MS NOW Exclusive: House GOP Privately Fears Midterm Doom

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0:55I'm Melissa Murray, in for Ari Melber. And we begin tonight with President Trump flailing after his White House press ban backfires. MSNOW, CNN, and Politico have already sued over the ban. The first hearing in that suit is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and the judge has ordered the White House to respond to the media company's request for a temporary restraining order by today. His ban has also had immediate and perhaps unintended consequences. TV networks have united against the ban by refusing to cover the president. The Washington Post notes that Trump is now being deprived of, quote, the thing he craves most, attention.

1:40While the New York Times wrote that he's facing, quote, the sting of cancellation. Here's the president today lashing out at CNN for covering him at the United Nations, a location where the network is notably not banned. Take a listen. I'm surprised that CNN is here covering me. You shouldn't be here. You should not. You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me. You shouldn't be covering me. Quick fact check. CNN never said that it wouldn't cover the president. Indeed, CNN is a party to the lawsuit seeking access to the White House in order to cover the president.

2:21Trump's allies are, however, rushing in to defend him while Democrats call out this latest brazen attack on free speech. Take a listen. We're not closing CNN. There aren't a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MSNOW, whatever it's called, and arresting people and unplugging it from the grid. They're just not allowed to work from the workspace at the White House. I told the president that we're going to have all of the members of the press here on the lawn. And that is something that I believe in is everyone, no matter the opinion or the critique that we engage.

2:59The Wall Street Journal reports that the president has reportedly floated the possibility of moving all of the press corps out of the White House, and that's been something he's thought about many times before, including as recently as last month. Now, a move like that may, like this ban, actually backfire on the White House. The president, though, is now launching a Trump TV channel on YouTube, and that drew immediate criticism. Some called it a, quote, global embarrassment. New York Magazine noted that, quote, no one is watching. So it's fair to say that the ban is garnering widespread backlash.

3:39And late night host wasted no time getting in on the action. Listen up. The hottest spot in D.C. has just changed their door policy. Bad news is fake news to Donald Trump. Trump banned all three outlets, and I thought this was odd. He even dressed like Alan Cumming to tell him, you're banished from my castle. You could ban the press, or you could be a better president. Do you realize how far south somebody has to go for Fox News to defend CNN? Speaking of Fox News defending CNN, here's Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley criticizing the ban. These courts have emphasized, even the ones that favored the White House, that it can't be done arbitrarily.

4:29You can't engage in viewpoint discrimination. Here, that seems to be the case in spades. You have the president saying, I don't like this coverage. This runs against the grain of our traditions, our values, and frankly, the First Amendment. it. The president himself already seems like he might be ready to back down from this. Earlier today, he said he would probably let the banned media back into the White House if the court rules that he must. Joining me now to discuss all of this is Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and an MSNOW legal analyst, as well as at the table, Janil Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and former deputy legal director for the ACLU.

5:16All right, Andrew, let me go to you first. Even the Fox News legal analysts can't find a way to argue that this ban is legal. Do you agree with Fox News? You know, this is a rare time for me to say, yes, I do, Melissa. But there's like good news and bad news in this story. The good news, as you noted, is the idea that we are finally seeing people act in solidarity. We were looking for universities to do that. We were looking for law firms to do that. Here, you are seeing the media across various spectrums of political ideology understanding this is a First Amendment issue. And they can see that if it's going to be MSNOW today, it could be Fox News tomorrow.

6:05And so that's the good news. The bad news is this is so blatantly unconstitutional. And while the president did it, and we're sort of inured to the idea that the president did it, we know of no person in the White House who objected to this. And all of these people are public officials who took an oath of office. And it tells you how they view the oath versus how they view the loyalty to the president with something that is just flat out unconstitutional. So, Jamil, that's a great point. There are a lot of people in this White House who went to law school who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution, and they are apparently on board with this.

6:44This is going to go before a Trump appointee tomorrow. And this is someone who's already had a little bit of a taste of the president's efforts to limit access to the media. He also oversaw the case that was brought by CNN reporter Jim Acosta when he was ousted from the White House press corps. Do you think that is going to shape the way he views this case or is this just an open and shut situation and maybe the judge will even rule from the bench here? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very straightforward First Amendment case. Normally, there is a dispute over whether government action is viewpoint discriminatory.

7:18If you're, you know, if you're litigating a First Amendment suit, you're always trying to prove that the government's action was based on your viewpoint, that they retaliated against you because they didn't like what you had to say. But here the president said it multiple times. He said, you know, I'm imposing this ban because I don't like the reporting of these news organizations. So there's no factual dispute. And the legal question, there's a Fifth Amendment question, which you referenced, having to do with the procedural rights that the news organizations have. Judge Kelly has already decided in a different case.

7:56The Acosta case. The Acosta case, exactly. That kicking somebody out from the press corps without giving them notice and an opportunity to be heard is unconstitutional. So that's very straightforward. And then the D.C. Circuit, since the Acosta decision, has held that the press corps is a public forum, which, you know, is a fancy First Amendment way of saying that the government can't act on the basis of viewpoint in that space. So I think it's a pretty straightforward case. So if it is a straightforward case, Andrew, do you worry that if the president loses here because, in part, he's been a little too clear about what the intentions are, could he go back and figure out a better way, a pretextual way, perhaps, to ban the press he doesn't want, but just to do it in a way that seems less obviously discriminatory?

8:46You know, perhaps, again, this plan to move the entire press corps out of the White House is a way to limit access to make the coverage perhaps less obviously objectionable to him. You know, that's possible. I mean, the counter is exactly what you opened with, Melissa, which is that this is somebody who craves the limelight. And, you know, moving the press away is, you know, he's like, wait a second, I'm going to follow that then because he wants that attention. Are there ways that he could try to sort of craft something that could withstand scrutiny? Based on what Jamil talked about, which is the D.C.

9:25Circuit does have a two-to-one decision that gives some wiggle room for areas like the plane, the Oval Office, areas where they have said that the president can have some sort of viewpoint discrimination. Taking basically the idea like, you know, he doesn't have to sit down with Rachel Maddow and then sit down with Fox News. He's able to make those kinds of decisions. And they've sort of expanded that to certain locations that are more or less private. He could try to do that. But I think here, if the news organizations band together, that's because that is their power. That is what we were all talking about when there was an attack on universities and an attack on law firms.

10:14And I feel like this is one where the news organizations are just so getting this correctly in terms of their power and how to insert it. So, Jamil, you suggested that maybe the judge, Judge Kelly, actually rules from the bench tomorrow. This is such an open and shut case that a ruling may be incredibly... I think he should. He thinks he should. And maybe he will. Are you worried, though, that this administration, which already seems to, you know, get very close to skirting legal pronouncements from courts, may actually justify this entirely? Yeah, I mean, I think skirting is a very generous way of putting it.

10:50You know, I think that they have been, you know, contemptuous in the colloquial sense, at least, of that term, of judicial orders in so many different contexts. This is obviously part of a larger strategy. I mean, this, the expulsion of these particular news organizations is part of a larger strategy to restrict and intimidate the press. I mean, we've seen it with the AP exclusion from the White House press pool. They're doing some similar shenanigans with the Pentagon press pool, imposing restrictions on journalists' access to the Pentagon. And I think it's, you know, partly about intimidating the press and partly about just putting a question mark in all of our minds every time there is a story published, you know, by a news organization.

11:37Now, the reader can't help but wonder, well, would this be different if, you know, CNN weren't worried about losing access to the White House press pool? I think that's a really damaging thing. And it's hard to, even if these news organizations win this case tomorrow, I think that, unfortunately, President Trump has probably done some real damage to public trust in the media, which was already at a low point. So, Andrew, to that point, this is not the first attack that this president has made on a free press. And is this simply about whittling down the available accountability institutions that are available to critique and hold this administration to account?

12:19Because we've already seen the law firms that might be available to provide pro bono resources to challenge this government whittle down. We have seen the president use the power of government regulation to bring the media to heel. Is this simply another way to limit the kind of accountability that he faces at the end of the second term? Absolutely. And also to mold what it is that the electorate sees. And, you know, he's right now doing this in a different way, which is having the FCC sort of attack and put pressure on media organizations, sometimes with some fair success. And yes, I am talking about CBS and other news organizations.

13:03The Paramount merger, which the Department of Justice is not seeking to prevent, is another way that there is sort of now is going to be a sort of Damocles over CNN. end. And so there are various levers that the government has to sort of turn us into sort of an autocratic regime. And this is straight out of the 1930s in Germany. But there are much more modern ways to see governments who do this so that the public does not see information that political officials do not want the public to know. All right. Sobering news to start us off this evening. Andrew Weissman, Jamil Jaffer, thanks so much for kicking us off.

13:48Thank you. Coming up, what experts say is a new war crime threat from Donald Trump on the world stage at the United Nations. Plus, the latest on that ice shooting victim who was detained was a bullet still lodged in his back. But first, what Republicans are privately saying about the midterms as the president's approval ratings sink to all-time lows. We are back in just 90 seconds.

14:22We now turn to exclusive MSNOW reporting the details that House Republicans are privately worried that they are doomed in the midterms. One House member says, quote, we're going to get crushed. The only question is by how much. Another GOP House member said, if you're a Republican and you're not concerned, quote, you're stupid. Today, Fox News shifted a whopping 17 congressional races to favor the Democrats. And the president is down to a 29 % approval rating in a new poll, with 68 % of respondents disapproving of his performance. All of this as food and gas prices hammer voters. And multiple Republican candidates who have long backed the president's war in Iran are now trying to change their tunes.

15:13Here's GOP Senate candidate in Michigan, Congressman Mike Rogers. Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. You have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly. But it's not just the Iran war. This week, a powerful House Republican came out against allocating funding for the president's triumphal arch in the District of Columbia. And a GOP senator says that he wants to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. over Trump Jr.'s Russian-funded wedding weekend celebration. Clear, Trump Jr. has said it was a gift from a friend. In Florida, the GOP candidate for governor, Byron Donalds, is, quote, stripping his campaign website of all references to the president.

16:08And this morning, a conservative columnist in the Wall Street Journal ripped the president's actions in office as, quote, unnecessarily cruel and indiscriminate, fundamentally un-American, grotesque self-enrichment, buffoonish symbolic acts, hubris, vanity, recklessness. Oh, my. And today, not to be outdone, the president's agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, is making headlines for suggesting that Americans who are facing the rising cost of beef should simply make different choices. Take a listen. If it is too expensive, unlike FuelBinny, you can eat chicken, pork, salmon, eggs. There are other sources of really good protein.

16:51And all of those prices are coming down as well. coming up i have two perfect guests to break all of this down including various protein options all of that is up next after this short break

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19:09I was with the president last night and he talked about gas prices and he talked about the need to make sure we get them down. But he's doing everything humanly possible and it does take some time. So that's what we need. We need more time right now. We need a longer runway. Joining me now is Molly Jungfast, contributing writer with The New York Times and host of the Fast Politics podcast. Also with me at the table is David Litt, former Obama speechwriter, bestselling author, and the author of the word salad, Substack. Molly, we just heard the RNC chair say that gas is too expensive, but the solution is to give Republicans, quote, more runway.

19:46And last week we had J.D. Vance telling us to just give the Republicans one more chance. Sounds a lot like 90s R &B. Is it a winning message for the midterms? Look, what I think has really hurt Donald Trump more than anything is the fact that he has actually said he actually said to voters like we're going to find peace. You know, we're going to go to peace with Iran and gas prices are going to go down. And then the gas prices did go down and the market went up. So we've seen a couple of times over the course of this Iran war him do that. And what it's demonstrated to voters is that actually the war did raise gas prices.

20:24And so even though that, you know, he thought that was helping him, it actually ultimately, I think, really voters saw just how tied the war in Iran was to gas prices. And so there was like no way to make any excuses about it. The other problem that has really been a problem for Trump is that he never tried to sell the war in the first place. And they had so many different sort of messages on it that there was never any clarity. So you would say, well, it's because of a nuke. Well, it's because of this, because of that. And I think it's just sort of too late for them to be able to message it now.

21:00Also, David, to that point, there has been a lot of mixed messaging, certainly on the Iran war. But they all seem to be getting in line on this message, which is, baby, give me one more chance. Like, is this a winning message going into the midterms or are Americans over it? I think, you know, Melissa, it's a winning message with people who are already inclined to believe them. And that, I think, is what if I were a Republican strategist, a lot in my life would have gone differently than it's gone. But also, I think it's the same thing where the convention, the Trumpapalooza that they had earlier in September.

21:33Yes, the midterm convention. Exactly. It was a lot of preaching to the choir and saying, give us another chance works really well with people who said, yeah, I'd like to give you another chance. But a lot of those voters who said, I actually don't really like Donald Trump. His policy, the first term, I maybe didn't vote for him, but I'm going to give him a chance, even though part of me wonders if that's a bad idea. They don't want to give Trump another chance. They were worried about giving him the first, second chance. Is this midterm elections going to be about turnout? And if it is about turnout, is that really going to be served by give us another chance?

22:05Or is that just for the Democrats to get out? I think that the give us another chance is a turnout mechanism for Democrats, too. Right. The Democrats are looking at this saying that's exactly what we don't want. But I think that every midterm election is about turnout. The big question that I'm asking myself is this huge red wave of money. Right. The Democrats are going to get outspent a lot in this election. And a lot of that money has not arrived yet. Is that going to be able to push Republican turnout up a little bit if they can get three, four percent more turnout than you would expect? That could take some of these races off the table.

22:38So, Molly, this is going to be a turnout game. And some of the Republicans who are running are trying to help themselves a little bit by distancing themselves from this president and a record that looks really uneven right now. Is this going to work with voters, especially for people like Mike Rogers from Michigan, who was for the war before he was against it? Yeah. And Byron Donalds in Florida, who has like wiped the Trump off his website. Look, especially when you are a candidate who exists only because you've been endorsed by Trump or because you're MAGA friendly like a Ken Paxton. I think it's a I think it's a real problem for them.

23:15The other thing that I would add is that in 2018, Democrats way overperformed and and and the and the economy was much better. Right. People gave the economy much higher marks. Here we have a midterm election where even if the stock market is up, voters are very sour on this economy. So you have a problem, which is you have like record high diesel prices, high gas prices, voters who are upset about the economy. And the message we're seeing from the Republicans, and I think David has a good point about all the spending, you know, we're seeing the MAGA PAC has really just, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and they're going to spend a lot of money.

23:55They're already buying these huge ad buys. But the message from them is a lot of culture war stuff, which I don't think moves the needle the same way if you can't afford to fill your car up with gas. And also just a lot of like, you know, kind of this kind of, you know, we are going to sort of get it together eventually, which, again, I just think people don't vote on that. So, David, Molly just mentioned the enormous campaign spending asymmetry that exists that favors the Republican. This is a situation where a lot of the wins are tacking in the Democrats' favor, but not the money part. So the Republicans are sitting on a huge war chest.

24:35Is that going to make a big difference going into the short term of this race where it really is going to come down to the wire? I think it's an unknown, right? I think there's this question of the red wave of money is going to crash over all of these media markets. And then if Democrats have withstood that, I would be much more confident saying, OK, definitely a blue wave is coming. We don't really know yet. I think there's some reasons to think that Americans right now who are already looking at the economy and how unequal it is, how you have the richest people in history trying to get even more while ordinary Americans are struggling.

25:09you could also see this backfire where saying, hey, by the way, we're bankrolled by all the people rigging the system is also not a winning message. So, Molly, to that point, what about these coordinated spending packages? Like so like party ads that are being parceled out in some of these competitive districts? I know that there's a lot being pushed into North Carolina where Roy Cooper is on the ballot for Senate. A lot of this seems to be aimed at preventing the Democrats from taking over the upper chamber. Are those likely to be successful given the huge war chest that the Republicans are sitting on?

25:42Well, that's a real question. And you have like fair shake the cryptocurrency pack deciding to spend, spend, spend. And they're going to, you know, go there and say, you know, what I have read. Recent reporting says that they are going to support Republicans and not Democrats because they're upset about this. The pro cryptocurrency act that has just failed in the Senate. But it's called the Clarity Act. But I do think that that may backfire because, remember, there were these judicial races in 2025 in Wisconsin where Elon Musk came to Wisconsin, put on a cheese hat, danced around and also poured millions and millions of dollars into it.

26:24And it actually ended up hurting the candidates and the Democrat ran away with it. So I do think that when voters see that, we've seen this with AIPAC spending, too. When voters see that they're that a big group is pouring money into a race because of something else, it tends to undermine the candidates. Now, it depends. But like the Haley Stevens primary is a great example. She got a lot of money from AIPAC and she didn't win. So it's not always a fait accompli. And I think we just have to see how it plays out. But there certainly is a huge, huge Republicans have just a ton more money this cycle.