Loyalty to Trump Isn’t Enough

0:00Listen to your favorite MSNOW shows any time as a podcast. Enjoy new episodes of Morning Joe, Deadline White House, and The Rachel Maddo Show. Every small-deed democratic muscle that we have is flexing. Plus the last word with Laurence 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 MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Good morning. It is Saturday, April 4th. I'm Ali Valshi. The search continues for one American crew member after a US F-15 fighter jet was shot down by Iranian forces over Iran yesterday. You are looking at debris from the crash. The jet was carrying two crew members. The military was able to rescue one of the two crew members.

1:00A US official tells MSNOW that a second American jet, this one is an A-10, it's called a warthog, is believed to have been shot down by Iranian forces near the Strait of Hormuz. The lone pilot of that aircraft was rescued. Additionally, at least one Black Hawk helicopter was fired on, and several of its crew members have been injured while they were searching for the missing American service member from the downed F-15 jet. So there is one pilot unaccounted for right now from that F-15 jet. We do not know what his condition is, whether it's a he or a she. We don't know where they are. The Iranians have not claimed that they have got custody of this person. There is a search operation underway. We'll stay on top of these developments. We're going to have live reporting from the region in just a few minutes. However, switching gears to a seismic shakeup here at Donald Trump's DOJ, the Trump Megaloilist and personal lawyer Pam Bondi is out as Attorney General. Now you know the story,

2:02but there's a lot more to it. Some people are celebrating, pointing to her chaotic tenure that turned the Justice Department into Donald Trump's personal vendetta machine, which of course he promised during the campaign. But don't get too comfortable. Donald Trump's reported shortlist to replace Bondi doesn't suggest that either reform nor order is coming to the Justice Department. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You see, Bondi was all about fealty, but it seems that fealty itself is no longer enough in this second Trump administration. What Trump needs in an Attorney General is a fixer. Blind fealty is simply the starting point now. The ceiling is how far you're actually willing to go. Bondi's downfall wasn't due to what one might expect. It wasn't really about incompetence. It was that she simply wasn't useful enough. Not because she broke with Trump, she didn't, or grew a spine, she didn't, or struggled with a sense of justice in an administration

3:03that always seems to be skirting the law, she wasn't. Not even that she pushed back a little. It seems Pam Bondi's gone because she didn't go far enough in protecting Donald Trump. She didn't run enough interference. She didn't control enough damage. She didn't apparently cover for him enough. She didn't go hard enough against his perceived enemies. As the old saying goes, she did a poor job of bearing the bodies. One might think this is about the Epstein files, which were central to her job since the day she was appointed, but an increasing number of sources suggest that while she blundered her way through that central scandal, which may still ultimately be the undoing of this administration, Pam Bondi's failure in Donald Trump's eyes was far more basic. Bondi simply couldn't deliver on persecuting and prosecuting Trump's perceived enemies. On one hand, Bondi had fueled expectations that she couldn't meet, publicly claiming on Fox News in February of last year that an Epstein client list was, quote, sitting on her desk

4:06and, quote, waiting to be reviewed only to later entirely contradict herself. One might say lie if one were being creative when she would say that no such list existed. Now, that credibility got never closed. That wound never healed. That's what we call an unforced error, and it's a big one. But that lie or obfuscation or whatever it was, serious though it was, was not ultimately what cost her the job. Sources told MSNOW that Bondi was fired because Trump grew dissatisfied with her inability to prosecute his perceived enemies, a list that includes the New York Attorney General in Tisha James, former FBI director James Comey, Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed as Fed chair, but who refused to cut interest rates on demand. The California Senator Adam Schiff, who prosecuted Trump during one of his impeachments, the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, the former Trump administration official Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, the Minnesota governor Tim Walsh, the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Fry, even former president Bill Clinton,

5:10and six members of Congress whose so-called crime of treason was recording a video informing members of the military and the intelligence community that they are not obligated to follow illegal orders. According to New York Times reporting, in the final weeks of her tenure, Bondi, aware that her days might be numbered, fried to win back favor by targeting individuals that Trump had singled out, including former Obama CIA director John Brennan and former White House aide turned whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson. But even that was not enough. And that says something important about what the role of the Attorney General has become. These aggressive, selective, vindictive, and legally dubious efforts were not being driven by traditional prosecutors. Indeed, they were being led by political henchmen who were willing to do the dirty work, combing through financial records, loan applications, insurance forms, and any other material they could use against specific targets.

