Trump cabinet picks point to continuation of scandals and disgrace AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Rachel Maddow Show

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Episode: Trump cabinet picks point to continuation of scandals and disgrace

Author: Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
Duration: 00:42:32

Episode Shownotes

Rachel Maddow looks at how Donald Trump is assembling his cabinet with the same disregard for ethics and integrity that marked his first term, and early signs that Trump is following the authoritarian playbook of subjugating the legislature to consolidate power in himself.

Summary

In this episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel Maddow discusses the troubling ethical implications of Donald Trump's cabinet selections, pointing out the continuity of scandals and authoritarian leadership. The episode highlights past cabinet members' corruption and the reappointment of scandal-tainted officials. It warns of Tom Homan's aggressive immigration plans and Stephen Miller's return, emphasizing potential extreme measures. Maddow also critiques Trump's attempts to undermine legislative authority by blocking judicial confirmations. Furthermore, the conversation touches on corruption concerns during the transition and suggest that grassroots resistance is essential to confront Trump’s possible authoritarian drift.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Trump cabinet picks point to continuation of scandals and disgrace) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_02
Thanks, Joan Holm, for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. So the last time that Donald Trump was President of the United States, his Secretary of the Interior got embroiled in a corruption scandal and was referred to the U.S.

00:00:14 Speaker_02
Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution.

00:00:18 Speaker_02
The last time Donald Trump was President, his Secretary of Transportation also got embroiled in a corruption scandal and was referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution.

00:00:30 Speaker_02
The last time Donald Trump was president, his secretary of labor got embroiled in a disgusting scandal involving convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

00:00:40 Speaker_02
A federal judge ruled that Trump's labor secretary had broken the law in that scandal, and so the labor secretary was referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department. He ended up resigning in disgrace.

00:00:57 Speaker_02
Donald Trump's Secretary of Energy resigned in a corruption and ethics scandal. Donald Trump's head of the EPA resigned in a corruption and ethics scandal. Donald Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary resigned in a corruption and ethics scandal.

00:01:12 Speaker_02
And I mean, Any one of these cases is like a teapot dome-sized scandal, right?

00:01:21 Speaker_02
It used to be if you had one cabinet official involved in a big ethics and or corruption scandal that forced them out of the job or led them to being referred for criminal prosecution, even if you just had one, that would be enough to brand your whole presidency a disgraced and scandal-ridden mistake.

00:01:43 Speaker_02
I mean, Warren G. Harding. What is remembered about the Warren G. Harding presidency? I mean, maybe you got three things you could remember. A, died in office. B, had an affair. C, Teapot Dome scandal.

00:01:57 Speaker_02
Corruption scandal which resulted in a cabinet official being criminally charged. I mean, literally a century after that one scandal involving one cabinet official, that's basically all we remember about that guy's presidency.

00:02:10 Speaker_02
Because admit it, when I just said Warren G. Harding had an affair, you went, he did? You didn't even know that! We only remember that one scandal. because it led to a cabinet official getting in trouble.

00:02:22 Speaker_02
One cabinet official getting in trouble in that kind of a corruption scandal used to be enough to mar your presidency and brand it alone for a century.

00:02:34 Speaker_02
The first Donald Trump presidential term had so many cabinet officials forced out of office in disgrace and referred to the Justice Department to face criminal charges, it's actually hard to remember them all.

00:02:49 Speaker_02
And of course, just one of the scandals of the Trump administration is that despite an unprecedented number of cabinet officials being referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution, the supposedly independent Department of Justice under Donald Trump decided to bring charges, to actually bring criminal charges against precisely none of them, which is yet another of the Trump scandals from his first term, but still.

00:03:16 Speaker_02
I will also mention that one of the more memorable disasters, ethical disasters along these lines from the first Trump term, was his Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And this one might be the most memorable because it happened right at the end.

00:03:29 Speaker_02
I remember the headline about it on our show blog. The headline about it was December 10th, 2020. So this is after Trump lost re-election to Joe Biden, but before the January 6th attack on Congress, before the inauguration.

00:03:42 Speaker_02
It was December 10th, 2020, and this was the headline. Yet another Trump cabinet secretary caught up in scandal. As Donald Trump's presidency comes to an ignominious end, it's apparently not too late for one more cabinet controversy.

00:03:57 Speaker_02
And that last one, it was the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And he too, like so many of his colleagues in the Trump cabinet, he too was referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.

00:04:09 Speaker_02
An investigation happened into claims that he had tried to discredit a veteran who said she had been sexually assaulted at a VA facility. The VA Inspector General investigated those allegations, found evidence that he seemed to have broken the law.

00:04:24 Speaker_02
They referred him to DOJ to be prosecuted. And of course, the Trump Justice Department did not prosecute him. They didn't prosecute any of these guys.

