Maddow Mocks Hegseth for Wasting $40 Million on Guantánamo Migrant Efforts: ‘Government Efficiency!'
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow mocked former Fox News host and now U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for using $40 million worth of taxpayer money in just one month to fund a migrant detainment facility in Guantánamo Bay that has since been shut down.
'The [New York] Times reporting tonight that Hegseth's failed gambit to stand-up a U.S. military role at Guantánamo, specifically to make it look like Guantánamo has something to do with [Donald] Trump's deportations. That gambit has thus far cost taxpayers about $40 million in its first month,' Maddow said Monday as she outlined the TV personality-to-politician's recent actions as defense secretary, also mentioning how Hegseth ordered two Navy destroyers to 'hover around the U.S. border doing nothing.'
'Now, this whole Guantánamo thing is a plan that has essentially been scrapped now, but only after Pete Hegseth moved nearly a thousand U.S. troops there and then back and had them sent up a tent city and then kind of dismantled it, because these guys — don't forget — government efficiency, can't allow old people to call the social security office anymore,' 'The Rachel Maddow Show' host said sarcastically, referring to the Elon Musk-ran Department of Government Efficiency's decision to downsize Social Security Administration with office closures and phone services.
'But hey, we gotta save money. Pete Hegseth needs to fuel up the C-17s to fly, like, five guys around so they can make TikTok vides about how tough they are. 'See my tattoos?'' Maddow mocks.
In addition to slamming Hegseth over his controversial decisions, Maddow also called him out for casually bringing his wife Jennifer Rauchet and younger brother Phil Hegseth into his everyday and very private government duties.
Alongside him, Rauchet attended two meetings with foreign military counterparts where 'sensitive information was discussed,' per The Wall Street Journal.
'Does she have a security clearance? This is the same wife, you may recall, who Mr. Hegseth brought with him to his meeting with U.S. senators ahead of his confirmation process for this job,' Maddow said. 'That, of course, made it socially awkward for those senators to ask him at those meetings about the rape allegations that he faced in California and his alleged serial infidelity and problems with drinking on the job. He has denied the rape allegations in California, and of course he was never charged in conjunction with those allegations.'
She then moved on to his baby brother, whom she joked is completely qualified to participate in Hegseth's responsibilities. Phil has been given key role as liaison and senior advisor in the Pentagon. He also joined Hegseth on his trips to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Hawaii.
'What is his little brother doing there? Good question. His past career experience includes starting a podcast, production company,' Maddow shaded. 'So, naturally it makes sense that he is paid by the U.S. taxpayers to go everywhere with his brother, the defense secretary, who has assured us that he definitely won't drink on the job anymore, and who apparently thinks it's OK to bring his wife to NATO meetings.'
You can watch the full 'The Rachel Maddow Show' segment in the video above.
The post Maddow Mocks Hegseth for Wasting $40 Million on Guantánamo Migrant Efforts: 'Government Efficiency!' | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
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Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Lt. Gov. Delgado pitches fundamental change as he challenges his boss for governor
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San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
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Democrats are spending $20 million to learn how to talk to men. Here's what they should do instead
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'That's us, most of us in this room,' Williams said during a recent book reading in Berkeley. 'Too often, we don't rail against economic elites, but we also fuel that narrative that we look down on people in the middle over time. They're 'deplorables' (Hillary Clinton's description of some Donald Trump supporters) 'clinging to guns and religion' (Barack Obama's line). They're 'stupid Trump voters who don't understand their own self-interest' (typical liberal Facebook post, an allusion to Thomas Frank's 'What's the Matter With Kansas?'). These are all class insults that just fuel the far right.' All those pulldowns do, Williams said, is 'reinforce the right's populist scripts that elites are looking down on you.' And that script is playing nonstop on your favorite conservative media outlet. Williams cites a study showing that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mentioned the term 'ruling class' in 70% of his episodes from 2016 to 2021. 