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The Beat with Ari Melber - Season Episode 129 -Episode 129 engsub fullepisode🌸 Secret Engagement
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00:00Hi, Nicole. I've been watching this interview. I have to say, first of all, congratulations.
00:06Extremely newsworthy interview. Everybody, 60 Minutes, New York Times, everybody would want
00:11Mr. Smith's first interview. And while he's talked to lawyers, this is his first journalistic
00:15interview. So truly congrats. I think people will be looking back at this, especially in
00:20this format, the depth. I have some questions, but I want to give you a chance because you've
00:24been busy interviewing to share with your audience, with our whole MSNOW audience, any
00:29of your top line or first takeaways. And then I have a question for you as well.
00:34Well, I'm just so struck by how decency and integrity and facts and apolitical sort of careers
00:44don't screech, right? And so much of what we're oriented to cover is that which is shrieking,
00:51right? Either shrieking by arresting tourists at the reflecting pool or shrieking by diverting
00:58intelligence agents from the FBI to some crackpot case in Georgia or shrieking because someone
01:05has covered concerning conduct by the director of the FBI. And instead, like what integrity
01:14sounds like is something a lot more methodical and calm and by the book. And I think that when
01:19we get to meet the people that we've covered, I was deathly nervous. I reread every piece of paper
01:28we ever had. But the thing about public servants is like there's not some, you know, they don't hide
01:35the secret side. It's not a diversion. And I thought about how much Trump has sort of broken my brain.
01:40You know, I'm sitting here trying to figure out what he hid and what he didn't tell us. And a
01:43lot
01:43of what we talked about were the kinds of things that you and I covered from the filings and the
01:48things
01:48that we're public facing. Yeah, totally. I mean, I so I have a couple questions. The first was
01:55thinking about who we're listening to. And as I mentioned, he obviously trusts you and thinks of
02:01you as someone that he can have a factual dialogue with about the health of our civic life and our
02:08democracy and our rule of law. And again, I think that's striking. And it's not a surprise to those of
02:13us who work with you. But but it bears noting, even if we are also colleagues. And he in doing
02:17that, he was issuing. Yeah, sure. He was issuing the warning. I mean, if if Bob Mueller was the
02:24Elliot Ness of his time, Jack Smith is the Bob Miller of our Bob Mueller of our time. And he
02:32had
02:32nothing but, you know, kind words of respect for how Mueller lived his life and career and integrity.
02:39And so when we listen to what I'm calling the Mueller of our time today, Bob Mueller has passed
02:44and he tells you tonight that we are facing this attack on the rule of law that is different.
02:50This is not. Sometimes there are crimes and sometimes there are people in office who have
02:54been caught committing crimes in both parties, as he was careful to know. But this is something
02:58different. We have just that short bit. I don't know if it jumped out to you in the moment,
03:01but let's listen to that for your response. I think we are facing an attack on the rule of law.
03:09That is different in kind and scope to anything I've seen in my lifetime.
03:16What does that mean to you that he wants us to know that?
03:19Well, look, in some ways, there's so much gaslighting in our politics and there's so much
03:27sort of an attempt to intimidate people covering the facts as we see them with our own eyes,
03:33that it was reassuring that he sees what we see and what we cover and that from his extraordinarily
03:38high perch inside the department and with all of his years of experience, he views it as dire as
03:44as I do. It was, I would say, equally striking that when I asked him, you know, if you were
03:53looking at
03:53our country and just assessing it in terms of whether the rule of law were alive or dead,
03:57is it still alive? He said, absolutely. I mean, that he knows of sort of more pockets,
04:04I guess, the things that aren't in the headlines inside the department that are still. And he said,
04:08you know, they're not throwing sand in the gear. They're not part of the resistance. They're just
04:11in there doing their job. But then he did say, I said, but what if doing their job, you know,
04:18ran afoul of Mr. Blanche or others? And he said, yeah, well, that would be the fork in the road.
