Dem Gov. Moore on Trump's D.C. Takeover

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0:35With Progressive Boat Insurance, you can choose coverage for most mistakes you or other boaters could make, helping you float carefree all season long. Quote today, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, number one rating based on 2024 filings with State Departments of Insurance. Welcome to The Beat. We are covering this developing news tonight. the mass shooting in Minneapolis has left two children dead, 17 injured. Another terrible day in America as we face a shooting. We will have the latest reporting on that for you coming up this hour. I want you to know that up front. We also have a significant news guest.

1:12Maryland Governor Wes Moore is here, one of the key figures that's emerged in this turbulent era, the MAGA era, as well as a time where Democrats are looking for new leadership. Westmore clearly on the top of some of those lists. So I've got to tell you, he's coming back to the beat after a bit of time, and we're looking forward to that conversation. As you also see on your screen, at a time where Donald Trump is trying to kneecap the Fed and make it a partisan institution, changing its very core, Nobel winner Paul Krugman, one of the most respected economists in the country, joins me on that.

1:46So those are two big news guests coming up. Our top story is what the president is doing in Washington, scenes that are abnormal, that echo what we see in other countries, including non-democracies, and yet what the Donald Trump era in the second term means. For people who say everything's the same or nothing changes or it's the first term again, this is not the first term. We didn't have permanent efforts at National Guard troops in multiple places, including our capital, in the first term of Trump. And Americans who are hearing about this, even amidst what I've mentioned, the reality that in the late summer, people vacation, people definitely tune out of news, Congress is in recess.

2:27Americans are any way they can letting Republican members of Congress know that Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch, that we have not ever been a country that has the military out in our capital for no reason other than the partisan or power-hungry demands of a given politician, I don't care what party. So people are addressing the deployment. You know, bad news is going to be very severe. We respect them. We don't respect you.

2:59The problem is, is the blue cities. The blue cities are the problem. He has also given the opportunity to the Constitution. Y 'all, this is lawlessness. This is what lawlessness looks like. So I do not think that we should be sending National Guard into other cities. Unless the governor... We're going to watch you vote. We're going to watch your vote. Those are just some of the meetings in Republican areas to say nothing of independent areas or liberal areas. You start to pile up and the polling shows the country's against this. Many other Republicans have refused to hold town halls at all. And one more point that's important to understand here.

3:40You saw Susan Collins, who often talks about independence and then votes in lockstep with the MAGA priorities. Susan Collins talked about respecting the guard, as if rerunning some anti-troops playbook from the Vietnam era is going to work. But people have information. They have their phones. A lot of people, even in those Republican areas, are hip to the Trump playbook. No one is talking about disrespecting the troops. Most people understand they have been given an assignment that is unusual, to say the least. What they don't respect, what concerns them, is the politicians trying to abuse the troops.

4:14I showed you the polling there. We'll put it up again. 56 percent of Americans oppose what's happening. And National Guard members often have nothing to do because there isn't a rampant daylight crime wave or riot for them to patrol. Earlier today, the mayor of D.C. also weighed in. What we know is not working is a break in trust between police and community, especially with new federal partners in our community. We know having masked ICE agents in the community has not worked. And National Guards from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources. As we look at this question, the breakdown in civil military relations, in the efforts to have the National Guard do what is traditionally daily policing, there are big questions here.

5:14Maya Wiley is, of course, a former SDNY civil prosecutor. She's in for mayor of New York. She runs the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. And in the city of New York, she has also worked explicitly on those issues of police-civilian relations. Here, it's military being assigned as police activity relations. What do you think is wrong with what's happening in the way the National Guard is being used right now? Well, that's a very long list, Ari. But let's start with the fundamentals for most Americans, which is why we see the polling you cited. It is because police accountability, the ability for us as people to have some direction about what our priorities are, what we care most about, what we fear most and what we want done about it is often at the local level.

6:00It's people we vote for, whether it's for a state office or for a city office, who then is going to direct forces like police forces about what they can and cannot do. And we've had a huge, huge need to have a reckoning in this country with ensuring that policing is fair, is safe, and is not biased against people who are Black or Latino. You know, what Trump has done, which is, by the way, in the Project 2025 playbook, is to say we will talk about high crime rates, by the way, whether the facts match the statistics or not. Use that to drive fear so that we can take control of places we don't politically control.

6:43Right. Meaning the whole point is Donald Trump, say, doesn't like a policy on bail reform. That is a matter of state and local law. It is not a matter of federal law. But if you don't like it and you're the president and you can take over local law enforcement, you can do whatever you want. And basically, that's what Donald Trump just said in a press conference, is that he can do whatever he wants. Well, no, you can't. And we can't let him. you say we can't let them when you look at how it's playing out it's both so small as to at times be ridiculous and yet the threat is as serious as it gets i contrast that to show that now that it's going on day after day it's not just trump talking you actually have real people out in washington who are guardsmen and women and what do they have to do well the post reports uh they're doing landscaping.

7:37They're doing sanitation duties. They're stepping up in places where the Park Service was defunded. Custodial work, the Post notes, is usually National Park Service work. They were facing, quote, staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration directed additional cuts. And so on the one hand, it's absurd. On the other hand, experts say this is the building of a kind of a federal police force to carry out the president's partisan goals, which is very serious. And which he has said he wants to drive across democratically controlled cities across the nation, many of whom, by the way, are peopled with black mayors.

8:15And the rhetoric that is both partisan and the rhetoric that stereotypes people who are black, people who are Latino, is about driving division so he can take power he does not constitutionally have. And I think we have to be very clear about that. Your point about D.C., I just want to elevate this, too. It is having a real cost on real people. I mean, that when he first called up the National Guard, I have friends. I have a friend whose son is like one of my nephews who was searching for his passport because he was so afraid to travel the city streets. He's always traveled as a young black man without identification and a passport.

9:01That is exactly the kind of thing that is taking a real toll on real people. When, as you say, and we'll put some of this imagery back up, this footage, it's the imagery of crisis, but it's a selective crisis. It's a crisis being created for those being patrolled. And the messaging to, as you mentioned, red states and places that don't have deployments is, don't worry, we won't come for you. I wonder, even in this polarized time, Maya, whether history suggests that those kind of promises from one who would wield this kind of power aren't very cashable. In other words, even if we say, oh, that's a narrow mindset.

9:40Oh, you should care more. Forget whether you care. If you're in one of these places where the president says, oh, as long as you truck with me, you'll be good. I don't know that John Bolton and other people have found that that works out. Well, I do think the history of retribution, a word Donald Trump himself used, which is I will come for anybody who gets in my way and I will use the powers of government to do it. And that includes people I don't like personally. So he said it. He's done it. We've seen it. And I think everybody has to worry about any person in power of any party that is willing to use power for their own personal gain.

10:17That's what we're seeing here. Yeah. Maya Wiley, on this important story here that shouldn't be normalized, even as Trump tries to make this normal life in our capital. Thank you for being here. I mentioned that we have special coverage coming up on the horrific school shooting in Minnesota. Also, Donald Trump facing new accusations of market control socialism, something that actually fits with what he's trying to do at the Fed. Paul Krugman, a Nobel economist, is here. And as mentioned, the big news guest tonight, Governor Moore. on fighting Trump and what matters right now. He returns with us in 90 seconds.

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12:38Thanks for being here. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Great to have you. Let's start with what's happening here. Washington, obviously very close to where you govern. And the idea that, as the president says, he would do this on a partisan basis. What's your response? Well, well, and first, I want to say to all the people in Minnesota that our hearts go out to you. I finished speaking with with with Governor Wallace earlier on. And, you know, he's having one of the toughest days that any of us can have as chief executive. So to him, to the entire Minnesota family, to all those families, we just want to let them know that everyone in Maryland is here with them and thinking of them and they're in our hearts.

13:21You know, and I think it actually, you know, when I think about the president's comments that he literally made from the Oval Office yesterday, where he was talking about how this is a good political issue for them to use and utilize when it comes to the midterm elections. You know, one thing that is, and again, as we hear it for all of us who had to live and exist in these communities that have been chronically neglected, who have had to live and exist and grow up in communities where we knew that our safety was not a concern for people in very high perches and people who are in power, for people who knew they spoke about us and never having conversations with us, that that unfortunately the comments of the president of the United States just validates what so many of us felt as we were coming up inside of those communities, that there actually is not a concern about our safety, that this is just a game.

14:14And it rings incredibly, incredibly frustrating for those of us who actually are serious about this work. When I first came on board, you know, I remember the year before I became the governor in 2022, Baltimore City was averaging almost a homicide a day. That for the eight years under my predecessor, we saw the homicide rate nearly double. The nonfatal shooting rate did double. And we came in with a completely new philosophy about the way we're going to address violence and public safety in our community. That we're going to work with local elected officials like the mayor and the state's attorney.

14:48And we made historic investments in local law enforcement, historic investments in technology, historic investments in the community. And it has produced not just encouraging results, but historic drops in violent crime in Baltimore City. It's because we actually take the work seriously. And we're not seeing that from the White House right now. Understood. And that goes to how you're approaching it locally within your authorities. When you look at what the president is suggesting, we have the list of many of the cities. it's hard not to notice how many are led by black American leaders. Do you view this and do you think there's enough evidence to suggest that this is part of the targeting and sort of a race baiting fight that he wants?

15:32Well, I think we are watching consistent trends that we have seen. So it kind of tracks with the president of the United States. And it's the reason why I actually invited him. And I said, come to Baltimore. because, you know, especially when ignorant comments are made, the only way to address ignorance is education. So come and learn. Come and spend time in our communities. Come and spend time with community violence intervention groups like We Are Us, who are actually on the ground doing the work. Come and spend time with our local law enforcement who are on the beat. Come and spend time with the mayor and the state's attorney and come see what we see as we walk our communities every single day.

16:08And of course, the, you know, the response that I received from the president of the United States with his laughing crowd around him was just simply making a snide personal comment about me. And so it does become very frustrating when we actually know what can work. We know that instead of doing things like cutting$30 million of gun violence prevention, like the president has just done for the state of Maryland, that we know if he could do things like invest in license plate readers and actually pass federal legislation that bans ghost guns, Things we have been calling for, but they have just scoffed off because they said bring in the National Guard to, you know, to, you know, to do pick up litter is somehow a better strategy to fight crime inside of our society.

16:51We know that there is a better way. And we know that if we actually had a partner inside of Washington, we could demonstrate what a better way looks like to continue producing the kind of results that the people in our communities hope for. You mentioned sort of his personal approach, and he's been on both sides of it, kind of attacking you, but then also invoking your support, which I guess it means if you did think highly of him, that would be a positive. That's usually why people invoke certain support. And again, some viewers may have heard about this. I got you on, so I'm going to ask. You have the headline, Trump falsely claims Governor Moore called him the greatest president.

17:27In terms of how lies work, it sounds like more of the way he talks and the way you talk. But I guess my question is to have you on record here. Was he lying? And what does it tell you that he would want people to think that you like him? Yeah, we'll have breaking news on the show today. The president's lying. And I know that's shocking for a lot of voters to hear that. But actually, what happened was when he first came up, the very first words out of his mouth was, he told me that I was a really good looking guy and I was really good looking in person, too. And then he proceeded to say that my people are telling me that you're doing fantastic work.

18:05And he said, how can I help? And I started talking about the bridge that I told him how how a year and a half ago, how we had one of the most tragic moments in our state's history. And we've been able to really give a case study on how to respond in these moments of crisis to move with speed, but also humanity. And I and I told him that we would really love his his continued support. And it's ironic now that this is the week that he then decides that he wants to threaten us with taking away bridge financing, despite the fact that he never gave it to us in the first place. Yeah, and we have that headline on the bridge financing.

18:39You know, Governor, it's funny. It's the way we live, right? That you're telling us that the president said to you you're good looking in person. It's just such a funny way for politicians to relate. I'm reminded of Jay Rock. You ever listen to Jay Rock? Yeah. Yes, of course. Who said, don't hit me when I'm working. She said, I look way better in person. And Trump giving you that energy. And we're not refereeing it. We're just reporting it. So that's part of your relationship. Broadening out. Well, it's kind of like Kendrick. When I say to the president, you don't tell lies about me and I won't tell the truth about you.

19:18Hey, I'm not like us. Which, talk about how it all comes together. That line was popularized by Adlai Stevenson. an old school Democrat. So it's all full circle today. You know, I mentioned earlier in the program, I know you're not going to make any other news about politics, but it's no secret that Democrats are looking around. There's a view that maybe they want a strong governor figure who is standing up to this administration. And I don't think you're the only name, but it's no secret that you and Governor Newsom, maybe Pritzker, are some of the names we're seeing circulated. How do you take that?

19:56Can you answer this question without giving us the usual talking points? You know, you're honored, but busy and focused on work. People are hungry for leadership. Democrats see a lot of D.C. leaders who they don't think are fighting hard enough or inventive enough. So walk us through how you see all that, knowing all the caveats that, of course, you're busy with your day job. Well, no, I what I say is, I mean, the people of my state, they need me now. and I'm locked in because these are not glancing blows that are coming to the state of Maryland. These are direct shots. When the president of the United States has now fired over 12 ,000 Marylanders who are federal workers, people who are doing things like making sure that our food is safe and making sure that our critical infrastructure is protected.

20:41When the president of the United States looks at historic floods taking place in Western Maryland and when we put in for federal disaster release support, which we qualified for, and we simply get a response in the White House saying support for Maryland is not warranted. When we get an FBI building that we worked for 10 years and across all quantitative levels to say should be going to the state of Maryland and the president of the United States says the FBI building is not going to Maryland because it is a liberal state. Like the president, like we are being, we are being attacked by the federal government right now.

21:12And my people need to understand and they know that, listen, I don't come from the world of politics. I'm a soldier and I'm standing my guard and we are locked in to make sure that our people will continue to grow and thrive and succeed in this moment, despite the fact that we're watching a federal government who seems to make my communities and our neighborhoods some kind of punchline instead of understanding that when you're talking about the people of Baltimore, what you are forgetting is they're also Americans too. And they hear you loud and clear. Understood. Governor Moore on a bunch of topics.

21:46Appreciate your time tonight. I appreciate you, Art. Thank you so much. Okay. See you again. Thank you. We just heard there from Governor Westmore on several topics, including the Trump administration's approach. If you saw the whole interview, you may recall he began by, of course, mentioning his heartfelt thoughts for the people going through the horrific shooting in Minnesota. I told you earlier, we have the update on that. A shooter killed Two students injured 17 others, 14 among them students. The two killed were an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old. The attacker ultimately dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the same scene.

22:25And this shooting was at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota. It was during morning mass. Police have said the attacker shot through the windows at the students in the pews using a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. that all three were lawfully purchased, although at times like this, one of the debates Americans have is whether all of the laws are perfectly written or could be tightened to try to prevent guns from getting in the wrong people's hands. The FBI also investigating it as an act of domestic terrorism and a potential hate crime targeting Catholics. Here was the mayor of Minneapolis speaking earlier during this horrific day there.

23:05I think the... Impetus has to be on all of us as leaders to do a whole lot more, to recognize that we've got more guns in this country than we have people. And it's on all of us to recognize the truth and the reality that we can't just say that this shouldn't happen again and then allow it to happen again and again beyond that. a different emphasis there than we hear sometimes from some leaders, especially in the past when it was often recounted that it's too early to discuss policy solutions. This is a daily problem in America, our guns epidemic and the misuse of guns for crime, crime against children being one of the most horrific you could imagine.

23:55A warning. It is a sad thing indeed to hear any child having to recount what they went through at school, but we are going to play a firsthand witness account right now. It was like shots fired, and then it kind of like got under the pews. It kind of, they shot through the stained glass windows, I think, and it was really scary. It was like right beside me. I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows, so they were like, the shots were like right next to me. that's scary yeah you went under the pew after that happened yeah is that what everyone tried to do i think i got like gunpowder on my neck yeah when you heard the shots what went through your head i was like the first one i was like what is that i thought it was just something i heard it again i just ran under the pew and then i covered my head my friend victor like saved me, though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit.

24:58Your friend laid on top of you? Yeah, and he got hit.

25:05We're joined now by Katherine Schweiter, former FBI agent and prosecutor. She's written several books on gun violence and hosts the Stop the Killing podcast and how to end the mass shooting crisis. Welcome. What should we take? Yeah. What should we take in your view from another a day like today, all of these shootings are terrible, but the ones at schools are targeting children, of course, especially horrific. Yeah, I think they, you know, they just, they hit us in the gut, you know, so hard when it's just, when it's kids in schools, because we know kids are so vulnerable and it's our job as adults to take care of them.

25:44And I think that's the message right today is we are not doing a good job of taking care of our kids, let alone the adults. There are about 48 ,000 people who die from a firearm in the United States every year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 60 % of those are suicide. We could cut that by 60 % by trying to do a better job of looking for people under stress, under duress. But when it comes to these kinds of shootings, which are less common, What we have to do is look for the signs ahead of time. And I think we're just really not doing that. We're just not doing that.