Meet the Press NOW — February 18

If it's Tuesday, the Trump administration government overhaul is firing on all cylinders with more staff cuts expected as top officials resign across multiple agencies. And President Trump has set to sign new executive orders moments from now. Plus, top US And Russian officials hold talks about Ukraine without Ukraine discussing ending the war, even as US Intelligence suggests President Putin is interested in actual peace deal. And the political fate of New York City Mayor Eric Adams could now be in Governor Kathy Hoble's hands as she was ousting the embattled mayor with his top deputies, quitting amid growing turmoil.

Welcome to Meet the Press. Now I'm Yamiche Sender in Washington, D.C. in just a few moments, we expect to see President Trump at Mar? A Lago.

The White House says he'll be signing more executive orders to be open, so could potentially hear him speaking with reporters and answering questions. We'll be keeping a close eye on that. That signing comes amid sweeping personnel changes happening across the federal government. And the Trump White House is now asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for more firings.

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt defended those firings and the role of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Any cuts, any firings, any hirings, wrapped discretion of the secretaries of these agencies, they are all cooperating with doge's efforts to cut federal government waste, rob and abuse. And that's exactly what President Trump campaigned on. President Trump is the ultimate decision maker for this entire administration.

Elon Musk, just like everybody else across federal government, works at the direction of President Trump. More top officials are now resigning, in some cases out of protests over actions by President Trump. And Elon Musk Yesterday, the head of FBA's food division stepped down, citing job cuts in his division. A senior prosecutor at the Justice Department also quit after refusing to comply with what she described as legally questionable demands to freeze assets tied to clean energy projects.

And the acting head of the Social Security Administration resigned after disagreement with the Department of Government Efficiency over access to sensitive personal data for millions of Americans. Last night, the White House press secretary defended Doge's access to Social Security systems. President Trump has directed Elon Musk and the Doge team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration. They haven't dug into the bookshelf, but they suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments.

These Doge employees, these Social Security employees are onboarding as Social Security Administration employees, political appointees, and they have every right to administer President Trump's agenda. And that's their main focus with this effort, not just at Social Security, but of course, at every agency. As you know, there is no evidence that tens of millions of deceased people are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments. An inspector General report from July 2023 found that less than 1% of benefit payments from 2015 to 2022 were improper and most of those payments were not to deceased or unqualified people.

This all comes as thousands of federal workers across several government agencies have been dismissed in the first four weeks of the Trump administration. The latest text coming for the Department of Homeland Security sources tell NBC News that hundreds of high level staffers are being fired for not being aligned with the Trump administration's goals. NBC News has spoken with public servants who were terminated over the past few weeks. Here's what Sullivan told us.

I uprooted my life to drive myself and my dog down here to try and make a difference for American consumers. I'm worried about paying rent in March. I'm worried about getting the health care that I need to check that my range and wear hasn't come back because I'm about to get kicked off health insurance. I mean, I've got to figure out a way to make money and I've got to figure that out soon.

I'm a single person. I bought this house completely on my own through hard work and I have a mortgage to pay. It's devastating. I feel really heartbroken.

I operated my life to move to Maryland. I took on significant debt to make it happen. I'm literally financially and even physically devastated. This is, I have no idea.

I'm going to recover from this. I think in 10, 15 days. You know, this whole thing has just been turned upside down. I, as of last week, I knew where my rent was coming from.

I knew where my groceries were coming from. There was no communication. There is no off ramp. We've been told that now we can apply for unemployment.

And we've got to figure that on our own. Losing this position, my kids will be able to do sports. He won't be able to do the extracurriculars, be able to travel a thousand miles home where our family is assumed during the holidays because of the financial burden of this family. Certainly some striking stories there.

And joining me now from West Palm Beach, Florida, where President Trump is spending his day is NBC News White House correspondent Vaughn Hilliard. Also with me is NBC News justice correspondent Ryan Reilly and NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley. So thank you all for being your Vaughn. Let's start with the resignations at the FDA And Social Security Administration.

Why are these top people leaving? Right. Yamiche, The Social Security Administration is the top official here who oversees the system that pays out 70 million Americans for Social Security dispersants. And this official ultimately resigning after DOGE employees attempted to access and sought access of the personnel data.

This is data that extends from bank account information, Social Security information, but also in the case for individuals who apply for disability, medical information about millions of Americans. And that is what led to this official here resigning. And it's notable that you mentioned that 2023 IG report, and there's a 2024 IG report, Inspector Generals from the Social Security Administration that said that While there were 20 million Americans over the age of 100 that were still on the rolls, still within the Social Security Administration system, almost zero, the words of the inspector general had still actually received payments here. And as for the fda, we are still waiting for exact word why the head of the food division stepped aside.

But the Trump administration, in response, said that they are looking for individuals to fill out these administrative roles who are clearly aligned with the Trump administration agenda in their specific agencies. And Vaughn, I know you've been talking to White House officials and they've been telling you and reiterating over and over again that they really want waste and abuse. What other rationale are we hearing from the White House given the fact that we're now seeing thousands of terminations? Right.

