Summary
Donald Trump is on a “corrupt thank-you tour of Middle Eastern dictatorships,” seeking to personally profit from his presidency through deals involving a Boeing 747 from Qatar, cryptocurrency ventures, and real estate projects in the region that his sons are pursuing. This represents “corruption on an epic scale,” as Trump and his family try to exploit the presidency for their own financial gain, even as Trump cuts funding for 9/11 first responders and makes false claims about losing friends on that day. Democratic lawmakers warn that Trump’s actions violate the Constitution and are “politically suicidal” for Republicans, as the party’s budget bill would strip healthcare coverage from millions of Americans to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
Main body
The last word with Lawrence O’Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence. Hey, Jen. I really enjoyed hearing Ben Rhodes describe to you what it was like sometimes when countries didn’t understand that they can’t accept gifts, something that the Trump administration is not exactly holding up their end on. I think, you know, all those Trump staffers on Air Force One should have their pockets checked when they’re coming back into this country. Most public servants, when you have a a suitcase of jewels left in your hotel room, you call the lawyers and you run for the hills because you don’t want to be anywhere near it. That’s what happens most of the case. We’re not in those times anymore. No, we are not.
00:00:41
We’ve entered this new era where the idea of the presidency is try to make as much money as possible for yourself and, you know, a little for your family while you’re at it. That seems to be the whole point of this week. And Musk and other billionaires. Yes, exactly. Thanks, Jen. Thanks, Lawrence. Thank you. Well, tonight, Donald Trump is on his corrupt thank-you tour of Middle Eastern dictatorships. And as usual in a Trump presidency, the first official foreign trip to another country was once again to Saudi Arabia, exactly what he did in his first presidency. Donald Trump, no doubt, took the opportunity to thank the corrupt dictator of Saudi Arabia, who American intelligence sources say ordered the dismemberment murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi during Donald Trump’s first presidency, a murder that Donald Trump had absolutely no problem with at the time because he said, of course, we have to keep doing business with murderous dictators like that.
00:01:39
Donald Trump has billions of reasons to thank that murderous dictator, Mohammed bin Salman, who gave $2 billion to Donald Trump’s son-in-law to play with. After the first Trump presidency, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, started an investment firm with zero experience in investing. And he immediately got $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, which means Donald Trump’s daughter became the richest Trump that day, if she wasn’t the richest Trump already through marriage. Those eager Trump sons, known not to be above jealousy, are busy this week trying to outdo their sister’s take from Saudi Arabia, and Donald Trump is doing everything he possibly can to join in the exploitation of the American presidency for every billion it is worth to the Trump family.
00:02:31
Donald Trump just offered a new defense tonight on social media for his desire to accept the biggest payoff in the history of the presidency and possibly the literally biggest payoff in world history, a Boeing 747 that the corrupt dictator of Qatar, a principal funder of the terrorist organization Hamas, wants to give to Donald Trump. The first line of Donald Trump’s exclamation point defense of accepting that plane tonight is the Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force Department of Defense. Not to me, exclamation point. And of course, no one contradicts Donald Trump better than Donald Trump. Here, he is telling Sean Hannity on the real Air Force One today, why wouldn’t I accept a gift? Some people say, oh, you shouldn’t accept gifts for the country.
00:03:31
My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept a gift? We’re giving to everybody else. Why wouldn’t I accept a gift? He didn’t say anything about the Air Force accepting a gift there. Why shouldn’t I accept a gift? Donald Trump knows the Air Force part of the arrangement. It’s a complete fraud. Donald Trump wants that plane so that he can have his own private 747 after he leaves the presidency. Donald Trump has already arranged for the Air Force to simply give that plane to the Trump Presidential Library. The Trump Presidential Library will obviously be a slush fund for Donald Trump’s personal use. Contributions to the library surely will be solicited to pay for the jet fuel Donald Trump will use to fly himself around in that Boeing 747 for the rest of his days.
