Trump Hits Crisis Point as War Expands and Economy Slows

With Instagram teen accounts, protections are turned on by default. Yo, look at this real. Okay, the secret is in the timing. Don't rush it. Built in content and contact settings and automatic time reminders. Mom, heading out back. Instagram teen accounts, nothing to turn on, safer from the start. Hey, take a breath. You've been moving all day. Scrolling, answering, planning. But for the next few seconds, you get quiet. Now imagine warm light, a place where your shoulders finally drop and you feel like a kid again. Never lose that feeling. Never lose your splash. Visit Lauderdale. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. And we are tracking several stories, Donald Trump, basically admitting that he could have an embarrassing defeat in the Congress that his party controls. And this isn't one of those stories where I have to tell you one side says this and the other says that. The concession of weakness coming out of the Trump White House is confirmed by Donald Trump. who publicized late today something that he doesn't want, that he wishes was going differently, and that weeks ago they were bluffing and saying would never happen, which is Donald Trump says he might just pull. the attorney general nomination of Todd Blanche. And that's because there is a revolt, not just criticism, not just, oh, what could happen, but an actual revolt that might prevent Todd Blanche from getting confirmed this term. Andrew Weissman is here on that. And while we start with a different story, I can tell you that that kind of weakness, Donald Trump's low polling, a Republican party that's less afraid of him, candidates that want to run away from him, is the context of basically everything in Trump's Washington right now. And that... relates to a reason he's unpopular that's different than just the AG, a crisis point with the low polling numbers and an unpopular war that Trump has clearly failed to stem, which has the cascading effect of more economic uncertainty and gas prices that are already high. We are now about half a year into the war that Trump said would take weeks, and the conflict has basically elements of expansion. We're seeing reports that Trump is exasperated that this thing has spun completely out of control. Remember, he sold that partial ceasefire as some kind of off-ramp. Well, we are not. through the worst of it. Reporting you see here, the president erupted at top officials during a recent meeting. That's a U.S. official and a person familiar with the discussion telling NBC. The war is also dissipated across other countries. Now, that doesn't mean we have what we would call a regional war yet because we don't have some hot conflict on the ground. But for the first time, Saudi Arabia has joined in with strikes against Iranian-backed militias. Egypt was hit by Iranian drones for the first time.

So that's not good, even if it's not a full regional war. Everyone in the region and the U.S. agrees on one thing, which is that hopefully it won't get worse and turn into a hot conflict. At home, we have the latest polls with 66% disapproving of Trump's handling of the war. When you look for people who approve, you have to go well beyond Trump voters or Republicans. You get a much smaller share of just 28%, a kind of hardcore group that thinks this is going well and they are in the clear minority. The backlash has been clear on the right. That includes media conservatives and the Trump voters that we hear from. Like, it was just totally normal that we invaded Iran, just do this thing that we know is going to wreck our country, which it now is. Clock is ticking for President Trump to get out of this war before voters head to the polls. I went from disappointment now to anger. It would be nice that we didn't have so many wars or... whatever's going on and the government is hiking up our gas prices. Well, it upset me that he, you know, told everybody he wasn't going to, he was going to end it quick. And now it started all over again. So I'm not happy with that. I think you need to maybe change your strategy. I don't think we're close in that regard of finishing the job. The word is out. We're often told that we live in this environment, especially with the internet and phones, where you can find your own version of events, your own stories. And I'll tell you, as someone who deals on a daily basis with news and information, there are topics where that happens, where people kind of just go into their corner and believe the stuff they saw. They'll tell you, well, I read this on Facebook. As if Facebook itself is a source of facts or news, Facebook is a bulletin board, and you can find all kinds of things people pin up there. So on some topics, that happens. Not this topic. As you just heard that voter say, and as I just showed you, the polling reflects, people know the war isn't over. They know that Trump's much-hyped ceasefire didn't work, and they know their gas prices are up. We also have new numbers with economic growth. Now, whether you follow this day to day or more broadly or you just know that things are expensive, U.S. economic growth is slowing, they say, unexpectedly in the second quarter based on at least what economists had expected. So that's a shift, tariffs, and the war cutting into the gains. The AP... recording its lowest second term approval rating for Trump 33%. And you see the other pollsters who track this. This is dangerous territory. This is getting towards Nixon Watergate territory. Sarah Longwell, writing in the bulwark, put it like this. Trump is close to the disastrous Bush line. an approval rating hovering where George W. Bush's approval was at the end of the term, like I mentioned, you get down to 34, 30%, you're in Bush-Iraq War or Nixon Watergate territory. And so while we hear stories about Trump's resilience, like many other Trump things, it's repeated a lot, but it's not true. He is not politically resilient. He is not Teflon. He is not popular. And he does not have the Magabase he used to, which is why Republicans are so nervous about the midterms.

