Meet the Press NOW — April 17

Welcome to the press. Now I'm Chris Welker in Washington. We are following the breaking news out of Tallahassee where a shooting at Florida State University has claimed the life of one person and injured six others. We're expecting a news conference from officials in just a few moments.

Police said one person is in custody. No more yet on motive. We do not know the identity of the shooter or the person killed. Officials of Tallahassee Memorial Health Care say they are treating one victim in critical condition and five others in serious condition.

Now, this all happened around noon today when the university sent students an alert urging them to seek shelter in response to a shooting near the student union a short time ago. Tallahassee police confirmed the campus has been secured, but this was the scene on campus's students evacuated. You can see them walking down the hall with their hands in the air. One eyewitness who was still sheltering place described the police presence on campus in response to the shooting.

In terms of right now there are U.S. marshals out here. There's actually people with their hands up right outside my window walking into the carry building. There's a man there with a sniper.

And all around me, I can see as far as I can, nothing but blue lights from the police presence. It's only grown since I have been sitting here. Now speaking in the Oval Office while hosting the Italian prime minister, President Trump said he was fully briefed on the situation. I've been briefed on the Florida State University Tallahassee active shooting.

I guess it's an active shooter. Fully briefed as to where we are right now. It's a shame. It's a horrible thing.

Horrible. Then things like this take place and we'll have more to say about it later. Joining me now is NBC News law enforcement intelligence correspondent Tom Winter. And NBC News correspondent George Solis is following the story from Miami.

Tom, let me start with you. I know you are tracking the investigation. What's the latest that your sources are telling you? Right, Chris, we do expect that briefing here in a little bit.

And what we're expecting, officials say, is that this death toll, which stands at least one person, may actually climb. It's our understanding that there's a suspect in custody, that suspect may have been injured prior to being put into custody or in the act of being put into custody, but is expected to survive. Specifically how all of this happened, it's a little bit unclear. And so it's not known, you know, specifically when he started firing, if he was going after a specific individual or group of individuals.

Or if this was something more random or if this individual, the shooter, was a student of the university or was somebody from the outside. So certainly a lot of questions as far as the sequence of events here. There were some initial reports of second suspect potentially. We get that a lot, unfortunately, in incidents like this.

And that appears, according to multiple law enforcement officials in Florida and federal officials, to not be the case at this hour. But again, the investigation is quite early. One thing I have been struck by, Kristen, is just for the students that have taught to us, the eyewitnesses, just how calm they are. And you and I growing up did not grow up in a time where students were taught basically active shooter training as part of their fire drills or their normal course of business in school.

And so it's clear that a number of these students have gone through that training and that that training kicked in, hopefully that today and a swift police response is why we're not being told that this is some incident where 20 or 30 people have died. But certainly a tragedy for the victims of this, their families in that university. It really is a tragedy. And you're right to point out that context, the fact, Tom, that we grew up in a very different world.

And tragically, this has now become all too familiar. What are you learning about the shooter at this hour, Tom? Yeah, still a little bit of confusion there as far as the name that's coming to us. Undoubtedly in Florida on the ground, they know who this person is at this point, but we don't have a lot of those details.

And of course, that's making it difficult for us to look at motive because so often we've seen with the people that have been arrested over the years for these types of incidents that they've left behind a note or some sort of social media presence that can help us at least understand a little bit more about their background, if not motive. That information gristed we just don't have at this hour. And hopefully we'll be able to get some more information from authorities. But that information is still something we're waiting to get in a sense that we can confirm and feel comfortable enough to report.

Yeah, I know a lot of moving parts. This investigation is still in its very early stages. George Silves, let me turn to Una. We're talking to school officials.

What are they telling you? It's a very somber and just harrowing day for them to have to relive something that is played out so often across the country. We talk about these school shootings. You see images there with the students with their hands raised so hard to process what has happened.

Many of them are going to have to process this over the next several days. We would note that as officials have noted that the threat has been neutralized. There are still a number of areas on campus that students will not be allowed to because they're still considered an active crime scene. KRISTEN so it just gives you a sense that there will be no sense of normalcy on campus in the coming days, maybe even weeks, as this investigation unfolds.

Again, we are expecting to learn more at that 4:30 press conference. And one thing that we should note here is that there appears to be here a case where you have students that survived the Parkland shooting that were at FSU with a note. Fred Guttenberg, who put out a very powerful statement on X noting, and I will reiterate it here, he writes, america is broken. My daughter Jamie was murdered in the Parkland school shooting.