00:04:19
It’s all about Qatar giving a plane to Donald Trump for his personal use after the presidency. That’s what it’s for. That’s what it’s about. Donald Trump knows that. And the dictator of Qatar knows that. And that’s why Donald Trump said, ‘My attitude is, why wouldn’t I accept a gift?’ Donald Trump is, of course, famously too stupid to keep his conspiracy story straight. The man is just too stupid to observe the theory of the conspiracy and say to Sean Hannity, my attitude is, why shouldn’t the Air Force accept a gift? It’s a 13-year-old 747, no longer good enough for the emir of Qatar, where no one dares object to the dictator giving the plane to the author of the Muslim ban in the first week of the first Trump presidency.
00:05:12
In Donald Trump’s social media posting tonight, he insisted that the 747 is free, free in capital letters. But that is another one of those Trump lies in capital letters. When someone gives you a gift that you then have to spend several hundred million dollars to make usable or a billion dollars or $2 billion to make usable, that is not free. Every one of those billions of dollars it will take to make that plane a usable Air Force One will come from American taxpayers. NBC News reports, quote, converting a Qatari-owned 747 jet into a new Air Force One for President Donald Trump would involve installing multiple top-secret systems; cost over $1 billion and take years to complete, accepting the 13-year-old jet would likely cost U.S.
00:06:05
Taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over time, noting that refurbishing the commercial plane would exceed its current value of $400 million. The project might also not be completed by the end of Trump’s term in 2029. The only company that could properly convert a 747 to use as Air Force One is the only company that has ever done it, Boeing. Donald Trump was very proud of the deal he made with Boeing during his first presidency to produce two new 747s to replace the current 747s used as Air Force One. Boeing has run into literally billions of dollars in cost overruns on those 747s and is years behind schedule on delivering them. Should Boeing now stop? The work on the real 747s, to then take on the project of rehabbing a 13-year-old 747 to serve as a so-called new Air Force One, it cannot be done.
00:07:07
It will not be done. It won’t happen. Donald Trump’s dream of getting that 747 through the corrupt scheme he has come up with will not happen. There is too much pressure on it already. There is too much Republican opposition to that corrupt scheme already. I’m not a fan of Qatar. I think they have a really disturbing pattern of funding theocratic lunatics who want to murder us, funding Hamas and Hezbollah. And that’s a real problem. I also think that the plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems. So we’ll see how this issue plays out, but I certainly have concerns. We probably ought to pass a law that requires the federal government to buy everything from and in the United States of America. I think this would be a good opportunity to do that.
00:08:01
And I can think of other things, I bet the president can too, that Qatar can do to be helpful to us. If they’d like to be helpful, they could start by rooting out the Islamic radicalist terrorists. I can assure you there will be plenty of scrutiny of whatever that arrangement might look like. There are lots of issues around that that I think will attract very serious questions if and when it happens. It’s not going to happen. But America and the world are going to have another clarifying picture of Donald Trump emerge as the most corrupt president in history, desperately trying to obtain literally the biggest payoff in history. That image of Donald Trump being supplied entirely by Donald Trump’s own stupidity comes immediately after Donald Trump has delivered to all Trump voters and to the world the very clear image of President Scrooge, as Republican strategist Karl Rove called him.
00:08:55
After weeks of Donald Trump exposing his stupidity about tariffs and Christmas and Barbie dolls, the crazy Trump worldwide trade war that he is in the process of abandoning has exposed just how stupid Donald Trump is about who pays tariffs and how harmful the Trump tariffs are to all Americans and to Christmas in this country. The Trump tariffs are going to fade away. But the way Donald Trump defined himself in his mad pursuit of his failed trade war should become a dominant image of Donald Trump to the majority of Americans. And the obvious corruption of Donald Trump’s sure-to-fail corrupt scheme to get himself a 747 will also live long after Donald Trump gives up on his mad dream of his 747 built for a dictator who funds Hamas.