And remember, the Bush number I mentioned included not just the Iraq War, but also ultimately, by the end of his term, a financial crash. What happened then? Well, Obama won the presidency, and Democrats had a blue wave. Now, this is not the first or the last time you might hear about Democrats saying, well, if Trump and or the Republicans mess up enough, they should be home free. And so while that is the context that we begin with tonight, there is a heck of a lot of political debate over what the right message is going into these midterms at a time where, as you can see, voters not only are paying more attention, but for people worried about gas prices and which failing necessity they have to sacrifice in the Trump economy, voters are paying attention because they have to. I want to bring in our Politico, Reverend Al Sharpton, who of course is president, the National Action Network, host of MS Now's Politics Nation. And although they don't mention it in every introduction, Someone who ran for president, stood on the stage with other candidates. You kind of know that side of the field, which most of us don't, how it looks when you're staring out at voters. And why don't we start with that? Because Trump's staring out at an angry set of voters now. He's staring at an angry set of voters that are angry about the exact things he promised him he wouldn't do. He said, we're not going to have war. I'm going to deal with making life easier for you. in terms of the economy. And he has also stated a bunch of cultural wars that he's not really shown any advancement there. So I really think that he's in serious trouble in the sense that not only is his polling near where Bush was at the end or Nixon, but... There is no clear strategy on how he digs out of this. So when you look at what John Cornyn did today and Thom Tillis, that's like just one of many things that's going against him to where he's embarrassed that two Republican senators from states that he gets a good vote said. I'm not going to vote for your candidate for the attorney general because he wants, he will not sign in writing that you can get negotiations with yourself about a tax settlement that you claim the government owed you. And it's just ugly. I'm sitting at a gas station. paying over $4 for gas, and the president wants an attorney general that won't sign that he can't sell deal on the record. And you wonder why the polls are going down? People are little sometimes not paying attention, but they're not stupid. Yeah, and they say sometimes with America, we have political amnesia. Right. There are countries that are...

ruled by the recent history of debate. If you go to Europe, I think it's fair to say sometimes they're talking about history in more detail than we sometimes do. And you wonder, was there amnesia about this strange end of the first term? Because COVID and so many other factors contributed. Trump was run out of the first term, first electorally, with people saying, no more. And then Jan 6, he was as opposed as he'd ever been. But he came back in 24 on the idea that it might be different or better. And now, by the time the next midterms show up, what do you make of the electorate saying, oh my gosh, they forgot and now remember what they don't like about his governance? And I think the part that they all forget is they get in the Beltway arguments. And I think in some ways, Trump has gotten into that, where they're arguing with each other in the dressing room, not realizing they're not on stage and the audience is not in the dressing room. And the audience is saying, I don't like what I'm seeing. And they're not hearing that. The weakness of everyone talks about how he had some adults around him in the first term, which is debatable, but they certainly were better than this crew. The weakness of having sink offense around you is you don't even get a real pulse. reading or where the people are. There's no one telling him this is not working on Main Street. Well, and you say Trump sounds very insidery. It's interesting because, and you've known him a long time, Chey Komen Dori, who's a guest on our show, said this week that... Trump has actually become a typical politician lying, spinning, focused on these things, that he's lost touch with whatever it was at bottom of the base, that he doesn't see himself that way, but the voters do. To paraphrase, big pun, a New York artist, you remember, he said, I'm not a player, I just play a lot. And so with Trump, it's like, I'm not a politician. That was his whole pitch, right? And his lack of experience, he flipped into a positive. Well, now he is politicking a lot. And people see that, including the D.C. corruption. He's the swampiest, most... conflicted and corrupt leader. I can't say whether these all break criminal law. That would have to be investigated. But I can say he has more ongoing corruption problems than any president we've seen. And so what about that, if you will, big pun problem that Trump was trying to say, oh, I just politic a lot, but I'm not like them. And now the voters seem to think he's exactly what's wrong with the swamp. He is not only what is wrong with the swamp. He's made it swampier if there's such a word. Because even though guys that I did not like, I'm voter. A, I did not like the guys in the swamp because I felt they were self-dealing. They maybe were going on a vacation at taxpayers' expense or they had some other stuff going on. Here's a guy that is outright negotiating millions of dollars to pay himself back.

