Transcript of The Purge

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. The first 100 days, bills are passed, executive orders are signed, and presidencies are defined. And for Donald Trump's first 100 days, Rachel Maddow is on MSNBC five nights a week.

Now is the time, so we're going to do it.

Providing her unique insight and analysis during this critical time. How do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country? The Rachel Maddow Show, weeknights at 9: 00 PM Eastern on MSNBC.

After the 2024 election, many Americans just needed a break. People turned off their TVs, and they closed their newspapers. An AP poll from last December found that around two-thirds of American adults said they felt they needed to limit their consumption of news about the government and politics because they were so fatigued. It looked at first like the resistance of Trump 1. 0 had disappeared, had gone quiet. Now, that may well still be true, but earlier this week, there was a glimmer of something. Elon Musk has got to go. Who's funny Our money. On Tuesday night, in front of the Treasury Building in Washington, DC, a large crowd gathered for a Nobody Elected Elon rally. We have got to tell Elon Musk, Nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country. It was a chilly, blustry evening that began with a couple of hundred people carrying homemade signs gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Treasury Building. But by the time a group of Democratic lawmakers began speaking, hundreds of protesters had spilled onto the street. Police eventually just cordoned off a whole block of Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is what democracy looks like.

Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.

If it wasn't the resistance proper, it sure felt resistant. A moment of catharsis, an expression of anger at what has been happening to the federal government under President Trump and his advisor, Elon Musk, who now heads the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE.

We want to make sure that all of our federal employees are protected.

If you are one of the over 2 million federal workers in this country, the last few weeks have been an onslaught. President Trump is making more than 2 million federal workers an offer.

Quit now and accept a severance package. A government email titled Fork in the Road offers federal employees a choice, a severance package or return to the office.

Unions representing government employees have filed a lawsuit to block the plan, calling the buyout offer arbitrary and capricious. Trump and Elon Musk, they're really focusing their eyeer right now on USAID.

In just the last hours, Musk calling the agency criminal and saying it's time for it to die. Usaid, it's uncertain fate. We've just confirmed. An email went out early this morning to staff saying, Do not come in. Headquarters will be closed this morning.

As federal workers are literally locked out of their offices while operatives working for a private citizen essentially take over our government.

Today, the President confirmed, Musk's Department of Government Efficiency was granted access to Treasury payment systems, which house the private information of millions of Americans. Given all of that, it would make sense that moment in front of the Treasury Building would feel like both an inflection point and a response. Elon Musk wants everyone in America to be at the mercy of Elon Musk.

We are here to fight back.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was there, as was Representative Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress.

We might have a few less seats in Congress, but we're not going be the minority.

We're going to be the opposition.

At one point, Senator Richard Blumenthal surveyed the crowd.

If you're a federal employee, raise your hand.

Raise your hand if you were. We are proud of you.

But if you had been in the crowd at that moment, you could have counted the number of federal workers on two hands. Maybe they were scared to be captured by the TV cameras, given Trump's scrutiny and focus on so-called loyalty. Or maybe the crowd was made up mostly of concerned citizens, people who had had enough of the chaos and wanted to do something with their anger. After walking through the crowd, we did find a few federal workers.

I've been in government nearly 20 years. I would like it to be more efficient, but not like this. Not like just wanton destruction.

We spoke with someone who told us he was a federal employee, but he was nervous to tell us exactly where he worked and put on a mask when our cameras started rolling.

What's the mood among federal workers right now?

It's really It's funny because I think last time it was, this is an aberration, and we're going to get through this, and things will return to normal. And now it's more like, oh, no, we're in this for some long haul, who knows? It feels very disempowering.

You're still working, right?

To the extent possible, we continue to do what we can.

Are people fearful right now?

Yeah, I think everybody's aware of it's not as bad for as it is for a lot of people that have much worse. But yeah, the prospect of losing a job that you've worked at and you're really passionate about, you've been doing for decades is really scary.

It feels like for a while, there hasn't been an organized resistance with energy and focus. I don't know if I'm overstating the case here, but this feels like an inflection point for that.

