Meet the Press NOW — March 23

Hi there. Welcome to Meet the Press Now on Ryan Nobles in Washington, where we're following several breaking news stories, including the deadly collision overnight at LaGuardia Airport. And we now have video of the moment of the impact, which we want to warn you, some viewers may find disturbing. This is the moment captured on CCTV footage, showing an air Canada plane colliding with a fire truck on the runway that was responding to a separate incident.

The collision killing both pilots on board and injuring dozens of others. We'll have much more on this breaking news coming up. But we are going to begin with the breaking news tied to the war with Iran. Markets closing just moments ago, stocks surging and oil prices plummeting after the president said the US could reach a deal with Iran to end the war and that the Strait of Hormuz could open quote very soon.

The president today making an abrupt shift, walking back his threat to obliterate Iran's power plants unless it agreed to reopen the strait by tonight, instead announcing he was postponing any and all military strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure for five days, saying the US and Iran were having productive conversations to end the war. Here's more of what the president said about those talks. We've had very strong talks. Mr.

Whitcalf and Mr. Kushner had them. They went, I would say, perfectly. I would say that if they carry through with that, it'll end that problem, that conflict.

And I think it'll end it very, very substantially. We're doing a five day period. We'll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this.

Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. They want to make a deal. And we are very willing to make a deal. It's got to be a good deal.

And it's got to be no more wars, no more nuclear weapons. They're not going to have nuclear weapons anymore. They're agreeing to that. Now, it's unclear who specifically the Trump administration is speaking to in Iran.

The president Trump would not say, and again, most of that, all of Iran's top leaders were dead. And to run, denying any such talks have happened. The head of Iran's parliament posting a social media quote saying, quote, no, no, no negotiations have been held with the US. And fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.

As for that vital shipping lane, president Trump now suggesting the straighter for moves could be jointly controlled by him in Iran's next Supreme leader. That would be open to very soon if this works. How soon? I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, be a jointly controlled by him, maybe me, maybe me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah, the price of oil will drop like Iraq as soon as the deal is done.

I guess it already is today. Today crude oil settled around $88, plummeting double digits after nearing $100 per barrel on Friday. But the average price for a regular gallon of gasoline is still closing in on around $4. Now, Ron, meanwhile, launching several major strikes over the weekend, hitting two cities in southern Israel, including near Israel's main nuclear site.

The local hospitals saying approximately 175 people were injured in those strikes. Now, Ron, also firing at a remote US-UK joint military base in the Indian Ocean, renewing questions about Tehran's military capabilities and the reach of their ballistic missiles. Joining me now, NBC News White House correspondent Monica Elba, NBC News International correspondent Ross Sanchez, who's in Doha, and NBC News Senior National Security Correspondent Courtney QB, as well as NBC News Business and Data Correspondent Brian Chung. The gang is all here.

So Monica, let's start with you. The president has repeatedly said that Iran's leadership is gone. If their leadership is gone, who do we know about? Who he's having these talks with?

Who exactly are officials talking to? We don't know, Ryan. And that is a very key question here. And the president didn't want to reveal that only saying that this person is in a position of power, is a top person, is somebody who could potentially have some influence.

But the United States is not the one who wants to communicate who that may be. All we know is that from the US side of things, it seems to be the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy for the Middle East Steve Whitcoff that are participating in these talks, these negotiations. But we just don't even know what stage they are in, Ryan. Initially, the president did try to say that they had been ongoing.

But then he kind of shifted that to say they were really just preliminary conversations that maybe are going through intermediaries that could potentially eventually lead to an actual diplomatic discussion. So we're not really at that point yet. But the president did seem to rule out that it wasn't contact with the current Supreme Leader, with the son of the late Ayatollah, that that's not who he was in touch with. Raising questions also about his status, the president questioning whether he's even alive or not today.

Ryan. And it does appear like it's a bit of whiplash with all of this. Monica, it seems as though the president sends us in a myriad of directions over the course of the past 48 hours. On Saturday night, he was touting the success of the US military strikes.

He said Iran wanted to make a deal, but he didn't. What's changed between now and that? Yeah, just in the last couple of days, he has also said that there was nobody left in Iran to talk to that, even if the United States wanted to engage in these conversations, that there was no one who could be on the other end. Now he's saying today that there is somebody potentially on the other end.

So there has been a lot of confusion on that front and confusion about what stage we are actually in in this conflict. It was on Friday that the president said he was considering winding down the war. Then he did make that threat specifically against the Iranian power plants. Then he walks that back this morning saying that he's going to revisit that five days from now.

So prompting again, just way more questions than answers, Ryan. Of course, the United States is not the only player in all of this. Even if the US were to reach a deal with Iran, is there any confidence that Israel would follow suit and be willing to end their military strikes as well? And the president was asked exactly that a couple of days ago on whether he is prepared to say that this war is over and what that might mean for Israel if they don't agree to saying that essentially.

And the president did seem to indicate that there could be obviously different motivations here between Israel and the United States. And they may have different timelines on how this does ultimately end. We do know today, according to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he held a phone call with President Trump. They have been in pretty constant contact over the last couple of weeks about all of this.

But it is pretty clear that they do have different motivations in all of this and could have completely different definitions of what so-called potential victory is here. And we remember the president imploring them to stop the bombing of Gaza and they continued despite his request. Let's turn to Raffna who is in Doha with a view of what things are like in the region. We saw this major Iranian strike in southern Israel, Raff.

What do we know about it? And are there concerns about the effectiveness of Israel's missile defense system? Yeah, Ryan. So two Iranian ballistic missiles hitting in very rapid succession Saturday night.

You're looking at images there of the aftermath in southern Israel. That's a town called Arad, one of those missiles falling, basically creating an enormous crater in between those buildings. Some 175 or so people were injured in these two towns, these two impacts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying it's basically miraculous that nobody was killed.

Now the second of those two towns is called Dimona. And it is significant because it is the closest area to the nuclear facility where Israel's nuclear program was based out of. This is a nuclear weapons program that Israel has never formally acknowledged, but the world universally understands that Israel does have nuclear weapons. And it seems that the Iranians targeted that area because there had been either US or Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility earlier in the day on Saturday, a research hub called Natanz, which the US had struck with those B2 bombers back in June of last year.

So it raises the very, very worrying prospects of tit-for-tat strikes against nuclear facilities across the Middle East. The UN's Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, says it is closely monitoring it is warning both sides to show restraint when it comes to strikes near nuclear facilities. And as you say, Ryan, it is raising questions about the effectiveness of Israel's much wanted missile defense system that two of these ballistic missiles were able to hit in such a quick succession, right? And it also probably raises some questions about just how effective Iran's military might be despite the beating they've taken.

And when you look back at the last 48 hours, President Trump issuing an ultimatum to Iran, giving them 48 hours to open this rate of harm news, but then Tehran responded saying it would hit energy infrastructure in the Gulf nations, and now the President walking back that threat. How are officials responding in the region? And is part of it that they believe Iran actually is capable of carrying out some of these threats? Oh yeah, Ryan, here in the Gulf, there is a real, real painful and learned-through experience, awareness of Iran's ability to keep striking.

As you say, the number of ballistic missiles and drones that they are firing is way, way down since the beginning of the war. It's sort of averaging out at about 100 a day. But these countries closest to Iran, they're just on the other side of the Persian Gulf. They've been targeted repeatedly, and we are finding that it is here in Qatar and the UAE and Saudi Arabia that it is often where Iran's weapons are most effective.

I'll give you just one example of the concerns here in the region. Qatar, where I am now, depends on desalination plants for 99% of its water, right? Turning saltwater into fresh drinking water. And the Iranians have been explicit that if President Trump is to go ahead with those strikes that he's promised against their energy infrastructure, that they could retaliate with strikes on desalination plants here in the Gulf.

And Ryan in a desert country, as hot as this with his little fresh water, if those desalination plants go down, that could have a potentially devastating impact. Yes, that would be a nightmare. Okay, Rob Sanchez, thank you for the perspective there. In Doha, let's turn out a Courtney who's on set with me here.

So, Courtney, the other strike that is getting a lot of attention is the Iranian strike on the joint US-UK Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean involving two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Talk to us about how significant that strike was and what does it tell us about Iran's capability? Yeah, so you can see here on the map why that's getting a lot of attention is because it wasn't clear that Iran would have the ability to actually fire a missile as far as Diego Garcia. You see there.

So, we knew that, okay, now we're kilometers to miles here, so I'm going to have to do some math. We, Iran has a number of intermediate-range ballistic missiles that have the ability to fly about 2,500 kilometers. We knew that they do have some space launch ones that are believed to be able to fly more than that, more than that, more like 4,000 kilometers. But an actual ballistic missile that they would be able to fly that could hit Diego Garcia would be new.

That is something that the world didn't really know that Iran had that capability. But what's really important to point out here is neither of those missiles actually made it to Diego Garcia, so it's not really clear how far they actually could have flown at full range. But 2,500 miles is significant and that's got to make people nervous. I mean, you've heard so new reporting about the options that the president is considering when it comes to boots on the ground.

I mean, there's a lot of military experts. I believe the only way you solve this for news problem is potentially with boots on the ground. What could happen next? Yeah, I don't see any other scenario at this point.

So, the U.S., they are hitting a lot of the potential threats to the straitformus right now from the air. So, things like their mining facilities, the places where they store their mines. The anti-ship ballistic missiles, they've gone after a bunch of those. That's been pretty successful so far.

They've gone after a bunch of these ships. You know, sometimes we call them the mosquito fleet. They're these tiny little super fast small boats. Some of them are unmanned now and they just pack them up with explosives and they send them off.

The military has gone after a lot of those, but they still have not mitigated the threat, not even close, frankly. So, the boots on the ground option would see the U.S. military sending troops to a couple of the small islands in the Persian Gulf. They're sort of at the base of the straitformus.

The depth of the Persian Gulf means that a lot of those bigger tankers have to go through two of these islands, known as Abu Musa and the Greater and lesser Tuns. So, they have to move them through there's spotters there's Iranian military equipment. They alert the mosquito fleet. They send out small boats with that choke point.

Part of the straitformus is extremely dangerous. It's a huge threat to the shipping that goes through there. Now, if the U.S. were to send in troops to the island and to some of the ports where they send out the boats, they could potentially mitigate that threat.

That combined with the continued airstrikes, it may make a difference in the straitformus. The problem, Ryan, is even though the U.S. has control of the airspace over that area, the Iranians would most likely just bombard those islands and those ports with drones, with missiles, with anything that they can to try to stop that. It would be a dangerous.

Extremely dangerous for the boots that would end up on the ground there. I do want to quickly pay for you something. Chair Secretary Bess and sent to Kristin yesterday. Just to put a fine point on this though, is the President in the process of winding down this war or escalating conflict?

Again, they're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate. What do you make of that strategy? Escalating to de-escalate.

So it's escalating to end the war, right? So we've seen that happen before in the past. And in this case, again, it would be doing things like putting U.S. boots on the ground into Persian Gulf to try or in the straitformus to try to end the Iranian stranglehold on this area and then potentially open up the possibility of some sort of negotiated peace agreement here.

I think one of the more one way that you really illustrate the escalate to end the war is with Carg Island because the U.S., if they were to take that, which would be logistically and everything strategically, everything about it would be difficult. But if they were, they would not only cut off the Iranian revenue stream, but very critically, that would give them a huge point of leverage if there were some sort of negotiations, which at this point we still don't really know much about. And 4,000 kilometers is 2,485 miles. Just have that.

I should have that right on. I've got to give Google credit for that. Thank you. Brian, let's turn to you.

You are a math guy. What do you make of how the markets are reacting to the President's comments today? I mean, things look better, but will it last? Yeah, no conversions necessary on this one.

But the markets were up over 1% as crude oil was down. Almost $10 in just one day. That is certainly big news, especially when you consider that we didn't really get any substance from the President on what those talks were all about or even who they were about. Now, I should point out that when we talk about specifically crude oil, what is still the focus of those markets moving is any sort of activity that happens in the Strait of Hormuz, that critical area where 20% of the world's oil travels through.

And we've not seen any substantial improvement in the flow of tankers going through that area. You can see on that chart ahead of you, whereas before this conflict began, there were over 100 tankers a day going through that area. Today there was only five. That is certainly, I guess, an improvement from the one that we were seeing per day in the later part of last week.

But that's certainly not, I would describe as an opening of that particular channel there. So again, whether not markets got too excited is certainly one question. It all depends on what happens going from here. But I think most traders will tell you that it's still certainly volatile out there.

It's also the difference between the speculative market and how it actually impacts the everyday price for Americans, right? We saw those prices at the gas pump, Jack, right up the second that this conflict began, even though the price of crude is coming down, it could be a while before the average American sees that at their local gas station, right? Yeah. Well, late last night when crude oil futures were opening up, it seemed like it was going to be another day of prices rising.

We have been watching prices at the pump at a consumer level as far as the national average goes, inching closer and closer to $4 a gallon the last week, I believe we saw $3.94. Certainly, it could be more expensive depending on where you live, like in California or Arizona. But the question is now with crude prices having dropped almost $10 in one day, could that bleed through to consumers as well? Analysts saying, yes, it's possible that if that pattern holds, you could see prices at the pump dropping by as soon as the end of this week.

But again, the big question here for supply is whether or not the strain of poor news opens up and you have analysts saying even if this conflict would be resolved, it can still take weeks for that channel to reopen to normal traffic, right? Okay. That's how it's going to impact your family budget. Brian, thank you so much for that.

Coming up, breaking news on that deadly runway collision between a plane and a fire truck at LaGuardia killing two pilots, injuring dozens of passengers and shutting down one of the country's busiest airports. The NTSB now investigating what happened and why. Plus, the waiting game, extremely long security lines at airports as TSA officers go unpaid during the DHS shutdown. Now, the president is sending in ICE agents to help.

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Welcome back. You are looking at live pictures as we're following breaking news out of New York as investigators piece together what happened leading up to last night's deadly collision between a plane and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport. NBC News has obtained new video showing the air candidate flight arriving from Montreal, colliding with the vehicle. Both pilots were killed dozens were injured and hospitalized.

Audio recordings appear to indicate an air traffic controller had cleared the emergency vehicle to cross the runway before ordering it to stop. About 18 minutes after the collision, this exchange was also captured on the air traffic control audio channels. The news conference last hour, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy making comments to reporters suggesting that air traffic controllers staffing issues were not to blame for the incident. This airport has a target of 37 controllers at LaGuardia.

We have 33 controllers employed certified at LaGuardia. And we have six that are seven actually that are in training. So as our airports go, LaGuardia is a very well staffed airport. We're a couple controllers short in total, but it is a well staffed airport.

Secretary Duffy also noting that LaGuardia has now fully reopened but is operating at a reduced capacity. NBC News correspondent Stephen Romo joins me now from LaGuardia. So Stephen, what's the focus of the investigation right now? Yeah, right.

Investigators are still in the early stages of figuring out exactly what happened here. The wreckage is still here as they document and gather that physical evidence. We did hear that air traffic control audio though that you played just a moment ago. They seem to show the air traffic controller giving the port authority emergency vehicle permission to cross that runway and then telling that vehicle to stop.

But it appears it was just too late and that violent crash happened. It's still surreal to see the plane here with the missing nose and these other planes that have now resumed since 2 PM Eastern taking off presumably the passengers able to see that out of their window. After that crash, you also played that sound. You could hear it sounded like a controller saying, I messed up.

So no doubt that audio will play a big part in this investigation as will the interviews of the air traffic controllers involved. But right now they're still trying to get that physical evidence as both the emergency vehicle from the port authority and that jet are still here on the runway. And we know that both the pilots were tragically killed in this terrible collision. Do we have any update on the passengers that were injured?

Yeah, 76 people on board that Air Canada flight including the crew aside from the pilot and co-pilot who were said to be young men both just starting their careers. We know 41 other people were hurt and had to be sent to area hospitals and most of them were treated and released. But there are still some serious injuries and looking at the wreckage of the nose of this plane missing, it's incredible that more lives weren't actually lost in this, right? Yeah, and we also are told two sources telling NBC News that a flight attendant was found outside the plane still strapped to her jump seat.

Do we have any update on that flight attendant's condition? Yeah, this is just incredible to hear the tales of survival from this woman who was practically dangling outside her jump seat. We have not heard an update on how she's doing right now with those two sources you mentioned. Speaking of, I was just thinking of this flight attendant who's probably done this so many times now planning for a normal landing and then this crash happens the next thing she knows she's outside of the aircraft on her jump seat.

Secretary Duffy mentioning the press this situation in general is a reminder of the importance of wearing those seat belts when you're in a plane regardless of if that seat belt is on. If you're seated, you're often pulled. Make sure you have that seat belt buckled. Yeah, and finally what about the crew of the fire truck we have an update on them?

Yeah, actually that's one bright spot here, much needed bright spot Ryan. We heard that both of those men who were on the truck who were injured, there's some serious injuries, some broken bones included, but one of them is expected to be released from the hospital today. The other one is going to be held overnight for some type of observation. It seems though despite their injuries, they are expected to recover.

Okay, Stephen Rommel on the scene for Sarah LaGuardia. See thanks so much. Up next, President Trump rejects the potential deal with Democrats to fund TSA, demanding Republicans double down on his push to overhaul elections in America as ICE agents are dispatched to America's airports to try and help manage the travel chaos. You're watching Meet the Press Now.

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Hey guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday sit down podcast. On this week's episode, I sit down with one of the biggest bands in the world, Mumford and Sons, as we get the boys together to talk about their new number one album, Prize Fighter, and the evolution of that irresistible foot stomping sound. You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts. Welcome back, ICE agents are now assisting with security at more than a dozen major US airports, a senior ICE official telling NBC News that at least 50 ICE personnel will work each shift at those airports, not to help with security screening, but to assist in other ways like crowd control.

President Trump today taking credit for the ICE appointments and also warning that the National Guard could be called to assist next. And I want to thank ICE because they said did so strongly. They'll do great. And if that's not enough, I'll bring in the National Guard.

We're not going to have the Democrats destroy our country. It comes as travelers are facing hours along security lines at multiple airports with a DHS shutdown now in its sixth week, nationwide, more than 11% of TSA officers who had already missed one full paycheck called out yesterday, that according to the Department of Homeland Security. Five airports and call out rates of more than 35%. NBC News correspondent Jesse Kirsch joins me now from Harsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport and also with me as former TSA administrator John pistol.

Jesse, let's start with you. I know that you've been dealing with ebbs and flows of security lines there in Atlanta. But what are things like right now? Yeah, mostly flow throughout the day, Ryan.

But this is really the first lull that we have seen since the early morning. Notably, however, you see that TV screen right there where I'm told our team based here in Atlanta, you would typically on that screen see your TSA wait time. So we've noticed they have not been advertising that today. And I think that just speaks to how unpredictable and possibly how pessimistic those numbers might be.

But right now at this main checkpoint, it's pretty quiet. That didn't really develop until the last hour or so earlier. Very different story. Here's some of what we've heard from travelers.

What time did you get here? I got your eight. You got your eight o'clock for a one p.m. point.

Yes, which isn't saying it's really I would get here about 1134. It's a get-through grab lunch and probably I don't know if you've been paying attention to what what it's causing all the back of it. But just the fact that this is where we're at in America's Airport. How does it feel?

Oh, it's it's insane. It's ridiculous. It makes me worry about my Friday when I come back. What time's your flight?

12 o'clock. And I got here about six. So it's 9.30? You got here at six for a new flight.

That's correct. Have you ever had to do that before? Never. Never will again.

This is crazy. I've been here like two hours. I've had a reschedule my flight. So you reschedule because you missed?

Because I miss my first flight. It's my second flight. Because of the way it was the first flight today or? Okay.

So this is your second flight you've booked for today. Yes. And that young woman told me that she was getting here before 9 before 10 a.m. for a 6 p.m.

flight. So needless to say Ryan, people's travel plans and you know, entire schedule for the day in some cases being completely reworked by what has been unfolding at airports like what we've seen here in Atlanta. Yeah. And even though things are not that busy now you still need to get there early because you just don't know what you could encounter when you get to the airport and tell me what are ICE agents actually doing to help with those long lines?

They're not actually at the screening locations helping you put your suitcase through the metal detectors, right? Yeah. Well, and to be clear, we have not gone through security ourselves today. So we don't know exactly what they're doing at every stage of the process.

But what I can tell you is what we've been able to see is mostly the agents from ICE walking around the terminal. We actually at one point, so ICE helping a woman get out of a car into a wheelchair and go into the terminal from the curb area. What we know from a senior ICE official is that the agents can help with things like checking ideas with crowd control, but they are not trained on things like running the X-ray machines. So bottom line, there's only so much they could help with.

And we spoke with the CEO of the airport here earlier. He said he doesn't think that they've been here long enough to know if they've made a discernible impact yet. But also he reiterated as well, there's certain things that would take months to train other people on that only TSA can do. Okay.

All right. Thanks for that, Jesse. Let's turn to you, John. As a former TSA administrator, you understand better than any of what a complicating factor this is.

From your vantage point, listening to what you heard from Jesse, is there any discernible way that ICE agents could help try and make the process a little easier at the nation's airports? Well, I think there's a couple things that could be done. One is, for example, in the 435 or so airports where TSA does the screening of things, many of those airports have exit lanes where when you go out of the security, when you're leaving the airport, that are staffed by TSO, Transportation Security Officers. So if ICE agents were assigned there as a supplement, they could relieve the TSOs from those responsibilities to get to the checkpoint to try to offset in a memo way, a high call-out rate that you showed earlier.

So that's one thing with the Q management, the line management, perhaps the one thing I think they could actually do be a visible deterrent or a putative terrorist who might want to think that they could take advantage of the situation and walk into any terminal in the country, in there, in the land, or wherever, and to take out some automatic weapons and just start firing at the lines. So it's a security risk, because it's a soft target. So I think the ICE officers could be helpful in that regard, too, as the visible deterrent. So President Trump has suggested perhaps maybe the National Guard?

Is the next step here? Would their skill set be any different than that of the ICE agents? No, no, that's, so again, there's not of any help in terms of the actual checkpoint operations. They don't know anything about computer demography or the X-ray machines, how to do trace explosive detection, how to resolve alarms, any of those things.

And that's just the normal circumstances, if there's an unusual circumstance, how they do, I don't see that exciting anything. I see it more as a visible deterrent, but it doesn't speed things up in terms of trying to get these lines. Now, that's a political issue that can be resolved. Right.

So let's talk about that overarching issue, because these are band-aids on any level, and that's the fact that DHS funding is still up in the air, which directly impacts TSA. The call-out rate yesterday reaches as high as 40 percent at some of the major airports. Today, they were around 10 percent nationwide. How worried are you?

I mean, these are hard-working TSOs, TSA officers who work for you. How worried are you that many of them just won't come back, that they're going to have to find a job somewhere else that they know will consistently be able to support their families? Well, it's a good point, because last fall, when there was a 42-day government white shutdown, nearly 1,100 officers resigned. For those very reasons, they've got a lot of groceries, paid child care, paid the rent, all those things that every normal person has to do.

So I think we're seeing a gradual increase, I think we're around 400 and some. Now, that being said, it's more the call-out rates, where people are maybe doing a gig job, doing a delivery or whatever it may be. So they can pay bills. I heard yesterday there are two TSOs who had their cars repossessed from airport parking lot because they missed their payment last month.

So things like that, that's the human side of things, and it just gets back to what risks are we willing to take because of those potential vulnerabilities that are, I think, increasing, the longer lines are, and the fewer TSOs who are working on the job. Put that in perspective, though, John, a TSO had his car in the parking lot at the airport, in which he was probably working for free and had that repossessed because he can't pay the bills. Boy, how many of you get that story to remember Congress? All right, John, thank you for your perspective.

We appreciate it. After the break, the very latest from Capitol Hill and President Trump's ultimatum for Republicans in Congress today died to his new push for new restrictions on voting and funding for Homeland Security. You're watching Meet the Press now. Welcome back, as we've been talking about security lines are growing at airports across the country, but President Trump says that Republicans shouldn't make any deal to end the DHS shutdown unless Congress passes the Save America Act, which is the Republicans' voter ID bill.

Take a listen. I'm suggesting strongly to the Republican party. Don't make any deal on anything. The most important thing we can have is what's called the Save America Act.

Don't make any deal on anything unless you include voter ID. Republicans do not settle with Democrats and let them out of this hole that they've buried themselves in. Well, President Trump says the bill should also include provisions that are in the current bill, including a ban on mail-in voting, a ban on biological men and women's sports, and a ban on transitioning surgeries for transgender minors. NBC News has learned that this weekend, President Trump rejected a plan to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security, except for ICE, which would reopen TSA and bring an end to the chaos at airports.

Now, according to those sources, the off-ramp was presented to the president by Majority Leader Thune and supported by numerous Republicans. Joining me now to talk about this is the senior national political reporter, Sahil Kapoor. So there's a lot of moving parts of the story, but it's seemingly only getting more complicated, Sahil. Now that the president is tying this to DHS funding negotiations, I have to imagine that this is just not a road that Senate Republicans are interested in going down.

Yeah, that's right, Ryan. The dynamic on DHS funding is looking worse today than it was a few days ago. And the turning point was a presidential truth social post last night, which I'll get to. But in recent days, there was an off-brand that was floated between Republicans.

It was kind of batted around between Senate Republicans, including Republican aides here and the White House. It was presented to Trump. It was presented to John through the Majority Leader. Essentially, what it would do is it would have Republicans take Democrats up on their offer to fund the non-controversial parts of DHS with TSA being at the top of that list and to save ICE and immigration funding, which is a controversial piece for a separate filibuster-approved budget reconciliation bill that the GOP could pass without any Democratic vote.

Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana proponent of this idea, he explained it on the Senate floor. Let's play that. This would be a tough thing for Democrats to turn down or Republicans did, in fact, put it on the floor, Ryan. But it's not going to happen, it seems, because President Trump emphatically rejected it in a true social post last night and doubled down on those comments today, not only saying that Republicans should cut no deal with Democrats on DHS, but they should wait until the Save America Act passes the Senate.

That is not going to happen. As we've spoken about many times here, the votes aren't there to get to 60 Republicans. They don't have the votes to say the talking filibuster. They don't have the votes to nuke the filibuster.

But they're still going through the stages of grief, so to speak, before they get to acceptance on that. So that's where we are. There's no path at this moment for either DHS funding or the Save Act, Ryan. So, I mean, Senator Republicans have an option here.

Don't they say they could just put it on the floor, whether or not the President likes it or not, and pass it, and then put the ball in the President's court. Is there any chance that they would be willing to do that? Very unlikely, Ryan, because they would have to get to a veto-proof majority to override a presidential signature. That is not something that a road that Republicans like to travel.

They generally like to work in tandem with the White House, rather than get crosswise with the President. Very, very rare instances. The only one I can think of recently was the Epstein Files Transparency Act, where they kind of muscle Trump into supporting a bill that he didn't want to support. No evidence that that's happening here.

They are a co-equal branch of government. It's important for us to remind them of that from time to time. Sahil Kapoor, thank you for that. Joining me now to talk about this is our panel.

Jeff Mason, who was the Washington correspondent for Bloomberg, former Missouri State Representative Don Callaway. He's now a Democratic strategist and Ashley Davis, a former White House official in the George W. Bush administration. So, Jeff, I've been trying to figure out, and maybe that's a bad idea for me to try and figure out, what the President's endgame here is.

He obviously is obsessed with the Save America Act for a wide range of issues, perhaps relitigating his 2020 loss, perhaps setting the stage to make it easier for Republicans to win going forward. But he's no one telling him what Sahil just told us that there isn't a realistic path to getting this pass and he's just ignoring them, or is he just not being told what everybody else seems to know is the reality? Well, either he's not being told or he's not listening. And I think your right to say is obsessed with it.

It's the top of his list in terms of domestic priorities and domestic legislation that he wants to get done. And he has a lot of thoughts about elections, some of which are grounded in reality and many of which are not. And that is manifesting itself in wanting to have wanting to get this done. But as Sahil very eloquently said, they don't have the votes, and Democrats certainly aren't going to give up on their demands for DHS in exchange for making concessions on the Save Act.

That's just not going to happen. So the question that raises for me is, does this lead to people putting more blame now on the Republicans when they're standing in line at the airports? Because they had an out just now that is being rejected by the president. Yeah.

Actually, I want to play for you some of what the president said earlier today. Take a listen. So I'm tying Homeland Security into voter identification with picture and proof of citizenship in order to vote. And I'm requesting that the Republican senators do that immediately.

You don't have to take a fast vote. Don't worry about Easter going home. In fact, make this one for Jesus, okay? Make this one for Jesus.

That's what I tell him. So now, pleading to a higher calling on this. That was kind of funny. You can laugh.

But actually, are you wearing as a Republican that the president is in many ways abandoning the rest of his entire agenda for this? In many ways, a fool is Aaron to try and get this very specific piece of legislation done. Well, as everyone said so far, this is a math problem. The Senate cannot get to 60 on this bill or the Save Act unless they obviously get rid of the filibuster, which I don't think that many people in the Senate will do.

There's a math problem there too. There's a math problem there as well. But listen, I think this is a lot of positioning. We've all lived around this time long enough that there's a lot of activity that's going to happen around Thursday when people think they're going to have to give up their break.

And we'll see how I have a lot of faith in Tom Homan right now. And that he's the one that's actually in front negotiating for the White House. And hopefully they'll kind of deal because I just don't believe in both sides of the aisle using DHS funding in any form as a political game because the chatter, as we know, or the terrorist is the highest that they've been since 9-11. And so we should not be playing as a country politically with any of the stuff.

But I actually kind of think they already have a deal, right? There's probably enough votes. I mean, what we're fighting over though right now is math. Isn't Trump the hold up here though?

Like in terms of, at least aside, if we took ICE out of it, I think there's enough Republican votes to vote for a DHS bill without ICE. Which by the way is fake as well because ICE is already funding. I mean, it doesn't even matter. That's what I'm saying.

But this is just, you know, the last 12 hours that this has been done. But do you think if Homan said, I've got to deal with President Pence? We suppose we did say that. I think that they're going to have to have to have to come up with something unsafe.

And it may be a shorter bill. I mean, we all know how the president negotiates. He puts everything out there and then pulls back. And I think this is hopefully some of this is posture.

So let's talk about a smaller version of safe that could potentially put your Democrats in a tight spot, Don. Why wouldn't John Thune go to the president and say, strip out all these other things that you've got in this bill and just put a bill on the floor that says you have to have a photo ID when you go to the ballot box? What position would that be Democrats in? That would put Democrats in a very difficult position of having to explain why that's not a thing, why that's not good for democracy.

However, I've done a lot of pro-voter protection anti-voter suppression act for work for 20 years. And voter ID is the number one thing that would derogate turnout at the box. Voter ID as well as proof of citizenship. Now Republicans would say it's very common sense.

These are very basic things. Sure. And maybe they are. But two things come into play.

Number one, whether or not it's easy for us, it's not easy for everybody, and data voting data shows that. But number two is implementation. So even if Republicans were to somehow pass the save act, a stripped down save act that focuses on the voting stuff, what does that create except for a hell hole morass in terms of state-by-state implementation in times for November? So Democrats, this is an existential threat to them because it represents a universe of an extraordinarily negative patchwork of state-by-state voting laws, and it allows the president the muscle to kind of federalize the election.

Republicans would want that, but it would be a disaster for kind of what we know of the procedure of representative democracy. And would it even actually even happen by the midterms? That's like a big conversation. That would be a good question.

So to a certain extent, is the president giving a gift to the Democrats here because it's giving them the opportunity to say, hey, we've got to deal here. And also, this is a relatively unpopular bill to save America in the form that it's currently in. And you're now tying the two things together? Yeah, he could be.

I mean, again, it comes down to, I used the word listening before, whether President Trump was listening. Our voters listening to this. I mean, that is, I'm glad we're giving attention to this story because it matters, but it is absolutely competing with some other really big pieces of news that people in this country are dealing with primarily the war. So will it have an impact on them when they get to the ballot box?

Probably not as much as gasoline prices. But yeah, if Democrats play it well, they can say, look, we could have produced this for you and we couldn't because the president didn't play ball. So let's talk about Iran. And we've seen kind of the president be a little bit all over the place in the last 48 hours.

He's not just the last 48 hours. Maybe since again, I think you're right. But I guess the question I have, Jeff, and you understand this from your many years covering the White House, is he continues to say that he's engaged in negotiations, but he doesn't say with whom? Isn't that an important part of this conversation?

Well, it's an important question. And he may be thinking strategically there by not wanting to share who he's speaking to, but it would give insight into how serious these talks are, especially given the fact that Iran is saying talks are not taking place. At the end of the day, any kind of a deal that will be taken seriously will have to have been given a green light by the religious leaders in Iran. They're the ones who call the shots.

Right now, if they're dealing with somebody who's slower down, that may be positive, that may be a sign of progress, but it's not going to be the writing on the bottom of the deal that their signature that they're going to need. And actually the Republican base seems to be relatively with the president when it comes to Iran, but there's obviously a deep divide about these foreign conflicts. How quickly does this need to be wrapped up for him to hold that base together? I think we have two more weeks.

So I think we have two more weeks for gas prices, because as soon as this is over, it looks to be over. Obviously, the market's back up today, but the gas prices will go back down as well. And I think if they're down by Memorial Day, tell me if I'm right. I think then people will forget it pretty quickly if they're back down to three dollars.

Do we have to get it done two weeks given where everything stands right now? I don't see it getting done in two weeks. I mean, we have no universal WebPetex that's war plan is. Is the war in Venezuela over?

Is that mission accomplished yet? So I don't know. JZ says finishing breakfast, right? So you have so many different projects just piling up, and it's not clear that the War Department has any way to bring any of them to a clean end within two weeks, let alone to show why they were worth it for the American people's sake moving into November.

I was just going to add to that too, though. There's also possibility, even if the war winds down, that fuel prices are not going to come down with it, at least not as far as where they were before three or in some places close to two dollars. So the political and economic damage of this war could last much longer than the end of it. We got to leave there.

Sorry. You can tell me afterwards. Jeff, thank you all for being here. We appreciate it.

Still the latest from the Supreme Court as it hears a case that could result in new limits on mail-in balloting ahead of the midterms. You're watching me to press now. Welcome back. As President Trump urges Republicans to ban mail-in voting, the Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether states can count mail-in ballots postmarked by election day, but not received by them.

Conservative justices appearing skeptical of those ballots should be allowed to be counted. The case centers around Mississippi law enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic that allows ballots to be received up to five days late, as long as they're postmarked by election day. The Republican National Committee is challenging the law saying it violates federal law establishing one single day when voting should occur. The Supreme Court ruling could upend mail-in voting throughout the country.

14 states in Washington, D.C. allow regular mail ballots to be accepted after election day with the proper postmark. Now is legal affairs reporter Gary Grumbach. Gary, based on the oral arguments here, conservatives on the court do appear to be skeptical.

Does this mean the law could be struck down? It absolutely does. It does feel like this is going to be struck down on ideological lines here in terms of where the Supreme Court lands. But what they talked about during the hearing during the oral arguments wasn't actually really about this topic specifically.

It was about election issues writ large. One of the big issues they talked about was ballot harvesting, and who actually takes the ballot and gives it to the state. And when they do that, the other issue they talked about was ballot recalls as if people in large numbers were going to FedEx or going to UPS and asking for their ballots to be recalled after they sent them in. What issues that could pose in the days after an election day.

Should this be this law stand? And also how long is grace period? As you know, states around the country have different lengths for how long this could be. Mississippi is five days, some states are 14 days, some states are as long as 21 days.

So these are all things that the court will have to figure out in an eventual opinion. The history though is also I think something that's significant, both sides really touched on here. They said, well the solicitor general from Mississippi said this didn't occur for hundreds of years. Why should it have to occur now?

And so would it be possible that if they strike this Mississippi law down that these 14 other states would also have their laws immediately go away or would there have to be challenges to that? So it really seems to depend how this opinion is written and what exactly the court is going to be dealing with here. The 14 states are going to be certainly at risk of having their laws struck down. And these are for regular mail-in ballots for any of us that do that.

There's 29 states that actually allow it for people that are overseas or for members of the military. But those are people who are also going to be at risk because this could include them too. And also could it give us some indication you mentioned they talked about a lot of other issues not specifically on this topic about where this court could go if they're dealt with future election issues? Well, certainly Samuel Leo was not happy with this at all.

He was saying, you know, this is not called election month, it's called election day. And he believes that's for a reason. Certainly the conservative majority on this court could do a lot of things as it relates to the election that may come up in the coming months before the midterm. And do they have, how soon could they put this really out?

Because we are approaching them in terms pretty quickly. We are. This has to come out by the end of June when their term ends. But that certainly is enough time between June and when in November for the states to all figure out what they're going to do, what the deadlines are and get this in line with the Supreme Court spending.

Okay, Gary Grumbach, thank you for that. We appreciate it. And we're gonna be back tomorrow as always with more Meet the Press Now. We thank you so much for watching.

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