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Donald Trump previews his vision for a second turn and agenda that proved divisive with swing voters in 2022. Would you sign a federal abortion ban into law? What I'll do is negotiate so that people are happy. After a town hall pedaling election lines promising to pardon January 6th riders and refusing to pick sides of the war in Ukraine, his 2024 rivals remain largely silent.
Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war? I want everybody to stop dying. As the field of challengers grows, can any of his rivals take him on without alienating his support? I'll talk to former Republican Congressman Will Hurt of Texas who is considering his own bid for president in 2024.
Bless moral compass, after a jury found Trump liable for his sexual abuse, his opponents, mostly silent. I just don't think it's where the American people are focused. Does character matter anymore for Republican primary voters? I'll ask Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity today.
And border crisis. I want to be very clear. Our borders are not open. As the Biden administration braces for a surge of the southern border, it's Democrats that are divided.
I oppose the Biden administration plan to end Title 42. Will the president listen to his base or those close to the political center? I'll talk to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Joining me for insight and analysis are New York Times, White House correspondent Peter Baker, Politico, Playbook Co-author Rachel Bay, Republican strategist Al Cardness, and Kimberly Yacken-Store, senior opinion writer for The Boston Globe.
Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press. From NBC News and Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
Good Sunday morning and a happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. What we saw this week is a Republican party that is paralyzed by Donald Trump. Elected Republicans and Trump's 2024 rivals are eager to move on, but not sure how to take on Trump and they're terrified of alienating his supporters. It makes them desperate to follow the voters rather than trying to lead them.
And the paralysis is in the party has been key to Donald Trump's strength. And Iowa's Saturday, forward to Governor Ron DeSantis, who's having to reboot his campaign before it's even gotten off the ground, invited a political comments to Tyler Hasey last week, letting reporters know he does plan to announce really, really soon. And yet, he tiptoeed around his criticism of Trump, never mentioning him by name. We must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years.
The time for excuses is over. If we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again. DeSantis, came to Iowa with all the presidential trappings, even had a bus wrapped with the words joined team DeSantis for president. But it is an open question whether Trump supporters even accept the premise that DeSantis was arguing there that Donald Trump has been losing.
And this week, after Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, his 2024 opponents barely blinked, perhaps spooked by the Republican reaction to the Manhattan indictment, even Mike Pence, who rose to political prominence, arguing that a president in the United States should be held to the highest moral standards, defended him. It's just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don't think it's for the American people to focus. Well, whether it's the American people or Republican primary voters, in our recent NBC News polar whopping 68% of Republican primary voters believe the multiple investigations into Trump are politically motivated and that Republicans need to defend him. Perhaps Pence is simply responding to those numbers because it was just 26% who said the party needs to find a different nominee who won't be distracted.
The Republican Party, which once impeached a president over an affair with an intern, no longer finds moral wrong doing to disqualify. Trump's rivals also had very little say when he sketched out a second term vision, which is likely to turn off swing voters during a televised town hall this week. He called the January 6th insurrection a beautiful day, said he would pardon many of the January 6th writers, he embraced the possibility of the fall, Democrats don't agree to massive cuts, even refused to answer whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war in Ukraine right now or even say whether Putin is committing war crimes or is a war criminal. Trump said he was so honored to be the one to terminate Roe v.
Wade and he also refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. So right now the only person Donald Trump appears to be helping is Joe Biden, whose polling problems would be magnified without the circus that surrounds Trump. To be sure, President Biden has plenty of challenges and this is likely to start up a very difficult summer with both the border and debt ceiling testing him. And the best case scenario for the White House is that the uncomfortable compromises that they're likely to have to make simply do no further political damage with Biden struggling in the polls, Democrats running in competitive center races, including Pearson sentiment, independent who caucuses with them are finding it easier to criticize him right now.
They made the decision to end Title 42 today. They also made a decision to not prepare for the end of Title 42. I post a Biden administration plan to end Title 42 this week without a real plan in place for the strain that will put on already broken immigration system. And joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut Senator Murphy.
Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's this title 42 issue. Look, this is the fingerprints of all of Congress on it. This says the fingerprints of two presidential administrations.
What could be done right now that would give you confidence that the administration can handle this? So Title 42 is required to be lifted by law, right? Title 42 allows you during a pandemic to stop individuals from presenting at the board and applying for asylum. And now that the pandemic is over, the president doesn't have discretion to keep Title 42 in place.
So for all these Republicans who are complaining that the president acts outside of his authority, in this case, they seemingly want him to violate the law and turn people around at the border. The president has not been sitting on his hands like Republicans would allege the president has actively been actively engaged in trying to manage this crisis. He has negotiated important agreements with Mexico so that Mexico takes more of these migrants. He has surged thousands of troops and asylum officials and board patrol to the border to handle this emergency.
