Blue States Check Trump Amid Legal Firestorm Over Troop Deployments

0:00Have you ever wanted to share your opinions with MSNOW about our TV programs, podcasts, live events, and more? Now's your chance to have your voice heard. Join the MSNOW Insights community at ms.now.insights. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on what you can see is clearly a breaking point in the use of federal force over the weekend. And I'm going to just show you some key moments here, and you can see with your own eyes what it looks like to be patrolled in America under the Trump administration right now. President Trump is radically expanding the use of military style, militarized and sometimes actual military patrols.

0:46These are new images. You can see federal agents in tactical gear in Portland, Oregon, brandishing their crowd control rifles and their gas masks. There was a smoke grenade deployed. You can see that there. It's outside an ICE detention facility in Chicago. We saw federal agents using tear gas. And that wasn't being used for, say, an immigration raid alone or for, say, public safety. There are times where lawful use of those methods can be for the public safety. But much of this on screen with these images was to counter the public reaction from protesters, including American citizens, exercising their rights against this.

1:30What you see. This is America over the weekend. And there's a lot going on and we'll get into it. And if you watch this program, you know we cover a lot of different things. But if you lived on that block or in that community, you can imagine what a big deal it is. If you're in some other part of the country or a red state that's not getting this kind of treatment, maybe you're less aware of it. But this is the news. We saw one agent seen with a tear gas launcher. These federal forces under Trump are also clearly girded and ready for escalation. You got to pack those type of weapons to then be ready to use them.

2:02The AP, nonpartisan outlet, reporting just the facts that the Trump administration has helicopters and chemical agents ready to go as immigration agents are increasingly, quote, aggressive in Chicago. They also ran a, quote, military style raid, which landed a helicopter. There were windows cracked, doors broken down. I'm showing you this because this is what's happening. It's an escalation of, quote, aggressive, as the AP put it, military tactics ordered by President Trump in our American cities. And much of it is blatantly partisan targeting. So you can have one debate about the use of force and how far to go.

2:43And you have another debate about whether this is the use of force for all places in the country that wouldn't make it OK, but would make it uniform. or whether things are so politicized and that's getting so normalized that the president has these kind of aggressive tactics with the launchers I showed you here in places that he perceives as his opposition and something else there in places he perceives as his support, which is, according to the Constitution, an un-American view when we are all equal before the law. The president using the feds and the places that voted against him and thus trying to override what has been largely Democratic governors pushing back against this.

3:24And he's tried to pull in guard troops from other states in a highly unusual bid to do an end run around some of the restrictions that protect your rights. Judges have rejected or narrowed some of these efforts when tested in the courts, rulings admonishing the president for treating America like a war zone and for treating you, American citizens, like some sort of foreign threat. Now that is becoming quite literal, because I can tell you they're not stopping at the images I just showed you. There is now discussion in the military among Pentagon brass and the generals about using the Army's 82nd Airborne, deploying that here at home.

4:02It's an infantry division that is typically, as one report put it, for combat zones. Indeed, that is where it was used in both World Wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yeah. You see what's happening? It's not about whether you agreed with Trump or voted for Trump. This is not normal, and the public knows it. We're talking about footage of war zones, because if I go to find, and our producers and journalists find, well, where do we get a picture, an image, or a video of the 82nd Infantry? You're going to get video from past wars, because that's when any other president in either party ever used it.

4:43the public is not okay with this. One example, I showed you the photos of the force. We also saw protesters out, many of them peaceful. One holding this sign, pleading with us to see it, and I will say this protester is seen. I showed you the ICE agents. I showed you federal forces. I'm also going to show you people standing up, the protester telling the nation this message. Your humanity is more important than your orders are. that might apply to people directly inside the government who, of course, have orders from the president. But lately, with this kind of president, that could apply to people on college campuses or in media organizations where the president is trying to issue orders and see who will fall in line.

5:28Remember, some of the largest Trump protests are about this exact abuse of power. No kings, no military rule. There are other things that has made Trump unpopular. We can get into those. But the big no kings protests were about this type of abuse of power and how this can correlate with attacks on democracy and elections themselves. The nonpartisan outlet Politico reports, as a matter of fact, not criticism, that it's become clear the president hopes to normalize the use of the military on American streets to quell protests and enforce his policy agenda. That's not what the military is for. The pushback continues.

6:12The Democratic governor of Illinois speaking out. U.S. citizens, including children, have been traumatized and detained. This escalation of violence is targeted and intentional and premeditated. The Trump administration is following a playbook. cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob. He wants to justify and normalize the presence of armed soldiers under his direct command. This is happening here. Now, I mentioned the laws against this. Military is legally restricted from patrolling American citizens. And the president at times has seemed to flout that.