6:14Take the campaign targeting New York Attorney General Latisha James, a long time Trump target an adversary. James successfully sued the Trump Organization in 2022 for more than 200 instances of fraud spanning a decade. Behind the renewed efforts to nab James on possible mortgage fraud was this guy. We've talked about him a lot on this show, Bill Pulti. Pulti is a close Trump ally and federal housing official from the billionaire Pulti real estate family. We'll talk about that conflict another time. Pulti publicly inserted himself into the campaign against Tish James, digging into her mortgage loan applications, and after three failed attempts to prosecute her, he then filed two new criminal referrals. Unsurprisingly, Pulti was reportedly one of Bondi's biggest critics. According to The New York Times, quote, they believed he had long pushed for her firing, blaming department leadership for slow walking and bundling the James and Colme cases among other things, according to people familiar with the situation. End quote.

7:17That's the model they're building. Not building cases from evidence, but searching for and twisting evidence to fit the target. All of this is unfolding against a broader backdrop on Friday. Donald Trump announced by a truth social that Vice President JD Vance will serve as the nation's so-called fraud czar overseeing a sweeping anti-fraud push with a mandate extending his words everywhere. But in Trump's words, quote, primarily in those blue states where crooked Democrat politicians have misused taxpayer funds. To be clear, this has its roots in Minnesota, where Trump has launched a blatantly racist attack against the sizable Somali community there. The administration has seized on fraud allegations to politicize the issue, using them as a pretext to target Democrat led states. So JD Vance is going to chair a new White House anti-fraud task force, which will include a representative from the Justice Department linking the White House and the Department of Justice

8:22in a way that raises conquestions about the DOJ's independence and the real aims of this initiative. This task force follows another DOJ unit announced earlier this year, which Trump claims will investigate fraud and will report directly to him and JD Vance. The administration presents these efforts as a crackdown on fraud, but the infrastructure being created is unusual and deeply troubling. As the Democratic Senator Chris Coons warns, quote, I am concerned that the administration is less concerned with specifically fighting fraud than with targeting people and states it dislikes or that it has a partisan agenda against, end quote. According to NPR, the DOJ unit will operate in close connection with the White House, even as existing anti-fraud, tax and public integrity units have been either weakened or dismantled. Perry Carbone, a former federal prosecutor, explains, quote, the Justice Department has historically operated with meaningful independence from the White

9:22House in individual enforcement matters. When you have statements like we have here suggesting that any new fraud enforcement office would be answerable to the White House, that raises legitimate concerns. If the Justice Department wanted to increase fraud prosecutions and they should be taking action to strengthen enforcement and not weakening it, the way that should be done is through the existing structure instead of cutting resources to the fraud section, end quote. And by the way, this guilty purge of Pambondi or the effectiveness purge, it's not happening in a vacuum either. The admitted puppy killer who was acting as the Department of Homeland Security Secretary was the first to go and Trump is said to be considering broader cabinet changes. Politico reports that he's very angry, very angry with officials he believes have underperformed or drawn negative attention signaling a potential major reset across the administration ahead of November's midterm elections that are looking increasingly ominous for this administration.

10:22Officials reportedly on thin ice include the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, the Labor Secretary Laurie Shavahs de Ramer, Director of National Intelligence Telsi Gabbard, and the Aviation Enthusiest FBI Director Cash Patel. Meanwhile, Trump has reportedly floated the idea of replacing Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the current EPA administrator and one of Trump's most reliable foot soldiers, or the Fox News host and former prosecutor Jeanine Piro, or the woefully inexperienced Trump defense lawyer, and there are a lot of them, by the way, so I'll have to name this one. This one's Alina Haaba, or the former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt, who's a Christian nationalist who generally doesn't like immigrants, but he's fine with German immigrants since that's what his grandparents were. 340 million people in this country, 1.3 million licensed attorneys, and this is the short list we have. Taken together, this appears less like routine turnover, and more like a recalibration around a single question, who is delivering for Trump? Bondi's ouster is just one part of the story. It signals a broader, more troubling shift in how

