The Best People with Nicolle Wallace

Sue Gordon is indefatigable. Nicolle calls her a “unicorn”: a rare case of somebody who served with honor and integrity as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence — and who Donald Trump, at least for a while, kept around. “I am for America,” Gordon says, declaring that as her North Star. Throughout her decorated career in intelligence, Gordon has always understood that telling the truth is imperative in keeping the president informed and the nation safe. She talks bluntly about the administration putting innocent people in harm’s way in Iran, calls Jay Clayton’s refusal to state that Joe Biden won the 2020 election during his confirmation hearing “100% disqualifying” and points to Trump being “more cruel” in his second term. She does not believe, however, that the president cannot be reasoned with. Taking a beat, she says: “Maybe I need to call him.”

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If historian Heather Cox Richardson ever had an agenda, it’d be protecting democracy. The history professor and author of the “Letters from an American” Substack joins Nicolle this week to consider the knock-on effects of economic pain at the grocery store and unpredictability at the podium on voter’s perception of Trumpism. She reflects on violence from ICE officers in her home state of Maine, the whiplash messaging in the war with Iran and concerns about the cyclosporiasis outbreak — which she sees as emblematic of places “where the federal government used to protect American families and are no longer.” Throughout, Richardson seamlessly adds historical context to our modern-day political struggles. And she makes it clear that we may already have what we need to recover: “What Americans are really doing in this moment is recovering their agency,” she says. “That’s a vibe shift.”

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Nicolle sits down with her dear friend and colleague Rachel Maddow for a revealing conversation about the state of the nation and Rachel's coverage of the Trump administration's cruel and violent immigration policies in the wake of two tragic shooting deaths by ICE agents in the span of a week. They also delve into how Trump's erratic behavior, which Rachel describes as his spiral into "emotional incontinence," has made him incapable of making strategic decisions. The duo talks about the dangers of his incoherence where the war with Iran is concerned, his fantastical claims of charging a toll on the Strait of Hormuz and how all of it is building up to a backlash against Trump and the Republican Party.

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Jim Acosta is pretty sure that when 60 Minutes is in trouble, we're all in trouble. A year and a half after stepping down from a storied career as a White House correspondent and anchor at CNN, the independent journalist begins by addressing his departure from the network: “There was intense pressure for me to be gone,” he tells Nicolle. But there is a freedom he now relishes to speak openly and directly about the dark corners the president has awoken in his second term. Calling the 2024 election “a terrible national mistake,” he tells Nicolle that “now we're on the dark side of the moon and the question becomes, can we get out of this on the other side?” They touch on Trump’s financial schemes, the public framing of Hunter Biden’s struggle with addiction and Acosta’s own experiences covering Trump across his two terms — noting that this is “not the same Donald Trump I covered” in 2016.  And as the nation eyes the coming midterms, he notes, "the American people still have the ability to surprise us."

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Senator and Pastor Raphael Warnock recognizes that “Democracy is the house we live in. It's the context in which we get to fight.” Coming off the release of his new book, “The Crooked Places Made Straight,” he joins Nicolle to talk about an increasingly activist court and a system he sees as “overrun with money and corruption.” They begin by addressing why decisions from the Supreme Court on redistricting (Louisiana v. Callais) and ending temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants (Mullin v. Doe) have made, in the Senator’s estimation, "the most activist court we have seen certainly in my lifetime.” He also grapples with the blatant grift happening in plain sight by President Trump and his family, and why Republicans only seem to show courage on their way out the door. But even as voting rights are threatened and wealth inequality continues to grow, Senator Warnock urges us to renew our faith — in our beliefs and in one another. And he holds a deep-rooted belief that while these rights are not inevitable, following the example of his mentor, the late John Lewis, “when you don't know what else to do, keep walking. Keep walking across that bridge.”

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