← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Trump WH Exposé Rocks DC
00:41:15
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan join MS NOW's Ari Melber to discuss their new book, "Regime Change," which goes inside the chaos of President Trump's second term.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:59]
Ari Melber
welcome to the Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We have a lot of news to cover on many nights. On this and other programs, we draw on reporting from some of the top newspapers in the country. Tonight we will be joined by two of the top journalists from the New York Times. You know their names and bylines, Maggie Hammerman and Jonathan Swan. Their best selling new book, regime Change, which goes inside this second term, has been reverberating through Washington. It is a national bestseller. It is in demand. We're going to get into the substance, the meat, the reporting on that in a moment. So thanks to both of our guests for standing standing by before we get to them. We begin with the very latest in the US Hitting Iran with a series of what are called powerful strikes late today, a reminder that while many people from Washington to the business community have sort of priced in and expected full ceasefire to hold, this is still a very unpredictable situation. It's retaliation for Iran's attacks on what are commercial vessels in the strait. That is according to the U.S. central Command. The president is in Turkey for the NATO summit. He has been clashing with allies there, reportedly furious that other countries did not help him fight the way he wanted, regardless of what many experts said was a failure to do the groundwork to build the coalition on that war and frankly, a range of other international issues. There's also reporting how people that have been seen as Trump's allies over many years in the U.S. including Tucker Carlson, were very much against not only the Iran war, but the basic expected fallout, which we're now living through. There's reporting that Carlson said, you're going to destroy your presidency. You won't do anything after this. If you get into a, quote, regime change, war with Iran, it's over. You will note what many could see as a double entendre there. That is the title, of course, of the big Herman Swan book. Now, Trump did not, of course, heed those warnings. If you are looking at this as just a matter of how the government works, you could say, fine. The president made up his own mind. He didn't listen to a political ally or a member of the media. Of course, there's also a lot of reporting about how many people who were even aligned with Trump's general agenda warned about how the way he planned to go into Iran, the nature of the kind of rushed and emotional or kind of aggravated assault on this country without a long term plan and a plan B was dangerous. And the pattern of ignoring expertise or input is a kind of a pattern of the second term governing. Trump does take some big swings. If you hear his allies tell it, he does what he said he would do whether he wins or not. He started a trade war just like he said he would. And you could point to examples like that. But there are many other big swings that falter. For example, Donald Trump, at tremendous cost to his agenda. His so called political capital in Washington, even among some Republicans, has repeatedly pushed the DOJ to, to do things that it should not, legally cannot, and often are not able to do. So he has a slew of revenge cases that we've been covering, but very few of them have gotten anywhere, let alone towards convictions. He also launched, of course, that rushed Doge Musk effort. The initiative just shuttered this weekend. Many estimates say it didn't produce the savings promised. There was taxpayer money spent on all kinds of other projects. Talk about the contrast between him and Elon Musk lecturing everyone about government spending. And then Donald Trump spending your tax dollars on the reflecting pool, on his vanity projects, on construction at the White House that nobody asked for. As for the trade war, the Supreme Court basically stopped the key parts of it. And then there's the profiteering. This isn't so much about government decision making as it is the oldest trick in the book, which is if the people have some power over your money, why don't they just take it? Our system of government's supposed to have checks and balances for that, but through crypto and other means, Donald Trump has shown his gu. His sort of cleverness At a minimum, it's self enrichment. Ms. Now has interviewed several Trump supporters who say that they're upset about a range of things, but especially what is currently the Trump economy. I feel like, man, it's a recession, man, I ain't never felt that before. I feel it now. I feel it now.
- [05:18]
Maggie Haberman
It's almost like the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. Everything in America right now is ridiculous. It really is.
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Ari Melber
Everything is going up. You can barely afford things. I think the way people feel about the economy, it looks good on paper, but people are really struggling. We're joined now by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the White House reporters for the New York Times who I just quoted in some of this lead. They're co authors of the book I mentioned, Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Welcome to both of you. Maggie, when you look at just some of what's going on today, including how President Trump is approaching the world stage, from matters significant like war in NATO to what some would say optional clashes like whether to intervene in the World cup, what from your reporting, the many sources you spoke to, sort of informs or gives us a lens for what we're seeing.
