Trump Approval Crashes Amid Econ & Intel Stumbles

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0:41Howard Dean:Notice you're limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to monday.com. Start for free and finally breathe. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We have a lot to start the week. There is some big news. We have really interesting guests. We begin, though, with something very straightforward that goes to the heart, the core of being president and commander in chief. Are you able to keep the country safe? Can you tell the truth about matters of state, of war and peace? It's a big thing, right? And Donald Trump basically caught lying about what is now his unending war and dealings with Iran. First of all, I didn't guarantee no war.

1:22Howard Dean:Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all. No more wars, no more disruptions. We will have prosperity and we will have peace. With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don't have wars. We had no wars. I could stop wars with a telephone call. I could stop wars with just a telephone call. It properly stated it would never start. They said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. And on and on it went. Indeed, if you're watching that and thinking you didn't believe him at the time, fine.

2:08You were right. But there's evidence that a lot of other people did believe him. They're angry about it now. If he could stop this war with a phone call, well, we're way past phone calls. Donald Trump and his team have traveled. They have cajoled. They've held hours on hours of meetings and negotiations and diplomacy. And he can't stop this war. We are in a worse place energy wise than when it started. That's why everyone's paying higher gas prices. This has become a stalemate and some view it as a potential quagmire. Trump failing to secure a deal. The war has gone on longer than he said it would.

2:39One Iranian official now saying a deal with Trump is no longer even feasible at this stage. That would sound like even any deal. Trump claiming the opposite.

2:50Howard Dean:So we're having very good negotiations with the people that are leading the country now. I think that we'll either have something done fairly quickly or we'll finish it out militarily. We're very close to having a deal. And if we don't have a deal, we'll do it one way or the other. Either way, we win. talking about winning without winning is like talking about avoiding wars and not avoiding them and unlike certain issues where people say oh trump's getting away with it or people don't know the whole story people understand in the united states that they're paying more for gas because of trump that the war is open and ongoing they've heard about the strait being compromised people know what's going on our top story tonight is basically two things it's this problem with the war, which is a very real world thing.

3:36And it's the related collapse of Donald Trump here in the second term. We've been following that story across different topics. And we've seen rising Republican pushback against him. We've seen special elections and primaries that show a revolt. We've seen top Republicans and Trump allies and Steve Bannon say they're not just going to lose the House, they could lose the Senate. Now, nobody knows what's going to happen. That depends on how you and everyone votes. But we're seeing something larger here. So that's the top story. It is the problem in Iran and the wider Trump problem, as the public knows that when Trump talks about winning, he is wrong and lying.

4:16Fuel prices up. Hostilities up with Iran and Israel. People paying more at the pump. National average is above$4 a gallon, and we are way past a period of time where Trump promised the war would actually be over. But the gas problem might hit you more or less depending on where you live. If you are in a place where you don't travel a lot for work or daily life, or you're in a city where you might take public transit, it hits you a little bit. Versus if you're in a place where you're driving all the time and you're picking up the kids and you're going back to camp and you're going back to picking up from sporting events and all of that gas is changing your budget.

4:52That's what a lot of people are going through. But that's, again, just one piece. If this ended quickly, it might end there. But as I've just reminded you, it's not. And so it's dragged a wider economy. It's affecting inflation and the Fed and other issues going against what Trump wanted. Remember, he had hoped to juice the economy and get help from the Fed going into the midterms. That's not happening. Trump's approval crashing. He's underwater by about 26 points in this poll. That makes him the most unpopular president since that survey started. And he has the earliest crash of any second term president in the modern era.

5:30I'm joined by Howard Dean, former Vermont governor, DNC chair, doctor, anti-war figure all the way back to the Iraq committee's situation. So you have more than one credential tonight. Welcome.