00:09:59
There’s no such thing as ‘blood money’ for Donald Trump. Oh, no. Hamas did what they did on October 7th in Israel, murdering hundreds of Israelis with the full financial backing of the dictator who wants to give Donald Trump a 747. The dictator who Donald Trump wants to accept a 747 from. And Donald Trump wants to take it. Because he doesn’t care whose blood is on your hands when you are handing him what he lyingly calls now a ‘free’ plane. This is a humiliation tour of the Middle East for Donald Trump, but he’s too stupid to know it. Every previous president who ever visited with a Middle Eastern leader, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II, has done so with dignity and never once suggested to any of those leaders that they could buy a president’s affection and loyalty with anything.
00:10:58
And so. Every one of the dictators who will be shaking Donald Trump’s hand in the Middle East this week will be looking down at him as someone who lives beneath them, as someone who takes their secondhand junk, their secondhand toys. The President of the United States, who last week was telling American kids how many toys they could have for Christmas, is now humiliating himself with those Middle Eastern dictators by showing them just how much he covets their toys. If I had to name the worst lie Donald Trump has told, it was the one he told about 9/11 in his first presidential campaign, where on the debate stage in South Carolina, Donald Trump told the lie that he lost, quote, hundreds of friends on 9/11.
00:11:54
I immediately tweeted that Donald Trump lost zero friends on 9/11. No one else in the news media even noticed that lie. The next morning on Meet the Press, Donald Trump, possibly chastened by my tweet, which he used to read religiously in those days, reduced his hundreds of friends to many friends. No one on Meet the Press called him out about that lie. I immediately tweeted that that was a lie. Again, no one else in the news media cared or noticed it. Donald Trump lost zero friends on 9-11. Donald Trump tried to steal the grief of thousands of people who lost loved ones on 9-11. He tried to steal that grief in South Carolina, where he assumed everyone there would think that as a New Yorker, he must have lost friends on 9-11.
00:12:43
Now, zero. Donald Trump attended zero 9-11 funerals. Donald Trump is now cutting funding for first responders on 9-11 who are suffering the life-threatening health consequences of the toxins that they inhaled after that event, cleaning up ground zero. Many of those first responders have died of cancer. The 9-11 families have released a message to Donald Trump tonight saying, ‘We know the President is enthusiastic about Saudi economic investments in the United States, but the 9-11 families will not stay silent while the Saudis keep denying their involvement with the terrorist attacks that destroyed our families,’ said Terry Strada, national chair of 9-11 Families United. The president may want us to move on. But there is no chance of that happening until the Saudis cease their decades-long lies about the role that their agents and institutions played in the murder of our loved ones.
00:13:41
A 747 is the physically biggest hunk of corruption Donald Trump, or anyone else really, has ever trafficked in. But in dollar terms? $400 million for a 13-year-old plane in dollar terms? It’s nothing compared to what Donald and his sons are up to now. Our first guest tonight, Eric Lipton, reports in The New York Times that in the weeks preceding Donald Trump’s trip touring Middle East dictatorships, his sons have, quote, ‘Pursued a blitz of family money-making ventures capitalizing on their father’s name and power, each seemingly trying to outdo the other. It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars, a luxury hotel in Dubai, a second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, two cryptocurrency ventures based in the United States, a new golf course and villa complex in Qatar, and a new private club in Washington.
00:14:41
In many cases, these new deals promoted over the last week will personally benefit not only Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but also President Trump himself. Other reporting in The New York Times says, quote, it is unclear what foreign policy goals, if any, will be advanced on this visit. And Donald Trump made clear today, we may never know what Donald Trump does for whom on this trip. Oh, what I do for the crown prince. Leading off our discussion tonight is Eric Lipton, New York Times investigative reporter. Eric, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I struggle to keep up with what you have so carefully been reporting in the New York Times and diagramming about this web of business interests that Donald Trump and his sons are pursuing.
00:15:34
What are you watching as he moves through the week in the Middle East? Well, he’s kind of matched his family business. Ventures in the Middle East, in the countries that he’s picked, those three nations that he’s going to, in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and Qatar are three of the most active spots for both cryptocurrency and real estate ventures that the Trump family is currently pursuing. So it seems impossibly coincidental that he is landing and visiting with the leaders in the same nations where his sons are pursuing billions of dollars worth of deals. And his son, Eric Trump, just left Qatar. And he was also in the United Arab Emirates just a few weeks ago, both announcing the $2 billion investment from the United Arab Emirates and World Liberty Financial, and then also a new tower in Dubai with a with a Saudi-based real estate company and a multibillion-dollar project in Qatar that’s funded by the government of Qatar.
