“How much will the MAGA coalition tolerate?”

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I trust DOD. We got two Marine Expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. The Marines, my money is always on the Marines. I don't know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this. The day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, has been weakened. It will die on a vine. Hi, again, everybody. It is 5 o'clock now in Washington, D.C. I'm Alicia Menendez in today for Nicole Wallace. For the sake of a purely political conversation, think of it kind of like a stress test, an unprecedented experiment into just how much the MAGA coalition will tolerate before whatever binds it together weekends or perhaps breaks altogether. Because what is going on in Iran right now, a war initiated by someone who promised he would keep us... out of them is increasingly exposing some pretty serious cracks between Donald Trump's political allies. We showed you some of that interview with Senator Lindsey Graham last hour, but consider now the backlash the American people observed as a result of those comments, invoking Iwo Jima, an operation that resulted in the deaths of nearly 7,000 American troops to advocate for a similar strategy in Iran. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a card-carrying member of Trump's MAGA coalition, said she was deeply upset at the lack of respect for life, suggesting Senator Graham was, quote, acting as if our troops are expendable cattle. Her Republican colleague, Congresswoman Nancy Mace seem to agree, insisting Graham, quote, has one foreign policy send someone else's kid to war. Those weren't the only such responses either. Indeed, the America First Corner of Donald Trump's support, even those who granted Trump latitude in the dawn days of this Iran conflict, are starting to reckon with the possibility that Trump might follow the advice of another corner of support when advocating for boots on the ground and billions upon billions of dollars in war funding. Remember Joe Kent, the now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Donald Trump, resigned from that position in protest over the war? Well, in an interview with the Washington Post, Kent described why he's been so public with multiple outlets in voicing opposition. From the Post, quote, it's a concerted effort, Kent said, to rally members of the presidents make America great again movement and ensure he hears dissenting voices on an issue that has divided Republicans. While some Trump supporters are inclined to use military might to influence global affairs, others like Kent, say they chose to support him in part because he voiced scorn for America's earlier wars. A widening rift inside Donald Trump's political coalition is where we begin this hour. Political analyst, former Senator Claire McCaskill is here. Also with us, political analysts and host of the Bullwark podcast, Tim Miller, is here for the hour. Plus, retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Amy McGrath, she is a candidate for the open Senate seat in Kentucky. It is good to see you all. Amy, I want to read just a little bit to you from the Washington Post on Joe Kent. They say Kent declined to disclose what the administration may be planning, but said Trump appears to have some really key decisions to make in the next couple of...

weeks. The potential deployment of U.S. ground troops makes me very nervous, he added, citing recent reporting that the president is considered seizing Kark Island, Iran's main hub for oil exports. I just think that would be a disaster, Kent said, of deploying U.S. troops there. It would essentially be giving Iran a bunch of hostages on an island that they could barrage with drones and missiles. Amy, your thoughts. Sure. I mean, look, Carg Island is not the golden key for unlocking the Strait of Hormuz. You can, you can't control the island without boots on the ground. Bombing it from above does not mean you control the dirt there. And so they know that you would have to seize it. And you have a problem of logistics. I mean, when Lindsey Graham's talking about, well, I trust the Marines, we're bringing 5,000 Marines in there. And it'll just be like, Iwo Jima. I mean, that is Crazy. In Iwo Jima, as you mentioned, we lost 7,000 Marines. This is ridiculous. Marine expeditionary units hold about 2,500 Marines, and they can hold land for 10 to 15 days, but then they become targets for drone, cruise, ballistic missile attacks. Then the ship would have to go through the straight of her moves, which is still closed. We don't have any element of surprise right now. So they know we're coming. That is also a factor. So, you know, this is not going to be easy. And ultimately, it comes down to the fact that this is a war, yes, it's a war, that the president shows to start that the American people don't want and how he's going to achieve the political objectives. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Claire, you have new CBS, you gov polling. And I just want to say to echo the point that Amy made there, the American public sees this as a war of choice. 60% say it is a war of choice. 60% disapprove of the war that is an uptick from earlier this month. 57% say it is going badly. If you are Democrats and you see those numbers, what do you do with them? Well, obviously, I think especially when you start putting it in context in terms of how much money we're spending, he's asked for $200 billion, and that's not counting what we would be spending if we actually started putting boots on the ground, either in Karg Island or in Iran itself. So when Democrats start comparing, For example, this is the kind of money that would restore everyone's cuts to Obamacare. This is the kind of money that would be helpful to people that are trying to figure out how to buy a home for the first time. This would be really helpful to students who are now facing really difficult decisions as they have to repay lots of student loans.

