Maddow: For a would-be strongman, Trump is profoundly weak

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First things first, I have an announcement to make on next week's show. This time next week, next Monday, September 22nd. Kamala Harris is going to be here. This is going to be her first full-scale news interview since the 2024 election. She will be here live on set with me for the show. I have roughly 400,000 things I want to ask her about. But I will get my chance. We're going to have that sit down one on one, one week from tonight, right here, 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. That's next Monday, September 22nd. I'm very excited about that. In the 10 months or so that have transpired since the 2024 election, it feels like we've had about 10 years worth of news, of course. But in thinking about talking to Kamala Harris next week, I realized that there's a lot on the record from her campaign, from her time in public life that is kind of helpful right now, especially helpful to the point that we shouldn't kid ourselves that anything that Trump has done is surprising. We shouldn't kid ourselves that the way he has behaved in office in the second term is a surprise. I mean, clearly looking back at Kamala Harris's campaign against him, looking basically to anybody who has been paying attention anytime in the last, I don't know, few years, it was not that hard to see it coming. Donald Trump has told us his priorities for a second term. He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute. He says that one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who insulted those law enforcement officers on January 6th. Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens. Pretty much nailed it, right? That was a week before the 2024 election. Kamala Harris speaking at the Ellipse outside the White House. And since Trump has been back in office, of course, he has freed the people who attacked the Capitol and assaulted police officers on January 6th. He has set up his Justice Department and his FBI and as much of the rest of the government as he can to go after his enemies list. He really does have the U.S. military deploying in U.S. cities against the American people. nailed it, saw it coming, clear eyed. That is, in fact, what we got. So I feel like it's just a helpful grounding thing to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that what Trump wants to do, what he's after, what he's going to try to get away with, we should think of that as basically a fixed variable. It's a knowable thing. It is knowable now, not only because he frequently says what he wants to do, but also because we lived through what he tried to do in his first term. But also, as Kamala Harris said during the campaign, we know his type, right? We know what guys like him want to do and what they try to do and how they behave. We know that would-be strongman leaders all over the world all do the same things. And so, you know, the headlines today, the headlines any day, every day, they all look like they're ripped from a textbook anywhere in the world about how strongman leaders try to operate once they get into office. Like just today, just take today for an example. You've got self-enrichment, New York Times headline, quote, anatomy of two giant deals. The UAE got computer chips. The Trump team got crypto riches. Quote, a lucrative transaction involving the Trump family cryptocurrency firm and a U.S. government agreement giving the Emiratis access to valuable AI computer chips. What this is about is the fact that the U.S. government has not allowed UAE, United Arab Emirates, to get really, really high-end AI computer chips for national security reasons. It's because UAE is so close with China. The idea is if these super high-end AI computer chips ended up in China, because UAE gave them to China, that could help China vault past us in terms of their military capabilities. So that was the policy. That was the reason why the UAE was not able to get really high-end AI computer chips. But then a member of the Emirati ruling family who was trying to get that policy changed, apparently hit on the idea that maybe his country could do an otherwise totally pointless $2 billion crypto transaction using Trump's family crypto company, which would then put millions of dollars in the pockets of the Trump family. And once they made that deal, wouldn't you know it, now UAE is getting those chips. National security be damned. The White House and Trump's crypto company are, of course, denying there's any link, but the timing sure is coincidental. And that sort of thing is, it's textbook, right? Also, the enemies thing, right? The enemies list thing, it's textbook. Today, there's headlines in the news about a new lawsuit brought by Maureen Comey. The reason her last name is familiar is she's the daughter of Trump enemies list headliner, James Comey, the former FBI director. James Comey's daughter has filed this new lawsuit, which makes a pretty compelling case that she was, in fact, fired from her job at the Justice Department because and only because she is James Comey's daughter and James Comey is on the enemies list. And, you know, hey, once you've got an enemies list, no reason to keep it short. Another headline today, quote, White House plans broad crackdown on liberal groups. They're saying now they will use the horrific murder of pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk last week as a justification for some undefined whole of government attack on what they always describe very vaguely as the left in this country. whatever else you think about what trump is trying to do in office there is no drama right there's no uncertainty there's no ambiguity about the agenda right it is the textbook agenda of every right-wing strong man everywhere right they all do the same thing you they tell people there is an enemy an enemy within that demands emergency measures, right? There's