Artists Revolt after Trump Adds His Name to Kennedy Center

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0:47Listeners can get an exclusive 20 % off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com slash 20. Visit ixl.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Melissa Murray in for Ari Melber. We begin tonight with a major problem that could cost Donald Trump and the Republicans the midterm elections. At the Kennedy Center, the traditional New Year's Eve concert has been canceled. As you know, the administration unilaterally renamed the Kennedy Center to include Donald Trump's name, a move that lawmakers say was patently illegal. And some musicians have taken the president's actions to heart, refusing to perform at the storied venue.

1:31For some, it is a matter of principle over profit. As one musician put it, quote,

1:41Self-indulgent vanity projects, though, have preoccupied this president in his second term, and the Kennedy Center is merely the latest example of the president's edifice complex. His obsession with the trappings of autocratic grandeur extends to various White House projects, ranging from the mundane, like gilding the Oval Office and remodeling the Lincoln bathroom and marble, to the absolutely outrageous, like paving over the Rose Garden and demolishing the East Wing to make way for a$400 million ballroom. And the president's DIY tendencies haven't been confined to the White House. Trump has festooned multiple government buildings with enormous banners bearing the image of his own face.

2:26And in his free time, Trump golfs or attends lavish parties at his Florida beach club Mar-a-Lago. And that tone-deaf behavior is setting off alarm bells. Take a listen. His obsession with those kinds of issues actually are a political problem for him. I mean, people are sitting around and thinking about how they're going to pay their bills. And he seems obsessed with gold and putting his name on things and remodeling buildings and rebuilding monuments to himself. And I think this is a huge political problem for him. It's a symbol of his distraction. And it's the Marie Antoinette thing that he's got going.

3:09He's not on the ballot in next November, but Republicans should be really concerned about what they're seeing. And Republicans are concerned. Some are still upset about the president's unwillingness to negotiate with Democrats during the government shutdown. And as all of this percolates, there is more potentially damaging information from the Epstein files that is coming out regularly. And many Republicans are distancing themselves from the president ahead of the midterms, while others are leaving Congress entirely. Most notably, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Once a stalwart Trump ally, Greene now says she was, quote, naive for believing in the president's promises.

3:53Those kinds of schisms seem likely to widen as Trump continues to ignore serious domestic issues and as the midterms draw closer. As The Atlantic puts it, quote, Trump is suddenly looking a lot smaller. Joining me now to discuss all of this is former Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who notably endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Also with us is Margaret Carlson, editor at large with Semaphore. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. Governor, let's kick it off. Is the Trump fever in your party finally breaking? Well, I think the Trump fever in our country is kind of breaking a little bit.

4:33But, you know, Mark Twain said, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. And I think some of that is true when it comes to Trump. He still commands a lot in the party. But as I think as time goes on, as the economy doesn't recover, as we see health care costs increase, when we see these what I just terrible ICE detained strategy here where they're like yanking people out of places who are, you know, never done anything, commit a crime in the United States. I think there are Republicans are beginning to say, you know, enough. And remember, everybody who runs for reelection, they can't run on Trump.

5:14They have to run on the basis of can they win again? And they got to pick their issues. That's why you're seeing some things break here. But we're still a long way off from seeing a complete shattering of MAGA. All right, Margaret, a mixed diagnosis from the governor, but Democrats are feeling pretty bullish about their chances in 2026. Take a listen to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. So if the Democrats win the House back. Yeah, no, no. When? When the Democrats win the House back, then they will. Right now. Yeah. The Republicans in the Congress have abolished the Congress. They just do what the president insists that they do.

5:59That will be over. So that ends as soon as you have a Democrat. That ends as soon as we have the gavel. Not if, when. What's your reaction, Margaret? Is she being too optimistic? Are the Dems spiking the football too early? We miss her certainty. And we actually, we miss Congressman Kasich. There's still a budget waiting to be balanced here, Senator. I mean, Congressman, if you ever want to come back. You know, there's been Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill. There was just a mayor elected in Miami, the first Democrat in 28 years. These are all good signs for the midterms. And I think some of the issues that you mentioned, Melissa, are ones that everybody understands that he just, he treats the White House like he owns it.

6:52At the very least, he owns it. Or he bought it to renovate it, and he's making excuses about the West Wing. Well, the law says you need to have permission to build, but it didn't say anything about tearing it down. I mean, these excuses to, when you go past it, Melissa, it's just shocking to see. And you brought up the Kennedy Center. He said he was, quote, surprised and honored by having the center named after him after he filled the board with fired everybody, filled the board with his cronies and then had a vote. And by the way, it took minutes to get those letters up on the Kennedy Center.

