Meet the Press NOW — August 25

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If it's Monday, President Trump takes new steps to crack down on crime in DC and beyond, threatening to deploy national guard trips to more blue cities, as Democrats look to counter the administration without appearing soft on crime. Plus, the immigration and deportation fighter for Kilmoder Braggle-Garcia and the Trump administration's sweeping immigration crackdown takes a new turn, as Braggle-Garcia is taken back into federal custody, and once again facing the possibility of deportation. This time to Uganda. And President Trump meets with the President of South Korea after raising new questions on the future of U.S.

trade relations with the key ally, while also saying he doesn't know if President Putin and Zelensky will meet face-to-face after all. Father, welcome to Meet the Press Now and Ryan Nobles in Washington, as President Trump vows to take his DC crime crackdown national, setting up a showdown with Democratic mayors and governors across the country. Today, two weeks after federalizing DC's police force and deploying the national guard to the nation's capital, the President signed several new executive orders aimed at exerting further federal control over DC's justice system and directing the defense secretary to establish, quote, specialized units in the national bar to be ready to be deployed to other crimes to address crime in other cities like Chicago, which the President seemed focused on as his next target, slamming the state's Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, and trustizing him for not welcoming the idea of federal deployments in the city. I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians and bad politicians like a guy like Pritzker.

I don't like going to a town, city, place, a state, and then be criticized by some corrupt or incompetent governor, where crime is rampant. When I have some slob like Pritzker criticizing us before we even go there, I made the statement that next year, B. Chicago, because as you all know Chicago's a killing field right now, and they don't acknowledge it, and they say, we don't need him freedom freedom. He's a dictator.

He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying, maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator.

I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities and then you send in trips instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the republic. And the President also saying that he's not ruling out military deployments to Chicago. I'm a character order, national guard troops, though, into American cities if those governors don't request the federal government.

I am, but I also think that, look, Chicago, everybody knows how bad it is. Everybody's standing there, and as we know, you don't have to be doing any studies. They should be saying, please come in. We're expecting to hear from Governor Pritzker any moment on those threats.

Speaking with NBC's Shaquille Brewster this weekend, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson saying the guard isn't needed in his city. This is not the role of our military. The brave men and women who signed up to serve our country did not sign up to occupy American cities. It's the antithesis to our democracy.

Not only is it the antithesis to our democracy, it's not what individuals signed up to do. It's costly, it's illegal, it's unconstitutional. All that comes as the President has sought to paint a picture of America's largest Democratic run cities as crime infested and attack Democrats as weak and dangerous. While many officials and residents will acknowledge that crime in major cities remains a big issue, authorities have reported significant drops in crime rates at both the national and local level, including in the cities that President Trump is targeting.

In Washington, for instance, violent crime here has fallen 27% compared to this time of last year, with homicides down 15%. In Chicago, crime is down 13% overall, with a 31% drop in murder. Joining me now to discuss all of this, NBC's senior Washington or White House correspondent Karen Haick and NBC intelligence reporter Danda Luz, also with me is NBC's Shaquille Brewster, who's fresh off an interview with Illinois Governor Brister. So Garrett, let's start with you.

The executive orders today signed a focused mostly on DC's cash bail system and the ongoing federalization of the city. DC's cash bail system though. This isn't new. Why is he focusing on it now?

Well, I think the White House is realizing that despite what they are saying publicly that they can't arrest their way out of any kind of crime problem that may exist in Washington, DC, they also have to address other elements of the system. Now, the President complained about DC's cash bail system, or no cash bail system, back during his first term, when it was actually much looser. The district has tightened up some of the requirements around its system in the intervening years, but nevertheless, it's been something on the President's mind for some time, meaning they're realizing if they can't keep the people that they are arresting. In some cases, for quite minor infractions, behind bars longer, their numbers might not hold up or at least you'd have higher arrests with lower sort of actual effect on crime.

So I think both of those things are probably behind it. This long-standing antipathy by the President and realization that arrests alone are not a metric for success in terms of actually getting rid of crime in a major metropolitan area. But at the same time, Gary, he's claiming the city is now safe, kind of bragging about the difference from just about 11 days or so since he had pushed troops into Washington. How does he square that with the fact that he feels the need for these executive orders?

Ryan, you and most of our colleagues have heard me say the phrase, don't try to make it make sense. Sometimes these policies can't be combined together in a way that totally build on themselves. But I think what you see here is, again, a President who's trying to approach this from a variety of different angles. They saw some of the criticism from the very beginning that this idea of just suppressing crime wouldn't really be defeating crime, but they had to make some of these more wholesale changes.

There's also been conversations about, you know, what kind of crimes do DC go through? Which parts of the court system here, which is unique in the country in a sense that all of it is federal, but some of it is sort of local federal and some of it is capital F federal. I mean, I know this is all kind of wonky stuff, but the DC system is so unique and I think now that they've become involved in it, they have to become very involved in it to get the results they want to see across the board. And he focused a lot on Chicago today, but he's also in a bit of an internet spat with the Governor of Maryland, Westmore, kind of threatening the Baltimore.

