On Monday's Deadline: White House, host Nicolle Wallace and reporter Jacob Soboroff were eager partisan spinmeisters on Democrats like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for their feverish resistance to President Donald Trump's deportation efforts of our "neighbors." But it really went off the rails when Soboroff touted conspiracy theories to mobilize protester turnout against the National Guard. He loved the line that "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes."
Wallace opened the show suggesting Trump could still lose support on the immigration issue and claimed that Pew Research polling found that only small numbers of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens -- a claim she has been making for months in spite of being debunked by NewsBusters. Here's Wallace:
He (Joe Rogan) doesn't like deporting people who have been here 20 years who haven't committed crimes. Pew polling had that number at about I think eight percent of Americans supported deporting people married to a U.S. citizen. It's about 12 (percent) who supported people -- I mean, there were always micro, micro numbers of people who supported what's actually happening -- 87 percent of Americans, according to Time/CNN, support deporting adjudicated violent criminals. And the whole program is built around deporting the people that eight (percent) of Americans want gone.
In fact, more recent polling finds that most Americans still give support to deporting all illegal aliens.
In the next segment, Wallace began by talking up Governor JB Pritzker (D-IL) resisting President Trump's deportation efforts in Chicago: "Pritzker seems to have been made for this moment, or to be emulating what Gavin Newsom pioneered both as an advocate for his city and state -- and Karen Bass as well for her city."
She then asked Soboroff for predictions, leading him to repeat some of the spin pushed by Pritzker and other Democrats:
And what they are communicating when they're saying, "Come get me -- come arrest me" is that -- he said to me -- he said, "I don' t know if we'll have an election" -- we were joking about it, but "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes.
And so they are taking this from just an immigration-related issue to saying, "Democracy is on the line here, ladies and gentlemen." And I think that's part of what is compelling people that -- as you said, Cornell -- may not have otherwise shown up for an immigration protest into the streets. That protest of 10 or seven or 10,000 people up and down Michigan Avenue was just -- was not your ordinary immigration protest.
He added:
It was a really electric, impressive thing to see, and I think because their local leaders are standing up and saying, "This isn't -- this is about your neighbors -- documented and undocumented -- but it's not just about the future of who gets to live in this country -- it's whether or not we get to have a free country at all."
Belcher jumped in to tout how this could work for presidential contenders:
I'm going be the bad guy here because I'm going to say it's not bad for their politics thinking about running for President. ... You look at Pritzker, and you look at Newsom. You know, they've been outspoken -- they've taken on this fight -- they're doing everything the base has asked that they want to see more Democrats doing. ... I think this positions them well in a crowded field going into a Democratic primary.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC's Deadline: White House
October 13, 2025
NICOLLE WALLACE: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Monday. It's 4:00 in New York. If Donald Trump's political power lies in being able to convince his supporters of anything and everything, then loud public dissent from inside his coalition from prominent Trump influencers might be the thing that will melt his carefully crafted, alternative fact-based reality faster than the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. And that is exactly what is starting to happen with his brutal and ugly and clunky and wildly unpopular mass deportation scheme. The sight and the sound and the smells of heavily armed federal agents of sweeping up people with no criminal records -- everyone from grandmas to kids -- with arrests everywhere from outside of schools to outside of bakeries to even a Marine base. Those sights and sounds are proving to be too much for arguably the most influential podcaster in the MAGA-adjacent universe.
(Plays clips of podcaster Joe Rogan and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) arguing against deporting illegals who have been in the country a long time who are working)
WALLACE: So the reality of Trump's mass deportation campaign and how it is impacting everyone of us. Everyone is going to be touched by it regardless of who you voted for -- if it's starting to sink in. We should note that the administration is about to turn the volume up even louder. They are now escalating what brought those two to their conversions in their views on Trump and his policy. In city after city after city, it's going to get worse. On Friday ICE deported the father of a U.S. Marine who was first detained along with his wife at a Marine base in San Diego.
In Chicago, more than 1,000 people have been arrested since deportation operations began last month, leading to some incredibly harrowing scenes that have put the city and the country and mixed documented families in this country on edge all over the country. Scenes like this one. This video is from The New York Times showing a flower vender being detained. Or authorities conducting a military-style operation on an apartment building on the south side in which children were zip-tied, and, according to one eyewitness, the agent said, "F the kids." Or this: agents shooting pepper balls at a pastor with his hands held up in prayer. Trump's Department of Homeland Security claiming that it is arresting, quote, "the worst of the worst," end quote. But brand-new reporting from MSNBC blows that lie out of the water. It reveals that, out of the more than 1,000 arrests made in Chicago, quote, "the agency provided detailed information for only 10 men with a criminal background, about one percent of those detained, making independent verification difficult." The public intra-MAGA backlash to the open cruelty of Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign is where we start today. ...
(...)
Jacob Soboroff says President Donald Trump wants to deport as many immigrants as President Barack Obama did, and then recalls the Obama-era deportations:
JACOB SOBOROFF: There will be advocates who say there were interior removals that tore apart families. Read Dr. William Lopez -- he has a new book out now about raised in the heartland of the United States and how these played out under multiple Presidents, but he didn't have wide-scale, indiscriminate family separation-style raids like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Tom Homan and Kristi Noem are effectuating on the streets of this country right now for the purpose of only of hitting the numbers that Stephen Miller wants to hit.
