Trump’s revenge tour is blowing up in his face

Monday.com AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Saturday, September 26th, join MS now live in Texas for our biggest event yet with Rachel Maddo, Chen Saki, Michael Steele, and more for a day of powerful conversations and timely insights in a crucial state for the midterms. Democracies heal and advance themselves by engaging everybody where they are. Plus exclusive community experiences. MS now live together in Texas. September 26th. Get tickets today at MS. dot now slash together. Tonight on All In. Is the $1.8 billion DOJ fund dead or is it on hold? It's, uh, I'd have to ask the lawyers. From the slush fund to weaponizing intelligence. Did you actually tell? Bill Pulte, you were going to punch him in the face? No, sir. I actually said it was going to kick his ass. Good. Okay, good. I share the emotion. Tonight, Senator Chris Murphy on the bipartisan fight to rein in Trump's corruption. Then Senator Mark Warner on his ultimatum on the Bill Pulte nomination. Plus, what we know about what's happening in those big California elections, and as our distracted president keeps his eye on the pool. We picked a color called American Flag Blue. We had color choices. Dyer warnings from oil executives about the potential for skyrocketing gas prices. We're approaching unheard-of inventory levels. I mean, really, really low levels. It all in starts right now.

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. As the midterms coming to view, particularly after last night's contests in a number of states, basically every major problem in this country that Donald Trump caused remains unresolved. I mean, just today, they're fighting to make it so they don't have to give back the tariff money, right? Remember the tariffs? Thought we were over that? No, no, no. Meanwhile, the war in Iran is ongoing, and despite claims of a so-called ceasefire, there are strikes basically every day. There's lots of firing happening between the two parties. The Strait of Hormuz, of course, remains under Iranian control. As a result, gas prices remain high, about 50% over where they were when we started this, and a real risk in the next few weeks they could spike up even higher. We're going to talk about that later in the program. And of course, amidst all this, what's so striking, what's so consistent is that the president, just couldn't care less. I mean, truly could not possibly be less interested in doing anything about the larger issue of affordability or improving people's lives. And all of that continues to erode his popular support to new levels. Look at this chart from UGov. I know there's a lot going on there, but stay with me. It's a pretty clear story. The pink line, that's the one that goes longer, right? That's tracking Trump's approval during his first term. The dark red line shooting basically straight down like a roller coaster is Trump's approval in his second term. Now, you can see he actually started more popular in this term than in the first one. And you can also see that he is much less popular now than he was at this point before the 2018 midterms. I mean, that's actually quite a gap. About 15 points less popular. The trend is moving in the wrong direction for the president. Again, because all these crises remain unresolved, because he is either caused or exacerbated all of them, because he doesn't care about resolving them, it's continuing to shoot straight down. And that's why Republicans are so spooked about the upcoming returns. It's why billionaires are going to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to try to boost Republican fortunes, right? And you can see the Republicans fear in how they're acting now in Congress. And there's this weird thing going on, particularly on display today. We have talked about the strange paradox that we're seeing where Donald Trump's revenge tour against Republicans, he thinks aren't loyal enough. His desire to retain the strongest possible grip over the party is actually making him politically weaker more broadly. Let me explain, right? Trump is a strong grip on Republican primary voters. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Although we should note, his preferred candidate did lose the gubernatorial primary in Iowa last night, somewhat surprisingly. So maybe that's slipping a bit. But more. broadly, right, he's basically been running the table. For instance, he was able to unseat Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. That's two incumbent Republican centers longstanding, as well as Congressman Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Basically forced out Senator Thom Tillis in North Carolina, forced him into early retirement because he certainly would have lost a primary challenge to a Trump-backed opponent.

