Transcript of Contrast in defense secretaries highlights Trump's failure to take staffing government seriously

Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. New episodes of all your favorite MSNBC shows now ad-free. Plus ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra, Bagman, and Deja News. And all MSNBC original podcasts are available ad-free and with bonus content, including Why is this Happening, Velshi Band Book Club, and more. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. He played rugby and he ran track at West Point. He also did two master's degrees and got an MBA on top of that. Rifle platoon leader, scout platoon leader, then Company Executive Officer, Valiant Commander and then Brigade Commander in the 82nd Airborne. He helped lead the initial invasion of Baghdad in March 2003. He rolled his mechanized division straight from the Kuwait border overland right into the center of Baghdad. On a silver star for his valor in that operation. Then to Afghanistan, where he led the Tenth Mountain Division. Then he became Chief of Staff at SENTCOM. Then he was the top US Commander in the Iraq war, in the whole war. He was actually the one who wound down US forces at the end of the Iraq war. He was then named Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army.

Then he went back to SENTCOM, this time as Commander of SENTCOM. Then he built and led the force that waged war against ISIS. Then, and only then, was he considered for the really big job Secretary of Defense. That is the man who just left office as Secretary of Defense. The man who just arrived to take his job, he was a platoon leader in the National Guard, but now he, too, is Secretary of Defense. Both of them, obviously, honorable records of service. Not equivalent, though, I think you'd say, in terms of demonstrated leadership experience, complex organizational management experience in particular. I mean, Four-star general Lloyd Austin had led a whole war or two. He had been chief of staff and then commander at CENTCOM just before being named as defense secretary. Centcom is the part of the US military that has as its area of responsibility, the Middle East and Central Asia and South Asia. That was what he was in charge of. That was his experience heading in to become defense secretary. That's who has just left as defense secretary. The guy who has just arrived, well, just before he was named as defense secretary, Pete Hegsaf, he led one-third of the famous Curvy Couch on the Fox & Friends Fox News channel Weekend show.

I have to say it may be that he led one-fourth of the couch, not one-third. I'm not totally sure how many hosts they have, but we could only find these pictures of him sharing with two, so maybe he held down a third. That said, prior to his time at the Fox News channel, Mr. Hegset also ran into the ground two small right-wing veterans groups amid allegations, which he denies, of wild financial mismanagement, nepotism, sexual harassment, public drunkenness, and even drinking on the job. For one of those organizations, an independent forensic accountant found evidence of gross financial mismanagement while Pete Hegset was administering that organization. Then they made him Secretary of Defense. Two guys, same job. Maybe he got the job based on merit and demonstrated capability. Or maybe it was some other factor. I don't know. Your call. Last night's horrific plane crash at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, was caused by the collision of an American Airlines' regional jet carrying 64 people in a flight from Wichita, Kansas. It collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter that was carrying three crew members. Tragically, there appeared to have been no survivors of the crash on either aircraft.

In the aftermath of this terrible incident, newly confirmed, Trump Administration Defense Secretary, Pete Hegsef, screwed up. When a service member, any service member is killed while in service, there is a strict policy at the Pentagon. The Defense Department gives no information about any service member who has been killed until at least 24 hours has elapsed since their death. They do not give their name, they do not give their age, they do not give their rank. They give no information about the service member in question. The reason they do that is because the Defense Department, sadly, but also obviously, has to deal with delivering terrible news like that way more than any other element of our government does. They very much know how to do it, and they have very strict rules about it. They are irreduciably strict, for example, about that 24-hour rule, specifically so they can be absolutely sure that the next of kin have been notified and have had time to absorb the information before any public announcement is made about the death of a particular service member. That's the rule. Hard and fast. No names, no ages, no ranks, nothing for 24 hours.

That's not just for service members killed in combat, it's for any service member killed while in service, whether it's a health incident or an accident or a crime or a tragic plane crash. That's the rule. Nothing for 24 It's a rule for good reason, for reasons of bare human decency, but also just competence at dealing with something very difficult. Nevertheless, Pete Hegset, today, just went to the White House and blurted out that it was a captain and a staff sergeant and a chief warrant officer who all died. He just blurted it out this morning. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he is not cut out for this job. Maybe he hired for some reason other than merit, experience, temperament, character. I don't know. Maybe there was something else about him. I don't know. But that is how it's going so far. Speaking to reporters about the crash today, the president himself did a lot of swearing, which was weird when you're supposed to be comforting the nation. He was swearing from the podium. He also rambled an adlib rift on what the crash looked like to him and what it was like for him to watch the video of it.

