Could New Hampshire Change the Midterm Calculus and Refugee Stories of Survival 5 Years after Afghanistan

0:00I don't want to spoil stuff, so I'm trying to both give you information as a reporter and preserve for you the kind of feeling that I had watching it. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugian. So you just heard me talking to NBC News senior Hollywood reporter Rebecca Keegan. There was this super secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival over the weekend, And it turns out the movie was about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder. So we talk about what we learned about Elizabeth Holmes in the lead up to her imprisonment.

0:39That is when this movie was actually filmed. Why Nathan Fielder was chosen as the co-director here and how this whole thing came together. Plus, it has been five years since the fall of Afghanistan. And I am speaking with two young Afghan women who were the subjects of a book written by NBC News president of editorial here, Rebecca Blumenstein. And we talk about what that exit looked like, how the resettlement process has gone for these two young women, and why it is Rebecca chose to write this book in the first place.

1:21up first though this year has been something to say the least but the political primary season is nearly over there's just a couple of races left to set the stage for the midterm elections come november today in new hampshire voters are cast in final ballots and races for governor for the house and for an open senate seat and up until now we were not expecting this senate seat to be all that competitive but that calculus could actually change tonight as republicans test the power of a Trump endorsement. And Democrats decide between establishment and more progressive candidates. So this is a question that we've seen play out before.

1:56But what could New Hampshire tell us about where the parties stand weeks away from the general? So for that, I'm going to bring in NBC News chief data analyst, Steve Kornacki. Tis the season. We're into it. The primary season is almost over, and then it's the general election sprint. And then the general election sprint. All right. Let's talk on the Senate race in New Hampshire first. So you got Gene Shaheen, Democratic senator, who's retiring after three terms. The Democratic establishment was rallying behind Representative Chris Pappas. And it seemed like it was going to be this slam dunk, right?

2:30But now Pappas is facing this challenge from Democratic Socialists of America member Karishma Menzor. So set the stage for us here. And it may still, at least in this primary, be a slam dunk for Pappas. No one quite knows what to make of it. What happened was there was a poll that came out from the University of New Hampshire about two weeks ago that suddenly showed Pappas still ahead, but 47 to 34. And when you consider the disparity between the endorsements, you know, Pappas with all the establishment support behind him, he's an incumbent member of Congress. And in New Hampshire, there's only two congressional districts.

3:08So half the state is what he represents in Congress. He's been elected, reelected four times there. Big financial disparity between them. So the fact that all of a sudden, a couple weeks out, you have a poll that shows this thing getting closer to a 10-point race. It sort of left people saying two things. One, he seems to be underperforming potentially as a candidate. And secondly, I think everyone's very mindful of this, the way this primary season's turned out. Mansoor, his opponent there, is a Democratic socialist, a socialist. We've seen these candidates in some states and in some districts.

3:41Too well. Right. And have that sort of like, you know, last minute momentum, it kind of seems. So it left everybody wondering, geez, is there something happening? Now, there's been no polling since then. We don't know. The Pappas folks have responded pretty aggressively with ads and stuff, but creates a little bit of mystery going into this. So we've seen this story before because you've got Republicans that are saying, listen, maybe we're going to have an easier time winning this seat if the socialist wins this race, right? And that is Manzur. But they actually have to figure out who their candidate is first, and I'm talking about the Republicans here.

4:15So you have John Sununu, who has President Trump's endorsement and is likely, it seems, to win this nomination tonight. He's facing Scott Brown. President Trump's poll numbers, though, they're not great. How is an endorsement from the president going to fare in this election when we look at the Republican race? Well, I think it had the effect in the Republican primary of really solidifying Sununu's hold on the nominations. He leads by that same poll I'm talking about from the University of New Hampshire had Sununu 40 points ahead of Scott Brown. So you see the power of the Trump endorsement in these primaries.

4:54The Sununu name itself is like royalty in New Hampshire Republican politics. His father was the governor, was George Bush 41's chief of staff. His brother, Chris, more recently, the governor, just left office early last year. Chris Sununu was a very popular governor. And John Sununu himself, John E. Sununu, the Senate candidate, is a former senator. He actually served in the Senate from 02 to 08. He defeated Jean Shaheen to get the seat in 02. Then he lost it to her in 08. Now he's back almost 20 years later trying to get back. So the thinking from Republicans is that, look, the Trump endorsement, they hope, helps a lot of the Republican establishment is what I should say.