00:16:36
So this is just a few weeks ago that Eric Trump was basically in the same nations that his father is now. And while his dad is not currently announcing deals there, he is helping build the Trump brand, which his sons are selling and profiting off of. And those profits financially benefit the president himself as well. And the Trump businesses, especially in the later years, simply became a brand exercise. He kind of stopped building anything and was just putting his name on projects that people involved in projects were paying huge amounts of money for that name. Is that the essence of the deals that we’re seeing now? That’s the bulk of the real estate deals they’re doing, mostly branding deals.
00:17:18
They also do manage the book when they when they do, for example, in Dubai it’s going to be a Trump International Hotel and in Oman there’s going to be a Trump Golf Course and Trump Hotel and Villas. So often when they have a Trump International Hotel they then will be they’ll not only receive an upfront agreement branding fee worth millions of dollars and then they typically get a percentage cut of of condo or luxury unit sales, but then over the long term if they if it’s a Trump International Hotel or Trump Golf Course they typically get management fees that pay revenues to them. But for the most part, their real estate business has become globally a branding business, and while they have golf courses and the Trump Doral in Miami and Mar-a-Lago and a winery um and there, for the most part, globally they’re really their new ventures on the real estate side
00:18:12
are they sell their name and they collect revenue based on the brand and it’s not surprising that they’re selling in the parts of the world where they’re the most popular, in the Middle East and Vietnam um they’re not selling you know there. Is a project in Serbia, but that’s the only project in Europe, and they’re they’re more popular in that part of Europe than in you know the core of Western Europe. And the first Trump presidency during the transition, we all remember the big uh press conference, so-called at Trump Tower in Manhattan where they brought out stacks of paper pretending that those stacks of paper represented some sort of written agreement that prevented Donald Trump from in any way engaging in any aspect of the family business, and the boys would just take care of everything.
00:18:59
There was a sense then that they had to at least pretend that they weren’t trying to profit off the presidency. They skipped that part this year. Well, that document was signed in January 2017 when the president was starting his first term. And he designated all of his LLCs to his two oldest sons, who continue to be the trustees. But the thing that never happened, and through his first term as well, was that he was still the financial beneficiary of most of those LLCs so for example that the you know Mar-a-Lago the club that he has in Palm Beach or the Trump Durell or the with the hotel in Washington he was still receiving financial benefits and we could see that in his annual financial disclosure report and he never signed away the financial interest.
00:19:51
He signed away his leadership interest in the companies. And that still continues to be the case. The big distinction in his second term is that in the first term, they agreed not to do any new international deals. And this time, they are racing to find as many international deals as they can. And not only are they doing international deals, but they’re doing deals with foreign countries. In Serbia, they’re planning to build a hotel on land that’s owned by the government of Serbia. In Oman, they’re currently building a project on government-owned land in Oman. In Qatar, they have a project that’s backed by the government of Qatar. And in UAE, they have $2 billion of government-backed funds that are going into their crypto company, World Liberty.
00:20:31
So they’re actually doing deals with foreign governments that Trump is having to interact with as president and set foreign policy. At the same time as he’s directly engaging with them and profiting from them as a business person. I want to get a last word from you before you go about the cryptocurrency business that Donald Trump is now in and how it’s an international operation and that money is coming into him that is just going straight in. This is a method of putting money straight in his pocket. It’s pretty extraordinary. I mean, they have overnight become one of the largest issuers of stable coins in the world. They have more than $2 billion in deposits, most of which come from the government of Qatar.
