Transcript
David Frost (0:00)
Sir David Frost gave us an intimate look at some of the most compelling personalities of our time.
Jane Fonda (0:06)
What makes people tick fascinates me. You can't fake interest. You can't fake curiosity.
David Frost (0:12)
MSNBC Films presents a six part documentary series, David Frost versus On the next episode, Jane Fonda.
Chris Hayes (0:21)
The war is being escalated in the most tragic, cruel way.
David Frost (0:26)
Sunday at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC.
Chris Hayes (0:30)
At this point, we are all pretty familiar with Trump's flood the zone strategy. I mean, we've all seen it. This is what he does all the time. Move fast, try to bend as many things as possible, throw so much at us at all times, including some completely bizarre obsessions with renaming things, like lots of things, like the Gulf of Mexico, for example. It's all kind of hard to keep up with sometimes. I mean, that's the point, though. He wants to make it harder for us to figure out what's real and what's just Trumpy and bluster. But one way to cut through some of that, I think, to figure out what's real, what he really cares about, what's going on in his head a little bit, is to go back to January 20th. And what did Trump prioritize when he was sworn into office a second time? What did he care about enough to do immediately? Well, one of the first things he did, really pretty much the very first thing he did after taking the oath of office on January 20, is he installed this guy as the top federal Prosecutor in Washington, D.C. now, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, as you probably know, is one of the most important, most powerful prosecutor's offices in the country. And for the last few years, it has been in charge of literally the largest criminal probe in American history, the investigation into the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. And the moment Donald Trump took office again, he put a guy named Ed Martin in charge of that office. Now, Ed Martin has zero experience as a prosecutor. And he was also literally at the Capitol on January 6th. And he described it this way, he said it was great, compared it to Mardi Gras, of all things. Now, after that, he then later went on to serve as a defense lawyer for several Trump supporters who were charged with attacking police officers during the insurrection. He was, he was defending them. Once Trump named him a U.S. attorney in Washington, the first thing that Ed Martin did was dismiss the cases of about 1600 Capitol rioters pardoned by Trump, including at least one whom Ed Martin still represented as a defense lawyer. One person he was defending as a lawyer, he helped pardon him. Then he set about demoting and firing federal prosecutors who had worked on those January 6th cases. That's what he did next. He also tried to indict Chuck Schumer, an effort so weird and outlandish, he apparently couldn't even get Trump Justice Department officials to sign off on that one. Ed Martin also sent out sloppy, poorly worded, vaguely threatening letters aimed at members of Congress, protesters, journalists, even medical journals he decided he needed to target. In other words, Trump seemed to be getting, I guess, I mean, exactly what he wanted out of one of his very first hires. Someone who would use the power Trump had bestowed on him to gleefully go after Trump's enemies and reward his friends. And Trump clearly, really, really wanted Ed Martin in that top prosecutor job. And he seemed to really, really like having him there. And with Ed Martin's interim appointment coming to an end this month, all Trump had to do to keep Ed Martin there permanently was to get the Republican controlled United States Senate to confirm him to that post. But today, Trump was basically forced to pull Ed Martin's nomination. Now, he did acknowledge, which is true, that he was pulling the nomination because Martin didn't have enough support in the Senate, which again, is controlled by the President's own party. Now, there's a lot of things to pull from and draw from as to what the final straw was here. I mean, it could have been the dozens and dozens of appearances on Russian state television that Ed Martin failed to tell senators about and also did. Maybe it was the multiple podcast interviews and glowing praise Ed Martin gave to a January 6 rioter whom federal prosecutors described as a Nazi sympathizer, in part because of the photos of him with a literal Hitler mustache. But to be clear, Trump still really liked Ed Martin. I mean, when he announced he was pulling his nomination today, the President said, quote, I just want to say Ed is unbelievable. I mean, I guess that's one way to describe this guy. Don't worry about Ed Martin. He's going to land on his feet. Trump says he's going to install Martin in the Justice Department as what else? The pardon attorney, as well as directing some kind of investigation into the weaponization of government under the Biden regime, as it's described, whatever on earth that means. And then tonight, just in the last few hours, Trump announced he is naming a new interim D.C. u.S. Attorney. I am not joking. I was not joking earlier. I'm not joking now when I said he picked former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, shown right there. I know you know who she is. And for those who are keeping Square at home. That will bring the number of Fox News personalities in Trump's administration to at least 21. And that count might have even gotten higher if, if Trump had not also just pulled his nominee for Surgeon general, a former Fox News contributor as well. Now, in her place, Trump says he is nominating a completely wackadoodle social media wellness influencer promoted by Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. What could possibly go wrong there? He was asked today about this nominee, his nominee, his new Surgeon general nominee who the person he supposedly wants in this job. And what he said to reporters is, I don't know her, man. I mean, this White House really is a well oiled machine at all times. Never surprises you. This all comes, of course, after the Trump administration polled its nominee to be director of the CDC several weeks ago. Now, they yanked that nominee less than an hour before his Senate hearing was set to begin when it became clear that he also didn't have enough support. And of course, who