I think that in the case of the Social Security Administration, I think that it's a worthy one to look at, because a year from Caroline Levitt, the press secretary for the president, suggested they had not opened up the books yet. Yet they suspect they're gonna find tens of millions of individuals who were inappropriately receiving funds despite being dead when, as you noted, there is no evidence of this. And a lot of the claims when it comes to specific agencies that are being elevated, whether it be by Elon Musk on his social media platform or other allies of this presidential administration. So much of this is not transparent.

And there are very few specifics in terms of evidence in what is a very massive federal government budget. And I think this is where, from Caroline Levitt to others working in the White House, they're consistently saying that they have empowered Elon Musk and his team to go and root out and identify the waste, fraud and abuse that administrations prior to theirs have always said that they were going to do. But this time, they're going to actually prove it and do it. Yeah, just right next to you on that screen.

We're showing images of Elon Musk. He, of course, is very closely associated with the Doge team. But last night, something really striking happened. That is that the White House is saying in court filings that Elon Musk is technically not the administrator of Doge.

So what do we know about that and what is the discrepancy here? Right. In his executive order creating Doge, which took over what was the US Digital Service, which was another office inside of the executive office of the White House, there is this role that is called the administrator of it. Well, the assumption, I guess you could say, was that Elon Musk was technically playing that role because the White House has signed again, so that he is the head of Doge.

Yet, what was acknowledged in his court filing and then acknowledged by Caroline Levitt is that he is not the actual administrator, the head of Doge. Instead, he is working as a special government employee, which we knew. But essentially he is a senior advisor, a special advisor to the president. But this also gets at the heart of where Caroline Levich just this afternoon was saying that the decisions are actually being made are coming from the recommendation that Elon Musk and Doge, but being executed by the secretaries of the respective departments or heads of the agencies.

Of course, there's a lot to unpack with those statements here, but one of the parts of the key parts of the lawsuits that is currently in federal court is over Elon Musk's rather unusual powers within this White House, despite not even being now technically the head of the US Digital Service, or Doge, which had long been understood to actually be the case, which is now, according to their own court filings, not actually the case. Yeah, certainly a lot to unpack. Of course. I gotta come to you, right?

The Trump administration is now going before the Supreme Court for the first time on this issue when it comes to ties. Walk us through the specifics on the firing of the Office of Special Counsel Director and what constitutional questions are at hand here. Yeah, I mean, this could upset the order of, you know, modern America. Right.

In terms of how we're talking about, in terms of the firing of officials who typically go from administration to administration. And what Trump is trying to do is sort of, you know, wipe as many of those people out as he can and install his own folks into those offices. I think what, you know, fundamentally we're talking about is using these allegations, often unsupported by the evidence of mass fraud. It's sort of similar to the January 6th playbook that Trump ran.

When you're talking about making these claims of fraud and then being able to do things that, you know, might go outside of the bounds of the law ultimately towards me aside, in terms of getting rid of a lot of these key figures, a lot of these figures, the Office of Special Counsel, are about waste, fraud, abuse and eliminating waste, fraud, abusing secretary generals that were all pushed out. Those are individuals who are professionally trained and know how to look into all of these issues and can actually look at the evidence and evaluate it factually and not just, you know, be spreading misinformation on social media, making false claims about fraud that aren't supported by the facts and the evidence. And I think that's what ultimately that's what the ultimate showdown we have right now is. These huge claims, these massive, sweeping claims about fraud versus what's factually supported by the evidence.

I think that's what we're going to see the Supreme Court take this issue up and the Trump administration argue that that's what this is all about and sort of using that same allegation, similar to in the aftermath 2020 election, making these claims of mass fraud that are often unsupported by the facts. Yeah. And Ryan, I do break down to the arguments that the Trump administration is making. I want to put up a line from the acting Solicitor General's filing that caught our eye here.

This court should not allow the judiciary to govern by temporary restraining order and supplant the judicial accountability the Constitution ordains. The executive branch takes seriously its constitutional duty to comply with the orders of Article 3 courts, and it has fulfilled that duty here. That's some pretty big talk to the Supreme Court. Why?

Also pledging to comply, while also pledging to comply with decisions of the federal court. So could you unpack that for us? There's a lot there. What's the meaning of this here?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think the argument is essentially that they want the executive to be the most powerful branch and don't really have too much regard for what's going on in the legislative branch or in the judicial branch. That's ultimately they want to do. They want to have as much power to do as much as possible, get revolved as officials just practicing speaking. If you were talking about just completely wiping the decks every four years of everyone in the executive branch, that would be not a way for government to be able to function.

So it's a question of how far the Supreme Court's going to let them ultimately go here with these firings. But I remember talking to Mike Fanon just a couple of days before all of the January 6th pardons came down, before Donald Trump took office. And you know just about this notion of investing all of your hopes in the corpse of being the one that sort of hold the line here. And you know that's not how worked out for him.

Everyone was assaulted. Mike Fanon is now back on the street and that's sort of the attitude I think he has and a lot of folks have towards the course of this time. Whether or not there's going to be that line being held or whether Congress, anyone, Congress is going to stand up for the co equal branches of government argument. Definitely some really important context there.

When you think of the courts timeline here, the deadline for the respondent to submit a filing is tomorrow. When should we expect the Supreme Court to rule on this issue at the time I know the panel on the Supreme Court case certificate, obviously this is an urgent one. So that's something that probably would get us some really high priority from the court there. Yeah.

