Transcript of Rep. Krishnamoorthi Discusses Trump and MAGA Collapse

Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are in full terror after Donald Trump surrendered to Iran. As I noted earlier, Donald Trump is no longer even trying to do a deal with Iran and the United States. Instead, Donald Trump's latest threats are, Iran, you've gotta make a deal with Oman or else, and then we are gonna take credit for that deal because Trump is incapable of making a deal. Americans did not want to be involved in this catastrophic war ever. Donald Trump promised it was going to be a complete victory, despite the fact that Americans did not want to be in this catastrophic war. And America saw the entire country put through a daily humiliation ritual as Donald Trump would threaten war crimes on Iran, then back out, threaten war crimes in Iran and back out and threaten more war crimes and back out. And now our economy is suffering. Trump though continues to manipulate the markets. And MAGA Republicans are out there in panic mode. I'll show you. You mean you got Trump cabinet members right now, like Brooke Rollins, you know, she's out there in Minnesota and she's like, we delivered, we got rid of the crazy woke, huh?

We got rid of the crazy woke, huh? We anti-woke. This is what you're doing right now with everything that's going on right now. We've got rid of the— ain't working there, Brooke. Here, play this clip.

With my boss, President Trump, and what he was trying to figure out was if we've gotta, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta delay deliver on our promises. We promised a smaller government. We promised to deregulate. We promised tax cuts. We promised to get rid of all the crazy woke.

And then she was like, hey everybody, give us applause because Trump has done more for farmers than anybody. Well, maybe he's done more bailouts for far— for farmers after bankrupting the farmers. But this is what the Trump administration officials are doing now. Here, play this clip.

And the biofuels industry has never had a bigger backer, a more vocal backer than my boss, President Donald Trump. This spring he announced, I think this may be due for another applause. This spring he announced the highest renewable volume obligation, RVOs, in the history of the program. How about that, y'all? That's a big deal for this state. A big deal.

Then they send out Dr. Oz and Dr. Oz is like, when I'm lying to you and you know I'm lying to you And I know that, you know, I'm lying to you and on and on and on. That's how countries collapse. Yeah, we know that's what's happening here. Play this clip.

Texas. I think there's a bigger problem here. And this is not fraud, waste, and abuse by itself. This is corruption on the underlying system. When you corrupt the practices that rot out the foundation of the boat that we're all in together and we start taking on water, we can start pointing fingers. But when everyone is doing it, which is maybe the most important quote from this press conference, not said by any of us. Us up here, that's a real pathology. Because then if you're not part of the corrupt system, you're a fool. When I'm lying to you and you know I'm lying to you, and I know that you know that I'm lying to you, and on and on and on, that's how countries collapse.

Thank you all.

Oh, and then you have MAGA Republican Senator— don't let him even consider calling himself a centrist— John Cornyn. Uh, say there's nothing that he and the GOP can ever do for survivors. And yes, they didn't want Todd Blanchett, uh, confirmed because he's covering up the Epstein files. And then he further tormented them. But Cornyn's like, there's nothing we can do. Yeah, we know because you're all part of the Epstein class. You are involved in the coverup of the child sex trafficking ring by not releasing the Epstein files and confirming Blanchett, in my opinion. Here, play this clip right here.

Senator, your Democratic colleagues seem to think that this said that your vote yes on Blanchard is going to have a chilling effect on survivors of sexual assault and things like that. What's your response to them? They were frustrated that you didn't meet with them in person too.

Well, what happened to them is a tragedy. There's, uh, and, uh, we know, uh, that, uh, people have been convicted of, uh, of trafficking and crimes, and, and Epstein is no longer, no longer with us. Um, but The, I don't believe there's anything we could do to assuage them at this point, but we need to continue to help them every way we can. But I just think that's one of those things that cannot be remedied by a no vote.

And Senator, your Democratic colleagues say that.

And let me just show you what some of the polling looks like for Trump out today. The aggregate of this stuff from Harry Enten, Donald Trump, the worst position ever right now, according to Enten's aggregate here. Play this clip.

President Trump thinks his own polls are good. He is simply put not on planet Earth. He is on some planet far, far, far away in a galaxy far, far, far away. I mean, just look at this. It has been a steady decline like a slide going into the sea. You know, you go back January 2025, +6. May of 2025, -7. September of 2025, -8. December of 2025, -13. April of 2026, -17. And now in an average of polls, he is 21 points underwater. This is the lowest he has been in term number 2. The bottom line is this: Trump is at record lows for himself in term number 2. He is very much underwater despite whatever he is claiming up in his head of his.

