← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Judge Halts Trump Midterm Plot
00:40:59
A federal judge has blocked President Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting. MS NOW’s Ari Melber reports on the latest developments and is joined by Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb and The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg.
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- [00:01]
Cyndi Lauper
I'm Cyndi Lauper with fellow Cosentyx advocate Chef Michelle Bernstein.
- [00:06]
Ari Melber
We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis with psoriatic arthritis and Dr. Panico will
- [00:12]
Michelle Goldberg
talk about the possible connection.
- [00:14]
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- [01:00]
Cyndi Lauper
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- [01:29]
Ari Melber
Welcome to beat. I'm Ari Melber, and this is a week that's featured Donald Trump looking often like a powerless lame duck. From setbacks for major matters like Trump's negotiations in Iran to the smaller items like the rejection of his effort to rename the Kennedy center, ripped down and covered, as you see there, or even get control of his reflecting pool saga. All of this continues with the news tonight, a legal loss thwarting the midterm plots he's been pushing. Democrats have been surging Hakeem Jeffries could become speaker if they win, and Republicans are fretting about losing in November. So Trump has been trying to meddle in what would be the ballots for that election. We can tell you the news, though. A judge dealing him a major loss, crushing and blocking the attempted executive order on mail in voting. Now let me tell you off top tonight, this loss is rooted in the Constitution. The president has no power to change this. Not the current president, not future presidents. This happens to be a Republican president who wants to do it. But if a Democrat tried the same gambit in the future, our system says no. Now, like many of Trump's fanciful executive orders. Just trying to write down that he wished he had more power than he gets under the Constitution does not create that power. It actually doesn't do anything for him. And the judge is reiterating that, which is something everyone learns in law school. The president does not control elections or rewrite their local rules because the states alone determine voter eligibility requirements. The judge writing the Constitution doesn't grant the president any powers over the elections. And the states know that, and the judges know that. Obviously, their job is to interpret the law. Trump's lawyers know that. We'll take this back to me. Yeah, I'm going to explain this in a second. But Trump's lawyers know that Trump's lawyers basically let him barrel towards this loss rather than saving him the embarrassment. Because as I'm telling you tonight, this was going to happen. You weren't going to just suddenly rewrite the Constitution to get control of elections. And now I'm going to explain what we showed you for a second, because this is really another humiliating example of Trump getting punked just by the law. And it's like an iconic scene in the Wire that is often quoted, including in this meme where the guy without the power is told, yeah, you want it to be one way, but it's the other way. The judges have the power here. They are the character telling Trump that it's not the way he wants it, it's the other. Now, that's the headline. If I were to simplify it with a pop culture reference, which we admit we do around here sometimes, I'll also tell you the details. The new ruling blocks federal officials from what are now Trump's frozen demands to make his own list of approved voters or do that through DHS to probe officials who might give ballots to those people. Well, they're supposed to get those ballots. It also stops the plot to try to steal the race before Election Day, using the Postal Service in a ridiculous sort of brazen effort that would try to deny people their ballots by mail. Now, Trump has tried before to turn the nation's mail carriers into some kind of voter suppression team. It's an echo of a failed plot from 2020. Donald Trump has long fixated on this, and nowadays, and this has come up a lot, so you probably know, but I'll remind everyone, the largest states in the country mail ballots to everyone, like California. And in the most recent election, which Trump won, by the way, roughly a third of the ballots in 24 came by mail. So this is how we vote. A MAGA plot to deny mail voting is a plot to deny voting, period. And that's a plot to end democracy. And I take no joy as an objective news anchor and reporter in telling you that the sitting president has been caught trying to end democracy more than once, if you're counting. So that effort fails. Other judges dealt Trump a loss on the bids to try to seize voter rolls from states. He's 0 for 10 in these cases. And this matters because we've all thought about what's going to happen when you have someone who's already led and pardoned a violent insurrection gearing up for elections that seem like he might not win. And we know how he's responded to losing before. It matters, though, because as I've shown you, coups are not a solo activity. The 2020 plots that we've measured and shown you, those arrows, charting them, they required literally thousands of people, including that failed insurrection. And they only came after many government staff refused to break the law for him. So the new rulings I'm telling you about, which matter a lot for our democracy, no matter who wins, and if Republicans win fair and square, that's our system. We just need to have a democracy, not a dictatorship. The new rulings strengthen the resolve of people inside the government if they are going to be asked in the next one or two elections, to potentially break the law again. It will deter those who rationally think about the jail time they could get if in a future administration there's a real DOJ that looks back at what they've done if they were to do it now. Trump's Postmaster General was talking up the proposal I just mentioned, which is now dead in the water, legally denying the ballots to people who otherwise would be able to vote in America. If the Trump officials don't get the extra voter info they've been demanding in this shakedown.
