‘Absolutely extraordinary:’ Buttigieg on Indiana Republicans' major rebuke of Trump

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Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Today was an absolutely brutal day for Donald Trump, with the president suffering one humiliating political defeat after another. And for much of his second turn, Trump and those around him, have been projecting an air of invincibility and unipotence. Bow before the king. You're powerless before us. I got to say, those days seem very much in the past and quickly as the president's political power and capital disappear before our very eyes. First, today, a federal grand jury returned a no-true bill refusing to rubber-stamp the Department of Justice's attempt to indict New York Attorney General Chish James on obviously pretextual charges. Now, if that story sounds familiar, it's because, just last week, an entirely different federal grand jury also refused to indict AG James. And it is very hard to overstate just how rare, how preciously rare. It used to be. for a federal grand jury to ever refuse an indictment from the Department of Justice lawyers. It's now happened twice in two weeks in the same case because the Trump administration completely overplayed its hand. Of course, this all comes after the first case this DOJ made against James collapsed last month and was thrown out of court. So if you're keeping track at home, they are now 0 for three. Then this afternoon, things got worse for Donald Trump. In Indiana, we saw a dramatic, and I got to say actually kind of shocking rebuke of the president, by the state's Republican legislators in a state Donald Trump carried by nearly 20 points just a year ago. In the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 40 to 10 supermajority, Donald Trump's scheme to redraw the state's congressional maps to eliminate the last two Democratic districts in the entire state was defeated overwhelmingly 31 to 19. Donald Trump, of course, wants you to know that he's totally fine with it. It's funny because I won Indiana all three times by a landslide, and I wasn't working on it very hard. It would have been nice. I think we would have picked up two seats if we did that. You had one gentleman, the head of the Senate, I guess, Bray, whatever his name is. I heard he was against it. It probably loses next primary, whatever that is. I hope he does. But because he's done a tremendous disservice. It's a great place. I love the people there. They love me. We won in a landslide all three times. I got tremendous votes. Record. I got record votes. And then you, there's no reason for doing that. And the Democrats do it to us, so I can't imagine that they do it. But I wasn't very much involved, but there's a band named. Bray as a, I guess, head of the Senate. Was that Bray? Is that the name? Bray? And I mean, I'm sure that whatever his primary is, it's, I think, in two years. But I'm sure he'll go down. He'll go down. I'll certainly support anybody that wants to go against him. I mean, you can tell from that long soliloquity, just how unbothered Trump is, how little attention he was paying to the entire affair. And despite Trump's claim that he wasn't very involved, he, of course, led a massive, like, all hands-on-deck pressure campaign against these Indiana lawmakers. JD Vance personally flew down to Indiana in order to lobby on behalf of the plan, which, it turns out maybe he's just not that...

persuasive for charming in person. Then he took to Twitter this afternoon to browbeat the Senate's Republican leader, the guy that Trump sort of pretended he didn't know the name of. Quote, Rod Bray has consistently told us he wouldn't fight redistricting while simultaneously whipping his members against it. That level of dishonesty cannot be rewarded and the Indiana GOP needs to choose a side. And they did, actually. Indiana Republicans did choose a side. They rejected Donald Trump and JD fans. And to be absolutely clear, the president himself was lobbying more than anybody to get this over the finish line. He personally called lawmakers, and then he went absolutely ballistic against them on social media. You can see from how long the text is, writing just last night, quote, anybody that votes against redistricting and the success of the Republican Party in D.C. will be, I am sure, met with the MAGA primer in the spring. Adding of the Senate leader, quote, Rod Bray and his friends won't be in politics for long. I will do everything within my power to make sure they will not hurt the Republican Party and our country again. Meanwhile, the conservative, if you can call it, that Heritage Foundation decided to run a mob-like shakedown of the entire state. Listen to this. I'm not making this up, okay? Writing, quote, listen. President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map. All federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every no vote will be to blame. Pass the map. What? Really? They're not going to pave the roads in Indiana. Of course, the most unsettling intimidation tactic. And one we have seen time and time and time again was the death threats more than a dozen lawmakers have said they received. One Republican state senator, Mike Bochek, said he would not vote for the bill out of protest after Trump used a slur against people with intellectual disabilities. Boecheck has a daughter with Down syndrome. The day he announced how he would vote, he received a bomb threat. Another senator told the Associated Press he decided to support the bill in part out of fear for his family. There's a lot of consternation about the midterms coming up in Indiana's in position to be able to help with that by broadening our seats where we have more opportunity for the Republicans. I had a bomb threat at my business that was a surprise to me. And it does come down to a question of, is it worth it? I mean, is our family safety worth it? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Think about what you just heard, right? He says, I got a bonthroat my business. And is it worth it? Meaning, is opposing this obviously corrupt power play, which many of my colleagues believe is corrupt and anti-democratic? Is it worth my family's safety? That's a question. He was asking himself and telling us he was considering. And yet, and yet, and yet, in the face of all that, Indiana Republicans remarkably had a simple message for the President of the United States. No. Whether we accept it or not, the forces that define this vitriolic political affairs and places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrated the political affairs in Indiana. Misinformation.

