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The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
House GOP debates how to pay for Trump's 'very pricey' agenda
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House GOP debates how to pay for Trump's 'very pricey' agenda
Update: 2025-01-24
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House Republicans reportedly float Medicare cuts and more to cover the cost of Trump's massive agenda. Plus, The many potential crypto opportunities for the Trump family. And, a federal judge temporarily blocks Trump's order to end birthright citizenship. Peter Baker, Carol Leonnig, Melanie Zanona, Peter Goodman, Peter Spiegel, Tim O'Brien, and Joyce Vance join The 11th Hour this Thursday.
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Transcript
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00:00:56
Tonight, Donald Trump signs off on a slew of executive orders, as Republicans debate major cuts to cover the cost of his massive agenda,
00:01:07
new details on what's being considered.
00:01:10
Then, the many potential crypto opportunities for the president and his family to boost their bottom lines.
00:01:16
Plus, Trump's order to end birthright citizenship is blocked.
00:01:20
For now, our legal expert is here to bring it all down for us.
00:01:24
As the 11th hour gets underway on this Thursday night.
00:01:30
Good evening.
00:01:34
Once again, I am Stephanie Rool.
00:01:36
It is day four of the second Trump administration.
00:01:39
And the flood of executive orders shows no signs of stopping.
00:01:43
President Trump signed several big ones today, one declassifying all records in the assassinations of former president John F.
00:01:51
Kennedy, Senator Robert F.
00:01:52
Kennedy, and Dr.
00:01:53
Martin Luther King Jr.
00:01:55
Another directing his administration to evaluate the idea of having a national crypto stockpile.
00:02:02
Pay attention to that.
00:02:03
We also got some very big developments when it comes to Trump's key administration picks.
00:02:08
John Radcliffe was sworn in as the new CIA director, and the Senate voted to advance Pete Hague's headspin to become defense secretary, 51 to 49, setting up a final confirmation vote tomorrow.
00:02:20
Two Republicans did vote no, Senator Lisa McCousky and Susan Collins.
00:02:24
But unless more Republicans flip from yes to no tomorrow, Hegseth appears to be on track to get confirmed.
00:02:32
Meanwhile, House Republicans are trying to figure out how to pay for Trump's agenda, particularly the tax cuts and the immigration crackdown.
00:02:39
The New York Times reports they are considering things like slashing Medicaid, ending home mortgage deduction, and even raising taxes on people who can go to the gym for free at work.
00:02:49
There can't be that many people that you can get that much money out of for that one.
00:02:54
But one of Trump's executive orders has already hit a great big roadblock.
00:02:57
Today, a federal judge temporarily blocked his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship.
00:03:02
We'll have much more on that story with Joyce Vance later on.
00:03:05
But let's first get a whole lot smarter with the help of our lead off panel tonight.
00:03:10
Peter Baker is here at Chief White House corresponded for the New York Times.
00:03:13
Carolennie joins us, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter with the Washington Post and Melanie Zanona, senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl Melanie.
00:03:21
We turn to you first.
00:03:23
Let's start with the House GOP trying to figure out how to pay for Trump's agenda.
00:03:29
It is hugely expensive to extend the corporate tax cuts and to pay for this extremely ambitious mass deportation plan.
00:03:38
Raising taxes on people who can go to the gym at work, that's just not that much money.
00:03:44
I don't know how many people actually go to the gym when they're at work.
00:03:48
But look, there is a whole menu of options that Republicans are eyeing right now from more low-hanging fruit, small-ball stuff, to actually big reforms and big large-scale changes, including cuts to Medicaid,
00:04:00
to Social Security Safety Net Programs, to SNAP for rolling back the Affordable Care Act.
00:04:04
And that is because what Trump wants to do here when this agenda is very pricey.
00:04:09
I mean, the things he's talking about, no tax on tips.
00:04:11
They want to raise or eliminate the state and local tax deduction, which has a cap right now of $10,000.
00:04:17
They want to continue these tax cuts they're set to expire at the end of this year.
00:04:20
They're going to need to pay for all of that.
00:04:23
And that is because they have these hardline Republicans, these deficit hawks, who are insisting on spending cuts and exchange their votes.
00:04:29
So that's what really Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leader John Thune are really bouncing here, is those deficit hawks who care about the ballooning national debt, and then they're more moderate members,
00:04:40
who are worried about the political attack ads.
00:04:42
I had one moderate Republican say to me today that the Democratic attacks really write themselves if they're going to cut Medicaid in exchange for giving potentially wealthy people tax cuts.
00:04:52
So that's what they're wrestling right now with all these spending cuts.
00:04:55
It's going to certainly dominate the debate, though, over these next few weeks, as they're really trying to get down to brass tax and figure out, yes, we all want to cut spending.
00:05:03
There's something everyone can agree on, but it gets a lot more difficult when those spending cuts impact your district and your constituents.
00:05:09
Peter, what do you think?
00:05:10
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:12
No, look, Donald Trump is very good at spending money.
00:05:15
He has never been very good at cutting spending, right?
00:05:18
He said before he became president in 2016 that with eight years in office, he would be able to limit the entire national debt, not the federal deficit that we rang up every year, but the entire national debt that has accumulated over the entire course of the country,
00:05:32
of the history of the country.
