Amid Gas Prices Spike, Trump Issues New Threats Against Iran

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1:32Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and we begin this week with a lot going on in America and the world. The president is trying to make what has been a belated case for the war in Iran. It's proved unpopular. He famously launched it without a presentation to the country or the Congress. He has been sort of trying to make up for that on the fly. There's a global energy crisis. Experts say it is the worst in decades. And we don't have an off ramp or a quick visible way out. That is economic trouble at home that has upended everything lately. James Carville is standing by to tell us whether it is the economy stupid or the gas prices stupid or the war stupid or a mix of stupid.

2:08James is here in a moment. I do want to give viewers, of course, as we start the week, a preview of what is coming. We know that the president is talking very aggressively, whether it is strategic and you think it's a threat designed us to get somewhere or a precursor to an escalation of a war that Americans say they don't want. He held an afternoon press conference. He praised what was widely seen as a positive, the U.S. military's effective and heroic efforts to rescue that missing airman who was shot down over Iran. Again, and we've heard many veterans and experts discuss this, the U.S. military can get a lot done.

2:43The question looming over whether that person should have been at risk in Iran in the first place, whether we have an exit strategy, what we're doing in Iran, those are all questions that don't really face the military and our democracy. They face our leaders, in this case, a president who started this war. And so quickly, the president then turned to the threats that we've been hearing about and statements that by any objective measure came across as, at times, bizarre. The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. I have the best plan of all, but I'm not going to tell you what my plan is.

3:15You've said Iranians would be mad if you stopped these attacks, but why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure, to cut off their power? Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime? They would be willing to, and it's suffering, they would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. That is basically how it went. the president was also at one point briefly presented with an overwhelming reality that he knows better than many presidents, because unlike some who came in hawkish or talking tough, we've had the reverse with this president. He came in talking about ending forever wars, criticizing administrations in both parties that had been too enmeshed in the Middle East.

3:57We heard all of that as part of his 2024 pitch. And now he's come into office and become the leader of new wars, forever wars. He's attacked more countries in one year than most presidents do in four. And asked about the fact that this is unpopular, that the public overwhelmingly now is clearly against escalating the war in Iran or being there in the long term, he basically insulted that majority of the public. What do you say to Americans who are not a fan of the war? They're foolish. Call it an unpopular president. versus the majority of the country. And we've talked about echoes of history.

4:38This is not Nixon's silent majority. This is a very loud, public opprobrium, opposition, and at times revolt against what Trump is doing. You have the people, many of whom warned that he would be exactly this kind of dangerous, impulsive, non-America-focused leader, that he is always lying. And so what he said about focusing on prices of the economy couldn't be taken to face value. That's called that the resistance of the critics and the Democrats. Then you have the broad center and independents who have soured on this administration long before the war over the high prices, Epstein and other issues.

5:15And now you have a growing concern on the right. Take it all together with a bad economy and we can see the writing on the wall. The high prices squeezing consumers are being called by our sister outlet CNBC, a war tax, a banker who looks at these things primarily through the financial lens. Citigroup CEO Jamie Dimon says it's not only going to get worse, but we're looking at the risk of recession. Gas prices are punishing the public out there on a daily basis. The national average is$4.12 a gallon. That's up over a quarter, over 25 % up since last year, and no signs of it dropping tomorrow. It's worse for diesel, $5.62 a gallon.

5:51That's over 50 % spike from just last year. The candidate who vowed to bring prices down, has taken a unilateral action, a choice. They call these wars of choice. He decided to do this. He didn't consult with allies. He certainly didn't run it through Congress. And now everyone is paying the cost. The diesel costs affect trucks that deliver food and consumer goods, what they call the supply chain and all the economic mumbo jumbo. We don't have to be economists to understand that what happens in a global oil supply and the Strait of Hormuz doesn't stay there. It affects the oil and that it affects all the other products that are tied in to energy, which is a big part of how our economy still runs.