Uh, a slide going into the sea, evocative. Image there from Harry. When did this slide begin?

When did this slide begin? When did Trump slide into the sea begin? I mean, just take a look here. I mean, you know, it'd be one thing again if we were talking about just one poll, but we're talking about the average of polls. But when we're talking about one poll, is there any poll that has Trump anywhere close to positive territory? Take a look here. Trump's negative net approval rating. Every single poll that meets CNN standards for publication has had Donald Trump underwater in the negative since March 29th, 2025. Days in a row, it is 494, nearly 500 days in which Donald Trump has had a negative net approval rating. He's not anywhere close to positive.

The Lou Gehrig of presidents in terms of approval rating.

He's the Lou Gehrig, the Cal Ripken of negative ratings.

Oh, and but people would say, hey, look, you know, the president had low approval ratings in his first term also.

Not this low. Not this low. Take a look here. Trump's net approval rating at this point in term 1, at this point, he was 12 points underwater. He is now broken the 20-point barrier in the negative, -20 points. And you know, I always love a little nugget here. Goes from -8 to -47 points with independents who are driving this.

And what do the prediction markets say this means about his chances of maintaining control of the House?

Yeah, okay. If you have a -21 net approval rating, no way your party controls the House if this holds until Election Day. Chance to win the House, Democrats now up to an 84% chance, up from 73% just a few months ago. Republicans now with just a 16% chance according to the cash prediction markets. Trump's negative net approval rating is—

What about even moderate Republicans? What do they think amongst Trump's own party Republicans? He only has a +10 approval, down from +69 in 2024. I mean, it is a 59-point drop here. Watch what Enten says here.

Yeah, okay, so you know we often talk about, oh, that conservative base, that MAGA base, but how about where the other GOP lives? That is moderate Republicans, K-Paul. With moderate Republicans, and in a word, yikes. Yikes is the word. Okay, take a look at this. The moderate GOP on Trump, this includes leaners, this is about 30 to 40% of the party depending on how you exactly look at it, versus Kamala Harris. Trump easily was winning amongst them by 69 points. Back in October of 2024. Come over to this side of the screen. Look at this decline in the Lake Erie. I mean, right now we're talking about— as they're talking about just a +10 net approval rate. This is within his own party. This is within his own party. He's just barely above water. Do the quick math with me. That's 69, 10. That's a 59-point drop. That is 5 and 9 in the course of under 2 years. So moderate Republicans abandoning Donald John Trump.

Now I want to bring in Democratic Congressmember Raja Krishnamoorthi. Congressmember, great to see you as always. At the beginning, I was talking about how, you know, yet again, Congress is in recess. The House is in recess. I mean, you know, yes, there's an election in less than, you know, 100 days. And yes, there's usually a summer recess. But when you take as many breaks as MAGA Mike has recessed this House of Representatives, when we're in this catastrophic war and Donald Trump one day threatens, I'm going to blow the effing S out of a country. And then he comes up with imaginary fake negotiations that aren't taking place. Meanwhile, Iran continues to strike the US bases because they don't see it as a ceasefire. I mean, they're not going with his imaginary narratives. I mean, he engaged, he invaded them. And so they're like, yeah, we're in a war. And now we learned that America is out of ATACMS and interceptors, not like our stockpile is depleted, but according to some of the latest reporting, it's like we don't— The public reporting is almost like, "We don't have weapons." And my broader point is like, where's Congress?

Like, this is quite literally the job. And it's like, okay, summer, chill. What's going on?

Well, what's going on is, you know, basically Congress has become a fully owned subsidiary of Trump Inc. and the White House. And at this point, you know, Mike Johnson and the Republicans would just prefer to put his interests above their own constituents' interests. And those of the country. You're right, by the way, with regard to the munitions issue, it's pretty serious. Um, we're not only running low on, uh, ATACMS, we're running low on Tomahawks, which are our long-range precision, uh, fires that would be necessary for holding off adversaries. We're low on SM-3 interceptors and Patriots. That's what provides our, uh, basically our ballistic missile defense, especially the THAADs, which we're also low on. And so we're kind of in this situation where we've basically exposed ourselves, uh, we're lowering our deterrence, we're inviting aggression, and I think we're sliding towards war. I'm just going to say it, I think we're sliding towards yet another war, and it's not the one we're currently in, but war with other adversaries, because they're going to take advantage of this situation and make more provocative moves, and that could really escalate very quickly.