- [06:58]
Interviewer
If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal rule under our proposed regulation?
- [07:10]
Tom Nichols
No.
- [07:11]
Interviewer
You're telling these states either give the federal government this information, trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we'll take good care of these. And if you don't do it, you can't mail absentee ballots. You're gonna make a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That's unacceptable.
- [07:30]
Ari Melber
That plan you heard the reference to a proposed regulation is now doa. And this happens a lot in the Trump era. You have people who are performing for the so called audience of one. They go give their hearing testimony, they say yes, that's the proposed regulation. But like Mike Pence and others, whether they actually, at the end of the day want to risk going to jail once courts say no is a very different matter. That so called proposed regulation dead in the water. Now, when an executive order is flatly illegal, it does get stopped in court. Other plots can turn more on the details on their validity. And that brings me to the second part of what I want to share with you in our opening report tonight. Because for example, it's perfectly okay for the DOJ and the FBI to monitor polling locations to prevent voter suppression, right? To keep an eye on, on how things are supposed to go, but it's not okay for them to do voter suppression. Sounds pretty obvious, right? So when Trump does admit that he has improper motives for the DOJ or for certain government officials involved in the elections, he actually makes it harder for his DOJ to carry them out. And I'll say as an aside, this is why following the news or politics these days is so strange. Cuz on the one hand you see the President admit to something like that and you are someone who supports democracy, you might say, gosh, that's terrible. On the other hand, if you want this to be fixed, it's actually better for the system that Trump blurts these things out and gives the courts and the system a chance to thwart and respond to them rather than if he were, I guess, quieter. So that pattern has become a strange part of the long running but often failed efforts to get the DOJ to bend the rules. And now I bring you another piece of news tonight. You can add this to the evidence pile. Trump admitting he wanted a Watergate style plot, that he's pursuing this, that he did this to try to get the DOJ to do him a favor, to meddle in the California race.
- [09:29]
Donald Trump (quoted)
I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California and I said, do me a favor, take a look. They're trying to steal that election too. But the U.S. attorney called. We want to check your votes. About an hour after the call. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hilton has won. So had I not made that call, Steve Hilton would right now be looking, watching the election from home.
- [09:56]
Ari Melber
Trump in his way, trying to take credit, suggesting that somehow everything shifted an hour because of one phone call. This fits with some of his magical bragging that he does on the campaign trail. But he's also confessed to making that call, to politicized meddling. This is the kind of smoking gun material that doomed Nixon in Watergate and certainly did cause Trump even More trouble in his first term. That's back when the DOJ was more independent, when it still appointed special prosecutors to investigate the sitting administration to avoid a conflict. That's why we had the Mueller probe. Now, Trump has thwarted those kind of investigations so far this term. But as we're reporting tonight, this is the problem we face. There is no reason to minimize or normalize what I just played for you. Donald Trump's confession. It echoes the confession he blurted to anchor Lester Holt all the way back in 2017. Do you remember that one? When he said, and this is Trump's confession, that his administration had been lying in a cover up about the reason they made the unusual decision to fire an FBI director, James Comey, in the middle of his term. Trump's DOJ had insisted and put in writing that Comey was fired for mistakes that didn't have to do with the Russia probe of Trump's campaign. And then Trump admitted it was Russia admitting a lie or making liars out of his DOJ leadership, a confession that haunted him as many of his aides were later indicted in the Mueller probe.