an enemy within that's nefarious and is responsible for all the terrible things. And so therefore we must have emergency powers and toughness and we must take off the gloves and break the rules, right? That's textbook stuff. Then you use your control of government to take over or intimidate every source of power and authority in the country, whether or not it has anything to do with the presidency, right? This means crucially the media, but also science and the arts and education and business and the professions, any source of authority or potential opposition or truth telling about the bad behavior of the dear leader, that must be shut down. He must consolidate power to include those institutions, even though they are outside of government. Then next, use your control of government and those institutions to enrich yourself and your family and your allies. and then you get rid of the professionals and the experts within government and law enforcement and the military so there is less friction from those institutions when you want to use those institutions to punish and intimidate your opposition and your critics and ultimately to allow you to stay in power indefinitely. And lastly, not all of them do this, but all of them want to. If you can, align yourself with other strongman leaders around the world so all the dictatorships start helping each other out and they do their best to undermine and work against the democracies. This is the same boring, straight up playbook they all play from. They all do the same thing. Pick an enemy, say it's an emergency. Consolidate power not only over the whole government, but over every other part of civil society and public life from which people might criticize you or oppose you or even just credibly report on what you're doing. Enrich yourself and your allies, use control of the state to make sure no one can ever remove you from power, and make common cause with some of the other strongmen who rule in this same way. They all do these same five things. And that is, of course, exactly what we are seeing now from Trump and from the Trump administration. And it's, you know, it's ripped from the headlines every day. I mean, just on that last point, joining the club, right, making common cause with other strongmen leaders against the democracies of the world. Just on that point, we've had a remarkable series of headlines over the past few days and today, right? We, of course, are part of NATO. If anybody threatens any of the other NATO countries, we're supposed to respond as if our own country has been threatened. NATO's the reason we haven't had a World War III after World War I and World War II happened in quick succession. We haven't had a World War III because we had NATO, of which we are a charter member and an animating force. At least we were until now, because now Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is so sure that that's no longer true, that we're no longer really part of NATO. He's so sure that President Donald Trump will act to help him and not NATO, that Putin sent Russian drones into Poland, a NATO country, last week. Trump responded by saying, oh, could have been a mistake. Could have been a mistake. He did nothing in response. Then this weekend, of course, Putin kept going. This time he sent Russian drones into Romania, another NATO country. And again, no response from Trump. Now, late today, Poland says it intercepted another drone flying over government buildings in the capital city of Warsaw. Because why would Putin stop? Russia and its close ally, the dictatorship in Belarus, they've just started huge military exercises right next to Poland in Belarus, which gives them a great reason to mass a huge number of troops and tons of military equipment essentially on the Polish border, on the NATO border. Trump responded to that provocation by lifting sanctions on Belarus's national airline, announcing that we may be reopening our embassy in Belarus and sending friendly U.S. military observers to watch these military exercises, as if these guys are our allies and not the NATO country right next door that these war games are meant to menace Trump hasn just reportedly blocked Ukraine from using long range missiles against Russia in its war with Russia Trump has also just cut military aid to other countries that border Russia. And the credulous U.S. press keeps covering Trump's verbal statements about Russia and Putin as if they mean something. Oh, Trump suggests he may be annoyed with Putin. Oh, Trump says he may be souring on Putin. Oh, Trump may someday be changing his mind to turn against Putin. Really? Watch what he does, not what he says. Trump is not just effectively ending NATO right now by refusing to respond to these threats to our NATO allies, even as they ask for our help. Trump is now allying us with the world's dictatorships, with his mentor Putin first among them. I mean, but like I said, there's no surprise about what he's doing, right? There's no open questions here. There's no black box. There's no mystery about his intentions or what type of leader he is. He's doing the same things they all do. Again, blame an enemy. Give yourself emergency powers. Consolidate power. Enrich yourself. Never give up power. And join the club with other strong men if you can. They all do the exact same thing. And Trump has always told us that these are the things that he would do. There is no mystery about what he wants or how he is trying to get it. Where there is mystery and where there is drama, where the history of this moment will be told, is in two things. the two open questions we've got are how are we going to respond as a country right we know what he's doing and how he's trying to do it how are we going to respond as a country meaning how far are we going to let him go that story still being written today every day in your personal life but number two how skilled is he going to be at trying to pull this all off