"A precarious day for the future of our country’s intelligence agencies"

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Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in the East. It is a precarious day for our country, for our national security, and for the future of our nation's intelligence agencies. With Donald Trump's personal political attack dog, Bill Pulte, officially assuming the role of acting director of national intelligence today, it's a job for which Bill Pulte has zero qualifications except for his unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump. Brand new reporting reveals just how eager Bill Pulte was to start the job and try to disrupt the office he is supposed to lead. According to CNN's reporting on this, quote, Bill Pulte showed up at his new job a day early on Thursday after asking for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them. That's according to two people familiar with the matter. CNN adds this reporting, quote, the sources said Bill Pulte is eyeing to cut hundreds of jobs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Bill Pulte's appearance at ODNI Thursday caught staff off guard, including the outgoing director Tulsi Gabbard, who was given a brief heads up on the visit. Trump himself has said that Bill Pulte, who is a Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience, would start his job Friday. Bill Pulte's short resume includes serving as the head of the federal housing finance agency where he's drummed up mortgage fraud cases against Trump's perceived enemies. And Donald Trump's decision to have him lead the country's 18 intelligence agencies has proven so controversial and unpopular that even members of Donald Trump's own political party don't support Bill Pulte. Trump was forced to nominate U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton instead to be the permanent DNI after Bill Pulte faced bipartisan backlash. But Trump, proving himself, if nothing else, erratic. Abruptly pulled the rug out from Jay Clayton's nomination hearing scheduled earlier this week, giving both lawmakers and the intelligence community whiplash. Now with Bill Pulte taking the reins at ODNI and Bill Pulte's now publicly known plans to purge the office, the top Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Congressman Jim Himes, writes this, quote, if the reports of Bill Pulte's arrival at OD&I are true, they demonstrate why he should never spend a minute. as Director of National Intelligence, a role he is legally not qualified to perform. Bill Pulte should expect the Intelligence Committee to closely scrutinize any actions he takes in what should be a very short period in this role to include any personnel decisions or declassifications. The top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee, Senator Mark Warner, also weighed in issuing this warning, quote, Bill Pulte is grossly unqualified for the responsibility with which he has been entrusted. I only pray that the American people don't end up paying the price for incompetence. Donald Trump putting U.S. national security on the chopping block.

to serve his political appetites is where we start today with a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Congressman Rasha Krishna Morthy of Illinois. Also joining our conversation, former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI and our national security and intelligence analyst. Michael Feinberg is here. Also joining us, Puck News, senior political columnist, National Affairs analyst, John Tom Homan joins us for the hour. Congressman, tell us what you know about... why Jay Clayton's confirmation hearing was scrapped and why the urgent need for Bill Pulte to rush into this office a day ahead of even Trump's timeline, which was Friday. I don't know. It's a simple answer. I just saw Trump's truth social tweet or whatever he calls it. And it was just, it caught everybody by surprise. Look, this guy is completely unqualified. Apparently, he even asked somebody, according to the CNN report, that you quoted, whether he could take the president's daily brief home with him, which shows his complete lack of sophistication. and lack of experience. And I think that basically Trump wants him in there to doge the place, doge the intelligence community, and fire people who may not be loyal to the president and endanger our national security interests, investigate election fraud, which is, of course, a bogus claim in the first place. And then third, potentially use sensitive information against the president's political enemies, which he did at the housing finance administration as well. Congressman, let me show you Trump giving him his marching orders, just so no one thinks that we're being precious about any of this. Trump directed him to do what you just outlined on camera. This is from June 4th. Why do you think, Mr. President, he's the best person for the job? Well, he's very smart. He's a person who's got high integrity. He's done a phenomenal job at Fannie Mae Freddie Mac. You know, you probably have a trillion dollars in value there. But he's a very smart guy, and he may find out some things about the rigged elections, et cetera, et cetera. I think he'd like to do it. He may find some things out about the rigged elections, et cetera, et cetera. I not heard him described as smart by John Cornyn or anyone else. But even if he were, I mean, John Durham had more money than Robert Mueller and didn't find anything about any. I mean, everyone that has looked at this has found no evidence of any problems with the elections. Chris Krebs, the lifelong Republican, Bill Barr, Trump's very sycophantic. Attorney General, what do you think Trump is saying when he says Bill Pulte is going to go and find things as ODNI about, quote, rigged elections?

