Trump In Crisis Amid High Prices, Deportation Backlash

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0:35I second guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who do I even call? That's where Thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note, and it uses AI-powered search to match you with the right top-rated local pro. So instead of guessing, you get clarity and can hire with confidence. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We begin with Trump in crisis, an eruption of anger over his agenda and warnings from Republicans that this could doom their party, both Trump's agenda and their elections in November. You have the economy, health care, the Epstein scandal, the backlash over ICE.

1:14It's coming to a head. Protests today at the House hearing for Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem. One protester dressed as a cardinal holding up a sign saying, stop ICE raids. with me. I'd like to introduce them to you.

1:33Antipartations! Disruptions of congressional businesses of... Get ice off our streets! Stop terrorizing our community! Go get ice off our streets! Stop terrorizing your community!

1:45Today, the AP reporting on polls showing Trump's longtime issues, things that whether you agree with him or not, there were periods where we can accurately report that independents, moderates, even some conservative Democrats thought that he was strong on, say, the immigration agenda or the economy when people were angry at the then incumbent Biden-Harris administration. So think about those two issues. They have become weaknesses for Trump. The two signature issues that, as one outlet put it, got him, quote, elected a year ago, that's what the AP says, could be turning into liabilities as his party is gearing up for these midterms.

2:19Since taking office, we'll just show you the facts. Do with them what you will. Trump down 11 points on immigration. Remember, his so-called get tough on immigration plans were something that he said helped him last year and that people wanted. Well, they don't like it now when it's actually happening, at least the way they're doing it. And the economy, again, where he did run effectively on inflation concerns, well, now he owns them. And he's down nine points to a sad 31 percent. If you're thinking that sounds low, it is. It's a low for this term. Politico says Trump allies now worry he is basically a, quote, imperfect messenger on this economic issue because he won't admit temperamentally that Americans face high prices.

3:01You might call this a kind of Freudian problem for Trump, that his ego is getting in the way of his actual goals, which would be, and it's not that hard to do, the goal would be to tell people, I get it, you want prices lower, I'm not perfect, I'll work on it, but that's not what the White House is saying. Politico reports, quote, unfortunately, I just don't think Trump is temperamentally capable of reversing himself and saying, yes, affordability is a concern. He's stubborn, they quote this ally as saying. The problem is the overall cost of living has continued to climb under Trump. Grocery costs up about three points.

3:40The lights are up 5 % and most people don't want to ration their electricity. So people are upset. Trump promised to address this problem. He is not doing that. And then there's health care, which for so many Americans is not only a constant concern, whether you're getting the right health care and enough, whether your kids will be okay, but also if you had a health care emergency, what would you do? That's something in the back of the mind for people because we don't have a system right now that looks out for everybody and makes it affordable. Now, it's complicated. I probably told you that before, and if you're watching the news, you probably know that.

4:16But if you talk about the government, which has been under Trump cutting taxes for the super rich and cutting crypto deals for their buddies, does the government under Trump want to help allay any health care costs? The news today is no. Trump's party controls the Senate. They could not extend even the prior agreed upon money, the subsidies for people under current federal health care programs under what you might have heard of as Obamacare. And that will cause, according to these estimates, premiums to double for over 20 million people. Guess what? Higher health care costs? That's not a partisan thing.

4:51It's generally unpopular. Then there's the Epstein files deadline. That's December 19th in eight days. And some prominent voices on the right are warning this has become a bigger problem. It's not just Epstein or just immigration, as I mentioned, or even just the debates over whether America's committing war crimes and a foreign entanglement. It is snowballing together for Republicans. Hard stops in American politics typically create massive political blowback, and 2026 looks like it's going to be pretty ugly for Republicans anyways. The political blowback is going to lead to Democrats in power in 2028.

5:26You can't gaslight people and tell them that their bills are affordable, and you can't tell them that the economy is an A+++. You just can't do that. And I think it's insulting to people's intelligence. Now, will it be enough to save the Republicans in the midterms? Probably not, but that's okay. This is a long-term deal. You're going to lose the House. You may keep the Senate. I'll take that. The voices you're hearing are people who are actively publicly aligned with Trump and the Republican Party. They would like things to be going better. They would like Trump to be ahead. They would like Republicans to be on track, in their view, and nobody knows for sure, to win the midterms or hold on to some seats.