can forget the debacle of the Matt Gaetz nomination for Attorney general. Who can forget that? I mean, it basically collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity in just a couple of days, but still happened. I mean, that was still one of the first things Trump did. But when it comes, just come back to Ed Martin. When it comes to his demise as U.S. attorney and that nomination today, here's something I think is worth paying attention to. I mean, the man who appears to have sealed Ed Martin's fate is none other than North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis. When Thom Tillis announced that he would vote against Martin, and this was rumored for days, but when he announced he was going to vote against him, the nomination was basically doomed. It's not like, also like Thom Tillis hasn't voted for Trump nominees before. I mean, even when he found them very objectionable, in fact, he's voted for all of them. You may also remember then I did, that it was Thom Tillis vote that saved the nomination of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth back in January. It looked like Hegseth's nomination might fail, and for good reason, obviously. I mean, he was a Fox News weekend host who had run two small nonprofits into the ground, been credibly accused by multiple sources of excessive drinking, and paid a settlement to a woman who accused him of rape. All of those things, although he denies all those allegations. But Senator Tillis was reportedly so disgusted, understandably, that he was working feverishly behind the scenes to kill the Hegseth nomination, including, and this is a big step for a Republican senator by securing a sworn affidavit from Hegseth's former sister in law, alleging drunken and threatening behavior toward his ex wife. It's a big step. You'd assume he'd opposed the nomination then. But then Trump threatened to back a primary challenger to Tillis in next year's election, and at the last minute, Tillis caved, giving U.S. defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Welcome, everyone. Signal chats and all, all the things that come with Pete Hegsett. So that was January, not that long ago. What's different now? Why couldn't Trump get Tom Tillis to vote for his day one handpicked D.C. prosecutor? I mean, maybe, maybe less than four months into his second term, Donald Trump just doesn't have the juice he had a few months ago. I mean, it's not just the nominations. That's part of it. It's been kind of a parade of failures, though. I mean, Trump has passed basically no legislation. Though he did get Republicans in the House to pass a bill today renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. So I guess he has that in his quiver. Who knows? The one Republican who voted no actually called the bill juvenile, which sounds pretty accurate. He's also faring a little better in the courts. I mean, a new analysis from Bloomberg today found that Trump is losing in court far more than he's winning by a lot, with his policies being stopped by courts more than 200 times times. And the polls continue to be just brutal for a president barely 100 days into his term. The latest Economist YouGov poll finds Trump's approval underwater by 10 points, with 52% of Americans disapproving of the job he's doing. A full 75% of Americans think Trump's tariffs will increase the prices they pay. And even among Republicans, I mean, just Republican poll respondents, the share who think tariffs will raise prices a lot has increased by 8 points just in the past two weeks. Now, today in the Oval Office, a reporter asked the President his thoughts on his tariffs causing a slowdown in traffic into US Ports and the thousands of dock workers and truck drivers who are now worried about their jobs as a result. Understandably, the president, in his response, appeared to think, that's all great. I mean, he said, quote in response, that means we lose less money. When I see that, that means we lose less money. Frankly, when I read this, I had to read it a couple times. I mean, I don't know who the we in that sentence is supposed to be. It's not the dock workers or the truck drivers. It's certainly not all the American consumers, people out there paying more for things. But at this point, we all know Donald Trump. We know what he does when things are going badly, when the polls aren't good, when nominations are blowing up, when he wants to try to change the narrative. He puts on a big show, announces some amazing deal as he brands it. And as we also know about Trump by now, the reality rarely lives up to the hype of the show. I mean, we got used to this during the first term, right? Remember back in 2018 when Trump held a flashy photo op outside racing Wisconsin to announce a $10 billion investment for a new manufacturing plant? You can see him there with the golden shovels. I mean, those golden shovels he used in that groundbreaking ceremony proved to literally be just another shiny object, right? Waving around to help distract us and make us think something was happening. Because the plan to actually build that large scale plant was very quickly abandoned. And the 13,000 jobs Trump had promised never actually materialized. There was also Trump's phase one trade agreement with China. Remember this? Which was signed at the White House amid a whole lot of fanfare in January of 2020. You can see it there on the video. Trump claimed that China would be spending an extra $200 billion buying American goods. And I mean, that sounds good, but how much of that extra $200 billion in American goods did China actually buy? None. The answer is none. 0. When the data eventually came out, it turned out that China had bought zero additional goods. He's been back at it in this term, too. Remember when he threatened Mexico and Canada with 25% tariffs and then backed off those tariffs, claiming he had struck amazing deals with our neighbors, gotten them to agree to major concessions? Then it all turned out that Canada and Mexico were actually just doing stuff they had already planned to do. So there was that. So it should really come as no surprise that the big breakthrough trade deal Trump announced with the UK today is not all it's cracked up to be. It's not really a trade deal at all. But that's not the point. The point is the show. My colleagues Chris Hayes and Stephanie Ruhl are standing by and they join me live in just 90 seconds.