This Sunday. Legal limits. A federal judge threatens to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for defying his orders as the administration's mass deportation efforts continue to clash with the courts. I was elected to get rid of those criminals, to get out of our country.
I don't see how judges can take that authority away from a president. This is about due process. This is about not letting people be just whisked off the street, which the Trump administration admits was done in error. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country.
None. None. I'll speak with Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland, who traveled to El Salvador to meet with a man the Trump administration mistakenly deported. Plus price hikes.
The Federal Reserve chair warns President Trump's tariffs are highly likely to raise inflation, leading the president to lash out. If I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast, believe me. If German power can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States. Can the independent central bank survive?
I'll speak with Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. And progressive energy Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are drawing huge crowds at rallies across the country. I don't think this is Trump country. I think this is our country.
Donald Trump Obey the Supreme Court of the United States. Is the new anger on the left a challenge for Democrats or a movement they can get behind? Joining me for insight and analysis are NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Melody Zenona, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, Maria Theresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, and Mark Short, former director of Legislative affairs for President Trump. Welcome to Sunday.
It's Meet the Press from NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Kristen Walker. Good Sunday morning. President Trump standoff with the courts is escalating as his mass deportation plans are facing multiple legal challenges.
On Saturday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants under an 18th century wartime law. A federal judge is now threatening to hold the administration in criminal contempt for refusing the judge's order to turn around planes filled with deportees headed for a prison in El Salvador. And the Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of one of those deportees, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department admitted was deported due to an administrative error. The issue at the center of this case is due process protections, a constitutional protection guaranteed to all individuals in the United States, regardless of their citizenship status.
Abrego Garcia was not given a hearing before he was deported. But the White House is so far refusing to act, arguing Abrego Garcia is a member of a violent gang. Ms. 13 accusations his wife and attorney deny.
They want this man to be brought back into our country where he can be free and to say he's a happily Maryland, you know, happily. They call him the Maryland man. He's a Maryland father. No, He's a violent person.
ICE testified an immigration judge ruled he was a member of Ms. 13. An appellate judge ruled he was a member of Ms. 13.
Stop. He should not be in our country. El Salvador's president, meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office this week, also refused to send him back. How can I smuggle the terrorist into the United States?
I don't have the power to return him to the United States. Abrego Garcia, married to a U.S. citizen and a father of three with a work permit in Maryland, entered the U.S. illegally in 2011.
He's never been charged with a crime in the U.S. and has no criminal record in the U.S. or El Salvador. And in 2019, a judge ruled he should not be deported to El Salvador because of fears for his safety.
This week, Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland traveled to El Salvador to push for the release of Abrego Garcia, but was denied entry to the prison. If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America. Now. Van Holland didn't meet with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
El Salvador's president shared images of the meeting on social media where he mocked the senator's visit. The White House, saying of Abrego Garcia, he's not coming back, while attacking Senator Van Hollen's trip. Look, he's a fake. I know.
I know all. They're all fake. And they have no interest in that prisoner. That prisoner's record is unbelievably bad.
Our people voted for me to get them out. They want him out. They want him out, and we've done a hell of a job. President Trump even floated the idea this week that he might deport US Citizens to foreign prisons.
We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking, that are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in a group of people to get them out of the country, but you have to be looking at the laws on that. And joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland. Senator Van Holland, welcome back to Meet the Press.
Kristen, good to be with you. It's wonderful to have you. I know you've had a long several days, so we really appreciate you being here in person. You just returned from El Salvador.
As I just laid out to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia, you were rebuffed multiple times from entering the prison where he was initially being held. Zakati has, as you said, been moved since then to a different facility. Did you accomplish what you set out to on this trip?
I did. I had two missions. One was to ask the government of El Salvador to not be complicit in this illegal scheme with the Trump administration and to release him. I made that request as vice president.
They denied that request. My other major purpose was to just see Abrego Garcia, to see if he's alive. Nobody has heard from him since he was disappeared. He tried to make a phone call from the Baltimore detention center after he was illegally abducted, but he couldn't do that.