6:11And if it were really close in politics, those are the type of people we know from history who don't usually jump to the worst conclusion for their side. Things have to get this bad, not day one of the Epstein vote or day one of the Venezuela clash or even day 10 of the bad polling. No, this has been building and things get this bad that they're saying something out loud in public that we know Trump and the White House won't like, but they think they got to help these guys and deal with the quote I read you from Politico, the warnings from people around Trump that he will not right the ship if he is not emotionally there.

6:44And then you have, of course, the evidence. It's not a hypothetical. Dems swept all the races where people did vote last month. This week, they flipped a mayor's race in a city that hadn't gone Democratic in 28 years. Again, there are places where Democrats don't do well. I will always give you the facts. Make of it what you will. Miami is a place, diverse, interesting city that had not chosen Democrats in a long time. Now they are. Whether that's because they're fed up with Republicans or the like, Democrats, people can debate, but that's bad news if you're a Republican looking at the trends.

7:14Let me show you something that gets a little less attention as we take this in tonight? State-level elections. This is a new report that shows Democrats, when you look at the small races, and some of them don't make national news, have actually already flipped 25 Republican seats this year. I have Jen Psaki coming up, and I asked her about this because you say, okay, well, what about the other side of it? Republicans have flipped none. Zero. At the local level where politics really happens, there has not been an instance yet this year where voters have said, hey, we want to go more red. Just hasn't happened.

7:49And that's where we start. A red alert that's gotten loud enough that even Republican allies, Fox News voices, people who want Trump to win are saying they got to address the problem now before it's too late for them. I want to bring in Jen Psaki, our leadoff guest, of course, host of the briefing on MSNOW. She's also a White House veteran, having served in the Biden administration and the Obama White House. Welcome. Great to see you, Ari. Thanks for having me on. Great to have you on. You know, your record is that top level experience, which is cool. Most people don't get a White House job. But you've started, I know, and worked in local campaigns.

8:28And I wonder what you think those local numbers show, because whatever's going on out in the community, wherever people are getting their information, Democrats flipping all the local seats plus the environment I just mentioned seems to be a pretty big indicator. No question about it. I mean, yes, there's 11 months or just under 11 months until the midterm elections. But you referenced a couple of the races this week. And if you look at those races, the Miami mayoral race, which, as you noted, there hasn't been a Democratic mayor elected there in 28 years. But what's also interesting when you dig into the numbers is that Vice President Harris won Miami by just one point a year ago.

9:05And this mayor won by 19 points. And a big part of that seems to be a flip in Latino voters. And that is a trend that we're seeing also across the country and other parts of the country as well. And that is a big voting block that has sort of moved away from Democrats in recent years to some degree. And the hope, I think, for a lot of Democrats is that they are moving back. I would also note on the Georgia race, the state legislative race that was won the other night as well, that is a race that flipped by more than 10 points. And that is an indicator, too, that there's not just excitement out there.

9:41In local races, it's not necessarily, not typically, about topics we often talk about, like the Epstein files or even the potential war crimes in these strikes in the Caribbean. It's about issues impacting people, affordability, the cost of living, and whether the party in power is achieving that. So it's an indication that people are dissatisfied with that as well, which is a good lesson for Republicans to do more and also a good message for Democrats moving forward. Yeah, and the economy is the great reality test. You're alluding to that. You know, people can debate whether you can get really accurate information from Real Housewives, the Kardashians or The Apprentice.

10:22Right. That's that's up to the people. But there was an indication that some people have watched Trump's Apprentice long enough to think, Well, look at him in the boardroom and he'll be good on the economy. And I don't patronize to that. You know, we talk a lot about culture and different ways to message on this program and elsewhere. So the idea, though, that he's good on the economy has been blown up this year, more so than in his first term, because COVID, while it hurt the economy, was a whole different issue. And we all know what happened. I want to mention that and get your response, because this is some of the questioning at the White House.

10:57I also think part of it. Is it a good look for him to be telling parents, oh, you can you should only buy, you know, two or three dollars for your kids when he's one of the wealthiest people in the country? That's a year ago, as you know, and grocery prices have been up. So we've covered the economy, but there's mixed signals in terms of what that looks like. But inflation is down from where it was. You said he's working to find a solution. He wants to see a solution to lower health care costs. He does. But these subsidies are expiring at the end of the year. So what is the plan and what is he going to do to put this in place in the next two, three weeks?