And he's put in place a really tough new rule that some frankly say goes beyond his authority to say to migrants, if you don't apply for asylum before you get to the United States, we're going to turn you right back around. Now, that doesn't mean that you aren't still going to have a lot of people showing up at the border because that's just a consequence of having two years in which males, single adults couldn't apply for asylum. But it's just simply not true that the president hasn't done enough to try to be as ready as possible. I understand what you're saying about the preparation for this moment.
But politically, other than introducing a bill on day one, he never talked about it. He didn't lean a shoulder in, build back better, was the focus, everything else was the focus. And look, the Republicans have dirtier hands on immigration. I mean, but the Democrats don't have clean hands on this either.
Well, Republicans have had multiple opportunities to come to the table and pass immigration reform that would fix the problem at the border. And my belief is that while you have a small group of Republicans who legitimately want to engage the majority of that party, the lights at chaos at the border. You saw some of my colleagues on Tuesday, as soon as votes were done, rush down to the border to take smiling photographs with the border patrol, essentially celebrating the fact that there was chaos because they believe that there's political gain to be had. So I think Americans know that its Republicans, not Democrats, have been sitting on the outside when it comes to fixing our broken immigration system.
Are you supportive of re-instituting Title 42? There's a bill in the Senate that could do that. It's gotten a little more support from Democrats, particularly ones around the ballot in 2024, which actually you are too, not in as purple of a state as others. Would you be reluctantly supportive of that if you thought it was a tool needed?
I'm not because that just pushes the problem down the line, right? That just gives you one or two more years of individuals being denied entry. Whenever Title 42 is lifted, you are going to have this temporary problem of massive numbers of new people arriving at the border. And by the way, Republicans have been castigating the president for not lifting COVID restrictions fast enough.
The only COVID restriction Republicans seem to want to keep in place is the one that keeps people that don't look like them from coming into the United States. Why do you think the economic argument hasn't worked to get Republicans to the table? Because there are inflation problems. You can make one case on the free money issue with the Fed.
You can make some case there. It's a real issue with a labor shortage. And it's having an issue on wages. That is our economic problem, yet it has no impact.
So despite my tough words for how Republicans approach this issue, I think there is still an opportunity, at least in the Senate, for bipartisan immigration reform, maybe not the size of the bill in 2013. But I do think there are a group of Republicans in the Senate who recognize that we have this massive labor shortage everywhere in the country. You see help wanted signs and that there is an ability to help the American economy by letting more people in the country legally. So I wouldn't be surprised if you see some discussions begin in the Senate in the wake of the House action last week to try to find some common ground immigration reform.
You think that in a piecemeal direction, it's always going to be piecemeal at this point. The word comprehensive just throw it away. Yeah, I think right now you've got to do the pieces that are most urgent. And to me, that's border security, that's asylum reform.
And then that's doing something about the dreamers who are here and need some help. That ceiling, it looks like the White House is not negotiating. It's something you didn't want to see spending caps around the table. They're debating between two years, 10 years.
Are you comfortable with a deal like that? Or do you think if you're going to cut a deal on spending, that maybe out of tax facts ought to be a part of this? Well, if we want to get serious about deficit reduction, then you have to put tax increases for billionaires and corporations on the table. That's why I'm pretty skeptical that there's going to be an agreement in the next two weeks.
And what worries me? Even a punted agreement for three months. Well, what worries me is that Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, even Mitch McConnell, have said that if we can't get an agreement in the next few weeks, default is off the table. The only leader who says we are going to light the American economy on fire, if we can't get an agreement in the next 10 to 14 days is Kevin McCarthy.
And that is deeply worrying to me because there's an opportunity to talk about their really unpopular agenda of cuts. But the time to do that is when we're negotiating the budget. Would you start invoking the 14th Amendment and start paying the bills now if you were Joe Biden in order to essentially launch the legal discussion about the 14th Amendment? I don't want to give Joe Biden advice, but I think we should do our job.
I think that's a precedent to just absolve Congress from being adults. I want to talk about the issue of guns. And look, this has been something that you've been working on for quite some time, trying to slide small increases in gun regulations or big ones. We saw another court ruling that essentially invoked and said, hey, there's just not much you could do because of the Second Amendment, this absolute version and interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Given that we have a court system that this is what it's going to be, how do you tackle gun regulation under this environment? Do you go for a new constitutional amendment or do you just hope judges philosophies change over the next generation? Right now, the Supreme Court has made it clear under the Heller decision, which still controls. They say there's a right to private gun ownership, but there is also an ability for Congress to regulate who owns weapons and what kind of weapons are owned.