Let me bring in Michael Feinberg and John Heilman on this. Michael Feinberg, do you share these concerns about Mr. Bill Pulte? My concerns are just as great, but from a very different angle. I'm probably in the minority among your guests today in that I'm not wholly convinced we should have a DNI. I think there would have been much more efficient ways to deal with this stove piping of information that we saw in the lead up to 9-11. But we do have one now. And what worries me is less what Bill Pulte is going to fail to do because of his utter lack of any intelligence experience whatsoever. What worries me is what he can accomplish with things that ODI and I already holds. This is somebody who is now in a position to release any classified information he deems fit to the public. And what everybody in the intelligence community knows is that by selectively declassifying information, you can really paint an inaccurate picture of certain things. We saw the best example of this recently when under Tulsi Gabbard, they released information that showed Russia was trying to encourage the Clinton campaign to get the IC to investigate Trump. We know John Durham himself said that that itself was a Russian operation to tar Hillary Clinton's campaign. But because Tulsi Gabbard only released certain elements of it, she was able to convince a lot of people on the fringes who don't understand the intelligence community that the document was actually true. And Bill Pulte is largely going to have unfettered discretion to do that and essentially run a misinformation campaign on the American people for the benefit of Donald Trump. Hamlet, I want to add to Michael Feinberg's concerns this reporting in Reuters, White House delays release of U.S. voting machine study as midterms near. Quote, White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the nation's voting machines ahead of the November midterms. That's according to three sources. The report produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concludes that voting machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, sources said. Some White House officials have argued that the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. It's unclear what Bill Pulte plans to do with the report. He's been briefed on efforts by the agency to investigate flaws in voting machines, including the unreleased report. A really sort of harrowing data point in this conversation.

Yeah, a harrowing data point and a conversation full of harrowing data points, Nicole. You know, I, Bill Pulte is obviously problematic in a lot of the ways that both of our other guests today I've been talking about. I'm still focused here mostly on what, on what Trump is trying to accomplish by pursuing this nomination. in the face of the kind of opposition that he's going to face. And beyond the obvious kind of, you know, he wants someone who's a pit bull for him and he's going to do the things that Bill Pulte's going to do. And he's going to, but Trump is probably applauding, you know, the idea the guy showed up one day early for work and wanted a list of who he's going to fire. The apprentice guy is obviously kind of that's the way that Donald Trump likes to roll. That's, talk about playing to the audience of one. You know, you can't do any better than that if you're Bill Pulte. But. But it seems to me that, you know, I literally was on the show just the other day with you when we were talking about on the day that we had the nomination for the, for the not the temporary, not the acting director of DNI, but the actual, the person that Trump says he wants to be the actual director of DNI, the permanent director of DNI. And that, and that, it seems to me that what's going on here, and I know this is not an original observation, but Trump is basically trying to hand congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans in some ways, kind of a devil's. of Sophie's choice, right? Which is either I'm going to have this obviously unqualified guy who's an election denier who's going to wreak havoc on not just on the intelligence capacity of the United States, but in particular on things that the intelligence capacity of the United States touches that relate to elections, or you're going to give me what I want, which is for you guys to make another push to pass the SAVE Act, which will allow me to try to mess with the elections in November. Both of them from Trump's point of view, he kind of wins either way, right? And I think he keeps going back at the SAVE Act, despite the fact that he's been told dozens, hundreds of times by the people who understand how voting, how the votes, where the votes are in the Senate, including John Thune, who knows better than anybody, that the SAVE Act doesn't go anywhere. But Trump does not want to give up on the SAVE Act. And I think this is mostly the Bill Pulte, his insistence on Bill Pulte is mostly. trying to beat John Thune with a cudgel to try to get him. Again, I think Trump is crazy to do this because I don't think the votes are there. I think John Thune is just telling him the truth. But I think Trump somehow thinks that this is the way he's going to get the SAVE Act passed. And that is the ultimate goal here that Trump is driving for. This is mostly kind of about legislative tactical maneuvering, very dangerous for the country tactical maneuvering. But that is, I think, what Trump's ultimate objective seems to be. Yeah, I mean, it's also the natural sort of plot point. In a long story of Trump hating his intelligence agencies saying to the world that he believed Vladimir Putin over the intelligence agencies, there have been volumes now written about how he won't consume the PDB. In the first term, I think his son-in-law read it for him. I don't even know who's reading it now. Bill Pulte wanted to take it home. It's not clear. I mean, I don't even know who the consumers are of the PDB in the second term.

