Trump's Approval at Lowest Point of Term

Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for teens. Instagram teen accounts have built-in content settings and limits for who can contact teens. Plus, teens under 16 can't change these default safety settings without parental approval. So parents can help teens connect safely. Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to seven billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Welcome to the beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melbert, and we have James Carvel here standing by to break down this election news. We haven't heard from you since then on this program and the news coming out of Congress. So James is moments away. Later in the show, more Epstein News haunting Donald Trump and big developments on Donald Trump, pardoning people who tried to overthrow his 2020 loss, a reinforcement of Trump's very public position against the police. Well, you see there trying to hold back the barricades and in favor of convicts who attack them or who organized these higher level coup plots. So we have that important story later tonight. We begin with the ongoing rejection of Donald Trump's agenda. We saw that in the aggregate in Tuesday's election sweep. We also have anecdotal evidence coming in over the weekend. It is the kind that Donald Trump specifically despises public televised booze. You can hear them at the NFL game this weekend.

Please raise. And on it went. It is not a sound that he likes. It's also pretty much what democracy sounds like right now. I mentioned that is just anecdotal. Just one moment in one game. It also depends on where the camera and the mics are. But here is national data that goes even beyond Tuesday that can't be minimized or ignored. The president's approval. cratering to a new low. This chart shows how Trump's dropping approval has been only a negative in the first year of this term, like any chart or any stock market indication, right? You have some gyrations, but the overall message from the far left there is when he started January 20th through last week's election defeats and on through this tough period he's had. Now, Why is he doing so poorly in this net gain, net loss approval? Well, part of it has to do with his failure to control costs or deal with rising prices, the type of things he ran on just a year ago. Healthcare groceries, everyday life. Those are the things that people clearly reacted to going into the election booths. And people waited in line in all kinds of places. People voted for liberal Democrats, Democratic Socialists, centrist Democrats. The one thing they didn't do is vote for anything that smacked of the MAGA agenda. So when you take it all together, it doesn't mean that we know exactly where people will be a year from now or which brand of democratic progressivism is the most popular in every part of the country. It does mean, as the Washington Post, the kind of paper of political record put it, that it's the affordability, stupid. That, of course, is a paraphrase of James Carville, who's standing by. Trump allies are saying maybe he got the message or maybe he'll talk more about affordability, but he is still throwing lavish parties at Marlago, another one this weekend. It's a let them eat steak or let them eat crypto moment for our unequal great Gatsby era. It's a tone-deaf choice that comes amid those huge democratic wins. And so you take it all together, and as is sometimes the case in politics or life, Think about where you were just one week ago. Monday night, election eve. If you follow news and politics, you'd probably read some of the headlines that it could be close, and there was a lot of drama in New York, and it could be kind of a close race in New Jersey, where, of course, one year prior, MAGA did pretty well, increasing the gains among young men and Latinos. Well, here we are, not just one week later, and it sounds and feels so different. But what's different is only that the voters finally spoke. They weren't crowded out by autocratic maga tantrums or calls to control what you see on your TV or cancel Jimmy Kimmel. They weren't over-dramatized by ICE agents and mass snatching people up off the streets.

When you turn down the volume of all of that, and as the mayor-elect said in New York, turn up the volume of the people, you get a very different picture. And right now it is a picture that overwhelmingly rejects whatever this first year of Donald Trump's second term stands for and is demanding change. With that in mind, we turn to James Carville, who knows his way around a change election or two. I wanted to get your reaction to what Tuesday night's Democratic sweep meant, as well as anything else you want to weigh in on right now. Well, thank you. All right. First of all, it was complete and it was impressive. I mean, and there was no, it was all across the board. Maybe the most impressive, I had to pick one out, was what happened in Pennsylvania. It was Supreme Court retention that got 62%. A county executive race in Erie, Pennsylvania, the Democrat got 24.6. That is impossible. That is almost politically impossible. Erie is, by the way, the swingiest county and the swingiest state. Understand that. I don't think any presidential candidate has gotten above 52 in this century. That's how tight area is. You're all the way to the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and you see Bucks County, which is another real, real swing county where you see the Democrats ousted Republican DA and a Republican sheriff by double digits. So everything was impressive. I think what Governor Spiro and his team did in Pennsylvania probably stands out as impressive as anything I've seen in one state. But understand this was about affordability, it was a big issue. And, you know, it was the economy's stupid. But I think corruption and cruelty also had a lot to do with this. I think that was just a revulsion. I think people saw the gratuitous cruelty separating people from... Children from parents, not allowed priests to say mass to immigrants, just going and people experiencing a cruelty on TV. And you cannot watch the corruption that's taking place. It is ongoing, as you pointed out in the opening piece, the Great Gatsby. I don't think Trump knows who the Great Gatsby is. I defend him on that. He'd have no idea who Scott Fitzgerald is or any of that. Nonsense. But yeah, it was a good, it was a great win. And I think we're going to have a big win coming up in November of 2026. I do. That's striking coming from you. And as shown, the Post and other places paraphrase you because you not only seem to get it sometimes, but you got it when your party didn't. The other news out of D.C. tonight, of course, is the longest ever government shutdown, which may be ending soon. James, it's going to hang with me. I'm going to update people. The Dems have sort of backed down in order to reopen the government. And they say there'll be a later GOP kind of promised vote on Obamacare funding. Now, some Democrats are arguing that this outcome works. They made their point. They showed the country the facts. They did in that process, damaged Trump politically. You see that in himself acknowledging the shutdown, hurt them Tuesday, the highlighted health care, and so on.

