Meet the Press NOW — July 26

Drive off in a new Hyundai Launcher today with $0 down during the Hyundai Advantage sales event. Take advantage of the $1,000 spring drive bonus and lease the 2026 luxury essential for just $73 a weekly at 4.99% for 60 months. And you're covered by Elantra's best in class five year new car warranty. Now that's the Hyundai Advantage.

Conditions apply. Offer includes 1% loyalty rate reduction for qualifying customers. Visit hyundaicanda.com or your local deal for details. If it's Wednesday, Breaking News tied to 100 as a plea deal with federal prosecutors falls apart in dramatic fashion at a courthouse in Delaware.

With the Justice Department warning that the president's son could face more criminal charges. Plus it's a third criminal indictment looms for former President Donald Trump. Republicans are gearing up for a potential impeachment inquiry of their own into the current president. There's also a potential government shutdown for the fall.

And a former military intelligence officer and UFO whistleblower testifies before Congress under oath that the government has been concealing a decades long program and has actually retrieved alien spacecraft and evidence of non human pilots under oath. Welcome to be the press Now. I'm Chuck T. Reporting for Washington where the White House is facing a renewed political and legal headache.

And it's all tied to the president's son, Hunter. By today, a dramatic series of events inside a Delaware courtroom. A federal plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department fell apart. It came after prosecutors said that Hunter Biden could face additional criminal charges beyond the two tax misdemeanors that were originally in the plea deal.

When Hunter Biden's lawyers heard that, they objected, at which point the government threatened to pull the agreement entirely. And then what followed was a tangled mess of negotiations and legal back and forth that ended with no plea deal, Hunter Biden pleading not guilty to the charges for now, and widespread confusion about what exactly happens next legally for Hunter Biden and of course politically for the president. The judges now has both sides to amend the deal to clarify her role in the agreement and insert new language on its scope. So be clear, Hunter Biden can still make a deal with our prosecutors at some point soon.

But politically speaking, the fireworks of the courthouse today extended episode the White House was hoping they were putting behind them today as Republicans in Capitol Hill appear to have gotten more fodder for their own probes than President Biden's family that are only just getting started and will serve as the rationale for them to do their own impeachment. House speaker yesterday raised the notion of launching impeachment inquiry the president to give the House full power to investigate President Biden in his favor. Congress has responsibility for investigation Wing. All I'm saying is I'm sure you'll probably ask the same question.

Where's the truth? You've got to get to the bottom of the truth and the only way Congress can do that is go to impeachment inquiry. That gives Republicans and Democrats the ability to get all the information. Meanwhile, White House is doing everything they can to avoid talking about Hunter Biden's problems.

As White House press secretary Jean Pierre directed all questions to today's briefing to the Justice Department and said simply the president stood by his son. Hunter Biden is a private citizen and this was a personal matter for him. As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life. Meanwhile, we're pointing out the trouble point of this attorney in the state of Weiss is facing elevated scrutiny of his own due to the handling of this investigation after public concerned public testimony from a pair of IRS whistleblowers alleged political interference in this investigation.

That testimony came after the original plea deal was announced which today dramatically fell apart. And it is worth noting that the House Ways and Means Committee led by Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri did give additional information to the judge in Delaware before today's proceedings. Timeline is in Wilmington, Delaware covering the latest in today's courtroom drama. Also in Wilmington is NBC News White House correspondent Mike Molly and Joan for some legal insight as a former federal prosecutor, Carol Lamb, who's of course an NBC News legal analyst.

Tom, let me start with you and simply to try to get a better understanding of where we are at this moment. Is there going to be a trial for Hunter Biden? Well, if you look at the Hunter Biden docket and I just did, it looks a lot like to me after a day we have a first appearance and an entering of a plea and then there's all sorts of filings that the judge has to put in about pre trial release and exclusion of the Speedy Trial Act. It looks as if this never even happened today.

But for the order saying you decides you two sides need to get together here and figure out what you're doing with the Splee agreement and address the language and some of the issues I have, it is possible, John. I don't think it's likely but it is possible based on our reporting that this could eventually go to trial and it certainly will if Those two sides can't agree on the language. Couple things to consider about here. And it's a little bit more relevant realm on the politics that it is mine.

But I found the language interesting in saying that a judge would have to be the arbiter of whether or not Hunter Biden had violated the terms of his agreement of the Pre Trial Diversion Act. That pertains to the gun charge. It's more serious. It's a felony.

And so I wonder if Hunter Biden's attorneys in the lead up to this thought just a second, 2024 is around the corner. If there's a Republican president, would they try to find the smallest thing to jam up Hunter Biden and effectively be able to move forward with a Republican case? It's a little bit more in the speculation, bordering conspiracy theory. But it is interesting language that's in there.

