← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Trump Swamped by Epstein and New Jobs Slump
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MSNBC's Ari Melber hosts "The Beat" on Friday, August 1, and reports on President Trump's trade war entering a new phase and his firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics after the latest report fell far short of expectations. Melber also covers Kamala Harris' first major interview since the election and renewed scrutiny over Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Plus, hip hop duo Clipse join the show, along with Bill Kristol, Margaret Carlson and Paul Krugman.
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This is the Beat and we begin here with with a piece of the story we were just discussing and a lot more of the Epstein political meltdown, including what victims say is Donald Trump's betrayal and favoritism for pedophiles. That's their words. I'm going to get to that. It's what might be the greatest peril of Trump's second term, the economy. We've been discussing the Epstein uproar hitting a whole new pitch today because it's gone beyond promises and talk and content and into coddling Epstein conspirators. So today we have an extraordinary move. Donald Trump, as Stephanie Ruhl and I were just discussing firing the data official who does these jobs numbers. Critics say it's an abuse of power. People involved in this type of work, labor finance, say they've never seen anything quite like this and it all was quite blunt. If you can say one thing about the second term that might be different than the first is Donald Trump just does whatever he wants immediately. We don't see guardrails, we don't see a lot of spin and we don't see the Washington game of them saying well wait till midnight, wait till Sunday. Nope. Came right along with what was bad news for the Trump administration hours after this tough jobs data which shows hiring basically sharply slowing, which means that's a bad thing, cuz it's not the kind of job gains they wanted. And second, a lot of concern and indicators that this could relate to Trump's policy. So it's not just bad news, it's is bad news partly caused by Trump, according to experts. We'll get into the details. They fell short of the expectations and this is widely Understood. Here it's summer, some people are busy, some people are turning off the news. But in finance, where this monthly jobs number is a big deal, it hit hard. This was a very weak report. The revisions certainly to May and June are very concerning. I'm still very bullish on the US Economy, but this is a disappointing number. Disappointing number, weak report. That's just how it played on, say, Fox Business Hours. After this came out, Trump fired the commissioner on labor statistics, someone you, you never really talk about by name. They are a nonpartisan sort of civil servant that does the numerical work. And then he went after her, smearing her as some sort of political person. Later in the show, we have Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on this, firing what it means, the tariffs and more. Then you turn to Epstein, the lawyer for the only person in prison for Epstein crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell. She was convicted of the luring of minors, the sex trafficking, revealing. She has now been moved to a minimum security prison in Texas. This is unusual. It is suspicious. It comes after her suspicious DOJ interviews and where Trump wouldn't rule out pardoning her. This looks like help for her, looks like leniency, looks like a reward. And the reason it looks like that is because A, there was no automatic sort of legal process that would just lead to this. B, it is in direct contradiction with the rules. You know how we have written rules, they're not laws. It's not a crime to move people around as an exception. But the bop, the Bureau of Prisons has rules that convicted sex offenders cannot get this type of better minimum security prison. So I just want to pause here and tell you what's happening. Say you think the Epstein story is sometimes overblown. Say you think it's become political and the right wing's doing this and Democrats then jumped in, but Democrats weren't talking about it last year. And it all kind of seems like a lot of noise. Well, this is a, a day today where the noise and the politics have turned into action. And that action is to help the surviving Epstein conspirator. So if you're someone who was on the right or in MAGA or saying, boy, the Epstein guy is worst of the worst and other people might have gotten away with it. And you can catch the new guys. The sum total result under the Trump administration is now to help Epstein style pedophiles, Epstein style predators, including the one serving time for him. I say that by way of introduction to the victims. I've told you when we cover this story, we will cover all sides of it. The politics are part of it. But let's hear what these Epstein victims and family members are saying today because they are outraged, saying it is with horror and outrage that we object to this, what they call preferential treatment for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell that she's received. Quote, maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions. She should never be shown any leniency. And then, and these are people who've lived this, these family members, and they didn't say this a year ago. They didn't say it at random. They are saying it in response to this unusual sweetheart prison deal for the Epstein