Tucker Bails on Trump Right as Approval Crashes

0:00Hello, I'm Ozempic. And I'm other GLP-1s, kind of like him. Are you shaking a maraca? No, I'm shaking the pill version of Ozempic, which no one should ever do except in ads like this. A nice disclaimer. Hey, thanks. Ask your doctor about which FDA-approved uses of the Ozempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 9mg, and Ozempic semaglutide injection, 2mg. There's a pill version of Ozempic! This NBA playoffs with FanDuel. You're not just watching the playoffs. You're a part of them.

0:36Steve's got the phone, opens FanDuel, and he's going for threes. Be a part of the action on FanDuel. All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game day. 21 plus and present in select states. Opt-in required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We are reporting on Trump's crash. The approval rating now cratering to 33 percent, an abysmal second-term low. Long-time allies see that the ship is sinking.

1:12Let's start right here. Trump campaign vet Bannon admitting the GOP is facing these defeats. Tucker Carlson has upended the White House's whole week with his new defection.

1:25Defeat after defeat. Now it's a crushing—now they turned over the whole frickin' state to him. It'll take us a decade to dig out of this. I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time. A long time of torment. I have more on both of those individuals coming up, but I start there because the defections don't come in a vacuum. They reflect an American electorate that is currently done with Trump and what he's doing in his second term. The extremism, the economic failure, the rampant lying, which some people on the right have dismissed when it was directed towards other people or other issues.

2:07But now they view it as insult on top of injury, in this case, economic and foreign policy injury. There's a revolt afoot over Trump's failed economy, over his choice to impose this effective war tax on gas. Just 33 percent of Americans approve of this Trump economy now. And I'm going to tell you something else. Some people may not like it, but one of those elite D.C. narratives has now been proven wrong again when you look at this Trump crash, because we have heard a lot of Republican apologists, especially the elite kind of bubbled type of them in Washington, but also a lot of D.C. media insiders talk about how Trump has this resilient base of support.

2:51They talk about it like it's some sort of law of physics, like it can't change and it's special to him. And in many cases, that has actually served as a practical matter to exaggerate and hype how popular Trump is or how much you have to deal with him. He is president. No one's saying you can ignore the entire presidency for a term. But whether you think of him as a popular president who has leverage or a lame duck who's fading, that's a big difference. And that narrative that the Republican Party will just stand by him no matter what, or as he likes to say, he could murder on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

3:25Uh-uh. That's ending, too. Now a sizable third, one third of Republican voters disapprove of Trump. After the months of inflation, the gas spike, this new war, the rolling Epstein secrecy and Epstein debacle that stretched from late last year into the beginning of this year. And new reports say that Trump aides are sugarcoating the war problems. They're afraid to tell him the truth. That's part of the war policy planning problem right now. And we have reporting on that. We can get into that. But that I want to point out tonight is a very stark and public contrast to Tucker Carlson and these other MAGA voices who aren't just telling Trump the bad news, not just going to him perhaps in private.

4:11They have access to him and his aides and saying, hey, this isn't working. This economy is bad. This is what people are mad about. No, they're going beyond that. They're doing it in public, as we've just seen. And that's driving the very media coverage that Trump cares about so much. The combined polling crash, the defections, the Iran troubles. All of this now has the right leaning Drudge Report website likening Trump to Jimmy Carter. whose term fell apart over a gas crisis and high prices and basically getting shown up by Iran, what Drudge calls war confusion. You know, Carter was a rare incumbent who lost after his first term, like Trump.

4:55Now, the second term of Trump was supposed to redeem him as a kind of a leader or maybe a more serious person than his early foibles. And yet here he is tonight, according to Drudge and a lot of other indicators, saddled with Carter problems of his own making and Carter-level polling and Carter failures on policy from the economy to Iran. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes, Mark Twain observed. But when it comes to Jimmy Carter, these are some rhymes most Americans would rather do without. Meanwhile, the Republican bid to try to reshape future elections in Virginia just failed. And here's a little more from what I showed you a preview of, the Steve Bannon rant as he took in that news today, going at Republicans.