Typically that wouldn't be the case. Prosecutors would say, hey, you violated it. If you disagree with us, fine, we're charging you and you have a process and ability to dismiss. So that's just one little nugget that I picked up on.

I think it'd be interesting to see how this goes from here in the context of the fact that prosecutors and we've seen no evidence from our reporting of this, but prosecutors are very clear today this is an ongoing investigation. So that's my other question to you, Tom. You know, there has been, it was only the Biden legal team that made it seem as if everything was done and wrapped up. There had been, if any, if anything had come out of justice.

It was, well, there's still potentially more things we're looking at. They never said this was the end of things, but they didn't correct the record either. When Biden's attorneys were going around essentially making everybody assume today was the day, what are we to make of that? Yeah, well, I think from the 100 Biden teams approach of a five year investigation, this has been over a year that they've been negotiating this, this plea agreement, at least having discussions with prosecutors saying, I know you're looking at this, but you have to consider that.

And that's something that's afforded when there's a tax investigation. So my sense of it is they felt like, look, we've gone over all of these issues. We've gone over and over and over again all of our specific points. If there was something else out there, would we have not heard that already?

Would we have not already been given the chance to respond? We are not aware of? Myself, my colleagues have been focused on the Hunter Biden investigation prior to the 2020 election, by the way, have not been aware of any reason overt steps since I would call them. So people being called before the grand jury, FBI conducting interviews.

And as you remember, Chuck, back earlier this morning, NBC News was one of the first to report that there was real angst amongst federal agents that this case hadn't been decided yet because they were done in their, in their view of it. So and one final thing before I move let you go here, Tom, which is this issue of of what else they could be investigated other other than the whistleblower. I mean, it does feel as if since the plea deal was announced, what is the new piece of information that's out in the public? It's these whistleblower.

It's the whistleblower testimony with the committee. It certainly looks as if considering how aggressively this committee got that information from this judge. Is it not what justice was referring to? No, I think actually the judge handled that quite explicitly this morning.

She said in addressing that letter and There was over 900 pages of exhibits that was sent to the court yesterday. The judge says, look, as part of this Rule 11 hearing, this plea agreement hearing, am I allowed to consider some sort of other evidence that has come up? Am I allowed to direct the government to reinvestigate to investigate something else? Am I allowed to tell them what type of charges?

Of course I have separation of powers and such. So she really shut down that. And if people are trying to say the Republican letter yester today led to today's inquiries by the judge, I think there's just what could they still be investigated? Because they did say in the courtroom that, hey, there are other things are investigated.

Yeah, 15ft in front of me in the front row. I think, Chuck, there is one other thing that's come up over the past several weeks and that is that 1023 report from a confidential human source that was presented the FBI about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's business dealings abroad and allegations of payments that was brought up during the Trump administration. It was brought up approximately three years ago. We haven't heard about anything as far as any charges or anything along those lines.

But you don't know what you don't know. And so it's not clear to me whether or not that's factoring in. It's not clear to me whether or not the Justice Department is trying to tap the brakes on turning over anything else about this case. Because if they say it's an ongoing investigation, they're typically able to keep Congress at bay.

What other little courtroom note today, Chuck? Kevin Morris, who paid Hunter Biden's taxes as part of a loan they say was sitting in the front row. So he's the person who's responsible for paying those taxes. One day, Hunter Biden owes him that money back.

Otherwise it's income and that's a whole separate tax. Tom, winner. Thank you. Let me move over my mic.

I guess the question I have for you is how involved is the Biden campaign and the DNC in this? Because it's my understanding there are some political legal types that are trying to get involved in here. What can you report? What do you know?

Well, so there had been, and we've reported about this, some tension on the part of the Biden advisors about the ways in which Hunter Biden's legal advisors, most specifically Abby Lowell, have been choosing, especially over the last few months, to try to not just wage a legal strategy as was seen in the courtroom today, but to make this a battle for public opinion. From the perspective of the Biden team, that is not something they want. Chuck, you receive the same semi regular scoldings that I do from Biden officials about what we cover and cover too much that we should be covering at all or things that we aren't covering or should be covering more that we are not officially covering in their view. And they've always viewed Hunter Biden's legal lows obviously in the category of things that we are covering too much.

But there have been indications very clearly in the last 24 hours that white House was ready for this moment, the Biden team was ready for this moment to mark a pivot. You heard it from the briefing room yesterday. As Republicans, they always knew were going to continue their investigations long after the Justice Department concluded its work. And they were ready to make that argument publicly that the Republicans, the Republican campaigns want to make this about the president's family.

He wants to make about what's important. So this is obviously a significant complication to that. There are obviously gonna be questions about what happened today. Clearly, this was a case in which the judge was stress testing a plea agreement reached between prosecutors and Hunter Biden's legal team.

