Meet the Press NOW — January 3

This is Wednesday. House Republicans launch a second impeachment inquiry, this time into President Biden's Homeland Security Chief, as party leaders and presidential candidates seize on the record-breaking influx of migrants at the southern border. Plus, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's provocative comments on white supremacy as NBC News and the Des Moines Register kick off a series of special interviews with the candidates making their closing arguments in Iowa. And rising tensions in the Middle East as Biden administration officials speak out, saying neither the U.S.

nor Israel was behind a pair of explosions that killed nearly 100 people in Iran. Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Gabe Gutierrez in Washington. And we begin today at the U.S.

southern border as the Biden administration comes under fire again for its handling of the migrant crisis. And as Republicans move to spotlight the issue politically with another impeachment inquiry. Moments ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson held a press conference while leading a delegation of roughly 60 House Republicans to Eagle Pass, Texas. He lashed out at the Biden administration and demanded the White House take stronger action.

Since the time that President Biden took office, the administration has done next to nothing to protect the border. But we've all seen with our own eyes, they've opened the border wide to the entire world. The president can and should act now. This doesn't require legislation.

It requires leadership. And despite the White House's claim, he has all the authority he needs right now under existing federal law to stop this madness. It comes as a committee spokesperson confirms to NBC News the House Homeland Security Committee will formally begin impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This morning, Mayorkas telling MSNBC he will cooperate with the inquiry.

The first hearing has been scheduled for one week from today. Meanwhile, border officials are scrambling to address a record-breaking number of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, which shut down four major ports of entry for much of December. DHS officials tell NBC News border apprehensions are down to start the year, and the administration is now planning to reopen those ports of entry this week. On the campaign trail, Republicans are seizing on the issue.

With presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis both out with separate op-eds today blaming the migrant influx squarely on President Biden. The Biden administration is responding with Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas accusing Texas' Republican governor of playing politics with the issue as Texas officials continue to bus and fly asylum seekers to democratically controlled states and cities. The fact that we have one governor in the state of Texas who is refusing to cooperate with other governors and other local officials and coordinate efforts to address the challenge that our country, which this country should stand united to address, that our country is facing. And it's a remarkable failure of governance to refuse to cooperate with one's fellow local and state officials.

Adding even more urgency to the situation at the border are talks here in Washington. Senate negotiators are back at it trying to strike a deal on border security legislation, which the White House has tied to a number of other U.S. national security priorities, including aid to Israel and Ukraine. NBC's Morgan Chansky filed this report from the border in Texas.

Good afternoon. We're here in Eagle Pass, and what a difference just a few weeks can make. We were here witnessing the thousands of migrants that waited beneath the Eagle Pass Bridge to be processed by Customs and Border Protection, waiting hours, if not days in certain cases. But today, the sunshine is out.

The river is being patrolled by numerous boats. And as of last check, there has not been a significant number of migrants that have come across. Federal officials saying that on Monday alone, a mere 500 migrants were spotted crossing this entire sector. You put that against some of the averages we saw in December when there was a daily average of upwards of 10,000.

And you can understand the kind of dip that we're seeing. Now, important as that is to acknowledge, it's also important that authorities say that this could wildly fluctuate based upon what's happening on the other side of the border. They say that Mexican officials have cracked down with law enforcement on migrant movements there. But as of right now, they're not publicly sharing how they're doing so.

We also know that there is a seasonal dip that's anticipated around the holidays this time of year. All that to say that people here are appreciating this temporary lull. But make no mistake, everyone understands it is absolutely temporary. And our thanks to Morgan Chesky for that reporting.

Now we're joined by NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley and NBC News senior national political reporter Sahil Kapoor has the latest from Capitol Hill. And Julia, I want to start with you. Let's break these numbers down a little bit. They were obviously record-breaking last month.

Now we're looking at one day. Numbers are down. Tell us what's behind this and why is the Biden administration touting these numbers so quickly? Well, Morgan's right.

Of course, the numbers do tend to go down this time of year. A lot of people don't want to start that trek right around the holidays. And so what you're seeing now is the dip that started probably right before Christmas. Cartels also have to go back and get more migrants, build up resources, because they pushed so many people through in December.

