← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Man, woman, tomato, tamale”
00:43:43
Nicolle Wallace is joined by Fmr. Senator Claire McCaskill and John Heilemann to cover Trump boasting about taking more cognitive tests and how he has “ACED” them all four (or was it three?) times.
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- [00:01]
Nicole Wallace
Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning.
- [00:03]
John Heilman
Joe, the briefing with Jen Psaki and more voices you know and trust. Ms. Now is your source for news, opinion and the world.
- [00:13]
Nicole Wallace
Learn more at Ms. Now.
- [00:19]
Typically you in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. It's you localize the election.
- [00:27]
And you keep the federal officials out of it. We're actually going to turn that on its head.
- [00:31]
Martina Navratilova
Good.
- [00:32]
Nicole Wallace
And put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters.
- [00:37]
Martina Navratilova
Yes, they are.
- [00:38]
Nicole Wallace
And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again.
- [00:53]
Not special. Hi again, everybody. It's five o' clock now in New York. Put Donald Trump on the ballot for midterms at 36%. Okay. The polls and his plunging approval ratings aside, and just consider what the American people right now are watching in real time with their own eyes. A man appearing to change in real time in front of the cameras. In terms of the things he says about his own state of mind and in terms of what we're able to witness about his physical well being, of course, it's a sort of observation Trump wants to stifle. Just last night, in a meandering, at times nonsensical social media post with a word count somewhere in the neighborhood of War and Peace, Trump suggested it was, quote, seditious, perhaps even treasonous, end quote, for the New York Times to share what he called fake reporting on his mental and physical state. So instead of doing that, we'll show you what he had to say last night about Susie Wiles, who we played at the beginning of this hour. Remember, he calls it the weave.
- [01:54]
Donald Trump
What?
- [01:57]
So Susie Trump, do you know Susie Trump, sometimes referred to as Susie Wilde? Susie Trump, she's the great chief of staff at sea. They don't use the word chief of staff anymore because of the Indians got extremely upset. But now the Indians actually want their name used, which is true. They never didn't want it used. But the chief of staff, and she's fantastic, she said, we have to start campaigning, sir. I said, I won. What do I have to do already? They said, we have to win the midterms and you're the guy that's going to take us over the midterms.
- [02:39]
Nicole Wallace
This should be fun. We should point out that that event in Pennsylvania last night was meant to fix Donald Trump's gaping political problem, his approval rating or plunging approval rating on the economy. And yet Trump once again described it as a hoax. People's economic anxiety to describe the Democrats focus on affordability. Still, at the very moment Trump was whining and complaining, Dems were actually winning elections with voters participating. In Miami yesterday, voters elected a Democrat, Eileen Higgins, for mayor. The last time that happened was nearly 30 years ago, November of 1997, when gas was $1.17 and the movie Titanic hadn't yet opened in movie theaters. In Georgia. A solid red state House seat flipped blue as Democrats gained valuable ground in their effort to switch the balance of power in that state House. But again, Trump, who's never passed up an opportunity to comment on his predecessor, Joe Biden's age or mental acuity, was completely preoccupied with defending his own in what has never been the kind of flex that Donald Trump thinks it is. Donald Trump again boasted about completing a cognitive test that is often used to screen for early signs of dementia in front of a room of top doctors. And it's not the first time he's made such a boast.
- [04:00]
Donald Trump
The next day they'll say, he's crazy. The next day they'll say, oh, he's incompetent. The next day they'll say, this is one of the dumbest human beings ever. And that wasn't working. But I didn't like that one as much. I mean, that was bad. So I asked Doc Ronnie, I love Doc Ronnie. But I said, what do you think about a cognitive test, Ronnie? Then he said, sir, there is a test. It's called a X test. They're really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way, but they're cognitive tests. The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, a giraffe, a tiger, or this or that.
- [04:32]
Claire McCaskill
A whale.
- [04:33]
Donald Trump
Which one is the whale? A chair, a hat, a badge, a necklace. Then you get to the end questions. And very few people could answer those questions. Person, woman, man, camera, tv. They say, that's amazing. How did you do that? I aced it twice. I aced it. I aced it. I aced it. I aced both of them, I'm very proud to say, meaning I got it all right. Aced it. Aced it means I got every single question right. I aced it. Every question right, and I aced it. I got a perfect mark, which you would be incapable of doing. I've taken the cognitive test, I think, four times, and I'm done. I've got nothing wrong. That's what the American people want.