Many of her friends were lucky enough to survive that shooting, went on to attend fsu. Incredibly, some of them were just part of their second school shooting and some were in the student union today. As a father, all I ever wanted after the Parkland shooting was to help our children be safe. Sadly, because of the many people who refuse to do right things about reducing gun violence, I'm not surprised by what happened today.

MEREDITH how for a heartbroken father who's watching these images, much as we all did today, play out, again, we are learning again, the threat neutralized one person in custody, one dead. We know in these situations, tragically, these numbers tend to fluctuate. So again, we are very eager to hear what officials will say at this 430 briefing. Again, we've heard from the president.

We've heard from Governor DeSantis, we heard from a number of elected officials about their thoughts and fears related to this incident. But again, still so many questions of Tom pointed out about a motive. And we'll hopefully learn a little bit more a little bit later this evening. KRISTEN it's just so powerful to hear from Fred Gutenberg.

I mean, it's just unimaginable that some of these students have now experienced their second school shooting. George and Tom, thank you both so much for your reporting. We're going to continue to follow this breaking news. We'll of course, bring you that 4:30 press conference live when it happens.

We do want to turn to politics now. And new signs that the tariffs may be taking a political toll on President Trump. Amid growing concern at home and around the world about the impact of global trade war. The president Today hosted Italian Prime Minister George Maloney at the White House after yesterday meeting with Japanese delegations as the White House works to hammer out new trade deals.

Speaking to reporters during the meeting, President Trump said that of course there will be a deal with the EU before his 90 day period for reduced tariffs is up, but also said there is no rush and that the US Is in control. Everybody wants to make a deal and if they don't want to make a deal, we'll make the deal for them because that's what's going to happen. I think I can say for Scott and the other people that are working on it that we're listening and we're going to be very fair to people. But you know, we're the one that really sets the deal and that's what we'll be doing.

President Trump raising some eyebrows earlier in the day after he criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and again called the independent agency to lower interest rates. On social media, the President said that the Fed chair is, quote, always too late and wr and added Powell's termination cannot come fast enough. He repeated that criticism in the Oval Office this afternoon, saying that if he wanted Powell out, he would be out and repeatedly called it into lower rates. That comes one day after Chairman Powell warned that Trump's tariffs would likely worsen inflation.

I asked President Trump late last year if he would try to dismiss the Fed chair. This is what he told me. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said he will not leave his post even if you ask him to. Will you try to replace Jerome Powell?

No, I don't think so. I don't see it. But I think if I told him to, he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn't.

But if I told him to, he would. You don't have plans to do that, right? No, I don't worry about the economy and frustration over inflation were arguably the biggest factors in Mr. Trump winning the White House.

But a new poll out from our friends at CNBC shows a public souring on his economic leadership. 55% now disapprove of President Trump's handling the economy. That's higher than his overall approval number and the highest disapproval number on the economy he's ever gotten. In the CNBC All American Economic Survey.

Broken down by party, his handling the economy is still very high among Republicans, but underwater among Democrats and independents. And Americans are also growing more pessimistic about the economy. Back In October, just 17% of respondents that the economy will get worse. That number is now up to almost 50%.

The only two issues in the survey where President Trump is above water are immigration related tariffs and inflation earn him the lowest marks. NBC Michelle Sidor has the very latest from the White House. In a moment we will be joined by CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman. Yamiche, thank you so much for being here.

So let's talk about the pressure that the White House is under. The president is under try to get a deal. We have heard Peter Navarro, his top trade Advisor, say repeatedly 90 deals in 90 days. Did the president signal he's close to get a deal today?

Well, the president said he feels like he's in a good place when it comes to making these deals. He's said over and over again that his terror strategy, chaotic as it may be, inconsistent as it may be, that it is bringing countries to the table. So the White House was saying that there are a number of countries that it's negotiating with, including Japan, the eu, South Korea. The president has also said that he's negotiated specifically with the European Union as a bloc.

But it's interesting, of course, that Italian prime minister, someone that is referred to as the Trump whisperer, someone the president called fantastic today, that she is here, I'm talking to him. You can imagine that they are talking about that deal and the president is feeling good about where they stand. The Italian prime minister also said that she feels like the US Is quote, reliable as a partner and that she wouldn't be here. She didn't think so.

So it's an interesting point of view. That being said, until something is actually inked, I think it's still a lot of there's a lot of questions of what the White House will actually get out of this, ultimately get out of it. So we'll have to see how this works out. Kristen and Yamiche, of course we're reporting on the fact that the president's really ramping his language towards the Fed chair.