And it didn't really hold up to that stress testing nearly enough. And to further complicate matters for the White House, I think this is probably the biggest after effect of this, which is part of the Republican argument, likely was gonna be that this is not a case that was being handled by the book the way the president and his advisors argued it would be. And to see the kind of, frankly, dysfunction as it seemed there was at times in the courtroom today only feeds the idea that this was not handled in a typical way. And that's why this potentially extends even more as a headache for the White House.

I was just gonna say, Mike, I assume the idea of an impeachment proceeding targeting the president now seems higher right now at 4:12pm Eastern time than it was 24 hours ago, considering what happened here. Because again, I know what House Republicans are gonna claim. Well, it is what Jason Smith sent. And this, all this information did lead the judge to have.

Wait a minute, something's fishy here. They're going to believe they found it there, there. Well, certainly one of the questions were, certainly I would expect to be asked on the part of some Democratic allies is whether that kind of political interference on the part of Republicans influenced the district attorney, the U.S. attorney, excuse me, here in Delaware, where he was feeling some political pressure.

But, you know, the difference between an impeachment inquiry and an actual impeachment. It's all about the very narrow majority that Republicans have. And what are some of those Republicans in Biden districts would go along ultimately with a vote to impeach the President of the United States. So any indication, any political cover that you can give to those swing district Democrats to say there's a leg to stand on to vote for impeachment, I think you're right to say that the likelihood potentially increased.

The idea goes to the finish line. We're going to get inquiry that we're going to get. You're right. About whether we get the actual articles.

Mike Baling also. 1,000,400. Mike, thank you. All right, Carol, I've been, I've been.

I've been withholding myself to go to you first because this was just so crazy. I got to think you've been through something like this. When a plea agreement falls apart in the courtroom, Chuck, I couldn't be more surprised than probably your next story about alien life on Earth. This was a situation where both parties knew the eyes of the nation was going to be on, on this hearing today.

And somehow they went into court not having a meeting of minds. Look, plea agreement is a contract. It's just a simple contract. And if you have good lawyers on both sides, which we have here, you represent your client and you know, your client knows what they're giving up in the contract and what they're getting in the contract.

This was very simple. And one of the government gets a guilty plea, they get some Certainty about that. They know what their constraints are with respect to what kind of time they can ask for in terms of penalty, what kind of fine. The defendant knows that he's pleading guilty and he's giving that up.

But he gets something in return. He gets uncertainty about what the penalty is going to be. And he knows what, if anything, the government can charge him with in the future. That's the befuddling thing about all this.

The judge asked a very obvious, simple question in the courtroom. Let's say the government wants to charge him with being an unrestful foreign agent in the future. Can they do that under this plea agreement? The defense says no.

The government says yes. That's incomprehensible to me. There's no way you should be walk into that courtroom not knowing that piece of this. Correct.

The release or the scope of the release. In other words, what charges the government cannot bring against you in the future is a very, very critical part of any plea agreement. And it has to be explicit. Can't be just some, oh, he said to me in the hallway, don't worry, we won't charge you.

It's got to be explicit in the plea agreement. And apparently it was not well articulated and there was no meeting of the minds. This is really a disaster for both parties. What?

Look, all we have is the public timeline of events. And I can't help but see that the plea agreement came before the whistleblowers went public, right before we knew that information. Does one plus one equal two here? Is that why justice was not ready to do this?

I don't think so, Chuck. It's very hard to say. Of course, a lot goes on behind the scenes that we're not aware of. But I was already befuddled when the announcer to the char.

And yet in the, in the government's press announcement, the last line was, the investigation continues. And I think all prosecutors and former prosecutors said, what is that all about? Are they looking at different people? Are they looking at different time periods?

How can the investigation be going on? How can it be ongoing when the defendant is actually pleading guilty to something? It's just so unusual in the criminal realm. What you sometimes see is that the government will say, we will not charge you with anything of which we are currently aware.

Of course you have to have that kind of protection on the government side. You find out that you killed somebody the next day and you didn't know about that. You can't try your own hands that way. But this was very strange from the get go, as you know.

Hunter has a zab legal team. I mean, you know, he's dealt with justice. He's dealt with these white collar plea agreements a million times over here. The only other explanation that this looks like were they just hoping that agreeing, pleading to this stuff would sort of be the pound of flesh justice was looking for and that, that and then all of a sudden when it was, when it was, when the judge asked, justice wasn't ready to say it.

Well, that might have been the case until they came out with that line in the press release that said the investigation is ongoing. That's, that's a big hint that something else is going on there. And if it hadn't been done before, if there had been an assumption on Abigail's part with respect to bringing future charges, at that point, he should have had it cleared up and said, yeah, well, wait a minute, I want to clear something else up, too. If this does go to trial, they really can't get their act together and come to an agreement, which I still 80% think they will.