I think we have to continue to operate under that construct. And I really see progress, right? We broke a 30-year law jam last year by passing the first major gun safety initiative. You're seeing Republican states like Tennessee looking at red flag laws, Texas considering raising the age to buy assault weapons.
I think our movement is in a position to win. Does it worry me what some of these district courts are doing absolutely? But right now, I think our focus has about got to be growing the movement and continuing to capitalize on the progress of last year. But it does sound like you got to do it within the construct of, look, you're probably not going to be able to regulate much having to do with access to the gun by anybody over 18.
Well, listen, if the Supreme Court eventually says that states or the Congress can't pass universal background checks or can't take these assault weapons off the streets, I think there's going to be a popular revolt over that policy. Of course, this already pretty illegitimate is going to be in full crisis mode. I want to put up something from our last poll. A majority thought that President Biden shouldn't seek a second term and even Democrats.
And they all pointed at the same thing, his age and his abilities to do the job. What gives you confidence that he's the best candidate that the Democrats can put up in 2024. So when we broke that 30-year large jam, 30 years of inaction on guns, it was a month in which we were negotiating that piece of legislation, Joe Biden was intimately involved in that process. I talked to Joe Biden probably every three or four days.
He made a bold decision to go to the country and speak directly to them when many of his advisors told him not to. That bill would not have passed with Joe Biden's personal involvement. And so I have seen how effective this president is. And this narrative that Republicans are spinning is just their best argument against him because they can't argue on the merits.
They can argue on the policies that he's passed because he's had one of the most successful policy agendas of any president in their first two years. Do you think that will translate into defeating Donald Trump? And what Joe Biden reminds us is that elections are not a referendum. They are a choice.
And as you pointed out, Donald Trump is advertising every single day what an irresponsible choice he is. Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut. Appreciate you coming up. Thank you.
Respect with us. Thank you, sir. When we come back, he wants his party to move on from Trump, but says no one is taking him on effectively. I'm gonna talk to former Republican Congressman Wilbur, who is considering his own race for president in 2020.
Welcome back. As Donald Trump's 2024 Republican rivals struggle with how to challenge him, when he's potentially candid, it says no one in the current field is taking him on effectively. Wilbur served as a CIA officer in the clandestine service for nearly a decade. He worked as a senior advisor at a cyber security firm.
He represented Texas's 23rd district, which is on the border between the US and Mexico, in the House of Representatives for three terms before choosing to leave in 2021. While in Congress, he famously drove 1,600 miles from San Antonio to DC, with then Democratic Congressman federal work, streaming their bipartisan road trip on Facebook live after their flights were canceled because of a snowstorm. There's a reminder of the way politics used to work around here. After 19 children and two teachers were killed in the evolving mass shooting in his former district, heard again called for universal background checks and a federal red flag law, now heard us calling for a reboot of the Republican Party.
And he is thinking about his own presidential run and has already made shots in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the former Republican Congressman, where he joins me now, Congressman heard welcome back to me. Thanks for having me. Can I also join you in wishing all these moms a happy mother's day? I was a mama's boy and saw the moms that are watching the show.
Even if your kids don't tell you enough, you're awesome. Yeah, I have texted my mother already this morning, right, mom. Anyway, let me start with what we saw this week. You, one of your cases for running is that you don't think other people are making an effective case.
Why do you think what happened to Donald Trump in that aging carol trial just sort of went away? It was almost dismissed out of hand as it being irrelevant to the decision-making of whether he should be the nominee of the GOP. I can't give you a clear answer on why that didn't impact more people, but here's what I do know. Even people that like Donald Trump and were proud to vote for him think that Donald Trump has a lot of baggage.
That's going to hurt Republicans' chances in 2024. A lot of those voters believe that Donald Trump's mouth gets him in the way and prevents us from talking about issues that matter. You've said at the top of your show, the GOP lost the House in 2018. We lost the Senate and the White House in 2020.
The red wave that should have happened in 2022 didn't happen, and all that is because of Donald Trump. Isn't this the information ecosystem of his voter? Is this where I heard you heard Governor DeSantis make this case? Hey, aren't you tired of losing?
But his voter is not leaving us. Like this is part of the issue, isn't it? It's part of the issue, but here's the rally. The election's not today.
I think the fact that in that CNN town hall was just looking backwards. He's not looking to the future. He's not looking about how do we tackle things like inflation? What would he put forward to create to solve the border crisis?
How are we going to make sure that America stays the most important country in the world? If we're constantly looking backwards, that's a losing strategy. But the election is many months away. You sound like a candidate in the before times.