So this is a lot of money to be spending. And I think it all ties up with the economic case that Democrats are going to make. You're not better off than you were before Donald Trump was elected. You can't afford to fill up your gas tank. You can't afford to go to the grocery store. You can't afford to get the health care you need. It all ties back to affordability. And if Democrats are smart, they will tie it up in that package because I think that's the one that voters are going to respond to most. Oh, and so we already hear to your point, Claire, voters responding to. Tim, you had Trump's U.N. Ambassador Mike Walls presented with those polling numbers. Tim, here is how he responded. I could quote a whole slew of polls that show, for example, self-described MAGA Republicans give the president a 100% approval rating. His base is in that. A majority say the number one job of the commander-in-chief is to keep Americans. safe. I can point here to an NBC poll, 90% of Republicans, broader Republicans support Trump's effort to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. And I have to point out, no one should be surprised here. President Trump has said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, 2016 campaign, 2020 campaign. Since 2024, he's said it 74 times out in the public space. But if he's going to commit any kind of ground troops. or boots on the ground. Don't you think he needs to persuade the majority of American people, not just his base? I think the president will keep all options on the table to secure these objectives. All right. Tim, two things I want to pull apart there. One, the polling, you're not the president of MAGA. You're the president of the United States. It should be relevant to you how the American populace feels about the fact that you have taken us to war. And then this idea that no one. should be surprised that a president who ran as though he was going to be America first, that he wasn't going to get involved in anyone else's business is suddenly well involved in other people's business. The fact that there are 50,000 U.S. troops already stationed in the region, Tim, the answer is nonsensical. It is, and I think that's why Mike Waltz, who had already been fired from one job, was out there delivering it, and not the vice president, who has been very happy to go and defend Trump up until today or up until this war, or Marco Rubio even, who started to fade a little bit more to the background. I don't think they want to have to be out there spinning nonsense and spinning when you know that the president might pull the rug out from under you at any minute of what you say. just 48 hours ago that he was going to obliterate all of Iran and obliterate their nuclear program, or excuse me, and obliterate their power plants and their energy infrastructure. And then now they have five days to figure it out. He's all over the place. He's changed his messaging minute by minute. So puts a guy like Mike Waltz there in a very challenging situation, and he didn't handle it very well. And the polling, look, like, I think it's better than it's going to get. You know, it usually takes a little while for things to seep into the polling. You know, people that have seen gas prices go up, for example, for one week, you know, if they're MAGA and, you know, it's maybe a little annoying at the pump for one week, you get called and you're still kind of wearing your team jersey and saying you're supportive of the president.