conspirator. Quote, Trump has sent a clear message today, quote, pedophiles deserve preferential treatment. According to Trump, that is how the Epstein victim's family views it. Bloomberg reports FBI teams saw Trump's name in the Epstein files and redacted them, that he was mentioned multiple times. And the DOJ did this review, found all that material, Bloomberg saying hundreds of agents who actually worked on this at one point. And it was a controversial matter to put so many resources into reviewing the documents which then all led to nothing. The two page memo which just said, we're not giving out more information. Republicans are facing heat from voters, meanwhile, because they are tied, of course, to maga. They're tied to President Trump and an agenda that is really closing in on all sides that is saddled. You have the unpopular health care cuts in that budget. You have the extremism many people have found of the immigration agenda. And you have the Epstein uproar showing that an administration that ran on and claimed it would bring more transparency and justice to the Epstein case has brought only secrecy and now today, leniency for an Epstein conspirator. That is the climate for a Republican town hall like this in Wisconsin. One of the biggest improvements that we have seen is the success in securing the US Mexico border. We can just keep it down a little bit so people can hear that's going to be helpful. And making sure, making sure that we're supporting. Making sure, making sure that we're supporting. What what occurred was during the Biden administration was a massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States. That is just some of what Republicans are facing in the few areas where they are willing to go out in public and face their constituents rather than run and hide. We're joined by Bill Kristol, a longtime Republican White House veteran, editor large for the Bulwark, critic of Donald Trump, founding director of Defending Democracy Together. And a longtime Washington journalist friend of the Beat and now editor at large for Semaphore, Margaret Carlson. Bill, I want to start with the actual fact that the only big change to anyone in the Epstein case is what the victims see as leniency, what the BoP rules doesn't normally allow for the only incarcerated living Epstein conspirator. I want to give you the floor to speak to that obvious problem, that unethical problem, and the politics of a movement that claimed, at least at times, that it cared about getting the bad guys and now helping one of them. I think your point that you made a couple of minutes ago is really important. This is an actual thing they have done. This isn't a conversation that we don't know what, why they were doing it. We can speculate, and I think there are grounds to speculate some bad motives there, but we don't know yet. But here is something they've done out of the blue, right? There's no, as you say, the prison, the Bureau of Prison Rules. I look quickly at the online. It seemed to suggest this shouldn't happen for this kind of offender, especially this early in her term. I assume she requests. Maybe she requests it, maybe a lot of them request it. But suddenly, one week after meeting with the deputy attorney general in private, in a meeting that we've had no readout of, no there are no notes that we've been made available for this to happen. I mean, what would we think in any context, right? You don't have to be a Trump. Never Trumper. You don't have to be a, you know, I don't know, Epstein conspiracy theorist, if that's the right word anymore. Or at least let's say someone who's very interested in the Epstein case. Just look at this happening, this one, two punch, and you think it's an inducement to her to say nice things about Trump, or is it a reward to her for something they know she's going to do? Is it a bit of a threat also? Because they could retract this, right? I mean, the whole combination of the back and forth. Did she say she might reveal certain things if they didn't do this? We don't know, again, who's sort of who's twisting the knot, who's inducing who, right? In this case, maybe some of both. But it really smells to high heaven, Margaret. The story wasn't gaining steam as quickly as it might have because Pam Bonney did what she did and then that kind of died and there wasn't anything new. And Trump's name being redacted is, is not new enough. And so it now turns into a story where the COVID up is worse than what was happening before. I won't call it a crime because we don't know what the crime exactly is on Trump's part. We know what it is on Maxwell's part and certainly on Epstein's part. But to give her a break right now when she could rat on him, she knows what happened with whom. I mean, it's such a blunder. I can't imagine who told Trump that it was okay to do or did he not ask anybody? He had to ask some people because it takes more than Trump whispering into the phone. So we go along and the story grows and comes into a whole other level, which is I assume that Maxwell wouldn't take the chance of saying anything against Trump because he could pardon her. Now we know he can give her leniency. So she wasn't that much of a threat to Trump anyway. So to go out in front of this and give this to the person who know, the only living person who really knows what happened, this is, it's, it's one of the biggest blunders I've ever seen. But don't you. I don't quite necessarily agree because we don't know if it's a blunder because we don't know what she has on Trump. It's not a blunder. If it