Trump Rocked as Epstein Scandal Roars Back

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0:39They hand-select every stem to ensure top quality. And with nationwide delivery, smiles and satisfaction are 100 % guaranteed. And right now, when you order a dozen multicolored roses, we'll double it at no extra cost. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Order today at 1-800-Flowers.com slash SXM. That's 1-800-Flowers.com slash SXM. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're tracking these reports of absolute chaos and infighting in the Trump White House. There is a lot of concern about the basically seemingly accurate reporting in The New York Times about the Epstein crisis inside the White House, but Donald Trump pushing back on that because I guess he's mad that the story is public.

1:20Washington also waking up to this type of headline, Knives Are Out, Inside an Insular and Isolated White House. Political reporting on the angry and grievance-driven Trump White House mood these days, with one ally saying knives are out in some capacity. People are stabbing people like it's chaos, the chaos creeping back. Another MAGA political operative quoted as saying Trump is pissed and people are not recognizing the level of pissed that he is. It all comes back to Epstein, a story that we've reported and told you they have not been able to step, including high-profile testimony this week and that New York Times bombshell, which is part of a forthcoming book that probably has more details because this was just an excerpt.

2:04The Times reporting the rather unusual, somewhat embarrassing detail that they misused the national security situation room to spin Epstein. The response here, instead of shoot the messenger, it's find the leaker, a reported massive leak probe into who might have been talking to those journalists. You'll note, though, that a leak probe implies there are real people who said real things to the journalists. In other words, that the story was basically true, right? They want to find their own aides who are still in the White House who talk to the reporters. Meanwhile, the inflation numbers that are coming in show that the inability to stem or end the ceasefire and the war in Iran continues to catch up with America and Trump at home.

2:48Price gains have wiped out the pay increases that Americans have even gotten over the past year on average. So this is some of that economic math. But the bottom line is if you adjust for inflation, your hourly earnings, all Americans hourly earnings are actually lower. They've effectively fallen because of Trump's inflation. Now, Trump says he loves the inflation. I guess that's something he does not have in common with the American worker. And there are other statements which, from someone who has focused on PR, who is known to be a communicator, have raised wider questions about why any politician, including the incumbent president, would say that he doesn't ever even think about your financial situation or that he doesn't care about what you do and vote in the upcoming midterms or has mentioned that he loves inflation.

3:38Mr. President, to what extent are American financing should make and motivating you to make it? I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I don't care about them at times. We can serve, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning. Could that be it? No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. He loves it. Meanwhile, in private, there are oil executives warning the White House that the gas price problem is only going to get worse. The Washington Post reporting on what were essentially private warnings.

4:12Americans paying at the pump. Federal workers, meanwhile, are preparing to host the UFC ring there at the White House. We have new footage. We should mention Trump also owns stock in the company behind this fight. Critics questioning whether this is part of the ongoing grift and that it doesn't end there as the Trump family is trying to make money by selling a$12 ,000 commemorative gold coin that connects with this unusual fight that Donald Trump wants to hold at the White House, which is a type of focus and energy going to this instead of, you know, governing the war, high prices. Jimmy Kimmel having a field day.

4:57the trump family is offering a special commemorative coin with his head on it for this ufc event for the low low price of only 11 999 dollars and 99 cents you can see though it's a beautiful coin julius uf caesar is pictured

5:20You know, if you forget the last many years of politics, if you go back to, say, 2014, 2013, you know, before Trump was even really floating this run, it's like the Simpsons episode that imagined it, or any other cartoon. The fact that it's really kind of the most absurd version of Donald Trump hawking the coins and the products and the wrestling and the reality TV gambits. The type of thing that you wouldn't think he would need to do. He's in the second term. He has no more elections to run. He could try to, at times, focus on other things. But this is who he is. He was not going to change. He has shown America who he is.

6:03And so that's the weird moment we're in, living through a summer where people are actually having to cancel, reschedule, change their weekly plans, the vacation they were going to drive to the lake for, because gas is too expensive. And whatever gains, as I mentioned, they got in hourly wages, had been wiped out by Trump. Inflation, including the gas crunch, that is only a direct product of a war that he started that nobody, nobody seemed to want in America, and that he certainly didn't run on and he certainly didn't get Congress to clear. And so against the backdrop of these serious problems, foreign and domestic, you have Trump selling coins and doing these reality TV ploys.

6:44And you might say, okay, well, the news is reporting on that, but you know, that's who he is and that's how he got elected and that's his appeal. Well, it's not his appeal anymore. He has historically low second term approval ratings. He is at a low enough approval that statistically a heck of a lot of people who have voted for him in the past now disapprove of him. So maybe the shtick and the campaign moves and the antics that did get attention in our political attention economy during campaign season aren't actually turning out in a way that the American public wants. And that's before you even get to the aging president's physical stamina.