But according to the seasonal data, it will probably be at another record in early March. If you look at how these things have gone and the fact that we've been at such big highs. The one piece of good news that might actually stick is the fact that the border processing centers are now able to breathe a sigh of relief. Border processing centers where Morgan is, were at three times their capacity before Christmas.

Now they're at 30% of their capacity. And we mentioned that the administration is now reopening those four ports of entry. Talk to me about that and what impact will that reopening have? I think the biggest thing that we can disspell for people on that is that doesn't mean to let in more migrants.

That means to allow people who are traveling for commercial reasons or for trade to come through cargo lines every day. They used to take the officers from those checkpoints and put them out in the field to apprehend migrants who are crossing illegally. But because of these lower numbers, they're now able to open that. So it's better for trade.

It's better for people who might live on one side of the border, go to school on the other side. I talked to a lot of people in Louthill, Arizona just a couple of weeks ago who thought they were going to have to close their businesses if that didn't reopen soon. And those pictures from your reporting in Louthill were just incredible. That huge number of migrants that were there.

Look, the Biden administration has been asked, and I remember, you know, I've asked them repeatedly about this, but there's been a lot of backlash from big city mayors across the country. Even today, we just learned that Denver, for example, plans to spend about the 10% of its budget this year to pay for migrants. But what is the administration saying now? I know there's been a lot of controversy about busing some of these migrants now to the suburbs.

What is the Biden administration saying? Well, the Biden administration is saying that they want to give these cities best practices. You know, they visited cities like Denver, like New York. They want to be in Chicago.

They've tried to meet with their officials there and try to tell them, look, you want to get as many of these immigrants working as possible. So if they're eligible for asylum as any Venezuelan who came in this summer can now apply. They want to open those clinics, get that going. But really, they need more money from Congress.

So they're putting this back again on Congress in order to help cities like Denver who were not budgeted for this. It could cost them $100 million this year. They only had $20 million in their rainy day fund. Those people are really worried.

Yeah, that's right. The Biden administration said repeatedly that it has given these cities some money as part of the supplemental request. But these local officials repeatedly say it's just not enough. Now, before I let you go, Julia, I want to ask you, you know, we heard that, you know, today now Secretary Mayorkas is now be facing this impeachment inquiry.

How is he preparing for that? And I also want to correct, I don't think they've gone to Denver, but they have been in touch with the mayor there. Let me correct myself there. But yes, Mayorkas is going to the border.

He's going right here to Eagle Pass on Monday. And then on Wednesday, he'll start, you know, the first impeachment inquiries get underway. We should point out that eight Republicans actually switched sides to vote against an impeachment inquiry. This could have happened much more quickly against impeachment in a four vote in November.

But instead, they referred it back to the House committee on Homeland Security. And they'll start that impeachment inquiry because they want to be able to bring out a lot of dirt to try to show that Mayorkas hasn't been doing his job and that everything that's going on at the border is the fault of one man. I think they might have a hard time proving that. And one thing that DHS continues to say is this takes a lot of work because they want so many documents.

They want so much time. It's taking time and manpower away from people who can be coming up with solutions. And Mayorkas himself is deeply involved in these negotiations. Exactly.

He's over on Capitol Hill involved in discussing logistics with these Senate negotiations. Julia Ainsley, thank you so much for joining here on set. I want to turn out to Sahil Kapoor, our Capitol Hill correspondent. And Sahil, let's take a little bit closer look at the logistics for this Mayorkas impeachment, which we're just talking about with Julia.

What can you tell us about the House proceedings against Mayorkas? And what do we expect that to endorsement from controversial former Iowa Republican congressman Steve King, who was removed from his committees and voted out of Congress after embracing some white supremacist ideology. Ramaswamy defended King while being pressed to explain his own views on the issue of white supremacy. Take a listen.

Speaking with respect of his committee assignments in 2019, you mentioned the New York Times. He was quoted as saying white nationalists, white supremacists, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive? Do you agree with those comments? Well, I think that I take Steve King's words over the New York Times that he didn't say those things.