7:39And so now it's the Trump and Kennedy. It is it's kind of astonishing. And the Oval Office, of course, looks like he's decorating that like an Atlantic City casino and then putting his predecessor's pictures on the wall with plaques underneath insulting each of them, except for Ronald Reagan. It is it's kind of astounding. And I think people, it does penetrate in a way sometimes that the cost of living index doesn't. So, Governor, the behavior is certainly outrageous, as Margaret has detailed. Are the Republicans going to pay a price for the president's behavior? Are they courting a midterm shellacking like the one the Democrats experienced in 2010?

8:22Yeah, I've been saying for quite a while, not just the last couple of weeks. And Margaret was saying this as well. I thought the Democrats were going to win the House a long time ago. Now, you know, when you take a look at these two ladies who won the governor's races, they were talking about affordability. They were not on fringe issues. You know, the Democrats have a have a challenge, and that is to stick on things like health care, like the economy. But don't be getting on these fringe issues. You know, they can talk about ICE and the fact that ICE has been too aggressive. I think that resonates with people.

8:58But if they go start drifting into the fringe issues, they're going to have a problem. For the Republicans, you know, they're sort of stuck with this MAGA thing. And I've been a Republican all my life, an American first, a Republican second. But I have to tell you, I don't quite know what it's all about. I don't know what's the positive message there. It seems as though it's a message about tearing things down rather than building things up. And that is never a successful way to get elected, to be just so negative and everything. So I think the Democrats are going to win the House, maybe by a significant margin, but they better be careful because they're very good at snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

9:39Or maybe I said it the wrong way, but I think you know what I'm going to say. Don't screw the thing up if you want to win. The bottom line is pretty straightforward. Margaret, any path to taking back the House runs through ballot boxes in localities. And the Democrats are worried that the president might try to influence voter turnout in the midterms by doing things like sending in the National Guard or ICE agents to poll sites, which would suppress voter turnout, certainly among some communities. Is that a real concern? And how should it be addressed? What should the Democrats be doing? I mean, of course he'll try to do that.

10:14And, you know, if he doesn't get it done ahead of time, he'll do it after, just the way he did in the presidential by charging voter fraud, et cetera, et cetera. You know, he wants to get rid of mail-in ballots. He doesn't want to get rid of them, but he wants not to have them count if they're not in by the second the polls close. He has all kinds of picayune ways he's going. He's going after states' rules on elections, which, by the way, those belong to the states, not to him. He will do anything he can to not make every vote count. You know, democracy, every vote counts. In Trump land, no, only his votes count.

10:56So, Governor, Margaret's made a great point up. There are real midterm insecurities in the White House, and they've already prompted the White House to take some extraordinary steps. There is ongoing a major mid-cycle redistricting fight that the Supreme Court has essentially blessed by blessing Texas's redistricted map. And there's real concern that the president might not accept the results of an election that doesn't break his way. Is there anyone around him in this White House who could rein in those impulses and bring some order to all of this? Well, maybe maybe Susie Wiles. I mean, it was pretty astounding interview she she gave.

11:29And, you know, the president supported her, which was sort of surprising. Maybe she and she seems to be someone there that people are inside the White House are intimidated by and also somebody who seems to have great common sense. So I think at the end, as Margaret was just saying, these these elections that are coming up, they're decided state by state. It's a little bit different than when we saw the presidential election, which, by the way, he won this one and clearly lost the last one. I mean, my sense of this is that the redistricting and all that is just not going to be enough. If the Democrats stay on the right issue, this redistricting is not going to get it done.

12:09And by the way, how about Indiana that said we are not in the Indiana styles not to do partisan anything. It's designed to have fair play. So I just don't think the redistricting will really change the outcome here. All right, Governor John Kasich and Margaret Carlson, thanks so much for kicking us off this evening. Coming up, there is new heat on Donald Trump's so-called border czar, as exclusive new reporting reveals more details about the probe into his alleged bribery. Plus, my conversation with one of Jeffrey Epstein's survivors as the fallout continues over the newly released files. And by the end of the hour, we will take a look back at the year in photos with The New York Times.

12:53All of that and more just around the corner when we're back in just 90 seconds.

13:02The lower federal courts are continuing to push back against Donald Trump's extreme agenda. Now he's ending 2025 with two major legal losses. A federal judge has ordered the administration to continue funding the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or risk violating an existing court order. And another federal judge has blocked the administration's attempt to deport South Sudanese migrants. The first year of Trump's second term saw a massive escalation in immigration enforcement as ICE raids made national news, resulting in the arrests of many immigrants without criminal records. And those arrests sparked protests around the country.

13:44And that public outcry was compounded by the administration's maigard legal losses in the courts. Now, of course, it wasn't all losses for the administration. The administration actually posted a number of significant wins at the Supreme Court. And just this week, a lower federal court allowed the administration to share with ICE basic location and contact data of undocumented immigrants who were receiving public health benefits. This all comes amid a fresh scandal from within the administration. There's new reporting from MS Now that shows that border czar Tom Homan didn't receive a standard background check while he was being investigated for bribery.

14:25Despite that very significant omission, Homan was granted security clearance anyway. The White House calling it a blatant political investigation, but it's clearly not. But The Beat spoke with Homan earlier this year about following court orders, and he had this to say. We're going to keep arresting them and taking them off the street. That's what I meant. I never said we're going to violate a court order. I said we're going to continue doing what we're doing and taking these people off the street. That is what I meant when I said that. That's what you meant. Consistent with court rulings.

15:01President Trump has said he'll obey the rulings of the Supreme Court. And that has been fairly easy for the administration to do so far, since the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has frequently ruled in favor of the administration. But the lower federal courts are continuing to stand up to this president. Joining me now to discuss all of this is Ankush Cardory, former federal prosecutor and illegal writer with Politico. Ankush, what's your take on the way the courts, lower federal courts and the Supreme Court, have handled Trump's immigration cases this year? You know, I mean, I think that this whole area of enforcement has been so controversial.

15:45And, you know, I share former Governor Kasich's assessment of the public's reaction to the really over-the-top and aggressive enforcement measures that this administration has undertaken. And what we've seen, as you kind of indicated, is lower level courts kind of bristling at this and expressing hesitancy, concern. And the Supreme Court staying some of these orders, quite a few of them, so the administration can keep moving forward. And some instances sort of blessing the administration's aggressive tactics, most notably when they effectively legalized racial profiling in connection with... That was Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence.

16:22That was Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence. Right, right. Well, he explained it, right? He was the one who explained the import of their ruling. And it was a shocking ruling. And even he seems to have recognized that it went too far since he's recently been stuffing in footnotes efforts to kind of clean it all up. So I think that's sort of the disjunction we've been seeing. There's new reporting from your colleagues at Politico about the administration's efforts to close what they are calling a legal loophole. and specifically the loophole is asylum. The Department of Homeland Security is asking the courts to, quote, summarily dismiss asylum claims without a hearing and send migrants to a third country where they can pursue relief.

17:01And that's even if the migrants have no connection to that third country. What do you make of the administration's efforts to shut down the asylum system? You know, it's really bad. It's a real, real serious attack on sort of the humanitarian legal framework, both domestically and internationally, that applies in these sorts of situations. And, you know, a good deal of this, including removing temporary protective status, as you noted, concerning some of the immigrants here, I find just transparently inhumane. I mean, some of these immigrants we invited here and told that they would be entitled to legal status.

17:37And then we just sort of yanked the rug out from under them. And, you know, it's been a really just, you know, sad, I think, set of conditions. But the one thing I would say to the administration, to the extent they're concerned about a quote unquote legal loophole, that's what laws are for. That is what Congress is for. That is why the White House is supposed to go to Congress when they want to change laws. Now, this administration does not have any respect for Congress. The Republican majority in Congress seems to not care about legislating or providing any serious oversight of this administration.

18:09But that is actually how our Constitution and our legal system is supposed to work. Well, can I see a follow up on that? Earlier this year, the administration created a special asylum program for white South African farmers. How do they square that action with this latest antipathy for asylum claims more generally? They don't. I mean, they can't. I mean, they claimed that the people that they brought in from South Africa or allowing in are there because they've been subject to some sort of discrimination in their local, in their localities, plenty of other people make those claims too. And the administration doesn't care, particularly when they appear to be from countries that are not largely, if not entirely white.

18:52Well, Angus, I want to take a pivot for a minute and get your take on what's happening in and around Venezuela. We're learning today that last week, the CIA conducted a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela, marking the first known U.S. operation on land in that country. What are your thoughts on this? Look, this is a yet another escalation of what I think is a campaign, a military campaign, has very, very serious legal questions around it, both domestically, internationally. This was these were questions that were appropriate even when the administration was just doing the boat strikes, even before the double tap.

19:26Now, even before this apparent incursion into Venezuelan territory, ordinarily, these would be considered acts of war. The administration seems to be very comfortable with that and perhaps even wanting to draw a conflict that they can then claim supports, for instance, their use of the Alien Enemies Act and the like. I think this is yet another instance in which the administration is just running totally roughshod over Congress here. And it's remarkable to me that the Republican majority has been content to go along with this. You know, I see no really serious legal justification for this. And the one thing I would mention, by the way, is the administration's legal justification comes from a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel that I have very serious questions about.

20:08However, it is related to a story that you mentioned at the top of this rundown, which is the decision that the court issued today rejecting the administration's position that they do not have to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As part of that opinion, the judge just took apart an OLC memo that the administration had created in order to try to justify their position. So my expectation is that the memo that they've created justifying their military strikes in and around Venezuela is about as legally competent as that memo. All right. Angus Cardori, thanks so much for that helpful context.

20:45Just ahead, new scrutiny on the Trump administration amid a brand new assault on women's rights. Plus, why Beyonce's ending the year on a high note? But first, the fallout from the release of Jeffrey Epstein's files. One of his survivors joins me live in studio. That's up next.

21:09Donald Trump's DOJ is in hot water over its failure to release all of the Epstein files, which is required by law. The DOJ now says that they have a million more documents, and so far they've only released a portion of those documents, many of which were heavily redacted. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has moved to sue the administration for its recalcitrance. Last night, I asked Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, about the committee's plans to hold the Trump administration accountable for these oversights. Here's what he told me. What's happening right now is completely illegal.

21:53These are illegal actions by the attorney general, by the Trump administration. It's not only the legal framework that is important moving forward. It's also about holding those that are now part of this cover-up accountable. And that is going to mean hearings. It is going to be a possible contempt action against the attorney general when Congress is back in session. Congressman Garcia saying that nothing is off the table, everything from legal action to contempt actions against attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi. And other members of Congress are also speaking out, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who notably split from Donald Trump over the Epstein scandal.

22:36In a bombshell interview with the New York Times, Greene claims that after she said she would publicly identify some of the men who were accused of abuse, Trump replied allegedly, quote, my friends will get hurt. Now the survivors are demanding transparency. In a letter, those survivors are calling on Congress to, quote, stand up for the rule of law and ensure the full release of the Epstein files. Joining me now to discuss these developments is Dani Benski, a survivor of Epstein's abuse. She was one of the survivors to sign on to that letter. First of all, thanks for being here. I can't even imagine what it's like to be in the center of this firestorm right now.

23:21How are you holding up? Thank you for asking and thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been a journey for sure. I think this rollout, first of all, was never meant to be a rollout. It was meant to be a hard deadline, but it's done a number on all of us because it's just been handled so sloppily and names have not been redacted when they should have been. And then And there are other names that we're asking why their adoptions are what they are. And so it's just incredibly frustrating to look through the files and not find what we're looking for at times. Yeah. So just the process itself has been kind of the punishment for you, another punishment on top of what you've already endured.

23:59It does feel that way. And I think something that we're finding is it actually moves to a point that like the people like those in power prey on the vulnerable. And that is something that we have seen time and time again. It is really at the heart of all exploitation. And when I think about my own abuse with Epstein, I think about there's just a small example. He, at one point, would pinch my fat on my body, and he knew that I was a dancer. He knew that my weight was really important to me. And so one tactic for manipulation would be to pinch me and tell me I was never going to be successful. If I didn't lose that, I would never go to the island like the other girls.

24:45I would never do all of these things if I had not done the things that he told me to do. So there was such a systematic manipulation that was happening all the time, but everything was a power play. And now I'm feeling like— This is a power play. Yes, this is a power play. You're talking about the president of the United States, who is the most powerful person in our country. And signed this law into law. Into law. And now it feels like, you know, he's talking to Marjorie Taylor Greene about that we don't have the merit to be in the people's house, which, by the way, it's the people's house. This is not a country club with his name on the side of it.

25:24You know, there's no monogram. This is it's just wild to me. Like there's a statistic out there that there are one in four women who have been assaulted or abused. So when you think about that number across the U.S., it's absolutely staggering. So that when we say the people's house, you're talking about survivors. You know, they make up a huge portion of our country. It's not just about this one case. And so it's just it's so incredibly disheartening to constantly be in a place where he uses everything as a power play and the DOJ is using the same tactics. Well, one of the things that I think is really important to reflect on here is the law that was passed had specific protections for redactions and materials that were to be redacted, including included information about the survivor.