← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"A matter of last resort"
00:41:44
Nicolle Wallace on Trump and his administration's eagerness to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role - what a former GOP Defense chief called "a matter of last resort".
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- [00:00]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Hey there, it's Dr. Sanjay Gupta with some exciting news to share. CNN is now streaming. That means you can read, watch and stream everything in one subscription. You can watch News Live 24. 7. You can also explore catch up videos and explainer videos. And you can also watch the library of CNN's originals, including my latest documentary. It doesn't have to hurt. Just go to CNN.com AllAccess why does.
- [00:31]
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- [01:04]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Use of US military people inside the United States, we don't sign up for the internal thing. We sign up to protect the away game, if you will. There are other people very capable of taking care of the home game, law enforcement people like that. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort.
- [01:25]
Nicole
Hi again everyone. It's now 5 o' clock in New York. A matter of last resort so says Donald Trump's former Defense Secretary Mark Esper about using active duty forces in a law enforcement capacity. That was then, this is now, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting. That does not seem to fit the Description for Trump 2.0. The journal details how new memos from the Pentagon show that the Defense Department is now preparing quick reaction forces in every state and territory by January that are trained and equipped to respond to riots and civil unrest. Wall Street Journal puts it like this, quote, the riot control units are a major shift for the Pentagon, underscoring the Trump administration's push to directly involve the military in responding to protests and other domestic missions that have been off limits except in emergencies. As many as 500 soldiers in each state will receive training and be assigned to deploy on short notice, according to the memos. It's a frightening proposition considering what Donald Trump wanted to do to deal with protesters back in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. He, according to Mark Esper, proposed having the US Military quote, shoot protesters in the legs, end quote. From reporting in the Guardian, which was the first outlet to obtain these memos quote, the October 8th memo says the Pentagon will deploy military trainers to every state and US Territory as far away as Guam, with the goal of making the quick reaction forces operational by January 1, 2026. Each state will also be provided 100 sets of crowd control equipment to be used to support this requirement. Among other things, the troops are to be trained in how to form squad sized riot control formations and how to employ a riot baton as a member of a riot control formation and how to supervise a riot crowd control operation. National Guard members are also to be trained in de escalation of force techniques. It was just yesterday that Donald Trump floated sending more active duty troops into U.S. cities, saying, quote, I can send the army, the Navy, the Air Force and Marines. I can send anybody I wanted, end quote. As Donald Trump intensifies the military presence here in American cities and on domestic soil, he is also intensifying his strikes against boats off the coast of South America. Administration says without providing any evidence to the public are smuggling drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced today the latest strike in the eastern Pacific where four people were killed today. Members of the House Armed Services Committee received a briefing on those boat strikes, but Democrats were furious that lawyers weren't also present to give the legal justification for the attacks. Meanwhile, on the Senate side yesterday, Senate Democrats were left out of the briefing on the strikes, a move Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intel Committee, called, quote, indefensible and dangerous. The Trump administration's intensifying use of the men and women of the military on domestic soil is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends, staff writer at the Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic daily newsletter. Tom Nichols is back. He's a professor emeritus of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, where he taught for more than two decades. Also joining us, former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department. Mary McCourt is back. And with me at the table for the whole hour, Puck News senior political columnist, MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilman is here. Tom Nichols, I start with you and the state of Donald Trump doing all the things Mark Milley and Mark Esper and Jim Mattis wouldn't let him do in 1.0.
- [05:20]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, and you know, it's we were here a week ago talking about this. We were all sitting right here in, you know, the same spot talking about how the president's trying to create the military as his personal muscle, as an extension of his will, which is what he's doing now. And, you know, the fascinating thing about Donald Trump is that every time people issue these kinds of warnings, his supporters go bonkers and say, he would never do such a thing. And then Trump himself comes out in public and saws that limb off right behind them and says, no, that's exactly what I intend to do. This whole notion of deploying, you know, riot control troops to every city for what, you know, what kind of disorder are they expecting? Perhaps millions of people voting, you know, going into the streets to express their choice in an election. This is clearly something that. This is clearly part of a plan to put the military into American streets because Donald Trump wants them there, because he wants to establish that they will do what he tells them to do, where he tells them to do it, regardless of the Constitution, the law, or tradition. And, you know, I don't know how many times we have to warn people about this, but, you know, you know, Trump as his. He always will, just shows up and says the quiet part out loud.