- [06:13]
Maggie Haberman
So you mentioned the title of the book as a double entende. Arian, again, thank you for having us. We'd actually thought of this title long before Trump went into Caracas to snatch Nicholas Medina Maduro. Because it occurred to us early on in the presidency that what we were covering was a form of regime change in our own country, a form of a different kind of American style democracy. This was not a Democrat to a Republican marginal policy. Trump is expanding executive power in massive, massive, massive ways, sometimes affirmed by the Supreme Court, sometimes not. But he has taken a lot of big swings and in cases like you just mentioned, for instance, with the revenge prosecutions, the process is actually intended to be the punishment. And we talk about that in the book, number one. Number two, on Iran, he is operating on gut, as you say, in a way that we really didn't see in term one. This was a decision that he made despite the fact that nobody in his government thought it was a good idea. He's now angry, as you say. He didn't make a case to the public about why they should be with him because he believed this was going to end quickly based on a feeling, based on his impulse. And he was very clear about that with people. And you are now seeing the result of that.
- [07:32]
Ari Melber
Yeah, Jonathan, Maggie mentions it and the book really makes the evidence backed case that separate from ideology in Red, blue, which we hear so much about, that the second term under this president is experimenting with or ramming home a different way to run the federal government, that structurally, in terms of where power operates, how little can really meaningfully be done at the cabinet or expert level without the President, at least on his chosen issues. Can you tell us more about that? Because it is distinct from so much of the ideological discourse around Trump.
- [08:11]
Jonathan Swan
Yeah, I mean, it's a very complicated story and there are so many elements to it. But I'll just give you one example from you mentioned it in your introduction. We've all sort of memory hold Doge. You know, we sort of forgotten about Doge. But for a few months last year, Trump essentially appointed Elon Musk as a sort of co president. The richest man in the world who had not divested from any of his business interests, who was placing people throughout the government. And yes, he, he didn't, you know, a lot of the stuff that he wanted to do didn't get done. But I'll just give you one example of something that did get done. And again, people don't really even talk about it anymore. It's been, you know, consumed with so many other issues. Usaid, a government agency designed to help the world's poorest people. Foreign aid set up by Congress, they just shut it down. They didn't talk to Congress, they didn't talk to anyone. They just shut it down essentially over a weekend. Musk did. Rubio, the Secretary of State wasn't even really that involved in that. He had to take over. The remnants of usaid, most of its functions have been disappeared. You know, the sort of, the dregs of it has been absorbed into the State Department. That's one example. I could go through, you know, endless examples. But the, the macro story is Congress, an entire branch of government last year led by Republicans, essentially just ceded the field. And so that as a check on Trump, just essentially evaporated. You're seeing a little bit of it now come back with the Senate, but, you know, only a little bit. And the only institution that the Trump team have really respected and not, you know, defied or tried to bulldoze is the Supreme Court. But at the lower court level, they've ignored tons of rulings. You know, people have documented this in the immigration space in particular. People have been languishing in these detention centers, not getting hearings. And so it's not just that he's ignoring or bulldozing norms, they're actually really stretching the law in very significant ways.
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Ari Melber
Maggie, how about that,
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Maggie Haberman
look at the beginning of his term, I'll give you another example. Trump fired a number of inspectors general. It was actually impossible, at least in those days, initially to learn exactly who had been fired. The government couldn't even give you a specific example or a specific hard number. The process, the law is that the White House is supposed to notify Congress. There is supposed to be 30 days, and there's supposed to be a reason given. None of that was done. Chuck Grassley, who is normally the senator from Iowa, normally very much a stickler for process, did some mild complaining, but that was about it. And you saw there that they were going to do what they wanted to do. Inspectors general were a thorn in Trump's side in term one. They actually are responsible for some accountability and oversight over agencies. They exist in a rump state now. And so most measures of accountability, particularly ones post Watergate, but not only have been eradicated or run over. And by the time, as Jonathan mentioned, the Supreme Court, the only entity that they really listened to, catches up. So much is done, like the East Wing has been torn down, or I can go on and on, but those are examples.