6:34It was just six months before the midterms here. Americans now speaking out, including online, about what they're going through and Trump's failures. The man residing in the White House wants to move us to a wartime economy. President of the United States of America is one of the most unhinged people on social media. Trump and J.D. Vance, they have no chill, bro. This feels excessive. I'd rather have health care. I'm trying to figure out why we would need to up our military spending if all our military operations are going so well. Why does all essential government services stop working when Republicans get elected?

7:11I'd rather have student loan forgiveness. Mine eyes don't see the glory in the bombing of Iran. That's just some of the way people are making their voices heard. We're joined by legendary Democratic strategist James Carville, co-host of the Politics War Room podcast. Welcome, James. It does seem to be getting worse. Your view on that public backlash and anything the president pitched today. Well, this is rare because this war has been unpopular from the beginning. People never supported it from the beginning. And of course, you have acts of individual heroism. We saw that rescue. I looked up. I was a veteran of the Vietnam era.

7:51I did not go to Vietnam when I was the era. There were more than 250 Medal of Honor winners in the United States during the Vietnam War. It was a catastrophic strategic decision, but my generation performed heroically. And soldiers and airmen and Marines and sailors, they're always going to do their job and they're going to do it heroically. That's what they're trying to do. But they deserve a mission that has been thought out, not what they've been given by this president. I mean, I salute the people who have the uniform, but I don't think this thing is thought out at all. And the American public believes that from the beginning.

8:29They do not support this war. Of course, they love our military people. Everybody does. They should. Yeah. And on the economy, something that, of course, your whole political career and campaign work is identified with, it is i guess it's one of those iron laws of politics because it doesn't go away and people have to make it through their daily lives i want to show a little more you know tiktok is so interesting i know you're on there as well sometimes because people can just they can sound off and this is what we're hearing on the economy well there is one word that should scare governments investors and honestly your wallet and that word is stagflation they're saying that the grocery price is about to go up some more because of this war.

9:14I overheard a woman at the gas station saying she wanted to burn someone's house down, but had to wait until the gas prices dropped. Does anybody who is not a billionaire know what are we supposed to do? What do you see there and how does that play into the midterms? I thought Trump did this, him pointing to the gas price. Every Democrat should get a bunch of these stickers and just put them right there on every gas. I don't think that's a crime. You're not defacing anything. You're just telling me the way it is. The course of gas is all petroleum products, diesel. They're all high, and they're going to stay high for a long time because all traders are going to demand a premium now that everybody's discovered you can shut off the straight to Hormuz or you can do this to limit supply.

9:59We're going to live with this way beyond next week and next month or even next year. Yeah. There was this moment as well at the end of the presser. Take a look. I want to show you this. It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don't want to give it to us. And I said, bye-bye. Okay, thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

10:36The very literal image of the president kind of walking out on the question about gas and the fact that he was all over the place. And you have to wonder, where does his acuity fit in when he sounds like this, finally giving a speech on the war, coming late, of course? So I think I got this straight. He couldn't buy Greenland, so he invaded Iran or bombed Iran more appropriately. I mean, it doesn't even—I don't understand it. Somebody would have to explain it to me, but it utterly makes no sense at all that he wanted Greenland, but he couldn't have it, so he's going to bomb Iran. I don't know.

11:19Maybe somebody else can explain it. It doesn't make any sense. Just to be honest with you, Ari. And the way that he goes at the public, I mean, we know his style, but walking out on the gas prices question, they're foolish for opposing the war. Has he become a lesser communicator, perhaps, than he once was? Well, this I do know. This is horrifically unpopular. unpopular, and there's a conversation that's going on among political people, is how low can Trump go? I mean, there's a certain, once you get down to hardcore Megan, some people think it's 33, some people think it's 32. I think his average is now about 35.

12:00So he's scraping the bottom, and I think he's going to find out tomorrow. We got two big, you know, pretty big elections, but, you know, they give you what they call tells in the poker game, but you're going to get two You tell Samara, but he's pretty conclusive on the Democratic side, is me, my guess. Yeah. I mentioned in the setup that there's also problems on the right. I'm going to show you Alex Jones, not because he's a source for anything true. OK, I want to set up the clip, but only because he has been in this right wing swamp. And when you're losing some of these folks and you're getting the skeptical questions they've gotten from Tucker and Megan, and even occasionally on Fox News, you sort of say, who's left to defend this foreign policy?

12:45Here's Alex Jones. They closed this trade. It's killing the economy. America's sinking global rankings of black ability. It's just not what we voted for. We've never seen rhetoric out of presidents like this when we go to war, even if you're for this war. This is really bad PR, folks. This is what I'm talking about, the way Trump's behaving. Way more erratic. His speech is not coherent all the time. You can't deny this is happening. This is a clown show, folks, and I'm really worried. James? Well, I mean, you can watch it. You don't have to be a neurologist, a Dr. Jonathan Reiner, or anything like that.

13:22We've all had experience with people aging. We've all had this experience. And you could just look at the guy as just an average person and say, this man is deteriorating at a really rapid rate. I don't know. I mean, but it's evident. I mean, Alex Jones sees it. You can see it all over the right. You've got Megyn Kelly and Tucker fighting with Mark Levin. I can't even kick trash. They hate each other more than they hate us. They're just in some dissent, just finger-pointing, and that's just what happens when parties go down. I mean, it kind of ends the Republican Party as we knew it, and they're all fighting with each other, and that's fine with me.

14:05I'm happy to watch. It's good spectators for us. Right. And it's interesting to hear you say that because folks, some folks feel like they've heard that before that after 2000, after 2020, a lot of folks said, well, Trump's really much been over. And they watched him come back. And even though now we're in the second term, there's this sort of that question. I want to get you to speak to that in the midterms. We're going to fit in a little break. I see you can see, James, the consternation on his face. We're going to get a good answer on this rebuttal when we're back in 90 seconds.

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16:36Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Discover something real.

16:44We're back with James Carville. We've been discussing President Trump's unusual, at times not fully sensical remarks today. Building on a weekend, James, where we don't always read all his posts for reasons of fact checking and news accuracy. But, you know, this Easter rant online where he's dropping F-bombs. He's saying the crazy bastards better open the straight. And he says, praise Allah. I mean, all that packed together, you could imagine being a big deal if any other president had ever said anything like it. And so you were talking about both his decline and why this isn't like other times when people have heard Trump is over and he's not.

17:24Well, look, I thought he was over after 2020. I'll be honest with you. I think his comeback was partly a result of Democratic failures to get ahead of this. But because May, I did think he was back. But I mean, I don't I don't I don't I don't see him coming back from this. I see him having a really bad 2026 election. And I don't think his future is very bright, both politically or cognitively. I just don't think this is a man with a very, very, very bright future ahead of it. I really don't. And what did you think of the of that weekend post I mentioned? And, you know, some Democrats, Bernie Sanders, others were sort of saying, hey, you got to take this seriously.

18:09He sounds like a madman. Other people say, oh, this is his endless antics. Where do you come down on on that? I mean, it was a very unusual post from a president in wartime. I think we could all agree on that. You know, I just, I detest the man so much, I really can't be objective. And I don't know, but I just, you know, when I see his face, I just go into like a blind way. But I do think, and other people who I respect, told me that they sense there's a real slippage, I mean, a real deterioration beyond just the normal craziness that he's engaged in. And I'm looking at these special elections, and I can't help but conclude anything that the political ground is shifting rather dramatically in the United States.

18:54And we'll know more in a little more than 24 hours tomorrow. But I expect it to continue on that front. Yeah. And looking at what their vision is, everyone always says, you know, your budget tells you what you're really doing. Everything else is just words and the campaigns and all that. The Democrats have been fighting for health care and they say they want ICE to be accountable and they want to only reopen the DHS under those terms. OK, public can make up their mind about that. The Trump budget here would cut a lot. It would cut K-12 schooling by$8 billion, health spending, humanitarian assistance, IRS by a billion, which nobody loves their taxes, James.

19:37If the IRS isn't working well, you can bet the really rich people with all the lawyers are going to get out of even more taxes and everyone else is going to have to pick up the tab. And then finally, of all weeks, we learn they want to cut NASA while everyone's cheering our folks in the air. What is this what does this budget tell people going into the midterms? I mean, first of all, we have$40 trillion in debt. He in 2016, he promised he would balance a budget in eight years. In fact, when he said that, that was$23 million, it's now$43 million. But everything else that he does, it just turns out this way.

20:19And I think the Democrats don't need—I'm one of these people that I advise Democrats for the 2026 election only. My message is don't just stand there and do nothing. You don't have any power You don't need to make any proposals Just, hey, I'm not here That's it We don't need We need to be the remainder This is an off-the-election It's going to be all about Trump Don't get in the way of that I think that's really important We don't need to have a seven-point plan Or anything like that We're not him And we're not going to we're going to oppose him and give us a majority. And, you know, my favorite Italian word, Basta, enough.

21:06That's it. That's it. That's about as far as I would go in this election. Well, look, I think people listening to you, that makes sense. There are some counterweights to that. One is in the relative approval of the parties. So Trump is unpopular. The war is unpopular. The No Kings protests show incredible mobilization. But life is complicated. And sometimes there's more than one thing going on. And for the Dems, the way they are, look at this approval. We had this teed up here. These are just the new numbers in from polling that was out out in the field last week. This is pretty close. To be clear, folks say they're going to vote Democratic in the midterms and Trump's unpopular.

21:46But when you just say, what do you think of these two parties, plus or minus three? What does this tell you? This is the in fact, I'll show you both. This is the lead for the for the midterms. So people do want change. And then just to go back to the first one, James, favorability. The Dems are lagging or within margin error of the Republicans, which would seem to be a problem for the Democrats. No, James. No, the reason that people don't like the Democratic Party is the same reason I don't like it right now. We lost when you win. That changes everything. People are part of a political party because they want the party to win elections.

22:26We lost the last election. You're not supposed to like us, okay? I don't like us. But if we win, I'm going to like us more because that's why, that's the most important thing that a political party can do is win elections, and we didn't do that. And the public is justifiably harsh toward Democrats, as they well should be. And the way to cure that is not a seven-point plan that you're not going to get through between now and 2028 anyway, but it's to go forth and win the election. Then the Democrats will start liking you again. That's simply what it is. I keep seeing that. Don't try to address that.

23:06Just like I say, don't just do nothing. Stand there. If you do that, party favorability is going to go up 7%, 10 % already. Then you get some presidential candidates that will go up more. All right. You heard it here. James, always good to have you. We'll be checking back in with you, sir. Absolutely. Thank you, man. Take care. Our thanks to James Carville. By the end of the hour, we're going to show you more of these incredible new photos that are coming through. The Artemis crew, we can tell you tonight, is actually minutes away from rounding the dark side of the moon. We are truly living through history.

23:40It's a totally different vantage point than some of our squabbles here on Earth. And we're going to show you more of those great photos. So stay with me for the hour and I promise you'll see them. The Supreme Court is now looking at Donald Trump's efforts to rewrite January 6th history, including his convicted aide, Steve Bannon. I'm going to report on that. But first, why Donald Trump stands accused of threatening actual war crimes. Next.

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25:32Available in both IV infusion and self-injection. Don't use if allergic to Cosentix. Get checked for TB before starting. Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or plan to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTICS or cosentics.com. Move and feel better. Ask a rheumatologist about Cosentics.