for a government, and here's a guy that gets a plane from a foreign country as a gift that he's going to take with him. There's just too much there for the average guy to now say he's one of us, not one of them. He's one of them with additions to being one of them. And I think that that's the problem. You can't play we the people, and then you're way ahead of the people. You know, there was a saying we used to hear. going of a civil rights movement, if you get too far ahead of the troops, they'll start shooting. They don't know the difference between you and the enemy. And he's way ahead of his own base. And that's why, yeah, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn didn't like his politics in their state. But they also know that the people in their state on the ground gives them enough cushion to stand up to him and not have to pay for it. Yeah. And Trump... When he was on his game, when it was first term, he was selling things that at least appealed to some people. We can debate them. But the message discipline, I mentioned the swamp. So he knew that what he's now doing is unpopular. The wall. I mean, he had clear things that weren't just about himself. Now they can't even explain the Trump economy. I want to show you right after this short break what Howard Lutnick basically got caught spinning on how bad the economy is. So we're going to look at that when we're back with Rev in 90 seconds.

Look for the second quarter of 2026 to be amazing as all this money comes back into the economy from this big, beautiful bill. We got the tape. That was in the prior quarter prediction untrue. You could call that, you know, hoping for the best. It's fine. You can hope for it. But they haven't delivered. Where is that type of sort of? fallen expectations for this Trump economy fit in? They have laid their own basis of failure because they're speaking in emphatic terms that are emphatically not coming to become true. Yeah. Look. for the second quarter where we're there and look at what we see. Wasn't this is what we're trying? This is a goal. This is the factors that we're looking at. It was a promise. They talk very basic to people, common language. There's no equivocation about what they're saying. So there is no equivocation that they failed and what they said. Yeah. And so people feel that. I mean, that's the reality theme that we hear. We're like, you can't just spin out of that. Right. There's no spend when you made a commitment. And it, in fact, not only did not in the second quarter of the economy get better for the average American, including the MAGA voter, it got worse. Right. Gas prices went up. Prices of certain... food and groceries at home went up. So I not only ended up getting better, I got worse. And you emphatically told me that I'd get better. Wait, hold on for the second quarter. And now we're in the middle of it, and I'm doing much worse. And finally briefly, I wanted to show health care. You and I know this is true. And you mentioned civil rights. It's true in activism. It's true in the news. Some stories are harder to tell. Just because of the nature of what's happening. So this health care cut from the GOP is a slow rolling problem. We don't have all the pictures. But I want to put up one headline here that patients who've lost their insurance because of these GOP cuts are now showing up in emergency rooms and clinics. They lost what was the Affordable Care Act, or sometimes called Obamacare coverage. The final question. Does this also matter as Republicans said, oh, it'll be fine. People will figure it out. They're not figuring it out. This is a health care crisis. It's a huge problem for them. Many of us said when they let the Obamacare or Affordable Care not to be extended, this would happen. But it took a slow process. Now people are seeing I have no insurance. I can't afford what I need, senior citizens, just regular people that was on the Affordable Care. And it's now...