I think that they will actually come up with something that works. But if they can't, he's not going to go to trial on two misdemeanors. He's going to go to trial on something much more serious. This was a plea agreement.

There was a give and take on both sides. But if this goes to trial, the government will file an indictment that charges something much more serious. Carol Anne, former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal analyst.

A wild day in a Delaware courtroom. Thanks for your expertise on that. Coming up, fuel to the fire, how the legal drama surrounding Hunter minds plead could complicate president's reaction campaign as House Republicans ramp up talk of an impeachment inquiry. Plus, turmoil in Niger.

The bio says it's, quote, gravely concerned about a potential coup attempt to the country as we speak. Our own report on the ground in the West African nation up ahead. You're WATCHING me. The press now drive off in a new Hyundai Launcher today with $0 down during the Hyundai Advantage sales event.

Take advantage of the $1,000 spring drive bonus and lease the 2026 laundry extension which is $73 weekly at 4.99% for 60 months. And you're covered by Elantra's Best in Class five year new car warranty. Now that's the Hyundai Advantage. Conditions apply.

Offer include 1% loyalty rate reduction for qualifying customers. Visit hyundaicanda.com or your local deal for details. Welcome back. Today's drama surrounding the Honda buying clean deal will likely amplify efforts by Speaker McCarthy and his allies to ramp up the investigations into the president's son and the president if they can come up with a connection.

All that consists. House Republicans say they are pursuing a potential impeachment inquiry into private press while also considering to expunge the former president of Beach. We should know an expungement would serve no real legislative purpose beyond symbolically applauding former President Trump. Is sort of like a resolution, if you will.

At the same time, House Republicans are also signaling then we'd be a central government shutdown this fall as the House Dream Caucus is insisting on more cuts than what leadership agreed to during the debt ceiling showdown. All of those things, a Biden impeachment inquiry, government shutdown, defending Trump's conduct are likely. Police Trump heading into 2024. What about voters?

Joining me now with the latest from Capitol Hill, we are senior national political reporter Sale. It's always felt as if an impeachment inquiry by House Republicans is some sort of retribution for the last Congress. For Democrats impeaching Trump twice and it looked like it was going to be Mayorkas, maybe Garland. And now it seems that McCarthy himself is saying no, if we're going to do this, it should be for President Biden.

How serious is this? What's the steps to watch for here? I think it's very clear that House Republicans are turning their sights on President Biden not going with impeachment of the cabinet member at some initially suggested. And the steps to watch are as follows.

The speaker has essentially made clear that there will be an impeachment inquiry that we led by the Judiciary Committee. After that there be formal impeachment proceedings and articles written up. The committee has to pass it and then a majority of the House of Representatives has to vote to say the president committed high crimes and misdemeanors. They can find that however they want.

There's no legal bar or evidentiary standard they have to meet. Right now the votes are not there. There's been mixed reaction from House Republicans about this idea of moving forward with an impeachment and quote, naturally the hardliners who've been pressuring McCarthy to do this for months are happy about it. But many other institutionalist Republicans, center right Republicans, those from Biden districts, are not ready to endorse that step.

Yet another Senator, Lindsey Graham, who's been in Congress for the last three impeachments, I asked him about the politics of this and he has some interesting comments. Let's see what he had to say. I would say that probably President Trump got A boost because, you know, the public, the base, it didn't hurt him with his Republican base. Could depends on, depends on what they find.

I think if you're impeaching a president for something that the public can relate to and that rises to the level of sort of a political death sentence, you know, then that's different. It didn't for Clinton, but he vomited about every impeachment of the country. And you know, no one's been convicted yet. And notably the NRCC chair of the man tasked with protecting the House Republican majority.

No one talking about impeachment yet. He insisted that they're just trying to gather facts very quickly. James Comer and Jim Jordan have been trying to get a pound of flesh on the Bidens for a long time and it turns out to be Jason Smith at Weighs and Means. Does that tell you?

Well, I mean, they're certainly happy that the Hunter Biden plea deal collapsed. They say the plea deal was bad to begin with. They see this as unbolding their investigations, you know, to go forward. And yes, it was Jason Smith who had this IRS whistleblower there a lot of insinuations that President Biden was involved, but again, no direct evidence.

There's some smoke here, but there's no fire that leads back to the White House at 600 Pennsylvania. Right. They don't have anything that touches the actual president. Before I let you go, I ask you about what was a pretty alarming moment at Mitch McConnell's weekly press conference.

Good afternoon, everyone. We're on the path to finishing the NDA this week. Been good by partisan cooperation and a string of. We're coming up on the one year at the start of the press conference and was related to your injury below this year where you suffered a concussion is that went through with the rest of the press conference.