And I've had my own experiences with the media. And I understand that if Steve King will have gotten known, and I really believe that this is an honest man and a patriot who cares about speaking the truth versus some New York Times reporter who hasn't offered a shred of evidence that he said such a thing. First of all, let's start with that. I don't even think those are the facts.

I think it's something deeper, though. And actually I was looking at this because someone said this to me last night after after a lot of the backlash relating to the Steve King endorsement. They sent a whole New York Times compilation of all the racist things he said, supposedly racist things he said. Well, actually, some of them are just calling for basic border security in the United States, calling for English as the national language in the United States, pointing out the criminality of many people who have come to this country illegally.

A lot of that isn't racist at all. People asked me even last night, will you denounce white supremacy? We live in a moment where don't forget a lot of the left has defined white supremacy to include things like punctuality or the written word. This is just as of a couple of years ago, even many in the DEI Academy in academia and otherwise have said concepts like this are vestiges of white supremacy.

These words have ceased to mean anything. And so if somebody wants to define white supremacy for me, then we can actually have a serious conversation about it. But until then, I think a lot of this is actually a charade. I think Steve King was defeated in part because of a donor establishment that used the toxic influence on money in politics to be able to disfavor him.

But this is somebody who I believe is a patriot. I'm proud to have his endorsement. I'm not afraid to say it. And I think that that's what makes me different than a lot of the other candidates.

Let's talk about white supremacy and what happened last night for a moment, because when you were talking to reporters last night, you called white supremacy a myth. When someone asked you about Dylan Roof, you said you didn't know who that is. Have you looked up what happened in 2015? Yeah, look, I said, I said this last night in vicious racial discrimination is wrong no matter how it happens.

But if a Washington Post reporter is asking me almost like a catechism, whatever question I said, I'm against invidious racial discrimination, whatever form it takes. It says, do you denounce white supremacy? It's incumbent on us for us to define what white supremacy is. I wrote my book, Woke, and I've written about the detailed understanding of what the popular understanding of these terms have come to mean.

Do you believe punctuality is a vestige of white supremacy, Dasha? Look, if you don't, they have a disagreement about any people who are defining those terms or the written word or the use of the nuclear family. This is this are my words. These are the words of intellectual proponents from Abraham Kendi to Iona Presley to BLM that have said these are vestiges of white supremacy.

So you have to have it both ways. You have to have an honest discussion. I'm not a straw man. You brought up Jussie Smollett as the best example of white supremacy.

Jussie Smollett was the hottest thing in news in the back of a fake actual attack on him that we have to contend with. And yet, and yet you have examples like the Buffalo shooter in New York just in 2022, but you are also cherry picking when you bring up Jussie Smollett. I'll look at all the statistics, more black on black crime. If you really care about actual crime against black Americans, let's get to the root causes of it in the inner cities of this country.

The anti defamation league tracked a 38% increase on white supremacist propaganda last year. The anti defamation league. The ADL, I don't think is a particularly credible source. When we're talking about, I would suggest, I would suggest, look at that.

There's a table, two by two table, a federal law enforcement data, which you could say, well, maybe we shouldn't believe that either. But okay, the FBI hate crimes. The FBI hate crime statistics. That's a law enforcement agency.

59.1% was based on race ethnicity. Saying hate crimes rose 12% between 2020 and 2021. Look at the absolute crimes themselves. What they classify as a hate crime is itself a political judgment.

I think that when you actually care about protecting life, if you want to say Black Lives Matter, let's look at where Black lives are actually being lost. It's in the cities at the heart of other black Americans and criminals that are restrained by the. We talk about as well, but are we supposed to ignore white supremacist hate crimes? We're not supposed to ignore any kind of crime, Dasha.

That's what I say. But what I see is a selective reporting. Take the national transgender shooter manifesto. Every shooter manifesto in a mass shooting has been released within 48 hours, except for that one shooter in Nashville.

Now it ended up being leaked. What do you see? It wasn't it wasn't a white supremacist. It was somebody that was actually making fun of using derogatory terms.

So why are you talking about that manifesto and not keep talking about the manifesto from 2015? I'm more than OK talking about both. But what I'm asking is, why is the mainstream media suppressed that one? Why did the police suppress that one?

