If it's Monday, the suspect accused of brutally attacking demonstrators marching in support of Israeli hostages will be appearing in court for the first time as authorities prepare to brief the public moments from now with what they know about the alleged terror attack. Plus Ukraine launches massive drug attacks deep inside Russia, targeting dozens of military aircraft in a stunning operation that involves smuggling more than 100 drones behind enemy lines. Russia's response. What it all means for the negotiations to end the war.
And the battle over Trump's megabill hits the set with lawmakers and odds over the package's sweeping cuts to Medicaid and how much the legislation would cost. Either welcome to Meet the Press Now and Ryan Nobles. We're going to begin today with that breaking news out of Boulder, Colorado is 45 year old Muhammad Sabri Solomon, the suspect in yesterday's fire attack on a group calling for the release of Israeli hostages is expected to make his initial appearance in court in Colorado this afternoon. Police say he unleashed a makeshift flamethrower into a peaceful crowd.
He's facing criminal charges by local authorities and hate crimes charges by federal authorities. Solomon was taken into custody shortly after yesterday's attack, which injured at least eight people, including one who's in critical condition. The witnesses described a gruesome scene as they rush in with buckets of water to help the injured. And we do want to warn you that the descriptions of what happened are graphic.
I saw the attacker have a Molokow hit. He had three Molokow cocktails, one of them he threw inside of a group at the group and one lady live on fire from head to toe. I jumped over this tiny little fence over to these two ladies on the grass and it was two older ladies just kind of rolling around a little bit. I was just like helping to help and they have like really bad burns all up on their legs.
Now according to newly filed court documents from the FBI, Solomon told investigators that he had planned the attack for a year and specifically targeted what he described as a Zionist group, which he found through online research. Now investigators say they found, among other items, a container with at least 14 unlit explosive devices and bottles and jars near where the suspect was arrested. Authorities say he shouted free Palestine and used the explosives to attack the demonstrators who were marching in support of Israeli hostages. The FBI says the victims ranged in age from 52 to 88.
It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence in the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism. Sadly, attacks like this are becoming too common across the country. The FBI is calling this an act of terror and President Trump is blaming the Biden administration for allowing the suspect in Egyptian national into the country. Posting on social media, quote, he came in through Biden's ridiculous open border policy.
He must go out under Trump policy. Acid terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. NBC's correspondent Camila Bernal is in Boulder and she joins me now, also with the NBC News law enforcement and intelligence correspondent Tom Winter. So Camila, you're there on the ground.
We just got these new court documents. What are we expecting from this upcoming court appearance? Yeah, it was supposed to happen this hour, Ryan, and it got delayed, but we did get the state charging documents just moments ago showing eight counts of attempted murder, as well as assault and other charges were waiting, of course, to hear those in court and to hear if this man is going to enter a plea. So we'll have to wait and see what happens in that court appearance again, once delayed just moments ago in those charging documents, the stage also addressing what happened here yesterday.
It happened about 24 hours ago at around 130 when this suspect came to this area specifically targeting this group of people that meets here regularly and have been doing so since the October 7th attack, authorities saying that he waited for this group single them out because he wanted them dead, also that hit crime after David from the federal government, essentially saying that he had everything prepared. He looked it up on YouTube and built these Molotov cocktails. He not only threw two of them at the crowd here, but also had 14 others. There are witnesses on the ground who talk about how chaotic, how scary that moment was.
There's people who rushed to those victims to try to pour water on some of the burned victims and, of course, the community here in Boulder, sort of coming together to support the victims, but also the Jewish community as a whole, Ryan. And what do we know about the victims conditions? You mentioned how the community is kind of rallying around all of them right now. Yeah.
Initially, they had said that the injuries vary, essentially, from minor to very severe injuries. We know that one of those who was severely injured was an 88-year-old woman, and my colleague Morgan Shuski spoke to a local rabbi who just said that not only she's okay, but she has been released from the hospital, the rabbi also saying that, yes, she is a Holocaust survivor. He said she is someone who knows what it's like to be a refugee, someone who knows what it's like to fight anti-Semitism and to stop hate in particular. So, again, the community just rallying behind that victim, but it totally was eight of them, four men, four women, all again, with different injuries, two of them had to be airlifted.