Before that was Trump. I mean, look, before Donald Trump came along, I would have said, hey, the candidate that speaks more optimistically always wins. That is not what happened. He has totally inverted both the ideas.
You don't talk about the candidates. We don't talk about the future. You usually get punished. He does it.
Why do you think this is? Well, look, I know why you're jaded and why you're concerned, but here's the reality that I've learned of crisscrossing the country. People believe in the United States of America. People want to stand up and be proud of their country.
When you talk to individual voters, they care about making our role in the rest of the world. And so don't be discouraged. The reality is two-thirds of Americans want somebody other than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. That's not the rematch from hell.
Sorry, moms. I don't mean to say that. But nobody wants that as a choice. And so there's better options out there.
And that's why we need to get more people voting in primaries. And only about 23% of the country actually votes in primaries. If we had more people voting in primaries, we'll see better choices in November, choices that we would actually like and be excited to vote for. So in some ways, your political resume would have been exactly the type of resume the Republican Party would have been looking for.
You were in a swing district. You've had to appeal to a 50-50 district. But the incentive structures don't seem to reward anybody that gets the center. In fact, the four most centrist senators, all right, if you look at the four, Sinema, Manchin, Murkowski, and Romney, all of them are more unpopular in their own party than they are in the other party.
So it is really hard to be a centrist and be popular in your party. How do you change that structure? Well, that wasn't the case in the realities for me when I was in Congress, right? Let's start with nobody thought a black Republican could win in a 72% Latino district, right?
And then nobody thought, including you, Chuck, thought that I was going to be able to win reelection. But I did, and how did I do that? I went to places that didn't identify necessarily with my party, and I showed up. And here's what I've learned, whether you're in ruby red towns or deep blue cities, people care about putting food on the table or roof over their head and making sure the people they love are healthy, happy, and safe.
Folks know that we are living in complicated times and that we need some common-sense solutions to solve our problems. And guess what? Most Americans know that we're better together. And so the reality is, yes, history says these things are true, but my experiences are different.
And it's a playbook on how to solve these problems and appeal to independents and Democrats who are as frustrated with the direction of the Democratic Party as that's our opportunity in 2024. Well, let's talk about the border here. You know, when you pull the idea of increased border security, a pathway to citizenship with background checks, you get 75% support across the border. And I'm going to there, including Republicans.
And yet, there's this belief that if you compromise at all on immigration, and really, immigration is not the only issue, but if you compromise a little bit, and you get 70% of what you want, but you don't get it all, you're going to get primary for it. And then you can't, and then so there's no incentive to solve the problem. How do you do that with immigration being a perfect example of that? Unfortunately, there's too many elected officials that are actually scared of their constituents, and they're afraid to go and take a message and explain things to people, because ultimately, they're lazy.
And the reality is, show up and talk about these issues. You're right. The solutions to these problems are there. It just requires political leadership, right?
Well, it's a political will in order to bring this forward. You know, I spent time when I was in Congress trying to work on this issue. What's happening at the border is an absolute crisis. There's ways to solve the problem.
There's ways to actually improve and streamline legal immigration, have more people coming in, impact, or- They're all sitting on a shelf. This is like, there aren't- No, I mean, this is one of those- Oh, it's intr- it's intr- it's intr- Dracula, but the solutions are obvious, and nobody will hold hands in job off the clue. Because when you people are willing to go out there and sell some of these ideas, it's hard to explain how you solve immigration in the border crisis in 280 characters. But it requires people to go out and make that case, and explain these common sense solutions to these complicated problems.
I want to get your reaction to something President Biden said, at his commencement at Howard University. That's one of those dangerous terrorist guitar homeland has White Supremacy. Your experience dealing with terrorism in the CIA and- in- in- in- in the intelligence community. Is he right about this?
White supremacy is a problem, of course, and it's something that we shouldn't allow and be supportive and doesn't exist anywhere. It shouldn't be in our institutions, and it shouldn't be in our country. And it's another name to say racism, right? And so, yes, when you look at, and I would extrapolate like this a little bit further, when you look at most of our single military advisors, when they have come to Congress and explain what the biggest threat is, they always talk about the threat from within.
Oftentimes, it's this, the chaos in our political process, it's an ability for people to work together and get big things done. And so, yes, racism doesn't exist, the fact that the tree of life, we're having that, I'm hearing that, it's a civil tribal, it's a civil tribal layer this week. We shouldn't see a growth of that. You know, I look at this guy who leaked all of these secrets and he is worth learning more about him and what motivated him.
And he clearly had some violent tendencies and there was some, what does the military need to do to improve this thing process? Because there were plenty of yellow flags about this young man. It is pretty clear to me that a cursory investigation of him, a cursory background check, would have tapped him away from these sensitive files. How, that seems highly concerning.