Ramaswamy was also asked about some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories that have become a hallmark of his campaign in Iowa. In recent weeks, you've put a lot of ideas out there. You've suggested on the campaign trail that January 6th was an inside job, that the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer was a job of inside entrapment, that the House Republicans impeachment inquiry is part of a Democratic plot to sideline Biden, that there is a devious Democratic scheme to actually nominate Nikki Haley. The reality is none of these are top issues for Iowa voters.

So why are you focused on these conspiracy theories? Well, I focused is a heavy-handed word, Dasha. If you take 80% of what I said, I'm talking about policy and future direction of the country, talking about how we increase the supply of energy to bring down the cost for everyday Americans. And so that's 80% of what I'm talking about.

But I'm not going to hide from what I do believe are realities hiding in plain sight that people deserve to know about. I'm sharing my true convictions. And I think if we want to revive our constitutional republic, we deserve a government that tells the people the truth again. Not just when it's easy, but when it is hard.

It's not a priority for voters. Why are you so focused on it? Because truth is a priority for me. That's the answer.

Truth is a priority for this campaign. And joining me now from Iowa is NBC's Dasha Burns. Dasha, wow. The first of your three interviews was full of news.

So there's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with that exchange about white supremacy. Bottom line, how does Vivek Ramaswamy define white supremacy? Well, it's a great question, Gabe.

I mean, he asked me to define it. He asked the mainstream media to define it. Ramaswamy is often less about how he defines things and more about his approach to dismantling definitions or criticizing what he believes to be how people have decided to define certain terms. You heard me there press him on what I've often found in my conversations with him is to be straw man arguments that he'll put up in order to bash them down.

And listen, for me, Ramaswamy has been a relevant candidate, not so much because of where he's at in polling, right? He's polling in single digits, but more about what he represents within the GOP, within our politics today, because of some of what he spouts here. And he does draw these large crowds here in Iowa. He gets standing ovations when he speaks and uses the rhetoric like some of what you heard right there.

And so I think it is important to pay attention to this because we've ignored things like this in the past and have come to regret ignoring it, not taking this head on. And so I do think it's important to have these conversations and to push back and to hold accountable candidates that say things like this. And Dasha, when I was in Iowa last year, you know, I spoke with several people that were considering Ramaswamy, even though they said they would eventually vote for Donald Trump. Now, he, of course, Ramaswamy is openly a Trump supporter, but he's running against him.

He's trying to make this argument that, yes, Donald Trump was the best president ever. And yet somehow he would be a better president. So how did he answer the question of why Trump voters should back him and not the former president? Well, he's actually taken an interesting turn when it comes to how he talks about the former president.

He started to articulate kind of another theory around this rigged system that he believes is going to prevent former President Trump from ultimately winning the election in November. And he says You know, we've done Iowa the way people who have done well in Iowa have done, which is be on the ground, create the organization. The polling has never predicted how the results come out because it's a caucus and it's just a different beast. Maria, what a difference a few months makes.

You know, just a few months ago, I was talking to sources within the DeSantis campaign basically saying that Iowa was everything, that they were putting all their eggs in the Iowa basket. And now, you know, he's walking away from that. What do you make of that argument? If not Iowa for Ron DeSantis, what?

Well, this is a candidate that was absolutely the one that was going to take Donald Trump down. He was Donald Trump lite. And then he had to relaunch a campaign that folks felt that he never launched. He's lost his fizz.

And as a result, I think the Republicans are now trying to coalesce around Nikki Haley. It's one of the reasons why we saw Vivek try to say, no, I'm actually the new Donald Trump. In fact, I agree with you. I think he's trying to run for vice president.

He's trying to be the foil saying we are not white nationalists when, in fact, everything that the former president twice impeached has demonstrated that he does embrace it. And so I think for DeSantis is that he has campaigned throughout to be dead on arrival, even though he had the largest purse of donations outside of Donald Trump. And I find that really quite surprising because he wasn't able to demonstrate what would make him different. And I want to turn to you on that point on the point of the expectations game.

What does a successful Iowa caucus look like for non-Trump candidates, whether it be DeSantis or Nikki Haley? How can they come out of there claiming some sort of victory? What threshold do they need to meet? Look, the polls at the moment suggest that Donald Trump could get as much as 50 percent of Iowa.

I think that if they manage to hold him to something less than that, that's some amount of encouragement. DeSantis, as you point out, has staked a lot on Iowa. He's done the full grassroots. He's done all 99 counties.

And and the endorsement of the governor and the endorsement of the governor. And in New Hampshire, the governor there has endorsed Nikki Haley, who's been all over campaign on that state as well. I think that you'll see, you know, likeliest Donald Trump runs away with both of those states. And at that point, the campaign is effectively effectively done.

But as a second place in Iowa, a moral victory. What does it signify? Nikki Haley reaches a certain threshold and perhaps keeps Donald Trump under 50 percent. Does she have a lot of juice heading into New Hampshire?

You know, you have some momentum effects, but, you know, if you end up consolidating Trump against any single person head to head, still, according to the polls, that Trump walks away with that and losing by 30 as opposed to, you know, coming in single digits. It's a small consolation, but you still don't get to be president. Whatever you can get right now. I want to turn to you.

Donald Trump locked up endorsements from the rest of House leadership today with the backing of Tom Emmer. I want to read from from his statement. He said that Democrats have made clear that they will use every tool in their arsenal to try and keep Joe Biden's failed policies in power. And we cannot let them.

It's time for Republicans to unite behind our party's clear front runner, which is why I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president. Still not the biggest endorsement, of course, in the history with Donald Trump. What do you make of that endorsement?

I make that Tom Emmer hasn't given up on being speaker of the House of Representatives. I mean, is it an acknowledgment of reality? It's an acknowledgment of reality, which is that it'd be very difficult to lead a party organization, be in a party leadership position or the top position and not have the support of the former president. Whether he wins the nomination or not, he's still going to be a major figure in the party.

And exactly to that point, does this does this show really the power that Donald Trump has over the Republican Party in Congress right now? He's the former president. So he is he is he is the most senior Republican, most recent elected person. So, yes, definitionally, he has a lot of power on the party.

And he is, as we've talked about, well ahead in the polls and likely to be the nominee based on what we know today. So, yes, he has a lot of power over the party. But I would actually kind of argue that Donald Trump, for all intents and purposes, is also an incumbent president. And the fact that he is not sweeping the Republican nomination also speaks to this vacuum.

He's not yet right. He's pretty far ahead. He's far ahead, but it's part of because people haven't consolidated. I think if there was a candidate that folks were able to consolidate against, I think that he should he should be polling.

I mean, everybody talks about how low Biden is, but Donald Trump is not exactly that far ahead either. I don't know about that. His polling was already high, but you're right. If there wasn't consolidation, but that has not happened.

I do. I do want to turn quickly, though, as we begin to run out of time here, I want to talk to the Democratic side. We just learned that President Biden will be giving a speech on Saturday near Valley Forge. And he's expected to talk about the threats to democracy.

It's a theme that his campaign is really leaning into right here. Is that straight from the 2020 playbook? And is that really the best option right now for the Biden Harris campaign to attract these Democratic voters? I think that he needs to start.

He needs to continue sending the alarm about the person that is leading right now. The Republican Party does not believe in the Republic. And by reminding the American people of that, it was one of the reasons why the red wave never came to fruition. You had plenty of Republicans and independent men who had voted historically Republican that decided either to stand it out or vote Democratic for a I'm sorry, for on the Democratic side in the midterms because they recognize that we are living under.

I hate to say this. I'm the optimist in the room. Mostly existential threat. It is real.

And so I think what he's trying to use this as a moment of saying, look, we have to stay the course. And this idea that the Biden administration hasn't done anything for the American people. It's pretty bogus. I think what we're going to be able to see in the next 15 years from now, what we're going to see.

Well, that message about the threats to democracy would resonate. It has. I mean, I think it has. That's one of the reasons why you saw so many.

And it was so connected to how they gutted foe versus red wave. That was at the beginning of the erosion of not only democracy, but our rights. And it's one of the reasons why you had so many, again, independent Republican men say, you know what? I can't do this to the country.

