Trump Claims To Ban MS NOW, CNN, Politico From WH

0:00Support for this podcast comes from Progressive, America's number one boat insurer. We've all made mistakes on the water, but there's one mistake you shouldn't make, being uninsured. With 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. My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user-friendly.

0:35It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. Welcome to Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and we have the music because this midterm election season is underway. It is an actual election day. If you're counting, this is the first official day of in-person voting in the whole midterms. As we know, it's a collection of local races.

1:11So this is starting in Virginia and Minnesota, where voters can now turn out for the midterms if they choose to vote early. Other states will join in the coming days. So that's a neutral fact. The White House has had a problem with things being so local. They want more federal control. They've even lost a bid to have the post office federally interfere. Between the parties, all the polls show Democrats up. So the timing's not good for Republicans to have people start voting to potentially lock in gains that Republicans hope they might chip away at in the weeks ahead. The economic conditions are against the incumbents.

1:47people overwhelmingly vote against the incumbents when there are problems like this. Huge gas crunch. That hurts Trump and the Republicans. Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, says everything's getting more expensive right now. We have GOP candidates who are basically fighting for their political lives, even in the kind of red areas where two years ago you wouldn't think this would be a competitive race, let alone something that they could lose. Republican John Kennedy in Louisiana is not up for reelection this cycle because the Senate, you know, goes a third, a third, a third. But he's keeping his eye on what's going on in his state saying this.

2:26This weekend, I'm going to Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa to help raise money and campaign for our very good candidates. So if you told me six months ago I was going to be having to spend my time in those three states, I wouldn't have believed you. Those ought to be fat guy layups for us. They are not layups. And he has a style of sort of saying what, of course, upsets Trump and what many Republicans have not said out loud as much. When you look at the economy here, though, the numbers already tell the story. People are not buying Trump's efforts to cast blame. And that explains the other developments we're seeing.

3:07Republican Senate candidate in Iowa swerving away from Donald Trump, skipping a Trump-Vance administration-style presence, right? She could have been with the vice president. Usually that's a boost. Vice president in your party, way more famous than you. She's avoiding it altogether. There was a huge break we saw on TV where a Republican, not pushed by angry voters or responded to press questions, but a Republican chose to spend their own money and cut this ad trying to save their seat, basically, and explain to the Latino and other population in her district in Florida why she's not for what Trump's been doing lately.

3:52Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50 % of the 50 ,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. That is what we're seeing. And the midterms are one of those things that those of us in news, politics, people who follow civics say, oh, the midterms are coming. You might be in a community or, you know, conversations that have covered this for weeks or even months. For most people, the midterms are, as I mentioned, officially starting tonight in the states that allow the early voting.

4:33Definitely in the coming weeks as you get mail ballots and a lot of states use them, you kind of look at that and go, oh, right, this is coming. We are basically just over a month out. And this is a homestretch that is not what Republicans wanted, not what, as the senators said, they expected six months ago and not a gap they want people to start locking in with early votes. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is caught up in a ton of fights of his own making, but breaking the key vows he made on inflation, lowering prices, and of course, not starting new expensive wars. That's where we begin tonight. I want to bring in Che Comanduri, an Obama campaign veteran, and Maya Wiley, former STNY civil prosecutor, former mayoral candidate, and leader of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, where she serves as CEO.

5:22Welcome to both of you. Che, I mentioned that it goes from the kind of mood of midterms, and some of us follow it closely, to the actuality. You sort of say, when does it start? Well, as emphasized, this is local. Different states start when they choose. Tonight is the very beginning. In the next two weeks, we see a lot of ballots going out. What does that do to potentially start to lock in what is a very tough environment for Republicans? Yeah, voters are making up their minds. They're looking at the facts at the gas pump. They're looking at their own household bills. They're looking at all the really rather odd and strange things Donald Trump is doing.

6:06You know, the obsession with the Kennedy Center, the obsession with the ballroom, with putting his name on everything like he's Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, you know, saying, you know, I'm the greatest president of all time. And with all this like sort of WWE wrestling rhetoric, talking about communists and socialists that don't really match up the picture of the Democrats that are actually running in many of these states and districts. They look at all of those things and they see a Republican Party that needs to be replaced by somebody fresh and new. And, you know, James Carville said the most powerful word in politics is new.

6:47And the Democrats are presenting themselves as new. And the Republicans are presenting themselves as old. Quite literally, a 80-year-old president who is obsessed with the legacy of John F. Kennedy. You know, nothing could be more OK Boomer than that. OK Boomer, I'm reminded of, you know, James Carville in the in the famous War Room documentary when he says they're yesterday. It's like looking at an old calendar. It's like just yesterday. And Maya, while there are important policy and values debates in this country and Trump has sparked a lot of them, It is striking that the Democratic Party, where, as I mentioned, you ran as a candidate, has found its momentum, if you will, not so much on the values debates, which matter.