Cruel social media posts. Over-the-top pressure from within this state house and outside. Threats of primaries. Threats of violence. Acts of violence. Friends were better than this. Are we not? After three hours of debate, the whole ordeal was done a matter of seconds. The no votes came rushing in, and that was that, not even close. You've got to see this, I think, as a sign. The political landscape has shifted and is shifting minute by minute very quickly. Faster than I think folks in Washington and a lot of the kind of political commentator core and political reporters are realizing because it's happening so fast. I mean... First, Republicans broke with Trump on the Epstein files, and then they started making noise about Trump's regime change agenda in Venezuela and the killing of dozens of civilians in the Caribbean, including two shipwrecked soldiers standing on the hull of a boat that had they blown up. And now this. Stunning rebuke by his own party in a deep red state of Indiana. And that's on the same day, an AP poll shows Trump approval slumping to just 36%. I don't think the two things are unrelated. The president is starting to quack like a lame duck. Pete Buttigieg served as Secretary of Transportation and President Biden. Before that, of course, he was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He returned to his home state earlier this year to campaign against redistricting, and he joins me now. It's great to have you here. Good to be with you. Thanks for having me. I got to say, I don't know Indiana state politics at well. I really don't. There are states that I've had occasion to kind of cover in depth, and Indiana's not one of them. So I'm looking at this from the outside and thinking, Wow, I did not see this coming. Now, there was resistance all along, and they were getting cajoled. What's your read on why this happened today? It's absolutely extraordinary. You know, the vice president said they have to pick a side, and they did. Now, to be clear, they didn't stop being Republicans. This is a conservative state. These are conservative legislators, but they figured out that the right thing to do, and for them, the smart thing to do, was to say no to the White House, no to Donald Trump, and no to J.JD Vance. Having spent a fair amount of time around the Indiana legislature, I'm going to tell you just how intense this pressure might have been. These are not full-time legislators. at least the last time I checked, they don't even have a full-time staff member. They often share a legislative aid. So imagine having a day job, being a part-time legislator, and you get a phone call from the president of the United States. You get an in-person visit from the vice president of the United States. You got the Speaker of the House in Washington working the phones. That pressure is enormous, and they said no. It's an extraordinary thing.