And authorities had said that burn injuries are very difficult to treat because they can develop infections, they can be life-threatening. So, we are waiting on an update on all eight of them, but at least we know that the 88-year-old has been released from the hospital, Ryan. All right. Thank you, Camila.
Let's turn now to Tom with more on the investigation. So, Tom, what is the significance of charging the suspect with a federal hate crime? Well, I mean, the significance of that is it's really, think of it like a bookmark effectively here, Ryan, in that federal authorities will still need to indict at some point. There is an option to take somebody to trial without bringing an indictment, but you'd have a preliminary hearing, and that almost never happens.
And at that indictment stage, I would expect us to get more information as far as additional charges, perhaps terrorism charges. It all depends on what federal investigators find. And to that point, in the course of conducting their searches, and at least their initial investigation, and of course, it's barely been 24 hours since this investigation even began even started, they've been able to uncover a couple of different things. First off, the most enlightening part of this has been from this individual statements, Solomon's statements himself, after he received the Miranda warrant, the FBI alleges in his complaint that he told them that if he could do it, he would conduct this attack, again, he made numerous references to the Jewish community, and he said that he started planning for this over a year ago, looking up more recently how to build these Molotov cocktails by looking at YouTube.
And at that park, according to law enforcement, they found 14 additional Molotov cocktails, at least that he could have used, as well as a kind of a bug sprayer, one of those backpack mounted ones that he could have used to basically turn into a makeshift flamethrower. Either way, this individual clearly came prepared to do something yesterday, and was successful in carrying out that attack, injuring eight as you laid out. So the significance from a federal standpoint, they could potentially bring additional charges, and if anybody, unfortunately, succumbs to their injuries, it could potentially be definitely eligible on the federal level. But at this point, does it appear that he acted a long time?
It does, Ryan. There's no indication from the charging documents and all of the reporting that we've done over the last 24 hours at this stage of the investigation, and typically finding out if there's anybody else that could have helped him take some time, but there does not appear to have been anybody else that he was involved with, it appears that he kind of came to this point on his own review of his social media accounts by us, and by law enforcement, we're told, has not yielded anything as far as any specific posts or threats that he might have made in the past that would have come to anybody's attention. And President Trump has already said that he was here in this country as a result of President Biden's open border policies called an undocumented immigrant. Do we know anything specifically about his immigration status and was he in the country illegally?
Yeah, I'm going to bring in the reporting from my colleague, Julia Ainsley, and yours there in Washington, effectively saying, according to DHS, that this individual arrives in August of 2022 in September of, excuse me, and gets a B-2 visa at that point. And then in September, he applies for asylum. That B-2 visa expired in 2023 over two years ago. It is not clear exactly where he stands in the asylum process, but apparently that process was still going on.
So that's the most that we know with respect to his immigration status. And when he came here, how he came here does have a family that he leaves behind the house of a wife and several children. So it's a bit of a question as to why he came here, and also if he tried to come to the United States in the past, those are all questions that investigators and we're still trying to get to the bottom of. And there's also another element to this time, because President Trump is saying that the suspect must go out under the Trump policy, essentially be deported.
But if he's charged with a federal hate crime in the United States, how does that impact whether or not he can be deported? And then what happens to the charges against him? Isn't there a degree of wanting to provide the punishment for him here in this country? Well, that's a decision that the Justice Department will make, and they're part of the executive branch, so we can expect them to weigh in on that.
There are times in other cases, I've seen it certainly in non-terrorism cases where the Justice Department in the U.S. decides to throw somebody out of the country and not allow them to come back in, PNG them, persona, non-grata, and just say, you know what, we're not even going to bother with the prosecution. You're out of here. You can never come back here.