5:44Defeat after defeat, now it's a crushing, now they turned over the whole frickin' state to them. It'll take us a decade to dig out of this. You're damn right you're going to lose the Senate because you've given nothing for people to work for. And right now, folks, take your number two princelad and write this down. We ain't going to be in power. you're going to lose the senate we ain't going to be in power get your number two pencil for those who don't just type notes on your own iphone now what does steve bannon and tucker carlson and alex jones all have in common remember what they do now they have their own dedicated audiences online and they apparently would rather meet those audiences where they are with at a minimum trump skepticism if not outright trump opposition they'd rather do that now than wait around and look like out of touch MAGA elite apologists when this November reckoning comes.

6:38I'm not telling you what's going to happen in the November midterms. I don't actually do that. I'm telling you, though, what they appear to think is going to happen. And that's why this is not just about anyone's opinion or voice. It includes that, but also includes what they're bracing for. Now, the anger against Trump around the nation is already reaching Capitol Hill long before any midterm votes are cast. Today, five different Trump cabinet officials you see across the board here. There is some work that sometimes gets done in Congress. Five different officials showing up and facing some members of Congress who appear to channel the concerns of this angry anti-Trump public.

7:20How fast will the prices of gasoline come down? Again, that is path dependent on when the war and the conflict end. Seven million people losing their health insurance because of the Trump administration actions. That's not debatable. There's nobody who is legally enrolled in Medicaid who is losing coverage. That is just not true. Will you guarantee that gas will go back to$3 again before the end of the year? No one can offer guarantees about the future. No, they can't. And on it went like that. Now, Americans blame Trump for the higher gas prices. They can see that direct result from starting the war.

8:01Financial outlets have covered the Trump tax for weeks. Here's one headline. This is from a couple weeks ago. We picked that on purpose to note how this has been the state of play. we've noted that it's like a war tax on this very program today senate democrats are hammering this point with the cumulative numbers if you add up the tab all in american families have paid 16 billion dollars more that's not 16 billion that's 16 billion extra that's the scale of the tax in a very short period of time because of trump's war it's the economy stupid or it's the Stupid war hurting the economy or however you put it.

8:39As you're about to see, people are upset with Trump's war economy. What would you grade the economy right now? Definitely a D. Is there an F up there? I just really don't think I have faith in this administration. It's not the greatest economy in the historic country. It's not blowing out of the water. People are struggling. The term right now, it sucks. There's hope, but it's not for everybody. It's difficult. With him, he doesn't have no plan. Everything just keeps going up and up. Is gaslighting us or delusional? I don't know what it is. Well, it's not great and not our best time as a country.

9:27Yeah, the gas is expensive. Gaslighting people about the gas being expensive doesn't work. and those are folks just filling up the tank and going about their day they're not professional politicians that's why we do these reported interviews sometimes you just check in it anecdotally overlaps with the polling i showed you why am i mentioning that as the top story tonight in concert with these other developments because when you see trump backers like tucker carlson jump ship after so many years of support and remember tucker broke the journalistic rules and limits from his former outlet employers like Fox and CNN to go directly campaign for Trump.

10:08He did it at the convention. He did it again in the homestretch at that controversial MSG rally in New York. So when you see him flip now, that was not that long ago, and you see people revolting before the midterms and you see the economy doing what it's doing, it is pretty clear that Tucker Carlson, who once privately confided in someone that he hated Trump, a text I mentioned this week that came out in a lawsuit, then went back to supporting Trump, then went back. He is a self-fact check. He is a liar. I can only say that rarely when we have the proof. But when you have someone's private text like a diary and them contradicting themselves, you can actually document how he lied to cozy up to Trump when he was up.

