Rep. Krishnamoorthi Discusses Trump and MAGA Collapse

0:00Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are in full terror after Donald Trump surrendered to Iran. As I noted earlier, Donald Trump is no longer even trying to do a deal with Iran and the United States. Instead, Donald Trump's latest threats are, Ron, you've got to make a deal with Oman or else. And then we're going to take credit for that deal because Trump is incapable of making a deal. Americans did not want to be involved in this catastrophic war ever. Donald Trump promised it was going to be a complete victory, despite the fact that Americans did not want to be in this catastrophic war. And America saw the entire country put through a daily humiliation ritual as Donald Trump would threaten war crimes on Iran, then back out, threaten war crimes in Iran, and back out, and threaten more war crimes, and back out.

0:52Ben Meiselas:And now our economy is suffering. Trump, though, continues to manipulate the markets. And MAGA Republicans are out there in panic mode. I'll show you. You mean you got Trump cabinet members right now, like Brooke Rollins. You know, she's out there in Minnesota and she's like, we delivered. We got rid of the crazy woke, huh? We got rid of the crazy woke, huh? We anti-woke. This is what you're doing right now with everything that's going on right now. We've got rid of it. Ain't working there, Brooke. Here, play this clip. With my boss, President Trump, and what he was trying to figure out was if we've got to deliver on our promises.

1:30Ben Meiselas:We promised a smaller government. We promised to deregulate. We promised tax cuts. We promised to get rid of all the crazy woke. And then she was like, hey, everybody, give us applause because Trump has done more for farmers than anybody. Well, maybe he's done more bailouts for farmers after bankrupting the farmers. But this is what the Trump administration officials are doing now. Here, play this clip. And the biofuels industry has never had a bigger backer, a more vocal backer than my boss, President Donald Trump. This spring, he announced, I think this may be due for another applause. This spring, he announced the highest renewable available volume obligation RVOs in the history of the program.

2:15Ben Meiselas:How about that, y 'all? That's a big deal for this state. A big deal. Then they send out Dr. Oz and Dr. Oz is like, when I'm lying to you and you know I'm lying to you and I know that you know I'm lying to you and on and on and on, that's how countries collapse. Yeah, we know that's what's happening Here, play this clip.

3:09Ben Meiselas:and I know that you know that I'm lying to you and on and on and on. That's how countries collapse. Thank you all. Oh, and then you have MAGA Republican, a senator, don't let him even consider, call himself a centrist. John Cornyn say there's nothing that he and the GOP can ever do for survivors. And yes, they didn't want Todd Blanche confirmed because he's covering up the Epstein files and then he further tormented them. But Cornyn's like, there's nothing we can do. Yeah, we know because you're all part of the Epstein class. You are involved in the coverup of the child sex trafficking ring by not releasing the Epstein files and confirming Blanche, in my opinion.

3:54Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip right here. Senator, your democratic colleagues seem to think that this. Yes, on Blanche is going to have a chilling effect on survivors of sexual assault and things like that. What's your response to them? They were frustrated that you didn't be with them in person too? Well, what happened to them is a tragedy. And we know that people have been convicted of trafficking and crimes and Epstein is no longer with us. But I don't believe there's anything we could do to assuage them at this point, but we need to continue to We've helped them every way we can. But I just think that's one of those things that cannot be remedied by a no vote.

4:40And Senator, your Democratic colleagues say that -

4:43Ben Meiselas:And let me just show you what some of the polling looks like for Trump out today. The aggregate of this stuff from Harry Enten. Donald Trump, the worst position ever right now, according to Enten's aggregate. Here play this clip. President Trump thinks his own polls are good. He is simply put not on planet Earth. He is on some planet far, far, far away in a galaxy far, far, far away. I mean, just look at this. It has been a steady decline, like a slide going into the sea. You know, you go back January 2025, plus six. May of 2025, minus seven. September of 2025, minus eight. December of 2025, minus 13.

5:21Ben Meiselas:April of 2026, minus 17. And now, in an average of polls, he is 21 points underwater. Water. This is the lowest he has been in term number two. The bottom line is this. Trump is at record lows for himself in term number two. He is very much underwater, despite whatever he is claiming up in his head of his. A slide going into the sea. Evocative imagery there from Harry. When did this slide begin? When did this slide begin? When did Trump slide into the sea begin? I mean, just take a look here. I mean, you know, it'd be one thing, again, if we were talking about just one poll, but we're talking about the average polls.

