Transcription
On Donald Trump's first year of his second term. This Tuesday marks one year since Trump returned to the presidency. And if you care about democracy, it feels like a lot longer.
In just 12 months, we've seen the weaponization of the Justice Department, a shock and awe campaign against American cities, and a governing style that has often felt less like a presidency, and more like a sustained stress test. But it's also been a year of broken promises.
On immigration, Trump promised to go after criminals, the, quote, worst of the worst. Instead, what he got was an American mother gunned down by ICE and many deportations without due process. And in Trump's inaugural address, remember this promise? "Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. Something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again. Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law." Needless to say, that didn't happen. He's weaponized the Justice Department to go after practically any public official who's opposed him. Most recently, the governor of Minnesota and the...
But a year later, Trump appears to be trying TARIFS ON ALLIES WHO OPPOSE HIM, CALLING FOR NEW LEADERSHIP IN IRAN AND DABBLING IN SOMETHING AKIN TO REGIME CHANGE IN VENEZUELA. AND THAT'S JUST THIS WEEK.
Then, of course, there are the kitchen table issues. "I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices." As you know, if you've been to a grocery store, prices are not down like Trump, Trump promised. They are actually up on a range of necessities from grocery store items to energy. But voters are noticing these broken promises on nearly every issue Trump campaigned on and told voters he would fix, quote, immediately once getting back into the White House. Trump is polling underwater. See it there on the screen.
Joining us now, Norm Eisen, founder of the Democracy Defenders Fund and former Special Counsel to President Barack Obama. Sarah Matthews, former White House Deputy Press Secretary during Trump's first term and spokesperson for Home of the Brave. And the one and only Reverend Al Sharpton. I'm going to start with you since you worked in the first Trump administration. What grade would you give President Trump on the first anniversary of his second term?
You know what, I'll give him a D. I think that things have been pretty bad and they're much worse than I would have expected in the sense that I didn't expect as many people to capitulate to him, as we've seen. But most of it was pretty predictable in my eyes. The one thing I really didn't predict was him wanting to take over Greenland. I think that's been a little bit of a surprise for me and for voters as well. I think that's why you see so many people who are upset with him. And we've seen in recent polling that they think that he has not prioritized the issues that he campaigned on. And so I think there's a lot of voter frustration there. So I think it could get a little worse. So that's why I'm not giving him an F.
So I was about to say, why not an F? Because it's year one. I think there's plenty of time for it to get even worse than it is already. So that's why I'm hedging my bets a bit there. Rev, you know, we're going to get into the polling and all of the things. We have lots of good stuff that our producer, John Ball, put together. And you're here for two blocks. Yes. But I'm curious for you, the mood of the country, right? Because THE WAY THAT WE TREAT EACH OTHER IN THIS COUNTRY SOMETIMES FEELS LIKE IT MATTERS MORE THAN HOW MUCH BACON IS OR HOW MUCH, YOU KNOW, HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO FILL UP YOUR CAR. BECAUSE It is our everyday experience, how we interact with each other as human beings, as Americans, as people that live in this country, as Republicans and Democrats. And I'm curious in, you know, we have two more days so it could get a lot MAKE SURE THAT IT'S A LOT WORSE. BUT IN THE, YOU KNOW, 363 DAYS, I'M NOT GOOD AT MATH, OF DONALD TRUMP SO FAR, WHEN YOU'RE LOOKING AT HOW THIS COUNTRY HAS TREATED EACH OTHER, HOW HE'S TREATING PEOPLE THAT LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY. WHAT DO YOU, HOW ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT THAT AS WE GET TO YEAR ONE?
I THINK THAT EVEN THOUGH I I HAD NO HIGH HOPES AT ALL ABOUT HOW HIS PRESIDENCY WOULD GO FORWARD. I COULD NEVER HAVE PREDICTED THAT HE WOULD HAVE BEEN AS DESTRUCTIVE AND DIVISIVE AS HE'S TURNED OUT TO BE, AND SEEMS TO WALLOW IN IT. I THINK WHAT DISTURBS ME MORE THAN ANYTHING IS HE'S LOST A SENSE OF EVEN HOW TO MEASURE WHERE HIS OWN SUPPORTERS ARE. HE'S REMOVED FROM THE FACT THAT GROCERIES ARE GOING UP AS YOU SHOWED IN THE FIRST PARTS OF THIS SEGMENT. HE'S REMOVED FROM THE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING YOU ARE CONDONING AND MISLEADING PEOPLE ON THE KILLING OF A YOUNG WHITE WOMAN IN MINNEAPOLIS. WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT GEORGE FLOYD NOW IN MINNEAPOLIS. AND I THINK THAT HE HAS LOST ALL KINDS OF SELF-ANALYSIS. AND HE'S BEING, IN MANY WAYS, I THINK, MISUSED BY THOSE AROUND HIM THAT ARE BRIEFING HIM INCORRECTLY ON THE PULSE OF THE PEOPLE.
