Trump's New False Claim: 'No Limits' To My Power

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0:41Rated A-plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews, On Deck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Melissa Murray in for Ari Melber. Tonight, there are new concerns about the DOJ and the controversial fund that could pay January 6th rioters. Also tonight, I'll talk with Ambassador Michael McFaul on the bipartisan backlash to Trump's Iran deal.

1:15But we start tonight with renewed fears that the president is asserting an expansive vision of presidential power. In a new interview about the Iran war, Trump claimed that his power as president is unlimited. Take a listen. What have you learned about not just the exercise of power, but the limits on your power as a result of the conflict? There are no limits. No limits. No, not I haven't learned that lesson yet. I know there are, but you know, there are no limits. Now, that is an obviously false assertion. Not only does the Constitution of the United States limit presidential power, the courts and Congress are increasingly enforcing those limits against this president.

1:56But it may be that pushback that is in fact fueling the president's thirst for unprecedented power. Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has recently been rejecting advice from aides and lawmakers, telling them, quote, I'm the president and you are not. In a new book, the New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal that Trump once compared himself to a series of powerful figures from history. According to the report, he rattled off names, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, Stalin. Those leaders, Mr. Trump said, maintained power through fear. Trump then reportedly posed what observers took to be a rhetorical question, musing, quote, who would ever do a thing like that, right?

2:46According to the Times, following a June 2025 strike on a nuclear enrichment site in Iran, the president crowed that the strike had completely, quote, obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities. When Vice President J.D. Vance proposed describing the strike in more muted terms, the president was not happy. Quote, Trump told one associate, everyone needs to say effing obliterated. That's the word. Everyone just needs to copy what I say. Obliterated. Obliterated. When, in an interview, Vance failed to use the word obliterated, Trump reportedly grew angry. Vance then changed his tune. Check out these two interviews just one day apart.

3:32Have those facilities been obliterated? Well, John, what was severely damaged versus obliterated, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is. what we know. Well, one, I mean, program back substantially. We have obliterated the Iranian nuclear program, obliterated the Iranian nuclear program. Their nuclear program has been obliterated, as I said before. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term. Seems like he got on message. And that's where we start tonight. Trump is on the defense over Iran. He is plunging in the polls and he is fuming, grasping for power at a time when it appears to be slipping away.

4:15Joining me now to discuss is Tara Palmieri, longtime journalist formerly with Politico and host of the Tara Palmieri show and author of the Red Letter Substack. Tara, the president is claiming unlimited power. This is not the first time he's offered a muscular vision of presidential power. But what do you make of this claim in this moment? clearly he doesn't understand his role as a civil servant right and i think if anything we saw the scent of his power with the war in iran and the fact that he was not able to get the outcome that he would have wanted i mean two of the 14 points in that deal are actually in favor of the united states and they barely are um he's clearly in legacy mode right now he's not concerned about his own party.

5:01He doesn't really care what happens in the midterms, even though there will, there's a threat of impeachment, I guess, another impeachment. So to him, he probably just thinks it's not a real exercise in holding his power to account because the last few have been unsuccessful. But I think what you're seeing is that the Republicans in Congress, especially those who have been defeated because he backed challengers in their primaries, they don't really care anymore. I mean, they're in a YOLO phase, you could say, and they're willing to defy his leadership. Also, he is a lame duck president. And so whether he likes it or not, these people, they don't need him anymore.

5:40So who knows? I mean. Well, Tara, it's a great point. He's a lame duck president, perhaps focused on legacy, but he's also seeming to move into a new phase. Like, what do you make of him telling aides and lawmakers that I'm the president and you're not? I mean, is that about legacy or is it about something else? I think Trump has always been this way. He's always been indignant. He's never really valued anyone else's opinion unless he's pitting people against each other and he enjoys watching the fight. He's always seen his staff as purely staff. He thinks he is the smartest person in the room.

6:13I think that's pretty clear. But I think as he gets older, as we've seen, people tend to become, as they say, more set in their ways, right? And you're probably seeing a manifestation of that with arguably the most powerful man in the world. And he's obviously high on that power right now, as you can see. Is this a dangerous moment for the country, certainly in global affairs, but even domestically? We have a president who's comparing himself to Mao, Hitler and Stalin. These are famous autocrats. At a time when democratic institutions seem to be fragile, should we be worried about the president comparing himself to these figures and asserting this very muscular vision of executive power?