Could be next, maybe he even pulls the funding for the Key Bridge Recovery Project. Is this a multi-pronged deployment of guard trips across the country that we could see happening? Well, we'll see, right. I mean, I was told today by Senior White House official that it's a question of when, not if, they try to involve themselves in the crime situation in Chicago.

That seems to be a higher priority than what's going on in Baltimore. The President's answer, when he was asked about those comments about Westmore and the Bridge collapsed today, went on an incredibly long tangent about police officers stopping people from crossing the bridge and people who were eating their lunch on the bridge. When it collapsed, I mean, he did not seem fully prepared to wade into the idea of engaging in Baltimore, in neighboring Maryland, in as significant of a way. But I think it is telling that both of the Governor's that we're dealing with here are people who are, I think, widely considered to be exploring presidential bids in 2028, and the President are running interference to a certain degree for whoever the Republican nominee ends up being next cycle by trying to take some of the shine off both of those figures.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Garrett. Let's talk now about the practical impact of all of this.

Dan Delus will bring you in. One of the executive orders of the President talked about today directs the Secretary of Defense to create specialized DC guard units that can be deputized to enforce federal law. Does this signal a potential change in mission from what we traditionally think of with the guard? Ryan, absolutely.

This is really extraordinary and unprecedented. The National Guard is not trained as a seasoned law enforcement force, right? And so its role is to help support local authorities and natural disasters. Occasionally, when there have been riots, they are brought in to help back up police.

But this kind of special deputized unit, it's very unclear how this would work in practice. It would raise all sorts of legal issues, I think, and legal challenges, most likely. And then it raises the question of whether they are even trained and have the skills to be able to do something like that. It may expand on that.

The National Guard is trained for very specific missions. It's not, you know, a beat cop law enforcement. How significant would their training have to change if they were to take on a role like this? Ryan, I think it would be a very big training mission there.

I think that would be a very big hill to climb. And yes, there are military police units in the National Guard, but they have very kind of narrow types of tasks, you know, running a vehicle checkpoint perhaps. But they are not trained and they don't have the experience of a policeman on the beat, right? Who knows what it means, what constitutes sufficient evidence, trying to collect that evidence, knows what would stand up in court, how to handle the chain of custody.

There's quite a bit of training in police work that a National Guardsman just simply doesn't receive. So it raises a whole practical question here. And then, of course, it again invites this criticism, these questions being asked, what is really behind this? Is this really about law enforcement in crime, or is it a political agenda?

Okay, Dandel, thank you for that. We have talked about how Chicago could be the next city and the President's crosshairs. It seems to be getting a lot of attention from the President over the past 24 hours. What did the Governor tell you?

Well, his main message, both in my conversation and right behind me, is that there is no emergency here in Chicago that would warrant the use of the National Guard. And I think there's a second point to that, is that if there is that justification used, there will be legal pushback that he will file. And that's part of what's going on behind me. You see the Governor just took the faith behind me.

He has a community leaders behind him, also the Attorney General of Illinois. And then I also see the Mayor of Chicago. It's a show of force, so to speak. But look at the backdrop to his remarks.

It's downtown Chicago. The Governor tried to make the picture and paint the picture that there is no act over a billion here. No emergency here. In fact, to come to this press conference, he took a boat that passed right in front of Trump Tower along the river and then went on a walk through a Chicago neighborhood to get here.

That is where I caught up with him. Asim, yes, we know that crime is dropping in the city of Chicago, but is there a possibility that there could be more improvement? I want you to listen to a little bit of our conversation. Could the National Guard in any way help continue that trend that we're seeing with crime numbers?

Look, remember that National Guard are trained extraordinarily well, am I? To go to war. And they're terrific. I mean, these are men and women who live in our state, our National Guard.

They are often police officers and first responders who also are National Guard, because remember National Guard are part-time. So they do tremendous work, but we don't call them in unless there is truly an emergency. And there is not one. One of the reasons that we're seeing right here is you can see that this city is actually operating extraordinarily well and in a much better position from a crime perspective than it was four years ago.

And the point that you hear from both the Governor of Illinois and the Mayor of Chicago is that there's a belief if the National Guard is brought in, if there's that pushback, that firestorm on the ground, the protests that then usually come from a deployment like that, that that could undermine the progress that you've been seeing in Chicago, which, yes, there are still significant issues. There are still crime here, but the trend line, especially compared to those pandemic highs, is going in the right direction. Yeah, and Chuck is one thing for a politician to tell us that everything is okay, but I'd be interested to hear from the people that actually live there. I mean, this is where you live.