Unfortunately, when you look at throughout the entire federal government, the way we do background checks, it's like we're still in 1982. I'm gonna learn more from somebody's digital profile than going to their neighbor 10 years ago and knocking on their door, right? And so, this lesson we should be able to go through and say, hey, how did this person get in and how do we stop someone like that from getting in in the first place? Oh, and by the way, why does someone like this have access to all this information?
They weren't going to be deployed. They weren't currently being deployed. There's some questions about the access that info. Before I let you go, when do you plan to make a decision?
Look, a decision has to be made about my future sometime very soon. And like I said, I never leave, I always leave over there. Before I got the memorial, before I got the memorial. I think a decision on anybody on what their future in politics has to be done before Memorial Day.
Well heard, former Congressman Texas, thanks for coming in. Thank you, Rebecca. Stay safe on the trail. When we come back, he's the Trump alternative who may announce his presidential run any day now.
But does Ron DeSantis need to reboot his campaign before it starts? And what's next? Welcome back, painless here. Rachel Beit, co-author of political playbook.
Peter Baker, the Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Republican strategist Al Cardness. I can't really act in store, senior opinion writer for the Boston Globe. Look, a lot has happened this week. I feel like the presidential race in the Republican side is obviously where there was a lot of noise thanks to the town hall.
And we've got Ron DeSantis. He got Iowa to himself yesterday thanks to a weather issue with Donald Trump. We'll play another excerpt from his remarks just. Governing is not about entertaining.
Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling. It's ultimately about winning and about producing results. Al, I'm gonna start with you. What he said is a message that appeals to a lot of donors.
But is that a message that appeals to primary voters right now? No, no, I mean, look, the whole thing was, hey, Ron DeSantis is perfect. He's Donald Trump without the baggage. Well, that felt flat.
That doesn't work. You want to, you have two choices. Either it doesn't run and saves himself for 28. Where if he's gonna run, he's gonna get money and dirty, follow Donald Trump wherever he goes and hits him because no one is gonna take away Donald Trump's votes unless they feel the voters.
That is, that dispersion is even stronger than Donald Trump. That's interesting. It does not seem to be a Republican in the field. It's ready to take that advice.
No, I mean, it's still early with that caveat. But what we're saying, it's almost like- It's getting late early though. It's getting late, but you know when you watch a race and you have a front runner, you see the other runners that are deciding what to do. Do they just kinda stay right behind?
Do they try to challenge him early? Do they try to come from the outside? And you're seeing all of these candidates trying to work that out, right? Ron DeSantis tried one thing, that didn't seem to be going very well, and now he's sort of trying to switch strategies.
There's only been one primary before involving Donald Trump and that took everyone by surprise. No other candidate knew how to handle him. I don't think they know yet how to handle him now. Yeah, I mean, you can't blame them.
If you look at these polls, I mean, look, there was a, there was a full out a few days ago that showed that only 7% of Republican primary voters actually wanna see a candidate that goes and attacks Donald Trump. I mean, they don't wanna hear. It's a message that they don't want. And so that puts these candidates, specifically Ron DeSantis, in a really delicate position here.
You know, he can't attack him head on, but he's still gotta make the argument that he's a better candidate. The DeSantis campaign is clearly trying to do this, like, delicate two-step dance, where, you know, his outside super pack is playing, you know, the bad guy and going after Trump. But then he's saying, look, I'm only gonna talk policy here. Will that work?
Peter, I don't know. To me, it looks like they're announcing up out on the timeline that they always wanted to have, but this looks like a team that is reacting. Yeah, constantly reacting. And now the campaign looks like it.
Oh, are they moving the announcement up? And now they're doing this. And it, boy, it's not a way to start. They've lost control of the narrative, right?
I mean, they had a pretty strong narrative going in and they don't have it right now. But let's look, let's also step back for a minute. We've seen this before. I mean, there's always a swoon over the new candidate.
Oh my gosh, he's sort of, she's really great. And then we kind of get tired of them and say, well, that's a great after all. And sometimes I come back and sometimes I don't. So we don't know, is this, you know, a Bill Clinton or is this a Rick Perry?
You know what I mean? Like, this is a fall flat and that's it. His strategy seems to be not so much doing what Al said, which is a front-line attack. Trump, but let's defeat himself.
Wait and see what happens. We've got three possible indictments still coming against the Donald Trump. It's not, it's not a bad gamble maybe for Trump to say. Let's wait and see if Trump falls short.
