Morning Joe - ICE expanding detention facility in Batavia, NY

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

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And again, remember, with the word, it's just artificial, it's a little bit high, it's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That's, this is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon. It's essentially almost over with, and they might keep going a little long, you know? They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you, they need it. but it's going to end very soon and it'll end one way or the other and your gas and your gasoline and all of the things.

You know, it was one thing a couple years ago when Donald Trump made fun of an elderly man getting battered and abused and almost killed in his home, Paul Pelosi. And hearing the California Republicans

gathered who laughed at that laughed that poor man having his skull cracked and the lies that the magi universe spread for for a week about the attacker and paul Pelosi somehow being connected there's just a sickness that's bad um you take that to now making a joke because we're going to be told this was a joke about the nuclear annihilation of Los Angeles or San Diego. We said, let them take out Los Angeles or San Diego. And people in the audience actually laughed at the prospects of 10 million Americans, not Californians, like not Democrats, 10 million Americans being killed.

They laughed at that. Now, for those of you saying, oh, it's just a joke, it's just a joke. You know what? He doesn't mean. Donald Trump wants to tell jokes about nuclear annihilation of American cities and, you know, become a comedian, a bad comedian because there's nothing funny about that so-called joke. It's like joking about an elderly man being abused, being battered, almost being killed. But it's not a joke. It's not funny.

And it says something deeper and more disturbing about Donald Trump and the people in the audience who laugh. at the prospect of two American cities being nuked. And for those at home still saying, oh, but you're taking this way to, no other president would say this. If any other president said this, everything in Washington, D.C. would stop. And I don't care that it's Donald Trump,

and I don't care that he's been doing this for 10 years. This is deeply un-American. But Donald Trump's days in the White House, like every other president will come and go. What is so disturbing to me, Willie, is that you have people in the audience laughing, just like you had Republicans in the audience laughing. It jokes about an elderly man being attacked in the middle of the night and having his skull cracked and almost dying from that attack, them laughing about that. Imagine, imagine, if you will, imagine if you will

Barack Obama making a joke about Alabama and Oklahoma being nuked because that's really where we are right now. Would Barack Obama ever make a joke

about Alabama or Oklahoma being nuked? Would you ever say let them take out Alabama and Oklahoma? No, he wouldn't. No, he wouldn't. We can look at the policies

and how bad they've been for America. We can look at the personnel and see the savage damage personnel has done to the Pentagon and to the Justice Department and to the very institutions that have held up American democracy. We can talk about the lies. All we want to talk about the lies. But as a conservative, what I look at are the things that Russell Kirk talked about, that we are guided by convention, by custom, by the Constitution. And when convention and custom and norms are savaged daily to a point where a joke becomes about nuking over 10 million Americans, you know, suddenly, Willie, it just doesn't strike me as funny

anymore. No, and I think you're not alone, and we may find out four weeks from today that many Americans agree with you that they don't find the act funny anymore if they ever found it funny. And the country is being asked to grade this president on such a curve that he makes a joke, I guess I hesitate to even use that word. He made a comment, I don't know who it was for, or why he would have thought it was funny, but about nuclear attacks on American cities that, by the way, are in a blue state that he doesn't need to worry about, which is the antithesis of what being the president is all about. And it's laughed off by some people.

And if you dare criticize it or raise it or bring it up, then he's owned the libs and he's owned the media. See, they took the bait again. Well, no, we should hold our president and all of our public figures to a much higher standard than just brushing off a comment like this or some of the other ones that you just detailed right there. And John, I would also just offer that that comment was made in the context of his trying to completely, as we saw, blow off the Iran war. It'll be over soon. Does anyone in America?