I think that that is typically weighed in instances where the cost and impact of a trial might be more than just the punishment of removing somebody from the country. In this case, given the graphic nature of the injuries and what occurred here and his alleged involvement is the key suspect, that's something that the Justice Department will have the way and say, you know what, maybe it's better that he has the trial here and we can make an example of people that try to do this against the Jewish community. That'll be a decision that'll be made down the road, right? Okay, Tom Winter, as always on top of all this time, we appreciate it.
Of course, we will bring you the press conference with the Department of Justice, FBI, and local officials in Boulder. What happens later this is how we're expecting in about 20 minutes or so. First of all, we are going to turn to Ukraine's stunning and complex drone attack on Russia, reaching deep inside the country, delivering both a military and strategic load of Moscow. According to Ukrainian officials, Ukraine was able to smuggle drones into Russia, place them on trucks, and then remotely launch them to strike Russian military facilities.
To strike, dubbed Operation Spiderweb involved 117 drones and more than 18 months of planning, resulting in the damage or destruction of 41 Russian aircraft, according to Ukraine's security services. NBC News has not been able to independently verify those claims. President Zelensky was in Lithuania today for a summit with European leaders and touted the operation's success. Europe, together with America, has better weapons than Russia.
We also have stronger tactical solutions. Our Operation Spiderweb yesterday proved that Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it towards the policy and when Russia takes losses, and this war is obvious to everyone that Ukraine is the one holding the line, not just for itself, but for all of Europe. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul today for a previously scheduled second round of direct peace negotiations.
Joining me now is NBC News Chief International Corresponding Chris Simmons and Richard Haas, the President Emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations. So, here, what more do we know about this attack by Ukraine and the planning that went into it? Oh, we're stunning. You really have to just think about how big Russia is, 11 times zones.
Just to give you an example, Ryan, I've been broadcasting from the far east of Russia, the direction that some of these attacks took place in the evening on the east coast, and it's been the morning in Russia. That's how far away it is. Just from Ukraine, for example, thousands of miles, so far away that it looks like the Russians were not actually protecting these aircraft, despite them being precious to President Putin. These are long-range strategic bombers, nuclear-capable even, and certainly have rained down horror on Ukrainian cities over many years.
So for the Ukrainians, this is a victory in terms of, frankly, a humiliation of the Russians, but also a strategic, a tactical victory, at least, in the sense that they have hit a third of these Russian bombers. Now, I think it will take time to establish exactly how much damage there was, but they brought these trucks in like Trojan horses, clandestine, loaded with these drones, and then remotely controlled them. There were reports, even that Russian truck drivers were not told, drove the trucks, were not told what they were for. This is something that the Ukrainians have proven pretty good at, in many ways, targeting, for example, generals in Moscow, but this is on a different scale and it's having a different impact.
And how is Moscow responding to these losses? Well, President Putin is calling it terrorism. Russia is also saying that where Ukraine says that its operatives were able to leave Russia after kind of preparing this attack, Russia says that it has made arrests. Those are the kinds of responses you'd expect.
What we haven't heard so far is the kind of question of retribution that you might hear from President Putin in the day's ahead. Interesting to hear President Zelensky in that clip you played there, talk about this kind of showing of strength is a way to get the Russians to the negotiating table. We will see so far some notable victories by Ukraine over the years haven't got your Russia to the negotiating table, but then neither has the attempt by the Trump administration to kind of cajole President Putin, to talk to him and President Trump's envoy Steve Wyckoff spent hours with him. That doesn't, tonight, appear to have had an impact either, because after talking to Istanbul, it looks like the Russians still are not offering to compromise.
Okay, let's move to Richard now. Richard, were you surprised to see Ukraine carry out such a complex attack like this? And what does it tell us about Ukraine's capabilities? Are they more robust than we thought?
Well, Ukraine has been, in some ways, the principle developer of new generations of drones, indeed, militaries all over the world, I'm sorry, of losing a word here, of these technologies. And I think they're being studied all over the world. And so it shows that you don't have to fight a war, tank for tank, or aircraft for aircraft, so Ukraine is doing it with great ingenuity. They've also showed their ability to expand the battlefield, not through the range of the systems, but by getting them inside of Russia.