11:33You'll hear more from the president and from the White House on that very soon. Jen? First of all, I almost cut off the White House reporters there, which is just I was just going back to my old my old stomping grounds there. You know, I think it's I think it wasn't even intentional. I think it's a clear indication, Ari. I mean, these are the issues which you see in these polls. I mean, 31 percent approval rating on the economy is an abysmally low number for any president. And in addition to the cultural side, which I think is definitely a truth here when it comes to Trump in terms of what people believed out there, it's much easier to run as the opposition, to run against what the sitting party that is in power is doing and say, I'm going to do it all better.

12:17It's much harder to govern and actually do the things you're promising to do. And the thing with Trump is that he's not a policy guy. He's not a guy who's interested in the details or somebody who really gets engaged to date in really legislating and policymaking. And so the things that he said he was going to do when he doesn't deliver on them, people are going to ask questions. The health care question, which came up, and I expect they're going to just get the more Caroline Levitt goes out there, the more they're going to get questions on this. The clear message from the public is affordability is the issue.

12:51Affordability is not just economic data. In fact, it shouldn't be thought of as economic data. The cost of health care is a huge affordability issue. And right now, Republicans, they don't have a clear plan. They don't have agreement on what the plan is. this would be a case where any normal president would engage and figure out what the plan is moving forward because nearly three quarters of the public wants these premium tax credits to be extended. And it doesn't seem to be what they're doing at this point. I'm curious how you think the dramatic rejection of Trump's yearlong effort on Epstein last month affects this.

13:26I'm asking you, and we showed the calendar, we'll cover this when the deadline hits, but I'm asking you less about the innards of that bill, which we reported, and more about the wider political impact of Trump losing that badly in public, both parties being forced to sign something that everyone knows he opposes. How does that spread to these other issues? Because, you know, we don't have a magic, you know, calculator or measurement device for all of politics. But I have observed, noticed, I'm curious what you have, that since losing that vote, there seems to be more criticism of him on other issues on the right.

14:08It seems to have given license, to your point, Ari, to Republicans to question him, to challenge him, to reject him. We've seen that on the boat strikes, and there have been some Republicans who have come out and said the video should be released, We need legal justification. There should be more information on this. We've also we just saw it this afternoon and evening in Indiana, where Indiana Republican state senators declined to pass a redistricting bill that Trump very much advocated for. So I think for a long time, or this is what I've observed, for a long time, it was a feeling among many in the Republican Party up and down the ranks that they could never challenge Trump, that they couldn't reject him because their own voters would reject them.

14:53And that premise seems to be being questioned right now. And they seem to be, some seem to be thinking more about what is politically advantageous and it isn't as often aligned with what the president is asking them to do. finally i wanted to ask you about this big loss in the enemies list campaign they have repeatedly gone after letitia james the attorney general of new york uh they did bring an indictment but it was so flawed and the trump prosecutor who brought it turned out didn't work there i don't know if you remember the seinfeld yeah where george loses his job but he still tries to go to work for the Yankees.

15:32You know, this is someone who, no disrespect, but Ms. Allegan didn't have the job. And so when she realized she didn't have the job because the judges told her, you don't work here. You certainly can't indict people. They threw the indictment out. They've now tried twice. And today we'll show the headline lost again in their efforts to get American citizens who are grand jurors to indict James. It certainly hasn't helped them that their prosecutor was illegal and this looks like a vendetta, the case looking thin. I'm curious what you think about how this plays in what is often called quite deliberately the court of public opinion, because these are jurors who are not legal experts.

16:14They're called to do a duty. And I can remind viewers, they tend to approve over nine out of 10 of the cases presented. But if the case is bad enough and weak enough, you get this. What do you think about that? And you are the lawyer, not me, but it is not a conviction, a grand jury indicting. This is just as, again, what do they say, a ham sandwich? They could indict a ham sandwich often in these grand juries. You know, I think that because this has been one of Trump's stated objectives, to go after his enemies, to have people working for him go after his enemies, it seems, one, it's an obsession and it seems very vindictive, which is, of course, a legal term, too.

16:52But it is a failure again. It is a loss of power in some ways. And if you look at the big scope of things, he's losing his power and his ability to win on legal cases. We're seeing that over and over again. Remember today also Kilmar Obrego Garcia is also should be being released at this point. That's a case he's been also obsessed with in the courts. And at the same time, he's losing his political power. These are kind of two of the levers that he always felt he was all powerful on, that he was Teflon on. And I think if you're looking at it from just the perspective of what does it mean for him and his ability to assert power or exert power, it's all challenging in one big pool together, in my view.