I mean, how are the Chicago residents reacting to the possibility that they could see National Guard troops on their streets? Yeah, look, there's a little bit of nuance here because you talk to people. You look at this past weekend, Ryan, for example. We know that there were more than four people killed in shootings, more than 27 people injured in shootings.

No one's celebrating those numbers, even if they're lower than what they are in the past. People want to feel safe in their own communities, but what you continue to hear from residents is that this is a power play they believe from President Trump. This is him trying to exert his influence. It's fun to see that he has targeted before going back to his first term when he threatened to send in the troops to Chicago.

So you're hearing that pushback from members of the community, but I think if there's one warning, I talk to the activist group, one that led some of the bigger scale protests here in Chicago over the course of the summer. There's some hesitation before they go out with these massive protests now because they don't want to provide essentially a reason for President Trump to come in and federalize the National Guard. They're waiting. They disagree with the possible deployment, but that doesn't mean they're satisfied and think everything's perfect right now, Ryan.

I think that nuance, the key word in all of this, Chef. Thank you so much for that great reporting on the ground. Let's talk about this now with our panel, Tia Mitchell, as the Washington Bureau Chief for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Michael LaRosa, former Special Assistant, to former President Joe Biden, and spokesman for former First Lady Jill Biden, and Mark Short, the former White House Director of Legislative Affairs and the First Trump Administration. He's also a Meet the Press contributor.

I got so much to impact there. Tia, let's talk about this crime issue, right? This is something that Republicans have often used as a way to demonstrate differences between Republicans and Democrats. Is the President's will here maybe to get caught trying, like kind of throw everything at the wall, maybe something gets tossed out in court, but kind of demonstrate that Republicans are the ones that are going to keep you safe?

I don't know because I don't know what real effort he's putting into meeting crime where it exists in cities like Washington, in cities like Chicago. We've seen a lot of the effort here in DC, for example, not in the highest crime areas. And quite frankly, the approach isn't necessarily the best practices or what the people who live in these neighborhoods have asked for when it comes to how to address the root causes of crime. They don't necessarily just want police marching through their streets with guns.

They do want jobs and programs to get particularly young black men off the streets in cities like DC and Chicago. So I think a lot of it is for show, and a lot of it, quite frankly, is a distraction. We know there are other things that are on the table that quite frankly are what Donald Trump says was his mandate when he was elected last year when he took office in January. Those are not the things he's talking about right now, and I think that's really the disconnect.

Michael, it could be dangerous for Democrats, right? I mean, whenever you talk about law enforcement and crime and punishment, that's an area where Democrats sometimes are uncomfortable talking. Absolutely. This is not a hill I would want Democrats to be dying on.

Joe Biden wrote probably the toughest crime bill back in 1994. He was reelected three times. Bill Clinton didn't lose an election ever by being tough on crime. He certainly was.

But we talk about how we need to meet voters where they are. The president probably feels very emboldened since I think every county in the country went a little redder. As a Democrat, I feel like this is what the people who voted for him voted for. He talked all the time about the cities and the crime waves.

Even if you live in D.C., you know there's a difference between feeling informed and being informed when it comes to crime, because nobody feels safe here, even Democrats and members of the press or anybody else who's down here. So, Mark, at what point, though, does it become overkill for Republicans? The idea of walking down the national wall and seeing a national guardsman with a long gun does begin to get this feeling of a creeping militarized state. At what point are you winning the argument on being tough on crime but then going a step too far and making people feel uncomfortable that the government isn't approaching too much?

Well, I think that the scourge of violent crime in our cities is a big liability for Democrats. I think the president is going to keep trying to highlight that and show the contrast. I think having the federalization of the D.C. police here in D.C.

in National Guard, I think it's been a smart move. I think it's been a dramatic drop in crime in the last two weeks in no homeless homicides. And so, even though you used to cite numbers that say violent crime is down 27%, reality is if D.C. were state, it would still have the highest homicide rate in the country.

At least here in D.C. we know some of the officials, some senior officials in the D.C. police departments have been fudging the numbers a bit and they're under investigation. We don't know how many leaders have been changing the numbers.

Let me answer your question because I do think where it goes too far is I think there's an exception for D.C. It's the nation's capital and, constitutionally, there's a role for federal government oversight of D.C. There are mayors, there are governors and there's a bill for them to call the National Guard or ask the federal government for help. I think from a federalist perspective that's a different step than what you're doing here in Washington D.C.

I just also just think it's important for us to be honest about where crime in D.C. exists. We're in D.C. right this minute.

We're sitting in D.C. We're surrounded by the tourist areas. Did you all feel unsafe when you walk into this building today? Did you see anything when you walked into this building today?

And so my question is, or my concern is we don't talk about crime in a nuanced way. We don't talk about the fact that there are pockets of this city that are higher in crime. But it's not the whole city. And also, just because crime exists doesn't mean the city is a war zone.

