"Voters are practically shouting that they want anything but Donald Trump’s economy"

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Donald Trump refusing to face the reality about voters' anger with his ailing economy, imperiling his party's chances in November's midterm elections, is where we start today with some of our favorite experts and friends. Puck News, senior political colonist and National Affairs analyst. John Tom Homan is back. Also back with us. Media Matters for America, President Angelo Carasone is here. And the host of the Fast Politics podcast, contributing writer for the New York Times, Molly John Fast, is back. What do you make of not just where Trump's numbers are? I mean, part of me thinks they're actually higher than they should be. 32, 34% is still a third of the country that approves of soaring inflation and a deeply unpopular war in Iran and tariffs that are still inexplicable to most people. But what do you make of how the economy is driving people to the Democratic Party? It's a real about-face. How many are mute? You got to unmute. Oh, how many got to stop and unmute? Start over. Take two. How many, we still can't hear you. I'm going to send the question. Is it there? All right. Angelo, your thoughts. I mean, look, I mean, it's reality, right? I mean, that's ultimately what it was down to. He has been selling a story about promises, and you heard it from that one voter. I mean, they were talking about five, six percent economic growth. They were making all these claims about, you know, a new golden age, which he's still hanging on to. But at the end of the day, it's people are feeling it in their pockets. They can't avoid the consequences of the bad decisions and bad policies they put in place. And then there's something else on top of it. I think he would have a lot more benefit of the doubt amongst his own people, even with all the bad stuff and the harm that he's caused, if he also didn't, while creating those effects, consistently tell everybody how much he doesn't actually care about their situation, how much he's focused on all these other random things. And even when the concept of affordability comes up and he's bragging about a golden agent of America, he calls it fake that it's made up by Democrats, even though his own people. are explaining this even people even candidates are now worried republican candidates about affordability so that's the lay of the land he's sort of making it worse for himself with his own policies and calcifying it with his own conduct and behavior and communications You know, Heilman, I think you're back with us. There is this tendency, I think, to separate out stories about the economy from stories about corruption and grip. But for voters, they've collapsed onto themselves, right? Like, what they are dealing with is every time they drive past the gas station to say nothing of filling up their cars, every time they go to the grocery store or to Walmart or to Target, everything is more expensive. And then the total of everything they buy regularly. is significantly higher than it was a year ago and two years ago. But every time they turn on the TV or look at any news from Washington, Trump is painting something gold.