On the other hand, most of the Democratic caucus isn't down with this, not yet anyway. The moderates who broke to do the deal, none of them are up for re-election. And so there's even headlines about furious liberal activists blasting this approach, a kind of a cave. I will say before I bring James back in, that for context on this story, the wider... trend is a bit more mixed across history. Here's one political analyst, Matt Glassman, and he writes that if you just look at the four long shutdowns, the party trying to leverage the shutdown loses. That was the Gingrich Republicans in 95, the Cruz Obamacare opponents in 13, true for the Trump border wall shutdown in 2019. He reminds everyone, it was also true for the brief Senate Democrats effort in 2018. They folded in two days over a weekend. And so, The other big change, as I want to tell viewers, the firing James Carvel back is you're waking up this week to an end to what is now the longest shutdown in history. The underlying political dynamics on that aren't very different because there isn't a drastic shift in how we're funding the government or what's going to happen to health care money, but there is now a break in that impasse as we head into Thanksgiving travel. James, your view on the shutdown news. Well, I'm going to shut down in the news. Everybody, you have until 1800 hours Wednesday, 1800 hours is 6 o'clock. I think that's when you're, let's say 19-hundredths that can go on your show to complain about it. Then shut up and start talking about Republicans. Okay. That's enough whining, enough clocking. All right. And by the way, this pass just means one thing. The House has to come back to Washington to pass this legislation. Mike Johnson's going to have to bring them back, and when they come back, they're going to have the little Epstein problem they're trying to avoid. So maybe this vote suck the Republicans back into Washington, but I don't know, procedure. I don't think in 10 days from now it's going to mean dilly squat. But let's... Well, let me slow you down. Let me slow you down and let you respond. James, you got people who open up their phones today, and they're seeing, oh, Dem wins and the government thing we're moving on and go on with your life. which to some people's great news, especially depending on if you're traveling or how you work. Other people open their phones and they're seeing some writers, some liberals saying Democrats caving again, civil war. What do you see in the phone in your mind's eye? What I see is people are complaining. They said they want them to stand tough. And people said, well, what in the polling? It was looking good. Some people say they were about to break. I know most of the eight senators personally. I think they're all decent people. But I don't want just to get in the way with our central message and the things that brought us this big win, not even a week ago. And if you got something on your chest, you ought to get it off, but get it off, like, between now and 7 o'clock Eastern Wednesday, okay? And then let's, then let's try to reorient our artillery where it's supposed to be fired, and that's at them, not us. And then, all right, so, well, let me go, let me follow, because here we are inside the James Carville window. We are before 7 p.m. Eastern, so I guess we're allowed to do a little quibble. Is your view, basically, it was probably going to end like this anyway? Because to paraphrase,