04:23I mean, what was interesting to me is that it is both as bad as it looks from the outside,
04:29that weaponization is the central organizational theory for the Department of Justice, that the
04:37examples that he lifted up were Daniel Sassoon, that's who he was talking about there at the end,
04:41who left over the perfectly predicated case against Eric Adams, the folks who have, you know,
04:48left before bringing the cases against Jim Comey, Eric Siebert and others, the people in Minnesota,
04:55he mentioned, who refused to investigate family members of a shooting victim. What is, I think,
05:01still, I think the work for people like us is to do what he's talking about, to lift up the
05:06people
05:07who are sort of paying the price of their life's work, of people who grow up and want to do
05:15this work
05:16are some of the very ones who rose to the top. And those ones at the top were the ones
05:20that worked
05:20on his cases. So I think I had a greater appreciation for the loss, the loss of experience,
05:27the loss of the cream of the crop, right? The people that have been purged were not necessarily
05:33the first agents in. They were the best of the best, the ones who understood the sensitive nature
05:37of the cases against Donald Trump, the ones who had enough clearances to even work on the
05:41Mar-a-Lago documents case. He couldn't say anything about that one and didn't bite when
05:45I asked him if he thought A. Lincoln would be nominated to the Supreme Court. But I think it
05:50was both reassuring that he sees the direness of the moment, the way you and I think largely cover
05:58it. And it was ominous to think about all the experience that's been axed for political purpose
06:06from the Bureau and the department. Yeah. And when you take out the experts,
06:11the tough people, the folks with multi-decade experience in catching the bad folks,
06:17then wholly separate from the rural law issues, which we care so much about,
06:20you also make the country less safe, quite literally so. I have one more question for you,
06:25then I'll let you go. I'm kind of Laurencing your Rachel right now.
06:28No, no, no. We can do this any time. I'm always available.
06:33You know, in lyrics, the famous lyric is, please, Lord, don't let me be misunderstood.
06:41And I felt through him, and I'm curious your take, that like Mueller before him and like folks who
06:47were using the integrity, quiet rulebook, and we understand why in normal times that has been the
06:56norm, that he referred back repeatedly, even when it wasn't in your question, to communicate,
07:01to reaching people, to reaching people with the facts and making people understand these cases.
07:05And I wonder, because you are a communicator in your own right, and here we are in media,
07:09so that's part of what we do is look at the stories, define them, try to tell them.
07:13What it says about, you said broke your brain, well, whether a reality show propagandist has broke
07:23some of the communication and storytelling in our country, where I, my view, and I'm curious yours,
07:28I think he's basically right in his theory of the case, that if you don't communicate in real time
07:34with the way people are getting information on their phones, et cetera, today, you're at a disadvantage.
07:38And yet I also thought it's, it's too bad that people doing the substantive work, not to diminish
07:46the communication we all do, but the people doing substantive work, like I don't want my doctor
07:51or my beat cop prosecutor thinking too much about the press release when they need to do the job.
07:57I give you the final word on that tonight.
08:00So I thought about Tim Snyder when we had this part of the conversation, who, you know,
08:05wrote on tyranny, writes, writes about autocracy. And I thought about how you don't need to overwhelm
08:11people by making everyone think that we all have to do everything, right? We all have to do our,
08:16our thing. And what I thought was interesting is, um, he, he has what every veteran of the
08:22department of justice has for Robert Mueller, and that's reverence, full stop. Um, and he's making
08:27some different choices. So he didn't say that he learned or any, and he said to me, it wasn't on
08:32my
08:32mind at all. It is also true that in one news cycle, Donald Trump and Bill Barr destroyed 23
08:38months of Robert Mueller's meticulous, respectful deference to the prerogatives of Donald Trump
08:44when he was, um, interviewing him. And, and Jack Smith has made a lot of the same, but a few
08:50different choices. And I think that's really interesting in its own right.
08:54Yeah. All, all really great points. Congrats on the big interview. We're going to be discussing
08:58it right now. So people don't have to go anywhere, but Nicole, thanks. Thanks for your generosity
09:02with your extra time. Thank you so much. Our thanks. Absolutely. Our thanks to Nicole.
09:08Uh, welcome to the beat. We are going to continue coverage of what is a bombshell interview. It
09:11happened on Nicole's show on MS now, but I can tell you as someone in the news, if it were
09:17a front
09:17page New York times interview or a big 60 minutes interview, as it might've been in a different
09:21decade, we'd be all over the clips excerpts as well, because we have now for the first time,
09:27the first prosecutor to ever indict a president, Jack Smith, who ultimately did it twice. Cause he
09:33said the evidence supported it speaking out in his first journalistic interview, included about those
09:40controversial January six pardons. What do you say about the facts that you developed that you see,
09:50I know you don't watch a ton of news, but you see enough to know that the basic principle of
09:56recidivism likely applies to the election case. The things that you charged are a lot of the same
10:01kinds of stories we cover. What is the cost of someone not being held accountable for their crimes?