Does anyone in that room actually believe that? Because he said at the beginning, it was going to be four to six weeks, and now when we're eighth month, it's going to be fine. Gas prices are going to come down. Don't worry about it. It's Ukraine's fault. Is anyone buying this argument anymore? I think that's the question. So then he goes off on that tangent, because prices are so high, let me change the subject and say, well, I have to continue down this path with Iran. We've got to prevent them so they don't attack one of our cities, and that's why you have to eat these gas prices for the foreseeable future. Trying to, again, justify a failed war of choice, a war that has made the economic situation for most Americans worse, and that there's no end in sight,

despite what he claims. He's saddling Republicans with another unpopular issue. They're going to be asked about this now. Also, we know President Trump has next to no filter. He's flirting something out of nowhere about Los Angeles and San Diego. Is it possible he received some sort of briefing that there's actually a threat against one of those cities? and he's now just saying that. Or at the very least, Mike Barnacle, this is now yet another moment of where he's, there is no bottom here.

It's a further coarsening and degrading of the American rhetoric of the American presidency. That's an office that throughout its existence, you know, good presidents and bad, and certainly some low lives who spent some time there in the centuries past. But like the office was still held with a certain respect.

There was a certain decorum that was anticipated and people held to a certain standard. Trump has just blown all of that away And even if it is the most harmless explanation, a very, very bad joke, it's deeply distasteful. These are, as Joe said, these are not Democrats, these are not Californians, these are Americans. And that was the President of the United States speaking that we just heard and that we're talking about now. And you wonder, when will this country, when will America stop sleepwalking through this presidency and realize the damage that's already been done, the rhetorical damage,

as well as the physical damage, programs being slashed cruelty as an element of politics in this administration, when is America going to stop sleepwalking and recognize what we are dealing with? Amica, it's a question that Joe has asked many times. When you see a moment like that and you see people laughing and cheering, it's that fundamental, I know nobody raised you that way. Your parents didn't raise you that way. Your pastor didn't raise you that way. Your coach or your teacher are other people in your life, the mentors and influences.

But how did you get to the point in your life where you were able to laugh at that? I know. I know. I know. We can cite 100 examples over this last decade. Why is that funny to you? Is it funny because you think it's going to incite a reaction from the people you don't like in the country that you disagree with? Oh, that's a good one.

He's going to own the lefties. He's going to own the media. I just can't get my head around what's happened to people, Joe, that some of us even know, who laugh at stuff like that. stuff like that. Well, and dismiss it. Justify it. Justify people being shot in the streets of America.

Justify people being beaten up. Justify being people, parents being dragged away from their children at school bus stops being disappeared. Young children being put into internment camps. I could go down the list and they justify it. It just, it is crazy. But you said something, Willie, about Donald Trump being graded on a curve. And every time I hear people talking about how biased the media is against Donald Trump, oh, media bias against Donald Trump, the worst ever.

Of course, people from Fox News saying that. I think that's cute. But the worst ever. I looked at the New York Times. I looked at the Wall Street Journal. I looked at the Washington Post. I looked at the Financial Times, looked at all the websites this morning to see how many picked them up. Only one.

The New York Times. If any president in American history had called for the obliteration of two American cities, even in what his deranged supporters would say is a joke, deranged because if you think it's funny to joke about 10 million Americans being killed by Iran, that's a serious problem. That's a serious problem. But he's graded on such a curve that the bias actually breaks the other way. He gets away with things that no other president would ever get away with because people in the media are so numbed by it all by now. So media bias, yeah, media bias in a way that breaks his direction. I mean, you could take his question. He's quotes from last night, you could take his quotes from other speeches. You can run together a super

cut of all of those clips. And that's the same questions about his mental acuity that we're asked about Joe Biden's mental acuity. And but that's not happening. And that won't happen. Maybe afterwards, people say, oh, I know about this all along and I'm going to write a book about it. Where was the media? Yeah, whatever. Whatever, Trevor. It's not happening. And it's not happening now because Donald Trump is graded on such a curve that he can say that, you know, he can say, let me get a right. Let him take out L.A. and San Diego. And only one newspaper, national newspaper reports it. That's a problem. You mentioned Joe Biden. We're learning new details about how the Biden administration worked to manage the fallout from Israel's conduct of the war in

Gaza following the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. As the New York Times reports, President Biden had grown so livid at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he appeared close to washing his hands of the whole conflict and cutting off the critical flow of American arms. BB man, what the F are you doing? Biden demanded when they got on the phone, you think I'm Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal. That exchange was revealed in the new book out today titled Brink, Inside the Race to Free October 7th Hostages.