11:26the administration is structuring enforcement, oversight, and the rule of law in this country. Don't celebrate the firing of Pam Bondi. What and who comes next could mark a significant escalation from what we've already seen? For more on this, I'm joined by Mary McCord. She served as acting assistant attorney general for national security at the DOJ, and is now an MS now legal analyst. Also joining me right here on set, George Conway, and attorney, founder of the Society of the Rule of Law. He helped co-found the Lincoln Project. He's currently a Democratic candidate in the Congressional race for a New York's 12th District. Good morning to both of you. Thank you for being with us. I appreciate your time. Mary, let me just start with you. I think there's an important distinction people may be losing. Pam Bondi wasn't actually let go for some performance reason associated with being attorney general. It wasn't that she was failing at her job as attorney general. She just wasn't doing something enough, and that enough is not actually normally a job

12:27requirement of being the attorney general. Well, to the extent that this firing was because she wasn't able to deliver on the political retribution prosecutions that Donald Trump desires, that's much less a function of her and a function of a couple of things. One, you need evidence. You need facts that actually support a violation of law. You've got to be able to show that to a grand jury to get an indictment. We've seen that grand juries have repeatedly refused to indict, or even in the case of Lindsay Halligan and James Calle me when Lindsay, not Lindsay Halligan, excuse me, Latisha James and James Calle me when Lindsay Halligan was able to go into a grand jury and get an indictment. A judge has already questioned her presentation and whether she left out key facts or maybe said things improper. Of course, a judge also dismissed those cases because she was improperly appointed. When others tried to then reindite to James, it failed. You need evidence,

13:28you need facts, and you need those to show there's a violation of law. That's not going to change because somebody else is in the position of the attorney general. It's also not the attorney general who goes into court and presents those cases. I think this problem is one that if Donald Trump thinks he can fix it by putting a different position in that chair, he's wrong about that. George, tell me, give me your take on this because Mary makes a good point. You need evidence. They keep trying. They keep trying. Donald Trump is obsessed with going after these people he perceives as his enemies, most of whom are just doing their job. James Calle me, they were doing what they were doing. We're not looking at candidates. I mean, Gideon Pierrotly says some experience as a prosecutor. That's it. We're not looking at people who are otherwise better qualified to do their jobs. I'm not giving Pam Bondy more credit than she's due, but she was a lawyer and a prosecutor. Right. And look, I mean, there are a bunch of problems going on here for people who want to work for the Trump administration. First of all,

14:31it's very, very difficult for starters to be evil enough and depraved enough and corrupt enough and grifting enough for Donald Trump. But here, the secondary problem was exactly what Mary pointed out, which is you actually need evidence. You can't just make these cases up. I mean, you can't just fabricate evidence. I mean, maybe that's their next step. They'll try to do that. You just can't make cases up. You have to go into a court. You have to prove them. And not the these people were not all that competent. The Lindsey Halligan's of the world and Pam Bondy was actually a prosecutor. You said, but no amount of competence combined with sufficient depravity can bring these prosecutions and just don't, they just don't work. But Donald Trump doesn't care about that because he's detached from reality. He's deranged. He's a narcissistic sociopath. And now we have a third thing going on, which is he's failing. Okay. He's floundering. He's screwed up this war. He's screwed up the economy. His poll numbers are dropping,

15:31you know, down to the low 30s, which kind of where it gets stuck, which is where it gets stuck. It's hard to see him go in a lore, but I give him a chance. And so, you know, as a narcissist, as a pathological narcissist, he can't take the blame. So he wants to start chopping away at the people around him. And of course, he starts with the women because he's a misogynist. And unceremoniously gets rid of them. But, you know, there are plenty of corrupt male incompetence. And he's going to get around to them. So, which race is the question? Who would take these freaking jobs? Why do people take these jobs? Why would you want to go? And that Pampani actually had a decent, okay reputation. She was a real prosecutor in a real DA. You know, I don't think she was a rocket scientist, but she was respected in her own way. And now she's basically going to be remembered forever as being the worst attorney general in history who destroyed literally has, has got it. The top department of justice is going to take

