Trump Fires Election Officials After Losing Ballot Case

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1:00Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melber. And we are following a lot of stories tonight, including some of these legal losses piling up for Trump. We are joined by Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb, who's become an outspoken critic and a defender of the rule of law. Warning about Trump's tactics. Ty is here. Good to see you. He joins me in a moment. We begin with Trump firing election officials. He's trying to clear out an agency that is in normal times just one of those things that isn't on the news, not the top story, and doesn't have a lot of hiring and firing controversies. I'm talking about something that I'm going to just keep it real with you.

1:38You might have never heard of, even if you're a news junkie. Let's find out. It's called the Election Assistance Commission, and it has officials usually representing both parties that are supposed to do the kind of nonpartisan election work that is independent. And as part of our tradition in this country, we have big, intense political campaign debates in the campaign, but we don't have these commissions and the rules of the road usually corrupted by the people running for office. That's why it's supposed to be fair. But he's pushed out two Democrats and he got a Republican holdover out to basically resign.

2:20Now, this deals with a lot of basic stuff that isn't usually controversial, such as voter registration information, working with states to protect against what might be multi-pronged interference plots. The states, of course, are the lead in our election system, but there is national coordination, especially in the modern era where you have worries about cyber or international espionage. It has been described as a kind of guardrail for ensuring election security across the country. As I mentioned, when things are working well, you wouldn't even hear about it. It would just do its thing. Same way you might not think about the speed bumps on the road.

2:54They're there. They do their thing. They're not national news. Well, Trump is trying to change all that. Remember, he's already tried to force the agency to add this citizenship requirement to federal forms, which is something that you don't do that way. You'd have to actually change the law, maybe even the Constitution, if you wanted to go that deep. But Trump just tried to force it through one of these executive orders, which dealt him one of his many losses, which is part of the theme tonight that I'm going to explain as the backdrop for these increasingly desperate measures. Obama vet David Axelrod says the signals are flashing red because these firings are part of a wider problem.

3:28in the administration, also recently sending those threatening letters and saying it would yank funding from states that didn't do what it wants. Now, some of those threats might be empty, and plenty of officials aren't going to just be jawboned that way. But again, it shows that he doesn't think he's on a path to winning fair and square. Trump's DOJ sent these other letters that threatened criminal prosecution of election officials if they think ballots were cast by non-citizens. Then there's the election deniers that Trump has tried to put in other parts of the federal government, and the return of the zombie Postal Service plot to try to intervene in, again, elections that are run first by the states, where the Federal Postal Service might deliver mail ballots.

4:10But other than that, it's not supposed to be, of course, putting a thumb on the scale. The problem here is not that this is working. A lot of this stuff, as I just showed you has run into roadblocks in court, including the ballot games recently rejected at the Supreme Court. But there is a wider question over whether what we're seeing is a prelude to a version of either Jan 6 or the other plots we've shown you going into the midterms that becomes a test. Now, I could just also tell you I'm not into alarmism. I do think we should be vigilant and factual about this. I don't think, and we're about to hear from Mr.

4:46Cobb, I don't think that as of right now, Donald Trump has enough control of the multiple levers of the election system to, for example, overthrow a midterm loss. And if you want to go back in history, in the first term, there was a lot of lying and a lot of games. But when the blue wave hit, you remember, they all went into office. So what I'm telling you in the news tonight is this is something to monitor, but not something to just freak out over. Sometimes they want everyone to be more scared of Trump's moves and threats than the actual results. Now, I mentioned we'll get to Ty Cobb. There's another prominent experienced lawyer with a lot of nonpartisan credentials, Jack Smith.

5:25He spoke out first in his first sort of television journalism interview with Nicole Wallace. He now spoke with Jon Stewart, which as a side note is a little bit interesting that Jack Smith, who is as old school as they come, is looking for different ways to meet people where they are today. Jon Stewart, a more of a comedy style show with a lot of serious content and a podcast, is reaching people in a different way than, say, the old school of just doing a newspaper interview or one news interview. And Smith, speaking to Stewart, I should say, is warning about exactly the kind of abuse I just mentioned and how the guardrails should work.

6:00We're in a world right now, Jon, where if there is corruption at the highest levels of our government, there is nobody to look at it. Nobody. Congress is not going to look at it. The DOJ is not going to look at it. There's not going to be any outside prosecutor to look at it. And so before we even get to bringing a case, there's no one who would be allowed to investigate it. That's Jack Smith, as serious as they come with the headphones so familiar in these podcast settings, talking to Jon Stewart. Why? Because having done his work for a long time in the nonpartisan DOJ in the corruption unit where he went after Democrats and Republicans alike.

