← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Trump Stokes Scandal with Jesus Post, Pope Attack
00:41:14
MS NOW's Ari Melber reports on new fractures in President Trump's MAGA base as he feuds with the Pope. Semafor's Margaret Carlson joins.
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- [00:46]
Ari Melber
Welcome to the beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on several major developments on the home front inside the United States. Tonight, this news breaking late in the day. Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell announces he's not only discontinued his campaign but is resigning from Congress following several credible allegations of sexual assault. We have more on that this hour. We're also following what can only be described as a feud between President Trump and the Pope. Backlash for a bizarre and some say blasphemous post where Donald Trump compared himself to Jesus. A president who's often described as not backing down has already deleted the odd post. We're going to get into that. And a major defeat for a strong man who has pushed the limits of autocracy abroad. We have the report on that and why it is also a blow to Putin and Trump. Andrew Weissman is here as well. As we look at safeguarding legal protections going into the midterms where the Republicans are increasingly acting like they're bracing for a routine. So we are really following a lot of major stories. One of those nights where you could start any number of places. But with Donald Trump continuing and in some ways escalating aspects of the war with Iran. We begin there. The United States has begun a Trump led blockade of the Iranian ports. This is around the Strait of Hormuz. This comes after the peace talks did not deliver peace or a breakthrough. Vice President Vance, of course, had led those talks over the weekend. For the United States side, those talks were seen by Donald Trump as a potential off ramp when he didn't get what he wanted after his threats. If you remember all that last week and there was a ceasefire to lead to the talks. Well, now we have more than 15 US warships in place. They are operating to prevent ships from leaving or entering. We are kind of doing a version of what Iran is doing. A point that has been observed by many experts wondering where exactly this all leads. Indeed, you don't have to have a satirical website like the Onion or wait for the late night comics to get a hold of this tonight, because mainstream outlets and foreign policy experts are already calling it something that might have occurred to you as someone who follows the news or this war. They're calling it Trump's blockade of a blockade. Because the issue that had spiked prices and caused so much pain for the US Putting pressure on Trump's policy was that Iran was already blockading most ships from moving through this city. Same body of water, this strict, the US now doing it. Remember, it's not exactly our backyard. And given the history and US Choosing to bomb Iran, this does play out as an escalation because the US Is stepping up to block everything there. Trump wants other countries to join in, but the president who started this war without allies apparently will be waging parts of this war without allies. The Times reporting there are no takers for that mission. As of tonight, Trump's patience may be wearing thin. The administration is also looking at limited strikes as a way to break a stalemate. That's from the Wall Street Journal. The blockade bringing US Ships into striking distance of Iran's missiles and drones. And that raises the risk where American military are now in harm's way. Our personnel are out there. We're close to Iran. The fact that we have limited their ability to hit us on the home front over in the US and near the continental US Is not comfort when we are now operating there. Experts also describe this as a kind of game of chicken, where Iran would seem to have an upper hand because, and this is partly a criticism of the Iranian government and its failures, but the fact is Iran and its people have endured a lot more pain, economic and otherwise, than the American public. And so the Times says if this is a showdown over who can endure more pain, Donald Trump's policies and the American economy may not be set up for success there. Also, this will increase oil prices rise, and it will deepen the drag on the global economy. Remember, before the blockade, oil was spiking again. It's been around $100 per barrel. A lot of the positives that we've seen in the energy markets involve the assumption, or call it a hope that Donald Trump will not wage this war for months on end. But the way he's acting, the way he's escalating and the erratic behavior, which some of his own allies and former aides say reflects an untenable mental decline for the sitting president. That's me quoting them. We can get over to the independent experts or the critics or the doctors, but we've had Trump allies speaking out. And another story from the Times crossing on that point today, well, that eroticism, that unreliability of the commander in chief does conflict with the market's best hope, that this will just work itself out. As for the price of oil heading up Donald Trump, who on his better political days, if you look at the last, say, 10 years, has been at times an effective communicator or really a kind of resilient liar, someone who just says what needs to be said for political purposes, that Donald Trump is fading into one who courts blasphemy debates and upsets the Christian population of the United States and around the world and upsets the Muslim population around the world and just does things that aren't adding up very straight. So I say that by way of introduction to the president's answer on FOX News about whether the price of oil will go up and stay up heading into the midterms.