And its author, former White House coordinator for Middle East and North Africa, Brett McGirk joins us now. And Joe, it was quite fascinating, the dynamics between Biden and Netanyahu in the weeks after October 7th. Well, I mean, in the years after October 7, in the year or so after, and Brett, you know, this actually fits very neatly with what we were just talking about, which I was talking about Donald Trump and his mental acuity versus Joe Biden's mental acuity. One of the reasons why I thought Biden's mental acuity was fine was one day, and I think it was February of 24. I spent two to three hours with him. It just, we had a very long lunch and tore around the White House. But I sat and talked to him for two to three hours. I talked to him about foreign policy, talked to him about the West Bank.

I talked to him about Gaza. I talked to him about Israel. I talked to him about Russia. I talked to him about South Korea, which was in the news at the time. We talked about when all around the world. Talked about how we were beefing up bases in Asia. The reason I bring all this up is because his conversation always turned back to Netanyahu for two, two and a half, three hours.

he was absolutely, let me figure out, would say a certain phrase in Alabama, I'll just say he was ripped. He was ripped. He was upset with Netanyahu. We had no use for him because he saw what Netanyahu was doing would be destructive. Not only did the United States, but in the long run, destructive to Israel. And that was basically a three-hour running. monologue about how NetJahu was damaging U.S.-Israeli relations and damaging Israel. Talk about that. Well, Joe, I remember seeing you in the White House residents, I think, around that time. I was up in the treaty room, probably doing some calls with the Israelis with the president. But yeah, all of that is detailed in here. Those calls, there's obviously a lot of colorful language. They had known each other a lot of time.

But, you know, this book documents just the most horrific, most polarizing crisis. is imaginable and we're at the three-year anniversary of it now. And you had all the players on the field, Joe. You had Netanyahu, which you had to deal with. And of course, the tragedy of the 250 hostages that were taken on October 7th. And to get a ceasefire in Gaza and stop that war, you had to get a deal for the hostages. The whole thing was intertwined. Meanwhile, the call that you just discussed, Mika, that very firm discussion, we were also at that

At the same moment, Iran was preparing to launch what then was a largest missile and drone attack in history. And we had to mobilize forces to help defend Israel. So all of this comes together in the Oval Office in real time. I've worked with four presidents. I've really never seen crises like this. But I documented here and what it's like, you know, we're talking about Iran and missiles and what it's like to be in the situation room as almost 200 ballistic missiles are flying

towards Israel. And it's a 13-minute flight. And for about six minutes before defense is engaged, it's just totally quiet because you're at the mercy of defense systems and technology, the professionalism of our military. These extraordinary moments, it's called brink, Joe and Mika and all of you, because that's what it was like. We were on the brink not only just finding some way to bring this conflict to a close to get the hostages out, but on the brink of a broader regional war. And just to finish the point, you know, Joe Biden called me. two days before the inauguration. We're waiting for the hostages to come out. They came out the day before the inauguration when that deal started, the three girls that should have come out a year

earlier. But he said to me, you know, all the headlines about the region, the Middle East, were on the brink of a regional all-out war. And we didn't have an all-out war on the president's watch. And the book kind of documents one of the reasons why, some really critical calls that were made, when to use U.S. military force, when not, what the objectives are. So I tried to just, I really poured it down in this book. I just tried to, this is what it was like from a firsthand perspective, and a readers are right there in the room as it goes down. Yeah, it's an amazing book.

There's great detail in here we want to get into. I do want to ask you about the reporting we've had recently that's been all the talk in Tel Aviv about Nenya, receiving warnings about what happened on October 7th, from Egypt, from the UAE, from other regional partners. What do you make of those warnings? And how do you make sense of the lack of preparation for what happened on October 7th? Yeah, so Willie, I mean, first of all, Israel to this day has not had a commission of inquiry about what was missed. Whenever something like this happens, we had it on 9-11.