Yes, and I just want to say, Nicole, I think maybe the thing that people have been trying to do to me my entire life, which is mute me, you finally got that to happen in the show. Never mean. I don't really understand how it happened, but it happened. First time, first time, first time, like half the people in my life are like, where's that button? Let's find that button. I'll have it on all the time. I think, you know, the, the economy is not good. It's been objectively not good throughout Donald Trump's presidency. And. He ran on the economy, as we all know, we've talked about this a million times in 2024. It's the biggest miracle is the fact that people who are around Trump somehow got him to focus on the economy in 2024 when, as we as become abundantly clear throughout these first 18 months or whatever it's been of Trump 2.0, he doesn't care about the economy as it affects anyone except him in his personal economy, right? He cares about... making himself as rich as possible. That is all Trump 2.0 is about that is 75% of it and 25% of it is retribution against his enemies. He does not care. And you see the reporting from, if you go back and really look at the 2024 campaign, you realize that it was like he didn't care about the economy then either. And he says it to people openly, he says, the economy bores me. I don't know what he's going to say in Nevada tonight. But. If it's anything like what he has said every time else he's gone out on the campaign trail to talk about the economy, it has been clear that he's not invested in it. doesn't care about it, has no real sense of what's going on in the world, and more kind of, the other thing he was bored by and doesn't care about is the fate of the Republican Party. And so he's worse than being disengaged with it, that he mocks it in what his statements are. It says, affordability is a hoax. And it's a witch hunt, or it's a, it's a fairy tale, Democrats at the media making it up, Republican, you know, my economy is the best in the world. I don't think he believes any of that, because I don't think he thinks about this all day. He thinks about all day. The renovation projects. I think Maggie Haberman said in an interview the other day that she thought 70% of Trump's mindset of his mind share is now on renovating things, building monuments to himself. Anything, it's like a building project that is designed to kind of, in his mind, not allow history to erase him when he's gone is three quarters of the mindset and the other... Remaining set is about retribution. And voters can see that. Your point is he's always talking about when he's on camera anywhere is one of those two things. He's not talking about them. He's not talking about their lives. And the things he's done have made the problem worse. And voters may not be, you know, the average voter may not be an absolute economic or political genius. But they are not idiots. And they can see those two things. The economy sucks. No one. in the White House cares about me or is doing anything about it. And the consequences of that, you know, barring some unforeseen events between now and November, the consequences of that are now kind of blaring through a lot of these primary results just in terms of what voters are telling us is motivating them to turn out. Again, the Michigan primary turnout was absolute off the charts last night. It's because Democrats and independents are pissed. And they're going to vote November 2.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think some Republican voters are pissed too, Molly. And what confounded Democrats about Trump for 10 years has been that people's desire to have what Trump has talked a good game about, a quote, hot economy for 10 years has been. a political boon to his party, even while he's been caught on tape, talking about grabbing women between the legs, even while he's had, you know, mask off moments about the KKK and racism and extremism, even beyond January 6th. And the hubris of the Republican Party thinking that real economic despair and anxiety wouldn't. come around and boomering on them. It's just stunning, considering what they've sort of taken on politically, what they've tolerated from Trump. The smears against Democrats, when people are literally making choices about how much gas to put in because filling up screws the weekly food and necessities budget is not something that's going to be easily smeared with the usual tricks and tropes that they trot out against Democrats. Yeah, and it's only going to get worse because remember the BBB has cuts to SNAP. So think about if you are a Republican voter on SNAP, of which there are many, and Donald Trump told you that you were running, I mean, there are Democrats and Republicans both on SNAP. You believed that Donald Trump was going to make things cheaper. You'll remember he ran on this thing called, you know, there was a weave. He did the weave on bacon, how he was going to make bacon cheaper. He said it was going to make it cheaper. He gets it. office, he does things that actually do the opposite tariffs war in the Middle East. Gas becomes more expensive. A lot of other stuff become more expensive because of the tariffs. And then you're about to lose SNAP assistance. I mean, it's just completely a very problematic split screen. And then you have Donald Trump. And he's rebuilding the helipad, right? Because he wants to move it so he can land the helicopter closer to the White House. And he's working on the reflecting pool, right? And he's fighting with his attorney general over the reflecting pool. And he's put his name up on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center. And now there's a tarp there. So you can't, I mean, it just feels very out of touch to see what Donald Trump is focusing on. Let me show you, Angelo, of all the times Donald Trump has said and done what everyone is talking about on camera. The thing with this story is he's not embarrassed about not giving a crap about people's economic despair. Here he is saying it on camera. This is the golden age of America. Affordability is a hoax. It's a conjoint. I think affordability is the greatest conjure. So will you sign that housing bill? It's a yawn. Something was this wonderful. To me, compared to the Save America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.

Angela, one of the things that we're going to learn about is how the appetite for conspiracy theories competes with the appetite for affordable groceries, gas, and housing. Because Donald Trump is making his base, his hardened base choose. Yeah, he is, and you know he repeats these things. He sounds ridiculous, right? And he sounds ridiculous if you have the larger context of reality behind you. But he doesn't have that, right? He's surrounded by sycophants, so no one's actually giving him any real perspective, not that he would necessarily listen. And then we shouldn't ignore the fact that he's not connected to the zeitgeist in any meaningful way anymore, right? He doesn't use, you know, X or, you know, truth social is mostly just sort of this weird... mixture of AI slop and nonsense. So he's not actually connected to that. He doesn't listen to the podcast. So what he gets basically is Fox News or Newsmax. And if you're just listening to that, you're hearing two things. You're hearing that Trump is a savior, but actually... He's done so much to get us out of the hole that Biden did. And their metric is the stock market. And that's what he uses. There's the gold veneer that he puts on the economy is the stock market. Sean Hannity, Ingram, a whole bunch of others will say this. Wow, look at him. He did a great job. And to the extent that any bad economic news gets through. They'll blame Democrats. So those are two parts of the larger media landscape. They're not all singing in lockstep anymore. They're either declaring victory or blaming Democrats for some of the hard issues that are currently happening now. But then there's this sort of third bucket of people out there that are the realists, like the Megyn Kelly's, like the Will Keynes, like a bunch of podcasters that are really closer to the audience, they're closer to the ground. They don't get an immediate reward system just by towing the line for Trump. They're out there saying the economy is terrible. We have to do something about it. Republicans could still maybe turn it around, but they have to focus on the economy. They're thinking beyond Trump. And that's partly why he continues to hammer away at this, just like he went into Iran in very large part because of his media diet. No, we can't dissect that from the reality. that we're all living in. And his own reality and worldview is that it not just sort of reinforces the bubble and what he thinks. It's not just a tool for building and organizing political power, which it certainly is when all of them are saying the same thing that he is saying. But it's also a mechanism of feedback loop by which he acts on. So in some cases, it drives us into war. And in some cases, it lets him continue to propagate these delusional arguments about the economy instead of pivoting even the slightest bit. And that is why he's going to continue to dig in on this. Nothing is going to change there because there's no sign that any of those media outlets are going to change their approach either.

