Trump's Approval at Lowest Point of Term

21:01Ty Cobb:Yeah. And you could do that with a Sherrod Brown, right? Or you could do it with this candidate who some people argue is too polarizing for this to work anywhere else in the country. Your response? Yeah. I would say don't get distracted by the labels. I think most labels in our political system are broken, including left and right and center. We can have a whole discussion about that. But people get... And yet you never liked the group no labels. That's a deep cut, everyone. Go on. So, you know, Zoran, if you take away the label, even the specific policies, look at how he campaigned. Have a vision, be bold, actually inspire people.

21:33And maybe challenging corporate power means something different in Nevada or New Hampshire. But the question I would pose to any Democrat, no matter where they're running is, are you willing to name a villain? Are you willing to tell a story? Or are you just going to have a milquetoast boring campaign or rely on anti-Trump backlash and hope that it lasts forever? Surprise, it won't. So if Democrats want to have a durable coalition and not just win in years where Donald Trump is very unpopular. We need to follow his lead everywhere in terms of having a vision and actually inspiring people.

22:01Ty Cobb:Yeah. You know, James, what's interesting is you and Adam are overlapping quite a bit. And I really know you both well enough to know that doesn't always happen. I want to play. We had Mamdani on this program on election eve, Monday night. And to set up an exercise with him, we mentioned some of your past phrase of what you just referred to, his discipline. So I want to play that and his response. Take a look. James Carville was here. He said Zorman Dami is more on message than any candidate he's ever worked with. And he said, hands, you know, hands down, that's a positive. So here's the test.

22:40Ty Cobb:Oh, God. How quickly can you go from this topic back to affordability? OK. Halloween. Here's the thing. You're seeing candy prices shoot up across New York City. It's part of the fact that we're the most expensive city in the United States of America. We got to take a look at that. James? A-plus. A-plus. Prof. Carville goes. Look, the guy has got a certain amount of charm, and he certainly understands what message this one is. I really hope he succeeds. I think it would probably be really good for New York, but I would caution people on one thing. The mayor of New York has historically never been much of a figure in national politics.

23:26As important as New York City is, and I told a friend of mine, the mayor of New York has actually never gone on to be elected governor in New York, and I was corrected. It did happen in 1869. So I think that the mayor-elect has a big city to run. He has a big agenda to get things done, and I hope he succeeds. I really do.

23:47Ty Cobb:Adam, a related debate has been about the other leaders of the party. Everyone lived through Biden. And the D.C. sort of elite messaging was, there's no problem here. There's no problem here. If you say there's a problem, there's something wrong with you. And then late, when it was kind of late to fix said problem, was we got to get rid of him today. It was really something we lived through last year. Now, Senate leader is not the same as president. but your group is coming out against Schumer, who's already been taken on water. Headline, this is your group, as I mentioned, Adam Green's group, progressive leader calls for Schumer to step aside.

24:26Ty Cobb:Adam Green of the PCCC says the Senate deal to end the shutdown is a failure of Schumer's leadership. And there's been a lot this year that Dems have been unhappy with. Why are you making news on this now? And do you think you'll get anywhere? Yeah. I don't know anybody who thinks that Chuck Schumer is a spectacular leader for this moment. That would include many senators I'm sure James Carville knows, who in private conversations will say he's not the person to lead us, our caucus in this moment. And, you know, in other countries, when a leader fails, they step down immediately, whether it's an election or something like Brexit.

24:57The next day, they'll step down being like, you know what? You trusted me. I tried. I failed. Goodbye. Only in this country are we saddled with people who lose over and over again. And, you know, it's a real problem for groups like ours that want to be out there, per James Advice, asking people to donate to Senate candidates, volunteer for Senate candidates, to be like, you know what? If we get some fresh blood in there, they will be following Chuck Schumer's lead. That's not really an inspiring proposition right now. Let me jump in.

25:22Ty Cobb:Some folks say, well, wait a minute. Who cares who's leader? And this is about the past. You're saying something that actually has some logic to it, which is the elections are coming in the midterms. if you keep this plan and Democrats do win on the strength of whatever, then Chuck Schumer would still be calling the shots. That's the plan. That is true. If you don't change it. That is true. Yeah. In addition to that, I'd even go a step further. I'd ask Mr. Carville to listen to this. For groups like mine that email hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions of people, trying to get them involved in this election, people who have been excited by the boldness of Senate Democrats the last 40 days, whose hopes were raised, there was a question of how do you just say rah-rah Democrats and not even acknowledge that there was a significant loss yesterday.

26:04I would argue that the most minimalist thing that we can do, if you want to pivot back to the election, is say, all right, the one head to roll, Chuck Schumer's. It's not that all Democrats are weak. It's not that all Senate Democrats are weak. Chuck Schumer has to shut down. First of all, rah-rah Democrats. Okay. Secondly, look, I'm not sure that we lost. I think we got I'll send you an issue for the 2026 campaigns front and center. I think we could drag them back. But again, this Greens organization has got multi-front. I'm not really involved in internal Senate politics. There are 24 Democratic sentences, and they can do whatever they want.

26:44Well, I got to press you. I'll let you finish, but I got to press you.

26:47Ty Cobb:You guys may debate whether reopening the government ultimately is good or bad on these equities. I mean, Republicans have the vote, so it's a tougher question. I think, if anyone's being honest about it. But James, Adam is saying this is not motivating going to the midterms that you both care about. Your response to that is that that he's misplaced, that people don't really care who's the leader. Well, people were motivated last Tuesday and Schumer was the majority. I mean, I'm not here to defend it, but they were clearly motivated to come out by a variety of factors in a variety of places. By the way, the turnout in the margins were not singular to one place.

27:24And look, do I think this is going to be decided on who the Democratic Senate minority leader is? No, I really don't. But the senators have got to make that decision themselves. And Adams Group certainly has every is very passionate and they get involved in these kinds of things. I just don't. It's just not. I've never been my policy. We're out of time.

27:45Ty Cobb:But, you know, what we did here, I love what we did. We had the civil debate, not on a text thread, not, you know, not back and forth behind each other's backs. We got you both in here and you both know a thing or two about your domains. James Carville, Adam Green, my thanks to both of you. By the end of the hour, we're going to hear why the pop star, Olivia Rodrigo, is slamming not only Trump's ICE tactics, but also what she calls, quote, racist propaganda. Those pardons we'll get into and Trump White House veteran Ty Cobb speaking out about his former boss's autocratic streak. He is my special guest next.

28:39today's ramen or rideshare or eye patches. The skincare kind, not the pyro kind. Spend with Venmo and you can earn cash back with Venmo Stash. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. Max$100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo.me slash slash terms. ID verification required to use a Venmo balance. At DSW, we ask the important questions like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay the right shoes can make or break an rsvp so own the moment you've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price of course get ready to get ready with designer shoe warehouse head to your dsw store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you in the u.s there's a break in every 26 seconds but when intruders step near simply safe home security steps up stop this is simply SimpliSafe.

29:32Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash SXM or with promo code SXM. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.

29:58Ty Cobb:Here's a story that won't go away because Donald Trump keeps siding with convicts and seditionists and would-be coup leaders and people who attack police over your United States government. New pardons to about 77 people who were involved one way or the other in some plot or effort to overturn Trump's 2020 laws. It includes names you know, like Rudy Giuliani, who has faced bankruptcy and over$100 million in defamation fines for this, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was indicted in Georgia, and a little-known lawyer who got very famous when he tried to steal the election, John Eastman.

30:36Ty Cobb:These are federal pardons that all connect to the elaborate, multi-layered scheme to keep Trump in office. You may recall the ARROWS coverage we've done, which tried to keep track of what was many efforts, some lawful, losing but lawful, that's in green, like lawsuits. You can file lawsuits after you lose an election going all the way down to the insurrection. It's all been pretty well documented. They're highly suspect ballots. That could have been Mickey Mouse. That could have been a dead person. I'd fire everybody that was involved in this election. Yes, I was part of the process to make sure there were alternate electors.

31:11The remedy was for Vice President Pants is the quarterback in the Green Bay sweep to remand those votes back to the six battleground states. I think a lot of that depends on the courage and the spine of the individuals involved.

31:26Ty Cobb:What Steve Bannon called courage, many juries of their peers found as crimes. These new pardons are federal. They're viewed legally as partly symbolic because at this juncture, the people getting them are not facing federal charges left over from the past. Pardons won't necessarily affect them at the local level. and no one thinks that the DOJ is currently credibly an independent operation that would investigate Trump's aides. Even Donald Trump has admitted in public he views it as a place for revenge and that if you are with him, you're good. Giuliani, Epstein, Meadows, and Eastman are still facing pending independent cases in Arizona, where, just a reminder, the president is not the governor of Arizona and has no authority over that independent judicial system.

32:15Ty Cobb:Trump, you may recall, memorably, was also indicted in Georgia. That's his mugshot along with Meadows. This pardon is federal. It does not relate to that. Now, Trump's retribution efforts are partly quite substantive and legal because they do things in court, but they also relate to a kind of autocratic narrative effort to erase what really happened. Because if you go back and look at the pictures and the video, we all saw the people beat down police and storm into the nation's capital and cavort around in an embarrassing and sometimes dangerous manner. Everybody knows what happened. So apart from the pardons, there has been an effort with a lot of power and money behind it to, as they used to say, whitewash or erase or minimize the actual convicted sedition that occurred that day.

33:07Ty Cobb:It started on Donald Trump's first day in office. It is relevant tonight because we are watching another round of elections that go against him. The last time he faced this, and it mattered more than just a governor's race or the New York City race, the last time there was an election that rejected his party in the White House, those are the crimes that were committed in his name. Today, again, he makes it very clear he is on the side of those crimes. We are joined by Ty Cobb, who brings a special expertise here. He is a former Trump White House attorney in the first term. He dealt with the Mueller probe.

33:41Ty Cobb:He has previous experience as a prosecutor. He has since spoken out about what he views as the import of the independent rule of law. Welcome back. Hi, Ari. Nice to be with you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Your view of these pardons. So I think, well, it's fascinating listening to your lead. And, you know, Trump's so proud of his insurrectionist activities that, you know, the mugshot that you referred to now is prominently displayed in the White House to the shame of most sane Americans. And while you speak, we'll put that up because we thought we might get there with you. The effort to kind of repurpose his view of the mugshot.

34:24Ty Cobb:I think we have this. I'll tell my producers, C1, I think we have it. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, no. So I think, you know, the pardons today really have nothing to do about protecting the individuals involved at all. I mean, they're ineffectual in that regard. Nobody's currently under federal indictment and nobody's going to be indicted at the end of Trump's term because the statutory limitations will have run. So totally ineffectual as a matter of law. I think that there's really very little doubt that the pardons relate a little bit to what happened last Tuesday and the recognition in the White House and in the MAGA world that they may only have a year left of total domination.

35:12They could lose the House, perhaps the Senate, but certainly the House is threatened at this stage of the game from Republican control. And I think they think they may have only a year left to continue their assault on the rule of law and the accumulation of power for the immediate use there. And this is a signal and a recruiting tool to those that will be asked to perform similar atrocities on behalf of Trump and his team over the course of the next year and perhaps in the election interference that they intend for 2026.

35:48Ty Cobb:You're saying something very alarming and you worked as a Trump White House lawyer, so you know how some of this thinking goes. You're suggesting if they just wanted to sort of give Giuliani a solid, they could have done this a long time ago. that after Tuesday, they look at this as an illicit kind of signal or potential kickback to next time. That sounds like the baseline for planning to break election law. Yes, this is, you know, look at what I'm doing for my friends. I'll take care of you in the future. Wow. And that's not good. No, it's not good. And it's, you know, I mean, they feel totally unrestrained, of course, by the law or legal requirements.

36:31And it's it's you know, we have 77 people who just got pardons, presumably because they were criminals. And I don't think you can sugarcoat that. I'm not sure I would have wanted one of these pardons. But but but the reality is I think they have plans for 2026. If you just look at what they've done, they've eliminated the election law enforcement at the Department of Justice. They have all but shuttered the public integrity section, reducing the number of lawyers there from over 30 to less than five now. You know, the guardrails that would have protected us and ensured election integrity are down.

37:19And I think they intend to run whatever through it they can.

37:23Ty Cobb:Yeah, I hope people are listening to you because you're making really important points about why this is about the future, not just the past. Some folks glaze over. Oh, we're talking about Jan 6 again. You know, well, no, we might be talking about the next January. I'm going to put up some headlines of the of the consequences for Trump lawyers, because initially he didn't pardon them in the two weeks he had left after Jan 6. and then you have the headlines, California upholds Eastman's disbarment. Giuliani disbarred in D.C. Another one people may have forgot, Kenneth Chesbrough disbarred in New York.

37:57Ty Cobb:If you're a lawyer and you spend decades doing this and you get disbarred as you and I know and others can imagine, that alone is a big deal and it has consequence. Others face even more consequence. And so when the center holds, people are disincentivized from joining this. And a coup is not a solo activity. If you want to do it legally, you need lawyers. If you want to do it with force, you're going to need the heads of the agencies or military. So you're worried, or at least you're a warning, that we went from those lines being held to now the idea that this time he would be faster with rewards.

38:32Ty Cobb:And if they did pull it off, if they did steal the election, then the power continues and those people get away scot-free. That's the warning? That is the warning. Yeah. He'll have their back. He'll have their back. They'll be pardoned. They'll be protected, you know, however they need to be. And all they need to do is whatever he asked them to do. Sort of like when he, you know, called to Georgia and said, you know, find me another 11 ,900 plus or minus votes. You know, these these are the kind of requests that you can expect in spades if the balance powers and in harm's way is from his view in 2026.

39:13Ty Cobb:Yeah. Dead serious. I also want to get you on these new Epstein votes and the revenge prosecutions. Ty Cobb will be back with us right after a short break.

39:28well he's going to get a third term so trump 28 trump is going to be president 28 and people just ought to get accommodated with that so what about the 22nd amendment there's many different alternatives at the appropriate time we'll lay out what the plan is but there's a plan and president trump will be the president in 28

39:47Ty Cobb:Steve Bannon talking about an unlawful plan, a coup, whatever that would be. Ty Cobb is back with us. You had very different roles, but you were at the White House in the first term. So was he. James Comey was a big flashpoint. You worked on that in the Mueller probe defense. And there are many legit criticisms of James Comey, what lawyers would sometimes call the process or the leadership choices, which are separate from criminal law. As you know, he's since been indicted. Trump's all but admitted in public. He sees it as revenge, not a legal case per se. The president's calls for prosecution.

40:27Ty Cobb:Comey's lawyers argue now don't rest on evidence investigation. Rather, they express vengeful animus to punish a perceived political adversary. Do you think the Comey case is weak on those grounds? And do you see any link between the Bannon-esque calls for permanent undemocratic rule and this effort to go after perceived opponents? So I would separate the two of those only because, you know, that's not Bannon's. I mean, revenge is really sort of the Ed Martin channel. The other guy. I mean, he's Trump's, you know, he's eye job to Goldfinger. He's the minions to despicable me. You know, it's it's Bannon has a different role, which is to incite the base and build up the vengeful bloodlust.

41:22You know, I was I was you're wrong about my overlap with Bannon. Not not not to be critical. He and I shared about 24 hours in the White House together.

41:33Ty Cobb:I just mean, yeah, you were first both first termers, which is different than being a second term. But I take care of the distinction. Yeah, but General Kelly was on the job 24 hours before he kicked Bannon out of the White House. So we didn't really overlap very long. But I think the, you know, 2028 talk will die down for a while. Trump may resurrect it again later. He's, you know, he's walked away from it a little bit in the last week. You know, but this has happened two or three times before where it built to a crescendo. And then, you know, they dialed it back. You know, we'll probably have another threat of that at some point.

42:12But I don't think anybody seriously believes that absent a military coup, Trump will run in 2028 because, you know, the states control their own ballots and it's unconstitutional to put him on the ballot. And I think I think that's I think that's highly unlikely. I do think that the Comey case, like the James case, clearly there's a vindictive aspect to it. Clearly, there's a revenge aspect to it. I think they're a little bit different, I think, in terms of just pure lack of factual foundation. The James case probably is on a little firmer ground. I mean, there's really no case there. there. The mortgage in question specifically authorizes short-term rentals.

43:05You know, the evidence at best would demonstrate that's all she did. So I think that case is dead, but I think it's also dead. I think they're both dead initially on the issue of Halligan's appointment. I think that's a silver bullet. I think Comey will prevail on that and that would terminate his case because it's now beyond the statute of limitations. I think with James, you know, it's still within statute of limitations, even if it was dismissed for that reason, she could be reindicted. But again, there's just no there there. And in fact, Todd Blanche, you know, who sold his soul and eliminated any credibility he may have ever had by participating in the extortion of a favorable statement from Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for, you know, favorable treatment in a prison and perhaps now a commutation, you know, even he cautioned against bringing the case against James, not seeing any legal viability.

44:01Ty Cobb:Well, that's striking. And I'll get you. I got 45 seconds. You mentioned Epstein. Your view on what now is a different vote count in the House so they could get the Epstein files. Do you think that matters? What do you think will come from any of this? First, I think it's a mistake to assume that Mike Johnson will actually swear in Representative Grigalja. But assuming he does, that would result in a release of some of the Epstein files. What you won't ever see is whatever it is that the CIA is holding back. And I think the CIA has been an active participant in preventing those materials from coming forward.

44:39Ty Cobb:Do you have a hint of what kind of things they would be involved in? Well, keep in mind that Ghislaine Maxwell's father worked closely with Mossad. He's buried in one of Israel's most sacred burial grounds and a credible, I mean, I have no idea whether it's real, but a certainly a credible theory as to why there were billions of dollars or over a billion dollars in, you know, monies poured into Epstein's account has to do with his alleged ties for Israel. Really interesting. We're at the end of two blocks and people watch TV know I'm close to the hour. So, Ty, I'm going to ask you more about that when we have you back.

45:17Ty Cobb:I hope you'll come back, sir. Sure, Ari. Good to be with you. Thanks for everything. Absolutely. We'll be right back.

45:29Ty Cobb:You covered a lot of ground. Thanks for spending time with us. I'll see you tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern. In the U.S., there's a break in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. using AI alerts US-based live agents help deter break-ins SimpliSafe no long-term contracts save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash SXM or with promo code SXM outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe active guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information Tennessee 2012