It's such a degraded office and asset that most presidents of either in any political party view is like the crown jewel of U.S. national security, and he thinks so little of it that he put this guy there. It's I think the flashing red. sort of cliches don't even fit here. But it is certainly an alarming moment. I need all of you to stick around because there's actually more. There's more troubling news of the story. There's also some breaking news to tell you about. Todd Blanche has refused to go along with a judge who has ordered him to put in writing, to commit in writing to killing Donald Trump's January 6th slush fund. and promising that it's dead. He's refused to do that. Plus, another blow to Trump's near obsession to remake Washington, D.C. This time, his taxpayer-funded $14 million renovation of the reflecting pool on the National Mall. Crews are still at war with the algae blooms that simply will not go away. And later in the broadcast, JD Pants better check his back entire marks, says Donald Trump. And many in the Republican Party seem to be making the vice president out to be the fall guy. And the White House is very bad and very politically unpopular deal with Iran. We'll have all those stories and more. When Deadlight White House continues after a quick break, don't go anywhere.

Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Summer means firing up the grill, getting together with friends, and making the most of the weekends. Total Wine and More is my first stop, whether it's seltzers and ready to serve cocktails with a cooler, or a good bottle of bourbon. Everything I need is at Total Wine. With the lowest prices, it's easy to stock up for whatever the weekend brings, and I can get everything I need in one stop. Shop total wine and more, and get ready for your next summer party. Spears are not sold in Virginia or North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. For moi? Claude, you can talk? I've always had the gift of gab, Nancy. But now you can understand. With pretty litter, the odor neutralizing, long-lasting health indicating kitty litter, that's simply the most luxurious way to bury my poopies and my peepees. Pretty litter was developed with veterinarians. It helps me monitor potential health problems just by changing color. Go to prettylitter.com today. Pretty litter. Not just a pretty litter. Mr. Attorney General, I wanted to ask a few questions about the anti-weaponization fund. We know that the department has agreed to pause this effort until at least June 12th. I wanted to ask what your plans were for the fund after June 12th. So thank you. So look, we're not moving forward with the fund. You're right that there's a date that in the case in the East District of Virginia in June, but we are not moving forward with the fund, period.

Well, there's some breaking news this afternoon on that $1.8 billion slush fund. The Justice Department is now refusing to say in a court filing in writing that it's officially killing it. A federal judge had ordered a sworn declaration in writing, putting an end to the slush fund by today. But DOJ is arguing that the declaration is, quote, unnecessary. and claiming that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's testimony to Congress, what we just played you, should be sufficient. That testimony, though, is not under oath and not under penalty of perjury. Now, all of this is because of the DOJ's continued resistance to backing off the fund in writing. The legal battles over it will thus continue. We're back with Congressman Cristamorothy, Michael, and John. Congressman... It's I guess pretty obvious. It feels like a dumb question to ask, but for the record, why do you think they refuse to put in writing that the slush fund for payments for Trump's political allies, potentially including violent insurrectionists, is something they won't put in writing? Because they don't want it dead. Regardless of anything that Ty Todd Blanche said, President Trump wants this thing definitely alive. Contrary to rumors that it was on death row at that hearing, I think that it was probably transferred to that. a low-security prison that Ghislaine Maxwell is at, that Todd Lynch transferred her to as well. And by the way, that's yet another reason that he should not be the Attorney General. And I have circulated a letter with regard to this issue to the Senate with a lot of signatures from my colleagues on it saying he has no business being the Attorney General of the United States. He's still the president's personal lawyer looking out for Trump's personal interests, not the best interest of the country. Kerrigan, if you had to predict if enough Republicans share your view of the president's personal lawyer, who's acting is acting Attorney General, do you think there are enough to port his confirmation as AG? Possibly, yes. I think this anti-weaponization fund is so unpopular with enough Republicans that I talked to that I could see not enough votes for his confirmation. And Thom Tillis, I think, was one of those who basically said there's just no way that he could support Todd Blanche's confirmation. And the reason is very simple. People like Mitch McConnell and others remember that The people that are supposedly going to get money from this anti-weaponization fund are the very insurrectionists that attack the capital in January 2021. And I just don't think that this fund is going to go away as an issue for Todd Blanche's confirmation.