But here's the thing. All those guys are still in Congress. And not just for, you know, a few days. They're still in Congress until next January, 2027. They don't disappear or get raptured when they lose their primaries or they announce their retirement. They stick around. They still have jobs. They still have votes. And understandably, they seem pretty pissed in Donald Trump. And despite being deeply conservative politicians, in fact, zealously fervent, even rabidly so in the case of Thomas Massie, I don't think any one of them is particularly eager to help Donald Trump in his congressional projects. Especially comes to the most egregious parts of Trump's current agenda. For instance, right, the slush fund for insurrectionist, the acting attorney general now claims after some pressure is dead, although who knew, knows? Both centers Cassie and Thom Tillis have been pretty outspoken against it, with the latter using a particularly novel turn of phrase to describe it. Do you believe this is legal what the president is trying to do, what the Department of Justice is trying to do? I'm not going to be an attorney and judge. It's legality, but I think it's stupid on stilts. Stupid on still, says Thom Tillis. And now, after losing his own primary last week, John Cornyn has, get what? Conveniently found his own conscience. Oh, there it is. I found it after I lost my primary. Quoting from an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, encouraging Congress to affirmatively vote down such a proposal, to block money for any such fund, the way to ensure the fund is more than mostly dead would be for Congress to put a stake through it. A, that's true. B. Hussah, see John Cornyn posting that. Now, of course, Trump being Trump, as soon as he apparently directed his henchman, Todd Blanche, right, to kill it and back away from the slush fund, he brought forth another equally ridiculous proposal. So outrageous and corrupt and audacious that it's in the same category as a slush fund because he wants Bill Pulte, his mortgage fraud attack dog in charge of national intelligence, the head of all 18 intelligence agencies. Now, the guy is completely unqualified. There's every reason to believe that the only qualification he has in Trump's eyes is his willingness to abuse his office and to use it to persecute and spy on Trump's domestic political critics. That really is the track record that Bill Pulte has, right? So now Trump's spurn senators aren't afraid to call it out anymore. Nothing that I hear suggests that he's competent for the job for which he's been appointed. And I say that because that's just kind of the kind of conversation about my colleagues, like OMG. And so I just don't know the guy. But as one person said, he has no military background, no intelligence background.

He's going to already keep his other job, and he's not even sure he has a security clearance. I don't believe he's ever had a security clearance. He clearly has no experience in intelligence. He has no geopolitical experience, no international connections, the sorts of things you would look for. He's a far cry from Dan Coates, but he's got a structural problem. He simply doesn't have 51 votes on the Senate floor, and he may not even have the votes at Intel Committee, and we just need to tell the president that clearly. Now, we'll also tell you, whoever... tell the president to go ahead and commit to those publicly before vetting it should lose their jobs because they should know that the math just works against Bill Pulte being confirmed. Do you see what Thom Tillis? Thom Tillis always does. That's like the president is being ill-served by his advisors. Like it's the advisor's problem. It's whoever told the president. It's not the president's fault. But Thom Tillis didn't stop there. In a committee hearing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he also made perfectly clear where he stands. Did you actually tell Bill Pulte, you were going to punch him in the face? No, sir. I actually said it was going to kick his ass. Good. Okay, good. I share the emotion. Well, he's not alone. Seems likely there could be further no votes from senators like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins in Maine, who of course is up for re-election. And you know, when re-election comes around, she loves to show how independent she is from her Republican colleague. And then you've got Republican Senator Leader John Thune, who conceded that Bill Pulte would face an uphill battle for confirmation. No kidding. On the one hand, it should not take the end of their political careers to inspire people like John Cassie or Bill Cassier or John Cornyn to speak out. Right? I mean, you should just call him like you see him, particularly when the president does something egregious. He should do it from the beginning. In fact, they probably shouldn't have voted for Pete Hegseth to name one example. On the other hand, it is somewhat satisfying to see Trump stymied by a problem of his own making, which this surely is. Today, the Senate bucked him, again, by removing the funding for his precious, precious ballroom from the spending bill. We know he's pretty angry about that. It's all he cares about. Well, that's not true. Also the reflecting pool. He might even veto the Republican's own party line bill. They're trying to ram through reconciliation to shove more money at ICE and CBP as a result of it not having his precious ballroom funding. It's entirely possible basically all of his agenda, such as it is, could be dead on arrival for the rest of this Congress. And then assuming Democrats can flip the House in November, his legislative agenda could be dead on arrival for the remainder of his presidency. Now, I will say he doesn't seem to care much because he doesn't like the legislative branch. He doesn't think it should exist. He wants to be a king. But he squandered a year of a political trifecta because his need for petty revenge outweighed everything else. And the tighter he grips the party... the more it slips through his fingers, and the more powerful the backlash. The more people he purchased, the more he contributes the conditions for people to break free. Senator Chris Murphy is the Democratic Connecticut, author of the new book Crisis of the Common Good, The Fight for Meaning and Connection, and he joins me now. First of we just start on the sort of thesis there as someone who serves in the Senate.