00:04:34 Speaker_02
But one of the things that was really memorable about his scandal is that more than 20 different veterans groups rose up in outrage against that guy. And these were disparate veterans groups with very different takes on the world.

00:04:47 Speaker_02
Everybody from the American Legion to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, they all demanded that this Trump VA secretary resign or be fired.

00:04:58 Speaker_02
Even a really, really conservative pro-Trump veterans group just railed against this guy. for that scandal that he was embroiled in. It was just a disaster.

00:05:07 Speaker_02
I mean, it was a sign that even right up to the very bitter and ultimately very violent end of Trump's term in office, things were just bad. It was a bad presidential term.

00:05:21 Speaker_02
It is not normal to have a half dozen members of the cabinet referred for potential criminal prosecution for crimes they allegedly committed while they were serving in the cabinet. It's not normal.

00:05:34 Speaker_02
I mean, that's the kind of thing that gets you listed repeatedly as the worst or among the worst ever presidents in US history when presidential historians and scholars are surveyed about these things, right?

00:05:44 Speaker_02
This is why Trump is considered by experts in the field to be, if not the worst, then certainly one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. I'm sorry, Warren G. Harding. It just wasn't good. Today's Veterans Day. Happy Veterans Day.

00:06:04 Speaker_02
Veterans Day is a celebratory day. It's not to be confused with Memorial Day, which is a very somber occasion. Memorial Day, we remember service members who gave their lives for our country. Veterans Day is a happy day.

00:06:18 Speaker_02
It is a celebration of our nation's veterans, a time to say thank you and to just pay them some attention, pay some attention to their service and their pride in their service.

00:06:27 Speaker_02
Basically, as a country, Veterans Day is a day to lift up our service members and our veterans. and I therefore try not to do bummer veterans news on Veterans Day.

00:06:39 Speaker_02
But today, the news is that Donald Trump, for his second presidential term, has brought back that guy, that last cabinet official with the last scandal, the guy who was referred for criminal prosecution right at the end of Trump's first term in office after a scandal-ridden tenure at the VA.

00:07:01 Speaker_02
And this time Trump has brought that guy back to lead Trump transition efforts for the entire military, for the entire Defense Department.

00:07:12 Speaker_02
former VA Secretary, who was referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution at the end of his term, to lead Trump's Pentagon transition efforts. At a time when the United States of America is looking to the U.S.

00:07:24 Speaker_02
military for assurances that they won't deploy against American civilians the way Trump has threatened he will order them to do.

00:07:34 Speaker_02
The guy who's in charge with staffing up the Defense Department leadership for the military, making sure we've got all the best, most ethical people there, it's the guy who left office last time under Trump while his, quote, possible criminal conduct was under investigation by federal prosecutors.

00:07:52 Speaker_02
Good times. There's been a flurry of announcements and news about Trump staffing up for his second term in the past 24 hours. He really is bringing back that guy to choose the staff and leadership of the U.S. Defense Department.

00:08:10 Speaker_02
It's just been reported by The New York Times that Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who once memorably cast aspersions on the size of Donald Trump's genitals in a presidential debate, The New York Times is first to report that Senator Marco Rubio will be Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State.

00:08:29 Speaker_02
NBC News has actually just confirmed that news as well, just in the last couple of moments. It is on the front page of The New York Times as we speak. Marco Rubio, the expected choice by Donald Trump. to be his secretary of state.

00:08:42 Speaker_02
We did learn for sure this evening that Trump is choosing for his national security advisor another Republican member of Congress, Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida.

00:08:53 Speaker_02
After Congressman Walz helped in the effort to try to overthrow the US government and keep Trump in power after he lost re-election in 2020, you might remember, this was an amazing Florida story, you might remember a very unusual apology being published by Congressman Walz's hometown paper, the Orlando Sentinel.

00:09:12 Speaker_02
It was an apology to their readers for having endorsed Mike Walz for re-election. They apologized for having endorsed him after he tried to help Trump overthrow the government.

00:09:26 Speaker_02
Mike Waltz has also distinguished himself by claiming that Trump was not responsible for January 6th. He also has proposed that Dulles Airport should be renamed Trump Airport.

00:09:38 Speaker_02
So clearly, Congressman Mike Waltz has checked all the boxes that he needs to to be national security advisor in a second Trump presidential term. Today we also learned that Tom Homan will be in a job that Trump is apparently calling border czar.

00:09:53 Speaker_02
Remember when Republicans used to maintain with a straight face that it was a huge scandal? It was evidence of communism? To call anybody the czar of anything in the US government? Well, Tom Homan will be Trump's border czar.

00:10:09 Speaker_02
Tom Homan is the architect of the policy that had the U.S. government deliberately and systematically taking little kids away from their parents and not giving them back.