7:34Are we a country that just kills people in the streets? We've been covering that. Are we a country that allows this type of rank corruption, self-dealing? But politically, the Democrats seem to be finding their momentum on what Che mentioned, just rejecting an antiquated sclerotic Washington. Trump is old. Trump is out of touch. And the economy certainly could do better than this. What if you had a president and a Congress that even just got up every morning and worked on the economy, which Trump doesn't even claim to do? Maya. Well, look, I think it's very clear that you would rather be a Democrat than a Republican in this midterm cycle.

8:12That's what we're seeing for the reasons that you say, Ari. This is about the direction of the country, though. And, you know, we talk a lot about approval ratings and the low approval ratings for Donald Trump. I mean, but that's a stand in for the direction of the country and the party that's responsible for the direction of the country. That's what's happening in House races, in the Senate debates is what's the direction of the country. But I would also say there is a relationship between these two things and important things that Democrats are saying. For example, you know, you played the Representative Salazar clip on ICE and detention and mass deportations.

8:53She's a Republican. She's a Latina who's saying in our community, we're seeing racism increase. I mean, that is what we're seeing in the data. Latinos are saying, we're experiencing racism. But it's also that the American public, we have people losing health care because the administration has decided to put billions of dollars into building the army it calls ICE to violate rights rather than to make sure people can see a doctor when they're sick. And those are also distinctions that we're seeing Democrats drawing that really relate to the actual lived experience of people because they do care about their rights and freedoms that does relate to the economy and whether they can participate in it.

9:34That's the point about people who are not criminals, who are contributing, who are feeling the impacts. But it's also about the choices that are about disinvesting in people's economic opportunities rather than in wars and lining the pockets of friends of the president and the president's family. All very, very well put. But, you know, Che, you mentioned that Trump's fixations are odd. The public is clearly over it. The old narrative of, oh, he's Teflon or he's kind of like the funny president, depending on where you sit. It doesn't work when people are hurting this much. I want to play for you something that I don't even know how you're going to respond to it, which is the president talking about how he has power and he could ban fishing.

10:17Take a look. I could have banned fishing. I'll tell you what, the power of this office is crazy. I could have banned fishing and driven Johnny right the hell out of business, okay? I think I'm going to do that, maybe just a quick order, just for a day or two until he calls me and he says, please, President, please, you're putting me out of business.

10:45Why would you ban fishing? That's a very, very odd thing that you would want to ban. I mean, there's a lot of other things that you could pick up that you would like to ban. Phishing just does not seem to me to be one of those things. What I actually think the reason he said that was he probably saw the video of Gavin Newsom phishing with Jake Tapper on the Rival Network. I think it was on CNN. And he had that in his mind. Gavin Newsom fishes. Let me take a shot at him. by saying I'm going to ban fishing. But it's just a very odd and circuitous way of getting there. And it also, you know, last I checked, Republicans liked fishing.

11:29You know, the rural voters, the red voters in parts of the country that vote Republican, big fans of fishing, big fans of going to Cabela and buying fishing gear. Yeah, I mean, it's also it's a subsistence activity for a lot of people. Maya and I are not going to get into the legal commerce cause jurisprudence under which you would have to try to defend a national fishing ban. But it it might fail in court if we wanted to waste enough time to test it. Maya, I'll show you the economy, as mentioned, Fox News poll. Has Trump made this economy worse? Overwhelming, 63 percent. And when you break it out, it's pretty striking that independents were so important in these elections.

12:14but also a quarter of Republicans see it that way. That might be regardless of what they've been told by their leadership. Yeah, I think there's no question that everybody in this country is paying a price, if you're not a billionaire or a friend of Donald Trump's, is paying a price for the direction of the country. And Republicans control all three parts of the federal government, right? They control Congress. They control the Senate. They control the White House. There's no question if you're very much upset about the direction of the country. There's only one place to place that blame. And that's why you're seeing that 26 percent Republican number.

12:53And when you're talking about the midterm elections, when you're talking about you were you were making the it's not a joke, actually, that part of what Donald Trump is saying is I in another way, I don't care about how you're making a living. I don't care about taking care of the issues that are bread and butter issues for you. I just care about my power and how I can use it if I just feel like using it some kind of way, like starting a war without congressional approval or, you know, any other things. We've got farmers that are committing suicide because of the conditions of soybean prices. This is not something to joke about, but it's also something where even if they don't vote against Republicans, will they turn out?

13:37Because it's a turnout election no matter what party you are in. And this is going to suppress their own voters. Absolutely. Very important points here. My thanks to Maya and Che for joining us here. Have a good weekend. There's been a lot of other news coming out today, including, you may have heard, President Trump claiming that he will ban entire press outlets, including MSNOW, from the White House. That is a developing story. We have a report and a legal fact check on that coming up tonight. You'll be able to hear me go right through the facts on that in a couple moments. We're also hearing deeper reports about what tech insiders say AI is doing, including stealing human creations, writing, labor.

14:22There's this AI shift we've been covering, and it's happening faster and faster. I've got that story and a great guest later in the hour. I wanted to mention that. But our next guest is a big one, Congressman Ro Khanna, and why he says he's got a bipartisan coalition to finish the job on Epstein, regardless of what Trump would like. We're back together in 90 seconds.

14:45My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, are just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com.

15:43You know that feeling when too many things fall through the cracks? Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform where people and agents work side by side to deliver more together. Create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com.

16:06It's the midterm homestretch. We reported tonight the voting has begun in some places, and that makes this particularly bad timing for Donald Trump to watch his Epstein nightmare roar back to life in a big way. A bipartisan group of lawmakers say they now have enough support to do what they already did once successfully against Trump and force a House vote on what they view as the remaining Epstein files being withheld. This would be going over the speaker's head a second time for a version of a continuation, call it a sequel, to the now quite famous Epstein Files Transparency Act. Republican Tom Massey, who risks and lost his seat over fighting Trump on this and other issues, is still at it, showing everyone what it means to actually use your power in office, not just bow out.

16:53He is joined by Democrat Ro Khanna, and they're trying to compel the DOJ to finish, they say, the job they started. Khanna notes that they have four Republicans. Thomas Massey and I have defied history for a second time, securing 218 signatures on Epstein 2.0. Four Republicans broke with Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson. Epstein 2.0 will allow state attorney generals to prosecute people like Leon Black and the Epstein class, and it will allow survivors to get access to the Epstein files. We report a lot on how Congress is broken, on how little it gets done, and how few things pass in a bipartisan way.

17:39That's kind of the baseline. But when you zoom in on this issue, which involves Donald Trump and the late tardy effort to have some transparency and justice, both related to what this terrible-to-see-sex trafficker did and the claims by victims and others for having their sort of other day in court, They didn't get that with his untimely death. This is an area where the people I just mentioned, including Mr. Khanna, have had actual results. Todd Blanche did admit, in addition, at the DOJ, that there were pages of files they didn't release. For its part, the DOJ has said there are good reasons for that, even though they were late, which means on its face, they already broke part of the law.

18:25Trump's DOJ, though, has all kinds of headaches. I'm here to get justice for the Epstein victims, the survivors. There are still some documents out there. Now, the disagreement and the confusion is over what can be turned over and what can't. A court has ruled some of the grand jury transcripts cannot be turned over, which we would dispute that. On the Epstein files, do you believe the files contain no meaningful evidence of additional wrongdoing by others who were not charged so far? the Epstein files. Three and a half million pages have been released by this administration. If you want to keep talking about the Epstein files, go ahead.

19:06Congress had to pass a law requiring the disclosure of the Epstein files. We've got solutions. We just refuse to pass them. We're joined now by Congressman Ro Khanna, California Democrat, who's led this push and, as I mentioned, got bipartisan progress. Welcome back. Thank you, Ari. People are busy with a lot of different things out there. Can you walk us through in English what this new push would do? What's new about it? Well, when Thomas came to me and said we need to do an Epstein 2.0 act, I said to him, usually sequels don't work. Are you sure you want to try to do this? And he said, look, Ro, I don't have much time left in Congress.

19:49I owe it to the survivors that we do everything. The reality is three million files were released. We've seen prosecutions around the world. We've seen resignations here, but there's still three million files that haven't been released. And state attorney generals haven't been able to prosecute. And we know that this DOJ has not been able to prosecute. So what this bill would do very simply is it would require the release of the remaining files and say that you can't claim any process protections or any legal deliberation protections. And second, it would allow state attorney generals and survivors to get access to these files, either so they could prosecute or in the case of survivors, so they can just understand what happened to them.

20:40What new hook or power would invest in those state attorneys general? With the state attorney generals, they would be able to get the documents. So we worked very closely with New Mexico Attorney General Torres. He's actually thinking about bringing a case because of the Zorro Ranch, but he hasn't been able to get the Department of Justice to give them the documents. In fact, there are foreign governments that say that the Department of Justice isn't giving them the documents in order to be able to bring foreign prosecutions. We at least solve the issue with state attorney generals so that state attorney generals can get the evidence, get the files to be able to bring charges.

21:27And then it gives survivors the ability to bring a lawsuit that would be able to recover these documents. The Congress has had a lot of action on this, including using the leads from the files to do more of the investigative work, including, as you've advocated early on and as we've reported, work that was undone by the federal government. There are speculations on that, the power, the money. There's a whole range of conspiracy theories you're familiar with. But whatever the reason, there were avenues not pursued. And in that realm, recently, your committee here held Leon Black in contempt over these Epstein-related investigative subpoenas following these tracks.

22:12From the Times, a billionaire had refused to appear for the deposition. Folks might remember he sort of showed up but didn't participate, if I'm simplifying, or turn over the documents to the key panel. I'll mention, of course, Black's attorney denies any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein's criminal conduct. Certainly, as with with everyone implicated, there's got to be some process. He's not currently federally charged either. But what does it mean to take this aggressive action, to hold him in contempt? What is the committee trying to get? Look, I'm usually known to be pretty even tempered.

22:48But let me just say this about Leon Black. It is outrageous, the allegations against him. I mean, the fact that this guy still has buildings named after him at Dartmouth sickens me and it sickens a lot of the survivors. He refused to show up and testify in front of our committee. He refused to release any of the NDAs that he forced some of the women to sign. And, you know, I am not going to convict them in a court of public opinion. But let me just say this. There is I do not understand how there is not an investigation into him, given all the financial ties. With the brief time we have, let's let's finish that point.

23:34Then we don't know what he did, according to public evidence. We do know there are serious allegations, as mentioned, haven't been adjudicated criminally. But we also know in your committees, look at the fact that he paid what are exorbitant sums to Mr. Epstein that can't be justified by normal business accounting. Do you have a view or evidence on what those sums were for? I don't want to speculate, but I would just say that there's no explanation. And he refused to provide the committee with an explanation. And so the normal thing, Ari, you know, as a prosecutor, as a lawyer, the normal thing to do would be having investigation.

24:11No one is saying go indict him tomorrow. But how do you not open a federal investigation? How do you not have agents there? And the fact that this was unanimous in I don't know what else could be unanimous in this Congress, but he has offended James Comer as much as he has offended Garcia. These just were not good actors. And what happened is one of the greatest sex trafficking, sex abuse scandals in our history. And I think the reason that we came together is not Massey or me. I mean, yes, we've understood the procedure. It's the survivors and their stories and their courage. and they really have moved a lot of people finally in this country and in the Congress.

24:52And I hope this passes. And I hope some of these people who haven't gotten justice for decades finally start to get some justice. Congressman Khanna, again, you've been leading on this. You mentioned the survivors. And we wanted to hear from you, give you the platform. And obviously, Mr. Black and his representatives are welcome on here. We talked to everybody. We've talked to the Trump White House. Attorney General Blanche, also welcome. to address anything you've said tonight, but you've laid out some important stuff. So thank you. All right. Thank you for covering this story. Yes, sir. Appreciate it.

25:26Coming up tonight, new revelations on this sort of AI blowback we're seeing. Insiders from Microsoft, which funds one of the big AI companies, OpenAI, blowing the whistle on what they call theft. If you've ever looked at any of these chatbots, you might have noticed, gosh, where are they getting all these words? Insiders saying this is theft and should be dealt with accordingly. Really important. But next, we turn to the story I mentioned. Today, President Trump claims that he's banning three media outlets, including MSNOW, from the White House. I have that report and a fact check next.

26:08The following news out of the White House today, President Trump says that he's banning three news outlets, MSNOW, CNN, and Politico, from the entire White House. He posted about that online and then discussed it today at the Oval Office. That is the news of what the president is saying, and it is a serious escalation in a campaign to go after the free press. We also want to report that as of this moment, those are public statements. We're bringing them to you as news, what the president is saying. We have not seen the White House take action to execute any such ban as of this moment. We can report MS Now reporters are inside the White House doing their normal jobs that they do every day.

26:53If that were to change in response to government action, we will report that out as well. But the wider issue here is about the First Amendment to the Constitution, and that generally protects freedom of the press. For those asking, is this even legal? Can a president do this? Well, we have not only the Constitution, but legal precedents from during the Trump era. Indeed, prior to today's announcement, the Associated Press has been in a legal battle with President Trump about a related issue, access to parts of the White House and the president's claimed reason of wanting to retaliate or address their coverage of his administration, including specifically the AP's reporting decision to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico and not as the Gulf of America, which is a term or name that Donald Trump proposed for that area.