keeps her quiet when she is threatening and she may not, she may have given up on. We don't know if she's threatening, if she's threatening to reveal things that could really implicate Trump in knowledge, not in direct knowledge of what Epstein and she were doing or in participation in that. It's worth it. She takes a hit. They think it's worth it. Right. So, so I don't know. Well, I think what you're. And also, so I do think one has to take. For me, it all comes back to the thing we've all been saying, I think should have been saying for the last month, there must be something in those files. He desperately. Why where I'm hearing you both agree is that this is a huge deal and risk. And Margaret is saying if you're taking that risk for no good reason, what a blunder. And you're saying maybe in the midst of all this, when he's already on defense, you take that bigger risk because there's something worse in there. And the other point I want to remind folks is the thorough investigation and deduction of everything that could be provably gotten out of this at one time, defendant and now convict already happened and it happened whatever skepticism people have, the government, which is fine. We're journalists, we're all skeptical. It happened under less suspicious terms already. In other words, she was prosecuted. There are plea negotiations and other things offered. They ran a whole case. They have all these files. They had Ms. Comey, among others at DOJ doing it. So to go back in that jailhouse is not necessarily a conversation that's on the level. They certainly haven't conducted themselves in a way where they're I think the Trump administration gets that benefit of the doubt. It may have been questions asked to try to encourage outcomes. Please do or don't say this or that the way a shady lawyer, not an honest prosecutor, operates. And so I want to hit some other points of that Bill and Margaret have agreed to stay. So we're on that. I also want to remind folks, we have something by the end of the hour that'll be interesting and talk about Obama's cultural legacy that some Democrats want to use and Paul Krugman coming up on the Econ story. But I'll be back as well with Bill and Margaret in 90 seconds. Your new beginning starts now. Dr. Horton has new construction homes available in Ellensburg and throughout the greater Seattle area. With spacious floor plans, flexible living spaces and home technology packages, you can enjoy more cozy moments and sweet memories in your beautiful new home. With new home communities opening in Ellensburg and throughout the Seattle area, Dr. Horton has the ideal home for you. Learn more@drhorton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder. With my job, I can't drink during the week. Weekends are a different story. Ugh. After eight hours of this, I have earned my wine. You know what I'm saying? My family is a lot. It takes me four beers just to hang out with them. Binge drinking isn't all college kids doing keg stands? Oregonians in their 30s and 40s binge drink at close to the same rates as younger people, raising our risk for long term health problems. More@rethinkthedrink.com an OHA initiative. Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two. We dive deep with guests that you love like Bill Hader, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Kristen Stewart and tons more. So join us for a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the smartless mind, Listen to Smartless now on the SiriusXM app. Download it today. We were shocked by it, especially to use the term stolen, because she's not an object, she's a person, she's a mom, she's a sister. And it just kind of makes us wonder, I mean, how much he knew. Epstein victims family members speaking out there, responding directly to some of Donald Trump's statements. This week, we're having this, this back and forth and Bill, go ahead, pick up where we were. I mean, it's terrible. I mean, everything Trump says a makes me think it's much more likely he knew in real time what was happening. He may not have participated, we don't know. But the idea that he had an idea what was going on, I think we know that already from other things he said. But it's been confirmed by what we've learned in the last couple of weeks. For me, what's so striking, Donald Trump speaks about, as the gentleman said, about these young girls being stolen or taken from him as if he owns them. And if the problem was just that they were working for him. And then Epstein took them, though. He also says he, whatever Epstein was doing with them or something like that, and he said he said something like that. But the degree to which Trump doesn't even think to offer words of sympathy or empathy for the girls, I mean, think of any normal person. That's not to say even you, you know, you kind of didn't know stuff was going on. You shouldn't, you feel you should have done more, you didn't do more. Maybe you trusted your friend too much. That's, you know, something, some story like that, right? If some, if this stuff then comes out about the incredible abuse, the horrible behavior, what Epstein was doing to these girls, you say, when you address it later on, you say, first of all, I just want to say I feel terrible about what happened. They have my sympathy. I'm sorry that this happened anywhere close to where I was. I wish I could have done more to stop it, but I didn't. And I do want people to know that I didn't know what was going on. I mean, something, right? That would be what a normal politician would say. Hopefully a normal