it seems that he's losing a bit of control there, whether that's him being a lane duck, it's the midterms and the fact that you've now got folks like Bill Cassidy and Corning kind of flowing around. But does that, is that how you see the developments over the last few weeks? Yeah, I think that's largely right. I mean, it's also because the corruption is just getting so bananas, right? Right, right. Yeah. This is a little different than the others in that he's just reaching his hands into the treasury and stealing $1.8 billion. And this time, like not for himself. They seem to kind of excuse it when he's just putting it in his pocket. In this case, he's giving it to the guys that tried to kill us on January 6th. So, yeah, I mean, I guess this. maybe stands for the proposition that there is like some kind of nuclear grade corruption that he can engineer that might offend a handful of Republican senators. Not necessarily something to celebrate. The democracy is not safe. But yes, this is new. And they are saying that they won't give him the votes on this big immigration bill if he goes forward with the slush fund. But he still may go forward with the slush fund. after we vote on this. So it is important for us to have an amendment that we will ask Republicans to vote for that will make it clear in statute that he can't set up this trust, this, this slush fund. So that will be the moment, which will probably happen sometime tomorrow afternoon. There'll be a vote on the Senate floor to permanently ban a police beaters fund like this. And we'll see if Republicans are really serious. Yeah, that was what struck me about the John Cornyn Post of the Wall Street Journal editorial was precisely because everyone can, you know, no one wants to vote on this stuff. They want to kind of pretend it's not there. But you now will, the Democrats, right, because of what we call this voterama, they're going through reconciliation process. You're going to have the ability to insert amendments. Like they're going to have to vote on this probably tomorrow, right? Like, and the votes on all the Democrats will vote to kill this fund. Correct. Every Democrat will vote to kill this fund. And you're going to need, you know, a sizable number of Republicans. We don't know whether we'll need 50 or 60 votes. But, you know, yes, if a bunch of Republicans join with us, then in statute, this will be illegal. The worry is that if they don't put this in statute, then as soon as Trump gets the votes for this big reconciliation bill, he'll just rename it something different. He'll go from $1.8 billion to $1.4 billion. tell Republicans that, yeah, I didn't do the old fund. I did a new fund. The other, you know, the other, I think, just like. too much for people to swallow move is this pulty thing. And again, some of the same voices expressing skepticism. I mean, I want to read from the New York Times editorial, because there's sort of an issue here like, Thom Tillis says he doesn't have 51 votes, and I believe him. I don't think he has 51 votes to get from firm. But the problem is, it's an important job he's going to serve in for 210 days. You know, the New York Times editorial saying, you know, that you have to have extensive national security expertise. He fails that test. Unless the president formally nominates him, he can only serve the job for 210 days.

That is 210 days too many. Congress should act to force Mr. Pultes media removal. It seems like an analog here where it's like there has to be an affirmative action by Congress to be like, no, you can't even put this guy in for one day. Well, and here lies the opportunity. I mean, this bill is maybe the last thing Trump wants. It's another giant infusion of money to ICE to allow him to hire more personal police. They could say to him that we are not giving the votes for this bill unless you pull the Bill Pulte nomination. This may be their actual last legislative leverage. And yes, Bill Pulte, frankly, will do all the damage he needs to do in 200 days because why is he going to D&I? He is going to DNI to scoop. secret information, potentially wiretaps that are sitting around on the president's political opponents and use it to destroy the president's political opponents. He can do all of that in 100 days and 50 days. So the very fact that he gets in there as the acting DNI probably will get done what Trump wants, which is more information declassified to hurt his political opponents. This morning, I was reading your really interesting new book about the common good. And really interesting and a real attempt to kind of wrestle with some of the sort of centrifugal forces that are pulling us apart and trying to find something in the middle of it. And I do wonder like... It's interesting. People feel exhausted. They feel sour. We feel very polarized. We feel very much at each other's throats. And there is a real question of like, what does hold people together? And that seems to be the central question you got to come up with and tell a story about, particularly if you want to win like a Senate race in Iowa as a Democrat. And I wonder how much you think that Democrats have articulated that or how much more work there is to do there. Yeah, as much as you and I spend a lot of time talking about the main character, Donald Trump, this book makes the contention that he's not the real story, that the underlying story is a way in which we've constructed our economy and our culture that makes people feel really powerless and lonely and angry and exhausted, and that that's going to continue if we don't make different choices. I worry about the same thing, Chris. I want the Democratic Party to be for something and creating a common good economy, a common good capitalism. So people don't think there's just a choice between market fundamentalism and profit obsession and socialism and a common good culture where we're incentivized to care about each other, where we have leisure time back in our lives, where we can join common causes like churches or service clubs. That's a message that speaks to the spiritual rot that exists in this country. So yes, this book is not really about Trump. And it's an