You know, Hylman, I think I spent an in anordinate amount of time thinking about how we got here. And Trump is a reaction, right, from his predecessors not having their ear to the ground in terms of the lived reality of Republican primary voters. Right. So they've, they no longer feel seen when Republicans like Mitt Romney and John McCain and George Chuby Bush are talking about free trade. And. American foreign policy that just feels crappy to a lot of people. It feels like these endless wars far away. Trump is doing the same thing that actually catapulted him in 2016. He has lost touch with the ground truth, the lived reality of his own voters. Yeah, I would say, actually, that I totally agree with that, Nicole. And I think I'd go further than what Angela said. I think Angela's basically right, but it's been amplified by the fact that it's not even that Trump is getting just news from right-wing media or Fox News. He's getting a filter of that. He gets most of his information from Natalie Harp, the woman who trails him around and feeds him only the most delusional Trump. conspiracy theories and things that praised Trump. He's got like a subs, he's got like a kind of like on steroids version of the Earth 2 reality that gets portrayed in some of that media. because he's got like basically literally a human filter who follows him around and knows exactly what it is that he wants to hear and be told. So it's, it's, again, it's that phenomenon on steroids. And as we know, he doesn't really go out of the White House thing where he very rarely travels anywhere. He doesn't do the rallies. He's basically, you know, he has all, these are characteristic problems of second term presidents, which is, you know, as you know well, you know, the thing about the White House being like the most comfortable prison. in the federal penitentiary system, is the bubble of that is a seduction for anybody who's in that office that's particularly, tends to suck people in in their second terms. And then you've got all with Trump, you've got the amplification of that, which is that he doesn't. He actively doesn't like to travel. He doesn't like to sleep away from home. He doesn't like to spend a night away from his own bed. He never really liked that. Even when he was first running in 2016, he would always fly back to his apartment. And now he basically doesn't have to go anywhere. So he doesn't go anywhere. And he's not even hearing from his own base. in the moments when he had the best fingertip feel for it, which wasn't going to actually at least going to try these lines out in the setting of rallies and being able to see what they reaction and what they didn't react to. He doesn't do that anymore. He's inside the bubble and the bubble is as delusional as any White House bubble could ever be, except it's turned up to 100 because of the way our media now works and the way in which he's constructed the filters.

to even the most biased form of right-wing media. I mean, I think he maybe believes some of the stuff he's saying, but all of that is undergirded by the fact he just doesn't care about this issue and about the people it affects. He cares only about retribution and self-enrichment. That's it. That's all he's doing. And decorating. I feel like we could rewire the televisions to HDTV all day and, like, save a bunch of... people from war in Iran and save a bunch of perceived political enemies from arbitrary prosecution, save Janine Piro from... I feel like if you could just, you know, changes the algorithms. I know all the design influence. You know, we could fix this thing. All right. No one's going anywhere. There's more ahead. For most people who won in 2020 is, you know, like a thing that an eight-year-old can answer. A very straightforward question. But if you're Kevin Warsh or Jay Clayton or we learned today one of Donald Trump's judicial nominees, it's an impossible question to answer. We'll show you the state of Trump's judicial nominees, plus the snowballing controversy surrounding alleged domestic abuser, Republican Congressman Max Miller, drags on. House Speaker Mike Johnson saying he wants to. Check notes. See the process play out. Okay. And later in the broadcast, despite the charges being dropped over completely fabricated claims that there was vandalism that contributed to the destruction of the reflecting pool, the people accused of that fake crime are speaking out about what abuse of power inside the DOJ looks like on the outside. All those stories and much more when Deadland White House continues after a quick break, don't go anywhere.