So my purpose was to meet with him, to be able to tell his wife Jennifer and his family that he was alive. And despite all the circumstances, he said that his biggest worry was about his family. Well, it was an emotional news conference with his wife standing there with you. You know, while you were in El Salvador, the White House was counter programming, effectively releasing information about Mr.
Abregos Garcia's background, including a police report suggest he's a member of Ms. 13, details about a restraining order from his wife, who ultimately dropped the matter, and a police report in which an officer said he suspected Mr. Abrego Garcia may have been involved in human trafficking. Now, he's never been charged with a crime, but is his past complicating the broader argument that you are trying to make here about due process?
Well, what Donald Trump is trying to do is change the subject. Let's make no. No bones about that. Right.
This subject is that the Trump administration is ignoring a Supreme Court order 9 to nothing to facilitate his return because they admitted in court, they, the Trump administration, that he'd been wrongfully detained. Now, what I have said is Donald Trump and his administration either put up or shut up in court. Instead of litigating this through social media, here's what the judge in the court case said, and I want to read it. To be precise.
On April 16, she said that the Trump administration had presented no evidence, no evidence linking abrego Garcia to Ms. 13 or to any terrorist activity, end quote. So if you have evidence, take it to the court, that's where we litigate these things. And otherwise just shut up on social media.
You know, the other thing that we witnessed at the White House this week, Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was a Maryland woman who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, you're very familiar with this, was at the White House. And she did speak from the White House briefing room. I want to play a little bit of what she had to say, get your reaction on the other side. Take a look.
To have a senator from Maryland who didn't even acknowledge or barely acknowledge my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grandbaby without a grandmother so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that's not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more right than I do for my daughter? What is your response to Mrs. Warren?
My heart goes out to the Warren family. They suffered, experienced an unspeakable tragedy in the murder of their daughter. And I said at the time that my heart goes out to the Warren family. And I'm very glad that the killer of Rachel has been convicted in a court of law.
That is how we hold guilty people accountable. The courts of law are also where people get to have their due process, so we don't unfairly punish people who don't have criminal records. And so my view is you can crack down and hold guilty people accountable and also respect the due process rights of everybody who is in court. And I'm not sure why Abrego Garcia's rights should be denied based on an awful murder that he had absolutely nothing to do with.
Let me ask you about the broader optics of this trip. You actually posted your meeting on social media after it took place. The president of El Salvador also posted one on social media trying to mock the moment he said, quote, kilma Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the death camps and torture, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador. Now, you said these drinks were staged, essentially brought over by waiters who were ordered to do so by the El Salvadoran government.
Do you think you walked into a trap here set up by the president of El Salvador? Absolutely not. They had no intention of letting me meet with Abrego Garcia until they felt the pressure. They felt the pressure from people saying, why are you complicit in this illegal scheme?
Why are you denying his wife, his lawyer, anybody, the opportunity to speak with him? So my mission was to be able to say that he is at least alive. You're right. It's the lengths that both, you know, El Salvadorian President UK And Donald Trump will go to deceive people are boundless.
Right. In this case, they did order the waiters, the government people, to bring these two glasses that, you know, appear to be margaritas. I have no idea. We didn't touch them.
And they tried to manipulate it to make it look like Mr. Rogers Garcia's margarita had been drunk. In other words, the liquid was lower. But they screwed up in their scheme because if you look at the rims of the glasses, I don't know if it was salt or sugar, but there's no gap in them.
So nobody touched the margaritas. They want to pretend that this is some sort of tropical paradise. When he was in one of the most notorious prisons in the world, you think it was pressure? Was that the key reason, you think, why the government ultimately, as you're about to leave El Salvador, brought him to you?
Yes, absolutely. I think the images of soldiers blocking us from trying to see us or Garcia and the press conferences we have with local media where I pointed out that El Salvador is actually violating international law by preventing Mr. Abrego Garcia from having any communication with anybody. The White House says Mr.
Abrego Garcia is never coming back. Senator, how far are you willing to go to bring him back to the United States? Well, the Supreme Court has said they must facilitate his return, and they have the option of holding Trump administration lawyers in contempt for refusing to do that. I know that the embassy in El Salvador has not been instructed by the administration to lift the finger in accordance with the court order.