6:01Ben Meiselas:But when we're talking about one poll, is there any poll that has Trump anywhere close to positive territory? Take a look here. Trump's negative net approval rating. Every single poll that meets CNN standards for publication has had Donald Trump underwater in the negative since March 29th of 2025. Days in a row, it is 494, nearly 500 days in which Donald Trump has had a negative net approval rating. He's not anywhere close to positive. The Lou Gehrig of presidents. He is the Lou Gehrig, the Cal Ripken of negative ratings. But people would say, hey, look, you know, the president had low approval ratings in his first term also.

6:39Ben Meiselas:Not this low. Not this low. Take a look here. Trump's net approval rating at this point. In term one at this point, he was 12 points underwater. He has now broken the 20-point barrier in the negative, minus 20 points. And you know I always love a little nugget here. Goes from minus eight to minus 47 points with independents who are driving this. And what do the prediction markets say this means about his chances of maintaining control of the House? Yeah, okay. If you have a negative 21 net approval rate, no way your party controls the House if this holds until election day. Chance to win the House.

7:09Ben Meiselas:Democrats now up to an 84 % chance, up from 73 % just a few months ago. Republicans now with just a 16 % chance, according to the cash prediction markets. Trump's negative net approval rating is dropping. What about even moderate Republicans? What do they think amongst Trump's own party, Republicans? He only has a plus 10 approval down from plus 69 in 2024. I mean, it is a 59 point drop here. Watch what Enten says here. Yeah, okay. So, you know, we often talk about, oh, that conservative base, that MAGA base. Well, how about where the other GOP lives? That is moderate Republicans, Kate Baldwin, moderate Republicans.

7:48Ben Meiselas:And in a word, yikes. Yikes is the word. OK, take a look at this. The moderate GOP on Trump. This includes leaners. This is about 30 to 40 percent of the party, depending on how you exactly look at versus Kamala Harris. Trump easily was winning amongst them by 69 points back in October of 2024. Come over to this side of the screen. Look at this decline in the Lake Erie. I mean, right now we're talking about us. We're talking about just a plus 10 net approving. This is within his own party. This is within his own party. He's just barely above water. Do the quick math with me. That's 69, 10. That's a 59 point drop.

8:25Ben Meiselas:That is five and nine in the course of under two years. So moderate Republicans abandoning Donald John Trump. Now I want to bring in Democratic Congress member Raja Krishnamoorthy, Congress member. Great to see you. As always, at the beginning, I was talking about how, you know, yet again, Congress is in recess. The House is in recess. I mean, you know, yes, there's an election in less than 100 days. And yes, there's usually a summer recess. But when you take as many breaks as Maga Mike has recessed this House of Representatives, when we're in this catastrophic war and Donald Trump one day threatens, I'm going to blow the effing S out of a country.

9:05Ben Meiselas:And then he comes up with imaginary fake negotiations that aren't taking taking place. Meanwhile, Iran continues to strike the U.S. bases because they don't see it as a ceasefire. I mean, they're not going with his imaginary narratives. I mean, he engaged, he invaded them. And so they're like, yeah, we're in a war. And now we learned that America is out of attack and interceptors, not like our stockpiles depleted. But according to some of the latest reporting, it's like we don't have the public reporting is almost like we don't have weapons. And my broader point is like, where's Congress? Like this is quite literally the job and it's like, okay, summer, chill.

9:42Ben Meiselas:What's going on? Well, what's going on is, you know, basically Congress has become a fully owned subsidiary of Trump Inc. and the White House. And at this point, you know, Mike Johnson and the Republicans would just prefer to put his interests above their own constituents' interests and those of the country. You're right, by the way, with regard to the munitions issue. it's pretty serious. We're not only running low on ATACMS, we're running low on tomahawks, which are long range precision fires that would be necessary for holding off adversaries. We're low on SM3 interceptors and Patriots. That's what provides basically our ballistic missile defense, especially the THAADs, which we're also low on.

10:32And so we're kind of in this situation where we've basically expose ourselves. We're lowering our deterrence. We're inviting aggression. And I think we're sliding towards war. I'm just going to say it. I think we're sliding towards yet another war. And it's not the one we're currently in, but war with other adversaries, because they're going to take advantage of this situation and make more provocative moves. And that could really escalate very quickly.