One of the richest nations in the world is not the richest. I've lived around the world. Other countries, China, Korea, Poland, Denmark, all of those countries I've lived in. They all have health care for all. You know, it's just absurd to me that people in this country are dying unnecessarily because they don't have access and suffering, living, you know, a bad life because they don't have basic access to basic health care. We're back with John, Angela, and Molly. So, Molly, I think there is a real danger. in what we all agree is Trump's perceived delusions about the country and about what he cares about for the rest of the Republican Party. And I know we're all done waiting for Republicans to break with them. And it's too late 90 days out anyway to do that. But what they are giving rise to is a real appetite for the same kind of sort of radical shift in terms of people's relationship with the government that... that fed, you know, almost a Bernie Sanders nomination for president. People are really, really seeing the extreme and grotesque wealth. We have a trillionaire. He's the president's buddy. There are stories in local papers about all the private jets because first class isn't enough for the Uber rich in this country. The sort of in-your-faceness of Trump's smash and grab of taxpayer dollars and extreme wealth and enriching his family is an incredibly toxic political brand for the Republican Party, not just heading into the midterms, but heading into the next presidential. Yeah, and you know, I think the irony here is that Trump really caught a populist wave in 2016. I mean, he caught that Bernie populism. He said he was going, you know, he said he was going to make things cheaper. He said he was going to help people. He said he was going to make the economy work for them. Now, he was under, he had no plans for that, but it was a real thing that people hungered for. And I think that as wealth inequality has grown, as we've seen more and more people feeling that they're, you know, they can't keep up or that the life that their parents had is not available for their children, that is extremely traumatic. And remember, the whole point of tariffs, even though it didn't work and it just made things more expensive, the whole point of tariffs was to onshore manufacturing, was to bring manufacturing back to America. Now, we know that it's very... complicated to get manufacturing back to America and you can't just make things more expensive to do it. But that was the point here. And so I do think, look, Democratic Party has an enthusiasm, enthusiasm problem. And what these progressives have is a lot of voter enthusiasm. So I think in my mind, the sort of secret sauce here is getting that.

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death blow. This is a guy with 15 houses in a state where the economic downturns have a real impact. Yeah, I mean, and it's not just that he is, he has all that stuff, right? Which is on his face a political issue. He's now pivoting, ironically, to affordability, right? He's running ads now. saying that the American dream is dying in front of us, is no longer accessible to people, that health care is not affordable. Completely contradicting Trump, by the way. I mean, if Trump would see a Fox News host say something like that, he would blow his stack. Like, he would lose his mind. And yet you have Ken Paxton out there who's completely running opposite of the very argument that Trump is making. But let's put that aside. That pivot, though, actually only draws that issue more into focus because it shows just how out of touch he is because he's trying to speak about something that he has not. credibility on. There's another layer to this, too, and James Albuquer was talking about it. He said the word corruption. It's a big thing because it's one of the extra through lines of the, it's one thing that things are bad. It's another thing when the establishment is completely not paying attention to people. But now they're going one step further. The establishment, the people that have power that have been in power for a long time are now engaging in rank corruption, which sucks day to day. But more importantly, the corruption has a direct effect on the people already suffering. It means that everything costs more for them. as a result of the corruption. So there are the layers to this. And in a moment where there's not just an anti-establishment wave and all these economic concerns, so he seems out of touch, there also is another factor here, which is that people are really upset about corruption from Trump on down. It is a catalyst to help them think about some of these issues. It helped put a lot of the focus on Trump's economic callousness, as John was talking about before, into focus for some of his supporters. Because like, wait a minute, you are so corrupt. You're doing all this corrupt stuff and you also don't care about me. That's terrible. So there's pieces here, which I think that's how people really was right over the target there. There are three layers to this Ken Paxton part, and each of them alone are devastating. When you add them all up, it's a real problem, for them at least. It's amazing. So it's 10 years in and we're post-access Hollywood, post-Charlottesville, and it is corruption coupled with this incredible indifference to people's economic pain that is the first. character assault on Trump that is stuck from the right. You know, it's like the first, the first time they've thought maybe he isn't such a great guy. Maybe he doesn't care about us. Just fascinating to watch it play out in real time. Molly and Angela, thank you so much for starting us off today. Tom Homan sticks around after the break. Democratic senators today urging their colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stop Donald Trump's election denying judicial nominees. We'll show you what that look like and sounded like next.