- [06:17]
Margaret Carlson
So do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?
- [06:23]
Donald Trump
I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be. It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same.
- [06:32]
Ari Melber
A little bit higher is not what the host was looking for. You can see Maria's eyebrows literally raised as she watches a president commit what is a gaffe, of course, a phone call where he admits that his policies are driving up prices on Americans, which breaks his campaign promises is only one of several gaffes, errors or outright failures affecting America. Indeed, if this were the only thing and this were a different political era, a president saying that, that they raise gas prices and they're going to go up even higher by the next election, that itself would be its own big thing. But we have to pick among that and the many other scandals and problems dogging Donald Trump. Anger over the war and the higher prices are part of why Republicans have been retiring. Now, that's not always the most fascinating story. Right. You have to be kind of a news or politics junkie to keep track and care about a retirement rate in Congress going up or down. But we reported, as did others about that, because that was one of those clear indicators that some Republican incumbents who already have the job Basically are sure they would lose it and would rather not lose it. They'd rather say they're retiring and go work on their next job or their lobbyist offers in D.C. that kind of thing. That is the context for what the Republicans who are still running are facing, if they're willing to talk to Republican voters, not all voters, just in red districts, incumbent Republicans and other candidates facing these kind of scenes.
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Reporter or Interviewer
As the conflict in the Middle east comes to an end, you're going to see, you're going to see oil prices come back down. The fact is that the president is well within his authority to conduct the strikes that have been conducted. Donald Trump won the election, the Republican
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Donald Trump
Party, and you are enabling him.
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Jason Johnson
You're all cowards.
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Ari Melber
That's just a sample of that Republican being addressed as a, quote, coward. And credit to those willing to face voters, which is what you're supposed to do if you're in office. At least he's trying to talk to them. The even larger, quote, cowards, if you by that critique, would be the ones ducking all together. But what you see there in just the moment we showed you is the talking point of the party is that oil prices are going down, not up. Donald Trump just contradicted that claim. The war is unpopular, obviously. And the way that Republicans are trying to stand with Donald Trump's claims, delusions and propaganda about a war that clearly was chosen by this administration and is raising prices and has not worked and now involves tonight a greater commitment of troops in harm's way and ships in harm's way in Iran to do the blockading that Iran was already doing. Doesn't make a lot of sense. You can look at the polling and majority of the country says they're angry about this war, 57%, a larger group says stressed. And if you just ask people if they're worried, well, that's a huge, huge number, 68%. That includes, by definition, statistically, a lot of people who have voted for Trump in the past. That is the scene we face as we bring in our experts on the politics. We have Jason Johnson, MS, now political contributor and professor. And on the national security front, Brian Katulis has worked with the nsc, the State Department and dod. He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. Welcome to both of you. Jason, we'll get to you on the politics. I don't think it's the hardest questions you face tonight. Why GOP politics bad, why voters angry, that kind of thing. Brian, we'll start with you on the more serious footing, which is what does a blockade of a blockade mean and what is the outlook in the region?
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Brian Katulis
All right, thanks for having me on. Let's be straight here. This problem that Donald Trump's trying to fix in the Strait of Hormuz was a problem that did not exist on February 27 before he launched the war. And that's a key problem here and a key issue. He keeps on using military tactics and our most precious national security resources, which are our men and women in uniform, and putting them in harm's way without a strategy, we essentially have strikes without strategy, or in this instance, an operation, we don't know that it'll work. And that's driving up prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store for all of us. And the real risk here you mentioned, he's the commander in chief. He's also just an improv performer in chief. He's sort of making things up as he goes along. In part, if you remember before the war and in the early days, he couldn't really articulate a clear end goal and objective. It was like a game of three card Monty. It was ever shifting the goalposts. And he continues to do that. And that's a risky situation going back to the troops, to the troops that are in the field right now, that you can't just solve this with tactics. You need smart diplomacy, which is not what we had on display in Islamabad this past weekend.