Well, you know, our adversaries or countries that there is, you know, to that point, Donald Trump though almost doesn't see the adversaries as the adversary. So when you say that, I hear that, but I think to myself, who does Donald Trump see as an adversary? Canada, Greenland, Spain, you know, Europe. I mean, that's who he sees as an adversary. I mean, I hear you probably implying What's going to happen with China? What's going to happen with Russia? What's going to happen with North Korea as these countries start to see US is out of weapons, baby? We're going to— we're going to start making our moves because, you know, he ran out and so he can't protect, you know, he— no umbrella in Asia, no umbrella over here anymore. They have Arab umbrellas over. But then I think, you know, Trump's given China basically the top semiconductor chips. I mean, he's given UAE the Blackwell, which they can just basically give to, you know, China, and he gives China the, the other one, uh, the, the second Nvidia chip that's basically like the— but so I guess my point is, is that, you know, maybe the only calculus for them is just like, just let him keep on going, he's destroying the whole country.

You know, I think that, um, this is where I see things kind of potentially breaking down, which is that He may not view them as adversaries. They view us as adversaries. And if they act according to their viewpoint, then he could be put into a situation where we're left with no choice. We're dragged into a conflict. And at that point, it doesn't really matter what Donald Trump believes. The reality will be screaming that We have to protect our soldiers, protect our interests, and we may be in conflict. And so we've got it. We've got to do the exact opposite of what we're doing right now. We got to end this illegal and unconstitutional war. And by the way, you know, every day that we fail to wean ourselves off the very fossil fuel that they have a chokehold on, namely the Iranians, we're giving them more and more leverage. Which really hurts our ability at the bargaining table to do anything to resolve the situation either. So we can't resolve this militarily, and we're not going to be able to resolve it on proper terms at the bargaining table the more leverage that we give the Iranians and the less that we do to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, start to develop these renewable energy technologies and EV technologies which unfortunately the Trump administration has axed to the tune of 200 to 300 projects at the Department of Energy already.

It's very focused on gilding bronze statues gold and golden ballrooms and, uh, something about the red bricks he was talking about yesterday. I mean, you, you have access to certain information that the public doesn't, you know, that you see in SCIFs and other places. And so I know there are probably some things you can share, you can share, but when you say it appears we're moving potentially towards war in other directions, meaning outside of the one that we're aware of right now. What, what can you— you know, I don't want to leave our viewers totally hanging, you know, with this, with a statement like that. So what, what can you share about what you know that you feel comfortable sharing?

Well, I think we're, you know, definitely, uh, starting to enter a dangerous phase in the Indo-Pacific region. Especially with regard to China. China is throwing its, uh, elbows militarily in the South China Sea, which by the way it claims as its own. This is a huge tract of the ocean that it claims as its own, um, kind of internal, uh, body of water. Then of course there's Taiwan, which Xi Jinping has tasked the People's Liberation Army with successfully conquering potentially by 2027. And so we're entering this dangerous phase where Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, um, have certain deadlines, are seeing their power start to peak in certain ways, even at the same time that they're seeing our munitions at an all-time low. They're seeing our alliances and partnerships fray. And so it's a very fraught moment where they could say, look, this is the time to strike. We're not gonna find a better time than now. And if that happens, you know, Katie, bar the door. This could be just a catastrophic situation for America.

I can only imagine. I mean, you know, they clearly see that we're out of weapons. I mean, like, I mean, we're out of weapons in the United States of America. For the trillions of dollars that were funded to the military industrial complex, complex, we're out of weapons. And not only that, but Trump's been putting the weapons in the wrong thing. He wants to build the Trump gigantic ships, you know, and it's like, we're in drone warfare, we're in unmanned submersives. You want to build ships that look like— what does he say? I love the way the ships look like in World War I and World War II.

These big—

I don't like stealth. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way the— you know, and it goes to this broader point. You know, it's like, I don't like stealth.

Okay.

I don't care if you don't like it. It's stealth, man. What are you talking about? I don't like aircraft carriers. I don't like—

okay.

I don't like the— okay. There's this kind of common sense disconnect. And, you know, just let's just switch topics for a second, for a moment. It's like, you know, we all look at the Post Service as saying we want to get our mail. Trump looks at the Post Service and says, how can I withhold people's votes from this Post Service?

Like, no, just give us the freaking mail, man.

I just want the mail.

Stop making this Post Service weird.

I just want the mail to get from point A to point B and receive it and open up my letters. And then I don't need you to have a post service, uh, you know, a head of the post service who's out there like a political guy who's like, I'm not going to deliver mail on elections.