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The backlash: That unfeeling toward working-class voters, Williams said, puts a target on the backs of immigrants and trans kids and people of color, and 'sculpts anger against them,' she said as some may wonder, Why are we less deserving than them? Williams said if you're asking why working-class voters 'are so angry, they're angry because we have a rigged economy.' Over the past 35 years, the wages of college graduates have increased 83% while those of working-class Americans have stagnated. And if the left doesn't channel that anger, Williams said, 'We know who will.' Here's one of her tips for winning them back: Candidates should stop focusing on 'defending democracy.' Defending democracy is low on the scale of needs for someone working three jobs who can't afford decent child care. 'Defending democracy is not best done by talking incessantly about defending democracy,' Williams said. 'And the people who we've lost — non-college voters — they're not too interested in defending democracy, because they think democracy has failed them. We need to focus on economics, not defense of democracy.' Take how liberals often talk about climate change. Calling conservatives 'climate deniers' may be accurate, but it comes off sounding like 'We're smarter than you.' she said. Instead, progressives can connect with farmers, who can become messengers who can say, 'I can no longer grow what my grandfather grew on this land,' Williams writes. In coastal and fire-prone areas, she writes that progressives 'can point out that insurance companies are already changing underwriting habits due to fires and floods exacerbated by climate change.' It's a way to unite different classes in a populist way against Big Insurance. When it comes to religion, progressives often look down at churchgoing non-college grads. That's a mistake, as religion is central to their lives, Williams writes, providing 'for many non-elites the kind of intellectual engagement, stability, hopefulness, future orientation, impulse control, aspirations to purity and social safety net that elites typically get from their careers, their therapist, their politics, and their bank accounts.' She tilted the chapter that contains that passage: 'Therapy's expensive, but praying is free.' 'Religion is very functional in the lives of non-elites,' Williams said. 'Religion is so powerful in offering sort of mental ballast and stability that being a believer actually erases the effects of class disadvantage.' In 2020, 84% of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump, a thrice-married man who bragged about sexually assaulting women on the 'Access Hollywood' tape. Williams notes that 40% of college grads say they are neither spiritual nor religious. Williams is not advocating that progressives move toward the center and abandon advocating for marginalized groups that can be politically polarizing, like the trans community. 'Politically, it doesn't make sense,' Williams said at her Berkeley reading last month. 'Raise your hands if you will support a Democratic candidate that gives up on all of the issues that you cherish most.' Instead, she suggested channeling Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat whom she paraphrased as saying, 'If you get your jollies bullying trans kids, then you really need another job.' She said Fetterman is using a 'blue-collar style of conversation. It's not fancy, it's not policy based. It's poking fun at somebody. He's doing all the things that Trump does. Trump channels a certain style of American working-class masculinity to victimize trans kids. Some politicians, not all of them, can channel the same style of masculinity to say, you know, if you're bullying kids, you know, you got to find another job.' The challenge is finding Democrats who can pull that off.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Prices of eggs and gas are down. Does Trump deserve credit, or is something else going on?
President Donald Trump ran on promises to bring down prices for Americans. Today, prices of eggs and gas are down from their peaks of the past few years. Can he take credit? Nope, experts say. In both cases, prices were expected to come down as external factors abated. There's no compelling, recently implemented federal policy that had much impact on either commodity. First, let's look at the numbers. A year ago, the average national price of a gallon of unleaded gas was $3.47, according to AAA, and $4.88 a gallon in California. So far this month, the average price is $3.14 a gallon nationally and $4.77 in California. (Gas prices are higher in California for a combination of reasons, including regulatory issues, the special type of gas required to be sold here, and the highest gasoline taxes in the country.) • Got money questions? Here's how to send them to our California budgeting advice columnist. Doug Johnson, a spokesperson for AAA Northern California, said gas industry experts predicted prices were going to come down this year 'no matter who would've won the 2024 election.' Egg prices have fluctuated a lot since the most recent bird flu outbreak began in 2022. A year ago, the average price of a dozen eggs was $2.35. Prices skyrocketed from $2.11 in October to an all-time high of $8.17 a dozen in March. As of this week, the average price has dropped to $2.54 a dozen — only 8% higher than a year ago — and is likely to continue dropping as bird flu detections decline. 'Eggs have come down 400%,' Trump declared, wrongly, in a White House interview on Fox News. Going from $8.17 to $2.54 would work out to a 68.9% decrease. 