Well thank you so much, Ryan. I want to now pin in Julia because you're for a little scooby here. Big scoop of she, I should say. Your latest excuse exclusive.

You reported that the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to fire hundreds of senior level employees this week. And DHS is of course an agency with ICE and cpb, cbp, I should say, which we know is vital really to the president's goals when it comes to immigration. So why is he making these steps if this is the agency literally that is like top priority for the thing he wants to do about. Yes.

Seems like opposite of what they would want to do. Right. Especially because they're already stretched thin and they're not able to deport and arrest as many migrants as Trump wants. We know he's been angry with that.

What I'm told here, and this is why people who are involved in these decisions is that they see this as short term pain for long term gain, that they see that there are people standing in the way of what they want to do. We really need to pull this apart from Doge because we've already already seen a lot of people, in fact over 400 people be fired across DHS, mainly at FEMA, which you reported on CISA, US Citizenship and Immigration Services and others that started Friday. What's happening this week is a little different because they're going after people in a really high level of the government senior executive Service and there's people who are GS15, they're right below it. But basically this would Be like your colonels and your sergeants.

These are people who are involved with policy and strategy. Sometimes they're Washington, sometimes around the ground, carrying out the mission of the agency. And these people have been identified by the Trump transition and the DHS landing team, the people who went into DHS on day one and they said, look, we don't think these people are in line with the mission here. They see them as standing in the way.

And I'm told that they have a centralized list of people now that they might get rid of across every single agency under dhs, and they want to replace them. People who they see as more loyal or more compliant. So they want to replace. But that's all going to take some time.

So I wonder in the short term or even in the long term, what's going to be the impact of them trying to carry out things like mass deportations, arrest of illegal immigrants that, again, the president says he wants to do? Yeah, well, because it's funny to get someone who's loyal, but it's quite hard to get someone who's competent. Right. And these are really intricate, difficult issues.

And especially to have someone with a law enforcement background who can pass a background check, that can be really hard. I already said it takes about two years to hire someone to work in their facility. So what are they going to do about this? That's a big question.

But as I understand it, they do think that they can fill some of these positions or maybe they can do without them, or they can move people up who are in lower positions to these higher positions and basically fill it with people who they think are going to act more quickly. And I'm asking more questions. And as you know, there's also been a lot of suspicion from Tom Homan, the border czar, and other people at DHS who think they have leaguers in their methods. Even if people are just confirming some really basic information that used to be part of their relationship between the press and these agencies, now they don't want as much transparency into these inner workings.

And so a lot of these people who might have been in press positions are not going to lose their jobs. Yeah. Well, we're also getting some breaking news here, which is that President Trump has signed some new executive orders. So, Yvonne, tell us what the president signed.

What we know, right? We're kind of following this in real time. He just made these announcements here. And the one executive order that caught my ear here was specifically having to do with IVF treatments.

The President is now answering questions and more law offices we're going to go there and it'll go very substantially higher over a course of a year. But we want to give them time to come in, because, as you know, when they come into the United States and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff. So we want to give a little bit of a chance. Yes, thank you.

The eu. Sorry, Andreas, the EU representative is going to be here in Washington next week. I'm sorry. Tomorrow he's gonna be meeting with Hasid and Greer and Letnik.

What can the EU do to sort of avoid the reciprocal tariffs that you've talked about? And, you know, you talked a lot about the vat. Do you expect them to reduce that? Well, they did already, as I understand it, reduced their car tariff all the way down to what we have.

And a lot of that will take place, and I think some won't do it and some will do it, but the EU had a 10 tax on cars, and now they have a two and a half percent tax, which is the exact same as us. So already we've saved a tremendous amount. That'd be great if everybody would do that. Then we'd all be on the same playing field.

Because essentially what we're doing with the tariffs is, you know, they charge us. We charge them same amount, and it's called reciprocal, actually. And whatever they charge us, we're charging them. And so the EU is, you know, I appreciate that they did this, but, you know, the EU has been very unfair to us.

We have a deficit of $350 billion. They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products. They don't take almost anything. They take very little.

And we'll have to straighten that out, and we will have no doubt about it. Yeah, go ahead, please. Thank you, Mr. President.

Tell us a little bit more about the Russia talks, your impression of how they went today, and if you're perhaps more confident, less confident of the deal after what happened today? Well, much more confident. They were very good. Russia wants to do something.

They want to stop the savage barbarianism. I mean, what's going on over there? Soldiers are being killed by the thousands on a weekly basis. It's ridiculous.

And they're not American soldiers. They're Russian soldiers and they're Ukrainian soldiers, largely. Although a lot of Koreans have been killed. As you know, quite a bit of them have been killed.

They came over to fight, and a large portion have been wiped out. But we want to. We want to end it. It's a senseless war.

It should have Never would have never happened if I was president. And it's a shame to see it. And I see pictures that you don't see, but I see pictures of fields that look just horrible. It looks like Gettysburg.

If you see the old pictures of Gettysburg, it's soldiers lying all over the field, body parts all over the field. They're all dead. And this is going on on a daily basis. It's a horrible thing.

Both Russia and Ukraine, they're losing thousands and thousands of soldiers, and a lot of people have been killed, too. I think that's one of the things that you'll see historically and you'll see later on as it goes. I think people are gonna be surprised at how many people, not only soldiers, have been killed in Ukraine. A lot more people than you think.

