The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025 - video Dailymotion

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The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025 The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025 The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025 The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025

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00:00The reaction, the law enforcement response, and what is increasingly a very divided political

00:05response to the terrible shooting of Charlie Kirk. This is a nation that is reckoning with

00:11things we do know about, gun violence, political violence, and a range of reactions from leaders.

00:17There have been many leaders who have been responsible and tried to tone down the rhetoric,

00:20others dialing up the rhetoric. Now, let's start with the most basic thing that is the same as it

00:27was last week. Law enforcement officials have not determined or publicized a motive for 22-year-old

00:34Tyler Robinson. He will be charged tomorrow, and given the voluminous evidence, he is as always

00:40legally presumed innocent, but facing a lot of evidence that he was the shooter in this heinous

00:45act. That, of course, will be dealt with in court. Democratic leaders have condemned this shooting

00:52and this type of violence. The New York Times reports that Trump White House, however,

00:56is not joining them in that type of approach where you just deal with this as a terrible and

01:02initially nonpartisan matter, especially with, as I remind you, no official motive from law

01:06enforcement, but instead is vowing a, quote, vast crackdown on their opponents, on what they call

01:14in the Times headline liberal groups, threatening to bring the weight of the feds down on what they

01:20alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence. And the Times reports that this

01:26White House, again, before all the facts about what is already clearly a terrible killing,

01:31for those facts are in, they are, quote, seizing on the killing to make broad and

01:34unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.

01:38The problem is on the left. It's not on the right. And when you look at the agitators,

01:45you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the

01:52place, that's the left. That's not the right. A lot of the people that you would traditionally say

01:57are on the left. They're already under investigated. Already under investigated.

02:03That's the president's response. Fact check, largely false and misleading. No motive yet for

02:10this shooter. And Donald Trump, along with other political leaders in both parties,

02:15have faced this type of risk. No one's underestimating that. It is a serious and terrible

02:20time. But what he said there about attributing blame in a generalized manner or attributing this

02:26violence to only one ideology in the United States is not true. There are voluminous reports on this,

02:34including from the government that he, of course, oversees now as president, DHS, DOJ, and experts

02:39who are nonpartisan and independent, who study this for a living and have pointed to the rise in

02:45violence in the United States, some of it political and coming from all sides and often not neatly cleaved

02:51into exact partisan groups. There were attacks on Nancy Pelosi's household when the intruders stormed in and

02:58brutally attacked her husband. Democratic lawmakers assassinated in Minnesota. As I just mentioned before,

03:06the attempted terrible assassination of then former President Trump. He was, of course, a candidate last year

03:12before winning the election. There's this killing of Kirk, who is a very prominent conservative.

03:17This is a dangerous moment and one that will continue to require not meeting fire with fire or rhetoric with

03:25rhetoric, but both acknowledging and then fact-checking and putting aside false claims wherever they may

03:31emanate from. Now, that is clearly what you just heard, what Donald Trump is saying, what the New York

03:38Times calls an exploitation for a crackdown, is one response. Today, in what must have been, of course,

03:44a difficult and moving and really harrowing time for people who listen to Kirk regularly, who followed

03:51him as a leader, who respected him. He has one of these shows, right? So people were tuning back in and

03:57they had an organized presentation from Vice President Vance, who also, we should note, was very friendly

04:02with him for years. It's a tough time for them as human beings. But there are many ways one could use

04:07this platform to mourn, to grieve, to try unity. I want to just play you what the Vice President did

04:15in part during that presentation on the Kirk platform today.

04:21Of course, we have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice. And importantly,

04:27we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up

04:34over the last few years. And I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin's

04:40bullet. We're going to talk about how to dismantle that and how to bring real unity.

04:45The Vice President uses that term, I believe. So he's sharing his belief for opinion. And First

04:53Amendment protects that. He can share that. And again, as I'm careful to mention, he's very friendly with

04:57the deceased Mr. Kirk and his family. Tough time for all. But his belief is not the law enforcement

05:03conclusion. Indeed, we don't have a motive yet for this, not according to law enforcement. And they

05:08are clearly on the case, charging the individual tomorrow. A guest today on that same Kirk platform

05:13was top White House official Stephen Miller. Here is what he said.

05:18We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this

05:26assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. We are going to use every

05:31resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government

05:34to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the

05:40American people. It will happen and we will do it in Charlie's name.

05:44Mr. Miller has a lot of power. He's talking about going after terrorist networks, as is often the case

05:49in a time like this. The government going after actual terrorist networks is a good thing,

05:54generally welcomed by virtually everyone who's not a terrorist.

05:59But authorities so far have said this individual acted alone. We don't have any link from this

06:06terrible shooting to the idea of a wider network or funding, as he referenced there, of terrorism.

06:11And the separate advancement of that agenda may be fine, but combining it as the government is

06:16doing here, your government, your taxpayer dollars today, at the level of the vice president,

06:21the separate remarks from the president and Mr. Miller, who's number two staffer in the White

06:26House, is quite a considerable escalation for what law enforcement has said thus far. And this could

06:32change. And if the evidence changes, we'll update you on it. But thus far, they view as a what they

06:36call a lone wolf or solo attack, not a network, let alone one that meets the definition of federal

06:41terrorism charges. Miller talked about specific agencies. He talked about going after opponents.