You heard him there say if I ask him to leave, he'll leave level set with us. What's the reality check here? Can you just remove the Fed chair? Well, Kristen, I know you were doing at 6:12am But I was not on the Internet.

But the president was posting messages about Fed Chair Jerome Powell saying that he his termination couldn't come quickly enough, fast enough for him. So the president is clearly wanting to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell. As you said, it's a question of whether or not he can actually do so. It's a big one.

We know that the act, the Federal Reserve chair Act, Federal Reserve act that established. The Fed said that the generals there, I should say the governors, they call them, the officials there, they serve 14 year terms. And Fed Chair Jerome how is supposed to be until May 2026. And the legislation says that people can only be removed for cause and that policy decisions, the courts have found are not part of the cause factor there.

So of course the President has been pushing the sort of issues here. It's not, it's not it would be surprising if he tried to remove Fed chairs even if he ended up having to have a battle in court. Kristen, we'll have to see how it plays out. You, thank you so much, Steve.

Lisa, let me head over to you and get your take. You just heard what you need to have to say about the Fed Chair. What are the implications of these mounting tensions between the President and the Fed Chair? Well, in the first instance it creates a certain volatility, a certain undermining of confidence in the outlook for the Federal Reserve and Federal Reserve policy.

If it goes further and the Federal Reserve Chair is removed, it would have much more serious consequences in terms of undermining trust in the US bond market, the most deepest important one in the world, as well as undermining trust in the US Dollar. All of a sudden Federal Reserve policy would not be seen as an independent policy, but one that is made and behooven and otherwise linked to politics and the political will of the President. But it's complic, Steve. I mean he can't by law, he can't just remove him.

That is the general understanding of almost every legal expert who's spoken about it. I think your prior guest just said there is this clause that allows him to be removed for cause, which is generally seen as malfeasance, which is not believed to be linked to a disagreement over Federal Reserve monetary policy. By the way, it's worth pointing out the Fed Chair does not make policy on his own. There are 11 voting members of the Federal Market Committee, 19 total members of the committee.

They make policy, that is their decision by a vote which is recorded and made public. So you can fire the chair. I suppose that doesn't guarantee you're gonna get the policy you want. But then if you think about what would happen next, which is really the scary part, if you were to fire the chair, appoint somebody in that person's place, all policy, anything from the Federal Reserve would now have a political stenched out to it.

And Steve, before I let you go, give us the top lines from this CNBC polling. That's out today that if you're the White House shows some potentially worrying data there. Well, yes, the president's approval rating, his overall approval rating was fairly consistent with what we see. In fact, it was about equal with when he left office in 2020.

The big story there was the economic approval rating. As you know, Christian, I've been doing this poll for about 17 years. During the entire including during entire Trump presidency, during no period was the president's economic approval underwater. His views and his approval on the economy has always been the cornerstone strength of his presidency and of his political power in that regard.

Now he is underwater when it comes to the economy and underwater in a deep way. And the importance there is Democrats who are pollsters, I will tell you, they didn't think Democrats could be any more negative economically on the president. They got more negative and independents joined them in being deep. He still has strong support from his base.

There doesn't look to be much erosion there on the overall. But what is interesting is that Republican on handling of the economy at 78, it's a few points lower than the overall approval rating as well as on several key issues on tariffs and on inflation. The Republican numbers drop and they're more deeply negative for independence as well. Does it matter?

Well, Christian, that's exactly your department. I don't know the extent to which polling right now matters to this president either because of their it's still long until the congressional races, which by the way, our preference shows a slight preference for Democrats by just two points, pretty much unchanged in the last poll. So it's unclear at this point whether political polls like this matter to this president who's sort of willing to abide this kind of market turmoil as well as some of the other issues that are out there. Well, and Steve, I just talked to White House officials, downplayed the findings saying, look, it's one poll overall, his approval rating still, except it's not.

It's almost. There are multiple polls now that show this issue on the economy. By the way, I will point out to be fair, he's strong on immigration, closing the southern border. That's where he has a majority as well as deportation.

He has a smaller but still majority there. Well, Steve, we so appreciate you bringing us these new numbers. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.

Appreciate it. Coming up, the Justice Department releases new documents on the detention and deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. We have the details straight ahead. Plus, power play, the latest on the escalating fight between President Trump and the federal courts as the White House responds to the federal judge who says the administration ignored a court order.