5:32The Republicans are hoping that basically the Trump endorsement helps Sununu in this primary. Where it needs to. And doesn't hurt him in November. The Democrats are hoping it will hurt him in November because Trump's approval rating in the state is at 37 percent right now. Not a place you want to be necessarily going into the midterms. And the same kind of, it seems, dynamics are actually playing out in the House as well, especially when we're looking at Chris Pappas' open House seat, right? Yeah, it's the first congressional district there. Again, this is basically the city of Manchester over to the seacoast.

6:03Portsmouth would be in there, sort of the eastern half of the state. This is a district that is very likely to elect a Democrat in November, just given the nature of the year, the nature of that district. The primary that's taking shape there is interesting. There's Maura Sullivan, who had lost to Pappas back in 2018 in a Democratic primary when he won the seat. She is running again. And she's running against her main opponent here is the daughter of Jean Shaheen, Stephanie Shaheen, who was a member of the Portsmouth City Council, but obviously carries the Shaheen name into this. And there is a third candidate, too, sort of, again, a progressive candidate, sort of a far-left candidate who may have a little bit of momentum, but folks think this is sort of coming down to a Sullivan versus Shaheen race there.

6:49The winner of that is very likely to go on to win the House seat in November. So let's take a step back now because we started off this conversation by saying we are near the end, and then we are looking ahead towards November and the midterm elections. what do you see differently now that you didn't necessarily see heading into the primary season and kind of the story that we have been talking about this entire conversation which is well it looks like maybe the progressives are coming out from left field and they can maybe pull out a win the republicans are wanting the progressive to actually win because they feel like they could beat that progressive come the general put it this way we look at the battle for control of the senate republicans control it the democrats need a net gain of four seats we've been saying all year, that's a very hard thing for them to accomplish because when you look at the map, they necessarily will have to win at least two Republican-held Senate seats in states that Trump carried by double digits.

7:43Right. And it's still harder now? Well, the way the year has played out, you're starting to see it look fairly doable for them, you know, for a couple of reasons. You could look at things that are happening in Alaska, for instance. Alaska looks a lot better, I think, for Democrats now than it did at the start of the year. Democrats think they caught a break in Texas where John Cornyn, the longtime Republican senator, lost to Ken Paxton, who's bringing a ton of baggage with him into the general election. So things like that, I think, have kind of broken Democrats' way to give them a chance. But the flip side of it is, have the Democrats put any of the seats they control at risk in the primary season?

8:23And the one right now that comes to mind is Michigan, where El Saeed won the primary there. again over the establishment candidate. You know, we talk about these sort of far left candidates who've won in Democratic primaries. Most of those high profile successes that we've seen this year have been in congressional districts that are overwhelmingly Democratic. It doesn't matter who the party nominates. They're going to win in the general election. That's not true in Michigan. Michigan's a state that Trump carried twice. So it's a Democratic held Senate seat. It's an open seat. The incumbent is retiring and the Democrats are nominating a candidate pretty far to the left right there.

8:57That's a test of, you know, how far can they kind of push it? And if they lose Michigan, that changes the Senate math. Steve Kornacki, now it's the sprint, right? Like you're at like a 21-mile marker in a marathon and you've got 5.2 to go. If I made it 21 miles, I don't know if I could sprint another. I think I'd be looking for the subway to get me to the finish line. Steve Kornacki, thank you. Thanks, yes. All right, we're going to take a very quick break. But when we are back, it has been five years since U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, forcing many Afghans to flee from the impending Taliban regime.

9:37How two young women were able to evacuate and make a new life for themselves here in the United States. And who helped them? That's next.

9:49My photos are my life, so I don't trust them to just any card. And with my Sandisk Extreme SD card, I know I'm capturing ultra-high-res memories of... Good times, good times, good times, good times, good times, good times, great times, good times, good times, great times, good times. My grandma, my grandma. Sandisk Extreme SD card. Capture your life in high-res. Terms and conditions apply. Visit sandisk.com for more information. My name is Annie Elise, a.k.a. your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Seriallessly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn.

10:31So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Seriallessly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serialistly with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. At Jared Jewelers, we know the right gift can bring a lifetime of meaning, a memory cherished forever, 20 % off storewide.