A month later, two months later, when you're really feeling a crunch on your family budget over this, when Trump hasn't explained what the objectives are, where he hasn't really explained what a win would be? I mean, when we started this, we were going to get complete surrender from Iran, and the regime was going to be toppled. And now they talk about their objectives as if it's like, well, if we degrade their naval capabilities, then it's really a win. It's like, I don't think that most Americans, even MAGA Americans, are on board with degrading the number of ships Iran has in exchange for paying more in gasoline, paying more in groceries, as Claire laid out, having their tax dollars be spent on that rather than on things that they need. So I think at some level here, the polling is the lagging indicator. And, you know, if I were the Democrats, I'd be putting my pedal to the medal on this and just really being. be screaming from the rooftops about how Trump should end this war now, and they should be opposing the war on every front. Well, and Amy, I think everything that Tim just laid out is particularly true when you have an administration that is not able to articulate clearly what the objective of this war is. Yet, Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, suggesting that it's still unclear and that that's a real problem. Watch. Here, I thought the initial bombing raid a while back was very successful. I could see why we needed to finish some of the work and go back in and maybe have a week or two back in. They're really degrading their capabilities. Now, it's ambiguous. I don't know what our long-term strategic goals are, but we're going to need to know that. I generally support what the president's doing in Iran, but if we're going to get anything close to the $200 billion supplemental request, we got get 60 votes and we're going to have to figure out how to accomplish that. Amy, they need to have a, I'm sorry, you go ahead, but they need to have a political opposition that is growing up in part to this question of the fact that they have not made it clear to Congress, much less to the American people what their objective is here. They cannot currently define success. Yeah, you just made the point that I was just going to try to make. Here's a United States senator. whose job it is to follow this, to know about this, matters of war and peace, he has a top secret clearance. And he's sitting there saying, I don't know what we are doing. Everybody on the street, people here in Kentucky, they tell me every day. And many are very conservative, have voted for Trump for three times. People do not know what we are doing there. why we are there. They're seeing gas prices go up. They're seeing a president and Republicans that follow him not focused on the things that matter to everyday Americans. They're seeing rising cost of everything in their lives. And they're seeing this president just making it worse with an almost unwinnable war, another one, in the Middle East. And Claire talked about it earlier. The Affordable Care Act, for example, the credits that we could give people just for health care.

of the MAGA movement and who chooses when to be in alignment and when about the specific fractures we are seeing in this moment. Yeah, a couple thoughts, Lisa. I mean, one, just going back to the last question you asked about where they're kind of bragging out the poll of MAGA Americans and what they think about Trump's war. I think the actions of the MAGA politicians betray that they know what the reality is with the voters, which is that, you know, I think that there are a lot of people out there who. self-identify as MAGA who want to support Trump, who want to say that they're on the team, and if a stranger calls them on the phone and they're going to say that they back Trump because they don't want to feel like they've betrayed their team or whatever. This is not healthy behavior. It's cultish behavior, but I think that that is what. you know, what happens when these people are getting pulled. I think that a lot of them are saying other things when they're talking to their members of Congress, when they are commenting on their members of Congress of social media posts, when they're watching MAGA media. And just look at the, I mean, if you look at the, you know, podcasting charts, it's like anti-Trump mega folks like, or excuse me, anti-war mega folks like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan and others are Dominic. right so those people there's somewhere it's not it's not all democrats listening to that right like the people are tuning into that because they are that message is resonating so i do think that maga voters are souring over this and just one more thing if i may a point of privilege on tom tell us i just watching that video you guys you and amy covered a lot of the craziness but just like the notion that he said that i'm i'm generally supportive of what the president is doing in Iran in one sentence, and then the next sentence is, I don't know what the strategic objectives is. I mean, that is insane. That's the position of a madman. They're just like, you know, I do like bombing the Ayatollah. Like, that's good. I'm for that. I don't know why we're doing it, what we're going to get out of it, how we're going to get out of it, what's going to come after it, what the plan is, but I'm still kind of okay with it. That's basically... the position of the non-Maga Republicans in Congress and the people like Roger Wicker that Claire mentioned there. And to me, that's that's even crazier than the MAGA position. When you thought the bar could not be dropped any lower. Claire McCaskill, Amy McGrath. Thank you both so much for starting us off. Tim, you are sticking with me when we return what the Supreme Court might be thinking today after hearing arguments in a case brought by Republicans to severely cut back mail-in voting and potentially upend elections in this country. That is our next story. Also ahead for us, new reporting the Cheds Light on how Jeffrey Epstein may have been able to avoid scrutiny for his horrific crimes for so long.