Look, he's been noticeably slower since he got back from that concussion. But that was, that was a moment that I think alarms him both, without a doubt. It was a very strange moment. You could see the looks of concern among the Republican leaders who were standing right next to him.

Notably, it was John Barrasso, a member of that leadership team who was a doctor himself, who ended up tending to him, kind of walked him away from it. McConnell did come back, as you point out, and did take questions. He looked a little pale, but he did answer the questions fine. I was among the reporters who asked them.

His office said after the fact, pointed out to the fact that he said he was okay and said that when he felt a little lightheaded and stepped away for a moment, that he came back to handle the Q and A and emphasized that he handled that okay. It's not. It's not the first health episode that we've seen from Senator McConnell, who's in his 80s now, been serving for a long time and, you know, certainly a little draw concern that his office playing this down, saying he's okay. Former senior advisor to vice president spokesperson under George W.

Bush. He was a Republican president. How long ago he. Far too long ago.

It's nice to see you. So, Martin, let me just start with this coming fall chaos. You know, it's funny. It's like you have the presidential campaign, which is over here, and then you have what House Republicans seem to be deciding.

We're going to have our own events. Maybe it's a government shutdown, maybe it's a peach rain period, maybe it's both. But the politics of this are so Lindsey Graham basically hinted at it. The last two impeachments, this is not a Trend.

We've had three total impeachments in the last 25 years. Right. The second Trump one was sort of in office, but the first two, Clinton and Trump, improved with their base. Yeah.

It's interesting to see the calculation, I think, at least for the House side. What I'm hearing from a lot of Republican lawmakers is we're getting to the point where McCarthy's leadership is really going to be tested. I have heard since literally the weeks after that he was elected speaker, that the most contentious point of his speakership is going to be the government funding fight. And we are seeing already, even just this week, a very small preview of the far right and their demands.

And what the vulnerable Republicans who have had to swallow a number of votes who have fallen in line, are now privately behind the scenes, really starting to fret. Does he think impeachment is a way for him to sort of, well, can I throw the impeachment? Can I make that the shiny metal logic and basically get government funding through? Yeah.

You hear some Republicans saying this is a distraction. You're actually hearing that from Ken Buck, who is in the Freedom Caucus, who literally said, today this is impeachment theater. And it's something else McCarthy is giving to the far right because he knows, you know, there's the Senate, it's led by Democrats. When it comes to policy and changing things, these people are gonna have to swallow whatever the Senate sends over.

So here's something else to try and appease them. History is riddled with House majorities, essentially When House majority is not with the President's party, the President's party almost always benefits when they play shenanigans like this. And the old guys know it, the Tom holes of the world. Well, this is a mistake.

Well, I think saying that Kevin McCarthy, between a rock and hard place, is being kind to his position right now. As we all know, it took, what, 78 votes for him to become Speaker. And I think, I mean, just look at some of the language he's using as he talks about this potential impeachment inquiry. He's saying we could do it.

And then today, behind closed doors with the caucus, he said, well, we don't have enough evidence to warrant this right now. He's trying to play both sides. He's trying to give to those hardliners, to those stubborn members of the Freedom Caucus, something to chew on, a sense of hope. And to those moderates trying to say, hey, chill out, we're not doing this tomorrow.

Yes, I'm on. Over the White House on one hand, politically, if you want to impeach, you want to do this, it's politically likely to benefit the President. Once shut down the government. Every time that's been done.

It is a cr however, like, how do you negotiate a standing bill right now? How do you negotiate this? When you're sort of seeing this, they pull it through once the debt ceiling. How do you do this?

Well, look, I think. I honestly think the White House's strategy of Kevin McCarthy changed during the debt ceiling calculations. If you remember, for a very long time, the White House and the President were saying, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to talk about the bill. They have no respect for Speaker McCarthy.

They can't control. Exactly. He demonstrated. And I think what changed is that there was a vote that happened prior to Easter.

This was before they started going prior to Easter. He got something. And then the White House said, okay, look, we'll have to play ball. I think the White House, Joe Biden, from the Joe Biden, I know he likes to try to make a deal where he can.

And I think the White House is seeing the chaos is happening in the caucus. And they're watching, speaking McCarthy's words. They're watching what he's are saying, what he's doing. And at this point, he's all they have to negotiate with.

And I think they don't want to cut. All right. The easy part is dealing with politics. Honor Biden's personal.

It is. It is. This is. It does feel as if there are people in the let me ask you this.

How many people in the White House and political team feel like they're blind into what's going on in comfortable. Well, I'm not asking why have the people in the White House and the folks on the political team. I can from my experience that is not something that is widely discussed. You know, you don't pop that on agenda, if you will.

