Brief summary

Federal judge sentenced Republican Congressman George Santos to 87 months in prison after he accepted a plea deal for identity theft and wire fraud charges. Santos was expelled from Congress in disgrace after serving less than a year of his term. The judge rejected Santos’ request for a more lenient sentence, citing his lack of authentic remorse and continued efforts to raise money and argue his innocence on social media.

The text also discusses the FBI’s controversial arrest of a county judge in Milwaukee, alleging she obstructed the detention of an undocumented immigrant. Legal experts criticized the FBI’s actions as an attempt to intimidate the judiciary and chill support for undocumented immigrants.

Overall, the text highlights the Trump administration’s aggressive actions against judges, immigrants, and government programs, as well as the public backlash and legal challenges against these policies. It suggests the administration is facing declining approval ratings, particularly on the economy, which may prompt a reversal of some controversial decisions.

Main body

00:00:00

Federal judge sentencing Santos to 87 months in prison after the Long Island Republican accepted a plea deal to aggravated identity theft and wire fraud charges. Santos expelled from Congress in disgrace after serving nearly a year of his term back in 2023. NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles is with us with the very latest. Ryan, what penalties did Santos also receive?

00:00:25

Well, essentially, Jorge, Jose, I should say, I’m sorry, George Santos is facing the maximum penalty that prosecutors were seeking as a result of this plea agreement. He was hoping by pleading guilty to a long list of these crimes that he would be given a degree of leniency by the judge. He was hoping for as little as two years in prison, but the judge thought differently and sided with prosecutors, giving him 87 months in prison, which is equivalent to more than seven years in prison. He’s also being forced to pay back more than $300,000 in restitution, almost $380,000 in restitution, and also forfeit more than $200,000. This sentence is far beyond what Santos had hoped. But it’s important to keep in mind, Jose, the way that Santos conducted himself after initially agreeing to plead guilty. Going to take this case all the way to a jury at one point, claimed that he was not guilty of any of these crimes against him, despite the overwhelming evidence that prosecutors had. And then he made an abrupt about-face, decided to plead guilty tearfully outside the federal courthouse in August of last year, admitted that he was guilty of these crimes, and in many ways throwing himself on the mercy of the court asking for a lenient sentence. But in the days after that, he used a number of different social media platforms. To try and argue that perhaps he wasn’t as guilty as federal prosecutors claim, that he was the victim of a witch hunt because of his conservative politics. He used the platform Cameo to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, bragging that he was making more money on Cameo than he ever would have made as a member of Congress. And there was no doubt that the judge took this into consideration, that part of the reason that they were looking for a more lenient sentence was because that he admitted that he had done something wrong and that he was trying to change his ways, and that he felt guilty and felt remorse for the victims that were impacted by his crimes. Clearly, the judge felt that that explanation of his remorse and his admitting of his guilt was not authentic. And they have sided with the prosecutors completely on this 87-month jail term. The other interesting thing in the back of all this, Jose, is the effort that he may be attempting to try and receive some sort of clemency or pardon. pardon from President Trump. This isn’t something that he’s explicitly asked for, and it’s not something that President Trump has even indicated that he’d be willing or open to doing so. But Santos has said in the past that if it was offered, he would certainly accept it.

00:03:06

Another in a streak of intentionally intimidating acts aimed at key figures and institutions. This morning, agents of the FBI arrested a county judge in Milwaukee as she was in the parking lot on her way into work, into court. She’s now out on bond. According to the charging documents, the bureau alleges this, quote, Judge Hannah Dugan obstructed the detention of an undocumented immigrant who was wanted by federal authorities. Just last hour, lawyers for that justice released a statement that reads, in part, quote, Judge Dugan will defend herself vigorously and looks forward to being exonerated. Joining our coverage, former top prosecutor at the Department of Justice and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman is here. And Washington Post Justice Department reporter Perry Stein joins us. Tim Miller is with us as well. I want to go to the reporting. I do just just because this moment has now come. I have to start with you. The FBI arresting judges and the Director of the FBI tweeting about it-that’s how I first saw it.