6:59Other times has rooted this in what are potentially lawful goals. ICE enforcement, immigration enforcement, those are valid federal powers, but not when used as a pretext only in parts of the country. We have immigration issues, for example, across many border states, Texas among them. Chicago is not the only place. And so there is going to be potentially a larger reckoning over whether this is a real thing or normalizing the abuse of power thing. The rulings against this are important because they're testing what they can get away with. In the new clashes, we can report that tonight, Illinois, Oregon, and California are taking Trump to court, trying to stop them from sending these guard troops across different state lines as the end run.

7:45A federal judge ruled this week that we still are a nation of constitutional law, not martial law, and warning against blurring the line between a civil and military federal power to the detriment of this nation. that judge blocked Trump a second time. Politico's headline, Judge Blocks Trump's National Guard deployment in Portland for a second time because of the loophole effort to get around the first blockage by moving these troops from one state to another. People often ask, when will we have a constitutional crisis? Will it be clear? Will it be like the Saturday Night Massacre under Nixon or some earlier periods of history, whatever you want to pull from.

8:26But you have to remember, some crises don't happen in a dramatic single moment. Sometimes they happen slowly over time until you look up and you say, why are there so many militarized people or actual soldiers or the 82nd Infantry patrolling my line to the Poles in the midterms? And by then, if you want to go to court and stop it, it may be too late. I want to bring in Reverend Al Sharpton, the host of Politics Nation here on MSNBC, founder of the National Action Network, and among other things, an expert on the long struggle for voting rights in this country, which is relevant to these federal powers.

9:05And Molly Jong Fast, an MSNBC analyst, and we can note tonight now a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Congrats to you on that media news. Thank you. Great to have you both here. Rev, I'll start with you. This type of federal power being used in these certain places tells you what about where we are in watching the autocratic risk tonight? Well, we are very close to an autocracy if we're not there. When you see this kind of force being used military style on U.S. citizens under the guise of we're going after illegal immigrants. And when you see the policies that are side by side with it, it is a cause for us to hit the alarm button in this country for democracy.

9:58When we see this president put tariffs on China at 145 and then bails out Argentina. And then what he did was break some of the farmers that voted for him that were depending on selling soybeans to China. And then Argentina took the bailout money and started selling soybeans to China. So there's not even a rhyme or reason to what he's doing. It's brute force and it's on American citizens. Kids dragged out in Chicago putting zip bags. This is unbelievable and it's un-American. And Molly, you get the feeling that he's not doing it everywhere because there's a heck of a lot of places that wouldn't like it.

10:44And if you listen to that Pritzker press conference today, he talks about why is Donald Trump targeting Illinois? And he also talked about, I mean, the thing that was so striking about that press conference is somebody was killed. You know, Pritzker was talking about this. They have not gotten good answers from ICE. And I think it is really scary. The one thing that gives me a little bit of I don't want to say hope, but a little bit of hope is that you see these Democratic AGs and Democratic governors pushing back, documenting everything. And what Pritzker said yesterday or a couple of days ago, which I think was so important, was he said, stay peaceful and document everything.

11:28You have a cell phone. You have a video. You have a lot of power in that cell phone. And, Rev, they are losing in the courts a lot, sometimes slowly, sometimes in ways where the courts seem to be deliberately trying to sidestep rather than having the clash right now. But in history, we have seen in the civil rights and racial context that rulings that support human rights or voting rights sometimes are very much fought. So we've tested when we talk about, well, will it hold? We've tested this before. And I want to show a very powerful person, the number two at the White House, Stephen Miller, using language that sounds a bit like what we've heard in other eras where people said, well, maybe we won't follow desegregation orders in the South.

12:11They don't follow the orders they don't like and how far that went. Let's take a look. You called a legal ruling legal insurrection. Are you recommending the president take action, gets judges, if you want to disagree with them? No, it's simply a factually accurate statement that when a judge assumes for him or herself the powers that have been relegated or delegated by the Constitution to the president, that that is a form of a legal insurrection. And we have seen... It carries legal weight, so are you recommending... No, we have seen, over the last nine months, an ongoing legal insurrection.

12:50What are the lessons in the past when you have the government, sometimes it was governor, sometimes it's the president, trying to test whether they're going to follow these orders? Because in the past there were fights, but the rule of law helped. I think the rule of law helped, but even then they had to fight to get the rule of law to be enforced. And what we're seeing in terms of what's going on with Vice in Chicago, wanting to do it in Portland and other places, is we're seeing they're pressing to see how far they could go. And the question is, if we're going to be a nation of laws, then the laws must kick in to save the nation.

13:30Real patriots are going to save the nation, even if their politics may agree with the president or his staff. They are there to enforce the law or you end up chaotic. When you look at even at the same time parallel, they're doing the redistricting, which is to undermine voting rights in this country. So we've gone from a country that had become a union after the Civil War. We're going back to states' rights now where we'll draw the districts the way we want. We'll disempower people based on how we decide who can be elected based on the likelihood of the makeup of a congressional district. And we're going to take away your rights, including innocent children.

14:15The pictures of us that we've seen of children in Chicago, babies, you know, three-year-olds dragged out. How could they be suspects of illegal immigrants? This is targeted. It is racial. It is based on nationality. And it's wrong. And it's illegal. And we expect the judicial system to stand up if checks and balances are going to hold in this country. And Trump is doubling down on this rhetoric. A little bit of what he's just said. Take a look, Molly.

14:51But we have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats. They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens that pour into the country. That was this weekend. Yeah. No, look, and I think a really good point here that the Rev was talking about was that judge that ruled against Trump, that was a Trump appointed judge. So I think that we're seeing a moment here where this is illegal. It's not normal. It's also not popular. Like the polling on this is terrible. So the question is, how far will Donald Trump let Stephen Miller go? Because at some point, Donald Trump is going to look at his phone and he's going to look at the polling and he's going to be like, this is nuts.

15:31Yeah. And that's what I want to turn to next is we know this is unpopular. We know it's being done in a targeted way in as they call it, the blue states. So what happens when it encroaches wider or how do you find some common cause across the states? Our guests are staying. So my thanks to both of you. I'm going to fit in a quick break and we'll be back. A Trump advisor said ICE agents will attend the Super Bowl after Bad Bunny was announced as the halftime performer, you know, to catch all those farm workers who can afford Super Bowl tickets. So I live back with that joke, Rev. The humor there is that it almost seems like programming sometimes, like content to the White House about, oh, wherever Bad Bunny performs, there must be undocumented individuals.

16:19And yet it's not a laughing matter anymore. It's not a laughing matter because this is racial profiling at its highest level, but this is coming from the president. And I think that we are challenged in this country to what is the standard and the values that we stand for. If you take the Super Bowl, which is one of the largest events in this culture, in American culture, and turn it into where you have people being shocked around to see if you look like you're a certain nationality and therefore you're an automatic suspect. Your nationality, your color, your language makes you a suspect. I think that this suspends any of the civil and human rights this country has proclaimed to stand for and was made to live up to in the civil rights movement, in the abolitionist movement, in the women's movement.

17:13And I think that Trump is going to run up against that over time. I remember when I was a teenager, we would fight about the Vietnam War. This looks like nothing compared. The LBJ never did this. And we thought this was the worst we'd seen. But I think that, you know, I believe Martin Luther King used to quote that truth crushed the earth will rise again. I think that Americans will rise up, including some of the red state farmers I mentioned and others saying, wait a minute, this is not the country that it's out of hand. And the president, Molly, just made remarks late today. We just got talking about other ways to expand power or even the Insurrection Act.

17:54Let's take a look at this new sound. The Insurrection Act, under what conditions or terms would you? Well, I'd do it if it was necessary. So far, it hasn't been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I'd do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that. I mean, I want to make sure that people aren't killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe. Molly, on the one hand, we see this a lot. But first of all, there's limits on which reporters are getting access to him. And then sometimes the questions are all like outflanking him.

18:30Right. But on the other hand, he seems eager to flex that, hey, it could get even worse. So we saw this between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. It was that they found a bunch of these sort of zombie laws and got them ready to use. And another one is Comstock. They've tried to work on Comstock, which is this law that, again, they're using for abortion pills. It was never intended for that. And look, he's going to try to make legal arguments for things. And then sometimes he's going to not and he's just going to lose in court. I just think that I still I think what what the Rev was just saying about how the American people, I do think that they are better than this and that the the sight of tanks rolling onto suburban streets because there are four or five protesters there.

19:18I think that that is a losing gambit for this White House. I think she's absolutely right. And I think that, you know, sometimes great movements are when people come forward and embrace each other. And sometimes it's when they back into each other because they've been assaulted or attacked by the same forces. I think Americans are going to back into each other. And here we are on the eve of what happened in Israel, October 7th. And we're dealing with what's going on in Gaza. The contradiction of trying to resolve and get peace in the Middle East while you are assaulting American citizens at the same time is a glaring contradiction of the Trump years.

20:00And what do you say, Rev, to people who sometimes are shocked that we got to this place and yet There's long been a battle in America over redeeming these rights. Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists you've worked with your whole life talked about. No, America didn't start there. We're going to try to redeem it. We're going to try to make it true. And I'm curious how that plays now, because the initial response to Trump on the left was as a kind of aberration. And we remember that this is not us, that language. Now it seems to be much more. This is a problem in America because on division, on abuse of power, on whether we are truly a democracy or ever were, this is a ongoing struggle, not something that you're going to finish off in one election.

20:46Coranus Scott King used to say this is not going to be won in one generation. It is a continual battle. She would always say, and Martin III always reminds me of the quote, that this is not a sprint. It's a marathon. And they passed the baton to the next generation. The baton has been passed to those of us that are active now, that we've got to protect everything this country stood for. There's always been those on the other side that wanted to make male supremacy, white supremacy, national supremacy run this country. And those on the other side that wanted America to live up to its stated goals and its stated mottos.

21:27And I think the battle continues. Our generation should not be the one to fumble the baton. Powerful remarks, especially when you look at those images we've been covering. Reverend Sharpton, Molly Jong-Fast, my thanks to both of you. You can always catch Politics Nation. Weekends, 5 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. Trump's DOJ case against James Comey has more problems, and they're coming from inside the Trump DOJ. We'll explain. And the free speech crackdown. I've got a special report coming up. And we do mix it up around here. Bad Bunny and SNL have their own take on Donald Trump. I'm just here keeping my eye on SNL, making sure they don't do anything too mean about me.

22:11And they better be careful because I know late night TV like the back of my hands.

22:25They better be on their best behavior. Otherwise, they'll have to answer to my attack dog at the FCC, Brandon Carr.

22:35Thanks. Wow. all right brendan carr is now an snl impression that's not something you normally see from the of course it's not supposed to be political he's getting an snl impression because of his very political partisan probably unconstitutional efforts to censor television now the host of the season premiere of SNL this weekend was Bad Bunny. And although he's known for his music and his dancing and is a very popular global artist, they had a little number where he had to get his dig back at Fox News, which has been featuring some commentary criticizing him getting the big nod to play the Super Bowl halftime show.

23:27You might not know these, but I'm doing the Super Bowl halftime show.

23:38And I'm very happy. I'm very happy. And I think everyone is happy about it.

23:48Even Fox News. Bad Bunny is my favorite musician. And he should be the next president. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. having a little fun with the editing. That's what they call words out of context. Of course, that's a comedy show. I can tell you on the news, no one at Fox said that whole sentence together. The meaning obviously changed for the punchline. But there's no joke about how Trump and his FCC and administration want to abuse power and basically play leverage games or threats or shakedowns, so you might not hear jokes or other criticism that takes aim at the incumbent government, which is, of course, antithetical to the First Amendment.

24:34While Trump lost the clash with Jimmy Kimmel over whether he'd stay on the air, there are continued threats, blatantly vowing to abuse the FCC to go after TV networks based on what he views as their criticism of them, their First Amendment protected rights. Trump also going at perceived opponents, former FBI Director James Comey will be arraigned Wednesday. CBS is now reporting that the FBI is considering doing a showy perp walk style arrest for the former FBI director. That would be unusual for what is a single case about whether his testimony to Congress was essentially perjurious. One agent apparently was so concerned about this plan, they balked and have now been suspended.

25:26The request, though, is for, quote, large beefy agents to come do the arrest with bulletproof vests and visible FBI logos. And that's on the show side. Then there's the substance. Remember, I told you before, they've already investigated all of the issues in the Comey case. There was a whole special counsel tapped by Donald Trump, John Durham, and they looked into all this and didn't find a case. And that's coming back up now, which could doom Trump's effort, I should say, to prosecute or jail Comey, because ABC News has a report that Durham already told the DOJ there was no evidence in a four-year probe supporting the very thing that they're going after Comey for now.

26:10Sources saying DOJ leaders repeatedly voiced skepticism about this new Comey case. No career prosecutor was willing to present it. That is weak. Trump is adding, though, to the list of people who are either indicted with charges dropped, subpoenaed, searched, harassed, threatened. One thing you don't see on here yet is anyone actually convicted for what legal experts say are increasingly unscrupulous, possibly unlawful selective prosecutions. Where do we go from here as they prep a possible perp walk for the guy who used to oversee the whole FBI? Well, Joyce Vance, veteran prosecutor, is here next.