offer for the Democratic Party to maybe effectively scoop into Trump's base for people that are sick of an economy that forces you to care only about yourself, technology that spins us into lives of isolation. There is an ability to rebuild a sense of obligation to your neighbors, responsibility to somebody beside yourself that I think can appeal to right and left. Yeah, well, that's your view. Personally, I think carrying around a casino in our pocket that allows you to bet on war is awesome and very spiritually fulfilling Senator Chris Murphy. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Coming up, brand new results from those two major primary battles in California, things are tightening up. Like, big, there's real changes as these ballots get counted. We're going to give you the full update next. Monday.com AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now, we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line. On the line with Alicia Menendez. Weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MS Now.

It is the day after a number of big primaries across the country. We're getting new numbers in from the California gubernatorial race. So just moments ago, as it stands right now, former Foxhose Steve Hilton, remains in the lead, nearly 28% of the vote. Xavier Becerra is just behind it almost 26%. And billionaire Tom Steyer sits just outside the zone to advance to the general election. You see it there. Now, we should note that that's 56% in. Those numbers have been changing a lot. which is the key thing to understand. We got new numbers for the Los Angeles mayoral race. And again, these numbers are changing quite a bit. Karen Bass is still in the lead, but the gap between the second and third highest vote getters, Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman, has narrowed by about 3,000 votes. It's not clear who will advance to face Karen Bass in November. Neither of those races have been called, and we may not have a call for quite some time. And that's for a good reason. Like, as each vote batch comes in, there's real movement in them. We're only 56% on the way of it through. Many of the other big races are in, however, as we reported last night in Iowa, you get state representative Josh Turrick winning the Democratic nomination with the state's open Senate seat. He will now face off against Trump endorsed candidate, Congresswoman Ashley Kinson, who's a former reporter, who was representative of the northeastern part of the state since 2021. In New Jersey 7th District, which looks to be one of the most competitive House districts in the whole country, Rebecca Bennett Handley won the Democratic nomination. She's a former Navy helicopter pilot to take on incumbent Republican Tom Cain, who has been totally and mysteriously absent from Congress since March, has missed over 100 votes. Keep saying he's going to tell us at some point what his health issue is, but doesn't tell anyone, and it hasn't been heard or seen from. Bennett has a very district-friendly profile, former health care executive Navy helicopter pilot seemingly in the mold of the current New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill. Like that worked, can we find another helicopter pilot? That profile will be tested in the general election in a new district. Michelle Goldberg's columnist New York Times, for latest pieces. There's no escaping the rot in this Justice Department. And Landa Lippman is a Democratic strategist, as well as co-founder and president run for something. They both joined me now. So I guess the first thing on the California thing, we go through this every year, which is, They do, they count slowly, we know why, right, the votes coming afterwards. And things do change a lot. And, you know, right now it's, it's both that L.A. mayoral and the gubernatorial are actually fairly up in the air. I mean, the jungle primary is such a disaster. I'm glad just... Yes, I agree. Like, if you want electoral reform, there are ways to do it, you know, having a ranked choice voting so that... But the jungle primary requires so much kind of strategizing by voters to, you know, like, you don't want to kind of throw away your vote. And there was a... There was a moment at which it seemed possible that it was going to be two Republicans who advanced to the runoff. And so people kind of had to scramble for, well, who will do now that Eric Swalwell has fallen into disgrace. I mean, the whole thing is such a mess. And similarly, it's such a mess in Los Angeles that we could either have this race, this like kind of very...