00:10:21 Speaker_02
He also spent this interregnum period, while Trump's been out of office, barnstorming the country, bragging about how he's going to be the man who will mercilessly come after immigrants if and when Trump gets back into power.

00:10:35 Speaker_01
Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?

00:10:40 Speaker_05
Of course there is. Families can be deported together. They ain't seen s**t yet. Wait till 2025. Trump comes back in January, I'll be on his heels coming back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen.

00:10:54 Speaker_05
I'm sick and tired of hearing about the family separation. And I'm still being sued over that, so come get me. I don't give a st, right? I don't give a st what anybody says. Trump comes back, I come back.

00:11:11 Speaker_05
And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen.

00:11:18 Speaker_02
That last appearance there, it's worth pointing out, was Tom Homan. Again, just appointed to be Trump's border czar for the second term.

00:11:26 Speaker_02
That was him speaking this year at an event called the Rod of Iron Festival, which was a quasi-religious event held by sort of a cult group.

00:11:38 Speaker_02
This is their leader, this is a group that literally, literally worships assault rifles, and their sort of demigod leader who literally wears a crown that is made out of bullets.

00:11:51 Speaker_02
That cult event is the kind of event that Tom Homan has been speaking at this year, talking about mass deportations and how he'll run all of that when Trump's back in office. Here's one other I just want to highlight.

00:12:06 Speaker_02
This is Tom Homan doing a very friendly, long radio show interview, a fairly typical interview for him content-wise. But I just want to show you, this is the guy whose show he chose to be on here.

00:12:16 Speaker_02
This is the kind of environment that Tom Homan has been swimming in before being named today to be Trump's border czar for his second term.

00:12:26 Speaker_04
If you look what happened under the attacks in 9-1-1 again, all coming out of the same group of people that has done a very good job at hiding under the religion of Judaism. They use Judaism as a cover for what they're really doing.

00:12:42 Speaker_04
I'm sure they helped engineer the takedown of Hitler. Things that I see, it just makes me shake my head. After what they've programmed us, people are going to learn a lot about World War II and Hitler and the Nazis.

00:12:54 Speaker_04
They're going to learn about Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.

00:13:01 Speaker_02
People are going to learn Hitler was fighting the same people. that we're trying to take down today. These people who are using Judaism as a cover for what they're really doing. And look at 9-11. Look at Judaism and 9-11. What?

00:13:20 Speaker_02
This is the company that Tom Homan has been keeping. And the kinds of Places where he's been making appearances over the past few years while Trump has been out of office.

00:13:31 Speaker_02
That's where Tom Homan has been promising mass deportations and camps to hold millions of people in this country. Now Trump today has announced that he is in fact bringing Tom Homan into the government to head up mass deportations.

00:13:45 Speaker_02
Trump has also put in charge of policy planning for the transition, the other architect of the family separation policy, the policy of taking kids away from their families and not giving them back.

00:13:57 Speaker_02
The whole second term Trump plan to build mass camps in the United States for the military to hold millions of people inside our own borders, that idea was developed by Stephen Miller.

00:14:10 Speaker_02
We learned today he will be deputy chief of policy in the Trump White House. And according to the New York Times, he will be in charge of all policy matters for the transition. And we know what his priorities are.

00:14:20 Speaker_02
He will be setting policy priorities for what the Trump administration will do on day one.

00:14:25 Speaker_02
So anybody who's telling you this is going to be at all moderate or normal in terms of what they're going to do, that person is living on a nice planet that I would like to visit sometime, but it is not our planet here.

00:14:38 Speaker_02
Any expectation that the most extreme things Trump talked about during the campaign and during his time out of office, those were just talk and normal people will come into his administration to do normal things, that wishful thinking has not survived this first Monday since the election.

00:14:58 Speaker_02
It is better to be clear-eyed about these things and to see them coming than to be in denial or to be surprised by them when they come around. It is what it is.

00:15:09 Speaker_02
And to that end, I think there's one other thing that is worth watching here, worth putting up a flag on this.

00:15:15 Speaker_02
Just in terms of thinking about, you know, not just policy choices, not just personnel choices, but the preservation of our system of government. A president, honestly, can appoint pretty much anyone he wants to any position, right?

00:15:29 Speaker_02
It is ridiculous that Trump, in his first term in office, had tons of cabinet officials who were involved in corruption scandals and even referred for criminal prosecution.

00:15:38 Speaker_02
It is insane that he gave his son-in-law a White House job and then gave him a security clearance, even though he failed the background check.

00:15:44 Speaker_02
And then that same son-in-law walked away from the White House at the end with $2 billion from Saudi Arabia in his pocket. It's all crazy. But legally, a president can put anyone he wants in the White House, basically.