How skilled is he going to be or not? And again, just in today's headlines, there's plenty of news on that front as well. Because whatever you think of his intentions, his skill level is low. I mean, to the extent that what he's trying to do depends on him using his control over the government to do the things he wants to do. Right. The operations of his government and to a certain extent, his political operation continue every day to be kind of a clown show. I mean, for a would-be strongman, for a man who wants to seem like a Putin type, right? Like one of these strongmen that he so admires all over the world. For a would-be strongman, there really is profound weakness here. Take the Lisa Cook debacle as an example. Trump has asserted that he needs unprecedented control over every lever of the U.S. economy, even levers over the U.S. economy that were explicitly designed from Trump to be independent of any president's influence. He wants not only control over raising revenues through taxes, which is something only Congress is supposed to do. He wants control over what the government spends, which is something that Congress is supposed to be able to do. He wants control over the central bank, which is something that is explicitly designed to not be controlled by the U.S. president. Now, should Trump have expanded control over more elements of the U.S. economy? Should he have unprecedented control over levers of the U.S. economy? Well, how is he done with the stuff that he does control already? I don't know. Under him, we've had job growth suddenly slow to a 16-year low, excluding the pandemic, which happened in his first term. Under him, long term unemployment is now, per The Washington Post today, quote, at a post pandemic high and a level typically only seen during periods of economic turmoil. Thanks to Trump's second term policies, health insurance premiums are about to spike to their biggest jump in at least five years. There are 24 million Americans on Affordable Care Act plans and above and beyond the spike in health care premiums that everybody's about to see. If you're on the Affordable Care Act this next year, your health insurance costs are expected to rise by more than 75 percent. That's affecting 24 million Americans. Health care costs up more than 75 percent in a year. That's because of Trump's policies. How's he doing in your personal economy? Donald Trump has done such a hit job on the economy that he is now putting his name on the signs at a bunch of infrastructure projects that were passed and funded by Joe Biden. in Biden's legislation that Trump was fanatically and vocally opposed to. Inflation is up. The labor market is down. Health prices are about to go through the roof. And so Trump is taking credit, literally putting his name on Joe Biden's economic projects in the hopes that maybe he'll at least get credit for that stuff, because that stuff seems like it's working. So yeah, a guy with that record, should this man get even more control over the U.S. economy? Should he also take the reins of the Federal Reserve Bank that is legally independent from him? I think that's a reasonable question. But the way he's tried to get that control, the way he's tried to get control of the Federal Reserve is by making wild accusations against Lisa Cook against a woman who is on the board of governors of the Fed, who Trump has decided he's going to try to remove her from her post and thereby grasp the reins of the Fed and control it himself. And how has he gone after Lisa Cook? He has accused her of mortgage fraud. And then he had his DOJ open a criminal investigation into her for this supposed terrible mortgage fraud. And as bizarre as this attack is, I mean, you know what? The details of it aren't working out for him. We first had reporting from ProPublica and Reuters that the thing for which Lisa Cook is being accused is not something for which people really ever criminally get charged. Then we had further reporting from ProPublica that the thing for which she is accused is something that has also been done, apparently, by at least three members of Trump's cabinet. His labor secretary, his EPA administrator and his transportation secretary have all also apparently done what they're accusing Lisa Cook of doing, according to mortgage documents, as have family members of the Trump administration's federal mortgage guy who made this accusation against Lisa Cook in the first place. Now, this weekend and today, we have reporting that Lisa Cook does not appear to have done anything wrong with her mortgage at all. Documents about her mortgage process show that she didn't commit the kind of mortgage fraud that they are accusing her of at all. Tonight, a federal appeals court has again blocked Trump from firing Lisa Cook. We'll be watching the United States Supreme Court late tonight and into the overnight hours to see if they'll make some sort of emergency intercession on Trump's behalf to try to keep Lisa Cook out of the Fed's meeting that starts tomorrow. But I mean, this was their big swing, not just to go after one public servant. This was their big swing to give Donald Trump massive new powers that no president has ever had before. This was their big swing to take control of the Fed and make it subject to his whims and his peculiar form of economic genius that right now is bankrupting your favorite North Dakota soybean farmer. I mean, this was their big swing to give Trump huge new power over the biggest economy on the planet. And they apparently never Googled to see if the accusation would stand up to even one day of scrutiny. They never checked to see if the accusation would be blatantly, obviously, publicly, provably, untrue. Their intentions are exactly what you think they are. Their capabilities, though, are not so much. I mean, you may have also noticed today that Donald Trump has not initiated a U.S. military invasion of Chicago. I mean, Trump literally threatened to wage