You have to have a commission of inquiry. Israel had it in the Yon Kippur War. They have not had one here. That's just unbelievable. Yeah, and I think there's obviously a lot of political motivations for that. But you have to have a commission of inquiry to make sure something like this does not happen again. Now, I say in the book, and I document October 7th of what we learned in real time, we did not have any warnings and indicators who looked through our intelligence, and we were not aware of any real warnings that went to the Israeli system. I think the Israelis had an assumption in their entire system, political echelon and the security echelon, and I've talked to all these guys up and down, that Hamas was deterred, was a swage, was not about to do something major.

And it was just a tragic, tragic false assumption. But there were intel analysts who were seeing things. Information wasn't passed up. That seems clear now. And you have to have a commission of inquiry. Israel is going to have an election, of course, at the end of this month on October 27th. We'll see what happens there.

But the country needs to really pull itself together. It's just too divided. So, Brett, in the days after the terrible attack, President Biden, I believe on his trip to Israel, but certainly he said at other times as well-warned Israel. And of course you're angry. Of course you're going to seek justice. But don't make the mistake we made after September 11th.

When we escalated it too far, thinking about the war on Iraq. Iraq, obviously, Israel, Prime Minister Dan Yahu did not listen there and what happened in Gaza. Can you detail as president and his team saw that his words were going unheeded, that the sort of what efforts were taken to try to rein in the Israeli response? Well, we face that trip, you're on Air Force One on that trip, and you're there in the basement of the Kapinski Hotel. I described it like a funeral scene. You could hear a pin drop as Netanyahu and the Israeli team walked in.

And one thing we learned on that trip, you know, we were trying to say, is there a way to keep the Israelis out of going in on the ground in Gaza? Because the situation at the time, just a few days before that trip, John, there was almost a major war with Hezbollah on October 11th. It looked like Hezbollah might cross the border. Israel is about to do a preemptive strike. We would have had a major regional conflict right then. So this is really the whole thing's on the edge. And we were trying to walk through with the Israelis what their strategic game plan was. What was clear in that trip, though, was the Israelis top to bottom. We have to go in on the ground.

This cannot end after what happened on October 7th with Hamas still in power in Gaza. That was like a consensus in the Israeli system. And then the issue is, well, how do you actually achieve that objective? Given that Hamas prepared for two decades for this very conflict. They built tunnels longer than the New York City subway system, multiple stories below ground. They would not allow civilians below ground. Just one tragic thing about that trip. We were going to go to Amman Jordan, the first stop,

and we were going to see President Sisi of Egypt and King of Bella of Jordan and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. And one of the issues was where are civilians going to go? Every conflict in this century, civilians are able to flee out of the conflict zone, for the most part. We try to do that. In Syria, 6 million civilians left Syria. I was involved in the Battle of Mosul,

which was horrible, a million civilians, and we got out of the city, there was nowhere for people to go. And I called the Egyptians early on. Can we allow civilians to come to Egypt? Temporarily, the Egyptians said no. But we were going to raise that issue in Amman when the president went,

and we had to pull down that trip because there was an attack on a hospital that it was reported. It was an Israeli strike in hundreds dead. King Abdullah said to the president, I'm so sorry, you can't come. Turned out not to be an Israeli strike, but we pulled down that trip.

I think it was a real missed opportunity. Because just civilians had nowhere to go in this dense urban environment, and it was a horrific situation for everybody involved, and there's too much loss. Can you talk about the impact prior to October 7th, the impact of Israel, Netanyahu, and the millions given to Hamas? Yeah, I go through that in the book, too.

You know, I came into the White House on inauguration day when Joe Biden swore the oath of office. You get briefed in. And I learned about, starting in 2017, 2018, Qatar was paying Hamas significant amounts of money every month, about $15 million a so every month. This policy started when the Palestinian Authority stopped paying salaries into Gaza. And the Qatar, he said, we have to, you know, Hamas is basically the government. They're not just a terrorist organization. So that's when that started. And I thought at the time that's, and we, Treasury Department gave a waivers for those payments to go.