6:51I mean, power that's unchecked is absolutely an issue, especially in the Democratic system. We hope that the processes, the checks and balances will actually check his power. I mean, hopefully Congress now will, Republican members will see less of a threat to their position. I mean, they've been pretty much cowards until this point, but some of them no longer, you know, needing to keep him on their good side. They might just side with Democrats. We'll have to see what happens. But these are his final years and we've only got two more years. Right. I know there's a lot of talk about whether he'll actually allow for a transition of power afterwards.

7:34But I would think that his Republican colleagues would make that less likely. you know, this is... And then he has J.D. Vance, who he clearly feels some sort of competition with already because he is positioning himself as the heir apparent. And J.D. is thinking about his own political future, as we can see in his positioning around the war in Iran. I think it's quite interesting that they would call it the Vance peace plan. I mean, had any of our peace plans with Iran actually worked? No. So you're basically handing him a failing plan, essentially. Tara, I want to bring into the conversation Margaret Carlson.

8:13Margaret Carlson is a longtime journalist and editor-at-large for Sumerfork. Margaret, we've been talking about the president in legacy mode. Tara just brought up the really tantalizing prospect of the president perhaps locked in some kind of power struggle with his heir apparent, J.D. Vance. Is that how you're reading this development with the Iran deal and Vance's apparent ownership of that deal despite its many problems? Right. Kara was talking about the struggle with Congress and now the struggle with J.D. Vance, which has been going on for a while. And it's a triumvirate with Marco Rubio.

8:53And Marco Rubio is the more serious, popular contender, I think, among the party in general. But Vance has, I think, the president's ear. And Vance is very diplomatic, where he manages somehow not to agree with Trump on Iran, but back him publicly on even this awful, awful deal that has nothing going for it. And on the other hand, the Senate, which always goes along with Trump up until now, I hear some spines growing. Even Senator Roger Wicker, the principal conservative from Mississippi, who's nonetheless held his tongue mostly up until now, disagreed and said about this memorandum that Trump is getting nothing with this plan that he got into the war to get.

9:46Now, that's a pretty stunning pronouncement from a very loyal, old chair of the Armed Services Committee senator. So with that in mind, Margaret, I mean, is this simply about discontent over the Iran deal, which doesn't seem to be going in the favor of this country, but seems to be accruing to Iran's favor? Or is this also about the domestic climate, where it seems that polling says that Americans are souring on Trump's agenda writ large? There's just not a lot of support for this. Is that why the Senate is growing a spine? Is that why J.D. Vance feels more authorized to disagree with this president, sometimes publicly?

10:26When things begin to go wrong, sometimes this tipping point, the dominoes start to fall. And so you're seeing Trump in trouble on a number of fronts. He really enraged the Senate when he decided to keep Pulte in place instead of bringing in a normal, somewhat normal intelligence chief. and then he didn't want to get rid of him until he fired the people that he resented and didn't like and no longer wanted there at the agency. And so then the Senate, until the Senate passed a bill he wanted that's very unpopular and that Senator Thun can't get the votes for. So now that's stymied and there's really no winner here.

11:10It's a terrible situation. But Trump seems dug in again, but he's not going to win this one because there aren't the votes in the Senate. And there are just any number of things where, you know, Trump now has those senators that lost their races simply because he backed their opponents speaking out against him. Bill Cassidy, very popular senator, a doctor who voted for Kennedy against his principles in order to please Trump. There's no pleasing Trump. And now that's apparent. You can see that in so many different ways in which Trump's reacted lately. You can't do enough for Trump. He will turn on you at the slightest infraction against him.

11:53So I think there's a wave building here. And this memorandum, which gets us nothing, we stay in the hole, is the turning point. Right. Margaret Carlson, Tara Palmieri, stick around. We're going to talk about the wave that may be coming from the big green monster, the DC reflecting pool on the other side of this 90 second break. Stay with us.

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13:49Trump's humiliating reflecting pool debacle just got worse. Today, the pool remains a bright shade of algae green. I think they call it Shrek green. But now there are new revelations about the Vanity Project that suggest that it could be another example of grift. The New York Times reports that work on the reflecting pool was performed by a company that is owned by a trust led by a Trump donor and Mar-a-Lago neighbor. And wait, there's more. While most federal public works projects are awarded through a competitive bidding process, this contract for a$14 million project bypassed that competitive process and was to this company in a no-bid process.

14:33The Times reports that the owner of the company is a, quote, longtime Republican donor whom Trump has described as a fantastic man. Well, this fantastic man, according to the Times, was also, quote, once involved in a high-profile bribery scandal. The administration says that the company was selected because it had the, quote, expertise, workforce and materials needed to complete this job on time. Neither the company nor its owner have responded to the times. Workers have tried to fix the reflecting pool ahead of the 250th Independence Day celebrations. They've been pouring jugs of hydrogen peroxide into the water, but those efforts have backfired.

15:15And all of this could cost taxpayers over$16 million. Here's a side-by-side from June 11th to June 16th. As you can see, the green is clearly intensifying. And as part of the effort to renovate the reflecting pool, the pool's interior was repainted blue. But now it seems that the blue paint is peeling off. Sam Stein and the Bulwark went and sent their own folks over there to take a closer look. Take a listen. We're trying to get a visual. Okay, so that's good. So that's the bottom of the pool that is now coming off.

15:58Margaret Carlson and Tara Palmieri are back with me. Tara, what's your response to this report of potential corruption in the bidding process for this public works project? I mean, it's the definition of political patronage. This is a friend of Donald Trump. He gets a bid. There are there's no bidding. Actually, he just gets a contract, a 14 million dollar contract. He's given Trump's affiliated PACs three hundred thousand dollars. He's known the guy for 10 years or more. President Trump literally gave him a shout out at an event. They're that close. This is this is enriching your pals in government office.

16:37If this happened at a micro like a local level, there would be outrage in the local papers. But here, I mean, this is just common business, it feels like. Everybody seems to be getting richer around Trump, right, including the Trump family themselves. So in a way, I'm not surprised, but it's like nobody's—it's like we're just used to it at this point. So, Margaret, it could be the case that we have just— Go ahead. I was just going to say there were cost overruns that just went right through and right into the guy's pocket without any questions on a job that obviously is totally inferior. Well, I was going to talk to you about that part, Margaret.

17:19I mean, it's not simply that we've become anesthetized to the grift or the apparent grift that may be in play here. It's that this grift doesn't seem to even be good grift. Like this work is shoddy, it seems. And now sections of the pools, new layer of blue waterproofing is coming up. So, you know, what do we how do you even represent this to taxpayers like this is taxpayer money going to fix a massive landmark in the nation's capital that is apparently being done with substandard working products and substandard results? Well, Trump is no apologies, no explanations. He he hasn't explained anything so far and he never acknowledges that anything's wrong.

18:02Somehow he'll ignore the blue blob in the reflecting pool in a reflecting pool that was just fine before he started messing around with it. You know, he's so obsessed with like interior decoration and exterior in this case. And there's a scene in the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in which he's super gluing fake gold to the fireplace in the Oval Office. and that's just what he does. It's all fake stuff. It's those letters going up on the Kennedy Center that he cares about. It's that arch. It's everything that says, here I am. I'm Trump. I'm a great man. By the way, great men don't say they're great men and slap their names everywhere.

18:50But this pull is part of this whole pattern and do not expect any explanation from him about it, any apologies, any change in behavior going forward. That arch is going up if he has anything to do it, and that ballroom is being built. All right, Margaret Carlson, Tara Palmieri, thank you so much for getting us started this evening. Later, how the Obama Presidential Library, which is now open to the public, highlights the contrast between the former occupant of the Oval office and the current occupant. And just ahead, I'll talk to the Obama White House photographer who's behind so many of the administration's iconic moments.

19:32Plus, there is new heat tonight on Trump's DOJ over its controversial fund that could pay January 6 rioters. But up first, Ambassador Michael McFaul on what many conservatives say is Trump's defeat in Iran. It is absolutely impossible to say this is in any sense a win for the United States because it's not. This is a pretty humiliating loss for the United States.