- [11:41]
Ari Melber
Yeah, well, we can go on and on because we set aside time for this to nerd out a little bit. Maggie, you know, thank you again. There's so much in politics that is the noise. And we all talk to sources and sometimes, you know, sources will say, well, let me go off the record. And then they'll say something like, and this could be for any politician. You know, my boss is actually really thoughtful. He's really, he's really thinking hard about this. And it's really, he wants to do right by the American people. And I think, oh, we went off the record for that. Like, there's so much crap. And you guys have found a way to cut through that and get a lot of real reporting done through sources and the relationships you have. And when you mentioned the inspectors general, I'm curious, Maggie, what your sources told you about how Trump does zero in. Because there's a lot of politicians in Washington who couldn't name a single inspector general of any agency. And I remember quite vividly when Trump was talking about, you know, Horowitz is pretty good. He's one of the good ones and these others aren't. And so that told me, wow, Donald Trump, who plays sometimes a very blustering fifth grade level speaker in public, had not only figured out who the DOJ IG was, but had determined through his own lens that he preferred those outcomes. Comes to IGS at other departments and agencies. So, Maggie, what do your sources tell you about the layers of Trump and you've covered him a long time that still work where I hear Trump critics criticize him on terms that he would welcome because he wants to be a blustery businessman. And there's other things to it. Go ahead.
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Maggie Haberman
It's a great question and it's actually a very good example. One of the things that Trump said many, many years ago to a writer who passed away recently was that he likes to do things, I'm paraphrasing, nice and complicated. So nobody knows what's going on. And so what you just pointed to actually is a very good example of that. It's a mixture of factors. It's not a binary of he knows everything or it's nothing at all. In the case of Michael Horowitz, this was the inspector general when Trump was under investigation in term one, when Trump wanted to see the DOJ take certain actions like prosecute James Comey in term one. And so he remembers the report about that he didn't actually recommend prosecuting Comey. And when Bill Barr, then the attorney general, who was hardly a squish or, you know, hardly a lefty, is telling Trump that he can't, this is not going to happen. Trump was infuriated. So Michael Horowitz is a specific one that sticks out in his mind. But on the other ones, it's some mix of allies who have issues with specific people, his own personnel, advisers, which is a, you know, a small group within the White House who have specific interests either in the agency or they have looked at things in their vetting of what these inspectors general have done in the past. It is a mix of different factors. And I think that if we went down the list or if we ever even got a full list, we would be able to go through it. And there would be different reasons for why. But Horowitz is an example of the, the personalist nature of how Trump is approaching absolutely everything right now.
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Jonathan Swan
The other thing.
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Ari Melber
Go ahead.
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Jonathan Swan
Oh, I was just going to say the other thing that's really important we should get into in the book is the long range planning for this term.
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Emily Bazelon
Yes.
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Jonathan Swan
Stephen Miller had really thought through what they were going to do in, in a few key respects. And one of them, which I think is very underreported, we get into it in the book is stocking the administration with a new cast of lawyer, different types of lawyers. And, you know, many people would, on particularly left of center people would view the Federalist Society as, you know, sort of Darth Vader, you know, they stock the Supreme Court in term one. People like Stephen Miller viewed the federal society as a bunch of squishes. And actually what they wanted was lawyers who were going to be much more aggressive in their interpretations of the law, much more willing to push the envelope and not just in the White House, but across the agencies. So when you stock a government with a different type of lawyer, you, as you know, you get a different type of legal analysis and that allows you to do far more than they could do in the first term. They're not getting the same sort of agency pushback that they were.