interesting intra-democratic race between Karen Bass and someone to her left or with this reality TV character that will just kind of be a... a spectacle. It tells us I actually think very little about where the people of California actually are. It's a great point because I was looking at this last night. It's like there's all sorts of reforms people will do. We have ranked choice voting in the New York City system. It's also in Alaska where I think it's actually been quite successful. There's a lot of debate on the other side. But this was an Arnold Schwarzenegger reform in 2011. Voters of California ratified at the polls, so they voted for it. But it does seem to me like not a great system. I would imagine that after this experience, they will revisit this. Yeah. It does not seem to get the outcomes they want. And it feels like it required a whole bunch of, as you said, strategizing on behalf of voters. And we've seen that. That's why they expect the vote to change so much over the next week as they count votes. Because the, you know, the later the ballots came in, the more people were hearing the news about how it could be a different kind of outcome and they wanted to vote strategically. Yeah, particularly when you have, I mean, just, you can't give voter 61 candidates, I feel like. I mean, it's just, what are you trying to do? So. Let's talk a little bit about the Senate, the state of the Senate after last night. The Iowa was the big result. You now have a candidate. It's going to be Turk versus Henson. And again, I don't want to like overstate this. Donald Trump won Iowa by 14 points. I mean, this should not be close and should not be in the realm. I was in really tough shape. It's really interesting. It's like 49th in income growth. It's a governor who's leaving is the lowest approval rating. What do you think about the Iowa situation? Rob Sand is an incredible candidate for governor. He's running for governor. He's running for governor. It's an open gubernatorial race. I think it's the first time in decades that it's been an open governor's mansion there. And he is so of Iowa. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. He is like of the community. He's kind of a weirdo. And again, complimentary. So good at communicating with voters. So present. And with him on the ticket, along with Josh Turk, I think that there is real opportunity here to flip it in a way that I'm not sure you would have been able to predict a year ago. The other big, in sort of these tiers of races, right? Like, it's very hard to come up with a universe in which Dems take the Senate without getting one of Ohio, Iowa, and Texas, right? So, James Talarico in Texas. Iowa's Josh Shurik, which we learned last night. Ohio is Sherrod Brown, right, who was a three-term senator there and lost six years ago. And he is running. And this new Fox poll today, now, again, that is an outlier poll. I have not seen him running that high. But that's got to put a shot in the arm of a lot of Democratic strategists about the Senate. Well, yeah. I mean, look, they've elected Sherer Brown to the Senate before in Ohio. So it's obviously not something kind of that Ohioans are not. willing to do. And we see those kind of swings. You know, I mean, that's in keeping, I think, with the swings that you see nationally. I also, I'm not sure. I haven't seen any recent polls, but I don't know that Vivek Ramaswamy who's running for governor is polling very well either, right? In this poll, weirdly, he and Amy Acton is running for governor are about even. Amy Acton's about a point up. But I think that also, there's a little bit of the fact that like Brown is just a known quantity in that state. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I think that

You know, there's, I think it'll be hard to draw. We'll see how this shakes out. But it's hard right now to draw a sort of unified lesson of which sort of Democratic candidates, you know, which sort of Democratic candidates are successful. They're, you know, because you have, on the one hand, you have a bunch of tried and true, you know, kind of older people that recruited by Chuck Schumer. I think, you know, clearly was the right candidate in Ohio. You know, you have Roy Cooper. And then you have these kind of brand new insurgents, you know, James Talarico, Graham Platner. We'll see how that goes. But, you know, there's going, it's like you're kind of running this like mass multivalent experiment. Yes. On the Graham Platner, of course, there were revelations that he had engaged in basically sexually explicit texts with a variety of women fairly recently while he was married. Skeved a lot of people out, I think fair to say. Again. When we're ranking these things, like the sitting president was found liable of sexual abuse and accused to raping a woman in a dressing room. So this is not that. But upset people. He was in Washington, D.C. to sort of calm some nerves. What do you think about that Maine race? All of this sucks. It sucks that there wasn't a better alternative in Maine. It sucks that voters may have to feel like they have to hold their nose and vote for someone they're not excited about. Although there's a lot of voters who've been extremely excited about him, which is why the sitting governor just drop out of the primary because she was 20 points down in the race. And like, it sucks that no matter, honestly, what he did or like, I don't want to say no matter what else comes out, but it would have to be really, really, really bad to make it worse than the possibility of Republicans holding the Senate and Trump getting every judge and Supreme Court seats. That is the cost. And it sucks that we're in this position. And I hope we've learned some lessons about building a deeper bench in every state moving forward. Yeah, but again, I mean, there was other people in this race. And he really, I mean, I was in Maine and I saw the crowds that he was drawing and there was something sort of electric about it. He's also very, very talented as a communicator, which is really good. But I do, I do wonder if this particular scandal hits a little bit differently because the other things he could sort of, you could bracket them under. this broader narrative of redemption, right? That he had, you know, kind of been this angry, unstable person who had the... Served many tours and had a really... But then he had been redeemed through his community and his marriage. And that was sort of the story he was telling. And so, you know, he was that guy, but he's not anymore. This suggests that maybe he was that guy much more recently than we realized. You know, the real bummer is he's not even going to be one of the top five worst men in the United States Senate. Well, that's, I mean, I don't think that's in the running. God. knows. Michelle Goldberg and Amanda Lippman. Thank you both. Still ahead, the top Democrat on Senate intelligence is raising major alarms. Donald Trump's new choice for DNI, as well he should. Senator Mark Warner joins me live next.