00:15:57 Speaker_02
He is free to make terrible decisions along those lines, and we have seen him do it before. He is free to make the worst possible decisions about who to bring into the White House. That's what the American people voted for.

00:16:09 Speaker_02
Congratulations, that is what we will get. Also, with the advice and consent of the Senate, he can put anyone he wants into high positions in the government writ large.

00:16:21 Speaker_02
But on that point, you may have seen that Trump put out a statement online insisting that even though he's not in control yet, even though the Democrats right now control the White House, President Joe Biden is still president, even though the Democrats right now have a majority in the Senate,

00:16:38 Speaker_02
Still, Trump insisting this weekend that the Democrats should not be allowed to confirm anyone, including any Biden-appointed judges over these next two and a half months before Trump is actually sworn in as president.

00:16:52 Speaker_02
And as an assertion, that's nuts, right? You're not president now, my guy, and Republicans don't control the Senate right now. So you and Republicans have no control, you have no say over whether or not Biden and the Democrats choose to pass more

00:17:06 Speaker_02
you know, confirmations before you take power. You don't get a say in that. You're not in power yet.

00:17:12 Speaker_02
And to be clear, after Biden won the presidential election in 2020 and Democrats won the Senate at the same time, when the Republicans were on their way out of power and they knew it, they had a gazillion confirmations.

00:17:26 Speaker_02
They confirmed at least 32 people in that time period after the 2020 election.

00:17:30 Speaker_02
Everything from the Surface Transportation Board to the State Department to the Federal Reserve to the DOJ to the Tennessee Valley Authority, they confirmed more than 30 people to jobs like that.

00:17:41 Speaker_02
after Biden and the Democrats won the 2020 election, but before Trump and the Republicans had left town and handed over power.

00:17:50 Speaker_02
Just in that time period, the Republicans, after the 2020 election, but before Biden's inauguration, Republicans in Congress, when they weren't helping Trump with his effort to overthrow the government by force and stay in power, thanks to an angry armed mob attacking Congress, when they weren't busy with that, they were busy confirming Trump judges.

00:18:10 Speaker_02
After the election, after Trump lost election in 2020, but before Biden was sworn in, Republicans in the Senate confirmed appeals court judges and district court judges, tons of federal judges, including Eileen Cannon, remember her?

00:18:22 Speaker_02
Who then proceeded in South Florida to throw out what otherwise looked like an open and shut criminal case about Trump illegally hoarding and mishandling classified documents, which he hid in his bathroom, among other places, at Mar-a-Lago.

00:18:37 Speaker_02
They confirmed tons of people after they lost the election in 2020, before the Democrats came into power at the end of January, 2025.

00:18:46 Speaker_02
The idea that it would be somehow improper now for the Democrats to do the same thing, for the Democrats to spend this next two and a half months confirming Biden nominees, including judges, to say that there's something wrong with that, or Republicans should stop that, or the Republicans can stop that.

00:19:03 Speaker_02
It's just an absurd suggestion. Republicans confirmed people at great speed after they lost power in 2020. Democrats will do so presumably with equivalent speed right now after they lost this election.

00:19:17 Speaker_02
The White House at least said they would do so today in a statement brushing Trump back, telling him to back off his threats to try to stop these confirmations even before he is back in power. Here's the thing that I really wanna point to here.

00:19:34 Speaker_02
Along with that absurd bluster from Trump, where he's trying to pretend he's already in power, right? Telling Democrats to behave as if Trump's already president and Republicans already control the Senate, which they don't.

00:19:46 Speaker_02
Aside from that, which is pushing it, big guy, Trump also said one other thing about confirming people for positions in the government. He said he wants the new Senate, once they're sworn in in January, to go into recess.

00:20:01 Speaker_02
He wants them to recess, to leave town, so that there's no Senate in session to confirm his nominees. for the new administration. Now on the surface level, you might think this makes no sense.

00:20:14 Speaker_02
Republicans are gonna control the Senate when they're back in January. It's not like Trump era Republicans are known for their independence and their willingness to buck Trump's wishes.

00:20:22 Speaker_02
Whoever Trump wants to appoint to his government, no matter how crazy, the Republicans in the Senate are going to approve everyone he asks for. What do you think, they're gonna be offended, right?

00:20:31 Speaker_02
Somebody like Tom Homan, oh, he's been spending time with the Jews did 9-11 guy. You think that Republicans in the Senate are gonna have a problem with that? Really? I mean, he's going to have a Republican-controlled Senate.

00:20:46 Speaker_02
They will confirm his appointees no matter who they are. So why is Trump now telling the Senate to go into recess, to shut themselves down, so they can't vote to confirm his appointees? Why is he doing that? He's doing that so the Senate

00:21:06 Speaker_02
won't have to vote to confirm his appointees. If the Senate isn't recess, he can make recess appointments. He can just install people in their positions without the Senate ever voting for them.