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Ari Melber
Right. I think you guys document that in a way that's very useful for people who want to learn how this really works. There's the old joke in Better Call Saul when he wants a lawyer to go even farther and he says you don't need a criminal lawyer, you need a criminal lawyer. And don't take my word for it, there are people like John Eastman who faced and Rudy Giuliani who faced civil and bar discipline over whether they cross those lines. And so that also goes to another detail I want to ask you about, Jonathan, on Stephen Miller, where again, the contrast between the terms that earlier the Pentagon leaders, however ideologically aligned they might be with aspects of maga, they were still unnerved by. What you write was the young Miller with his inexperience and aggression. Reading from the book, you say they'd now installed a Trump devotee atop the now named Department of War. Miller had lobbied for a like minded defense secretary whose thoughts about the American military and contempt for by the book, lawyers were much more in line with the aggressive mindset he shared with Trump. And let's leave out to the side, Jonathan, the semiotic politics of the term deep state. And just refer to the fact that there is a large superstructure of people in the federal government. It's supposed to be that way. And yet you document that as they figured this out, they went deeper into what they would call the deep state to make those changes. Jonathan?
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Jonathan Swan
Very much so. And the Pentagon was an area that they really saw as almost an enemy force within the government that in the uniformed ranks were full of, in their opinion, never Trumpers, anti Trumpers, people who are going to obstruct the president. So it's been a very systematic effort to clear them out. And it's had real world effects. I'll give you one example, the boat bombing campaign in term one, Trump's, you know, Trump was talking about, you know, Term one. He would talk admiringly about how Xi Jinping doesn't have a drug problem because he just kills drug dealers, you know, unilaterally. That Duterte didn't have a drug problem. Trump is now doing a version of that on the high seas. And what he has done is fishing boats carrying cocaine traffickers. Donald Trump has decided to that these are enemy combatants. And instead of doing what has been done, you know, interdicting them, arresting, putting on trial, treating as a criminal matter, they say, no, no, this is war and we're just going to kill them. And he has had a very enthusiastic secretary of War in Pete Hegseth in carrying out that campaign and really no resistance whatsoever from the leadership of the department. Stephen Miller was also heavily involved in that campaign. So you sort of see all those threads come together just in that one example.
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Ari Melber
Yeah, and there's so many of these stories that take up attention for various reasons. You're reminding everyone that the, this is the first draft of history. The long eyes of history might focus on some very different controversies than sometimes we do. Certainly what most nations would call the, the possibility of premeditated war crimes. I mean, you have the technology and the ability to look, to see the person's alive, to see that they seem to pose no threat, and then to go forth and kill them in what is a violation of potentially the Geneva Convention. I mean, that's big stuff. Maggie, I want to get your reporting as well on the Epstein freakout because you have so many details there that of course made news was in the Times as a standalone article. Maggie and Jonathan are back with me after a quick break. We return in 90 seconds.
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- [21:13]
Ari Melber
We're back with Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the authors of Regime Change, which is one of those books that had many different headlines and excerpts in the New York Times. One was about what seemed like, frankly, a panic inside the White House over Epstein as they failed to control that story. That was a big theme in the first year. Reading from the book, Trump and J.D. vance, who spent a lot of time on X you note and were tapped into a younger and hyper online portion of the base, were very worried. They urged the White House to change course and to force the DOJ to release more of the files. But there was one major obstacle in the path of the solution. The president himself had no interest in transparency. He wanted the whole Epstein issue buried and snapping at anyone who mentioned it. Maggie, what does the inside story tell us about how concerned Trump was about this issue that the guys criticized a lot? The guys obviously stared down and come back from all kinds of things, and this seemed to be huge. And also tell us about the Situation Room.