He scoffed at the idea that he would go pay his respects at the crash site, which, after all, is just minutes from where he lives. He said, You tell me, what's the site? The water? You want me to go swimming? He also today, at length, blamed the plane crash on diversity. Diversity hiring. Literally at the moment, bodies were still being pulled out of the frozen Potomac River. He was insisting that there must be something about this that can be blamed on non-white people having jobs. He said it was just common sense. While we were on the subject of the unquestionably and unairingly excellent performance of white men in their job duties, though, did you see the press conference this morning from Trump's newly confirmed Secretary of Transportation? Here was the very end of that press conference. Here's how that one wrapped Thank you. Is there an acting FAA director? And he just walks away. Question from the reporter there. You can hear it pretty clearly. Is there an acting FAA FAA director. You might think that there is an FAA director, right? Because there's this guy there at the press conference in the black jacket, the guy with the brush cut.

When he turns around and walks away, you can see a big FAA printed on the back of his jacket. Despite appearances, though, that is not the FAA director. That is Trump's newly appointed, newly confirmed US Secretary of Transportation, who also was plucked from the elite ranks at the tippy top of the meritocratic pyramid in this country, by which I mean he, too, was picked off of TV. Like Trump's Defense Secretary, Pete Hegset, Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, also demonstrated his competence for this cabinet position by co-hosting a weekend show on Fox. Now, I don't want to sell him short. He was also on the real world on MTV. So clearly, the best. This morning, while he was wearing an FAA jacket, he was also pointedly not answering that question about, is there an acting FAA director right now? Is there anyone who's directing the FAA right now? He did not answer that question. He just walked away. That may be because as of this morning when that press conference was happening, as of last night when the crash happened, too, there was no acting director of the FAA. The director of the Federal Aviation Administration, like the FBI director, like the IRS director, this is one of those jobs that's not supposed to turn over with each new president.

Faa directors are appointed for five-year terms, which means explicitly they're supposed to span multiple presidential terms. But that did not happen with this FAA director. This one left the job on Inauguration Day. Until this When, during, Donald Trump hadn't gotten around to appointing anybody to replace him. Well, why did the FAA director leave on Inauguration Day? Less than two weeks ago, even though he had a whole bunch of years left in his term as FAA administrator. Why did he leave early? Why did he leave as Trump was being sworn in? Do you remember this? This feels like this was years ago, but it was only two weeks ago today. I don't know if they figured out a way to blame this on DEI. If Somehow, somewhere, someone interfered with the inherent white male excellence of SpaceX in order to make this debacle happen. I don't know. What was this about? But somehow, Elon Musk's latest rocket ship crashed two weeks ago today. It was his huge starship rocket. It went up a little bit, not far enough, caught fire, broke apart in midair, and showered the Earth with debris. Elon Musk was apparently excited by the crash.

He described it as entertaining. Meanwhile, people in Turks and Caicos are dodging the debris. The good people at the FAA, in response to Elon Musk's screw-up, they had to scramble to emergency divert dozens of commercial airlines, including from Jet Blue and American and Delta. Spirit Airlines had a plane in the air that had to veer off course. Also, same was true for a FedEx cargo plane. Commercial flights as far away as South Africa and Australia had to be laid or diverted as they had to put out these emergency warnings over a whole big swath of the Indian Ocean because of Elon Musk's mess. This happened two weeks ago today, the Thursday before Inauguration Day. The day after the crash, so the Friday before inauguration, the FAA, unsurprisingly, grounded SpaceX Starship program. You cannot try to fly this thing again until you figure out what went wrong here and you fix it. We cannot have anything like this happen again. You are grounded. That was the Friday before the inauguration. Then three days later, inauguration day, the head of the FAA, the FAA administrator, was gone, gone from his job. Elon Musk was rid of this FAA director who had grounded his rockets.