war against the city of Chicago. He threatened a military apocalypse in the city of Chicago. Chicago's about to find out why it's called the Department of War. That is not somebody posting about Trump. That's Trump posting. After making that threat, the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois pushed back super hard, as did the people of Chicago, who said, no, no troops in our streets. And hey, wouldn't you know it? Now Trump has lost interest, apparently, in mounting a military invasion of the city of Chicago. He's apparently not sending the troops there after all. And hey, if you are watching me right now and you are one of the people, one of the tens of thousands of people who went to those big peaceful protests and rallies and demonstrations against Trump's promised invasion of Chicago. Congratulations, you did it. You stopped him. It worked. He did not send troops. He does not like being resisted. And when people resist him. More often than not, he stops what he's doing. He gets diverted. moves on to try something else instead. You know who also stopped him? Grand juries. The least romantic, least heralded part of our whole criminal justice system. Regular citizens. Every day we're getting more and more news about grand juries, regular citizens, who are doing something previously unheard of in the criminal justice system. They are refusing to hand down indictments against people the Trump administration is trying to charge in the cities that they have invaded. In Los Angeles first and now every day in Washington, D.C., grand juries are saying no, they will not sign off on felony charges being brought against people who Trump's feckless and incoherent prosecutors are trying and failing to prosecute. And speaking of incoherent, Trump has now had to post a bowing and scraping apology for, oops, having his immigration agents arrest and shackle and deport hundreds of South Korean workers who were apparently legally in the United States constructing a battery plant in the state of Georgia. Oops. Oops. Didn't mean to horrify and shock and insult one of our most important geopolitical and economic allies getting their whole country up in arms against us because we have built an abuse machine in the name of immigration enforcement that is a machine we can't control, and it just goes after anyone who looks foreign. And oops, did we do that? We didn't understand who they were, why they were here. We just arrested and chained them all. Oops, were we not supposed to do that? So now Trump has had to post this. He just posted this online. And when foreign companies who are building extremely complex products, machines and various other, quote, things come into the United States with massive investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise. I don't want to frighten off or disincentivize investment into America by outside countries or companies. We welcome them. We welcome their employees. Oops. Yeah, that's not what you've been doing. This is what you've been doing. This is not a welcome. Did you not know they were going to arrest all these people? Did the people doing the arresting know why they were arresting these people or who these people were Was this part of a plan You not even a year into this term in office and you already have no idea what your own government is doing And you apparently can't stop it even when you do. Strong men want to seem strong. They say things all the time that are meant to create the impression that they are very powerful, very strong. They can do whatever they want. That does not mean that they are strong. In our case, with our would-be strongman, this guy has put together the only federal prosecutor's team in the history of the United States legal system who actually can't get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. In our case, with our would-be strong man, this guy has decided to mount an overthrow of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America with the legal equivalent of scribbling something mean about the Fed on a bathroom wall and hoping the rumor mill will take care of the rest. In our case, in the case of our would-be strongman, this guy, oops, accidentally arrested 300 South Koreans without any idea of why. And now has no idea how to fix it. Now that South Korea obviously is mad. I mean, in our case with our would-be strongman, you better watch out or you're going to get a U.S. military invasion of your city. Unless, unless, unless you say no real loud, in which case, OK, then no invasion. I'll go invade somewhere else, maybe. And yes, I know. I know that they are now promising a massive assault on their political enemies. Right. They're going to use the whole government to annihilate the whole political left in America. I know that's what they are saying now. Their ambitions are as grand as they are predictable and unsurprising. It is textbook stuff. But never forget for a second that they are also just terrible at everything they try to do, which is why pushing back against them almost always works. Watch what they do, not what they say. We've got a lot to get to tonight. More to come on both those fronts. Stay with us. What do you know about the Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas? It's where our government imprisons immigrant parents, children, and even newborns, a place with putrid drinking water, food with bugs and worms, and even a confirmed measles outbreak. These conditions are unsafe and inhumane. The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, is the only legal aid provider inside Dili, day in and day out. We're there right now, defending immigrants' rights to due process and filing emergency petitions to free families illegally detained. 