But again, that was Israeli policy across multiple governments. I think that was a huge mistake. And the Israelis assumed that was going to help, again, assuage and buy some peace. We had an 11-day Hamas, a Gaza conflict early in the Biden administration in March of 2021, that we were able to go to ceasefire after 11 days. yeah, those payments are going in every single month. And to pay, you know, civil servant salaries, because all the ministries are Hamas, but also to fund Hamas's war machine.

Yeah. And that was a big mistake. The new book, Brink, Inside the Race to Free the October 7 Hostages, is out now, former White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. Brett McGurk, thank you very much. Thank you for coming on the show this morning. We appreciate it. And still ahead on morning, Joe.

the man who made a subprime mortgages gripping with the big short and who turned baseball stats into poetry with moneyball. Brings us inside a look at the early days of President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, as told by the public servants who were targeted bestselling author. Michael Lewis joins us next with his new book. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Hey, our next guest is taking readers inside the Trump administration's so-called doge campaign. Remember that to slash government spending with stories of civil servants who were simply doing their jobs, protecting taxpayer data, enforcing the law, fighting wildfires, and more, when they were suddenly labeled, quote, blockers. A term for people, the department viewed is standing in their way.

With us now, New York Times bestselling author Michael Lewis, his new book is titled, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep, state. I really, I quickly, in a minute, I want to quickly get to this and the debate we're having about AI and the so-called Dumeers standing in the way of those who are on top of Mount Olympus telling us how things are going to work out. But what I'm struck here, Michael, is by the fact that when I talk to people on the inside throughout this entire process at the beginning, this is you're just not going to believe this, Joe. I know you guys balance the budget and you're proud of that. You're not We're going to save one to two trillion dollars. And you're going to, I kind of, I go, no, you're not. No, no. And they, they were true believers and saying, oh, they didn't call me a blocker, but you're

out of your mind. It's an old way of wash. I said, you do understand 85% of what we spend money on, entitlements, defense, interest, and that, you're not going to touch. And the other stuff's going to be much, much more important to Americans than you're suggesting right now. but they weighed in there and ended up, it just ended up being a catastrophe. Talk about your interest in this and talk about how far short of their goal they came. So it wasn't just Doge I was interested in. I think Doge was just one piece of the Trump administration's assault on the civil service. Doge is the beginning of the book, but they fade away.

Doge, you know, the interesting thing about Doge is Elon Musk is supposed to be so smart. But it never made sense. I mean, as you say, if all you're attacking is 15% of the budget, you're not going to cut $2 trillion out of the federal deficit. I mean, it's just not the math. So what were they doing? Either he didn't know what he was doing or he was doing something else. And I think, like, Doge was kind of the artillery strike before the invasion.

And that what they were really, what was really going on was a massive power grab. I mean, in the chaos, they eliminated. inspector as general. They seized all kinds of agencies that they probably didn't have the right to seize. They established that like this two million person civil service previously, you know, which previously took an oath to the Constitution and served the people, was going to be a loyalist operation that served this a single person. I mean, that was the, that was the push was all in that direction. And that's what interested me, because I thought like, if you change the environment that much. If you take this thing that was once this way and you turn it into this

loyalist operation, everything that happens in it is going to be different. All the incentives for the people inside of it are going to be different. And so what happens to like the basic functions of government? What happens to public safety? What happens to like long-term science research? What happens to what happens to like data and information collection? You take these. And so that was the premise. And you go out and you find people. who are doing critical things like, I don't know, preventing your tax returns from being weaponized by the White House. And you find, like, oh, my God, this person no longer has a job.

You know, it's a fundamental shift in how we govern ourselves. And I don't think it's gotten enough attention. No. Yeah, and, of course, attacking the very government that oversaw the American century. And this whole idea that we're going to bring a CEO in. They know how to run a company. And bureaucrats in Washington are just such idiots. I've seen it time and time again.