But if we talk about it in absolutes, then that raises the real conversations that could be happening about why crime exists where it does in cities like Washington. The crime is down across the board last week in all parts of D.C. But it has been a very unpredictable pattern. It's not in the pockets of the city where there has traditionally been crime.

Yes, there's been hijackings in Georgetown. There has been people shot in their cars and murdered in downtown at the convention center for simply double parking and picking up their spouse. It's been terrible. So I think that anyone would ignore the idea or downplay the idea that there's a crime problem.

But is the solution, National Guard Troops patrolling the streets, that's, I mean, maybe in an 11-day window mark, you're going to make it a little bit better. But you cannot have National Guard Troops patrolling up and down Washington, D.C. for how long? How long can you do that?

I mean, the Constitution says 30 days. I mean, to Tia's point, how do you address the root causes and is either party then willing to stand up and address those root causes? Well, let's hopefully the mayors and the cities will start working with the president on the root causes. Instead of fighting the president at every turn, it might be better for the cities for their constituents to be working with the federal government on how they can address the root causes.

Mark, I want to play a little bit about Vice President J.D. Vanstold Christian about this issue this weekend. Take a listen. At least six Republican states are sending in their own National Guard Troops' reinforcements.

But many of these states have cities that actually have crime rates that are worse than Washington, D.C. So why aren't these states sending National Guard Troops into their own states to deal with the crime issue? And is that a possibility? Well, look, if the local governors want to make that determination, we'll leave it up to the local governors.

But what we have control over is the nation's capital. I think this kind of leads to the point that you were making, right? Mark, like Washington D.C. is one thing, but he seems to talk about these Democratic-led cities.

So the Republican governors get to choose, but the Democratic governors don't think so. That's my perspective. I think the D.C. is exceptional in our nation's capital.

And again, constitutionally, there is a federal government oversight of the city. I think some of those data points, you say, like, Jackson, Mississippi, it's a much smaller scale than what's happening in Chicago. But they're per capita numbers. When you say the per capita numbers, they're the relative homicide rates.

It's still very different. Having said that, I still think from a federal perspective, it is up to the governor of the state to call the National Guard and not from the federal government to deploy it. I just want to point out, you know, you talk about where should mayors cooperate? The mayor of D.C., Mayor Bowser, was quite frankly bending over backwards to cooperate with the Trump administration.

Since he took office in January, she faced a lot of heat from her constituents for doing things like dismantling Black Lives Matter. And still, the federal government didn't come in as a partner. It forced this upon the city. So you can't say in this current posture, the mayor wasn't trying to be as cordial as she could, but the White House.

And it still is not something that came as a collaboration. Now, they tried to position it as a collaboration and message it as a collaboration after the fact. But even that has been somewhat painful for the mayor because people wanted to see her fight this more. And quite frankly, don't know where the federal government's decision-making begins and the D.C.

government's decision-making ends. It's been quite confusing. Okay, we're out to leave it there. Thank you guys all for being here.

Michael, Mark, great conversation. Coming up, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, then brought back to the U.S. to face human smuggling charges. Now he faces deportation again, this time to Uganda.

We'll have the latest in the controversial case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after he was just taken into ICE custody. His lawyer will join me here in studio. Plus, a status update on the progress or lack of progress, and the Trump administration's efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. You're watching me the press now.

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Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. Welcome back. Turning now to the latest in the ongoing saga of Kilmar Obrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador more than five months ago. Obrego Garcia was taken back into ICE custody earlier today in Baltimore after an immigration check-in.

He now faces possible deportation to Uganda. Although this afternoon, a federal judge ordered him to remain detained in the U.S. until she holds an evidentiary hearing. It comes just a few days after Obrego Garcia was reunited with his family after being released on parole from federal custody.

He'd been held on federal human smuggling charges since being returned from El Salvador in June. Obrego Garcia spoke this morning, surrounded by his family and his attorneys and his supporters. When I was detained, I remembered memories with my family, going to the park with them, going to the trampoline with my children. Those moments will continue to give me hope to continue in this fight.

NBC News legal affairs reporter Gary Grumback joins me now from Baltimore. So Gary, what's going to happen now to Kilmar Obrego Garcia? So Kilmar Obrego Garcia was taken into ICE custody in this building behind me just after 8 a.m. And he's already at this moment, more than 200 miles away in an ICE detention center in central Virginia.

And that's where he's been staying for the next two days after federal judges have decided that he is going to be there and not be deported to Uganda until after she could hold an evidentiary hearing, because she's very concerned about several things, including the country of Uganda and what arrangements may or may not exist in Uganda if he were to be sent there, including would he be in custody in Uganda? Would he be given refugee status in Uganda? Would he be able to even speak the language of anybody? Would he be able to communicate with officials or folks in the country, Eastern African country of Uganda?