Now, Attorney General Bundy did say the United States would send an airplane down. So when I met the vice president of El Salvador, I said, of course, we're not asking you to smuggle Grego Garcia back to the United States. Just open the prison, let him walk out, and then train. General Bonnie says we'll send a plane.
So there are also pressures we can put on the government of El Salvador, including through, you know, you know, people deciding not to invest in El Salvador, Americans not traveling El Salvador. So I think there are other pressure points here. You mention the courts. Given the fact that the Supreme Court has ordered the administration to facilitate the return of Mr.
Abrego Garcia. Mr. Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador. Do you think that the Trump administration is ignoring the courts?
Do you think that the country is currently in a constitutional crisis? Oh, yes, we are. They're very much flouting the courts as we speak. As the courts have said, facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing.
And they are doing nothing. Yes, they're absolutely in violation of the court orders as we speak. If this is a constitutional crisis, as you say, what should the response be from Democrats? What recourse do you have?
Well, we will keep pushing back. Again, the courts can impose sanctions on on the Trump administration. The Trump administration is going to pay the government of El Salvador $15 million to take these prisoners, including the illegally abducted Abrego Garcia. I can tell you when they make that request to the Congress, because those monies have to be appropriated, I don't think American taxpayers are going to want to spend one penny going to El Salvador to continue to hold somebody illegally and in violation of the United States Constitution.
Let me ask you about the reaction from within the Democratic Party. While some Democrats support you, others say this is not the issue that Democrats should be focused on. Governor Gavin Newsom of California calling Mr. Grego Garcia's case, quote, the distraction of the day.
He argues Democrats are playing right into the hands of President Trump, an issue he wants to be focused on. How you respond to Governor Newsom? I don't think it's ever wrong to stand up for the Constitution. And this is not about one man.
If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights for everybody. I think Americans are tired of elected officials or politicians who are all finger to the wind what's going this way, what's going that way. And anybody who can't stand up for the Constitution and the right of due process doesn't deserve to lead. All right, Senator, thank you so much for being here today.
Please keep us posted on this matter. We really appreciate it and do enjoy. Happy Easter with your family. Thank you.
Thank you for being here. When we come back, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana joins me next. Welcome back. And joining me now is Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.
Senator Kennedy, welcome back to MEET the press. Thank you so much for being here. Let's start off with this case of Mr. Abrego Garcia.
You heard my conversation with Senator Van Hollen. The Justice Department called the deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia A, quote, administrative error. The Supreme Court has ordered the government to facilitate Mr.
Abrego Garcia's return. Should Mr. Abrego Garcia be returned to the United States, Senator? Well, Chris is my friend and I respect him, and he's certainly entitled his opinion, but in my judgment, he is utterly and gloriously wrong.
I mean, most of this gauzy rhetoric is just rage bait unless you're next level obtuse. You know that Mr. Garcia is never coming back to the United States ever. And that's not because of President Trump.
That's because of Mr. President Bukele. He said up front in o office that he was not going to return Mr. Garcia.
No federal judge, even Jay Wilkinson has authority over a sovereign country. Besides that, it should not go unnoticed that Mr. Bukele is much closer to President Xi in China than he is to President Trump. She is spending billions of dollars to build infrastructure in El Salvador.
And I wouldn't be surprised if they discussed this case. The, the final point I would make, whether you agree with it or not, is Bukele hates MS.13 and Mr. Garcia allegedly is a member of MS.13. The other point I would make is that Chris says Mr.
Garcia has had no due process. He's been in front of 17 judges, some of them twice, probably $5 million worth of legal fees and he hadn't had to pay a dime. Final point I'd make, look, this was a screw up. In my opinion.
The administration would admit it, but this was a screw up. Mr. Garcia was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. He was sent to El Salvador.
The Democrats say, look, you know, we told you Trump is a threat to democracy. This is going to happen every other Thursday afternoon. I don't see any pattern here. I mean, Sunday teams may fly, but I doubt it, Senator.
So this is notable because you are saying in your words, this is a screw up. I mean, are you concerned that more mistakes could happen? Well, sure. None of us want mistakes.
