Alarm and Pushback as Trump Presses Autocratic Agenda

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0:36Let me tell you a story Long ago, Serta invented the Perfect Sleeper mattress Oh no! Oh yes, it says the all new Serta Perfect Sleeper with the Q4 support system has 4-in-1 perfectly interlinked coils that help relieve aches and back pain for perfect sleep night after night. We'll never get counted again. Uh, nope. Serta, we make the world's best mattress. Welcome to The Beat. We have a lot to cover tonight. The crisis engulfing the CDC, dangers to public health, and a new example of how officials who are potentially fake fired are pushing back. An outrage as ICE agents were seen detaining firefighters as they try to fight fires to protect the public.

1:20and then more Republican lawmakers facing the buzzsaw at voter town halls.

1:35The pushback to Donald Trump's power grabs is hitting both him, his administration, and these other Republicans who, according to voters in their own districts, often red-leaning districts, say enough is enough. Lisa Cook is the Fed governor that Trump posted on social media he is firing, which is a classic example in Trump's increasingly autocratic efforts to see what he can get away with. A, that's not a legal way to typically fire someone. But B, and more importantly, the Fed officials are not part of a Trump cabinet or people who he picks that way. He does nominate them, they're Senate confirmed.

2:11But then unlike, say, the cabinet, we know since the beginning of the Fed, no president has ever removed a Fed official for no reason. And Ms. Cook is punching back today, filing a lawsuit against Trump over this unprecedented and illegal removal, as her lawyers put it. And this could be a landmark legal battle because the Federal Reserve is not just some other little part of the government as far as Trump or Musk is concerned, as they've tested going after parts of the government that whether it's good policy or not, judges said, yep, well, you can fire certain employees. This is different. The Federal Reserve was always insulated from exactly this kind of partisan pressure to protect its independence in the American economy.

2:53And even if it sounds like a kind of obtuse thing and you don't wake up thinking about the Federal Reserve every day, most people don't. That's a good thing because most days in most parties, administrations, there haven't been these kind of efforts to turn it partisan. That is a backdrop for the increasing concern and pushback around the country. California Governor Gavin Newsom has become one of the loudest Democratic voices in saying you can't just wait around and criticize. You have to fight fire with fire. And he is talking directly about something that used to be considered sort of a more fringe concern or is it really going to happen?

3:28Well, he says it's happened here and Trump wants it to happen again, how he will cling to power. he will send the National Guard. He will send them all across this country and he will do so through election day. And he'll do so working in concert as he has with ICE and Border Patrol to do the same. You have the largest private police force in the world. If people actually think this guy's serious about having another election, You think he's joking about 2028? Wake up. You or lose your country. A stark warning from a governor who has used his powers, both going to court and fighting with Trump, and also said he's going to continue to break decorum or anything else he has to in recounting, for example, what are typically private discussions in the White House between him and the president, who he said was very exercised about continuing to abuse power.

4:30Now, for all the talk about, well, Trump did win the election and all the reasons that Democrats may have lost by a point and a half, this is a ongoing story, not just one stat review of where the country was in November. And the Democrats made their mistakes. I think that's been well established under the Biden era, and they had to swap out the candidate. But even after losing by a point and a half, the country, the nation is watching this. I want to remind you with everything that Trump has done in this first year where he stands. an approval rating that is now the lowest of his second term, one of the lowest of modern presidencies, sinking in this late August period of Trump clashes to just 37%.

5:11There's also a public health crisis unfolding and turmoil at the CDC where the Trump administration, not through Trump directly initially, but through basically an intermediary, said they were going to oust their chosen CDC director because of a clash with RFK over vaccines. Now, Xi, like the board governor, is saying There are still rules and laws here, even if Trump wished otherwise. And because this was done through an unusual intermediary, she argues and states that is just not lawful. She does serve at the pleasure of the president, different than the Fed. But she says she's not going anywhere until the president steps in and says what he means.

5:46Four other top officials are resigning in what looks like a very clear protest of how the Trump administration has dealt with both the science of this and the process. Now one of the doctors wrote a letter on the way out accusing Trump officials of pushing policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than improve the public's health. Also stating that RFK Jr. has been intentionally eroding trust in those what she calls quote low risk vaccines and noting Trump officials desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.