Okay, so do they feel as if they just deal with this as it comes? Look, I think the reality is that this is something that if anyone is shocked by, we can be shocked by what happened to in corporate. I was when it took the nail appointment, thought it was a run in the middle situation. Come out of the nail appointment, all hell is broken loose.

Okay. But people be shocked by proceedings in courtroom today should not be shocked that there was a case. This is something that folks have been well aware of for years, frankly. And that there are things going on as it relates to legal dealings with Hunter Biden, period.

So that should be something that everyone should be prepared for. I think that folks in the White House who work for the president of people and then Democratic National Committee people personally, his family, they are aware of how they feel about it and they feel as though that this is a family. This at the end of the day, Hunter Biden is Joe Biden and Joe Biden's son. That is how they're going to treat them, like their son.

They have nothing else to say about it. Let me put it to your side of the aisle. I want to put this poll today that's sort of a reminder. Tim Miller over the Bulwark likes to there's two primary campaigns in the world covering one that is a fantasy, which is being that there's a competitive one.

We put these numbers of strongest Republican candidates against Biden. 45% said definitely Trump, 24% said probably Trump. We are literally looking at 70% of the party versus 30 thinking that Trump is the strongest candidate against Biden versus 30 that do not. And we've been at this for a long time now.

This is I don't want to hear the words early out of here, like at this point, because I don't think it's early. There goes my entire talking point because it's not early anymore. I mean, is the Republican primary a fantasy? You know, basically the equivalent of fantasy baseball?

I will actually make the early case for one second. You know, a lot of people are focusing on Ron DeSantis and laying off for firing 30% of his staff yesterday. Well, I'm old Enough to remember when John McCain had an implosion in July of 2007. I'm old enough to remember when John Kerry had to take a mortgage out on his house to pay for early state ground efforts.

Both of them became nominees. Maybe not the best analogy because they lost the general elections, but it is truly early. If you're going to have struggles, have them in July and August, not in January and February. It's undoubtedly that Donald Trump right now is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party.

The debates, I think, will matter. That's why these candidates are trying to get on the debate stage, because it's hard to engage with Donald Trump when he dominates the media the way he does. The only chance they have to pierce that bubble is on the same stage. You know, it's interesting here.

Marianne looks not gonna hand Ron DeSantis's lifeline. And right now, Donald Trump showing up for the first bait would be handing Ron DeSantis's lifeline. Does Steven DeSantis know that? I don't know.

That's the thing. I mean, listen, I don't think many people are actually thinking that Trump is going to show up. It's actually probably more beneficial to sitting back, truthing, tweeting. However, we want to describe how he gets his message out there.

But I mean, as long as these people are punching each other on stage, we're trumpets. Beneficial. I want to close with a segment that I didn't ask you about, but the case for age limits now in government. How is it not going to go up?

We've had this now in the Senate, multiple senators, both parties. You know, there does seem to be. I mean, it is not surprising. Do we think age limits are in the federal government is something that might take on some.

Get some. I don't think so. Because the people who would have to do the passing now that are the folks who are at the age limit, I don't think we're evidence to happen. I think there are a lot of young people out there who would like it only because it creates more.

If that was our father or grandfather out there, you would be like, we got. He can't do this anymore. It's hard to watch. Absolutely, absolutely.

Thank you, guys. Good to see you all. Nice. Of course, allegations of alien spaceships and a government cover.

Somebody went under oath day in front of Congress and said, we have detained alien life forms. Grab the highlights from today's House hearing and more on the pressure of the Pentagon to release more information about this new unidentified aerial phenomenon. You're watching the first step. Welcome back.

Today held a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAPS or used to be known as UFOs. A growing public interest about potential extraterrestrial life beyond planet Earth. You can make her testimony from three witnesses today. One was a former Navy commander, one was a former Navy pilot.

Both of them claim to have seen UAPS as well as a former intelligence officer who goes to separate and he led to the government is concealing a multi decade crash of a UAP and a retrieval program. Take a listen to more of what this person had to say. If you believe we have crashed craft stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft? As I've stated publicly already, my News Nation review, biologics came with some of these recoveries.

Were they I guess human or non human biologics? Non human. That was the assessment of people with threat knowledge on the program. I talked to.

They're currently still in the program. Non human biologics AKA alien for its part, rejected those claims saying it does not currently have nor in the past had any extraterrestrial materials. The hearing comes as moral lawmakers are calling for increased transparency surrounding UAPS and their potential threat to national security. And both NASA government officials have said there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity here on Earth.

Our congressional correspondent Julie Serkin has more on today's hearing. So Julie, look, I remind people you testify before congressional committee. You're under oath on this front. Where does this investigation go back?

Look, this is, this is one person's sworn testimony, but it is hearsay. I don't think he said he was there. Oh no, it's totally hearsay. And you're right to point out that he gave this testimony.