- [11:25]
Donald Trump (quoted)
I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won
- [11:46]
Ari Melber
confession. They had already said it wasn't about that. They had a different cover story in writing. And then he admits it's about Russia and the Democrats and his anger and his political goals. That was a journalistic interview that mattered. It yielded damning information. It led to the convictions, accountability, deterrence because the DOJ system was working then. People like Paul Manafort went from being the number one official in the 2016 Trump campaign to going on trial, getting convicted, being incarcerated. Well, today we know Trump has ground down the doj. Comey's not just fired. He joins these others on the enemies list, charged a guardrail, though, has held and that juries, grand juries in the courts have still required evidence. And most of these cases have been losing. While Trump's very tardy bit to get the Senate to now do what maybe the courts will not to try to push new laws, to bend the rules, to maybe save or change the outcome in the midterms, where Republicans say, and no one knows till there's voting, but Republicans say they're worried about losing. Well, that brings me to a final piece of evidence tonight that ties it all together because Trump's hope or prayer or demand that the Senate pass his voting plot drew a new fact check from the party's top leader, who says people like Trump who want that voter bill, the Save America act, are not going to get it and they need to get a grip.
- [13:11]
Senate Leader
The facts on the ground are very clear. We don't there are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren't going to be 10 Democratic votes to all of a sudden support the saving merit pack. It's just those are just hard realities. And I think people at some point you have to come to grips with that.
- [13:31]
Ari Melber
You're not going to get it, he's telling Trump. You got to come to grips with that. How would you sum up that tough message tonight? You want it to be one way, but it's the other way. A tough message. Some people have to learn more than once. Jelani Cobb and Michelle Goldberg join me on those hard lessons in 90 seconds.
- [13:53]
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- [15:25]
Ari Melber
we're back with the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School, the New York Times Michelle Goldberg, a columnist and Ms. Now analyst I tie it all together with Trump wants it to be one way, but increasingly it is the other way. For all of the concern about how the other branches have failed for years. On these stories tonight, I think the evidence shows the courts and the Senate to some degree are saying, no, it's the other way.
- [15:51]
Jelani Cobb
It's the other way. So there are a few things that I think are significant here. Right. One is that even red states don't like the idea of turning over their voter rolls to the federal government, like there is a bridge too far. The other is something we remember way back to the 2016 election, something that people had historically thought of as maybe a kind of bureaucratic throwback or something that was a headache or inefficiency or whatever. But the vastly decentralized nature of, of American elections actually works to our advantage here because there are so many different levers and there's so many different things. It's not easy. It's not a kind of like, single switch, kind of flip one switch and you can put your thumb on the scale for a national election. God knows they have tried with multiple kinds of avenues. But I think that this is the ways in which a system that would otherwise seem archaic winds up actually beginning to seem brilliant.
- [16:54]
Michelle Goldberg
I mean, I also, look, I mean, as you said, you know, people, there's a lot of red state opposition to various parts of this. People in red states vote by mail. My parents live in Arizona, where almost everybody votes by mail, which is, you know, a very, very purple state. And I also think that the Republicans probably don't want to pass the SAVE Act. This is the kind of voter suppression law that Donald Trump is holding hostage, this bipartisan housing bill, because it would also create a lot of problems for their own voters because of all the, how onerous it is to sort of prove citizenship, especially if you've changed your name. And then I think the final part is just that Donald Trump, he came in with this kind of terrifying amount of political capital, and he has, you know, squandered it as flagrantly as he squandered money as a casino owner. And so now you have him, you know, with kind of extremely low poll numbers. There is this fascinating story in the Bulwark about how his campaign is doing this kind of outreach to QAnon. And, you know, with this sort of social, QAnon themed social media campaign. And they're all like, screw you. You know, we like, I feel like when you've lost QAnon, right, you're not somebody who kind of has this, you know, movement behind you anymore.
- [18:12]
Ari Melber
QAnon hard to find, hard to lose. But once, as you say, we've gone through the life cycle of that, and it speaks also to the weakness of everyone on the right bracing for a loss. Now, we've all covered, and you teach students, and I'm sure you advise people at the Times and others who seek your counsel about not getting ahead of reality, because reality will tell us the story.
- [18:37]
Rashad Bilal
Sure.
- [18:37]
Ari Melber
But I want to show briefly Tucker and others who think the reality is, and Trump is acting like they are on the way to losing
- [18:46]
Cyndi Lauper
Tucker, where
- [18:47]
Ari Melber
this leaves the future of the MAGA movement. I mean, the future of the maga, well, that's over. There's no future of the MAGA movement. Obviously, we're done.
- [19:01]
Jelani Cobb
I mean, the only thing I'll say is that the MAGA movement has been like the villain in a movie at the end where, you know, like, the villain is dead. But no, it's not, actually. It's about to, like, jump back out of the grave and come. And so, you know, rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated many times previously. But I do think that there's something here, you know, so what has happened, you know, historically or generally with this administration is that the machinery that's meant to create electoral equality has been taken over in order to create electoral inequality. The same sorts of claims have been. You know, I think that some elements of the Republican Party are aware of the ways in which this could go the opposite way. And what I mean by that is that when you look at a state like Alaska, which voted for Trump and their reliance upon mail in ballots because it's Alaska, do you really want to get on board with that? There are lots of local people. There are lots of statewide people. They're congressional delegation. Nobody is unaware of the ways in which they are dependent upon this. And you can create a system that winds up disadvantaging them, not just in 2026, but 2028 and down long after Donald Trump has left the White House.
- [20:22]
Michelle Goldberg
Yeah, I mean, I think. Look, But I also think that Donald Trump in some sense knows that this is coming for him. And, you know, obviously we can't be sure. A lot of things could still go wrong for Democrats. You know, some of the congressional generic polls are closer than you would like or think, given Trump's unpopularity. Nevertheless, I mean, the most likely outcome is Democrats taking at least one branch of Congress and Donald Trump spending the next two years in, you know, sort of endless hearings and subpoenas and investigations. Kennedy said as much when he tried to pressure a libertarian member of Congress to drop out of the race, saying, you Know, I don't want to spend, you know, the Republican needs to win because I don't want to spend the next two years in hearings. And so. And I also think it's important for all of the kind of people in all of these agencies that are tasked with carrying out Trump's will for that to become increasingly real to them. Right. That everything they do now they're going to be sitting in front of a congressional committee answering for.
- [21:32]
Jelani Cobb
Yeah.
- [21:33]
Ari Melber
And Jelani, the, the judges, though, are also giving a very clear guidance. I mean, I mentioned the almost absurdity, but we have to be serious and be ready of weaponizing the mail men and male, women and male workers of the country into a voter suppression force. But the judges ruling against this and there being hearings and it being on record really does put pressure on those individuals to hand out the damn ballots. And if they get an illegal order from the president's office, which happened in 2020, like Mike Pence did, to disregard illegal orders because the judge has already ruled.
- [22:08]
Jelani Cobb
Right. But I mean, it's also, you know, how do you build a constitutional crisis?
- [22:13]
Ari Melber
Yeah.
- [22:13]
Jelani Cobb
You know, in three easy steps. Because, you know, this is, you know, the territory we start saying, who do you listen to? And so when we think about Mark Kelly and all the heat that he took for saying that you should disobey illegal orders, which seems to be very straightforward. Like, the only time you could have a problem with someone saying that is if you intend to tell people to do things that are, in fact, black letter law, illegal. Right. And so the other part of it that makes me a little bit anxious and curious about how this plays out is the consistent weaponization of the DOJ and how that will be a factor, the kind of X Factor actor and how all this plays out, launching investigations into election returns or whatever. I mean, that is not a kind of far out scenario. That could be part of the equation, too, that we're looking at beyond the midterms.
- [23:04]
Ari Melber
Yeah. When I show those arrows and remind people that's civic exercise. So the folks are ready. Last time the DOJ arrow got stopped by Bill Barr. Whatever you think of.
- [23:15]
Jelani Cobb
That's right.
- [23:15]
Michelle Goldberg
Right.
- [23:15]
Jelani Cobb
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Ari Melber
This time these type of leaders at the DOJ may not. And so then everyone has to be ready to interpret that the DOJ yelling something is not the same as reliable sources or journalists telling you it's a fact. Or even the Supreme Court, what everyone thinks of it, ruling at the end of the process. It's just their campaign arm now, and it might be dealt with with the Same skepticism of a convicted campaign, basically. Michelle and Jelani, I want to thank you both on this convo. See you by the end of the hour for something a little different. There is a growing consensus in America, left, right, and center, that Trump lost the war. Even the comics agree. But this deal almost makes it seem like we lost the war. You remember what happened last time we tried to tell him he lost something. He tried to kill my pence. He tried to kill my pence. President Trump's decision to initially wage war in Iran took many by surprise. Then his rushed efforts to unwind the war he started have come with all kinds of U.S. setbacks. When this tentative deal was first announced, plenty of serious people went to study the details. First, it's not an overnight black and white thing. It can be complicated. And then we saw the US And Iran clashing over what the deal really meant, what was coming next. But now that we've had some time and the details have come out and sunk in, there are some takeaways. Broadly speaking, it's no secret that Iran has gotten many of the key things it wanted, and it's, of course, kept its regime intact. And that Trump's team has offered money and more time and even oil leverage to Iran going forward. So we have experts and insiders, foreign policy vets, and really leaders in both political parties coming together to reach that rare thing in America these days, a shared consensus. And I'll tell you what it is. It's that Donald Trump lost the war. The conservative National Review's headline, the US Loses Its War Against Iran. The conservative Washington feeble Iran deal, A fitting end to a foolish war. Criticism of basically ever launching it. Longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove says that Trump's deal is a political and foreign policy disaster, that it's weaker than Obama's deal, which is salt in the wound. He certainly knows that. Now, you could say that's also the political wins. But take the highly respected New York Times editorial board, which crunches foreign policy and goes through the evidence. They came up with a headline that matches the conservative one I showed you. President Trump lost this war. Noting the failure to achieve the goals that were offered, which included unconditional surrender, which could be bluster, but also regime change, which is a thing that countries sometimes tried to do and which they said they were going to do and which they failed to do. They lost any bid at regime change, if anything, hardening a younger version of this regime. They didn't destroy the military either, although you could say they degraded aspects of it. Now, many diplomats and national security experts often discuss these matters with more, well, diplomacy. Right. It's kind of their job. And so they may not shriek the headlines that we're seeing here. They talk about it in different terms. That the US Has a strategic disadvantage in this deal or that it benefits Iran more in the future than it obviously benefits the US and that Iran now has continued to show a geostrategic ability to flex power over the Strait of Hormuz, something that Trump's actions allowed them to do, which before they weren't doing. There's a discussion of mismatches in the obligations and a geopolitical slump for the US that is so obvious. Many people say, I bet you've heard this one. The United States was better off before the war started, meaning it didn't achieve much. Or as the political voices said, that Trump's war is a loss. And then there's the simpler bottom line you will hear on certain conservative airwaves. Despite all the denials, the MoU is a massive cash cow to the Iranian regime. It's a complete capitulation to the Iranian regime.
- [27:33]
Interviewer
They're better off than they were before the hostilities began.
- [27:37]
Ari Melber
I hate to say this. In this deal, the biggest loser is the United States and India.
- [27:42]
Interviewer
America has given up all of its
- [27:44]
Ari Melber
leverage in this situation.
- [27:45]
Jelani Cobb
This doesn't feel like a victory.
- [27:50]
Ari Melber
Trump lost the war. He started the war. He lost the war. And according to many critics of the deal, including on the right, he lost the peace. That is to say that while very few people want to continue a military operation there, which is why sometimes it can be funny to criticize, because if you hear someone saying the peace deal is bad enough, you start to wonder, well, does that mean we should stay in the conflict? No. For many of these experts, I just showed you them across the spectrum, the answer is no, we shouldn't have started. No, we shouldn't continue. And also, he lost the war and struck a bad deal. All three things being, according to many, the problem with Trump's failure as commander in chief. And then there's what we all watch, the contradictions, as Trump had to grapple with the failure to achieve the goals.
- [28:35]
Tom Nichols
The purpose of this is to destroy that missile capability. Why does Iran want that ballistic missile capability?
- [28:41]
Donald Trump (quoted)
I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some.
- [28:46]
Tom Nichols
It's the fact of the matter. I mean, the Iranian system is led by clerics, radical clerics.
- [28:51]
Donald Trump (quoted)
I think they're very smart. I think they're far less radicalized. I think they're really good. They love their country.
- [29:02]
Ari Melber
The broader trend line is also clear. Iran eyeing a $40 billion windfall from reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which they closed only in response to Trump starting the war. Taxpayers on the hook. $87 billion. 24% of Americans now think this was worth it, a number that tends to go down over time. It is too easy these days to have a snap opinion. You see a headline on your phone about the end of the war and people say he lost. And that's about worth the amount of time it took to say it if someone rushed to give you an opinion in 20 seconds. So while this isn't breaking news tonight, we have actually sifted, as I just showed you, over time, the details and a range of views to land on the point that seems pretty important. Donald Trump led the US to losing this war, and we have a special guest on that next
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Ari Melber
21 sponsored by Chumba Casino. Joining us now is Tom Nichols, U.S. naval War College professor emeritus, who writes the whiplash of Trump's Iran capitulation in his new piece noting foreign policy is about one man and little else under this president. Welcome.
- [31:33]
Tom Nichols
Thank you.
- [31:34]
Ari Melber
I mentioned that it can take time with any deal to look seriously at what it says and what it achieves. And so rather than a snap judgment, we've called this together. Is it fair to say that many experts view this as Trump losing the war? And what do you think is important tonight to understand?
- [31:56]
Tom Nichols
Well, I can't think of many experts who don't view it as a loss. And that includes as well the partisans, the non experts who really wish Donald Trump had won this war. You ran some of the clips. They would love to say that Trump won this war and they can't. I mean, at some point the willing suspension of disbelief starts to break down, even in Megaworld. I think the most important thing to understand, as I said in the piece, is this isn't working for Donald Trump. That's all he cares about. And now he's having a fire sale. This is sort of like closing down a failed casino or something. Just get rid of everything, get it over with, make sure that we get out with as much as we can get out with and then we're done and dusted. I think that's exactly what he's doing now. There have been reports that he's bored by the word. You see that every now and then. I think he's just frustrated it didn't go his way. I think he's been frustrated by this ever since the first week of the war when it didn't go his way. He really thought this was going to be over fast and now he just doesn't care. This is just a liability for him. So he's going to do what he always does. I won. It's the greatest deal ever. It's the biggest victory in history. He said that again last night at this state fair and he's just going to hope that nobody talks to him about it after this.
- [33:20]
Ari Melber
We hear a lot about leverage in these talks. Part of your writing here seems to suggest that Donald Trump, not caring about the well being of the United States over the long term and how this affects everybody has given Iran extra leverage in terms of what they can get and rushing a timeline which again might relate to Donald Trump in the midterms. I'm old enough to remember where any president would deny that politics had anything to do with national security implications. Is that fair? Is that a problem? The sort of selfishness making him worse, positioned at the negotiating table?
- [34:03]
Tom Nichols
The problem is that the Iranians know it. That's the problem. I mean, you know, there are always. Every president goes into these kinds of situations with a mix of concerns. Domestic politics, national security. That's. That's normal. That's just the way, you know, this. It's just the way politics is. The problem is Donald Trump has telegraphed, I don't care about this. I want this. You know, I want this. This piece of gum off my shoe. And he just doesn't care. So what's. What exactly are the Iranians supposed to care about here in terms of leverage? They now think time is on their side. The United States look looks weak. The Gulf states are all aggravated that the United States came roaring in here and then took a powder. Trump has basically told the Israelis to. To sit down and shut up.
- [34:58]
Ari Melber
You know, what's.
- [34:59]
Tom Nichols
What leverage does he have left? Now, of course, Trump says if the Iranians don't cooperate, he'll restart this war and he'll bomb them and he'll, you know, really, this time, really do it. You know, I don't think they. I personally, I don't believe that. I don't think the Iranians believe it. I don't think anybody believes it, especially because the timing of that operation really would take him, you know, into a month or two before the midterms. But I also think he just doesn't want to do it. He took a gamble. It didn't pan out. And as he does with everything else in his life, if it didn't pan out for him, he wants to wash his hands. Unfortunately, that's a terrible attitude to have about national security. Unfortunately.
- [35:42]
Ari Melber
Clearly. I want to show you one other thing. When we talk about public perception, here's on TikTok, people weighing in. That's right, America. The President of the United States signed
- [35:53]
Tom Nichols
a memo of understanding, and the understanding
- [35:55]
Ari Melber
is that he lost the war.
- [35:57]
Monday.com Advertiser
You took us to a war that's almost certainly going to lose your party, the midterms, and all you got out of it was having to pay Iran $300 billion in reparations on Juneteenth.
- [36:05]
Jelani Cobb
It's so hilarious that we renamed it to the Department of War, then instantly lost.
- [36:09]
Jimmy Uso
Yeah.
- [36:10]
Interviewer
Fight one more and lose.
- [36:11]
Ari Melber
Oh, my God.
- [36:12]
Monday.com Advertiser
You picked a fight and you lost it. Story of your Life, huh?
- [36:17]
Ari Melber
About 30 seconds left. Are they on to something?
- [36:21]
Tom Nichols
Yeah, that last one. That last one's especially funny and one you hear a lot. We're going to rename the Defense Department to the Department of War and then instantly lose a war. I think what you're seeing with these videos and reactions is this is not hard for people to understand. You don't have to have an arcane understanding of war and strategy to know that Donald Trump said, here's what we're gonna do, here's how we're gonna do it. This is the result we're gonna get. And then none of that happened. And now the President of the United States is standing on television saying they're really okay people, they're rational, they just care about their country. We can work this out. This is not hard to understand. And again, ordinary folks, regardless of their politics, get it that Donald Trump started a war and then lost it.
- [37:04]
Ari Melber
Yeah. Tom Nichols again, taking this seriously with all the evidence we have. That's what we thought of you. We appreciate it. Quick break when Republicans might be down in the midterms. But there is a big money game you gotta know about. That's next. So much going on, but we still made time tonight to fall back. And we have two very special guests returning to the table. Jelani Cobb, of course, Peabody winning journalist, a regular here, dean the prestigious Columbia Journalism School and an author with the new one. Three is a crowd.
- [37:39]
Jelani Cobb
Three or more.
- [37:40]
Ari Melber
Three or more is a crowd.
- [37:41]
Jelani Cobb
Three or more is a riot.
- [37:42]
Ari Melber
Three or more is a riot. Look, it's even on the screen. You know, I read part of it, but I didn't look at the screen. Maybe that's a lesson for us here. Three is a crowd.
- [37:50]
Jelani Cobb
But that's not what I was talking about.
- [37:52]
Ari Melber
Three or more is a riot. Also from the New Yorker magazine and making his debut is Rashad Dalal, co creator of the Earn youn Leisure podcast. We talk a lot about new voices and creators. It's a financial literacy platform and they have over 230 million views on YouTube and counting where they host all kinds of interesting people from Mark Cuban to Tyler Perry. He also co created Vest Fest, which draws thousands of attendees and is the co author of youf Deserve to Be Rich. Hey now, I like that. Jelani and Rashad at the table. Welcome to both of you.
- [38:22]
Jelani Cobb
Thank you, thank you.
- [38:23]
Ari Melber
Excited to have you. You are hometown. So I'll go to you first. What's on your callback list?
- [38:29]
Jelani Cobb
Well, to start with, you know, we see that there is, we're on track to spend about $1.3 billion in the 2026 elections. That's obscene. And I mean, there are a few reasons for this. One is of course there's a Citizens United decision that makes money synonymous with speech. I rank that the same as the 14th Amendment decision that says that corporations Are people. Money does something different than speech does, and it's not difficult to understand that. But the best testament to the way in which this amount of money has warped the way our elections operate, that we're now in a kind of cash arms race. And then beyond that, it really diminishes the relationship between elections and democracy, which I always say are the same as the relationships between weddings and marriages. Weddings are rituals. They may be important in their own right, but the marriage itself is the more important thing element of it. An election is important, but it's a ritual. The democracy is the thing that we actually have to be worried about. And in this instance, the election, the process. The elections look more like auctions than they do. A democratic process.
- [39:48]
Rashad Bilal
Yeah. You know, to piggyback off that, it's almost like early stage investing, which is fitting because a lot of these guys in the VC world, it's like, you know, you invest in a candidate and then you have equity and then you
- [39:59]
Ari Melber
have, you own a piece of them.
- [40:01]
Rashad Bilal
If you look at Elon Musk, he was worth 300 billion before the election, and he put 300 million into the election, and now he's a trillionaire. So his net worth went up 700 billion. And the US government is the number one consumer customer of SpaceX. And SpaceX has the biggest IPO in American history. So it's obviously not all directly related to politics, but it plays a major part. So I think it really set a, a dangerous precedent when you can, you know, put that much money into politics and get such a tremendous rate of return on your investment in a short period of time.
- [40:37]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [40:37]
Ari Melber
And do you think, I mean, you, you work in that field. Do you think understanding how they look at it is important to thwarting it? Because a lot of people are saying, oh, I, I'll vote in the primary, maybe I'll volunteer, I'll vote in the election. That's almost quaint. And they look at it very much as trying to own or rig for
- [40:56]
Rashad Bilal
their own benefit on the space, from everything from local elections to governors to mayors. So that's very, very, very important because a lot of times people only look at the political elections that gets the most attention, which is the president and senator, if they have enough attention. But I think the very intelligent people with a lot of money are looking at everything. They're looking at every single House race. They're looking at House races in Arkansas, they're looking at House races in Alabama, even if they no business there. So I think that it's really really, really. You know, trying times right now when it comes to maintaining the democracy, because it's only going to get worse. So if it's 1.3 billion now, what's it going to be in 10 years? What's it going to be in 20 years? If we're on the same rate, we're looking at, you know, historic amount of money that's getting put into these elections. Yeah.
- [41:47]
Ari Melber
What else is on your. Your fallback list right now? I know you're thinking about the Knicks.
- [41:51]
Senate Leader
Yeah.
- [41:52]
Rashad Bilal
Shout out to the Knicks. James Dolan. I think, you know, it's just been a historic run when it comes to the New York Knicks, and 50 years since the last time that we won. And I feel like he's doing his hardest to kill a vibe. You know, you had the President come to game three. That's the only game that we lost. And it could have been a historic sweep of the Finals. And that was a debacle. And then. And then, you know, you have the parade. The parade is wonderful. Mahdani gives a great speech. He names all of the Knicks players for the last 30 years and just come and rain on that parade. Literally, like, he's just, well, I don't need to name all these players. If you know them, you know them, and I don't need you.
- [42:29]
Ari Melber
The owner, you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.
- [42:31]
Rashad Bilal
And then. And then you just automatically say that they're coming to the White House. And no NBA team has come to the White House during Trump's presidency. So I think he just put the players in an awkward space because now they have to answer political questions, and he still has to make it right with Charles Oakley. So, yeah, James Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks, I think that he needs to fall back and just let the team enjoy the moment.
- [42:54]
Ari Melber
Well, to paraphrase some famous poetry, it sounds like you're saying, james, don't kill my vibe.
- [43:01]
Jelani Cobb
I'm not quite sure that's how that line goes, but it's close enough.
- [43:04]
Ari Melber
I said paraphrase.
- [43:06]
Rashad Bilal
Right.
- [43:08]
Ari Melber
What else is on your list?
- [43:10]
Jelani Cobb
So, you know, I want to take a culinary turn here.
- [43:14]
Ari Melber
Bring it.
- [43:14]
Jelani Cobb
Which is that a group of researchers found yeast in the intestinal tract of otzi, who's the 5,000-year-old, you know, mummified, man. That was disc in France, and they turned that yeast into sourdough bread. And, you know, I might be a purist, but I think digestion is only supposed to go in one direction. And, you know, I would also want to see the research proposal for that, like, how did you get funded for this? And then, and then finally, the joke that you can anticipate from a mile away, someone's going to take a bite and say, this tastes like crap.
- [43:56]
Ari Melber
Well, I could see it appealing to Rashad only because you and your platform are into turning anything into bread.
- [44:05]
Rashad Bilal
I like that.
- [44:06]
Jelani Cobb
I like that.
- [44:07]
Michelle Goldberg
That's good.
- [44:08]
Rashad Bilal
That's good.
- [44:09]
Jelani Cobb
That's pretty good.
- [44:09]
Ari Melber
It was okay. Yeah, we do have some dad jokes around here. And we mix it up. Rashad, in one sentence, what's the key financial advice you give to people, especially in communities, that might not be included in some of this?
- [44:20]
Rashad Bilal
Live below your means and learn as much as possible.
- [44:24]
Ari Melber
Simple words to live by. Great to have you both here. We'd like to mix it up at the end of the hour. Jelani Cobb, Rashad Bilal. We'll be right back. We have eyes on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Tomorrow, a billionaire linked with him, Leon Black will finally testify before Congress. Lawmakers likely to press about those excessive sums, even by any standard, over $150 million. What was later described as tax and real estate advice that many experts said seemed inflated. NBC also notes the phrase please call Leon Black appears over 300 times in the files. We should mention Black denies any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein's criminal conduct. This is his story. Trump has tried to stem repeatedly, but tomorrow, new hearing, new testimony, new evidence, even in Congress. We'll bring that to you. You can join me again at 6pm Eastern. That does it for us.
- [45:16]
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