Yeah. Please. President Trump, as part of a peace deal with Putin, would you be willing to consider removing all American troops from Europe? Well, nobody's asked me to do that, so I don't think we have to do that.

I wouldn't want to do that, but that question's never really come up. Yeah. Please, sir, do you support stationing European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as part of this peace deal? If they want to do that, that's great.

I'm all for it. If they want to do that, I think that's. That'd be fine. I mean, I know France has mentioned it, others have mentioned it, UK has mentioned it, but.

Yeah. Well, if we have a peace deal, I think having troops over there for. From the standpoint of Europe, we won't have to put any over there because, you know, we're very far away. But having troops over there would be fine.

I would not object to it at all. We're talking about this now. Peace. We have either a ceasefire or a peace itself, and we're looking to do both.

We'd start off with the ceasefire, and if they want to do that, I know France was willing to do that, and I thought that was a beautiful gesture. Yeah. Please, do you have any message for Ukrainians who, after three years of fighting, might feel betrayed or disappointed at not having a seat at these initial talks in Saudi Arabia? Well, I think I'm really disappointed in what's happened.

I've been watching this for three years. It's a war that would have never happened if I was president. And I've been watching these people being killed at levels that you've rarely seen, not even close, since the Second World War. And I'm very disappointed.

I hear that they're upset about not having A seat. Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides.

You have those magnificent golden domes that are shattered, will never be replaced. You can't replace them. Thousand year old domes that are so beautiful, you can't replace that. The whole civilization has changed because of what.

So when they're worried about not being seated, you mean somebody that should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago, you could have made a deal. This is one that could have made a deal. There was no talk of this during the Trump administration. Putin would have never, ever done it.

And by the way, we wouldn't have had October 7th, you know that. We wouldn't have had October 7th either in Israel and we wouldn't have that mess that's going on over there. It's like we have great fire people here. We're putting out fires all over the world.

We're putting out fires. So that would have happened. And you know what else wouldn't have happened? Inflation.

Because it was caused really by the cost of energy going through the roof because of their bad energy policies and also their spending, their terrible spending, wasteful spending on the green new Scam. It's a scam. It's a whole big scam. Yeah, please.

Yes, sir. I want to ask you home. What would it take for you to reconsider the restrictions on the Associated Press? And secondly, some of your advisors are concerned with the Associated Press's style guide, using language and giving guidance to not use words like illegal immigrant or to use phrases like gender affirming care.

And they're concerned about that being an encroachment of liberalism in the way in which the press writes about things. You share those concerns? Well, I do think that some of the phrases that they want to use are ridiculous and I think frankly they become obsolete, especially in the last three weeks, because many things have happened in the last three weeks, and I didn't know about that, but I would say that they want to use certain phrases like that. And I guess some are okay, but many aren't.

But the Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It's called the Gulf of America now. It's not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it just like we have the right to do Mount McKinley.

Nobody's even challenging that. But only the Associated. Essentially, it's primarily the Associated Press. And I don't know what they're doing, but I just say that we're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America.

We're very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America. Now, this Associated Press, as you know, has been very, very wrong on the election, on Trump and the treatment of Trump and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives. And they're doing us no favors. And I guess I'm not doing them any favors.

That's the way life works. But, you know, thank you for the question. Who you with. Very good question.

Thank you. Yes, we're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal. Is that something that the US Would ever support? Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially.

Martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got, most of the cities are laying on their sides. The buildings are collapsed. It looks like a massive demolition site.

The whole, I mean, so many other cities. They haven't done it in Kyiv because I guess I don't want to shoot too many rockets in there. They've done it 20%, but they haven't done it 100%. If they wanted to do it 100%, it would probably happen very quickly.

But you have cities that are absolutely decimated. And yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want to seat at the table, you could say the people have to, when the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election. That's not a Russia thing. That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.

You know, Ukraine is being just, just wiped out. Look at what's happening to the cities. There are cities. There's not even a building standing.

It's a massive. You talk about Gaza. I mean, it's literally these cities look like Gaza. Actually.

Many have, percentage wise, more buildings knocked down than in Gaza. So, you know, people are tired of it. People want to see something happen. And you know, the other thing that it's been bothering me for a long time because I solved the problem with NATO, they paid hundreds of billions of dollars into the funds of NATO.

When I said you got to pay because the United States was paying for European countries, and then they take advantage of us on trade. But I've seen it. Look, we have to. They have to pay.

They have to find out where's the money going to. We have, I believe President Zelensky said last week that he doesn't know where half of the money is that we gave him. Well, we gave them, I believe, $350 billion. But let's say it's something less than that.

But it's a lot. And we have to equalize with Europe because Europe has given us. Given a very much smaller percentage than that. I think Europe has given 100 billion, and we've given, let's say, 300 plus.

And it's more important for them than it is for us. We have an ocean in between, and they don't. But where is all the money that's been given? Where is it going?

And nobody. I've never seen an accounting of it. We give hundreds of billions. I don't see any accounting.

So I want to see peace. Look, you know what I want? Because I don't want all these people killed anymore. I'm looking at people that are being killed, and they're Russian and Ukrainian people, but they're people.

Doesn't matter where they're from on the whole planet. And I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it's going very well. But today I heard.

Oh, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years.

You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land. Everything.