16:33years. They've literally lost lawyers. They've got lost prosecutors. Who's going to take the job? Mary, let me ask you this though, because I apologize in advance, but it's such a waste of your time and your expertise given, given your experience. But to the extent that you need evidence and that this administration has tried and failed numerous times to gain evidence against in some of these prosecutions, how much of this is the process being the point? Does Donald Trump just want somebody who's going to be more of a bulldog, who scares more people? Because I don't know how this ends. I don't know why this is good for Donald Trump. To George's point, he's losing on the economy, he's losing on this war, he's losing popularity. What does going after Comey and Schiff and Tish James and all of these people actually do for him at this point? Well, I mean, that's a great question, because even if it were somehow successful and could get through a grand jury, it's probably never going to get through an actual jury trial. And like I said, you're going to have to come up with some evidence. And that's not going to change if it's Todd

17:34Blanche, who's now the acting AG. It's not going to change if it's Lee Zeldin or Janine Piro. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I think George is right that the Donald Trump started with the women because he's a misogynist. But I also, I also wonder sometimes if the way that Pam Bondy just supplicated herself to him almost was an embarrassment. You know, Todd Blanche has a different style. Todd Blanche doesn't sit out there and preach every day that Donald Trump is the greatest president we've ever had in the history of America. The way Pam Bondy does. She's done it on Capitol Hill. She's done it in public speaking. Todd Blanche is just like the bulldog who just rams Trump's agenda. And I think part of it could be to George's misogynist points. And now I'm way outside of my lane as a, you know, a lawyer and a former DOJ. I'm now doing, you know, psychology, which is not my expertise. But, you know, when I watch her, I wonder if sometimes that just didn't bother him. He wanted somebody who was just going to be a little bit more forceful. And even though he loves people to supplicate themselves to him, I think maybe it was somewhat

18:38off-putting and maybe that was part of the problem. It's, it's weird because again, George, while everybody remembers the, the files are on my desk just waiting to be reviewed, I remember the testimony in which she was asked about prosecuting Epstein collaborators and she talked about the DAO. It's like, well, that was just, that was sort of stupid. It is, it was stupid. But I have an answer to, I mean, I'm happy to go into the psychological stuff with Donald Trump as you know. I'll answer the question that Mary said, what does it do for him? Yeah. It gives him personal satisfaction to, to hurt his enemies. He, he will destroy himself if he can do his hurt down. Right. Which is the big danger for our country. This is what, I mean, wow, because I think of him as a self-preservationist, but this doesn't look like some of his decisions. No, he'll take, he'll, you know, he'll take everyone, you know, he wants to do, correct. I mean, it's kind of like what happened in January 6th and even, even, even Mitch McConnell recognizes. He wanted to burn everything on the way out of town. And that's the danger with a sick, deranged, malignant narcissist like a Donald Trump is,

19:40they end up destroying not just themselves, but everyone around them. And the real question is, is whether Republicans are finally realize we have to get rid of him too. Right. And we have to help the Democrats get rid of him before he destroys its all. Thanks to both of you. I appreciate you kicking soft this morning. Mary McCord is an MSNL legal analyst and professor at Georgetown Law, George Conway, founder of the Society of the Rule of Law and a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York. All right, coming up, the search continues for the Missing American Service member who was aboard the fighter jet that was shot down, the fifth, I'm F-15 that was shot down by Iranian forces yesterday, the latest on the search and rescue is next. Home to the Rachel Maddo Show. Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Socky and more voices you know and trust. MS now is your source for news, opinion and the world. Learn more at MS.Now.