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Maggie Haberman
Sure. So Epstein was one of these issues, Ari, that Trump just, he'd gotten so used to his base, listening to him say what I say is true, what those people are saying is not true. And he just couldn't make it disappear. So he kept calling it a Democratic hoax. It was, you know, it was all concocted, as we say in the book. He didn't want to talk about this at all. He wanted it gone. And so that left his aides. And we're not, you know, I'm not defending this or saying, yes, this was right. I'm just saying this was their view that left his advisors with the choice of how do we deal with something where the president doesn't want any, anything out? And that led us to report on a handful of specific Situation Room meetings, the White House Situation Room, which is this, you know, essentially like a no cell phone sanctuary where wars had been planned and discussed, where raids of, you know, Osama bin Laden, where he was killed, was monitored by President Obama. In this case, it became An Epstein crisis comms center, in part because they were worried about leaks. But you had the top levels of the White House, the top levels of the doj, and the FBI talking about what their options are. There was this remarkable meeting that we wrote about in August where they were talking about releasing a public facing website put together by the doj, of all things Epstein. The question was, what about Donald Trump and things related to Donald Trump. And so one aide had searched Trump's name and up popped this uncorroborated secondhand claim that had been public for a year and a half in an unrelated case, civil case, that Trump allegedly abused some woman's nipples. And the abuse was visible and they were very swollen and looked painful. And the aide said, this is out there. And the vice president, who wanted everything out, said, you know, I think he'd be fine with it. He'd been accused of worse. And the White House chief of staff said, no, no, he would not be fine with it. But that was the end of that conversation about this public facing website that didn't happen. So it was remarkable for the fact that they were attempting very hard to keep this very quiet and private and deal with this situation that only grew bigger. And the fact that because of their own resistance or that every path was blocked by Trump not wanting anything out, this issue has lingered and remained a real problem for them politically. Which polling shows, including their own private polling that we lay out in the book.
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Ari Melber
And Jonathan, when you look at that story in your reporting, who was it around Trump and the White House that figured out there's a gap? The gap between what they were willing to give up and the accountability, the demands of their base was too wide a gap to bridge. I mean, we ultimately got the law because they mishandled it so poorly. That's one of the only issues where the Congress has overridden Trump on a bipartisan basis.
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Maggie Haberman
Right?
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Jonathan Swan
Well, many of his senior officials of Trump senior officials underestimated the political potency of Epstein. And to you know, to be fair, they had endured all kinds of scandals in their time working for Donald Trump. So you can see why they thought this would blow over. The two people internally who really were most adamant about getting Epstein transparency and putting it out there and trying to get, get on top of this issue were the vice president, who the White House chief of staff described to others as a conspiracy theorist on Epstein, and Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, who in his previous life as a podcaster had talked about Epstein and the need to get to the bottom of it. He was very aggressive internally. And actually, we report in the book, there was a pretty astonishing blow up between him and the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and then again him storming out of the White House situation room after a meeting with the Chief of staff. So those two were really the most aggressive, but many of them underestimated us. And, and you know, the thing we found, which was kind of stunning to Trump's aides, was even this year in their private, you know, in their confidential memos from Trump's chief pollster, it's still popping through in their focus groups. Voters are just bringing up this issue. And they found, Trump's own team found that it ranks above issues like CR and data centers and some really politically salient issues. Epstein is still cutting through from their perspective to an alarming extent.
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Ari Melber
Number one, true. Number two, you gotta be really in the weeds to be impressed by that data center comparison. Jonathan. Bigger than data centers. Oh, my God.
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Jonathan Swan
You said we were. Data centers are big.
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Maggie Haberman
That's what we're doing.
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Jonathan Swan
Data centers are big.
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Larry David
Yell it.
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Ari Melber
Yell it. Data centers are big. They're big, man. They're big. I want it. We're over on time. But, Jonathan, on the other positive note, this applies to both of you, but I'll give the question, Jonathan, People talk so much smack about the media and we can all learn and do better and take constructive criticism well. But what does it say to you that this book at one point was sold out on Amazon? I know it was in back order, hundreds of thousands of copies. That real journalism reporting, talking to sources, reporting it out, still apparently matters to people. And obviously it mattered because we saw a reaction from the government. In brief, what does that say to you tonight?
- [27:35]
Jonathan Swan
It's very gratifying for anyone who believes in the value of journalism that there is still a real hunger. I think it's a hunger for people to understand what's going on, to put meaning around it, to really understand how the country's being run. And we've been overwhelmed by the response to the book. Yeah.