'Price of eggs has dropped 61% since Trump took office,' declared Fox Business in a piece comparing January and June egg prices. A headline on the right-wing news and opinion site Daily Caller said, 'Grocery Prices See Biggest Drop In 5 Years As Trump's Policies Take Effect.' But, again, experts say Trump's policies aren't driving the price decreases. So what actually is behind them? Why gas prices have come down in California Gas is down 13 cents a gallon just from last week in the Bay Area, said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for cost comparison website GasBuddy. That's more than the drop we've seen at the national level — only 2 cents compared with the previous week. Most of the recent drop here is because refinery issues in California have begun to resolve, De Haan said. However, refinery repairs are ongoing, so the decline may be only temporary, he added. Though Trump ran on 'drill, baby, drill' and his administration has discussed opening public lands for oil and gas drilling, federal policy takes a long time to work its way to the price at the pump, De Haan said. 'It really takes years for those types of policies to have a broad significant impact,' he said. Both California and national gas prices are up from January, when Trump took office. Why eggs are getting cheaper again Though the current bird flu outbreak, now in its third year, is not over, it's not as bad as it was at the start of 2025. Detections of bird flu in commercial and backyard flocks have decreased by a lot, which is part of the reason egg prices have dropped, said Daniel Sumner, a professor of agricultural economics at UC Davis. This isn't the first time bird flu has hit chicken farms in the United States. The most recent outbreak was in 2015. Like ebola, bird flu is endemic, Sumner said: Somewhere in the world, there's always a wild bird that is carrying the virus. What's different about this outbreak is how long it's lasted. Often, like many pandemics humans have faced before, an outbreak hits and then fades away. That hasn't been the case yet with this incidence of bird flu. Bird flu was first detected in a flock in Dubois, Ind., in February 2022. A year ago, when eggs were $2.35 a dozen, there were 12 confirmed bird flu detections in the U.S. The virus was detected more frequently in commercial and backyard flocks throughout late 2024 and early 2025: 16 in October, 62 detections in November, 122 in December, a peak of 133 in January. When bird flu is detected in a flock, even if it's found in only one chicken, industry practice dictates that the entire flock should be culled — agriculture-speak for killed. Some of those flocks consist of thousands, even millions, of birds. That has translated into a grim toll: More than 174 million poultry, including commercially farmed chicken and backyard flocks, have died or been killed because of bird flu, according to a CDC estimate. The abrupt drop in supply contributes to price increases. However, only 12 instances of bird flu were detected in May 2025, according to the USDA, and the agency said it hasn't been detected in any flock in California since February. Members of the Trump administration laid out a number of potential policy changes to tackle the bird flu epidemic: increasing imports, boosting biosecurity and exploring vaccination. Sumner dismissed the foreign imports as 'publicity' and said the other suggestions haven't been put into effect at a broad scale since Trump took office. 'There have been no significant changes to egg policy,' he said. The other two pieces of the pricing puzzle relate to how grocery stores get eggs to put on the shelves and how egg demand works compared with other products. Grocery stores typically have contracts with specific farms to get their eggs, Sumner said. If the egg farmer can't perform — in other words, if they have no eggs to sell because they've culled their herd because of an outbreak — the contract usually lets the retailer find another source for eggs. So grocery store chains have been able to use alternative providers. At the same time, farmers that did have to cull their herds have now had enough time to restart their flocks: Chickens can begin laying eggs when they're around 4 months old. Egg demand is typically known as inelastic — it doesn't change much. That's because there aren't a ton of good substitutes for eggs, Sumner said. Though bird flu can hit a flock of chickens being raised for meat as easily as it can hit a flock of egg-layers, we haven't seen the same price surge in chicken breasts and thighs as we have for eggs. Sumner said to think of the difference like this: If chicken meat goes up in price, grocery shoppers will swap in pork, beef, beans, tofu or other protein sources. But it's tricky to find a suitable one-to-one substitute for eggs in a baking recipe or an omelette. That's part of why shoppers have been so sensitive to the price of eggs. That said, persistent high prices have curbed some of America's appetite for eggs. A recent report on the egg market from the USDA described consumer demand as 'lackluster' and 'sluggish.' People have found alternatives. This year, Sumner said, his grandchildren's Easter eggs were the plastic variety.