Mistakes, mistakes, bad. Doing it, right, Good. Yeah, but it was a screw up. And I understand why the administration is bowed up and said we won't admit it's a mistake because if they do, they'll have their throats torn out.
But it was a screw up. I don't see any pattern here. I've been listening to my Democratic friends say for, I don't know, since God was a child that Trump is a threat to democracy. I don't, I don't see any pattern here.
I see a screw up. Well, and the concern for some people is that if there's one screw up, it does become a slippery slope. It is worth noting Mr. Garcia has not ever been charged with a crime.
And in terms of what the courts are saying, they're not saying this is under the jurisdiction of the President of El Salvador. They're saying this is the responsibility of the US Government. The Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to facilitate his return. And in a ruling this week, a three judge panel on the US Court of Appeals wrote, quote, the government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.
That is the foundation of our constitutional order. Do you believe, Mr. Abrego Garcia, it is due to have due process? Well, I think he, number one, he's had due process.
But if your question is, should he have been given a hearing before he was sent to El Salvador? I think the answer is yes. But let me say something about the Fourth Circuit opinion written by Jay Wilkinson. Judge Wilkinson is a very clever, self confident guy, but he left out one part in his opinion.
What does he expect Trump to do? Declare war and go get Bu? I mean, he brought Boucle to America. President Bu sat in the Oval Office in front of God and country and said, I'm not sending this guy back.
So I don't know what Judge Wilkinson expects Trump to do. Well, the president could simply have asked for it back and he may have brought him. Let me ask you about something you said just a couple of months ago. How do you know he hasn't?
But, but Kristen, how do you know he has? Well, he said he's not his own plan. So I'm just basing this off of his public comments. The president says, let me just play something that you said.
This is a couple months ago during a confirmation hearing for some of the president's DOJ gets reaction on the other side. Don't ever, ever take the position that you're not going to follow the order of a federal court. Now on our judiciary has an equal branch of government, has its legitimacy. It doesn't have an army.
Ever say you're not going to follow the order of the court. Do you believe that President Trump is following the orders of the courts right now? Yes. And I don't believe that President Trump will defy a federal judicial order.
If he does, I'll call him out on it. I believe what I said in the clip. I love the rule of law. I love it like the devil loves sin.
I think if we start not following federal judicial orders, we undermine the system entirely. Now, that doesn't mean you can't criticism. You can criticism, you can criticize them, you can appeal them, but you can't choose to not follow them. And I haven't seen President Trump do that.
And if he does, I'll, I'll say very loudly and clearly that I think he's wrong. Okay, let me ask you about something else President Trump said this week. He said he would like to send what he called, and I'm quoting him, homegrown criminals, meaning US Citizens, to foreign prisons like the one in El Salvador. Senator, do you think the law allows the president of the United states to send U.S.
citizens to a foreign prison? No, ma'. Am. Nor does it, nor should it, nor should it be considered appropriate or moral.
We have our own laws. We have the 8th amendment to the Constitution. We shouldn't send prisoners to foreign countries, in my judgment. Okay, let me switch gears here a little bit.
Ask about President Trump's agenda, because I know you're going to be very focused on that. Senate Republicans split right now, Senator, over whether to allow tax hikes on wealthy Americans as a part of that budget bill that you're trying to pass. Bloomberg News is reporting that the House proposal would set the rate at 40% for taxpayers earning a million dollars or more per year. That's up from the current top tax rate of 37%.
Senator, would you support increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans? Not sure yet. I'd like to see the language, hear my thoughts. Question.
Generally, I don't believe in making tax policy on the basis of class warfare. And I think the people who are raising this issue, they're entitled to, of course, but they're asking the wrong question. I listen for under President Biden, my Democrat colleagues for four years asked who needs to pay more in taxes. That's, to me, is the wrong question.
The right question is, what the hell happened to the money? And I hope that's the question that we address fundamentally in the reconciliation. But, Senator, it sounds like you're leaving the door open to the possibility that you could ultimately, at some point, support an increase in taxes if you thought it was the best way to get that budget below the finish line. Well, we're in the process of putting the bill together, and here's what will probably happen.
