Trump's 'best people' are not doing very well; bad time to cut career public servants

ABC News1

Jen Psaki looks at a startling number of Trump Cabinet members whose lack of fitness for the jobs they serve is glaringly apparent, all while career public servants who make the government work regardless of the competence of the people in charge are struggling to adjust to crippling DOGE cuts and burdensome new red tape.   For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.msnbc.com/

Transcript

00:00But I want to start tonight with this. Do you hear that? That is the rare and blissful sound

00:08of silence. We rarely get that these days. Because for the first time in his presidency,

00:14Donald Trump has not made a public appearance for three straight days. We're not sure why.

00:19Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's feeling a little low energy. Who knows? But for whatever reason,

00:24the president is taking his longest break from the public eye since retaking the White House.

00:30Now, if you're missing all of those nonsensical updates from the administration,

00:34because sometimes they're interesting to talk about, don't worry, because the president has

00:38surrounded himself with what he calls the best people. Also, his words, not mine. Who are out

00:44there filling the void. People like former WWE wrestling executive Linda McMahon, who Trump

00:50inexplicably put in charge of the Department of Education. It's quite an assignment for her.

00:54Secretary McMahon, of course, testified before the Senate today, and Republican senators

00:59kind of did their level best to lob her softball questions and make it look like

01:04she kind of knows what she's doing. I mean, here was Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen

01:09trying to tee her up for an easy one.

01:13What was we ranked in reading and math in 1979?

01:17I'm sorry, what?

01:18What was we ranked nationally in math and reading in 1979?

01:23We were very, very low on the totem pole.

01:25We were number one in 1979.

01:26We were very, very low on the totem pole.

01:32Actually, we were number one. Very awkward. That's the secretary of education, everyone.

01:37Now, in her limited defense, Senator Mullen's question was garbled nonsense. I mean, set aside

01:43the strange verb conjugation about what we was, which ranked, which, by the way, maybe that's

01:48confirmation that our education system needs help. He asked her how the U.S. ranked nationally

01:53when he clearly meant globally. So clearly neither of these people are getting an A in reading

01:57comprehension or, frankly, grammar today. What about math?

02:01We spend $1,58 billion a year on TRIO?

02:10Yes.

02:13That's $1,580 million a year. Is my math right?

02:20I think that's right, sir.

02:21And how long have we been spending $1,580 million a year on this program? More than 10 years?

02:31Yes.

02:33So that's over a trillion dollars.

02:36Okay. I understand that we was not ranked number one in math recently either, but something

02:44there seems off, right? Don't have to be a mathematician. Maybe there's a Democrat on

02:49this committee who can help them out a little bit.

02:53I'm secretary, and I'm not a great mathematician, but I think you were talking about a trillion

02:58dollars. I believe 1.5 billion times 10 is $15 billion. That's a little bit off from a

03:06trillion dollars. I think the budget cuts $1.2 billion for TRIO.

03:11Well, 1.2, that would be $12 billion, not a trillion dollars.

03:15Okay.

03:17Okay. Thank goodness for Senator Jack Reed. Now, Republican senators and Trump's education

03:22secretary just spectacularly failed a math and a reading quiz of their own making while

03:29they were complaining about America falling behind in math and reading. But unfortunately,

03:34Linda McMahon is not the only one of Trump's best people who does not seem up to the job

03:40these days. I mean, here's the headline from the New York Times today. Acting FEMA chief

03:44told staff he didn't know about U.S. hurricane season. And here's more of what the story actually

03:50says. The acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told employees on Monday that

03:55he did not know the United States has a hurricane season.

03:59Now, the Trump administration has said those comments were meant as a joke,

04:04but that was definitely not clear to people in the room. FEMA is now heading into a new hurricane

04:09season with a staff that has been absolutely gutted thanks to Trump's cuts. And FEMA staff are

04:14reportedly also worried about the new director's live experience. I wonder why there? Maybe the new

04:20FEMA director should have Googled his job first to see what it entails. After all, that is what Trump's

04:26equally unqualified social security commissioner actually did and then talked about.

04:31Yeah, it's about social security. And I'm really, I'm really not, I swear I'm not looking for a job.

04:40And I'm like, well, what am I going to do? So I'm Googling social security, you know,

04:45one of my great skills. I'm one of the great Googlers on the East Coast. I'm like,

04:49what the heck's the commissioner of social security?

04:55What the heck's the commissioner of social security? Well, sir, that's you. You are the

05:00commissioner of social security. Now, to be fair, every member of Trump's cabinet seems to be kind

05:06of struggling to do their job these days. And honestly, a little Googling might serve some of

05:11them well. Could be worse. Googling might help them. I mean, take, for instance, Health and Human

05:16Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last week, we talked about how his much anticipated

05:21and much celebrated at the time by Maha people, Maha report on American health was riddled with

05:27citation errors and at least seven studies that didn't even exist. Well, Secretary Kennedy and his

05:34crack team took a crack at it again. They updated that report to fix those errors, which led to a new

05:40headline the next day. Here it is. The Maha report has been updated with fresh errors. Yes, HHS swapped

05:49out the bogus studies in their first report with several new bogus studies. The actual authors of

05:56those new studies say HHS is still getting it wrong and is misrepresenting their work. So RFK Jr. has now

06:03somehow managed to screw up the same report twice. Okay, so things aren't going great at FEMA or Social

06:11Security, HHS, but surely the Department of Homeland Security is running like a swish swatch, right?

06:18Well, last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent out a press release claiming that ICE had

06:23arrested a, quote, illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Donald J. Trump.

06:28It included an image of a handwritten letter, a threat letter that you can see on the screen there

06:34that was sent to the president. Noem claimed that letter was sent by an undocumented immigrant in

06:39Milwaukee named Raymond Reyes. But it turns out local law enforcement officials did not think

06:45Ramon Reyes sent that letter. In fact, they think that Reyes was being set up. This is from a New York

06:51Times story that dropped late today. Quote, not long after the announcement, the government story began to

06:57look shaky. And as detectives in Wisconsin began looking deeper, they came to believe Reyes had

07:04been framed. By this week, Milwaukee County prosecutors had filed identity theft and witness

07:10intimidation charges against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin resident. They said that man had written

07:16several threatening letters that included Mr. Reyes's name in the return address. Prosecutors said it was

07:21an attempt to catch the attention of the Trump administration and weaponize the threat of deportation

07:26against Mr. Reyes, who is scheduled to testify against the man at a robbery trial next month.

07:33So this guy who is actually on trial for a crime basically tried to trick the Trump administration

07:39into deporting the witness who would testify against him. That's what happened. And the Department

07:44of Homeland Security appears to have fallen for it. They did exactly what he wanted. I don't know.

07:51Maybe Christina would be better off solving crimes if she was dressing up like Sherlock Holmes.

07:56She loves to dress up. Couldn't hurt. Maybe she could try it. Meanwhile, Trump's intelligence chief

08:01appears to be struggling with her job as well. As director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard

08:06is responsible for making sure that Donald Trump is up to date on the latest intelligence, which

08:11includes, of course, reading his presidential daily briefing, digesting all of it. But apparently that is

08:18proving very difficult. Since taking office, Trump has taken his daily intelligence briefing less than

08:23once a week, which is far less than previous presidents, including Trump himself during his

08:28first term. And so Tulsi Gabbard is now resorting to what I would call creative methods. According to NBC News,

08:36one idea that's been discussed is possibly creating a video version of the PDB that's made to look and feel like

08:42a Fox News broadcast. A new PDB could not only could include not only graphics and pictures, but also maps and

08:50animated representations of exploding bombs similar to a video game. That is NBC's reporting. In other words,

08:58because Tulsi Gabbard is bad at her job and the president of the United States doesn't like to read,

09:04career intelligence staffers may be forced to put on some kind of Fox News puppet show in order to get the

09:09president to pay attention to intelligence threats against the United States and otherwise.

09:15Just digest that for a moment. And that is really part of the problem with all this. We all know when

09:20it comes to people, Trump is not sending his best. But at least the career public servants who have been

09:26the heart and soul of every administration, Democratic and Republican, should still be able to do their

09:31jobs, right? There's a whole system of dedicated federal workers who actually make the government

09:36function and in turn make even the most incompetent look vaguely competent. But Trump is making it

09:43impossible for them to do their jobs, too. I mean, The Washington Post recently dug into it all the ways

09:48Trump's efforts to increase government efficiency have, ironically, buried federal workers under red tape.

09:55Here's part of what the story says, quote, at NASA, employees recently wrote several detailed paragraphs

10:00across multiple rounds of emails to win approval to buy simple fastening bolts. Fastening bolts, folks,

10:08required multiple paragraphs of emails. At the Food and Drug Administration, once routine tests on food,

10:14monitoring for accuracy and labeling, coloring and exposure to heavy metals were delayed significantly

10:19because the agency began requiring department level approval for expenses at every step. Purchasing samples

10:26to test, paying to ship samples between labs, buying lab supplies. What could go wrong there? It's only

10:32the Food and Drug Administration. At air traffic control towers at two dozen West Coast airports,

10:38officials are unable to easily pay to have their windows washed and shades cleaned, which is obviously

10:43important. At the Social Security Administration, Trump officials and Doge pushed thousands of central

10:49office workers to take lower level positions answering phones in field offices, threatening to fire whoever did not

10:56make the jump, according to emails reviewed by the Post and interviews with a half a dozen agency employees.

11:02So government officials cannot purchase bolts for rockets, do food safety testing, or wash the windows

11:09at air traffic control towers without wading through layers and layers of new Trump-approved red tape.

11:16Workers at Social Security are being forcibly demoted to call center workers because of Trump's workforce cuts.

11:21All of the real people who make our government run and have made governments run for decades

11:26are being squeezed. And all we're left with is the bizarre and clueless leadership of Trump's so-called

11:34very best people.

11:51Radio chatter

11:54You

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