Michael Feinberg, I don't like to put my eggs in the Republicans will grow a spine, do the right thing, even if it's for U.S. national security basket. But I will point out some signals of disapproval of the... Todd Blanche and or Bill Pulte picks. This is from John Cornyn. He tweeted out a quote from a Wall Street Journal piece that went like this. Quote, here's where things go off the rails. When the president fails to acknowledge some hills simply can't be held and charges up anyway. That's what happened in the fight of repeal Bill Pulte, wiretapping, and the Save America Act. His no-win standoff, it's his Senate GOP risks more than national security. It's accelerating his lame duck status. Sort of making an argument on the two fronts, protecting U.S. national security, which has never been persuasive for Donald Trump. But lame duck status gets right at his thin skin little underbelly of an ego. Do you think either those will be persuasive? Or do you think he's, as the journal points out, charging up the hill? I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm fortified by the fact that in order to oppose Todd Blanche to keep him out of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. building as the permanent attorney general, you don't need all the Republicans. You just need a few. And one of the ones who seems like he might show the most spine... is Thom Tillis, who, of course, is on the Judiciary Committee, where he actually wields quite a bit of power and could conceivably make it so that Todd Blanche's name never even reaches the floor. But we've seen time and time and time and time again from January 6th forward, Republicans say that they've had enough and they're going to stand up to Donald Trump only to back down when the rubber hits the room. So it's really difficult to say. But the reason I'm worried that I think Senator Corden's tweet is actually worth looking at is the two departments that could be the most influential in helping the White House skew the results of the midterm elections or interfere with them being carried out in a nonpartisan manner befitting civil society is the Department of Justice, which is supposed to prosecute. election crimes, but has already announced that it is not doing the command post for election night, that it has done literally every year in recent memory, an ODNI, which now has Bill Pulte at the helm. So, you know, am I glad Republicans are standing up, at least in small numbers? Yes. Am I still worried existentially about the future of our country? Also, yes.

Yeah, I mean, Halman, you'd have to stick your head in the sand not to see exactly where Trump is heading with this. He's heading to the exact dramatic testimony we heard from his own White House insiders in the very dramatic primetime hearings of the January 6th Select Committee absent the key figures who literally barred the door. I mean, he wanted to seize voting machines. That's with the Reuters information. reporting suggests is what Bill Pulte was rushed in there for this week. It's a report. They've been holding it for Bill Pulte to arrive. They think Bill Pulte is a better bet than Jay Clayton. One could easily and logically surmise. So they rushed him in there Thursday ahead of what was supposed to be a start date of today. It's all out in the open. Trump already said in the Oval. He's there to look into rigged elections. Trump wanted the military to seize voting machines, and it was actually Rudy, who I think said that was going too far. So we called DHS. I went online. This is all in the record. We know what he wanted to do on that front. And at DOJ, I mean, Bill Barr went on CNN ahead of the elections of 2020 and said he was going to pursue election fraud. It's Bill Barr, who rather famously testified before that same select committee and said all the election fraud theories were bullshit. But here we are. No Bill Barr. No Rudy. I never thought I view that as a... is an unfortunate occurrence and no guardrails whatsoever. Yes. Correct. That's the story of Trump 2.0 right there in a nutshell, Nicole. I don't want to, I don't want to, we're kind of talking about. things because of the weirdness of the fact that Tulsi Gabbard got by Trump's direction got dragged into these election integrity supposed to election integrity these vote really all of Trump's accusations of voter fraud we suddenly are like well the DNI is involved in that and with that we're looking at and obviously that is what Trump is doing with Bill Pulte. I just want to keep honest to keep our eye on the ball. you are right that that is what Trump wants to do. He wants to interfere with the November elections. He's made it clear. He's said it a bunch of times. We've talked about it a million times on the show. So what's the office by which he's going to do that? It's not going to, the front line of that is not going to be the DNI. The front line of that is going to be the Justice Department and the FBI. And so the question is, Can you get Todd Blanche to be the actual attorney general? And can he get Todd Blanche confirmed? And I know that you are not naive. And I know that Michael is not naive. And I know that everybody is couching all of their comments about, you know, are the Republicans finding their courage? And yes, we've seen some signs of certain situations in which people are speaking out and, you know, people who are, for various reasons, Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, both feel betrayed by Trump. They couldn't find their spine before that.