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Elegance is a journey. Air France. Available on certain flights. Progressive rollout in 2026. Reserved for Flying Blue members. The free loyalty program. This is the cover of the latest New York Times magazine. You see it says there in big, bold letters, the war on cancer. And then on top of those words, a big red stamp that says canceled. Quote, how the 50-year campaign to save millions of lives was dismantled in six months. Quote, in the mid-1970s, America's five-year cancer survival rate sat at 49 percent. Today, it's 68 percent. But now an extraordinarily successful scientific research system, one that took decades to build and has saved millions of lives and has generated billions of dollars in profits for American companies and investors. That system is being dismantled before our eyes. Quote, in a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer related research grants and contracts and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country's cancer research system and who ensured that new new discoveries reached clinicians and cancer patients and the American public. President Trump's proposed budget for next year calls for a more than 37 percent cut to the National Cancer Institute. Yeah, you'll remember when Trump was running for president against Kamala Harris last year and he said, vote for me. I'll get rid of cancer research. Vote for me. I'm for more cancer. Not what he ran on, right? Not what anybody in their right mind would run on. But nevertheless, it is one of the most shocking facts of this second term of Donald Trump being president, that his administration really is engaged in a comprehensive, aggressive, super thorough campaign to permanently destroy cancer research in this country, not to pause it, not to refocus it, but to stop it. In the New York Times Magazine this weekend, Jonathan Mahler reports that, quote, a deliberate and targeted attack is what cancer research is experiencing right now. One National Cancer Institute official told him, quote, they have studied how the National Institutes of Health works, studied it hard and learned it well, and they've put sand in the gears in ways that are very effective. Devastating. Former number two official at the NIH who stepped down this year after 18 years there says, quote, it's an absolutely unmitigated disaster. It will take decades to recover from this if we ever do. Why are they doing this? I mean, who asked for this? Or who benefits from it, right? Qui bono, right? Jonathan Mahler writes this weekend, quote, America's 80-year run as the world's leader of biomedical research and America's 50 year run as the global leader of cancer research may well be coming to a close. And he says, quote, for no apparent reason, for no apparent reason. And that is the question that hangs over this entire debacle, right? I mean, who in 2024 went to the voting booth thinking, yeah, the one thing I know is that we got to get rid of cancer research. We're going to talk later in the show tonight about what Trump is doing to vaccines in this country and the way that lots of people with public health backgrounds are trying to figure out ways around that to save public health, given what he's doing to vaccines. But with cancer, at least, I mean, unlike with vaccines, with cancer research, I mean, nobody's really pushing crazy potent narratives about the evils of cancer research the way that Trump's health secretary, Robert Kennedy, has been pushing crazy potent conspiracy theories about the evils of vaccines. Dismantling cancer research has what constituency, right? This is not something around which I can see any political constituency whatsoever, but it is a determined, comprehensive project that they are engaged in with incredible energy. Why is this happening? Joining us now is Jonathan Mahler. He's staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of this remarkable piece. Mr. Mahler, thank you for all the work it took to get this piece done, and thank you for being here tonight to talk about it. Thanks for having me. I just wanted to ask you to explain what I thought was one really important point that you made in this piece, that this defunding of cancer research, which you've documented, doesn't appear to be the byproduct of indiscriminately slashing the budget. It really does appear to be planned and targeted and deliberate. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you can sort of, the instinct, the impulse, I think, is to see it as collateral damage, right, to see it as, well, this is, you know, just the sort of byproduct of some larger effort to shrink the government, to kind of get the liberal elite research universities in line, et cetera. You know, you can sort of look at it through that lens. But in reality, this has been such a kind of deliberate, focused, conscious effort. And this is not an easy thing to do. I mean, the NIH and the National Cancer Institute, the NCI, were constructed to be insulated from politics. They were built to not be vulnerable to a political attack. So it's not an easy thing to do to start to dismantle the biomedical research system, to dismantle the cancer research system. And it took a concerted, deliberate, well-thought-through campaign. So it really isn't fair to see it as just collateral damage, just a sort of a, you know, a byproduct, a necessary byproduct of a larger, larger effort to sort of straighten out the government and to, you know, get rid of the woke bureaucracy. It really was a targeted, deliberate effort. And I mean, forgive me for asking it this way, but is there some Earth 2 out there? Is there some corner of the MAGA world or the conservative political universe that I've never stumbled upon where cancer is good and cancer research is bad, where there's some conspiratorial mindset around cancer research, something akin to the way they've demonized the public health miracle that is vaccines? Yeah, no, there really isn't. I mean, I did not come across one. I mean, I think that the most the best explanation I could come up with was, you know, that this was was maybe, you know, think about this from