10:07Yeah. I mean, if you talk about the pardons of these, these people convicted for the violence on
10:13January 6th, right? There's all sorts of costs. Um, there's the obvious cost of just recidivism.
10:18Um, these are people who committed their crimes in the name and in the interest of Donald Trump,
10:23and he's returned the favor, right? By pardoning them. Uh, that sends one message to them. Uh,
10:29a message I'm equally concerned about is the message that it sends to law enforcement. Um,
10:35supporting law enforcement should not be a political issue.
10:39Jack Smith speaking forth rightly there on two points. The second, as you heard,
10:43is that Donald Trump sided with violent criminals over police, that he is an anti-police president.
10:48The pardon is a power that the president constitutionally has. No one is saying that
10:53it was itself illegal. Smith is saying, however, that it is anti-police, anti-law enforcement.
10:59The first point he made was admittedly a little more legalistic. He referred to recidivism.
11:04What he's saying in plain English is, if you let people get away with it, they'll do it again.
11:08And that maybe Donald Trump wants to do it again, to have another violent insurrection
11:12or other violent crime committed on his behalf. Recidivism is why you have strong penalties and
11:19deterrence under the law, something that prosecutors like Smith basically devote their lives to.
11:23And he's saying for the first time in the modern era, it's the president
11:28undercutting that on behalf of criminals. He also spoke about the midterms.
11:33I'm very concerned of what's going to happen in the next election. Absolutely.
11:37Do you see, again, in things that are covered and things that are public facing,
11:43conduct ahead of the midterms that you investigated in the January 6th case?
11:48Well, I've been thinking about it more in terms of what needs to be done based on what we saw
11:54happen last time. And, you know, it's a different situation now based on, you know,
11:58the people who perpetrated January 6th, they've probably learned from how they did that.
12:03My personal view is I think the state attorney generals have a tremendous role to play here.
12:09They can make sure the rule of law functions in their state. And I would also say that I think
12:15a thing that all of us can do is support election workers and election officials. The last time around,
12:22we saw that those people stood firm and they were in many cases, the difference. It's clear to me
12:29anyways, that what I've seen publicly, that those people are going to be put under great pressure.
12:34And my experience, not only just the special counsel, but, you know, I was the chief of the
12:39public integrity section at the Department of Justice for five years, had a number of cases with
12:44election officials. These are people also, they're not tooting their own horn. They're not
12:49self-promoters. They just care about our democracy. We need to show them that we have their back.
12:57Smith, speaking out clearly there in this new MSNOW exclusive interview, when he mentions the
13:02public integrity section, which has been, of course, completely decimated under Donald Trump,
13:06that's the part of the DOJ that deals with the important but sensitive cases of anti-corruption
13:11and potentially indicting or prosecuting lawmakers, politically connected individuals, important
13:17politicians. To run that section, you have to have kind of the gold standard of being evidence-based,
13:25nonpartisan, and having integrity. It's kind of the fulcrum of pressure inside the DOJ. And when he
13:31was there, for example, he pursued famously a case against Democrat John Edwards, because he said the
13:36evidence supported it. And ultimately, as we know, concluded that there was enough evidence to go
13:40after Donald Trump. I mentioned a case of a Democrat and Republican. So when Smith then now draws on
13:46that credibility and his entire career to assess the so-called enemies list or some of the cases
13:53that the Trump DOJ has brought on his personal demand, it comes with great credibility. Most people
13:58may only know Smith from prosecuting Trump, and that might even overweight how you look at him. But
14:03he is kind of, like I'm telling you, the legal gold standard for these cases. So when he says,
14:08as we just learned he did, I'm going to play you the excerpt, that so many of them lack any
14:12merit,
14:13that is kind of the ultimate slam dunk against some of the Trump DOJ's revenge cases. Take a look.
14:21I, from my perspective, I've seen a number of cases. James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell. I mean,
14:29right? There's not criminality here. I mean, seashells. I mean, so the only reasonable explanation
14:37is the president has it out for these people, and he has people who, his former personal lawyers,
14:44who are going to do what he says, regardless of the factual law.