With the term chickens come home to roost, and people are looking at them saying, wait a minute, and you left us no cushion. There was no alternative. It wasn't like they said this is our health plan and it's better than the affordable care. They had no plan. They just wanted to stop anything that Barack Obama did. And in the process, they put millions of people where their health care was out of reach in terms of their being able to pay for it. Yeah. I appreciate your candor and all this important stuff. I'll let the viewers in on a little bit of the backstage. We asked you, can you stick around for something really special at the end of the hour? You said, sure, because you're a great colleague. So what we're doing at the end of the hour is even more fun than what we just did. So Rev sticks around for that as we look at the artist fighting back against Trump Jimmy Kimmel winning. That's later in the show. Trump also now saying what Rev alluded to. He might pull his AG nomination. A moment of weakness? What's happening? Andrew Weissman's here. Next. Hey, everybody. It's Rob Lo here. If you haven't heard. I have a podcast that's called Literally with Roblo. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen, wherever. You get your podcasts. Normally in these ads, you'd expect someone like me to ask you to buy something. But I want to ask you to do something different. I'm Dave Ferenthalen, and I'm a reporter for the New York Times. I'm an investigative reporter, which means that I follow the money, inside of government and outside of government. The point of my job is to find things people are trying to hide. It involves talking to lots of people. It involves looking through lots and lots of documents. And if there weren't folks like me to go beyond the surface, to understand who is really shaping what the government does, the public will be left in the dark about what the government's doing with your tax money, what the government's doing to you through regulations and spending. If you're like me and you think this kind of journalism is important, seek out a news source that does firsthand fact-based reporting. If that's the New York Times, thank you. If that's your local paper, that's great too, because where you get your information matters. With the Vivgard-Hitrullo, F-Gar-Tygamad Alpha, and hyaluronidase QVC, pre-filled syringe, self-injection is in your hands. It's your treatment routine. You set the time and same day each week. Take the pre-filled syringe with you on vacation. Or have it handy for cozy staycations.

For more information, visit live vividly.com. That's L-I-V-E-V-Y-V-Y-V-I-D-L-Y dot com. Brought to you by Argenics. Here's how badly Donald Trump's week is going in Washington. Just through facts. One, Trump cares more about the attorney general position than just about anything else in government. It is the fulcrum of his efforts to break the rule of law, to punish and indict enemies, and to have sort of favorable treatment of what he perceives to be as vulnerabilities, tax audits and the like. You've probably heard about that in the news. That's number one. Number two, today was a scheduled vote in a Republican-controlled Senate to confirm. his Attorney General nominee. And as a reminder, most of Trump's cabinet has been pretty straightforward, pretty easily confirmed by this Republican Senate. And yet if you've been watching the news atop of this broadcast or really any news lately, you might have heard that Trump is crashing in approval. Republicans less afraid of him, don't need to work with him as much depending on the issue. And that brings us to point number three. The plan to install, controversially his former personal criminal offense lawyer as Attorney General is derailed. That scheduled vote? off. So that right there is a loss or a setback in the plan. If they had the votes, we know how Congress works, they would have voted today. Translation, they don't have the votes, and we have more evidence on that. But this has been derailed. Donald Trump's plans not going the way he wanted, and the fear of crossing him is fading. Trump says, in response to this setback, that maybe he would just pull the whole nomination, which is a kind of ploy to leave Todd Blanche in as acting AG, then the midterms would come. Trump is hoping they hold the Senate, and then the two senators causing the most problems, who he primaried would be gone, and he hopes replaced by more loyal Republicans. But that itself is a gamble. that requires them winning the midterms, which is really up in the air, especially when you look at the polling and the war. John Cornyn responding that there are other senators that have similar concerns, they just haven't been flushed out in public, which is an interesting point we will discuss tonight. What he's basically saying is he's the heat shield. Other people oppose this, but they don't need to get into a party civil war if... the nomination is already stalled. And that came hours after John Cornyn sent the DOJ a new proposal to try to resolve this sort of fake, made-up settlement deal that Trump claims would immunize him and his family from future audits. All of this tied up as well in the plan to try to give out money to Magi allied convicts. Now, John Cornyn told reporters already that the way things are going, meaning as of that moment, he was just going to vote no on the AG nominee. Every time I think we're getting close to a resolution, somebody throws a wrench into the work. So we, this morning, it looks like we're no closer than we were before. I am prepared to vote no, but I do think I owe it to my constituents and to Mr. Todd Blanche to try to negotiate in good faith. And that's what we've been doing.