It reminds me a lot of what we saw in the run-up to January 6th after the election in 2020. I'm thinking of the Arizona state legislature, Rusty Bowers, who, you know, resisted the calls again from the president to start a special session. We saw, you know, in Georgia where Brad Raffensperger wouldn't give him the 11,000 votes. And in all those cases, it seems some combination of personal disposition. calculation of the politics and also just genuine principle. Is that your kind of read of the combination here? That's part of it. Also, political organizing helped. So I went to Indiana in September. We had a rally with... hundreds of people, about a thousand people filling that atrium of the state house. And it demonstrated that the people of Indiana, again, still a very conservative state, but they did not think that this was right. And every time that the forces aligned with the president tried to stage a rally, trying to show popular support for what they were doing, it fell flat. They could only get a few dozen. And I think that's especially important at a time like this where a lot of people at home are wondering if they have any power at all. A big part of how Trumpism works is to make you feel totally disempowered, to make him feel inevitable. And yet the clear takeaway from this is... He is not unstoppable and you are not without power. A whole bunch of people stood up, rallied in the state house, made those phone calls. The exact kind of old-fashioned political organizing things that some of us asked, does this still matter? Does this still work? It clearly had an effect stiffening the spines of these Indiana Senate Republicans who in the end had this vote and it wasn't even close. And part of what I was chuckling about today when I was looking at the roll call is that You know, this is a state that's already, Donald Trump wanted by 20 points, Republican state. You would expect a big majority of the members of Congress to be Republicans. In fact, they are. It's a 7-2 state. It seems roughly okay. Indianapolis is a Democratic area. That was part of what was being discussed. Are we going to cut it up the way they have in Tennessee with Nashville? But the Senate is, what is it? It's like 40 to 10 or something. So it's like, we're not talking about this is, we're talking about maps that are like aren't. already pretty gerrymandered that we're dealing with. It's not like they were super level to begin with. But they really went over the top. Openly talking about a nine to zero map means you're openly saying the election will be decided before the first vote is cast. And people in Indiana, even Republicans, said they didn't want anything to do with that. It was interesting because a number of folks got up today and said that. They said, I'm going to vote no because my constituents don't want the district to be withdrawn, which I thought was refreshing in that it does seem to speak to your point of that organizing.

and general sort of mechanisms of responsiveness, which I think we all worry are being broken, are still working in some place. Exactly. It is still possible to use political pressure, even outside of an election year, to remind legislators who they work for and to encourage them to do the right thing, especially when they know deep down that the sort of thing the White House is pressuring them to do is wrong. And if it can happen here, it can happen in so many other cases on so many other issues. So for folks who feel like, I can't wait until the next election to flex some political muscle as a citizen. I would say now is the time to use those tactics, not the tactics of fear and intimidation that Donald Trump tried to deploy, but the tactics of organizing and talking to people, calling writing. I know it can sound quaint, but when you do that in force, it clearly is more powerful than the toolkit that the president was trying to use to literally frighten these people into doing it. his will. Yeah, how much, I want you to comment on that because, you know, we've obviously, I think in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, there's been a long conversation about political violence. I just had a conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu Wallace Wells and New Yorker about it about this week on our podcast-wise is happening. And, you know, one of the things that you hear from electives is that it really does loom over people. Like, they really do think about it. And it gets in their head. And when someone calls in a bomb threat to your house or your business, particularly you're a state rep. It's not like you don't have security. You move through the world like... you were insurance agent, right? There's no difference, right? How much do you think that? hangs over all this. It's absolutely a factor. We've seen this for years. I think it was a profile of Mitt Romney was the first time I read an account of U.S. senators. This was during the impeachment. Exactly. Changing their votes because of the fear of violence. But the thing about political violence is if you give into it, there will be more. If you stand up to it, there will be less. The only antidote to that kind of politics of fear is a politics of courage. And that's what we saw here. It's kind of spell that only works if you believe. believe in it. I would say the same is probably true for those mob boss tactics that we saw coming out of the Heritage Foundation. I mean, that was wild. Yeah. So let's see. Is the president going to follow through on his threat and close guard bases and stop paving roads in Indiana? Let's see. But obviously, these legislators were smart enough to face that down, to call BS. And now we will show just how thin, how flimsy, how just not credible that kind of talk is. And when you stand up to it once, there's more and more opportunities to do so. This is the thing that Republicans actually are starting to show maybe sooner than Democrats that they understand, which is that Donald Trump will not be a political force in this country forever. And so from the Indiana Senate Republican caucus to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, they are beginning to think past Donald Trump. Democrats need to do the same.