- [05:20]
Nicole Wallace
Describing the early screen for dementia as the standard he has passed four times in his telling or last night he said it was only three. So the two answers he's given us are three and four times. He's been administered an early screening test for dementia that he seems to brag about passing the way one would brag about, I don't know, the lsat. The not so encouraging nature of forgetting how many times he's even taken the cognitive test is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite Experts and friends. Mississippi. Now political analyst, the former Senator Claire McCaskill is here at the table. Also joining us, Pak News senior political columnist and MSNow national affairs analyst John Heilman is back with us. So I think, I don't remember if either of you were here the day that he first did man, woman, tomato, tamale, potato. But I remember being stunned that he was the source on the early. And if anyone let me just say this about dementia and Alzheimer's, there's some of the most wrenching diseases to watch someone you love suffer from. And anyone who has a loved one with any of those diseases knows exactly what the MOCA test is. It is an early screen. It's not perfect, but it's a screening test for cognitive decline. And right now we have this dissonance with the commander in chief talking about acing a screen for cognitive decline, a test that he says he's taken four times and three times. So somewhere between three and four times and then bragging about acing it. What are we even to do with that?
- [06:53]
Claire McCaskill
You said all those proper right and proper things about Alzheimer's and its ravages and so on. This doesn't have anything to do really with that. This has to do with some fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the test. Like woman, woman, camera, teleprompter Nicole, Claire, like, do I get a Rhodes scholarship? I mean, it's just a wild thing. It's not a bad, it's like Trump is trying to find, trying to claim somehow that this is a test of his aptitude, that it's an IQ test. Right? This is not about, I mean, whatever one thinks about his or that or.
- [07:32]
Nicole Wallace
That everyone or that Obama got it too and somehow his score wasn't as good. I mean, he's peerless in the sitting Commanders in Chief on TV talking about how he's doing in a screen for cognitive decline.
- [07:44]
Claire McCaskill
He's a very stable genius, as we know, according to him. You know, like they asked him the other Day on the airplane, on Air Force One, why he took an mri and he said he didn't know, like if, if getting the camera person TV thing right is acing it. Not knowing why you took an MRI is flunking it. I'm not sure what to make of any of those things, but it's totally clear and has been for some time. It's not the first time I've said this, but if you look over the course of the last 10 years that we've had Donald Trump in our lives, you can measure the decline in his mental acuity. You can measure it by looking at the interviews he gave in 2015 and 2016, looking at them in 2020, look at them now. His vocabulary has reduced dramatically the complexity of the words that he uses. He rarely uses multi syllabic words anymore. He says the same words over and over and over again. This is, you know, these are people who do linguistic analysis and go look at those things. If you go back and look at Trump's interviews from 2016, he was never a genius, but he could conduct or have a real conversation with the Wall Street Journal editorial board about trade policy. That didn't seem the way he sounds now when he talks about this stuff. I think that the weird combination of his hubris, his arrogance, his insecurity and need to boast about things that he's always been called, people have always put him down for his intelligence, so he has to boast about it now, combined with the various diminishments that are taking place with him. And again, I'm diagnosing the guy. I'm just saying his complexity of thought has been dramatically reduced in the last decade. In a way, it is for frankly, a lot of people who get to be his age. But if you put those things together, the insecurity, the braggadocio and the diminishment, that's how you get where we are now, where most of the time, an awful lot of the time, if you watched that whole speech last night, and I did, no idea what he's talking about, no idea what he's talking about. And the last thing I'll say is Susie Wiles saying that, man, he can be out there like he was in 2024, go around the members of Congress today, and not just people in battleground districts, in frontline districts, but across the board, and put them all on sodium pentothal and say, what do you think about that? He's going to be out there, he's going to be in your district. Shrieks from anybody who watched that speech last night, they've all been like, please, please admit that affordability is a problem. We're going to get crushed if you keep doing what you're doing. For him to go out there and give that speech at that level of incoherence and politically suicidal impulses, there's not a Republican in the country who's going to be like, yeah, I want President Trump in my district during this midterm year. He's going to be nothing but toxic for all of them.
- [10:29]
Nicole Wallace
Claire.
- [10:33]
There are a lot of good reasons, right, why this story is such a slow boil. None of the three of us are doctors.
- [10:41]
He's the only president we have right now. I don't think any of the three of us wish him decline in public right now. He's the only person who makes decisions on matters of nuclear authority and whatnot. It is also true that all of those restraints only exist on one side of the political equation. Right. The attacks and the scrutiny of Joe Biden's age were relentless. I would argue appropriately so. I mean, he was old, and the public said it was a concern for them. This New York Times story was one of the first stories about what John's describing. Trump sort of aging before our eyes. And Trump is the only known source for his own cognitive monitoring, which, again, Trump has told us he's had four. He's had the MOCA test administered to him four times, and he's, quote, aced it. Why do you think there's such a slow start or such a reluctance to sort of deepen our understanding of what Trump keeps telling us before the cameras?