person would believe that. But even a politician who didn't quite believe that would be told by his aides. You've got to show empathy, right? This is, you know, fact that he doesn't even think of it doesn't even occur to Trump to say it. He's addressed this, what, 10 times in the last two weeks. Not a word literally, not a word of sympathy. I mean, it shows to me what a. I don't know, a moral monster he really is. I've got to say, Margaret, moral monster is a good way to put it. And Maxwell, her participation in this coming out, everybody around Epstein had to know, including people who visited the island. And even if it was only rumors, it's so disturbing, you would be repelled and stay away. He didn't stay away. He says the birthday letter with the naked drawing that the Wall Street Journal reported isn't true. He denies in different ways. He's had different stories about when he stopped seeing Jeffrey Epstein, what he knew, how much knew about how much time he spent with Maxwell. All kinds of things that he's denied without ever, as Bill says, getting down to what it is he's denying, which is the just, the most egregious, horrible, dark behavior that's possible. And that poor family. And we forget that girl committed suicide. She's gone because of this. She's gone because of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell and all those people, the important people that huddled around him. Right. And what connects. Bill used his turn of phrase, a moral monster. What connects the concern about that lack of ethics with governance today is a government that has given leniency, a lighter treatment to an Epstein conspirator, that that's what comes home. And the reason we have a justice system and we punish crimes, and I've mentioned in our coverage, we punish capital crimes, murder, the highest violence and sex trafficking and crimes against children, the highest of anything. And there's other bad crimes, but they're the highest. And there are reasons for that in our society that we all know that I don't need to repeat. So undercutting that system so that someone isn't punished is hard either, because you put them to an easier prison, which is easier for a reason, their minimum security, usually for nonviolent crimes. This is a violent crime. Or as Trump has still held the door open to it, potentially giving them clemency. As if that is on the table is a tell. Bill and Margaret, I thank you both for your thoughts and your contributions. Good night, Ari. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Good night. Up ahead, Paul Krugman, the Nobel winner, is here. And by the end of the hour, cultural lessons from Obama. It's the Oval Office. 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CTNC is 21 + sponsored by Chumba Casino Donald Trump's economy is the worst since the pandemic when it comes to job growth. The trade war may be part of the problem. And he didn't like getting the bad news on the job slowing. So he fired the person who collects that data. Today we'll show you. The July jobs report shows it slowing to just about 70,000 jobs, far below what they wanted. On top of that, hiring in May and June has been downgraded. That's how the data works. So the whole picture is getting worse. Reaction pouring in. Warning signs Stocks plummet after a weaker than expected new jobs report. Now the revisions. Here's a biggie. The two month revision minus 258,000. That is a biggie. A biggie. It's a little shocking. We were strong and now we're so we. Economic goosebumps. A dismal jobs report giving a gut punch to the White House. Taking their advice is like. It's like taking the advice of a nun about sex. It wasn't a good jobs number. It wasn't. Well, if this is what Liberation Day was supposed to look like, then God help us. The strongest economy in the world in December of 2024. Now it's got nothing but smoke coming out of it and red lights flash. And so the actual numbers are bad. Some of those reactions come from different politicians. But you'll notice even the Republican senator there said, hey, not going to spin a bad jobs report. Although Trump wants to do that by firing the people who put together the nonpartisan data. Here's a chart of average job growth and you can see it is Trump's trade war, what they call Liberation Day. Where you see the crash, that's a chart that was circulated by Nobel economist Paul Krugman, who is standing by. There's no one else to blame for Trump. Americans also can see the outlines of this picture. 60% say Trump has driven up the cost of living. That's even before you see the jobs problems. And Trump is also clashing with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell and the Fed board, saying they could assume control if Powell doesn't do what he wants. But of course, a lot of Americans in markets don't think Trump should get more of what he wants and more control over these levers of the economy. Last night, Trump also said there will be more tariffs on trading partners, but he punted the deadline. It is this stop and start approach to the trade war that also has bred uncertainty. So you can see here Canada, India, Switzerland, Brazil, hitting a range of what sound like big tariffs if they happen. But a week is a long time and a chance to, as Wall street traders have put it, chicken out again. Axios says Trump's latest tariffs will, if they keep going, cost each household over $2,000 this year. It's uncertainty. The markets don't like it. And we've seen all of this play out in the culture where people have long heard about broad or stupid tariffs failing. The Great Depression passed the. Anyone? Anyone? A tariff bill. Put the tariff you shake them all about. That's a smoke detector, right? No, it's rebranded as a musical instrument. And of course, you're Doing that for what reason? To avoid the tariffs. The Hawley Smoot Tariff act, which anyone raised or lowered raised tariffs. We can keep tariffs on Cuban sugar high. You can keep them high enough to protect my farmers. E scooters have taken off this year. Now they face a 25% tariff. Okay, I hate to admit this, but if one of the key casualties of this trade war is e scooters, I actually think I'm fine with that. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work. And the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Have we learned our lessons? Anyone? Anyone? Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is here to make sense of all of these strands when we come back. Everybody wants to think about world trade. Everyone wants to think about the economy as a struggle. It's us against them. There's a prize out there and if one or the other of us is going to get it, it's also the Japanese or it's us or the Europeans and somebody's going to win that struggle. That's a metaphor which if you know much economics, you know, it's just wrong. Look at that. The wrong way to think about it. You remember that guy, Professor. That's Nobel prize winning. Go ahead. Hey, I still got my hair. Anyway, I'll introduce you. People know you. Nobel Prize winner, of course, distinguished professor at CUNY grad school. Now writes the Paul Krusman Substack newsletter, which people can find online. We pulled one of the charts. I read your piece there today. Explain what you mean about how the numbers can be noisy. But the Trump trade war, the Liberation Day chart we'll put back up, quote unquote, doesn't seem to have helped hiring. Yeah. So what's. Yeah, numbers are noisy. Monthly, one month number can fluctuate a lot. And also the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which I assume we'll talk about, is they have to go with incomplete data and when they get new information, they go sometimes revise the data that they were reporting. So we have new numbers as of today and there's not just numbers for last month, but there were also revised numbers for the past two months. And what we're now seeing is a picture that corresponds. Previous numbers were a little bit different from what we were getting from other sources. You know, we have private surveys and so on. But now it's all kind of consistent that we really are having a serious slowdown largely because of the chaos and uncertainty that Trump is creating. We're not yet in recession territory, but we're definitely losing steam and this is a not good picture. This is not what you want to see happening. Yeah. So you get that not good picture. Trump sort of crashes out, shoots the messenger. We don't have any modern precedent for that. It's reminiscent of bigger problems in controlled or autocratic countries and economies. Put that in context for us. And why would that affect, why would that be bad for, say, average person in the economy? Well, the thing to remember is that this agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is not a household phrase, but it is absolutely critical. Basically, everything that we know about what's happening to the economy in the last couple of months comes from the bls. They do the surveys that tell us how many people are unemployed. They do the surveys that tell us how many jobs companies are creating. They produce the inflation numbers. So all of that comes from them. And first of all, it's critical for all of us to understand what's happening. But it's also how the government itself makes decisions. It's how the Federal Reserve makes decisions. If you start to corrupt those numbers, if you start to report those numbers as being what makes the president look good instead of what's actually happening, then bad things start happening. It's what you see. If you ask, how does some place like Venezuela get to hyperinflation? Ask how did someplace like Argentina get hyperinflation? An important part of that is that they start ordering the statistical agencies to report nothing but puppies and rainbows. And so they go plunging ahead. And by the time they finally start, if they ever do, to admit that maybe we have a problem here. You're up at 80% inflation. This is the playbook. We've seen it many, many times. And now, I have to say, faster even than I expected it to come to America. Right. It's a big problem. There's a projection to this because we've had hard fought elections, we've had controversial cases like Bush v. Gore. We haven't in the modern era had politicians use lies and violence to try to overthrow the results of an election. So we, we know that's where Trump comes from in terms of dealing with information he doesn't like or that threatens his power. He's been projecting conspiracies about this labor data, as you know, but others may have forgotten if we don't track it for, you know, daily. And I want to show on cnbc, I mean, they found it laughable. Although now he's doing the thing he used to accuse others of. Take a look. Let's tee up the most ridiculous conspiracy of all Time. Okay. I got to have. The election has nothing to do with the jobs numbers, I can assure you. No, let's. No, but let's. Let's do it. Let's do it. You have an election happening. I believe it was in November of 2024. Right. So if you're trying to be political and help out the Democratic Party and you're a Democratic