So it's an extraordinary culture, and it has one of the advantages that we haven't discussed. It takes care of some of the defeatism. One of the arguments you hear from President Trump all the time is Ukraine has a terrible hand, it's got bad cards. And by doing this, Ukraine is basically signaling to the world, if you support us, you're not throwing good money after war, bad.
This is not a hopeless cause. We can hold our own. And to the extent that gets felt self-affilling, if that gets adopted, then it's a really powerful thing for Ukraine. How do you think President Putin will react to this?
And how could Moscow retaliate? Well, they are going to react. It seems to me that it's something of the humiliation. I think there's no chance that this in and of itself moves Putin closer to the negotiating table.
If he ever moves to the negotiating table, he wants to do it from strain so he can impose the settlement. This now shows a degree of tactical weakness. So I think he's going to unleash something very large, if not against Ukrainian military forces, quite possibly against population centers. That's the way he's been fighting this war.
He's been fighting in the East, grinding, grinding, grinding, literally meter by meter. But a big part of his war plan is to attack civilian targets throughout the country. And that's easier for him to do than to do that than to show progress in the East. So my guess is we are going to see some very cruel, violent attacks, not so much against military targets, but against industrial and civilian targets throughout Ukraine.
On a separate but related issue, Poland conducted elections over the weekend. The pro-Trump conservative candidate won there. Poland has been an important ally for Ukraine. They've taken in thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Is there a concern that perhaps Poland's posture could change as it relates to Ukraine as a result of this election? Change is a little bit too strong, but yes, the president can frustrate in Poland's democracy, quite a lot of initiatives of the government. They can veto certain things. So it's not as though Poland's going to become pro-Russia, but it might become a slightly more difficult for Poland to be as pro-Western as it has been, but it's ties to Europe in particular.
So yeah, I think this is a setback. It's interesting. The Trump administration goes to the Middle East and talks about how it's not going to get involved in domestic politics of other countries. Clearly that doesn't apply to Poland or the Germany for that matter.
Okay, Richard Haas, thank you for that. We appreciate it. Coming up, deficit denials. The Senate takes on President Trump's sweeping agenda bill as House Speaker Johnson pushes back on the massive bill's potential price tag.
Plus a case of die-hard support for the president's agenda, Republican Senator Joni Ernst responds after facing blowback from her own constituents over potential Medicaid cuts and her support for the so-called big, beautiful bill. You're watching Meet the Press Know. Welcome back. Turning now to Capitol Hill, where the Senate is back in session, which means it's their turn to take up President Trump's megabill and it's their turn to deal with the same issues that complicated its passage in the House.
Of course, deficit hawks like Wisconsin's Ron Johnson say they're worried about the package's price tag. After multiple nonpartisan budget watchdog say that it would add trillions to the federal deficit. Senator Johnson told Fox News yesterday that his loyalty is to the American people, to his kids and grandkids, and quote, we cannot continue to mortgage their future. But on Meet the Press yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed those concerns.
He said the bill would balloon the deficit, would not balloon the deficit, arguing that all those nonpartisan budget wants are just wrong. We can't flip a magic switch and reverse it overnight, but this is the largest step forward in the right direction. The Congress has ever made- Senator if the big beautiful bill does add to the debt, will President Trump own that? It's not going to add to the debt.
Are you really telling the American people this will not add one penny to the debt and deficit? You can guarantee that? I am telling you, this is going to reduce the deficit. There are also Senate Republicans like Missouri's Josh Hawley, who would take an issue with the Bill's cuts to Medicaid, which the Congressional Budget Office says will lead to millions losing coverage.
All of a sudden, though, they spoke to President Trump today and was promised there would be no cuts made to Medicaid benefits, depending on how you define cut. Senator Johnson also pushed back on concerns, saying that only individuals who choose not to work or are in his eyes abusing the system that would be impacted. There are no Medicaid cuts in the big beautiful bill. We're not cutting Medicaid.
What we're doing is strengthening the program. We're reducing fraud, waste, and abuse that is rampant in Medicaid. There's about 4.8 million people that they're referring to. They're able-bodied workers.