The sound you hear is of a Republican actually using a little bit of their power as a co-equal branch to govern and regulate the executive branch. one that many people say has become a runaway executive branch. Now, we'll leave it to the side for now whether John Cornyn could have done this. I don't know. Anytime in the last six years, he lost his seat anyway. But that's where we stand. Now, the Republican majority John Thune, is still trying to work with Trump to come up with some resolution before this long summer recess begins, which sort of would put a fork in the whole plan. Here's how Politico, a nonpartisan outlet, puts it. John Thune, leaving the door open to getting Todd Blanche confirmed next week if the senators are able to come to a deal with the DOJ. But, and this is crucial, political rights, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, have yet to blink. Trump is threatening to take his ball and go home. That would be, obviously, a very public loss in a very key agency, the Department of Justice, all because these senators decided to stand up for something. So, not your normal narrative, a little bit different. I want to bring an Andrew Weissman, former FBI General Counsel, former Mueller prosecutor. He has lived the intersection of the DOJ and Congress. When Congress is doing its job, it can exercise. a productive type of oversight. That's why we see people, including the Attorney General, testify. Lately, I think a lot of folks are skeptical or cynical about the whole thing. We'll put to the side of John Cornyn's newfound constitutional responsibility. We can do it in three minutes. But for now, what's happening here? And do you see this as a type of progress? Look, it is, as you said, it is a loss. Even if ultimately he is confirmed, you know, in short order or upon, you know, a new Senate, if the Senate is still controlled by Republicans, it is still a loss. But having said that... The idea that you have John Thune and others willing to confirm somebody where the hill that two senators have chosen to die on, where they have drawn the line is such... small potatoes. This is somebody who has subpoenaed the New York Times and his own lawyers have had to go to court and said, we made mistake after mistake and we didn't even read the leading case on point. And so we're in violation of law. And then the Department of Justice issues, a press statement saying that the judge is wrong. After a court appearance where they were...

They had to admit over and over again how they, it was a department to violate law. You have Todd Blanche, Department of Justice, trying to indict six sitting members of Congress. You have them in trying to open a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve. You have them in violation of the Epstein Transparency Act. You have a federal judge who said that Mr. Abrago-Garcio was vindictively prosecuted and laying the blame clearly over and over again at the feet of. Todd Blanche. And you have a federal judge who has referred Todd Blanche and what are the bad faith conduct in connection with this so-called settlement slush fund to the Bar Association for the nominee to be the head of the Justice Department. And yet you have just two Republican senators saying that there is a problem. Well, I'll paraphrase Tucker Carlson. As I want to do. We had big pun earlier quoted in the show, but Tucker Carlson said about this moment in the Trump era very accurately, and we're supposed to pretend this is normal? I mean, there is nothing normal or in bounds about this kind of attorney general. And whether people like to hear it or not, the president is fully entitled to nominate a qualified attorney general who has strong conservative policy views. Absolutely. Jeff Sessions was at the time one of the most right-win voting members of the Senate, but he did, by all accounts, follow the DOJ rules, went through a confirmation process. Here you have someone who, as you're pointing out, is... already on a rampage against the rule of law against the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment probably, depending on how you use subpoena abuse, and a heck of a lot of other rights and rules. And so you kind of say, yeah, to get back to the John Cornyn of it, if I can nerd out with you. Yep. Yeah. If this flies, then what the heck? I want to play a little bit of this was Trump and John Cornyn because this has become their standoff. Yep.

Maybe you have said that the weaponization fund is a moot issue. Is that your position? The time. That has nothing to do with it. This is about making sure that even if you're the president of the United States, you don't get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get. You know, it's a combination of lawyers and Washingtonese. The way he says that, I mean, I have it written here. You don't get favorable terms of the government of a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get. No, you don't get to corrupt the entire Justice Department to do self-enrichment that can endanger the public good. Yeah, absolutely. Remember, the general release that is at issue here was signed by one and only one person, Todd Blanche. Yeah. And Todd Blanche, at his confirmation hearing, made it absolutely clear. And frankly, to his credit, that he is no Elliott Richardson, that the way he is going to run this Justice Department. is if the president says I should do it, I'm going to do it, period, the end. You know, Elliot Richardson famously was the Attorney General who said, when Richard Nixon said, fire the special counsel, Archibald Cox, he said, no, I'm not going to do it. Find yourself another patsy to do that. Todd Blanche made it very clear, and frankly, now the reporting on what we're seeing in connection with this new... James Comey indictment. That's exactly what happened, where the White House was behind all of it. And he is saying that is the new model. I am throwing out the sort of traditional Republican and Democratic model post Watergate is not how Todd Blanche is going to run this. And again, that should be. Just to get back to sort of this idea of normalization of it, that should be something that Republican and Democratic senators should be saying no to because, you know, the next president can be a Democrat and it will be just as bad if the Department of Justice is just doing what the White House is saying that you should do in terms of who to prosecute and who not to prosecute. It's like that should be something that people should be able to coalesce around. Well, and we started with sort of the political standoff here, which I still want to button up so folks understand what Trump is betting on. But faced with a question about the Republican Games and this plan, you dove deeper into the substance and where we should be. You are the embodiment of the opposite of clickbait, Andrew. We have the thing here, and you go, well, let's get to the point of it. And that's... We need that. We have enough clickbait, I would argue. It's the new clickbait. Oh, is it? Andrew stays, and we are going to talk about what the actual eventual plan is. If Trump loses here and makes good on his plan B to punt this to next year, we'll be right back.