- [06:50]
Nicole
Well, I think, Tom, it's important, though, to point out the connective tissue between running a campaign against the, quote, enemy within. And you had people, even John Hannity and Laura Ingraham, trying to. I think some of us were together when those interviews came out and they tried to get, oh, you're not really talking about going after the enemy within. He said, oh, yeah, I am. They deserve it. This is what it looks like when you reorient the federal government, including the US Military, against what you say and believe is the greatest threat to the country. And anyone that thinks his rhetoric is just his musings or his rantings or his burps or whatever, people excuse them away as he's now reoriented the United States military against the enemy within, which is fellow Americans.
- [07:35]
Tom Nichols
And it's not just him. I mean, there are people in his administration who draw these very clear connections. They say the President can designate anyone to be a terrorist. If the President designates a terrorist, an organization is terrorist, he can use military force, which is why we're blowing up boats and engaging in extrajudicial executions on the high seas right now. And then you get people in the White House saying things like, and by the way, anyone who's an opponent of the president, including people that are part of organized political parties, are terrorists. And then they kind of leave it for everybody else to fill in the blanks. But again, I think it's just a. It's meant to intimidate Americans out of the public space. It's meant to keep Americans out of their own streets, away from their own polling places, away from organized political activity. That I think that is the game here. And I think it's actually, let me say something optimistic. I think it's going to fail. But I think that's clearly where the president is headed with this. And this is. This just is. It's un American. I mean, this isn't. This isn't the country that we once knew.
- [08:43]
Nicole
Why is it gonna fail?
- [08:45]
Tom Nichols
Because I think people, you know, Americans really don't. Of every political stripe really don't like being told what to do. I think that they will actually show up and vote and come out. I mean, we've already seen it. You know, anybody who was in Washington when the National Guard was there knows that, you know, this didn't really intimidate anybody, you know, because the National Guard didn't wanna be there. We sort of politely waved at each other. And so I susp. This could backfire. But what I think he's hoping for and what I think at least some people around him are hoping for, is to draw the foul, is to put so many military forces in the streets that people then react against that and engage in violence or engage in public disorder so that they can then rationalize an even deeper crackdown and do things like perhaps invoke the Insurrection Act.
- [09:36]
Nicole
Haman. I mean, you listen to.
- [09:40]
Justin Wolfers
All of.
- [09:40]
Nicole
Mark Esper's interviews when he left the Pentagon. You listen to Mark Milley's public events, which are fewer than Esper's because he's made different choices. Mattis hasn't spoken out, really, except through the reporting in Bob Woodward's book. Everything that they warned of him and Stephen Miller wanting to do or trying to do, except for shooting protesters in the leg, which was Hesper's, a line from his book, actually, and something he talked to Norah o' Donnell about when he was interviewed for the book has come to pass. And we're not nine months in. What do you think that the sort of full project looks like if they are not slowed by either Tom Nichols scenario of people voting and objecting or any sort of political breaks in the system?
- [10:31]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Well, you know, we've often talked about the Esper thing and the Milley thing in the context of contrasting Trump 1.0 versus 2.0, that there were people who stood up to him in 1.0, and now they're all enablers in terms of what he was trying to do in those days. It's just so much smaller. I mean, as horrifying as the notion of, hey, let's shoot a protester in the leg because I'm embarrassed by these protests out in Lafayette Square compared to what Tom is relatively obliquely suggesting and that I will not be so oblique about. Right. Little pattern recognition here. He tore down the east wing of the White House last week.
- [11:13]
Tom Nichols
Right?
- [11:13]
Nicole
Two days. Sorry, in two days.