the point of view of the tech right. Right. This is like the Silicon Valley approach here might be we need to disrupt this system. You know, we haven't cured cancer yet and we need to take this this effort out of the hands of the government and we need to empower private private industry to cure cancer. The problem is they're not proposing anything new. This isn't an effort to reform cancer research. This is an effort to dismantle and defund cancer research. There's no plan. There's no, well, we're doing all this so that then we can do that. There is no that. So, you know, it's very hard to honestly to understand, because as you say, there's no constituency for this. And there has always been a very, very powerful bipartisan constituency for this research. That is why it has been so well funded across so many decades. It's honestly mystifying. It's mystifying in political terms. And at some point, somebody will make political traction out of this issue because there is no constituency for it, at which point we will find out if this damage is at all reversible. Jonathan Mahler, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. It's a really, really important piece. I knew some of this was going on, but nowhere near the half of it. Thank you for doing this very difficult reporting and for being here tonight. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. We've got much more news ahead tonight. Stay with us. Cash Now More Later from Opendoor gives you cash up front for your home plus all the profit later That no chaos now no cash left behind later Skip the showings now pocket extra profit later This is so simple now, this is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. 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Cottonelle gives you that kind of clean that makes you want to come clean about everything else, like admitting you've been rocking press-on nails since 2008. It's the clean that boosts your confidence and keeps you feeling fresh all day. So today was the day for everybody who works at the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, to return to their headquarters in Atlanta, their headquarters that is still full of bullet holes. It's less than a month since an anti-vaccine gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the CDC campus. Repairs are still ongoing. You see a lot of the bullet holes there. But nevertheless, the staff is being ordered back to work there as of today. Anyway, CDC employees have been through quite a lot recently. In addition to that concerted, major, violent attack on the CDC headquarters, which killed a police officer, you may remember just a couple of weeks ago, the CDC director was abruptly fired after just 29 days on the job. After she was fired, all the rest of the agency's top leadership quit in protest. And then everybody who works at CDC went out front of the buildings and clapped them out to support their decision to quit in protest, to salute them as they left the building. The CDC director who was fired then said explicitly why she was fired. She said Trump Health Secretary Robert Kennedy ordered her to pre-approve the findings of his vaccine advisory board that's due to meet this week. Kennedy, of course, has fired all the vaccine experts on that board, filled it instead with people who've made their careers spreading conspiracy theories and doubt about vaccines. The fired CDC director wrote about her dismissal, quote, I was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric. Trump's health secretary has denied that's the reason that he fired her. But we may hear more about it soon because she's going to testify in Congress day after tomorrow, Wednesday. The following day, Thursday, that's when Kennedy's wacky vaccine panel is going, in fact, to meet to discuss recommendations on a whole bunch of vaccines, including COVID and Hep B and measles, mumps and rubella. All of those are on the agenda for that CDC meeting this week. Tonight, ahead of that meeting, Kennedy has announced five more appointments to that advisory board. As the New York Times reports tonight, quote, like other members currently on the committee, some of the new additions have expressed skepticism about vaccines or vaccine mandates. Joining us now is Apoorva Mantovelli. She is a science and global health reporter at the New York Times. Ms. Mantovelli, thank you very much for your time being here tonight. My pleasure. What should we expect out of, at least as far as you could tell, out of that testimony on Wednesday from the fired CDC director and from the vaccine approval meeting the following day? Well, from the Wednesday hearing, I think we will at least find out what Dr. Moneris thinks happened, because in his hearing, the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said that he asked her point blank if she was trustworthy. And she said no. That seems like a very odd conversation to have. And I have a feeling she's probably going to deny that. So it's a bit of what he said, she said, but she will probably also, again, detail the things she said in that Wall Street Journal op-ed you showed where she talked about the things that Mr. Kennedy asked her to do that she felt she could not do. And that's why she was forced out. And then on Thursday. Sorry, I'm just going to go ahead. Please go ahead. On Thursday at the vaccine panel, we are going to see these new panelists, plus the seven that were announced a couple of months ago. They will be discussing the hepatitis B vaccine and voting on that. And we're expecting to see them change those recommendations at least a little and possibly quite a lot. In terms of Dr. Moneris' expected testimony on Wednesday, as you point out, There is this weird scenario. We had that incredibly lit up, almost bizarre and performative, angry hearing appearance by Secretary Kennedy recently in which he described this scenario around her firing, which, I mean, I wasn't there. I don't