Maddow on Trump's unbridled chaos: 'We are having some drama at the moment'

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“The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this.”

Sign up for the Project 47 Newsletter at ms.now/project 47. Really happy to have you here. We are having a moment of sort of unbelievably dramatic news. News that's like, if you're pitching a movie, the people you're pitching it to would say, "No, that's too over the top we can't do that." Denmark reportedly sent soldiers just a few weeks ago. They sent soldiers to Greenland armed with explosives and blood supplies.

“The explosives were to blow up the runways at airports in Greenland, and the blood supplies were an anticipation of combat casualties in a conflict with the United States.”

That is, if the US could find a way to put US troops on the ground in Greenland without landing on the blown up airfields.

Think about that for a second.

I mean, Denmark is freaking Denmark. They are literally and officially our ally, but they had to send troops out with live ammunition and blood supplies and live explosives, not for an exercise, not for training, but on a real deployment on which they planned to disable the airfields in Greenland to protect their territory against us against the United States. You may also recall that Denmark is in NATO. So if Trump actually does try to use military force to take Greenland, we will be at war with all of NATO.

“But now I guess we know how it would start.”

Two dramatic, too far fetched. Oh wait, there's more. Consider Hungary right now. The authoritarian leader in Hungary, Victor Orban, keeps getting visits from top US officials. He just got one from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, supposed to host Vice President JD Vance very soon. Trump did a creepy video endorsement for Victor Orban this weekend. Our government is doing everything they can to try to sort of fluff Victor Orban right now to prop him up, because Hungary is having elections next month.

And if Victor Orban allows those elections to go forward, it really looks like he's going to lose. So our authoritarian government is trying to prop up his authoritarian government with these big public shows of support. But because the news is the way it is right now, I also have to tell you that Russia is approaching the same task with a bit more style. New reporting from the Washington Post this weekend headline, to tilt Hungarian election, Russians proposed staging assassination attempt. In the run-up to Hungary's pivotal election in April, Russia's foreign intelligence service last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who's friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Cretland a strategic foothold inside NATO and the European Union.

Officers from the SVR, Russian military intelligence suggested that drastic action might be necessary to help Orban, a strategy they called the game changer.

SVR sub SVR operative said the game changer would quote fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign. And what was the game changer, the game changer was quote the staging of an assassination attempt on Victor Orban. Washington Post reporting that to try to help Orban in his election, the Russians have already mounted social media campaigns to boost Orban, much as they did for Donald Trump, they've used fake allegations against Orban's political enemies. They've used fake AI-generated videos to spread wild smears against opposition candidates, but they also apparently were plotting to fake an assassination attempt against Victor Orban in order to get people to rally behind him.

Two dramatic, two over the top, not believable enough. Oh, but wait, we've also still got the Strait of Hormuz shut down, choked off as a result of the U.S. President Donald Trump inexplicably starting a war with Iran for reasons he has yet to explain and with goals he has yet to credibly articulate. This weekend President Trump announced a no-if sands or butts ultimatum that if Iran doesn't open up the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz by today by Monday Trump promised he would commit a capital W capital C war crime.

He said he would bomb Iran's civilian power plants starting quote with the biggest one first.

That was the ultimatum as of Saturday. He would do that today unless the Strait of Hormuz opened up today rolled around and even though it's not even yet.

He says happening between us and the Iranians. The Iranians say no, there aren't any new talks going on.

Suspiciously Trump won't say who these supposed talks are with but he says they're definitely going great and even though he says they're going great now he's also sending 4500 sailors and Marines over there and the New York Times is reporting that he's considering calling up the 82nd airborne as well. How well will the talks going? However well Trump says these phantom supposed talks are going watch what he does not what he says and if you do that in this inexplicable war it really seems like Donald Trump has started something he has absolutely no idea how to finish and aside from everything else this war is doing there is a very real prospect it is going to crater not only our own economy, but the world economy with Trump having no plan for that whatsoever.

