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00:00It's Sunday, March 16th. I'm Ali Velshi. We've got brand new polling from NBC this morning
00:04showing that for the first time in the poll's history, a majority of Americans
00:08disapprove of Donald Trump's handling of the economy. Now, we're going to dig into those
00:12numbers with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and we'll talk about threats to Social Security. Plus,
00:16Congressman Jamie Raskin is taking on a key figure who's seen as carrying out the president's
00:21promised retribution agenda. He'll join me to explain, and we'll get the latest on a flurry
00:25of legal activity overnight after the Trump administration issued an executive order
00:30invoking an obscure 18th century law to deport a group of Venezuelans without a hearing,
00:36and a federal judge receiving word that planes were already departing with the immigrants on board
00:41ordered that they be turned around. Then, the former Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is
00:46here to talk about when silence becomes acquiescence, and when acquiescence becomes
00:50collaboration, and how to shape the fight against authoritarian creep. But we begin this morning
00:55with the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadliest medical crisis in modern American history,
01:00which unfolded with Donald Trump in the White House. Now, his second administration is waging
01:05a war on our health with unqualified advisors in powerful positions who hold fringe, debunked,
01:11and unscientific conspiratorial beliefs. And those seem determined to take us back to a time before
01:16life-saving scientific discoveries. Five years ago today, shortly after the first cases of COVID-19
01:22were confirmed in New York, schools in New York City were shut down. Days later, stay-at-home
01:27orders started being instituted in states across the country. At the time, we were all trying to
01:32figure it out together. We turned to experts and trusted medical officials to help guide us through
01:36those uncharted early days of the pandemic. It's been less than two months since the novel
01:44coronavirus COVID-19 first arrived in the United States, and since then, it has wrought havoc
01:49into the United States, and indeed, to much of the world. Overnight, the House of Representatives
01:54passed a bipartisan coronavirus aid package that includes free testing, paid emergency leave,
02:00it strengthens unemployment insurance, and takes other measures. Fear and anxiety are the new normal,
02:05and we know that you, the viewer, have tons of questions about COVID-19. So this hour, we're
02:11going to try to answer as many as we can to the best of our ability. Now, five years later, a new
02:18Trump administration is proceeding as if COVID-19 never happened, as if not a single lesson was
02:22learned in the navigation of that deadly crisis. President Trump is now targeting the very
02:27scientists and agencies whose research led to breakthroughs like the vaccine that helped get
02:31us out of the pandemic. He's gutting funding for institutions like the National Institutes of
02:36Health, the country's primary federal funding source for medical research. In 2023, the NIH
02:42provided more than 35 billion dollars in grants, supporting more than 300,000 researchers across
02:50public and private institutions. Since returning to power, the Trump administration has put in place
02:54a massive funding cut for NIH research grants, which has been put on hold for the moment by a
02:59federal judge, but those are grants that would directly affect things like clinical trials and
03:03patient care. Researchers warn the move would set medical innovation back decades. It would mean
03:09biomedical research will be less ambitious, less competitive, and achieve fewer breakthroughs.
03:14The same can be said for the United States Agency for International Development, USAID,
03:18which helps fund programs that prevent disease around the world, programs that not only save
03:23lives in other countries, but keep us safe here in the United States by preventing pandemics.
03:29Secretary of State Marco Rubio has shuttered the agency and has canceled 5,200 of USAID's 6,200
03:37contracts. Research projects that are being eliminated are said to include active work on
03:41tuberculosis, AIDS, Ebola, and multiple types of cancer. The destruction of USAID has had a dramatic
03:48impact on Johns Hopkins University, one of the nation's most significant and prestigious
03:53institutions for scientific research and medical care. The university received significant funding
03:58from the agency and has announced that it has been forced to cut more than 2,200 positions
04:04because of those losses. This affects some 600 clinical trials and programs on things from HIV
04:11to tuberculosis to diarrheal disease to cholera. Dr. Judd Watson, an infectious disease physician
04:18and the chair of the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins, told NBC News that,
04:23quote, USAID funding has provided a mechanism for us to have eyes on the ground of what's
04:28happening around the world in relationship to disease. We are one plane ride away from the
04:33spread of very significant diseases into our country, end quote. President Trump says USAID
04:40was run by, quote, radical left lunatics, end quote, and was riddled with tremendous fraud.