7:20Now, this is the type of story we reported on regarding the last president who happened to be a Democrat and this president who happens to be a Republican. What they have in common is what has become a big kind of ongoing issue in sclerotic Washington, which is a lot of people who are way past retirement age, continuing to do their jobs or do them as best they can. Trump again being seen in what looks like a public nap and not at a kind of quiet end of the night kind of event. This was actually at the loud, action-packed Knicks-Spurs game. Today there is reporting that he saw 22 different medical specialist as part of his last checkup.

7:58Now, if you have good health care and everybody would want the president to have, of course, the best there is, you can see as many specialists as you want. The question is whether this relates to other issues and a lack of transparency in the White House. There are questions from outside physicians who said they were skeptical of the disclosures about his health. And remember, when you are president, you give up some of that personal health security that most Americans have. In other words, it's not your employer's business or anyone's business if you don't want to share. But that's not the case with the president.

8:27There is a long and important standard of the president and the White House sharing the medical exams and other information because it is a national security issue and a matter of public import. If you ask the public, though, well, Americans are concerned that he may no longer be physically and mentally fit enough for the job. And that is a backdrop that might remind you of why Biden ultimately exited the race, because those kind of problems, those numbers are very hard to reverse. And while Donald Trump isn't running for office, his party, of course, is up in the midterms and Republicans are watching their odds get worse.

9:05Larry Sabato is a renowned elections forecaster. He sees Republicans struggling and Democrats surging in several Senate races. Take it all together. And what do you have here? a kind of a doomsday of problems. We didn't have to be at war. Trump started the war. So we didn't have to have a gas crunch. The war caused that. We didn't have to have an Epstein crisis that lasted this long in America. If Donald Trump had done just what he said he would do and immediately released the files, it wouldn't have taken this long. And ironically, it may redound against his benefit and hurt the Republicans that here deep into the summer, we're still looking at that issue, the reporting, him hunting the Epstein leaker, more witnesses going before Congress because Trump's DOJ did not do the investigations that they should have and said they would.

9:57And you don't have to take the news's word for it. You can get that take from Megan and Tucker and the right-wing podcasts. So all of this is congealed into a problem for the Republicans going into the midterms and potentially for Donald Trump as he looks at a nation that increasingly sees him as unfit and off the path Americans want. Where do we go from here and what will Trump do responding to such a kind of negative terrain for himself? We have a very special guest booked tonight. You might remember Tony Schwartz, the Art of the Deal co-author and noted Trump critic who has worked with him up close, who has really eyed what the problems are.

10:37And he's back with me on set in 90 seconds. Welcome to Omaha, where work and play meet. Where productivity meets the after party. Where downtown convention space and hotels are within walking distance of 90 restaurants, pubs, and unique shops. Where locally made morning lattes meet 5 o 'clock craft cocktails. And where colleagues meet to explore the waterfront views in our 72-acre downtown urban oasis. And where in 2028, a modern street park will take you to even more entertainment options. Go to visitomaha.com slash meetings to learn more. Tired of paying for channels you don't watch? Well, a new select package by Sling gives you a curated lineup of live and on-demand TV you actually want.

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12:17We're joined by... I'm going to go here. We're joined by Tony Schwartz, co-author of The Art of the Deal. His interactions with Trump dramatize in the film The Apprentice. I got three rules, okay? They're my three rules of winning. Rule one, The world is a mess. OK, the world is a mess, Tony. You have to fight back. You have to have a tough skin. Attack, attack, attack. If somebody comes after you with a knife, you shoot him back with a bazooka.

12:54That's all the art of the deal. We know how Tony got there and co-wrote it with allegedly Donald Trump, depending on how much you think he wrote. Now, I want to mention Tony is the founder of The Energy Project, a consulting firm, conducting surveys on how people feel in the workplace. And I want to mention you can find that at energyproject.com slash survey for the work you're doing. Welcome back. I'm thrilled to have you at this critical time. It's been a minute, given how well you know him. and how he responds to adversity, what does he do with this situation? I honestly don't think he has the marbles to do anything.

13:31I think it's happening to him. And, you know, you just look at a day like today, where he goes from one extreme to the other about Iran and whether he's going to bomb it or not, and then he tells the world he is. Why in the world would you do that? And, you know, now he's got the Epstein drama that was created by Maggie Haberman and her colleague. I just think that he is lost and really doesn't have a sense. not that he was so great about this at any time over the last 10 years, but I think he is without any instincts other than self-preservation in the immediate moment. And that self-preservation in the immediate moment means he sets himself up for lots of terrible things going forward.