6:39He cares about this deeply. He's got the proven record. And having brought the unprecedented case against former President Trump, an indictment that he clearly didn't take lightly, he is now also trying to reach the people where they really are, whether that's watching digital media or podcasts or also the news, and we're also on YouTube and all of that, because he wants to make sure people are ready. That's not to say that a coup against the midterms is about to happen or about to work. It is to say everyone should be informed about how much power the people still actually have as we go up against these kind of threats.

7:14That's my introduction. I want to bring in Ty Cobb, former White House attorney, former DOJ official. He served, as I mentioned, in the first Trump administration and has been an advocate for the rule of law. You might put it differently. Anyone who's seen this program knows I don't only book people who might put it the exact way I do. But I see that balance. They really are trying this, but they also want to rattle and scare at a time when people could still come out and show their power and their voice in the midterms. How do you view the balance tonight, Ty? So I think the balance is holding.

7:51But I don't think that this administration is going to do anything other than be relentless in continuing to attack and try to reposition the regulatory pieces, the enforcement pieces and the local pieces as best it can in advance of the elections. Then, of course, once the elections are held, there are issues about certification, who will be seated. I think I think we're in for a long battle that won't be settled until the next Congress is is sworn in. I do think that you can't look at the termination of the Election Assistance Commission as anything other than another effort by one side to try to take over part of the referee role for the elections.

8:42You know, this is a it's not the most important federal entity, but it is the entity that provided funds, provides funds, provides training, provides assistance to the state election officials in preparing for federal elections. They also control certain forms that can be required for states to sign in order to authorize federal funds for these elections and also to certify the state elections in connection with federal voting. So it's consequential, but it's part of a deliberate plan. We have to go to 30 ,000 feet, I think, and look at how unbalanced things have gotten before we talk about what the balance is now, which is we now have a president who, despite losing by 7 million votes, which is undisputed in 2020, and bringing 63 lawsuits alleging voter fraud in which he lost every single one of them, who had an attorney general who told him that there was no evidence of voter fraud that would justify any investigations or contesting any of the elections.

9:51now trying to use hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, multiple federal agencies, ICE, the National Guard, and every federal agency that he can get control of with his own people, putting in election deniers, sprinkling them throughout the government to contest these elections and to interfere with them. So when we talk about the balance now, those forces are already on the field. And the other side is relying on the traditional mechanisms that have kept us throughout our history in combination with the federal courts. And while the federal courts have been formidable in withstanding the assault on the rule of law posed by this president, I don't think we can be sanguine about the elections because he is stacking every card in the deck that he can get his hands on.

10:42Yeah, no, I think you put it very clearly, And that that is the issue. You're reminding everyone as bad as Trump is doing. We've seen that in the approval polls. We've seen that in the defection of very prominent, not random, but pretty prominent MAGA voices like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Even amidst all of that, it's a very distorted environment that he's operating in. One where he's used threats to distort what Republicans will say out loud, where, as you said, he's distorting and undercutting the basic election systems and the rule of law. the indictments, which I want to ask you about tonight, and to say nothing of the media, where a bunch of media entities have been cowed, silenced, censored, or bought by his allies and mergers that he oversees.

11:26So, you know, you could flip it and say, gosh, how much worse would he be doing if not for all of that? Maybe instead of being at 34%, he'd be at 27. I mean, you know that. I want to go to the revenge indictments because that also speaks to the environment where it's become normalized to some, that there's just open cases against all these people. Most of them are not working, but they have a guile and a kind of a subterfuge of affecting all those people. We might see most Democratic candidates running in 28 under some sort of supposed probe. Jack Smith spoke about that too. Again, this is a new interview.

12:05Our viewers, of course, know Smith. You know him. This was in that Stewart exchange. Let's take a look at this. You can look at, you know, Letitia James and look at her mortgage fraud situation and you can then get the facts together. But then ultimately you say, hey, as I understand the prosecutors in Virginia did, this is not a case anyone would ever bring. And then you might get fired for it for telling the truth about how a case should be handled. Prosecutors and agents, too, should try to stay and do the right thing. Ty? Ty? Well, I very much echo Jack's admonition to prosecutors and FBI agents who have character and integrity and love their country that are in that job now.