04:46Trump has also targeted the Centers for Disease Control, which, as we learned during the COVID-19
04:51pandemic, is charged with protecting Americans from outbreaks and other public health threats.
04:55Instead, the CDC, which is under the purview of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has
05:01a long history of anti-vaccine advocacy, is re-examining the widely debunked claim
05:07that vaccines cause autism. On Friday, TV personality Dr. Oz was on Capitol Hill for
05:13his hearing to head the department in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. He refused to rule out
05:17cuts to Medicaid, which covers health care costs for 72 million Americans. That lines up with the
05:24House GOP's budget bill, which also calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, potentially as much as
05:30$880 billion. And this war on our health is happening as the nation is experiencing a
05:36significant measles outbreak, a disease which had been considered eliminated in the United States
05:41not that long ago. Measles is extremely contagious, significantly more so than diseases such as the
05:47flu or Ebola or COVID-19. Up to nine out of 10 unvaccinated people are likely to be infected
05:54if they come into close contact with someone who has the measles. According to the World
05:58Health Organization, measles kills an estimated 200,000 people a year worldwide, primarily
06:05young children. Measles is also easy to prevent. It's a very safe and effective vaccine, the MMR
06:11vaccine, which is known as the gold standard for vaccine efficacy. It offers 97 percent protection
06:17for life. But the first dose of that life-saving vaccine is typically given to children at 12 to
06:2415 months of age, which is part of the reason the measles mortality rate is so much higher
06:29for young children. So far in the first three and a half months of this year, there have been at
06:33least 320 confirmed cases of measles across 16 states. That already surpasses the total number
06:39of diagnoses in all of 2024, and we're just in March. The majority of the cases are associated
06:45with the spreading outbreak, which originated in Texas. Nearly all of the cases have been in
06:51unvaccinated individuals. An unvaccinated school-aged child has also died, by the way, the
06:56first measles death of a child in the United States in more than 20 years. Secretary Kennedy, who has
07:02a long history of anti-vaccine advocacy, has downplayed the outbreak. He's pushed unproven
07:07treatments, including cod liver oil and the, quote, almost miraculous and instantaneous effects
07:13of steroids and antibiotics. Joining me now is Dr. Peter Hotez. Dr. Hotez was one of the medical
07:18experts we regularly turn to during the pandemic. He serves as the co-director for the Center for
07:23Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital. He's the dean of the National School of Tropical
07:28Medicine. He's the author of multiple important books, including The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.
07:33And importantly, he was one of the experts we turned to frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic.
07:38Dr. Hotez, it's good to have you back. Thank you for being with us.
07:43Oh, it's great to see you again, Ali.
07:45Five years ago tomorrow, Moderna introduced the first human trials for a COVID-19 vaccine.
07:51But the point, and the point you made to us all those years ago, is that the research that went
07:56into that vaccine and the others started well before the pandemic. In some cases,
08:0140 years before the pandemic, including research that you'd done. This is the kind of thing we're
08:05talking about here. Research that's being done in the background that most people don't even know
08:09for diseases that we don't know that we're going to suffer from.
08:13Yeah, that's exactly right, Ali. Remember the work going in to show that the spike protein,
08:19especially the receptor binding domain of the spike protein, is the target of any vaccine
08:24strategy against a coronavirus, whether it's SARS or SARS-2, which is the cause of COVID-19.
08:30That was work that was funded in our lab all through the 2010s and possibly even earlier
08:36than that. So that was a decade of research funded by the NIH. And then all of the research
08:42that led to the Nobel Prize at the University of Pennsylvania, scientists for mRNA research,
08:47that was 15 years of research. So unfortunately, the American people too often have the impression
08:54that mRNA vaccines arose out of nowhere, and it didn't. There was 15 years of significant
09:01support from the National Institutes of Health that funded two convergent lines, one for showing
09:08the spike protein as a target for coronavirus, and second, how to shape the mRNA as a vaccine
09:15strategy. Well, what we learned from talking to you all those years ago and since then is all that
09:19we don't know about biology, about chemistry, about disease. And look, my argument is that's
09:26okay. It's okay if everybody watching the show doesn't know what the NIH does. It's okay if you
09:30don't know what clinical trials are going on out there, but they have to happen. The fact that you
09:35can target them because people don't know what they are and that the government can get away
09:39with impunity and saying we're cutting all of this research, you shouldn't have to know what it is.