CEOs come to Washington, D.C., and almost every single one of them gets devoured. But I'm wondering, does this teach us a lesson finally? You know, my pet peeve is, oh, we need Washington outside. We don't say that about brain surgeons. We need somebody who's an outsider who's never done an operation on a brain before. or our car mechanics, or our general contractors, our dentist. But this whole idea, we're going to bring Elon Musk in, who knows absolutely nothing about Washington, D.C., or we're going to bring Donald Trump in, who just says, I alone can fix it,

that has absolutely no idea how to work with Congress, no idea how to work with the bureaucracy. I mean, does this book, after you read this book, explain why it's important to actually have knowledge, experience, and wisdom inside it? the government? Yeah, in between the lines and directly. I mean, I think that, you know, what I find interesting is that conversations that aren't happening. I mean, these people, the civil service just generally, the stories don't get told. And the stories can be amazing. I mean, just amazing. I mean, movie-like caliber stories. The stories don't get told. And also the thing that never gets kind of asked is like, who should be running these places? Like, it's like

Howard Lutnik is nominated to be Secretary of Commerce. What qualifications does he have to be Secretary of Commerce? It's almost not fair to Howard Lutnik, because this has been going on for a while. But it's like we seem to think like whether you were or were not on the Epstein list is more important than have you run an organization like this. Do you know what's inside of it? Do you understand the weather service which is inside of it? Do you understand NIST which is inside of it? Do you have any kind of plan for it?

That conversation just doesn't happen. I think, like, basic, like, tests of character and qualifications for the people who run the various agencies in the government is a really good idea. And Trump has just taken – that's been a problem for a long time. I think Trump is just – he's taking it to an extreme. And the whole Musk thing, I don't know what Elon Musk thought he was doing. I mean, it does – it only makes sense. If you think of it, I mean, people closest to him don't know what he's thinking, because you're right, the numbers don't add up. But if what he was doing was trying to create a

disruption so that they would make room for this power grab, or if what he was doing was all he really wanted was to have a friend in NASA, because SpaceX is what he cared about, then it makes sense. But he was, but I mean, look, what has happened? He was all about, he said, the budget deficit, that national debt's going up $3.5 trillion in the last two years. It makes no sense. Yeah, I mean, that was a charade, obviously, that we're going to bring down the budget deficit with Doge. What you do in this book so well is humanize this, too,

because you find and anyone could go find it, go to your post office or whatever. People who have made careers of working for the government, people who are proud of working for the government, people who have done a good job working for the government, people who are important to the government being pushed out, And you highlight a woman named Kathleen Walters as one example of that. Well, she was the human being between your tax return in the White House.

I mean, she was the privacy office of the IRS. And she was asked right away to hand over the file of the tax returns of undocumented workers. There's a special database. So they're assigned a number so they can get Social Security numbers so they can pay taxes. They paid hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes over the last 30 years. and there's been an understanding that those tax returns are as sacred as they're protected just like our tax returns. The ICE didn't know where to find undocumented workers.

The tax returns had the most recent home addresses. And it was clearly against the law to hand them over. But, you know, they came for them. They came for them. They got them. And you think about this. I mean, this is a larger conversation about how we, you know, this is a larger conversation about how we handle data. But she knew that what she was doing, she had an oath to the Constitution.

She had an oath to, she'd made an oath to obey the law. And this was a violation of the law. And not only that, it was a sin. It was like, you know, the last time that this sort of thing happened was in World War II when the census data was used to round up Japanese Americans. But that was legal. This is like a similar sort of thing and illegal. And the, that this attempt to kind of get to break the norms and break the rules. and sort of change the nature of the government is, I mean, it's a big story. And so she, anyway, she got washed out. She was a, she got labeled a blocker and she got washed out.

About to retire, too, wasn't she? Yeah. Yeah. But you find, you know, you find people, it's not just that they're good people who are serving their country. Somebody's people, I mean, these are, these are people doing unbelievable things. This guy in the middle of the book who invented a fire science, the science of, of, like, urban interspace fires.