The House and the Senate will spend about, I don't know, hopefully no more than 60 days trying to reach a consensus. Everything's on the table. We won't reach a consensus. And then we'll have to go to the White House and meet with the president.
And after a few hugs and a couple hot cocoa, the president will arbitrate here and say this is him and this is out. And then he's going to have to put his muscle behind, behind it to pass it. But this bill is important. It's our way of lowering prices.
You lower prices by cutting spending, by deregulating the economy and by designing a tax code that looks like somebody designed it on purpose in a way that stimulates growth so wages go up. And that's, that's my objective in all this. Senator, we are almost out of time, but I think no tensions have been mounting between the president and the Fed chair. Would you support President Trump removing Jerome Powell as Fed chair?
I don't think the president, any president, has the right to remove the Federal Reserve chairman. I think the Federal Reserve ought to be independent. I think that Jay Powell and President Trump need to sit down and once again have a hug and a cup of hot cocoa and work it out. My experience with Jay Powell is he's got tiger blood.
He's going to do what he thinks is right and he's not going to go down in history as the Federal Reserve chairman that allowed inflation to become wild as a March hare. And he's going to do what he thinks he's got to do. All right, Senator Kennedy, thank you so much. I want to wish you and your family a very happy Easter.
Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Stay informed with the NBC News app. Breaking news just coming in moments ago.
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Price is subject to change. Visit nbcnews.comxfinity for full offer terms and details. Welcome back to Panel. It's here NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Melanie Zenona, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Vogel Latino and Mark Short, former director of legislative affairs under President Trump.
Thank you all for being here. Happy Easter. We appreciate you being here on a holiday. Peter, let me start with you because we're talking about this matter with Mr.
Rodego Garcia, but it's really much broader than that because what we're witnessing is part of a large standoff between the Trump administration and the Courts. How do you see this playing out? Yeah, we rightly talked about how the president this week tried to make it about Roberto Garcia and whether he violated the law. The question is whether the President is violating the law.
Right. And there are rules to how this is done. And it's striking because of course, one person who cares very much about due process all last year was Donald Trump because he went to the court himself. Right.
Obviously indicted him and prosecuted at one point convicted. And he availed himself every possible argument in a court of law as he is entitled to do in his defense. What we're talking about here is that even a man like Garcia Abrego should have the opportunity to avail himself of that. And a judge said he should not be deported.
Senator Kennedy told you it was a screw up. The question is, if you screw up, what do you do about the Queen Court? You have to do something about it. Facilitate as active verb says judge.
Yeah. And Mel, you have the Democrats watching this. Senator Van Hollen went to El Salvador at a time when Democrats really the process of searching for a leader. And as one a Democrat said to me, he actually did something.
This went beyond messaging. How is this playing out on Capitol Hill? What a Democrat saying to you? I do think there is a divide in the Democratic Party right now about whether this was the right fighter, is the right fight.
And certainly they are Democrats who feel like this is a core defined principle of democracy in the Democratic Party. There was a lot of activists and the base was very praising of what Yonah Holland did, that he actually went there. But there's another camp of Democrats who really feel like this is playing into Trump's hands and that they're taking the bait. They would much rather be talking about the economy and the terror fight.
So they are worried that they're just on Trump's turf right now when it comes to immigration. This is an issue that Trump is still very strong on. So this is really encapsulating the broader fight that has been playing out the Democratic Party since day one. I think you're absolutely right.
In fact, we have two Democrats who encapsulate that divide you talk about. Now. This is Governor Yada Newsom and they fight for former top Obama administration official on two very different sides of the spectrum. Take a.
This is the distraction of the day, the art of distraction. Don't get distracted by distractions. We say here we Ziggy and Zag. This is the debate they want.
This is their 8020 issue as they've described it. If our response to the Father and husband US Citizen being sent illegally in defiance of the Supreme Court order to a foreign gulag is to vomit up some pollsteps at talking points about Paris. To turn our back to it like that is absurd. Like, who are we and what do we stand for if we do that?
Race, Russia. We should mention he's married to a US Citizen. But how do you see this divide playing out? So I would say that the Democrats and deals do both things at the same time.