Stay with us. You're watching MEET THE PRESS now. Welcome back. Facing pressure to provide evidence for their claims that Kamara Garcia is a violent gang member, the Justice Department has now released documents revealing details in the case of the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.

One of the documents, titled Gang Field Interview Sheet, details how law enforcement officials came to the conclusion that Mr. Grego Garcia was a member of the Ms. 13 gang, citing the clothes he was wearing, including a Chicago Bulls hat, and referencing a confidential source who advised he was a member of the gang. Abrego, Garcia's lawyer and his family denied he has any gang affiliation.

The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to, quote, facilitate his return to the US and this afternoon, President Trump was once again pressed if he would take any steps to do so. Well, I'm not involved in it. I'm going to respond by saying you'll have to speak to the lawyers, the doj. I've heard many things about him.

And we'll have to find out what the truth is. I was elected to get rid of those criminals, to get them out of our country or to put them away, but to get them out of our country. And I don't see how judges can take that authority away from a president. Meanwhile, Maryland Senator Chris Van Holland is in El Salvador, just a short distance from the notorious prison where he says he attempted to visit Mr.

Rodrigo Garcia, but was denied entry. We were stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint about 3 kilometers from Secot prison. We were told by the soldiers that they'd been ordered not to allow us to proceed any further than that point. I'm here to vouch for the judicial system in the United States which guarantees individuals the right to due process.

And that is the difference between being illegally detained and abducted like Omar Abrego Garcia and the right to have your day in court. Joining me now is NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly. So, Ryan, we are digging through these new papers that have been released by the Justice Department. What are your key takeaways?

What's that to you? Yeah, well, first one, this is largely sort of the media pushback, right, because these first came out through Pam Bondi's Twitter account and then announcing, you know, this is an underlying documentation. This is just not how due process normally works. It's not, we send someone to a foreign prison and then all of a sudden we're sending these documents afterwards when, you know, there's no way to contact him.

And you know, sort of, I guess you have his side of the story. This is someone who's being held in really horrific conditions, those persons before. But, you know, the case itself supports a little bit, you know, more of the underlying investigations from Prince George's county investigation. That's all happened in they originally encountered him in the Home Depot parking lot.

And there's a couple of factors in there that seem to suggest that certainly it's not, you know, beyond the reasonable that sort of thing. But I, I think the key thing here is that had this gone through the sort of normal process, this is someone who might not even be on our radar at all. This could have been handled sort of through the normal case rather than this extraordinary procedure where people in America are being sent to a foreign prison. And there was another remarkable development yesterday.

We learned about a temporary restraining order that was requested by his wife back in 2021. She's now speaking out about that, explaining it, giving a little bit more context. What are we learning there? Yeah, she said that she had previous experience with massive violence and that they eventually had sort of settled this and worked everything on the end, not of him, but with a different.

Correctly. Yeah, correct. So this was she was sort of saying based on that previous experience, that's the way the approach that she sort of took to this. But, you know, I think this is just one of those other efforts to get this is not normally the way that this entire procedure would work.

There are procedures for this. Of course, there are administrative judges within doj, immigration judges who can, you know, evaluate these issues. And that's the key thing here. The reason that this has risen to this level is because what the DOJ had admitted before the immigration attorney was fired for making that for saying that in court is that there was this order not to take this individual to El Salvador.

And that's really what this case is fundamentally all about. Ryan, very quickly, there have been a big back and forth about with the judges asking the administration and the Justice Department for more information that they were not providing. They provided some information. Is it enough, though, to satisfy the judges are asking for?

I don't think that no. They're essentially sort of it seems as though they're trying to basically offer no more information. There are updates that they require to send every day are essentially things stand where they were. Ryan Reilly, thank you so much.

Great to see you. Appreciate it. I want to turn now to Chuck Rosenberg, who's with me on Set, former U.S. attorney and an NBC News legal analyst.

Chuck, thank you so much. For being here. Let's start right where I left off with Ryan, this standoff really between the Justice Department and the courts. What do you make of how the Justice Department is handling the situation so far?

So I have an old fashioned view of this, Kristen, that the Justice Department is not your average litigant, that the Justice Department has a higher duty and a higher calling. And so, you know, my view had always been that it wasn't my job necessarily to win. It was my job to see that justice was done. And by the way, don't credit that to me.

That comes from an old Supreme Court case, case called Berger dates back to 1935. And the notion behind Berger was that exactly that the Justice Department prosecutor is different. Their duty is to see that justice is done. And that's troubling to me in this recent context, it seems like winning has become more important than justice.