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Ari Melber
Right, Jason,
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Jason Johnson
So here's the thing. Blocking a blockade, it's a hat on a hat. It doesn't make sense. You can make an economic argument, right, because Iran for the last month has been charging people to get to the straight of Hormuz. They're charging people like 2 million bucks. And maybe they were going to put the price up. But here's the thing. You could, you could charge 1 million, 2 million, 3 million for it doesn't matter. At some point, somebody needs to tell Donald Trump, you don't know what you're doing. And he keeps trying to shift things back and forth. And the problem is there are people who are willing to pay the price to get through Iran's blockade that are going to be frustrated by our blockade on top of that blockade. So it is an absolute mess of strategy and makes absolutely no sense. And it has damages not just in this country, but the global economy.
- [12:21]
Ari Melber
Brian, here's what, what the president said about it today.
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Reporter or Interviewer
Mr. President, as far as the naval blockade is concerned, what's the end game? Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the strait, so that gas prices ultimately come down, maybe everything.
- [12:38]
Donald Trump
I mean, both of those things, certainly.
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Ari Melber
And more, Brian, it gives you the echoes of sort of the real estate deal guy, the tycoon, the Build the Wall, the reality show. It's this, it's that, it's more. But, but all of this is being tested in reality in the days ahead. I mean, how long can he blockade. A blockade, and if he doesn't get Iran to give in, which the Times and others are saying is tough, then what?
- [13:07]
Brian Katulis
Yeah, so before I get back to the blockade, on the blockade, just remember a few short days ago, President Trump suggested that we might be collecting tolls with the Iranian regime. An Ayatoll Booth, I call it, or a piracy pact between the United States and Iran, which nobody on his team, I think, was prepared when those words came out of his mouth. Flash forward to today. What I'm most worried about as somebody who lived in the region, worked on it for 30 years, is we're putting our sailors and soldiers in harm's way. And what I'm watching is whether A, there's any reaction from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which is the most dangerous force in the region, and then B, whether this actually produces results.
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Ari Melber
Right.
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Brian Katulis
The straits are not open. They've not been for a month and a half. And the longer the they stay closed, it's going to be costlier for all of us at the grocery store, at the gas pump. And the key missing link here is that he's not, as the commander in chief, he's not articulated the end game, which is the thing we should have learned from more than 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is how you get stuck in a quagmire when you don't have your leadership actually being crystal clear. And in that clip you just played, Ari, I didn't hear a commander in chief who's very crystal clear about where we're going here.
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Ari Melber
Yeah, and Jason, I mean, it actually is true. It's not a burn. It's just true that a politician, Donald Trump, who's lied more than anyone, seems to not even be good at lying anymore. He's lost it. He doesn't have it. So the GOP message is we're gonna sell lower gas prices. Give us time. Now, that's messaging. It's not a full blown lie. We can just say it's their hope. And he, as we showed tonight, can't even land that pitch. He is posting, Praise be Allah, most presidents, if they did that, it would require some explanation and make you wonder what's going on. He follows that up with comparing himself to Jesus, a post that he deleted because he very quickly had to back down and take it back. You can say, oh, this isn't a president who says sorry. Well, to him, deleting a precious post like that is as close as he gets. What does it say to you, Jason, that we are watching a performance in decline?
- [15:29]
Jason Johnson
You know, I think that's the thing that Republicans have been trying to avoid admitting to themselves for a long time that the president, whatever it is that he had, whether you liked it or not, he ain't really got it anymore. And on top of that, the rest of the world sees it. And whether that's in the form of supporting Viktor Orban, he doesn't have power. Whether it's making threats that people no longer believe in, it is we are in a bizarre world where a country that the United States is bombing is mocking the President with AI Lego videos. Right? Like that is a sign of disrespect that you could not imagine occurring to any other president in history, let alone the fact that we're having a conversation about AI videos and Legos. So the President's ability to have an aura around him is gone. The President's strategy is almost non existent and the president's planning is so unclear from day in and day out. We used to, you know, usually when the military attacks, there's like no reasonable doubt. We know exactly what we're going to do and where we're going to go. Nobody knows that from day to day and therefore people can't even execute whatever plans he's got.
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Ari Melber
Yeah, yeah. It's really something the world we're in here. Brian and Jason, my thanks to both of you. Coming up, Andrew Weissman is here on the legal ways to safeguard the midterms. Maga rattled as we watch that Orban loss over in Hungary. Something Jason just referenced. J.D. vance was there, but obviously didn't help enough to save that off. Autocrat. Meanwhile, Trump backpedaling on the big story I mentioned really unbelievably unusual even by our current times. The Jesus post and the attack on the Pope.