He did it inside the Department of Commerce. And it's like these fires every year are a bigger and bigger deal. He is the key to like how we're going to respond. And his science is a person deep. And he's Howard Luckner came in and just starved him. Like took away his credit card, made it hard to do his work. And he's out. And you measure, it's very hard to measure the cost of that because it gets paid,

it gets paid decades down the road. What about the cost of, You mentioned the word cost. The cost of people who have disappeared from their jobs, departments being headed by Robert Kennedy, the FBI being headed by a nitwit, stuff like that, the cost of that. Can we ever measure that?

I mean, you feel it, right? You feel it when you can't eat the lettuce. Right? That's where you start to tell. The plane falls out of the sky. I mean, those, it's a degradation. You think of, I mean, I think there's like this discreetest, between Americans' view of their government and what the government actually does.

Americans, I think when they think of the government think politics. But all these problems that the private sector does not want to deal with, and there are a lot of them get dealt with there. And sometimes they get dealt with well, and sometimes it's inefficient, and the systems are maddening, and we all have a big conversation about how the place could run better. But the idea that you're just going to kind of like gut it is nuts, because it's protecting, It's essentially in the business of prevention, right? You hear about the cuts at the Defense Department

that impacted the way Iran was struck. What do you, with the writing of this book, what do you feel the most dangerous void has been created with getting rid of stuff? I'm going to answer that in a little bit of a meta and probably a frustrating way for you. I think what's being threatened is a very idea of civil service,

the very idea of public service, that it's turning it into more cynical operation. It serves the narrow interests of a president. And so you're not going to work there. You're not serving your country anymore. And if we lose that, I mean, so many of these people are there. So many of these people, everybody in this book could make more money in the private sector. They'd be more famous in the private sector.

They're not after any of that. They're there because they believe in the country. They're serving the country. And if you sort of cut the knees out from under people like that, you're shifting a value system. That was the first thing they did. It is what they did. It is what they did.

And more generally, I mean, very generally, a lot of what these people are doing is creating trust. And it sounds strange to talk about trust in government because everybody says they don't trust the government, but they drink the water. They hold dollar bills. They hold treasury bonds. they actually, in their behavior, they're making a lot of assumptions, and the assumptions are they trust.

You're attacking that trust is what you're doing. The new book, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State. It's out now, bestselling author Michael Lewis. Thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. Thanks for having, I appreciate it. And coming up, the Trump administration is continuing with its plan for a multimillion dollar expansion of an ICE detention center in New York State. Democratic Congressman Joe Morelli visited the facility. He'll join us next to discuss what he saw and the efforts to help families who've been detained. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. Welcome back to Morning Joe. The Trump administration is reportedly moving forward with a major $17 million expansion of the largest ICE detention center in New York State. It's a project that could potentially include tents or trailers all or.

or part of which is intended to house women in the facility that currently only holds men. The news comes as the Buffalo Service Processing Center in Batavia already operates well over its 650-bed capacity. Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Joe Morelli of New York. The ICE facility in Batavia is not in his district, but he visited the site earlier this year and has been working with families detained there. Let's start there. What have you seen? What have you heard? Who have you seen who's being detained? Well, I visited a gentleman by name of Omar Ramos Jimenez, who has been detained now for nine months. I saw him a couple of months ago. I've been working with his family to try to secure his release. And it was heartbreaking. Here's a gentleman who's been in the United States for well over 30 years. Came here in his late teens, early 20s. Has two children. American citizens, has been active in his church parish, and has been a small businessman. He

has a work permit until 2030, but he was scooped up and he sits in a cell in Batavia, literally one of the most heartbreaking moments in my career. And for what? I mean, the interesting thing is when you go around the facility, they're color-coded, the detainees. So dark blue means that they're detained, but they've committed no crimes other than the question of whether they're, you know, have their proper, exactly. There were a handful, literally a handful out of the hundreds I saw in orange or red, which meant that they either got some criminal past or violent. But the vast majority of these are nonviolent people who just looked confused and frightened,

and there's no reason they should be there. And held for months and months and months. So now they want to build a large tent for women. What are we talking about here? What are the plans for expansion? And are these lawful? Well, those are all great questions. I mean, the problem is with this administration,

the Congress gets virtually no information. I'm an appropriator. It is adjacent to my community, the metro area of Rochester and Buffalo. It sits right between us. And you get virtually no information. And the idea that you'd build tents, we're just talking about with all due respect.