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11:18And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So it's been five years since U.S. troops pulled out of Afghanistan in August of 2021, ending the longest war in U.S. history. But even before American forces had completely left, the Taliban started retaking control of the country. Anyone who had worked with the U.S. government or even private American companies was in danger. That included the journalists and the employees who worked for media companies. At the time, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein was deputy managing editor at The New York Times, and she helped spearhead an effort by The Times to get a group of employees and their families out of Afghanistan, 124 in all.

11:59They were especially concerned about the women and the girls who had faced extreme oppression under the first Taliban regime and were about to have their rights taken away yet again. In her new book, The Last Free Women, Rebecca and her co-author Diana Kapp describe the incredible evacuation of these women and their families and the challenges that they overcame in the years after their arrival here in the United States. So I spoke with Rebecca Blumenstein, Marwa Rahim, and Marcel Rahim. Welcome, guys. Thank you for having us. It's great to have you. Marwa, Marcel, I want to start with you. I want to go back to the day in which you got a phone call from your brother who was working for the Times in Kabul, in which he said to you essentially, while you were eating lunch around the family table, you had to leave immediately.

12:58You had to get out. What happened after that? After that, when we receive a call, we were not prepared. It was not a trip that you were prepared to have your packs ready, have your stuff ready. It wasn't like that. It was only 30 minutes for us to pack our entire life, for my parents to pack their 76 years of their life in a small suitcase and to leave Afghanistan. And the thing, we didn't know where we are going. And we had to only bring our document and we had to run to the airport in order to leave Afghanistan. And the situation in the airport was, when we entered, it was normal. But later on, when Kabul fell completely, it got worse and all the people, you could see everyone in the airport rushing to get into airplane to leave Afghanistan.

13:47You could have seen a politician. You could see an artist. Everyone was trying to leave Afghanistan because the Taliban took over Kabul. Rebecca, take me behind the scenes a little bit because the Times decided to help these people that were working for you at the time in Afghanistan in your bureau. What went into that decision to support them during the United States pulling out of Afghanistan? The Times had had a bureau in Kabul for the 20 years of the U.S. occupation and took great pride in the Kabul and Afghanistan bureau. And the U.S. signaled that it was pulling out of Afghanistan. What happened next was just shocking.

14:29Province after province fell to the Taliban so quickly. And I think everyone thought there might be more time for Kabul. But a couple days before August 15th, we had had various things in the motion and went into overdrive. And we decided that we had an obligation to help everybody who had worked for The New York Times. Do you believe that Marwa and Mursal and the other people that got out of Afghanistan would not be here today had it not been for the efforts of The Times in getting them out, that they would have been killed by the Taliban? One never knows what would happen. I know that some people have been killed by the Taliban.

15:04And I would also say that the Times was not alone. Other news organizations and other nonprofits and especially vets leapt into action. The U.S. in those early days was really not much of a help, quite frankly. And so we were all just dialing frantically any contact we had anywhere around the world, looking for someone who would take our people out of Afghanistan and give them refuge. You did make it. You are here now. You had to go through Qatar. You had to go through Mexico and then finally made it to Texas. You had lives in Afghanistan. You had dreams in Afghanistan. You were studying to be a lawyer.

15:42You were studying to be a doctor in Afghanistan. You were into your studies. You weren't at the beginning of them. and yet you have had to start all over here with your careers and learn English at the same time. What has been, Marwa, I'll start with you, the hardest thing for you in that journey of having to start over? Exactly. As you said, we had our whole life. I was in my fourth year of medical school, which is a big thing for an Afghan girl going to medical school. I left my city that I was burned and moved to another city just to study medicine. And as you know, health situation in Afghanistan right now, specifically for women, is very difficult.

16:27And then leaving that behind and moving to the United States was not easy. At the beginning, of course, I was just thinking about what if I stayed there and what if I pursued my career. By now, I would have been graduated and be practicing medicine right now. Had the Taliban not come back in power. Yes, yes. If the Taliban were not there, me and other hundred million or other girls would be educated by now. And that very mentally hurt me. And I'm just so heartbreaking by this idea of the Taliban that they banned the school for girls. And at some point it motivated me, that it gives me motivation and strength thinking about those women, that I am one of those women.