“To put it lightly we are having some drama at the moment.”

I mean, because of the president and his Republican parties policies in Washington, two million Americans have lost their health insurance just since the beginning of the year for millions more health care has become dramatically dramatically more expensive specifically because of Republican policies.

The federal reserve just announced that there has been quote zero net job creation in the private sector over the past six months zero jobs created in six months in the private sector.

One Trump supporting Republican sheriff in California has just seized the ballots from the last statewide California election in his county not because the sheriff's office has anything to do with election administration in Riverside County or anywhere else but because that sheriff and his deputies have guns and badges and they say they heard something was wrong with the election. In Riverside County, California, that maga sheriff just seized a thousand boxes of elections material including more than 650,000 ballots.

“As American air travel absolutely melts down not only because the price of jet fuel is skyrocketing thanks to Trump's war of choice in Iran.”

As American air travel today absorbs not only that, but also yet another Trump era fatal collision at yet another airport this time a runway collision at La Guardia in New York which killed two pilots and sent 41 people to the hospital as TSA security lines tonight exceed four hours just to get through security at Houston's airport as Atlanta advises travelers on domestic flights that they're going to need at least four hours lead time at that airport.

Or just domestic flights today in the midst of that meltdown President Trump told Republicans that a campaign event in Tennessee that he did not want the TSA crisis to be solved.

He said he did not want there to be any talks about resolving the TSA crisis and funding TSA agents until Democrats agreed to pass new restrictions on voting rights. He said Republicans had to get this done quote for Jesus. Okay.

“MS now is reporting tonight that the ICE agents Trump has sent to the airport supposedly to help with the TSA disaster.”

The ICE enforcement and removal operations officers, the ERO officers that they've sent. They quote, "Do not have the ability to check travelers identification or screen passengers." So what are they there for? Other than to creep everyone out and crowd the food court and you know, remind the poor beleaguered TSA agents who actually are trained to do this job that they're not being paid to be at work right now. While these random bros from ICE who can't actually do anything are being paid their full salaries to stand around and creep everyone out and add to how crowded it is in the terminal without actually doing anything to help at all.

So the news right now is dramatic. You might even call it melodramatic. Everything seems to be just happening on this grand scale. But here's also part of what's going on that is unfolding more quietly without melodrama. It's definitely got moral drama and it's the kind of story we can only get from people who are watching very, very closely. This story starts with a guy in Minnesota and a mnick Benson who would not mind if I described him to you as a plain spotter.

He's a plain buff. He's an aviation geek. He studies planes. He looks at flight data. You know, at some airports there are little places set aside for people to view the take-offs and landings. Those are for people like Nick Benson. In the Minneapolis area where he lives whenever he gets the chance he goes to the Minneapolis airport and he takes photographs of interesting planes coming and going.

And like most people who live in near Minneapolis, Nick Benson has also been horrified by what Trump's federal agents, Trump's ice agents and Border Patrol agents have done in Minneapolis and they're attack on that city.

And as part of Nick Benson's contributions to his communities fight against ice. They're fight back against this attack by the federal government.

Mr. Benson has been documenting ice flights out of Minneapolis as airport. He's been doing it ever since ice surged into Minnesota in December. Along with other local plane spotters, Nick has watched and kept count. He's kept a record. He's documented it as people made their way from the tarmac up the steps into one of these deportation planes over and over and over again. He says many of the people he's seen put on these planes are put on in shackles both men and women. The long hours that he's put in waiting at the airport going through flight data mean that Nick Benson has been in almost a unique position not just to document those disappearances those flights.

But specifically to follow up on a story that absolutely tore people up all across this country, the story of five year old Liam Kanejo Ramos.

“You'll remember the story of Liam Ramos, right? Nick Benson was able to follow that up and uncover something about that story that nobody else in the public has been able to see.”