09:45You do have to know that important work is being done. Well, and not only that, Ali, you're
09:51absolutely right, but the other aspect is now with this mRNA having proof of concept that it works
09:56for infectious diseases, now we're turning it to cancer therapeutics. So there was a recent report
10:02that an mRNA vaccine is showing a lot of promise in pancreatic cancer, which, you know, in the past
10:08has been such a devastating condition that's taken the lives of so many of my friends and colleagues
10:14over the years. We're now at Baylor looking at the possibility of creating an mRNA for triple
10:19negative breast cancer. So again, this is going to be the next generation of cancer therapeutics,
10:26and we can't now cut that off. And then we have other pandemic threats coming down the line.
10:33There's this thing called H5N1 that's affecting cattle and poultry, and now there's been 70 human
10:40cases so far. There's no human to human transmission, but that could happen, and it could
10:45happen over the next couple of years. And so we're going to need new vaccines for that, and that
10:50can only come through support from the National Institutes of Health. So this is absolutely vital,
10:56not only for the health of our nation, but also to protect our whole nation's biosecurity. This is not
11:01the thing you want to shut down. Well, because that's the research side. Then there's the
11:05political side, and when I say that, I'm referring to the measles situation we've got in the United
11:10States. And we've not talked about a measles outbreak in this country for a very long time,
11:14largely something that people thought was eradicated. It doesn't take much to shift
11:18the political winds, to cause people to say, I don't need vaccines, they're dangerous, they're
11:23going to cause autism or whatever the case is. In some cases, those concerns are rooted in some
11:27valid fears, and in some cases, like MMR, they're simply not. And yet we have a head of HHS who
11:35suggests that there may be other ways to deal with measles.
11:39Yeah, and it's not the kind of message we want to get out. I'm here in Texas, where the measles
11:44epidemic is pretty serious business, where at least 250 known cases, and some of my colleagues
11:50in West Texas are telling me that number may be considerably higher. And the one thing you can't
11:55hide is the 34 hospitalizations in Texas right now because of measles. Measles is a serious
12:04illness that causes measles pneumonia. It causes measles croup, it causes permanent neurologic
12:12injury, deafness, and this is what's racing through the unvaccinated populations in the state
12:19of Texas. And the only way to slow this epidemic down right now is to vaccinate our population,
12:25to catch up vaccination campaigns. You can even vaccinate individuals who have been exposed to
12:30the virus. If you vaccinate within 72 hours, that has to be all hands on deck. And I don't know,
12:35I'm really head scratching what our health and human services secretary is saying. He's starting
12:40to talk about vitamin A as a preventative. It's not, or budesonide as a steroid. I don't know
12:46where that comes from. The overwhelming message needs to be to vaccinate our population and stop
12:53it. And as long as we have an unvaccinated population in Texas, this virus will continue
12:59to race through it. I think of it like a hurricane over warm Caribbean waters. As long as there's warm
13:04water, that hurricane will continue. It's the same with an unvaccinated population. We learned this
13:09during COVID. You'd think we'd have learned that lesson. Dr. Hotez, good to see you as always. Thank
13:12you for being with us. Dr. Peter Hotez is the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development
13:16at Texas Children's Hospital, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, and the
13:20author of the important book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science. All right, coming up, the very
13:24latest in the legal drama that began unfolding overnight when the Trump administration invoked
13:28an obscure 18th century law to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants. Plus, Congressman Jamie
13:34Raskin is trying to interrupt President Trump's retribution agenda. He'll explain how himself. And
13:39it would be almost funny if it weren't also so dangerous, why we can't just cringe at Republicans'
13:44increasingly embarrassing proposals to venerate Donald Trump as a founding father of an imagined
13:49golden age. Then, when does silence cross over into complicity? Former Washington state governor
13:55Jay Inslee has some ideas. He'll join me ahead to talk about President Trump's latest executive
13:59order. Yesterday, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in an executive order to
14:05deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang accusing the migrants of, quote, unlawfully
14:11infiltrating the country. The ACLU and the nonprofit Democracy Forward sued, and a federal
14:16judge in Washington, D.C. said he would issue a temporary order blocking deportations. Let's get
14:21right to NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, who's in West Palm Beach,
14:25Florida, traveling with the president. Yamiche. Well, good afternoon. This, of course, has all
14:31unfolded very quickly. But President Trump, as you said, has invoked this Aliens Enemies Act
14:37of 1798. This is a wartime, rarely used law. It dates back last time we saw that it was
14:43implemented was during World War II. And the president is justifying this move because he's
14:47saying that this Venezuelan gang is a foreign terrorist organization. It's been designated
14:52that by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And then the White House put out a proclamation
14:57putting in writing some more of its certification. I want to read part of that proclamation to you.
