Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / Pull the plug! Trump's ads blocked as 'PROPAGANDA' after losses on Kimmel, press ban

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Pull the plug! Trump's ads blocked as 'PROPAGANDA' after losses on Kimmel, press ban · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and his administration are losing in court all
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: over the place.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Some of this may be distraction techniques.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We've all lived through a lot of Trump, so he
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: does something breaking or stretching the rules, gets in trouble,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and he hopes people talk about that with great outrage over, say,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the jobs, the economy, the gas prices, things that, of course,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: led our broadcast tonight. At the same time, illegal conduct
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: by an administration can't be normalized. So the Trump administration
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: is under understandable criticism. for what looks like blowing past
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: a judge's order when there was a deadline to halt
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: taxpayer-funded campaign ads that for now are frozen because they
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: may be illegal. A judge Sunday basically temporarily blocked the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: administration from running any more of them.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: This is a controversy you've probably heard about.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: They've tried to buy ad times on a bunch of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: different networks, and they look like potentially illegal campaign ads
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: that taxpayers aren't supposed to fund.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: This is a first step, a temporary ruling.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: The judge did say they're likely to succeed on the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: merits against Trump. given that the purposes are authorized by
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Congress and this violates restrictions on propaganda.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: That's the quote from the ruling.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Now, because the DOJ already blew past this briefly, they've
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: now said sorry for letting the ads continue to run,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: at least initially. The DOJ faces heat on a number
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: of fronts, though, because it also has cooked up what
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I can tell you as, well, a legal reporter for
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: this network and a lawyer myself, what looks like an
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: obviously serious or as lawyers say, pretextual probe going after
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: TV news networks because the administration is angry that it
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: lost in that White House press ban case. The DOJ
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: is trying to say that the TV networks somehow might
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: have broken the law because they responded to that press
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: ban with the pool coverage. A judge has also temporarily
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: reinstated News Outlet's White House access and there are more
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: rulings expected. This is just some of the probes and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: investigations that Trump has waged against his media targets. We've
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: been tracking and updating it over time. You can see
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: several places where he's lost, other places where outlets settled.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: The overall record, though, shows those who fight tend to win.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I want to bring in Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: federal prosecutor. Joyce, when you look at the, what I
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: said lawyers would call pretextual probe of news network's pool access.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Where does that fit into what has been a largely
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: losing but often exhausting campaign against the free press and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: comics and others?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: It really is Trump versus the free press at this point.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: And I think your use of the word pretextual is
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: dead on the money, because the reality is when the
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: press pool briefly suspended its coverage and That's not what
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: antitrust law refers to as a boycott, as a group
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: coming together to boycott as a restraint on trade. And
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: so Trump is simply seeking bargaining chips. And he's gotten
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: away with this. In so many cases, folks have been
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: intimidated by his efforts to frustrate them, and they've caved.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: And the reality here is the media did the right
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: thing coming to the defense of MSNBC of MS now
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: of CNN and of Politico.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: We do that all the time.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Hard passes, right? I know it's so hard. Occasionally MSNBC
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: still comes out.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It comes out and it's okay. Uh, it's, uh, you know,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: it's a rebrand, but we all know what you mean.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And you look at the serious part of it, which is, uh,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it's rare to see Fox and CNN coordinate on much
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: of anything. Uh, Here, on the facts, it was dealing
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: with a very extreme effort to divide and kneecap the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: press coverage.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen any public evidence, which the DOJ would
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: have to offer.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: That there was a, quote, commercial or monopolizing benefit to
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: those outlets.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I actually went back and read the Sherman Antitrust Act
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: the night that that reporting came out. And as you
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: look through both the statute and the case law defining it,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: it clearly has to be a boycott with an intention
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: to restrain trade, to have a commercial impact. This was
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: something very different. This was a defense of First Amendment
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: rights and of the free press. And it simply won't
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: get anywhere if they try to investigate this as antitrust.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Then there's the revenge prosecutions. We've been charting that.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: We've added Congresswoman Omar on there as a potential target.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Again, we'll follow the evidence, but they've.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Gone to extremes against these sort of internal policies that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: raise the bar for pre-election activities here. We're in a
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: very close window of the midterms. Her house was searched,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: as people can see on the lower right. This chart
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: has grown, and it would be comically large if these
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: weren't all such serious cases.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: That implicate potential jail time.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Joyce, you've been reporting on this for us with legal
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: analysis as well as in writing on your newsletter where
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: you say it's hard to imagine DOJ just learned about
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the existence of evidence that it so urgently needed to
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: recover that it couldn't wait to a few weeks for
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: the election to be over before striking. Tell us about
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: what you found in looking at this case and whether
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: these so-called guidance or norms about pre-election activities possibly need
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to be tightened in the future. They're clearly not holding
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: these folks back.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: No, they're not holding them back. They have no respect
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: for the norms or for the justice manual, which says
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: prosecutors within 60 days of an election are shouldn't take
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: these sorts of overt investigative acts that can influence, that
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: have the potential to influence the outcome of elections. Here,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: it's even more serious than cases where some action is
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: taken 45, 60 days out. Here, voting is already underway
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: in Minnesota when this happens. Now, look, the Justice Department
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: may have a case against the congresswoman.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: We don't know.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: We don't really know anything about their case. The problem is,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: if this was any other Justice Department, you would give
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: them the benefit of the doubt. Here we've been through
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: revenge prosecution after revenge prosecution where the government's cases have
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: been dismissed or they've had to dismiss them themselves or
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: grand juries have declined to indict.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Let me jump in and ask, do you have a
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: concern that they're trying to add smoke and headlines against
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: her and folks who don't follow this as closely say, well,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. I'm seeing this weeks out.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe I don't vote for her.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, that would seem like a type of DOJ-enabled meddling.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what the 60-day rule is meant to prevent.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: And so the fact that they're violating it would seem
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: to make it clear that that's the intention. The only
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: reason that you might at this point execute a search
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: warrant would be If there was new evidence, you were
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: afraid it was going to be destroyed. It was critical
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: that you get it immediately. But to the extent that
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: there's an investigation here, it's something that's been dragging on
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: for years. She's been, you know, a favorite whipping boy
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: for Donald Trump on claims of faulty immigration for a
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: very long time. There's no reason to believe that something
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: so spectacular and compelling has cropped up that they had
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: to execute a search warrant immediately. And, you know, this
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: was executed at her D.C. residence, which is a little
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: bit odd. You would think that if there was evidence
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: about immigration status, it would be at her home in Minnesota.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: All of her original immigration papers are already in the
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: government's possession. They had to be provided to the government.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: So it's tough to understand without an explanation from the government,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: which you might have expected to receive if there was
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: more than smoke here to defend its actions.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Or just click below. Thanks.