And then I'm there to pick up pieces. Oh, it's shocking to me though, is how many donors are comfortable saying, after meeting with Ron DeSantis, I'm still shopping. That's alarming for him. That's alarming for him.
Okay, and it doesn't be around the bush. No, the clue is how you get to be notorious enough to be competitive. I like what he's a hutch at since doing. I mean, he's frontal, he's critical.
And at the same time, he seems rational. Now, can someone like that, you know, gain any traction in our party's primary closely? All of this. Right now I'm gonna put up some of the criticism that Biden's been getting on Title 42, mostly coming from Senator Surab for the election of 2024, shared Brown, both parties have failed on this.
John Tester, he, you know, it means to anyone, including President Biden, Joe Manchin, the administration failed properly to scare us to the other border. The irony to this, Kimberly is you get the sense that the Republicans, they're almost, they're distracted from focusing on Biden because Donald Trump is a constant distraction. Yeah, but they also have their talking points down on anything related to immigration. You know, with all respect to Congressman Hurd, it's the Democrats who have to deal with the complexities of actually explaining how immigration reform works and coalesce around that and that's really difficult.
Whereas over the years, Republicans have just boiled it down, not to just 280 words, but to three, build a wall or stop amnesty. And so they have that messaging locked that leaves Democrats actually having to explain how the real work is done and politically that's a lot harder. Yeah, Rachel, this just feels like no matter what happens in the next couple of months, the White House is gonna have a difficult political experience. Yeah, I mean, it's not just not cynical, but they could send everyone down to the border to sort of stop everything, everyone from coming over, and they're still gonna face problems from voters.
I mean, if you look at the polling, you see that, this is an issue that really helps Republicans and hurt Biden. I mean, more, I'm the majority of Americans believe that Biden is totally ignoring the border and they're certainly not doing enough. And so even though they're trying to take steps right now, I mean, is that gonna resonate with folks? Clearly not.
If it does, it's gonna take a lot of terrible images on television of chaos down there. Right now they don't have the votes to do that in the Senate, but it is really telling that you have someone like Sherri Brown, who is a progressive, always in lockstep at the White House saying, look, they're not doing enough, and we need to extend title four to two for two more years. Here, this is a party that is sticking by Joe Biden because of what they say on the other side. In three months, if his numbers are not improving and he's agreed to budget caps and we know that the budget talks are gonna get, I mean, do you think this unity holds?
You know, there's not a lot of avenue for somebody else to come in and challenge him for the nomination, that doesn't seem to be happening or really theoretically possible for a major candidate at this point, but you're right that there's uncertainty in the party because these polls pretty consistently show that the very least Biden is within a margin of error lead and in some cases even behind Trump. This is running against a candidate who's been impeached twice, who's been indicted for felonies, who's just been found liable for sexual abuse, who instigated insurrection, who caters to racists, and yet Biden is within the margin of error. This guy, of course, Democrats are gonna be nervous about that. Yeah, I can't really, I mean, what if the nominee isn't Trump?
I'm skeptical, but what if the nominee isn't Trump? Yeah, I think it's still really unknown. I mean, there's some polling that's out, it's still pretty early that shows that Biden's best shot is with Trump and Democrats really have to be prepared to make that case, but I think in that case, they actually have to make a case. I think the reaction to, by President Biden, to Trump CNN appearance, which is just like, who wants that, you know, I think what you got is not gonna be anywhere near enough.
They have to make the case about what they've done, what they can do and how they are better. And that's harder. It's actually harder to run for reelection and govern at the same time, but at the same time, you also have that ability. You have something to show actual work to put on the table and I don't think that Biden has done a good enough job at that.
At this point, without if Trump's over there, do you think that's the Biden's best asset? Yes, yes, I do. He would score well with Trump. Look, 50% of our country right now considers itself independent.
More Republicans don't want Trump to win. Want him to win. More Democrats, unfortunately, for him. Don't want Biden to win.
So we're gonna have a binary choice unless a third party comes in and this group, no labels, is trying hard to provide a third party. Do you think they get traction or not? It depends on who no labels comes up with. But they're doing all their hard work in terms of qualifying in a number of states.
And I think they'll end up doing that. The question is, will they come up with candidates that are attractive enough? After all, elections are about the people running for the office. I think they come up with a third option.
It's gotta be someone that people say, my gosh, you know, it better be someone outstanding. Yeah, I don't see Joe Manchin fitting that role, Peter Baker. No, no, I don't know. Who's his coalition there?
And the problem is he brought us from our existing fools and voters. And the reason a dynamic, magnetic personality out there, you can say, ah, that person runs the third party. I don't think there's the only guy out there. And he's not, we don't think he's eligible, though, you know, you still don't have standing unless you actually get elected.