David Gersten, a former intelligence officer under oath, he told the panel that he's heard a secondhand account from his colleagues. He even said in another exchange in the hearing that he had colleagues complain of being physically harmed by these objects. Now you ask an important question. Where does it go from here?

Well, this is not over because I was talking to one member on the panel, a Democrat who actually said that he wants to hear from Russian a closed door settings. He to wants, wants him to come back and say much of what he told them, much of what he hinted at in a closed door setting. Brush multiple times had said that there's a lot of things he can't reveal to the committee. But he did accuse essentially the government of not being transparent or forthcoming enough about it.

And look, no matter what you believe, whether this is a balloon, an alien, a plane or a bird. This is a significant moment in which for the first time after last year's hearing, we heard from Pentagon officials, but for the first time, we're hearing from a witness from a whistleblower here who says that he has heard of different accounts that the government may be hiding what they actually know about these extraterrestrial aliens, as he called them, or whatever the heck it is flying out in the sky. So, Joey, look, if we, if somehow the government has obtained these crap that indicates there are crashes, was there evidence? We know there have been people.

We said Navy pilots, commercial pilots have seen unidentified objects and we've been chronicling that. Is there anybody chronicling crashes that we can't explain? Well, that's kind of what Congress wants the government to go back and start doing more of. We've heard in the last few years, whether it was passed through the National Defense Authorization act or any other intelligence reports that we see from Congress.

They want the government to have a closer eye at investigating it. We know that they started this task force to investigate UAPs. But even just recently, as a few weeks ago, there was a very real effort from the Senate, from the House, for the government to do more on this issue. That's exactly what they're calling for in this year's ndaa.

We saw the President amendment, for example, from Senator Chuck Schumer and others, including the intelligence ranking member and chair for the government to do does that, to publish this information, to make it public and by the way, to not retaliate against whistleblowers who come before Congress to try and tell their stories. Julie, in 20 years, it'll be fun to go back and look at this day of congressional hearings, courtroom dramas, and find out which one of these stories is the one that had the most legs. It could be the story you were covering today, Julie Circuit, on a quite natur ordinary congressional committee day. Julie, thank you.

Up next, the US Calls for the release of Niger's president after presidential guards appear to have detained him. What happened that had the United States national security adviser going on the record about this? More in this breaking news story. Who's reporting live in Niger?

You're watching this press now. Welcome back. We're following an evolving situation in Niger as members of the presidential guard that surrounded the presidential palace in what neighboring countries are calling apparent couplets. President Bazun was elected in 2021, is now a liable partner for the United States and the west in a particularly viral Region where US Troops are currently training local partners to fight extremist groups.

You know, we've had troops in the, in the area for some time. In a statement you don't see every day from the White House, the National Security advisor earlier today put out a statement that denounced the actions of the presidential guards. Addict. We strongly condemn any effort to detain or subvert the functioning of Niger's democratically elected government led by President Bazoo.

We specifically urge elements of the Presidential Guard to release President Bazoon from detention and refrain from violence. You should know my colleague Chris Walker, spoken chair present on this show when he was here in Washington late last year attending the US Africa Leader Summit where he talked about his country's young democracy and it shared values with the West. Join me now is our Patagon, Cory QB. She's in Niger, who's been reporting on U.S.

training missions. We did Meet the Press reports together when she was in Somalia. So, Courtney, here you are trying to leave the country. This happens.

This is not a statement you see every day from a national security adviser. You're on the ground. What's going on? Well, I mean, so far, the streets, there's relative calm here in the streets for the capital.

But I will say a couple hours ago, we heard a series for several minutes of gunshots being fired. The assumption, the belief is that may have been an attempt to disperse a crowd that was growing around the presidential palace where the president is believed to still be held along with his wife by his security forces. Since then, we haven't heard anything else. But I think the reason that we saw such a strong statement coming out of the White House, the national security advisor, is the exact reason that we're here, Chuck.

And that is because this is really one of the focal points for the US Military and for the national security apparatus of the United States where they are focused on an effort to combat terror groups. Now, there's two main, main terror networks that are really threatening Nigeria right now. One is an Al Qaeda affiliate known as jnm. The other, an ISIS affiliate called the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

The concern is these two groups are really squeezing the population more and more. The US Military is here now trying to help the local Nigerian military forces train them so they can combat those terror networks. Courtney, do we think other countries are trying to interfere here? We don't know.

Candidly, there's a lot that we really don't know about what's going on right now. The reality is early on this morning, when we first heard that this was happening. The presidential office put out a statement, a tweet that seemed to imply the President was still in power and that this was a rogue element, a small rogue element. That tweet was later taken down.

So this time we don't even really know who's in control if the president has actually been ousted. There also doesn't seem to be any indication that the military is a part of this as well. It seems to just be the presidential security forces. But again, we're talking to sources, US Foreign sources, military sources, everyone that we can.