All open questions there, especially because of the country that was on the table in the potential plea deal from this weekend, which was Costa Rica, a country that was offering him refugee status and offering him the ability to walk free once he was in their country. And you mentioned the judge will now have this evidentiary hearing. How big of a win was that for his legal team? Well, I'd love to hear Simon's answer on this in a few minutes, but I do think it was a significant win because of the entire idea behind this whole thing, all 160 days of the saga has been due process.

Is Kilnara Bregarsia being given the due process of the constitution affords him, even though he is not a US citizen? And by going through this process with the federal government, he will be given that due process. Nobody here is arguing that Kilnara Bregarsia should spend the rest of his life in the United States. But if he is to be deported, he should be able to be given the due process affords him to make that happen.

And if he is deported to Uganda, is there any guarantees he will receive that due process? So there is a lot of questions up in the air about Uganda, the State Department and the officials just came from agreement on Thursday about the idea of sending migrants from the US to Uganda. So he would be among the first to be sent there. Would he say in custody in Uganda?

Would he be allowed to walk free? All questions that are still remain to be answered by the State Department. Okay, Gary Gumbard on the ground there in Baltimore. Gary, thank you for that.

I'm joined now by the aforementioned Simon Sandoval motion burden. He's one of Kilnara Bregarsia's attorneys. Simon, thank you for being here. Obviously he's been a very busy day for you.

Talk to me first about your client. What is he doing now? Have you been able to have any contact with him? What's his seat of mind?

So Mr. Bregarsia was separated from his family for about half a year. Finally, on Friday afternoon, he was released from the jail in Tennessee. He made his way up to Maryland, arrived around 3 a.m.

at Saturday morning. His whole family was there to meet him. He spent the whole weekend getting together with his family and friends and reuniting. We knew all along that detention was a very real possibility at this ice check-in this morning.

It's really unfortunate that they chose to do that. There was no need. He was already on electronic monitoring, practically house arrest. But in any event, they did choose to take him into detention this morning.

And how did his family respond to that? Even though they were prepared to see him potentially detain once again. It seemed like a pretty emotional scene there in the courtroom. Yeah, it's a real yoyo of emotions.

I mean, to go from not even knowing if he's dead or alive when he was being held in communicado in El Salvador, to having him back in the United States, but behind bars several states away, then having him back in the house. And now, again, in another detention center, it's been quite the rollercoaster for them. But remember, this is someone who understood that he was out of the woods from an immigration perspective. He won his case in 2019.

He thought he was fine. And now it's been all of this. So let's talk a little bit about what comes next. As Gary pointed out, there's an evidentiary hearing before he can be deported, which is something that you fought for and won.

Are you confident that Trump administration is going to abide by the court orders and not deport your client to a gun before this evidentiary hearing takes place? Yes. And the judge made very clear to get the Department of Justice attorney on the record as sort of repeating back her instructions, as it were, at the hearing, the telephonic hearing this afternoon and confirmed that they will not remove him pending this evidentiary hearing. It's really crazy that I have to file a federal lawsuit to sort of establish the position that someone can't be put on a plane and deported while they're waiting for the hearing to determine whether or not they can be deported.

Like that ought to be obvious. But here we are. I mean, is that happening even more than we realized to potential clients who don't have the same high profile or variety that a Brigo Garcia has? It really is.

I mean, I must have gotten, since the Brigo Garcia case blew up, I must have gotten about 15 emails from different immigration lawyers saying, yeah, my client was also erroneously deported, even though he had a state of removal, what do I do? And this whole business with third country removals is really brand new. It's just something that started. We thought that a Brigo Garcia was sort of a one-of-a-kind case, but it turned out really to just be the tip of the sphere.

And so you fought a lawsuit today, which you hope will prevent him from being deported. What's the status of that lawsuit and what are the next steps? So he's got the right to essentially fight out a case as to any particular country that they want to designate, that he deems his would be inappropriate, that his safety would be at risk in that country. Or more critically, that hasn't given him assurances that they're not going to just turn around and redeport him to El Salvador.

So even if they were named Spain as the country, unless they've got guarantees that he can stay in that country, all it is is really just a way station on the way right back to El Salvador, where it's already been established that he can't go. And that's what we have from Costa Rica right now. Assurances of refugee status, assurances that they will not redeport him. So is it your expectation here that it's not a matter of if he'll be deported but when he is deported and where he's deported to?

Yeah, look, I mean, if the government really wanted to remove him from this country as quickly as possible, we could work that out tomorrow, right? I mean, Costa Rica is a perfectly reasonable option. And how long do you think it's going to take for this whole process to play itself out? I don't know.

And part of the issue is why they have the right to detain and keep him behind bars to send him to Uganda, which is basically, it seems like, you know, chosen at random by throwing darts at a map on the wall when there's a perfectly reasonable country that's already offered in refugee status. So the Attorney General Pam Bondi talked about your client today earlier in the Oval Office. I'm going to play a little bit of that for you. We've got him under control.