and what happened just after his death at a New York jail. And later, sinking to a new low, even for him, Donald Trump's reaction to the death of a patriotic American, former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller. Deadline One House continues after quick break. Stay with us. What if upgrading your windows and doors didn't mean tightening your budget? Scratch that. What if it meant spending nothing today? For a limited time, renewal by Anderson is offering no money down, no monthly payments, and no interest for 18 months on a minimum of six. That means beautiful, energy-efficient windows and doors while the payments wait. Visit Renewal byandersonhome.com today and see how easy it is to buy now and pay later. 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. All of us strands are in real danger, and whatever it is, it's closing in. It started with just a few lost hairs here and there, but now more and more of us are disappearing every day. But listen, we think we have a plan. A way to stop the shedding. Pantene, abundant, and strong. Go now. It's not too late. Panteen, abundant, and strong. It's a three-step system that reduces hair loss by 85%. Only the strongest will survive the shedding. The Conservative Majority Supreme Court appears ready to overturn a mail-in voting law in Mississippi. And if they do, it could end up end upend voting in time for this year's midterm elections. The conservative justices expressed skepticism over the existing state law that validates ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to five business days later. That law is being challenged by the Republican National Committee, and a ruling in its favor in this case would make voting harder in this year's elections and all future elections in 14 states, three territories, as well as our nation's capital. The justices did raise concerns today about the practical implications of changing the law so close to the midterms and how it would hurt overseas and military voting. Ketanji Brown Jackson Ketanji Brown Jackson also pushed back on the suggestion by the RNC's lawyer.

that we should worry about a loser not accepting the results if late ballots decide an election, or that post-election day deadlines are a new thing. Listen. There's just no way the loser is going, whoever it is, is going to accept that outcome, and the supporters aren't going to accept the outcome. And so that's something I just don't think is implicated by early voting. Thank you. Ketanji Brown Jackson? Except people accepted the possibility of that outcome for 100 plus years now because this idea of the votes being cast by Election Day and counted after Election Day has been around, right? I mean, it's not like we're talking about a brand new thing from Mississippi from the standpoint of no one ever had a post-election day ballot deadline before. Want to bring an Ari Berman. He is the National Voting Rights Correspondent from Mother Jay Jones. Also joining us, Ankesh Kedori, he is a senior writer at Political Magazine and the author of Rules of Law column. His latest piece is about the reconstruction that will need to take place at the DOJ once Donald Trump is gone. Tim Miller is still with us. Are you right today that, quote, Trump wants to end mail voting and the Supreme Court's conservative justices appear eager to assist. Talk about the Republicans arguing on each side today. And the skepticism we heard very early here from conservative justices. It was very disturbing because so many of the arguments that Trump has made falsely against mail-in voting were echoed by members of the Supreme Court, talking about late arriving ballots, somehow fraudulently fixing election outcomes, talking about the vote dumps that Trump talked about in... 2020, Samuel Alito bemoaning the fact that election day has become election month, suggesting that mail balloting more broadly undermines people's faith in the voting process. These are all the things that Trump talked about in 2020 that he was... that he eventually was rebuffed on by 60 courts, but nonetheless, now it's back up for the Supreme Court. And of course, you can't divorce this from what is happening in Congress right now, with Trump trying to ban mail voting in the SAVE Act. That is the most unpopular part of the SAVE America Act is what Trump wants to do with mail balloting. And this could unleash chaos at the midterms if they change these male deadline laws, you could have hundreds of thousands of voters who could potentially be disenfranchised in a very hotly contested election across the country.

