Trump WH Aide Peter Navarro joins The Beat

0:00Adventures don't always go as planned. One minute you're cruising in your RV, the next your tire hits a massive pothole. Progressive is ready for you when the unexpected hits with excellent claim service for your boat, RV, and motorcycle. Plus optional coverage like roadside assistance and on-the-water towing. Visit Progressive.com and make sure your next adventure is unforgettable for the right reasons. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Coverage is subject to policy terms and limits. Watch Disclosure Day at home now with exclusive bonus features.

0:34If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp starring Emily Blunt, Josh O 'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required. also in theaters. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We are covering more of the reaction, the law enforcement response, and what is increasingly a very divided political response to the terrible shooting of Charlie Kirk.

1:14This is a nation that is reckoning with things we do know about, gun violence, political violence, and a range of reactions from leaders. There have been many leaders who have been responsible and tried to tone down the rhetoric, others dialing up the rhetoric. Now, let's start with the most basic thing that is the same as it was last week. Law enforcement officials have not determined or publicized a motive for 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. He will be charged tomorrow, and given the voluminous evidence, he is as always legally presumed innocent, but facing a lot of evidence that he was the shooter in this heinous act.

1:52That, of course, will be dealt with in court. Democratic leaders have condemned this shooting in this type of violence. The New York Times reports that Trump White House, however, is not joining them in that type of approach where you just deal with this as a terrible and initially nonpartisan matter, especially with, as I remind you, no official motive from law enforcement, but instead is vowing a, quote, vast crackdown on their opponents, on what they call in the Times headline liberal groups, threatening to bring the weight of the feds down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence.

2:29And the Times reports that this White House, again, before all the facts about what is already clearly a terrible killing, for those facts are in, they are, quote, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents. The problem is on the left. It's not on the right. And when you look at the agitators, that you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place. That's the left. That's not the right. A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left. They're already under, already under investigate.

3:09That's the president's response. Fact check, largely false and misleading. no motive yet for this shooter and donald trump along with other political leaders in both parties have faced this type of risk no one's underestimating that it is a serious and terrible time but what he said there about attributing blame in a generalized manner or attributing this violence to only one ideology united states is not true there are the luminous reports on this including from the government that he, of course, oversees now as president, DHS, DOJ, and experts who are nonpartisan and independent, who study this for a living and have pointed to the rise in violence in the United States, some of it political and coming from all sides and often not neatly cleaved into exact partisan groups.

3:59There were attacks on Nancy Pelosi's household when the intruder stormed in and brutally attacked her husband. Democratic lawmakers assassinated in Minnesota. As I just mentioned before, the attempted terrible assassination of then former President Trump. He was, of course, a candidate last year before winning the election. There's this killing of Kirk, who is a very prominent conservative. This is a dangerous moment and one that will continue to require not meeting fire with fire or rhetoric with rhetoric, but both acknowledging and then fact-checking and putting aside false claims wherever they may emanate from.

4:39Now, that is clearly what you just heard, what Donald Trump is saying, what the New York Times calls an exploitation for a crackdown, is one response. Today, in what must have been, of course, a difficult and moving and really harrowing time for people who listen to Kirk regularly, who followed him as a leader, who respected him, he has one of these shows, right? So people were tuning back in and they had an organized presentation from Vice Vice President Vance, who also, we should note, was very friendly with him for years. It's a tough time for them as human beings. But there are many ways one could use this platform to mourn, to grieve, to try unity.

5:18I want to just play you what the Vice President did in part during that presentation on the Kirk platform today. Of course, we have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice. And importantly, we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years. And I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin's bullet. We're going to talk about how to dismantle that and how to bring real unity. The vice president uses that term, I believe. So he's sharing his belief or opinion. And First Amendment protects that.

5:59He can share that. And again, as I'm careful to mention, he's very friendly with the deceased Mr. Kirk and his family. Tough time for all. But his belief is not the law enforcement conclusion. Indeed, we don't have a motive yet for this, not according to law enforcement. And they are clearly on the case, charging the individual tomorrow. A guest today on that same Kirk platform was top White House official Stephen Miller. Here is what he said. We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.

6:36We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name. Mr. Miller has a lot of power. He's talking about going after terrorist networks. As is often the case in a time like this, the government going after actual terrorist networks is a good thing generally welcomed by virtually everyone who's not a terrorist. But authorities so far have said this individual acted alone.