the liberal critics, there some of them are saying, well, what was the point of all this if you didn't get much? I, no, I thought, I thought we were throwing them a lifeline by extending these health care subsidies, which would apply to a lot of people. I was like, maybe we started out, and they didn't want to take that. All right, understand that what the Democrats were trying to do would actually help tens of millions of their own people. You're saying it would help people, yeah, in both parties. Yeah, and I thought they'd say, well, this is a way that we can be against Obamacare, but we can say we want to shut the government down. I actually thought it was in their political best interest to take it. So politically, I'm not that upset. that it was rejected. And again, I point out to the fact that the House got to come back and settle it. And Mikey Barr, he's not going to be able to, he can't handle a situation. He can't do it. So, yeah, I thought we would win because I thought they'd have enough political sense to say, hey, these guys are throwing us a lifeline. We ought to take it. And we can't get blamed for it. Yeah. I'll give you a response to that. And I'm going to play you a little Obama. But just to button this up, it was really striking because the final Democratic offer before the deal. was one year of Obama funding, Obamacare funding, which would help Republicans because it would buy them less pain among the voters I just showed in line and the affordability message all that for just a year. They didn't even want that, to your point. But okay, we got you on that. We're within your window, James Carville. You know, maybe you're the new Brendan Carr, and you could decide when we could talk about what? That's a joke, everyone. I got, I got you. On the Dem wins. Obama. Doesn't come out that much. I mean, he campaigned a little, but he's well known for kind of hanging back. He came out late going into the weekend. Victory lap. Take a look. It was good to see progressives get off the mat. It was a good reminder that it turns out that the American people are paying attention. They don't want cruelty. They're not looking for people on the top trying to entrench themselves in power. We recognize, yeah, we have differences. And yes, there are fights that are going to have to be fought. But that deep down, there is something core in us that we have in common that is extraordinary. something extraordinary. He's rally on the base, James. And I'll tell you, you know, I've had Zohran Mamdani on the program. I want to ask you about that coming up. I've had Andrew Cuomo on the program, and I've had plenty of MAGA leaders here as well. I will say, if you simplify it, Andrew Cuomo ended up closing weekend in a New York City mayor's race saying diversity can be a weakness. And Obama ended up... given a victory speech there on behalf, a lot of Democrats he campaigned for saying ideological diversity is not only a strength, but it's part of the Democratic brand in a way that is credible and not part of the autocratic MAGA brand. It would not be credible for them to claim they believe in diversity of that kind right now. Your view on the contrast to way Obama puts in it.

First of all, I was tremendously flattered that he mentioned cruelty as one of the reasons that he did so well. Look, if the reason that people, the reason I became a Democrat, because I believed in diversity. I mean, basically it's a sort of fundamental to being a Democrat that that tolerance, inclusion, diversity, whatever that group of words is, is. pretty much at the whole identity of what it means to be a Democrat. And I don't care if you were, one of the eight Democrats that voted this way, or are you one of the other ones that didn't? I think they all share a real commitment to this. And I think that President Obama was absolutely correct. I'm really surprised that Andrew Cuomo would say something like that. I guess people getting the heated campaign and they're not thinking it, they're foggy. And I don't think that's who is, I don't think, I don't think. I hope Andrew really doesn't believe that because that's a remarkably stupid statement that diversity is a weakness. That's insane. And by the way, every day this country is getting more and more diverse. The time we go, get up in the morning, the time we go to bed at night, we're living in a more diverse country. And I think that's what makes it a better country. I really do. Really striking there. James has agreed to stick around. And I got some really interesting stuff to show you. We're back in 90 seconds.

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co-founder, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. They, of course, endorsed Zohran Mamdani and Mr. Green has been involved in efforts from the left, primaries, et cetera. I'll let him explain it. But, James, you get to go first because you're older than both of us. How about that? And I'm probably old and both y'all combined. You get to tell us what the victory means. Well, look, to me, what it means is that he was one of the better messages and more disciplined messages I've ever seen. He just would not get out of his affordability message. And I think people were just looking for something different in New York. And I think people should, you know, should give him a chance. I mean, I hope the guy succeeds. I mean, he's leading eight million people. And he's talking about things that are relevant. I mean, some of the stuff that he wants to do is difficult, but everything is difficult. But I think he told people he saw them and he saw their problems and they were awarded him with a victory. Adam, you know this. When you've advocated for candidates that are seen as liberal, whatever that means, a lot of times the rejoinder from D.C. Democrats is, well, they can't win. What do these races say to your argument? So the most important thing for Democrats going forward is to have a vision that actually excites people. I was there Tuesday night at his rally. It was electric. And the people weren't just there because we beat the bad guys. They were there and they will be with him for the long haul because they were inspired by his vision. And no matter where somebody is campaigning, they should be campaigning on a vision that fights for everyday working people, has a shake-up the system vibe and is willing to challenge powerful interests. And you can choose that state-by-state district by district. And we've seen that in some red districts and purple district. 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. And yet you never liked the group, no labels. That's a deep cut, everyone. Go on. So, you know, Zohran Mamdani, if you take away the label, even the specific policies, look at how he campaigned. Have a vision. Be bold. actually inspire people, and 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 got to have a milk toast 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. 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 Zohran 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 Zohran Mamdani is more on message than any candidate he's ever worked with. And he said, hands down, that's a positive trait. So here's the test. Oh, God. How quickly can you go from this topic back to affordability? Okay. 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 of the United States of America. We've got to take a look at that. James.