10:53And now he's lying about why he's ditching Trump when he's out. But the big political point is he's out. Tucker and these other folks, they're not following some sort of long, clear ideological plan where, oh, if you do this on the war, that's going to break it. No. They are following their own audience and the public and trying to get ahead of what is already the lowest approval of Trump's second term. Trump's aides may have him high on his own supply. Top MAGA leaders have taken a different route. They are planning their own futures as a future without Trump. And that makes you wonder if it's this bad now, how bad do they think it's going to get for Trump and Republicans?

11:38We put that big question to Howard Dean and Juanita Tolliver when we're back together in 90 seconds.

11:50If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter, also with Iran, but if you look at what happened with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election. It was what a mess. Carter-level polling, Carter-level problems. We're back with Wendy DeToliver and Howard Dean. Howard, your view on this wider Trump crash? I think he's got about three months to turn it around, which I don't think he's capable of doing, because I think his people in the House and the Senate are going to be fleeing like a drowned, like rats leaving a drowning ship. Politicians are politicians, no matter which party they're in.

12:28And they're terrified of Trump. But the lower Trump's numbers go, the lower their numbers go. And I already believe it's not possible for them to hold the House and the Senate. it. The question is, how bad is the damage going to be as each one of them decides that it's in their best interest politically to abandon Trump? And that's what they're going to have to do. And I think give the Democrats credit for forcing votes on a lot of stuff that they would not like to vote on. And Juanita, when you look at a third of Republican voters against Trump, that is different than the narrative. And it suggests that this is the overall approval, but we have, I think, the Republicans specifically.

13:07we may have. And I would just say it undercuts everything we've ever heard. It looks like the MAGA base. There you go. 31 percent not resilient for Trump. I mean, Ari, it gets even worse when you dig into issues specific. And I think it's at 47 percent of Republicans disapproving of Trump's efforts to ease the cost of living problems that they're facing. And that number also includes 89 % of independents. These are the voters that Republicans chase after election cycle after election cycle. And they're looking at Trump like, you are literally making our lives worse. And to Howard Dean's point, they're also looking at congressional Republicans like, you're not doing anything to stop him from making my life worse.

13:51They have made no effort to rein Trump in on Iran war powers. They have made no effort to rein in Trump on tariffs, right? Like, These are the things that are impacting people's day-to-day lives. And as you put up that graphic earlier, Ari, about the additional$16 billion that people are paying at the pumps just since February 28th, when Trump and Netanyahu started this war with Iran, a war that no one wanted, a war that Trump still has not provided the public with a reason or justification or an explicit plan for, it makes people angry. And I think that's what's coming up in this snapshot poll.

14:27But Ari, we understand polls are a snapshot in time. I want to see how long this carries on because we know that this is not a snapback situation with gas prices going down. We know that Trump is exclusively focused on funding the war, not child care, not Medicare, not Medicaid or anything outside of this war in Iran. And so how much more will Republicans accept as their bank accounts are humbled by Trump's and Republicans policies? Yeah, I mean, Howard, to that point, you have a kind of a failure of imagination by a lot of folks in Washington to see that he's really lost the plot. He hasn't had, you know, two weeks of good media coverage since maybe the very beginning of his term, something he tracks closely.

15:15And from Epstein to the way they started the year to the war to now the economy, you can see that the the so-called influencers or the MAGA pundits are much more eager to draw the line before the midterms. Contrast that to you said that the politicians are politicians, but House Republicans are not as vocal yet. You're saying they'll get vocal if it's this bad when they're out on the sump? Yeah, I think it's going to be too late for them. I think they're terrified of Trump. They're absolutely terrified of Trump. They're almost none. And the ones who have crossed him left. So there's no backbone in the Republican Party at all.

15:53I mean, the whole message of the GOP is hate. The message of the Democrats is hope. Now, I think we have not been terribly nimble in taking care of this stuff other than outside the beltway, Democrats, governors, and so forth. But even inside the beltway, they're getting better. They finally have woken up to the fact that this is not a successful president, and they don't have to be afraid of him. And their constituents are furious with the Democrats, which is why they poll so poorly, and why there's going to be an age revolution. There's going to be a lot of 45-year-olds in the House and the Senate next year, and some of them will have displaced Republicans who are in their 70s, Democrats who are in their 70s.