He will no longer terrorize our country. He's currently charged with humans smuggling, including children. The guy needs to be in prison. He doesn't need to be on the streets like all these liberals wanted to be.

So what's your reaction and the characterization that she has of your client? I mean, five courts have looked at this case from the original immigration judge in 2019, all the way up through the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the two judges in Tennessee, the magistrate judge and the district judge, and not one of them has agreed with that characterization once they actually have evidence filed in court.

But do you feel like you need to or will fight these accusations against him here in the United States or are you more focused on the deportation end of this? Yeah, I'm really focused on making sure that they don't have excessively prolonged attention and terrible conditions in a nice detention center for no reason when there's a reasonable possibility that's already on the table. Okay, all right, Simon, thank you so much. We appreciate you being here and please keep us up to date with the latest on your client.

Good to be back. All right, thank you. And up next, President Trump hosts the President of South Korea at the White House after Trump questions whether the U.S. could do business with a key trade partner.

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Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. Welcome back. President Trump met with South Korea's recently elected president this afternoon at the White House and told reporters there's another leader on the Korean peninsula he'd like to meet with. Kim Jong-un.

We should go back to the DMZ to meet with the North Korean president. I loved it. Remember when I walked across the line and everyone went crazy, especially secret service? I have a very good relationship.

I understand that I spent a lot of free time with him talking about things that we probably aren't supposed to talk about. And I just get along with him really well. I think he has a country of great potential, tremendous potential. Do you think it was possible to meet him this year or maybe next year?

Well, I'm meeting a lot of people. I mean, it's hard to say that, but I'd like to meet him this year. Well, taking questions from reporters this afternoon, the president also spoke about his push to get Russia and Ukraine to meet face-to-face, which has yet to gain any real traction. Let's kind of be up to them.

It takes two to tango. I always say it. And they should meet, I think, before I have a meeting and probably close the deal. But I think it's appropriate.

They meet. I believe that we're going to get that worst straight nap. We're going to get it done. I don't know that they'll meet.

Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. They'd like me to be at the meeting. You guys ought to work it out.

It's between you. It's not us. Now, this comes after Vice President Jeannie Vance sold Chris and Welker on Meet the Press this weekend that both sides were making what he called significant concessions toward a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Joining me outside the White House is NBC's Jonathan Allen.

And with me on set is NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent Andrea Mitchell. Jon, let's start with you. President Trump questioned whether the United States could, quote, do business in South Korea before today's meeting. What was the tone once the two leaders met?

Well, the tone was very much what President Trump expects and wants, which is that South Korea's new leader, President Lee, flattered him. He talked about how President Trump could bring peace and opportunity to the Korean peninsula and perhaps build a Trump tower in North Korea, build a golf course, and by the end of the meeting, President Trump told reporters just a little while ago in the Oval Office that he believes the South Korean leader is a good guy and a good representative of the South Korean people. So the tone definitely warmer than it was going in, but we come to expect that from President Trump, he tends to throw a punch before he meets with someone. And the president also said that he'd like to meet with Kim Jong-un that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Is that a bit of a surprise? And how's that going to go over with the South Koreans? It's not terribly surprising to those of us who traveled abroad during the first Trump term for his meetings with Kim Jong-un. I was in Singapore and in Hanoi when President Trump met with Kim Jong-un a couple of times previously.

Those did not yield any results in terms of sobbing North Korea's nuclear ambitions. So it's not surprising that he wants to meet with Kim. He talks about him all the time. He talks about the great love letters he says that he's received from Kim.

Whether or not that happens soon or particularly so soon after President Trump went to Alaska and elevated Vladimir Putin, I think remains to be seen. I think the White House will prefer not to have another humiliating conference where he basically elevates a lesser leader and walks out with no deal. You mentioned kind of the script that is emerging for these foreign leaders that meet with President Trump in the Oval Office. It seems to be heavy on flattery.

Are they all trying to avoid what happened with President Zelensky and the leader of South Africa earlier this year? Well, I think they certainly would like to avoid President Trump inviting them into the Oval Office and then trying to humiliate them. But in addition to that, I mean, look, it's characteristics, I guess. I mean, you know, I think anybody that's spent any time around President Trump knows that he expects that people scrape and bow around him and if they don't, then he will, you know, do whatever he can to make them miserable.

So I think it's, you know, you know, whether or not they end up doing all the things that he wants, certainly the public show, I think every foreign leader understands what their role is, which is to suck up to President Trump. And, you know, President Lee of South Korea is no different. And as we said with the South Korean president right by his side, President Trump also talked about the seemingly stalled, attentive peace talks between Korea and Russia. What is the White House saying about this lack of progress?

Well, they're doing everything they can to possibly distract from it. I mean, today was a foreign policy day. Big, you know, big energy around this meeting with the South Korean president, which has nothing to do with the two words the president has promised to bring to a close. You know, Russia's war on Ukraine and the war going on in Gaza.