Todd Thom Tillis has been opposing Trump on certain limited ways once he's decided that he was going to leave the United States Senate. But I ask you right now, as we sit here, is there a Republican senator who's on the record opposing the nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General? There is not. There is not one, even though the reasons to oppose that are manifest and obvious. And there are many Democrats you could find. And most of these Republicans know what those reasons are. You don't need hearings to know why. You just have to look at Todd Blanche's behavior as acting Attorney General and as the DAG to know why he's not qualified to be the Attorney General of the United States of America. Yet no Republican right now is on the record for that. And I think that we are kidding ourselves if we think that some of these, that's a scattering of Republicans. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I'm much more in the camp of I'll believe it when I see it. When the Republicans, that. small collection of Republicans band together and stop Todd Blanche because that is where the rubber is going to meet the road on election interference. It's the DOJ and the FBI. And that is why Todd Blanche matters so much and why I am so disheartened and so not just disheartened, but I was not to say petrified, but so why I find it so ominous that that is where the action is going to be. And I think Todd Blanche is going to get through. That's why that's why I'm feeling so unnerved these days. Yeah, and I mean, look, he's got Kash Patel, who's got all the hallmarks of the kind of person Trump would loathe. He's sort of messy. He seems to be drunk in public. There are cameras on him when he's drunk in public. He's obviously there to serve a larger purpose. He gets horrific press and the kind of press that Trump hates. So what do you need if you've got him there? You need the counterpart on the other side. I associate myself with everything you said, Heilman. Congressman, thank you for starting us off. We'll keep our eyes on this space. Michael Feinberg, thank you for starting us off. I never thought you'd be our optimist, but today you are. Heilman sticks around after the break. The green algae right now floating throughout the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is certainly not the color of American flag blue, as Donald Trump promised. New reporting on the no-big contract awarded to a Mar-a-Lago neighbor hired to originally clean it up. We'll bring you that reporting next.

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Donald Trump has done a lot of losing this week. The latest loss was in his war against the algae in the reflecting pool in what is perhaps the most perfect metaphor for the second Trump term after focusing on seemingly little else posting about the reflecting pool at all hours of the day and night, carrying around a bizarre graphic of the size of the reflecting pool compared to the size of buildings, giving out not one but two, no big contracts to donors in one of the... his own contractors to repair and clean the reflecting pool. The White House and Donald Trump wrote claim that they're not involved in the selection of his donor and spending $14 million in counting taxpayer dollars on defeating the algae and turning the reflecting pool, quote, American flag blue, more than seven times the original estimate to do that. Donald Trump is worse off than when he started. Does that sound familiar? The algae that appears to haunt his dreams for the reflecting pool remained firmly in place today. And his much-beloved American flag blue pool lining is actually coming up in chunks of plastic. After National Park Service workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool and a desperate, ultimately failed battle against the algae. Despite those undeniable setbacks, to put it mildly, the Trump administration once again refuses to acknowledge the reality of their own reflecting pool. with his Department of the Interior posting this on social media. Quote, the advanced nanobbubbular technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening. Most infamously, Obama's reopening since 1922. The reflecting pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the reflecting pool. just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Okay. I want to bring in New York Times investigative reporter, David Ferren pole. John Tom Homan's still here. I mean, level set us. Is the reflecting pole currently American flag blue or is it currently have algae in it and chunks of the blue lining floating in it? When we visited the pool yesterday, as you said, parts of it were very green, and most distressingly, this blue coating, which the Trump administration paid almost $15 million to apply just a few weeks ago is already coming off the bottom and floating to the top. That's something that was supposed to last for years. That's the more worrisome thing to me. Algae, maybe you can fight. But if they just put the coating on and it's already peeling off, what was that money for? I mean, what was it money for? The money's for what all the money's for? Like something that's half ass and cheap and tacky, like everything Trump has ever done. I mean, I guess my question is, who can come in and save the pool? Like, who can come in and fix it? Where we just stuck with the algae-filled, floating plastic, tacky blue, like, who thought the blue...

