MSNBC’s Chris Hayes sat down with “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Monday to share his thoughts about President Donald Trump’s first week back in office. The longtime journalist discussed everything from the president’s decision to pardon all the Jan. 6 rioters to his decision to fire federal agents across departments.
“It’s in the worst-case scenario neighborhood. There are a few things he has done that are indicators,” Hayes told Colbert after he was asked to reflect on Trump’s first seven days back in the White House. He started with Trump’s pardoning of 1,500 people who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021.
“He could’ve done a little work in an executive order, saying, ‘I am directing the acting attorney general to review the cases of the 1,500 people prosecuted for Jan. 6 — come back to me with recommendations.’ They could have said, ‘We are giving a thousand people who did not commit acts of violence a pardon. The fact that they said, ‘All of them are out, jailbreak, the guys that took a baton and beat a cop and bear-sprayed them, all of those people and the people that convicted of seditious conspiracy against our republic, they are all getting jailbreaks, and one of them — Stewart Rhodes — is going to be at my rally next weekend on stage.’ That is not — they got too lazy too distinguish, that is a clear message about embracing and promoting political violence on his behalf and a payback for it.”
Hayes said another Trump move that should set off alarms for Americans is the president’s decision to put a federal funding freeze on all public loans, grants, aid and more, which could impact nonprofits, small businesses and other industries.
“This memorandum requires federal agencies to identify and review all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the president’s policies and requirements,” a White House memo, which was posted on Tuesday, read.
“There is a lot of health equity work being done by the National Institutes of Health, and what we think might be a plausible thing happening is they froze the grants because they want to go through and take out all grants that has to do with health equity,” Hayes explained. “They want us to know less. They definitely want the federal government to be worse, more incompetent and stupider.”
The MSNBC host then touched on Trump’s move to fire several servants in the Department of Justice, many of whom worked on the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents and his involvement in the attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election. On Friday, Trump also fired at least a dozen federal inspectors general, an act he claimed to be “very common.”
However, Hayes insisted that is not the case.
“Not only is it not common, it’s not legal under the statute … that statutes that protect them exist precisely so they will be insulated from the political pressure of new administrations,” he said. “I have had the joy to talk to civil servants in our government doing all kinds of things. People who work in the health infrastructure and the Pentagon, there are so many people who work for the federal government who care and are nonpartisan and want to serve the country, and those whose expertise we rely on for so much; a universe in which that is gutted so that Donald Trump can pick whoever is in his Truth Social mentions to run who is going to inspect your meat is a nightmare scenario — but it is what he wants to do.”
Check out a snippet from Hayes’ interview, above.