When I said the name Liam Ramos, you instantly pictured him right? This is Liam Kanejo Ramos, standing in his neighborhood, blue bunny hat, black and white check coat, Spider-Man backpack and one of Trump's federal agents standing behind him with his hands on the backpack. A snowy street in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. This happened while Trump was crawling about how the people being taken by his masked agents are all terrible criminals and monsters, the worst of the worst. And there's little five year old Liam and his bunny hat and his backpack, the real picture of who they're picking up.

The day after school officials took that photo, they announced that Liam and three other local kids from the same school have been grabbed by ICE agents along with their families. And then we learned that within one day of them snatching them off the street, ICE had already taken Liam and his father all the way from Minnesota to Texas. And taking them to notorious prison, the Dilly detention center, just outside San Antonio, place where they lock up men and women and children were prisoners have testified to horrific conditions.

“And if you followed this story of a little five year old Liam, you might remember that we know how Liam and his dad got out of Dilly, right?”

Remember this, a week after they were taken, Texas congressman walking Castro visited Liam and his dad at Dilly, I sent out this heartbreaking picture of Liam not looking well in his father's arms. There was continuing national uproar over this case of after what over what had happened to the little kid in his family. And then just days after that visit from the congressman on February 1, the Trump administration decided that they were going to release Liam and his father from Dilly. And the government flew Liam back to Minnesota and you might have seen the images from that, right?

Liam getting to visit the cockpit of this delta flight that he was flying on his flight home to Minnesota. A crew from ABC News was there as the very, very nice pilots who were very kind to him gave him a lot of attention and let him sit in the pilot seat and gave him his own little pilot swings. In the case of little five year old Liam, the public pressure worked in a way instead of being stuck in Dilly for weeks or months or longer, things moved faster for him and his family. Liam was taken off the street, Minneapolis flown across the country imprisoned, then freed from the prison and flown back home all in less than two weeks and went fast because of the national uproar.

But back home in Minneapolis, that plane spotter that activist Nick Benson, he had this nagging question because in all of his weeks and weeks of watching ice flights leave the Minneapolis airport watching the men and women and shackles go up those tarmac stairs.

Nick said he'd never once seen a kid boarding one of those flights he'd never seen a little kid like a five year old like Liam.

So then how did they do it?

“How exactly did ice ship Liam and his dad from Minneapolis to Texas and so quickly within 24 hours after they grabbed him off the street?”

We know they sent this little boy to prison in Texas. How did he get there? How did he get from standing in his bunny hat and his black and white coat and a spider ran backpack in Minnesota to a Trump prison camp one day later? How did they do it? Well, now thanks to Nick Benson, we can see that part of the story. We can have a view now into the machinery of Trump system for locking up little kids for locking up families, a view that we've not had before.

Because he knows the flight schedules, he knows the layout of the gates, he knows roughly when Liam had had to have traveled and because of all that because of what he's been doing.

“Nick Benson was able to tear this thing open.”

Quote, pursuant to the mini, excuse me, the Minnesota Open Records law. I request copies of video footage of the following areas of the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport. January 21, 2021, 2026, 530 AM to 10 AM, any footage of or that would show vehicular traffic entering or exiting gates 222 or 269.

Exterior ramp areas, interior gate areas, jet bridges near Gates F11, F13 or F15.

Nick Benson filed his open records law request under Minnesota State Law. He paid his $359.4 in processing costs.

“And what did he get? He got dozens of hours of footage from half a dozen different surveillance cameras.”

All showing the Delta Airlines passenger terminal or the operations going on just outside the terminal's windows. And the hour is leading up to that morning's nonstop flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio. And he went through all of that footage and look. There he is. Recognize the jacket. Heading for gate F13, the Delta flight to San Antonio and his black and white checked coat. That's Liam Konejo Ramas and his dad. There's no sound with this footage, but you will see three people with Liam and his dad.

Three people who seem to be taking them through the airport to be clear. We don't know whether they're federal agents or contractors or something else. But there they are with Liam and his father. They're checking in before the flight. They're waiting in the terminal with all the other travelers.

“At one point in the background, you can see Liam laying his blanket down on the floor. I think it's so he can lie down on the blanket.”

Sometimes he gets up to look out the window with his dad. Liam's like any other kid at the airport except for where he's going. Except for the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump is sending him to prison at age five. Finally, Liam and his dad and these minters line up with the other passengers and they head off for their flight. A boy, his dad, his Spider-Man backpack, a nonstop Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio on the way to family immigration prison. Nick Benson went through that footage. She shared it with an excellent aviation journalist named Gillian Berkelle, who broke this story last week. Gillian Berkelle has tracked apparent ice flights all around the world to places like Espotini and Ireland.

Espotini and Africa and Ireland and Egypt. She told us this was the first time she had seen this other part of what they call ice air.

Not the flights on charter aircraft or contract aircraft that load up people in shackles, right? But this other part that is happening quietly around all the rest of us unsuspecting passengers. On passenger airlines, in regular airports, flying prisoners to Trump prison camps to be held without trial, including little kids. We contacted Delta Airlines for comment. They told us what they told Gillian Berkelle that that government air travel is often booked via third parties like travel agencies. They said airlines may not have advanced notice or detail as to who may be flying and for what reason.

Delta also, and we should have seen this coming, they pointed us back to that happy ABC news report about Liam and his dad being flown home from Dilly on a delta flight. That's the moment the pilots were so nice and they gave Liam his little wings. Delta was very happy to promote its involvement in Liam's homecoming, but not so much their involvement with sending him to prison. We also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security with a number of questions about the video from the Minneapolis airport and how the government manages commercial airline travel with federal agents transporting prisoners against their will including minors.

We haven't heard back, well let you know if we do. What we do know is that what we can see in that video of Liam and his dad at the Minneapolis airport. We know that that is not an isolated incident. We know that ice is moving immigrant families and little kids on domestic commercial flights. And we know that because many of the families in prison at that hellhole facility in Dilly, Texas have described in legal declarations that that's how they got there. And one long running legal case about conditions for kids in these immigration prisons.

There were declarations filed just this past Friday families imprisoned at Dilly, they don't say what airline they were brought there on, but they described being brought to the regular commercial airport alongside other passengers, but they're being forced onto flights by mysterious escorts, two or three escorts and who knows who those escorts are, they generally don't identify themselves, nor will they tell the families where they are going, they just force them onto the planes.

And then three unidentified people escorted the woman and her daughter through two different airports and two different flights, these are regular commercial flights on regular commercial airlines with other passengers. And on one of those flights, the woman said she desperately handed a flight attendant a vomit bag on which she had written a plea to call her husband and tell him that she and her daughter had been taken, and they were headed to San Antonio.

She hadn't been allowed to make any phone calls for two days, this was her last desperate attempt and the flight attendant, mercifully, did it call the woman's husband.

Even if the airlines don't want to talk about it, the families being shipped to Dilly on these flights are talking about it. And now this new footage of Liam in the Delta Terminal at Minneapolis St. Paul Airport makes it just impossible to ignore.

“You may remember we have covered a lot on this show, pressure campaigns that have brought to bear on commercial airlines and airports that were facilitating these ice flights, these deportation flights for Trump's federal agents.”

People were pretty upset to discover, for example, that Avello Airlines, you know, an Avello Airlines plane, they might have been taking on vacation. Might be used on a different day to fly out of plain full of people in chains who Trump's agents had snatched off the streets or rammed off the road or pulled out of their car windows. People were also upset that an aviation company called Datallus was going to lease airplane hanger space at their local airport in Delaware. They were upset about that because Datallus was also flying these flights, these deportation flights for ice.

And in both of those cases, public outcry worked. A fellow got out of the deportation business. They sold all their planes, many of them diced. Now they're back to trying to be a normal passenger airline again, trying to wash that moral stench off themselves.

“Datallus, as far as we know, they still fly for ice as well, but they don't also try to fly retail passengers.”

And after the pushback from the public, they backed off their plans at Wilmington Airport as well. In the Trump administration may no longer care what voters think of them.

They may think that Donald Trump and his ilk are never ever going to be subject again to elections that control whether or not they still hold power.

But commercial public-facing companies, they very much care what their customers think of them they have to. Back in the first Trump term 2018, commercial airlines discovered that that first Trump administration was using their flights to transport immigrant kids who had been separated from their moms and dads. And a bunch of airlines when they discovered that their flights were being used for that purpose, they told the Trump administration that they wouldn't do it anymore. They asked the Trump administration to stop doing that delta at the time, said that family separation policy did quote not a line with Delta's core values.

“Well, that was then. How about now, Delta, are your core values, are your customers?”

Okay, with this second term Trump policy of family incarceration, Delta, with the help of your planes.

How about the other big airlines? Your customers okay knowing they could be flying on one of your planes? Right, headed to a beach or a wedding or to visit their family. And in the next row, there's the five-year-old and his dad that ice just grabbed from outside their home and are transporting to a hellish Texas prison against their will. Everybody okay with this? In addition to Delta Airlines, we reached out to United and American Airlines as well to ask whether ice is also moving migrant families on their planes as well.

Whether companies have a position on it. We have not heard back. As for Liam Ramos and his family last week, lawyers for the family said they're appealing a deportation order. Their lawyer tells us the appeal of that deportation order could take months or even years. She says the government does appear to be moving with remarkable speed on this case in particular.

She tells us that if the Trump administration follows the law, Liam and his family cannot be deported while their appeal is pending. But that's a big if, if they follow the law. One other thing Liam's family lawyer tells us today, she says that in addition to Liam and his father still coping with the trauma of this ordeal, contending with anxiety and trouble sleeping and all the rest of it. She says Liam no longer wants to wear his bunny hat when he's out in public because it's now recognizable.

And he does not want the attention that it draws. This weekend this Saturday, Liam's hometown of Minneapolis will be the flagship protest and what is expected potentially to be the largest single day of protest in American history.

You might remember that was June 14, the first no kings day.

“That was the day Trump tried to throw himself a weird North Korea style military parade for his own birthday.”

That sad low turnout event was wildly overshadowed by five million Americans turning out and protest against Trump all over the country.

And then there was the second no kings day in October. That one did not draw five million people. That one drew seven million people. The flagship protest in October was in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Constitution. Seven million people turned out on no kings day in October.

And that was before Trump bulldozed the east wing of the White House. And before he tried to arrest six Democratic members of Congress. And before we learned that in addition to bombing random votes in the Caribbean, he was also deliberately killing the survivors of those bombings, which is a war crime. It was before he invaded Venezuela and announced he was taking their oil.

It was before he started an apocalyptic war with Iran.

“It was before he renamed to the Kennedy Center for himself and then announced that he would close it.”

It's before he blew up health insurance for millions of American families. It's before he effectively made the Nobel Peace Prize winner give him her prize. It's before he sent the FBI to seize the ballots from Atlanta, Georgia. It's before he posted a video online depicting President Obama and his wife Michelle Obama as if they were apes. It's before they killed Renee Nicole Good, it's before they killed Alex Predi.

It's before they took Liam. This Saturday will be Minneapolis as the flagship. But there are more than 3,000 separate protests planned all over the country. This Saturday, no kings. More head, stay with us.

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So this is just about 45 seconds. Just watch this. This is part of how they are promoting it. Our demonstration of moral strength is in opposition to the tyranny that threatens our very existence as a country. And this kind of gathering can unite us in a moral movement to save America.

And we will not stand down, not now, not ever. I've got a question for you. Are we ready? This is Gary's law. Are we going to let you out now?

That's right. So what we are doing here today is as America is able to find your standing up for rights. You're standing up for our neighbors. That is a video put out by the indivisible movement. Promoting the no kings day protest this Saturday this weekend.

This is going to be the third one. And all across the country, people have been doing kind of gorilla promotion about that protest this weekend. In Chippewa Valley Wisconsin, local organizers there showed up with shovels and die and made this very cool sign in the snow. No kings three March 28th. But we ain't afraid of no stink and blizzard with Wisconsin is ready for no kings 3.0.

Bundle up and get your bunnies out here. We'll be waiting for you. In sunny Villa, California, they're advertising Saturday's protests with this sign over a local highway overpass. This is Waterville Maine this weekend, people promoting this everywhere.

At the first no kings day protest last June, organizers say more than 5 million people showed up at marches and rallies all across the country.

Then the second no kings was in October, just four months later, organizers said more than 7 million people showed up. How many people do you think you're going to show up for the third one this Saturday? Each of the dots on this map marks where an individual no kings protest is being held in the United States. There are so many protests that from the distance the map is basically useless.

“The only thing you can see is areas where no one lives a couple of them.”

There were 2,500 protests at the first no kings, there were 2,700 protests at the second no kings. Organizers say for this one there are already more than 3,100 protests planned all over the country.

What it looks like to stand up and fight back tonight, Bruce Springsteen announced that he will be performing at that flagship protest.

Joining us now is Ezra Levin. He's the co-founder of Indivisible one of the grassroots groups that has helped lead the organizing for the no kings protest. Ezra, it's nice to see you. Thanks for pan here. Great to see you. Indivisible does lots of different kinds of organizing.

“How do these large, very decentralized no kings protest will now have the third one of them this Saturday?”

How do they fit into the overall movement to oppose Trump and to limit his freedom of movement? As president. Rachel, that's a great question because I think actually people tend to both underplay and overplay the role of massive one day protests like this. I would say no kings is a tactic and extremely important tactic that can accomplish a couple of things.

One, it can bust through that bubble that air of inevitability, that Trump that this regime is invincible is unstoppable is all powerful.

You don't look all powerful when you're facing the largest non-violent protests in American history in every nook and cranny in the country. So sitting that message is great is key is why I'm excited that there are more than 30, 100 protests are already planned for Saturday.

“But the second thing it does, the second thing it does that I think is just as important is it doesn't just gather millions of people in one place.”

I love that spring seeing this plane in the Twin Cities. I love we're going to have a big New York event in Chicago event in San Francisco event. That's great. I'm from the rural Texas. I love that Kyle Texas has an event. I love that the redist and most rural parts of the country also have protests because the day after no kings democracy won't suddenly be saved. Trump will still be in the White House. This illegal and unconstitutional war will still be going on. Secret police force Goonsquad will still be terrorizing American communities. So we need to build. This is why it's important to be organizing where you are and why we recommend if there is not a no kings protest within 30 minutes or so of where you live.

You should probably be organizing your own boat to make the point on March 28, but also to start organizing your own community for what comes next. In terms of the sort of atmosphere in the country, I will say that it's two different related feelings that it creates in me to see a gigantic protest of a million people in New York or someplace where there's lots of people have come together. And also to see five people out on that street corner in a rural place where there does not have a lot of population. It's kind of the same feeling in terms of the import of it.

As right, I want to ask you, you know, one of the things that's happened between the last huge no kings day protest and this one this Saturday is of course the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis and the brutalizing of protesters and some other places.

“Do you think that's affected the way people are thinking about showing up for this kind of event?”

Oh, absolutely, but I don't think the way that Trump and his folks all across the country who are launching these campaigns of terror and communities thought it would. Two days after Alex Freddy was murdered in the Twin Cities, you could imagine people over the country said, oh my gosh, that that said, I'm mad about that, but I've got to protect myself. I'm not going to show up. I've got to hide. I've got to not be targeted by this regime. Instead, we saw the exact opposite Rachel the exact opposite. Two days after Alex Freddy was murdered.

We saw them within 200,000 people joining no kings eyes on eye training to get trained up on exactly what Alex Freddy was doing exactly what Renee Good was doing. If there is a shift though that I've seen is how the Republicans are responding in no kings. It's really interesting because in the lead up to no kings too, they spent two, three weeks talking all about no kings. How this is going to be a violent protest. We're going to demolish the country. They had to call out the National Guard. And of course, that's not what we saw. We saw powerful joy from millions of people around the country. But you'll see right now I challenge you. Find one national elected Republican who has said the phrase, no kings in the last month.

I don't think you'll find that person because the word is gone out. Do not talk about this because if we don't talk about it, then there's no conflict. There's no conflict. Press won't cover. And if press doesn't cover it, then people won't find out about it. If people don't find out about it, they won't show up. That's a smart strategy on their part. I think we've got to adapt our tactics to recruit folks ourselves. So I do hope people will text no kings to 5, 9, 7, 9, 8.

Find out where your event is and then text three people who never attended a protest before. They're not activists. They're not organizers.

They might not even be political, but they don't like what's happening in this country. Text them and recruit them to no kings on Saturday and invite them to join you.

Thanks, Rachel.

“All right, much more news ahead, stay with us.”

Start your day with the MSNow Daily Newsletter. Sharp insights from Voices You Trust stand out moments from your favorite shows and fresh perspectives from expert shaping the news. Sign up at MS.now. Tonight the U.S. Senate has confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security from Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin. He replaces Christy Nome, whom President Trump fired earlier this month. Nome's top advisor Corey Lewandowski is at the center of new reporting, alleging what sure looks like a series of proposed kickbacks and other kinds of financial corruption within the Homeland Security Department.

NBC News reports that some Homeland Security contractors have told the White House that Corey Lewandowski told them he wanted to be paid and exchange for helping them get Homeland Security contracts. When the company's refused, they say Lewandowski then blocked them from being granted government contracts. Lewandowski has denied these claims, roundly and adamantly, a statement on his behalf says in part, quote, Mr. Lewandowski, adamantly denies ever demanding any payment or compensation from any potential former or current government contractor.

The statement says the allegations are, quote, not supported by a single piece of evidence because there is none. I should tell you, these reports have none in the last spurred a congressional inquiry by Democrats on House oversight. But alongside those allegations, there's a second sort of mysterious financial update we have for you about the Homeland Security Department and specifically how the Trump administration has been buying up warehouse is all over the country to use as prison camps to hold people without trial.

Well, now, in at least two of the places where they are trying to do that in Utah and Georgia, local press are reporting that the Trump administration agreed to purchase these warehouses to turn into Trump prison camps. But they appeared to purify purchase these facilities for way, way, way more than the facilities are worth in Georgia, for example, the Trump administration has agreed to pay $129 million for a vacant warehouse.

Just a little over a year ago, that same property was valued at just $26 million.

A fraction of what the Trump administration just paid for it. Same thing over in Utah, the Trump administration agreed to pay more than $145 million for a warehouse there. According to local property records, that warehouses only worth around $97 million, meaning the Trump administration potentially overpaid for that one by $0.48 million. Why the overpaying? These proposed Trump prison camps have been wildly unpopular in the communities where Trump has been buying up these warehouses. As you see here in Utah, there have been multiple protests against the plan conversion of this Salt Lake City warehouse,

which the White House appears to have massively overpaid for at a time when the agency that paid for them is being accused of rank corruption and self-dealing at the highest levels.

“What's going on here and do these two dots connect?”

More on this in just a moment, stay with us. Nate Blueen is a state senator from the great state of Utah. His South Salt Lake City constituents are wildly against the Trump administration's efforts to put a massive prison camp in a warehouse in Salt Lake City. A prison camp to hold thousands of people indefinitely and without trial. Senator Blueen is one of the local officials who's attended protests against that facility.

Last week at one of those protests, he specifically called out the inexplicable $150 million price tag the Trump administration agreed to pay for an empty warehouse in Salt Lake City,

which appears to be tens of millions of dollars more than the property is worth. He said quote out there, someone is making a whole bunch of money profiteering off the suffering of human lives. Joining us now is Utah State Senator Nate Blueen who is also candidate for Congress this year. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate it.

So what do your constituents think about this proposed facility? I know that Salt Lake City felt like it dodged a bullet. There had been an original plan to buy a warehouse that had then been scuttled after the owner of a sort of talked out of it.

“But then ice came in and bought a second facility. How do your constituents feel about it?”

People feel betrayed this happened out of nowhere. We saw overnight this transaction for as you called out earlier $50 million over the

A praise value of this site and people are so frustrated. They want leaders who are going to step up and be accountable for the decisions that they're getting made.

But we have had strong local leaders in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County standing up and speaking out against this.

And really making sure there are constituents feel heard and that we have the opportunity to get involved in this process and to actually make a difference. As you also mentioned, we hid shut down a similar facility months ago and for this to come out of nowhere. And again, for somebody to be making tens of millions of dollars off of it is just so incontentionable in the current environment.

Well, let me ask you about that price tag part of it.

It does seem unusual that they seem to be wildly overpaying for a facility like this, but it is also a pattern that we're starting to see emerge with other facilities that they're buying around the country. Certainly there's been reporting similar to what you found in Utah in Georgia just over the past few days and we've seen it in other places as well.

“Do you as a state senator, does anybody acting locally in Utah have any recourse to try to figure out how the price was arrived at?”

Who in your words might be profiteering off of this type of plant facilities or any way to follow the money here?

Well, you know, I am running for Congress and I think that's where we're going to make this difference is we need to lean in with the power that Democrats are going to take back in November and to hold hearings and to hold everyone accountable to abolish ice and to make sure that we are actually going after the people who have made these decisions and establishing where this money is coming from. This is taxpayer dollars that are getting spent far over the budgets of what we should be spending and frankly we shouldn't be spending any money on on these sorts of internment camps.

Utah has an history with internment camps and we don't need more of them in our backyard so I think we need to be exercising every single option here. We need our local governments to step in and say no to permits and you know for infrastructure for water for the safety needs that these are going to bring along at the protest I was at just last week. We saw people lining the streets and trucks were having a hard time getting by this is frankly bad for business that's the least in my concerns here, but that sort of disruption needs to become the norm.

As long as we see the Trump administration and folks playing along my opponent in this race has taken tens of thousands of dollars from private prison corporations. You know we need to elect leaders who do not who are not going to be accountable to these corporations that are making money the billionaire class and splitting us up and really driving us apart.

“So it's important that we do have these strong people speak up for our communities for South Salt Lake and others in particular that are going to be targeted here.”

This is happening in one of the more diverse neighborhoods in Salt Lake City and I think everything I've heard from Mike constituents that I represent right now from the folks that I'm speaking with as I'm running for Congress. Our speaking out loudly against this they see ISIS overreach they see all of the things that are happening and believe that this is an agency that has lost its social license to operate. And so to move forward with something that would lock up 75 100 people 800,000 square feet I walked around this thing I mean it takes it takes time to just get around one side of the building and to imagine what's happening in there is just so criminal to me.

You taught state senator congressional candidate Nate blue and thank you very much for being here stay keep keep us surprised we'd love to have you back to talk about this again.

“Thank you check out need for you to dot com if you want to learn more.”

I'll be right back stay with us. All right that's going to do it for me tonight. Subscribe to MS now premium on apple podcasts for early access at free listening and bonus content to all of MS. Now's original podcasts including the chartopping series the best people with Nicole Wallace why is this happening main justice and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MS now shows ad free and ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddo's original series including Rachel Maddo presents burn order.

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