A plus. A plus. Prof. Prof. Carvel goes like, the guy has got a certain amount of charm, and he's got, he certainly understands what message this one is. I really hope he succeeds. I think it would be really good for New York, but I would caution people on one thing. The mayor of New York... It's historically never been much of a figure in national politics. as important as New York City is. And I polled a friend of mine, the man 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. 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 them 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 Chuck Schumer, who's already been taken on water. Headline, this is your group, as I mentioned, Adam Green's group. Progressive leader calls for Chuck Schumer to step aside. Adam Green of the PCCC says the Senate deal to end the shutdown is a failure of Chuck 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, the next day it'll step down being like, you know what, you trust in 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. 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, I'd 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's a question of how do you just say rah-rah Democrats and not even acknowledge?

that there was a significant loss yesterday. I 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 to all Democrats are weak. It's not to all Senate Democrats are week. James? First of all, rah-rah Democrats. Okay. Secondly, look, I don't, I'm not sure that we lost. I think we got our signature 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. They have 24 Democratic sentences that they can do whatever they want. Well, I'm sure they're all talking about you. I'll let you finish, but I got to press you. 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 be 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 he's misplaced, that people don't really care who's the leader? Well, people were motivated last Tuesday, and Chuck 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. And look, do I think this is going to be decided on who the Democratic... the 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 not, I've never been my policy. We're out of time. But I did, 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 Garville, Adam Green, my thanks to both of you. By the end of the hour, we're going to hear why the pop star, Olivia Rodriguez, 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.

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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. 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 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. 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. 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. Listen 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. I think we have this. I'll tell my producer C1, I think we have it. So ahead, sir. Yeah, no. So I, and 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 statute of 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, you know, they may only have a year left of total domination. They could lose the House, perhaps the Senate, but certainly the House is... 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. 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 from 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, it's, you know, I mean, they, they feel totally unrestrained, of course, by the law or legal requirements. And 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 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. insured in election integrity are down. And I think they intend to, you know, run whatever through it they can't. 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, they 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 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. 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. And if they did pull it off, if they did steal the election, then the power continues. And those people get away Scott 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 him 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. Yeah. You know, these are the kind of requests that you can expect in spades. If the balance powers in. in harm's way is from his view in 2026. 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. Well, he's going to get a third term. So Trump 28, Trump is going to be president 28, and people just sort of 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. Steve Bannon talking about an unlawful plan, a coup, whatever that would be. Ty Cob 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 calls for prosecution. The James 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 James Comey case is weak on those grounds, and do you see any link between the Bannoness calls for permanent...

undemocratic rule and this effort to go after perceived opponents so i would separate the two of those um only because um you know that's not Steve Bannon's i mean revenge is really sort of the Ed Martin channel um the other guy yeah i mean he's trump's uh You know, he's odd job to Goldfinger. He's the minions to despicable me. You know, it's, it's, uh, Steve Bannon has a different role, which is to incite the base and, uh, build up the vengeful, um, bloodlust. Um, you know, I was, I was, you're wrong about my overlap with Steve Bannon, uh, not, not, uh, not to be critical. Uh, he and I shared about. 24 hours in the White House together before. 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. But, yeah, but General Kelly was on the job 24 hours before he kicked Steve Bannon out of the White House. So we didn't really overlap very long. But, but I think, I think, um, 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, they'll probably have another threat of that at some point. But 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 highly unlikely. I do think that the James 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. The mortgage in question specifically authorizes short-term rentals. You 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 Lindsey Halligan's appointment. I think that's a silver bullet. I think James 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 re-indicted. But again, there's just no there there. And in fact, Todd Blanche, you know, who sold his soul. and eliminated any credibility you 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. 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 Gravolgia. But assuming he does, that 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. Do you have a hint of what kind of things they would be involved in? Well, keep in mind that Ghislaine Maxwell's father was, 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 certainly a credible theory as to why there were billions of dollars or over a billion dollars and, 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. I hope you'll come back, sir. Sure, all right. Good to be with you. Thanks for everything. Absolutely. We'll be right back.

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