Because what? An entertaining little crash which forced emergency diversions of dozens of passenger planes packed with humans? In September, while Elon Musk was busy spending the quarter billion dollars that he dumped into Donald Trump's campaign to make Donald Trump President again, Mr. Musk had posted a picture online of the head of the FAA and had demanded his resignation. He needs to resign. He had posted that because even before the FAA had to ground SpaceX altogether because of this most recent crash that Elon Musk thought was so awesome, even Even before that, the FAA had already issued a bunch of fines to SpaceX for ignoring safety rules and other requirements. Elon Musk had adopted this as one of his personal causes. This was one of his crusades. Get rid of the FAA. Get rid of this guy at the FAA who's in the way of my SpaceX company. He has been personally demanding that this guy be gotten rid of. And so he got it. Faa chief was out on inauguration day. Then Ten days later, we had a horrific midair plane crash, whereupon one of the cable news hosts, Trump hired for his cabinet, wore an FAA outfit to a press conference, which made people wonder if he was running the FAA, which made reporters ask, Hey, who is running the FAA?

To which there was no answer, which apparently prompted Donald Trump today at a press conference to surprise name a new head of the FAA for the first time because he'd never bothered to do it before. Yes, it is the FAA that is one of the agencies that will now be in charge of figuring out what went wrong in this devastating plane crash that killed dozens of Americans last night. But don't worry, Donald Trump says he has already figured out what happened. What happened here was diversity. He's eliminating diversity. We can all feel safe. All our problems are all solved. Because, yeah, look at all of the cable news hosts. The one guy's got the little jacket and the other guy's blurting out information on service members who have been killed. The President himself says he thinks he might get wet if he visits the crash site because it's a river. So no, he's not going to do that because ick wet. Just excellence through and through, right? Just look at these guys. Can't you see the excellence? I mean, at least Elon Musk is getting what he wants and what he needs from the US government.

Are we? That word oligarchy seems to stick in everybody's kra. It sounds like somewhere between an ancient word and a foreign People don't like the word, but people who study how oligarchy works around the world would tell you that this is like a perfect case study, a textbook case. Man with tons of money effectively purchases politician. Politician then changes the government so it meets the personal and business needs of the rich guy to whom he belongs. That change in government is bad for everybody else. For example, times like this, it might be good if we had an FAA. But even though what the politician is doing is bad Bad for all of us, bad for everybody else in the whole country except for the rich guy, we're supposed to think we can't do anything about it because after all, it's this rich guy who's buying the elections now, and so our voice doesn't matter. That's what we're supposed to think, and that's how this is supposed to work. But in our country, it is not working out the way they hoped because the American people, broadly and deeply, say they dislike this eccentric right-wing billionaire who's getting his own personal government while the rest of us get the shaft.

The American people, broadly and deeply, say they do not want our government leaders taking direction from billionaires. The American people are pushing back pretty broadly and pretty deeply at what this new administration is trying to do. For the first time in 70 years of Gallup polling, there are more Americans who say they oppose the new president than support him even this soon after his inauguration. When the administration tried to get federal employees to narc on each other, to turn one another in, If anybody was still secretly trying to support diversity and nondiscrimination in the federal government, they set up a special email for people to send in their tips about their coworkers, about anybody who was secretly resisting Trump's orders. That email address they set up, I'm pleased to tell you, was reportedly soon flattered with, Scientology emails, pornography, the script of The Bee movie, and warnings that, Unqualified, mediocre white people were being hired to head up unimportant government agencies. Maybe somebody should do something about that. When this administration tried to call a halt to all federal spending with a bizarre word salad bumper sticker order that inexplicably ranted in the order about DEI and woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal, which is not a thing.

Not only did they have to spend that whole day that they announced that, clawing it back, saying they didn't actually mean all spending, and no, it didn't apply to this, and no, it didn't apply to that. By the following day, they had to send out a total recission of that previous day's order. The language of that, some people may have already cross-stitched it onto a pillow or two. I don't know. I'm just saying what I've heard. But their balder-dash nonsense effort to halt all federal spending without even understanding what they were stopping ended with this wimper, which does look good on a pillow. O-m-b memorandum M-Dash25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President's executive orders, please contact your Agency General Counsel. Because of pushback, because of the pushback they are getting, they have had to rescind Trump's effort to stop all federal spending in the US. They also, because of the pushback, have had to rescind Trump's effort to stop all spending around the world. Except when Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, sent out the memo rescinding that order, they couldn't even explain clearly what it was exactly that they were taking back.