00:21:19 Speaker_02
Even though the Senate would definitely vote for them if they took a vote, he's telling the United States Senate to shut itself down so he can operate independently and on his own.

00:21:30 Speaker_02
Even though they don't have any intention of stopping him, he doesn't even want to give them a say.

00:21:37 Speaker_02
I draw your attention to this because of all the discussion we have had as a country about Trump's dictator on day one promises, his authoritarian values and promises and threats.

00:21:50 Speaker_02
One of the things that hasn't been talked about very much is that we have a three-part system of government. Co-equal branches of government, the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. We have a three-part system of government.

00:22:04 Speaker_02
But what's the first rule of authoritarianism? It's that there's one guy in charge, right? It's that there can be no other source of authority in the government other than the dear leader.

00:22:16 Speaker_02
So if there has to be a Congress, well, it certainly shouldn't be a Congress with any power. It shouldn't be a Congress that has any role in governing. And frankly, same thing for the courts, right?

00:22:30 Speaker_02
This is something that I've been trying to raise flags about in advance. Sometimes you can just feel something is getting traction or it's not getting traction. I can tell this is not getting traction.

00:22:40 Speaker_02
But I'm just going to keep saying it because this is what's coming. We're already seeing it. Watch. for moves early on to consolidate power for him, not just within the executive branch, which they are obviously doing, right?

00:22:54 Speaker_02
This whole thing about firing all the civil servants, firing all the career government employees, what's that about doing?

00:22:58 Speaker_02
It's about consolidating the executive branch so there's no source of authority and no directive force in the executive branch at all other than the president himself. That is about consolidating the power of the executive branch. But also look to him.

00:23:14 Speaker_02
to disempower, to hollow out, to neuter, to sideline the other two branches of government. The legislature, meaning the Congress, and the judiciary.

00:23:26 Speaker_02
Trump does not fear being constrained by this iteration of Congress, especially if the Republicans take the House as well. Trump doesn't fear being all that constrained by courts, not with John Roberts as Chief Justice on this Supreme Court.

00:23:41 Speaker_02
He does not fear being constrained by those parts of our government in anything he wants to do. He's got them both on choke chains, frankly. But it is important to any would-be authoritarian to not just have the obedience

00:23:57 Speaker_02
of other portions of the government, he needs to have their subservience too. It must be that other portions of the government cannot matter. Only he can matter. There can't be three co-equal branches of government.

00:24:11 Speaker_02
There can be one man who is the government and everything else is subservient to him.

00:24:17 Speaker_02
And on this point, amid everything else we are learning about this transition, and oh boy, there is more to learn about it, we're gonna talk about it this hour, but amid everything else we are learning about this transition, stick a flag in the fact that he is demanding that the U.S.

00:24:28 Speaker_02
Senate shut itself down for him, even though it's gonna be controlled by Republicans. There is no rational reason why he should not want the United States Senate to confirm his appointees unless he doesn't want the Senate to have that kind of job.

00:24:44 Speaker_02
He doesn't want the Senate or the Congress to have any job, frankly. L'état, c'est moi. Right? The state, that's me. Authoritarian governance means only one person matters, and the rest of the government is just decoration.

00:24:59 Speaker_02
We are watching for that from him about the courts. We are already seeing it from him about what he is demanding from the Congress. Heads up. Lots to get to this hour. Stay with us.

00:25:19 Speaker_02
Donald Trump's first term as president is not typically remembered as a time when bipartisanship flourished. But there were some exceptions.

00:25:26 Speaker_02
For instance, in 2019, the pretty hard-right Republican senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, he teamed up with a group of Democrats, including progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, to co-sponsor a legitimately bipartisan bill that was called the Presidential Transition Enhancement Act.

00:25:44 Speaker_02
The main purpose of it was to try to smooth out the process of transitioning from one president to the next, but also to handle possible conflicts of interest while a new president-elect is staffing up.

00:25:55 Speaker_02
Among other things, the bill required candidates to devise an ethics plan, quote, an agreement that the eligible candidate will implement and enforce an ethics plan to guide the conduct of the transition.

00:26:08 Speaker_02
That bipartisan sort of good government reform bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Not a single senator opposed it. The bill then passed the House of Representatives on a voice vote. Again, no opposition.

00:26:20 Speaker_02
And in March of 2020, on Super Tuesday, in fact, Donald Trump signed it into law. And despite what you're thinking, which is, what? Donald Trump signed an ethics law? It wasn't that much of a surprise at the time, right?

00:26:34 Speaker_02
Republicans were involved in crafting the legislation. It was a unanimous passage through the House and the Senate.

00:26:41 Speaker_02
Also, Trump's own team said that there were things about the transition process that they did not like either, which they thought this bill would fix. So Trump signed it.