12:52I'd like them to to stay and do that job rather than create more vacancies for Trump to fill with people like Bill Pulte, Ned Martin or, you know, Kash Patel's of the world. So I do think that these these revenge prosecutions, they're out there. People are very much aware that if you cross Trump, you're in danger. And couple that with the threats to the election officials that you mentioned in your intro, the 50 states and the District of Columbia that Harmeet Dillon from the Civil Division of the Justice Department sent out a threatening letter telling them they would be prosecuted. if somehow it was learned that they facilitated the ability of non-citizens to vote somehow.

13:36Now, that's very odd under the rule of law that the civil division of the Justice Department would threaten criminal prosecution. It's also very odd that they would threaten a type of prosecution that has never been attempted before. So, yes, the combination of the revenge prosecutions and the continuing threats to anybody who might might be malleable in the election process is definitely a strategy. Yeah, I have a lot more to get into. We're going to fit in a brief break. Ty Cobb has agreed to stick around. I like sometimes going deeper on these Fridays. A lot of those other court losses I mentioned, including the quashing of the subpoena about 2020 in Georgia.

14:21So Ty's staying with us. We'll be back together in 90 seconds. is it possible for ai to work in the enterprise the short answer is yes the long answer is oh yes users can pick the ai providers they prefer and you can decide which data is off limits monitor all ai activity and control every detail this is enterprise ai from ireland AI at its best by keeping out the worst. Scaled for the enterprise. From Ireland. Normally in these ads, you'd expect someone like me to ask you to buy something. But I want to ask you to do something different. I'm Dave Ferenthal, and I'm a reporter for The New York Times.

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16:21We're back with Ty Cobb, a longtime lawyer, DOJ veteran and served in the first Trump term, has been a big advocate for the rule of law. One of the things they do, Bannon, who I've interviewed and you know about him, he would say, we're going to flood the zone with blank excrement. And it started as a as a communications and sort of political strategy. I've noticed, curious your view, that in the second term, it's definitely become an actual legal strategy that they throw so much out and they do so many things that they know, their lawyers and experts know, are against current law, illegal, and then they see who catches up with them.

17:03Now, one of the problems with the courts, as we know, is they can be slow. Here's just recently, the last few weeks, I'm going to put on the screen for everyone to see, Kennedy Center loss. Carroll Supreme Court rejected Trump's effort to get out of paying her, and that relates to a defamation sex abuse case. They went after Wash Poe, lost. more ICE oversight. And we've seen literally, and I'm not exaggerating, they had to count thousands, if you count every type of order, of situations where they more or less lost. And the courts are struggling to keep up with that. I mentioned before the break, the 2020 case lost.

17:44That subpoena, that effort to use the powers that way was quashed. That was just this week. And the Supreme Court, of course, stopping the ballot case. These are just some tie. What is your view of this, that on the one hand, they are stopping things, but it's almost like the Larry David joke we showed earlier this week, where he imagines the founders unable to foresee somebody this venal and relentless in breaking all the rules? Yes, I think that's one of the defects, and there are a few, but one of the major defects in the Constitution that we have now witnessed is it was not written for somebody as evil as Trump in the absence of a Congress that would uphold their duty to impeach and to contest some of these things, not fund them.

18:41And it's very difficult when you talk about Bannon saying that, yes, he was going to flood the zone. You have disgraced acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who, you know, has admitted now that he violated the Epstein Disclosure Act and also has, you know, has played a central role in the effort to siphon off one point eight billion dollars of taxpayers money to create the slush fund for the president. And then he went further and immunized Trump and his family from IRS scrutiny, despite what appears to be, based on reports, over$100 million worth of unpaid taxes. You know, he said with regard to the flood the zone issue, which was something that I thought was just shocking because the federal agents aren't supposed to be at the polls.

19:29They're prohibited from being in there and influencing elections. But he said, why wouldn't people want ICE at the polls? They're trying to season the country to not be as offended once they do take those measures. And I think they're preparing the world for the possibility they will take those measures and that the country should not be should not be sanguine about that possibility, which is why I think now in advance of the elections is the time that people need to speak out. They need to make it plain to their congressman and their local officials and their election officials that they want fair elections.

20:03They want to do what elections are supposed to do, which is. Get out as many voters as possible, get as many Americans to participate in the electoral process as we possibly can. Make sure that we invite people to come vote, not that we exclude people, not that we, not that, you know, by country of origin or ethnicity or minority status, that people aren't intimidated, that they aren't excluded, that they aren't pushed away, that they aren't fearful. Fear has no place in American politics. We're supposed to be a country unified, moving forward aspirationally. We were once the shining, shining city on the hill for the rest of the world, inclusive for peace, democracy and the rule of law.