14:31When you see this Epstein story drop, and they're still so concerned about that, And the response is hunt the leakers. As I mentioned, and it bears underscoring, this isn't a response that says they made this up, fake news. It's not true. It's more like, oh, no, someone who works here told the truth about this. And all he wants to do is publicly admit that he wants to, quote, hunt them down. Yeah. I mean, that's his way is to attack, attack, attack, as he said in the movie. And so, you know, reality has no meaning to him. Reality is what he makes it in that moment. And in some measure, he believes it.

15:11The problem for him right now is most people don't. Right, right. And that gap, which we saw in GAS, it used to be sometimes he would say things and elites or D.C. would recoil, but he would find a pocket of support out in the country. Maybe we didn't like it, but he would find it. When he says, I love the inflation going up, which I just reported in the Times as an article, has literally wiped out what little hourly gains people had. That's real world. I don't think anyone agrees with him that they love that. No, I think they don't. And actually, that's part of what we're doing in this assessment.

15:47You know, in 2014, I did an article for The New York Times called Why You Hate Work, and it really assessed what's the experience people are having at work. We're redoing that now. That's what you were mentioning. And it strikes me that we are at probably is going to turn out that the climate Trump is creating is making the experience of people. What people hate most is uncertainty. That's what makes them the most anxious. And the climate of uncertainty trickles down. He's, from my perspective, the chief, Ed Trump, for better or for worse, is the chief energy officer. And the energy is bad. And so the experience people are having, we want to look at what is it that you need to do as a human, as an individual right now, to weather this storm, to deal with what is an unprecedented level of uncertainty.

16:46of uncertainty. Yeah. And the gaffes, you know, they may accrue in a way where people are sort of used to them. It's almost like the first time you fall asleep in public, you go, I guess that's that's part of his deal now, even though he was famously loved to call him Sleepy Joe. And then it keeps happening. Falling asleep at a Knicks game in the finals that you flew up for, you know, it really says something. And I wonder what you think, having worked with him and his communication skills. I want to show some of these recent gaffes, but whether the public is also inured to them to some degree.

17:16Take a look. Mr. President, to what extent are American financing, Mr. Mason, motivating you to make it? I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I don't care about them at times. Sir, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number, which came out this morning. Could that be a... No, I love it. The numbers were very... You know what I really love? I love the inflation. It's demanded. I mean, It's so self-destructive. And this is, I think, since the first time I came on this show in 2015, 2016, I guess it was, I've been saying this, that the destructive impulse, self-destructive impulse in Trump is so intense that, you know, what he has is a classic addict's way of being, which is he needs to feel he's a black hole and you pour stuff into it.

18:14and he poured in, it maxed out when he was reelected president and it looked fantastic, but it seeped out incredibly quickly. And then he has to keep upping the ante and chasing the high. And so now where he's at is there's no high to chase. So that's just a piece of self-destructiveness. He is going to go down as the worst president in the history of this country. You look at his dealings with the congressional primaries where even when you're unpopular, the sitting president has leverage in their party. I mean, that's well documented. Doesn't make him some mighty superhero. It's just how party politics works.

18:54And so we saw that with Cornyn and Massey. And Cornyn was very, very reliable vote for the mega agenda in Texas, but committed the cultish sin of criticizing Donald Trump on something years ago. this is what he says. Trump was hurting his own party with self-serving decisions and this insistence on a kind of slavish loyalty, setting himself up for a midterm disaster, which he thinks will pave the way for the most miserable two years of his life. And that's where we go if they lose the midterms. And I always tell folks, that depends on what the people do, right? We can't predict that because we have to see what the people do.

19:35But the numbers show if they were held today, it would be an uphill battle. That idea that Trump would be miserable, would be a lame duck, would be watching the world pass him by, and yet you know him so well, that doesn't mean that he will bow out gracefully. What do you worry about if Cornyn's right about those miserable two years? Well, first of all, graceful is not a word we apply to anything that he does. Second of all, I imagine that as being a torturous period of time for him. You know, No, he's also, we have to assume, got something going on pretty significant physically, given the number of visits to the hospital and all of the all of the issues you can see on his body.

20:17And to be clear, that's something experts are questioning. And the White House has not been very transparent. If they were more honest and transparent, then we would look at it and the doctors would tell us what they see. Yeah. And we wish that transparency had characterized the previous administration as well. But yes, lack of transparency is characteristic of this administration. I just think that though I agree with you, he would not step down or bow out. I think he's going to quit in his own mind. It's like you're playing a basketball game. You're playing a basketball game. You're down by 29.

20:57And you say, you know what? Right. I've had it. Some teams do it. He is not the Knicks. Let me say one other thing, Ari. But I'll let you finish. But you think he might do a kind of quiet quitting at the real hard parts of the job. Perfect description. He is going to quietly quit, even if it's just that he loses the house. But I think people really, maybe this is my hope, are underestimating how big this wave is going to be. I think the wave is going to be bigger. But I just want to invite again your audience to collaborate with me in assessing how they're doing and in being able to report back to them, I hope, here on what we discover, particularly as it relates to what they can do about it.

21:41So www.theenergyproject.com slash survey. Great. And we'll put that up on our socials as well. Tony Schwartz, thank you. Good to have you back in the house. Coming up, Donald Trump has a plan on the convict fund, a way to potentially bring it back. And is it still illegal? Maya Wiley is here on the DOJ next.

22:10Turning to two important stories now that are related. Donald Trump's lies and his effort to get people around him who will support or even abuse government power for those lies. Number one is a story with a type of silver lining, if you care about qualifications in government, because we can report that Trump has backed off one of his most controversial moves of the last several weeks and now is pushing prosecutor Jay Clayton to run intelligence. That is a retreat from Trump's initial temporary pick, Bill Pulte, who had no relevant intelligence experience and faced widespread backlash. Now, whatever one thinks of Clayton, this new individual, he does have more relevant experience.

22:54So this is widely seen as a retreat by Trump, that he didn't want to continue to fight what was probably a losing battle to have an unqualified partisan choice play a kind of temporary role on intelligence. Now, some of that pushback came from experts, intel vets, Democrats had criticized the choice, as well as Republicans. And if you're sensing a pattern here, things are a little different than a year ago or the first term. We're increasingly seeing, at least on the very extreme measures, some Republicans in the Congress, including some that Trump, of course, has tried to defeat, which I just discussed with Tony.

23:28We've seen some of those Republicans join a chorus of pushback. Now, this new individual for the intel pick, Clayton, was recently questioned about Donald Trump's evidence-free claims about voter fraud. do you think that it helps given where you sit in the world to speculate about a fraud or potential fraud without any direct evidence of said fraud i am not speculating about fraud i'm not saying there is fraud okay i am saying that the opportunity for fraud makes no sense to me The president over the weekend very openly didn't just speculate that there was fraud. He said directly that there was fraud.

24:17You'll notice the kind of slow, halting, pausing interaction. Part of what you're seeing is what it sounds like when someone doesn't want to upset the president, which, by the way, is part of your job if you're an honest government service, if you're in that line of work, but not going nearly as far as the now discarded pick, Pulte, who was saying all kinds of false things. So, what we also know, though, is the administration's already tried pursuing election fraud investigations in California. And Democratic leaders are pushing back quickly and prepping legal injunctions so that they can bar in real time any effort to misuse power and put armed federal agents or even armed citizens near voting sites, among other measures.

24:58So for those watching who say, well, are we even going to have a free and fair midterms? That's some of the back and forth. I mentioned a second story here, and it's kind of related. Pressure works. lawmakers and lawsuits have swiftly made Donald Trump's DOJ back off that proposed criminal fund that drew so much outrage. Remember, the DOJ first floated this as a method where they would misuse sort of funds that are in the DOJ settlement fund system to pay like legitimate cases. They would just take that without it being appropriated from Congress and try to pay MAGA allies, maybe even ex-convicts from Jan 6.

25:34Now, that's pause in court. Trump's DOJ saying it will stop. They will not do the fun. That's what they said to court. But that doesn't mean they will. If you're watching this, you're going, yeah, I've seen Trump and his folks lie and move around before, right? And there are new reports that Trump aides are already secretly assuring some allies that those original payout plans will remain on track, according to eight sources who spoke to the Atlantic. Now, that violates the DOJ's own claim in court. So what do we do with this? If you're watching this and going, okay, well, they lost, they backed off, but if it's just a ploy, then what happens?

26:15Well, I can tell you some of the lawyers and liberal groups who've been suing over this are on to it. The DOJ provided no evidence, for example, say lawyers who were suing them over this issue, that it would actually end this thing for good. And so what you're seeing tonight is the Trump Justice Department's we don't trust you moment. That's what Metro Boomin once told the artist Drake, that basically you have no credibility. If people don't trust how you move, if people don't trust you, then they will act accordingly. It's kind of a diss. In fact, if you're interested in the trivia, the album cover on your screen is we don't trust you.