Trump Drives Rift Within GOP

0:00Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're following what has become a series of Trump setbacks today. Republicans say the president has been hurting his party's midterms chances. And that's a complaint that obviously is often lodged in private or these sort of blind quotes, as they call them. But it burst into a direct confrontation today with Republican Bill Cassidy yelling. That's the word we're told, yelling to President Trump to his face about the faulty war, the tenuous Iran deal, retiring senator, recounting his side today. I stood and said, you have not told the American people what's going on.

0:39It was supposed to last four weeks. This lasted four months. Our original objectives had not been achieved. He did not particularly care for my comments. Praised his voice. I lost my temper. I made it clear that I wasn't going to be bullied and made it clear that I think we need answers. So you have, according to that account, two people yelling at each other. We would have to amend Senator Cassidy's statement that he wasn't going to be bullied. I think an English teacher would say, well, if you want to be accurate, the full sentence is, I'm not going to be bullied by Trump anymore. Because like a lot of Republicans, his word, they've been bullied a ton.

1:21And that was the scene at what was a rare visit by Trump to go meet with Senate Republicans in the group. And Trump was also, according to reporting, reduced to asking for more help from Republican leader Thune amid setbacks. Remember, Trump just lost that big Senate War Powers vote with Republicans turning on it. And that was coming after he had squeaked by in prior votes. So if you're counting this as momentum, he's losing it. The anti-Trump vote there was a huge deal. It shows the national opposition to Trump's around war, as well as high gas prices landing in the Senate. This was the scene, as you see there, him losing the vote.

1:57Now this shaky peace deal could leave the U.S., according to experts and now some Republicans, on a worse footing than before Trump started the war. So he's reeling from a rejection by a Congress run by his party. You know, you can go all the way back to Vietnam, where the opposition actually took many, many more years to build to this level, to find this kind of united opposition. And I say that as a reference point because sometimes people think, well, is Trump getting away with everything or it all seems to just kind of happen and not matter. But it's actually quite the opposite. In ways we can measure, this is higher, faster opposition than other presidents have faced.

2:37Now, back then, it was Vietnam, you may recall, that led Congress to pass this new law, which was at least going to try to prevent future unilateral wars from running away from the American people by just a president. Because the power to declare war in our constitutional system is supposed to actually be with Congress, although that has been, of course, circumvented many times long before Donald Trump. But here's what I can tell you. Right now, Donald Trump is actually the first president since that Vietnam era law passed to ever actually see both houses of Congress use the War Powers Act to reject him as commander in chief, to reject what he's doing abroad with, again, your tax dollars, your military.

3:25and, of course, if you're in a military household, what he's sending young men and women to go off and fight. No other president has seen this kind of opposition on record in the Congress to their ability to be commander-in-chief, and this has happened despite his party controlling the Congress. Here's how the New York Times reported it. Trump's loss in this week's vote is the first time in the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 73 that both chambers of Congress have approved a resolution directing a president to end a military conflict. The Times reporting that the House passed the measure earlier this month after Republican leaders who tried to block it basically failed and were, quote, unable to keep the party unified.

4:06You can say that again. Those setbacks in a Congress that we're told is so partisan or so under Trump's thumb, those setbacks are on the biggest issue. And if you follow Republican politics, if you follow conservative-leading podcasts, and you don't have to, We'll follow it for you and update you on the key takeaways, the headlines. This issue and Epstein, the Iran issue and Epstein, have split this party unlike anything else in the last two years of this Trump second term. The setbacks are also context for Donald Trump's odd retreat on a different issue today. I mentioned he's got multiple problems.

4:41Well, Trump's Republican Party was actually excited about what they called a rare legislative breakthrough, passing a pretty sizable housing bill, which their leaders touted. They had some Democrats on board. So as recently as last night, you had these kind of headlines that were kind of like celebratory. We're going to send this to Trump's desk. We got bipartisan support. Look, we're still able to do things on the domestic front. And then today, Trump abruptly canceling his own party's plan signing. And he added an unrelated new demand that Congress should bow to his plot to meddle in the midterms, midterms that apparently he might realize he's doing worse in because of all these problems.