- [27:54]
Ari Melber
Jonathan and Maggie, again, congrats on the book I mentioned. We and other outlets draw on the Times and your reporting for all kinds of stories. Great to have you directly here. I'll show the audience one more time. Regime Change inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. You can get it wherever books are sold. Thanks to our guests. Let me tell you what's coming up. HBO's Larry David uniting with Jimmy Kimmel in a now recorded satire that also includes the late Rob Reiner. But they came together about something they wanted to talk about, which is our founding history. And mocking Donald Trump.
- [28:28]
Larry David
He can attack universities, even the free press, silencing anyone who dares to criticize him.
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Jonathan Swan
Ah, come on.
- [28:37]
Rob Reiner
That could never happen.
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Larry David
Tell us what you think.
- [28:41]
Ari Melber
Revisionist history. We will show you more of that. It just aired on hbo. You'll see it for the first time on Ms. Now tonight. But up next, Trump's attorney general nominee running into unprecedented opposition from DOJ veterans. That's next. Donald Trump is trying to install the kind of loyalists to permanently run the Justice Department in a manner that would have been completely dead on arrival in most terms. And yet here we are. Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney. He has, in his short tenure as acting attorney general, had a slew of crises of his own competence, his professionalism, his honesty. And he tried that sweetheart deal to give Donald Trump a tax benefit by self dealing, which Senate Democrats now say they want to press as part of Blanche's confirmation hearings. Blanche was also behind the basically aborted plan to hand out your money to convicts, including people who may have attacked the Capitol on January 6th. Now, Blanche's hearing is next Wednesday. Senators Warren, Schumer and Wyden have already teed off the battle, writing to 11 affiliated companies. Under the guise of a so called legal settlement, administration's attempted to decree that Trump and his family and their business empire face zero consequences for a range of financial crimes or misdeeds. The original document from AG Blanche claims that the IRS is forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims from Trump's tax returns. Now, that itself is legally unheard of. And suspect it may be that if this attorney general has the power to do that, then a future attorney general has the power to undo it, just like an executive order. But a lot of this is new turf. Meanwhile, how does the relatively respected set of DOJ alumni view Mr. Blanche? Poorly. We can report that in a rare move, over 1,200 veterans of the Justice Department are opposing Blanche's nomination. This goes, like so many stories today, well beyond ideological grounds. This has to do with whether it is even proper and valid to have the nation's top law enforcement officer be this much of a personal loyalist to the President. They say Blanche degraded the DOJ's independent career staff, including demonizing career employees, meaning the nonpartisan people who uphold the rule of law. I'm joined now by Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine legal writer.
- [31:19]
Rob Reiner
Welcome.
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Emily Bazelon
Thank you.
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Ari Melber
There's a connective Tissue from this story to what I was just discussing with the book authors about how some folks inside the administration realized for what they wanted to do, they had to find extreme, sometimes even, you know, invalid or ethically dubious lawyers, because one of the first steps in government is sometimes getting things signed off internally. It would seem that Blanche is a far cry from the first term attorneys general. Your view of this opposition towards him?
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Emily Bazelon
Well, I mean, it is remarkable to have 1200 former lawyers from the Justice Department speak out collectively in this way. And what you're seeing is the nonpartisan ranks, the career rank and file attorneys saying this is not the right guy. And a lot of them are people who worked with him either in New York when he was at the Southern District U.S. attorney's office or when he was at the Justice Department, because so many people have left the Justice Department, so many lawyers, thousands of them. So that is a lot of the people signing this letter. And I think, you know, as Maggie and Jonathan were describing, based on their incredibly important reporting, Trump wanted different kind of lawyers this time around, right? He wanted people who would say yes. And so he picked his own former personal lawyer who has been willing even to sign off on this idea of, you know, effectively a civil pardon for Trump and his family and his businesses by saying that the Justice Department will never investigate any financial misdeeds by any of them.
- [32:57]
Ari Melber
And Blanche has had a really tough go of it. I mean, there's so much normalization or people say stain washing of various things. Nobody that I've seen thinks he's doing any kind of good or serviceable job. Conservatives who identify with his agenda would rather they had someone who was, frankly, more credible. He has very little experience at this level. He's a lawyer. But he has this. And that I think has shown in how he talks and his inability to get these things done. Even the rollout of the tax deal and the so called criminal fund, those were bad ideas on substance. Many people say they claim to have dropped it, but the rollout and the way he presented it and all of it was really terrible. Take a look at some of his moments.
