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Pass like $99 a week. The fort is a big deal event. Visit your Ontario Fort store or Fort.ca. If it's Wednesday, Republican riffs and partisan political warfare on full display today, after House Speaker McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden and as the White House steps up its response.
Plus, Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with North Korea's Kim Jong-un amid concerns they'll make a weapons deal to fuel the Kremlin's war in Ukraine. The latest reaction from the White House's national security team ahead. And tech titans on the Hill. I'll interview a senator who was in the room for today's closed-door meeting with the power players at the forefront of the AI revolution, as Washington tries to grapple with the potent and perilous new technology.
Welcome to The Press Now, I'm Garrett Hake. We begin today with What Happens Now on Capitol Hill, one day after Speaker McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry against President Biden, and 17 days before the government runs out of money. If McCarthy thought that the impeachment announcement would somehow strengthen his hand inside his unruly conference, well, that hasn't happened yet. So far, things appear just as unruly around McCarthy as ever.
As far as impeachment inquiries go, the evidence of presidential wrongdoing here is pretty thin at the moment. Even some Republicans agree. Today, the White House also wasted no time in pushing back on some of the GOP's claims that Biden was improperly involved with his son's business ventures, with a memo to reporters that included excerpts of witness testimony and plenty of public reporting, raising serious questions about the strength of the GOP's case. But to best understand McCarthy's decision and where it goes from here, don't look at a case itself.
Look at the politics facing McCarthy. After meeting with his full conference for the first time since the announcement, this morning, he outlined the scope of the inquiry and what he's seeking for the White House, and gave no timeline for how long it would last. One more to Republicans need to prove and provide hard evidence of any possible wrongdoing. You used any possible wrongdoing.
If you had an FBI informant, alleged someone is right, ladies, shell companies. How do you prove that? You'd have to get the document. You don't have any of the credit card statements from all the credit cards from this, um, shell companies.
We don't have the president's bank statements. We don't have the Biden's bank statements. Providing information like that would answer your question. All we're looking at in the impeachment inquiry is answering the question.
They're answering the question. McCarthy made his announcement that day the House returned from recess, and it comes as the Speaker needs all the support he can get from the pro-impeachment far right wing of his conference on the fight over funding the government beyond September 30th. But if McCarthy is horse trading, what'd he get? Not much, at least not yet anyway.
While House Freedom Caucus members have long called for impeachment, they don't seem particularly moved to back the Speaker on anything else, and are continuing to make more demands in exchange for even that mere stopgap plan to keep the government open a little longer. All as McCarthy faces the prospect of a vote to oust him as Speaker, which any member of his conference can call for at any time. Here's Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry yesterday. I think we agree with the Speaker that impeachment is not, it should not be done for political reasons.
If the facts take us to that location, then that's what they should take us. But it has nothing to do with the debt, the deficit, the outrage is spending, the inflation that's crushing American families. Those are two separate issues and they should be dealt separately. Meanwhile, Florida Congressman Matt Gates, a longtime thorn in the Speaker's side, also appears to be unmoved by the launch of an impeachment inquiry, as he continues to threaten McCarthy's job.
During his analysis, Ryan Nobles is on Capitol Hill, and NBC's Ali Rafa is outside the White House. So Ryan, I'll start with you. The dust has kind of started to settle after yesterday's announcement. What does the House Republican Conference look like in the aftermath?
They appear any more united on this matter than they did 24 hours ago? You know, Garrett, I spent the better part of this afternoon chasing down Republican members to ask them that exact question. And I'm so much struck by how uniform they are in the belief that this was the proper step by the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And part of the reason is probably because they don't ever actually have to go to the House floor at least not yet and cast a vote in this regard.
They do seem to be all on the same page in terms of wanting more answers about this investigation into the Biden family. Many of them are reluctant to say that they've seen a hard evidence that connects the president's son's business dealings with the president himself. But nonetheless, they seem willing to let this process play itself out. And they really push away any suggestion that perhaps this is going to get in the way of all the important work that members of Congress have to get done this month, including of course that budget deal, which could lead to a government shutdown at the end of the month.
So at this point, McCarthy does seem to have all his troops in line. The big question, of course, Garrett is how long will that last? Yeah, look, nobody wants to link these things on the record, but we know that McCarthy has credibility problems with the far right. Do you see any indication that taking this step has bought him any love from those members?
He's kept Marjorie Taylor Greene in the camp, okay. But does he get anything back from the members who trusted him not very much before he was the speaker and even less after the debt ceiling deal? You know, almost the opposite, Garrett. I mean, I think many of these House Freedom Caucus members and conservative members, because we should point out Matt Gates, who's the kind of the lead voice in this regard, is not a member of the Freedom Caucus, they first of all are making it clear that impeachment has nothing to do with the budget process in their mind.
You know, they have very specific goals and very specific demands about the budget process and they have very specific goals and very specific demands about the impeachment process. And they want everything. They're not looking for one thing in exchange for another. And so there is still this real threat, this cloud, if you will, that hangs over the House Speaker that at any moment one of these conservative members could offer up this motion to vacate and we could be in a situation, again, where he is fighting for his speakership.
That is maybe not something that's going to happen today or tomorrow, maybe not even a week from now, but it continues to be a lingering threat. And that is really what's guiding many of the decisions that you see the Speaker making at this stage. And Ali Rafa, the White House was not caught off guard by this. They seem to have been operating from a position like they knew this was going to happen eventually, and when it did, they'd be ready.
We saw a forceful response from the structural White House, but nothing so far from the President. Is that intentional? Yeah, and I think it is safe to say that that is intentional. And remember, this was the first public appearance that we've seen by Biden at this cancer cabinet meeting.
And he very well could have commented on this impeachment inquiry being launched, but he chose to take this opportunity to really reshift the focus to his domestic agenda. This is a familiar strategy and approach that we've seen from the President and the White House before. You think of whenever there is a development in the legal woes of Hunter Biden, we see the White House sort of put this shell around the President, not taking questions, not only on his son Hunter, but just on any sort of world news, the President sort of going into a silent mode when it comes to answering the press's questions. And that's what we're seeing right now.
But I think the bigger question is, because we don't know how long this is going to last, what risk does the White House take continuing this sort of vow of silence? This is coming, remember, these new sort of powers that these committees have, they've already vowed to potentially interview more Biden family members, request more financial records, more documents. They run the risk of by ignoring those requests, approaching this as sort of a lack of cooperation, what could potentially come out of that messaging-wise is definitely risky for the White House and the President. Ryan, I want to bounce back to you on that point.
That was sort of always true in the sense that all these committees have subpoena power. They were already investigating the President and his family members in one capacity or another for months. What does James Comer, the Inquirer, have in his arsenal that James Comer, the Committee Chair, did it before? And are they any closer to getting any of that evidence that the speaker so pointedly underscored they don't actually have?
So probably the most obvious thing that James Comer is in search of that his committees yet to get their hands on is a complete record of the President's bank records themselves. Tax returns that they've been able to look at, they certainly have thousands of bank records for many of the Biden family associates and they have some from the President's son himself, but they do believe that there is some sort of smoking gun and the President's financial records themselves. And they believe that because now that they're under the banner of an impeachment inquiry, that gives them more strength in terms of their subpoena power than they would have under normal circumstances, because under normal circumstances it would have to have a specific legislative purpose attached to it, where an impeachment investigation gives them more credence. Now, there is legal debate over that for sure, Gary.
In fact, the Trump Justice Department argued exactly the opposite that required a full vote of the House of Representatives. So there is the chance that this becomes a court battle, but even a court battle to a certain extent Republicans might relish because then they can argue that the President and White House are trying to hold something back. So what this does is it really just puts the investigation on steroids if it weren't there already. And now you're going to see them put a lot of energy and effort into this in search of that smoking gun.
The question is, will they ever find it? And Ali yesterday, Hakeem Jeffery's the House Democratic leader made it very clear that House Democrats are going to back President Biden to the hilt on this at the forefront of that. That's going to be Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on House Oversight. What's the coordination like?
What's the relationship like between the White House and particularly Raskin? But some of these other kind of frontline impeachment defenders on those relevant committees as they prepare to be in battle over this going forward, whether the White House is engaged or not. Yeah, Gary, you've got to think that those voices, those people who are going to take the front attention on this, are going to take sort of the attention away from the President and the responsibility of the President to comment on this. And I believe it was Ryan that had some reporting earlier this week about Jamie Raskin and the House Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and how they had already planned their strategy to counter message and to defend the President.
You've got to think there's coordination and cooperation there with the White House. That's something that was asked for the briefing today. But press secretary Karine Jumpier didn't provide any details on that. But that could be the reason, you know, these staffers and what has become sort of a war room by the White House Council's office.
They've been working on counter messaging strategy using these claims that House Republicans have presented against them and using the words against them as part of this counter messaging effort. All right, Ryan Nobles and Allie Raffa. Thank you both for that reporting. We'll be busy going forward and joining me now on set is Rhonda Colton, senior congressional reporter for the Washington Post, former Florida Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy and Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent for the National Review and a contributing columnist at the Washington Post.
So, Rhonda, if Kevin McCarthy had one kind of card in his pocket here coming back from recess to play with his conference, it was this impeachment inquiry startup. What did he get for that card? I think right now he got a pacified caucus where it looks like for right now they're okay. And as your reporter said, they seem to be falling in line with him right now.
How long that will last? I think is the question we're all asking on the Hill, right? Especially when it comes to, you know, any of those moderate or folks in the middle who are concerned about being reelected in the next House races, there are the ones that are probably going to, you know, speak at least behind closed doors about their concerns about this. But right now he at least has a conference that seems okay about what he did yesterday.
About what he did yesterday, but he also had a spending bill fall apart today that they were trying to bring to the floor. How much does the high wire act get more complicated for him as we approach the end of this month? It gets very complicated because we are working with the deadline September 30th for the shutdown, the potential shutdown, and from what we saw today and what we're hearing, there really isn't a very true path to not shutting down the government, which is incredibly scary. And that's not really what's being talked about as we've all been talking about the potential impeachment.
But that does also overshadow the work of Kevin McCarthy and the decisions he's going to have to make in the next few weeks. But it's going to get messy. I think this is really going to be a messy three weeks. Over shadowing the sausage making may be part of the point here too.
And to that point, Jim, I mean, everybody we talked to kind of denied the idea that there's politics in the timing of this. But this has very much the flavor of it. It looks like a duck and quacks a duck. It's probably a duck.
I mean, Matt Rosadale came by that and said it saying he finds it very convenient that this comes out the week they're returning to Washington and it's supposed to be focusing on these appropriations bills. What do you make of the timing of this? It's not like there was some, you know, thunder clap of new evidence over the recess. House Republicans had a very nice good thing going, right?
You had to stay drip, drip, drip up. Look at this shady businessman that Hunter Biden was in deal. You could have an endless, near endless amount of embarrassing stories causing a headache. Biden would insist.
I want to talk about it and not any other kind of stuff. And that would all be very good for the 2024 presidential election. The odds are you're going to find some smoking gun, you know, with a canceled check that says for altering government policy made out to Joe Biden from shady, shady because Pakistani businessmen, you're probably not going to find that. And the odds are you're going to get any house Democrat to vote to remove Biden, exceptionally unlikely.
And you know, it's going to go to the Senate, which is currently controlled by the Democrats. You know, this isn't going anywhere. So the value was in the messaging of it. The extra starting the process then creates the point.
Well, now you're going to have to have a vote and now it's going to be a bigger deal. I guess if you don't want people paying attention to appropriations, it's worthwhile, but it just seems like it's a rerun of what we saw. It seems to me like there's a trade-off here from McCarthy. He wants the bigger spotlight on this inquiry now because only it certainly needs to be paying attention to the 100 Biden stuff.
But the rest of the country hasn't necessarily, but it doesn't also raise the stakes. If you don't find anything now in 2023, in 2024, you can bring this issue up again after you have it in between Korean and lanes with a thud, right? Now, as you'll say, you will move on to work. We'll reserve it.
So do the slogan again and say, this is all been done. All kinds of stuff. If anything, I said you want the slow steady, you don't want anything rushed. You want to take your time with it right up until election day 24th.
How does that timing play out here? I mean, obviously the longer this goes, in some ways, it's better for Republicans to kind of keep this impeachment in the headlines, but they also can't end it, right? If you end this without an impeachment, you've functionally acquitted the president. Yeah, they have started something that they can't put back in the box, and I'm not sure it's good for them for a political perspective, because at some point, he may have spared his vulnerable members, the 18 who are in Biden districts.
He may have spared them a vote this week on opening an inquiry, but he cannot spare them the vote of voting on impeachment. And so he better hope that this inquiry turns up a smoking gun. And from my experience with congressional investigations, we have limitations that the Department of Justice does not. And January 6th, I think we got a lot of information, but we had a lot of people who played high the ball with us.
And one recently, Navarro just got convicted of contempt of Congress. And so maybe that will play into the willingness of the people to participate in this impeachment. But DOJ has incredible powers to get information in a criminal investigation that, and if they haven't turned something up, what are the chances that Congress is going to turn something up? Well, and this is one of the things I've been thinking about, that most of these accusations had to deal with Joe Biden's time as Vice President.
There were four years of a Trump Justice Department that also didn't turn anything up on this when they might have been motivated to do so. I want to ask you about precedent here when it comes to impeachments, because Kevin McCarthy has argued that Speaker Pelosi set the precedent of moving down this path without authorizing an inquiry, which is true in the strictest sense that Speaker Pelosi started the first impeachment without a vote on an inquiry. I want to play a little bit of what he said about this and then ask you about it on the other side. Nancy Pelosi changed the president of this House.
Nancy Pelosi changed the president of this House on September 24th. It was held good enough for every single Democrat here. It was good enough for the judge. Why would it have to be different today?
Now, the House ultimately did end up voting on moving towards that first impeachment. I pressed him on this some yesterday. He's the Speaker now. He can point to Pelosi as much as he wants, but he's in charge now.
Do you worry about his argument there, which you make of it? But the idea that House Democrats were so aggressive in oversight against the former president in the last couple of Congress is that this kind of comes around on you now in perhaps not entirely good faith ways from the Speaker from House Republican. I think that American people have gotten used to the fact that hypocrisy is the name of the game in Washington. Shocking, I know.
But we are so divided and so partisan as a nation and as a Washington that you play by rules if it benefits your team. And then when the tables are turned, you argue against it. And that's what we're going to see as this impeachment unfolds. And it starts with his explanation for why he's using the impeachment inquiry without a vote.
But it's going to go on through whether it was the Ways and Means Committee, one of the three committees that are going to be a part of this inquiry. They're going to call for the current president's tax records under Section 6103, which when I was on the Ways and Means Committee, we used that section to call for the former president's tax records and got excoriated by the sitting chair of the Ways and Means Committee. And let's see what he'll say. It will be hypocrisy.
It's going to be fascinating. I'm going to talk about the other big political story today, which is Mitt Romney hanging it up so he's not going to run for election. Talk to me about Mitt Romney, the senator, and his last act, if indeed, this is his last act of American politics. Well, he seems to suggest that it is his last act.
He also pointed to his age that he'd be in his 80s if he did run again and was reelected. But Mitt Romney has had a tough time in his Senate career. He was there in 2018. He was the only Republican to vote to impeach Donald Trump in the first impeachment over the Ukraine call.
He also voted to impeach him again. He's been this standout. And he's just, it's been hard for him to work in that Senate. I think he's also reading some tea leaves back home with Utah, looking at his popularity way in there a little bit.
It is a Republican leading state, of course. And if you followed last week, there was a special election with a GOP primary for House seat there and the Trump supporting candidate won that. So I think Mitt Romney is very aware of the politics of the day. He mentioned in his letter today that it is hard to run in this environment when there's so much populism.
And he was also very critical of the front-runners on a GOP side for the presidential campaign as well as Biden. Jim, could you have one, a Republican primary in Utah? It would have been really tough. I think the fact that it would be so difficult says more about us than it does about him.
He will be missed. But I don't know. I just find it just fascinating refreshing to see somebody in their 70s saying, yeah, okay, that's enough. I don't know what I wanted to do.
I didn't even know you could leave a position in Washington before you were approaching 90 these days. It just seems like it's this one out of style. Yeah. And what do you make of that?
I mean, age thing is such a part of what we talk about politically in this country, whether it's between McConnell or President Biden or Speaker Pelosi announcing she's running for reelection. Romney made that explicit in his retirement video. He said, I don't want to be here in my 80s. And we need a new generation of leaders to solve these problems.
Is that message be heard by the people who need to hear it in Washington? One would hope so. I'm still somebody who believes in a citizen Congress, which means that ordinary people get a chance to serve, bring their experiences, having lived of life as average Americans do to Washington and legislate from that place. This isn't supposed to be a lifetime career.
I think that's not healthy for our democracy. And so he's demonstrating a level of self-awareness and a lack of ego that is rare in this town. And I have a lot of respect for him and what he's accomplished. I certainly hope that others take note because the Democratic Party has a deep bench of really dynamic and interesting young leaders who are politely waiting their turn because they don't want to risk their career getting out too far in front of say a sitting president.
There you go. 76 old enough. We'll leave that there as our closing thought here. Thank you all for the panel for coming in for today and coming up new filings and fallout for the former president as Fulton County prosecutors dig in on trying Trump and his 18 co-defendants together in that massive Georgia reco case.
But first, my one-on-one interview with the National Security Council's John Kirby as the White House threatens sanctions and retaliations for our potential arms deal between North Korea and Russia. That's next. You're watching. Meet the press now.
Welcome back. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a rare in-person meeting today smiling for the cameras as they toured a Russian space facility and discuss future military cooperation. It comes as the White House's warning about a potential arms deal between the two U.S. adversaries.
After more than a year and a half of fighting in Ukraine, Putin appears to now be turning to North Korea to resupply his country's munitions stockpile. And for his part, Kim offered his full and unconditional support for what he described as Russia's quote sacred fight in return. North Korea is looking for Russia's help to develop its own military capabilities. And joining me now from the White House is John Kirby coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council.
Thank you for being on today. I want to start with North Korea and this meeting we just saw between Kim Jong Un and President Putin and Russia. Kim Jong Un said he wants to transform what's been a friendly relationship into what he called an unbreakable strategic partnership. Obviously, he's a fan of that kind of rhetoric.
But how concerning is that kind of talk to the United States? And looking at the intelligence available to you, what's the biggest takeaway from this meeting? Difficult to say what the big takeaway is from the meeting right now, since I haven't really announced anything in terms of specific negotiations or arms deals. We're going to watch that very, very closely.
We've been mourning about this potential arms deal for quite some time. And that's why, because we are concerned about any capabilities that might be given to North Korea or bought by North Korea that can help destabilize the peninsula or anything that can go the other way. Mr. Putin to make it easier for him to kill innocent Ukrainians.
As for this strategic partnership, I think that much remains to be seen here. These are not two countries that play well with others. And they are not two countries that have any kind of longstanding history with cooperation between the two of them. They are pretty isolated on the world stage.
So we'll see exactly where this goes. But I can promise you this. If North Korea moves forward with some sort of arms deal, arms deal to help Russia in Ukraine or consequently get help from Russia, there'll be repercussions for North Korea. And certainly we're going to continue to hold Russia accountable as well.
What can those repercussions be? I mean, you mentioned the idea that these are two the most isolated countries on the planet already. What else could we do to Russia or North Korea to punish that kind of behavior? Well, we'll certainly look at additional sanctions enforcing already the sanctions that are in place and looking at additional enforcement mechanisms, the possibility of looking at additional sanctions both unilaterally and with our UN partners.
It's important to remember that if there is an arms deal between these two countries, it violates UN Security Council resolutions that Russia themselves signed up to many years ago. So there's a great irony here. We'll look at options inside the UN as well. We've got the General Assembly coming up next week.
And then lastly, we're going to continue to call it like we see it. It was weeks ago when we said we thought that these two countries were going to be working together on some sort of transfer of arms to Russia. A week or two ago, we said we thought there could be leader level meetings. We're going to continue to call it out as we see it and make sure that they can't do this in a non-transparent way.
The White House has definitely been out in front of this. I think it's pretty clear what the Russians could want from the North Koreans. But what do the North Koreans want from Russia on this? I mean, for Kim, it's a coup just to have a meeting like this with another world leader, right?
But what do they take away for North Korea other than elevating themselves on the world stage? Well, again, it really depends on what kind of arms deal they come up with. We don't know exactly what sort of trade space they have with one another. We know that Russia wants at the very minimum artillery shells because this is a gun fight in the Don Boston Southern Ukraine.
It's possible to want other munitions from North Korea. It is certainly possible that North Korea will look for military capabilities, technology, intelligence sharing, that kind of thing that will booster their defensive and offensive capabilities on the Korean Peninsula. You know, Mr. Kim keeps shooting off ballistic missiles.
There were two more short-range ballistic missiles. He fired off today. This is a burgeoning program that he wants to improve. Russia has ballistic missile capabilities.
So it's entirely possible that that could be one avenue that he's looking at. The Chinese don't like the idea of a North Korea with a strong ballistic missile program right next door. Is this an area where we can work with them? We know that Beijing has probably more influenced in Pyongyang than any other nation on Earth.
And as they say, it's not perfect leverage that they have because Kim Jong Un even spurs a lot even from Beijing. But Beijing does have influenced in Pyongyang. And we would encourage them to continue to use that influence to curb these appetites by Kim Jong Un and to try to help us all try to achieve a more stable Korean Peninsula today. China's not been willing to do that.
They are not enforcing all the sanctions that are in place. Sanctions again that they signed up to through the UN and they have not put enough pressure on Kim Jong Un. We'd like to see him do that. I'm starting to feel like unenforced sanctions is a theme here.
I want to talk about Iran a little bit. You've said that the money that the administration is freezing, unfreezing rather from Iran for in exchange for these hostages coming back. We'll use for humanitarian purposes and you've outlined some of the ways in which that can be enforced or at least monitored. But $6 billion is still $6 billion, right?
If it's money that the Iranian government doesn't have to spend on these humanitarian needs, doesn't that free that money up for them to spend it on other things, right? Talk to me about the controls that exist on this money and why the Iranians can't just sort of move money around in a way that makes this $6 billion free for them to use how they see fit. Yeah. So a couple of thoughts here.
First of all, the controls you talked about. They have to specifically ask for withdrawals from this account to be used for legitimate humanitarian purposes, medical equipment, medicine, food, that kind of thing. And that money will be administered through the Qatari National Bank. We will have visibility on those transactions.
We can cut off those transactions if we don't think they're going if they're going to try to cheat. We can certainly re-free those funds if we continue to see the regime try to cheat against this. But it's important to remember that the regime doesn't get any of this money. When they submit a request and it's legitimate and we've agreed that it should be supported on behalf of the Iranian people, it'll be going through vendors who will purchase that equipment or that material or that food and get it into Iran that way independently.
The mullah's the regime has no direct contact with these funds. It goes directly to the Iranian people. And again, we have total control over whether or not we want to re-freeze that or not. So it's functionally the Qataris are acting like an escrow account here essentially where the Iranians don't ever touch this money directly.
Is that a fair way to understand this? It is correct. The Iranians will not be able to touch this funding directly. Now look, your other question was about, well, you can free up funds for other things.
We are already putting a lot of pressure on Iran for their destabilizing activities, support the terrorist, maritime shipping attacks, sending drones to Russia to use against Ukraine. We will not hesitate to continue to leverage more sanctions, more pressure to hold Iran accountable for their destabilizing behavior if they continue to perform that. We've even boosted our military presence in the Iranian Gulf because of the attacks on maritime shipping. So the president is going to use a wide range of tools here to continue to hold Iran accountable for this destabilizing behavior.
And we have no reason to suspect that they're just automatically going to stop doing these bad things. So we're going to keep that pressure on. And I suspect what would help the president is having confirmed people in the top of his military leadership. I want to ask you about Senator Tuberville's holds on military promotions.
He was on this program yesterday and he's really trying to put the onus on Democrats to find a way to work around his holds. I want to play for you what he told us yesterday. We could do all the top brass and less probably less than two weeks. You know, I'm not holding up all the nominations.
I'm just holding up a group at a time. We could do one this afternoon in two hours, but Schumer won't bring it to the floor. Now I covered the Senate in my day job. I understand the concern about creating a precedent here for agreeing to these tactics by Tuberville here.
But at what point does the national security need outweigh the desire for Senate Democrats to win the argument here and have Tuberville fold on his own? The pressure really needs to be on the Republican side here, because Republican colleagues, they're the ones that have to get, they got to pull them aside here and tell them to knock this off. And he wasn't being honest by way in his interview, saying he's not holding them all up. He's holding up more than 300 generals and animals.
Every single one that gets nominated gets put in this blanket hold by Senator Tuberville and is absolutely having an effect on our national security and our readiness. Have you heard anything from Senate Republicans or Republicans that you talk to to suggest they are feeling that pressure and are ready to apply it to him? Because I'm not hearing a lot of it. No, I would agree that we have not heard that some Senate Republicans will say that, you know, they don't like his tactics, you know, they agree with his concern about the policy that DOD is pursuing, but they don't like his tactics, but they're not doing anything.
They're not lifting a finger to put enough pressure on him. This one Senator who was holding up all these generals and animals from moving on. All right, John Kirby, thank you for your time and for your expertise. Yes, sir.
Up next, new developments in the Trump trials as prosecutors push to try all 19 defendants in the Fulton County racketeering case together next month. What it could mean for the trial's timeline. Next, you're watching the press now. Welcome back.
As we await word on when former President Donald Trump will stand trial in Georgia, Fulton County DA, Finee Willis is making clear she intends on trying the former president alongside his 18 code defendants all at the same time. In a late filing yesterday, Willis argued that all 19 code defendants facing reco charges should be tried together to ensure a fair and an efficient trial arguing in part, quote, the reco conspiracy charge ensures any trial would share the same evidence and witnesses. Willis has proposed that that trial begin next month, October 2023, with the judge presiding over the case, Judge Scott McAfee has expressed down so about such a complex complex case moving too quickly. I mean, as I've seen his justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Delaney, and we spend a lot of time chewing this sort of thing over.
So Ken, I mean, should we really expect that one of the most consequential trials in American history that's going to be on camera could start in six weeks? No, in a word, no. Thank you for joining us. Have a good day.
Particularly, we're not going to see Donald Trump trial. We may see a couple of the code defendants earlier rather than later, but it's hard to imagine it could happen in six weeks. What does it do to an eventual Trump trial? If you do have split trials, if you know, Kenneth Chesbro and Sidney Powell basically go as the junior varsity version of this in October and Trump goes six months later?
Well, one thing it does is gives Donald Trump and his lawyers a free crack at the evidence. They get to hear all the witnesses and see all the evidence. I mean, they're going to get that presented to them anyway in volume, but it's another matter to see how the prosecution is going to make the case. So that's an advantage for Trump.
It also, you know, could none the public to this information, the only trial that's going to be on television of the big three against Trump. So there's a lot of consequences. It's something that's worked in Trump's advantage so far. It's just a sheer volume of all these things, at least politically.
So there's a hearing tomorrow, right? Do we expect any answer to this question tomorrow or more filings and more questions? Yeah, probably not an answer tomorrow, but it's really interesting. You know, Trump and a group of defendants are offering to waive their right to a speedy trial in order to sever from the defendants.
And then you've got, as you said, she's broke in Powell, they want a speedy trial. And the DA is arguing that they'd like to try it all together because in the interest of justice and efficiency, you know, it's interesting. She did a really complicated, there was a cheating scandal in Atlanta public schools. You know about how she became publicly known nationally.
Right. And I was looking today, there was actually 12 defendants stood trial at the same time in that case. So it can be done on the issue of moving this case to federal court. Mark Meadows is appealing the decision that kicks it back to state court.
You and I are both fake television lawyers. We both read that original filing here. Do you see anything in the original Meadows decision that's awarding shot for Trump or anybody else trying to move this case to federal court? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the judge in a resounding fashion found no evidence to support the idea that Mark Meadows was operating as a government official, as the chief of staff. And a lot of the same logic, it would appear to me, non-lawyer, would apply to the president of the United States. For example, the famous call to the Secretary of State. Mark Meadows spoke on that call.
He was advocating an investigation into bogus allegations of fraud. Donald Trump did the same thing. And the judge ruled that that was acting politically, not governmently. Very good.
Can we bring you back tomorrow for tomorrow's? No, not likely segment with candidate. Thank you. And up next, Florida governor, Rhonda Santis, goes after the latest FDA approved COVID booster as he tries to regain ground in the Republican presidential primary.
That story is next. You're watching the press now. Welcome back. Amid a spike in COVID cases and COVID related hospitalizations nationwide, the CDC is now recommending everyone ages six months and older get an updated COVID shot.
But that recommendation, which came yesterday, is meeting from some resistance from Florida governor Rhonda Santis and his administration. Today, Florida's search and general issued recommendations of his own that people under the age of 65 go against the CDC. I just think that at this point with the amount of immunity that's in the community, with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity. And the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it's not a good decision for young people, for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic.
NBC News, national politics reporter and resident Florida man, Matt Dixon joins me now. So not COVID was the issue that made Rhonda Santis the governor of Florida into Rhonda Santis, the presidential candidate, arguably. So it's hard not to look at something like this through a political context. Is this decision largely about medicine with political, you know, trailing indicators or is this a political decision with medical consequences?
When you frame it that way, I like to think about it as the old cartoon Popeye. When Popeye needed strength or momentum, he would eat spinach. For governor to Santis, when he needs strength and momentum on the campaign trail, he needs headlines, he needs a little wind at his back. He goes to COVID, he goes to Anthony Fauci, he goes to the vaccine.
These are things we've seen time and time again. It's worked for him very well. He won Florida, you know, he won reelection by 20 points here. So from a state level perspective, it's been great for him.
It hasn't worked as well. And we haven't seen it as much as when he was running for president. But that's kind of the general way I think people should think about it. When these things pop up seemingly out of nowhere, for him and his political team, these issues are spinach to what spinach was for Popeye.
And that's kind of I think what he's going for here. It kind of reminds me to harken back to another Republican presidential candidate who struggled of the criticism of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, which was that it became focused on, you know, noun for 9-11. You see this potentially with the Santis here returning to a COVID issue. How do you expect him to deploy this on the campaign trail?
And when he talks about COVID now in 2023, does it get the kind of response that perhaps he would hope as someone who was a COVID hero to the right in 2020 and 2021? Sure. For the foreseeable future, I would be more surprised if you heard him talk about anything else in the campaign trail. If you are sort of on his email list, you're going to see a lot of vaccine, Fauci, Operation Warp Speed sort of emails help us push back against this.
There's a spike of cases in Florida, the FDA and the CDC just approved that the latest round of the booster this week. So there's a moment in time where I think the campaign sees the ability to focus on this pretty intensely. And that's that's something that I think you saw kind of play out today. And you're going to see moving forward, at least for the foreseeable future, at some point they'll be okay.
But for the time being, this is going to be the focus. And in 2020, 2021, I feel like a lot of Republican governors kind of looking over their shoulders at how one another we're handling COVID related issues. Have we seen any indication of any other Republican-led states offering similar guidance to what Florida is doing? Not to this moment and certainly not this strong, but that's not terribly surprising.
Florida's sort of always been on the forefront. Since at least it's important to note, actually, Governor DeSantis on the front end of the vaccine was very supportive to encourage me to get vaccinated on the front end. But since roughly 2021 or so, Florida's sort of on the vanguard of the sort of state level anti-vax movements. So Governor DeSantis in his administration, including today, have taken a much stronger stance than other Republican governors.
But I don't think that's terribly surprising considering what we've seen over the past few years. I'll be very interested to see how other governors, particularly those who aren't running for president, react to this move. Matt Dixon, thank you for your reporting. And still to come, Congress huddles with the titans of tech.
I'll talk to one of the senators who was in the room for today's private meeting with some of the tech industry's most powerful leaders about what's next for AI and regulation. That's next. You're watching. Meet the press now.
Welcome back. And as we've noted, Congress is struggling to keep its own lights on. But that same Congress is also being tasked with regulating one of the most complex technological explosions of our time on this planet, the AI revolution. No big deal.
Today, in an effort to bridge a very large knowledge gap on the issue, senators on Capitol Hill held behind closed doors with tech's biggest titans, including Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and some other big-name tech CEOs. Speaking to reporters outside the room, Tesla, CEO, Elon Musk, and OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, addressed the need for government regulation in this space. I don't know what exactly perhaps it'll probably be. I think probably other being some sort of AI regulatory agency that stands on its own, similar to the FAO, as you see, is likely at some point.
I think so. Senator Schumer and rounds, part of the bipartisan group that organized the forum, praised the event, while also warning of some of the challenges ahead. We got some consensus on some things. First, I asked everyone in the room, is government needed to play a role in regulating AI and every single person raise their hands?
AI's not going away. It's going to be here for a long, long time. The challenge that we have is when we try to catch up on, first of all, the development of the United States, can we stay ahead of the rest of the world? Can we lead the rest of the world?
And second of all, can we do it in such a fashion that our people truly benefit? Joining me now is one of the senators who attended that meeting, Democrat from Colorado, Michael Bennett. So, Senator, thank you for joining us. You were obviously in the room all day today.
What was your reaction, broadly speaking, from what you heard from these industry leaders? My reaction, broadly speaking, is that we need to have a new agency to regulate big tech. I am the first member of Congress to introduce a bill calling for that. I think it was two years ago, and it's kind of an amazing out-of-body experience to be there to hear Elon Musk saying we need an agency like that.
But I think the reason we need it is that Congress will never do a good job at this. Leaving this to the courts will be a huge mistake. And what we need to do is instead, as we have in the past in American history, set up a new agency with the expertise that can move nimbly enough to be able to help us capture the benefits of this new technology while making sure that in the case of AI, we've got guardrails in place so that people can't go out and build nuclear weapons or create pathogens that could kill millions of people. That's stuff that we need to take seriously, it's stuff we need to avoid, and it's why we've got to do this.
Senator, respectfully, when I hear government regulatory agency and nimble in the same sentence, I'm a little skeptical. I mean, how does an agency like which you're proposing keep up with the technology that has really just exploded in the last few years? You know, it's a great question. So, first of all, if you want to see somebody not nimble, that is the U.S.
Congress. So, by way of comparison at least, they don't suck as much as we do, and I think it was hilarious that you started this by saying we couldn't even keep the lights on in Congress because my book about this place is called The Land of Flickering Lights, for that reason as well. And so, it's got to be properly staffed. Look, the FDA, some years, it does a lousy job.
Some years, it does a decent job. Our oversight should be making sure it does a better job. It'd be the same way with a new agency here. And by the way, just to make matters even more difficult and more complicated, I've said this to Schumer over and over again, this discussion of AI cannot ignore the fact that we have not, we have totally missed the ball in terms of social media, you know.
And what the American people want to have as a negotiation with Mark Zuckerberg and with the rest of these guys about their privacy, their data, and their economics. And that's something we're going to have to do at the same time we're dealing with this, this AI conundrum. Yeah. I mean, I've covered the hearings you've been in them where there's clearly senators who've been explaining some of these social media properties by their grandkids and it just doesn't inspire a ton of confidence.
Should this set up a meeting today? One of the criticisms of this meeting today, and to be fair, it's been widely, I think, praised on and off the hill as a necessary step. But one of the criticisms was that it shouldn't have been closed doors. Do you think the public would have gained from watching this all play out or does it kind of, you know, potentially limit what you might have learned if the world was watching more directly?
I think it should have been public. I didn't see any reason for it not to be public. I think only, you know, intelligence matters and other, you know, if you've got a compelling national security reason, I think otherwise it should be public. It would have been good to have this public.
What do you think the tech leaders wanted out of this today? I mean, I don't have to tell you it's not always particularly easy to get these CEOs to come up to Congress. Do you think they were trying to avoid getting dragged up there later? Or did you get the sense that they really welcome or requesting specific kinds of congressional involvement in their work?
I think it's probably a wide difference of opinion and approach, you know, and you saw it in the engagement in the room. I think one of the things that I hope was pretty clear in there is that hopefully if this has been an era of big tech setting its own rules, that era is going to come to an end. I mean, Garrett, I was on Friday with 15 school, adolescent, they weren't adolescents, but 15 school psychologists who study, you know, adolescents in Colorado and work with adolescents in Colorado, and they could not even get past the mental health issues their own kids have as a result among other things of the way they interact with Mark Zuckerberg's platform. We need to do something about that.
We've got to do something about that. And we cannot trust these guys to write their own rules. They don't have the knowledge to do it. We have to do it in a way, obviously, that's thoughtful.
But, you know, sometimes I hear people say, oh my God, there's nothing you can do all those losses places that frickin' disaster. And it can be a disaster, but we need to assist more. You know what, if we had that attitude about rivers that were catching on fire in the United States, we would have never passed the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act. And we can do it.
Well, let me ask you about another seemingly unsolvable challenge of late. There's a report out from the Census Bureau yesterday that showed child poverty rates and what had doubled from the record low they hit in 2021 to 2022. They explicitly tied the increase to the expiration of the expanded child tax credit. The numbers make it so clear that this has worked.
Why do you think it's been so hard to get an extension through Congress? I think that Congress has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and for big corporations instead of for working people. You know, I ran my not terribly well-noted campaign for president on that bill and the idea that we could cut childhood poverty in half in America. And you know what, Joe Biden won the presidency.
I didn't. But we did cut childhood poverty in half as a result of that legislation. And the good news is we've proven to ourselves, in the richest country of the world, we do not have to accept this degree of childhood poverty as a permanent feature of our democracy or permanent feature of our economy. We just have to go back to work and fight for this and fight for this and fight for this.
My goal is for us to end childhood poverty in this country. I think that's what we really ought to do. Senator, I think that's a very noble goal and I'm curious about the idea of the sort of politics as a circle here, whether the populace right might work with you on an issue that Republicans have normally stayed away from. But I want to ask you about another Republican who was making news today, your colleague and fellow westerner Mitt Romney saying he's going to hang it up.
He's not going to run for reelection. What will it mean to lose his voice in the Senate after next January? You know, I think it's possible that I will have people who watch this who disagree with me. But I believe the Senate will be a lot worse for not having Mitt Romney here.
He's been a voice of reason. I've worked with him on western issues and also on frankly the child tax credit where he had the most generous version of that of any Republican in the U.S. Congress. So I think we're going to miss Mitt Romney.
I'm sorry that he's leaving. And I hope the rest of us, you know, when you have a loss like that, maybe it's a moment for the rest of us to actually step our game up and maybe improve the way we work together. We're going to miss him here. Well, I hope so, Senator.
We can all keep the lights on up there after the end of this month. Senator Michael Bennett, thank you for coming on. Thanks, Garrett, for having me. And thank you all for being with us this hour.
I am back tomorrow with more Meet the Press Now. The news continues with Hallie Jackson right now.