00:26:52 Speaker_02
Bipartisan reform of the Presidential Transition Act, inspired in part by the concerns of the Trump team, crafted in part by pro-Trump far-right members of Congress, signed by Trump in 2020. Well now, it's transition time again.

00:27:04 Speaker_02
It's time to put it all in place. And so now, naturally, here's the lead from the New York Times. Quote.

00:27:13 Speaker_02
President-elect Donald J. Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.

00:27:28 Speaker_02
And yes, this is the very same ethics pledge from the bipartisan bill that Trump himself signed into law. He's not signing it.

00:27:36 Speaker_02
He's apparently ignoring all the requirements of that law, including, according to the New York Times, blowing through the September 1st deadline to sign the transition agreement with the General Services Administration. Why is that important?

00:27:48 Speaker_02
Well, that provides for a variety of services to be made available to the president-elect, including $7 million in funding for the costs of the transition.

00:27:56 Speaker_02
That provision also puts a, quote, $5,000 cap on individual donations to the transition and requires the public disclosure of all its donors.

00:28:05 Speaker_02
By refusing to sign that agreement, Trump effectively faces no limit on contributions and does not need to name his donors publicly. And here's the best part, money raised by the transition is not regulated by any other government agency.

00:28:21 Speaker_02
So not to bottom line this too bluntly, but what this means is that Trump in the transition appears to be setting himself up to take unlimited funds from anywhere, he doesn't have to disclose where it's from, and he can use that money for any purpose with no oversight.

00:28:40 Speaker_02
What could possibly go wrong? Would you like to pay a bribe to the president-elect? Do you know where the mail slot is that's marked transition office? Joining us now is Ken Benzinger. He's a politics reporter for the New York Times. He broke this story.

00:28:54 Speaker_02
Mr. Benzinger, I really appreciate you making time to be here. Thank you.

00:28:58 Speaker_00
Thank you, Rachel.

00:29:00 Speaker_02
I wanna ask you about the ethics and potential corruption concerns here, but I also wanna ask you about whether this holdup means that there isn't a transition happening, meaning the literal transition to a new government in which the president-elect and his team get into the agencies and start learning what's there and what needs to be done, start seeing where their desks are and their filing cabinets.

00:29:22 Speaker_02
None of that can happen in addition to some of these concerns about money, right?

00:29:28 Speaker_00
That's right.

00:29:28 Speaker_00
Until the proper agreements are signed and until the ethics plan is submitted, the Biden administration is legally prohibited from opening any of its doors, opening its files, even providing national security briefings to the Trump transition.

00:29:44 Speaker_00
It's like a total wall. They can't give them anything, the Biden administration would be in violation of the law, and they're not going to break that law, at least so far they said they haven't.

00:29:52 Speaker_00
And what that means is that the Trump transition has seen nothing. The kind of things you normally have in a transition, having people getting access to different agencies, sharing of files, getting people in so they can

00:30:05 Speaker_00
in the next 70 days prepare to take over the federal government is simply totally not happening and it's because of the Trump transition's refusal to sign the two agreements it was required to do in September and October and provide the ethics plan that conforms to federal law.

00:30:22 Speaker_02
Is it your sense, and this may be a question that's unanswerable, but is it your sense from your reporting that they intend to sign those pledges so that the transition can go ahead, or is it your sense that they do not intend to sign those pledges and they, in fact, just don't intend to have a transition, they just intend to show up on the 20th of January?

00:30:44 Speaker_00
So one thing is my sense and the other is what they say. And what they've been saying to me and others is that, of course, they're going to sign all the necessary agreements and they're going to get it done.

00:30:54 Speaker_00
They first told me that in early October, that they were going to do it. And of course, it's now more than a month since I had the conversation and they haven't signed anything.

00:31:03 Speaker_00
People inside the federal government are telling me that they really have made no progress in terms of getting them to sign anything.

00:31:10 Speaker_00
The fact of the matter is that the one agreement with the General Services Administration that you mentioned probably could never get signed and it wouldn't hinder the transition as much as the other one, which is crucial.

00:31:22 Speaker_00
That's with the White House. That's the one that sets the guidelines for providing access to all the agencies, which sets up the national security briefings that allows the real transition to happen.

00:31:33 Speaker_00
And if that's not signed, we're looking at a situation where Trump and all of

00:31:37 Speaker_00
his appointees and all the people that he wants to work in his new administration would have to walk into, you know, 400 plus federal agencies completely cold on January 20th with no prior preparation.

00:31:49 Speaker_00
People who follow these kind of things, that worries them a lot because they believe at the moment where any administration or any time the U.S. government is at its most vulnerable is in these transition moments. That if they're

00:32:00 Speaker_00
If there was ever a risk of a foreign attack or foreign cyber espionage or anything like that, it's going to happen in those transition moments. We're looking at a situation where the new incoming Trump administration would have zero preparation.