It's crazy, it's crazy stuff. It's absolutely nuts. Look, the US Post Service has already been in decline over the past several years because Trump installed a guy named, uh, Postmaster General DeJoy when he first entered office in Trump term one. That guy totally hurt the Postal Service. Mail is not arriving on time primarily because of quote unquote reforms that he put in place. Now Trump wants to use the Postal Service to essentially withhold election mail, mail-in ballots, basically from people that he deems not to be citizens, not to be eligible voters. Well, guess how he's gonna determine that? He's gonna force states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government to be screened by Donald Trump and DHS, and once they get screened, then the Postal Service will deliver mail-in ballots to quote-unquote eligible voters. That is not only illegal under our privacy laws and other protections, but it's also illegal under the Constitution because the federal government does not have primary authority for elections. And yet he's now using the U.S. Postal Service as an instrument for voter suppression. Now, the U.S. Postal Service for its part is supposed to stay out of politics completely and the Postmaster General is supposed to do the same.

Instead, he has allowed himself, he's enabled Trump to use the USPS in an illegal, unconstitutional way. So I'm calling for his removal now. Uh, his name is Steiner, Postmaster General Steiner, the same way I did with DeJoy. These guys have got to go, and we've got to get our U.S. Postal Service back. It used to be one of the most trusted institutions in America. And unfortunately, it's also falling on hard times thanks to Donald Trump.

And finally, what used to be a trusted organization, the Department of Justice. I mean, you and I, both lawyers, you know, working at the DOJ after law school was the biggest honor. The top lawyers would at some point try to want to work at the DOJ, maybe before going back into private practice. And this spanned all different administrations. Uh, the presumption of regularity where you know, a federal prosecutor shows up in court and the judge, you know, basically says, we kind of trust what you're saying because, you know, you're the DOJ. And, and you often— sometimes you don't get that benefit when you were on the other side of the DOJ in a case. But now they're basically viewed as a, uh, as like a, as like a firm on, uh, I don't, I don't want to offend them. They're sure there are good firms on Ventura Boulevard out here in California, but like, uh, but you know, like, uh, like a small Ventura Boulevard, you know, lemon law firm that has been sanctioned repeatedly by courts for, you know, whatever, for recruiting client. Let's like, I'm going to take the analogy because there are good lemon lawyers, there are good small law firms, there are good firms of Ventura Boulevard.

I don't want to offend any target audience there. But the point is, is that you and I, when we would go into court, we would see some firms that were like, man, how'd this person even pass the bar exam? And the courts would yell at these lawyers and you'd be like, oh my God, these bad lawyers, crazy. And the DOJ is, is that and maybe even worse than that. And now, you know, Blanche is doing settlement, you know, he's doing the order where he says that I'm revoking the prior order, but I'm affirming that Trump gets tax immunity, giving the guy tax immunity. And that's enough for Tillis and Cornyn. You know, we've narrowed the scope of it.

I'm like, what do you mean you've narrowed the scope of—

you've affirmed that Trump and his kids and all of the trusts get tax immunity from the day of the settlement going back in time forever. That's as expansive as it could possibly be.

You didn't narrow anything.

But the American people get it, you know, Roger. The American people like, what is this?

Totally.

What's going on?

It's a different system of justice. You know this, Ben. Look, I think there's a system of justice now that applies to billionaires and people like Trump, and then there's a system of justice that applies to the rest of us. And I think that just to take another example, let's just look at the Epstein affair. You know, this guy Donald Trump is out there prosecuting, quote, "vandals" who supposedly ruined the reflecting pool, and yet he has not filed a single charge or announce a single investigation of anyone beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And for Maxwell, he's transferred her to a low-security prison in the hopes that she would, quote unquote, exonerate him, uh, from any wrongdoing in the Epstein affair. That is this type of justice that we have right now. And I think that goes to what you were talking about with regard to the DOJ and its credibility, which is shot. It's completely shot at this point, thanks to its prioritization of, you know, crazy issues that Donald Trump makes to be the issue of the day, going after his political enemies, going after others who might kind of cross him, and not going after the people's business, and not trying to even, you know, bring justice to the thousands of girls, now middle-aged women, who've yet to receive a single iota of justice after decades of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and others.

So this is a very sad moment.

Congressman Krishnamoorthy, thanks for joining us. As always, we always loved having you on the show, and we'll hope you come back soon. Thank you, everybody. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers.

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