00:21:10
At the same time, they’re selling a meme coin that has 220 people participate in effectively an auction to get the right to have dinner with the president, which is going to take place next Thursday at his golf course in Virginia. And a number of them, as we investigated, some of the bidders were foreign entities that were trying to you know, asked the president for policy changes that would benefit their company. So they were paying money directly to the family of the president and the president himself in order to gain access to the president to try to influence United States policy. It’s a pretty unusual situation. There aren’t many precedents for that in American history, but that’s what Trump has been doing through his family in recent weeks. Eric Lipton of the New York Times, thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight. Thank you. Coming up, our next guest says Donald Trump is engaging in, quote, corruption on an epic scale. Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin will join us next.
00:22:16
What happens when the Attorney General of the United States is a former lobbyist, a former lobbyist for the dictator of Qatar who calls himself the Emir of Qatar? That attorney general will then write a letter for you to the Secretary of Defense saying it’s perfectly legal for the Defense Department to accept a gift from Qatar and then spend a billion or two dollars to convert that gift of a 747 to become as useful as Air Force One. And then it’s also perfectly legal for the Secretary of Defense to just give that multi-billion dollar gift. To Donald Trump, in the guise of giving it to his presidential library, which means Donald Trump can just use it as his personal flying vehicle for the rest of his life with the jet fuel financed by contributions to the Trump Presidential Library.
00:23:13
The Washington Post reports that the dictator of Qatar has paid Donald Trump’s, quote, Attorney General, FBI Director, and Head of the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, to lobby or consult on behalf of the country and its royal family; a Washington Post review of Foreign Agents Registration Act filings and disclosures found. The president will end his trip in Abu Dhabi, where his family’s cryptocurrency venture, already at the center of allegations of corruption, is increasingly intertwined with Middle Eastern investment last week. An investment firm backed by Abu Dhabi said it plans to plow $2 billion into the venture. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. And Congressman Raskin, I worry that the simplicity and the obviousness of the literally, physically biggest payoff in history, a 747, will take enough attention.
00:24:13
That the real big money cash in the pocket payoffs, cryptocurrency and otherwise, might not get the focus they deserve. Well, that’s right. But just because you’re robbing a bank in broad daylight doesn’t mean you’re not robbing a bank. And he’s clearly robbing a bank. Look, we’ve got to use this as the teaching seminar for all of America about how utterly unconstitutional this arrangement is. And for some reason now, this flying grift-or Con Air Force One, as some people are calling it-has caught the public eye and the public imagination. And it’s really broken through. People understand that the President of the United States, without the consent of Congress, cannot be collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from foreign states or governments. The framers drew a very bright line on that.
00:25:10
The exception is if you go to Congress and you ask for Congress’s consent to do it. Donald Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson, actually went to Congress to ask whether he could keep a gift from Simone Bolivar that he loved. And Congress said no, and Andrew Jackson turned it over. Abe Lincoln went to ask whether he could keep some beautiful elephant tusks that he got from the King of Siam in the middle of the Civil War in 1862. And Congress said, thanks for coming. You’re doing a great job. But no, you can’t keep them. Turn them over to the Department of Interior. So at this point, with the Republicans incensed in outrage, with public anger growing, we’ve got to. In unison say, Donald Trump, bring your putative gift, your proposed gift to Congress and we will debate it there.
00:25:59
And you can make your case on why you think it doesn’t compromise national security, why it doesn’t undermine public integrity. We’ll have witnesses on different sides and Congress will decide it. And that’s what we’ve got to do with all of his crypto investments and his meme coin and so on, because these are just. Open, gaping gulfs within which they’re funneling money from foreign governments directly to the Trump family and to Donald Trump himself. To stick with the plane thing, just to game it out a couple of steps here, the deal for the new 747s was on the order of $3 billion. And Boeing’s already spent $5 billion trying to make those planes and hasn’t been able to deliver them yet. Years in overruns and cautions. Overruns.