20:48All right, moments ago, President Trump posted on Truth Social. Remember when I gave Iran 10 days to make a deal or open up the Hormuz straight? Time is running out. 48 hours before all hell will rain down on them. Glory be to God. End quote. Glory be to God. This is a new ending. Normally he says, thank you for your attention to this matter. Glory be to God, which is a whole thing which we're going to discuss later about the role that God seems to be playing in this mission. But this all comes as US forces continue the search and rescue mission for the Missing Airman that was shot down in an F-15 yesterday. Trump has not posted on social media at all about that situation. A crew member of an F-15 shot over Iran. There were two crew members in that airplane. One has been rescued. The other one is unaccounted for and the President of the United States has not posted about that. But glory be to God for the next 48 hours. Iranian forces are also looking for that airman by the way. And Iranian state media says that a local

21:52Iranian official has put a bounty out for their capture. Now, this incident is the first American combat aircraft to have been downed by Iranian forces since the start of the war five weeks ago. It's also believed to be the first downing of a US fighter jet by enemy fire since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. During the US search mission, at least one Black Hawk helicopter was fired upon. You can see low flying aircraft there. Several of the crew members on the Black Hawk were injured. The helicopter, however, was safely able to return to base. The other crew member of the two seat F-15 E fighter jet that was shot down has been rescued by US forces. Separately, Iranian forces are also believed to have shot down a second American jet. This one is an A-10 warthog. It crashed near the Strait of Hormuz and the lone pilot of that aircraft has been rescued. Joining me now from Dubai is MSNOW contributor in Zaman Rashid. In Zaman, give me some sense of this. I would assume if the Iranians had this second Airman,

22:56we'd know about that because they're very good at putting that sort of information out very fast, but we are missing information. We don't know where this Airman is, what the condition of this Airman is, what do you know? Yeah, Ali, look, we haven't had information directly from the United States about this missing pilot, whether they have been rescued or not. It's been quite some time now since that F-15 jet was shot down by the Iranians, but I guess the good news also is that we haven't heard directly from the Iranians that they have captured this pilot. As you mentioned, they're usually quite good at making a bit of a sing and dance, particularly online, when they've done something in their eyes, which is pretty positive. They were the first ones to report that they'd shot down this F-15 plane yesterday, but clearly, at the minute, there is no news about this second pilot. Right now, there is a race on a search mission by both

23:57Washington and Tehran to find this pilot because, of course, the US wants to retrieve this armed forces officer in the Air Force to get them back to safety to make sure that there is no harm done to them inside of Iran. But, of course, on the other hand, you've got Iran who will want to try and capture them alive as well, because they will use them as some sort of propaganda tool. They'll use them in some form of negotiations in this conflict. And essentially, they would have severe upper hand in this conflict if they managed to get hold of this US pilot. And I think importantly, as well, we see the efforts from Iran, because, as you mentioned there, Iranian media have specifically called on the people of Iran to go out to these two provinces, which they've named, near to where the jet was shot down and actively go out and look for this pilot, hand them in two authorities, and you'll receive a reward of around $60,000. So look,

25:01the news is right now that the US have not given us any official updates. Iran themselves, not updating their social media accounts where their leaders usually talk. And currently, the search very much continues for this US pilot, Ali. Inzaman will say close to you on this. Thank you for joining us this morning. MSNOW contributor Inzaman Rashid in Dubai. All right, coming up, the national average for a gallon of gas is now $4 and 10 cents a gallon, close to $6 a gallon in California. I don't need to tell you that, however, you already know the price of gas. You're feeling it at the pump and you have Donald Trump's war in Iran to thank for that. Coming up next, everything you need to know about the sudden oil shock that's been felt around the world. It's been more than a month, been about five weeks since the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel plunged us into a war of choice with Iran. Americans have seen gasoline

26:05prices shoot up to a national average of $4 and 10 cents a gallon of self-serve unleaded gas. That's more than a dollar more than it was a month ago. The culprit is Iran's blockade of the state of Hormuz, the crucial naval passageway through which more than a fifth of the world's oil flows. Oil prices shot up even higher when Trump declared that the war could drag on for weeks longer during his address to the nation this week. For the first time ever, US oil futures, well, maybe it's not the first time ever, but it's the first time in a long time, US oil futures which are called West Texas Intermediate are now trading at a premium to the international oil benchmark, which is called Brent Crude. These are for technical reasons having to do with when that oil actually gets delivered. So people are paying more for American crude oil because they can get access to it faster. West Texas Intermediate, that's American Crude, the futures for that settled at $111.54 a barrel yesterday afternoon. Brent Crude futures, that's the international benchmark,