00:04:08

So there has been a violation here that we know for sure, and it is not the judge. That’s something that remains to be proved. The thing that we do know is that the FBI Director has violated DOJ policy. I know I can hear Tim looking at me going ‘That’s so quaint. The norms, the norms.’ Right, exactly. But that is, you don’t do it. Remember sitting here going, you know, James Comey really flouted the rules because he started talking about his own personal opinions of somebody who is not being charged. This is somebody who’s being charged and you are supposed to stay mum and instead completely denigrated her. And you don’t do that. The same thing, by the way, Pam Bondi was on Fox News talking about how we’re going to go after judges. That is what they’re doing. I mean, this is a much more sinister view of the president saying we need to impeach them. That led to the chief justice having to step in here. That is really the way to see this. Even if you thought that there was a ground for doing this, the judgment call that you thought that this is the case to bring, it tells you everything about what the strategy is. And by the way, that’s a huge if. I mean, I can’t imagine this case is going to hold up for a whole variety of factual and legal reasons. But again, there is no adult in the room who would have said, are you kidding me? This person was apprehended steps from the courtroom, steps from the courthouse. It’s going to be so hard to prove, even if you could somehow show this was the judge’s intent, was to obstruct. Why would you possibly do this? And the answer is because we want to send a signal to the judiciary. And that’s what you shouldn’t be doing. I mean, that is fighting the last branch of government to oppose the executive branch.

00:06:13

Yeah, I mean, Tim, I get it back into the latest reporting on this with sort of all of the context. I mean, this comes at a moment when Trump’s approval rating is in freefall and it is plunging around what he has done to his own. Pretty hot economy. He’s tanked it with this obsession over tariffs. Whether it’s causal or not, we’ll never know. But he has also tanked his two political sort of shields have always been people thinking he was actually a businessman, even though that was a character he played on a reality show. And and people liking his energy or aggressiveness around immigration. He’s tanked his his approval on both fronts. I think this was a distraction from the first weakness on the economy and a case that they wanted to be arguing in the press instead of that of Kilmar Abrago Garcia. So I just want to lay down the foundation. So we’re not sort of covering the shiny object they wanted us to focus on today.

00:07:19

Yeah, and I think that’s right. And I think that the PR operation around this is the real relevant element as far as the big picture is concerned. Obviously, we’ll wait to see what the facts are on the specific case regarding this judge. But this was entirely motivated by PR. We can all sort of speculate on what their motives are. Was it a distraction? Maybe that’s part of it. Was it trying to intimidate people and chill people that want to provide aid to undocumented migrants? I think certainly that has been part of their plan all along. Is it a shot across the bow of the judiciary? Probably, you know, I think it could be all three of those things. But like that is what is motivating not just the arrest, like the way that they handled it. And, you know, having the FBI director tweet about it, and Pam Bonney Glenn Fox, as Andrew mentioned. And so, I think those are very like it’s obviously very serious to think about that, because I think the chilling effects, even if this case doesn’t work, I think the chilling effect might work. Because if you’re somebody that, you know, is is in some way helping an undocumented worker, you might think, do I? An undocumented immigrant, excuse me, you might think, do I, is this worth it? Like, do I want to put out the risk that the FBI is going to come after me? I think they want people to be thinking about that and having those conversations. The only good news in this, the only silver lining is what you alluded to, about how his numbers are tanking on immigration. And I think there’s just been so much depressing out there about the state of the country and how we think about the country, that they elected this guy again. But to see people already starting to reject this immigration regime. I think is extremely encouraging. And hopefully it will be a continued reminder to Democrats and others that oppose this president to stiffen their spine to make these arguments, because some people were worried for months. It’s like we got to let him do whatever noxious stuff he wants to do on immigration because that’s what the people voted for. Well, it turns out that there actually is a broad majority of Americans that are not for just nabbing people off the street and sending them to a gulag. I know maybe there was some doubt about that. I mean, some people in the Trump administration thought that would be a winner, but it’s turning out that that’s a loser. And a new poll that came out right before we got on from Siena showed that the [Kilmar-Obrego-Garcia] case, he is less popular. People are less favorable to his treatment of Kilmar-Obrego-Garcia than they are to the tariffs or to his behavior with Russia and Ukraine. It is his lowest number. And so I think that is a really encouraging sign that people are going to need to continue to fight back against these efforts broadly.