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The president's vote for his attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche, was scheduled for today and canceled, derailing a process that has sort of taken on a life of its own. Andrew Weissman is back with us. So Trump says, all right, if I can't win back these Republicans who have these low standards you already discussed, they won't even meet them. He says, oh, we'll just leave Todd Blanche's acting AG. And next year, I'll get new Republican centers he expects to replace these ones to vote with him. That means they would hold the Senate. What do you view is Trump's calculation here and how would this actually work? So there are a couple things. One, he can bet on the fact that the Republicans will hold the Senate. But, you know, that's a risk. It may not happen, in which case you could easily imagine the Democratic majority saying no and saying, you know what, you have to have somebody who is more moderate. For instance, somebody who believes in the post-Watergate norm of being independent or who doesn't seek to indict six members of Congress for asserting something that's protected by the First Amendment. I could go on and on. So that's one. Two, he could, even if the Republicans lose the Senate, he can keep. the acting attorney general as acting for as long as possible. And there is a lot of complication about the law when we could really nerd out on that issue. But you basically think he's looking at what is right now a loss. So he's punting and saying maybe it won't be a loss later, which is very Trump. Right. It may not be a loss later. I can keep who I want now in an acting position. That's for sure that he can keep him not. But there still is the mark, right? Which is that he wanted something that was denied and denied, as you said, by in a Republican majority Senate. And so in many ways, this is sort of payback, which is, you know, you have two senators. who you crossed and now they are actually doing what they should have done all along, but at least they're doing it now. The other thing, there is a third option, which, you know, I have no idea whether he would do it, but he could say, is there somebody else who I can put up in this position? Now, it's unclear whether that would, if the two senators are saying the real problem here is this. fund and how it would be used, any new person who is put up is going to be asked the same questions. Oh, yeah. No, but again, they bluff and they bluff and then when they lose on Intel, he ultimately did swap out a partisan warrior pretty quickly. If John Cornyn is not lying, why would he lie? Right. On this of all things, he says there are other Republican senators who have the same view and are just hiding behind him like the Tour de France bikers. So we'll see whether that increases. Andrew on... A couple segments. Thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Appreciate it. When we come back, we have Sharperdun returns with a special guest on this backlash to Trump's free speech crackdown. Donald Trump's cratering polls have been driving several stories this week, including a revolt that goes beyond politics.