10:58Ben Meiselas:Well, you know, our adversaries or countries that there is, you know, to that point, Donald Trump, though, almost doesn't see the adversaries as the adversary. So when you say that, I hear that, but I think to myself, who does Donald Trump see as an adversary? Canada, Greenland, Spain, you know, Europe. I mean, that's who he sees as an adversary. I mean, I hear you probably implying what's going to happen with China? What's going to happen with Russia? What's going to happen with North Korea as these countries start to see U.S. is out of weapons, baby. We're going to start making our moves because, you know, he ran out.

11:41Ben Meiselas:And so he can't protect, you know, no umbrella in Asia, no umbrella over here anymore. They have Arab umbrellas over. But then I think, you know, Trump's given China basically the top semiconductor chips. I mean, he's given UAE the black well, which they can just basically give to China and he gives China the other one, the second Nvidia chip that's basically like the black. So I guess my point is that maybe the only calculus for them is just let him keep on going. He's destroying the whole country. I think that this is where I see things kind of potentially breaking down, which is that he may not view them as adversaries.

12:27They view us as adversaries. And if they act according to their viewpoint, then he could be put into a situation where we're left with no choice. We're dragged into a conflict. And at that point, it doesn't really matter what Donald Trump Trump believes, the reality will be screaming that we have to protect our soldiers, protect our interests, and we may be in conflict. And so we've got to do the exact opposite of what we're doing right now. We've got to end this illegal and unconstitutional war. And by the way, every day that we fail to wean ourselves off the very fossil fuel that they have a chokehold on, namely the Iranians, we're giving them more and more leverage, which really hurts our ability at the bargaining table to do anything to resolve the situation either.

13:22So we can't resolve this militarily, and we're not going to be able to resolve it on proper terms at the bargaining table, the more leverage that we give the Iranians, And the less that we do to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, start to develop these renewable energy technologies and EV technologies, which unfortunately the Trump administration has axed the tune of two to 300 projects at the Department of Energy already.

13:51Ben Meiselas:It's very focused on gilding bronze statues, gold and golden ballrooms and something about the red bricks he was talking about yesterday. I know you have access to certain information that the public doesn't, you know, that you see in skiffs and other places. And so I know there are probably some things you can share, you can share. But when you say it appears we're moving potentially towards war in other directions, meaning outside of the one that we're aware of right now, what can you, you know, I don't want to leave our viewers totally hanging, you know, with a statement like that. So what can you share about what you know that you feel comfortable sharing?

14:35Well, I think we're definitely starting to enter a dangerous phase in the Indo-Pacific region, especially with regard to China. China is throwing its elbows militarily in the South China Sea, which, by the way, it claims as its own. This is a huge tract of the ocean that it claims as its own kind of internal body of water. Then of course, there's Taiwan, which Xi Jinping has tasked the People's Liberation Army with successfully conquering potentially by 2027. And so we're entering this dangerous phase where Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have certain deadlines, are seeing their power start to peak in certain ways, even at the same time that they're seeing our munitions at an all-time low.

15:32They're seeing our alliances and partnerships fray. And so it's a very fraught moment where they could say, look, this is the time to strike. We're not going to find a better time than now. And if that happens, you know, Katie, bar the door. This could be just a catastrophic situation for America.

15:54Ben Meiselas:I can only imagine. I mean, you know, they clearly see that we're out of weapons. I mean, like, I mean, we're out of weapons in the United States of America for the trillions of dollars that were funded to the military-industrial complex were out of weapons. And not only that, but Trump's been putting the weapons in the wrong thing. He wants to build the Trump gigantic ships, you know, and it's like, we're in drone warfare, we're in unmanned submersives. You want to build ships that look like, what does he say? I love the way the ships look like in World War I and World War II. I don't like stealth.

16:34Ben Meiselas:I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way the, you know and and it goes to this broader point you know it's like i don't like stealth okay okay i don't care if you don't like it it's stealth man what are you talking about i don't like aircraft carriers i don't like uh okay i don't like the okay i there's this kind of common sense disconnect and you know just let's just switch topics for a second for a moment it's like you know we all look at the post service as saying we want to get our mail trump looks at the post service and says, how can I withhold people's votes from this pro service?

17:07Ben Meiselas:Like, no, just give us my fricking mail, man. I just want the mail. Stop making this post service weird. I just want the mail to get from point A to point B and receive it and open up my letters. And then I don't need you to have a post service, you know, a head of the post service who's out there like a political guy who's like, I'm not going to deliver mail on elections. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's absolutely nuts. Look, the U.S. Postal Service has already been in decline over the past several years because Trump installed a guy named Postmaster General DeJoy when he first entered office in Trump Term 1.