If you are able to work and you're not and you're writing on the public wagon, you need to help pull it. Those 4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so. I will go into any town hall in any district in America and explain what this is and every single person will knock their heads and go, oh, that makes sense. Somebody should call him on that.
He should do the town halls all across the country, I mean, what is the state of play right now in the Senate? Is there going to need to be- and I should introduce this to Saha'l Kapoor, my capital calling. We're just so friendly. I didn't even feel the need that I needed to introduce.
Saha'l welcome. What's the state of play in the Senate right now? Break it down for us. Yeah, first off Ryan, the speaker is objectively wrong on the math of this bill.
Yes, there are substantial savings in spending cuts in the bill, but you can only say it doesn't reduce the deficit if you ignore all the things in it that do increase the deficit, including the tax breaks and the hundreds of billions of dollars that increase spending other Republicans are putting in there. That aside, the bill is now past the House, it's in the Senate right now where a majority leader John Thune has a margin of three votes, three defections to spare, take a look at some of the issues that he's going to be eyeing, that he's going to have to balance when trying to get the 50 votes necessary to pass this. There are issues about Medicaid spending cuts, some Republicans are nervous about that. There are issues about cutting clean energy funding.
A lot of that goes to red states, Republican senators, at least some of them don't want to cut funding for their constituents. The Senate is going to put their own imprint on the tax portion of this bill. Many of them have no use for that expanded salt deduction, state and local taxes. That House Republicans from blue states demanded.
There are other less salient but important issues like spectrum auction authority for the FCC, the debt concerns, red ink, Rand Paul and Ron Johnson have been very vocal about this. And finally, they're going to have to squeeze everything through the Senate rules, the so-called bird bath, which makes sure everything in this bill complies with provisions that limit it to budgets, to dollars and cents in order to bypass that filibuster. Obviously, everybody can score this bill to death's bill, but ultimately, it's a messaging effort here, right? And trying to convince enough constituents that they are not going to be hurt by this or conversely that they're going to benefit by it.
I have to imagine the Republicans hoping to see this pass did not want to see Joni Ernst over the weekend just flippantly say that everyone is going to die when she was challenged on the merits of this bill. How was she responding to that criticism after all the outcry from her town hall this weekend? Everyone's going to eventually die is what Senator Ernst was trying to say. I guess I should add that caveat since she believes it was an important part of the point that she was trying to make.
But as you can imagine, Senator Ernst got a lot of criticism for being flippant about what some constituents, some people who were shouting at her in that moment saw as a life or death issue. But she issued an apology that was equally flippant. Well, I should let viewers decide whether it's really an apology to this plan. I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.
So I apologize. And I'm really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth area as well. Now, that video seems to have been filmed from a graveyard, Ryan, a little bit of background on Joni Ernst. She, of course, lost her position in Senate Republican leadership earlier this year.
She was famously in the spotlight when she was indecisive about Pete Eggset, the defense secretary initially sounded like she was voting on before coming out as a yes after getting a lot of tax and some political threats from the right. Her seat is up for reelection in 2026. It's a reddish-purple state of Iowa, but Democrats are certainly watching it to see what she does. And whether they find the opportunities there, potentially some of the difficult seats.
Yeah, and there's a couple of aggressive Democrats that are already in the race already. So just quickly, Sahel, is July 4th realistic? I mean, they really got to get moving if it's going to happen, right? It's plausible, Ryan.
It's a month away. Senators usually like to take longer than that to do a big tax package. But the reason I say it's realistic is there's an actual deadline staring them in the face. Everything up until now has been junk.
Everything up until now has been a self-imposed deadline. They could blow through it with no consequences. If they missed July 4th and they're getting really close to that end of July deadline by when the Treasury Department says Congress has to raise the debt ceiling in order to prevent the catastrophic defaults on the country's obligations, remember, this bill has to go back to the house if they make any changes. So if they go past July 4th, they're really getting close, teetering on the brink of that end of July deadline to get it to President Trump.
Okay, great. So, thank you for that. We appreciate it. Let's talk more about it now with our panel.
On set is Mariana Sotomayor, a congressional reporter for the Washington Post, Kimberly Atkins-Dore, senior opinion writer for the Boston Globe, she's also an NBC contributor, and Republican strategist Rick Tyler. So, Mariana, obviously, Congress says you are domain, you are there watching closely. House Republicans rustle over these same questions that Senate Republicans are going to have to deal with. I mean, what's going to have to happen for Senate Republicans to get it over the finish line?
Well, Senate Republicans have been telling me that they want to change this bill as we just talked about. There's not that much time to be able to do that. And a lot of their concerns are ones that we heard House Republicans also have to overcome. A lot of it has to do with those Medicaid cuts.
There are a number at least four Republicans who don't want to see any people lose their Medicaid benefits. But there's also, like, you all recapped those Republicans who very much want to see more cuts be made. They want to be able to make sure that this does not add to the deficit. So, as of right now, there's probably like a solid eight Republicans or so who have said these are my red lines.
This is going to be a real test, I think, for Senate Majority Leader John Thune. This is the first time he's been a leader, has to corral all but three Republicans to vote this bill through. And I think what's notable and kind of different than House Speaker Mike Johnson is that this is still a new relationship with Trump. Johnson has worked for years to get Trump to trust him and they do have that relationship we've seen so far.
Johnson, be able to tell Trump, hey, we should keep this one big bill. We should keep this going through the House first. And that kind of influences one that Thune does not happen. And isn't it really more about Donald Trump than it is, John Thune, at this point?
I mean, it seems when he decides he wants something, his congressional allies step up and do whatever he wants. Well, that's clearly not true. I mean, he said he was, don't touch Medicaid. You have 45.5% of the cuts of the spending cuts that are in the Big Beautiful Bill are Medicaid.
But look, can I be flipping? We're talking about 0.1% of overall federal spending, 99.7% of federal spending is not in the Big Beautiful mega mega bill. It is, this is a puny bill, it's a tiny bill, it has marginal cuts, it's saves, it spends about $650 billion in cuts, but it has $400 billion in additional spending, which is a net gain of about $200 billion. New Gingrich got $400 billion with Bill Clinton in 31 years ago, so it's half the savings of that.
This revolutionizes nothing. It is the status quo. It is a yawner. So it's interesting that Rick says that really because the Democrat strategy here be to kind of poke at those fishers that may exist within the Republican caucus, maybe taunt Republicans and tell them this doesn't cut nearly what you think it does.
Well, I think it's more important for Democrats right now to be clear about who it affects. That might be true, that it's a tiny percentage of the entire federal budget. But when you're talking about the people who are going to lose their health care coverage because of the changes in eligibility, whatever that's going to look like in this bill that I still don't understand, that's a big deal. And being flippant about that, that is what, I don't care, Senator Ernst is not a comedian, I don't care about her jokes, what people do care about- That was supposed to be a drama.
What the question she was being asked clearly was the fact that people are going to die if they lose their Medicaid coverage. And that's a big point. And for Republicans to be joking about that, I think it's pretty flippant. On top of the fact that this is going to balloon the deficit, something that Republicans screamed about when it came to, say, COVID relief during the Biden administration.
So I think Democrats need to hit on all of those things. But if you want to really make voters understand why this is important, talk about how they will affect them. I want to play a little bit of what John Federman said this morning, the Pennsylvania Democratic Senator. He was arguing the merits of this bill with his Republican colleague, Dave McCormick.
Take a listen to this one this morning. Another thing that I'm troubled that he brought up also is our national debt approaching $37 trillion. That's a lot. I mean, there was that joker that quoted, it's like, hey, now, after a couple of billions that might matter sometime.
And now we're talking $37 trillion. And now that's a significant danger for our nation's future, honestly, as well. He sounds like a Republican there, Kimberly. And, you know, who is this message intended for?
I don't know. I can't speak for Senator Federman. I'm not quite sure from one day to the next what his message is intended for. I'm not to cut you off.
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