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Pope Leo / Religious Figure
I have no fear neither the Trump administration are speaking out loudly about messaging the gospel.
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Ari Melber
The President of the United States is in a lot of trouble for fighting with the Pope and comparing himself to Jesus. This is the actual news tonight, and it is one that one debate or controversy that's affecting Donald Trump at home and abroad, feuding with the Pope is not popular. Trump going after Pope Leo online because the Pope had called for peace, which quite frankly is a very Pope thing to do. And that was seen as a rebuke of Trump's choice to attack Iran. Moments later, he posted an AI generated image that you see right here. We don't often show all of the things that Trump posts on Truth Social, but I want to make sure you see this with your own eyes so you can make sense of it. There are all these sort of AI propaganda visuals that go out and people have different views about their role or efficacy. But from a religious viewpoint, this was deeply offensive to many people in our country and around the world. This is what to many Christians is seen as total blasphemy. Donald Trump posted it. Obviously he had his own reasons for that, but we've seen a lot of prominent individuals, including in maga, describe this as reprehensible, saying it's blasphemy. The faith is no prop that it crosses the line. One longtime Trump ally posting God will not be mocked online. And as I mentioned earlier in our coverage, we hear a lot of things from Trump and his allies that aren't really true. They just continue this sort of spin and one of them I'm sure you've heard a lot as well. He doesn't back down. He doesn't apologize. That's not true. He backs down when he is attacked or confronted in a consistent way, and especially by other people who don't back down. Some liken that to the approach you need for bullies. And so while Trump has been all over the place on these issues, I mentioned his praise a la post as well. He deleted this post. He might not want you to know that, but we showed you the post. It's no longer on Truth Social. He deleted it. Then later, facing the cameras, he went after the Pope again.
- [20:51]
Donald Trump
I'm not a big fan of popleo. He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. I'm not a fan of popleo.
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Ari Melber
And that brings us to, again, a strange chapter in a region where the United States has all sorts of religious sensitivities and past presidents have made a point to try to be respectful and serious about all of the different world religions that are involved in the Middle East. Indeed, when you have a war that's being waged right now that involves Iran, Israel and a lot of other parties affected, you are dealing with all the monotheistic religions. You are dealing with Islam, Christianity and Judaism. And so for the United States, it is a net negative to be seen as mocking or playing with the idea of Allah, which the president did during this war on Easter Sunday, or attacking the pope, which doesn't fit into any discernible strategy other than perhaps, as mentioned, a kind of erratic anger that the president can't withhold. Here was Pope Leo's response.
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Pope Leo / Religious Figure
Blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political politician. I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out loudly. I have no fear, neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about messaging the gospel
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Ari Melber
on the home front. Trump has also seen his support from American Catholics fall. Remember, they voted for him by a 20 point margin as recently as 2024. But there's slippage there. If you take white voters who didn't attend college, which has been a MAGA voting bloc, well, Trump has fallen about 40 points since last year. We're joined by Margaret Carlson, Semaphore editor at large. Margaret, your view on the substance of this, which pits Donald Trump against religions, more than one, really. And the politics of it, where it doesn't seem to be helpful to him or the standing of the war, no
- [23:09]
Margaret Carlson
decent politician would take on the Pope. It's like just asking for trouble. There's nothing in it for you. Let's put his ratings against Trump's ratings. Let's look just at the Catholic vote that you were speaking of. And the Jesus talk is just so out of hand these last couple of weeks. Pete Hegseth equating Trump's getting the return of the airman as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, wearing a cross around his neck, asking the troops to fight for Jesus. I was at a funeral mass this week, Irish Catholic Mary Ellen Doyle, high Mass, and I didn't hear the name Jesus that many times. And it seems to Catholics almost blasphemous to do that. Like when I was growing up, Ari, we would bow our heads when we said Jesus. That's what it was like. So Catholics hearing this, they don't like it. And what did you say? He's lost a big part of the non college educated Catholic voter. I think this today and the last week, even just Hegseth invoking that name all the time, I think he's lost out. I'm not even that good at and I'm offended.
