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Get up with the sun, show up for camh, and rise up for mental health. Register today at Sunrise Challenge Ca that sunrisechallenge cat if it's Wednesday. President Trump tries again to twist arms and push his sweeping agenda bill over the finish line. Meeting at the White House with leadership and a key group of hardliners in a last minute push to de escalate Republican revolt.
Plus, President Trump confronts the president of South Africa, forcing the leader to watch a video in the Oval Office about what the White House alleges is genocide against white Africaners despite official denials from the South African government. And the Justice Department moves to end the civil rights investigations in cities with high profile killings by police officers. It's pulling back federal oversight of police amid major changes at the Justice Department. And welcome to BE the PRESS now.
Aaron Gilchrist in Washington. We will get to that highly unusual Oval Office meeting today in just a moment. Let's start with another piece of breaking news from the White House right now. For the second day in a row, President Trump is getting personally involved in trying to push his massive tax and spending bill over the finish line in the House.
Republican leadership was hoping to vote today, but with a very narrow majority right now, Speaker Johnson does appear to have the votes. At this hour, members of the House Freedom Caucus, along with Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Solis are meeting with President Trump at the White House. That meeting comes after hardline members of the Freedom Caucus said earlier today they're making progress on the bill, but they're not on board just yet and they want more time to push for additional spending cuts. So we're working with the president today.
We're working with our colleagues to deliver. But there's a long way to go. I want to be very clear. We've got to deliver on what we're talking about.
We're not going to be able to get the build on and that's what we're trying to Achieve leadership to figure out what time frame this is. As you know, I've come and I've spoken to several of you in the past few days. I'm not sure it's going to be done this week. I'm pretty confident it could be done in 10 days.
But that's up to. That's up leadership to decide. We just want to emphasize we want to deliver the president's agenda. While we don't know the specifics of the Oval Office meeting, President Trump earlier today said they were close to a deal.
In contrast to the Freedom Caucus, House of Public Leadership wants this bill to advance. Now, the Rules Committee began a marathon markup session at 1 this morning that is still going. Exactly what's in the bill is still being negotiated. But broadly, it will increase funding for immigration enforcement and the Pentagon.
It extends the expiring 2017 tax cuts and temporarily ends tax on tips and overtime, all Trump campaign promises. It also raises the cap on state and local tax deductions after a deal hammered out with some blue state migrant Republicans. It is paid for by cutting funding for clean energy, food assistance and Medicaid. Those Medicaid spending cuts will come from adding work requirements and barring individuals with unverified citizenship from the program.
Now, the Congressional Budget Office says those changes would cause more than eight and a half million people to lose their health insurance, something Democrats are already sounding the alarm over. NBC's Cyl Kapoori's on Capitol Hill for us also. Also with us now is senior White House correspondent Kelly o'. Donnell.
I'll start with you here. Where do things stand right now? Let me know about how this meeting is going at some point at this moment. How many holdouts are there in the Republican conference?
Yeah, Aaron, broadly speaking, it's all up in the air right now. Speaker Johnson does not have the votes for this bill. And this meeting is President Trump of the White House's attempt to corral the vote of these conservative hardliners in the dream caucuses who have emerged now as the single biggest obstacle to passing this bill. They are unhappy with the fact that it increases the debt by more than $2 trillion, which goes against everything they say they believe in.
They argue the bill got worse overnight when Republican leadership cut a deal with a group of blue state Republicans to increase the state and local tax deduction, so called salt deduction, which these conservative hardliner don't believe in and which is going to cost money, make the bill into something that they think is worse than it already was. What they want to do More of is steeper spending cuts in the form of Medicaid work requirements and rules. They want to move that up. They want to repeal more of the clean energy funding that was passed by Democrats in the Biden years, some of which was done on a bipartisan basis.
And all of this is being done as House Republican leaders are working desperately to preserve the votes of those moderates and swing districts who are already being forced to cast very difficult votes on Medicaid cuts that are unpopular in their district. Still, Speaker Johnson said he wants to get this done by Memorial Day. We're going to have a discussion at the White House about that, and we're trying to get the bill in its best possible form and we're trying to meet our deadlines. We've been saying this for many months.
And Aaron, time is certainly running short for Speaker Johnson on that Memorial Day go. It's unclear if he'll be able to get it done by them. Okay, let me bring you in here. What is the White House offering the Freedom Caucus here?
What's on the table for this meeting? Well, certainly the president is trying to use the force of his personality and the success that he has had in persuading those who support his agenda overall and using the sort of constituent connection that they share in common many voters who put these lawmakers into office, as well as giving the president power to sit in the White House. And so this is really a huge test for President Trump because he has, in many ways, this is his big legislative agenda. Typically when presidents come into office, and of course, this is his second term separated by a four year gap.
But having that first initial legislative victory is something that typically happens, especially when a president also has control of the legislative branch, which he has very narrowly here. So the stakes are high for the president. He wants to maintain the tax cuts that were part of his signature achievement, as he would describe it in 2017, of lowering taxes. Those, of course, sunset this year.
That's why it is urgent. But some of the divisions within his party, you find, are sort of the typical divisions. You have those that are really more concerned about that debt issue than the president typically is himself. And then you have those who believe that effectively taxing citizens who pay a state or local tax, it might be the property taxes, it might be their income taxes.
Having that not be deductible fully is something that lawmakers who represent those higher tax areas believe is effectively taxing the same income twice. That's one of the arguments they make. So they feel they've got a Lot on the line. So that's what makes this particularly difficult is it is deeply reflective of all of these lawmakers and the President about what they said they would do here in Washington, which is why there's so little space for compromise.
Well, we made the point that the Rules Committee started meeting at one o' clock in the morning today. Right. Leadership seems to want a vote on this as soon as possible, as we've been saying. Why does seeming rush on this?
Yeah, Aaron, it's been 15 hours since the Rules Committee met to start reviewing the bill and they still haven't voted it out. There are a ton of amendments being filed to this bill, including many by Democrats to try to highlight some of the provisions that they pose and try to strip them out. There's one Congressman, Teresa Ledger Fernandez, a New Mexico Democrat, called it the Vampire Committee, saying that they're going to suck away all the health care from Americans in the middle of the night. That is of course referring to Medicaid.
Cause it's the singular focus of Democrats when you know, when trying to attack this bill. But in terms of the deadline, the memorial deadline, that is a self imposed deadline by Speaker Johnson, his attitude is to put these deadlines because he believes it helps get the ball rolling. What Republic leaders don't want is for this to just hang out there and for members to go home for recess and get earful from their constituents and decide maybe we don't want to support those Medicaid cuts, maybe we don't want to support the clean energy cuts which by the way, all that funding goes to red states and benefits them at the end of the day are the only two deadlines that really matter here. One at the end of July deadline which the Treasury Secretary has said is necessary to prevent a default on the national debt which we catastrophic.
They have to raise the debt limit through Congress in order to prevent that. And the second, the one that Kelly just mentioned, end of the year, the Trump tax expire, that would be a massive tax hike. They allowed that happen. Everything else is noise.
Everything else deadlines are Republicans for political purposes. So to go very quickly, if the star is aligned and this bill does pass the House, then has to clear the Senate, of course. Right. What's the early outlook there?
Exactly right. Early out there. As Republican senators made it abundantly clear, this is not going to pass in its current form. So if Speaker Johnson is struggling, this must corral his narrow House majority before senators even touch it.
That indicates that it's got a long, long way to go because It'll have to come back to the House. There are a lot of things big and small that Republican senators want to change as also this push and pull, this rubber band between hardliners who insisting on speakers spending cuts like Ron Johnson on one hand and then a bunch of others like Susan Collins, Lis Murkowski, even Josh Holly of Missouri complaining about the med kite cuts. So it's going to be a long, long road. Even the dust paths.
Aaron. All right, so hell, thank you. We appreciate you reporting on this. Can I stick around for you?
Because we want to turn now to that extraordinary Oval Office meeting with the South African president. He is the latest world leader to have a tense meeting with President Trump at the White House. With cameras rolling, President Cyril Rajosa came to Washington in hopes of smoothing over tensions with the Trump administration, including a recent decision by the State Department to fast track refugee status for white South Africans based on claims they were victims of race based violence. The Oval Office meeting quickly devolved into President Trump amplifying unsubstantiated claims of mass killings of white South Africans, essentially ambushing Raposo with a video the White House says shows proof of violence against those white Afrikaners.
President Raposo, who at times looked uncomfortable see the next of President Trump tried to push back, tried to defend his government. As President Trump continued to make the claims about the situation in South Africa. Here is some of their exchange. Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying, even in the parliament and a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution.
But you do actually them to take land. No, no, no. Do allow them to take land. Nobody take the land.
They kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them. No, there is nothing happens to that is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately through criminal activity are not only white people, majority of them are black people.
If you're taking people's land and those people in many cases are being executed, they're being executed and happen to be white and most of them happen to be farmers. And that's a tough situation. I don't know how you explain that. How do you explain that they're taking people's land away and in many cases those people are being executed.
Now to be clear, there is little to back up these claims by President Trump. While South Africa did pass a law that allows the government to redistribute some land, it was part of a push to address the disparities stemming from apartheid. According to the organization Action For Southern Africa, 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white South Africans, or only about 7% of the population. According to the New York times, of the 225 people who were killed on farms in South Africa between April 2020 and March 2024, more than 100 of them were black farmers, while 53 were white.
Back with me now is NBCU senior White House correspondent Kelly o'. Donnell. Kelly, we talked about this a little bit earlier today in some of our special coverage of this meeting. Have you seen an Oval Office meeting like this where a US President confronts another world leader with a video like we saw today?
How did the South African president handle that situation? It was extraordinary. I don't recall ever seeing something like this before. And certainly when leaders come together, they usually reserve the most heated disagreements for their private conversations, not the portion where the media is included, which typically is establishing that meeting is taking place, allowing some greetings, perhaps some discussion of what they hope to accomplish in a meeting.
All the things we typically see. This I had the feeling of President Trump having a very specific concern and an issue that, as you described, we don't have a lot of information to back up the claims that he's making and effectively ambushing a guest in the White House from another country with this information. The South African President Ramaphosa, he certainly tried to argue point by point with President Trump, and we know that can be fraught as well, awkward to be sure, but also can sometimes make things go even more uncomfortably. He held to the notion that there are rights for people to speak about these things in his country, that it's a very minority party, that the government does not take land in a broad way you just described, with some additional fact checking there.
And so he tried to defend his country. The president was also asked, what could the South African leader do to resolve this, or what would the president need to see to learn that there is not a genocide in South Africa for whites? And he could not answer either of those. So this appeared to be an opportunity for the president to raise an issue that has been certainly getting to his attention.
He's already removed funding for South Africa from the United States earlier this year. Secretary Rubio has said that the US does not intend to participate in the G20, which is being hosted by South Africa this year. So definitely some punitive measures toward South Africa. The South African leader extended an invitation for a state visit to South Africa.
The president didn't respond to that. So this was tense. And one of the big questions is where was the information coming from that formed the president's opinion? And there were some other topics today as well.
Kelly, in the Oval Office appearance, our colleague Peter Alexander tried to press the president about the Pentagon's confirmation that it is in fact accepting a luxury jumbo jet from Qatar. Is the administration at all concerned about some of the questions that have come up about ethical and security concerns related to this decision? They've rebuffed those. That question came up just as it was breaking.
We've been talking about the airplane issue for a week or so, but now the Department of Defense says it will receive that as a gift. One of the concerns is in the Constitution there was a prohibition against foreign governments giving something to the president or to an office holder. So perhaps housing it as a gift to the Department of Defense is a way to get around that prohibition in the Constitution, which was intended to not give foreign governments the ability to buy favor or influence with the US Government. The White House has completely dismissed those concerns.
They have argued that this is something that the nation, Qatar wants to do on behalf of just simply a gift for the president that he would use as Air Force One. There's also been talk that would eventually go to the Trump Presidential Library. There are serious ethical questions about this, but the White House maintains it's not a concern for them. All right, Kelly o', Donnell, Force in Washington.
Kelly, thank you. And coming up, immigration lawyers and the Trump administration in court today. At issue, the latest case of migrants being deported to a war torn country in violation of a court order. First, though, I'll talk to a House Republican about where his conference stands on the GOP's mega bill as President Trump hosts several key holdouts at the White House.
Don't go anywhere. You're watching Meet the Press. Now there is a magical land where museums are more fun than tablets, where picky eaters ask for seconds, and where boredom has long gone extinct. It's called Halifax and you can plan your trip at HalifaxKids CA.
No magic required. Welcome back. All eyes are still on the White House where President Trump is trying to get a consensus among Republicans for his so called big beautiful bill. Joining me now is Republican congressman from Colorado, Gabe Evans.
Congressman, we appreciate you making some time. Today. President Trump is meeting with some holdouts from the House Freedom Caucus. We know at the White House right now.
Are there any changes on the table that they could agree to in this bill that would change, change your support for it? Well, I think we're continuing to negotiate all those things. But at the end of the day. We're going to get this bill passed because of the things that it does.
These are the things that the American people want. In my state, Colorado, this is tax breaks for the bottom 84% of wage earners. This is extending the child tax credit to families with kids. This is making sure that taxes don't double on our small businesses and they can continue to compete with large corporations on an even footing.
And so what this bill is doing is so incredibly important to Americans that I'm confident we're going to reach a point where we can get this thing passed. Anything that's worth doing is of course, going to have some finite details of negotiation involved because we are the party of free thinkers. We want to get the policies right, but we're going to get this thing passed. I do wonder if you've heard from your constituents in Colorado about this to any degree.
Are they concerned that they'd come to you and said, you know, here the pros and cons that we see. Well, I know one thing that folks in Colorado are concerned about is the fact that in my state you got 51 million taxpayer dollars going to illegal immigrants through programs like Medicaid and state health care programs, again funded by taxpayers. And so a time where we've got a lot of concern around access to health care. This bill, by cutting out the fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid, by strengthening the program and increasing spending.
Let me be absolutely clear. The Republican program increases Medicaid spending every single year. We're just gonna be more efficient with it by cutting out that fraud, waste and abuse, those 1.4 million illegal immigrants that the Congressional Budget Office says are currently receiving taxpayer benefits. That's gonna make the program stronger and more efficient for the people that truly rely on it and truly need it.
Let me ask you this. As we talk about Medicaid, you reference that according to NBC News analysis, about 20% of adults under 65 in your district have Medicaid or another means tested form of coverage as their only health insurance. Are individuals that you represent going to lose any care at all because of this package, folks that you represent? No, we're going out.
We're going after the fraud, waste and abuse. If you're a lawful beneficiary of Medicaid, we are fighting to protect that. We're fighting to put Americans first in this program. Again, that's by cutting.
These are my numbers. These are CBO's numbers. 1.4 million illegal immigrants are currently receiving this taxpayer funded benefit. You got 1.2 million folks who are not eligible for Medicaid but who are siphoning money away from actual lawful beneficiaries because Biden era rules didn't allow states to actually go and spread their Medicaid rules more than once a year.
And so through reforms like that, and by asking able bodied working age adults with no kids to either work part time, volunteer part time, or go to school part time, 20 hours a week, again, we can bring some good stewardship of taxpayer money to this program while protecting it for every single lawful beneficiary. So you mentioned a couple things I want to ask you about. First, the cbo, I want to put some numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. They say this bill would add roughly $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
They also say it would decrease the household resources of the lowest 10% of earners while growing them for the top 10% of earners. What do you make of that? Are you okay with that? So that 3.8 trillion increase, unfortunately that's money that's already been spent by the previous administration.
That's just how the federal budget works. So if we don't increase the debt limit, then we're going to be defaulting on our debt. This is money again, that's already gone out the door. I spent 12 years in the Army.
I have no idea why the army uses a Navy term. But we would say big ship, small rudder. It takes time to turn a big ship around. And so this debt ceiling increase, that gives us the time to turn the deficit spending in this country around without defaulting on our debts.
And again, that's money that's already been spent and is out the door in terms of who this bill benefits. Again, we can go through the numbers. The bottom 84% of wage earners in Colorado are the ones who take the standard deduction for a millionaire. You itemize, bottom 84% takes the standard deduction.
We are protecting the standard deduction at its current rate rather than allowing it to be cut in half. That benefits the bottom 84% of wage earners of your average family of four to the tune of over $2,000 in Colorado. By protecting that child tax credit, preventing that from being cut in half from $2,000 to $1,000. Again, we're putting more money back into the pockets of everyday, hardworking Americans.
Let me ask you this. I want to put up a line from your congressional webpage that says our country is spending money we don't have, leading to inflation and the always growing national debt. Reducing and eventually eliminating the budget deficit is critical to long term prosperity. So you have to know for you, does this bill reduce the federal budget deficit?
Look no further than the committee's icing on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Again, we were tasked with protecting Medicaid for lawful beneficiaries and also cutting out fraud, waste and abuse. That fraud, waste and abuse is deficit spending. Our instructions were $880 billion.
There was actually so much fraud, waste and abuse that we found in all of the different programs that fall under the jurisdiction of energy Commerce. Again, committee with the broadest jurisdiction of any of the committees in Congress, we actually found $100 billion more. We found over $980 billion in fraud, waste and abuse. That's deficit spending that we can reduce while at the same time continuing to spend more money every year on Medicaid just focusing on the people who need it by cutting out taxpayer funded giveaways to 1.4 million illegal immigrants and 1.2 million people who aren't even eligible for program.
I do ask you about one other topic before I have to let you go here in just a second. The defense secretary we learned today has accepted this luxury jumbo jet from Qatar for President Trump's use. Today your Colorado Republican colleague Jeff Heard said that he had some serious concerns over over this whole deal. Do you share any of those concerns?
Well, I think use the correct term there and that's deal. We're in a time right now where trade deals and international relationships between the United States are being negotiated around the world to get us back to America first, policies that make sure that the United States is not being taken advantage of in these foreign relationships and these foreign engagements. And so for things like the Japanese reference, we've got an army of lawyers that are going to scrutinize every single component of that to make sure that it is done legally and lawfully. But I think that that's indicative of a broader phenomenon that's occurring, which is where the United States is once again respected in the international community.
I spent 12 years in the army, deployed overseas. I know that the rest of the world respects strength. We are once again negotiating from a position of strength. So it sounds like as far as the Secretary defense is concerned, this is a done deal.
You have no concerns. Well, like I said, you've got an army of lawyers that look at this and examine this. And I think that as long as the lawyers sort this thing out and say that this is lawful, to me this is indicative of the United States again being respected in the international community and the fact that we're negotiating from a position of strength. All right, Congressman Evans, we do appreciate you making some time for today.
Thank you so much. Always good to be on with you. Now. Before we go to break, Washington is mourning the loss of a longtime member of Congress today.
Democratic Representative Jerry Connelly of Virginia died this morning after battling esophageal cancer, according to a statement from his family. The top Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee, Conley served in Congress for more than 15 years and was a fixture in Virginia politics for decades. Connolly was known as a pragmatic leader and a passionate advocate for federal workers. In his last of many appearances on this program, Congressman Connelly had a frank answer when asked what Democrats can do to counter the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
Well, we can enter into litigation. We can mobilize the public. We can use the bully pulpit. We're in a reactive mode.
We're in the minority. The American people decided to give a trifecta to the Republican Party and this is the consequence of that. But that doesn't mean we're powerless and it doesn't mean we're more bonded or sublime. And we're not going to be.
We're going to be very outspoken. We're going to look at situations like this where they have overreached and we're going to strike back. And that's what we're doing. I'm doing it right now here in program.
This one's for all the parents looking for something to do that isn't not talking about Bruno. From museums to ocean fun, there's something for the whole family here in Halifax. Visit HalifaxKids CA to plan your trip. Major developments today in the federal government's oversight of local police departments.
The Justice Department announcing its dismissing proposed reform agreements known as consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division also plans to close investigations into six other police departments across the country. The head of the division calls the consent decrees which were reached during the Biden administration overbroad and claims they limit police departments and local officials. Louisville and Minneapolis plan to continue police reforms independently.
We as a city are committed to reform. I am committed to reform and improvements. Chief Humphrey is committed to reform and improvements to ensure that the promised progress continues throughout Louisville Metro government. We are moving forward with the community commitment.
Louisville's consent decree. We're doing it anyway. We will comply with every sentence of every paragraph of the 169 page consent decree that we signed this year. The bottom line is this people should expect us to do this work.
People have been demanding for years that we do this work, and we're not gonna let them down. Now. This comes nearly five years to the day of the death of George Floyd. That case sparks nationwide outrage and the push for police reform across this country.
NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney joins me now. He's been tracking this. So, Ken, first remind us what the terms were in the now former agreements with the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments. Each one varies, but essentially, in all these cases, the Department of Justice comes in to a police department, does an investigation, does a statistical analysis, and then makes conclusions in some of these cases that there was racial discrimination, that there was a pattern of excessive use of force, that there was other kinds of violations of civil rights.
They put those findings on the record, and then they try to reach an agreement with the municipal valley in the state of Louisville, in Minneapolis, an agreement monitored by a judge to put some reforms in place. And it can go into hiring practices and stop and frisk practices and all sorts, all manner of the way the police departments are run. Now, what the the assistant attorney general for civil rights said today is that she doesn't believe that this was done in the correct way. She thinks that the Department of Justice can't stand behind some of these findings.
And so they are actually retracting them. In the case of those six cities that you mentioned are under investigation, and they're withdrawing the consent decrees in the case of Louisville, Minneapolis, which had not yet been approved by judges. And she said she's reviewing about a dozen other consent decrees across the country. This is a real sea change.
It's very. It's standard and usual in a Republican administration to see less aggressive civil rights supervision of police departments. That's normal. What's unusual here is actually withdraw agreements that were already in place made by the previous administration.
But that's what's happening. So, Ken, do you have a sense of what the immediate real impact of the Justice Department announcement today is? Well, it will vary by state. As you just heard there.
The officials in Louisville and Minneapolis are saying, look, we like these deals and we're gonna keep abiding by them. In fact, in Minneapolis, they have a separate consent decree with the state. So there's a number of rules in place. And a lot of times the mayors or the heads of these municipalities use these consent decrees as leverage over the police unions, which sometimes are resisting some of these reforms.
So it really will depend, city by city, what the departments decide to do, whether they continue on with the reforms the Justice Department has been proposing where they walk away. But in general, this is taking the pressure off policing nationwide to do the kinds of reforms that the Biden Justice Department thought were warranted. All right, can delay in force today from doj. Thank you, Ken.
Let's turn now to the courts and the latest legal battle over the president's deportation agenda. During an emergency hearing yesterday, a region lawyer said at least two of their clients from Myanmar and Vietnam were being deported to South Sudan in violation of a court order. That order bar the admin from deporting individuals to a third country. The judge didn't order the plane to turn around, but he said any migrant in DHS custody could not leave US Control once the plane landed.
Today in court, the judge said he believes the Trump administration violated his previous court order barring the government from deporting individuals to third countries. Joining me now is NBC News senior Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley has been tracking this story for a while now. So, Julia, what happened in court today, first of all, and is it clear what happens to those migrants going forward? Well, look, there was a pretty strong opinion here when we heard it verbally.
We're about to get it in writing any minute now. Aaron, this judge, Judge Murphy in Massachusetts said that the administration, the Trump administration, violated his preliminary injunction that he issued previously when they tried to send people to Libya, another war torn country that said that if you're going to send them a migrant to a country that's not their own, you need to give them enough time so that they can review the country and be able to appeal to the government to say if they have a reasonable fear of persecution or torture if they're sent to that country. And Judge Murphy said in this case with South Sudan, it might not be that these people even know about the conditions in South Sudan. They might have to have some time to Google it to talk to their lawyers.
And at the time that they gave him in this case, these eight men looks like it was about 17 hours. He said that that was not a reasonable amount of time. But the Justice Department said is that neither this judge nor the Supreme Court or any other court who has said has talked about reasonable time before deportation has actually defined what that time period is. What we do know is they've left the United States.
These eight men are still in DHS custody, but we don't even really know where they are. So if we zero on this point about the judge's feelings as though his order has been violated by the United States government. Is there any sense of whether there will be repercussions as a result of that violation? I mean, what the attorneys for these men want, the Plain attorneys in this case, when they say that these men need to be brought back to the United States so they can consult with their lawyers and make the arguments.
But DHS is saying that these are all convicted murderers, rapists have done an enormous amount of very violent crimes and that people shouldn't be afforded those rights and instead we should be talking about the victims. But a lawyer today for the Plain has a very good salient quote saying that it doesn't matter what these people have done, that there's no human being on earth that should be subjected to torture. In other words, the US Penal system obviously agrees to prison and to people serving their time, but not to torture. I want to ask you, the State Department, we know has A warning, Level 4, do not travel warning for South Sudan.
How are they then swearing, sending migrants to a country that they say is grappling with incredible violence and instability? I asked that exact question today to the acting director of ICE at a press conference. They rarely do press conferences, but I got the chance. And they said, we have the right under the Immigration Nationality act to send people to safe third country.
And so I said, well, is South Sudan a safe third country? They said, I'll refer you to the State Department. Now, the State Department, of course, put out what you just said telling all Americans not to travel there. And it was juxtaposition today to have the president in the Oval Office talking about South Africa being unsafe and now saying South Sudan is a place of immigrants.
All right, Juliasley, thank you. Still had to count down to New York City's mayoral race, where voters are facing a crowded Democratic primary field. And the front runner is now facing a federal investigation. You're WATCHING me, the Press now.
Welcome back. We are just five weeks away from New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the clear front runner in the race, is now facing investigation from the Justice Department. House Republicans requested the investigation, claiming that Cuomo lied to Congress about his actions as governor during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, you might remember Cuomo's daily pandemic briefings where he gained national attention for his criticism of President Trump's Covid response in his first term.
The investigation presents a potential example of the Justice Department's willingness to go after the president's critics. In contrast, just last month, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, an ally of President Trump And Cuomo's chief rival in the race for mayor saw his corruption charges dropped. The mayor's race to school attempt at a political comeback as he resigned as governor in 2021 after being accused of sexual harassment allegations that he denies. Joining me now is law enforcement and intelligence correspondent Tom Winter.
So, Tom, do we know the focus of this new federal investigation? We actually do. It's kind of a rare thing that we would know the focus and the reason why specifically a federal investigation would be open like this one. And that's because, as you alluded to, Aaron, this is a referral from Congress in this case.
James Comer made this referral. He's going to subcommittee going on the response, the government's response to COVID 19. And Cuomo testified to look at a photo of him testifying at it there sometime earlier. And so in the course of that testimony, testimony, the claim or the statement, rather, from Comer, is that in fact, Cuomo lied to Congress, which is a Federal Crime Statute, 18 U.S.C.
1001, and that he did so willfully. And he cited three specific examples, all surrounding what's been referred to in New York circles and referred to in this referral to the justice department is the July 6 memo, a memo about what happened at the nursing home. And Cuomo was asked whether he had any sort of feedback over it, any sort of edits, whether he reviewed it, and he effectively said no to Congress. However, there are emails that paint what some have called a very different picture, effectively saying in one email communication, one staffer sending an email to another saying, this has got the governor's edits on it.
So that's just one of the things that they highlight in this criminal referral. So this is happening during a campaign season. We can't help but to know that just last month the Justice Department formally dropped all the charges against the current New York City mayor, Eric Adams. As you sort of just oppose those two things, what's the significance of this investigation and the timing of it?
I think one thing we have to keep in mind is that this was a referral in late April from Comer to the Justice Department, and it's Congress that has to make that referral. Have the Justice Department decided today to just pick up the phone and say, hey, we're investing, investigate Andrew Cuomo? I think that there'll be some more eyebrows raised as far as the timing of that in light of the fact that you laid out with respect to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who of course is running for reelection in Cuomo's bid for mayor as well. However, since that referral was just several weeks ago and the investigation did not just start yesterday or today, this has been going on for some time.
I think there's some folks that have been asking about the justice department so called 60 day rule or 60 day window. That's just a rule. But on something where it is referred to the Justice Department, those rules don't always necessarily apply. So that's something we have to kind of keep in mind here.
The clock is a little bit different given the nature of the case, given the fact that it's a referral from Congress here. All right, Tom went to us today. Thanks, Tom. Now, as we noted, Andrew Cuomo is the front runner in the upcoming Democratic mayoral primary.
But it is a crowded field with at least one candidate trying to take advantage of New York City's ranked Choice voting. A 33 year old self proclaimed socialist candidate with minimal name ID but major money backing him is taking the unusual step of asking his supporters to donate to a rival. Join me now from the big board is national political correspondent C. Corny with deeper diversity.
Yeah, so I mean we're talking about this situation now with Cuomo and potentially these charges or at least investigation before all this broke. We can say Cuomo is in a very good position here. He may still be in terms of pulling off this political comeback. Take a look.
This is the mayor's poll. This is the most recent poll we have here of this Democratic primary. It mentioned Eric Adams a minute ago. He's not running in the Democratic primary.
He's talking about running in the any third party line in November. So he had Cuomo out in front here by two. But you just mentioned Zori Mandami, the socialist candidate here. And this was the significant news in this poll.
All of these other candidates have sort of been jumbled together. Mondami now is bumped up into a clear second place, attaining separation from the rest of this field. Again, Cuomo still leading him two to one. But the way things work in New York with this ranked choice system is you go in and you vote in this primary, you're gonna see all these candidates, they ask you to rank them.
This is my first choice, my second choice, my third choice. And then the tabulation proceeds in rounds. At the end of the first round, whoever's in last, that name gets dropped. They reallocate the votes for that person based on the voter's second based on the voter's second preference and on and on and on until somebody hits 50%.
So one way of saying this mayor's poll actually played it all out. So you see when you list all the candidates, this is what they came up with. Now they start working their way through the tabulations. This is what happens.
Cuomo, 45, 23, round two, round three, he's up to 46. Four, he's up to 48. You see how they keep knocking one off each round and then round five, in this version of it, Cuomo would cross 50%, Maidani would still be in second place, and that gap between them would never really change. They actually played this out to a sixth round, but it would end here if somebody crossed 50% in the actual election.
So it's an interesting dynamic because for Cuomo, if Mamdani does emerge as the clear second place candidate in here, then this suggests that as odd sort of as the system is, as complicated it is, it's not that chaotic. Actually, it's pretty orderly as they work through these rounds. And I think if your Cuomo and Mondami is your main opponent here, chief rival, you kind of like some of the internal numbers here. Let me show you what I mean here.
Look at this. It's New York City Democratic male primary. White voters are not a majority here. They're definitely a plurality.
And actually that's what Mondami does best. He's only trailing by two among white voters. If you look closer in these numbers, Mandani does best with voters who call himself liberal, very liberal. He does best as we sit here with white voters, higher income, college educated, all of these things.
You look at the black vote, this is more than a third of the electorate in the Democratic primary. Look at that. Cuomo, 50%. Mondani isn't even in second place there, 2 to 1 for Cuomo among Latinos.
This is where the majority of the votes are in the Democratic primary in New York City, not among white voters. So Cuomo is drawing strength from the groups that are the largest in this primary. Now, finally, that piece, finally that piece about DOJ here and what effect it could have in this race, we'll see. Does it shine a light on Cuomo's Covid handling, raised concerns there?
Does that hurt him? Or does the fact that this is coming through the Trump Justice Department, is that the lens through which Democratic primary voters filter this? Because look at this in this poll, how do they want a mayor to handle President Trump? Democrats, three quarters of them, want opposition as much as possible to Trump.
They might just use this as politically motivated move from the Trump administration to rally your uncle all right. Steve Cornet, you with us today. Steve, thank you. Appreciate it.
You got it. We have much more news and politics still ahead. The panel is up next. You're watching the press now.
Welcome back. It has been a very busy day in Washington, so let's get right to our panel. Joining me now on set, Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters Juanita Tolliver, author of A More Perfect Party and the NBC News political analyst and Jane Shabria, partner at Mag Global Strategy. Where do we start, Jeff?
I guess we start in the Oval Office today for what we saw with the two presidents seated there, President Trump showing this video that he claimed was proof of genocide in South Africa with the South African president sitting right there. He didn't really offer much verified information in that moment. What's your read on the moment? What we saw today in the so I'm just coming here from the White House and I have to say that my first read is that President Trump was prepared.
It was an orchestrated onslaught. And it that video was played on a TV screen that is not normally in the White House Oval Office. So that's planned. Two, the South African president was also prepared.
He I mean, I made some comparisons to the story that I wrote about this between this meeting and the Zelensky meeting in February. Right. The difference though is the South African president did not engage. He was calm, he was poised.
He said this is something we can talk about. He also pushed back against some of the false claims that the president made. So he came in ready. And the last thing I would say in terms of what he came in with was he brought a golf book to the president and he brought some white golfers.
Let's talk about white golfers. I watched a lot of what happened in the bluffs today. And Richard Kusin, the great golf was there and everybody else too. And the president, President Trump asked Racheef Gousin about what he saw and Racheef Gousin recounted a story about his father's friends who have been killed or their farms have been burned.
And when I went to prepare for the segment and I started reading a bit about the write offs, not one mention of Ratif Khusen's story was presented. So again, I think what's happening here, what the president naturally does is he pits these bad actors against the press, these bad actors against the elites. And he's done it here again. So this is not mentioned.
Chief Koosman's the only place you're ever going to find about Chief Goosen's account is on The President's website, his X account. And it's one of the things that just was amazing. We heard several reporters in the room ask the President what's the point of having this meeting? What do you want to see the South African President do as a result of coming here to the White House and talking about this and then presenting the issue to him as they did.
And the President never gave an answer about what he was hoping to have happen. Well, I think it's clear what he hoped to have happened. The ambush or the onslaught, the reality TV style environment that he created upon that. The only other difference between this meeting and Zelensky meeting is that Trump didn't have backup.
Marco Rubio was not in the room now this time to help double down or JD Vance was not in the room to have this time to back him up. But the reality is I think the South African president also levels at his expectations to not realizing any change in terms of US Trade relations with South Africa or avoiding tariffs which are being lobby. Right. He understood that this was a bit of a joke.
And so he could quip in this meeting we don't have a plane to give you, referring to the Qatari plane and potential favor in that relationship that will come to them. And I do want to talk more about the plane. Just a second here. I just want to give you last words on this and we'll move on.
If you, if you think that a world leader is responsible for a genocide happening in his country, why invite him to the old. Well, I think he wants to shine a lot on this. I mean this is what this president does. He shines lights on things that are often underreported.
Last summer, if you remember, we were told that there were very few, few in Colorado that were occupied by Venezuelan gangs. What do we find out? It is happening. We do this all the time.
Ms. 13 is prevalent in this country. He shines a light on these things and all of a sudden the base, the Republican base, but also independence, they start to get outraged by him and policy changes start to happen. This is the president that once again master class.
So I want to add to that briefly. We can't ignore the facts. And the facts are that the vast majority of crime and murder that happens in South Africa is against black South Africa. So where do you get those facts from?
That's my question again. Last year, two years ago, we were told the facts where the President Biden was completely okay. The expert classroom, they're all related because these experts are in South Africa that are telling us this. I don't know that we actually can trust the experts for class anymore.
Okay. All right. I want to talk about other topics here, too, but so we'll leave that there for this point. We referenced the luxury jet that is now being accepted by the United States Department of Defense from Carter.
We heard the defense secretary has made that decision at this point. We know some Republicans on Capitol Hill don't like the idea. Jeff, do we anticipate, though, that there will be some pushback? We had Congressman earlier who seem to say the lawyers are gonna look at this and they will make a decision about whether this is gonna go through.
I think the facts will show that over the last three months, there hasn't been a great deal of pushback by Republicans on the Hill against what President Donald Trump wants. And I think that that will probably be the same case here. However, that doesn't mean that there won't be some questions. Certainly there are some ethical questions being raised by Democrats and by some Republicans.
But my guess is that there's not going to be a big sort of opposition from the president's party about this particular about this gift. I do think that the friction will come into whatever investment it takes to ready this plane to be Air Force One, which has been estimated upwards of a billion dollars on top of the two planes that Trump already has contracted Boeing for for about $4 billion. And so absolutely a moment where even if they may not ask those questions now, it'll come down the pipe when he's going to be seeking appropriations for exactly what he's asking for, if it's even possible to do that within the next three years. While he's shown up, I want to play a piece of video.
This is again from the Oval Office today on the topic of the jet. I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you. If your country offered the United States Air Force supplied, I would take. So, Jay, what do you make of that?
I mean. Well, I'll give the South African president some credit there, too. I mean, he went in the Oval Office and he learned how to play the president's game and the president played it back, too. I think that's a pretty humorous moment.
Not that whole change so simply humorous moment. Not a question about the deal being made or I think it was rigging on both sides and they were both playing the game there. The only evidence I'll push forward against that is that Trump has made it clear he's paid a play with his dinner party he's hosting tomorrow. Night where people who purchase his Meme coin will have access, 25 of them are private.
Audience with him. He is PID flight. I think he was. And that was my question for you.
How much do the optics matter in the world that we live in right now? Does it matter? How does this look to the public when we're talking about jumbo jets being treated like this? I think clearly it looks badly to the public.
Has it overshadowed his entire foreign trip last week or the week before? It was a constant in front of the public. It'll again be a constant in front of the public when they point out the wasteful spending that comes along with this acceptance of this, this push for it to be retrofitted to have missile weapon systems and other protections required to transport the president and other members of his cabinet. That's where it's going to be a burn for regular people who are in a moment when they're experiencing the effects of tariffs and rising costs.
Also when they're facing cuts to essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP which impact them on the day to day. And I hope Democrats make it claim about the differences in their reality and the wasteful spending coming from Donald Trump. Got a few seconds left, Jeff. I'll give you last word on just the analysis of this moment.
You know, I think that as far as the plane is concerned, it's something that the president really wants. I think as far as pay for play, just follow the news, follow the stories and what he does. All right, we are out of time today. I appreciate you all coming in and sharing with us.
Jeff, Lenina J. Thank you all. We are back tomorrow with more MEET the PRESS now. But the news continues with Hallie Jackson right now.
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