14:49Going after people regardless of the law will get you a lot of trouble in court, might get your case
14:55tossed. And if some of those folks are doing it knowingly, below the legal standard of what it takes
15:00to indict someone, they could be disbarred or worse. Jack Smith, again, the expert on that. So
15:06that's not nothing. And for those who say, well, when is it going to matter? Well, it could matter
15:10very soon if Congress changes hands, and it could matter a lot in just over two years if the White
15:16House and DOJ changes hands. He's sort of telling you how it is tonight. Now, I want to just remind
15:22everyone, we are here in an extraordinary place. A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable
15:29that a prosecutor would be on television talking about not one but two federal cases against a
15:34former president. It had never happened before. So let's remember how we got here, because what
15:40started out with lawsuits turned ultimately into the insurrection in the 2020 plots. Some of them,
15:46we've marked for you green or yellow because they were effectively legally allowed. But as Trump got
15:52more desperate and those things didn't work, when you get to the Congress overturning votes, the requests
15:56on Pence, the aborted plan to have a military plot or coup, and then ultimately the final arrow we all
16:04know, the illegal sabotage of January 6th. Those were the plots that accrued. And Smith ultimately
16:11was tapped as one of these special counsels with extra independence to pursue them. And as you know,
16:16I'll remind you, as we plotted this, he indicted many of them and won convictions against,
16:22we saw at the state level, over the overlapping plots. The federal cases, of course, were truncated
16:28by the Supreme Court. Now, we have special guests tonight with Jack Smith breaking his silence in
16:33this newsworthy interview. Emily Bazelon, Rick Wilson are here. We're back together in 90 seconds.
16:44We're back with New York Times, Emily Bazelon and longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson on this
16:49Jack Smith interview. I want to play this key part where he, again, first time in a journalistic
16:54televised setting, responded to some of these Trump threats. Do you expect to be indicted?
17:02Listen, I, Donald Trump has made a bunch of statements. He said he would indict you. Yes.
17:08I'll tell you, Nicole, I honestly do not spend a lot of time thinking about the things he says
17:12about me and his threats about me. I'm real focused on the people who I worked with,
17:18looking out for them. I'm real focused on how the Justice Department's going to be better going
17:22forward, things like that. In my situation, I did my job the right way. I had an all-star team.
17:29I mean, Nicole, the agents on my case, if I were to walk you through all the awards they've won
17:36throughout, you know, generations of administrations, we would be here all night.
17:39These were superstars. And I'm much more concerned that those people
17:45get to serve in the department, get to serve in the bureau again someday.
17:49Emily, your view on what Smith is saying tonight?
17:53Well, I'm glad for his mental health that Donald Trump is not taking up a lot of space in his
17:57head.
17:57And I've interviewed some of the FBI agents who worked with him. And, you know, they both live
18:04up to his description of their resumes and the work they did and the nonpartisan way that they
18:12approach their jobs. But also, some of them really have suffered, you know, both in terms of the loss
18:18of their jobs, but also the way that they have just been, you know, raked through the coals by the
18:24MAGA right on social media. So I think from their point of view, I'm sure they were watching and
18:28knowing that Jack Smith is thinking about them will mean something to them, I'm sure.
18:34Rick, your thoughts?
18:36You know, I think what you saw tonight, Ari, was a kind of public servant that is almost entirely
18:41lacking inside the Republican universe these days in the Trump administration. And it also reminded me
18:47that every accusation on the Trump side of weaponization is a projection. He's the kind
18:52of professional that Americans should have great confidence in. I wish he'd been able to speak out
18:56sooner in some part because the Republican effort to demonize him as some sort of political operative,
19:02which is completely untrue, was ongoing until almost this moment where you saw somebody who
19:08was a professional who went out to pursue justice and the law, not a political end as the Blanche,
19:14Patel and others in the DOJ of today do.
19:19Yeah. We all have had conversations about this era we're living through, what people do,
19:25journalists playing one role, people who are direct in politics playing another. And I thought it was
19:30interesting to hear someone like him who's faced these threats, who I'll just share briefly, when I
19:35was in the courtroom for the case on the Gen 6 issues in federal D.C., and he was on
19:43one side,
19:43I remember Todd Blanche was on the other with that team, and I'm watching them. And it was the
19:47largest security retinue I'd ever seen for a non-attorney general, for any prosecutor. And it
19:53spoke to the fact that even in the sanctum of that highly fortified federal D.C. courtroom, to say
19:59nothing of how he moved around the country, there was tremendous threat and protection for that
20:04threat. And so now he faces these other risks. And I give that context to listening to him tell
20:10Nicole, tell Nicole this. Anyone can put anything on you, but you have a choice about the attitude
20:16you take. For me, and I think a lot of the people that I've worked with, our view is I
20:21want to behave
20:22now in a way that my kids will be proud. Yeah. I want to act in a way that when
20:26I'm retired, I look
20:27back on this time and say, I did things right. I think a lot of people relate to that, and
20:32I think
20:32it's understandable. And I think if we start aligning actions with our beliefs, it's a huge,
20:41huge step. I think one of the things I've seen, which is the sort of journey I've been on, is,
20:48you know, with me being targeted by the president, you get to find out who's who, right? You get to
20:54find out who runs towards the fire, who kind of backs away. It's difficult in the moment, but I think
21:01for the future, that's going to be really helpful to know. Are you afraid to be speaking out?