17:13But I got lucky that I am here today and I have help of other people around me. What has it been like for you, Marcel, this transition of having to go back to Ground Zero or to start over again? Because at my age, we were the first generation to go back to school after five years of the past. So I was growing up with the word that you are the next generation. You are the young generation who will build the country, who are the future of the country. so you become a lawyer doctor like you are the future and I was thinking like okay we have had war situation war not good for women but this generation will make a change will make different and unfortunately it didn't happen and when I got here and we came here as a refugee as a woman who doesn't know English who doesn't have any support and we were hopeless until we We met Rebecca, friends, and other women who supported us to be here where we are right now.

18:09And they gave us hope. They told us that it's not impossible as a refugee or as a migrant to start from the beginning. What has surprised you most, Rebecca, about the journey of refugees in this country? You had never worked with refugee resettlement, right? You're a journalist. Right, exactly. When we landed in Houston, you're absolutely right. I knew nothing about resettling refugees, and the General Counsel of the Times gave us some good advice. You should hire someone who does. And we contracted with Catholic Charities, but we also hired this man named Eric Tate who had worked with refugees all around the world.

18:46And he's like a soft, gentle soul. He kind of laid out to me the expectations for what the typical life of a refugee is in America. And he said, and this is a tension we describe a lot in the book, that the fate of most refugees is a life of poverty. And I just felt that we owed something more, especially to the young people and especially to the young women who managed to get out of Afghanistan. I felt it was our duty that these were people who had helped America, who had helped American news organizations, who lost everything in half an afternoon. And it wasn't easy. Colleges that we contacted initially were like, well, we prefer, you know, these other visas.

19:29We don't like the humanitarian parole they were brought in. And I'm like, well, that's what the reality is. And we began pushing bit by bit for ways for them to get into school. And initially, most schools said, absolutely not. Their English is not good enough. And besides, how are you going to pay for it? And of course, college, the cost of college is something that so many millions of people grapple with. But I felt like, well, teach them English. That's what colleges should do, especially this is the largest influx of refugees since the Vietnam War. How are we as a country going to respond?

20:02And eventually, we did find enough people along the way who figured out a path. And there are a lot of heroes in this book. We eventually formed a nonprofit, the Journalism Refugees Education Fund, to help pay for the school of not only our group, but other exiled journalists. You actually work for the resettlement agency that The Times was working with. Things are different now, though. Anti-immigrant sentiment is at an all-time high. temporary protected status for Afghans has been revoked by the Trump administration. How do you provide hope for Afghan refugees right now? Unfortunately, it was a very tough moment for me as well when I heard this news, because I was imagining myself and my family and the whole group in 2021, what we would have done if we didn't have the support, if we didn't have the support from resettlement agency.

21:01And now I see my client as like this, hopeless. It's really hard to now to give a hope to refugees that you are supported here. You are welcomed here because sometimes they will be like, yes, we are welcome. But we at the same time, we see there is no support for us. They are limiting us. I had this client that she left Afghanistan when she in 2021. And that time she had newborn baby and she came to this country with her newborn baby. But she left her husband behind. and her husband is now in another country and she has been uncertain with her status for almost five years and the father has not been able to see his kids.

21:39And she told me something that broke my heart that she was FaceTiming with her husband and she was showing her son, the father, but he was not recognizing him. The son did not recognize the father. Because he's never seen him. Yeah, they never seen. And it's not even clear that she will go and see his— This is the reality that so many refugees are living right now. Yes, I think something that has been overlooked and not have been paid attention enough is the family separation. I have been seeing so many families that have been separated for so many years, and they have been living in uncertainty because they can go and see their families or to reunion with their families.

22:27Rebecca, what do you want people to take away from this book? Why did you write it? There were books written after Kabul fell, but there was never really much of a discussion about what happened after that. This was the largest influx of refugees since the Vietnam War. And there were so many people who helped along the way. And that's what we've been so privileged to tell, is not only to share the stories of Marwa and Marcel and the two other young women, But the many people who did lean in and whether it was donations, whether it was, you know, tutoring, whether it was helping on applications, there's a feeling a bit sometimes of despair at the country right now and how divided we are.

23:09And to follow the journey of these women, not only the tenacity, but the kindness of so many people across this country really gives you faith in America and the best of America. The book is called The Last Free Women, out now wherever you get your books. Rebecca, Marwa, Marcel, thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Coming up, name a more unlikely duo, Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder. We're going to tell you about a surprise new project they announced this weekend after a very quick break. And also, while you're waiting, why not take a moment to share this episode with a friend?

23:50And we would love to meet more future fans of the podcast. I'll see you on the other side.

23:58My name is Annie Elise, AKA your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Seriallessly. Now I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn. So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Seriallessly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases, so you don't have to. Diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend.

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25:44And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So the Telluride Film Festival, it was held in Colorado over the weekend. It's this really big launching pad for movies that want to build buzz for awards season. And on Sunday night, word started going around that there was going to be this secret screening. The people that were lucky enough to get in, because there were a lot of people that wanted in, they had to lock their phones away while watching this movie. Well, that secret screening ended up being a documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Nathan Fielder, a master of cringe comedy.

26:23I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Hmm? Why would I deceive you? So there's no reason for me to do that. Okay.

26:46All right. Okay, good shot.

26:52So how did Fielder actually get access to Holmes? And how was he able to keep this movie called You Can See Everything under wraps for so long? And by the way, why him? For this, I want to bring in someone who saw the film, NBC News senior Hollywood reporter Rebecca Hegan. Hi, Rebecca. Hi, Yasmin. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how this came to be. Because Nathan Fielder, he's kind of famous for blurring the lines between reality and fiction. He has his shows Nathan for You and The Rehearsal. Then we have Elizabeth Holmes. She's now in prison for fraud and lying to investors about her blood testing company Theranos.

27:31although she still claims that she never lied when she launched the company. What did Fielder say about how this movie came together and how he got so much access to Elizabeth Holmes? Like, why him? Right. Why him is a question that is asked directly in the course of the film, but Fielder also said some things about this during the Q &A. His co-director, Lance Oppenheim, had heard from A24, the indie studio, that Elizabeth Holmes and her romantic partner, Billy Evans, were looking for someone to tell her story in the days before she left for prison. Fielder found that very interesting. He was curious.

28:09And he went to A24 and the studio arranged a meeting between Fielder Oppenheim and Holmes and Evans. In the film itself, Fielder asks Holmes, why me? And he wonders, is it because I don't know a lot about science? I'm not some sort of investigative journalist. Like, do you think you can pull the wool over me and that's why me? She explains that Evans had shown her some of Fielder's sort of comedy and shows. And they both had the sense that he was someone who thinks differently. And they think differently. And they thought it might be a good fit. So there are parts in which the filmmakers had to fill the gaps when it comes to Holmes' storytelling.

28:53So there is an A-list actress that helps fill those gaps playing Holmes. I know that those who have seen it, including yourself, have been sworn to secrecy as to who that A-list actress is. What can you tell us, though? Like, what more can you explain for us about the dynamics between Holmes and Fielder? What more did you learn about Elizabeth Holmes and lead up to her imprisonment that we didn't know already? Like, who is she? How did she come across? Right. Well, so really the central, the core question of the film is who is she? And is she as sort of innocent and sometimes just naive as she appears to be?

29:33And I had many moments where I thought either this woman is Meryl Streep or she is actually as naive as she seems. Did you have an answer to that? Like as you watched it or at the end of the film? At the end of the film, I did not have an answer to that. She really is very, very hard to read. And either she firmly believes what she's saying, or like I say, she deserves an Academy Award for the way she presents to the world. But Fielder and this crew literally move in with this family. The production starts 34 days before she leaves for a federal prison in Texas. You see her nursing her baby, walking on the beach with Evans, her partner.

30:14You also see some of the stuff that's a little kind of strange in that they seem to be planning a new company that Evans will run while Holmes is in prison. And so they're talking to potential partners, running calls on that, which feels very strange, like who would want to be associated with Holmes in a business sense. But they seem to believe that they can build this company, and they're trying to do that in the course of the film. The second piece of the film unfolds while Holmes is in prison, and there's no cameras for that part. So the way Fielder and his co-director depict those conversations is, as you said, with the help of this A-list actress.

30:54And I'm not revealing her because she becomes a character in herself, in the film, you know, as herself, in addition to playing Holmes. What do you mean? I mean that her relationship to Holmes becomes a dynamic in the film. Because she communicates with Holmes or just because of how she feels about Elizabeth Holmes, this actress? I don't want to spoil stuff. So I'm trying to both give you information as a reporter and preserve for you the kind of feeling that I had watching it. And for the audience, that same feeling. When is this film out? October? October. Yeah. Wow. I cannot wait to see it.

31:32Rebecca Keegan, thank you. Thank you. All right. That is going to do it for us at Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It is a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox. You can sign up for The Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription at NBCNews.com. We'll see you tomorrow.

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