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Ari Melber
Well, there you go. You know, your, your spirituality and religious choices will never be evaluated on the beat. So I'm sure, I'm sure you're pretty good at anything. But we don't even do that around here. So, you know, but Margaret, the, the other piece is obviously, is the president in decline, increasingly unwell? People who watch this program know I really try to follow the evidence. So for folks who felt that that was kind of a, a thing to maybe muse or ask about in years prior, we didn't leap towards that. Absent evidence. Now you're seeing a much more what we might call evidence driven or mainstream discussion of it because, you know, people say this term sane washing or trying to clean up for, for somebody. When I read the Praise Allah post, there was no way to put it in a context. I've heard some defenses by the Trump allies. None of them make any sense. If we're just, if we were in court and saying, okay, is this admissible evidence? It doesn't make sense. It felt much more like something was slipping at the Times. As a story new today, Trump's erratic behavior and extreme comments, including what we're discussing, revive mental health debate. Former allies questioning whether he's grown increasingly unbalanced. Some say he's being like a lunatic or, quote, clearly insane. Others say, and this might be hard for people who've been longtime Trump critics to admit, but they say what was a little on the edge, a little wacky, charming eight years ago, whatever, in their view, now looks like something else. Where does that fit into these remarks and attacks, some of which he's had to delete?
- [26:10]
Margaret Carlson
I think he's been doing this for a while, Ari. It's in the context of war that it looks so much more erratic and so out of touch and so swinging from one extreme to another. He's going to annihilate the Iranians one minute and then he's like shrugging his shoulders about what he's going to do and what it means and, you know, like, he could walk away from it. He cares about Hormuz and then he's double blocking it and then, well, he'll figure it out some other way. It's. And he's not used to losing in his own business. He could move and jockey and, and, and, and the worst that could happen, he'd go bankrupt and then he'd get back up again. He doesn't see a way out of this. And I think it's making all of the things that have been there for a while, this isn't new, all the more apparent. There was a Wall Street Journal headline this Saturday, in Gut we Trust, and that's Peggy Noonan's assessment of Donald Trump right now. And she's not a harsh Trump critic. It was a going through just this back and forth where within one as you're talking about that one too social in which he went back and forth and ended with praise Allah. He also dropped an F bomb. And I, just before I came on, Ari, I went and looked up to see how many times a president has used that word. Some things seem to be still out of bounds. Not a lot, but actually no one I could find. No one except someone accidentally caught on a hot mic and then apologizing for it. No one has ever, no president has ever done that. How many times are we talking about that? It's because the bar is so low that, you know, if this, what you might call erratic to crazy behavior, hadn't gotten us into something that nobody else would have done, at least without analyzing an exit strategy or the consequences of, say, the straight being closed, we wouldn't, you know, we're so just numb to it, it wouldn't matter. But when you look at these truth socials and then today, after insulting the Post, the pope and all Catholics, then to picture himself as God. You know, that reaction, even the reaction to something crazy is now so crazy.
- [28:48]
Ari Melber
And you, well, I think you, I think you put it, and I think you put in a very important nexus, which is this disinhibited, erratic behavior is also being carried out as our foreign and war policy. And that's chilling. It's not just, oh wow, the F word. I have a bunch of news, including Swalwell dropping out, so I have to break here. Margaret Carlson, thank you. Always good to see you. We have a lot coming up, including the loss of an authoritarian abroad, how that plays here at home, and experts warning about these midterm games. Andrew Weissman is here. Stay with us.
- [29:21]
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- [31:20]
Ari Melber
Moving new scenes out of Hungary where you could hear people singing We Are the Champions, the American Queen classic. At times they're in English because they were celebrating not only a win, but a very big, special unusual one, defeating the longtime autocratic leader of that country, Viktor Orban. And as we all know from watching politics abroad and sometimes Here in the United States, if you have a leader hell bent on defeating a peaceful transfer of power or a lawful election, then winning could be all the sweeter. This was clearly a loss for Trump and Putin. There were efforts to endorse Oban's reelection in different ways. Marco Rubio was in Hungary in a kind of a show of support. And JD Vance chose to come in right before the election, which was a noticeable timeline. Diplomats know when foreign country elections are. And in a kind of unusual step, to say the least, he dialed Trump up at an Orban rally.