00:32:13 Speaker_00
They'd be coming in completely cold. The metaphor I think of is sort of like taking the final exam without ever having gone to class.

00:32:22 Speaker_02
I'm trying not to use words like final, even in metaphors these days, but it seems like an appropriate use in this context.

00:32:29 Speaker_02
Ken Benzinger, politics reporter for The New York Times, congratulations on this reporting and thanks for helping us understand it.

00:32:36 Speaker_00
Thank you very much for your time.

00:32:37 Speaker_02
All right. Much more ahead here tonight. Stay with us. For over 30 years, the most prominent human rights organization in Russia was an organization called Memorial.

00:32:51 Speaker_02
And the purpose of Memorial was to memorialize and tell the stories of the oppression and the bloodshed of the Stalin era. It was one of the most important repositories of information about the brutal past of the Soviet Union.

00:33:06 Speaker_02
Memorial, the organization, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. But stories about the Russian government doing bad things, even doing bad things decades ago, those are not stories that Vladimir Putin likes.

00:33:20 Speaker_02
And of course, one of the hallmarks of authoritarian rule is that there can't be sources of information that compete with the dictator. So three years ago, Putin's government shut Memorial down.

00:33:32 Speaker_02
They first labeled Memorial a foreign agent, which then was just a quick hop, step and a jump to the Kremlin just ordering the group to be liquidated altogether.

00:33:42 Speaker_02
Another branch of Memorial that focused on present day human rights, they were accused of supporting terrorism. They got shut down as well. Putin's government also shut down the anti-corruption movement led by opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

00:33:56 Speaker_02
How did he shut down Navalny's organization? By labeling it an extremist organization, which is the same label the Russian government gives to ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

00:34:06 Speaker_02
One key signifier of authoritarian drift is leaders giving themselves wide powers to shut down civil society groups and media outlets. And the easiest way, of course, to do that is to declare some kind of emergency.

00:34:19 Speaker_02
The second easiest way to do that is to label groups you don't like as terrorists or as part of some nefarious outside influence. Well, today, with 70 days to go until Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term as president,

00:34:35 Speaker_02
This is probably not a great time for the United States Congress to be considering a bill that would willingly hand over to the executive branch new wide latitude to unilaterally declare non-governmental organizations and media outlets to be terroristic.

00:34:53 Speaker_02
And yet, that appears to be the plan in the House of Representatives.

00:34:56 Speaker_02
Republican leaders tomorrow are expected to fast-track a bill that would allow the Secretary of the Treasury, whoever Trump appoints to that role, to essentially shut down any nonprofit organization in the country that he or she declares to be a terrorist-supporting organization.

00:35:14 Speaker_02
The ACLU has joined more than 120 different human rights, charitable, and journalism organizations in urging lawmakers to vote against this bill.

00:35:22 Speaker_02
I have to tell you, back in April, incredibly, an earlier version of this bill got overwhelming support from almost every Republican and Democrat in the House of Representatives.

00:35:33 Speaker_02
Now, with a Trump administration on the horizon, this bill presumably looks very different to members of Congress who have their eyes open.

00:35:41 Speaker_02
One Democrat who didn't oppose this bill the last time around now tells The Intercept that he will likely vote against it this time. Again, this is expected to be voted on in the House tomorrow.

00:35:52 Speaker_02
Even if the bill does pass the House, there's no reason to expect that the Senate will take it up as long as the Senate is controlled by Democrats. Democrats obviously have a lot of other priorities in the last days before Trump takes office.

00:36:05 Speaker_02
But if you're worried about Trump's stated desire to go after those he considers to be his enemies, and you're looking for ways the legislative branch of government could not help facilitate that, this vote tomorrow is a pretty good place to start.

00:36:21 Speaker_02
Hold that thought.

00:36:27 Speaker_02
Republicans in the House are fast-tracking a bill, they're expected to bring it up tomorrow, which would allow the Trump administration to essentially shut down any nonprofit organization in the country by declaring that nonprofit to be a, quote, terrorist-supporting organization.

00:36:43 Speaker_02
Joining us now is Ezra Levin from Indivisible, which was one of the groups trying to marshal opposition to the bill. Ezra is a former congressional staffer, a co-founder of the Indivisible movement in 2016.

00:36:52 Speaker_02
You know Indivisible from their successful organizing against the Trump administration the first time around, including their heroic and ultimately successful organizing to save Obamacare.

00:37:02 Speaker_02
Today, with a second Trump term on the horizon, Ezra is on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers.

00:37:07 Speaker_02
He's actively involved in writing a new Indivisible guide, a new instruction manual for Indivisibles, a specific brand of practical, grassroots, locally-based opposition, this time to the second Trump administration. Ezra, it's really nice to see you.