statistician, tell me what the sense is to release In August of 2024, the idea that payrolls were 818,000 lower than previously reported. Would we be just idiots for doing that? The idiocy of the political conspiracy, it just defies the logic of even repeating it. I was going to use an expletive there, but it is really stupid. That's sort of. Again, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? That's what connects the Epstein story to this one and this type of magical thinking or propaganda. Where do we go from here, Professor? And is there a role for the powers that be in either objective financial information or finance itself to say this is terrible and try to stop it? Well, I'd like to be seeing a lot of protests, and the business community has been really, like, a lot of institutions have been afraid to speak up, and they really should be saying, hey, this is really, really bad. I mean, I was actually out for a walk, and my phone started lighting up with texts from all of my business friends saying, holy, where I can't use. Trump just fired the BLS commissioner. And so they are upset, but they may not be willing to see it. I think what I'm personally doing as we speak, more or less, is I'm assembling all of the alternative sources that you can use to try and guess what an honest BLS would be producing. I don't think they're going to be producing fake numbers by next month, but they might be, and that's certainly where Trump wants them to go. So we're going to be back in Argentina. In the days when they were faking the statistics, Argentine economists put a lot of effort into producing independent estimates of inflation because they knew that the government was lying. And guess what my substack was Caracas on the Potomac. I mean, we are definitely in Banana Republic territory already. Yeah, Banana Republic. And all the danger that comes with that. As you say, Professor Krugman, thank you. We want to hear from you. Exactly. On a day like today. Thank you very much. I'm going to fit in a break. When we come back, we will hear directly from Kamala Harris. She's Talking about why she's not running for governor, but why the system is broke. In her first interview since leaving the White House. Kamala Harris has been relatively quiet since losing the campaign and leaving the White House. But she just joined Stephen Colbert for her first interview since leaving the White House, talking about how the system is broken and that she won't run for governor, something that she had announced this week. California's governor race was something people had wondered if she might jump in it. Harris is working on a memoir. Here's what she told Colbert. Why is it then when we think we want to improve a system or change it, that we're always on the outside, on bended knee or trying to break down the door? Shouldn't we also be inside the system? And that has been my career. And recently I made the decision that I just, for now, I don't want to go back in the system. I think it's broken. I believe, and I always believed that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that they're not as strong as they need to be. Maybe a frank assessment. Also a little bit meandering. Harris reemerging to do late night and to talk about this book. But she has not exactly been on the forefront of activism during a period where the person she tried to stop from winning won. And a lot of Democrats say they could use any help they can get. We're going to fit in a break when we come back, as promised, the cultural moments that Democrats are studying for Obama's success. Welcome to a special edition of Mavericks with Ari Melber. We have a duo that once disappeared like Houdini, now reuniting after 15 years. Pusha T and Malice back as the iconic hip hop duo Clips returning with their sharp lyrics, bending wordplay and that signature Pharrell driven sound grinding. You know what I keep in a lining? When the last time you heard it like this? Smoke some drink, some get ripped. I know, I know. Yep. Yeah, you too. Okay, we get it. Yep. Yeah, you too. Hey, buddy. I'm good. What they tell you? I'm good. Smoke. So be it. So be it. The last song off the new album, let God Sort them Out, featuring Nas, John, Legend, Kendrick and Tyler. The Guardian has already dubbed it one of the best albums of the year, coming amid one of the most thorough, thoughtful album rollouts in many years, Pusha T and Malice, our special guest. Thanks for being here. What's up? Thanks for having us. You guys are busy. Oh, Man, Barry, never too busy for you to Ari. Respect. I appreciate that. I'm actually gonna start with you. Okay. Does it feel like you expected or now that you're in it, having made the music and in this amazing rollout, does it feel any different being back with your brother and being on the stage? I will say I haven't, and I didn't have any expectations. It's a total comfort level, you know, Like, I remember being with my brother, being with Pharrell. Everything just feels at home like it always has. Let's take a listen to this. Ace trumpets Penny Alivaca Panama fishing village visiting with papa with choppers all of you imposter pasta simply just Ferrari window shoppers the one that I just sorted look like it was built by NASA over half a mil we call focaccia Reaching for Akasha Never leaving home without my peace Like I'm a hotma from the tribe of Judah I'm Mufasa and. And on that. On that song, you both play with words people have joked about. We fee, which is an international pronunciation. There's more than one way to talk, right? NASA, Right? Do