Norm, I want to ask you this because you're always keeping lists, crunching the numbers, and so I want you to help us frame how we should be looking at this in the context of action versus durability. This was a conversation that I'm sure a lot of people might have listened to this week, that Ezra Klein had with a conservative scholar who argued basically that Trump has signed fewer pieces of legislation than any president in modern history, and that the bulk of his regulatory work has actually been deregulatory, and therefore slower than a president like Joe Biden who came in and issued a flurry of affirmative regulatory actions. Instead, Trump has just been focused on dismantling all of that. So yes, there has been a lot of action. But how does that shape what we're going to see going forward?
Jackie, part of the reason I have all those statistics and numbers is because I study democracy, including as an ex-diplomat around the world. And we are not the first democracy to go through a backsliding. WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL OF THE INDICATORS OF WHAT DONALD TRUMP IS DOING, THEY ALL SUGGEST ACTUALLY A MAJORITY OF BACKSLIDING DEMOCRACIES HAVE DONE THIS THAT WERE HEADED. IF YOU TAKE HIS PERFORMANCE IN THE POLLS, FOR EXAMPLE, WHERE HE IS DEEPLY UNDERWATER, IF YOU TAKE HIS PERFORMANCE IN THE POLLS, FOR EXAMPLE, WHERE DEMOCRATS WON OR OUTPERFORMED IN OVER 221, OUT OF 248 RACES IN... I'M GOING TO TAKE THE IMAGES COMING OUT OF MINNESOTA. IF YOU TAKE THE CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY, THE BACKLASH WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TURNED ON JIM CROWE THAT LED TO THE PASSAGE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT IN 1965. THAT'S THE VIOLENCE THAT WE'RE SEEING IN THE STREETS. AND THEN YOU HAVE TO, YOU CAN'T ONLY GRADE TRUMP. I THINK HE'S TOTALLY OFF. YOU HAVE TO GRADE HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE RESPONDED. AND YOU KNOW, BECAUSE I'M A REGULAR, WE'RE CELEBRATING A YEAR OF DOING THIS TOGETHER, THAT THE PUSHBACK HAS BEEN SO POWERFUL. AT DEMOCRACY DEFENDERS FUND AND DEMOCRACY DEFENDERS ACTION ALONE, WE'RE ONE ORGANIZATION IN THE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT, 249 LEGAL CASES AND MATTERS, INCLUDING PUSHING BACK ON MANY OF TRUMP'S MAJOR INITIATIVES. SO I THINK I GIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE I DON'T WANT TO TELL THE GRADE OF AN A FOR THIS PAST YEAR. EVERYBODY? HOW THEY'VE RESPONDED AS A GROUP.
Eugenia. Okay, that's a group. Project when we first started talking about this, that sense of sleepwalking, right? That the country was not awake. I'll tell you what, country is awake. Since uh Rev, I'm going to come to come to you because um Norm brought up and it was the Bloody Sunday was in 1965 and it's what got the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed. But Rev, I want to read something to you that the president of the United States had to say vis-a-vis the civil rights movement. This from the New York Times, January 11th. Trump says civil rights led to white people being, quote, very badly treated. "White people were very badly treated where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university, to college." He said, an apparent reference to affirmative action and college admissions. So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases. He also went on to say, "I think it was also at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people, people that deserve to go to a college or deserved to get a job were unable to get a job so it was it was a reverse discrimination." Yeah.
I think that I think that uh this was probably the most blatant uh statement uh of white supremacy I've heard in uh probably my lifetime because what he is suggesting is that to say THAT BLACKS COULD NOW DRINK AT A WATER FOUNTAIN IN THE SOUTH OR SITTING IN FRONT OF THE BUS OR CHECK IN A HOTEL OR GET A JOB THAT THEY WERE DENIED BASED ON RACE IS HURTING WHITE PEOPLE. SO THE ONLY WAY TO BE FAIR IN TRUMP'S WORLD IS TO HAVE A FULL WHITE EMPLOYMENT ECONOMY, NOT BLACKS. TO HAVE FULL OPPORTUNITIES IN TERMS OF GOING TO COLLEGES, NOT BLACKS. BECAUSE RATHER THAN SAY THAT WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO GUARANTEE EVERYONE'S RIGHTS BASED ON MERIT, CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT SAID WE DON'T WANT YOU TO BRING PEOPLE IN THAT DON'T HAVE THE MERIT TO GO TO SCHOOL. WE WE WANT YOU TO STOP EXCLUDING PEOPLE WITH MERIT FROM GOING TO SCHOOL. HE SAID IT DOESN'T MATTER. IT'S HURTING WHITE PEOPLE, AND I THINK THAT THAT IS NOT ONLY A WHITE SUPREMACIST STATEMENT, IT'S AN INSULT TO WHITE PEOPLE BECAUSE A LOT A LOT OF WHITES WERE SAYING WE CAN COMPETE WITH BLACKS AND OTHERS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO EXCLUDE THEM FROM US, THEREFORE THAT'S THE ONLY WAY WE CAN HAVE WHAT WE NEED TO HAVE. THAT IS INSULTING TO EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN IN AMERICA.