A number of Donald Trump's nominees for the judiciary and Department of Justice showed just how loyal they are to Trump and his lies today in a nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats on the panel use the hearing to give these nominees who will be tasked with upholding the rule of law, an opportunity to... make clear they will tell the truth and differentiate themselves from Trump's other political appointees, people like Jay Clayton and Kevin Warsh, and admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Here's how that went. Judge Cook, who won the 2020 election? I joint session of Congress certified that Joseph Biden won the election. Who won the popular vote in the 2020 election? So if you look at each state, the governor under one of our acts is required to certify. You're essentially unwilling to tell me who won the 2020 election, who won the popular vote. Judge Cronin, you're already on the district court. who won the 2020 election. Senator, under the constitutional system and in particular the 12th Amendment, Joseph Biden received the majority of electoral college vote. You really have nothing to lose. You're on the court with a lifetime appointment, and yet you're unwilling to state the simple fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Let me make this easy. Show us your courage. Show us your independence. Yes or no. Did Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election? Yes or no? The United States Congress. Oh, there you go. Sir, stop. Federal courts said he did. President's own attorney general said yes. President's own cybersecurity director said yes. This is the pivotal question. Can you please tell me a yes or no answer? Tell me no. I can't give you a yes or no answer if that's your answer. Yes or no. Did President Biden win the 2020 elections? The United States Congress certified judge. Sir, you are showing cowardice. Of course, it's an easy question. And of course, this is a new low. Donald Trump himself said this, quote, I can't believe I lost to that effing guy to Sarah Matthews as she testified before Congress. But this is the price. This is the price of loyalty. This is the price of keeping a job you want from Donald Trump in 26. You can't tell the truth. You can't say the sentence. Joe Biden won the 2020 election. A beauty rest mattress gives you unparalleled motion separation, isolating movement with our pocketed coil technology, while providing individualized support for every sleeping position. People at their best get their beauty rest for 100 years.

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That's the natural logical converse of that, yes. In 2016, Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, who won that election? He was sworn to office, so as a matter of law, he was elected to that office, Senator. So Donald Trump won that election? That would be the natural assumption, yes, Senator. Is it really an assumption you have to make? Did Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton? In the Electoral College, he did. Well, then, I read Dr. Seuss to Hizzy. This is like nonsensical. This is parsing. This is barely telling. the truth in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And this is what most rational people are pinning their hopes for the survival of democracy on, which is the independence, the intelligence, and the courage of this branch of government, the judiciary.

Well, I mean, look, you and I have discussed on many occasions, Nicole, the ridiculousness, the self-abasement, the absolutely kind of humiliating, pathetic displays of people who will not say the straightforward thing about the 2020 election that all of us could say, Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Donald Trump won the 2016 election. I have known some lawyers in my time who have... sometimes got into the weeds in terms of how they speak and have a difficulty. That last example, at least the guy... ended up in the right place about 2016 because, you know, Donald Trump did lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but he did win the electoral college and therefore he won the presidency. The guy was parsing a little bit too much for losing a little bit too complicated language for my taste. But at least in an election where you have a situation where the popular vote and the electoral vote are different, you can imagine why a lawyer, in certain circumstances, even if they weren't Trump toadies, might want to try to draw a distinction between those two things. It's been a distinction that's been drawn by many political analysts and many Democrats and Republicans alike in different circumstances. But I do think that what's come about here is a culture that Donald Trump has created for everybody who's coming into the judiciary now, whereby everyone is terrified to speak plain English. And to your original point, A culture where people in the judiciary are terrified to speak plain English, even though, as you also said, the judiciary has held up has been the best bulwark, the only bulwark we've had, maybe not a perfect bulwark, the only ballwork we've had in Trump 2.0 that's held in boxing together compared to the Congress or the White House, it still is worrying that for many years to come, there are going to be a bunch of people on the federal judiciary who are so terrified. that they abide at what might happen to them that they can't just come out and speak to plain truth when asked yeah and to and to start in such a defensive fearful crouch um Doesn't inspire much confidence about whether they will follow the facts and be faithful to the rule of law. But hopes brings eternal. Everyone sticks around after the break. House Speaker Mike Johnson has the power to make the subject of alleged domestic abuser Max Miller go away, but he chooses not to. We'll bring you that update next.