And we just don't really still have a good sense of exactly where the situation is, even right here where we can see the presidential palace from where we are here. But we still don't really know. Just well, look, we have US Military personnel in this country. This matters a lot, whether they can be safe in that country.

Courtney, you stay safe and we look forward to getting you home as soon as possible. Thank you for your reporting. Silicon Some new data shows why the Republican Party may have a problem when it comes to winning over America's youngest voters in 2024. That data and why it matters.

Thanks. You're watching the press now. Welcome back. If the Republican Party was hoping to target younger versions in 2024, they got a lot of work to do.

New analysis of some numbers from Harvard Youth Poll show that Americans between the ages 18 and 29 have been steadily getting more progressive over the past decade. Here are their stances on progressive local 63% support strict gun laws, up from 46% over time period included many nationals including the Parkland school shooting half of young girls not the government act on climate change. The number was below 30% in 2011, four years before the Supreme Court's decision on over fell 42% supported same sex relationships. That number is now 54%.

And when asked in 2011 if necessities like food and shelter are human rights, 45%. So they were. Today the number of young people who agree with that has jumped nearly another 20 points. Well, the man behind this view poll is John Delpepa.

He's the only director of Harvard County School and he's been here before. John, we've talked about this, this sort of growing divide between where the Republican Party is going and where voters under the age of 50 look, you cut off at 30, you could go up to 40 and see this. It really just depends on the pollster here. Is there any evidence that, you know, usually as people get older there is a move back to the right, whatever that is from left to center, etc.

We're talking about is not one, but two generations now of American millennials and Gen Z, who basically have a shared sense of values. But what you just shared with that data is that Gen Z is becoming more urgent, but also even more progressive. And that coalition will be 40% of all voters in 2024. When we think about a divided nation, I think perhaps the best prison to look at that is it's a divide of people over the age of 41, fed actors, baby boomers, people under the age of 41, millennials, and gen Z.

It is that group that blunted the red wave just six months ago. I'm curious if you're seeing anything, any difference between. Between those that have young families and don't, those that are married that we see? Because usually that is also another market.

When people start moving from whatever extreme they're on into the center, it's usually after marriage and family. It is the divide that is emerging that's relatively new, is actually divide based upon class and education. Like, we've seen the broader electorate. But there's been a lot of social science research published over the last year to show that this could be the first generation millennials as they age into settling down, that's not becoming more conservative.

They're actually becoming more progressive in what we've seen, not just in the US in terms of these values, but also in the west and Europe, the UK as well as in Canada, it does seem as a Republican. Potential Republican vote electorate is shrinking. I mean, we've seen it. They skew older.

Is this still a case I've seen It's an interesting curve. It feels like the oldest voters don't skew as conservative. It's more of. It's like a 50 to 70, isn't.

It's about that Gen Xer and early baby Boomer. And I go back to what was the experience of each generation is the problem, not the solution. And I always say, what did Bill Clinton say about eight years later? He says, you know, he said, here the government's over.

So here was a Democrat affirming Ronald Reagan. Exactly. But now what we see is two generations who. There are big four issues that we talked about.

The concern about climate, the concerns about LGBTQ rights, fundamental safety in terms of their personal safety, as well as a belief that government is required to solve those issues. All right, Cynicism and apathy are the two things that sometimes inflict younger voters here. I don't think this is an apathetic generation. But they are cynical.

My concern is that over the next. Over the last few years, they're becoming more cynical. Part of it is the defensive mechanism, I think, because they're trying to manage their news habits because of stress and anxiety. They already have.

So I think that elected officials and folks who care about civics need to start early in this cycle. I mean, that is a concern of mine with this younger cohort is they very much see all these problems these guys can't solve. They want government. That's the thing.

They don't trust government, but they believe that. They believe they need system. Exactly. Government.

And. But the good news is, I think we see a lot of young people still engaging in record numbers. Is there a conservative message that would. That you think could resonate with younger voters?

Does anybody have one? It's not a message, Chuck. I think it has to start with values. It has to start with values, and then message comes second or third.

Right now, it comes like guns. The culture, reproductive rights. They're just. They're designing the symmetrically opposed.

And not only that, is they're using younger people as pawns. I think in the culture war, it's not just ignoring them. It's actually kind of, you know, kind of running a, you know, a thumb in the eye, almost using them as a plug, using them as a. Whether student loans, LBTQ rights, education.

Well, it's not like your polling hasn't been a flashing yellow light to the conservative movement. We'll see if they heed the warning. Good to see you. Thank you.

Thank you. All good. Tomorrow morning, weekly press now, NBC News Now. Coverage continues on this extraordinarily busy news day with 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. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an only podcast from Dataland. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts.