Trump Stokes Scandal with Jesus Post, Pope Attack

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1:30Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on several major developments on the home front inside the United States tonight. This news breaking late in the day. Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell announces he's not only discontinued his campaign, but is resigning from Congress following several credible allegations of sexual assault. We have more on that this hour. We're also following what can only be described as a feud between President Trump and the Pope. backlash for a bizarre and some say blasphemous post where Donald Trump compared himself to Jesus, a president who's often described as not backing down, has already deleted the odd post.

2:12We're going to get into that. And a major defeat for a strong man who has pushed the limits of autocracy abroad. We have the report on that and why it is also a blow to Putin and Trump. Andrew Weissman is here as well as we look at safeguarding legal protections going into the midterms where the Republicans are increasingly acting like they're bracing for a rout. So we're really following a lot of major stories. One of those nights where you could start any number of places, but with Donald Trump continuing and in some ways escalating aspects of the war with Iran, we begin there. The United States has begun a Trump-led blockade of the Iranian ports.

2:52This is around the Strait of Hormuz. This comes after the peace talks did not deliver peace or a breakthrough. Vice President Vance, of course, had led those talks over the weekend for the United States side. Those talks were seen by Donald Trump as a potential off-ramp when he didn't get what he wanted after his threats, if you remember all that last week, and there was a ceasefire to lead to the talks. Well, now we have more than 15 U.S. warships in place. They are operating to prevent ships from leaving or entering. We are kind of doing a version of what Iran is doing, a point that has been observed by many experts wondering where exactly this all leads.

3:31Indeed, you don't have to have a satirical website like The Onion or wait for the late night comics to get a hold of this tonight, because mainstream outlets and foreign policy experts are already calling it something that might have occurred to you as someone who follows the news or this war. They're calling it Trump's blockade of a blockade because the issue that had spiked prices and caused so much pain for the U.S. putting pressure on Trump's policy was that Iran was already blockading most ships from moving through this same body of water, this strait. The U.S. now doing it. Remember, it's not exactly our backyard.

4:06And given the history and us choosing to bomb Iran, this does play out as an escalation because the U.S. is stepping up to block everything there. Trump wants other countries to join in, but the president who started this war without allies apparently will be waging parts of this war without allies. The Times reporting there are no takers for that mission as of tonight. Trump's patience may be wearing thin. The administration is also looking at limited strikes as a way to break a stalemate. That's from the Wall Street Journal, the blockade, bringing U.S. ships into striking distance of Iran's missiles and drones.

4:41And that raises the risk where American military are now in harm's way. Our personnel are out there. We're close to Iran. The fact that we have limited their ability to hit us on the home front over in the U.S. and near the continental U.S. is not comfort when we are now operating there. experts also describe this as a kind of game of chicken where iran would seem to have an upper hand because and this is partly a criticism of the iranian government and its failures but the fact is iran and its people have endured a lot more pain economic and otherwise than the american public and so the time says if this is a showdown over who can endure more pain Donald Trump's policies and the American economy may not be set up for success there.

5:31Also, this will increase oil prices rise and it will deepen the drag on the global economy. Remember, before the blockade, oil was spiking again. It's been around$100 per barrel. A lot of the positives that we've seen in the energy markets involve the assumption or call it a hope that Donald Trump will not wage this war for months on end. But the way he's acting, the way he's escalating, and the erratic behavior, which some of his own allies and former aides say reflects an untenable mental decline for the sitting president. That's me quoting them. We can get over to the independent experts or the critics or the doctors, but we've had Trump allies speaking out and another story from the Times crossing on that point today.

6:10Well, that erraticism, that unreliability of the commander-in-chief, does conflict with the market's best hope that this will just work itself out. As for the price of oil heading up, Donald Trump, who on his better political days, if you look at the last, say, 10 years, has been at times an effective communicator or really a kind of resilient liar, someone who just says what needs to be said for political purposes, that Donald Trump is fading into one who courts blasphemy debates and upsets the Christian population of the United States and around the world and upsets the Muslim population around the world and just does things that aren't adding up very straight.