7:09We don't have any link from this terrible shooting to the idea of a wider network or funding, as he referenced there, of terrorism. And the separate advancement of that agenda may be fine, but combining it as the government is doing here, your government, your taxpayer dollars, today, at the level of the vice president, the separate remarks from the president and Mr. Miller, who's number two staffer in the White House, is quite a considerable escalation for what law enforcement has said thus far, and this could change, and if the evidence changes, we'll update you on it, but thus far, they view as what they call a lone wolf or solo attack, not a network, let alone one that meets the definition of federal terrorism charges.

7:49Miller talked about specific agencies. He talked about going after opponents. And so this time, which could have been for mourning or grieving or some lowering of the rhetoric, which we heard from some politicians last week, this is that time maybe to do that, instead has this coming from the incumbent administration and Democratic officials pushing back. Instead, it looks as if, President Trump and his allies are gearing up to potentially exploit this tragedy and use it as a means to do what they have been planning to do, what they have wanted to do for the entirety of their time in office, which is to try to use their control of the legal system to destroy, to obliterate the political opposition to Donald Trump.

8:34We're joined by New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, an MSNBC analyst, and Maya Wiley, a former SDNY civil prosecutor and president a leadership conference on civil and human rights. Maya, your view on how to deal with this responsibly, not falling into echoing or only rebutting what we're hearing while also taking it seriously, because as the New York Times puts it, there appears to be a much wider rushed agenda from the White House. Yeah, I mean, first, starting with, there's a difference between shooting someone and shunning someone. Let's just be very clear. Charlie Kirk should be alive today, and it is critically important that we have a process of fact-finding and the rights of every individual protected.

9:22That's number one. The facts matter here. The facts do matter and should matter. And you laid them out, Ari, but the facts are, number one, that we have a serious problem of driving hate and bias in this country. And it does matter what political leaders say in terms of whether they're being part of the solution or being part of the problem. Let me just say this when we're even hearing this word political with the word assassination. First of all, I don't think that's an accurate way to describe what is an act that should have never happened. No shooting should, in my view. And I come from the tradition where Shirley Chisholm, first black woman elected to Congress, went and sat at the bedside by George Wallace when he was shot, even though he was a segregationist.

10:21Right. That is our tradition. That is our experience. That is what we need to be about. But this is very what's political here is claiming that someone who has every every right to have his viewpoints, but also every right for the rest of us to shun the ideas that we heard the ideas, the ideas that said that if you're gay, you should be stoned. The ideas that said you should think of black women as being intellectually inferior and incompetent, that is not political. That is not partisan. That should not be seen as Democrat or Republican. That should just be seen as something we should as a nation and have as a nation traditionally shunned and should not see that as partisan politics.

11:07And certainly if we are at a time when the people who have been voted and elected into office use the powers of government to try to place blame on people who have taken no unlawful action for their viewpoints, because that's part of what we're seeing out of New York Times reporting today about how the White House may be planning to go after not-for-profit organizations that have totally legitimate positions. And frankly, are trying to protect the rights and the democracy of people in this country, the democracy that we all share and the opportunity to have disagreement and to do it safely. understood i mean very very well put and i hope people are listening uh you know michelle politics doesn't wait for facts and a lot of politics gets facts and then the political project is to dispute override or or lie about the facts that are inconvenient um i did mention that we're both covering the reality of this because this is what we're hearing from the administration right now while also bringing in everything we're learning about the shooting so I want to add in one more fact about what I mentioned was what looks like considerable evidence against the shooter on these chat rooms and people have different things.

12:25People sometimes think they they're speaking in a place that's more secret than it is on what they call discord. According to the Washington Post reporting, he addresses other individuals and says, I have bad news for you all. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all this. more investigative work is continuing. But there's a lot of evidence that this individual did this shooting. Yeah, absolutely. And very little yet public evidence about why. Well, I want to say two things. First of all, that that very statement, I have bad news for you, it was me, is kind of evidence. We don't have a lot of evidence, but that's evidence against this being a broader conspiracy.

13:03That's evidence against a terror network. Right. A terror network. Right. I mean, that suggests that he was acting alone, at least preliminarily. Furthermore, there's something, you know, what we're seeing is the we again, we don't know very much about his ideology. He might very well end up being a person who identified with the left. Right. We know that he was not registered with any political party, that he never voted. But we don't really know beyond that. There's been just a lot of speculation and also a lot of extrapolation from these phrases that were engraved on these bullets. And something that is so debasing about the rise of these kind of meme killers, these killers, and he's not the first, who are just absolutely marinating in Internet nihilism and irony, is that it forces us to be kind of semioticians of these edgelord phrases.

13:53So some of these phrases that might on the surface seem straightforward about fascism actually relate back to memes in video games and have several layers of meaning that, frankly, people my age are barely equipped to decipher. But it's why you want responsible people not trying to kind of immediately rush to judgment. But, of course, Donald Trump was always going to rush to judgment because this is what he wanted to do all along. He wanted a pretext to sick the entire Justice Department on his political enemies. And he feels like this has given him some rationalization or some fuel for that quest.

14:34And so when they talk about, you know, kind of, quote unquote, terrorist networks, you know, in those same conversations, they're talking about the Nation magazine where you and I have both written for. They're talking about George Soros. Right. And so this is not kind of the this has nothing to do with the traditional mission of law enforcement or the FBI. It's a it's they're kind of telling us that they are going to try to conduct a political purge. And you mentioned the FBI, which brings us exactly to the next story where there actually is more overlap. The New York Times and Fox News, both crossing stories about the embattled FBI leader who, as you mentioned, is connected to people looking at Internet memes, posting on X before getting it right.

15:16he's under a lot of scrutiny today. I want to do our quickest break and we'll turn to the FBI director's problems when we're back in 90 seconds. Ever notice how life's best stories don't happen in your living room? They happen on the open road, out on the water, or parked under the stars. At Progressive, they get that you want to focus on the experience, not worry about the what-ifs. That's why they offer quality insurance designed for your ride, whether that's a boat, RV, or motorcycle. Adventure with confidence. Visit Progressive.com and see how easy it is to protect your favorite way to get away.

15:50Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in D.C. Prices vary based on how you buy. Watch Disclosure Day at home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O 'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Normally in these ads, you expect somebody to ask you to buy something, but this is something different.

16:34I'm Julian Barnes, and I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I'm a national security reporter, and that means I'm reporting on military operations. These are fast-paced, quickly-moving situations. What exactly is happening on the ground is often shrouded in mystery. But we turn to trusted sources, satellite imagery, and expertise built up over years in order to ferret out the facts that wouldn't otherwise come to light. I'm here to ask you to seek out a news source that does firsthand fact-based reporting. If it's your local paper, great. If it's the Times, thank you. Because where you go for your information matters.

17:25Donald Trump's unusual pick for FBI Director Kash Patel is showing that his inexperience is a problem, and that's according to people inside the FBI and the Trump administration, as well as independent experts. Congress will be grilling him this week, a series of hearings that come at a precarious time for him. Fox News reporting on administration sources and others inside the FBI who just view him, despite Trump's support, as embattled and incompetent. Despite that report in Fox News, which speaks to the problems, he then went on Fox News today. The job of the FBI is not just to manhunt the actual suspect who did the killing or suspects, but it's also to eliminate targets.

18:05and eliminate subjects who are not involved in the process. And that's what we were doing. Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not. He's referencing there something we actually covered in real time as an unusual post that then was a misleading at best post. But he may have been misinformed from the beginning, which is exactly why, as you know, Maya, having worked in DOJ alongside the FBI, they don't typically do it this way. So he's doing it a different way that is being panned from all sides. Your thoughts on this this aspect of the story?

18:39This aspect of the story sounds like Kash Patel being political, which is why two Republican senators actually would not vote to confirm him, which is concerned about some of his political behavior before, you know, between the time when he left the White House and had his own private merchandising concerns, for example. So what he did was exactly what should never happen from anyone who's heading the FBI, which is sharing anything before there's confirmation, because this is not uncommon. It is not uncommon to have initial arrests and find out you don't actually have enough evidence. Or even if you have an initial arrest, you don't want to do anything that might undermine your investigation by suggesting you do have an arrest.

19:26Because if you find out there's someone else you're looking for, that could be a problem. So all I can say is it's actually very consistent with concerns that were raised in his confirmation hearing. It's also very consistent in another way. In his confirmation hearing, he would not say that he would, for example, resign if asked to do the political bidding of Donald Trump and utilize the office in a way that either protected Donald Trump's allies or came after people he didn't like. And just to bring in Michelle, because I only have a minute left on this, they've also under Patel fired a lot of career experts.

20:05And that seems to be a net negative for law enforcement. Right. Including somebody in Salt Lake City who is very known for, I guess, penetrating terrorist networks. And I mean, I think that, look, you need a functioning FBI and that shouldn't that's become a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. I think that, you know, you see this sort of nihilistic attack on state capacity in this administration. This, you know, kind of replacing qualified people with not just ideologues, but kind of clownish ideologues. And you're starting to see at least some people on the right, at least with this, realize that, you know, you maybe want your apparatchiks, but you want apparatchiks who know what they know what they're doing.

20:45Yeah, because the incompetence is what many people agree is. And thank God somebody turned this guy in because they could, you know, I mean, what a disaster if he wasn't caught with all of the I mean, you look at the conspiracy theories that are already percolating. You know, if he had been able to somehow get away and there's kind of no evidence that they were closing in on him. I mean, they got lucky. Well, you say they got lucky in Trump that Steve Bannon said that as well, that it was a product of good thing people in the community did this. But Bannon, of all people, was saying this had nothing to do with Patel or the FBI's actual law enforcement work, which, to your point, means without the community, this killer could be at large.

21:29And that, again, goes to whether this FBI is fully staffed and functioning or whether it is a failed partisan experiment right now. So, Michelle and Maya, my thanks to both of you. Legendary Bob Woodward is here tonight. We're going to play new things from him you haven't heard yet. That's something we are looking forward to. Meanwhile, Trump's trade war is in trouble in the courts. Peter Navarro has a lot of experience on that and many other issues and joins us after the break. There are moments that define who you are and who you're becoming. And when those moments arrive, what you drive should rise to meet them.

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23:19Not available in all states or situations. Coverage is subject to policy terms and limits. Normally in these ads, you expect somebody to ask you to buy something. But this is something different. I'm Julian Barnes, and I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I'm a national security reporter, and that means I'm reporting on military operations. These are fast-paced, quickly-moving situations. What exactly is happening on the ground is often shrouded in mystery. But we turn to trusted sources, satellite imagery, and expertise built up over years in order to ferret out the facts that wouldn't otherwise come to light.

24:00I'm here to ask you to seek out a news source that does firsthand fact-based reporting. If it's your local paper, great. If it's the Times, thank you. Because where you go for your information matters.

24:20Now we turn to a White House aide who has an interesting, if not perhaps unique story. Peter Navarro, one of the most influential economic voices in this White House. And you may recall his journey from first-term trade advisor, an influential member as well, of an ad hoc or ongoing effort to challenge Trump's loss in 2020, and ultimately going to jail for defying a congressional subpoena related to a Jan 6 probe. He is now, after all that, back in a powerful post in the White House as Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep.

25:00And then they put me in handcuffs. They bring me here. They put me in leg irons. If they can come for me. And if they can come for Donald Trump. Be careful. They will come for you. And I guarantee no recession. OK, there's not going to be any inflation. White House advisor Peter Navarro joins me live now. His new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, is out now, a love and lawfare story in Trumpland. Thanks for coming back on the program. It was a pleasure, Arne. It was a pleasure. Let's start with the book. What did you learn in this journey through prison or jail three months and back to the White House?

25:40So I wrote this as a warning about the partisan weaponization of our justice system and the lawfare that we are encountering. And I want to appeal now to you as a legal expert on a nonpartisan basis. I don't know if you know this, but my case is on appeal. It's likely headed for the Supreme Court. The question is very simple. well, does Congress have the right to subpoena senior White House advisors? And for 50 years, the Department of Justice said no based on the principle of executive privilege, which goes back to George Washington. Candor and confidentiality are required for presidential communications.

26:29And I had a duty to refuse that subpoena. It had nothing to do with UJ6. It could have been a subpoena for anything. And I had a duty to refuse that. And I wound up going to prison for that. And if I lose my appeal, then every senior White House advisor going forward, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, will face that same kind of dilemma, that Hobson's choice. Do your duty, maybe go to prison or bend the knee. And you made that decision. Let me read from an interesting part in the book. You say inmates would regularly check this sort of legal federal database paster to screen new inmates for danger signs that they would cooperate with law enforcement or be what some call, quote, snitches.

27:20Such searching is highly sophisticated and organized among the inmate population for safety and security, you learned. and then you recount an inmate telling you, Navarro, quote, you're okay because you're, quote, not a snitch and you didn't rat out Trump. Well, finish it because - Go ahead, you finish it. Because the book, I mean, look, it's legal, but it's tragic. It's funny. It's a love story. My fiance went, did the time with it. But in that post, I called them postcards from prison, I basically ended it by saying And I wasn't sure what the moral equivalence was of these felons basically not ratting out on their thing and me upholding the Constitution.