21:05No, not at all. I'm not, I am not going to be intimidated. And there's no way in the world
21:11if
21:11the thought was to go after me so that I wouldn't speak up about the corruption that's happening or
21:18speak up to defend these agents and prosecutors, that is a grave miscalculation. There is no way I'm
21:23going to be intimidating. Rick, Americans are desperate to see that kind of integrity in their
21:31government again, that kind of modest humility about who he is, coupled with absolutely ironclad
21:38courage. It's something Americans, I think, are desperate to see. I think this is a really
21:42important interview for so many reasons, but that's probably the chief among them.
21:47Emily? You know, it's also important because it has still been relatively unusual for former
21:54prosecutors, former important justice department officials to speak up. And there's just an allergy
22:01really in the whole profession to being a media presence. You're just not supposed to do your work
22:06that way. What you say in court is supposed to speak for you. But I think Rick is right. These
22:12voices
22:12are really important right now. And having a television interview is the vehicle that allows
22:19a lot of people to see, you know, what you have to say in this moment. And so I wonder
22:23if Jack Smith,
22:25you know, presenting in this way will also open the door to more former Justice Department officials
22:31and FBI folks to come forward in the same way. Well, Emily, you know, you can't take a lawyer
22:36seriously if they want to be on TV.
22:41Present company accepted, Ari?
22:44Well, that's the joke. I think that you're exactly right about what I would call traditional
22:51legal culture, especially at Maine Justice, the DOJ. And a lot of those folks come out of that.
22:57And then Nicole and I discussed this earlier. He's also come around. I think you're right. I mean,
23:02we're I'm analyzing something that we're a part of because he chose to speak to our colleague
23:06because he respects her show, because I could tell the audience the interview requests have
23:11been in for Jack Smith from everyone, print, television, everyone. And this is where he came.
23:17But having said that, he clearly wants to reach people in this medium, which was anathema to him
23:22for most of his DOJ career. So he he alluded to he said directly things are changing and you got
23:27to reach people where they are. He wants the facts to get out there. And we are a phone video
23:31world.
23:32We are not just a long DOJ report world, let alone, you know, reading print newspapers every
23:41day. The world's changing before our eyes. And Trump has obviously mastered the propaganda side.
23:45So I think that's really interesting. He said so much. I want to show before I lose both of you.
23:49The other thing he said about the DOJ's process itself breaking down under the basically impossible
23:56demands of Bondi and now acting AG Blanche. Take a look. One of the problems right today besides the
24:04the retribution prosecutions is that the Justice Department can't do its job. Right. If you go to
24:11court. Explain that. Well, if you go to court and the judges don't trust you, you can't do the basic
24:15things that you need to do to represent the American people in court. And we have seen judges across the
24:21country say they can't trust prosecutors anymore. And that has such a cascading effect on any sort
24:28of case. And, you know, I can't count how many opinions, but one opinion like that in my career
24:35would have been seismic. People could not would not know what to do if a court said, you know, trust
24:41that's been built over generations has been lost in days. Right. And that's happening every day.
24:46And so regardless of what you think politically, they're just not effective at doing their job
24:51anymore. Emily, what's he getting at there? Well, he's talking about, you know, something
24:58that's foundational to the rule of law that judges and lawyers sometimes call the presumption of
25:03regularity. And what that is, is like you go to court, you represent the government. The judge is
25:08going to trust how you represent the facts. They're going to assume that you are telling the truth.
25:12You are dependable. And Jack Smith is right. There have been a lot of judges throwing up their
25:17hands in court and saying, wait a second, Justice Department lawyer, you just told me something
25:22that's not true. I can see you redacted a grand jury transcript. You're basically trying to mislead me.