And he'd be the only person. There is no other outsider like that that feels like would fill that vacuum. Well, not only that, but you know, that 50% of independent voters, they're all very different. I mean, are they socially conservative and, you know, liberally, physically more liberal?
Or is it flipped? So they all want something different. And it's hard to find them. And the system with 270 electoral votes makes it all, but I mean, we have to be an extraordinary candidate to be able to get over it.
Right, that's the interesting thing. That winning right off the bat with 270 votes is hard, not impossible but hard, but keeping other candidates from getting 270 votes is certainly feasible. And who knows who's gonna win the majority in the house when it comes to Trump? All right, well, if you really want a unity ticket, that's one way to potentially end up with a unity ticket, where the Democrats make control one chamber, Republicans control another, and all goes there.
Maybe that's the outcome we deserve, even if it's not one that we think the country can handle. With that, let me pause it there, by the way, happy mothers say happy first. Thank you. Thank you.
Up next, Americans are worried about the economy, even as it continues to improve. That uncertainty is setting the tone for 2020. Welcome back to the download time, as always. The economy will be a big topic heading into 2024.
And like so many issues these days, how well it is doing depends on who you ask and whether they have a D or an R next to their name. So what is the current state of the US economy? Well, the data presents a complicated picture that seems to be more about where people think the economy is going, rather than where it is. Because if you just look at where it is, it's doing quite well, GDP growth.
Look, it started gangbusters when Biden persuaded office, this is the post-COVID surge that certainly quickly expanded economic growth. Then we had the inflation dip there. Now we're sitting at just over 1% growth, and it's really being slowed down our economic growth by the Federal Reserve to tame inflation. Let's take a look at the unemployment rate.
This is on bid on steady decline since Biden took office. It's down to 3.4%. We still have a labor shortage in this country, or that has to do with our lack of compromise on immigration, by the way. This is being felt across the board on unemployment.
African-American unemployment is also at an all-time low at 4.7% neck gap between overall unemployment and black unemployment among the lowest of all time. Now, inflation, this is what has dogged this economy, and this is what has led many people to believe this isn't a great time in this economy. Obviously, we had an inflation rate that peaked in the summer of last year at 9.1%. It is still at 4.9% much higher than when Biden took office, but it has been on a steady decline, and some people think it'll be down to close to that 2% mark perhaps by the end of this calendar year.
So, why do people feel bad about the economy? It has to do with overall confidence about where they think the economy is going. So, consumer confidence down a bit from March to April, but here's why. Consumer confidence went up from March to April, sort of in the moment.
People said, yeah, the economy is good right now. In fact, better this month than it was last month. But then you ask them, what's it gonna look like in six months? And they still believe we are headed to a recession.
Now, people that believe this now for over a year, and a recession hasn't come. So, pessimism in many ways is what's making people think this is a bad economy. Before we go to break, this week I meet the press reports. Our deep dive is on AI, artificial intelligence.
It's promises and it's dangerous. My colleague, Jacob Board, has been covering the emergence of AI for years. Here's his excerpt from this story. Meredith Whitaker was an early AI researcher at Google.
She left after leading walkouts over military contracts and Google's handling of executive misconduct. Google made several changes to its products and policies after the outcry. But Whitaker says it's the issues around AI that worry her most. So, the idea that this is going to sort of magically become a source of social good, or that this is a, you know, kind of a natural substance that all of us have the ability to use equally.
And hey, teachers will be using it, and students will be using it, and nonprofits will be using it. It's simply not true. It's a fantasy use to market these programs. You can watch the full episode on The Power of AI.
It's on Peacock or YouTube, or it's after this broadcast on NBC News now at the bottom line. It's available right now. When we come back, the party that once demanded morality and their politicians is now led by someone that's been found liable for sexual assault and charged with 34 felony counts in a hush money scheme to pay off a porn star. So does character matter anymore for a Republican primary voter?
I'll talk to evangelical leader Russell Moore. Welcome back, Republicans once demanded morality in their politicians. Now it appears not so much. Just listen to what Lindsey Graham said on this program, as House Republicans weighed whether to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton, 25 years ago, for obstruction of justice and perjury.
It's one thing to go and commit a crime. It's another thing to flown it in front of the American people and never admit to your own doing. If the president would have the character to come forward and admit to the wrong doing that I think is obviously there, then maybe I would treat him differently. But what I'm looking for is a president that has a character trait to lead the American people that will put his interest secondary to the American people.
I'm looking for somebody who's repentant, somebody understands they made not just a mistake, but violated the law. The law allows people to be treated differently if they'll come before the court and say, I'm sorry, I'm guilty. But somebody plays the game to the bitter end, tries to have it both ways, dances on the head of the pan, in my opinion, has forfeited the right to lead this country. So does character matter in the Republican party?