6:23CDC workers also held a rally outside the headquarters along with some allies in defense of what they view as a kind of rolling attack on both the science and the leadership of that organization. Now, RFK clearly has a blank check from Trump. So what he does is not just an RFK problem. The buck stops at the president. And as we showed you, voters seem to realize that turning against this administration in this early period, He's also saying he's found interventions that he says may cause autism. We'll have announcements as promised in September. We're finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly, almost certainly causing autism.

7:08And we're going to be able to address those in September. RFK using that televised meeting there to obviously try to give a boost to this. Listen to what he says he can do about diagnosing children himself. I'm looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements. I know that that's not how our children are supposed to look. he can tell from their faces from their body movements he says very few doctors consider that any kind of diagnostic but this is the state we're in this is the leadership team that donald trump has selected and this is even as i've mentioned a late summer period where people may not catch every little bit of news but the news they are keeping up with whether they get it through traditional media sources or an alert on their phones or even social media which we've cautioned sometimes has a lot of false information, but whatever general picture people are getting, it is leading to this historically low approval for the president, a disapproval on policy, on substance, and clearly, as the No Kings protests also showed, a concern about whether Gavin Newsom and others are right, whether we are living through the slow building boil of a plan to end democracy in this country.

8:37And for all the hyperbolic exchanges, which do happen, by the way, from politicians sometimes in both corners. Donald Trump has basically spent the bulk of this first year of the term proving his critics right, showing that the autocratic warnings were not overstatement. Many of the things he's doing now sound like Democratic campaign ads from last year. He'll put Marines in the streets. He'll put troops in the streets. He'll undercut science. He'll put conspiracy theorists in charge of your children's health. With all that happening and voters revolting, where do we go next? We have a man who knows Donald Trump, who's tangled with him and is known to many of our viewers, longtime colleague Reverend Al Sharpton joins me for a special discussion when we're back in 90 seconds.

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10:51Reverend Al Sharpton is here. Here we want to show him marching on Wall Street earlier today, protesting Donald Trump, the leadership, the pressure intervention in the economic leadership of the country and this ongoing clash over diversity in hiring. Rev, you've cautioned against that. We see you out in the streets, which both shows what you're doing and also full disclosure of where you stand on some of those debates with the president. But we've now seen Wall Street leaders who may have said, oh, fine, push back on DEI or BLM. Oh, fine. OK, he wants to have a little more say about things. And now this week they're seeing he wants to go after central banking.

11:30He wants to control the economy in what some call a warped view of MAGA socialism. Other people call it extortion. What were you saying today? And do you think anyone on Wall Street is waking up? I think that we are saying exactly that. And that is that what when it was DEI and just diversity, which implies minorities and women, Wall Street looked the other way. when they now see that he's taken 10 % in intel. I mean, this is supposed to be the conservatives that don't believe in government interference. He's going in dealing with taking over policing in Washington, threatening to do it in Chicago and other places.

12:14What happened to the state's rights philosophy of the conservatives where national government doesn't come in? So they're beginning to see a different threat to themselves. And that's why the march today was important. Thousands of people, more than I thought would come, march down, because not only are we not getting the jobs at or eliminating jobs, they're eliminating business contracts to blacks and women and Latinos. They're eliminating C-suites. And the people on Wall Street needed to see bodies in their lunch hour like that that'll say, we will buy a few shares of stock and come to your stockholders meetings with thousands of people.

12:53We're going to have this argument. And I think Donald Trump, having known and fought with him and was friendly with him and fought with him again for the last 40 years, he only respects people that will stand up to him. He does not respect people that cows to him. Yeah, and we're seeing that sort of diversion in the country. A lot of people are standing up. There's a lot of opposition. I showed the polling. Governor Newsom says you got to take him seriously and fight it now. It's too late if you expect people to catch up with it later. And he's pointing to both Trump musing about a third term, musing about being a dictator.

13:32Steve Bannon, who's on the outs, who's not running things the way he used to, but it often is the kind of trial balloon for these things. Take a listen to Bannon. The lead story over at Semaphore. Wait for it. Republican voters now 53-47 support President Trump running for a third term. I kid you not. Told you this day was coming. Do you think Trump is serious about this and Newsom is right to say you got to get this out there and fight it now? I think that he is serious, as serious as he is about anything else. But he becomes increasingly serious when there's no pushback and when people like Bannon, whether he's inside, outside the tent, make stuff popular.

14:18Trump is a person that goes with whatever serves his ego and purposes at the time. He's not a deep thinker. He doesn't think in 2025, about 28. But if it sounds right and he can build up and gear up a momentum, yes, he will do it. And look at what he's doing. He has, I mean, taken over cities to say you want to remove a governor from the Federal Reserve on an accusation. We don't know that there's going to be an indictment. We don't know there's going to be a prosecution. We don't know if there's going to be a conviction. He wants to fire her based on an accusation. And here's a man with 34 felony convictions and was filed guilty of fraud with how he did business.

15:04And no one's hitting back saying, wait a minute, you're the last person that ought to be talking about an accusation. You're a convict, the only one that ever sat in the Oval Office. What do you think Trump returns to here as we come back next week? Congress comes back into session. The Epstein issue is not something they've been able to completely suppress. And whether Trump cares or not, the Republican Party can see polling when you get down to you're dropping towards what could be a third of the country. That's not where a party wants to be going into what is a midterm year. I think that Trump will face people bringing back up the fact that we've not seen the entire Epstein matter.

15:47We have not seen an explanation on why Maxwell was moved to a minimum security federal facility. And we've not seen a lot of transparency there. So Epstein is not dead. And I think when they're going to look at these whole takeovers that he's trying to do with the National Guard, who are not trained to fight crime, who don't bear arms unless they're special. I think he's going to face a more divided Congress, even in some Republicans, than he faced on his way in. Reverend Al Sharpton, thank you. I'll tell folks, reminder, Politics Nation airs weekends 5 p.m. Eastern. We can catch the Rev this weekend on these issues.

16:29The hot summer that Republicans didn't want continues with these constituent town halls. We also, by the end of the hour tonight, will be joined by Omar Epps, making his beat debut, the great actor. But next, we have Joyce Vance on the Epstein scandal that won't go away.

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18:21Donald Trump and his allies have been saying for some time that they hope to end the Epstein matter or release something and make it quiet down, and certainly by Labor Day. Well, it's not going according to their plan. Congress is returning to Capitol Hill. You got a bipartisan duo that wants to force a House vote requiring Trump's DOJ to release all the Epstein documents once and for all. Since for all the double talk, Trump's administration is clearly not doing that. The same duo says they will hold a press conference with Epstein survivors on the first day Congress returns from recess. I could tell you here in the newsroom, we hear about a lot of press conferences and sometimes you look and say, this is important.

19:03Maybe we'll cover it. Other times you look and you say, maybe it's a political gimmick. It always depends on the news of the day. You watch the news, so you probably know that. But it would be a good bet that a lot of people online and in the news media will be wanting to cover some version of that news conference, considering that Trump has open questions, he has not fulfilled his vows for transparency, and substantively it matters when victims, some of whom have never appeared in this formulation together, speak out about what they say is the Trump administration's failures. So that is pressure.

19:36House Democrats also looked over this first batch of documents that were kind of pushed out here in the summer period from DOJ and say most of them are not new. They were basically already public. The DOJ did release something new. It's unusual interview with the Epstein co-conspirator Maxwell, but that's raised a lot of questions amidst these blanket denials. I never ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age. And I did introduce him to women. I did, but not underage women. So I never saw an aggressive move. I never saw anything that was... Non-consensual. Thank you.

20:22Okay. I never saw anything that was non-consensual. That's the voice of a sex trafficking convict Disclaiming things she was already convicted of It undercuts her credibility And speaks to the farce of that interview According to many legal experts We have one on hand as you see Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney MSNBC legal analyst Welcome back Joyce, the trickle or drip drip Of some information Or sometimes recycled information from DOJ Seems to be raising more questions They want to claim they're releasing stuff, but the big stuff they haven't released yet and what they have released looks fairly stale.

21:03What does that tell you about sort of where they're at with a president who once claimed there would be transparency in this case? Well, and that's exactly the issue here, Ari. DOJ was under no obligation to release its case files. But Donald Trump, the president, the head of the executive branch, their boss, said that there would be transparency. And so the fact that they've backtracked, I think, raises a lot of legitimate suspicions and concerns about what might be in that evidentiary file if it were released. So far, we've seen two dodges. We've seen this ridiculous end run, this attempt to get the courts to release grand jury material, which failed.

21:44And in the process of that, we learned that the only thing that was involved there was two summary witnesses testifying. So nothing new there. And then we have this release, this dump of information vouched for by Representative Comer, which turns out to be nothing new. And so at some point, you know, you don't have to be a former federal prosecutor to have your little ears pick up and wonder what it is that they're trying to keep from the American people. Mm-hmm. And jailhouse statements, be they issued in this unusual interview format or what sometimes happens, as you know, in cases where there's things that are captured that an inmate says to another inmate or in a context, they don't have automatically high credibility.

22:26We're talking about convicts. Sometimes we're talking about people who are trying to barter or trade information or continue to clear their own name for whatever their own personal reasons. And so when Maxwell went on and on about how nothing bad ever happened, I played one part, I'm about to play you another. I'm wondering what it tells you about her credibility because the administration wanted to release this to say, look, here's a character witness for Donald Trump, in a sense. And that's so bizarre because a convicted sex trafficker is a terrible character witness. Here she was. Take a listen.

23:00I saw him with lots of masseuses. I never saw a single masseuse ever look unhappy or not come back or whatever. So based on my observation, I don't think that if you are being raped, as now he's prolific, I just can't imagine why you would return. It's not what you observed at the time. Not what I observed at the time, no. So Blanche sort of gives her this open door And she talks about how whatever the ring of activities Including these so-called masseuses Were happening, Epstein never did anything in her observation That caused anyone to be concerned I'll let you have the easy job of analyzing and fact-checking this I'll just say it sounds ludicrous Because we know these people were concerned Because we have their testimony Some of them are going to be speaking out next week We know they were concerned after their interactions with the now deceased defendant, Epstein.

24:04It's really hard to imagine a less credible witness. The only thing that matters here isn't my assessment of Maxwell or your assessment. It's the jury's assessment. They heard all of the evidence. They heard her defense. They found her guilty. A unanimous jury of her peers convicted her. Look, she's sitting in federal prison. we all understand the game. Her case is still on appeal. She has hope, perhaps, that her conviction will be turned and she might be able to get her life back. It seems very unlikely to me, having studied the briefs, that she has anything there. But we understand what the game is.

24:40And I think your point here is so important. These victims who are willing to come forward, it's not easy. And it's especially difficult in the current context where someone like Donald Trump sits in the White House. And we now live in a world that treats women very differently than the world treated women even several years ago. So these victims are engaging in an act of bravery, trying to make sure that the truth is what shines through all of this. The fact that the Justice Department released this tape is really, as you say, just a ludicrous exercise. You hear Todd Blanche literally putting words in the witness's mouth.

25:21You hear him offering her up as a credible source. We all know that she isn't. Yeah. Joyce Vance, thank you. Needed sober context on a story that continues. So thank you very much. Still ahead, we'll show you some of these outraged voters in Republican districts and Trump clashing with Democratic governors. But more Democratic governors are taking the page out of California or some of these states and fighting back hard. That includes Progressive Governor Bob Ferguson of Washington State, who is our special guest live next.

26:00The Trump administration continues to ramp up these deportation efforts. And in contrast to what was claimed as the primary reason during the campaign, there's no evidence here that they're prioritizing the dangerous criminals. You can see ICE detaining active firefighters here who were actually involved in working to contain a wildfire in Washington state. And if you remember what happened in California, these percentages are scary. That fire is only 13, 1-3 percent contained. And yet these federal officials basically stopped two of the men from working towards that public safety goal. Some of their colleagues sharing video of that raid online.