We can talk about the economy, we can talk about the breaking of the law on the Trump administration because they sent someone that basically wasn't supposed to meet to an El Salvador in Gulang. But here's the thing. In isolation, they seem separate. But when you start looking at what the administration is doing so effectively right now, when you start talking about tariffs and railing tariffs, when he starts talking about them, he has nose of judiciary.
When he starts talking about Doge, what he's doing right now is a massive power grab for centralizing power in the administrative branch. And in doing so, if we do not have the checks and balances as our founding fathers had envisioned, where do we go? Congress is supposed to check on tariffs. The judiciary is supposed to check on the rule of law.
You can actually see that right now the markets are the only ones checking him because they're the ones that are saying, wait a second, what he did right now is screwing up the bond markets. So we're going to tank you. And that's why he pushed back. So that's the whole purpose.
We do have rule of law and he's not doing it. We need to talk about the economy. Sure. Leave with that first, but then remind people that this is an administrative power grab in ways that we've never seen before.
Mark, your response to the fact that, boy, the administration does see this as a very potent issue for them. Well, sure it is. I think that the president still enjoys favorable ratings on immigration policy. I think that this latest, this last week has been really good for.
I think it's really good for Donald Trump. I think if we're focused on immigration, you're talking about somebody who's a wife beater, who's gone as judge. Senator can be sent for judges 17 different times. I think it's hard for a lot of Americans feel sympathy on this.
And I think for the president and his team, we have a lot of the central planners, as you said, inside his trade policy team, destroying $12 trillion in market capitalization. They'd much rather be talking about immigration than what they're doing on the economy. Mark, let me follow up with you quickly. On the economy.
I was struck by the fact that Senator Kennedy outright said he did not think that President Trump has the authority to get rid of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell. What was your take on that and kind of where things stand? Well, I think the president, even though he nominated Jerome Powell was wanted to remove him. He was angry with those who recommended him.
I think that he would want to test this. The courts have suggested some of his independent branches, the executive branch has that authority. I do think that stepping back the Federal Reserve has enormous power economy and doesn't have many much accountability to the American voter. Having said that for the same reasons that he's destroyed this much market value already, kind of the trade policy, I think the markets would push back significantly any sort of suggestion of replacing palace while things have happened.
You've written extensively about this. I mean how do you see this playing out? And it comes against the backdrop of all this volatility, uncertainty. Senator Elizabeth Warren saying she thinks the markets would crash if the president were to get rid of the Fed share.
Yeah, I mean that's possible. They've already obviously plunged quite a lot as it is. And it's he wants to change the subject. We talked about that with a regular c.
Change the subject to Jay Powell. The economy of the markets may be doing badly but it's not his fault. It's Jay Powell's fault. Now as Mark said, this is a legal question and he tried to talk about doing this in the first term.
J. Powell consulted the lawyers about this and the lawyers told him look, you got a case of independent, he can't get rid of you. But here's the thing, you're going to have to defend yourself out of your own pocket. Jay Powell told people he will spend every last nickel he has to defend it.
And that means therefore you have one fight. You go back to Supreme Court. One more case before the Supreme Court. So even if you want to fire J.
Powell, it may not be practical to do in the short term. There could be economic consequences. Now how are people responding to those tensions between President Fed chair on the Hill I can see right now there is a fragile truce between the free market Republicans and Donald Trump when it comes to the issue of tariff. Prior to the 90 day clause, there had been momentum going for a bill that would bring in Trump's tariff authority.
There was talk about forcing a floor vote to provoke some of those tariffs. After the 90 day pause, the momentum really stalled for that. But if Trump were to fire the federate, I think that would be a red line for some Republicans. Well, not just for Republicans, but for people outside investors, for foreign, for foreign allies.
People are watching. He's going to disrupt the global markets in ways that we've never seen. And even now with these ideas of the terrorists, there's so many people that now, different countries now that are great, their own trade agreements that we're not involved in. And we just expect that we're going to be able to slip right in when we're ready.
All right, guys, pause. We'll come back for much more with you all. But when we come back, Harvard's clash with President Trump army. The president takes a look back at one of the leaders of the elite institution.