17:44That guy totally hurt the Postal Service. Mail is not arriving on time primarily because of, quote unquote, reforms that he put in place. Now, Trump wants to use the Postal Service to essentially withhold election mail, mail-in ballots, basically from people that he deems not to be citizens, not to be eligible voters. Well, guess how he's going to determine that? He's going to force states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government to be screened by Donald Trump and DHS. and once they get screened, then the Postal Service will deliver mail-in ballots to, quote unquote, eligible voters.

18:32That is not only illegal under our privacy laws and other protections, but it's also illegal under the Constitution because the federal government does not have primary authority for elections. And yet he's now using the U.S. Postal Service as an instrument for voter suppression. Now, the U.S. Postal Service, for its part, is supposed to stay out of politics completely, and the Postmaster General is supposed to do the same. Instead, he has allowed himself, he's enabled Trump to use the USPS in an illegal, unconstitutional way. So I'm calling for his removal now. His name is Steiner, Postmaster General Steiner, the same way I did with DeJoy.

19:18These guys have got to go and we've got to get our U.S. Postal Service back. It used to be one of the most trusted institutions in America. And unfortunately, it's also falling on hard times thanks to Donald Trump.

19:31Ben Meiselas:And finally, what used to be a trusted organization, the Department of Justice. I mean, you and I, both lawyers, you know, working at the DOJ after law school was the biggest honor. The top lawyers would at some point try to want to work at the DOJ, maybe before going back into private practice. And this spanned all different administrations, the presumption of regularity where, you know, a federal prosecutor shows up in court and the judge, you know, basically says, we kind of trust what you're saying because, you know, you're the DOJ. And sometimes you don't get that benefit when you were on the other side of the DOJ in a case.

20:10Ben Meiselas:But now they're basically viewed as a, uh, as like a, as like a firm on, uh, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want to offend them. I'm sure there are good firms on Ventura Boulevard out here in California, but like, uh, but you know, like, uh, like a small Ventura Boulevard, you know, lemon law firm that has been sanctioned repeatedly by courts for, you know, uh, whatever, for recruiting client. let's like like i'm going to take the analogy because there are good lemon lawyers they're good small law firms they're good firms of ventura boulevard i don't want to i don't want to offend any target audience there but the point is is that you and i when we would go into court we would see some firms that were like man how'd this person even pass the bar exam and the courts would yell at these lawyers and you'd be like oh my god is it this bad lawyers crazy and and the doj is is that and maybe even worse than that.

21:07Ben Meiselas:And now Blanche, you know, Blanche is doing settlement, you know, he's doing the order where he says that I'm revoking the prior order, but I'm affirming that Trump gets tax immunity, giving the guy tax immunity. And that's enough for Tillis and Cornyn. You know, we've narrowed the scope of it. I'm like, what do you mean you've narrowed the scope of you've affirmed that Trump and his kids and all of the trust get tax immunity from the day of the settlement going back in time forever that's as expansive as it could possibly be to narrow anything what do you but the american people get it you know rajah the american people like what is this totally it's a different system of justice you know this ben look i think there's a system of justice now that applies to billionaires and people like trump and then there's a system of justice that applies to the rest of us and i think that um just to take another example let's look at the Epstein affair.

22:01You know, this guy, Donald Trump, is out there prosecuting, quote, vandals who supposedly ruined the reflecting pool. And yet he has not filed a single charge or announced a single investigation of anyone beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And for Maxwell, he's transferred her to a low security prison in the hope that she would, quote unquote exonerate him from any wrongdoing in the Epstein affair. That is this type of justice that we have right now. And I think that goes to what you were talking about with regard to the DOJ and his credibility, which is shot. It's completely shot at this point, thanks to its prioritization of crazy issues that Donald Trump makes to be the issue of the day, going after his political enemies, going after others who might kind of cross him, and not going after the people's business and not trying to even, you know, bring justice to the thousands of girls, now middle-aged women, who've yet to receive a single iota of justice after decades of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and others.

23:17So this is a very sad moment.

23:21Ben Meiselas:Congressman Krishnamoorthy, thanks for joining us as always. We always loved having you on the show and we'll hope you come back soon. Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Before you go, our book WTF America is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back to pre-order, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.

23:50Thank you.