Do I love Joe Biden? No. But do I believe in democracy and our institutions? Absolutely.

Sarah, I want to give you one quick point and then I want to end with Idrees. I think it's certainly a great message for the Democratic base. I don't think it riles up other members. And to your point about the Biden accomplishments, if Biden was trying to appeal to independence, he should be talking about his accomplishments.

But he's not. He's talking about this instead. And I think that I think that that that this tells you a lot about what he's going to campaign on and what he's not going to campaign on. And Idrees, finally, really quickly, he's President Biden also giving a speech in Charleston, South Carolina on Monday.

Is that part of the effort by the Biden Harris campaign to attract and to retain black voters? Well, they were asked about this and they said, no, it's about the soul of the nation, all these other themes that they're trying to sound. But, you know, I think that most voters have heard of January 6th. They know about the trials.

And yet, you know, in the polls, Donald Trump is leading Biden by a few points. So, you know, the democracy versus autocracy point is an effective one for the base. But I don't think that it might have the pull that the campaign thinks that it does. Idrees, Maria Teresa and Sarah, thank you all so much for joining us here on the panel on Meet the Press now.

And after the break, the increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East. We're live in Tehran with everything we know and don't know about those deadly blasts in Iran that killed nearly 100 people and wounded countless others. You're watching Meet the Press now. Welcome back.

Turning now to Iran and an increasingly volatile situation across the Middle East. State media reports that 95 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a pair of blasts in Iran. And what Iranian officials are calling a terror attack. State television showed people running after two explosions hit the southeastern city of Kerman at an event marking the death of Iran's top general, Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S.

drone strike four years ago. This afternoon, the U.S. saying it was not behind the blast and there was no reason to believe Israel was behind them either, but that it was too early to say what might have caused the explosions. NBC's Ali Arouzi joins us now from Tehran.

And Ali, what more do we know about these explosions and how are Iranian leaders responding? Hey, Gabe. Well, as you mentioned in the And the FBI is trying to find those people. And again, Warren, do we know the details about where these threats called in today or any more details that you can share with us?

What they're saying is that this was an email. This was a mass email to a number of different places. And the penalties regarding these types, you mentioned that there have been an increase of arrests over the last couple of years. But what are some of the penalties here for these felonies?

Yeah, they can carry prison time. These are serious crimes, making an interstate threat, calling in a hoax bomb threat because they have real repercussions, Gabe. All right. And Ken, we're also, you know, this also comes just weeks after somebody was found just outside the Capitol with a weapon on them unclear if they were actually threatening members of Congress.

But how how closely is law enforcement looking into this here in Washington, D.C.? Well, again, I would separate this phenomenon of hoax bomb threats, which is increasing, but it's been with us for a long time and these specific threats to public officials. It may be a related phenomenon, but it's two different threat streams. And really, the more concerning one is the threats to public officials, because that has been a real thing.

And people have actually attacked public officials, including most famously the husband of the Speaker of the House, Paul Pelosi, attacked in his home. And there have been many more threats, horrific threats made to public officials, including to the judge presiding over former President Trump's trial on election suppression charges. So the FBI has said this is a major priority for them. They are trying to investigate these cases and they are encouraging state and local law enforcement to take this very, very seriously.

Ken Delaney, our justice correspondent. Ken, thanks so much. And turning now to Texas and the fight over abortion rights. A federal appeals court has ruled Texas can ban emergency abortions, affirming a district court's ruling that sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Paxton had sued to block 2022 guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services that a federal law governing emergency rooms can require abortion when necessary, even in states where it's banned. The ruling comes after the Texas Supreme Court denied a request for an emergency court order to allow Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus had a fatal diagnosis, to have an abortion in the state. The issue of abortion is set to play a major role during the 2024 election cycle after being a driving force behind Democratic success in the 2022 midterms. And thank you so much for being with us this hour.

I'm Gabe Gutierrez. Kristen is back tomorrow with more Meet the Press now. And we'll be back with more of our closing arguments, Iowa steerers, featuring our exclusive interview with Governor Ron DeSantis, 12 days out from the Iowa caucuses. NBC News Now coverage continues now with Haley Jackson.

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