00:37:23 Speaker_02
Thanks very much for being here tonight.

00:37:25 Speaker_03
Great to talk, Rachel.

00:37:28 Speaker_02
So Indivisible is one of the groups, along with the ACLU and more than 100 other civil society groups, that are calling on Congress to reject this bill. What seems important about it to you?

00:37:38 Speaker_03
Look, I do not know why, on the first day that Congress comes back into session after Donald Trump wins the election, that you would have Democrats in Congress voting to give him more power to go after his enemies. That is bonkers to me.

00:37:55 Speaker_03
And I think it's a real test to see if Democrats in this new Trump era are willing to fight back.

00:38:02 Speaker_02
In terms of the indivisible approach to organizing, we have to go back in time now, Ezra, and I wanna ask you to sort of nutshell the indivisible philosophy to that kind of practical, locally-based grassroots organizing that I described in the intro, how you developed it in 2017, in the wake of Trump being elected the first time, and whether or not that basic ethos still guides what you're doing today.

00:38:30 Speaker_03
Look, Trump wants to think that he's all-powerful, and he wants you and everybody else to think he's all-powerful. But I'm sorry, Rachel, for the time being at least, we still live in a federated, national, democratic republic.

00:38:44 Speaker_03
And in that democratic republic, yes, we've got Congress, and we've got 50 state republics where there are 19,000 villages and cities and towns and unincorporated areas where 335 million Americans live and vote for hundreds of thousands of elected officials.

00:39:00 Speaker_03
Every single drop of political power in this country flows from the people. Every single drop of it. And it doesn't flow up to Donald Trump. It flows through the local level and the state level and the national level, but it's geographically based.

00:39:13 Speaker_03
So the key insight in the Indivisible Guide didn't come from us. It came from years and years of organizing on the left and the right. We saw the Tea Party do this.

00:39:22 Speaker_03
What they recommended folks do was focus on their local area, where they live, get folks together,

00:39:30 Speaker_03
Organize them and then focus on your elected officials, whether they're city elected officials, county elected officials, state elected officials, or federal elected officials.

00:39:39 Speaker_03
And in this moment, where you've got Donald Trump and what looks like a Republican trifecta coming after us, using a slim election margin to justify a deeply unpopular policy agenda, in this moment, what we have the power to do

00:39:55 Speaker_03
is to organize locally and tell our elected officials, just say no. Fight back. Do not give this guy power that he does not have.

00:40:06 Speaker_03
That's what we did in 2017 and 2018, as you said, to save Obamacare and also to build the largest midterm margins in the history of the Republic in 2018 and take back the House.

00:40:19 Speaker_02
Ezra, obviously, the election results this time around didn't land with the same shock value as they did in 2016. After Trump had been elected once, I think everybody implicitly knew that it could at least theoretically happen again.

00:40:35 Speaker_02
But I wanted to ask what you're hearing from Indivisible members,

00:40:38 Speaker_02
And what you're also hearing from people who may be interested in joining indivisible groups around the country, you haven't put out any sort of official call, I know, for people to form new indivisible groups or to collectively start organizing in any way, but I'm wondering what you're hearing just in this first week in terms of people's enthusiasm for doing the kind of work you're talking about.

00:40:57 Speaker_03
yet was a racial it's it's been a week and that way folks were probably put out the uh... original indivisible that it was in mid-december and i've heard a lot of talk of oh gosh it's been a few hours it's been a few days where are the massive crowds where's the resistance here's what i've seen talking to folks around the country i joined statewide indivisible groups in georgia this weekend and they did a little poll they ask their members how are you feeling right now

00:41:23 Speaker_03
What are you going through? And folks are feeling everything. They're feeling angry. They're feeling scared. But the number one response from the Georgia Indivisible group, 70 percent, determined.

00:41:34 Speaker_03
We saw 11,000 of our members join us the day after the election. And then we joined with Move On and Working Families Party and others to hold a nationwide call. the next day, 150,000 people joined. We haven't yet put out a new guide.

00:41:48 Speaker_03
It's going to be coming out on Wednesday, but the number one thing we're going to be calling on folks to do is gather in your community.

00:41:54 Speaker_03
So if you're interested in that, go to indivisible.org, come check it out, and reach out to a few friends and family members and start talking about what you're going to do in this moment to fight back.

00:42:05 Speaker_02
Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, online at indivisible.org. Thanks for being here and keeping us posted. We'll be talking to you in an ongoing way in weeks ahead, Ezra, I'm sure of it. Thank you so much.

00:42:17 Speaker_03
Looking forward, Rachel, thanks.

00:42:19 Speaker_02
We'll be right back. I have officially landed 24 seconds into Lawrence O'Donnell's real estate, which means it is time for me to move along.