06:47And so this time, which could have been for mourning or grieving or some lowering of the rhetoric,

06:54which we heard from some politicians last week, this is that time maybe to do that, instead has

06:58this coming from the incumbent administration and Democratic officials pushing back.

07:06Instead, it looks as if President Trump and his allies are gearing up to potentially exploit this

07:11tragedy and use it as a means to do what they have been planning to do, what they have wanted to do for

07:16the entirety of their time in office, which is to try to use their control of the legal system to

07:22destroy, to obliterate the political opposition to Donald Trump.

07:28We're joined by New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, an MSNBC analyst, and Maya Wiley,

07:32a former SDNY civil prosecutor and president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

07:37Maya, your view on how to deal with this responsibly, not falling into echoing or only rebutting what

07:46we're hearing while also taking it seriously, because as the New York Times puts it, there

07:50appears to be a much wider rushed agenda from the White House.

07:55Yeah, I mean, first, starting with there's a difference between shooting someone and shunning

08:02someone. Let's just be very clear. Charlie Kirk should be alive today. And it is critically important

08:10that we have a process of fact finding and the rights of every individual protected. That's number

08:17one. The facts matter here. The facts do matter and should matter. And you laid them out, Ari, but the facts

08:26are number one, that we have a serious problem of driving hate and bias in this country. And it does

08:35matter what political leaders say in terms of whether they're being part of the solution or being part of

08:44the problem. Let me just say this when we're even hearing this word political with the word

08:51assassination. First of all, I don't think that's an accurate way to describe what is an act that should have

08:58never happened. No shooting should, in my view. And I come from the tradition where Shirley Chisholm, first black

09:06woman elected to Congress, went and sat at the bedside by George Wallace when he was shot, even though he was a

09:14segregationist. Right. That is our tradition. That is our experience. That is what we need to be about. But this is

09:21very what's political here is claiming that someone who has every every right to have his viewpoints,

09:27but also every right for the rest of us to shun the ideas that we heard, the ideas, the ideas that said

09:35that if you're gay, you should be stoned. The ideas that said you should think of black women as being

09:42intellectually inferior and incompetent. That is not political. That is not partisan. That should not be

09:50seen as Democrat or Republican. That should just be seen as something we should as a nation and have

09:56as a nation traditionally shunned and should not see that as partisan politics. And certainly if we are

10:03at a time when the people who have been voted and elected into office use the powers of government

10:10to try to place blame on people who have taken no unlawful action for their viewpoints, because that's

10:20part of what we're seeing out of New York Times reporting today about how the White House may be

10:25planning to go after not for profit organizations that have totally legitimate positions and frankly are

10:33trying to protect the rights and the democracy of people in this country, the democracy that we all share,

10:39and the opportunity to have disagreement and to do it safely.

10:45Understood. I mean, very, very well put. And I hope people are listening. You know, Michelle,

10:51politics doesn't wait for facts and a lot of politics gets facts. And then the political project

10:57is to dispute, override or lie about the facts that are inconvenient. I did mention that we're both

11:05covering the reality of this because this is what we're hearing from the administration right now.

11:08while also bringing in everything we're learning about the shooting. So I want to add in one more

11:13fact about what I mentioned was what looks like considerable evidence against the shooter

11:16on these chat rooms. And people have different things. People sometimes think they they're

11:21speaking in a place that's more secret than it is on what they call discord. According to the

11:26Washington Post reporting, he addresses other individuals and says, I have bad news for you all.

11:31It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all this. More investigative work is continuing.

11:38But there's a lot of evidence that this individual did this shooting.

11:43Yeah, absolutely.

11:44And very little yet public evidence about why.

11:47Well, I want to say two things. First of all, that that very statement, I have bad news for you,

11:51it was me, is kind of evidence. We don't have a lot of evidence, but that's evidence against this

11:56being a broader conspiracy. That's evidence against a terror network. Right. A terror network. Right.

12:00I mean, that suggests that he was acting alone, at least preliminarily. Furthermore, there's

12:06something, you know, what we're seeing is the we again, we don't know very much about his ideology.

12:11He might very well end up being a person who identified with the left. Right. We know that

12:16he was not registered with any political party, that he never voted. But we don't really know

12:21beyond that. There's been just a lot of speculation and also a lot of extrapolation from these phrases

12:27that were engraved on these bullets and something that is so debasing about the rise of these kind

12:34of meme killers, these killers. And he's not the first who are just absolutely marinating in

12:40internet nihilism and irony is that it forces us to be kind of semioticians of these edgelord phrases.