6:50So I say that by way of introduction to the president's answer on Fox News about whether the price of oil will go up and stay up heading into the midterms. So do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections? I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be. It could be the same or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same. A little bit higher is not what the host was looking for. You can see Maria's eyebrows literally raised as she watches a president commit what is a gaffe. Of course, a phone call where he admits that his policies are driving up prices on Americans, which breaks his campaign promises, is only one of several gaffes, errors or outright failures affecting America.

7:40Indeed, if this were the only thing, and this were a different political era, a president saying that, that they raise gas prices and they're going to go up even higher by the next election, that itself would be its own big thing. But we have to pick among that and the many other scandals and problems dogging Donald Trump. Anger over the war and the higher prices are part of why Republicans have been retiring. Now, that's not always the most fascinating story, right? You have to be kind of a news or politics junkie to keep track and care about a retirement rate in Congress going up or down. But we reported, as did others, about that because that was one of those clear indicators that some Republican incumbents who already have the job basically are sure they would lose it and would rather not lose it.

8:22They'd rather say they're retiring and go work on their next job or their lobbyist offers in D.C., that kind of thing. That is the context for what the Republicans who are still running are facing if they're willing to talk to Republican voters, not all voters, just in red districts, incumbent Republicans and other candidates facing these kind of scenes.

8:45As the conflict in the Middle East comes to an end, you're going to see, you're going to see oil prices come back down. The fact is that the president is well within his authority to conduct the strikes that have been conducted. Donald Trump won the election. the Republican Party and you are enabling him. You're all cowards. That's just a sample of that Republican being addressed as a, quote, coward. And credit to those willing to face voters, which is what you're supposed to do if you're in office. At least he's trying to talk to them. The even larger, quote, cowards, if you buy that critique, would be the ones ducking all together.

9:30But what you see there in just a moment we showed you is the talking point of the party is that oil prices are going down, not up. Donald Trump just contradicted that claim. The war is unpopular, obviously. And the way that Republicans are trying to stand with Donald Trump's claims, delusions and propaganda about a war that clearly was chosen by this administration and is raising prices and has not worked. and now involves, tonight, a greater commitment of troops in harm's way and ships in harm's way in Iran to do the blockading that Iran was already doing doesn't make a lot of sense. You can look at the polling, and the majority of the country says they're angry about this war, 57%.

10:16A larger group says stressed. And if you just ask people if they're worried, well, that's a huge, huge number, 68%. That includes, by definition, statistically, a lot of people who have voted for Trump in the past. That is the scene we face as we bring in our experts on the politics. We have Jason Johnson, MSNOW political contributor and professor. And on the national security front, Brian Katulis has worked with the NSC, the State Department, and DOD. He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. Welcome to both of you. Jason, we'll get to you on the politics. I don't think it's the hardest questions you face tonight.

10:53why GOP politics bad, why voters angry, that kind of thing. Brian, we'll start with you on the more serious footing, which is what does a blockade of a blockade mean and what is the outlook in the region? All right. Thanks for having me on. Let's be straight here. This problem that Donald Trump's trying to fix in the Strait of Hormuz was a problem that did not exist on February 27th before he launched the war. And that's a key problem here. And I key issue. He keeps on using military tactics and our most precious national security resources, which are men and women in uniform, and putting them in harm's way without a strategy.

11:32We essentially have strikes without strategy. In this instance, an operation, we don't know that it'll work. And that's driving up prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store for all of us. And the real risk here, you mentioned he's the commander in chief. He's also just an improv performer in chief. He's sort of making things up as he goes along, in part, if you remember before the war and in the early days, he couldn't really articulate a clear end goal and objective. It was like a game of three card monte. He was ever shifting the goalposts. And he continues to do that. And that's a risky situation going back to the troops, to the troops that are in the field right now, that you can't just solve this with tactics.

12:11You need smart diplomacy, which is not what we had on display in Islamabad this past weekend. Jason? So here's the thing. Blocking a blockade, it's a hat on a hat. It doesn't make sense. You can make an economic argument, right? Because Iran for the last month has been charging people to get to the Strait of Hormuz. They're charging people like two million bucks, and maybe they were going to put the price up. But here's the thing. You could charge one million, two million, three million, four. It doesn't matter. At some point, somebody needs to tell Donald Trump, you don't know what you're doing.

12:44And he keeps trying to shift things back and forth. And the problem is there are people who are willing to pay the price to get through Iran's blockade that are going to be frustrated by our blockade on top of that blockade. So it is an absolute mess of strategy and makes absolutely no sense. And it has damages, not just in this country, but the global economy. Brian, here's what the president said about it today. Mr. President, as far as the naval blockade is concerned, what's the endgame? Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the straits so the gas prices ultimately come down?

13:21Maybe everything. I mean, you know, both of those things, certainly, and more.

13:28Brian, it gives you the echoes of sort of the real estate deal guy, the tycoon, the build the wall, the reality show. It's this, it's that, it's more. But all of this is being tested in reality in the days ahead. I mean, how long can he blockade a blockade? And if he doesn't get Iran to give in, which the Times and others are saying is tough, then what? Yeah. So before I get back to the blockade on the blockade, just remember a few short days ago, President Trump suggested that we might be collecting tolls with the Iranian regime. An ayatollah booth, I call it, or a piracy pact between the United States and Iran, which nobody on his team, I think, was prepared when those words came out of his mouth.

14:11Flash forward to today, what I'm most worried about is somebody who lived in the region, worked on it for 30 years, is we're putting our sailors and soldiers in harm's way. And what I'm watching is whether, A, there's any reaction from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which is the most dangerous force in the region. And then B, whether this actually produces results, right? The straits are not open. They've not been for a month and a half. And the longer they stay closed, it's going to be costlier for all of us at the grocery store, at the gas pump. So and the key missing link here is that he's not as the commander in chief.

14:51He's not articulated the end game, which is the thing we should have learned from more than 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is how you get stuck in a quagmire when you don't have your leadership actually being crystal clear. And in that clip you just played, Ari, I didn't hear a commander in chief who's very crystal clear about where we're going here. Yeah, Jason, I mean, it actually is true. It's not a burn. it's just true that a politician, Donald Trump, who's lied more than anyone, seems to not even be good at lying anymore. He's lost it. He doesn't have it. So the GOP message is we're going to sell lower gas prices.

15:32Give us time. Now, that's messaging. It's not a full-blown lie. We can just say it's their hope. And he, as we showed tonight, can't even land that pitch. He is posting praise be Allah. most presidents, if they did that, it would require some explanation and make you wonder what's going on. He follows that up with comparing himself to Jesus, a post that he deleted, because he very quickly had to back down and take it back. You can say, oh, this isn't a president who says sorry. Well, to him, deleting a precious post like that is as close as he gets. What does it say to you, Jason, that we are watching a performance in decline?

16:12You know, I think that's the thing that Republicans have been trying to avoid admitting to themselves for a long time, that the president, whatever it is that he had, whether you liked it or not, he really got it anymore. And on top of that, the rest of the world sees it. And whether that's in the form of supporting Viktor Orban and he doesn't have power, whether it's making threats that people no longer believe in. We are in a bizarre world where a country that the United States is bombing is mocking the president with AI Lego videos. Right. Like that. That is a sign of disrespect that you could not imagine occurring to any other president in history, let alone the fact that we're having a conversation about AI videos and Lego.

16:50So the president's ability to have an aura around him is gone. The president's strategy is almost nonexistent. And the president's planning is so unclear from day in and day out. We used to, you know, usually when the military attacks, there's like no reasonable that we know exactly what we're going to do and where we're going to go. Nobody knows that from day to day, and therefore people can't even execute whatever plans he's got. Yeah. Yeah, it's really something, the world we're in here. Brian and Jason, my thanks to both of you. Coming up, Andrew Weissman is here on the legal ways to safeguard the midterms.

17:23MAGA rattled as we watched that Orban loss over in Hungary, something Jason just referenced. J.D. Vance was there, but obviously didn't help enough to save that autocrat. Meanwhile, Trump backpedaling on the big story I mentioned, really unbelievably unusual, even by our current times, the Jesus post and the attack on the Pope. I have no fear. The other Trump administration are speaking out loud about confessing the gospel.

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20:19which quite frankly is a very Pope thing to do. And that was seen as a rebuke of Trump's choice to attack Iran. Moments later, he posted an AI-generated image that you see right here. We don't often show all of the things that Trump posts on True Social, but I want to make sure you see this with your own eyes so you can make sense of it. There are all these sort of AI propaganda visuals that go out, and people have different views about their role or efficacy. But from a religious viewpoint, this was deeply offensive. to many people in our country and around the world. This is what, to many Christians, is seen as total blasphemy.

20:58Donald Trump posted it, obviously had his own reasons for that, but we've seen a lot of prominent individuals, including in MAGA, describe this as reprehensible, saying it's blasphemy, that faith is no prop, that it crosses the line. One longtime Trump ally posting, God will not be mocked online. And as I mentioned earlier in our coverage, we hear a lot of things from Trump and his allies that aren't really true. They just continue this sort of spin. And one of them, I'm sure you've heard a lot as well, he doesn't back down, he doesn't apologize. That's not true. He backs down when he is attacked or confronted in a consistent way, and especially by other people who don't back down.

21:38Some liken that to the approach you need for bullies. And so while Trump has been all over the place on these issues, I mentioned his Praise Allah post as well, he deleted this post. He might not want you to know that, but we showed you the post. It's no longer on Truth Social. He deleted it. Then later, facing the cameras, he went after the Pope again. I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo. He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. I'm not a fan of Pope Leo. And that brings us to, again, a strange chapter in a region where the United States has all sorts of religious sensitivities, and past presidents have made a point to try to be respectful and serious about all of the different world religions that are involved in the Middle East.

22:30Indeed, when you have a war that's being waged right now that involves Iran, Israel, and a lot of other parties affected, you are dealing with all the monotheistic religions. You are dealing with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. And so for the United States, it is a net negative to be seen as mocking or playing with the idea of Allah, which the president did during this war on Easter Sunday, or attacking the Pope, which doesn't fit into any discernible strategy other than perhaps, as mentioned, a kind of erratic anger that the president can't withhold. Here was Pope Leo's response. The blessed are the peacemakers.

23:08I do not look at my role as being political, politician. I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out loud with this. I have no fear. I'm neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message in the gospel. On the home front, Trump has also seen his support from American Catholics fall. Remember, they voted for him by a 20-point margin as recently as 2024, but there's slippage there. If you take white voters who didn't attend college, which has been a MAGA voting bloc, well, Trump has fallen about 40 points since last year.

23:56We're joined by Margaret Carlson, semaphore editor at large. Margaret, your view on the substance of this, which pits Donald Trump against religions, more than one, really, and the politics of it, where it doesn't seem to be helpful to him or the standing of the war. No decent politician would take on the Pope. It's like just asking for trouble. There's nothing in it for you. Uh, let's put his ratings against Trump's ratings. Uh, let's look at just at the Catholic vote that you were speaking of. Um, and the Jesus talk is just so out of hand these last couple of weeks. Um, Pete Hegseth equating Trump's, um, getting the return of the, of the airman as the resurrection of Jesus Christ, us wearing a cross around his neck, asking the troops to fight for Jesus.

24:55I was at a funeral mass this week, Irish Catholic, Mary Ellen Doyle, high mass, and I didn't hear the name Jesus that many times. And it seems to Catholics, almost blasphemous to do that. Like, when I was growing up, Ari, we would bow our heads when we said Jesus. That's what it was like. So Catholics hearing this, they don't like it. And what did you say? He's lost a big part of the non-college educated Catholic voter. I think this today and the last week, even just Hedgset invoking that name all the time, I think he's lost out. I'm not even that good at Catholic, and I'm offended. Well, there you go.

25:43You know, your spirituality and religious choices will never be evaluated on the beat. So I'm sure you're pretty good at anything, but we don't even do that around here. So, you know, but Margaret, the other piece is obviously, is the president in decline, increasingly unwell? People who watch this program know, I really try to follow the evidence. So for folks who felt that that was kind of a thing to maybe muse or ask about in years prior, we didn't leap towards that absent evidence. Now you're seeing a much more what we might call evidence-driven or mainstream discussion of it because, you know, people say this term sane washing or trying to clean up for somebody.