- [11:16]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
In two days. Some incredibly good Scott Galloway riff on this where he was like, I will put a refrigerator in a house that I'm renting, let alone would I undertake a major renovation? Isn't it clear if you engage in a major renovation like this, you're not planning to leave in 36 months? We then get him on Air Force One. He tried to walk that back a couple of days later, but saying, I would love to stick around for more than two terms. I mean, the writing is on the wall here. The question of what is he planning for, what is he doing here? In using the military in a way that no American president has ever done before, or planning to laying the tracks down for that, whether it's building the actual paramilitary in ice or diverting the official military towards the ends that he's diverting it towards in these American cities that are now in this quick action anti riot strike. He's laying the tracks for the thing that Tom said at the end there, which is try to get to getting to three years from now, which is why who knows what's going to happen in the midterms. The end game for Trump though is, is trying to figure out a way to, I think again reading the signals here. What's legible is being able to be in a position where you have said for three years there are riots all over the country where an emergency. He said, I can do anything I want if there's an emergency. America's an emergency, I can do whatever I want. Emergency powers, riots everywhere, building up the tolerance of it and our acculturation towards it so that you can look up in, in 2024 and not have to deal with the constitutional question of can I serve two terms? Because of course the Constitution says you can't serve more than two terms. But what you can do is you can say, sorry, we got to call off elections now because it's an emergency. We've been in emergency for three years. We had riots all over the country for the last four years. This is why I've been doing all this. It sounds like a paranoid fantasy, but look at what is happening and look at what he is saying. He is making it very clear that he does not intend to leave at the end of this term. And then he's doing all these things that we have unimaginable to us. To what end? As Tom's question is, and it seems to me it's obvious to what end, because it's the end that is always the end with Donald Trump, to serve Donald Trump. He's doing the stuff he's doing in some way to get something for himself. And when it comes to the American military all over the streets of the United States, what else is there? I mean, his financial grift is going on someplace else. He doesn't need the military for that. He can do the cryptograph without having to use any bombs or bullets. The thing that the military on the American streets is for, if you look just at Donald Trump's narrow interest is extending his political power going forward. There's no other answer to it really than that.
- [14:01]
Nicole
I mean, Mary, it assumes a lot of institutions are destroyed in the process, right? You have to take all the lower courts, which I would agree that the Supreme Court, except in one or two instances, has greenlit everything he sought to do, but the lower courts have not. I mean, it assumes a complete collapse of the remaining bulwark, which is right now the lower courts, the district courts and the public. Do you think that is a far fetched scenario that Howman lays out?
- [14:35]
Mary McCourt
I think that is definitely what Trump is trying to do, but he is being thwarted. And you know, we are now have a case, the case from the 7th Circuit, the case from Illinois. The US government has sought a stay of the district court's temporary restraining order, you know, prohibiting the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago. And that is something that the 7th Circuit refused to give Donald Trump a stay. That issue went up almost two weeks ago, two weeks ago tomorrow to the U.S. supreme Court. They asked for an immediate administrative stay while the longer stay got briefed. The case went to Justice Barrett, who refused to give them that administrative stay and instead set and expedited briefing schedule. And just yesterday, the court asked for supplemental briefing. The Supreme Court asked for supplemental briefing on the question of whether the statute that the President Trump is using for these federalizations and deployments, which says that the National Guard can be federalized when the President is unable with the regular forces to execute US Law. The question that the Supreme Court asked the parties to answer is what does regular forces mean? Because if regular forces means the US Regular military, then Donald Trump's reliance on the statute is completely inapplicable because he has not used the regular military. Now, you might be saying, be careful what you wish for. Are we suggesting that he should use the regular military? But he can only do that if he's got authority from Congress. So if he were to lose in the Supreme Court, and I think I'm very cautiously optimistic that he will not get a stay of the injunction and that injunction will remain in place. If he were to lose on that basis of, of regular forces being the military, will he then invoke the Insurrection act and say, okay, fine, I'm going to send out our regular military? That will be challenged, too. I guarantee you immediately those things will be challenged in court. And I think as much as this Supreme Court on the emergency docket has greenlit some really, really horrible things that Donald Trump and his administration has done, I do think that there are justices there, and it's not just the three who are often in dissent, who would be concerned about green lighting, the deployment of federalized National Guard or the military across the, you know, cities across America, and particularly whether it's just blue cities in blue states and blue cities and red states. You know, I think the Supreme Court isn't, just has to really think about this because the founders, part of the reason that they divided power over the military between Congress and the president and only gave Congress that authority to call forth the militia is because they were worried about the military engaged in domestic law enforcement. That's what they hated the British for doing.
- [17:29]
Nicole
Right?
- [17:29]
Mary McCourt
And so that's why this, this goes way back. So if you've got a Supreme Court who cares about originalism and what the founders were thinking back when we broke from, from England, you know, these are core principles that underlie our Constitution. So I agree with, with, with Tom and John that, that, you know, Trump is wanting by next year's election to have military and ice flooding the streets and being at polling places. But I'm not ready to give up on the courts on this one. And certainly the district courts have been hanging in there and we now have gotten the 9th Circuit that is also doing en banc review of the, of the panel's decision to stay the, the Injun. So that could get reversed. So, you know, I'm going to be, I'm sometimes a glass half empty person, but I'm going to be a little glass half full here.
- [18:19]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Can I just say that just to be really clear, I'm not foretelling the future. I'm not trying to say this is going to work. I was only talking about Trump's motivations. I think the future is to play for in terms of those institutional responses and the popular will of the people. But what I think we can analyze is what his game is, and that helps for people who don't think it's where we want to go, because we should. The more we can get ahead of it and we can see where we're going, the better chance we have we Team Democracy, has of stopping it.
- [18:49]
Nicole
And the only thing I would inject is those may be his desires and that is the picture that his actions paint when you take them, but when you add to them his trinkets that he's collecting his crown and his wandering around, there is an element of capacity to do something extrajudicial and unconstitutional that we have to inject into some of it as well. We'll do that on the other side of a break because no one's going anywhere. Also, head for us the many, many things Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand about nuclear weapons and why we should all be deeply alarmed about it now that he's ordered the resumption of nuclear testing. We'll have that conversation next later in the hour. How world leaders have learned to let Donald Trump claim a win while walking away as the winners themselves. It happened again when Trump met Xi, leaving many to ask whether Trump got played again. Plus, the other big takeaway from Trump's trip to Asia, the growing questions about his health and fitness for the job. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [19:55]
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- [20:24]
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- [20:56]
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- [21:27]
Nicole
We try to abide by the instruction from our colleague Rachel Maddow to watch what they do, not what they say. But sometime we got to cover what they say. And yesterday, Donald Trump said that he had directed the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. Trump saying that that announcement came in a post. It was a 100 word post with very few other details given about a matter of grave global consequence. The 100 words were also riddled with inaccuracies and proved to be, as with everything Trump related, more about his own ego than anything else. So Tom Nichols responded like this in the Atlantic quote, in the space of one short announcement, he managed to get a lot wrong, which is worrisome because he's the only person in America who has the authority to order the use of nuclear arms. Resuming nuclear testing looks weak and petulant, not strong and confident. No American president should ever let the Kremlin get under his skin, especially not where nuclear weapons are concerned. We're back with Tom, Mary and John. Now, I understand Tom. When it comes to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons, watching what he does could be too late. So we have to look at what he says. But what is your sense, before we get into your brilliant fact check here, of why he said it and why we're even having this conversation, which was immediately alerted by every news agency. I mean, a president into the United States talking about nuclear weapons is international news.
- [23:03]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, I think, I suspect, I mean, you know, trying to parse Donald Trump's posts and public statements is always a risky business. I think he's angry that the Russians have been beating their chests and crowing about a couple of new supposed Russian wonder weapons. One of them is called the Burevestnik, which is supposedly a long range nuclear powered cruise missile that can fly for hours and hours and hours. Cruise missiles use jet fuel, so they fly like regular airplanes. The Russians claim they've put a nuclear reactor on one and it can fly, you know, halfway around the world. Why would you want to do this with a cruise missile? Good question. It's a stupid idea, but it's the kind of thing, you know, Putin brags about. The other is that they claim to have perfected a Poseidon, the Poseidon tsunami, creating underwater nuclear detonating torpedo, which, again, why would you want to do this when you already have lots of other nuclear weapons? Putin really is kind of a throwback to the Soviets about this, of saying, we have amazing, cool weapons. And I think Trump reacted to that and said, well, they're testing, and I have to show that I'm tough. And, of course, Donald Trump never shows toughness by being stoic and silent and confident. Trump always has to react to everything.
- [24:30]
Nicole
I thought, Heilman, that maybe he saw House of Dynamite.
- [24:35]
Tom Nichols
You think?
- [24:36]
Nicole
I mean, the Pentagon's freaking out about it.
- [24:38]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Yeah, maybe. I mean, the Putin thing, he's so triggered always by Russia. And I'll defer to Tom on basically everything related to this topic, because he knows way more about it than everybody else. But I will say that in almost every respect, Trump 2.0 is worse than Trump 1.0, right? Like, worse. More dangerous, more destabilizing, more upsetting, more this, more that. More the other thing, the one place that's been better up until now has we haven't had any, like, little rocket man, fire and fury, nuclear saber rattling that hadn't happened.
- [25:10]
Nicole
And now it's, like, all figured out how to play.
- [25:13]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Are we really going back to that more? Little rocket man's gonna be coming back pretty soon, like, for how scary that was. And then it's easy to forget because we now think about his love letters with Kim Jong Un or whatever. But at that moment when Trump was rattling the nuclear SABERS In Trump 1.0, it was really a terrifying moment that showed how cavalier he was and how ignorant he was and how willing he was to make threats about a thing that could lead to global nuclear annihilation. This was a thing that kind of. Because he is unstable in the ways he's unstable and because he does. He is so cavalier and because he is so ignorant. The idea that when you mix those things together with nuclear weapons, luckily we haven't had that happen, and we haven't had the catastrophe that people have been worried about since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it's always there, right? It's just such a. It's such a thing that. It's a thing that, unlike many other things, that's a thing where even a little bit of trifling can get real dangerous real fast.
- [26:14]
Nicole
I mean, Tom, the. The distinction, or the other distinction between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is there are no more Espers or Millis. There's a guy now leading the Pentagon which is dropping missiles on boats alleged to be drug traffickers without any evidence provided to the public. So that's the Pentagon leadership in this moment that he's posting on social media about nuclear testing.
- [26:42]
Tom Nichols
And one of his most senior people below, Hagseth, because there are some intelligent professionals working there, but their views on these things are pretty scary. I mean, he's got the undersecretary of policy for policy, Bridge Colby, and Colby is a big fan of nuclear weapons. I mean, Colby once wrote an article saying that we should consider using nuclear weapons to respond to cyber attacks. You know, these are people that have a different view of nuclear weapons than most people that have ever served in the US Government. But I think on this particular thing, again, it's Trump saying someone did something somewhere, so I have to do something too. And this may not go anywhere. I mean, to ramp up to actual explosive nuclear testing, because we do test our arsenal. We actually run simulations and we check the components. I mean, this notion that apparently Trump has adopted, that we just let them sit there and every now and then somebody like taps on the nose cone to see if it's still ticking or something.
- [27:49]
Nicole
Like, my watch is not how we do. Bang on it. Yeah.
- [27:53]
Tom Nichols
So they are being tested, but.
- [27:58]
Mary McCourt
It'S.
- [27:58]
Tom Nichols
Going to take like years to ramp up to get to the point where we can do explosive underground tests. So again, I think this is just another one of those strain neurons that fired and got loose from his head because he's mad that the Russians, who he thinks are his friends, that he thinks Putin is his pal, keep making him look bad by announcing things like nuclear powered cruise missiles and all this other stuff.
- [28:25]
Nicole
I mean, Mary, the irony is, of course, he's dismantled all the things that actually keep us safe. He's dismantled foreign corrupt practices, prosecutions and investigations. He's purged the FBI of all of the top leadership with together centuries of experience in fighting international crime.
- [28:44]
Mary McCourt
That's right. And you know, the weird sort of internal inconsistencies in so many of the things that he says and does are kind of mind boggling. I mean, I thought he wanted the Nobel Prize. So we're going to resume nuclear testing. And you look at these, the rationale for these strikes in international waters, whether it's the Caribbean Sea or the eastern Pacific, you know, he's claiming that these are drug cartel drug runners and that, you know, that is such a scourge on America. Yet when there were survivors, rather than arrest those people and bring them back to the United States so they can be prosecuted for supposedly trafficking drugs. Oh, no, let's get rid of them and send them back to their country as soon as possible possible. Because you know what, if you arrested them and you brought them here, they would have lawyers and the lawyers would seek evidence. What was the evidence that they were actually running drugs. And in the meantime, maybe we get some answers about what's the authority that the, that the president thinks he's using to strike these boats. Because you know what, even if they were drug runners, even if they're a designated foreign terrorist organization, there is simply no authority under domestic or international law for murdering people on these high seas. And if you can do it on the high seas disease because the president says you're a drug narco terrorist, well, then you could do it in Boston or in Peoria or in Louisville. Right. And if you can do it for suppose narco terrorists, what is he thinking about these other groups of Americans who he's now calling terrorists based on their ideology? I think that, you know, Americans need to see the slippery slope here with like so many things that we've been talking about in these last two segments because he will go do something extreme that he thinks people are not going to care about because, oh, it's narco terrorist from a different country. But then gradually, just like with using the military in our, in our cities, I mean, it's a, it just, it's a cumulative approach that I think he hopes will, will numb us and normalize all of this that we're living under.
- [30:53]
Nicole
Such an important point. Mary and Tom, thank you so much for joining us and starting us off today. Hallman sticks around. When we come back, Donald Trump. Trump calls his Chinese counterpart a tough negotiator. And on that point, he's probably wildly accurate. How she outmuscled Trump on trade and why it's bad for the American people and the American consumer. That's next.
- [31:19]
Commercial Announcer
Hey, friends, this is Audie Cornish, host of CNN this Morning and the Assignment. And guess what? Every story is you care about, every angle you want unpacked is now streaming on cnn. That means you can catch my show or other CNN programming whenever you want on your favorite device. And a subscription also gets you access to exclusive video series and unlimited articles. So subscribe to CNN@CNN.com subscription hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie and one thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. Because with every fix and update and renovation, it becomes a little more your own. So you need all your jobs done well. For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter, from plumbing to electrical roof repair to deck upgrades. So leave it to the pros who will get your jobs done well. Hire high quality pros@angie.com Imagine relying on.
- [32:20]
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- [32:26]
Tom Nichols
Complicated than the last.
- [32:28]
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- [32:52]
Nicole
Go down the list. The sledgehammer we're seeing being taken to the rule of law. An impending food crisis manufactured by Maga Repub, Republicans and Donald Trump for America's families in need. An alarming use of the military at home and abroad. And that's just the stuff we've covered today. But for all that, there is a not so insignificant portion of the American public willing to just write it all off. That is, as long as Donald Trump delivers on his economic promises. So when he shakes hands and makes a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, this isn't the sort of summary you want about that deal. From the New York Times quote, by flexing China's near monopoly on rare earths and its purchasing power over US soybeans, Mr. Xi won key concessions from Washington, a reduction in tariffs, a suspension of port fees on Chinese ships, and the delay of US Export controls that would have barred more Chinese firms from accessing American technology. Both sides also agreed to extend a truce struck earlier this year to limit tariffs. Joining our coverage, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, Justin Wolfers is back. John is still here. So, Justin, what did we get?
- [34:11]
Justin Wolfers
So the most important baseline and the easiest way to understand Trump is to always remember that he came to power on January 20th. So therefore, we should compare everything to January 19th. So if you remember way back on January 19th, Nicole, you and I were not talking about soybeans. We weren't talking about rare earth minerals, and we weren't talking about high tariff from China today. We're still talking about those things. Those things are a little less bad than they were last week. So we have some access to rare earth minerals not as much as we had on January 19. We have some soybean. American soybeans are going to get sold to China. Not as many as on January 19th. And we've halved the tariffs that Trump imposed because of fentanyl. So he negotiated with himself and decided to halve the tariff that he's charging Americans on goods they import from China. Again, still much higher than they ever were on January 19th.
- [35:11]
Nicole
Let me ask you this about tariffs. I mean, this is NBC's reporting on the Senate. I don't want to use the word reasserting itself because I feel like we're not quite there yet. But they did vote to pass a bipartisan resolution to block Trump's global tariffs. I'll read you from the story. The Senate voted 51 to 47 to block Donald Trump's global tariffs and restore congressional authority over trade, which Democrats forced to the floor as a privilege measure. Four Republicans joined 47 Democrats in supporting the resolution, which needed only a simple majority for passage. The four included both Kentucky Senators McConnell and Rand Paul, who I think are upset about bourbon, as well as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maid. Justin, what does that mean?
- [36:02]
Justin Wolfers
Well, first of all, wow, signs of life. Who knew we had a Senate? That's exciting. And unlike the House, apparently, they're still sitting. Even more exciting. Look, what we're seeing there is something that you and I have known for a long time, Nicole, which is the tariff policy is deeply unpopular. If Trump were to do what the Constitution demanded and go to Congress and ask for permission for these tariffs, he would not get permission. The American people don't want them. Businesses don't want them. The Senate just showed the Senate doesn't want them. And you want to bet that the House doesn't want to be forced to take a vote on this because home districts of a lot of congressmen are really at risk. You can talk about bourbon, we can talk about all sorts of other products. And so this is a policy that's about one man in the White House imposing his will, arguably against the Constitution. And we see yet again, these are unpopular policies.
- [36:57]
Tom Nichols
Policies.
- [36:58]
Nicole
Here's how unpopular they are, John. This is just the question of the economy. Numbers on tariffs and inflation are actually lower, but trump approval on the economy. The Economist YouGov, which is out this week, Negative 22%, 35% approved. Almost 60% disapproved. Quinnipiac has the same disapproval at 57%, 38 approved. AP is the highest disapproval at 62%, 36% approved. CNBC has a 55% disapproval, 42% approved. Underwater 13 points. And Reuters and Ipsos has him underwater 18 points on the question of the economy. Brutal.
- [37:39]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Yeah, really brutal. Also, I do want to say, Justin, dude, if you were not having conversations about soybeans and rare earth Minerals back on January 19, you were going to the right parties. Come out to New York. I'll take you to some of the parties. I go to wild time at those parties. It's all we talk about is those two things. And when. When did you think you'd ever be in a situation where you're, like, cheering on Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell? Never happened in my life before. But, hey, they're fighting the good fight for bourbon.
- [38:06]
Nicole
When I started interviewing the Canadians about the terrorists was when I knew to sort of cue the Rand Paul splintering away from MAGA over the bourbon.
- [38:14]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I'm like, man, the way the bourbon price has been spiking, it's killing me. It's killing me.
- [38:18]
Nicole
Are you sorry?
- [38:18]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
It's killing me. But look, look, the question I have. So you started, you teed this up by saying, if that's. People will excuse Trump on a lot of fronts. If he's delivering on the economy.
- [38:31]
Tom Nichols
He isn't.
- [38:31]
Nicole
He hasn't.
- [38:31]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
As an empirical matter, he has not delivered on the economy. The main thing he said he was gonna do was bring prices down. They have not come down. Right. The tariffs are unpopular and also not working. I mean, I never thought they were gonna work because they're. For all the reasons we know, but they're not working and they're really, really unpopular. Trump continues to say that his poll numbers are the best they've ever been and the economy is the best it's ever been. The one thing that is doing well is the stock market. We know that the stock market and the real economy are not the same thing. But, Justin, the question I have for you is the disjuncture between the performance of the stock market and the performance of the real economy feels to me, and I'm an old man, but feels to me like it's the greatest that I've ever seen it, where the stock markets are record highs and the economy is. We're not in recession, it's not as bad as it's been, but that this juncture is really huge. Am I wrong to feel like there's never been a time when the stock market performance is more at odds with the performance of the real economy, at least in our lifetimes?
- [39:34]
Justin Wolfers
I see something there. I'm not quite sure. I'm as vehement as you would be. Partly. I think the economy right now, the reality of the numbers that are coming out, it's fair to moderate it. The stock market is ecstatic. If you ask people how they feel about the economy, it's downright poor or recessionary. So people's feelings versus the stock market, I think that disjunction is as large as you've ever seen. The reality versus the stock market. Well, global stocks are up. The American stock market is not doing anything particularly spectacular relative to the rest of the world. And I think that's a key part of this. So a lot of the stock market is a beta that AI is going to be the future and revolutionize our economy. It's an interesting bet, but it's also a bet that's got nothing to do with the Trump administration and the stuff we're talking about right now.
- [40:21]
Nicole
Justin, thank you for making sense of all this for us and being part of our coverage today. When we come back, we'll show you the single video fueling the most questions on and off television about how Donald Trump is doing. That's next. So, John, we, you know, have talked about the cliff that people who receive nutritional assistance are about to drop off of. We've talked about military in the streets. There are two images, though, that to.
- [40:54]
Tom Nichols
Me.
- [40:56]
Nicole
Sort of encapsulate all the insanity of this moment. This is the gold crown. Tim Miller in the last hour called it a Burger King crown given to Donald Trump. It looks like the kind of thing he's always wanted. And then there's this video, you know, on a more serious note, of him looking a little out of sorts in terms of where, you know, where the event standing. A little bit of wandering to see him wander off. They're there. He's being led around. Looks like a nice ceremony. Not clear press is in front of him. So pretty sure he's not saluting them, but you never know.
- [41:46]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
You never know.
- [41:48]
Nicole
And then he keeps going. She's missing him maybe. And so she goes up to Trump, who's now done a full loop and is still walking. Oh, and she's. Oh, this is how I. This is how I coax Poppy, the young vizsla. Come, come, come. And so sort of coaxing him around the room. And there we go. What do you think?
- [42:21]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I think that if you that that image. This is will not. People will not love me to hear me say this, but that was a thing that most is resonant to me or reminiscent to me of some of the worst of the Biden video that we saw.
- [42:33]
Nicole
No, I know what you're talking about. The parachute.
- [42:37]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Yes. Yeah. And there were several of them. And what happened in that time, as you recall, the right wing media went crazy about those images. The left was like, whoa, no, there's nothing to see here, he's fine. And the truth was the right was overdoing it, but there was something that was there. He was drifting in a way that sometimes people of that age drift. It just looks exactly like that to me. And what to me that calls to is like, so I assume we're going to hear Laura Ingraham and John Hannity, everybody else and the whole of right wing media are going to be like Donald Trump's Joe Biden moment. Right? That's what we're going to hear. No, we're not going to hear that. We're going to hear a very similar set of excuses and self justifications and kind of like, like not going to close your eyes to what's clearly there. And it's not, is it devastating? No. And it will on his media. No one will make anything of this.
- [43:28]
Nicole
No one will see it.
- [43:28]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
But there is, but there is. I mean, there just is. This is not. The parallels are pretty strong and pretty striking. And I think when he said that thing the other day about how great it was that Obama could take the stairs. Remember that? When he said that, he said Obama used to bop down those stairs.
- [43:48]
Nicole
That was the one thing I liked about him.
- [43:49]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
That was one thing I liked about him. And it was funny. Colbert did this thing that night where he was like, what's he talking about? And then they played the video of how Obama used to take the stairs. And it was really a reflection of Trump's mind, which is that he fixates on the thing that he can't do. And you know, he started to get, you know, with the ankles and everything else, he started to get, he's projecting some fear, I think, of his own mortality and frailty.
- [44:12]
Nicole
Halman, thank you for spending the hour with us. It's lovely to have you at the table. When we come back, more fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Quick break before that. We'll be right back. Prince Andrew is no longer a prince. He's now set to lose that title and just be Andrew, I guess, and leave his Windsor Mansion after his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein once again entered the public eye. Buckingham palace announced hours ago that the king, quote, initiated a formal process and his brother will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. He will also be evicted from his residence at the Royal Lodge. It comes on the heels of accusations made by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in her memoir that was published this month after her death. Another break for us. We'll be right back. Today, on Halloween eve, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is asking the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem, to not conduct immigration raids around Halloween parties and trick or treating and celebrations. Governor Pritzker has been warning about the trauma that is right now being inflicted on children since his state and the city of Chicago have become ground zero for Donald Trump's ICE raids. He talks about it a great deal in this week's episode of the Best People Podcast. Just scan the QR code on your screen to watch our conversation on YouTube or download the Best People wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for letting us into your homes today. We are grateful.
- [45:48]
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