5:20Now, let me tell you what this means. Some stories are simple. We don't need a lot of DC analysis or jargon. Two points here. On substance, Trump's plot is just a panicked midterm shakedown. He's just literally saying, give me what I want to distort, corrupt, or disrupt what would otherwise be the looming vote, which he's worried about losing. Shakedown. Point number two, very simple. On political strategy, D.C. insiders, legislative experts will note this was a sudden, weak, and incompetent legislative strategy because even apart from the strings that he wanted to attach, let's say it wasn't a midterm plot, let's say it was just a legitimate request to fund something else.

6:08everybody knows the time to attach those strings to a bill is before the lengthy process of passing it out of both houses of Congress, not after, not on the signing day. And Trump had very little measures to explain himself when asked about it. Client at home is unattainable for so many Americans. Is this election legislation more important to you than resolving? This is every election is important. We're doing very well. yeah, sure, every election is important, but why would you need in a panicked way in this summer period with just a few months to go to try to change the rules of the law for the election?

6:49I mean, these are the same rules that Trump won the election in last time, right?

6:57It's a panic move. Now, because he is him and operates the way he does, he ignored what the Republicans said, what some of his own aides said, probably what he would have done in the first term, where you have something from your own party and you have a PR signing bill and you kind of do that while you make your other points. But this is second term Trump. He is not the communicator he once was. He's certainly not the planner he once was. And as I mentioned, even apart from the fact that it is unlawful to try to distort the vote while you're in government, and there's many rules to prevent that.

7:29Whatever the goal was, Donald Trump coming in the day of the signing and asking for something is ineffective. In other words, he's not getting any action on that today. So the move was ineffective at the thing he wants, but also canceled the other thing that Republicans say would help them in these midterms. Now, Trump is usually trying to focus on opponents. He sees them on the left. He sees them in the media. But I want to point out, his opponents are increasingly obviously in his own party now. The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal put it like this, Trump is now living on a collision course with a newly defiant Republican Senate.

8:09And that is the battle ahead of the midterms. Now, that would be enough problems, but he has more. The polling shows that Donald Trump's second term has been rejected by the nation. On many issues, we live in a 50-50 nation. These debates sometimes about woke culture and liberal issues, they sometimes, by some people, ignore that. That there are plenty of people, sometimes 50 % plus, that have a different view on some of those issues. So, again, if we just measure where people are, you might want them to be in a different place, I can point you to issues that are 50-50. Trump is not a 50-50 issue.

8:46He is crashing to new approval lows. This is a 60-35 kind of issue now. And what's also louder in D.C. are these Republicans that are suddenly saying what they avoided or were afraid to say when bowing to Trump for so many years. And that goes to the narrative of this. So sometimes we report just what's happening, period. Other times we have the narrators. And so when people in Washington or people in power say something more, that's going to affect how it's covered. That's kind of pretty straightforward. And you might have noticed, as I'm alluding to, we're hearing more and more from at least some of the Republicans.

9:20And some of them are just talking because they're now retiring. So Trump can't touch them in a future election. That includes Senator Tillis, who's saying the party's got to get its act together, that it's had conflicting messages. And he's now speaking out against Trump's D.C. vanity projects. Damaging a lining in the reflecting pool is something that Pirro wants to prosecute to the full extent of the law. if it's proven true. And yet they're releasing people who pled guilty to assaulting a police officer. What freaking parallel universe did I just wake up in? Okay. Tell us trying to summon some outrage, but his metaphor might be a little more incriminating than he realizes.

10:06Senator, do you feel like you just woke up to all this? This is the universe you woke up to, But this corruption, this anti-police agenda, as he mentions January 6th, has been clear for years. And he was just trying to avoid upsetting its leader. I guess now, as he says, what has he woken up to? Then there's a smaller issue of the reflecting pool, which late night has been going at. Now you got people across the country coming over to gawk at the fact that you turned the reflecting pool into a Kool-Aid bucket. Trump somehow went from draining the swamp to creating one. This is how far America has fallen.

10:43The last time we collected this many people around the reflecting pool was for civil rights. People were like, we must come out to support Dr. King. Sixty years later, we're like a slimy pool. This I gotta see.

11:00So there are funny parts, except for the parts that aren't that funny. There is a war reckoning going on in this country, even as the president tries to get us out of this war on whatever terms he can. And if you're sitting around going, OK, well, when are they going to do anything? They have started doing anything. They have started doing things. I mean, the War Powers vote is a once in a 50 year event. We know now how we got here. How do we get out of here? Senator Raphael Warnock. We'll ask him when we're back together in 90 seconds.