16:33Some of them will also have replaced Republicans in their 70s. There is an age revolution going on in this country. And frankly, I think it's about time. And Juanita, when you look at the Democrats then, is this now more than you would have known a year ago? Is this fundamentally an economy election? Or you think they have to still kind of go no kings and take on all of the different panoply of Trump problems. Ari, I've been shouting affordability for over a year now, right? Like it's explicitly clear that people want to be able to afford their lives. They want to also improve the quality of their lives.

17:08We see both declining in real time as their day-to-day needs, whether that's food, shoes, cars, clothes are still beyond reach. Like these are, the reality is Ari, we're seeing a spike in individuals relying on credit cards and buy now, pay later to get groceries. People cannot keep up with the reality of the inflation and price surges that they're experiencing. And this predates Trump's war in Iran. Think back to the terrorists, right? Like this is all self-imposed. And I think that's something that you mentioned earlier in the comparison with Carter, too. Yeah. And so, Howard, when you looked at just the sampling we showed of the hearings today, You had a lot of Trump officials and they're saying we're going to get gas prices back down.

17:55We don't know how fast and maybe not as good as they were. When you talk about the oil pipeline in the Strait of Hormuz, people say, well, eventually we're going to get it open. OK, well, it was open. We just had the very decorated Admiral McRaven on and he speaks very carefully. But I want to play for you and viewers how he, in a very clear kind of diplomatic way, refer to the fact that since the date the war started, Trump has put the U.S. on a worse footing. When we look at where we are today, you know, prior to February 28th, the straits were open. Yes, you had a regime, but the Israeli intelligence would tell you the regime in place now is more hard line.

18:38You know, we have unfortunately lost soldiers. We've expended a lot of blood and treasure. And so are we in a better strategic position? Howard, he lays out reasons as a military man why we're basically not. Yeah, well, we're clearly not. But, you know, this stuff, this attack on the middle class and the start of the day that Trump took office, look at all the tariffs. Think of the billions and billions of dollars that people paid in tariffs. That money is not going back, no matter what the Supreme Court said. It's going to the businesses that paid the tariffs, but the businesses are under no obligation to fund the ordinary Americans who paid that.

19:19This is Trump, the worst president for the middle class in any president in my lifetime. And that's you think you're pointing out that even with this court stopping the tariffs because Trump, again, lost, blew it, didn't didn't build them in the right way. You're pointing out that it's basically still a pro one percent kind of trickle up program. Absolutely. And let me just say one thing in defense of Jimmy Carter. I got into politics because Jimmy Carter. He was an upstanding human being who brought the first peace treaty between an Arab state and Israel. He was a remarkable, remarkable human being.

19:57I respect it. Was he a strong president? Was he good on Iran policy? No. Well, no, probably not. Probably not. You know, the Iran policy was, look, the people who run Iran are thugs and they have been for as long as, you know, run Iran. So he didn't really have control over what they were going to do. Could he have somehow seen, had a vision that they were going to take over the embassy and all this kind of stuff? Maybe he should have gone and blown the hell out of everybody, which might have cost us the lives of our hostages. So I don't, look, do I think he made mistakes? Jimmy Carter made mistakes.

20:32He was also probably the greatest ex-president the United States has ever had. And that honor will never befall Donald Trump. You see, Juanita, when Howard Dean has your back, he has your back, even even in a bad news cycle. We respect it. Howard Dean, Juanita Tolliver, thank you very much. I want to tell folks I mentioned at the top, we showed you some of those clips. I told you we have more. We do. You got to see it to believe it. The Tucker of it all. We're going to break down why this matters and why the worst may be yet to come for Trump. I mean, we're implicated in this for sure. Yes. It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind, or like, oh, this is bad, I'm out.