17:38Yeah, makes sense. Jen Psaki, great to have you here. And you've agreed to come back later in the hour with DJ Bobbito Garcia. I think that'll be fun. So I'll see you soon. I do, too. I'll see you later in the hour. OK, coming up, we turn to a big anti-Trump South Park finale that has rattled the White House. As you see, it involves what you see here, him in bed with Satan. We'll get to that. But first, fact checking Donald Trump's broken vows on stopping foreign wars. It matters. It's new. And it's next in 90 seconds.

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19:37An escalation in the Caribbean. Trump has announced the seizure of that oil tanker, and the attorney general released rather dramatic footage, which shows, first you see the tanker in the distance, then you see the rappelling of agents down there. They rappelled from those helicopters, and it was a search of cabins and compartments. Bondi says this was done safely, securely, and lawfully with U.S. oversight. But there's, of course, larger legal scrutiny on operations like this, and the powers the administration has been seizing under Trump, killing people, sometimes killing survivors who appear to be unarmed and innocent based on what we know, which led to the talk of a war crime probe.

20:18They say they're targeting drug boats. One of the strikes carried out in September had these reports of the second strike I mentioned, and two basically shipwrecked survivors killed by the United States. That's put scrutiny on the Pentagon and Hagseth, as well as Admiral Bradley, who carried out the strike. The Post reports in a period of time that has gotten a lot of scrutiny, a rather long 30 minutes between strike one, which killed most people, and strike two, which killed the two people who apparently were just clinging to wreckage, that Bradley consulted a military lawyer to determine whether they were, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the laws of war, officially shipwrecked, in which case you can't kill them, or were they perhaps a threat?

21:00Bradley ultimately decided that the definition did not apply shipwrecked, which would have given them, of course, in the views of the military and that strike, protection. As everyone knows who's ever followed any war or really any war movie, when people are no longer a threat, they become prisoners of war. In modern Western war, you don't go around executing everyone who's been disarmed because those are war crimes. I say it plainly and slowly because we are now in a position where this is being debated, and the reportedly unarmed shipwrecked individuals were killed by your government. Now, Bradley defended the decision to lawmakers when he had to discuss it last week.

21:43That was in a closed-door session. Reportedly, and I say reportedly because it wasn't public, so we don't have a transcript, he did not say whether the lawyer considered the survivor shipwrecked. The Post reported there was, and this matters, again, now that you think about what I just told you, quote, dissent in the operations room over whether the survivors were viable targets once they were shipwrecked after the first strike. In other words, even the military folks, who of course are deemed to be pretty aggressive, they just killed the other guys and their military lawyer, whose job is to find the best defense of whatever they want to do.

22:17That's kind of what being general counsel of the Pentagon means. Even in that hawkish room, they were saying, I don't know that we can go this far. That's what the dissent was. Lawmakers had the impression there was uncertainty about whether there were even drugs on board and whether the survivors had any means to call for help or intended to surrender. Again, we don't have the second video, but if they're just holding wreckage in the water, they don't look like a threat. The House approved a bill that will try to pressure Hegseth to release the rest of the video evidence. Experts warn the boat strikes in general are contested.

22:49And the Politico reports that the administration's top lawyers signed off on a memo just this summer, which says officials have criminal immunity because the U.S. is in an armed conflict with drug cartels. Now, there is a lot of protection for the military to do what it needs to do. That's why you don't see very often indictments, let alone prosecutions and convictions of our armed service members inside the U.S. But the wider problem here on a policy level, because we don't know yet everything that happened in the strike. Journalists, the Washington Post reporting, and now Congress are trying to find out.

23:23But the wider issue is, what are we doing out there with your tax dollars and your soldiers and now lethal, deadly efforts in a so-called drug war where the president wants to seize a lot of war powers? Because a lot of people are old enough to remember that one of the things where Trump really did differentiate himself from the traditional hawkish Republican Party of the war on terror and the Bush wars in the Mideast, was he repeatedly, loudly promised that he would take a different route, be less hawkish than Bush, even be a so-called, quote, peacemaker. Remember what he said. We're uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars.

24:06Can you rule out an American ground invasion? I don't want to rule in or out. I don't talk about it. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. We have officially renamed the Department of Defense back to the original name, Department of War. I've been working every day to put the world at ease a little bit to get rid of the wars. We take them out, and we've taken out four. It's amazing what strength will do. This is one of the most significant real-world shifts by Donald Trump. There's some things that he ran on, like lower prices, that he's not delivering on, and people say, well, he would like prices to be lower.