It's interesting. You said that. Here's Mike Braun, who, of course, served in the Senate, then went to move and ran successfully for governor. He said, I'm very disappointed that a small group of misguided state senators have partnered Democrats to reject this opportunity to protect Hoosiers with fair maps and to reject the leadership President Trump. I'll be working the president to challenge these people who not represent the best interests of Hoosiers. And your point, I think, here is crucial that Governor Mike Braun and the senators from Indiana and that congressional delegation should answer whether they think. per the Heritage Foundation, the state should get cut off from federal funding, having crossed him. Exactly. Let's see if the governor endorses the president's plan to punish the people of Indiana because their legislators decided not to distort the maps of the state to further benefit his political party. Let's see how that goes over. I should note Mike Braun saying it's a small group of senators. It was a majority of Republican centers. In fact, As we went into the vote today, and again, I will fully admit to not being the most red-in man on Indiana politics, but from the people I was reading, there were some question about this could be a one-vote thing, two-vote thing. I mean, this, it felt very nice edge. In the end, 3119, even a majority of Republicans, a majority of state Senate Republicans in Indiana, in a non-election year saying, Take a hike. And they made it easier on themselves by the number together. That is so, so, so true. Which is something that law firms, universities, and media companies should think about. Yeah, it's like that old poster with the fish, the organized one. I'm sure that was up in your house, too. Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thank you very much. Coming up, Kristi Noem visits Capitol Hill, and it doesn't go well for her. Next. Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff, knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics. From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Soberoff. Weekends at 10 a.m. Eastern on MS. Now. I want to be very clear. You have misused resources appropriated by Congress. You've engaged in unethical behavior. I am sick of your lies. The American people are sick of this lies. American people demand truth. Do a real service to the country and just resign. Oof, Christy, no matter rough day on Capitol Hill, testifying before members of the House Homeland Security Committee. Well, actually, it was half a day. More on that in a minute. But as the face of Donald Trump's immigration policy, she faced questions about her record of lying and ignoring court workers, along with the growing list of abuses by her masked armed agents. The whole thing culminated in one truly remarkable dressing down of Kristi Noem by Congressman Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island. It's a five-minute exchange, and it is really worth watching in its entirety.

Madam Secretary, how many United States military veterans have you deported? Sir, we have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans. I don't believe you served in the military. I haven't either, but I think you and I can agree that as Americans, we owe everything to those who have served our country in uniform, particularly those who have served in combat. Do you agree with that? Sir, I believe that people that are in this United States, that are citizens, have legal status here. Madam Secretary, we are joined on Zoom by a gentleman named Sejeune Park. He is a United States Army combat veteran who was shot twice while serving our country in Panama in 1989. Like many veterans, he struggled with PTSD and substance abuse after his service. He was arrested in the 1990s for some minor drug offenses, nothing serious. He never hurt anyone besides himself, and he's been clean and sober for 14 years. He is a combat veteran, a Purple Heart recipient. He has sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have. Earlier this year, you deported him to Korea, a country he hasn't lived in since he was seven years old. Will you join me in thanking Mr. Park for his service to our country? Sir, I'm grateful for every single person that has served our country and follows our laws. And can you please tell Mr. Park why you deported him? Every one of them needs to be enforced. But you understand that many veterans struggle with PTSD, many veterans struggle with substance abuse challenges. This man took two bullets for our country. Will you, you have broad authority, by the way, as Secretary, to issue humanitarian parole, to do deferred action. Will you commit to at least looking at Mr. Park's case to see if you can help him find a pathway back to this country that he sacrificed so much for? I will absolutely look at his case, but I want you to remember that our programs need to have a country as well. His name is Jim Brown from Troy, Missouri. He is a Navy combat veteran who served our country in the Gulf War. He's married to a woman named Donna who came to our country legally from Ireland when she was 11 years old. She has lived here for 48 years. Because of you, Jim's wife, Donna, has been in prison for the last four months. She did not come here illegally. And she has never committed any crime other than writing two bad checks totaling $80 10 years ago. She is currently in prison and facing deportation. Ms. Kristi Noem, will you thank Mr. Brown for his service to our country? Thank you, Mr. Brown, for your service to our country. Now, what possible explanation can there be for locking up his wife for four months when she has committed no crime other than writing a couple of bad checks for $80? Sir, it is not my prerogative, my latitude, or my job to pick and choose which laws in this country. You have broad discretion as the secretary. We need to follow the law. You can do all kinds of things, but you're choosing not to. Will you commit, again, to just reviewing Donna's case and reuniting this combat veteran with his beloved wife who also loves this country? I will review the case.