- [11:44]
John Heilman
Well, you know, here's the thing. I think part of it has to do with the energy that he exudes when he is out there. I mean, this is a guy who. He is falling asleep these days. But when America thinks of him, they don't think of him as sleepy. They do think of him as somebody who is. I think that has contributed to how slowly people have been looking at the reality of what he is right now. The fact that he's only going to fun stuff. You know, he's going to boxes with billionaires in him to watch football games, and he's going to his golf clubs, foreign trips and foreign trips where people lavish him with praise and phony awards and crowns and all those things that, I mean, he really is like a man child in the White House. He's having a ball. He's got nobody telling him no. He's doing the stuff he really likes. And I gotta tell you, I assume Susie Wiles gave that interview before last night, or should I say Susie Trump?
- [12:57]
Claire McCaskill
Otherwise, he goes out there.
- [12:58]
John Heilman
Here's the one thing he can't get away with, Nicole.
- [13:01]
Claire McCaskill
He.
- [13:01]
John Heilman
He has lied and prevailed all of his adult life. He has lied and lied and lied and got reelected President of the United States. He thinks he can lie about how expensive everything is and the people will take it and they'll believe it. Then he does not understand. He is so out of touch. He doesn't realize this is something people are feeling. 40% of America is living paycheck to paycheck.
- [13:28]
Nicole Wallace
See, I think about that.
- [13:29]
I don't think it's 40%.
- [13:31]
I think they've tried to tell him, though, like, I accept the premise that he's so out of touch, he's a billionaire. By the time they're president, they're not grocery shopping to the degree that any of them ever did go and do the grocery shopping. I think it's that they tell him he doesn't care or he doesn't believe it.
- [13:47]
John Heilman
And that's a sign of mental cognitive problems that he is so fixated on the way he sees the world, whether it's tariffs or whether it's, you know, what, going to take over the oil in Venezuela. Is that him or is that Marco Rubio? I can't tell. But, you know, this whole thing that he's doing with foreign wars, the whole thing he's doing with cozying up to Russia, all of it, it's like his own stuff. And nobody around him is doing anything other than telling him he's brilliant. So, of course he says this stuff over and over again.
- [14:18]
Nicole Wallace
The only thing I disagree with is having worked for politicians who existed.
- [14:25]
Martina Navratilova
As.
- [14:25]
Nicole Wallace
They saw them and as the public saw them through their caricature, either on SNL or other places, I do think that the sleeping through his own very carefully managed schedule is seeping through.
- [14:38]
John Heilman
I think it is, too. I just think it hasn't until now, because he was energetic in his first term and he was out on the campaign trail, but I think now it is. When you see him sleeping with people surrounding him in the Oval Office and he's sleeping behind the desk, that's not a good look.
- [14:55]
Claire McCaskill
He had Biden as a contrast, and then that. Claire's right about the past. Right. Because Sleepy Joe resonated with people. There was this notion that Biden, whatever his mental acuity, he spoke slowly. He seemed to have. He seemed to be listless. Right. And Trump had all that energy and energy reads on tv, you know, it's like, I don't know what he's saying, but he looks robust, right? So now it's like he's got the makeup on his hand because we don't know exactly why he's got the swollen ankles. He's talking openly about how worried, in some ways, projecting, when he talks about Obama dancing down the steps of Air Force One and how he envies that. That's because he's afraid he's going to fall down the steps on Air Force One. He didn't. Hasn't done a. Hadn't done a rally before last night for six months. You know, that's not a mistake. That's because to Clare's point, it's. One thing is he's doing the stuff he likes doing. He wants to go to Mar A Lago, he wants to go on foreign trips. But he also, I think, is a little worried about being out in the rally setting. He had 1500 people who showed up at that event last night. He was talking about, whoa, we talked to 10,000. You know, the bloom is off the rose. And you could hear him. The other thing in this whole thing last night, he's slurring throughout, and he's done that before. He slurred through 90 minutes yesterday, constantly.
- [16:05]
Nicole Wallace
The slurring I listened to, I didn't.
- [16:07]
Get through all of it. But he said crazy things about Dina Powell.
- [16:10]
John Heilman
The fact that he listened to all of it. Can we give him some sodium pental?
- [16:14]
Nicole Wallace
I'm not sure I believe that's.
- [16:16]
Claire McCaskill
I need antipsychotics, not sodium pedicure.
- [16:19]
Nicole Wallace
I saw the news alerts and went and looked for it, and it wasn't. I mean, Fox didn't carry it. It wasn't easy to find. But he started saying crazy things about Dina Powell, who worked for him, who was the wife of Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick. And he said she, I think the quote was, she would have left him if he lost. She's very social. I mean, just bizarre things to say about a former national security official from your first term, I think.