15:01It said that the gang has, quote, unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting
15:05irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States, both directly and at
15:12the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, of course,
15:16that being Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who is seen by many as a dictator.
15:21But you asked about how this all unfolded. It's really interesting. A number of groups,
15:26including the ACLU, sued to stop the president from using this act when reports were saying
15:31that this was going to happen. Then a judge temporarily said that he was going to block
15:36that. But it really only applied to five suspected members of this Venezuelan gang.
15:41Then the president put out this proclamation, and a federal judge held another hearing,
15:45an emergency hearing, where he then expanded that block. And now it applies to more people.
15:50And it's really anybody that the government is trying to deport using that law connected to this
15:56gang, suspected to be connected to this gang. The other thing, Ali, that's really interesting here
16:00is that this is moving so quickly that at the emergency hearing last night, the judge had to
16:04apologize for not wearing a robe or a suit. He wore a sweater. But he said that things were just
16:08moving so quickly. He wanted to make sure he got in there. I'm going to use that as my excuse for
16:12not wearing a tie this morning. Yamiche, there were reports that there was actually a flight
16:17already en route to Venezuela when the judge issued his ruling blocking the order. What do
16:22we know about that? Well, it's really fascinating because the ACLU and a number of other groups that
16:28were suing said that they had heard that there was a plane in the air and that it was carrying
16:34people that were being deported, that were suspected of being gang members and part of
16:38this Venezuelan gang. The judge said that if any plane was in midair, that it would need to be
16:44turned around. An attorney for the Trump administration said that that would happen.
16:49That being said, it's unclear sort of whether or not that actually happened,
16:54not accusing the government of, of course, violating a court order. There's just some
16:57question of whether or not once a plane was landing, whether or not it actually was able
17:02to get the communication to turn around. The judge's order, and this is really important
17:06to underscore, the judge's order says, if a plane has landed and those people have been
17:10deported and are already on the ground in other countries like El Salvador or Honduras,
17:15that this does not apply to them. Thus, if you were someone who was deported and then you made
17:18it all the way to El Salvador or Honduras, you're no longer in the jurisdiction of the judge, he said.
17:23So those people will continue to be deported. But if they were in the air mid-flight,
17:27the idea was that they would have had to turn back around. And the White House,
17:31though, is saying that they've deported at least 300 people suspected of being part of this
17:36Venezuelan gang this weekend. We're out to them asking about the timing of that flight. But as
17:40again, as of now, it is, it is our understanding that those flights would have been turned around,
17:45Ali. All right, lots to unpack here. Thank you, Yamiche. Good to see you, as always,
17:49Yamiche Alcindor in, in Florida. All right, coming up, Congressman Jamie Raskin is taking
17:53a swipe at President Trump's retribution agenda, taking on a key Trump world figure that he says
17:57is using his office to illegally attack. Donald Trump made no secret of his plans to exact revenge
18:03against his enemies if he won a second term. He campaigned on it. Now that we're living through
18:07Trump's retribution era, Congressman Jamie Raskin is moving to rein it in. Raskin sent a nine-page
18:12letter this week to the Justice Department inspector general asking for an investigation
18:16into recent moves by the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., a man named Ed Martin,
18:22whom Raskin says has, quote, used his office to illegally attack critics and perceived enemies
18:27of the Trump administration while endangering the public safety of the citizens and visitors
18:32to our nation's capital, end quote. Raskin said Martin has violated federal statutes,
18:37DOJ regulations and rules of legal ethics. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Ed Martin,
18:42if you don't know anything about him. He's a conservative activist with no prior prosecutorial
18:47experience who was named by Trump to be interim U.S. attorney for D.C. and later nominated to
18:52take over the critical post on a permanent basis. Martin was at the Capitol on January 6th,
18:58comparing what he called the rowdy crowd to a day at Mardi Gras. The House Select Committee
19:03that investigated January 6th even sent him a subpoena, but he never complied and he was never
19:07charged in connection with the riot. Ed Martin helped organize the Stop the Steal movement,
19:12according to NBC News, and served as a defense attorney for multiple January 6th defendants,
19:18which is where the story gets interesting. When Donald Trump won back the presidency,
19:22he gave Ed Martin a job where he would oversee hundreds of January 6th cases.