What do you see as the stakes here? The stakes are very significant, both on this narrow issue and the broader issue. So on the narrow issue, that is before the court today. We have this question about the disenfranchisement, which is a very, very serious concern and problem. There's also going to be a bunch of uncertainty, legal uncertainty, both in the run-up to the midterms and presumably even after, in the period of running up, I would expect... bunch of these states will attempt to make some sort of contingency plan, put something in place, implement new sorts of rules, maybe even have public messaging campaigns so the people in their states know that things have changed in a certain way. But, you know, they're going to have to figure out ways to implement whatever the Supreme Court issues, probably in the summer, without any particular guidance on the granular details. So that means there could be then disputes. arising from the state's efforts to comply with the Supreme Court's order. So it's going to prolong all of this. And then disenfranchised people and increase uncertainty all around. I think the broader point that, well, the broader point that Ari made is an important one. So much of this is actually just driven by the president. And his grievance. based on his false claims about the 2020 election. All the politics, all the political machinations, the fact that this is in play and that it's this particular issue because he hates mail-in voting because he thinks that cost them in 2020 election is a remarkable thing. More broadly, this is a Supreme Court that whatever they may do in a tariff decision or an upcoming birthright citizenship case where Trump is hopefully going to lose, this is a court that with six Republican appointees and three appointees from Trump still largely favors Republican priorities, in particular in areas of sort of the rules of democracy and voting. Of course, there's this parallel dispute for a decade on the Voting Rights Act. These things are not accidents. Right. And Tim Miller. You heard that today in most of the questioning from conservative justice. I also think the exchange between the RNC attorney and Justice Kastanji Ketanji Brown Jackson that we played before we came into the segment was... pretty wild and worth a mention, right? The attorney saying, well, anyone, anyone in their right mind would question these results. And then Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying, well, this is how it's been for the past hundred years. What might make this moment Tim Miller fundamentally different? Yeah, a couple of things of this. The thing that makes this moment different, obviously, is Donald Trump's attempt to steal the election in 2020. And his commitment to advancing a bunch of lies about our voting system that he fabricated and friends of his fabricated in order to rationalize his temper tantrum and his effort to overturn the election. And so this is all just an outgrowth of that. We would not be talking about this had.

you know, whatever, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton been presidents for the last decade. We're only talking about it because Donald Trump did. And what is undergirding their attacks on mail-in balloting is also a lie. Like, there is no fraud at any scale or any meaningful amount of fraud in mail-in balloting. In Colorado, where I grew up, it's almost all mail-in balloting now. The elections have been perfectly free and fair for quite some time. I will say this is a point of personal privilege on this particular issue of the... counting the ballots days after. I think it would be wise, like for blue states in particular, like California, not this time, is from the middle of the election season. And they should not try to mess with this in the middle of the election season. But going forward, looking at the 2028 and beyond, to try not to have a system where it takes seven days to count the vote, I do think that in an advanced democracy in the year 2025, 2026, we should be able to. count votes on election day, and I think that they are creating an opportunity for troublemaking on the right, and this is one of those pieces of troublemaking that they're engaging in. Can I just toss one point out, which I think is also kind of a little lost in this. Okay, if we're going to implement a requirement that requires the ballots to be in hand and potentially even counted election day, people who are mailing in, we're going to have to do so increasingly early, okay, prior to the election day. Things actually happen. putting the run up to the election day. And some people want as much information as possible to make their decisions. So it's not, you know, we need to be sort of careful about, like, you know, suggestions which are going to emerge quickly, if not already. Well, just have them to mail in the ballots two weeks prior. What's the big deal? Well, I don't know. Things happen, actually, in the games leading up to an election. Right. People actually change their mind. Ari, you have the New York Times reporting that more than 900,000 voters cast their ballots overseas. In 2024, at least 30 states allow military ballots to arrive after election day. What does this mean for armed forces? It means that you could have people that fought for their country and sacrificed their lives disenfranchised based on Trump's big lie. And the impact of this is much broader than just states allowing you to have a few extra days to cast your ballots. It could upend laws for mail voting for overseas and military voters in nearly 30 states. It could also open the door. to pushing back more broadly on cutting voting access. The president and a lot of his top Allies want one day of voting in this country, which means no early voting, which means no mail-in voting. It means you have to show up on a Tuesday in November and cast your ballot. That is extremely unpopular. That is out of step with how 47 states run their elections. That is something that a lot of Republicans would object to. But nonetheless, that is a larger goal here. The larger goal is not to change one law in Mississippi that gives people a few extra days to vote. It's about a much broader.