27:11settled at $109.03. That's up 60% in just the last month. That's the biggest monthly gain since the 1980s. Now, remember gas prices always 100% of the time track oil prices. So your $4.10 a gallon average price of gas is still going to go higher. Now, the president says these spikes are temporary because he's been trying to calm the market, but right now stock markets are not reassured by Trump's words and the cost of energy and plastics and fertilizer and food and transport are going up everywhere. Joining me now is the veteran financial journalist Ron Insana. Ron's the author of the sub-stack column, the message of the markets and he's the guy I've turned to for, I don't know, 25 plus years when we need to explain big issues. My old friend, let me just, I just want to get to one thing. Unlike other things like tariffs where a company may decide they're going to pass it on to the consumer, they may decide they can swallow it, whatever. That's never the case with oil. Oil prices always become gas prices.

28:16Yeah, look, I was 12 years older, the Arab oil embargo in 1973. They were passed on immediately. Then again, in 1979, they were reigning revolution and through every spike that we've seen since then, prices for at the pump go up immediately and they go up faster than they come down, which is another issue we could deal with another day, Ali. But yeah, look, there's the direct linkage between the price of crude oil and the price of gasoline and also direct linkage between other heating oil and natural gas. All of these different energy products are linked to crude oil and when there are supply shortages or disruptions or worries that we're having right now that this could extend for even longer than we currently realize, prices are just going to continue to go up. And again, because they're holding onto this high-cost inventory, the price will come down even more slowly than it went up. It goes up in an elevator down in an escalator, right? So, and you make an interesting point. Somebody said to me yesterday, well, at least I don't drive,

29:18so this doesn't affect me. That's just not true. It affects everybody. If you heat or air conditioning in your home, if you buy food, if your food comes from a farm, if your food gets chipped anywhere, if you buy anything, if you buy anything from Amazon or UPS or the postal service now has a fuel surcharge, you pay twice. You pay at the pump. That's the price. You think you pay. And then that it's woven into everything because everything in this country gets transported. Yeah. And you pay more than twice. I mean, petrochemicals are used in a wide variety of consumer goods. Plastics, as you mentioned earlier, jet fuel has more than doubled. And so you're now starting to see airlines raise ticket prices and even put surcharges on baggage that's being put into the plane as you travel from one spot to another. So this has really wide ranging implications for the economy. It's going to push inflation higher over the next couple of months than we would have expected just six or eight weeks ago. And it's going to potentially keep the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates because inflation already above target prior to the war is going to be

30:21even more so over the course of the next several months. And if this becomes a protracted war, that means that inflation, as we've seen in prior periods, will remain elevated for some period. But it's a problem. If you ended up with slower growth, we saw some revisions to job numbers that are worrisome. We see the stock market. We're getting to a problem where these are two ways to fix these things, right? You lower interest rates are trying goose the economy, but you can't lower interest rates when prices are going up. This is a mathematically and economically dangerous place to be. Yeah, we've been talking for months and months now about many stagflation. Again, this is a 1970 where a US car gets 11 miles to the gallon. It gets close to 30. And again, we're not seeing the types of disruptions that we saw in the 70s with respect to stagflation, but we are seeing as I just mentioned above average inflation above target most certainly. We're starting even though we did see a bounce in job creation last month to the job market is low higher, low fire. So it's stagnant and estimates of economic growth are beginning to come down

31:23towards 1%. So that's kind of a stagflationary environment that is satisfying to no one and no less so to the Federal Reserve that again, as you say, if it raises rates to kill inflation, you deepen the risk of recession. If you cut rates, you might add fuel to the fire of inflation. And so it's a box in which the Fed finds itself and it's also a box in which consumers find themselves as well, particularly they have to start making choices between what they pay for higher prices for gasoline, higher prices for food, childcare, insurance, so on and so forth. So it is a sticky wicked at this point in time and is entirely dependent now on the duration and severity of the war. You and I are going to be talking a lot, Ron, which I always at least I enjoyed talking to you. I hate that this is what we're talking about. Ron and Son has a long time financial journalist and author of the message of the markets on Substack. All right, coming up, Pete Hegsis, Hegsis latest controversy. I'll explain next.