I have just a swimming pool, and I know that if I put a plastic liner in it, it would not make it through one winter in the North. Like, who approved these ideas? Well, this is really interesting to me that one of the trends we see in this administration is that the things that Donald Trump wants done the most, the things he's most focused on, often end up being the things that are done the least well. I mean, Iran is a... Big example of that, but this is a small example of that. He wants this thing done. He wants the pool fixed. And instead of going through the normal process of having people bid and finding the best bidder to do the best work for the least money, they just give up the contracts in a rush without competing them to two different companies that both turn out to be led by Trump donors. And one of them, a very close friend of Trump's who's lived close to Mar-a-Lago with no effort to figure out if those guys that they just happen to know are the best. And we're already seeing the results of that, right? The pool is green and the bottom of the pool is about peeling off. Tom Homan, I don't even, like, I won't even try to stretch this beyond algae and flaking plastic floating in the reflecting pool. But Donald Trump has made clear that there's nothing more important to him than the reflecting pool. Well, I just want to say, Nicole, you know, yesterday we talked about this a little bit. I made my trip to the reflecting pool. I took all my malaria pills. You know, I had the mask and a hazmat suit, the whole thing. I came with some anti-crockadile, you know, the whole thing. You know, so I've been there. I've seen it. I actually flying out of D.C. looking down, when they put the peroxide in, there was a moment there where the edges of the pool was back to blue. before the, like the, at the perimeter of it, before the peeling, before the paint or the plastic started to peel off. So it was kind of like a blue rectangle around a green, larger rectangle in the middle. And it looked a little bit like a Mark Rothko painting. I kind of like that. I thought that would be kind of a good look for the pool. I'm not sure Donald Trump knows who Mark Rothko is. But here's the thing that I want to say about this. I don't know, Nicole, are you through the Haberman and Swan book yet? I'm about, I've got about 100 pages left. So I've read about 280 pages. Have you gotten to the super glue yet? Have you gotten to this? Have you gotten to the super glue story yet? Yeah. Have you got to the super glue? So there's a story in there where Karoline Leavitt walks into the, into the Oval Office, and Trump is personally supergluing little gold ornaments onto the furniture or the walls or something, right? So I just think if there's any justice in the world, the answer to your question, Nicole, is the person who should have to glue, go and glue the blue lighting back, make Trump to it. Like, it's really important to him. You know, let's drain the thing, drain the swamp. and then have Trump go in there and glue all the blue step back. Do you know who he's going to make do it, though? He's going to make JD Vance do it. Like, I think we should have a camera down there. I think J.D., I think he's going to put J.D., in like an old-fashioned scuba suit, make him go under. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