19:27In that role, Martin demoted top prosecutors from January 6th cases to entry level positions,
19:33and under Trump's direction, oversaw the dismissals of cases of defendants
19:37that Trump had pardoned. As Reuters first reported, one of those cases was complicated
19:42when Martin found himself on both sides of it. As the D.C. U.S. attorney, he was now the
19:48prosecutor seeking to have the case dismissed. But in this particular case, he was also still listed
19:54as defense counsel. That's right. As prosecutor, he was trying to dismiss a case in which he was
19:59representing the defendant. Martin did eventually file a motion to be removed as counsel for that
20:04January 6th defendant, but the court refused to grant Martin's motion to withdraw, not because
20:10of any perceived conflict of interest, but because Martin's bar membership had lapsed.
20:14The top federal prosecutor in D.C. was not, at the time, a member in good standing of the U.S.
20:21District Court for the District of Columbia. Joining me now is the Maryland Congressman
20:25Jamie Raskin. He's the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, good to see you.
20:29Thank you for joining us. I have to ask you, we are talking in so many different ways through all
20:33of our shows and all of these days about how to stand up to this authoritarian creep. You've
20:40written a letter to the Attorney General's Inspector General's office. Tell me about that
20:44and whether you think that's even meaningful these days, because there are a lot of people
20:47out there thinking, does this Trump administration pay attention to anybody's complaints?
20:53Well, we hope it's going to be meaningful to have the Inspector General actually conduct
20:57an investigation, because these ethical and legal violations are just glaring. The first thing they
21:02teach you in legal ethics in law school is you can't represent both the plaintiff and the defendant.
21:08You can't represent both the state and the criminal defendants. And yet, after plunging
21:13himself into January 6th world and describing the insurrection as Mardi Gras, he got into
21:20his current office and then dismissed charges against his own clients. It's hard to imagine
21:28a more blatant conflict of interest. But he has proceeded to make threats against public officials.
21:32He talked about prosecuting Senator Schumer for remarks he made back in 2025 years ago,
21:42saying that they were a threat to the Supreme Court. They were completely First Amendment
21:46protected remarks and were not a threat to anybody. But he's made threats to journalists,
21:52anybody he deems to be a political opponent of the president and describes himself as a
21:57lawyer for Donald Trump and not as a lawyer for the people, much less the rule of law.
22:04And so the violations are just staggering and they're piling up every day. I hope the Senate
22:10does its job, but I hope the Inspector General moves very quickly now to render his report
22:17on what's taking place in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia, a very
22:20important office. Well, a lot of people don't pay attention. They've learned from Trump,
22:25one, not to get sucked into Trump, too, sometimes and listen to everything he has to say,
22:29although sometimes it's important. On Friday, he gave a speech at the Department of Justice
22:33in which he confused his role as president with the role of the attorney general and did talk
22:37about it being his department. In fact, from your letter to the inspector general, you write,
22:42Mr. Martin has repeatedly used the powers of his office to protect President Trump's political
22:46allies. Recently, Mr. Martin referred to the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office as President Trump's lawyers
22:53and said they were, quote, proud to fight to protect his leadership, end quote. For those
22:58of us who are not lawyers, for those of us not steeped in the ways of the prosecution and the
23:03Department of Justice, most of us still know that doesn't make sense. That can't be true.
23:08These prosecutors can't be Donald Trump's lawyers fighting to protect his leadership.
23:15Well, Donald Trump's speech at the DOJ just intensified that terrible confusion. He's the
23:20first president in American history to go over to the Department of Justice and then essentially
23:25read off an enemies list of people that he wanted his lawyers to go out and prosecute. And this is
23:31an absolute prostitution of the Department of Justice, which has been known for many decades
23:38for its independent criminal law enforcement function, separate from the president's
23:44political powers. And now that boundary has been destroyed and they've collapsed the difference
23:49between the political whims of the president and the prosecutorial decisions of the Department
23:56of Justice. It's a very dangerous thing. This is what goes on, as you know, Ali,
24:00in authoritarian societies. This is what takes place in Putin's Russia and Orban's Hungary and
24:06Pinochet's Chile. You name it. The officer who is the chief executive now suddenly wants to take
24:15over the law enforcement function and say, you prosecute my enemies and you let my friends go.
24:21And it's hard to imagine a more dangerous erosion of America's traditional understanding of the law
24:27enforcement function. Now, probably a lot of my viewers have not had direct dealings with
24:32some of the big white shoe law firms in this country, some of the private law firms in this
24:38country. But the president has targeted now three major law firms because of perceived work that
24:45they've done in the past, in some cases for Hillary Clinton or with Jack Smith's team.
24:51They've canceled the government's contracts with these law firms. Put that into some context
24:55for me, because that's different, obviously, than the Department of Justice.
24:59He's decided to target Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, which is a well-known Democratic
25:06law firm. And he's revoked the security clearances of any lawyers there that have
25:12a securities clearance. He has barred them from federal buildings, which obviously makes it
25:16impossible for them to do their jobs in many cases. And he has barred them from getting any
25:21federal contracts. So this clearly violates the right of counsel, the right of due process,
25:28and First Amendment free speech rights. It is blatantly viewpoint discriminatory within
25:34the First Amendment context, but it's an attack on people's ability to get lawyers and have
25:40lawyers do their job. The government cannot draw up an enemies list of lawyers and then
25:46attack them professionally and personally. And so, again, this is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes.
25:53Congressman, good to see you as always. Thank you for joining us and for making this a lot clearer
25:56to us. Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Coming up, congressional Republicans
26:01say they want to recognize Donald Trump as the founder of a new golden age, and they've engaged
26:05in a truly embarrassing game of one-upmanship with increasingly ridiculous proposals to honor
26:09their dear leader. But while it is embarrassing and a little bit funny, we cannot just cringe
26:14or laugh because some of it's dangerous. I'll explain why next. Seems to be a competition
26:21emerging among President Trump's most loyal allies in Congress, a campaign of one-upmanship
26:26to see whose grandiose show of flattery will win Trump's favor. Republican Congressman Brandon
26:31Gill of Texas has proposed legislation to redesign the $100 bill. I bet you can guess where this is
26:38going. Congressman Gill wants to replace Benjamin Franklin, a founding father, inventor, writer,
26:42and scientist with Donald Trump on the $100 bill. The legislation is called the Golden Age Act of
26:492025, and Gill says it would be a small way to honor all Trump will accomplish in these next
26:54four years. But why stop at the $100 bill? Let's go bigger. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of
26:59South Carolina wants to create a new currency denomination, a $250 bill with Trump's face on it.
27:07This is an actual legislative proposal called the Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act. Creative.
27:16Three other Republican members of Congress have signed on to this bill, and it's worth noting
27:19existing federal law prohibits any living person from being depicted on U.S. currency. Of course,
27:25Congressman Wilson says the legislation would create a one-time exception for Donald Trump.
27:31Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York introduced legislation to make Trump's birthday a federal
27:35holiday. She argued with seriousness that such a move would, quote, recognize him as the founder
27:40of America's golden age, end quote. There's that reference to the golden age again. A golden age
27:47typically refers to a period of great prosperity, peace, cultural production, and achievement.
27:52Congressman Daryl Issa of California announced that he's nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace
27:57Prize. He said, quote, remarkably, it was the 2024 election of Donald Trump, more than 10 weeks before
28:02his swearing-in, that tangibly kick-started the cause of peace in numerous regions of the world,
28:07and we're already seeing the benefits, end quote. He added, quote, President Trump ideally represents
28:13what the Nobel Peace Prize should stand for, end quote. Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna of Florida
28:19introduced a bill to carve Donald Trump's face into Mount Rushmore, saying on X, quote, Trump's
28:24remarkable accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue to deliver
28:29deserve the highest recognition and honor on this iconic national monument. How would that work
28:35exactly? Would they replace Washington or Jefferson or Roosevelt or Lincoln, or would they just add a
28:42large stone to accommodate Trump? Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a House joint
28:47resolution, get this, to amend the Constitution to allow a president to be elected for up to three
28:54terms. Ogles said Trump has, quote, proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of
29:00reversing our nation's decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time
29:04necessary to accomplish that goal. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms,
29:10ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs, end quote.
29:15This all sounds like a joke, but these Republican lawmakers, though some acknowledge that most of
29:20these bills have absolutely no chance of passing, are wasting their time and your taxpayer dollars
29:26on these silly proposals meant only to garner the love and affection of Donald Trump.
34:40So