32:27President Trump's cabinet is full of controversial characters, some unqualified for the job, some with lists of scandals under their belt, some whose judgment may be clouded by their undying fealty to the president and some with all of the above. Some congressional lawmakers who voted to confirm these picks have taken the defense of, well, if only I had known then what I know now, maybe my vote would have been different. I mean, come on. Here's what the Republican Senator Tom Tillis said of the Defense Secretary Pete Hegsis all the way back in last July after one of his early controversies. With the passing of Tom, I think it's clear he's out of his depth as a manager of a large complex organization. So you don't regret it, but if you had to do it again today, you probably wouldn't vote yes. I think based on the information I had today, if all I had was the information on the day of the vote, I'd certainly vote for him again. But now I have the information of Helm being a manager and I don't think that as probationary period has been very positive. With the passing of time, it's clear that he's out of his depth.

33:36Are you kidding me? There is no new information about Pete Hegsis. Everything you needed to know you knew. Pete Hegsis is not an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Okay, maybe you didn't know everything about him, but you knew this. He was not qualified to lead the U.S. military and here's the latest scandal he's at the center of. According to the Financial Times, a broker for Pete Hegsis attempted to make a big investment in major defense companies in the weeks leading up to the U.S. Israeli attack on Iran. And quote, three people familiar with the matter tell the Financial Times. Quote Hegsis broker at Morgan Stanley reportedly contacted BlackRock, the equity fund, in February, about making a multi-million dollar investment in the asset manager's defense industrial's active exchange traded fund, ETF. The people said shortly before the U.S. launched military action against Iran. It continues. The inquiry on behalf of the high profile

34:40potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to people familiar with the matter. End quote. The Financial Times says the investment that Hegsis broker allegedly pursued did not ultimately go forward, but here's the thing. It wasn't blocked because of ethics concerns. It was blocked because the fund wasn't available yet for Morgan Stanley clients to buy. It's unclear whether Hegsis broker later found another defense-focused fund to invest his money in. In response to the Financial Times report, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in part, and I hope you're sitting down for this. This is going to come as a shocker. This allegation is entirely false and fabricated. Neither Secretary Hegsis nor any of his representatives approach BlackRock about any such investment. This is yet another baseless dishonest smear designed to mislead the public. End quote. MSNOW has not independently confirmed the Financial Times reporting, and neither Morgan Stanley nor BlackRock have commented. But let's just take a moment to fully appreciate this. If the report is true, a sitting U.S. defense secretary reportedly tried to

35:47invest millions of dollars into the defense industry weeks ahead of the very war that he had lobbied for and would be overseeing. A coalition of Democratic senators led by Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding answers in a letter to Hegsis that obtained by ABC News. The senators say in part quote, this would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement, a betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm's way. End quote. I'm joined now by Tom Nichol, staff writer at the Atlantic and professor emeritus of the national security of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. And Jesse Eisinger is an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. He's covered the world of finance for more than 30 years. He's won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for a journalistic series on Wall Street corruption. Gentlemen, good to see you both. Thank you for being with us. Tom, I want to be very clear. This is the Financial Times reporting. It's not a Lucy Goosey publication. They don't tend to just sort of run these things, but we haven't confirmed it. But these senators

36:49have asked for an explanation. And if I were the defense secretary of the United States, if there was a hint that I somehow tried to invest in defense companies before starting the war, I would have I would insist. Here's all the documentation to prove that's not true. Instead, we get these boilerplate. These are liberal media smears. Well, and it shows you the problem of living in a post-truth environment. In the old days, seven, eight, ten years ago, if something like this happened, the secretary and his people would say, all right, let's get to ground truth on what happened here. How much of this report can we argue with? Because eventually everything will come out. Instead, they simply say it's fabricated in false knowing that they're only talking to their base. And their base is going to stop right there and say, fine, it's fabricated in false. The idea that you should care, whether you're Republican or Democrat, MAGA or not, you know, that the secretary of defense potentially was going