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Todd Blanche
Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places? Illegals can't vote. We see our most activist judges that we lose to every single day. There's a lot of ways that we can work within that to get some of our cases where we want them to be. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much. I love you, sir. We are not moving forward with the fun period.
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Maggie Haberman
Not moving forward ever.
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Todd Blanche
Correct.
- [34:13]
Maggie Haberman
Oh, there's no more fun then. Is there any way that you could put this in writing?
- [34:18]
Todd Blanche
I'm not committing to putting anything in writing. I'm going to set it to over and over again.
- [34:24]
Ari Melber
The final point, just amateurish. He was putting it in writing in the sense that saying it to Congress, where false statements are a crime, is more legally binding than if he wrote it on a post. Just seemed like one of those amateur things. On top of what I mentioned, which was the ethics and the honesty issues. Do you think he's fit to be attorney general? Do you think he'll have a rough confirmation hearing?
- [34:48]
Emily Bazelon
I mean, this is really up to the small number of Senate Republicans who've been willing to challenge the president in some way, Right? People like Thom Tillis who are not running for reelection. We'll see. There was a theory that Trump was just going to leave Blanche in place as the acting attorney general for as long as possible rather than daring the Senate not to confirm him. But, you know, I have not heard of a lot of organized opposition among Republicans who obviously control the Senate. So we'll see.
- [35:18]
Ari Melber
We will see. Emily Bazelon, thanks for joining us. As always. I promise this and we are going to show it to you. Larry David, going at Trump with historical fiction in that new show. This is coming up next.
- [35:34]
Larry David
What if he was a deeply corrupt con man, a pathological liar who preys on people's prejudices?
- [35:41]
Rob Reiner
Are you positing that our electorate is a collection of dupes that would be swayed by such a scoundrel?
- [35:49]
Larry David
Yes, Mr. President.
- [35:54]
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- [37:29]
Ari Melber
We just went through July 4th, Independence Day and a special one with it being 250 and so Americans celebrated that if you follow news and politics, you know that the president tried to involve himself in some of that. But this is larger than any one political project. Indeed, when you look up at the fireworks and you look around and think about what unites us as a country, sometimes we can use our history to broaden our perspectives. Other times we look back at history and wonder, well, did it work? Does our system of government, these famous checks and balances and guardrails, do they even work? And that brings us to something that is funny with comic Larry David going at Donald Trump, something he's been doing for years, but has a deeper kind of historical constitutional point embedded in the comedy. Of course, we know Larry from Seinfeld and Curb, and many of his co stars have been on this very program. But his new show, which we've mentioned, he teamed up with Barack Ob to do and it draws on the founding era and other periods in history to basically make jokes. But the newest episode, if you haven't seen it yet, just aired on hbo. We're airing a clip here on Ms. Now for the first time, has this biting critique of Trump through the lens of the first President Washington and a Larry David character who's raising questions that may be dismissed in the fabric of our founding documents feel newly relevant right now.
- [38:56]
Rob Reiner
I stand before you today as your president to announce that I shall not be seeking a third term.
- [39:07]
Larry David
The country needs you.
- [39:08]
Rob Reiner
Nope. In order to ensure the success of our fledgling democracy, I believe that no man should serve more than two terms as president, and I hope that future presidents will follow my lead.
- [39:27]
Emily Bazelon
Amen.
- [39:27]
Larry David
What if some future president doesn't follow your lead and runs for a third term?
- [39:34]
Maggie Haberman
Amendment?
- [39:35]
Rob Reiner
There are remedies for that. The Congress can pass a constitutional amendment that would prohibit that.
- [39:44]
Larry David
Well, what if there's some in office Some narcissistic who doesn't follow the Constitution.
- [39:51]
Rob Reiner
Yeah, then the Congress of the United States and the United States Supreme Court would not allow it.
- [40:00]
Larry David
Right, but what if the Supreme Court is a bunch of yes men and Congress is a bunch of who care more about party than country?