00:26:47
So apply that to the to the Amir’s 747, which basically needs the same treatment. It needs to be stripped down and rebuilt as Air Force One, which will take years. It’ll also take possibly the way Boeing is going now, at least a couple of billion dollars, which would have to come from Congress, wouldn’t it? Yes, of course. And look, all of the members who I trust most on matters of national security, like Jim Himes from Connecticut, say this is an absolute disaster as a national security move. And it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to basically deconstruct and reconstruct that airplane. Donald Trump says it’s going to save us money. How is it going to save us money? We’re not getting rid of the one we already bought that is being commissioned for use as the new Air Force One.
00:27:42
We’re just going to have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more for this one, that maybe he gets to use for a year or a few months before he leaves office. But it’s basically a gift from Qatar and the American people to Donald Trump, violating both the foreign emoluments clause and the domestic emoluments clause, because the framers in their wisdom. Also, said the president is limited to his salary in office and cannot collect any other money for personal purposes from the federal government or from the states. Congressman Jamie Raskin, what was the Abraham Lincoln example again? I need to use that. It was the King of Siam. There were just some elephant tusks. OK, so I don’t know whether how much money maybe they were worth a thousand dollars, five hundred dollars. Who knows? But Congress wouldn’t let him have them. That’s what we need. If we really want to know the history of this, we need to turn to Jamie Raskin. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. You bet, Lawrence. And coming up, politically suicidal. That’s what one Republican senator calls the Trump budget bill that will cut Medicaid and take healthcare away from a total of 13 million people. That’s the Trump plan. That’s next.
00:29:03
Politically suicidal. That is what one Republican senator is saying about Donald Trump’s budget bill. That budget is now in trouble in Congress because some Republicans actually believed Donald Trump when he said this in February. Social Security won’t be touched. Other than if it’s fraud or something, we’re going to find it’s going to be strengthened. But it won’t be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched. Nothing. You don’t have to. I played that video for you here on this program because it’s a very, very important statement, won’t be touched. And a week later, Donald Trump supported a budget in the House of Representatives that promised the biggest Medicaid cuts in history. House Republicans have now delivered those cuts in writing.
00:29:49
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the $715 billion in Medicaid cuts approved by Donald Trump will take healthcare away from 8. 6 million people. Republicans’ plan, the Republican plan, Donald Trump’s plan, will also take health care away from millions more people by not renewing an expiring healthcare provision, so that the total number of people who will lose health insurance coverage under the Republican Trump plan is now 13. 7 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The only legislative opportunity the Congress realistically has to extend that expiring health care provision is in this Trump budget bill, and the Republicans have deliberately decided to not include an extension of that expiring provision in this bill, which is standard legislative procedure for expiring tax provisions in such legislation.
00:30:49
Republicans didn’t vote for any of the health care that they are now planning to vote to take away from 13. 7 million Americans. Republican Senator Joshua Hawley, likely future presidential candidate, prefers the original Trump campaign position of refusing to cut Medicaid. In the New York Times today, Senator Hawley said Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now a wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong, and politically suicidal. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, debated the bill today. Who do you believe? The people who are trying to cut this? By the way, to cut from quote unquote ‘undeserving’ people to give to ‘deserving’ people.
00:31:56
But they are cutting these Medicaid care and these Medicaid dollars to pay for tax cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires. So this money isn’t even going towards funding better care for people who are eligible. This money is going, and we are cutting money and healthcare from people and families who are suffering to pay for tax cuts for the rich. It is a crime happening in front of the American public right now. I yield back. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania. He is the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, and he’s a member of the Ways and Means Committee. Congressman, thank you very much for joining us. So we finally have it. We have it in writing. This is exactly what they’re doing.
00:32:44
They’re cutting Medicaid in the biggest way we’ve ever seen. Yes, as you just showed, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan CBO’s own analysis, when you take the Medicaid cuts, which are the biggest in American history, and combine that with the other cuts that they’re inflicting upon the Affordable Care Act, a shockingly high number, 13. 7 million Americans will lose their health coverage because of this legislation. No other bill in American history, no other event, not even the Great Depression, caused that many millions of Americans to lose their health coverage. And why? Because Republicans need to pay for their mega tax cuts for billionaires. It is, and I can’t believe I’m about to quote Josh Hawley here. But it is morally wrong.
00:33:34
So this is a big deal to have a Republican senator like that, not just say it, put it in writing in The New York Times and something he’s writing. This this is going to be fascinating to see if he can be forced to go along with this after saying what he said, saying that it’s morally wrong. Can can Senator Hawley now cast a vote that he has said is morally wrong? Well, no one can say he was misquoted. He wrote that in an op-ed. So those are literally his own words. I don’t know, given that, how he could possibly reverse himself. The question is, will enough House Republicans do something that they know is politically unbelievably unpopular? 81% of the American people polled a few weeks ago said they oppose cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts. And that was actually before the figures came out showing that at least 13. 7 million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage. Congressman, I want to squeeze in a break here. We have to, actually. I have no choice. But there are some Trump voters in Pennsylvania, in your state, who now regret their vote because of those Trump tariffs. I want to get your reaction to that when we come back with Congressman Brendan Boyle. We’ll be right back.
00:34:58
Everyone’s scared. That’s the headline in the Pennsylvania Independent today detailing how the state’s coffee roasters are feeling because of Donald Trump’s tariff war. The Pennsylvania Independent reports some coffee shop owners in Pennsylvania said they’ve already seen their expenditures and consequently the prices they charge their customers rise because of tariffs. Those owners can’t shift their sourcing to the U. S., because the U.S. Simply can’t grow enough coffee beans to meet the demand. An email to the Pennsylvania Independent and National Coffee Association spokesperson noted that the overwhelming majority of coffee that Americans drink comes from outside the country. The association spokesperson said just one percent of the country’s coffee comes from Hawaii and Puerto Rico. A local coffee shop owner added, ‘The tariffs is another layer to already inflated coffee prices.’ Doug Pinto, the owner of Steel Cup Coffee Roasters in New Kensington, wrote in an email to the Pennsylvania Independent, now all the importers are adding the 10% tariff tax onto each other.
00:36:03
These prices are the worst I’ve seen in almost 10 years in the roasting business. And Vox quotes a Pennsylvania voter saying, ‘we voted for Trump and Trump betrayed us.’ The truth is people voted for one thing, the economy, a good economy, and these tariffs are hiking everything up. Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania is back with us. I’m sure you saw that article. And big surprise, our coffee doesn’t come from around here. Yeah, it shows you just how unbelievably stupid some of these tariffs are, like tariffs on an island that is only inhabited by penguins. I mean, there are times when placing a tariff on a certain good from a certain country is warranted. That’s not what we’re talking about here at all.
00:36:54
You know, Donald Trump is the guy who sets the house on fire, comes and puts out the fire in a couple rooms, but not the entire fire, and then turns around and wants an award, saying, ‘God, no one’s talking about what a great firefighter I am.’ Please praise me more. And then, of course, you add on to that the level of corruption that we’re seeing, where now countries basically are lining up not to do good for the American people, but to personally line the pockets of Donald Trump and his family. In order to get better prospects. And the coffee example shows you why we have never imposed blanket tariffs before. Tariffs on individual products for individual reasons, but to tariff coffee in a country that doesn’t produce any coffee.
00:37:45
It is just breathtaking. The very first thing people drink every day has always, for all of their lives, come from other countries, mostly Brazil and Colombia, mostly South America. You know, that’s exactly right. When we look at the number of coffee shops there are, say, in my district in Philadelphia, and you look at the number of people who are employed by them, we’re actually talking about quite a large number. And, you know, when you read that quote from the voter in North Philly, it’s such a tragedy because he actually lives in an area that voted Democratic, but where the Trump number improved by more than double digits, heavily. Hispanic and Latino part of Philadelphia. They did it because they were concerned about inflation and prices going up after COVID.