20:03Three months ago, Trump wrote, no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. Little did we know he meant it was ours.

20:15That was Jimmy Kimmel's take on Trump's Iran deal. And all of this is unfolding as the next stage of the process has already hit a snag. Apparently, Iran has delayed the nuclear talks that were supposed to start today. J.D. Vance canceled a trip to Switzerland for those talks at the last minute. Discussions concerning Iran's nuclear capabilities were literally the first thing that was supposed to happen after the initial memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran was signed. Apparently, that has now gone kaput. Meanwhile, criticism of the MOU is heating up. The Wall Street Journal says that Trump reached the deal, quote, from a position of weakness, not strength, in essence, paying a ransom.

21:01Tucker Carlson is also piling on. Take a listen. It is absolutely impossible to say this is in any sense a win for the United States because it's not. This is a pretty humiliating loss for the United States.

21:20And it seems that the American taxpayers aren't done paying the price for this loss. The Pentagon is asking for another$80 billion to help cover the cost of the war. It's increasingly apparent that this deal was not good for the United States. But one person seems to be in denial. And it certainly brought Iran to the table more than before. However, beginning a conflict, you had talked about you only wanted unconditional surrender. And the MOU doesn't look like unconditional surrender. Well, it really probably is unconditional surrender. it. Joining me now to break it all down is Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration.

22:05Thanks so much for being here tonight. Ambassador McFaul, one of the major reasons for getting into this war was the opportunity to limit Iran's nuclear capabilities. What should we make of the fact that those discussions around Iran's nuclear capabilities are being deferred to another day? It means very bluntly Trump did not achieve that war objective. He had other war objectives that he didn't achieve, but that was the paramount one. That was the first one. He didn't get it done. And he had to sign this memorandum of understanding to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before he started his war.

22:43And not only did he have to do that, he had to pay, or at least make pledges of payments of billions of dollars, some that we have frozen assets for the Iranians, others that our partners in the region will transfer up to$300 billion. That's what it says in the Memorandum of Understanding. So we're not just at the status quo ante before the war. We're actually worse off than when we started this war. And I didn't even mention the other things he pledged to get done, to end their missile program, to end their support for terrorism, to support the democratic aspirations of the people of Iran. None of those objectives have been met as well.

23:23And as you suggest, like this isn't returning us to the status quo ex ante. We actually had an Iran deal. As you know, President Obama negotiated that deal. Today, he weighed in on the newest Iran deal. Take a listen. We've now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, you know, put an enormous strain on our military. A lot of people have died. And it feels like we're back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little bit worse off. Ambassador McFaul, is your former boss understating things? Are we just a little bit worse off, or is this a real loss for the United States?

24:05Have we lost ground here? He's always a little more diplomatic than I am. He was being modest there. I think this is a catastrophic failure for the United States of America. The hardest decision that any president makes, including President Obama, when I worked with him at the White House, is a decision to use force or not. You should only do that as a last resort. President Trump didn't use that criteria. He just decided to go in thinking it was going to be a cakewalk. And now we're worse off. We've lost soldiers. Thousands have died in the region. We're going to have to pay$100 billion to get back to where we were in terms of our military readiness.

24:45Billions around the world have been lost, including from American consumers, to pay for this increased oil prices. And we're no more secure. We're not more prosperous. And we're most certainly not adhering and supporting our democratic values that President Obama so eloquently talked about in Chicago. I was there for that speech. We're doing exactly the opposite. And this makes us a lot worse off compared to where we were three months ago. Has this whole experience emboldened Iran and made us less safe? Absolutely. The Iranian regime, they feel like time is on their side. Look at what they got in the memorandum of understanding.

25:26They got billions and billions pledged just to do what any responsible country is supposed to do. Number two, I would add to that, it's the autocrats of the world that are all emboldened, right? Russia got a big payoff because of these increased oil and gas prices. Their allies in Tehran are still in place. China looks like the responsible stakeholder in the international system because they're not launching preventive unilateral wars like President Trump just did. So I think the second and tertiary consequences also need to be added to this equation. I do this without question is President Trump's biggest foreign policy failure, but I think it'll rank among the biggest failures of the last several decades.