Taylor Swift Returns After Dunking on Trump's 'Hate'

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0:36Yeah, so do we. Here at Designer Shoe Warehouse, we'll give you something to brag about. Like the latest styles from brands you love. Or the trends everyone's obsessing over. Or shoes that make you feel like, well, you. So go ahead, show off a little. Find shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. Head to your DSW store or DSW.com today. DSW, let us surprise you. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. And I am smiling because, well, I love seeing Nicole and seeing you. And we do have some good stuff by the end of the hour. So we will get to that, I promise. The top story is Trump trying to seize power with the Pentagon doing several strikes.

1:16Now the fourth strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela. This is, of course, at a time where we have other problems. The U.S. government is partially shut down. Of course, foreign policy can continue. You have these rather dramatic scenes. They've killed four men who, according to the U.S., were accused of smuggling drugs. But that, again, is according to the Trump administration. This is not exactly some legal process. We don't have public evidence yet. Whatever the government releases will follow. U.S. military has killed about 21 people, according to the evidence we have, that it asserts were drug traffickers, and there's no due process for that, so we're in more of a war posture, like I said, than a domestic legal one.

1:53Now, the wider context is Trump using the word war in a host of settings. War on U.S. cities, war for training grounds, war on these cartels, and trying to say they're unlawful combatants. Now, the wider context is the big problem here. If you've followed American foreign policy, it has aggrandized executive power, sometimes without Congress or legal proceedings, under many different administrations. Sometimes the threat was considered urgent and high, like after 9-11 or dealing with individuals credibly believed to be foreign operational terrorists. Drug dealing or international cartels are also a big problem for the U.S.

2:33and one you want to thwart, but legally under foreign policy, not necessarily at the level of post-9-11 terror. And again, that's just one piece. Then you have the crackdown at home, where troops are being asked to do things that are unprecedented, without governor's approval, going to Tennessee and Memphis this week. Trump threatening Portland. There's reports that 200 Oregon troops are now going what they call initial military training, according to this ABC News account, Oregon already suing to try to stop what they view as potentially unconstitutional deployment, saying Trump doesn't have the authority there.

3:06And then there's ICE, which again, has long operated under both administrations to do types of immigration enforcement. But under every other administration, including Republican ones, it has generally had a hierarchy and dealt with perceived potential or active criminals who are engaged in, say, the drug dealing, the violence, other things. differently than just anyone who might be undocumented. Well, those days have shifted. ICE escalating tactics in Illinois, arresting protesters outside an ICE facility after a confrontation, agents in tactical gear, roaming the streets. Many critics view it as something other than traditional immigration enforcement.

3:51It is ICE's responsibility to respect and uphold our First Amendment rights. It is not on us to accommodate their illegal and immoral actions. This is violence that we are seeing in our community. We have constitutional rights and in the city of Chicago, every single elected official is going to protect those constitutional rights.

4:17ICE targeting criminals or people believed to be engaged in violence. We've seen that before. ICE targeting protesters and walking around in masks and camo and clearly going at people who are either likely citizens or clearly citizens, haven't seen that. Presidents testing foreign policy powers even without Congress, sometimes using lethal powers, we've seen that before. Presidents doing that while waging a war, his word on the home front, a war on our cities, asking the entire military to come together and giving a speech that was so obviously partisan that the generals, many appointed by Trump, had to stay in stony silence to show the country and follow the rules that this was partisan and not normal government leadership.

5:01We haven't seen that, not in the modern era. I want to bring in SDNY civil prosecutor, veteran, and human rights expert, Maya Wiley, and NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has studied and written about authoritarian governments. Ruth, the facts are what they are, and past presidents have certainly pushed the bounds of lethal powers abroad. So this is not a story where every single part of it is wholly unusual to Donald Trump. I say that in accuracy and fairness. But combined with a lot of what else is happening this week, there does seem to be alarms. How do you view it on the evidence, regardless of what one thinks of Trump's politics?