25:28Now, what do I do? Because if I have to question everything the government presents in court,
25:33it's going to take a long time. It's going to change the whole way that we think about these cases
25:39and adjudicate them. It's a big gift to the defense in a lot of cases, but it really changes
25:45how court works for the government. Yeah. And it's a point that's completely nonpartisan,
25:51Rick. I'm running over on time, but it's about something that you and others have diagnosed.
25:56The first order Trump problems seem to be all about him. The second order are the decay of systems and
26:02institutions. It doesn't mean they're going right or left. It means they're actually just not working.
26:07Yeah. And I think what Smith said a couple of times during the interview was that there has to
26:12be a path to reform DOJ in a post-Trump era. And that's going to be a big challenge. And
26:18it will
26:18be, I think, getting back to that assumption of regularity, getting back to the assumption that
26:23the rule of law obtains universally inside the government is something that is going to take
26:28an awful lot of work, which Smith, I think, correctly identified in that interview.
26:33Yeah. Rick and Emily rolling with us on this big news night. Thanks to both of you.
26:38We have even more parts of it if you want to dig in or see some new things. We didn't
26:42air in this
26:42hour. That's coming up later. But we're also turning to the heat, even from the right,
26:47on Donald Trump's enrichment and corruption issues. That's next.
26:55We're following several stories tonight, including the one that was truly exclusive breaking news on
27:01our colleague Nicole Wallace's show just a few hours back. At 5 p.m., Jack Smith speaking out in
27:06his first television interview about a whole range of topics, including something we haven't aired in
27:12this hour yet, the First Amendment, and how, yes, you have free speech, but that doesn't mean that the
27:17words you use to actually incite a riot, which is a classic example, or commit other crimes doesn't
27:23mean that is always OK. Speech in furtherance of crimes is not protected. I mean, how much do you
27:32think people should just be monitoring and tracking the things people are saying out loud in terms of
27:37stealing the midterms? Yeah. I mean, and that's maybe a good point for your viewers is there is
27:42rock solid Supreme Court precedent that you cannot just use speech to commit a crime. Fraud, particularly,
27:47there's a specific case on it. And so obviously people have a First Amendment right. And I think
27:53we made clear in our indictment that we respect First Amendment rights. That's certainly important
27:58to me that we not charge a case that would, in essence, be violating someone's rights. But that
28:04doesn't mean that you can't commit crimes through words. It happens all the time. When a Ponzi scheme
28:10person is bilking someone out of their life savings, they're doing it with words. That's how that's done.
28:15All sorts of financial crimes, all sorts of corruption crimes. A bribe is usually communicated
28:21in words. That happens all the time. And in a lot of ways, this case was no different.
28:28Smith, of course, addressing a lot of the different criticism he's got and he's gotten. And really,
28:34as we've discussed in this hour, and as I just discussed with Nicole, using his voice,
28:38even against the extraordinary threats that he's faced, to try to reason with the American public,
28:44to share his track record and facts and defend the rule of law, which he says is under attack like
28:50never before. That's a little bit more of his newsworthy remarks. As I promised, though, we have
28:55a lot more in this hour, including the mounting scrutiny on Trump and his family over the billions that
29:01he's reaping that's too much, even for some on the right. There are all kinds of ways to try to
29:11look
29:11at Donald Trump's business, the way he's claimed he's got all this money, but also how poor he's been
29:18at making money. Because one of the weird parts of this corruption scandal he's in with the two
29:24billion dollars he took in in his first year as president is that it's so much more money than he
29:28usually makes, which shows that whatever people think about his business acumen, the delta, the
29:34gap between what he was making and what he makes now is kind of the price of the grift, the
29:40graft,
29:40the corruption, whatever you want to call it. Remember, he's not supposed to be working full
29:44time at any of that stuff. He's supposed to be doing the presidency full time. The self-enrichment,
29:49the profits continue to rock the White House this week. MSNOW reports that the two eldest sons are linked
29:55to investments in defense firms that have drawn over three billion in federal funds just since
29:59Trump took office. The brothers say that they don't play a role in managing those contracts. Of course,
30:05that's not the accusation. The accusation is that Trump and the people around him know to funnel money
30:10towards his sons, even if they don't ask for it. The normally conservative Wall Street Journal
30:15editorial board says it's hard to believe the Trump boys would be able to do the same deals
30:19if dad wasn't in the Oval Office. And the financial disclosures show the over two billion dollars
30:25in one year alone. There's also new reporting today that in April, Trump made over 300 stock trades
30:32the day before he paused the tariffs. And he knew he was going to pause the tariffs. In other circles,
30:42this would be illegal insider trading. People do go to jail for this kind of thing. The next day,
30:46those stocks posted one of the biggest single day gains since World War II. The question is whether
30:55Donald Trump is profiting off the presidency and whether he's making moves to profit himself and
31:03his family over the good of the American public. I cannot repeat enough that these things are illegal
31:09and people go to jail for them if you do them in the corporate context and in some other local
31:14government context. Trump voters, a lot of them don't like it. Some defend him, some sounding off.