I love upstate New York. I live there, but it's in the wintertime. It can be brutal conditions. and they're talking about spending millions and millions of dollars. They should really half the people there, more than half the people there should just be home. And the interesting thing when I met with Omar, who as I said, it's been a small business owner. He's a sweet gentleman. And when I got up to shake his hand and say, you know, let me know, we're going to continue to try to keep in touch with you and your family.

And he said, this is the first time I've been able to touch a person when my family comes, rarely when they get the chance to see him. They're behind glass. I mean, this is heartbreaking. And all he said was, I just want to go home. But not to Mexico, where he hasn't been for decades. He wants to go home to Rochester in a community that he loves. So as you said, Omar has lived in Rochester for decades, worked there, paid taxes, raised a family. He's an American by every definition of it.

And he had a work permit. So the question is, why was he arrested on what charges? Well, it's interesting. He was actually lured there. He checks in as he goes through his checks. He's going through an asylum process, on a pure. heel and he was told to come to Batavia to fill out more paperwork and that's when they detained him so he was there under false pretenses in my view and he's just a gentle sweet man

I mean it was literally heartbreaking to me to see this and to spend nine months and when I went around and saw all these young people just cowering and some of them you could tell with their parents or older siblings and just holding on for dear life I mean it is it is so immoral to do this and to not spend this money, all the money we're spending to be able to give people a path to citizenship, I think is verged on criminal. So Congressman, can you speak to the impact in the communities of what you're seeing here? Obviously, families that have been ripped apart because someone's actually being detained, but also the sense of fear that permeates elsewhere because people are afraid that they could be next. No, there's no question. It has had a chilling effect

on workplaces where people have worked in hospitality and construction. Certainly, you know, agriculture is huge in upstate New York, so farm workers. So people are cowering. They won't go to church. They won't go to work. Their kids aren't going to school, all for fear of just being picked up. And it's had this enormous impact in our community, but it's had enormous impact in communities all over the country. So how many are housed in the facility that you visited that you're talking about? And are they the worst of the worst? I mean, that's the lie to the whole thing, is that these are supposed to be murders and rapists. these people having in committed crimes, they said the vast majority, 90% were in these dark blue jumpsuits, which they indicated to me meant that they had committed no criminal penalty.

They were going through in many cases as Mr. Ramos Jimenez. He's going through the asylum process. So he checks in. He's never missed a check-in. He has a work permit. That work permit, as I said, extended to 2030. So that tells you how much of a risk. He has, and we're working with his attorneys and working with the family.

but it's been just, I mean, so hurtful to him, to his family, to the community at large, to your point. And this is someone who not only is not the worst or the worst, he's contributing, paying taxes, owned a small business. It's very popular in the region, so people, as you understand, are decidedly upset about it. There are so many cases like that. So many.

Yeah. Democratic Congressman Joe Morelli of New York, thank you so much. Will you please keep us posted on developments with all of these detention centers in these cases. We appreciate it. And still ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump now claims that his Super PAC

will pay for his TV ads. After backlash over taxpayer money, funding the commercials, we'll follow that. But that announcement came hours after Vice President J.D. Vans defended the ads. We're going to go through all of that. Next on Morning Joe. Still ahead, Republicans are spending millions

to help Senator Tom Cotton, hang on to his seat in Arkansas. Democratic nominee Halle Schaffner will join us to discuss how she's standing up against the spending plus the issues facing voters in her state. Morning Joe, we'll be right back.