push to try to cut back on voting access, which we've seen with the Save America Act, which we've seen with the Supreme Court over many years repeatedly weakening the Voting Rights Act, upholding new voter suppression laws. So this case is just the latest manifestation of a much broader war on voting that honestly predated Trump, but has dramatically accelerated under Trump. And which we're also watching play out here on Capitol Hill. Ari Berman Ankosh Kudori, thank you both so much for joining us today. When we return, there is new reporting about how Jeffrey Epstein dodged accountability for his crimes for so long. We're going to have that after a short break. Everyone's talking about protein lately, but how do you actually get enough of it? Muscle milk. Muscle milk has a great-tasting new formula with no artificial sweeteners, flavors, or added colors. It's high-quality, complete protein designed to support healthy muscles with fewer ingredients than the previous formula and 206 to 42 grams of protein. For when you're stuck in meetings or need a post-work recovery, available in chocolate, vanilla cream, cookies and cream, and strawberries and cream. Try the new great-tasting muscle milk today. Available in stores nationwide, muscle milk. protein for all. Have you ever wanted to share your opinions with MS Now about our TV programs, podcasts, live events, and more? Now's your chance to have your voice heard. Join the MSNow Insights community at MS. Now slash insights. One of the most pressing questions about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes is how he was able to evade accountability for so long. New reporting in Bloomberg sheds light on the answer to that question, at least when it comes to Epstein's 2008 sweetheart deal. when a female prosecutor was rebuffed by her male supervisors. According to documents and emails reviewed by Bloomberg, quote, Marie Villafanier, a federal sex crimes prosecutor in South Florida, who spent a year listening to Teen Girls detail how Jeffrey Epstein had recruited and paid them for sex acts at his Palm Beach mansion. He was a danger to children, she told her bosses in May of 2007, and begged them to urgently seek his arrest by the FBI. She proposed a 60-count indictment that charged Epstein and some of his assistants with sex trafficking and other crimes. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Her supervisors, Alex Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and his criminal chief, Matthew Menchel, didn't act. When she pressed her case again, two weeks later, Menchel told her, quote, I'm having trouble understanding given how long this case has been pending, but the rushes. I want to bring in former acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Justice Department, Mary McCord. Tim Miller is still with us. Help us understand sort of how these teams work and the dynamics of one of the attorneys on the team making the argument, this is big. We have to do this. We have to do this now. And having her supervisor say,

What's the big rush? Yeah. So, you know, I think we've talked before in other shows that I prosecuted sex crimes as a federal prosecutor myself up here. And, you know, there's so much I would like to ask this former AUSA about the circumstances here. Because, you know, I don't know whether she also had the backing of others in whatever division of the office might have been doing the investigation with her. Was she out on her own? Like, were there supervisors between her and the criminal division? and the U.S. attorney and what was their position? Because, you know, to sit there, as she says, and listen to teenage victims telling her what happened to them, that's a very compelling case. On the other hand, teenage victims, you know, sometimes don't tell the truth. So now, that would be one thing if it's one teenage victim, but if it sounds like there are many, right? you can start to corroborate when you hear many people telling the same type of stories, right? The same modus operandi that he had of recruiting, paying them. Then that adds credibility to each individual teenager's stories, right? So I don't know whether Acosta and the Crim Chief were doubtful about the veracity of these young victims. I don't know what their relationships was between themselves and this particular prosecutor, whether she had the backing of her. her, you know, colleagues and supervisors, but somebody really dropped a ball here, and she was absolutely right that Jeffrey Epstein is a danger to children. To Miller, Mary and I were doing some back of the envelope math here. So Maria Farmer is 1996. Villafonnier is having these conversations in 2007. So when Acosta is saying to her, well, it's a long time ago at that point, it's 11 years. You fast forward, it is now 18 years later. This sense of a crime that happened a long time ago, the timeline just keeps growing because there was not action taken at any of these inflection points. How different of a conversation would we have been having if Alex Acosta had taken what his subordinate had to say to heart? Yeah, it's a tragedy, really, because I thought the back of the envelope map you were going to, math that you were going to do was the scale of the, you know, that could have been stopped, about the number of victims that could have been stopped, right? I mean, Jeffrey Epstein continued to have underage girls as victims for years after this conversation happened in 2007. So, you know, the crimes continued and you end up, what, 12 years later, this one ends up dead in custody during the Trump 1.0 administration. So, look, it was obviously a huge oversight by Costa, maybe worse than that. I mean, this is something that Julie Brown at the Miami Herald and others have been covering for a long time is just, it's not as if this was something in the moment that. you know, whatever, there wasn't enough information and it slipped to the cracks. Like, there's just another data point upon a bunch of other data points where people at the time, when he got the sweetheart deal for Acosta, were saying, why? Like, why, what was, you know, why didn't they go in for more? And I think there continued to be a lot of questions about this. And I think that if the Democrats take back Congress next year, it's going to be incumbent upon the oversight committees to take a close look at him.