37:54to profit off of a war that he knew was coming is completely lost in the wash. It's all about part as an advantage. And more to the point, Hegseth and Parnell and the people around him in the Pentagon, they know it. And all they have to do is say fake news, denied, and hope that it just goes away. I mean, it shouldn't just go away, but it probably will. I hate to say that, but it probably will. Because that's the world we're in. Jesse, again, I, this is the second time I've had to do this today. I've got to apologize to a guest because you are a Pulitzer Prize winning senior reporter for ProPublica, which means you are far more heavily equipped to answer this question than one actually deserves. One doesn't need to be you. One needs to read a pamphlet on ethics to understand that this is a problem. And if it's not true, it's still a perception issue that needs to be addressed to Tom's point. It should be incumbent upon the Defense Secretary and his staff to say, let me be very clear about what did or did not happen here. Yeah. This isn't something that's

38:58hard to think through conflicts of interest in this way are incredibly corrosive. Obviously, there's the aspect of, are you making decisions about life and death because it is in the interest of the United States. It's got some strategic point and goal. Or are you making it because it has a short-term benefit for you? Of course, this is a pattern. And this is a pattern that we've seen with suspicious trading on polymarket, one of these prediction markets ahead of the Iran war itself. And we've seen oil market betting. We've seen equity market betting, stock market betting. We've seen bets on Maduro. So there seems to be a pattern of leakage. We have no idea what it is. Is it just sort of scuttlebutt among young people in the kind of right-wing firmament of DC? Or are we talking about leaks from Trump's family? And the fundamental issue here,

40:04though, is this goes right to the top, of course, because Donald Trump is profiting from the presidency through conflict of interests that are grotesque and unprecedented in modern times. He is personally in business with the Emirates. He's personally getting money from crypto interests. So we're seeing this from the top, which just I think means that he sends a kind of signal and licenses this kind of behavior for the headsets of the world. Which by the way, Tom, this is your point. This is why this is why this is likely to go nowhere because it's all over the Trump administration. And sadly, it's all over Congress, too. I mean, there's all sorts of insider trading that goes on that normal, my regular viewer with no finance education would say it is unethical and shouldn't happen. But this is so permeates government that this is a more I'm more not going to see solved. Yeah. And, you know, in Congress, it's bad enough, right,

41:05that you have kind of inside information about petting legislation. And you can, you know, move your, you move your assets around to either get on board or get out of the way. But to go back to Jesse's point, these are decisions about life and death. Yeah. This is the secretary of defense. And you would think that a mature, responsible man of character, none of which is, would want to say, look, I'm the secretary of defense. I am the steward of America's defense establishment. I'm the person, you know, who's presiding over the institution that's sending your sons and daughters in the harm's way. You, I want to be upfront with you about that I would never do this that this didn't happen. Here's, you know, here's my finances, here's my statements. And instead, you know, he sends Sean Parnell out there to say fabricated, we demand a retraction. Because they know again, because within MAGA world, that's good enough. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's all I

42:07got to say about that. That's, you're right. That's, I wish that was a different story. One day, we'll have a different discussion. I appreciate it. You guys, Tom Nichols as a staff writer for the Atlantic, Jesse Eisinger is a assistant managing editor for ProPublica. We'll be right back. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, follow along with the MS now newsletter Project 47. You'll get weekly updates and straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people. The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this. Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at ms.now slash project 47. President Trump initiated a war that's already killed Americans abroad and is making life increasingly more expensive for Americans at home yet he can't seem to articulate why this war

43:07with Iran began in the first place, how long it will last, what the strategy is, or anything else in between. I'm going to speak to the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee Congressman Adam Smith of Washington about Trump's incoherent and convoluted sales pitch for the war. We'll be right back. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MS now shows ad-free and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddo's original series, including Rachel Maddo Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MS now premium on Apple podcasts.