Barack Obama -- I'm not justifying it in any way -- I think any of the advocates would say it was very damaging and traumatic -- traumatizing to the children that were caught in those policies -- but for Donald Trump -- and I'm not objectively -- this is what they said -- the point was to harm people with family separation. The point is to hurt these communities so that other people -- there are ads running in Chicago in English with Kristi Noem on television offering people money to leave the country. They want as many people as possible to leave, and the way they think they can do that is by scaring the holy hell out of people by putting these images on television. That is not what prior administrations did. This is a whole new level.
WALLACE: If you take the parts of this that -- let's just go with Joe Rogan because he's speaking publicly, and the MAGA coalition listens to him. He doesn't like deporting people who have been here 20 years who haven't committed crimes. Pew polling had that number at about I think eight percent of Americans supported deporting people married to a U.S. citizen. It's about 12 (percent) who supported people -- I mean, there were always micro, micro numbers of people who supported what's actually happening -- 87 percent of Americans, according to Time/CNN, support deporting adjudicated violent criminals. And the whole program is built around deporting the people that eight (percent) of Americans want gone.
BELCHER: Yeah, well. look, I'm -- the cruelty is the point, yeah, the cruelty is the point, but I want to go a little deeper than that, right? This doesn't lower the prices of gas or eggs or groceries
(...)
4:24 p.m. Eastern
NICOLLE WALLACE: We're back with Jacob, Cornell, and Tim. I feel like we could solve everything. Jacob, just tell me -- I mean, Pritzker seems to have been made for this moment, or to be emulating what Gavin Newsom pioneered both as an advocate for his city and state -- and Karen Bass as well for her city. But just tell me -- tell me where you see this heading this weekend and in the coming days.
JACOB SOBOROFF: Well, I think what they have all come to realize and understand is that not only is this a usurpation of their power -- at least that's what they say -- that's what Bass said on the streets -- that's what Newsom was saying when it came to the calling up of the Guard and the deployment of the Marines. Obviously, he's not going to deploy the Marines to L.A., but when the Marines were on the streets of L.A. -- and Pritzker as well -- and what they are communicating when they're saying, "Come get me -- come arrest me" is that -- he said to me -- he said, "I don' t know if we'll have an election" -- we were joking about it, but "I don't know if we'll have an election in 2026 or we will have the military outside of the ballot boxes.
And so they are taking this from just an immigration-related issue to saying, "Democracy is on the line here, ladies and gentlemen." And I think that's part of what is compelling people that -- as you said, Cornell -- may not have otherwise shown up for an immigration protest into the streets. That protest of 10 or seven or 10,000 people up and down Michigan Avenue was just -- was not your ordinary immigration protest. That was people from all walks of life on the night that that Cubs' future was on the line in Chicago.
It was a really electric, impressive thing to see, and I think because their local leaders are standing up and saying, "This isn't -- this is about your neighbors -- documented and undocumented -- but it's not just about the future of who gets to live in this country -- it's whether or not we get to have a free country at all."
WALLACE: Yeah, I mean --
CORNELL BELCHER, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Nicolle, I'm gonna --
WALLACE: Yeah, go.
BELCHER: I'm going be the bad guy here because I'm going to say it's not bad for their politics thinking about running for President.
SOBOROFF: Yeah.
BELCHER: Right?
WALLACE: Yeah, yeah.
BELCHER: You look at Pritzker, and you look at Newsom. You know, they've been outspoken -- they've taken on this fight -- they're doing everything the base has asked that they want to see more Democrats doing. And, again, I'm completely neutral -- I never want to work another presidential campaign as long as I live -- but I got to tell you, I think this positions them well in a crowded field going into a Democratic primary.
WALLACE: Let me just give you an alternate analysis, I mean, President of what? Because -- because -- right? Because like if this doesn't win, President of what? And I think that the MAGA world braids these things together, right? Why do -- why do 48 states pass voter suppression laws? They pass them predicated on a lie that Bill Barr told us was a lie. He told us it was bull bleep. It's Monday -- I'll try to go through two hours without swearing. So the same thing with the -- with immigration raids and militarized federal law enforcement.
But what are they on the streets for? Only the pro-democracy side is trying to answer that question. To MAGA it's a lollapalooza. They're there for all of it. They're there for -- they're there for mass deportation -- they're there to make it scarier to vote -- they have no plans on leaving. We're the only side trying to unbraid what is just their mass overreach.
BELCHER: Yeah, I'm not kidding when I'm not sure there's going to be an election.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BELCHER: I'm not, right? I, fingers crossed, I hope there's going to be election. But if I look at everything that's happening in this country right now, I'm not 100 percent sure that these people aren't going to block an election. There's -- he's not --
WALLACE: A free and fair election.
BELCHER: A free and fair election -- that he won't, you know, put military on the street and especially in certain areas of the country, military will be on the street to stop us -- get in the way of having a free and fair election.