That includes culture and even a kind of resistance from big companies that used to do more of his bidding. He's found it harder to get airtime. Network skipped the hyped prime time speech, which might be why Trump went from... boycotting the White House correspondent's dinner in his first term to speaking there this past weekend, drawing mockery from actual comics who do this for a living and schooled Trump on his basically flailing attempt to replace the professional stand-up comedian that usually performs at that very event, a dinner that contrasted the press's work with Trump's many attempts at censorship. He sued the very reporters who were receiving awards that night, many have pointed that out, and he tried to abuse government power to cancel Jimmy Kimmel. Other artists have also been just drawn into this Trump revolt because he's misused their music, basically pulling them in to announce that they disagree with him and his policies. Now, the wider thing that's a little different about Trump is he's long pitched himself as a entertainer and star who can cameo in movies. And so we know that the arts community rejecting him, the movie stars and singers and cool kids, disliking or opposing him, has always bothered him even more now. Maybe that's why he was so intent on trying to slap his name on the National Hub for the Arts, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, a bid that he famously lost. The plots that he wages against arts and free speech undercut the First Amendment. So that's a substantive problem. It is also ironic that Trump fails to see one reason why he's never been respected by the artistic community and its many different styles of speakers and leaders. I would venture to say that great artists tap creativity and authenticity to confront larger truths, the very approach that seems to so threaten his rigid and sensitive governing style, while Trump's self-promotional reality theater was rarely ever seen as having any artistic merit at all. Now, we're exploring this tension tonight with Reverend Al Sharpton, MS now host, National Action Network founder, and the artists and rapper Killer Mike who won the 2024 Grammy for Best Rap album and has been deeply involved in politics for years. He just sat down with Maryland Governor Wes Moore, the two talking there. He famously campaigned for Bernie Sanders presidential runs. And Mike's back in the news this week as his song Nobody Speak with DJ Shadow made that new Rolling Stone list of top Trump protest songs, which we'll get into in a moment. Welcome to both of you. How are you doing, Mike? Oh, man, I'm doing good tonight, Ari. How are you doing, Ray? I'm good. How are you doing, Mike? I'm doing well, Black Man.

Respect. It's like a Zoom call. We got all our hellos in. Rev is a hometown player. So I ask you, Rev, big picture with Trump, you have what I mentioned, the legal substantive abuse, but also clearly his personal, maybe even, you know, vanglorious need for more artistic cred. He has always been one that wanted to be a cultural figure, whether it was doing cameos and movies, whether it was in when he had his casinos. He definitely wanted all the big boxing matches there. That's where I would see him. And he'd have artists there. I remember James Brown. I took me with him. He played the Taj Mahal, and Trump was out there acting like he really knew how to, you know, pop his finger, pop fingers on the beat. But so he took it personal because that was what he wanted to be, was a cultural figure as well as a political figure. Did he clap on the one and the three? No, he clapped on the like seven and the ten or something. I mean, something that was way out of beat. But the problem is now that artists... who, more than anything, maintain their authenticity and their creativity. That's theirs. They live this. This is who they are. And if they see something negative or positive, whether it's against Trump or anyone else, they're going to express that. He can't handle that. And I think that that is the tension he has started to have with cultural figures. Cultural figures are not trying to get boats. They're trying to have people feel what they have inside. Yeah. Which brings us right to you, Mike. You made that big new list of Trump protest music. I want to actually play. Congrats. I wanted to play the part of Mike's music video for that song for our viewers to see, and also an earlier hit that confronted Reaganomics and the Iran-Contra scandal and the long U.S. drug war. Yes. Give me lip. I'm going to send you to the yard. Get a stick, make a switch. I can end the conversation real quick. Top billing come cops and feeling it shots is blocks shipped out and bought in your...

Repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever, but mostly black boys, but they would call us and lay us on our belly while their fingers on their triggers. But thanks to Reaganomics, prison turn to profits, because free labor's the cornerstone of U.S. economics, because slavery was abolished unless you are in prison. You think I have. Then read the 13th Amendment, involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits. That's why they're giving drug offenders time and double digs. Congrats on making the Rolling Stone list. Tell us about what you've been getting at here across the years of these songs. Our viewers here, listening to them, can see you're not new to this. Well, on one half, a run of jewels, shout out to my rap group, my rap partner, LP, who was specific in naming the president in that track. It was another track. I say, you know, a bad toupee in a spray tan. But I want to say that political propaganda has always been used. And I want to say to my community, especially the black community, be very wary of when you say, well, don't let entertainers. They'll reference brother Malcolm when he says, don't let entertainers be your leaders. Ronald Reagan was an entertainer. And he set a scourge. his administration by allowing drugs to flood this community. And a big part of the reason that working class white people in the steel industry study suffered as much as black people in their cities was because Ronald Reagan was trusted because he had been an entertainer. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an entertainer. And he became governor of California, no matter how you argue, whether you liked it or didn't, he was big part there because he was the entertainer. There's a power in art. Nina Simone showed me that. Dick Gregory showed me that, who I knew in the last three years in his life. And he told me how to educate and enrich and how to make sure you take care of yourself so there's an artist you aren't starving and for sale and prostituting yourself. Our president, diabolically enough, has used entertainment and used celebrity to his advantage. His party seems to understand that in a way that they follow him, that I think the Democratic Party, especially from the black artistic side, can and should. When your artists are doing right. Get behind them. If they need education, do like Brother Al has done all my life as an artist and educate us. I remember Mr. Farkon putting a bunch of us in a room saying, don't encourage people to riot. Riots are not good for your communities. I saw a bunch of rappers leave that room and rest in peace, his wife, Cidija. I saw a bunch of rappers leave that room who walked in that room wanting to start a riot and left saying, let's insure that our neighborhoods are safe. So I would like to encourage artists to be distrustful of all government always. to especially under this administration raise hell everywhere you can and make sure that your audience is educated on getting to the polls. Your audience is educated on self-educated and educating one another, and your audience is educated on how to counteract the evil art that's currently being spewed by others from the other side. And let me ask you with the video we showed, I think we'll put it back up. Setting it in a congressional hearing, tell us about that artistic choice. What are you saying to your listeners? Well, if you look at that video and you look at what's going on in a world state, oftentimes what's happening are the same petty discreements and arguments that you may have in your neighbor, have become something that's been politicized, something that has been blown up, something that is called what could be neighbor against neighbor to turn into nation against nation. I think that ultimately what we're saying is there is violence and war is sick, it's putrid, and we don't have to continue in that manner. And we all do.

We all at some point allow ourselves to just become members of a team and whatever that team does is okay. And we have choice. We have the ability to stop. We have the ability to halt in war. We have the ability to halt in famine. We have the ability to halt and end greed. The question just becomes from my side as an artist, will we do it? Like Nina Simone challenged us too, like Pablo Picasso challenges too, like so many others. Will we do it? Yeah, Mississippi God damn, among others. Let me read from one of your songs where you say, you're so numb. You watch the cops choke out a man like me until my voice goes from a shriek to a whisper, I can't breathe. And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV, but most of you gives a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy. Go ahead, sir. What are you telling us? I'm telling you that it's not enough to simply attack. those you like or agree with those you do like, to attack those you don't like and agree with those you do like by your phone on Twitter. I don't care how you felt about Al Sharpton in my community. You saw them in the streets. I don't care how you felt about James Orange. You saw him in the streets. I don't care how you'd feel about Mike if you don't like me on Twitter or IG. You can find me right there in the polls, right there in the streets. I don't care. that you vote or agree against me or with me, I care that you're involved in this amazing democracy, this amazing republic called America that gives you certain inalienable rights. I care that our children understand the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. I care that everyone sees freedom and feels freedom while they're here. Like the Negro National Anthem, I want all of us to be involved, not just a section that I like. So for me, It is about making sure that all of us achieve a measure of freedom. All of us achieve it. And it is a constant struggle. It is a constant protractive struggle like Kwame Tore said. We must be in a constant state of organizing. It must not be a one-off that we think we get to and there's the end of a journey like a rocky movie. Every generation will have this to fight and we should instill this in ourselves. 30 seconds for you. No, I think Killer Mike hit it right on the head, and we should not underestimate that. Whether you go back to Harabella Fonte with Dr. King, James Brown did what we couldn't do in the movement. I was a kid then. He changed us from being Negro to black with one song, said loud, I'm black and I'm proud. So what Killer Mike and others are doing is the continuity of that kind of protest music that fits their time that may be commercially successful. but is even more spiritually rewarding. I love you sharing that. We know your history with James Brown, and even that song, if you know the history, it sounds less radical today than it did then because he was vindicated by the culture and the words change, which itself is a whole story for another day that we'll get into. Reverend Sharpton, Killer Mike, great to have you both on this important conversation. We'll be right back. Thank you, all right? Love and respect now. Thanks for spending time with us on The Beat, The Weeknight, starts now. Who answers America's call for more energy? Our people do. Chevron's U.S. energy production has increased by nearly 60% in the past three years. Hi, my name is Aaron, and I'm a wealth site representative at Chevron. I'm proud of the work that I do every day. It gets more American oil out of the ground, and it brings America more energy security. Learn more about what our people do at chevron.com slash America.