This feels much more exciting than I think anything we've seen. I was When we think about this the other day, we feel like we have protests and they have rallies, and this feels like a rally.

We found another federal employee who was willing to talk with us anonymously and not on camera. I asked her about this past week.

Yeah, so I'm a federal employee. We've been getting a lot of emails from a new email address that's essentially insulting the civil service and requesting that we resign. That's what it feels like. There's a lot of pressure to resign. But as far as I know, no one No one in our office is interested in taking that offer. There's a lot of rumors flying around related to reductions in force, with nothing that has been confirmed.

Do you feel like there's enough resourcing to stop what could be an attempt at a broad series of layoffs?

Civil servants care about the mission, about supporting the American citizenry, and they are going to fight to stay in their roles and defend democracy. That is an active conversation in the hallways.

How long have you been a federal worker?

I'm still in my probationary first year, so I feel very vulnerable.

What a first year.

Oh, my God. I came to the government for a stability. That was a Yeah, it's not fair. It's not fair. It turns out that was a mistake.

Now, today, Thursday, February sixth, was supposed to be Decision Day, the deadline for the vast majority of federal workers to decide whether to accept or reject a buyout offer from President Trump and Elon Musk. But on Thursday afternoon, just hours before that midnight deadline, a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the administration from implementing these mass buyouts, at least until Monday. So Right now, it would seem federal workers have a few more days to decide. If workers do accept the buyout, they would trade in their resignation for the promise of eight months of pay and benefits. But the big problem with that promise is that Congress hasn't actually approved those eight months of payment, and the federal government is only funded through March 14th. So whether Trump and his administration can actually make good on this deal is an open question. There are over 2 million federal workers in the system and the administration is hoping for 5 to 10% of them to take the offer. But as of Thursday afternoon, only 60,000 workers had reportedly taken the deal, roughly 3%. Still, who knows what happens next? Next. On this episode of Trump Land with Alex Wagner, we're heading back to DC.

As the Trump administration attacks the federal workforce, we speak with some of the civil servants caught in the crossfire.

I signed a contract to serve the American people on my 9: 00 to 5: 00, and this is my 9: 00 to 5: 00 today, and so I'll be here as far as I need to be.

Stay connected with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live, read live blogs, blogs and in-depth essays, and listen to coverage as it unfolds. Visit msnbc. Com/app to download.

Hey, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why is this Happening?

Bloomberg news reporter, Zeke Fox on what the heck is happening with crypto.

What crypto is good for is crazy gambling. And there's a very big group of people around the world who've realized this is fun. I like gambling on crypto. I know somebody who made a lot of money on it. Maybe I should try to find the next Bitcoin.

That's this week on Why is this happening? Search for Why is this happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

Get the all-new CNBC Sport Newsletter.

Alex Sherman brings you exclusive interviews and the biggest news impacting the world of sports business and Media. All straight to your inbox. Sign up for free at cnbc. Com/sportnewsletter.

It's Tuesday in Washington, DC, and Trump has been issuing a flurry of executive orders intended on dramatically slashing the size of the federal government, and he is doing it with complete disregard to what is potentially lawful and what is potentially most orderly in terms of a transition. We've been running around town for the last 48 hours trying to follow this story and understand how people are dealing with it. But every time you talk to one group of people, another other agency comes under assault. It's like federal agency Whac-A-Mole. We're on our way to USAID, which is the US Agency for International Development, and that organization has been the focus of Trump's federal purge.

The agency itself has been shuttered.

People's emails have been turned off. It's a huge question mark about what the international program is funded by USAID, what the future of those programs is. We're going to speak with one employee who is at the center of all this and whose career, whose future, whose work remains deeply uncertain, which is maybe the point of all of this.

Hi. How are you, Alex? How are you? Thanks for doing this.

We met Christina Dry in front of the building earlier this week, which, up until very recently, was where she came to work every day. The USAID building is one of those huge DC buildings that essentially takes up a whole block, which maybe gives you a sense of what an institution it is. The institution that helped rebuild Europe from the ashes of World War II and helped eradicate smallpox and has fought to secure food for millions in the world's most vulnerable nations for over six decades. More than 10 1,000 people work for USAID, about two-thirds of them overseas. They provide critical life or death humanitarian aid to more than 100 countries, including areas decimated by war like Gaza and Ukraine and South Sudan. They also promote democracy, transparency, and human rights, with the idea that these American values spread around the world help both the global community and our own national security. That's not to say that the work of USAID has been without criticism. For years, Conservatives have raised questions about inefficient spending, while Liberals have voiced concerns over the ethics of making vulnerable nations reliant on American aid. This isn't the first time the has been a high-profile political target.

In 1995, during the Clinton Administration, Congress passed a bill abolishing USAID, but it was never signed into law. Whatever its flaws, no administration, Democratic or Republican, has been willing to strip USAID down to the studs until this one.

So maybe just first start and tell me where you worked or work. I don't even know what tense to use.

I also don't know what tense to use. I worked work at USAID, and I'm a speechwriter for the front office.

Do you think about past tense, present tense, future tense? When you say that.

In my head, I think past tense. I feel like actively right now, it's probably present intense, but by the minute, I feel like it's past tense.

And just walk me through the last week.

So the last week has been just so crazy. I know that most people have heard about the emails people got from the government in the executive orders that first week of the new administration telling us, We're cutting all DEI. And so they were asking that we scrub our websites. They were making sure that people who had that in their job description were furloughed or administrative leave or whatever term they were using at the time. And then it just really ramped up on Monday. I was sitting in my office and heard sobbing, and I looked around. It was people who had just gotten an email. I mean, civil servants who had worked for decades across administrations that had received an saying that you're on administrative leave effective immediately. We were finding out who it was based on hearsay from other colleagues that were also saying, Oh, this person isn't here today, but they were here yesterday. So that was Monday. And then throughout the week, it just continued to feel really heavy. They unplugged the televisions with the news stations from the kitchen galleys. They took off all the pictures of our work off the walls.

Why did they unplug the televisions?

I couldn't tell you. I walked in one day to warm my lunch, and the TVs were on, and then I walked in the next day and they were off. We heard rumors that Doge was in the building, that they were assessing our work, and they were doing this review. And all throughout the week, again, as I'm sure you've heard, contractors were being furloughed right and left, and you didn't know who and what and when until you saw them post on LinkedIn saying they were open for work. And then on Saturday morning, all the websites went completely blank. I tried to log in Saturday, probably around 7: 00 PM, and my and access was completely revoked. So I couldn't retrieve any emails. I couldn't retrieve any communication. I couldn't retrieve any old speeches for writing samples. You lost complete access. And then we were told not to come to work on Monday through an email that I didn't receive because I didn't have access. How did you find out about it? I found out about it from colleagues who still had access, which there was no pattern to who did and did not. They texted and said, Hey, they're saying that the building is closed.

And at that point, I started feeling very past tense about this, and I wanted my stuff, the remaining stuff I had at my desk. And I came here and they said, Did you get the email? And I said, I didn't get the email because I didn't have access. They gave me a printout of the email, and then they said, It's just closed today.

There's the swiftness with which this all happened, but it also sounds so chaotic. It sounds like it's word of mouth. Your livelihood and the work of this massive agency, the agenda here is not developed, and the execution is completely scattershot.

That's the way it feels. Even as a contractor, most of USAID is contracted, my contractor had no idea.

People are contractors. I mean, these are people all over the world.

Yeah, I would say that I think the estimated loss in American jobs alone from what I would consider bringing the development sector to its knees is 52,000 jobs. More than that around the world because we have implementing partners, and these massive implementing partners, 5,000, 6,000, 10,000 employees that are doing amazing work around the world. Again, employing Americans and others, they've all been furloughed because they are not getting paid. They can't pay their own bills. So in addition to the USAID folks that are losing their jobs without being able to plan or even put in two weeks, everyone in the development sector that I know is just sitting here going, What do we do?

I mean, because USAID is a global agency in a sense, it's obviously American, but the reach of it is global. There's the chaos that this visits upon American workers, you say, but it's also America's reputation abroad. Can you talk about what the implications are for America's reputation?

I think people forget that something like USAID is a critical tool in America's national security toolbox. When you're looking at national security, you're looking at keeping the American people safer, secure, and more prosperous, which is what the lines that are coming out of our current State Department. Usa does that through things like soft power. It's almost like preventive care. You go to the doctor, you get preventive appointments, and then you get reactive appointments. The more preventive appointments you get, the less reactive you have to be. The more we invest in these things like development, the more we're investing not only in the health and security and human dignity of people around the world, but you're also building currency with countries around the world, and you're also protecting truly the safety of the American people. It's devastating to see that this is not only being dismantled, but there might not be an alternative.

What's the emotional tenor of the conversations you've been having with current, I don't know, former USAID employees? What's that like?

I think that the emotional tenor is weight and shock and truly sadness. These people are public servants who never ask for recognition. They never ask for anything except that they do a good job for people around the world, and they see that every single day. We functionally see that every single day. And what hurts the most is when you think about those people in the field that are no longer getting this life-saving care, this life-saving food, this life-saving shelter, maybe the fear, too, that we're abandoning them, and it's not our choice to do that. And we, I think, hold honor and dignity and trust to a very, very high standard here at USAID. It's part of the culture and the mission. So to feel like that's been broken without your input is something that is just so incredibly heavy. I think it's a profound sadness that cuts deep, and it's compounded by the fact that most of these people are also looking for their own livelihood now. And there's this sense of you cry in the elevator because if they see you crying out of it, they know where you stand, and that's really heavy.

If you were launching a soft coup, you'd go in there, you'd storm the gates, you'd take over buildings that weren't ones that you necessarily had access to before, you'd start firing people en masse, you'd institute loyalty tests, you'd replace top leadership. All those things are happening. I wonder, as someone who is of this place, who is a spokesperson for one of these agencies that's directly under assault by this administration, what it feels like to be here in this moment.

This place represents truly the best of the American people, and it represents the empathy that I know we have. It represents the kindness and the gratitude and the respect for human dignity that we have. I believe that we are all of this place. We are all those values. We are all of that experiment on how to be kind to one another and run a country. We look at democracy as an experiment, and I think that it is heavy and momentous to be here in this time, but times of challenge are not unusual. They might feel momentous like this, specifically or unique when you're in the moment, and so I can only speak to this moment. But I do believe that we all have to engage with our democracy at every level so that you don't watch something from the and then say, Wow, how could that happen?

Hours after we talked with Dry, that answer came in the form of an email sent to USAID staff, informing all direct hires around the globe, with few exceptions, that they would be placed on leave. On Wednesday, the American Foreign Service Association, a union representing 1,800 Foreign Service Officers working for USAID, called this a reckless decision by the Trump administration and one that would impose an enormous financial and logistical burden costing American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. The group also announced it would be seeking legal action, though it's unclear what exactly that would entail. Dry, who was contracted as a USAID speechwriter, found out she, too, lost her job. She told our producer that she was sad and worried not just for her future, but for the future of all the people we, as in USAID, serve. We'll be back after a short break. Week.

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. Stay up to date on the biggest issues of the day with the MSNBC Daily newsletter. Each morning, you'll get analysis by experts you trust. Video highlights from your favorite shows.

I do think it's worth being very clear-eyed, very realistic about what's going on here.

Previews of our podcast and documentaries, plus written perspectives from the newsmakers themselves, all sent directly to your inbox each morning. Get the best of MSNBC all in one place. Sign up for MSNBC Daily at msnbc. Com.

Right now, tens of thousands of federal workers are caught in limbo, unsure of whether they still have a job. Many have already been shown the door. Others are receiving intimidating emails, urging them to resign. It's all part of a purge launched by the Trump administration administration two weeks ago, a purge designed to upend the core of the American system of government. Activists are calling it a coup. History books may very well call it the Friday Night Massacre.

Mounting criticism from both sides of the aisle after President Trump's Friday night firings of 18 inspectors general, removing the watchdogs from federal agencies tasked with monitoring for fraud, waste, and abuse.

These weren't political appointees refusing to follow a president's controversial order. This was the president deciding to purge 18 independent watchdogs meant to keep the executive branch in check. The mass firing wasn't just controversial, it may very well be illegal. In 2022, Congress passed a law mandating that the President give lawmakers on Capitol Hill a 30-day notice if the President intends to remove any Inspector General. The President is also required by law to provide a substantial rationale for firing an IG. Trump did neither. In order to fully grasp how unprecedented this all is, I sat down with one of the Inspector Generals who was fired, a man who was hired by Donald Trump himself.

So the commerce building is this red one right here.

That's where you work for how many years?

Five and a half years in that building. Up at the corner, you see where that balustrade is going off the top, that one. That's where you were. And then the Department of the Interior, which is... I never actually looked at it from this angle. It's one of those three-Over there?

Yeah. So this is your hood? This is it.

Spent a lot of time on the ellips.

This is Mark Greenblatt, the former Inspector General for the Department of the Interior. He and I spoke from a room that overlooked the National Mall, and as it turns out, several places he had worked over the years. Trump nominated Greenblatt back in 2019 and spoke highly of his work at the interior, like the time in June of 2021, when Greenblatt's Department Department cleared Trump of wrongdoing after determining that the US Park police had not forcibly removed protesters from Lafayette Square, near the White House, to make way for Trump's now infamous Bible photo op during the summer of racial justice protests in 2020. But Greenblatt's career as an IG came to a breaching halt on that fateful Friday night.

So on Friday night, this is a couple of weeks ago, I received an email around 7: 30 at night, and it was entitled White House Notification. And instantly my My heart sank because I knew that was not good.

Were you on alert for that?

Certainly over the course of the election period, and then once Trump won, and during the transition period, there was open discussion about whether he would be firing any or all of the inspectors general. In fact, his former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post expressly calling for him to fire inspectors general. There was open discussion about this, both in the OIG community, in Congress, and out in the world. We were on notice that this could happen, but still, when you see it, it's just so stark that even if you're mentally prepared, you don't internalize it until you see it there in a two-sentence email saying that you're terminated effective immediately.

Do you have the email still on your phone?

I do.

Can you see it? Yeah.

Dear Mark, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I'm writing to inform you that due to changing priorities, your position as Inspector General of Department of Interior is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for for your service.

Wow.

What was your first call? Other than to your family, were you reaching out to fellow IGs?

Absolutely. That was actually on my work phone. On my personal phone, I had actually a text from another IG who was telling me that she had gotten removed as well. This is when I said, Okay, this is going to get real bad. Then I called the head of the Council of Inspectors General, and I said, Mike, I've just been fired. He said, Me, too.

Wow.

That's when I knew this was going to be really, really bad. I knew this was going from an isolated one-off of me and maybe a couple of folks to a widespread massacre.

To a purge.

To a purge.

There seems to be like there are two levels of it, it seems. There's the thank you for your service, question mark aspect, but then also what it represents in terms of oversight and what happens to the country next. What does this look like to you knowing the dynamics of this office?

These positions were designed to be apolitical and not change with administrations. Our whole design, our whole construct is based on us being apolitical, non-partisan. We don't ride with the pendulum swinging back and forth with whichever way the wind is blowing.

Does he have to appoint new I. G.

No. I mean, we've had long term vacancies in I. G. Positions. For example, at the Department of the Interior, before I got there, it was vacant for close to 11 years. Wow.

Well, so, I mean, workshop this with me, because if I'm the layman that hears, well, there have departments, agencies without I. G. S for extended periods of time, nothing bad happened. Why does it matter if these positions sit empty after Trump's purge?

So first, an acting I. G, like what's happening now with the vacant spots, they are fully empowered to take actions. But when you have someone who's been confirmed by the Senate, nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, there is a bit of more stature that comes with that. You also get the ability to make long term changes. You can more robustly manage the office and lead the office. There's a marked difference between what an acting can do versus what a permanent IG can do. That's the critical thing is, are they going to be in a weakened state as an acting IG throughout all the major departments in the federal government, all the cabinet-level departments in the federal government now have, effectively, all of them have acting IGs. Are they going to be necessarily more weak in what they're doing? Are they going to be willing to speak truth to power as the job requires? If you have a weak IG or office of Inspector General, then they're not doing what they need to do to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. The key question is, are they going to be watchdogs? Are they going to be lap dogs?

We sit here in Washington, DC, where there are protests in front of the Office of Personnel Management.

Elon Musk says, We're shutting down USAID.

There are protests over there.

The Department of Treasury now has effectively given over a lot of important information and record keeping to members members of DOGE, which is not actually a government agency. It's a group led by Elon Musk and a group of his acolytes. It feels like, and I don't mean to be heavy-handed, it almost feels like a slow-motion coup.

Am I overreacting when I think of this as something just extraordinarily dramatic that's playing out within the federal government?

Oh, no, these are dramatic changes. There's no question about it. I think President Trump and his allies would argue that's why he was elected. We'll have to see. We'll have to see is this a week or two or three of robust activity in key principle ways, or is this going to be a sustained movement, if you will? But I think there's no question. These are enormous changes afoot, and they feel empowered and that they were voted in to affect these broad muscle movements inside the federal government. There's no question it's going to look very, very different going forward.

But as someone who's been in the federal government, are you alarmed by this?

Certainly by the removal of the 18 IGs, yes, that's alarmed. And some of the other actions that we've seen are very aggressive. This is going to be a total makeover of the federal government. This is going to change the way the federal government interacts with the American people and the world. I think we've got to brace ourselves for that. But yes, there's no question it's alarming. I think they would even argue they would like that characterization in the sense that I think they're trying to conduct a massive overhaul. I think they would appreciate that it would be alarming.

You say that government efficiency is, that's your bag. That's what you've been dedicating your life to. The fact is, Trump is rooting out the very people who focus on the thing that he says is job number one, two or three of his new administration. He and Elon Musk develop the Department of Government Efficiency, and yet the people who are in charge with manifesting that, where the rubber meets the road, the people who are in charge of efficiency and cutting out waste, fraud, and abuse are the ones purged within the first week of the administration.

Well, I think there are two interpretations of it. One is that he had a lack of confidence in offset individuals, or he's trying to remove the independent watchdogs and essentially emasculate the OIGs so that he can make over government without perceived roadblocks or speed bumps in the way. In terms of the efficiency, I mentioned the Council of Inspectors General. The full name is the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. It is literally in our name. And so what I would argue is that we should be natural allies. There's a synergy between what we do every day and what they are attempting to do. And so I think the fact that the IG community and this effort to streamline and to make government more efficient haven't quite aligned. And to the contrary, as you're saying, he fired 18 of us, is, I think, a missed opportunity to harness the power of the IG community to effect the very changes he's hoping it to affect.

Or maybe he's not actually trying to affect the changes at all.

Well, you'll have to ask him.

Trump's moves to slash the size of the federal government and to rid a massive bureaucracy of people perceived to be his enemies has all unfolded with alarming speed and complete disregard for the system itself. Nobody knows what waits on the other side of this purge, what it will mean for the millions of people employed by the government or for those who depend on it for basic services, or for the millions more who simply expect it to function day after day, year after year, no matter who is in charge, because that's how the federal system works. It seems clear, this week especially, that President Trump is trying to break something fundamental to the American project. And if he ends up succeeding, well, what happens then? We'll be back next Thursday with a new episode of Trump Land with Alex Wagner. To get this show and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free, be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. As a subscriber, you'll also get exclusive bonus content. Trump Land with Alex Wagner is produced by Max Jacobs, along with Julia DiAngelo and Kay Guerrero. Our associate producer is Jameris Perez. Our crew is Enrique Lareal on audio and Liam Lee and Katherine McNamera on camera.

Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Katie Cee Lau, and Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Matthew Alexander is the executive producer of Alex Wagner Tonight, and Ayesha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. And I'm your host, Alex Wagner. We'll see you next week.

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.