This is a Monday.com ad. The same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built-in AI, scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line. On the line with Alicia Menendez. Weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MS now. We've been talking about this Bill Pulte nomination to oversee all 18 of the country's intelligence gathering agencies and the backlash to it. If you're not fully up to speed on who he is, I do think we should spend a minute to refresh your memory or even introduce you if you don't really know him. It is even worse than you can imagine. So in his current job, Bill Pulte has clearly distinguished himself as one of the Trump appointees most willing to abuse his power for the boss. He has repeatedly used his position as the nation's housing affordability chief. To gin up, ludicryph pretextual charges of mortgage and insurance fraud against Trump's critics. He's done it to New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. and former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. And when you see these stories about all of the people that criticized Trump and he wants to go after happen to engage in mortgage fraud, like you've got to think to yourself, like, huh, that's interesting. That's an interesting coincidence. Did they all just do that? Semaphore reports the president was ultimately swayed to promote Bill Pulte by Roger Stone. Yes, Roger Stone, apparently still around, still whispering corrupt notions in the president's ear. So who is Bill Pulte? Well, he's the grandson of a billionaire housing magnate. He's worked in private equity until last year he'd never held public office. The AP notes that he did not run, that he did run for student council in college. When he lost, he told the school paper, I guess I can go back to running my helicopter business. Bill Pulte calls himself the inventor of Twitter philanthropy, and he gained millions of followers as well as access to MAGA influencers by offering, get this. Giveaways of cash and cars on Twitter? Those prizes were often exaggerated, according to a 2019 investigation by Right Wing Watch. To be eligible for them, users had to follow Bill Pulte on Twitter, surprise, surprise, share his posts, send him videos, create accounts on Cash App, which Twitter owns. Right Wing Watch reached out to Bill Pulte for comment. He didn't respond. See, Bill Pulte's not a veteran. He's not an analyst. He's not a spy. He's the kind of entrepreneur who organized events promoting meme stocks, events like this one in 2003, where he flew in on one of his helicopters and an MC slapped a guy with a sex toy before giving Bill Pulte an award. So, Bill, this says Bill Pulte. All right. Thank you.

And then if you notice on, it's got a tramp stamp stamp with a butterfly. I like Only the Young. One-cheek. Yes, it does say, it does say only the Young on the back here. Only the Young, December 14th. That looks pretty badass. Ladies and gentlemen, your new acting director of national intelligence. Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Vocal Credit of Bull Pilty, and he joins me now. I would love to know where you were when you heard about this nomination and what your initial reaction was. Well, Chris, as you said, it's worse than you think. And I'm glad you put that... that last video, that was, I believe, a DILTO convention or something. But it's, it was, you know, I didn't think that the Trump administration could still surprise me. But picking someone with no national security experience, I don't even believe has a clearance. I asked Scott Bessent today, who's Quasi is boss, and he said he didn't know. It's the guy that Scott Bessent said he was going to punch in his face. And I think his claim, the one thing your story left out, that is confidential information, mortgage information. It's private. So this guy has found a way to weaponize housing information, and you're going to give him the keys. All of our 18 intelligence agencies, you know, and this comes at a time when we've got this debate over 702, which is a critically important tool, but, you know, and I'm less worried about him there, but I'm just worried about, you know, this guy could. disclose our most classified secrets. He will do whatever Donald Trump says. And the idea that he's kind of acting for six months, which puts him through the election, so I have huge fears about election interference. And just to add final insult to injury, Trump has even said, okay, you can do both jobs. You can be director of national intelligence and head of our housing finance agency. It's insane. That point, I want to go back to that point you made, because it's an important one. There's some housing data, as anyone who's ever bought a home knows, right, that is public, right? Like, who bought this property? But the kinds of documents that have been used to refer to the Department of Justice for prosecution are confidential, and they're stored by the agency he has. And while I don't think we can definitively establish this has happened, what seems very likely from the outside is he or someone else has basically rifled through. government class, like confidential personal information to create these criminal cases or referrals, right? I mean, it really is like the nightmare scenario for anyone who would have access to wiretaps or, you know, the ability to pull someone's emails and the like. And just, just to put up.

A point on that, the practice of, you know, Congresspeople, others, if you buy two homes, what you made your home, was exactly duplicated by half of Trump's cabinet who had been, you know, formerly elected officials. So again, it just, you just kind of keep pulling your hair, you know, and all of the Republicans have been quietly pushing back. But I am so sick of like, you know, What they say to me quietly and what they will do publicly. Finally, a few have gone public. But this guy is so far over his skis. You know, at some point, this would be the time that somebody in the White House needs to go to the emperor, Donald Trump, and say, you know what? You got no clothes on. Maybe a weird analogy, but the emperor with no clothes was something we all grew up with as a story. And this is a case of such... craziness. And I really wonder whether he wants to now actually defeat this issue called Section 702, which is the way that we listen in to foreigners outside of America talking to each other, which is always a hard push through. There are genuine civil libertarian concerns. And we have put major reforms in place. I'm going to add more now. But the idea that I'm going to kind of, well, convince. Anyway, it is a challenge. Yes. I mean, let me just say, I'm not in the Senate, but there's no way that thing's passing if he's on the table. It just seems to me, and we already saw a Senator Cortez-Mastos say today. So if that's the goal, like for you, which I believe it is, you know, one of the goals in your job is, but I guess the other question is to cite the New York Times. Like, it just seems intolerable to say, well, the vacancy reform acts means he doesn't need a Senate authorization. He doesn't need to be confirmed. He could sit there for six months for the election. Someone's got to... That doesn't seem good enough to me. I imagine not to you. Like, what can the Senate do? Well, listen, we will, there will be lawsuits filed. And because remember, the Director of National Intelligence was established after all of the intelligence failures around 9-11. And the Congress was very clear that if you're going to be this person, you've got to have national security experience. This guy has none. And again, the notion that he's going to do both jobs, it's, it is beyond non-believable. What I'm wrestling through and trying to push through is, you know, there is no more important to all the way. The presidential daily brief, 70% of the information is obtained from this Section 702. I don't want to put Americans in harm's way. They're literally, word will come out shortly of certain cases now that have only been discovered where Americans would have been killed but for Section 702. But the notional idea, you know, again, I am more concerned about his misuse of all the information you will get as Director of National Intelligence. But I sure as heck hope that somebody, if they actually care about national security, we'll find a way to replace this guy, get rid of him. But it is, as a lot of my friends who are going to vote for this, we're now saying, you know, what can we do with this awful a choice? All right. Senator Mark Warner sits on Intelligence Committee. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Chris. Still to come, a grim warning, a sort of remarkable one from oil executives about skyrocketing gas prices that could be right around the corner. That's next. How can you find ceasefire? Pretty much the way it is. It's a different part of the world. You know, I'd say that part of the world, ceasefires when you're shooting in a more moderate manner. It's been another week of, quote, promising talks in Donald Trump's war with Iran, even as both sides continue to launch attacks in the region. And the talk of a deal has kept gas prices stable, even dropping a few cents in much of the country this week. There are still more than a buck a gallon higher, they were before Trump started the bombing. And they could soon get a lot worse. So last week, Exxon warned that oil supplies will bottom out within weeks, pushing the price of a barrel so high that $7 a gallon gas could become a reality for Americans. Dan Dicker is an oil trader, co-founder of Matrix Partners, as well as the author and host of the energy world energy word newsletter, and he joins me now. It's good to have you here. So we had you on, I think a few times earlier in the crisis, right? And I, you know, I was immersing myself in what people were saying about it. And you were on it. And a lot of people were saying, like, this is really bad. This is going to blow up. Grass prices are going to go through the roof and we're going to have physical supply problems. We're now months into this, and it hasn't quite been as bad. Is that fair to say as the most catastrophic predict? Absolutely. And there's two reasons for that. One is that... Physically speaking, stockpiles, and I'm not talking about strategic stockpiles like we talk about the SPR, but just basic stockpiles have been drawn upon to try and cushion the blow of gas prices going up too quickly. That's number one. So the Chinese and the Japanese particularly get a lot, they were sitting on a lot. They were sitting on a lot, and they have been for years for precisely this reason in case there was a problem, and they've been using that to kind of cushion the blow. The trouble is that those stockpiles are getting to a place right now. Think of it like in your car. You have like 10 quarts of oil in your crank case. And if you burn through a quart of oil, you refill it. But the engine will still run. You can burn through two, three quarts. The engine will still run. But if it gets down to a certain level, now all of a sudden the engine starts making creaky noises. Right. And all of a sudden, the systems don't work really right. So that's what's going on in global stockpiles. I could give you numbers. I mean, every month, it's 120, 130, 140 million barrels. There's a shortfall. dropping stockpiles globally, 130, 100, you know, we're down a half billion barrels of oil since this started. We're getting to where the engine's going to start to sound really creaky, really soon. This is what the Exxon CEO said, right? He said that oil inventories will hit dangerously low levels in weeks, and he said, we're approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean really, really low levels, senior vice president, Neil Chapman. You can debate whether that's going to hit those really low levels in two or three weeks. Once you get at that point, then you'll see the price shoot up. Correct. So we're at a point where like you're just up against a physical barrier, basically. Yeah, because what you have is you have the financial side, which is what I've done for the past, you know, 45 years. Which are the traders. Exactly. And the financial side hasn't represented, you know, the disaster that's coming for a very simple reason. If you're a trader, you're not going to be long oil. You're not going to be buying oil. You're definitely not buying oil at $105 a barrel because Trump is going to make a deal.

He's going to make a deal tomorrow. And when he makes that deal tomorrow, you're going to lose $6 or $7 or $8. You don't want to be caught. You don't want to be caught. The risk for a trader to be long is not worth, you know, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Right. So when you're looking at oil prices at $105, that doesn't represent at all the stockpile warnings that are going on in the physical world. Even worse is if you go back to the back end of the curve where you have November and December crude, not trading $105, but trading. $80. Right. Because they're trading on a deal. They're trading on a deal. They're trading because they can't afford to be long anything in case there's a deal. So here's a fundamental interest. The physical actual, what oil is out there? Right. You've got oil. Right. You've got markets. Right. And the markets are trying to price things now and in the future. And they also have a sort of asymmetrical risk profile because they don't want to get caught flat-footed on a deal. Exactly. But at a certain point. The two do have to meet up, right? I feel like I'm losing my mind. No, you're not the only one. I mean, traders are also losing their mind because they're sitting there going exactly that. There's a point at which the financial market cannot paper over what is the physical reality of a shortage of oil. And when that happens, when that meets. It's not going to be like a slow kind of grind up. It's going to be a disaster. It's going to be the global marketplace searching for barrels wherever they can get them at, whatever price they can get them at. It won't be like gasoline goes from 4 to 420 to 450 to 480. You'll see 450. You'll see 550. You'll see 650. And that's as fast as it'll move because that's going to be, there's going to be that kind of necessity to cover up barrels that you need. the Exxon guy is saying. And that's why he's walking in. Why is he saying it, though? Because I think he's trying to make sure that when that does happen, and he's pretty sure that it will happen, that they don't blame the oil companies. It doesn't mean they won't play in the oil companies. But he wants to get out ahead. But he wants to get ahead of it. Believe me, they would not make a statement like this unless they were really sure that they were facing this kind of catastrophic stockpile problem. If, in fact, this continues for another four or five weeks. Now, this is predicated on the notion that Iran wants nothing to do with a deal. And they want to let it just play out. And they want to see how this plays out going into the midterms. That's what the presupposition is. And I think that's about right. All right. Dan Dicker, that's very, very clarifying and helpful. Great to have you, as always. Stay tuned in just a few minutes. Shensaki will speak with Center Adam Schiff, California. We'll be right back.

That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS Now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.com slash on with Chris. Listen to your favorite MS now shows anytime as a podcast. Enjoy new episodes of Morning Joe, Deadline White House, and the Rachel Maddo Show. Every small D democratic muscle that we have is flexing. Plus the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell, the beat with Ari Melburgh, the weeknight, and more. On the go, wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening to all of your favorite shows, subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.