Welcome back. President Trump escalated his battle with Harvard this week, freezing billions of dollars in federal funds, threatening to block the university from enrolling international students and calling to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status. The move came after Harvard rejected a list of demands that would have required sweeping reforms at the university, which it called, quote, unprecedented and said violates Harvard's First Amendment rights. In 1986, Harvard President Derek Bachman joined me, the press, to defend the diversity of its curriculum.
I don't think there should be certain courses required for every student in America. One of the glories of the United States is that we educate a much higher proportion of young people in any other country. And that means there's enormous diversity and they start with many different levels of preparation. So I think we should capitalize on our diversity and have many different approaches to undergraduate education.
I do think to say we should have many different approaches doesn't mean individual colleges should just let things go into anarchy. And I think there was too much tendency in that direction and much of it has been corrected. And every university ought to tighten up and reform its own curriculum. But the answers that they arrive at will not be the same for all institutions.
And that's a healthy thing. When we come back, they are drawing massive crowds as they tour the country fighting President Trump. Is the left having their own Tea Party moment? More with the panel next.
We believe in an economy that works for all, not just for Musk and his fellow billionaires. You even voted for Donald Trump in the past and are open to changing your mind. Come on in. Welcome back.
The panel is still here, Maria Teresa. We are seeing Senator Sanders and Congressman Alexandria Casio Cortez hold these rallies across the country, warning of what they say is an emerging oligarchy. Do you think this is where the party is. Is it galvanizing the party?
Is it moving the party further to the left? What do you make of these? I'll look at what's happening right in Folsom county in California. It is a county of 85,000 people, and 30,000 people showed up to that rally.
And I think that they are touching on the moment that we're, as Trump did, we're in a populous moment. And when you have almost a third of registered voters who sat it out saying, the system's not for me, it's too icky and government is not functioning for me, there are many folks there. And I do think that there's an opportunity for the Democrats to embrace these masses, speak about modernizing our government for the 21st century. I mean, Trump is taking a sledgehammer to it.
And he could say, you know what, let's not be part of successful. Let's use this moment to reimagine our institutions for the 21st century, because we were constructed 100 years ago. But then start talking about moderate policies. What they want, at the end of the day, the majority of American people want.
They want someone fighting for them in a way that they understand and they recognize that, yes, the cost of AIDS are too high. Yes, if you do mass importations, who's actually going to pick our food? Who's going to basically take care of our hotels? And you talk to right now to airline industry.
Nobody wants to come to United States right now because they're afraid that they're going to get deported. I mean, you hear about the stories of, you know, tourists that came here wrongfully and got shackled and sent back to Germany. If you look at, there's a piece in the Washington Post that across Europe, people who are intending to come here for the summer, they're canceling their plans. That's not actually policy.
But the Democrats have to be strong and say, look, what we're seeing on the ground is a swell of pay attention. We want our democracy to work, but you have to go to policies that, yes, we are. The ripple effects are staggering as you lay them out. Now, you've been to these rallies, actually, and part of the messaging is Senator Sanders saying, you know, you should think about running as an independent.
How do you think they're playing and are they helping in any way? Because right now, the Democratic Democratic Party is really struggling to find a coherent strategy and message that they can all get behind. I don't think the runaway's an independent message on this Democratic lawmaker. When we made those comments and the response was an eyebrow emoji.
There are other aspects of these rallies that Democratic leadership is looking to as a playbook for re energizing a party that was incredibly depressed to ria's point after Trump won in November. And one thing that was really remarkable to me, not just the size of the crowd but how many people I talked to who told me they'd never been to a political event or rally in their entire life. So one thing that these rallies are seem to be succeeding at is getting people disenfranchised, disenfranchised voters more involved in the political process, particularly working class voters like I was Las Vegas, for example, huge working class voter population and that was going to keep them across the city mega. Peter, you know, it's not just these rallies that they're people taking to the streets.
We saw at weekend all across the country really speaking out against protesting the Trump agenda. And it comes as the Democratic Party is still largely a leaderless party. It needs some energy. Right.