So, you know, they're trying to avoid that. The big domestic policy thing today for the executive order sign. One of them, you know, the president said was going to outlaw flag burning and assess a one-year penalty for anybody of foreign society. If you read the executive order, it doesn't either of those things.

But there's been a huge effort on the part of the White House to distract from what is essentially been a failure for the last seven months to live up to President Trump's campaign problems to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end. And, you know, I should just add, Ryan, it's not necessarily the president has done anything wrong in terms of trying to negotiate with his countries. But the promise that he made on the campaign trail sounded ludicrous to not only a lot of his critics, but even some of the supporters, and he has found that it is much more difficult to get Russia to give up its efforts to reconstitute the U.S. or basically Vladimir Putin's greatest wish to just give him to give it up.

And so, you know, we continue with a slow-moving process there. And, you know, the president at this point is even promising that there will be a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, much less a trilateral meeting involved in the president. Yeah, less a check. We are well past day one of the presidency when he originally promised to have this war.

Over with, all right, John Allen. Thank you there from the North one of the White House. Let's bring Adrian into the conversation. So what did you make of what the president said today in the Oval Office?

He said he's talked to Putin since their last meeting, but he didn't really seem to indicate there's any progress on an actual meeting between Putin and Zelensky. A far from it. First of all, he said he talked to Putin. None of us knew that.

There was no follow-up question about, well, what did you say? What happened there? The fact is that he showed all the picture last Friday that Putin sent him of their meeting and said how nice it was that Putin sent him a meeting. He is relying on signals of personal diplomacy and friendship when Russia is continuing to bomb Ukraine.

The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in cave yesterday to commemorate Ukraine's national day next to the Zelensky's. And this was in the midst of more bombing, more advancing by Russian troops. The fact is it's been nine or ten days since Alaska. Not only is nothing accomplished, but they have moved backwards.

And no one in the Oval Office today asked about Lavrov, you know, definitively saying to Christian Woger, I mean the press, that there would be no meeting. The president's response to that was, well, they don't like each other. Putin doesn't like Zelensky. Well, that's not an answer as to why there hasn't been a meeting when that was a promise to him.

Aren't you humiliated that there has been no follow-up on this? What about the fact that you were promised a security agreement? And that Lavrov said there will be no security agreement. He immediately said, in fact, in the days following, and then he made it very clear to Christian Woger, that they have a veto over the security agreement.

The Canadians are leading this coalition of the willing of 30 nations trying to work out the details supposedly with Marco Rubio who was sitting right there on the couch. Why not ask him, you know, Mr. Secretary, Mr. National Security Advisor?

What about the security agreement? If they have a veto of it, since when does the aggressor nation, the invading nation, get to say what the security agreement of the victim is? And you mentioned Sergey Lavrov. Let's play a little bit more of the, he told a person over the weekend, take a listen to this.

We want peace on Ukraine. He wants President Trump wants peace on Ukraine. The reaction to an anti-rich meeting, the gathering in Washington of the European representatives and what they were doing after Washington indicates that they don't want peace. They say we cannot allow defeat of Ukraine.

We cannot allow Russia to win. It sounds like Lavrov is saying that Ukraine is not as committed to peace as Trump had put in this, as Putin continues to drop bombs on Ukraine. He doesn't acknowledge that Ukraine is a country. He doesn't acknowledge that Zelensky is a leader.

And when you talk about what President, with all due respect to the President and his effort and his real compassion over the death on all sides, he seems to be wanting to run away. He keeps giving himself an hour. Well, maybe we'll wash our hands on the Europeans. There's a two to ten goal.

That's not being one to two. And just to talk about Kim Jong-un the way he did, Kim Jong-un is a killer. And he has advanced his nuclear arsenal by light years since they are wonderful, beautiful letters and their wonderful summits. So all this personal diplomacy means nothing.

Andrew, thank you so much. After President Trump doubles down on his strategy to deliver a midterm win for his party by ending the election, he will speak to the top elections official in a key battleground state that does a lot of mail-in voting. You're watching Meet the Press Now. Welcome back as both parties ready their messages for the 2026 midterm.

President Trump appears to be taking aim at the ballot box itself. Earlier this month, he floated an executive order to get rid of mail-in balloting in certain voting machines claiming, without any proof, that they are a scam that allows his opponents to cheat. And we said before, but it is important to repeat this back check on the President's claims. Election experts have long said that mail-in voting is secure against fraud and tampering, and that wrongdoing is exceptionally rare.

It's been used nationwide in elections both won and lost by President Trump. But it's also a method of voting that Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to use according to survey data. President Trump and the Republican Party encouraged the use of mail-in balloting in 2024, and Mr. Trump himself has voted by mail himself in past elections.