know if it happened, but if it did happen, it's definitely stranger than fiction. Just a conversation that just doesn't happen in real human communication. At the same time, I do feel like this is a moment of unusual political potency because I feel like Secretary Kennedy, as much as his pugnacious affect and other things about him may appeal to the president and the president's supporters and pro-Trump media. It does feel like there are Republican senators who are uncomfortable with his work at the Health and Human Services Agency and who may specifically be uncomfortable with what he's doing at CDC and what he's doing at vaccines. What is your sense of the sort of political momentum around this question, around CDC and potentially around this testimony? I think you're right that there are some Republican senators who have become increasingly irritated and dissatisfied with Mr. Kennedy's stances on vaccines. But I don't know how much political weight that's actually going to carry. I mean, we did see, you know, Senator Bill Cassidy, who was sort of the determining vote for Mr. Kennedy, feel really uncomfortable, it seemed like, about the decisions he's made and ask some really tough questions, including whether he agreed that President Trump should get a Nobel Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize for Operation Warp Speed, which brought us the COVID vaccines. And we saw Senator John Barrasso, who also has not really spoken up about this kind of stuff before, take a stance. But at the end of the day, I'm not sure that that will make a big difference to President Trump, as my colleagues have reported. It seems like Mr. Kennedy enjoys a particularly close and protected relationship with the president. And it does not seem like President Trump really wants to shake Mr. Kennedy out of that job or even interfere with how he's doing it. We'll see if that if that holds through what I expect to be pretty important, potentially politically explosive testimony on Wednesday. And we'll see what that wacky new vaccine advisory panel does on Thursday. How how hard they're going to go with this. Apoorva Mandavili, science and global health reporter at The New York Times. It's an honor to have you here tonight. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for having me. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is such a weird story. All right. As headlines go, it at least started with a very clear headline. Quote, $10 million in contraceptives have been destroyed on orders from Trump officials. These are birth control pills, IUDs, hormonal implants. The Trump administration decided that they were going to block these supplies from being delivered to developing countries. We had promised to deliver these supplies and Trump said, no, no, no, we're not going to deliver these supplies anymore. So this stuff had been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium ever since. This stuff was kind of in limbo. And groups like the Gates Foundation and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation had offered to buy the stockpile so they could deliver these supplies instead. The U.N. said they'd buy this stuff. They pay millions of dollars to buy these birth control pills and stuff. But rather than take any of those offers, the Trump administration said no. They would instead spend an additional one hundred and sixty seven thousand taxpayer dollars to incinerate this stockpile of perfectly good contraceptives. Which, okay, wow. But then look at what happened next. The Trump administration apparently told reporters in a statement that the incineration was complete. They had, in fact, burned $10 million worth of contraceptives. They explained, quote, the administration will no longer supply abort-efficient birth control under the guise of foreign aid. Now, first of all, none of the products in this $10 million stockpile were abortifacients. This was like birth control pills and IUDs. Birth control pills are not abortions. IUDs are not abortions. It's just birth control. But it got so much weirder from there. So as I said, the warehouse where all of this contraception had been stockpiled was in Belgium. Authorities in Belgium saw this report in the New York Times with the Trump administration confirming that it had set all these contraceptives on fire. They've incinerated these $10 million worth of family planning supplies. Authorities in Belgium went to the warehouse and checked to see if the report was true. And it turns out all the stuff was still there. The birth control that is in no way an abortion had not, in fact, been burned up. It had not been incinerated. The Times says the same official who had confirmed to them that the incineration had happened now was not responding to calls or texts or emails. After the Times published a new story about how, in fact, nothing had been burned, the official finally replied, quote, there was a miscommunication. Quote, there was a miscommunication with international staff and no destruction has yet happened, but we are reviewing the matter. it's like the way a three's company episode always resolves it's all just one big misunderstanding Chrissy great work all around you guys great work we'll be right back just before I go one last reminder next week this time this show Vice President Kamala Harris is going to be here for her first news interview since leaving office she's going to be here live in person with me 9 p.m. Eastern next Monday, the 22nd of September. We have a ton to talk about. I'll see you there a week from tonight. If you dread dealing with your insurance company more than you dread being stuck in an elevator with a total stranger who's an oversharer, then you might have Insuranoia. And if you have Insuranoia, then you should have NJM. They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders. No jingles or mascots, just great insurance. 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