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Donald Trump
I just want to tell you I'm a big fan of Victor. I'm with him all the way. The United States is with him all the way. You don't have problems with all of the problems that so many other countries have because they let their countries be invaded, and you don't have that problem because of Viktor Orban.
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Ari Melber
We have got to get Viktor Orban reelected as prime Minister of Hungary, don't we? That's what the Trump Vance campaign reboot looks like when they do it abroad. It didn't work. And to be clear, Orban may have been headed for a loss regardless of what Trump and Vance wanted or tried to do. Now, Trump hitting a little bit of a different tone,
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Donald Trump
that's going to be under very serious examination, thank you very much.
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Ari Melber
If you follow this president, as you know, the questions he doesn't take and when he walks away can be much more revealing than the things he does want to chew on. And he is clearly watching an autocrat lose abroad after some very serious tactics that overlap with his. And perhaps thinking about the midterms and the next election where Vance, who you just saw, or other MAGA style Republicans might want to use a Trump playbook, that is to say, not have a free and fair election. The AP reports that there are striking parallels between Trump and the Hungarian leader and the levers of government being used to, quote, tilt media, judiciary and electoral systems. That is, of course, putting it mildly when you look at January 6th. It wasn't just a tilt, it was violence. Later convicted of Trump allies and efforts to still try to steal or override the delegate kind of electoral votes on the 6th inside Congress. Now Trump is going after the guardrails that worked more or less, at least slowly, in ejecting him from office after his 2020 loss. Those efforts failed partly because there were consequences and partly, as we charted on this sort of chart of arrows, things that started out legal and turned illegal, and as they turned red and illegal, they were stopped. Publica though reports that some of the guardrails and people that held the line last time are missing. And there are now two dozen people picked by Trump who actively worked to overturn the 2020 vote. Some of those efforts went towards illegal plans. Trump also trying to undercut the agencies that deal with nonpartisan election security reducing measures at DOJ and the Civil Rights Division.
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Commercial Announcer
The Trump administration is not being shy about threatening to undermine and steal this
- [35:16]
Ari Melber
November election, authorizing federal forces to roam our streets and saying that we now need to make federal forces guard ballot boxes to avoid fraud. He's going to try to call out ICE and CBP and scare people away from the polls. Their calculation is by making it harder for tens of millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote, they'll have a chance of winning the midterms. This is voter suppression. If you care about America and democracy, you have to take this seriously because they've tried it before. You also have to keep a clear eyed view of what works because the last time they tried it in this country, it failed. And if you look at these blueprints abroad last night we saw how even more extreme efforts can also fail because when there are facts and enough people who know the score, the autocratic playbook does fall apart. Andrew Weissman is here on exactly that issue when we return. We're back with Andrew Weissman, a longtime DOJ veteran, former FBI general counsel, prosecutor and deputy leader of the Mueller probe. Andrew, when you look at what happened in Hungary where an autocrat tried in many ways to avoid the outcome of last night losing this election, does it tell us anything for us here at home?
- [36:49]
Commercial Announcer
I think two things. One, if there's anyone out there who doesn't understand or take to heart what this administration is about, one of the more remarkable things was a line in the New York Times saying that Orban was a leader who was backed in this election by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Just take a beat on that, no pun intended. Just focus on that for a second that we are aligned with Vladimir Putin to uphold the regime of really an admitted autocrat. The second thing that I think is a lesson here potentially for us is the nature of the person who won because they ran as a centrist. And there was very much a sort of, what I would say is at least a tacit deal with the so called left in Hungary to not push on sort of social issues so that he could appeal to people who had voted for Orban but were really sort of disinclined to this time for economic reasons because of his tactics, but should not be too far to the left. And so that's a debate that I'm sure is happening within the Democratic Party about how to position yourself best to win. And this is one potential lesson. It doesn't mean that's something they needed to do to win, but it certainly is a strategy that we can see worked.