- [40:15]
Rob Reiner
I can't even fathom the existence of such men. But to further ensure the success of this grand experiment, I would suggest that after every presidential election, there be a peaceful transfer of power.
- [40:31]
Larry David
Anyone who won't accept the results of a free and fair election is a sociopath, a madman. A band like that could even foment an insurrection. Rather than just admit that he lost a lot of challenges, he could use the presidency to enrich himself and his family.
- [40:50]
Rob Reiner
No, no.
- [40:52]
Larry David
He could send troops into American cities to terrorize and even kill American citizens. We could attack universities, even the free press, silencing anyone who dares to criticize him.
- [41:04]
Rob Reiner
Are you suggesting that the President would taketh the time to challenge anyone who died? Dare make fun of him as if he were a big baby?
- [41:14]
Larry David
A big baby?
- [41:16]
Ari Melber
I don't see it.
- [41:17]
Rob Reiner
What duly elected president would do such a thing?
- [41:20]
Larry David
An insecure lion hole.
- [41:26]
Ari Melber
There you have it. You'll notice Congress and the Supreme Court took some of the strays. The Jimmy Kimmel Cameo is particularly apt. And we also saw, of course, the late Rob Reiner there playing President Washington. It shows us that comedy, satire, free speech, all of it, is what we need to get through this period. Even if the joke with Jimmy Kimmel is that this imagined future president baby would react so stridently to us exercising what are, of course, our foundational rights. We'll be right back. Maine's race for United States Senator was upended after this news that the Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman he dated five years ago. Platner denies the allegation and released a video statement about taking time to reflect on his path forward. The accuser spoke on the record to Politico saying she absolutely believes she was raped. Top Democrats and other candidates have now withdrawn their endorsements, pushing Platner to withdraw his candidacy. You can see top Democrats from in and out of the state, Mayor Mamdani and others. Bernie Sanders added his voice to the group this afternoon. The DSCC says it won't invest in the Maine Senate race if Platinum remains on the ballot. And Maine voters have begun to react. It's too bad, because I thought he was going to do good, but I'm at the point where I'm starting to change my mind and I think a lot of people are doing that now, taking a second look.
- [43:06]
Maggie Haberman
It's time for us to pull together and either find a new candidate or support him. If he's dropping out, let's rally together and find somebody who can beat Susan Collins.
- [43:20]
Ari Melber
Democrats have viewed this as a state where they could definitely take a Republican seat. Collins has been main senator for nearly three decades. She faces in that sense the uphill battle that many longtime incumbents have had at a time when there's a people seeking generational change. And she has proven to be a vote for a MAGA Supreme Court even while she always promised Maine independence. One polling firm is already testing replacements for Platner, including the primary opponent and other Maine officials. Time is limited. Platner has to withdraw by this Monday for the critical step of Democrats to be able to put a different name on the ballot. If you have the old name of someone who later dropped out, it sows confusion. In a close race, that alone could make all the difference. We will stay on this story and be right back. We wanted to remind you about one of the things we try to do to broaden out beyond just the daily news Rush. We have our summit series. In fact, we're looking forward to another one soon. These are in depth interviews with people at the summits of their fields. Take a look.
- [44:33]
Jonathan Swan
Being judgmental to me just means I have standards.
- [44:36]
Ari Melber
Well, let's just go through it. They scream a brace for impact. This is a real Dr. Jane Goodall Barbie. A Barbie doll that encourages little girls to think that I can do that. Reaching the summit means peace and fulfillment.
- [44:51]
Jonathan Swan
I feel like I'm in the foothills.
- [44:52]
Ari Melber
You have done something positive with the
- [44:54]
Jonathan Swan
power that the summit has given you
- [44:56]
Ari Melber
that I haven't got there yet. I hope you can go to ms.dot now summit and see these long form interviews a lot of you like the ones with Bob Woodward and Eric holder and on YouTube. There you can share them with your friends. Thanks for watching us.
- [45:13]
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- [45:41]
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Sequences shortened and simulated.