- [16:43]
Claire McCaskill
And this is. That's how these things kind of come together is this like he's not. He's lost his fingertip feel for his. For voters in general. And the one thing you could say about Trump, you know, this is true. Like, you know, president or presidential candidates, it's not like they don't go to the supermarket. They're not putting their. They're not checking out the price of milk because they're buying their own milk. But if you're out there on the road doing a lot of events, meeting people on rope blinds, you are going to hear, you're going to get some feedback.
- [17:07]
Nicole Wallace
You get your touch and you get.
- [17:08]
Claire McCaskill
And you get some sense. I mean, people, these people who are quoted in the newspaper yesterday, a bunch of stories saying like that pissed at him, you know, like that he was in denial about the affordability thing. You would hear that if you were doing the kind of rope line work, the kind of big rallies that he used to love to do. He's not doing them. Why is he not doing them? Partly because he's got other fun stuff to do that he likes to do, but partly because I think, like I say, there's a little bit of a gun shyness to go out there and be seen in these public settings. And the less he, the more he withdraws from the road, the more he's deeper and deeper in that bubble, which is now just all the billionaire bubble, the billionaire and sycophant bubble. And to break through and convince Trump that things aren't going well, it's hard for any president to hear, hey, you know what, your policies aren't working. But for Trump, it's impossible, I think, for them to pierce the bubble.
- [17:57]
Nicole Wallace
There's no one in his life who can tell him what a bag of groceries at shop and stop costs nobody.
- [18:01]
Claire McCaskill
Or tell him honestly that prices are not going down and have him go, okay, right. I get that. And have that be reflected in the rhetoric. It's just not going to work.
- [18:11]
Nicole Wallace
Right. All right. No one's going anywhere. There's much more on Donald Trump's seeming to meltdown in the face of his own political reality, his own unpopular agenda. Our friend Sarah Longwell joins the conversation next. And later in the hour, a warning about what Donald Trump is doing to our country from the legend who has lived through authoritarianism and a totalitarian regime.
- [18:32]
Martina Navratilova
I'm defected from a totally regime and like hell am I going to be cowed again and have to be careful about what I say.
- [18:40]
Nicole Wallace
Tennis superstar Martina Navratilova. She is pushing back against those who empower and capitulate to Donald Trump. She'll be our guest later in the hour on what we should be doing as citizens right now to save the country and the democracy we love. Deadlift continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [19:00]
Jen Psaki
As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow along with the MSNow newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people.
- [19:17]
Nicole Wallace
The American people are basically telling the.
- [19:19]
John Heilman
President that they are not okay with any of this.
- [19:22]
Jen Psaki
Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at Ms. Now. Project 47.
- [19:35]
Nicole Wallace
Joining our merry gang is the publisher of the Bulwark, host of the focus group podcast, our friend Sarah Longwell. Claire and John are still here. Sarah, how is this playing with voters? This, this seeming. Well, I won't even say seeming. Trump telling the country that he keeps taking a cognitive screen and acing it. How's that playing?
- [19:56]
Well, look, I think I'm actually seeing sort of a funhouse mirror with Trump and Democratic voters like I was seeing with Joe Biden and Republican voters. Right. Like Democratic voters think he is insane and has dementia and are very sort of tracking his cognitive decline, like the fact that he's falling asleep during meetings. So Democrats are on this the same way Republicans were on it with, with Trump. But what's funny about Trump this time around, Trump often has a really good kind of lizard brain for how to sort of move on from conversations. He doesn't like to change the subject. Sometimes, though, he gets caught in these loops and he's doing this more and more where he doubles down or raises the salience of an issue that he would be better off just changing the subject away from. And so him sort of digging in on, no, I'm taking cognitive tests is just bringing more attention to the fact that people are talking about his declining health, his declining mental acuity. And I think that it's clearly something that is bothering him because he, he seemed to, like, he can't stop talking about it. And so all it's doing is having a Streisand effect with voters where they are more and more now engaged in the idea of, like, yeah, maybe, maybe things are really falling apart for him. But of course, Republicans are still defending him on this. And they also do the. What about. Well, what about Biden? And I think overall, though, especially with swing voters, they'll just tell you we've got a, we've got a gerontocracy in this country. Our leaders are too old, and we need a new generation of leadership.
- [21:40]
Yeah, it's funny, like in the funhouse mirror with the Democrats is Donald Trump, because the only person talking about it on the national stage incessantly, as you said, is Trump. Let me show you what he's saying, though, on this term of sort of picking, picking his own political scabs. Here he is about affordability, describing it once again as manufactured, as a hoax.
- [22:04]
Donald Trump
But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.
- [22:11]
So they look at the camera and they say, this election is all about affordability. Now, they never talk about it. And I can't say affordability hooks because I agree the prices were too high. So I can't call it a hoax because they'll misconstrue that. But they use the word affordability and that's their only word. They say affordability and everyone says, oh, that must mean Trump has high prices. No, our prices are coming down tremendously.
- [22:43]
Nicole Wallace
Now that's a lie and people know it's a lie. But it isn't even on this political problem of affordability. It isn't even as only lie or deflection. Here he is with his other formulation.
- [22:54]
Where he's just sort of shopping material. This is him basically saying, you know, you can do, do without. This was about dolls.
- [23:03]
Donald Trump
I have no higher priority than making America affordable. Again. That's what we're going to do. And again, they caused the high prices and we're bringing them down. It's a simple message. You know, you can give up certain products, you can give up pencils.
- [23:21]
That's under the China policy. You know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. You know, they don't need that many. But you always need, you always need steel. You don't need $37 for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need $37.
- [23:40]
Nicole Wallace
So you can tell where he was reading the part he was supposed to read, I have no higher priority than making America affordable. And then when he just, you know, politically wet the bed and said, you don't need any dolls or pencils. I mean, what do you. I guess we just hope that Suzy Wells is right and Donald Trump is out there on the ballot in the midterms.
- [24:02]
Yeah, there's nothing like a groggy sounding billionaire telling you you need fewer things going into Christmas. Here's the thing about Trump and this affordability problem. Voters absolutely know this is Trump's economy. They are trying to do this thing where they say, oh, well, we're digging ourselves out of the terrible Biden economy. Even if Republican voters are up for kind of saying, well, Trump has a big mess to fix, we've got to give him some time. Nobody thinks things are getting less expensive. Everybody knows prices are going up. It is the number one thing I hear from Republicans, Independents, Democrats, everything is too expensive. The other another thing they know is that One of the reasons it is more expensive is because of Donald Trump's tariffs. Like, because Donald Trump made such a big deal about the tariffs because he talked about them so relentlessly. He owns the tariffs and he owns this economy. There is no passing the buck. I do not hear from voters saying, well, you know, this is all Joe Biden's fault. Like, even the ones who like Trump, who thinks that they need to give him more time are kind of rubbing their hands together saying, boy, I thought things were going to get better faster. Yeah, I know, I know he needs time. But the tariffs are not helping things. And so this is an Achilles heel like Donald Trump has never had. Not just because things are so bad for people, but because it is on the issue that they hired him to handle. They believed the Trump salesmen selling them the Trump stake, the Trump University, the Trump, hey, I'm going to lower your grocery prices on day one. And they are feeling that lie now. And so I am seeing voters across the political spectrum and they also, they see the contrast of, is he protecting the billionaire class through Epstein? Why is he building a ballroom? Why isn't he focused on the economy? This is what I'm hearing from voters and it's become, you know, you and I talked about this many, many months ago and I was like, you know, there's starting to be this little bit of buyer's remorse on the economy. It has now reached a fever pitch and he owns it entirely.
- [26:12]
It's like buying a house that's a money pit and you deal with the basement that floods and the roof that leaks and the toilets that you can't use toilet paper in because of the view. And then someone puts up a three story house in blocks of view and you're like, what am I doing with this house?
- [26:34]
Claire McCaskill
What am I doing here? And how did I get. David, you're talking heads. How did I get here?
- [26:40]
Nicole Wallace
So like, so like Trump is this like leaky, creaky, grab him in the, you know, what, bombing, blowing up things in the Caribbean after he promised no wars, but people were going to have more economic freedom and freedom from economic anxiety. And he has betrayed not just his own voters, but the whole country on that promise.
- [27:01]
Claire McCaskill
I mean, if you think about the comparison, that keeps coming back to me. And this is one thing that politics just never changes. You know, it's. And sometimes you can argue it's fair or unfair, depending on what the circumstances are, but you become president, states and you own the economy. You just do after a certain period of time. Joe Biden became president in 2021 and could rightly say really good. I mean, you really point to Covid. We just came through a once a century pandemic. We had to do all kinds of stuff to mess with the economy. Prices are high because of that. Whatever you think of the merits of that argument, six months in, no one cared. Everyone was like, you're President of the United States.
- [27:36]
Nicole Wallace
Fix it.
- [27:37]
Claire McCaskill
That is the reality. You become president, it's your economy.
- [27:40]
Nicole Wallace
Oh, I know.
- [27:40]
Claire McCaskill
Regardless, regardless of you can make all arguments all day long. If you run for election on really a central core thing, which is prices are too high, I will bring them down on day one. People won't hold you to day one. They know that's political rhetoric and exaggeration. A lot of politicians make, you know, kind of exaggerated claims. But you get to December and not only are the prices not down, but they're going up. There's no world where you can talk your way out of that. I mean, not just. Even if you acknowledge it's not like anybody's not going to call this the Trump economy, no one is sitting around going, yeah, this is all no Biden's fault. It's just never been true in the history of American politics where you could get away with that.
- [28:21]
Nicole Wallace
Right? Right. All right. No one's going anywhere. When we come back, we will be joined by an icon, the legendary tennis star Martina Navachilova. She's teamed up with Sarah's Home of the Brave campaign and has a dire warning for all of us about Donald Trump, based on her own story and her own upbringing in a totalitarian regime. Martina will join the conversation next.
- [28:47]
Jen Psaki
As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow along with the MSNow newsletter project. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people.
- [29:04]
Nicole Wallace
The American people are basically telling the.
- [29:05]
John Heilman
President that they are not okay with any of this.
- [29:08]
Jen Psaki
Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at Ms. Now. Project 47.
- [29:22]
Nicole Wallace
Claire, I want to pull you in on this. On the economy.
- [29:26]
It feels like the real part of the story is how much anxiety people have about the price of things. The price of meat, the price of milk, the price of bread, the price of cheese, the price of produce. It has all gone up. None of it has gone down. And for Trump to give speeches that are so out of touch that we can almost, you know, jokingly talk about the political stupidity of that seems to diminish the real anxiety and fear people have out there about their economic well being.
- [29:55]
John Heilman
Yeah, it is real. And I said earlier, when you have 40% of the country that is working every day to make it come out even at the end of the month so they don't go in a hole.
- [30:10]
That is a problem for a president and he's going to pay off the farmers, which by the way, they don't.
- [30:17]
Nicole Wallace
Want to say it's not enough talk.
- [30:20]
John Heilman
About socialism, the federal government just stroking you a check because their policies have hurt you. And he wants to hold onto them politically. And the problem he's got, Nicole, is that in order to really bring down prices in the short term, he would have to give up his favorite word, he would have to give up tariffs. And he is so bought in on the tariff thing, which is economic nonsense. In a consumer economy. We have a consumer economy. I mean, I am not an economist, but I know enough from econ in college that you do not put across the board tariffs in consumer economy and think prices are ever going to come down. They will not come down until he does something about the tariffs. And you know what? He's not going to do anything about the tariffs.
- [31:07]
Nicole Wallace
Well, and his, the twin pillars of his second term, Sarah, are mass deportations and the tariffs. And both of those make the economy worse, not stronger.
- [31:20]
Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump's only way out on the affordability issue is probably if the Supreme Court saves him by striking down some of the tariffs. That is the only way that the economy is going to improve before the midterms. And I want to go back to something you were saying about Susie Wiles saying she wants to put Trump on the ballot. And I am like, please God, put that guy on the ballot. Because you know, when Trump is actually on the ballot, like in a general election and he pulls out a lot of these Trump only voters, that works. That works in these big elections. In an off year election when the structure dramatically favors Democrats. And I don't just mean the political environment where people are frustrated. I mean, structurally now, Democrats do much better in these off year elections. And so they have these structural advantages. Those people that turn out in midterms, they disdain Donald Trump, they despise Donald Trump. And even if you, let's say kind of like Donald Trump, but you're upset about the economy, you just stay home. Like if we go into 2026 with an economy like this or worse, it is going to be an absolute bloodbath. And I don't know whether Susie Wiles is trying to shine Trump up there by saying that because she's on the skids with him a little bit right about now. But that is an insane proposition to, like, have him go out there and give speeches in swing states like Pennsylvania where he's saying you should probably just buy fewer things. Affordability is a hoax. It's a con job. Do you know who loves that? Josh Shapiro loves to hear that Governor of Pennsylvania, because he is going to have a blowout victory in that state if Donald Trump keeps showing up to tell people that he doesn't care about.
- [33:03]
Affordability and that it's all a scam. Yeah, we should revisit whether or not we should be showing more people the crazy things he's saying. Martina Navratileva will join us after a very short break. Stay with us.
- [33:20]
It's been 50 years since our next guest, tennis legend and icon Martina Navratilova, defected to the United States from the former Czechoslovakia. Now she says she's, quote, pissed off as hell about what Donald Trump is doing to America. And she is sounding the alarm about the totalitarian warning signs, threats against free speech, capitulation, and the danger of doing nothing. Here's her brand new ad for the Home of the Brave campaign launched by our friend Sarah Longwell to elevate Americans who refuse to be silent. Watch.
- [33:52]
Martina Navratilova
I'm defected from the Totality regime and like hell am I going to be cowed again and have to be careful about what I say. So I left my country in, in 75. I was 18 years old.
- [34:02]
My goal in my life is to become number one. You know, I want to play as much as I can and I didn't get this chance while being under the Czech government.
- [34:10]
So I didn't see my family for five years. It was a one way ticket and it was very scary. So when I defected and I was able to say anything I wanted to, I did.
- [34:20]
I'm still proud to be an American, but I'm embarrassed for what Trump is doing to our country.
- [34:25]
I am.
- [34:26]
I'm pissed off as hell about people capitulating to Trump, whether it's the legal firms or schools, politicians or companies. We are too big to fail if we stand together. But divided we fall. And that's what Trump is counting on. Chaos, fear. This is the freest country in the world. When I defected in 1975, if this was the situation for me now, I would definitely not choose to live here. My fears that people are just too complacent, too scared and thinking that they don't matter.
- [34:59]
Nicole Wallace
It is an honor to bring into Our conversation, tennis legend Martina Navratilova. Sarah, Claire and John are still with us. Thank you so much for being here.
- [35:07]
Martina Navratilova
Yeah, I have too many dogs.
- [35:09]
Nicole Wallace
The dog is welcome. Welcome, Martina. We're dog friendly. We love the dog.
- [35:16]
Martina Navratilova
I just hope the birds stay quiet. Anyway, I don't mince words, do I? I never could. So here we are. I was not a diplomat ever, but.
- [35:24]
Nicole Wallace
That used to be who we were. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about the psychology of capitulation and silence and indifference, which seems to be what you're getting at.
- [35:40]
Martina Navratilova
All three capitulation in advance and then the ignorance and just giving in. And, and then what I see also that I really never saw before in America is cruelty.
- [35:56]
I am thinking, what happened to our American humanity? Compassion, caring about the world, caring about your neighbor. It's just gone off the rails in so many ways and it's easy to despair. But, you know, not doing anything is just not an option. Being quiet is not an option.
- [36:17]
Nicole Wallace
What is the response been? I know you, you pick your, your spots very carefully. What's the response been to your decision to speak out?
- [36:26]
Martina Navratilova
Well, so far, you know, I'm on X on Twitter. I and the response has been great for the most part, but you know, it's been the usual that I get, you know, you're just a tennis player. Why don't you shut up? Or why don't you go back where you came from if you don't like it here? To which say, I just want to do maga, make America great again. Which right now we're going the other way. But the response has been very positive for the most part. But of course you remember the negative comments more than the good ones.
- [36:56]
Nicole Wallace
We all do. We all do. I mean, famous authors who remember word by word their negative one star reviews on Amazon, even when they're bestsellers. What is your message to ordinary people who seem to be the only true heroes right now? And as you said, the universities have capitulated. The biggest, most powerful and prominent law firms have capitulated. Harvard is still negotiating with the Trump administration even as his support plunges. But the American people, when they have an opportunity to either march in the no Kings protest or vote for Democrats for change seem to be showing up. So what is your message to the American people about this, their power in this moment?
- [37:40]
Martina Navratilova
We are the change. We are the ones that will change it. And you know, strangely enough, it's the people that can most afford to stand up to Trump, like those legal firms, like those Schools that capitulate and people that can least afford it, that are living from paycheck to paycheck, that speak up and that demonstrate and that vote, and they're organized and they do their very best. So it's really frustrating that so many people in power have given up or given in, but it's also encouraging that so many people still are paying attention and are speaking up. I mean, look at all the people that are protesting against ice. Of course, who wouldn't protest against ice, considering what they're doing? So it's gotten pretty scary on the streets now, but people are still speaking up when they can and speaking up even when they are putting themselves in danger. So that's very encouraging. So I just say, don't be a coward and do your part if you possibly can do it safely.
- [38:37]
Nicole Wallace
What else do you think people should be doing? It seems like when people spoke with their purse, with their pocketbook, when they threatened, when they canceled their Disney and Hulu subscriptions after Kimmel was taken off the air, those powerful corporations who were eager to capitulate turned. They made a different choice. Would you like to see more economic people speak more with their paychecks?
- [39:00]
Martina Navratilova
I don't like boycotts, but maybe support the businesses that are aligned with you, that are supporting liberty and democracy. So do your homework on that front. Support the little guy rather than the big guy so you can do it that way economically and otherwise. Just get in the streets, listen to your neighbors, listen to to yourself, and do the right thing. It's just we know what we are capable of. We know who we are. And you look in the mirror, do you like who you are? Are you doing enough? Can you do more?
- [39:35]
Whether it's local or national, call your representative, do your homework when you go vote so that you know what you're voting for, all of that stuff. You just need to be more prepared and more aware and.
- [39:50]
Pass the buck.
- [39:51]
Nicole Wallace
One of the things I'm sure you hear is people are mad at American leaders, they're mad at Donald Trump, people around the world, but they haven't totally lost faith in all of the American people. I hear this a lot from people who travel. I hear this from my own friends outside of the country. You are known the world over. What are you hearing and what do you tell people about America and this moment?
- [40:16]
Martina Navratilova
Well, it's always been the case. You know, when I was living in Czechoslovakia, I was proud to be a Czech but embarrassed about my government. Now it's the other way around. I'm proud to Be an American. But I'm embarrassed about my government, which has gone the totalitarian way. And what you hear around the world, which I heard way back with W. Bush was elected, they like, really? And now with Trump, everywhere I go, I've been probably to 20 countries a lot, eight years, and none of those people. And I speak to everybody. I speak to taxi drivers, the people at the checkout counter at a grocery store in, you know, housekeepers, the people at the front desk in hotels, and they're all saying, like, we cannot believe what is going on in your country. But to that, you know, Trump says, we don't care what the rest of the world thinks, but at the same time, he's bragging about what? That we are now respected. It's absolutely the other way around. People are just really.
- [41:09]
Disappointed and surprised or they're laughing or they're crying because there just isn't anything good to see right now with what's going on.
- [41:19]
Nicole Wallace
So, anyway, Sarah, let me bring you in on this. You're the brains behind the campaign, and you're bringing us the most powerful voices in this conversation. This feels like, like, almost like, like next level, really talking to everyone about who we are and how we're seeing around the world with Martina's message.
- [41:41]
Yeah, well, you know me, Nicole. I'm obsessed with permission structures. I'm obsessed with. If you can find some people who will speak out, it will encourage other people to speak out. You know, courage is contagious, just like cowardice is. And when you find somebody like Martina Navratillo, I've been watching her for a while. I was a, you know, female athlete, played sports in college, and so she's a hero. She's an icon. And to have some. I was watching her and what she was saying on X and Twitter, and we had some mutual friends, and I was like, would she be willing to say something? And she was like, absolutely, yes, I want to speak out. And I was so encouraged, because the way that we're going to make this happen, right, the way we're going to build the permission structures for other people to speak out is by them seeing people do it, especially people who are heroes of theirs. And what I find so inspiring in the video and is, like, it used. America used to have so much pride in the idea that somebody who was from a totalitarian regime would want to come to America. Like, we were the safe space, right? Like, we were the place you would come and say, I'm going to be one of you now, because I can't do my thing back where I was because they don't have the same rights that you guys do in America. That's what made us proud. And so to have somebody who's seen what it looks like to be in a totalitarian regime and say what is happening right now in America is scary. That's the kind of thing that wakes people up and Right. That's the mode I'm in. How do we wake people up? How do we shake them out of their complacency? How do we get the people who are the most powerful to recognize that their silence, their silence is complicity and they should speak out, too. And so I just want to applaud her and I appreciate her participation.
- [43:16]
I want to applaud both of you.
- [43:19]
Go ahead.
- [43:20]
Martina Navratilova
Sorry, really quickly. That why I came here, because of that shining city on the hill. It was such a amazing, amazing country. And I wouldn't be coming here now if it's still an amazing country. But I don't know if I would be able to get a citizenship because they keep changing the rules. Just the other day, people that were in the step to get sworn in, but if they were from the wrong country, they did not get sworn in as a citizen. It's just crazy. The rules keep changing, the goalposts keep changing. So what? You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow now, you know, we might have a war with Venezuela and martial law and who knows what else after that. So it's just crazy how quickly this country has been decapitated, really, as a leader of the world.
- [44:05]
Nicole Wallace
Martina, thank you for speaking out, Sir Longwell, thank you for the campaign and for letting us cover it. Claire and Hellman, thank you for being at the table for the hour. One more break. We'll be right back.
- [44:17]
This week, I am joined on the Best People podcast by one of my favorite human beings anywhere, my dear friend and colleague, Rachel Madd, who is the absolute best at everything, especially connecting the dots between everything we've covered here on the show today and everything happening in our country and our politics. You can listen to the entire conversation by scanning the QR code on your screen or download it wherever you get your podcasts. And you can watch the interview on YouTube if you'd rather by scanning the QR code on your screen right now. As always, let me know what you think on Instagram or bluesky. One more break. We'll be right back.
- [44:56]
Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.
- [45:00]
Jen Psaki
Ms. Now presents season two of the Blueprint hosted by Jen Psaki. In each episode, she talks to leading Democrats about how they plan to win again, including Texas Congressman Greg Cassar, who chairs the Progressive Caucus, Congress woman Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly trans person elected to Congress and more who are helping to shape the future of the party. The Blueprint with Jen Psaki Season 2 All episodes available now.