Nicole spoke to Julie K. Brown, who you just referenced, the Intrepid Miami Herald reporter about the Epstein case for this week's The Best People podcast. I want to show you both what Julie K. Brown had to say about why she thinks so many investigative threads were just not followed in this case. Take a listen. Is it as simple as they didn't believe the women, or was there something else going on? I think that was part of it, I think, especially early on in the case. They didn't find them credible and they thought they were really, you know, prostituting themselves, which was ridiculous because they were 13, 14 years old. So it's absurd. But even I think as the years went by, I think. You know, there's a lot of men in our government. And I do think there was absolutely a bias, not only on the part of failing to recognize how serious this crime was, but also the female prosecutors in this case were also treated poorly, I think. And their male counterparts weren't really, I think, listening to them. Let me read you just to that point a little bit more from the reporting from Bloomberg. In nearly 20 instances, Villafani felt pressured, intimidated, threatened, coerced, or wrongly influenced to take a position or action she disagreed with. She wrote in 2019, from her point of view, her bosses had allowed Epstein's legal team to undermine the case she was building. That's the other dynamic that's in play. Yeah, well, you know, that's an office that I never worked in and am not familiar with, but it sounds like it was not a very hospitable environment. And that's something that, you know, no U.S. Attorney's Office should be that way. I will tell you personally, spending 20 years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., we took sex crimes very, very seriously. Every U.S. attorney I worked for, man or woman, took them seriously. We had supervisors of that division. In fact, I was one at one point who were women, but also men. and took it very seriously. And this sounds like there's some dysfunction in that office, which makes you wonder, does it go beyond sex crimes and into other areas as well, or potentially the treatment of females in that particular office? There was the office, but there's also the fact that they were getting steamrolled. by Epstein's legal team. Yes, yes. Which also, you know, makes us wonder things about other new reporting about a personal attorney for decades who apparently testified he knew nothing about this. Now, his legal team doing his criminal defense would, of course, be a different legal team. But there were a lot of lawyers, a lot of business people close to Jeffrey Epstein for a lot of years. And given the just sheer sort of volume of what we now see in terms of his activities, with young women, it seems nearly impossible that anyone who work closely for him for any amount of time would not have been aware. But, you know, you can get a powerful defense team with, you know...