31:22Somebody's making money on the side. It's not me. I don't think one person should have that kind of
31:28power to make that kind of money, especially when he's in public office.
31:33Did he come to me and my expectations? Absolutely not.
31:36Where did he fall short of your expectations?
31:39He definitely made lots of promises and he made them seem like they were going to come a lot quicker,
31:44faster than they actually were to ever come or ever will come.
31:51The crypto ventures have been profitable for just about Trump and nobody else.
31:58So many of his fans losing what they call a fortune. Two thirds of investors in the meme coin are
32:03in the red.
32:04So the majority of people who like Donald Trump enough, who trust him enough to put their money in
32:09are losing money while he reaps these profits. The backlash continues. We will see whether people
32:15act on it in November. Now we have something very special coming up after the break, including
32:20Molly Jong Fast and our friend, curb vet Susie Essman.
32:32A long week as we get towards July 4th, and that means it's a little time for some fun and
32:37to fall
32:38back. We have two very special guests tonight. Molly Jong Fast returns, the MSNL analyst and New York
32:43Times contributing writer, host of the Fast Politics podcast. She's got a bestselling memoir out,
32:48How to Lose Your Mother, out on paperback. And a triumphant return by Susie Essman, the comic,
32:54the actress, the curb vet. We love. She started out doing standup and went on to play Susie Green on
33:01HBO's Curb. Like all things Curb, we don't know. Is it her? Is it a little bit of her? Is
33:05it none of her?
33:06But we love all the iconic moments.
33:10Oh, God.
33:14I know you took the doll's head. Where is it? Where's the f***ing head?
33:21I don't know.
33:23The kid is home, hysterical, because her doll, Judy, has been decapitated.
33:30All right, just get me the f***ing head, all right? Get me the f***ing head, all right?
33:34Both of you, because I've had it, you four-eyed f***ing. Get me the head!
33:39A peace treaty, whatever.
33:42We can show you this. Larry David just talked to her about the new Obama collab project,
33:47Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, an HBO show that's debuted just in time, of course,
33:52for Independence Day, All Eyes on History. We'll get into that soon enough. But first of all,
33:56welcome to both of you. How you doing, Susie?
33:58I'm good. I'm happy to be here with Molly. Big fan of both of you. You got to show pictures
34:04of me
34:04from 25 years ago where I look so young? That's not fair, Ari.
34:09You look great now, and who doesn't like to see the passage of time? I mean, that's,
34:15we've got, July 4th is all about that, you know, anniversaries.
34:20250 years of perfect perfection.
34:23Perfect. We'll see if we get to 251. Molly's a hometown hitter here, so you go first. What's
34:30on your fallback list, Molly?
34:33ICE picking up a nun. Just a crazy story. I mean, first of all, it just shows how over,
34:44how over the line this administration is. They pick up this nun. She's in South Texas.
34:50Remember, Trump won a bunch of these districts in South Texas, and now he is underwater with
34:58Latino voters. He has alienated a voting bloc that Republicans thought was going to be theirs
35:04forever. And I think they've really done it by this kind of thing, arresting nuns, you know,
35:11rounding up people who are not, by no stretch of the imagination, the worst of the worst.
35:19Yeah. Susie, what about you? What's on your fallback list as you drop by the news tonight?
35:24You always have to be careful of those nuns. You know, they're dangerous, dangerous people.
35:29You know, one of my pet peeves as a comedian is whenever comedy is censored, everything's in
35:39trouble. Turkey detained a comic for something that he said politically, allegedly insulting
35:45religious values. And in any totalitarian regime, the first thing that goes is comedy, because comedy
35:51is by its nature subversive and questioning the status quo. And that is the slippery slope we never
35:57want to go down. That's one of the most dangerous censorships we could ever have is censoring
36:02comedians. So that for me personally, but I think for the country as a whole, it's a bad place to
36:08go.