Developing today, there is some increasing pressure from some Republicans and the Trump White House to push Congressman Max Miller, who's been accused. Really serious stuff, physical abuse of his ex-wife and two-year-old daughter to drop his bid for re-election. New York Times is reporting this, that when Trump called Miller, his former loyal aide, to warn him the domestic abuse allegations he was facing would make it tough for him to win reelection. Republican officials at the White House end in Ohio hoped it would be enough to get the embattled congressman to drop out. But Trump stopped short of asking Miller to step aside, and the congressman made it clear he had no intention of doing so, according to two people familiar with the Monday call who spoke anonymously, which was reported earlier by Axios. Miller has denied the allegations leveled against him and has sued his ex-wife for defamation. Miller has vowed to stay in the race, and yesterday he claimed to have the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson. When asked about Congressman Miller, Speaker Johnson, did little to dispel that notion. Watch. Will you tell him to drop out? No, I will tell Max what I tell everyone. These are serious allegations. I'm the father of two daughters who work in Capitol Hill. I mean, the allegations are serious. I think Max is taking them seriously. I think our colleagues are. But again, we have to allow this process to play out. Taking them seriously is, according to his ex-father-in-law, holding hostage a stuffy. Okay, Mr. Speaker. As of this hour, still none of Miller's House GOP colleagues have called for him to resign. We're back with Melissa and John. Melissa, about six Republican senators have called on him to resign. This is a twisted public story. His ex-father-in-law is Senator Republican Senator from Ohio Marino. who has broken his silence in the last 72 hours and described his daughter as living in fear and his own fears for the safety of his two-year-old granddaughter. Your thoughts? Well, I know you always have me on here to talk about constitutional law, but I also teach family law at NYU. And one thing that this is so striking for me is that... For many, many years, these questions of domestic abuse were not handled by the criminal justice system because they were viewed as private family matters to be sorted out within the privacy of the family. And obviously, that kind of privacy had real consequences for women and children. And so when I hear the president saying things, as MS now has reported, I know Max, he's a good person. I'm going to let the families figure this out. It just sort of smacks of that older notion that. These are not matters to be publicly resolved. These are matters for private resolution within the confines of the family. And I think that's a very dangerous message for the president of the United States to be trumpeting. It's a very dangerous message for members of Congress to be communicating, even if they are doing so by implication, by not speaking out, by not condemning these credible allegations of abuse, or even saying that like any time you have someone.

credibly accused in this way, it's a real issue. I mean, we saw this with Graham Platner. He is no longer in the race. I don't know why this is dragging on and on and on. I have to sneak in a break. I'll give Heilman the last word on this on the other side. We'll all be right back. We're back with Melissa and John. Howellman, I, um, howellman, are you there? I think Halman froze up on us. Melissa, it is interesting that politically there's nothing clear cut. You know, there's no mutually agreed upon bottom for the Republican Party. And they reveal that in news cycle after news cycle. No, it's true. I mean, the question here is, will the voters reward them for it, right? You know, when this happened on the Democratic side, people were just very clear that, you know, one time maybe you get a pass, but like ultimately, as these allegations continue to come out, they weren't going to be able to tolerate it in a nominee and they scuttled. Graham Platner's nomination here. It seems like there's no end in sight. You have what appears to be internecing fighting between these two wings of the Republican Party in Ohio. And even that isn't enough to sort of call this question. These are really credible allegations. Domestic abuse is not a laughing matter, whether it happens on the political stage or just in private life. These are serious allegations with children at the heart of them and they should be taken seriously. Melissa Maria John Howland, thank you for joining us today. When we come back, Trump's transition from a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Those are the words from our friend Tom Nichols, and he joins us after the break. The next hour of Deadland White House starts in just a minute.

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