00:38:32
And now what has happened? Some of the worst price jumps literally since the pandemic caused inflation. What’s going to happen to those same voters when they start finding out about Medicaid, when they start seeing members of their own family lose health care coverage? You know, I said this just a few hours ago in the Ways and Means Committee. We’re still eight hours in. And as soon as this is over, I’ll be back to the committee room. We’re probably going to go well into the night. I said, you know, Republicans are good at spinning the American people, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to spin the 13 and a half million Americans who are about to lose their health care because of this bill. No amount of spin, no amount of fancy talk will be able to convince them of something contrary to their own actual experience. So this will be devastating, I’m sorry to say, for the people of Pennsylvania and indeed for every state. But I think it will also be a tremendous political backlash on Republicans for doing this. Congressman Brendan Boyle, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Tonight’s last word is next.
00:39:46
What was at stake for North Carolina was really what was at stake for Americans. It’s this idea of when we have elections, do candidates who lose respect the outcome of those elections, or do they engage in gamesmanship to try and change the rules after the election? That was North Carolina Democrat Alison Riggs on this program last Wednesday after her Republican challenger conceded the election. She won by 734 votes in November. Today, Justice Riggs was sworn in for an eight-year term. In the last six months of this fight, many of you thanked me for my commitment and energy in this fight. It was never an option for me to give anything less. I learned from the people who fought, bled, and died for the right to have a democracy where we all get to be heard. And the reason I was able to stand resolute, not discouraged, and not intimidated was because I knew that I stood arm in arm with you protecting that precious fundamental right to vote. I will uphold the rule of law and the Constitution without fear or favor. And I will always, always stand up for your rights and freedoms. Thank you.
00:41:30
North Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs gets tonight’s last word.
FQAs
QA 1: Why did Trump accept a Boeing 747 gift from Qatar?
Context:
- Trump reportedly plans to accept a 13-year-old Boeing 747 (valued at $400 million) from Qatar’s authoritarian regime under the guise of transferring it to the U.S. Air Force. In reality, the aircraft would become a private asset through the “Trump Presidential Library.”
- Qatar, a major funder of Hamas, has drawn criticism for this arrangement, labeled the “largest presidential corruption scheme in history.”
Key Controversies:
- Legality: The U.S. Constitution prohibits presidents from accepting foreign government gifts without congressional approval. Trump bypassed this by claiming the Air Force would receive the plane, though its true purpose is personal use.
- Cost Overruns: Retrofitting the aircraft would cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 billion—far exceeding its residual value—and would not be completed during Trump’s term.
- National Security Risks: Concerns include potential spyware embedded in the plane and Qatar’s ties to terrorist organizations.
Political Reactions:
- Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin called this “corruption on an epic scale,” citing historical precedents (Lincoln and Jackson) to demand congressional oversight.
- Growing Republican opposition argues the deal “harms national interests.”
QA 2: Why is Trump’s Medicaid cuts plan called “political suicide”?
Context:
- A Republican budget bill backed by Trump proposes $715 billion in Medicaid cuts, stripping healthcare from 13.7 million Americans while funding tax breaks for billionaires like Elon Musk.
Key Data:
- Impacted Groups: 8.6 million low-income individuals would lose Medicaid directly, while 5.1 million others would lose coverage due to expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.
- Funds Redirection: Savings from cuts would offset tax reductions for ultra-wealthy individuals.
Political Dynamics:
- Republican Senator Josh Hawley publicly condemned the bill as “morally wrong and politically suicidal,” contradicting Trump’s promises to protect working-class Americans.
- Pennsylvania coffee shop owners and voters accused Trump of “betrayal,” citing a 20% surge in coffee costs due to tariffs exacerbating economic strain.
QA 3: How do Trump’s tariffs harm U.S. industries?
Case Study (Pennsylvania Coffee Sector):
- Absurdity: The U.S. produces no coffee beans, yet Trump imposed a 10% tariff on South American imports, passing costs to consumers.
- Real-World Impact:
- Pennsylvania roasters face decade-high production costs, forcing small cafes to raise prices or lay off staff.
- Voters lament, “Trump betrayed us,” with former supporters expressing regret over economic promises.
Underlying Contradictions:
- Trump claims tariffs “protect U.S. industries,” but flawed policy design (e.g., taxing uninhabited islands) exposes hypocrisy.
- Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle likened Trump’s approach to “setting the house on fire and then claiming credit for putting it out.”