- [38:43]
Ari Melber
We have reports that Trump is musing about or promising pardons to all kinds of aides and staff. The Wall Street Journal says, quote, I'll pardon everyone who's come within 200ft of the oval. He said in a meeting there was laughter. But it fits a mindset where looking at what failed for him in 2020, where he very clearly tried to override his loss, a version of that in 28, whether it's a Republican closely allied with him, he's talked about Vance and Rubio, something like that. Where does that fit in? And what do you see as the important things for safeguarding these midterms?
- [39:21]
Commercial Announcer
Sure. Well, you know, the ProPublica reporting that you've been covering, one thing that did not speak about was exactly what you just just alluded to, which is that the president has the power to say, don't worry if you are violating federal law, because I can deal with that. And, you know, he can say, no, he's doing it because he's worried about the next administration going after them. But the effect of it is to tell people, you really don't have to worry. Not just, of course we will not go after you, but no administration federally will be able to go after you. And so it would fit in with the difference between Trump 1.0, where, as you said, the strategy of obstructing and trying to thwart the Democratic transfer of power did not work. And all of the steps, all of the levers that are being pulled and can be pulled to try and have a different outcome here. What I would say with respect to the pardons, though, is if I were, let's say I've been a defense lawyer, I would say to somebody who is asking me advice about that, I would say, just remember, you don't have to just worry about federal prosecution. If you are violating state law, you can still be prosecuted. And in fact, we saw state prosecutions of the so called fake electors. So the President does have an enormous power here, but does not have a complete get out of jail free card.
- [40:58]
Ari Melber
Yeah. And another thing is in the courts, we've seen slow justice. Trump went after the Wall Street Journal because they reported with multiple credible sources about his Epstein ties. He got his headlines about that at the time. I wanna make sure viewers see this news today. A judge dismissing Trump's defamation suit against them, that Trump didn't even make a valid legal claim that he was defamed. Translation, Trump lost because the best available evidence is that was responsible journalism and that he has voluminous ties to Epstein. Does it matter that Trump still tried to get the first week of headlines out of this? Oh, he's so upset. When in fact now, when it's all said and done, looks like that story held up.
- [41:46]
Commercial Announcer
Yeah, I mean, the story held up. The question is, in newsrooms, are people going to be cowed? Are they going to back off of stories? Of course, they should always be careful. I mean, that goes without saying, but they would be careful without these lawsuits. And so what you worry about here is, you know, you can have Wall Street Journal, Ms. now, players who say, we're still going to cover responsibly. And, you know, if you bring these lawsuits, we will defend them. And they are, just to be clear, this is not the first case that has been thrown out that Donald Trump has brought claiming defamation. But the question is whether people will act like the Wall Street Journal or like Art Station or whether they will do what, in my view, CBS is doing, which is, I think, very much caving to the pressure. And other media organizations have followed suit. And so these lawsuits in some ways are a win win, because if it has, you know, the potential of actually prevailing, that's great. But even if they, if he loses, the issue is whether there are people there who don't have the same kind of backbone as the Wall Street Journal who will. Who will no longer report things that they should report, which is a detriment to all of us.
- [43:11]
Ari Melber
Yeah, I think that's an important distinction. It goes to how people understand it. And the world's complicated. Rupert Murdoch funds Fox News with one hand, but unlike, as you say, leaders at some other outlets, he did stand by his newsroom, on the other hand, and didn't do an apology or surrender. And there we are. And the world now knows a little bit more about Donald Trump's documented desire to praise and joke around with Epstein. I got to get in this other resignation news, so I'm going to thank Andrew Weissman. Thank you, sir, for being here. We have a quick break. When we come back, important updates as mentioned on two different members of Congress now resigning, facing credible allegations of misconduct. We have that story. Next, Major developments in Congress. Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez, both announcing they're leaving Congress after facing credible allegations of sexual misconduct and concern about being expelled. Gonzalo Gonzalez, I should say, announced that retirement just moments ago, and it's effective tomorrow. This had been a long time coming with months of reporting allegations and controversy about an affair with a former aide who later died by suicide. Now, it was also in the last hour that Swalwell announced, after suspending his campaign in California, that he's also resigning from Congress outright. This comes after the San Francisco Chronicle published an account from a former staffer accusing him of sexual assault and CNN reported four accusers, a story we reported on last week. While Swalwell denies the allegations, both men are exiting before what would have been potential votes to forcibly expel them. And the weeknight starts now.
- [45:01]
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