00:05:33
Obviously, he not only did not get anywhere near that in his first four years.
00:05:37
He added trillions of dollars more to the debt during his time there.
00:05:41
And ever since he has come back to office and in the campaign leading up to it, all he has done is promise more, promise more, promise more.
00:05:48
We'll get rid of taxes on tip.
00:05:49
We'll get rid of taxes on overtime.
00:05:51
We'll get rid of taxes on Social Security.
00:05:53
And he's ruled out touching Social Security and Medicare and the defense spending.
00:05:58
By the way, he's just added another commitment on defense spending.
00:06:01
This week, he has said he wants NATO allies to spend 5% of their economies, GDP, on defense spending.
00:06:07
Well, the United States, a member of NATO, only spends 3.5% of its GDP on the military.
00:06:13
So we're going to add that 1.5%.
00:06:15
That's another 560 billion dollars a year right there.
00:06:18
So he's very good at adding up the numbers.
00:06:20
It's just not good at finding the offsets.
00:06:23
Carol, the American voter, we care about the economy, we care about safety, we care about education, we care about immigration, we care about health care.
00:06:34
Yet we're in day four and Donald Trump is ordering the assassination files to be classified for JFK, RFK,
00:06:44
and Martin Luther King Jr.
00:06:45
With the exception of conspiracy theorists, who in the world is calling for this?
00:06:51
Yeah, this is Pat Nip, if you will, to a large group of supporters of Donald Trump's, especially people who think,
00:07:02
basically, the government is in on big scams, may have played a role in these assassination attempts, or that there are secrets the government tried to conceal about the assassinations of these three very prominent individuals.
00:07:16
You may remember the theories that the government helped kill JFK, or that they hid that the mafia tried to kill him, or that they hid that Cuba tried to kill him.
00:07:28
All of these, again, are just so salivatingly salacious and exciting for people who believe the government is lying and concealing information from the public.
00:07:40
It's bananas, especially if you think about what Donald Trump once said about Ted Cruz's father.
00:07:46
Peter, you wrote a piece this week, headline The Return of the King.
00:07:51
I just said at a moment ago, this is day four, and we have already seen quite the spectacle, including signing executive orders in an arena at a big mahogany desk to a screaming,
00:08:01
cheering crowd.
00:08:03
Do you think this is what we're going to have for the next four years, the King show?
00:08:07
Well, he certainly loved the trappings of royalty, right?
00:08:12
He sort of had a coronation as much as an inauguration this week.
00:08:15
One of the balls, he's waving a sword around as if it was a scepter.
00:08:20
He loved introducing members of his family one after the other after the other as if they were sort of the royal family being introduced.
00:08:27
And again, this is not a comparison that he disavows.
00:08:31
Quite the opposite.
00:08:32
The return of the King phrase comes from his own circle, from his friend Elon Musk who tweeted that outer, or whatever the right word is these days on the day of the inauguration.
00:08:41
And others, of course, have also adopted this phraseology, the idea that he's a king.
00:08:45
And that's the way he is approaching the job in some ways, right?
00:08:49
He believes in pushing the boundaries of executive power.
00:08:52
We talked about a number of things already, but let's just take another example, TikTok, right?
00:08:55
A lot of people focus on TikTok.
00:08:57
Congress, bipartisan majorities of Congress, president of the United States, the previous president, all signed this legislation.
00:09:03
Nine justices say this is a legal law.
00:09:06
Donald Trump said, I'm not going to enforce it.
00:09:08
I'm going to decide maybe in 75 days, all enforce that or not.
00:09:12
That's a keenly approach to the office, at least according to a lot of his opponents who think that he is already pushing the boundaries.
00:09:19
One more example, birthright citizenship, he thinks he can rewrite the 14th Amendment as it has been traditionally interpreted.
00:09:24
Well, federal judge today said it was blatantly unconstitutional.
00:09:28
That'll go to Supreme Court no doubt as well.
00:09:31
But again, this is a president who doesn't see the boundaries that previous presidents saw.
00:09:35
>> Carol, this one confounds me, okay?
00:09:39
The administration is now pushing.
00:09:41
I'm going to say it slowly, so the audience really hears it.
00:09:44
They're pushing federal government employees that have jobs to do to now snitch on any colleagues that they suspect are doing any kind of work surrounding diversity,
00:09:57
equity, and inclusion.
00:09:59
I'm not ever going to ask have we ever seen anything like this, but what in the world is going on, right?
00:10:06
Even if I wasn't a DEI enthusiast, this is just stupid.
00:10:09
>> This stuff has such a performative air to it, right?
00:10:17
I mean, within 12 hours of becoming the president of the United States a second time, Donald Trump sends out through his acting cabinet secretaries a big scary warning.
00:10:29
You've got 10 days to report on your fellow employees who are trying to conceal that they're hidden in the woodwork and involved in diversity or affirmative action work or equity or inclusion,
00:10:41
and they're trying to hide it by changing the names of the programs or using codes.
00:10:45
You've got 10 days people to not face adverse consequences.
00:10:50
It's just a strange sort of scary, totalitarian kind of message to send that big brothers watching you essentially, and your colleagues may be checking you out.
00:11:02
I mean, do we really think that a lot of people try to re-sculpe the name of DEI programs right after Donald Trump was elected?
00:11:10
I'm not sure that we do, but I do think that this sends a sort of shock and fear, shock and awe kind of message.
00:11:18
And for it to be the first thing out of the gate, again, putting DEI employees on leave all across the government, which was another interesting step, very performative.
00:11:30
To remind the base of Donald Trump, I've got you, we're going to get rid of these woke programs.
00:11:36
We're going to forget about affirmative action that literally was begun under President Nixon, and just stop this because it's so damaging to America in Donald Trump's view.
00:11:49
It's just like performative for who or what?
00:11:52
Putting these employees on leave, you still have to pay them out.
00:11:56
Great.
00:11:56
Now they're sitting home for what?
00:11:58
What was being done that was so damn damaging for the American people?
00:12:03
It's amazing that on day three and four, after four years of what they said were an absolute disaster for the American people under Joe Biden.
00:12:11
This is what they make as their week one priority.
00:12:13
I want to talk about a different priority, though, because Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, I think that's how you say his name.
00:12:20
I never heard of him until today.
00:12:22
This guy's introducing legislation, I guess we should have expected this, that would amend the Constitution to let Donald Trump seek a third term in office.
00:12:30
Is this actually being taken seriously on the Hill, or is this just this Ogles guy way of getting in good favor with the president?
00:12:38
Well, listen, this isn't going to go anywhere on Capitol Hill, but it's not just Ogles.
00:12:43
I mean, there's people who are on the far right members of the Freedom Caucus, some of the Trump supporters who are talking about this, who are likely going to line up behind this.
00:12:50
And I would say this is just one of many examples that we've already seen this week of how Republicans now let their empower and now that Trump is in office, they are racing to do all the things that Trump called for when he was on the campaign trail,
00:13:04
whether that's the Panama Canal, whether that's putting some of these executive orders about the immigration crackdown into law.
00:13:10
They've been passing bills, putting bills on the floor, putting bills into legislation, to sort of mimic everything Trump is doing.
00:13:16
And even starting investigations to go after some of Trump's political enemies, they had investigated January 6th and the work of the January 6th elect committee, an attempt to undermine the work of that committee, that bipartisan committee,
00:13:28
and they're going to keep doing it.
00:13:29
Speaker Mike Johnson just announced this week that he is going to name a new select subcommittee on that issue, that was something that we're told that Donald Trump had been pushing for.
00:13:38
So it's just another example of how the Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing Trump's bidding and how Trump is really the one in control of Washington right now.
00:13:45
I just think of all the moderate Republicans who said Trump is not going to be about vengeance this time.
00:13:50
It'll be all about legacy.
00:13:52
Peter, let's talk about Pete Hegseth.
00:13:54
It sounds like he is going to be confirmed, but Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted no.
00:14:00
But Democrat from Pennsylvania, John Federman, voted yes.
00:14:04
This is a guy who just a few months ago, Republicans after his stroke said he was unfit to serve.
00:14:09
Yeah, well, he's already gone down to Mar-a-Lago to talk about finding ways to work with President Trump.
00:14:17
He's made clear that he is the outlier in this Democratic caucus at this point, and the one that Chuck Schumer will probably have to worry about.
00:14:25
And he's an unpredictable fellow.
00:14:29
He obviously stands out in this caucus on a number of issues, whether it be on Israel, whether it be even just the way he comports and dresses himself, and so forth.
00:14:37
Hegseth looks like he's going to go through.
00:14:43
It is conceivable, I suppose, that some, a couple of Republican more, we say, okay, I voted it to advance.
00:14:48
Past Philip Buster, but I don't really want to vote for him, but there's no sign that that's what's going to happen.
00:14:55
And so you're going to have at the head of the Defense Department, ahead of a 2 million member armed forces, somebody who's been accused of financial mismanagement,
00:15:05
of sexual misconduct, of drunken behavior, and he's never run anything larger than a small veterans organization that he got pushed out of.
00:15:16
So it's quite a thing to see, but this has become a test case for Republicans, and Donald Trump is taking names.
00:15:22
>> I guess Republicans have forgotten all that they said about federal interests a few months ago.
00:15:27
All right, I've got to ask about this before we go.
00:15:29
The Washington Post is reporting that Republicans that want to conduct their own January 6 investigation, they were considering a subpoena of Mark Meadows former aide,
00:15:42
Cassidy Hutchinson, we all remember her.
00:15:44
But one of Speaker Johnson's aides said, do not do it, because the subpoena could expose sexually explicit text lawmakers sent to this young woman.
00:15:54
Speaker Johnson has denied this report, and NBC News has not confirmed it, but Melanie, have you heard anything about it?
00:16:01
>> I mean, listen, I don't know what members they're referring to.
00:16:05
The Washington Post says they have not reviewed any text messages between Cassidy Hutchinson and any members of Congress.
00:16:10
They did review though the email correspondence between Johnson's office and very loud or most office.
00:16:16
So clearly this was a concern that was perglating.
00:16:18
And I would just say that Cassidy Hutchinson has been the star witness of the January 6 Select Committee.
00:16:25
She delivered some of the most explosive testimony.
00:16:27
So it's not surprising that they wanted to subpoena her.
00:16:30
They had been trying to go after her.
00:16:31
We'll see though whether they end up following through with that.
00:16:33
Isn't that they're going to continue this investigation?
00:16:35
>> It's a wow.
00:16:36
All right, Carol Melanie Peter, thank you for starting this evening.
00:16:40
When we return, Donald Trump takes America first to Davos.
00:16:43
Well, he does it virtually and later.
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Trump's world's ventures into the crypto sphere.
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This could be creating a new pathway for legal corruption.
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With a taxpayer creating a safety net behind it, the 11th hour just getting underway on a Thursday night.
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If you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff differing amounts,
00:18:53
but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.
00:19:02
Reminder any and all of Donald Trump branded products are also not made in America.
00:19:09
That right there was President Trump issuing a straight up threat today during a video appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos and he didn't stop there.
00:19:18
I'll demand that interest rates drop immediately and likewise they should be dropping all over the world.
00:19:25
Interest rates should follow us.
00:19:26
He wants to influence interest rates at home and in other countries.
00:19:33
I wonder how that's going to go over.
00:19:34
Let's bring in my friends for Money Power, Politics, Peter Spiegel, US Managing Editor for the Financial Times and Peter Goodman Global Economic Corresponder for the New York Times and author of how the world ran out of everything,
00:19:45
Mr.
00:19:45
Spiegel.
00:19:46
I knew he was speaking at Davos today because my cell phone was blowing up with people saying to me, are you seeing this, right?
00:19:55
He's kind of threatened the Fed before to which Jay Powell has said, take a hike.
00:20:00
He is demanding on a public stage which he has no ability to do.
00:20:03
You better lower rates and saying, hey, the rest of the world, you know, tell your central bankers to do the same.
00:20:09
Well, he also told OPEC to cut oil prices, by the way.
00:20:11
Good on you.
00:20:12
I mean, I got the same thing.
00:20:13
I mean, it's one of those things that I think the group here at this table, we've been watching him talk nonsense for 18 months now.
00:20:19
And so some of this stuff is like, we're tired of it now.
00:20:22
He goes to Europe and speaks in front of business community that you and I talk to an occasion, but has not been apparently paying attention over the last 18 months.
00:20:30
And they say, oh my god, did you hear it?
00:20:32
It's not just the Fed stuff.
00:20:34
It is the OPEC stuff.
00:20:36
The stuff he's talking about tariffs.
00:20:37
And then of course, the tangential things he goes off on that the people were just shocked about.
00:20:41
And to me, it was like, why are you surprised?
00:20:43
The dangerous thing about this, though, is it's been interesting to me to just focus on the Fed very briefly because if you remember, the last word he had on this during the campaign, he was asked,
00:20:53
are you going to fire Jay Powell?
00:20:55
And he said, no, because there are a lot of same people.
00:20:58
And Jay Powell said, do you plan to step down?
00:21:00
And he said, I do not.
00:21:01
I got another year and a half on the job.
00:21:03
And he's right in the law.
00:21:04
He's right in the law.
00:21:05
He can't be fired.
00:21:06
But there are a lot of smart people, Scott Besson, the coming trade secretary who have been telling him, you do need an independent Fed that once you lose central bank independence,
00:21:16
the American economy could go poof.
00:21:19
And that is why it is written in law, not only in the US, but it's an EU directive.
00:21:23
It's the Bank of England.
00:21:24
Every single major central bank has a central bank independence as a key thing because you cannot set interest rates through politics or else your economy goes poof.
00:21:31
And I don't quite think he understands that or the people who are in his ear aren't speaking loud enough.
00:21:36
>> Okay, you know who does understand it?
00:21:38
All of those big-time CEOs that have been doing the cha-cha with him at Mar-a-Lago and sitting right behind him at the inauguration pouring money in his pockets and cheering him on.
00:21:48
Did they not have egg on their face in the last 24 hours?
00:21:51
Watching Donald Trump pardon all of the January six writers and then put on this ridiculous show in Davos.
00:21:58
>> They are looking like a laser focus at tax cuts and deregulation.
00:22:04
Let's remember the market rallied today.
00:22:06
So the idea that, oh, those people at Davos really believe in multilateral cooperation, they're real institutions, they understand the importance of an independent Fed and independent central banks around the world.
00:22:18
They looked at one thing they said, oh, interest rates could be coming down because this guy Donald Trump, he doesn't care about any of that.
00:22:23
And he tends to get what he wants and the market rallied and the people listening to that speech in Davos.
00:22:31
If they said anything, I missed it.
00:22:34
Where's Jamie Diamond?
00:22:36
We're Steve Schwartzman who got to ask him questions expressing his concern.
00:22:41
>> You're so good Peter.
00:22:42
I mean, you're right on everything right now.
00:22:44
You know what?
00:22:44
Because they're all living in a world of ultimate short-termism and in the short term, it's going to work with them.
00:22:49
But maybe not for Mr.
00:22:50
Diamond because I want to share something else he said that was to me, Benonkers.
00:22:55
This one was directed at Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank America.
00:22:59
Watch this.
00:23:00
>> You've done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complained that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank.
00:23:11
And that included a place called Bank of America, this conservative, they don't take conservative business.
00:23:16
And I don't know if regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody.
00:23:22
I hope you're going to open your banks to conservatives because what you're doing is wrong.
00:23:27
>> What in the world is he talking about?
00:23:30
I mean, he said that and JPMorgan and Bank America then had to put out statements that said, yeah, we do business with all sorts of conservatives because they do.
00:23:40
You think the Palm Beach set is putting their monies under their mattresses?
00:23:44
No.
00:23:44
They banked with JPMorgan and Bank America.
00:23:46
I promise.
00:23:47
What is this?
00:23:48
There is a right-wing conspiracy that is going on, that there are like the January 6 defendants, like others, who have been accused of crimes that because of American law against supporting terrorism,
00:24:01
you can't bank them.
00:24:02
And so there are people who have been caught into anti-terrorist legislation because they have backed right-wing built-in groups.
00:24:08
That is not conservatives who are not able to bank it bank of America.
00:24:12
And the fact is, completing that, again, goes to I think the word you use.
00:24:16
But donkers, was that the word you use?
00:24:18
>> But donkers.
00:24:19
>> But donkers is the official.
00:24:21
>> Look, I mean, this is again the thing that I think what was really interesting about Davos today is that we've been watching the crazy for a while.
00:24:30
Europeans, and while these business leaders are just seeing it first time and they are shocked.
00:24:34
>> Okay, I want to talk about this thing that Trump signed today.
00:24:37
He signed a national energy emergency into law.
00:24:40
I need you to explain to me why this is because I want to pull up a chart.
00:24:45
You can see that U.S.
00:24:46
soil and gas production is at an all-time high, right?
00:24:49
Trump is up there saying, we are now at an emergency.
00:24:52
It is time to get back to drill, baby, drill.
00:24:54
We're drilling, baby.
00:24:56
We're drilling.
00:24:57
What does the upside of this false claim about an energy emergency?
00:25:02
None of this is true.
00:25:03
>> It's about undoing the Biden legacy, right?
00:25:06
So Biden- >> The Biden legacy was let's pump it up, baby.
00:25:10
The progressives didn't like it.
00:25:11
But they didn't talk about that, right?
00:25:14
They talked about the clean energy transition, the electric vehicles that we were going to be promoting and building out charging stations.
00:25:22
So in comes Trump, he wants to get rid of all that.
00:25:26
And drill, baby, drill is a really, well, it's a reality television show presidency, right?
00:25:31
And drill, baby, drill is a great line that everybody can remember and repeat.
00:25:36
People aren't looking at charts for the most part.
00:25:39
They're repeating things that they run into.
00:25:41
>> No, but you're right.
00:25:43
It is, to me, much more about dismantling anything green, right?
00:25:47
That's what this is about.
00:25:49
In fairness to there are some legitimate Republicans, and certainly the oil industry, the first year of the Biden administration, pre-Russia Ukraine war, they were pushing a very strong no drilling on federal lands,
00:26:01
no licenses on federal land.
00:26:02
>> That's true.
00:26:03
This is true.
00:26:03
>> And then the war happened, and Jennifer Grahamholm goes to Houston and says, please start drilling again.
00:26:08
So they went back, they went back and forth on this one.
00:26:11
But what Peter was saying is exactly right.
00:26:13
They just want to completely dismantle any environmental legislation out there.
00:26:16
They've killing subsidies for EVs.
00:26:17
They're stopping funding from the IRA to battery plants that were supposed to be built in the United States.
00:26:24
It's just a completely dismantling and frankly doing the bidding of the oil industry, which gave big money to Trump in the last year.
00:26:30
>> Well, although the oil industry is not that crazy about it, that's the interesting thing.
00:26:33
They love the let's get rid of green energy.
00:26:35
Let's get rid of, you know, there was no EV mandate, but the idea that we're going to have these EPA regulations that effectively force one more of the fleet to be electric.
00:26:44
But they don't like to be told, let's increase the supply of our commodity.
00:26:48
Because guess what happens when you're doing a lot.
00:26:50
>> Right, yeah.
00:26:50
>> And then you drill more.
00:26:51
The price goes down, which is something that comes back.
00:26:54
>> Okay, I'm not going to use an egg on their face pun, but I remember on the campaign trail when JD Vance was talking all about that his kids eat like 18 eggs a week, and how expensive egg prices were.
00:27:04
It was one of the quarterstones of their campaign, right?
00:27:07
When you go to the grocery store, eggs, bacon, butter, well guess what?
00:27:10
Because of the bird flu, egg prices are spiking across the country.
00:27:13
How are they going to handle this?
00:27:15
Just not talk about it.
00:27:17
>> Well, it suddenly disappeared on the agenda of anyone who's talking about egg prices literally a month and a half ago.
00:27:22
The thing is though.
00:27:23
>> It doesn't disappear in the minds of the American people.
00:27:25
>> No.
00:27:26
>> You do care about egg prices and groceries and gas.
00:27:29
>> And let's go back to the Davos speech.
00:27:30
What happens if you cut rates?
00:27:32
What happens if you raise tariffs?
00:27:34
Your eggs are going to double again.
00:27:35
I mean, this is the weird thing about his economic agenda.
00:27:38
The most important economic issue facing Americans right now is inflation, high prices.
00:27:42
If they have not gone down on day one since the Trump campaign.
00:27:45
>> Inflation is what crushed Joe Biden.
00:27:46
>> Absolutely.
00:27:47
So he's going to enforce the fed to cut rates in a, and it looks like a very increasingly inflationary environment.
00:27:55
Then he's also going to impose tariffs on everything we import, which is not being paid by China despite what he keeps saying, which means our TVs and our washing machines are all going to cost more as well.
00:28:03
This is not going to end well.
00:28:04
>> And don't forget, Mastie Portation.
00:28:06
Who do you think is going to look in the farms?
00:28:09
>> Who's going to be building the housing that we need if we're going to Mastie for all the construction work?
00:28:13
>> Yeah, it's going to be a problem.
00:28:15
>> Peter and Peter, thank you so much.
00:28:17
>> Thank you.
00:28:18
>> When we return, we're talking crypto.
00:28:20
How Donald Trump and those closest to him, his family, could use the oval office to bring in some big bucks.
00:28:27
Even if you don't invest, even if you don't like it, I'm going to tell you what you need to care.
00:28:31
As we keep a close eye on the new administration,
00:28:41
one question we have been asking is this White House for sale?
00:28:46
Because there seems to be a lot of potential for this president and those in his orbit to boost their own bottom lines while he's in office.
00:28:53
And that is especially true for the people closest to him, his immediate family.
00:28:57
His wife, First Lady Melania Trump launched her own cryptocurrency token just days before the inauguration.
00:29:03
His son, Don Jr., is now part of a venture capital fund while his other son, Eric Trump, heads up the Trump Organization.
00:29:09
And despite removing himself from the West Wing this time around, his son and large Eric Kushner founded a private equity firm that does a whole lot of business with foreign governments.
00:29:18
And he's also in partnership with the Trump Organization.
00:29:21
But I want to take a closer look at the patriarch and some of his more recent business ventures.
00:29:26
He's been making announcements on his social media platform, Truth Social, part of his media company.
00:29:31
And by the way, he's the majority owner of it.
00:29:34
He also has his own crypto exchange world liberty financial and he is and just ahead of his swearing in, he released his own meme coin that is now worth tens of billions of dollars.
00:29:46
I want to discuss it with Tim O'Brien, Bloomberg, opinion senior executive editor and Trump biographer, okay, Tim, it is no surprise that Donald Trump wants to make money.
00:29:55
People have sort of many people aren't happy with it, but it's a foregone conclusion.
00:30:03
But I want to talk about crypto.
00:30:04
And I know lots of people don't like it, don't want to hear about it.
00:30:07
But shouldn't we care about the fact that people could be buying up his coin because they want stuff, they want favors from our government favors that are not in our national interest.
00:30:21
They pay Trump personally, they get things from our government.
00:30:25
>> Stephanie, I wouldn't describe it as Donald Trump likes to make money.
00:30:30
I would say that Donald Trump likes to grift.
00:30:33
And this is a classic, classic example of it.
00:30:37
A mean coin is a collector's item.
00:30:41
It's not fiat currency.
00:30:43
It really has no value other than the fact that someone's name is attached to it.
00:30:49
And if you get enough interest in it and it begins trading, other people buy it.
00:30:54
Other people buy it in them.
00:30:55
Presto, in Trump's case, it's worth billions of dollars.
00:30:59
And as you correctly noted, it makes our national security and our national interest vulnerable because it's very easy for outside entities to join the party.
00:31:10
And essentially capture both Trump's attention and his wallet by bidding up the Trump mean coins.
00:31:17
The other dimension of this that is out of the box, both bonkers and unacceptable is that one of the driving forces right now in driving crypto prices higher is the fact that Trump's federal government has talked about making crypto a storehouse of value and will be held as an asset by the treasury department.
00:31:40
Hold on a minute.
00:31:42
Hold on a minute because you lose people.
00:31:45
We often lose people when we get to that point.
00:31:49
So I want to just explain it a little bit slower because by Trump even putting forward the idea, which he did today, he signed an executive order that he wants to evaluate the potential for a national digital asset stockpile.
00:32:01
Again, people are tuning out saying, what does that mean?
00:32:04
But don't we need to care about that?
00:32:06
Because if they go through with that, that means if crypto blows up, the US government could end up having another bailout for the crypto industry.
00:32:17
One that taxpayers are going to be on the hook for.
00:32:20
Isn't that why we need to care?
00:32:22
I think that's an important part of why we need to care.
00:32:25
Hopefully the banks and the federal government won't bring so much crypto into their coffers that they become the systematic, a systemic problem.
00:32:35
But let's take the word crypto out of it to make the issues here.
00:32:40
You've isolated this in a really useful way.
00:32:43
Donald Trump owns a platform that trades this stuff.
00:32:46
Let's call it, he has an investment in a platform that trades this stuff.
00:32:51
He has an investment in the asset that's trading on that platform.
00:32:55
And he's putting the faith of the federal government behind part of the industry.
00:32:59
Every part of this, he benefits financially from any increase in the price.
00:33:05
And meanwhile, he becomes a target for foreign interests who want to get his attention or his loyalty.
00:33:12
And he did this in many ways during his first term.
00:33:16
Remember that was the Trump hotel in Washington.
00:33:19
But this is so much bigger.
00:33:20
But this is so much bigger.
00:33:22
And the dollar amounts are far larger.
00:33:25
And the issues that were president and Trump 1.0 that there aren't any real restraints, ethically or legally, around a president,
00:33:35
self-dealing and conducting business in the Oval Office has been now compounded by the Supreme Court saying the president is also immune from criminal act.
00:33:44
>> And Trump will read you on that one.
00:33:46
Okay, it is day four.
00:33:48
>> But Donald Trump is making his calls to other world leaders.
00:33:51
Think about all of the major countries around the world, people who he would want to speak to.
00:33:58
And one of the very first phone calls he makes is to the president of teeny tiny El Salvador, which people might not realize is the first country to use Bitcoin as legal tender.
00:34:11
And of course, soon after that call was announced, Bitcoin surged.
00:34:16
What do you think about that?
00:34:17
El Salvador, a lot of the countries in the world.
00:34:20
And the White House read out of the call mentioned nothing about the fact that they might have discussed crypto.
00:34:28
It talked about immigration, Latin American affairs and everything else.
00:34:32
I don't think Donald Trump on day four of his second term is calling the leader of a small central American government because he cares about immigration or any other issue other than the fact that they are a player in the crypto world.
00:34:49
And he knows he's adding legitimacy to that by calling them.
00:34:53
And he stands to gain financially from it.
00:34:56
And until the White House becomes clearer about the content of that call and Trump's intentions behind it, we're just left to suspect that that might be the underlying reason.
00:35:06
>> I can't even believe I'm asking you this question, but here we go.
00:35:09
Because you mentioned Trump's first term.
00:35:10
Today, the White House announced that Donald Trump plans to spend most weekends at his house in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
00:35:17
He likes to call it the winter White House.
00:35:19
It is not.
00:35:20
It's his private home, but it's also a club.
00:35:22
During his first administration, all sorts of watchdog groups highlighted the millions and millions of dollars he made from foreign patronage to his hotels,
00:35:32
all the people who went to Mar-a-Lago, all the money the U.S.
00:35:36
government had to pay because he was overcharging to have the secret service and his staff all stay there.
00:35:42
Are we just going to get that this time around but supercharged since he didn't get in trouble for it last time?
00:35:47
He's figured out how to double down and charge even more.
00:35:50
>> Yeah, of course, I think that's going to happen.
00:35:53
The other thing is if he's conducting official business at Mar-a-Lago, and you have none of the record keeping or cataloging that you have at the White House in terms of who he's meeting with and who he's visiting with,
00:36:05
it introduces another level of opacity into Trump's dealings as president.
00:36:10
And the more time he's conducting public business from there, rather than from the White House, people should be concerned about what he's doing in the dark.
00:36:18
>> Oh, boy.
00:36:21
Mr.
00:36:21
O'Brien, eat your Wheaties.
00:36:23
>> Stephanie.
00:36:24
>> Make sure you get your runs in, stay hydrated.
00:36:27
You got work to do, brother.
00:36:28
When we return.
00:36:29
>> It's good to see you.
00:36:31
>> You too.
00:36:32
Donald Trump's attack on birthright citizenship is blocked in court.
00:36:35
We're going to break down the judge's decision.
00:36:37
[MUSIC]
00:36:46
>> As we mentioned earlier, a federal district court judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump's order, order attempting to end birthright citizenship.
00:36:54
The judge called the order blatantly unconstitutional and temporarily stopped it from taking effect for 14 days.
00:37:01
President Trump said they would appeal the decision.
00:37:03
Here to discuss former U.S.
00:37:04
Attorney Joyce Vance, who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor, Joyce, Donald Trump wanted to do this the last time he was in office.
00:37:12
And his White House lawyer said, do not even try it.
00:37:15
It is a non-starter.
00:37:16
It's unconstitutional.
00:37:17
Nothing's changed.
00:37:19
But except this time, he's going for it.
00:37:21
And as expected, the court said, no, it's unconstitutional.
00:37:25
So what gives?
00:37:26
Does he think he can manipulate the judiciary this time, and he just couldn't do it last?
00:37:30
>> You know, it's hard to say stuff because this is blatantly unconstitutional.
00:37:37
In a way, I don't think even Donald Trump can outrun.
00:37:41
The 14th Amendment very clearly provides birthright citizenship.
00:37:45
The court has consistently construed it that way since the late 1800s.
00:37:50
One almost is tempted to wonder if there's not another endgame here.
00:37:54
If Donald Trump doesn't know he will lose in the courts and perhaps plans to use that loss as a springboard to engage in even more egregious forms of anti-immigration policy.
00:38:05
>> Wow.
00:38:07
Is this the first of a whole lot of legal challenges we're going to see to this executive order?
00:38:12
I mean, is it just going to go on and on?
00:38:14
>> Well, it is.
00:38:16
There are a number of them ultimately, one or more of them, perhaps they'll be combined.
00:38:22
They'll filter up to the Supreme Court.
00:38:24
And that court will ultimately have to make a decision about the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.
00:38:30
And even though we've become very jaded about this Supreme Court and the way it rules on cases where Donald Trump is involved, in this instance, I'll go out on a limb and say I think that their end result won't be very different from what we saw in Washington today.
00:38:46
It would be shocking for the court to say that birthright citizenship is no longer a part of the law of the land.
00:38:53
Something else stuck out to me today, as long as we're talking about at least trying to potentially manipulate the judiciary, the Department of Justice sent out a memo.