11:40joining us now is democratic senator from georgia rev. ralph warnock he has a new book out the crooked places made straight reflections on the moral meaning of america out now you can get yours wherever books are sold welcome good to be here with you good to have you so i ran through a bunch of issues Let's start with what is a historic rejection of the president's exercise of his commander in chief powers. You're in the body where that occurred. How did that happen? How do we get here? Does it matter? Well, I think it's an important inflection point. We have watched this Congress under the leadership of Republicans give over its power time and time again, confirming people who are egregiously unqualified for office, the likes of Pete XF, you know, Robert F.

12:39Kennedy. And then Trump dragged us into an illegal war of choice. We kept hearing different explanations for why we were there every day. And we committed as Democrats that we were going to hold our Republican colleagues accountable. We held vote after vote after vote. I sponsored one last week, which was narrowly defeated. And finally, this week, we had the votes necessary with just enough Republicans to hold this president accountable. What comes next? How do you view the peace deal? Have they sort of kicked too many issues down the road? Well, I mean, this is deadly serious stuff. I mean, we had an agreement to hold Iran accountable.

13:30Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. We can't allow that to happen. And we had an agreement which held them accountable, which required regular inspections. And Donald Trump tore up that agreement because Barack Obama put it together. And here's where we are. And an issue as serious as that is outstanding. It's still unresolved. And he talked about regime change. The regime is very much in place. In fact, it's younger now and probably more radical. He has made that region even more unstable. And today, Americans are a lot less safe than they were before he ever started this war. Sending people into harm's way is the gravest decision an American president can make.

14:22And what we're seeing is that this president is unserious, unserious about everything concerning the American people, including sending us to war. The other big news, of course, was this housing cancellation. I want to play a little bit of Speaker Johnson discussing it today and get your thoughts. Thanks for your time.

15:12from the original Senate bill, which was not a great product. But finally, that's just... But doesn't it sound helpful? I think it'll delay the signing. I think we get it done. So what happened here? And you were part of efforts to try to actually have more regulation to protect homeowners or would-be homeowners over what might be a more Wall Street system. So tell us about what you were working on and what's going to happen here. Look, in this divided moment in our country where the partisan differences are real and deep, we managed to pass through the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which I'm a member, a housing bill, which hasn't been done in about a generation.

15:55And, I mean, think about this. Tim Scott is the chair and Elizabeth Warren is the ranking member. You know, it sounds like a joke that went bad. Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren walked into a bar. But they came out with a bipartisan bill. It passed unanimously through our committee. It passed overwhelmingly through the Senate, passed the House. Here is the thing. Americans are hurting. People are struggling. Housing is unaffordable. I have a provision in this law which finally stops private equity from sweeping into our communities, as they've been doing in Atlanta and in other places, buying up so much housing stock that they pushed up the price, sent rents and other costs soaring, pricing ordinary families out of the market.

16:49it. I mean, you're trying to buy a house in the local neighborhood and your competitor is a big corporation, private equity. And so it was past time for someone to do something about it. I'm glad that I got my provision in the bill. And there's some other good provisions in the bill that's bipartisan. Donald Trump was on his way over to sign it. And because he's so obsessed with himself. He keeps bumping into himself, tripping over himself. And here is where we are. He says it's more important to pass the SAVE Act. Give me a break. This is a voter suppression bill that's focused on a problem that does not exist.

17:29Everybody knows that housing is a real problem. And, you know, you mentioned what you were doing, which is looking at Wall Street or speculators basically working against regular people who still have maybe the American dream of trying to get a home, which has gotten harder. And that's the kind of work that we don't hear as much about in this era, but you're obviously doing it and you found a way to break through and get it in the bill. The other thing that's going on, of course, is a lot more speculation and AI-related investment on Wall Street. We had Elon Musk at one point becoming a trillionaire on paper, the first in world history.

18:05That sort of moved around a little bit. But I'm curious, given your mention on private equity and what Musk has done just in the last week and what two other big AI companies want to do in the coming year, we're told, is take up, you know, a few trillion dollars. Do you view that as risky for the public? Do you think there's enough knowledge and regulation on this? And should Congress do anything? Donald Trump's economy is working very well for people like Elon Musk. You know, this announcement that we have for the first time in human history, something called a trillionaire, that's not good news.

18:43That is a reflection that because of deep structural issues in our politics, wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top and the divide between the very, very wealthy and the rest of us has gotten wider and wider People feel it in their pocketbooks, and they feel it in their soul. There's a kind of soul weariness in our country because Americans are seeing the growing divide between the ideals of our country and where they actually live, their ability to keep the promises that all of us make to our children. And so they're so weary, which is why I wrote my book, which is a kind of sermon to the country as we approach the 250th anniversary of the country, the crooked place that's made straight.

19:33I can tell you that this town increasingly is owned by private equity, owned by the wealthy and the well-connected, so much so that even when we get something done, you know, it's so incremental in part because our system is awash in money. And so we've got to give the people their democracy back. Donald Trump has added to this problem and he continues to assault the voices of ordinary Americans with this foolishness about passing the SAVE Act, with his audacity of sending the FBI into my Fulton County, Georgia, in order to snatch up ballots, subpoenas harassing ordinary election workers. All of this are signs of the democracy being under assault.

20:26But we can't lose hope. Part of what they're trying to do is weaponize despair, convince us that they've already won. And so we need not fight. I think we proved this week when Georgians stood up and frightened the Georgia legislature and its governor around this gerrymandering that the people can make a difference. And it's time to straighten our backs and recognize that that's where the power is. It's we the people. That grand American creed stated 250 years is up to us to keep it alive. All big, big thoughts tonight. And on more than one issue, Senator Warnock, thank you so much. I'll remind folks, the book, which he was just referencing, is called The Crooked Place is Made Straight Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America.

21:10We've got a lot more coming, including Obama saying Trump is obsessed with him. You've got to ask him what it is. The obsession? The obsession. I know what it is. I obviously have a room in his head. Rent free. Rent free. We'll get into that. And the Mom Donnie effect results coming out of New York that show Democrats, some of them, want to go more left. We're going to look at how that affects the midterms with Jay Comanduri later tonight.

21:48We just had some new elections, so what did we learn? Well, no House primary race is going to resolve every issue for the whole country. But these New York primaries last night had a pretty clear trend line with voters greenlighting more of Zoran Mamdani's progressive push. In fact, three Mamdani-endorsed Democratic Socialists, who often struggle in prior elections to win over older or less liberal Democratic voters, all three won last night. and two of the races actually ousted current incumbent Democratic lawmakers. Now remember, statistically, primaries usually do not oust the people who already have the job and they have the advantage of name recognition, usually establishment money.

22:28They usually beat the lesser known candidates. When this happens, though, when they're ousted, people take notice. Remember, that's how AOC rose to prominence, another New York liberal, along with Mamdani himself. and he was unknown two years ago. The now surging mayor drawing a line from his upstart win to these brand new faces. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our city and in our country.

23:01We are showing that last June, a year ago tomorrow, was not an anomaly.

23:13It was not the end. It was the beginning.

23:20Mom Donnie saying his win was no anomaly. Now you could see why a politician, of course, would want to cede that idea and connect himself to other victories here. But many in the media and certainly the New York tabloids, they love a big, clear narrative. So today you can cue the new headlines crowning Mom Donnie a party kingmaker, including in the kind of political paper of record, The Washington Post, reporting on how his own endorsees share both his progressive economic platform and his fairly strong position on basically ending American support for Israel. And that's a shift from the traditional Democratic Party platform, which supported a two-state solution.

24:02And supporting two states has historically meant support for both Israel and a Palestinian homeland. And the issues are complex. And three New York races do not ensure Momdani is now a national kingmaker. Doesn't mean that he would help. He might even hurt someone in a more conservative Democratic primary in some states. But on the evidence, it does suggest that he has this motivated and enduring base willing to turn out. And if you want to do apples to apples, that a popular mayor with a motivated base is already above the past two Democratic mayors of New York. Nationally, the party is debating the implications of all this.

24:45And this is a Democratic party, which, remember, is currently already led by two New Yorkers. And depending on how you count, of course, two members of minority groups, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who was speaking about this today by emphasizing the party's potential unity.

25:06I don't think we're on opposite pages. You can ask him whether he thinks we're on opposite pages. He doesn't believe we're on opposite pages. There are multiple races that I've gotten involved in supporting House Democratic and Colors, which is what I have done as leader and will continue to do. So with respect to races where he may have endorsed a different candidate, we have agreed to strongly disagree. And we put it into the hands of the people of New York to decide what's the best path forward. Jeffrey's there emphasizing the structural point that he leads the House Democratic Caucus. So by definition, he works with and supports the members of that caucus who were these incumbents I mentioned.