The order from Marco Rubio just told everybody that if they needed any clarification on what exactly was being rescinded here, they should contact the Director of Foreign Assistance at the Department of State. Before you ask, no. No. There currently is no one holding the job of Director of Foreign Assistance at the Department of State. There is nobody there. But that is where Marco Rubio says you should to go for clarification on this thing he's tried to undo because of all the pushback, but they're still not even really sure what they did, so they don't know what they're taking back. They are not sending their best. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that diversity does not seem to be the cause of the problem here. Seems like it might be something else. But they're not sending their best. The American people know it and are pushing back. Democrats Democrats in Washington are starting to get up on their hind legs and yell about it like they should have from the very beginning. That's proving to be effective as well. One of those Democrats joins us next. Stay with us. Who's in charge of the FBI right now?

Previous director of the FBI, Chris Ray, he stepped down before Trump's inauguration. Trump's nominee to replace Chris Ray isn't yet confirmed. He just had his confirmation hearing today. So who right now is running the FBI? It's okay if you don't know the answer to that question, because apparently the guy who is running the FBI right now is there by accident as the product of a mistake. This is from the Wall Street Journal, A week before Trump's inauguration, the Trump transition reached out to an FBI official in New York to serve as the FBI's temporary leader. Officials asked another FBI official, Brian Driskill, who worked in hostage rescue operations, to please serve as FBI Deputy. Driskill is known to sign his name Driz. Driz with two Zs. Driz was tapped to be Deputy Director. Each man had one conversation with Trump's FBI Director nominate, Cash Patel. Each traveled to Washington and each had set up in their respective suites on inauguration day when word reached them that the White House, Oops, had messed up. The White House had incorrectly listed Driskill, Driz, as the acting director error on its website. The Wall Street Journal reports, Instead of fixing the error, the pair decided to swap their temporary FBI roles and offices.

Is that how this works? Somebody does a typo on the White House website, and bam, suddenly you are the acting director of the FBI. Yeah, that's Driz. They didn't mean to give you that job, but they accidentally did. Oh, God, the IT is going to be a hassle. Let's just switch offices instead. Okay, Driz, you're running the FBI then.

Oops.

Let's just go with it. Today, Senate Republicans spent today's confirmation hearing falling all over themselves to praise Cash Patel as the ideal person to lead the FBI, despite the fact that this is Cash Patel. I'd shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopening to the next day as a museum of the Deep State. Here's how, generally, that went today when Senate Democrats tried to challenge him on statements like that one. Could he just answer the question if he said that the FBI headquarters where they investigate cybercrime and terrorism should be shut down and open as a Deep State? Mr. Chair. As a museum. Did he say that the headquarters should be shut down?

Mr. Chair.

I deserve an answer to that question. He is asking to be head of the FBI, and he said that their headquarters should be shut down.

Mr. Chair, parliamentary inquiry.

You got anything you want to say, Mr. Patel, before I go on to Senator Lee? Simply this. If the best attacks on me are going to be false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations, the only thing this body is doing is defeating the credibility of the men and women at the FBI. Mr. Chairman, I am quoting his own words from September of 2024. It is his own words. It is not some conspiracy. It is what Mr. Patel actually said himself. Facts matter. How dare you besmirch the men and women of the FBI by quoting statements said by me, Cash Patel, who has never worked for the FBI ever, and who did say, I wanted to shut down the headquarters. That was just one of today's hearings. Three of the most controversial, most ostentatiously unqualified, the most trolling choices Trump has made for his cabinet, three of them all We all had hearings on the same day at the same time today. At the first of his two confirmation hearings, yesterday, Trump's Health Secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, seemed to not understand what Medicaid is, even though Medicaid ensures roughly a fifth of all Americans and would be among the 13 federal health agencies he would be overseeing.

If he was confirmed, he also suggested that Americans have so many babies that most of the humans born on Earth in any given year are babies that are born in the United United States. The United States, for the record, has roughly 4% of the Earth's population. So I don't know. How'd things go at Mr. Kennedy's second hearing today? You said the following, and I quote, We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that's given to Whites because their immune system is better than ours. Can you please explain what you meant? There's a series of studies, I think most of them, that Poland that show that the particular antigens that blacks have a much stronger reaction. There's differences in reaction to different products by different races. I have 17 seconds left. Let me just ask you then, so what different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received? What different vaccine schedule should I have received? The Poland article suggests that Blacks need fewer antigens. A series of studies, I think most of them by Poland. That led to some people thinking that maybe Mr. Kennedy was talking to the country of Poland.