Almost all of the land. And no people would have killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way. And President Biden, in all fairness, he doesn't have a clue what.

He was so bad for this. It was so bad, so pathetic. It's so sad. But with all of that being said, look, it is what it is.

When I left, there was no chance that this could have happened, but it happened because we had incompetent leadership at different levels. But when you see what's taking place in Ukraine with millions of people killed, including the soldiers, millions of people killed, a big percentage of their city is knocked down to the ground. I don't know how Anybody even lives there. You know, when they say they took a poll and Zelensky's at 4%, who's living there?

You know, I mean, people are. It's hard to believe that people live there. Their cities are being knocked down. And this is something that would have never happened.

And by the way, for four years, it didn't happen. It was never going to happen. But how would you counter the perception, Because Russia's pushing this, obviously they don't really hold true elections, that that would be a capitulation of some sort. How would you guard against potentially Russia installing a puppet government?

And then finally, how would that new election have an impact on getting Zelensky to sign the rare earth minerals deal? Look, you have leadership, and I like him personally, it's fine. But I don't care about personally. I care about getting the job done.

You have leadership now. That's allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States. Look, we had a president who was grossly incompetent. He had no idea what he was doing.

He said some very stupid things like going in for portions and all of the things. He made a lot of bad statements. But he's grossly incompetent. And I think everyone knew that.

This is something that should have never happened, would have never happened. And I used to discuss it with Putin, President Putin, and I would talk about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye, I will tell you that. But there was never a chance of him going in.

And I told him, you better not go in. Don't go in. Don't go in. And he understood that.

He understood it fully. But I'm only interested. I want to see if I can save maybe millions of lives. This could even end up in a World War iii.

I'm gonna be honest with you. But hearing now, Europeans say, well, I think we're going. And we're. All of a sudden, you end up in World War III over something that should have never happened.

And, you know, it's a very sad situation. In a court filing, the White House said that Elon Musk is not a Doge employee and has no authority to make decisions. Can you clarify for us today? Yeah, yeah.

Elon is, to me, a patriot. So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want, but he's a patriot. I mean, look at the kind of things I just said. Just write it down just in case that question got asked.

Right. And which I'm surprised It took so long, actually. But you know what? Ukraine's a bigger deal because people are dying by the thousands a week.

Thousands. But look at this. From 90 to 99, Social Security, 6,054,000 people. Well, that's okay.

Maybe that's possible. You know, 90 to 90, 99. Maybe it's possible. It's a lot of people though, with that.

But people that live to 100 to 109. 4,734,000. Wow, that's a lot. That means over 100 years old, they have 4 million people.

I don't know. I don't know too many. I know people that are doing great in their 90s, but not too many people over 100, but over 120. From 120 years old.

People that are 120 years old up to 129. 3,472,000 people. Wow. You know, that can't possibly be because the record is like, I think it's one person, a woman lived to 127, but they have 3,472.

Okay, but now we're going really in. People from 130 years old to 139 year old. 3,936,000. Wow.

I wonder. People are getting paid with all this. I mean, are these checks? And that's what we're checking right now.

People from 140 years old to 149 years old. 3,542,140 years old and beyond. Now, now we're really going because we're looking to break the record by 25 years. People from 150 years old to 159 years old.

1,345,000. These are in the. By the way, these are the computer files. This is what they do.

Well, yes. Elon, who are these dogish people? He said they're super brilliant computer people and they love the country. It's simple.

Wait a minute. People from 160 years old to 169 years. 121,000. So 160 year old people.

170 to 179,000. 6087. But now let's go into the real numbers. From 200 to 209 years old.

879 people from 210 years old. I haven't met any of them. And if I did, I would bless them. I would.

I would worship the ground they walk on. 210 to 219 years. 866. From 220 years old to 229 years old.

1039 and then you have two people from 240 years old to 249 years old. One person, and there's one person that's 360 years old. That's just that. And then where's the money being spent?

Right, let's go into that for just a second. $520 million for a consultant on the environment. It's called Environmental, social and governance Investments in Africa and mobilize private sector resources. $520 million.

Somebody get $520 million for an environmental. Sounds like an environmental study. I've always been one that paid a lot of money for my environmental studies, but they, you know, I paid like $50,000, not 520 million. $520 million for ESG.

$25 million to promote biodiversity conservation and promote illicit livelihoods by developing socially responsible behavior in the country of Colombia. Well, it's nice. $25 million in Colombia for something that nobody ever heard of. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants.

40 million. $42 million for John Hopkins. Great place to research and drive social and behavior change in Uganda. 42 million.

What about us? What about social change in our country? $70 million for a center at Purdue to research university source evidence based solutions to developmental challenges. I mean, these are massive numbers of things that nobody ever heard about.

$10 million for Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcisions. $10 million for circumcisions in another country. $9.7 million for UC Berkeley to develop a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills. In other words, let's teach them something about enterprise.

What about our people? Can we teach them about enterprise? $2.3 million for strengthening independent voices in Cambodia. $32 million to the Prague Civil Society center, which is a very liberal group of people.

Wonder how much of that money came back to the people that approved it. $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia. $486 million to the consortium for Elections and Political process strengthening, including 22 million for inclusive and particip and $21 million for voter turnout in India. Well, why are we giving $21 million to India?