Now, Madam Secretary, you've already heard the story of Lance Corporal Alejandro Barranco, the United States Marine veteran who is behind you, who also has two brothers who are United States Marines. Will you thank Lance Corporal Barranco for his service? Thank you for your service. His father, Narcisco Barranco, is a landscaper in California who has lived peacefully in our country for 30 years and has no criminal record. Last spring, While he was mowing the lawn at an eye-hop, ICE agents tackled him in the street and imprisoned him for weeks. A peaceful, hard-working man who raised three sons to be United States Marines. We need men of that character in this country. Again, as secretary, you have broad discretion. Will you consider Lance Corporal Bronco's father for parole in place to stay in our country owing to the fact that he has contributed to our country by raising three United States Marines? This is an opportunity to remind everybody that every person that's in this country illegally has an opportunity to voluntarily go home and come back the right way. Follow our laws. He raised three United States Marines. He has been living here peacefully doing his job for 30 years. You have discretion. You are choosing not to use it. Madam Secretary, you promised America that you would go after the worst of the worst. But these people are not the worst of the worst. A Purple Heart recipient. A military spouse, the father of three Marines. And it's not just veterans and military families. You are locking up and deporting children with cancer, mothers, with babies in the NICU, United States citizens. There are many problems with your leadership, but the biggest problem is this. You don't seem to know how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Go after the bad guys. Go after the terrorists. Do not go after veterans, Marines, children. Gentlemen's times expired. I yield back. Hoof. Hearing could have gone on even longer, but Kristi Noem had prearranged for an early exit, citing the need to attend another meeting. However, listen to this. That meeting had already been canceled. Kristi Noem's office said she didn't realize that until she left the hearing. Whoopsie. Members of Congress now say she was intentionally misleading them to get out of there sooner and honestly who could blame her. Congressman Benny Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he would subpoena gnome to come back to appear before them, saying, quote, she was a liar with no respect for congressional oversight. We are now three weeks away from health insurance costs spiking for more than 20 million Americans, and yet Republicans refuse to do anything substantive about it. Today, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to reject health care bills offered by both parties. Both votes needed 60 votes. Meanwhile, in the House, there's a bit of a jail break happening among antsy Republicans. Some, small number, are moving against their own leadership, signing onto two discharge petitions with moderate Democrats that would force Speaker Mike Johnson to bring forward bills to extend the subsidies.

