On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House (Oct 10, 2025), Nicolle Wallace, Elizabeth Oyer, former Pardon Attorney at the DOJ, and Melissa Murray, NYU Law Professor, tried to portray Donald Trump as “the machine” — an authoritarian force using government power to punish dissent. Oyer focused on “norms” and “traditions” within the Department of Justice, while Murray accused Trump of using “strongman tactics” and warned that this is “what happens when you stand against the machine.”
Here’s the truth: the corrupt U.S. government itself is the machine — a permanent structure of unelected officials, political operatives, and media allies who run things no matter who’s elected. MSNBC doesn’t challenge it; they protect it. Trump may lead the government, but he isn’t part of their club — and that’s why the machine turned on him.
Elizabeth Oyer began by admitting that the Justice Department isn’t bound by law so much as by tradition.
She said:
“Even if there is some legal merit to some of these cases, which is in question, the way in which these prosecutions are proceeding creates the perception that the president is just swooping in and pulling strings in the criminal justice system, and that undermines confidence in the whole system.
We’re now learning that the Justice Department is largely governed by norms and traditions, and those have been in place for over a century and have largely been abided by by the leadership and career workforce of the department. But at the end of the day, those things don’t have any teeth. So if Donald Trump wants to disregard all of the norms and traditions that have kept our justice system functioning and created a sense of legitimacy for over a century, then there’s really very little there to stop him. It goes hand in hand with the mass firings of career experts within the department like myself.”
Oyer didn’t just stumble onto this — she’s known it all along. When she said, “We’re now learning that the Justice Department is largely governed by norms and traditions,” she gave away more than she meant to. Those unwritten rules aren’t about protecting justice; they’re about protecting control. They keep power locked inside the machine — a network of bureaucrats, political players, and media elites who protect their own. Trump didn’t break the law — he broke their system. He disrupted their power structure, not the Constitution. And that’s why they see him as dangerous.
Oyer then complained that Trump replaced entrenched officials with people who would actually support his administration. She said:
“He has through Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche rooted out career professionals who are standing in the way of accomplishing his political agenda…”
To Oyer, that was proof of corruption. To anyone else, it’s how democracy works. The American people elect a president to carry out a vision. Bureaucrats who defy that mandate aren’t “career professionals” — they’re unelected gatekeepers protecting the machine.
She went on to defend those same insiders, saying:
“As a result of pulling out people who are experienced in prosecuting and putting in place people like Lindsay Halligan, who has no idea what a criminal prosecution normally looks like, he is able to do a tremendous amount of damage to the legitimacy of our entire justice system.”
Here, legitimacy doesn’t mean legality; it means loyalty to the insiders. Only people from their circle with “experience” are considered qualified. Anyone new is automatically branded a threat. That’s how the machine keeps itself running — by convincing the public that only it can be trusted. And when outsiders like Trump try to change it, they claim he’s “damaging” the system — when in truth, he’s only disrupting the one they built to protect themselves.
Nicolle Wallace then said:
“Melissa Murray, when you think about what these three people have in common — and the medium that matters most to Donald Trump — is that they aggressively and charismatically poked at all of his soft tissue, if you will. Jim Comey described his organization like a mob family, La Cosa Nostra, in his first book and his first interview about it. The criticisms were really not launched by Attorney General Tish James. She went out and proved they were true in the fraud case — the civil case — and held up a multimillion-dollar judgment against his company, another pride point, I suppose, for him. And then John Bolton came in from the far right of the ideological spectrum and said not only all that, but that he’s an idiot. I mean, Bolton basically said he was too stupid to be a dictator. That was his line of attack against Donald Trump, repeated over and over and over again on television. So whatever the answer is to Mike’s question about finding a line around vindictive prosecutions, there is copious evidence that these were people who got way under Donald Trump’s skin.”
Wallace’s question was as loaded as it was wrong. “The three — Jim Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton — aggressively and charismatically poked at all of his soft tissue,” she said, as if Trump’s critics merely bruised his ego instead of waging a coordinated campaign to destroy him. Ironically, the only ones who ever sounded like mob bosses were Comey and James — both using their offices like weapons to enforce loyalty and punish dissent. Comey ran the FBI like a political operation, leaking internal memos to manipulate investigations and using the Clinton-funded Steele dossier to justify spying on a former Trump adviser. James campaigned on a promise to “sue him” and “be a real pain,” then used her office to make good on that threat. Her civil fraud case rested on disputed property valuations where no banks lost money, no victims existed, and no criminal fraud was proven — a show trial built for headlines, not justice. And John Bolton has never represented the “far right.” He’s a career Washington war hawk and establishment insider — exactly the kind of figure Trump ran against. Wallace got it completely backward: she cast the machine’s enforcers as heroes, and the outsider challenging them as the villain.
Wallace framed these figures as fearless truth-tellers “standing up” to power. In reality, they are the power — the entrenched class protecting the system that serves them.
Melissa Murray responded:
“This is a very thin-skinned administration in a lot of respects, and these prosecutions make that very clear. But I want to emphasize it’s not simply about seeking retribution from those who you believe have wronged you over time — whether it’s John Bolton, Letitia James, or Jim Comey. It’s about sending a message to other people who would similarly stand up and dissent against your administration — that this is what happens when you stand against the machine.
Murray meant that Trump and his administration are “the machine” — and that figures like Bolton, James, and Comey were the brave ones “standing up to them.” Bolton is a lifelong Washington operator. Letitia James built her career on partisan politics. Jim Comey led the FBI, leaked internal memos, and helped trigger the Mueller probe. These aren’t outsiders challenging power; they are power. They are the machine Murray is defending.
Murray closed with the familiar MSNBC narrative:
“So these are typical strongman tactics that we have seen in authoritarian governments the world over. They’re just being exported now to the United States. And he’s using every lever of power to do this.”
She accused Trump of being a “strongman” simply for replacing bureaucrats who opposed him — something every elected leader is expected to do.
Oyer, Murray, and Wallace spent the segment defending the machine — a system that hides behind “norms and traditions” to shield insiders and smear anyone who dares to challenge it. When Murray warned, “This is what happens when you stand against the machine,” she revealed more than she intended. The real machine isn’t President Trump — it’s the coordinated alliance of government insiders, career bureaucrats, political operatives, and media elites working together to control information, crush dissent, and install presidents they can control. MSNBC isn’t exposing the machine — Oyer, Murray, and Wallace are its puppets.