5:44Well, you know, we've been focusing a lot on the attacks on the rule of law at home as part of an authoritarian advance. And we can't separate this from attempts to kind of destroy respect for international law. And what the administration is really doing is redefining what the battleground is, where the battleground is, who is an enemy, who is a combatant, And these are all of a piece. And I know this because in my book, Strongman, I studied these juntas, these military dictatorships and Cold War. And the way that in Chile, Pinochet justified his crackdowns was saying it was now a time of war and war was redefined to be a war on civilians.

6:40And so the military in Chile, which was very different than other militaries in Latin America, was very democratic, very dedicated to the Constitution. It had to have this shift. And that's what Hegseth's speech at Quantico was about, from my estimation, was reorienting the military, saying, now we're untying your hands. And that meant implicitly to many people in international dealings as well. So this is an attack on international respect for international laws that are dictated by democratic internationalism. That's why there's been all the attacks on NATO. The admiration for dictators is also an admiration for their lack of respect for democratic international norms.

7:30And Maya, this is coming as the White House is also facing anger and concern about the government shutting down and whether Trump has his eye on the ball of that, his job on the home front. Yeah, for sure. Let me just underscore one thing here. And it is the through point between what you teed up, Ari, about what these attacks against people, civilians, who are being called, not necessarily with any demonstrated proof that we've seen, members of gangs, let alone whether this falls within the powers of the president, which I haven't found any authority for and there is none cited for. Remember, it's Congress under our Constitution that declares war.

8:18So that's important to know. But the through point here is these are civilians. Whether we're talking about the people on the streets of our cities or whether we're talking about people on boats in international waters, there is no allegation here that they are actually part of armed forces that the U.S. military would take action against. And the line being crossed in both of these instances, and to your point, where Donald Trump is using language of war, whether it's related to U.S. civilians in our own country or in these attacks in international waters, really amounts to the same thing. We're seeing him utilize the military in ways that have nothing to do with the norms or rules that bound the U.S.

9:08military. And the only reason to do that, to Ruth's point, is to abuse power for personal gain. And to your point, because he's in a situation right now where the economy is not going well for a lot of Americans, where we're seeing Americans taking hips on their health care because of Republican and his administration's policies, where we're seeing chaos. It's a word that I think we've heard others use, but it is very well felt inside the Capitol in terms of the operations of federal government, and it is impacting ordinary people. And then you have things like the Jeffrey Epstein files, which the majority of Americans want to see.

9:48There's a lot to have to distract from, and it's not uncommon to abuse power, to drive division, to give someone a different focus and a different enemy. and far too often, that's us, civilians, we the people. Right. And you talk about those walls closing in, the government shut down Epstein, other issues, Trump officials blowing the whistle on their own administration, somewhat unusual. We have more on that actually coming up. On the autocratic issues, Ruth, I wanted to show you this headline, Treasury considering a$1 Trump coin, which they say would somehow commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S.

10:29Of course, you got about 240 years of history you could draw on. You can see the prototype here, according to Politico. I'm going to leave this on the screen because you have on the one side the kind of profile picture we associate with dead presidents, deceased presidents usually long after their political rule, if they are seen at that level to make a coin, make the coin cut, if you will. And then on the other side, you have, of course, something that was a was a terrible moment for the country, the attempted assassination. But lionizing that with Trump's fist in the air and a coin treatment.

11:02Where does this fit in with how the U.S. usually does this and how more autocratic regimes do it? Because it looks quite unusual. Well, it is unusual in democracies because this is part of President Trump's personality cult. And he has been building this for 10 years now. And really, books will be written about how skillful he was at keeping his personality cult going, even when he was out of power for four years. And so now he is, you know, very open about being an autocratic strongman. So that's why we also have giant pictures of his face on government buildings. You know, it looks like North Korea or classic dictatorships.

11:49And so why not have a coin that immortalizes him as well? And it's his, you know, the posture of the fighter, the rogue. And so, you know, this is of a piece of what we're discussing, that this is somebody whose way he operates is to be a fighter and to declare war and to think of everything as either he wins or else. And so the coin is about that, coming back with the fist raised and now declaring war on America. And that includes American civilians. Yeah, and it ties together with, again, a Newsweek where there's all these other problems and the government is shut down and you can see the pretext for using various events as emergencies.

12:39Professor, thank you. Maya, stay with me. We are going to turn very shortly to why the White House is enraged about a Trump cabinet official blowing the lid, alleging, we'll get into the evidence, but alleging a cover up for Epstein by Republican officials. how the shutdown is showing more facts about the Project 2025 agenda, which, remember, so many officials seem to deny. Maybe they knew it was unpopular when running for office. Now we have the receipts. And by the end of the hour, Taylor Swift. The new album drops last night, midnight. We have the news on that. We'll be back in 90 seconds.

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14:54A huge whistleblower, a claim that Republican officials have helped cover up for Epstein, coming from a current Trump cabinet member. That's the news that screamed across Washington this week when Cabinet Secretary Howard Lutnick made these amazing, astounding, guilty comments about Epstein. The Commerce Secretary has completely shredded and rebutted what the DOJ's official story was. Remember, they said no evidence about Epstein committing other crimes, blackmailing other people or blackmailing the government itself, which has been a question. What we're showing you is what a current cabinet official says.

15:32Doesn't mean it's true. There have been a lot of warring claims about Epstein. But Lutnick says he had his own firsthand knowledge of Epstein. I say to him, massage table in the middle of your house. How often do you have a massage? And he says, every day. And then he gets weirdly close to me. And he says, and the right kind of massage. And what happened in that massage room, I assume was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. Blackmailed people, that's how he had money. I assume way back when, they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18 month sentence. Lutnick there sounding downright sinister.

16:21He is describing what he says he learned from his firsthand observation of Epstein, those interactions, as well as his inferences. That's not hard evidence, but it is a major problem for a Trump administration, which is hiding documents and says there were no other crimes. Lutnick talking about another crime of blackmail. Maya Wiley is back with me. How do you view these statements and now Democrats call for Lutnick to testify, given the great import of what he's alleging. Well, first, let's remember Secretary Lutnick, a Trump appointee, not somebody who is in a camp of opposition for Donald Trump.

17:01And obviously, he wasn't talking about Donald Trump in that clip about Jeffrey Epstein. But here's the point. you have someone of his stature saying very explicitly, this guy is all that nasty stuff we're hearing about. And this guy, from his standpoint as a businessman, remember his background is as a Wall Street businessman, not a politician, is just saying what every other person who has paid any attention to the facts of this case is saying, which is, ew, this guy is creepy. All of the allegations, not, and remember, he's also going way back to 2005 before, before the U.S. attorney in Miami, who becomes a Trump, another and different Trump secretary, cabinet and Trump member in Trump One, basically gives Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal, despite all of the evidence that suggests this guy is beyond creepy.

18:05He's actually literally taking advantage of young girls in all the most egregious ways that we know. But I just want to underscore this one point. You're always good about doing this, Ari, as well. I mean, Lutnick is making very clear in that interview that he doesn't have facts of bribery. He's making an assumption. Now, the reason that's important is because we shouldn't listen to this as facts in evidence that there is blackmail, right? And that's important to note. But having said that, drawing the natural inference of all these powerful men and the ability of Jeffrey Epstein to somehow escape the county for so many years.

18:47I'm going to jump in to say, and that he was around it. We have other legal news I definitely want to get you on. So that's the Sean Diddy Combs sentencing. Finally came late today. The disgraced mogul getting arrested over four years in prison, convicted on those two counts of transport for the purposes of prostitution. There were much more serious charges that carried longer prison time. He was cleared on those sex trafficking and RICO charges. Maya, your reaction to this sentence based on the charges that he was convicted of? Two reactions. He's going to do real time. And that is going to matter for a lot of people.

19:25The second, though, is that there are a lot of victims, including those who testified, including Cassie Ventura, who made very clear that they were afraid of what was going to happen to them as a result of the fact that they came out and testified against him. And that is something that I sit with when we remember the videotape that we all saw publicly and all of the number of allegations about just how violent, just how prevalent what he was convicted of is, and also just how much the prosecution has some accounting to do for, given the facts that we've heard and the way they postured the case.

20:09Yeah, understood. And a big development there in finally learning what his justice and sentence would be. Maya Wiley, thank you. By the end of the hour. We have the update on Taylor Swift returning with the new album, government watchdogs fighting back and the Stephen Miller receipts next.

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22:13infrastructure weeks, targeting billions in energy funding and trying to do this by explicitly going after states that didn't vote for him, which looks punitive. Now, remember, the project's architect, Russell Vogt, works in a key budget position in the Trump administration, and there's renewed scrutiny because of all the dubious claims during the campaign that this big Trump-related thing wasn't going to be their governing blueprint. Some on Fox clocking this 180. Remember what Donald Trump said a year ago. I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who's behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.

22:55So I'm wondering, Francesca, did he just learn about Project 2025 in the last year, or did he know about it all along? Did he know about it all along? a gentle way of suggesting that they were being misleading. This matters because when you hear talk about whether they have a mandate from what they ran on, you got to remember what they ran on. We interview everybody here that's willing to take an adversarial journalistic interview, and it's something we pressed on when we had these interviews during the campaign. Why do so many parts of the Republican platform overlap with 25? And we can put examples on the screen for you, including, as I think you know, abortion.

23:35It's very simple. President Trump has said he has nothing to do with Project 2025. Project 2025 has absolutely nothing to do with the past, present, or future. President Trump and President Trump alone will make his own policies. Categorical denials. Apparently they knew then it would get in the way of winning. And now when you hear people say, oh, this is the mandate, well, it certainly wasn't for the Project 2025 issues that they're now trying to implement. Coming up, everything you need to know about the new Taylor Swift album, which will be discussed all weekend, and the new fallout from the failed Musk cuts.

24:17What if the cuts cost money? That's the question of rocking the Trump White House after Elon Musk and those so-called programs to cut waste, fraud, and abuse are failing when you actually total it all up. Governing is hard. There was a lot of talk about how this would save money, but it doesn't save money or help the public when you oust and fire hundreds of essential federal workers that were so important even the Trump administration has realized they must rehire them. A, quote, giant waste of money, as one account puts it. We also have receipts. A new Senate report from the summer shows this whole thing and the unwieldy ignorant way it was waged cost over$20 billion.

24:57dollars. So keep that in mind and whether they really care about any of this or it's a pretext for weakening the government and oversight because a lot of the folks who patrol corruption and fraud in the government also are a check on executive power, something Trump doesn't like. The Post reporting the Trump plans now include ending funding for an oversight group which helps those watchdogs inspectors generals do. There it is, quote, waste, fraud and abuse patrol. Those watchdogs saw many of their ranks thinned or ousted earlier this year, some speaking out. IGs oversee how the priorities of the administration is being conducted to make sure that there's transparency in government.

25:39These people want to run through walls for the American taxpayer. We are nonpartisan and independent. That's in the IG statute. They wake up every day trying to sniff out waste for an abuse. They don't want independent inspector generals, and they don't value the great benefit we provide. The last voice, Veteran Affairs IG veteran Michael Missal. He served under the first Trump term and for Obama and Biden administrations, but he was purged at the beginning of this year and returns now. Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. You do this work and you've done it in the trenches, out of the spotlight on a nonpartisan basis.

26:20Here we are now into the fall. With what we've learned this year, how do you rate the credibility of the talk of saving money or fighting fraud and the actual way they're approaching the IGs who do that work? I find it extremely troubling. IGs, as you pointed out, have been a great service to this country. For almost 50 years, they fought fraud, waste, and abuse and have had tremendous benefits. On an annual basis, IGs save taxpayers about$100 billion a year, plus they help improve the performance of the government. We should have a government that's constantly trying to do the best possible job for the American people.