Studies from Poland? In fact, he seems to have been referring to one single study by a Dr. Poland, Gregory Poland, MD. In fact, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Made a whole anti-vaccine film targeting Black people using that one study from Dr. Poland. But poor Dr. Poland for years has been telling anybody who will listen that RFK Jr. Is completely, totally wrong about his work. Dr. Poland says RFK is wildly misrepresenting his research. Dr. Poland says, We do not have a study that shows African-Americans need half the vaccine dose. We do not have a study that shows African-American children are being overdosed. Please, for the love of God, stop citing my work in your weird anti-vaccine race science theories. Get my name out of your mouth. Senator also, Brooks, told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Today that his assertions are dangerous, that she'll be voting against his nomination. But today's third hearing was for the Trump cabinet nominee who's generally seen as having the greatest danger of not being confirmed. The third one was the hearing for a former Democratic Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard. He's Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, which I still can't believe anytime I say it.

When it comes to red flags in a candidate's biography, senators are really spoiled for choice. With Ms. Gabbard, they could have held a whole hearing on just her 2017 secret trip to Syria, where she met with its Russian-back dictator and came back making excuses for the atrocities he was committing against his own people, not to mention the meeting with the guy who said he had a network of suicide bombers ready to activate inside the United States. But for whatever reason, senators of both parties today were most exercised about Tulsi Gabbard's past support for Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who more than a decade ago leaked classified information on US government spying programs, he now lives in Russia. Regardless of whether you may think this was the most vital thing to focus on, it was definitely a preoccupation of senators on Committee, and she refused so many times to agree with their characterization that Edward Snowden is a traitor, that Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado plainly just got frustrated.

Was Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?

Senator, I will also repeat my answer.

He broke the law. This is when you need to answer the questions of the people whose vote you're asking for to be confirmed as the Chief Intelligence Officer of this nation. As my colleague said, this is not about you. It's about the people that serve of the intelligence agencies of the United States. Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.

Senator, as someone who has served in your phone- Your answer, yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? As someone who has borne our reform in combat. I understand how critical our national security is.

Apparently, you don't.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, a member of both the Senate Finance and Intelligence Committees. So he had the pleasure of questioning both Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Today. Senator Bennett, I know it's been a really long day. Thank you for being here tonight.

Well, it's been too long, Rachel. I'm very happy to see you tonight.

I'm happy to see you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Of Tell me your overall impression of Ms. Gabbard at her hearing today and how you think she did and what you were thinking in that moment that I just played for our viewers.

I think that she didn't do well, and I think she didn't do well with Republicans and Democrats, not because of an attack on her patriotism, which is what she kept asserting before the hearing even started, but because I think there's a lot of question about her judgment. It just seems like every time she has the opportunity to go out of her way and side, for example, with a dictator who has rolled over the peaceful border of, let's say, Ukraine, she does that by sending emails in the middle of the night at 11: 30 in that case. Or she goes to Syria and comes back and says it goes out of her way again to say the intelligence community, who sometimes is wrong, but in this case was clearly right that thatAssad had gassed his own people, that somehow that was wrong, and everybody who didn't agree with her was subject to some insane conventional wisdom. It was a tough day in a sense, but I think a good day for the Senate's responsibility to advise and consent, and hopefully show that the Senate is not going to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump's appointees.

There There has been some interesting reporting all along the way from the Wall Street Journal, from some other outlets during the course of when she was meeting with senators ahead of this confirmation hearing today, and even quite recently, just onto the eve of this hearing, saying that senators were, forgive me, weirded out by her in private, that she didn't, in some cases, seem to know what the director of National Intelligence was as a job. She didn't seem to understand the basic facts of some of the basic foundational responsibilities and abilities of the US intelligence community, that she just didn't seem... That she seemed both attitudinally and perhaps intellectually unsuited to the work. Are those concerns that have been reported in the press? Do you think that will be made manifest in any of your Republican colleagues saying no to her.

Well, I don't want to get into their heads. Obviously, they have their own individual decisions to make. But the Intelligence Committee is a place where we historically have worked in a in a partisan way. It doesn't mean we agree on everything, but we take seriously our responsibility because most of what we do is in secret, and most of what we do is a responsibility to the other senators who don't have access to the intelligence that we do and to the American people who don't have access to it. I can tell you that people take very seriously the signal that would be sent, for example, to the Intelligence Committee, if we confirmed somebody who not only couldn't take the position today on Snowden, but actually wrote legislation to pardon Snowden long after the facts of Snowden were understood because of the work that the House Committee did, that clear that he wasn't a whistleblower, but that what he had done was way out of line with what anybody should have done. He was part of our intelligence community. Here's what I really think, Rachel. I think she is caught in this. I'm not sure what the word means, but I was thinking about it when you were describing what was going on, a miasma of this confused social media chatter that outside of any hearing where you're actually being tested on something maybe makes sense or maybe feels like something you can get away with.

The same thing with Bobby Kennedy's half-true is that the second that he's in front of a panel where there are actual doctors who are Republicans who are asking him questions, He can't answer the questions anymore because it's not just people that are nodding along and agreeing with the half-trues that he is articulating. I think her approach to Putin is very much the same as Bobby Kennedy's approach to Medicare, if that makes any sense to you at all.

Yeah, exactly. What you're saying is that the real world isn't Twitter and isn't your fans. Right. The facts have a way of following you home in the real world. Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado. It has been too long since you've been here, sir. Come back soon. Thanks for your time tonight.

I will. Thanks for having me, Rachel.

I appreciate it. I should mention that Senator Bennett took the lead in questioning RFK at the first of his two confirmation hearings yesterday about some of the most unnerving things that he has claimed, like COVID being engineered to spare the Jews and pesticides making people transgender and AIDS in Africa being different than AIDS in not Africa and AIDS being caused by parties. Yeah, he took the lead in questioning on some of that most unnerving stuff. We'll see, to have all of these guys have hearings on the same day is almost too loud a circus for any of us to cover. We got more news ahead. We're doing our best. Stay with us. In October 2020, so right near the end of the first Trump term, Pentagon officials preparing a rescue operation, a SEAL Team 6 operation, to go save an American citizen who'd been kidnapped near the border of Nigeria and Niger. The Pentagon had planned the mission to a T. All they needed was one last thing from the State Department. They needed the State Department to make sure that the US government had permission from the government of Nigeria to enter Nigerian airspace.

So these Navy Seals conducting the rescue mission wouldn't be shot out of the sky by by the Nigerian military protecting their airspace. The Atlantic's Elaina Plott Calabro describes what happened next. Quote, Around noon, Cash Patel called the Pentagon with an update. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, he said, had gotten the approval. The mission was a go. The Seals were close to landing in Nigeria when Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, discovered that the State Department had not, in fact, secured the overflight clearance, as Cash Patel had claimed. Their point. The aircraft were quickly diverted. They flew in circles for the next hour as officials scramble to alert the Nigerian government to their position. Esper later wrote that his team suspected Cash Patel had simply, made the approval story Europe. The Pentagon official and retired Army General, to whom Patel had originally given the supposed green light, then confronted Cash Patel in a rage. You could have gotten these guys killed, he shouted, according to two people familiar with the exchange, what the bleep were you thinking? Patel's response was, If nobody got hurt, who the bleep cares? Now, Cash Patel denies that version of events, but that's one of just a series of revelations from inside leaders from the first Trump term who have tried to ring alarm bells about this guy who may be about to gain even more power in a second Trump term.

As Patel has been put up for the job of FBI Director, Elaina Plott Calabro at the Atlantic has also reported that a longtime Trump advisor said he had been in Cash Patel's presence more than once when Patel claimed he was the person who, quote, gave the order for US forces to move in and kill the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. The Baghdaddi operation was one for which Patel, by his own admission, wasn't even in the situation room, let alone given the kill order, which is what he's claimed. Joining us now is the person who wrote that detailed profile on Cash Patel Atlantic staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro. Ms. Plott Calabro, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me, Rachel.

Given your reporting on Cash Patel and what you've been able to learn, particularly about what people who've served alongside him in the past thought about serving alongside him. What did you make of his performance today, his confirmation hearing?

In some ways, Rachel, what struck me about his performance today was less about how he responded to questions, which was predictable in many ways. He denied saying things that he had ever said. He denied being on podcasts with extremists that he had clearly met before, been associated with in the past. What struck me, though, was the line of questioning from Democratic senators, focusing really intently on his involvement in, or his statements in the past about January sixth, his involvement in promoting a song performed by the January sixth Prison Choir. Whereas, as you just read from my story, there are plenty of incidences in his professional career where Republican officials themselves have sounded the alarm about him. I just thought it was interesting that those moments didn't seem to be put forth for inquiry as much as these very narrow, focused questions about January sixth.

I was interested There was one moment, and this may seem like small stuff, but it just seemed like a really easily disproveable thing. One of the post-first Trump term things that Mr. Patel has done is he's repeatedly appeared on a podcast with a guy who's a really virulent anti-Semite. He was asked about that today. He said, I don't know who that is. I don't remember who that is. That name is not familiar to me. Turns out Mr. Patel has appeared at least eight on that guy's podcast. That anti-Semitic podcaster then came out today and said, Clearly, Cash Patel is lying. He absolutely does know who I am. We directly text via personal cell phones constantly. I get what you're saying about this time in office versus his time out of office. But that just seemed like something that might have blown up a normal nominee in normal terms.

I was just going to say you're absolutely right. In a normal time, it's the thing where, again, so easily disprobable, something that I think everybody would be talking about in the immediate aftermath. But I think this comes with the normalization of the evasions and just outright lies that we've seen from several Trump officials in the past what is it now? I guess nine, eight years. And I think Cash Patel's hearing was chalkful of moments like that. In some ways, it's almost flooding the zone with enough that it's difficult to parse one moment and understand the degree to which it's actually registering with those tuning into the hearing.

Elaina Platt-Colabro, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks for your reporting on Mr. Patel. Thanks for helping us understand these hearings tonight. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Rachel.

All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Might have seen a headline today that Trump's nominee to run the Budget Office, Trump's nominee Budget Director, Russell Vote, passed his Senate Committee hearing today, 11 to zero, 11 to nothing on Russell Vote, unanimous vote. Does that mean Democrats voted for Russell Vote? This same guy who says, yes, the President can refuse to spend money that Congress has said to spend, no matter the chaos, no matter the authority vested in Congress by the Constitution. This super radical nominee, Russell vote, passed on an 11 to nothing vote? How did that happen? It was 11 to zero, but it is not because Democrats on the committee voted for him. That 11 to zero vote was unanimous, but it was not homogenous because only Republicans voted. Democrats made the decision to boycott this vote, and they let the public know that they were doing it and why they were doing it. Budget Committee Democrats are boycotting today's committee vote on Russell Votes' nomination to OMB. We will not vote for someone so clearly unfit for office. Meaning, we will not even vote no, we will not vote on this.

Rather than be part of voting on this nominee, knowing they'd be in the minority, even if they all did show up and voted no, Democrats instead decided to not show up to make a point that this guy, the guy who has designed this strategy to consolidate all government power in the presidency, to essentially render Congress powerless. They essentially made the point that this is not a normal nomination. He doesn't even deserve their no votes. In other words, they made a fuss. They made scene, which is in keeping with what Democrats around the country have started to ask Senate Democrats to do, which is to say, Do not participate in what the Trump administration is doing here. Do not participate. Do what you can to shut it down. Senate leader Chuck Schumer reportedly heard it last night from half a dozen Democratic governors, all but begging the minority leader to persuade tenant Democrats to block whatever they could. We're hearing from the press, such as it is, the Washington Post Editorial Board writing last night, quote, senators who back Russell vote are choosing to undermine their own institution and give away their power of the purse.

Also, columnist Ruth Marcus last night writing, If this vote goes through and Trump grabs the power of the purse, quote, Lawmakers might as well pack their bags. There won't be much of a constitutional role left for them. The progressive group Indivisible, with chapters all over the country, has been demanding that Senate Democrats, in fact, shut it down, that they do everything they can procedurally slow down and stop the Senate from doing basically anything at all to try to stop the radicalism on display in the form of nominations like Russell vote. Today, Senate Democrats, in this way, on this vote, did what they could. They may not be able to stop this particular nomination, but they are doing everything they can to say, This is a disaster. Pay attention. It's something. Watch this space. All right, that's I'm going to do it for me for now. I'll see you again tomorrow and every weeknight from here on out till the end of the first 100 days. I'll be here 9: 00 PM Eastern on MSNBC. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. You should try it. If you don't have Blue Sky yet, you should try it.

I'm on Blue Sky at matto. Msnbc. Com. As President Donald Trump returns to the White House, what will the first 100 days of the presidency bring? Follow along as his agenda takes shape with a new MSNBC newsletter, Trump's First 100 Days. Weekly updates sent straight to your inbox and expert insight on the key issues and figures defining this second term. We're seeing a really radical effort to change the American system of government. Sign up for Trump's First 100 Days at msnbc. Com/trump100.