00:09:54

Boy, it just seems every day, sometimes more than once a day, there’s a new jaw-dropping story about Pete Hegseth’s incompetence and recklessness at the Department of Defense. So yesterday we learned that Hegseth had an unsecured internet line installed at his Pentagon office so he could continue to use the commercial messaging app Signal, leaving him vulnerable to potential hackers who might be interested in what the head of the DOD is up to. Of course, we also know that Hegseth has used his personal cell phone, which I got to stress, in the government is like a real no-no, to discuss sensitive information about imminent military strikes. Again, using Signal in multiple chains. Today, New York Times reports, quote, Hegseth’s personal phone number was easily accessible on the Internet and public apps as recently as March, potentially exposing national security secrets to foreign adversaries. Helene Cooper covers national security at The New York Times, where she was one of the reporters who broke this story, and she joins me now. Great reporting, Helene, you and your colleagues. First, I want to start with just the idea of the personal phone for every member of the government, not the least ahead of the DOD. You’re told, like, do not do anything official, certainly nothing classified in your personal phone, right?

00:11:11

Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me. It’s true. I mean, even low-level government officials. I have a friend who works for NOAA and she does not do any government business on her personal cell phone. And so you can imagine we’re talking about the Secretary of Defense here, who is probably one of the most targeted person in the. people in the world when it comes to what hackers or what foreign adversaries you know. And when I say target I don’t mean target to kill I mean target to surveil would be one of the one of the people who would be the top. five or six in the United States when you’re looking at officials that foreign adversaries would want to get a hold of his communications device. So the issue is not that Pete Hexeth has a personal cell phone. Everybody does these days now. The issue is that he has been that personal cell phone is easily findable on the Web and he’s been doing government business on it. He’s been involved in Signal chats in which he texted the flight plans of American fighter jets and when they are going to take off to strike Yemen. So he’s clearly been engaging in government business on his personal cell phone. And that phone was very easy to find. That number was easy to find as late as March 27th, when a German newspaper, Der Spiegel, was able to surface that phone. What we found out in our story now in doing this is we were able to acquire the exact phone number that Pete Huthinson used in the Signal chat. Our researchers found the phone number on the web earlier, and so we knew that this was Pete Huthinson’s personal phone. But then what we found out this week is that that same phone number, belonging was the exact phone number that he used in the Signal chat. So there you have the causal, the actual going from point A to point B where he’s actually doing government business on it. And that was sort of mind blowing.

00:13:19

Right. Hard confirmed that it’s that number, the number that you can find online, the number of his personal phone, the personal phone that has a Signal where he’s sending these messages on, you know, not in sort of the classified channels to people like his wife and his brother. And there’s a great quote in here from Mike Casey, former director of National Counterintelligence, is what he says. There is zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone, Mike Casey said. He is one of the top five, probably most targeted people in the world for espionage. And just in case people don’t know Pegasus, I mean, there exists software that can be remotely put into your phone that will essentially dump everything in that phone to an espionage agency, even if you’re using an encrypted app. Because it’s grabbing directly from the phone, right?

00:14:07

Exactly. It’s called zero-click technology where you don’t even have to open any – all you have to do for it to grab is you don’t have to open anything. It will just see you. It will see what you are writing as you are writing it, as you are texting it. So Signal, for instance, is encrypted at the moment that you’re sending and as you’re receiving. Once you send it, it’s encrypted. Once you receive it, it’s encrypted. But what you can’t – what they’re – There’s technology that’s able to do it. It’s almost as if it’s got a camera, you know, on your shoulder and it’s looking at what you’re typing. So if anything like that is on that cell phone, then, you know, Pete Hexeth would have. This would be an intelligence breach. And it’s hard to imagine if you’re Iran or if you’re Russia or if you’re China. And China has proven that they’re able to do this. So has Russia. China had that. There was that big salt typhoon case last year. They’ve proven that they’re able to do some of this and that they wouldn’t be targeting the Secretary of Defense’s cell phone.

00:15:16

Yeah, and I just cannot stress enough. This stuff is day one throughout the entire security apparatus of the United States, from contractors to federal workers to anyone with classification to anyone in any of the military services. Day one, all of this stuff, like it really can’t emphasize enough how much of a breach this would be if you were low-level. It’s remarkable reporting you and your colleagues have put together. Helene Cooper at The New York Times. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

00:15:46

This was two days ago in Storrs, Connecticut, on the campus of the University of Connecticut, home of the UConn Huskies. Students protesting about Trump targeting immigrants and international students and revoking student visas. This was yesterday at UNLV in Las Vegas. Students protesting at UNLV about Trump targeting students, targeting immigrants there, too. This was a big one. This was Syracuse University. A big protest. Look at this. Against Trump going after immigrants, going after student visas. And I see this is all just within the last couple of days. And, you know, we have been covering these kinds of protests against Trump’s arrests of students, his attacks on students for weeks and weeks now. I mean, we’ve just got reams and reams of this kind of footage. Left to right, top to bottom here. This is just an unrepresentative sample. This is New York City, Columbia University. That’s the top center. That’s Newark, Delaware, the University of Delaware. On the upper right, that’s Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bottom row, that’s Cobb County, Georgia, Kennesaw State. Center in the bottom there, that’s Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University. Lower right there, that’s Tempe, Arizona. That’s ASU, Arizona State. Colleges and the communities around them have been protesting in one way or another every single freaking day about these kids being snatched off the streets, snatched off campus by Trump’s agents, students being thrown out of the country, in many cases for no apparent reason at all. Are you one of the people who has participated in one of those protests? Have you driven past one of those protests and given them a honk and a thumbs up? Have you done anything to publicize the cases of those kids? posted about it on social media, wrote letters to the editor, called into call-in shows, called your member of Congress about it, put up a sign in the window. Have you done anything to bring attention to this, to show or say that you objected to what Trump was doing in arresting all these students and jailing them or throwing them out of the country? Have you done any of those things? If so, today is your day. Headline: Trump administration reverses course. On student visa cancellations, headline: International students who lost their immigration status will have it restored, government says. Headline: Trump is reversing the termination of legal status for international students around the U. S. People have been protesting about it instantly and everywhere, every day. People have been speaking out about it, making the case, calling on the conscience of the American people, which is what nonviolent protest is all about. The polling now shows in poll after poll after poll that the American public is absolutely, totally, and by huge margins against what Trump has been doing to these students. And that pushback, that fight has been not only popular, it has been ferocious. Headline, ACLU of West Virginia sues over West Virginia University students’ revoked visas. Headline, UI, University of Iowa students sue Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Headline, 17 international students in Georgia accuse ICE of violating due process. New Haven residents sue Trump administration over revoked student visas. Rutgers international students sue feds over revoked status. UW Madison international students file lawsuit. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley students sue Homeland Security. ACLU of Connecticut sues Trump administration over 60-plus students’ visas being revoked. Three international students in Colorado sue Trump administration over termination of immigration status. Gannon University students in Pennsylvania suing the federal government. Purdue students suing federal government over visa revocations. UC Berkeley international students are suing the Trump administration over revoked visa. There are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of these. I could go on. And those individual cases are all separate and apart from the really big cases involving multiple students, multiple jurisdictions. The Big Case filed a week ago today in federal court in New Hampshire, class action on behalf of all the foreign students whose visas have been yanked by Trump. That Big Case filed by 19 Democratic state attorneys general to stop it nationwide. That one take-no-prisoners lawyer in Georgia, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, whose case started with 17 students in Georgia. Then he added more than 100 more. That lawyer telling CNN, ‘I can file 133 lawsuits, but I think the court wouldn’t be happy about that.’ So we are filing one, one big one. Well, all of those efforts effectively have now been victorious because Trump stopped. He had to stop. Wholesale attacking these thousands of students for the terrible crime of going to college in the United States. The Trump administration also today had to reverse itself on killing the Crime Victims Hotline at the U. S. Justice Department. Why did you kill that? They have now had to put it back. The Trump administration now having to reverse itself on killing all translations of weather forecasts and weather emergency statements because, heaven forbid, somebody who doesn’t speak English might also receive the tornado warning. They’ve now had to reverse themselves and reinstate those translations. The Trump administration has now had to reverse itself and restore the funding Trump had cut for the largest and most important decades-long study of women’s health, credited with saving countless women’s lives, changing women’s health globally, and saving billions of dollars in the American health system. It is a study that started in the 90s. It has enrolled over 160,000 American women. It is one of the most successful long-term medical studies in the history of science. And Trump just killed it, cut it off midstream with no warning. And now they have had to reverse that. Now, the Trump administration has had to reverse itself on its not-at-all-terrifying plan to create a national government registry of autistic people under the authority of Trump HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, of course, talks about autistic people as if they are not even human. And now he’s going to create a universal registry of everyone with an autism diagnosis in the United States? Are you kidding me? That was his plan. Now he’s had to reverse himself on that as well. Today, the Trump administration has had to reverse itself on cutting food safety scientists at the FDA. Trump’s new handpicked FDA commissioner actually went on CNN this week and denied that those scientists had been fired. He said, quote, I can tell you there were no cuts to scientists or inspectors. There absolutely were firings of scientists and inspectors cut from food and drug safety labs all across the country, including, I should mention, from the veterinary division of FDA, where what they were working on was the bird flu. He didn’t even know they hadn’t been cut. Now they’ve quietly started reinstating all those scientists and inspectors that they actually did cut, but they didn’t want to admit it, let alone defend it. And so now they’ve had to reverse it. All of those reversals within the last day. I mean, listen, it’s Friday. I’m sorry. I run out of things to give by the time we get to Friday. Sometimes I’m a little more blunt on Fridays than I am other days. I’m sorry. It’s exhaustion. But listen, it’s not like we didn’t know it was going to be terrible, right? This week, after all, it’s the five-year anniversary of Trump in his first term telling the country that maybe we should all inject bleach or disinfectants into our bodies. Because sure, that would probably take care of COVID, right? Do you remember Lysol had to put out a disclaimer saying, ‘Please do not actually inject disinfectant into your body?’ My God, we realized the President just said to do that, but please do not. That was five years ago this week. We’ve had time to settle in to what it’s like to have Donald Trump in a position of power, right? So it’s not like we didn’t know it was going to be terrible. And it is terrible. He really did have a judge arrested today. And we will have more on that in a moment. But that wasn’t all. I mean, today we learned that Trump is killing off the federal funding for Narcan. Narcan, the anti-overdose miracle. That has literally saved hundreds of millions of American lives in the last few years. There are hundreds, excuse me, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are alive today who would not be alive without Narcan. It is a miracle that saves people from overdose. And Trump, in his first term, bragged and bragged and bragged about how much his administration supported Narcan and how much they’d done to make sure everywhere in the country could get Narcan. Now he’s killing it off. And killing off programs to combat opioid addiction at the same time. Trump really is completely zeroing out, completely eliminating Head Start everywhere in the country because, God forbid, American kids can go to preschool because that’s a terrible thing. Complete termination of that 60-year-old program. Trump really is killing off Meals on Wheels. Because, heaven forbid, old people and disabled people and people with mobility problems get meals delivered to them and somebody to check in on them. They’re getting rid of the agency that runs that. Trump has already fired half the staff from that agency, and Trump has closed all 10 of the regional offices that oversee Meals on Wheels. Because Donald Trump is against Meals on Wheels for some reason. This was two days ago in Morgantown, West Virginia. People out protesting against Trump firing nearly everyone. 85% of people at NIOSH, the Occupational Safety and Health Agency that oversees coal mines. People out in West Virginia protesting that two days ago. Trump has cut the Mine Health and Safety Administration and the agencies that serve coal miners. And West Virginia is up in arms about it. We knew it was going to be bad. And it is bad. But the American people, God bless them. God bless us. The American people are under no illusions about it. And the American people are very broad-minded now very consistently and very. Very affirmatively against what Trump is doing. Even the stuff that he thinks you’ll like, that he says for political effect, the American public is resoundingly saying no to all of it. And they’re saying no in the polls, and they’re saying no in the streets. And that, in the end, with the courts. That’s going to be the only thing that matters. He’s not even 100 days in, and we are in desperation mode from him already, arresting a judge today. Are you kidding me? That is a sign of weakness, not strength. It is the public that is being strong here, and he cannot handle it.

00:27:36

He’s a brilliant guy, and he was a tremendous help, both in the campaign and in what he’s done with DOGE.

00:27:45

That was President Trump on Wednesday referring to Elon Musk, a special government employee, as if he’s already gone, speaking to him in the past. Speaking of him in the past tense, earlier this week, Musk told Tesla shareholders that he was ready to shift his focus away from the Trump-ordained Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE, and return to his other business investments. This came as Tesla reported a 71% plunge in profits and a 9% decline in revenue compared to the same period last year. Musk originally promised to cut $2 trillion in federal spending annually. But he says he’s delivered $150 billion in cuts. It’s a fraction of that original number. Also, that claim has been riddled with errors and fuzzy claims and what look to be outright fabrications. And some of Doge’s sweeping changes have been halted or reversed by the courts. So while Elon Musk is stepping back, Doge is not going anywhere. Musk has filled this new governing entity with many of his close allies, many who are new to Washington. And in just a few months, they have burrowed into government agencies at a very deep level. According to The New York Times, Musk installed roughly 60 allies. A handful have departed, but many remain in roles that are still murky and ever evolving. The Times also reports that those who remain have tried to gain entry to more than 80 data systems across at least 10 federal agencies. Joining me now is Brian Barrett. He’s executive editor of News with Wired. He’s going to help us understand what to expect from Doge now that Elon Musk is getting out of Dodge. Thanks so much for being with us. Musk is leaving, but Doge remains. Who’s in charge? It’s rather startling that people who hold some of the most sensitive information in government are a mystery to most people. Many people probably can’t identify or name the people that are on screen right now?

00:29:48

Yeah, no, it’s interesting. Who’s in charge of Doge has been sort of one of the questions that we’ve tried very hard to answer ourselves because they sort of intentionally obfuscate that like they hide so many things. Elon Musk was not technically on paper in charge of Doge at all, even though he said that he was. Donald Trump said he was. The person who is technically in charge of the U. S. Doge agency is Amy Gleeson. She is the acting administrator of the group. She comes from the healthcare tech industry. But really, the people that are actively doing the work every day across all these agencies are, for the most part, associates of Elon Musk, former employees of Elon Musk’s companies, people from that whole universe of Palantir, which is founded by Peter Thiel, who’s a Musk ally. It’s this big network of people who all come from the same set of companies with the same set of objectives, and they all still owe something to Elon Musk as they go forward on their Doge project.

00:30:44

Now, we should say that Ms. Gleason does have a history in the federal government. She has worked in the previous Trump administration. But if you were interested in fiscal efficiency, if you were interested in trying to rein in spending, wouldn’t you bring in accountants or people who have experience in Washington rather than an army of software engineers?

00:31:08

Yeah, you’ve got a diverse group of often young coders, basically, who are getting access to all of this data, doing who knows what with it in most cases. People who don’t really understand what we’ve seen is a pattern of behavior where people get fired across the government who held critical jobs, and then they need to go try to get them back. At one point early in this process, they fired the people who were in charge of nuclear safety. And had to try to get them back in the fold. It’s been a very inefficient process so far. It continues to be, although I think it’s more clear now that what they are doing with the data seems less to do with Musk right now and more to do with things like immigration and other administration priorities.

00:31:53

So you’ve talked about hiring and rehiring people. There have been a number of unintended consequences, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal workforce. and has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, rehirings, lost productivity, paid leave of thousands of workers were cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. That’s not exactly savings. That seems to offset the alleged $150 billion in savings that Elon Musk is claiming.

00:32:28

It’s so true. And what I also like to keep in mind is that there’s an opportunity cost to all of this. The more research we cut from scientific studies, the more money we take away from people who are trying to prevent the next pandemic, from people who are trying to improve food safety, people who are trying to improve health care outcomes, that’s going to cost money down the line for America. It’s going to cost us money when we’re behind on AI, when we’re behind on a cure for cancer. There are a lot of savings that these projects and research projects and groups and agencies that don’t show up on the balance sheet right now but would pay off for the next decade, two decades. That’s where I’m worried about most. We’re going to lose that momentum, and it’s going to be hard to rebound from the cuts that have already happened.

00:33:16

Businesses are frozen right now. Ratcheting back their spending. And so it’s their-it’s their planning as if these things are still in place. One other one other thing you should point out is that we have a weak negotiating hand here. I know the president keeps saying we’re right. Right. Right. We have a we; we’re almost in a recession. We have markets that are on edge. We need people to buy our debt. And China supplies us with a lot of cheap goods. We can see inflation ratchet up dramatically if we don’t need to deal with them. And she knows this.

00:33:46

That is Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino with an assessment of the economic impact of President Trump’s tariffs. Wall Street saw a third straight day of gains, though, yesterday amid President Trump’s toned-down rhetoric on tariffs. But when it comes to the trade war with China, Washington and Beijing are sending mixed messages on whether talks actually even are taking place. Several Chinese officials have said there are absolutely no negotiations happening. While President Trump suggested yesterday some talks had taken place earlier in the day.

00:34:17

Well, they had a meeting this morning, so I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter who they is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.

00:34:29

The general they. Meanwhile, we’ve learned U. S. officials did hold trade talks with South Korea yesterday. South Korea represents Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Leaders there are reportedly hoping to work out a deal by July to avoid tariffs. Let’s bring in former Treasury official Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve, good morning! So, are they talking? Are they not talking? U. S. and China: China says no, there’s no serious negotiation going on. Trump floated a vague meeting that he says took place yesterday, but are they talking at all, from what you can tell?

00:35:01

What you have going on here is that Trump now is desperate to show some progress on these tariffs because every time it looks like nothing good is happening, the stock market plunges, and then he throws out these feelers or makes some other announcement about a delay, and the stock market goes up. And we do know he does care about the stock market. So I think they’re desperately trying to show some kind of progress. They talk about Indian-ness and that. I think China is the really tough nut. We have these huge, huge reciprocal tariffs on both sides now. I think my personal view, which based on I’m not obviously in the White House, is that I think Trump did not expect this kind of reaction from China when he put them on. I think he thought they would quickly come to the table because we buy so much stuff from them. But instead, Xi basically said, ‘I’m a real country, my economy.’ Is essentially as big as yours, a lot more people. I make all kinds of stuff that you need, and I’m not going to be pushed around by you. And so he put on his tariffs. Trump put on more tariffs. And here we sit with 154 percent tariffs on imports, which basically means no imports. So the answer is, look, at some point, I think there will be conversations with China. I just don’t believe at this point we’re really making any progress.

00:36:11

What’s your sense, Steve? Obviously, you’re not in this White House, as you said, but you know people, you’re connected to people. What I’ve heard from people on Wall Street is they’re comforted to some extent that Scott Besant is there at least providing some reality checks about what tariffs do and what’s going to happen to the economy, despite his public support of President Trump. What’s your sense, though, of the conversations going on behind the scenes about the value or the damage being done by these tariffs?

00:36:40

Yeah, I think Scott Besant understands it. I think Keith Hennessey, who runs the National Economic Council, understands it and is on the right side of the issue. But this, as we’ve talked about before, is the one issue that Trump believes that he and he alone, to use one of his famous phrases, is really understands how valuable tariffs are. And he’s got Peter Navarro, who Elon Musk more or less correctly described as dumber than a sack of bricks, kind of egging him on. And so people are critical of Besson for not having made more progress styling this back. But you’ve got a guy who’s got the bit between his teeth, and he’s just running for it.

00:37:16

Steve, why don’t we? Bring on the conversation we were having privately, which is about what the effect is on American business and what will it take for the people I talk with every day, CEOs, and so forth, to essentially start making investments again, to basically say, OK, I can sell this or buy this because I now have confidence that the price that it’s at now is reflective of its real value and in the same zip code is where it’ll be in six months. What has to happen, and what’s my sense of the timing? What’s the most optimistic we could be on that?

00:37:46

Well, as it happens, I was just two days at a conference in Washington with a lot of CEOs, and what is striking is the unanimity of view among CEOs about how bad this policy is. You cannot find, I haven’t even yet to find, a single CEO who says, hey, this is great, you know, it’s going to solve this problem or that problem. So they are deeply, deeply unhappy about the situation, and it has affected all kinds of business, absolutely deeply. Deals have more or less come to a halt, as you know, now that you’re in the investment banking world. And why wouldn’t they? Who would buy or sell something when you have no idea what it might be worth six months from now when the whole tariff thing hopefully does get resolved? But all kinds of other decisions, investment decisions. Do I build a plant? Do I not build a plant? Where do I build it? Everything is kind of on hold in this economy at the moment. And you have a very unhappy business community. And you also are going to start to see shortages of things. This is going to be, I’m going to exaggerate slightly, like the Soviet Union in the 1960s or something. Empty shelves. Empty shelves. You’re going to see empty shelves where you can’t, you know, 90% of our toys are imported and virtually all those come from China. This goes on until Christmas. Not so many toys at Christmas for the kids. Not so merry.

00:39:00

You know, Susan Page, I think one of the hopes of people who oppose these policies and see the damage they’re doing to the economy is that at least President Trump would view the damage it’s doing to him in that might prompt him to reverse the policies. You’re writing this morning about economic polling we’ve seen over the last couple of days that show his approval rating down generally, but really specifically down on the economy, down at 37 percent in one poll and 40 percent or so in another. Is there any sense that perhaps these numbers might give him some pause about the policies that he’s endorsed and stick sticking by to this point?

00:39:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think only two issues matter front and center for President Trump. One is immigration. The other is the economy. And, of course, the feeling Americans had of trust in him to handle the economy in a smart way was one of the fundamental reasons he was elected president both times. Both times he won elections. And yet that has been really undermined by the chaos that we’ve seen, by the turmoil in the stock market, by the concern that we heard in the clip that began the segment that we are at this moment almost in a recession or nearly in a recession. So this was a in the in the Pew poll that just came out. This was a 19-point advantage confidence in Trump on the economy when he was elected. It’s a now a nine-point negative. That’s a huge swing of 28 percentage points of undermining of erosion and confidence in him to handle the economy since he was elected on Election Day last November.

00:40:33

All right, Susan, stay with us, Steve.

FQAs

QA 1: George Santos’s Sentencing

Q: What penalties did George Santos receive?

A: Santos was sentenced to 87 months in prison (over 7 years), ordered to pay 380,000inrestitution,andforfeit200,000. The judge rejected his plea for leniency, citing insincere remorse and his post-guilty-plea social media behavior (e.g., fundraising on Cameo and claiming political persecution). The sentence aligned with prosecutors’ demands despite Santos initially hoping for 2 years.

QA 2: FBI Arrest of a Judge

Q: What are the implications of the FBI arresting a Milwaukee judge?

A: Legal analyst Andrew Weissman criticized the arrest as politically motivated, arguing it violated DOJ norms by publicly targeting a judge. He suggested the case (alleging obstruction of an immigrant detention) was weak and intended to intimidate the judiciary. The FBI Director’s public commentary breached protocol, echoing tactics used to chill dissent or opposition to Trump’s immigration policies.

QA 3: Elon Musk’s DOGE Agency

Q: Who is in charge of DOGE after Musk steps back?

A: Amy Gleeson, acting administrator, now leads DOGE, but Musk allies (ex-Tesla/Palantir staff) remain entrenched. Despite Musk’s claims of 150Binsavings,theagencyfacescriticismforinefficiency,dataoverreach(accessing80+federalsystems),andcostlydisruptions(e.g.,firing/rehiringexperts,135B in estimated losses). The focus has shifted to advancing Trump’s immigration agenda rather than fiscal efficiency.