Donald Trump and Mike Johnson do not care about stopping people's health care premiums from surging, but it appears some of their members are just scared of the political consequences of all this. Now, here they are running out of time and out of rope. Congressman Brennan Boyle is a Democrat of Pennsylvania and ranking member of the Budget Committee, and he joins me now. So first, Congressman, just give me your lay of the land right now as we're coming up against this hard deadline about the possibility of some kind of movement to save folks from watching their premiums skyrocket. In some cases, you know, 2, 300%. Yeah, well, Chris, first I do want to lay some context for the moment in which we find ourselves. It's not here because of some natural disaster or some unexpected event. This dates back to the original sin, which was their tax bill they passed the summer, which includes cuts to the ACA and Medicaid as well as cuts to other programs. In total, CBO projects 15 million Americans will lose their health care because of those cuts. The first of those cuts to take effect are the cuts to the ACA and the expiration of the tax credits that takes effect January 1. Now, I have a hard time believing that the same crowd, 99% of whom in the House voted for these cuts some five, six months ago, are really all that concerned about stopping them from taking effect. here at the last minute. So right now, I'm a little confused because there's like a bunch of discharge petitions floating around. And I can't tell if some of them are being used essentially as kind of heat sinks so that none of them can get enough like actual signatures. Is that what is, are these serious, I guess is my question? When you see a Republican saying, I signed on a new discharge petition, is it serious? Is there a serious effort? Or is this like them attempting to perform being concerned? So let me give the quick rundown because there are three live discharge petitions on this issue on the well of the House floor. The first, which was filed a couple weeks ago by our House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, that has 214 signatures, literally the signature of every Democratic member, whether it's a squad member or Jared Golden or anyone in between. Every single House Democrat is committed to a discharge petition. Clean extension of the credits for up to three years. There are two other discharge petitions that were more recently introduced by Republican members, so-called moderates. And one is a one-year extension, but with some changes to the program, another is a two-year extension, but also with some changes to the program. The idea that Mike Johnson is really going to allow those to be signed into law or even pass the House to make it to the Senate. I think it's more an act of political theater than anything else.

Yeah, there's some reporting today that moderate House Republicans are talking with the leadership about possibly setting up some kind of amendment vote that can add an extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies to health care package expected to move across the floor next week. Again, a lot of this stuff, it's like, are we really, do they really want to set up a vote? Because I imagine some sort of amendment could pass. Then it would be part of a bill and they think the Senate kills it. Or is, again, this one of these sort of designed to give them a vote so they can go back and say, I voted to extend the subsidies. Yeah, to be fair, I do actually think there are a few House Republicans who may genuinely want to see these subsidies extended. That's my question, yeah. But the vast, very few, but there are a few. The vast majority of them, however, are in competitive districts that either Trump lost or he only won by single digits. And they are not dumb. They have seen the results of every single special election, either for state legislature or Congress. to take place over the course of this year, and they realize that they are in serious trouble come next November unless something changes the dynamic. They're also aware that Donald Trump right now is at 31% approval on the economy, and that that is dragging them down as well. So it really is actually, as often in life, things aren't that black and white. It's really the combination of a few who may be genuine, but a lot more who want the political cover. Finally, some news today, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is leaving Congress, she announced somewhat abruptly, having gotten crosswise with the MAGA folks, is casing around to try to find nine votes, I think would be necessary in the Republican caucus for a motion to vacate the chair? Does that, again, that seems unlikely, but it does, you know, given that we saw it happen with Kevin McCarthy and given we've seen a lot of internal anger in that caucus, particularly over the last four or five weeks, does that seem like anything to you? You know, the worst job in Washington is being the Republican House Speaker. Just ask John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, or now Mike Johnson. Let's not forget, it used to be you just needed one member in order to file one of these motions. They changed the rules after Kevin McCarthy to raise that threshold. There's a lot of internal dissension on the other side of the aisle. Just this week, a rule vote, which... Previously, it was always just taken for granted that the majority wins a rule of vote. You hadn't seen a rule getting voted down in 20 years. Now routinely, House Republicans defeat themselves in passing something that's pretty procedural in a rule of vote. So this chatter from Marjorie Taylor Greene, combined with all the votes we've had this year, just shows you how many internal divisions there are within the other side.

Congressman Brendan Boyle, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back. 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. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, the explosive and unsettling rise of prediction markets? I think legally the Supreme Court is going to ultimately decide how these things should be regulated. If there's a Democratic administration after Trump, I do think they're going to crack down. But you can see Kalshi already trying to get ahead of that by staffing up with former Biden people, with former Democratic senators, as a way of sort of signaling to the world. We're not just the Trump thing. The Trump family loves us. But look at all of our Democratic lobbyists. So they are. definitely staffing up and readying for that fight. That's this week on Why Is This Happening? Search for Why Is This Happening? Wherever we're listening right now and a follow.