And just to follow up on that point, I mean, are there any repercussions for the Justice Department, for the attorney general, if the courts do not feel as though they are abiding by that principle, that very critical principle? Oh, absolutely. Because as prosecutors, we are playing a long right. Credibility is the key to the kingdom here.

You can lie once, but you can never lie again because we all live in small towns in the Justice Department. And your reputation, which takes a lifetime to build, can be ruined instantaneously. And I know many judges who often look to the prosecutor to recite the facts because prosecutors have done that well incredibly for 200 years. If we lose that, that's the repercussion.

If judges can't rely on the Justice Department for an accurate recitation of the facts, that's the repercussion that would be deeply damaging to the institution and to the institution of justice. And I'm not quite sure how you get that back once it's gone. Let's talk a little bit about what the Supreme Court has said. They have basically, correct me if I'm wrong here, called on the Trump administration to facilitate or effectuate the return of Abrego Garcia.

And the administration is saying, well, facilitate could providing an airplane once the president of el Salvador releases Mr. Rossi. They're saying it's up to the president of El Salvador because he's in their custody. Now.

Does this, can this only end with the Supreme Court clarifying what it meant by facilitate? Well, it's not the only way it could end. I mean, you and I both know what the word facilitate means. And if we're unclear on it, Chris, then we can go back to the court and say, you know what, there's a legal meaning of facilitate, perhaps, and a dictionary meaning facilitate.

We're a little confused. Can you help us in good faith if you don't know what facilitate means, Go ask the court, seek further guidance. What the sharp lawyering that's going on here, arguing that facilitate is amorphous or unclear, I think is somewhat disingenuous. It's not that hard a word to sort of divine.

And I think again, going back to what we just discussed, the Department of Justice has a higher obligation. They should meet it in this case and in every case. If they really, truly don't know what facilitate means, go ask for a clarification. Do you think, given that it doesn't seem like the administration is going to ask for that clarification, do you think at some point the Supreme Court, that this case will go back to the Supreme Court?

Possibly, though it shouldn't have to. It's possible that an appellate court, a higher court than the district court, issues a judgment and that becomes the final judgment because the Supreme Court doesn't have to take this again. And I hope it doesn't take that long either. I hope cooler and wiser heads prevail.

I hope that the Department of Justice understands that it is obligated to follow court orders. If, and we're always welcome to disagree with an order, we're not welcome to disobey an order. If you disagree, you appeal. At some point it becomes final and then you obey.

And I hate to make it sound so simple, Kristin, it was actually pretty simple. Let's talk about this issue of due process. It's gotten a lot of attention. And as we're having this conversation, Chuck, I should remind our viewers we are waiting for a press conference to start in Florida about the tragic shooting there.

So I might have to interrupt our conversation and go to. We are, we are going to go to a special report on that. You've been watching a special report on the shooting at Florida State University. Authorities saying that two people were killed in that shooting, six people were injured, taken to the hospital, the shooter taken into custody.

George Solis has been following the story for us from Miami. He's back with us now. And George, that stunning detail, that the shooter was the son of a sheriff's deputy and was able to gain access to one of that deputy's previous weapons. Having to offer that bit of information, this weapon appears to have been one that had been previously used by this Leon county sheriff's deputy and then later purchased when they switched over to a new handgun.

There's also believed that more than one weapon may have been used as reference of a shotgun potentially. But of course, they're not drawing any conclusions yet. As they have noted multiple times throughout this day that this is an ongoing and fluid situation. The campus lockdown, so to speak, is lifted.

There are still so many areas, this camp is so large, so many crime scenes. As they noted, they're going to go over this with a fine tooth comb to leave no stone unturned. As you heard there, the suspect here in this case did not listen to the officer's commands and therefore was shot. So again, one of the injured now is well being treated.

Again, so many questions about a motive, what may have preceded the shooting. All these questions they're not going to be able to get into and they flush up this investigation with the headline here. As you mentioned, you have two people that are dead on as a result of this tragic shooting. They were not students who will hopefully learn more about the identities of these individuals.

Again, such a dark and sober day when you look at the images that are playing on the screen right now of students with their arms up while this investigation was unfolding. Again, there's so many questions that left are left to be answered here, Kristen. There certainly are. Solis, thank you so much for staying on top of this story for us.

We will continue to update our viewers throughout the evening. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for watching. We're back tomorrow with Warming the press now, but the news does continue with Hallie Jackson right now.

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