00:39:03
And in the memo, they threaten to prosecute state and local officials if they do anything to obstruct the federal government's immigration enforcement.
00:39:12
Can they do that?
00:39:13
>> No, they absolutely can't.
00:39:17
Here again, we've got longstanding law, including a Supreme Court decision authored by the conservative icon Justice Antelun, Antonin Scalia.
00:39:27
And what it in essence says is that we've got a federalist system.
00:39:32
The federal government can't tell state and local officials what to do.
00:39:36
They have their own authorities, their own jobs.
00:39:39
The federal government can ask it can't command or command dear state and local officials to do its bidding.
00:39:46
So again, this is a second fail if they try to do this.
00:39:49
Okay, but again, Trump's lawyers know this.
00:39:53
So why do you think they're going for it?
00:39:55
Because just the threat of this letter could send a chilling effect to the state and local people who receive them?
00:40:02
>> You know, there's certainly an environment of coercion around immigration policy.
00:40:09
We saw Trump do it in the first administration.
00:40:11
He's gearing up again for sanctuary city function against sanctuary cities, whether that's withholding funding from them or whether it takes the form of this more sort of insidious suggestion in the memo that there could be criminal prosecution of officials.
00:40:28
Even if those criminal prosecutions don't come to anything in the courts, that doesn't as Trump knows well from the conversation we've been having about revenge prosecutions.
00:40:39
That doesn't mean you can't investigate, you can't make life difficult for people.
00:40:44
And perhaps you do ultimately convince some folks to go along and to do what you'd like them to do simply to avoid the mess and the hassle of this prospect of criminal prosecution.
00:40:56
>> All right, Joyce, I need to ask you about this because former DC police officer Michael Fanon, many people know him on our air.
00:41:02
He was one of the officers who was violently attacked on January 6th as he was defending the Capitol.
00:41:09
In the last couple of days, he went to the Department of Justice, asking for help to get protective orders against those who attacked him, who have since been pardoned and now they're walking free.
00:41:19
And this is what he was told.
00:41:22
Watch this.
00:41:23
>> I'm told that because the cases were pardoned, there is no longer any criminal charges, and I'm not entitled to that information as I am no longer a victim according to the Department of Justice.
00:41:39
>> This man's life was turned inside out and upside down.
00:41:42
He was physically hurt, he was emotionally traumatized.
00:41:45
How unusual is this?
00:41:46
Like, what rights does Michael Fanon have in this situation?
00:41:51
>> So, let me tell you what's exceptional about this stuff.
00:41:56
Typically, presidents don't use the pardon power to permit people who are violent criminals, people who have committed violent acts to leave prison.
00:42:05
Yes, this actually is the logical legal result.
00:42:09
Following the pardon, you're no longer a victim of the crime because there's no one who's been convicted of a crime.
00:42:15
But typically, the kind of people who are released are not the kind of people who present a danger to someone in the community upon release.
00:42:24
I think what this does is it underlines how irresponsible Trump's use of the pardon power was the fact that he would do it in a way that revictemizes law enforcement officers who were part of the images that were seeing displayed on the screen on January 6th.
00:42:40
And now, or once again, at risk, it's simply an unconscionable exercise of power by a president.
00:42:46
>> It sure is.
00:42:47
Joyce, thank you so much for joining me tonight.
00:42:50
I appreciate it.
00:42:50
When we return, something I'm looking forward to sharing with you, more religious leaders speaking up about the importance of immigration, the importance of humanity reminding us at the end of the day,
00:43:03
we are all humans, humans together.
00:43:06
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The last thing we go tonight, love thy neighbor, but actually do it.
00:44:53
In a time when so many people are feeling scared and uncertain about the future, faith leaders are stepping up and shining a light on the universal truths of human decency and kindness.
00:45:05
After this first week of the new administration, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Reverend John C.
00:45:11
Wester, said that he felt a profound obligation to speak on behalf of immigrants.
00:45:17
And I want to share just a bit of his statement.
00:45:19
Quote, "We must consider the concerns of our fellow citizens while not succumbing to false narratives.
00:45:26
The truth is that immigrants are a benefit to our country.
00:45:30
They help the economy by increasing the labor force, creating jobs and boosting productivity.
00:45:35
Let us remember that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were once forced immigrants in Egypt, fleeing from King Herod.
00:45:45
Immigrants have already played a crucial role in making America great.
00:45:51
This really stood out to me because we have been talking about it for weeks now.
00:45:57
All sorts of super powerful people in business and politics have been bending over backwards, silencing themselves, silencing their companies, their employees, some media organizations,
00:46:08
to make sure they do not get on the wrong side of President Trump no matter what, because they do not want to face backlash or his wrath.
00:46:16
And it's stunning to me that here we are four days in.
00:46:21
And what have we seen over the last four days, faith leaders?"
00:46:25
So I want to thank Archbishop Wester and all of those who are speaking truth to power this week.
00:46:32
Just truth, that's all they're doing.
00:46:34
We need it more than ever.
00:46:36
And on that note, I wish you a very good night.
00:46:38
From all of our colleagues across the network of NBC News, thanks for staying up late.
00:46:42
I'll see you at the end of tomorrow.
00:46:43
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