Additionally, while President Trump claimed that he can make states change their voting procedures by signing an executive order, the Constitution gives states the power to control elections, not the President, and only Congress can change that. Joining me now is Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. He is the chief elections official in the state of Arizona and previously served as the recorder of Maricopa County. Thank you so much for being here, Mr.

Secretary. You are the chief elections official in your state. It's a state that relies heavily on mail-in ballots. It's always worked very well.

I want to respond. I want you to respond to what the President said, what he wants to do on mail-in balloting. What's your reaction? Well, I said it before, and I'll say it again.

The President can pound sand. The Constitution clearly says that the states are the ones who run elections, and Congress can also play a part of the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act, the National, the MVA. Those are certainly federal statutes, but for the most part, states are in charge of running elections. That's why this federal republic works.

The President, number one, has no business interfering in the methodology, time, place and manner of these elections. The bottom line is this. As you mentioned a minute ago, ballot by mail voting is an important part of the way many states run their elections. In fact, there are several states out west where every voter gets their ballot in the mail.

That's just the way that we do it. Importantly, Donald Trump won Arizona in 2024 with mail-in ballots. No excuse absentee voting in Arizona was invented by Republicans. Republican governor of five signings and signed it into law back in the early 90s.

It has been developed and improved over the years. It is a preferred method by the vast majority of Arizona's voters. This is outside of his scope of business, and I think he should just mind his own. And why do you think he's making these attacks?

Do you think it's about the 2020 election where he lost? Or could it be about undermining confidence in 2026? Well, that's exactly what it's about. And, you know, he has said repeatedly that he voted for him in 24.

You never have to go again. He stopped us from talking to the Department of Homeland Security's agency called SISA. He has asked the DOJ to criminally prosecute the former director. He has threatened to prosecute state elections officials.

He issued an executive order earlier this year, pretending to take over other parts of the elections process. It has continued erosion of confidence in our elections with spurious and false claims by the president is setting up one thing and one thing only. That is the erosion of confidence in our elections so that he might be able to potentially declare an election and suspend 2026. But look, we ran elections during the Civil War.

We ran elections during the Spanish flu during World War I, during World War II. Even during COVID-19, when many of your viewers remember, folks were afraid to leave their homes, but we continued and we persisted. And that's what American elections officials have done for the past two and a half centuries, and we intend to continue doing so. Thank you very much.

You mentioned what the Constitution says about states rights when it comes to running elections. It's pretty explicit. There's a lot of time, places, manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time make a law to alter such regulations. If he puts out this executive order, my understanding of executive orders is that they do not go through Congress.

Do you even have to listen to it? Do you have to file a lawsuit to prevent it from going in? What's your reaction if this executive order comes out? Well, the interesting thing was the day after he made that threat, the White House started talking about, well, maybe we'll go through Congress.

And that's because there was a human cry across the land. Look, Trump always chickens out. There's a reason that they call them taco. And that's because in these sorts of things will come out all full of bluster.

And when he realizes at some point or enough people tell him that that's illegal, you just can't do that. Then he backs off and he moves to something else. This guy is nothing but a game show host in a salesman. And he needs to mind, again, his own business.

He doesn't have the authority to do what he has threatened to do. But he does have a sound machine over in other spaces that continue to misrepresent the truth and mislead the American people. And this is embarrassment for the United States of America, where you have a president who's just flat out lying and misrepresenting the power that he actually has, which is appropriately limited by Congress. And oh, by the way, this is a really good time now for us to call out the cowards on the other side of the aisle in Congress who will not put this president in check.

You know, they used to be all about states rights, but when Donald Trump says otherwise, they just bend at the knee. Okay, we're going to have to leave it there. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, thank you so much for your perspective on this. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. And up next, we're going to take a sneak peek at the monumental task being pushed by some of Trump's allies putting his face on Mount Rushmore. Is it reality? We'll be back with more.

Meet the president. Before we go, I've got a sneak peek for you of a story that's coming up tonight on NBC Nightly News. We travel to South Dakota to take a look at the majesty of Mount Rushmore. And believe it or not, the feasibility of adding President Trump's face to the massive monument.

Some of the president's supporters are pushing to make it happen, but it's not as simple as passing a bill through Congress. There are rules about who could be memorialized in a national park, but the even bigger obstacle? Experts say it's geologically nearly impossible. I spoke to Paul Nelson, who's an engineer who worked on the monument.

He says any new carving could cause serious damage. Is it something that people that come here and see it in a moment and most probably don't understand the depth of? You know, it's a monument known the world wide to make any changes. It's an icon.

It's a national and world icon. And I would just say to see changes made. But again, to me, it comes down to the geology, the engineering. It just can't be done.

And you can see much more of our report from the great state of South Dakota tonight on NBC Nightly News on your local NBC station. And that's right today on Meet the Press Now. We'll have more tomorrow at the same time, but there's more news ahead right now on NBC News Now. He was a young Marine.

She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn.

I'm Josh Megawatts, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all-new podcast from day one. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts.