House Vote on Trump Budget "Frozen" Amid GOP Holdouts

0:00In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds, but when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash sxm or with promo code sxm. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012. You know that feeling. Too many updates, too many meetings, too many things falling through the cracks.

0:36Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up for people and agents to work side by side and deliver more together. Drafting the brief, flagging risks, running a competitive scan, your agent can do it all. And the best part, anyone can build one. Even you. Try it. Create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. James Carville is here. Will he be hosting the show the whole hour, co-hosting? Only one way to find out is to stay with us. I'll see you in a second, James. We're following breaking news.

1:15We are keeping an eye on the House where the big bill is hanging in the balance. House Republicans at this moment do not have the votes to get this Trump budget deal done. It explodes the debt. It cuts health care. It is by far the most significant thing in the Trump agenda this year. It got through the Senate, as you know. We were covering that. But here we are. It is at a minimum stalled. We're going to give you the news as we have it. This is not good news for Trump in the House. They wanted to move faster, but I can't tell you what the future holds. It's stalled out. Will it eventually pass?

1:49Will it fail? We don't know yet. What we are witnessing technically is a procedural vote that has been held open for nearly four hours, while Republicans basically bend the rules a little bit, although I could tell you both parties at times have tried to do this stalling technique to find the votes because they don't have them. Speaker Johnson walked off the floor looking to get the help he needs to get it done. They're also waiting reportedly for about two members to get to D.C. They were delayed by the weather. Now, everybody knows the House Speaker's job is to count and move when you have the votes.

2:28You cannot blame the weather on this job. Speaker Pelosi often did all kinds of things to make sure that she didn't actually hold the vote until she could win the vote. Meanwhile, the president, meeting with Republicans at the White House, his legislative agenda hangs in the balance. Seven Republicans have folded on many of the issues. They've given Trump what he wants. So that could still yet happen. Today, Democrats are highlighting that the bill is not just unpopular from some liberal or centrist perspective, but that it is fundamentally flawed, some say amoral, and thus they say this is still a chance, the delay in the House, for people to come to their senses.

3:09Don't tell me you give a shit about the middle class when all you're doing is shitting on the middle class. Vice President said these cuts are immaterial. This bill is a deal with the devil. Mitch McConnell says people will get over it. This is a special place in hell for people who take food away from veterans. Joni Ernst reminded us we're all gonna die anyway. You should be ashamed. Democrats fighting hard, saying this is a moral issue, and really pinpointing one of those key issues. There's a lot in this bill. There's a lot of ways you could come at it. We've heard Republicans' concerns about it, but you're hearing here in sort of the closing argument, the bottom of the ninth, Democrats trying to remind everyone just how much this bill goes after health care.

3:55Democratic leader Jeffries is calling for any Republican somewhere, he says, to summon the independence, the political courage of Republicans of years past. So all we need are four Republicans to join us in support of their constituents, to have John McCain-level courage and stand up in defense of the health care of the American people. Senator McCain was famously conservative. He was a hawk. But let's put this in full and remind people, if you guys can see this, we got the video from our control room. We're spotlighting what was that moment when he put his thumbs down at another pivotal time in 2017, having crossed and clashed with the Trump administration and there really risking his entire political standing with his party because he said that was the right thing to do.

4:51You can see him walking up and voting down what was then an effort to gut Obamacare. We're joined now by James Carville, who may be old enough to remember that moment. There's lessons in history, James. Your view on both what it means that it may be stalling momentarily and the Democrats' argument there. Well, there are lessons in history. And I want to go back to 1983 when Michael Foote, the head of the Labor Party, penned what is known as the longest suicide note in history. It was 40 pages long. This is 25 times longer. This is now the largest suicide note in history. This is going to be the most unpopular piece of legislation you can imagine.

5:38It's not just unpopular with Democrats and independents. It's unpopular with a fair amount of Republicans. And if you look at it, it's a net 25 underwater now. So it's not going to do anything worse, but they want to write a suicide note. They want to jump. Let them jump. You know, you don't even have to shove them. You can just watch. And they're going over the cliff on this. It's pretty clear. You're saying Republicans are going politically over the cliff because first and foremost of the health care cuts? Oh, the veteran stuff is just god awful. And then when you start, and every time you turn something else, you find out this thing is a thousand pages long.

6:15The journalists and the analysts have not uncovered everything in this. We're just starting to find out everything, and we're going to find out more as we go along. But the big thing is this cuts taxes. You know, maybe Jeff Bezos needs a four-day wedding, not a three-day wedding. Poor guy, you know, he'll be able to easily afford that going forward. Look, this is a singularly bad piece of legislation. It's unpopular. The American people have figured it out. And these Republicans know it. They know what they're getting ready, what they're getting into. They just don't feel like they have another choice.

6:50This is not going away, I promise you. Yeah, and there's plenty of folks, including in conservative areas, that are very concerned opposing what you're saying. They're still going to go off the cliff, but opposing the Medicaid cuts. Take a look. State officials say if cuts and changes are made, about 300 ,000 people are at risk of losing coverage. 300 hospitals across the country at risk of closing if cuts are made to Medicaid. As many as 200 ,000 Georgians lose Medicaid coverage. This is our medication that without the Medicaid coverage would be$3 ,200 a month because our primary insurance has denied us.

7:32Really is the difference from us being able to stay afloat versus going in the red. I'm looking at a potential crisis in my household. One public health expert tells me it could mean upwards of 700 ,000 people in the state could lose their Medicaid. James, this is real life. It's real life, and it's particularly damaging to rural America and particularly damaging to a lot of Trump's constituency. And by the way, when you lose a rural hospital, even if you're fortunate enough to have health care, If you don't have the hospital and you have a health emergency, you have an heart attack or something like that, it doesn't do you any good.

8:05And we're going to see vast numbers of rural hospitals closed. We know that. That's all predicted. It's all baked in. They know that. And they tried to come up with a fund, a totally inadequate fund to say, well, we put some money in there to help rural health. It is not adequate. This bill is unpopular. and the Democrats just don't need anything but just oppose and drag it out and just let this fish in the sun and it's going to rot and smell. I promise you. There's no doubt about that. It's also very fiscally irresponsible. You know, James, there are parts of politics that everyone's used to and you say, well, this is how it is.

8:44And there are other parts where you say, can we just say once and for all, factually, I deal in facts, that you have Republicans in the current party, the recent party and the magnified party that are very fiscally irresponsible, that that's how they govern. They don't pay for things. It affects the economy and they want to give tax cuts to multimillionaires and move the money towards the rich, but also set up a debt trap. Now, we have elections. People can say whether that's good or bad, but that's the facts. And so I'm I'm curious. I want to show you how long this campaign has been going. You know, my job is to show people the facts and they make up their own mind.

9:23But to do that, we have to cut through the propaganda of how long there has been these lies. Republican leaders saying they don't want to do exactly what this bill does, which is grow the debt. We have the tape. Most troubling of all, the unsustainable trajectory of government spending is accelerating our nation toward a ruinous debt crisis. I'm very worried about the debt. The single biggest threat to our country, both in the short term and the long term. We now have a debt of$16.4 trillion. The real problem here is the debt and a lack of a credible plan to deal with the debt. The dangerous addiction to deficit spending.

10:02You're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution. James? Well, not only does it add, according to the CBL and other private analysts, it's almost unanimous. anonymous. They come in at$3.3 trillion. I don't know how to get there, but they all get to the same place. So we're going to cut veterans. We're going to cut healthcare. We're going to cut the weather service. We're going to close hospitals. We're going to do all of these things. In addition to that, we're going to pay$3.3 trillion in added debt. Now, I don't have to explain to anybody that this is very inflationary because when you add this kind of debt, what happens is interest rates go up.

10:43I'm sorry, the cost of money is inflationary. The interest rates are the most damaging part of the cost. We just saw what happened in your hometown in New York City, where the cost of living took issues front and center. This can be awkward that this is going to increase. It's not only going to cut services for ordinary Americans, which it's going to do manifestly, it's going to increase costs for ordinary Americans. And it's almost a straight line. It really can't be disputed. I don't think there's an economic argument against that. I really don't. So yeah, there's a lot to work with here. It's going to take a lot of discipline and a lot of stick-to-it-miss to stay and remind people what this is.

11:22Yeah. Yeah. I hear you on that. We got a couple more questions for you. One is how many dogs do you have there? Well, this is the Shenandoah County Symphony Orchestra. You got two? How many you got? I think there's about four or five. That doesn't count goats and the chickens. James Carville has a lot of animals. It's a whole farm there. We love that because we book one animal. That's you. We book one alligator, and we get a couple other animals in the background. That's great. Stay with me, James. What I want to ask you about as well is Paramount, which owns CBS and 60 Minutes, caving to Trump, paying this off.

12:08Some Democrats today saying this is basically a bribe. And I want to get you your take on that. It's another big news story today. We're back with James the Alligator and the Dogs in 90 seconds. You know that feeling. Too many updates, too many meetings, too many things falling through the cracks. Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up, for people and agents to work side by side and deliver more together. Drafting the brief, flagging risks, running a competitive scan, your agent can do it all. And the best part, anyone can build one. Even you. Try it.

12:45Create your first Monday agent today at monday.com. Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in. And that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We stop crime before it starts. SimpliSafe, plan starting around$1 a day. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash sxm or with promo code sxm. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.

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13:53Donald Trump has been putting pressure on all kinds of corporations. some of whom withstood the pressure more last time around in the first term, but that's changing. Today, another domino falling. Paramount, which is the parent company of CBS, folding. There was a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris during the campaign. And Donald Trump sued over CBS airing that interview. He was also invited to join 60 Minutes. He has previously. He didn't at that time. No serious lawyers looked at this as a suit that was likely to win in court if you kept fighting. But Paramount stopped fighting. They are paying about$16 million.

14:30The payment goes to a future presidential library. It is an embarrassment. It is a type of surrendering to Trump. The network notes that it is not apologizing for doing journalism, which is interviewing candidates. It is going to release the full transcripts of those interviews. Critics say this is clearly over the line. Elizabeth Warren says it's a bribe. Another Democratic senator today says, quote, Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval. Trump's aides in the administration deny that there was any exchange, or if you know the term, quid pro quo, for the merger, but that's the allegation, and there is a wider pattern.

15:08Consider that in the second term, Trump has gotten payments from these companies to him or his interests. You see them on the screen? Some of these are run by people who are more aligned with him now, including X. Others are supposed to be independent. The pattern is clear. Pay up or get in trouble with the government. You're back with James Carville. Your view of this decision by the CBS News' parent company. So let me get this straight. They're looking at approval of a merger, as Senator Warren pointed out, I think very correctly. And there's an effect that, you know, the Trump administration has to give approval to this so they could stall it forever.

15:51Mrs. Redstone, who was some of the Redstone's widow, is the primary shareholder. I think daughter, but yeah, go ahead. Right. So they pay$16 million to get it through. That's a hell of a good deal for Paramount. I mean, I don't know how much money they're going to make by selling this, but, and the same thing happened with Disney. We tend to forget that Amazon paid Melania Trump$41 million for a documentary. There is no documentary ever produced in the history of the world for anything approaching 41 million. That's a subject I know something about. The war room wouldn't even make 40 million in today's adjusted dollars.

16:29So right in front of you, it's just an old shakedown, you know, like it would be terrible if someone broke your windows out, wouldn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you see it as extortion. You see it as what? Go ahead. How else could you see it? You want a merger? Hand a lawsuit? Send a lawsuit? You get to merge. I don't know how an objective person could look at this, and that would not be the first thought that comes to his mind. If this was the first time, you could say, well, it's a one-off. You just put up three other instances. I would add to Amazon. So for previous things, there's a pattern here.

17:08There's a real pattern. Well, you're right that Amazon will put we'll pull that graphic back up when we have it ready in a second. There it is. These are just settlements in the cases. James is absolutely right. The 40 million dollars that Amazon paid, which is run by Bezos, which is also had this back and forth fight with Trump, was to put it economically far above market value. There was not a market demand or an auction. You can have a public bidding process and see whether companies that aren't in a fight with Trump put up 30, 40, 50 million for a Melania doc. But as you say, that was also suspect.

17:42While Bezos, of course, is out gallivanting. You mentioned that earlier in our unequal times. What is to be done, James? I mean, Senator Wyden says he is going to preserve this material and thinks there should be an investigation and a possible prosecution in the future. What has to be done is you must win an election. And the way you win the election is coming up in, I hate to be like a one-note giant, giant one-note here, but you've got to win the election. The way you win the election is you focus on the horror of this bill that just passed Congress. Stay unified, recruit. You're going to win big in Virginia.

18:15I think you're going to win big in New Jersey, and you've got to roll with the 26th. The only way that you can account for this, the only way you can investigate this is through political power, and that only comes by winning elections. So let me ask you a question that I've gotten from MSNBC viewers and other people come up to me and they say, well, with everything going on, will there be free and fair elections? James is telling me to go get organized. They're worried about that. What do you say to that question? I'd say your concerns are legitimate. I'd never tell anybody that's worried that, no, don't you worry about that, because he's going to see what's going to happen in Virginia, New Jersey.

18:52The data is going to be coming in on this bill. You're going to start seeing, I saw some North Carolina and a Democrat up in the Senate, I don't know, 12 points. It'll only get worse. He's going to see that coming. He's going to try to do anything that he can possibly to try to educate himself for what is almost certain to be a humiliating loss in October, November of 2026. So people should be worried. They should be vigilant. They should watch this. You should. Not just the media. Everybody, everybody should watch this. in no way we're not going to have an election. That's got to be the message.

19:26And I think that's a popular concept. Yeah. I got my final question for you. You'll never guess what it's about. All right. You mentioned New York City had this mayor's race. Right. The winner here is an AOC-style Democratic Socialist. You've had your, in the primary, you've had your battles with various folks. We talk about what's winnability and what's a good campaign message. A lot of folks outside of New York are watching the race. There's a lot of different views of it. Inside New York, a big part of the message was populism, affordability, make this city livable for everybody again. A lot of people found that to be an uplifting message, although he may have other demerits, including figuring out how he speaks about foreign policy and other issues, which also matter to a lot of people in New York.

20:13So I'm not painting it with one brush, but your thoughts on the results. Are they relevant to the Democrats in the rest of the country or not? I think they are because he never got out of talking about affordability and how people, how they met this. Yeah, he had some, I would say, esoteric positions, people uncomfortable. They look beyond that. And I think the message is that's what we got to talk about. And we talk about the big, beautiful bill. We got to talk about how this is going to increase cost on America. because the cost of living is going to go up for most average Americans, and there's real power in that.

20:50Governments fell all around the world on this issue of cost of living. We probably lost the presidency because it was a big contributing factor to us losing the presidency. So let me make sure I'm hearing you right. You think Zoran was right to hammer affordability. I absolutely do. And yes, he absolutely understood what it was about, and Andrew just never addressed that. And it was, you know, the big thing this guy does, he sees people. People say, you know, I don't know if I go to that guy, but he sees me. He knows what it's like to get up at 4 o 'clock in the morning, to go to the transit station, to get on the transit, how much a quarter increase in a transit fare is going to hurt me.

21:32He knows what it's like to get off the train to walk six hours of work, to work nine hours a day to come back and your kids and take it. He knows that. And let me tell you, a lot of politics is just telling people that they exist, that I see you and your problems. Maybe the solution is impractical, but at least he sees us. Really striking. And I think that was a big, big, big factor for him. Wanted to get your read on that. James Carville, on many topics, thanks for joining us tonight. Back there. And well, again, glad you enjoyed the music in the background. Hey, the dogs are barking. Thank you, sir.

22:05I'll tell folks what's coming up. We turn to California where Governor Newsom has some new ideas about dealing with what has been a housing crisis there even with green trade-offs. But first, the verdict in the Diddy case came today. That's next.

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23:55Turning to a case with major implications today well outside of music or business in New York. A jury reaching the verdict today in the trial of mogul Sean Diddy Combs, finding him not guilty of the two most serious charges in this case. racketeering and sex trafficking, but also finding him guilty on two lesser crimes involving prostitution transportation. The mixed verdict drawing strong reactions from Combs detractors and fans, many gathering outside the courthouse today for the culmination of this long saga, this seven-week federal trial, the news rippling across the nation. A mixed verdict here.

24:32Sex trafficking, not guilty. Wow, that's a big deal. Okay. So that is obviously an enormous win for the defense. We're pleased that he's finally been held responsible for two federal crimes. The jury clearly did not believe that the government proved the unreasonable route, that these two women were sex trafficked by force. The jurors stood up for what was right. This is a real backlash, I think, to the Me Too movement. We as a society still have a lot of trouble understanding these both and kind of situations. This particular case may not fit neatly into any wider narratives. These two convictions are still serious crimes.