Russell Moore has been one of the highest profile conservative evangelical voices speaking out against Donald Trump. From 2013 until his resignation in 2021, he was the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Now is the editor-in-chief of Christianity today. Dr.
Moore, welcome back to me to the press. Thanks for having me, John. I want to repeat the last sentence there from Senator Graham. Again, 25 years ago, this was Lindsey Graham.
Somebody that plays the games to the bitter end tries to have it both ways, dances on the head of a pan, in my opinion, has forfeited their right to lead this country. I want to get your reaction to that. That was 1998. Where are we today?
Well, it was right in 1998, and it's right now. And that's part of what's so confusing to many of us who were taught in the 1990s that character matters and are now told by often the very same people that it doesn't. I mean, evangelical Christianity emphasizes that the internal affects the external. And the fact that a person's character in private has everything to do with his or her character in public.
That has always been the case, and that's always been the issue here, is does character matter or does it not? You know, even former vice president Pence was kind of dismissive of the defamation verdict against with the aging Carol against the former president. You know, saying, well, I think this is something that the media cares more about. It was shocking.
That was a shocking reaction for me coming from the former vice president. Was it to you? I'm not sure what's going on in Vice President Pence's mind at this point. I know it was a shocking moment for me even after everything that we've seen.
And what's primarily shocking is the fact that here we are in a week where a former president of the United States is found liable for sexual abuse and sexual assault and defamation of a woman who survived such abuse and assault. And the country just yawns for the most part. That tells me that something has really, really badly gone awry in this country. And you add to it the demeanor and the content of President Trump's deposition to simply shrug off and defend the Axis Hollywood comments.
In 2015, I said that President Trump had the, or Donald Trump at the time, had the attitude toward women of a Bronze Age warlord. In that deposition, he said, yeah, as a matter of fact predated it back to millions of years ago and said unfortunately or fortunately, that's the way that it is. Well, think about the teenage girl in a church somewhere who's being abused by her youth pastor, wondering whether to come forward. And she hears not only that, but when the victim is ridiculed by a presidential candidate in front of a crowd, the response is laughter.
That has devastating implications. Four, eight years ago, when Donald Trump first ran, there was a divide inside the evangelical community and there was a lot of hand-wringing and many came down on the side of, well, if the choices between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump will appoint the judges that I like. You seem to indicate after Donald Trump announced his reelection plans after the November 2022 midterms that you didn't sense to divide anymore in the evangelical community that politically, they're all in. Do you still sense that?
Well, I think that's probably true with the politically activated, politically energized base. I don't think that's true of everyone. And that's one of the reasons why we see churches divided, we see families divided. I mean, one of the most dismaying aspects of the Trump years is the fact that Donald Trump is at the center of everything.
Almost every congregation that I know is either divided or tense about these sorts of political controversies coming out of the Trump years. Almost every family that I know has people who don't speak to each other anymore about this personality and this figure. And I think there are a lot of people, including conservative evangelicals like me, who are looking at this and saying, are we really going to do this again? Haven't we seen this already?
Do we really want to repeat it? And I suppose that will be the question for the rest of the year. What would you like to see from other candidates? I mean, it seems that they're very much don't want to make a character case against the former president.
Well, I think someone needs to step forward and talk about the importance of character and talk about the importance of having someone who can be trusted to have the nuclear codes. I mean, we really need someone to step forward and say, let's remember what's at stake here. We're not just choosing what kind of entertainment we're going to have for the next six years. We're talking about the direction of the country and we're talking about what our children are seeing and potentially will replicate.
If you have an entire generation who only grow up seeing this, what's going to happen? We need somebody who will make that case and say it. And right now, among candidates, among elected officials, sometimes even among church officials, there's fear. No one wants to speak to this because they're afraid of what will happen to them.
The stakes are too high. Last question, is there any circumstance you could imagine supporting Donald Trump? Well, I can't speak for all the evangelicals. I can only speak for myself.
And Jesus said, let your SBS and your nobody know. I'll let my never, never. Dr. Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity today, appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us.
Thank you, sir. And that's all we have for today. Thanks for watching. Happy Mother's Day.
If you've forgotten, hurry up. Talk to us a minute. We'll be back next week, guys. If it's Sunday, let's meet the president.
I'm Craig Malef, cheers, cheers. I've always been a glass half-hole kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way, too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges, their stories are funny, and I can't do it.
So I hope you'll join each week. And those, you might just come away with your own glass half-hole. Search glass half-hole with Craig Malef and from today on YouTube and wherever you get the podcast.