20:52We've lost that. And to recapture it, we need to we need to be ready for the worst. But to try to make sure that people understand it's the best of us that matters and to go vote for the people that you think are the best of us, not the people who, you know, want to divide the country, not the people who say, you know, hate Democrats, hate Republicans. Not people who stand against anybody for race, ethnicity, or opinion. People who are generous, hardworking, thoughtful, and they want to make the country strong again. We can't do that if we're not united. And there are very few unifiers out there.

21:30And that's on purpose. Because if you look at the rhetoric of this president, the rhetoric he used on the 4th of July when we should have been celebrating one of our greatest days ever, You know, damning Democrats and basically splitting the country right down the middle. You know, I think we've got to combat that. That's not who we were when we were our best. We're not our best now and we need to get back there. Yeah, I appreciate it all. I think you put it plainly. I hope people are listening. Ty Cobb, good to see you, sir. Wonderful to be with you, Ari. Appreciate it. Our thanks to Ty. Up ahead, we turn to the McConnell mystery.

22:11Health questions, hospitalization, and Republicans struggling to provide the basic transparency about a powerful person and their party's health, obviously contradicting a lot of what they demanded in the Biden era. We're going to get into that story with all due seriousness. But coming up, the politics of a lame duck presidency exposed. That's next.

22:39Donald Trump has been busy enriching himself with his side jobs. He's obviously spent a lot of energy and time complaining and talking about things. But when it comes to doing the job of president, he is increasingly MIA on things that he's not interested in, which only feeds the very powerless lame duck mode that tends to come after a president's second term midterms that he might fear. but he has refused to even sign the big housing bill that Congress passed and many Republicans said would be a big good thing that they wanted to tout. The bill automatically becomes law tonight. Trump says he won't sign it, but he's also not going to veto it.

23:23If you can think of a more passive way to be president, I'm all ears. But just letting it become law is so odd and so sort of petulant, given that he also poured a lot of cold water on the Republican bill, but doesn't appear to think that there's something wrong with it enough to justify vetoing it. It's been a decade since the president did this move where you wouldn't sign or veto a bill. And there's a lot of effort inside the bill to lower costs, something that Republicans want to run on and that many Democrats joined in in this policy. So Republicans say this is good for families, even if their president doesn't think it's good enough to sign.

24:03It also has a cap on how many single family homes big banks can buy, which is one of those sensible policy ideas that Congress used to do more often. In other words, it's not really a left or right thing.

24:22it's not a left or right thing to regulate whether the home market should be tailored towards people who live in homes people single people families etc or big business that wants to make money off that market so while sometimes there's so many controversies these days we don't even talk as much about policy coming out of congress and there hasn't been a ton here's an example were on a bipartisan basis, there was agreement that putting families first instead of the big banks was a good idea and that there would be less big bank, big owner speculation in the housing market, which is different than other markets because the Congress said there's an interest in supporting people being able to live in the homes they buy, which is different than the financial Wall Street speculators.

25:08Trump, again, can't get behind that idea enough to put his name on it. He has also, of course, shown a lot of disregard in general for how people are struggling right now. I don't know. I think it's so unimportant by compared to by compared to the Save America Act. Compared to the Save America Act, just about everything is a big yawn. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up. He wants to drive housing prices up. There's a funny thing about Donald Trump, and we've all lived with him plenty of time now.

25:52He has that voluble kind of cartoonish way. Maureen Dowd famously called him more of a toon than a person. He was a celebrity. And so sometimes his gaffes don't get the attention they might merit or if another person said them because they're Trumpified. But these are not just gaffes. When he says he doesn't care enough to get involved, or he thinks housing prices should be higher, or he doesn't care about whether you're struggling, it's not just that he means it. That's sort of a personal perspective. It's that his leadership and lack thereof as president has a very real world enactment of that same blase, elitist, completely out-of-touch attitude towards what people are going through, even as his war surges prices and his Congress struggles to get anything done with him not even signing the little that they do pass.

26:46Sounds like a criticism, but sometimes it really is just that bad out there. I want to bring in New York Times columnist and MSNOW political landless Michelle Goldberg, who recently lit up the Internet with her observation that Donald Trump would be happier as a first lady based on his design impulses and small, petty sort of obsessions with decorating. No insult to other first ladies. And Mark Leibovich, staff writer for The Atlantic, MSNOW contributor. Michelle, I'll start with you, because for viewers who don't know, you made that point on our air and it went viral, as the kids say, apparently resonated with people.