21:19If you talk politics in America on any regular basis, you've probably heard someone ask, or you yourself have had the question, when are they going to say enough's enough? Well, when? now, this week. Trump's bag of base is splintering in a more high-profile way than we've seen this term. You take Tucker Carlson, who, as I emphasize, is not just another conservative who kind of zigs and zags on different issues. This is someone who broke tradition and the journalistic rules of his former employers to go out and campaign for Trump at the convention, at MSG. That's something you didn't even see most other Fox hosts do.

21:57So he went that far only to take it all back this week and apologize for even helping get us in this situation at all for getting trump elected we're implicated in this for sure yes it's not enough to say well i changed my mind or like oh this is bad i'm out you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now i do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences will be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional. That's all I'll say. He's sorry. He's tormented. This is something to wrestle with as a matter of your conscience.

22:44This sounds like you committed a sin. You did something terrible. And I emphasize that because there's plenty of times in politics where you say, oh, you picked this policy. It didn't work out. You pick this person early on and over time they didn't deliver. There are failed political careers in both parties. There are votes people might reflect upon differently. He's talking about it at a moral level, which tells you either he thinks it's that bad or he knows his audience thinks it's that bad. Either way, it's bad. Now that's kind of the money clip when you talk about this and what goes viral these days or what clip you keep seeing on MS Now across our different shows.

23:24That was like it. That's the money clip. There's more. Because if you peel back the layers, Carlson has gone up against some Trump policies in recent weeks. The war, which is of course a huge issue for him and his audience. And what he calls a betrayal. now we're in a weird moment an even stranger moment where a lot of people who really like trump are very disappointed in trump in fact more than disappointed feel betrayed or enraged feel like suckers feel like they've been taken for a ride how could i possibly have supported that given what it became this is why we're not just dealing in theories tucker carlson refers to a lot of people who like Trump feeling betrayed.

24:12So either he has the evidence to back that up, I showed you a third of Republicans turning on Trump, or he has that idea in his head, and that's part of what he says out loud has led him away from Trump. So this is bigger than Tucker. That's bad for the White House. Tucker also knew better, a fact check that's important, even if people want to welcome folks who join the No Kings movement or whatever you want to call what Tucker's going to become, we don't ignore the facts around here. Because of a lawsuit, private text messages, which I mentioned to you, show how Carlson said he hated Trump passionately and that because of Trump's demise then, he was excited that, quote, we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.

24:57I truly can't wait. That was around the insurrection period in 21. A few years later, Tucker was campaigning for the man that he passionately hated and wanted to condemn to the dustbin of cable news history. The Times reported how they were chuckling together at that RNC that I mentioned, that Carlson said Trump is the funniest person I've ever met in my life. He's a wonderful person. I know him well. Now, Carlson is also, in addition to saying his audience and Trump fans are upset now, he also says there was a kind of epiphany because the Iran policy is what changed everything. Others, however, don't buy it.

25:36I don't believe him. He's not getting a bear hug from me. I don't think, you know, the world's on fire and you can't just say oopsies. Is he now claiming he had no idea that Donald Trump held the position that he would never permit Iran to have nuclear weapons? If that's what he's saying today, he's kind of a moron. That's big. I mean, Tucker Carlson apologizing for helping Trump get elected. I believe they call that liar's remorse. Liar's remorse, buyer's remorse, situational ethics based on what your own podcast fans want to hear. There are other accounts that this is just too little too late.

26:14To see Carlson break with Trump, Rolling Stone notes, as anything other than a calculated beacon for his next political life raft would be to engage in the kind of blindness Carlson would like us all to believe he was afflicted with by chance. Remember, we have the text from 2021. We know that in his private moments, Tucker said, A, he hated Trump passionately, and B, he couldn't wait to move past him. Maybe he's been waiting on this moment for the ensuing five years in between, another time to look past him. Whatever it is, it is bigger than Tucker It is the connective tissue between the now third Of all identified Republicans who oppose Trump And the energy and economic crisis that has Curdled the rest of the thinking, observing American electorate against this economy What comes next could be even more severe We have someone who thinks a lot about these issues, maybe so you don't have to The Bulwarks Will Sommer is here, next