They got a lot of money. They're one of the highest taxing countries in the world in terms of us. We can hardly get in there because their tariffs are so high. I have a lot of respect for India.

I have a lot of respect for the Prime Minister. He just left us, you know, two days ago, but we give him $21 million for voter turnout. It's Voter turnout in India. What about, like, voter turnout?

Yeah, we've done that. I guess we did. 500 million. Didn't we throw the lock boxes.

$20 million for fiscal federalism in Nepal. Listen to these numbers. This is all fraud. $19 million for biodiversity conservation in Nepal.

$1.5 billion for voter confidence. We want to give them confidence in Liberia, $14 million for social cohesion in Mali. $2.5 million for inclusive democracies in South Africa. $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia.

Asia's doing very well. They're doing a lot. Now listing a number of line items that he says shows waste and fraud and in the government, without exact context, we're not clear where he's coming from. But I want to walk people through what we're saying.

The president is taking questions right now at Mar a Lago. The biggest topic was the war in Ukraine and how to end it. He talked about the fact he was more confident after today's talk between US Officials and Russia that left Ukraine out. He said, in fact, that he believes Ukrainians who are maybe feeling betrayed, that he has a message for them and that was that they're upset about not being at the table, that they've had to sit at the table for the last three years and then nothing's happened.

He also talked about the fact that he might be backing. He did say exactly what he said, said hinted idea that he might be backing having elections in Ukraine to change possibly the leadership there, saying that President Zelensky told him personally that he didn't know where some of the money that the US has given Ukraine to fight back against Russia has gone. He also talked about the fact that he believes that there have been no elections in that Ukraine is subject to martial law right now. There was a lot there.

I also want to point out that he was talking about Doge and Elon Musk. Elon Musk, Patriot and said that there are a number of sort of roles that he can talk to about what Elon Musk is doing. But at the end of the day, he's praising him and celebrating the role that he's playing in the government. The other thing is that he talked about the ap, this Associated Press, that has been barred from a number of press conferences, including one right now.

He said they're not going to let the AP back in unless they change the terminology from the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. The Gulf of Mexico has been there for that name for several hundred years, but he has changed it in executive order. We Also just want to do a quick fact check, which is going back to the Russia and Ukraine. Thought he said at one point you shouldn't have never started it.

I think he was referencing Ukraine starting the war. Of course, we should say that it was three years ago that Russia invaded Ukraine in this latest invasion. There's a lot to digest here. So I'm going to bring back in Von Helier, our White House correspondent who is in West Palm Beach.

Also with us is our NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons, who joins us from Riyadh here. I tried my best to sum this up. I know you are the expert here. So break down what don't doubt at you from what the president just said.

You know, I think you did a good job. I think you hit the key points really that he said that was if you like new, because this is the first time we've heard the president speak since these negotiations here in Riyadh. The fact that he said he thought the talks are there were good and that he felt more confident. What's interesting to me is that he didn't go into more detail about the nature of those talks.

So what he really did was repeat some of the things that we heard him say before, that the war would not have started if I had been in power rather than President Biden, for example. And what does that tell you? I think it tells you actually that President Trump simply wants a deal, that he wants to deliver on the cease fire that he committed to during his election campaign. Why is that important?

Well, because what we saw here today was a meeting between and by the way, keep in mind, I mean, seismic, massive, the first formal meeting between US Senior officials and Russian senior officials to talk about the war in Ukraine. What we saw was a meeting that laid out a roadmap, if you like, for restoring relations between the US And Russia. You would have expected, perhaps many people might have, that these talks here would really just be focused on that question of sea fight. In fact, they went much further.

The secretary of state Marco Rubio talking about that there could be cooperation over geopolitics, even over economics. Remember that the US has been leading the sanctions campaign along with Europe against Russia. So you really saw the Trump administration today unlocking that campaign of isolation against Russia. That's why potentially what happened here is transformational.

The Russians looked pleased. President Zelensky looked downtrodden. The Europeans weren't even in the room and are going to hold another meeting in Paris this week, it appears. But they don't even appear to be able to agree with each other.

So there is disarray in Europe, frankly, over what is happening. What you heard from President Trump there, frankly, was reiterating the things that he has said many times, basically demonstrating a determination to get to a point where there is a ceasefire almost no matter what. Now, I would caveat that with a couple of things. One is that President Trump's envoy for Ukraine and Russia, General Keith Kellogg, in a briefing overnight talked about that he will spend three days this week in Ukraine.

He'll go back multiple times. They will brief President Trump on the View from Ukraine. And he talks about it as a kind of twin track approach. Another point that would make me know this well from President Trump that he can change his mind, he can shift direction.

So just because these talks set out all of these potential ways in which Russia extraordinarily can now work with the United States, that could all shift at any time. And there does not at this stage appear to be a plan, a date for a meeting between President Trump and President Putin. Both the Russians and the Americans said that here in Riyadh today at these talks organized by the Saudi Arabian crown prince, which frankly, the Saudi Arabian leadership here would be happy to host if it was going to. There is no sign of that at this point.

So on the one hand, really a seismic shift. On the other hand, things moving slower here than perhaps you might expect. And President Trump regaling not very much more in what he had to say there. And Kir, as you break that down, some of this is really clear, which is that President Trump is sounding very pro Russia.