the brothers talk about that in advance? Hey, maybe we'll, like, pronounce words differently. Or does that creatively just bubble up, you know, in this particular album. In creating this album, Pharrell made one of the criterias that everything had to be sticky. And when he says that things have to be sticky, it means that there needs to be a stencil. A stencil follows. So if the hook is catchy, the verses need to be just as sticky or catchy as the hook. The other thing we had to ask you about in the news is that, you know, you bring up Obama, and I don't know if you bring him up only as inspiration or the president or politics. The new album talks about the system. It talks about certain issues, but it's not, like, partisan or anything. But we did pull just some of the Obama references. Take a look. If I was Brittany Griner I' ma need Obama only one to swap his chapel started in the crack house Obama went the back route Kill Ben lad another four up in the black house My new attorney get Jeffrey Dahmer out and all that I told Obama about as God who was left to save us so together we mourn I'm praying for my neighbors what does Obama mean when you're name checking him? Man? You know, Obama actually invited me to the White House. Yeah. And actually asked me, you know, what I cared about. And, you know, at the time, I think it was his last year in office, and he was like, man, you know, what are the issues you think we should tackle? And it was about sentencing, fair sentencing, you know, sentencing guidelines and things like that. That's what was on my. Was on my plate at the time. So, you know, I was invited a couple times, and then when I couldn't make it, they had. They let a friend of mine named Tony Lewis Jr. Come and, you know, speak on behalf of prison reform and fair sentencing. And he's great. Like, he's great, and he's great in the community. And actually, his father just came home from 30 years. Wow. So for you, I mean, put it on wax is making sure people know we talk about what's true Is like, same thing I told Obama about. Yeah, yeah. Same thing I told Obama about. Ask him. He knows. Good bar. Great bar. You start this album very deliberately, reflecting on each of your parents passing you. In this opening song, you say in discussing the passing. Right. The way you miss Mom, I guess I should have known. Chivalry ain't dead, you ain't let it go alone. Yeah, you told me that you love me. It was all in your tone. Absolutely. Quote, I love my two sons was the code to your phone. Right. So, you know, as I'm in the house and organizing and going through paperwork and policies, my dad's passwords to various things, like to his phones, to different accounts was always some form of, I love my two sons. And I, you know, I remember telling him what the password was, but I couldn't get it out. You know, I was just letting him know. He was like, what'd you say? What'd you say? I was like, is, I love my two sons. I love my two sons. But it was just very touching. My dad was all about family, you know, and even in retrospect, just looking back, I just see how huge he was on family, and that's what everybody knew him for, was being about family. And, you know, people talk about the idea of a mantra or code that being his password meant that he already felt that way while he wrote the password. But that meant, what, several times a day? Sometimes it's 10, 20 times a day that he's typing that in. Like, that was his mantra for his love for you guys. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he exuded that for sure. I mean, my dad was all world. Yeah, everything. I'd love to do a lightning round before I lose you guys. This. This lightning round is, you know, a word or a phrase or in a sentence, Virginia or New York, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia or Paris, Virginia, Virginia. Malice or no malice? Malice. No malice in a word or a sentence. Pharrell Innovator Revolutionary. Grinding means. Grinding means however. However you make it through your day, however you make your money, however you make your living. That's your grind. That's your hustle. Right. Hustle. Failure means. Failure means you quit or you didn't try. Yeah. Giving up. Giving up. It's a lot to be said for constantly pushing, even if you're not getting where you're trying to get to. To see someone who is working and trying, it says a lot. I don't think they could ever be a failure. Hmm. Success means. Oh. Success is just providing for your family and having your. Keeping your family happy. That's it. Yeah. Success is being able to sustain to the point where you can help someone else. Pusha T Malice clips. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us, man. Absolutely, man. Thank you for having me. Appreciate you guys. Pleasure. Our thanks to the clips. That is a new album that's out on the charts right now and you can see the entire interview. We went even longer than that@msnbc.com Ari, you can see that and our other mavericks interviews there. And if you want to connect with me here as we head into the summer weekend, you can go at social media or go to ari melba.com, that's ari melber.com where you can sign up for my free newsletter and connect with me directly. If you're not into the Internet, that's fine. I'll see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend. It's Stephen A. Smith here. You want sports. SiriusXM's got it all. Every game, every team, all season long. Debates, rants, hot take and no filter whatsoever. Trust and believe. 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