The Jeffrey Epstein files have become a defining issue for Trump in his first year back of the White House, stoking allegations that his administration is covering up for the most notorious sexual predator in recent American history and his accomplices. But something that's flown under the radar is the story of how this man and his brother, two of them there, both facing charges of rape and human trafficking in Romania. were suddenly allowed to return to the United States and how the Trump administration might have been involved in that. One of those men, Andrew Tate, is one of the most proudly, violently misogynistic influencers in the world with an enormous following online, particularly among young men and even teenage boys. And in his online content, he and his brother have bragged about their recruitment and exploitation of women to make pornography. Both brothers have repeatedly denied criminal wrongdoing. Well, now the New York Times, in a remarkable investigative report, finds that they were released from Romanian custody only after Trump administration officials intervened. An official in the White House told the Times that it was not involved in Tate's legal matters. But the time reports that six days before Trump's inauguration, Andrew Tate wrote in a text, quote, I had word from the Trump administration that they're on top of things. I've been told I'll be free soon. And here is how the Tate brothers reacted when, in fact, they were freed. And they boarded their flights back to the States the very next month. No, you are, Andrew. You know what? We are. We are f***ing back. We are so back. No one has ever been more back than we just got.

It's true. And we never really left. And now we're back. Never left, but we're massively back. Megan, too, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report from The New York Times, one of the reporters who broke that story, and she joins me now. It's great to have you here. This is phenomenal work. Thanks for having me. I say that to you a lot, because it's always true. So first, I guess just for folks that don't know who Ander Tate and his brother Tristan are, like, can you just give us a sense of... who they are and what kind of content they made and what their message is. Sure. So they are huge stars in the so-called manosphere. Andrew Tate in particular has built a massive audience of mostly young men by preaching brazen masculinity and chauvinism. And they have also taught courses on how to date women and exploit women and make money. and have also very notably run a porn business for about a decade in which they kind of bragged about basically dating women and then steering those girlfriends into making content, online sexual content, in which they'd take most of the profits. If I'm not mistaken, I think one of the courses they offered was like a pimping course, right, the acronym Pimp. Yeah, it was a Ph.D., short for Pimping Ho's degree. Yes, and the whole idea was, and again, they would say this is, We will teach you how to find women, create some sort of what appears to be romantic connection with them, and then use that to manipulate them into... them making sexual content that you profit off of, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And they were born in the United States, but grew up, spent much of their life growing up in Britain. And so they launched this porn business, if you will, around the mid-2010s when they were based in Britain. And then in 2015, they moved to Romania. We found out... Andrew was actually under a criminal investigation then for alleged assaults of multiple women. And as he tells it, thought that Romania was a place where you could get away with a lot of stuff that you couldn't get away with in the West. I think he even said that, right? He even said that, yes. Get away with. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they move, they basically relocate to Romania. And so they're running this business out of both like Britain and Romania. They're growing it into a variety of platforms with a variety of women. And so they're doing all these. things simultaneously. They're doing the porn business. Then they're teaching the online courses in which they're basically saying, we'll teach you the lessons we've learned from this. And there's some of the like the MMA stuff fighting and working out and they're like he's super ripped and all that, like all of that stuff adjacent to the sort of exploitation. Yeah, exactly. Like super fitness. And Andrew got his start as a professional kickboxer. Right. So it's really maximize that image. So they have this huge fine. Now, so that's sort of uncontested, right, that part of it. Like that they, that this is what they're about. And they've said it, and they've talked about needing to treat women like slaves, and you need to dominate them, and you need to treat them like a dog that you say to them, you give them orders, right, and that you have to condition them the way you can condition a dog. That's all stuff they've said. There are a variety of criminal allegations against them. Let's start with the Romania case. That was the reason they couldn't leave the country because they were under indictment.