And I kept thinking as I was listening to him talk about Ukraine being a part of martial law, he said, and maybe hinting at new elections, that if I was President Zelensky, who just canceled his trip to Saudi Arabia then supposed to be there tomorrow, I would feel a little worried here. What do you think about that? Yeah, the President Zelensky counseling the trip here, and he may well be a bit angry. He may be angry with the Saudi Arabian leadership for their leadership in making these talks happen.

You know, you can make the point that in any negotiations, after three years of brutal war, frankly, it's unlikely any side is going to be satisfied, although the Russians did look pretty satisfied today. So, yeah. On the other hand, President Zelensky immediately says he has plans to come here for talks. So there is that aspect.

And I think too, I don't know, President Trump has clearly shown an affection for President Putin in the past. Whether he is pro Russian, that's a different question. Certainly what he would say, what I think he tried to say there in that news conference again in the signing ceremony was that he is against the war. Now, look, the reality is that it has got to something like a stalemate.

It is very, has become very slow moving. It's been difficult to see any winner, if you like. And certainly what the Ukrainians will be concerned with now is whether there is going to be a carve up of their country decided by America and Russia together. Again, Trump administration saying that's not the way it's going to go.

But another aspect of this, of course, is the question of the kind of security guarantees that Ukraine might get in any kind of a ceasefire deal. And you heard President Trump there say that he would compare European troops in Ukraine. The Russians today said they don't want that. So there are differences.

It's a work in progress. It's a little bit chaotic, honestly. I think we know more now, but we don't know everything. A little bit chaotic is one way to describe this in these first four weeks.

But I want to bring you in. I was underscoring when I thought about the domestic audience, the fact that President Trump was claiming, we don't know, he can't really fact check this. We don't know what happened or if it didn't happen. But President Trump is saying that President Zelensky told him he doesn't know where you have the money that the US Gave Ukraine went.

I wonder what you think about that. Any other big takeaways that you have after we listen to the press? President Right. I think peer support on this has been so on because when you're looking at the claims that the President of the United States is making, so many of them are unverifiable.

And much like he has suggested when it comes to domestic policy, suggesting that Social Security payments are going to millions of Americans who are dead though making a statement without writing any evidence to back it up. It is very similar to what we hear from him suggesting outwardly in the public, in front of cameras, to an American audience, but also an international one, that there's hundreds of billions of dollars of US Money that has gone to places that are unspecified. And yet at the same time, he doesn't allege or make specific allegations as to how the money was improperly spent. And I think that is a remarkable part of what we just heard from the President here.

Almost hedging his bets openly, not in direct analysis with the Ukrainians behind closed doors in classified setting, but instead hedging his bets for The Russians on such a platform as from his estate here in Florida with the cameras rolling by suggesting President Zelensky has a 4% approval rating. There is no evidence that we see to suggest that there's actually any polling that shows those sorts of numbers. We know that the President has gone through difficult times over the last three years as we watched President Trump leave his Mar A Lago estate this press conference. But I think what is so much a part of this is we have seen a tidal wave of support move against Ukrainians over the last three years, years here in the United States.

And it takes me back to 2022, the weekend in which Russia invaded Ukraine with its initial strikes. I was actually down here in Florida at CPAC in less than 24 hours after those initial strikes. J.D. vance, then Senator at the time, he openly was suggesting why us should provide any financial support or why it has any vested interest in what's happening in Ukraine.

And fast forward three years later, it's JD Vance and are in control and now openly questioning the American public whether Zelensky is in a position to not only lead Ukraine, but whether it's a worthy investment for the United States to still be engaged in. Yeah, and it's certainly so smart to sort of lock down and put into context what we're seeing here. I want to ask you also about the executive orders that were told President Trump signed. There was this executive order were told on expanding access idf.

That was a big, big promise that he made. Broke the story that he wanted to do that. That's something that is impacting a lot of families across this country. What can you tell us about that?

Right. During the campaign in the up to the November election, he made the quite radical statement that either insurers or the federal government were going to cover all the IVF treatment for any Americans that desired in an effort to reproduce and build their families. And the statement at the time was head training because of the billions, trillions of dollars of costs that would be understandably associated with such care. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars for any American family that goes to the IVS treatment.

But those are individuals that seek it and either have insurance that helps them with it or, or pay massive amount of cost expenses to go forward with that sort of care. It doesn't include individuals that never seek IVF treatment because of its expenses. But what you heard here from just a few moments ago is he was signing executive ordering his domestic Policy council to begin to look into how they can work with insurance companies to make it more affordable for Americans to seek that IVF care. Of course, that is far away a different policy position than outright coverage for all Americans who want it.

But nonetheless, after about a month in office, this is the first time that we're hearing from the president directly suggests that he's going to have his White House seek to ways to make IVF more affordable for Americans. Yeah. Well, Vaughn Keir, thank you both for riding this roller coaster. We'll be back, of course, I'm sure again on this.

So thank you for bringing all your A game to this. For more, I'm joined by Kavia Go, political reporter for Summer four. That's right, that we start the panel. Andy Levin, former Democratic congressman from Michigan, now distinguishing your fellow at the center for American Products Fund.

And Mark Short, former chief of staff and Vice President Mike Pence. He's used to this. He's the new chair of Americans Advancing Freedom and an NBC News contributor. So, Mark, I want to start with you because you're used to the turn of the Trump administration, having served the first administration.