36:09Yeah. And, you know, Susie's point, Molly, echoes with it can happen here. We used to get these
36:17warnings. You know, imagine if we lived in a place where the leader was trying to censor or cancel
36:23comedians because they criticize the government. And yet lately, Molly, that is where we live.
36:28Yeah, we saw Colbert. The Colbert show is not on air anymore. And there was real speculation that that
36:36was because of a want of regulatory approval, because remember, the Paramount merger needed to
36:42go in front of Trump's people. And then you have to remember the Kimmel show has been taken off the
36:47air once before. So we have seen this administration really act out towards comedians. And again, this
36:54tracks with Putin's Russia. Right. Remember, Vladimir Putin obsessed with a puppet comedy show
37:01that he took off the air. And that is why it is so important to have, you know, remember, it
37:08is
37:08technically the First Amendment, our First Amendment rights to make fun of our politicians, Democrat or
37:16Republican. Yeah. And there is no greater power than satire, I think. You know, satire is
37:24one of the greatest powers that we have. And you take that away. And what do you have? Mimes. That's
37:29it. And nobody wants mimes. Look, we could talk more about Trump, Susie, or we could talk about Obama
37:38and Larry David and this this wonderful commemoration of our country this weekend. And I turn to that. I
37:46by way of introduction, Susie, I want to say Happy New Year.
37:52Happy New Year to you, too. It's a little late. Happy New Year. But that's OK. It's not too late.
37:56I'm not as strict as Larry.
38:00Well, who can be as strict as Larry? I'm making a joke that anyone who's caught the first episode might
38:06get.
38:06But this is such an ingenious way that Obama, Larry, and you, of course, are in an episode.
38:12Yeah. Are looking at our history, having fun with it, but also then getting a chance to reflect on it.
38:17And boy, do we need, I think, the better angels of our history, if you will.
38:21You did talk to Larry about it. Let's take a look at that and then discuss the project.
38:27OK. President Obama is one of the producers of the show.
38:30Right. Did he give you any notes?
38:31Jeff and I were called in for notes from President Obama. Now, I really haven't gotten.
38:44You don't take notes. You don't get notes. The entire time we did.
38:48He started telling me that I don't think this is good. I don't think this is going to work.
38:54And if somebody had a good idea, I would I would I would listen to it.
38:57And I was the president of the United States. I said, I'm the president here.
39:05And he laughed.
39:09It rings true. Tell us about. Tell us about this.
39:13This is your first time being on an Obama produced comedy show, we can say.
39:17Tell us about it and and what the uplift is as we go into this holiday.
39:22Honestly, Ari, he was not on set. He was not around.
39:26It's really Larry and Jeff Schaefer's production.
39:29I know that his company, Higher Ground, produced it.
39:33Michelle and Barack's company.
39:35But it wasn't like he was there on set and with the headphones on and watching it.
39:40Video Village. None of that happened.
39:41So I still have never met him, even though I would love to.
39:46It's it's really it's really Larry's skewed, very skewed take of American history.
39:53Nothing is accurate. You're not going to learn anything.
39:57You're going to laugh. That's the whole point of it.
39:59And to celebrate 250 years, the fact that we're still here is amazing.
40:04And to celebrate 250 years by making fun of everything that happened along the way.
40:09What could be better?
40:12And Molly exercising what I guess ties this all together, which is, you know, they made it the First Amendment
40:17for a reason.
40:18And maybe people in the arts and people in the letters and people in media like us, we talk about
40:23it extra.
40:24But without the First Amendment, you don't have much else, Molly.
40:27Yeah. And especially at this moment when it's so important that we can really connect with history in an interesting
40:39and also, more importantly, hilarious way.
40:43And also, Larry takes no prisoners on this, by the way, that nothing is sacred.
40:49He takes no prisoners. There's no political correctness.
40:52He skewers certain people in a very hidden way that's quite obvious.
41:02Hey, curb never took sides. It was it was anti everything, anti woke, anti MAGA.
41:09And it was just funny. Susie, I was going to say if we had more time, I wanted to tell
41:13you about one of my dreams last night, which is another violation of Larry's bill of rights.
41:19But we're out of time, Susie. Thank you, Ari. I appreciate that.
41:23And Molly, always good to see you. Thank you, Susie. Thanks, Molly. We'll be right back.
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