That's right. Well, actually, the reality is that they're actually under criminal investigation. Sorry, criminal investigation. It's a different process. It's a different process. So they have been since late 2022, they have been under criminal investigation in Romania. And the allegations are there that they have coerced dozens of women into their porn business and to what amounts to trafficking and that Andrew has raped one of those women. And they also, there's accusations that he, you know, had sex with in business. beat a 15-year-old. And so those... I want to just say that again. There's an accusation that he had sex with and beat a 15-year-old. Correct. And so this case, as the prosecutors have been building this case, they have repeatedly sought to keep these guys confined. And so they had been prohibited from leaving the country as the prosecutors are building this case with the prosecutors saying that they posed a public danger and a flight risk. I want to read some of these texts that you have gotten in the article. This is a woman who says, do you want me to be your slave or your wife? This is a woman who, again, he's sort of, it seems to be recruiting kind of quasi-romantically and then maybe trying to move him to something else. You'll do whatever I tell you, which is the same thing. I'll choose a woman to be my wife. She'll love me enough to let me tell her what I feel like. I will decide if she's a slave. And then this is a text exchange in a text chat titled pimps. This is two associates, along with Tristan, the brother, discussed how to punish a woman who said she would no longer work for them. Tristan Tate, the move now is as follows. Okay. Both you go, get her out of the house. Okay. Hit her if you have to. I don't care. Don't let her take her things. Thanks. Okay. Right. Those are among the text messages that the prosecutors have gathered. I mean, we've been pouring through hundreds of pages of court records from Romania in which they've gathered together and spelled out what they say is like a long pattern of this behavior with a variety of women. There are other criminal charges in England, am I right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in Britain, prosecutors have authorized charges. They're not just under investigation. They have been, they've authorized charges of trafficking and rape against both brothers there. And that, those are charges. that they'll have to face when the Romania case is complete. They'll have to go to Britain and face those there. And we also realized one of the things we discovered in the course of our reporting, I worked on this with my colleague, Isabella Kwai. And what we found was that... Here in the United States since 2022, anti-trafficking agents at the Department of Homeland Security, as well as federal prosecutors here in New York, the ones who eventually convicted, you know, won a conviction of Sean Cones, had been investigating the Tate brothers. We should also note that almost immediately upon return, a girlfriend of Andrew Tates accused him of assault and rape. He denies those charges. She has now sued him. He has countersued her for defamation. Right. So that happened immediately after came back. Everyone, I think, has a picture of these individuals at this point. They were in Romania. It's very clear from your reporting, even though the Trump administration has tried very hard to run away from it and deny it, and Romanian officials have tried to deny it, that there was some pressure put by the Trump administration to get these guys back to the U.S.

Yeah, well, what we found was that their release from Romania was really the culmination of like years-long efforts by Andrew Tate in particular to forge very strategic alliances with prominent figures on the American right media figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, people in the Trump family, first Donald Trump Jr. and then Barron. And then eventually some of his supporters who were very public with their support and defense of him and their criticism of Roman. the Romanian criminal case ascended into the Trump administration. Alina Habba has talked about him, Richard Grinnell, who has a kind of freelance portfolio, and in fact, admits that he discussed the case with a Romanian official. Right. So, right, exactly. Paul Ingrossia, who actually served on the Trump's legal team. He ascends into the administration as well. And so after the, after, you know, this new administration comes in. Richard Grinnell in particular, we found, had discussions with at least two Romanian officials about the Tate's case. One at Mara Lago in December of 2024, the second in February, the conference in the international conference in Munich. And what we also found was that within days of that second conversation, an order from the highest levels of the Romanian government came down to the prosecutors in the criminal case saying you got to strike a compromise with the Tate brothers. And they were unhappy. They were very, they were outraged, but they did follow through with ultimately lifting their travel ban. which the Romanian Prime Minister believed was going to appease the Trump administration. It's truly like, it's really a shocking set of events and incredibly scrupulous reporting about all this and people should check it out at the New York Times where you can read some of these texts and you can read more about some of the allegations against Andrew Tate and his brother, which the men deny. You should definitely check it out. Megan Tui. Thank you very much. Oh, thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

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