12:47So some of these phrases that might on the surface seem straightforward about fascism actually relate

12:54back to memes in video games and have several layers of meaning that, frankly, people my age are

12:59barely equipped to decipher. But it's why you want responsible people not trying to kind of

13:06immediately rush to judgment. But of course, Donald Trump was always going to rush to judgment

13:12because this is what he wanted to do all along. He wanted a pretext to sick the entire Justice

13:19Department on his political enemies. And he feels like this has given him some rationalization

13:25or some fuel for that quest. And so when they talk about, you know, kind of quote unquote terrorist

13:31networks, you know, in those same conversations, they're talking about the Nation magazine where you

13:37and I have both written for they're talking about George Soros. Right. And so this is not kind of

13:42the this has nothing to do with the traditional mission of law enforcement or the FBI. It's a

13:48it's there's they're kind of telling us that they are going to try to conduct a political purge.

13:54And you mentioned the FBI, which brings us exactly to the next story where there actually

13:58is more overlap. The New York Times and Fox News, both crossing stories about the embattled FBI leader,

14:04who, as you mentioned, is connected to people looking at Internet memes, posting on X before

14:09getting it right. He's under a lot of scrutiny today. I want to do our quickest break and we'll

14:14turn to the FBI director's problems when we're back in 90 seconds. Donald Trump's unusual pick for

14:21FBI director Kash Patel is showing that his inexperience is a problem. And that's according to

14:27people inside the FBI and Trump administration, as well as independent experts. Congress will be

14:32grilling him this week. A series of hearings that come at a precarious time for him. Fox News reporting

14:37on administration sources and others inside the FBI who just view him, despite Trump's support,

14:42as embattled and incompetent. Despite that report in Fox News, which speaks to the problems,

14:49he then went on Fox News today.

14:53The job of the FBI is not just to manhunt the actual suspect who did the killing or suspects,

14:58but it's also to eliminate targets and eliminate subjects who are not involved in the process. And

15:04that's what we were doing. Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure.

15:08But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.

15:11He's referencing there something we actually covered in real time as an unusual post that then was a

15:16misleading at best post. But he may have been a misinformed from the beginning, which is exactly

15:22why, as you know, Maya, having worked in DOJ alongside of the FBI, they don't typically do

15:27it this way. So he's doing it a different way that is being panned from all sides. Your thoughts on this

15:32aspect of the story?

15:34This aspect of the story sounds like Kash Patel being political, which is why two Republican senators

15:40actually would not vote to confirm him, which is concerned about some of his political behavior

15:46before, you know, between the time when he left the White House and had his own private merchandising

15:53concerns, for example. So what he did was exactly what should never happen from anyone who's heading

16:01the FBI, which is sharing anything before there's confirmation, because this is not uncommon. It is

16:07not uncommon to have initial arrests and find out you don't actually have enough evidence. Or even if you

16:13have an initial arrest, you don't want to do anything that might undermine your investigation

16:18by suggesting you do have an arrest, because if you find out there's someone else you're looking for,

16:23that could be a problem. So all I can say is it's actually very consistent with concerns that were

16:29raised in his confirmation hearing. It's also very consistent in another way. In his confirmation

16:35hearing, he would not say that he would, for example, resign if asked to do the political bidding

16:44of Donald Trump and utilize the office in a way that either protected Donald Trump's allies or came

16:51after people he didn't like. And just to bring in, Michelle, because I only have a minute left on this,

16:56they've also, under Patel, fired a lot of career experts, and that seems to be a net negative for law

17:02enforcement. Right, including somebody in Salt Lake City who is very known for, I guess, penetrating

17:07terrorist networks. And I mean, I think that, look, you need a functioning FBI, and that shouldn't,

17:13that's become a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. I think that, you know, you see this

17:17sort of nihilistic attack on state capacity in this administration, this, you know, kind of

17:23replacing qualified people with not just ideologues, but kind of clownish ideologues. And you're starting to

17:30see at least some people on the right, at least with this, realize that, you know, you maybe want your

17:37apparatchiks, but you want apparatchiks who are, who know what they, who know what they're doing.

17:40Yeah, because the incompetence is what many people agree is. And thank God somebody turned this guy in,

17:46because they could, you know, I mean, what a disaster if he wasn't caught with all of the, I mean, you look at the

17:53conspiracy theories that are already percolating, you know, if he had been able to somehow get away,

17:59and there's kind of no evidence that they were closing in on him. I mean, they got lucky.

18:04Well, you say they got lucky, and Trump, that Steve Bannon said that as well, that it was a product of

18:10good thing people in the community did this. But Bannon, of all people, was saying this had nothing

18:15to do with Patel or the FBI's actual law enforcement work, which, to your point, means without the

18:21community, this killer could be at large. And that, again, goes to whether this FBI is fully

18:25staffed and functioning, or whether it is a failed partisan experiment right now. Michelle and Maya,

18:31my thanks to both of you. Legendary Bob Woodward is here tonight. We're going to play new things from

18:37him you haven't heard yet. That's something we are looking forward to. Meanwhile, Trump's trade war

18:41is in trouble in the courts. Peter Navarro has a lot of experience on that and many other issues and

18:47joins us after the break.

The Beat With Ari Melber 9/15/25 | ️ Breaking News September 15, 2025

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