What did you take away when you think about what the president said? I mean, there's a lot there. You can start with the international because international is a domestic in this case because there are a lot of people in your party, Republicans who do not want to see more a go into Ukraine. I think that's been a big shift, obviously inside Republican Party.

I think a lot of Americans are tired of American involvement across the globe. But it is a dramatic shift for me from a time when I think Republicans celebrated wanting to support this and stuff for freedom. And you know, when the president talks about the who started this aggression, it's important to mind people that couldn't start this aggression. He invaded Ukraine.

And for three years, not only there's been a brutal war of murdering women and children, but Russia's actually been stealing children, taking them across the line and selling them, trafficking those children of Ukrainians. This is, this is nothing but a Russian aggression. I think that those other nations in Eastern Europe have concerns. Now, there's a, there's a part in our party that says that's not our problem.

That's recent Europe to decide. But it's important at least to get the facts straight. And the facts are that Putin is a murderer and he's an aggressive dictator. He's the one that initiated this war.

And Andy Tipping here. Well, I agree with Mark. And you know, it's really outrageous to talk about just walking away from this and the way he talks about how many People have been dying. He just throws numbers out with no verifying anything.

The Ukrainian people have been fighting for self determination and for controlling their own land in their own homeland for years. And this history between Russia and Ukraine goes back hundreds of years when czars attacked Ukraine. My own dad, when he was in Congress, led the effort to get a memorial to. It's called the Holodomor, the genocide by hunger when Stalin was in power in Russia, in the USSR, 4 million Ukrainians died in 1932 and 33 from famine caused by the Soviet Union.

So this has a long history. The Republican Party, I will say to my brother here, has an honorable tradition of fighting. We don't always agree on the details, right. But this is outrageous that President Trump is abandoning democracy, abandoning self deterrent discrimination for people in Ukraine and elsewhere around the world.

And you've been so good at covering President Trump. He won his candidate, Trump. What do you think is driving him right now? Is it really a sponsor to get a deal?

You know, it's interesting because when I pulled away from this and Kier kind of touched on it, he said Trump was unlocking isolationism. I would say, I would go even further to say this is sort of a, sort of an interventionist approach where he, you know, talked about Zelensky not needing to be in the room because they've had three opportunities, three years to address this. This is something that a father would say about his children to say, you know, I'll handle this now. Just not giving a whole entire country a say on a matter that, you know, speaks to their future.

So I thought, I thought this was very different from where Americans have postured in the past before in terms of intervening. And it sort of goes against this whole America first ideology where Americans should be focused on Americans. When you talk about determining someone else's elections, that's pretty different from where he's been posturing in the past. And I got a call from a former mayor of a really big American city today, just kind of railing about what's going on and said, was there a news story you want me to cover?

What's going on? He's like, no, I just wanted to tell you how angry I am. And it kind of, for me, solidify that Democrats right now, they're very angry, sometimes vocal, but they don't really have a plan or something. At least it doesn't seem like in this conversation I had a real effective way to push back.

What do you make of it is an effective way to push back? What do you Think of how Democrats have been handling it. I do think people have been reeling and people, you know, have been sort of on their back foot. And if we've never seen this kind of scattershot, attacking the rule of law, attacking constitutional order, attacking backing the statutes across so many areas, like, I'll just pick this one that we were just covering.

Ivf, right? Yeah. Donald Trump ran on how he's gonna make it free for everybody. It's up to Congress to appropriate funds.

He can't do that by an executive order. That's just nonsense. So I do think that we need to. Democrats need to stand up for the rule of law and for the working class people of this country who've been taking it on the chin for 40 years.

And they are. They obviously shout out in this election that, look, something needs to change because I can't afford my medicines and my rent, you know, and we have to get back, I think, not just reacting to Trump. We have to go out there with a proactive program and say, we're for everybody having a union if they want to be, for everybody making 15, 20 an hour. Quickly play the sound of President Trump, what he said back then, because he signed today a little differently Protestant.

I'm announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment, fertilization for women, IVF treatment. It seems like what he signed today is a little different than what he promised. But, Mark, broad strokes here. Do you think people are getting what they voted for?

Do you think this is what the. The Trump supporters who backed him and were excited that those rallies are getting what they. What they bargain for, what they voted for? I think broadly, yes.

I think that for a lot of Americans, despite all the chaos, what's really cutting through is the notion that there was a chaos of the war in the previous administration. Trump is fixing that and he's cutting government spending. And so even though there's a lot of stories about how it's happening with those, I think that's what's coming through. I think that's benefiting president's approval.

I think this particular plan, though, is a little bit different. Like when you say, I'll cut government spending and then say, I'm gonna give free IVF to everyone, that runs counter your notion, actually shrinking the size of government. And so I think he'd be better off if he stuck with the war issues and doge issues. Yeah, quickly.

Yeah, just. This is an expensive route to go down if you want to pay for ivf. For anyone interested, this is when we're talking to a Congress who wants to cut a considerable amount of money for the budget. Well, thank you so much again for rolling riding this roller coaster.

Thank you all for watching. We're back. Tomorrow we'll war Meet the Press now, but the news continues with Christine Romans in for Hallie Jackson right 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.

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