Democratic Party as of November was demoralized, defeated, had no energy, all deflated. They weren't the streets. They didn't know what to do. They're fighting each other about who's responsible.
It's liberals, faultless and modern spot whatever. And now they do seem to have some energy thanks to Trump and Musk because he gave them something to rally around. But they don't have a leader. You're right.
They do not have a leader. We do not see on the horizon yet the obvious person who's going to take them into the next stage or whatever it is and help define them in the way that Brooklyn helped define the party when he came in the 90s way rock Obama helped define the party he came over. I don't see that leader at this moment. Maybe it's too early.
Mark, one of the parallels that is being drawn in this moment is to the inception of the Tea Party movement, which we all remember started during the Obama administration. Do you see those parallels playing out? How do you see it? Sure.
I think there's a lot of energy on the left, but I think it's also, I think we live in really unserious times. Kristen, I think the reality is that you're highlighting that Bernie Sanders AFC rally at the same time that Donald Trump is pursuing Bernie Sanders trade policy. The Trump administration is advocating tax increases on job payers in America. The economic policy is exactly what AOC Bernie Sanders wanted.
And that's not where the Tea Party started. The Tea Party started with cutting spending and cutting the size of government. And although the Trump administration is doing that through Doge, you'll get so many other points as Marie actually made about centralization inside the executive branch. That is actually a lot of economic policies that are exactly what Brie Sanders is out of her career.
Yeah. I mean, you think about a leaderless party. Maria Theresa and remarkably, former President Biden stepped into the spotlight this week, made some pretty powerful words about President Trump, his agenda. What do you make of President Biden within the first 100 days, which is much earlier than we've seen past presidents come out and speak out against his successor?
Well, I don't think we've seen any other president be so effective in their policies in 100 days. I mean, whether we like it or not, Trump has disrupted the movement every single day. He is attacking an institution, whether it's the media, whether it's on power, whether it's philanthropy, whether it's universities. I mean, he is full throttle.
So I think that one of the things that Biden is saying is that this is not only not normal, but remind us of what it means to have a decency in presidency when you connection. You know, one of the things, you know, government system working is like sometimes you want to feel like government's not working because you're not getting shocked by it. But you know that we turn on the lights, the lights work and that's government working. Yeah.
Now, a lot of Democrats are questioning whether former President Biden is the right messenger at this moment or is he muddying the message because they want to turn the page for 2024. They want to turn the page from 2024. I think there are probably some Democrats who don't want to see Biden. There were reports that, you know, during the convention, you have reached out that I wanted helpful and numbers like, I think we're good here.
But look, he is someone who still has a real connection with working class voters, given his roots and his background. And he is someone who back in 2020 was the messenger for normalcy and a return to change or return to the adult room. And probably that is the message that Democrats seem to be coalescing around once again. Yeah.
Mark, how do you think Republicans see this moment when you do see Democrats kind of struggling to figure out what their message is? I mean, do you think it emboldens President Trump or could we see a moment where, for example, Garcia Case backfires against the president? Look, I think that for Republicans, Joe Biden's the gift that keeps on giving. There's Nothing like more than to see, you know, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden is the future of the Democrat Party because there's not a lot of future there.
So I think for Republicans, sure, this is important to see how sort of disorganized the Democratic Party is. But you know, on a legal front person, I think the last week we have seen something different where there have been district court judges that Trump appointed will against him. You highlighted the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, a Reagan appointee having a strong position against Trump, now even the Supreme Court. So I do think we're at a different point today.
Yeah. And Peter, just finally with the 30 seconds or so we have left, it's not just President Biden speaking out. It's former President Obama and it's former President Clinton in this extraordinary. He was speaking at the Oklahoma City bombing Memorial yesterday.
Yeah, yeah. But I think what matters, frankly is when dolphins speak out. Right. We saw this last week.
Lisa McKowski, senator from Alaska who's not a fan of Trump, say very candidly that the reason she doesn't is that she's afraid of retaliation. And you know, she's a nice state senator. Right. She ought to feel some confidence in that.
But it is true that a lot of polls are uncomfortable when some things are going on, but they're not willing to speak out for a lot of reasons. Alright, guys, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. That is all for today.
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