you know, potentially connections, but even not connections to the U.S. attorney, even just if it's some folks that have a lot of sway and a lot of ability to put pressure, sometimes you can see things go awry like this. Okay, a reminder. You can listen to Nicole's entire conversation about the Epstein Files with Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, whose reporting has driven so much of the Epstein coverage over the years. Just scan the QR code on your screen to download this week's episode of the Best People podcasts. When we return, just when you think you have seen the bottom, Donald Trump manages to go even lower. We're going to explain after a short break. Former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a true, dedicated public servant, died on Friday at the age of 81. Mueller was the second longest serving FBI director, transforming the Bureau in the wake of 9-11. He was also a war hero. Mueller received both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after serving in the Marines in the Vietnam War. He is, of course, known more recently for his work investigating Russia's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election in Trump's favor. Never won, to pass up an opportunity to disparage his perceived enemies. Here is what Donald Trump posted just minutes after Mueller's passing was announced. Quote, Robert Mueller just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people. Now, in normal times, celebrating the death of an American citizen would be far beneath the sitting president of the United States. So very few Republican lawmakers have criticized Trump's post celebrating Mueller's death. GOP congressman Don Bacon telling Politico, quote, it is clearly wrong. un-Christian behavior. The vast majority of Americans want better. We are back with Tim and with Mary. I didn't want Donald Trump to be able to define this moment. So from you, who was Robert Mueller? And why does his service matter? So Robert Mueller is the epitome of public service. I mean, this is a man who, from his original, you know, entry into the Marine Corps, it was after that that he went. to law school, right? He worked his way into public service early on. And when I started in the U.S. attorney's office in DC in 1994, around that same time, he came to that office after he had already been a presidentially appointed Senate confirmed U.S. attorney in Boston, after he had already held high-level positions at the main justice, after he had been a partner at a law firm, he's like, DC has a homicide problem. Remember early 90s? It was the homicide capital of the world. I want to come. prosecute homicides, not even in federal court, but in superior court here in the District of Columbia. And that is what he did. He went out, he met with victims, families, and prosecuted homicides in superior court. That's the bustling court house, right? Where all of the street crimes and murders and rapes and things like that are happening rather than the more stayed, you know, federal court. And he went on many times to serve his country. I mean, served 12 years as the FBI director. These are 10 years.

terms, but he was so instrumental. to reshaping the FBI that President Obama asked, would you stay two more years and Congress blessed that? And then even when he finally took what should have been a well-earned retirement and didn't fully retire, he went to a law firm, but I think was never totally happy there, when, you know, he got the call from Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General early in 2017 in Donald Trump's first term, would you come be special counsel? Now, he already knows he's watched Donald Trump fire James Comey. He knows this. is likely to be a thankless task, right? Because the president is going to completely, you know, jump all over him and criticize him and, you know, say all kinds of things. Yet he took that. He took that challenge. He went in. He brought together a team of experienced prosecutors, many of whom I know very well. I myself was interviewed by that team because of my former role in national security. And he did what needed to be done. So it's a huge loss for the country. And certainly he deserves better than what the president had to say about him. Well, Tim Miller, I've got about 60 seconds left. But that would be because that type of service is anathema to this president. It is. And because he's a depraved human. I should just say it. It's good that he's dead. I'm glad that he's dead. And it's the kind of thing you would never say. about even your enemy if you're a person that has any honor and dignity. So, look, I think in addition to everything the Mary light out, their patriotism was contrasted nicely by Bob Mueller's service. And he served in Vietnam voluntarily. He had an actual injury, a real injury, and he had to delay a year. He could have gotten out of Vietnam, but he went back and served again while Donald Trump made up a fake injury to avoid service. And I think that tells you about all you need to know. Tim Miller, Mary McCord. Thank you both so much for joining us today. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Some bombshell reporting from ProPublica today, revealing the extent of the cruelty of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. An exclusive data analysis found that the administration has detained the parents of more than 11,000 children who are U.S. citizens. Their analysis showed ice arrest of parents doubled in the first seven months of Donald Trump's second term compared with the Biden administration. They also found that the impacts were more pronounced from mothers. This administration has deported moms of U.S. citizens at four times the rate of the Biden administration. And they even went as far as to change the guidelines. From ProPublica, quote, a document once known as the parental interest directive has been given a new name under Trump. the detained parents directive. In its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was humane, has been stripped of that word. As our friend Jacob Sobrough often reminds us, it is all family separation by a different name. Another break for us. We'll be right back. Thank you for spending part of this Monday with us. Everyone's talking about protein lately, but how do you actually get enough of it? Muscle milk. Muscle milk has a great-tasting new formula with no artificial sweeteners, flavors, or added colors. It's high-quality, complete protein designed to support healthy muscles with fewer ingredients than the previous formula and 206 to 42 grams of protein. For when you're stuck in meetings or need a post-work recovery, available in chocolate, vanilla cream, cookies and cream, and strawberries and cream. Try the new great-tasting muscle milk today. nationwide. Muscle Milk. Protein for all.