5:44Howard Dean:Thank you. Thanks for have me. I'm curious how you see it. I'm reporting it as these two stories because the war and the gas is a very real world thing, but it's not the first thing that's hurt and hobbled the Trump second term. It seems to be kind of contaminating what were these other weaknesses. And one more data point for you, and then you can walk us through it. Reuters noting how when you look at the Republicans in Congress, they have rebuked the war in Iran. They've rejected a billion in related to the Vanity Ballroom project. They force now a fairly quick retreat on that criminal fund, although Trump's gone both sides of it.

6:19The DOJ submitted court papers saying it's over. It's more pushback than before, but your views on all of the above.

6:27Howard Dean:Well, so let's start with his big problem, which is not an unusual problem, although his degree of it is record-breaking, and that is second-term-itis. He's done a lousy job managing in the economy. Things aren't going well. He got us into a war. And just things aren't going well. And he got elected principally because people felt that things weren't going well under the Democrats. We can debate whether that's fair, whether that's true. But when you get hired to fix things and things go south, that hurts. There are a couple of factors that support Trump. One is the MAGA factor. They're going to be there forever, just like the people who, you know, went to Hitler's bunker and thought he was still a great guy on the day of his suicide.

7:11Howard Dean:That's going to get to be a smaller number. Some differences in what they're supporting, but go ahead. I'm not so much different, so clear how different it is than what they're supporting. Fascism is fascism, and Trump is basically believes in fascism. We could have the larger debate sometime, Howard, but there's some big differences. Well, I'm happy. Yes, there's a big difference in the outcome, although he does talk about getting rid of immigrants and so forth and so on. But in any case, his big problem is the people who voted for him because they were mad at the Democrats or because they weren't doing well academically, economically.

7:47Howard Dean:I think the Democrats still have a ways to go. We are still an inside the Beltway party. We need to be an outside the Beltway party. I'm very heartened by these young people that are running, even those running against incumbents, some of whom I like. But the public wants a change And Trump is clearly not going to be the change agent Now the big question is, can we change? And the economic problem is the big one We have to get to people where they're at Not where we think you should be at From inside the beltway We've got some really good candidates You know, Tallarico in Texas I think has a really good shot At becoming the next senator Especially since he's going to run against a guy who I think has criminal convictions, if I'm not mistaken, certainly had an impeachment effort against him.

8:36Yeah, Paxson impeachment. He had a whole bunch of scandals in Texas.

8:40Howard Dean:I think the guy in Plattner has got a shot in Maine. Collins is a very good campaigner, but she always votes with Trump whenever he's needed. And I think people are fed up with that. I think we got a great shot in Iowa, a veteran who's running against a weak candidate who's been involved in, I think, some corruption. So we've got some shots in unusual places. Sherrod Brown, of course, has a shot. And I think Vivek Vamaswani is going to be a very unpopular candidate for governor because he's full of himself. And I think Ohioans are full of Republicans as they are. Republicans don't like people that are full of themselves any more than anybody else does.

9:18Howard Dean:And that's a big problem. I mean, Trump, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single senior person in the Trump White House that I think is competent. Yeah. I mean, when you when you talk about those Democrats and what do you think it's important for them to hit? Because, I mean, Tallarico, as you mentioned, he's got a bit of a different message. There was a lot of attention on Texas. But you're saying make sure you hit what people are going through. This is not an ad for Andy Beshear, and I haven't endorsed him, but I like him a lot. And the reason is he comes from about a plus 20 Trump state.

9:54Howard Dean:And when his right wing crackpot legislature does anti-trans or anti-gay or book burning and all that stuff, he vetoes it. He gets upheld and he said, instead of arguing about these issues that we lose on, he says, wait a minute. What have you guys done about my public school reform? Nothing. What have you done about my jobs program? We need jobs in Kentucky. You've done nothing. That is the way to win. Do not get bogged down in the inside the beltway drama that nobody else cares about. Do get bogged down in the stuff that we have to win. We have to win on jobs. We have to win on the economy. We have to win on honesty in government.

10:34Howard Dean:And that's what we should return to and only that. And on the Mideast, I mean, one thing we noticed, you talk about Beltway, the news sometimes were in these these little gradations. Big picture, most of the Democrats have been very strong against Trump's Iran stumble. But in the first few days, there was a mixed message, as there was with Venezuela. And, you know, in D.C., there's a you know, there's a lot of sort of, well, national security, this and that. Well, as you said many years ago, and as Trump used to say, starting wars doesn't help national security if they're the wrong war, that sort of faux toughness.

11:10Now, he's fallen back into being the thing he ran against, which he is on many issues. So I'm curious what you think about where Democrats are now on a war that is as unpopular at its beginning as the Iraq war was near its end.

11:23Howard Dean:I think we're getting there. The problem is that a lot of the people in Washington have been there, not all of them, but a lot of them have been there for a very long time, and they play the inside the beltway game. I always say that Washington is basically middle school on steroids. They work hard. They're very smart. And it's all about them all the time. And they're clueless. They're honestly, a lot of them, some of them are not. I mean, it's not like I paint them all with the same brush. But when they go home, they're thinking about the Washington game. The Washington game is irrelevant to 98 percent of the American people.

11:55Howard Dean:That's why Trump won. He didn't win because the because American voters are idiots. He won because people were tired of the B.S. in Washington and they just and Trump promised to break it up. And they believed him. That was the mistake. But, you know, we've still got to get with the program and the Democratic Party. And I'm not so sure the inside. You know, I fought the inside the Beltway people, including when I was four years inside the Beltway as running the Democratic National Committee. And we won the House, we won the Senate, and we won the president after having none of them when I started.

12:27Howard Dean:I'm not taking all the credit for that at all. But you have to have discipline and listen to the voters, not your own special people. One of the things I love about Ken Martin is, you know, he may have done this and he may have done that. But one of the first things he did when he got to be the head of the DNC was fire all the Washington consultants. That is essential because and this doesn't mean you're a bad person. But the first thing you care about is making sure your kids can go to all the great schools in Washington. And you do that by paying big, getting paid big fees. And people think you're smart because you were involved in a campaign that was three and four generations ago.

13:05Howard Dean:This is ridiculous. So we've got we're talking about also this is the populist difference that we've seen. We've seen the Internet actually in your in your days, all the way back to Democracy for America. And now, of course, some of the tools have shifted. But the Internet's been a place where you see more people pop up and say, yeah, they're against the elites in both parties and anyone who's kind of dining out on the on real America in New York and D.C. especially living bubbled lives. You know, it's interesting because we've followed your career for a while. I'll give you the last word. I'm running over on time.

13:36But when you were chair, I think it's fair to observe you were a heck of a lot more popular among Democrats and liberals out around the country than you were inside the Beltway. And that seemed like to some people a good thing. I'm over on time. You get the last word.

13:51Howard Dean:I'm just saying, look, I don't think that the Democrats are bad people. In fact, I think they're much smarter than the Republicans because you don't see a lot of the Democrats kissing you know what, as the Republicans all seem to be doing. But they've got to take themselves out of Washington and they've got to start talking to the people in their constituents, not just the safe, quote unquote, blue states. We've got to win in some red states and we can do that, but we've got to listen to the voters. Yeah. Howard Dean, good to have you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Coming up, we've been hearing about CBS vet Scott Pelley.

14:23He was quoted in articles after being ousted by the new MAGA friendly ownership of CBS. He's now speaking out further. You're going to see it all torching management.

14:34Howard Dean:There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Rarely do you get that inside view and how it's working from the very top. I mean, there was nobody above him in the 60 Minutes newsroom, and he was clashing with that MAGA management. We're going to show you that tonight. The Tony Awards also featured artists speaking up. But first, we are going to get into it. Trump melting down when he couldn't handle questions about election lies. Do you have evidence to support that? All I have to do is look.

15:16Howard Dean:All I have to do is look. That's not evidence. And I listen. And I listen to people. And let's see what happens. But, sir, that's not evidence. You traveled all the way to Wisconsin. for this interview. Like when you cannot handle the questions. And Andrew Weissman is here on the big news about the official plan for who's going to lead the DOJ if they can get through Senate confirmation. We're back in 90 seconds. Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com.

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16:42Attorney to the DOJ tonight, President Trump formally nominating Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. He has been in that role in an acting capacity. GOP Senator Grassley has confirmed that the Senate has now formally received that nomination. We live in an era where the president saying something doesn't always mean it's really happening. So this is the formal, actual enactment of what Trump had previously suggested, which is he wants Blanche to be AG. There's been an audition process. Blanche has clearly made Donald Trump happy by doing things that no other attorney general have ever done, including rolling out this over billion dollar criminal fund, which is currently paused in the courts.

17:20And the DOJ later said they're rolling it back. But Trump continues to talk about how he likes it. His DOJ, I'll remind you, put in writing that the embattled fund paused in court was now dead.

17:34Howard Dean:I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do many other Republicans. You have to get it approved. If they get it approved, that's great. If they don't get it approved, I'd be disappointed. What you'll notice there is a president who is still decent at PR and doesn't want to act like he's completely out of the loop and then be embarrassed by the courts potentially showing him and the DOJ to be powerless to do something like that. So he quite directly references that they may not be able to do it. They don't have the power. And then, as we mentioned, he did this infamous walkout from the venerable show Meet the Press.

18:13Again, if you want to kind of clean your eyes and say, do presidents normally do this? No, they don't. And it came not at a random time, but in apparently direct response to him not being able to handle straightforward questions about how he can't back up election lies.

18:31Howard Dean:The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. You've never presented evidence. I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94 % bad press. But, Mr. President, you've never presented evidence. You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility. But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's call it quits, because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. Petra will call the way to Wisconsin for this interview.

18:59he'd had enough. He'd had enough, as you can see there. Now, that is what real journalism looks like. And let's be clear, it's not always just the easiest thing to sit face to face with any president, let alone one who tends to interrupt in Hector and has threatened all kinds of opponents, including journalists. And that journalist, our former colleague, Ms. Welker, stood her ground, asked the questions. She wasn't pushing him in any biased way. She just kept at it. And what happens when you do that with Donald Trump? I mean, this is a real moment because it shows something that's so different from all of the bubbled special scenarios he likes to be in.

19:36When somebody actually sits with him, cameras rolling, and continues to press him to just try to substantiate some of these lies, it's not only that he can't substantiate them, which is a useful public service for people to see, but in this case, he actually just has to bail. He can't handle the questions can't handle the truth, as it were. Meanwhile, the DOJ has still opened election fraud investigations in blue California, where they are looking at what they claim to be vulnerabilities. Trump had criticized their ballot system. A lot of that opens the door to whether they are going to try to use these as a pretext to abuse power.

20:11There's a report that the DOJ is also trying to dismantle safeguards going into the midterms, deleting a guide about prosecuting election offenses and other details. They haven't taken the steps to establish There's the command centers that are usually there to try to monitor emergencies on a nonpartisan basis. Either three sources told notice. The New York Times reports the FBI director has this so-called grand conspiracy probe that's trying to bring together basically different old complaints and turn them into criminal cases. It's set off now cascading crisis within U.S. Attorney's Office. It's derailed careers and undercut DOJ credibility with judges.

20:48DOJ vets say it was a Frankenstein monster with an assortment of these long-dead investigations that were supposed to be stitched together and brought back to life FBI leadership demanding daily updates or near-daily updates on the case which is usually only reserved for national crises The Times reporting on, of course, a situation where for all of that effort and pressure they haven't exactly delivered many winning cases Now we have someone who actually knows how to put a case together Andrew Weissman, DOJ vet on all of this next.