I have some leftover super glue from my gold ornaments. Here, take the super glue down there. JD, take care of it. Go down there. You might be able to get my endorsement if you do that. Incredible. He also repainted something else that we should all be very worried about. All of the Air Force One fleets, we'll show you that. I guess the point isn't even what they look like. It's, well, the paint stay on when it takes off or flies through weather. We'll show them to you on the other side of a break. Don't go anywhere. You know, you take a look at the Washington Monument beautiful. Lincoln Memorial, you said, but the walking in between was disgusting. The thing was loaded up. We took 11 or 12 dumpsters, trucks full of garbage out of there that they were shoveling, and it was there for years under the Biden administration. Again, Biden and Obama, if you combine the money they spent, it was over $142 million. And they got nothing, as usual. So I'm very proud of it. Maybe I shouldn't say that before it opens. Maybe I'll open it. It'll look like a sieve, but it's not going to be. I'm very good at building things and constructing things. I mean, the Washington Post, where you worked during the first term, David, tracked the lies. I mean, I think maybe they stopped around 38,000 lies. But I was actually... I don't know if surprise is the right word, amused, that being good at building things was also a lie. I mean, it seems that these are the most flawed. These are some of the most visible debacles of the second term, the bulldozing of the East Wing without any plan to rebuild, with stairways to nowhere and the plans that he trots out. The... debacle of, you know, like a DIY swimming pool doesn't have this many mishaps as the algae and the plastic lining coming up. I mean, who's going to save the buildings and like the structures in D.C. from Donald Trump? What we've seen, you know, many presidents in their second term, you know, get frustrated by domestic policy and retreat to foreign policy where they have more agency. But Trump has did that and then ran into Iran where he didn't have the agency that he thought. So he's retreated sort of one step further to the immediate. environment around where he lives and there he's found that the park service and the interior department are very willing to do whatever he says even if it doesn't make a lot of sense even if it means discarding the process is the bidding process that's designed to find the best vendor they'll just do whatever he says even if it doesn't you know in this case let's resurface the pool, refill it, brag about it, but not have actually installed the filter that will keep it clean, so just run a step on a rake, basically. Refill the pool and then have it immediately turn green and embarrass everyone. Though he's found that the park service is willing to do whatever he says, and I think that's a comforting thing to him that this is a place where his word still goes.

Goes green. I mean, his word goes, like, to no end. I mean, he looks like an incompetent fool for all the promises he made about American flag blue. David Ferenthal, thank you very much for joining us today. Quick break. We'll give Halman the last word on the other side. Heilman, this is the Qatari plane that Trump got as a present from the Qataris. This is the new Air Force One. He says he's going to paint all of the planes in the fleet Air Force One to look just like this. I suppose it is his prerogative to redesign Air Force One. But after the... American flag blue lining is now floating in the reflecting pool. I don't know that we should trust him to paint anything, like not even the walls in his bathroom. What do you think of this obsession with redesigning and repainting everything? Well, I think, I mean, look, I think that he is, David was just talking about how he's focusing on things that he can control and he's got willing. servants at the Interior Department, then the Parks Department, and so on. I mean, he's obviously also into the notion of trying to build monuments to himself in various ways and to leave marks that he thinks will not be, will not be able to go away. They'll like to kind of build the arc to Trump, you know, change the reflecting pool, change the east wing, install the claw and leave it there over the White House forever, right? I mean, Trump is... you know, pretty dumb sometimes, but I think he knows some of these things are maybe more transitory than others, easier to tear down. But I think all of it reflects Nicole a sense that he recognizes on some basic level that that project, the project of, of. exercising Donald Trump, and I mean exercising in the movie, the exercise sense, getting rid of the damn spot of Donald Trump, you know, is going to be a big project of a certainly of a Democrat gets back in the White House. Not just there's the big, there's the high-minded stuff, the restoration of American democracy, the rebuilding we need to do to our institutions, all that kind of stuff. But there's also just going to be a lot of. You saw it when they took the Trump name down from the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, right? How many people were like, that was a big moment for people? I think you're going to see a lot of that. And Trump knows that. So part of what he's doing is trying to do things. If he changes a whole lot of stuff, he probably thinks some aspects of him, some markings that he leaves, some bird droppings of his will somehow survive the purge to come. Can I tell you, I predict that all these things, you know how miraculous it is in a normal transition that the old president moves out and then everyone goes for the swearing in and the new president moves in and it's like this feat of like human logistics? I will predict that they, other than rebuilding the e-swing, I predict that they wash away that spot pretty darn quickly.

They might take more planning than usual, but I think it's going to be a giant national steam cleaning, right? Like, it's just going to be a giant national steam cleaning of everything he's touched. It's just going to be like, okay, let's get in here. Clean it all, scrub it all out. I think that's right. And the gold. I mean, I don't know who's going to be in charge of prying all that stuff off the wall. My thanks, my thanks, my friend. You've been, you've done the high and the low with me all week long. Thank you very much, my friend. After the break. 100%. See you later. Good weekend. The political miscalculations being made by JD Vance. are under the microscope today as Donald Trump looks for someone, anyone to blame for the very unpopular deal he's made with Iran. The next hour of Deadland White House starts after a quick break. Stay with us.

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