The Beat With Ari Melber 7/21/26 | 🅼🆂🅽️🅲 Breaking News Today July 21, 2026 HD

[00:00:00]The Beat with Ari Melber starts right now. Hi Ari.

[00:00:03]>> Hi Nicole. Thanks so much. Welcome to The Beat. We are picking up exactly where MS Now's coverage and Nicole Wallace's discussion there had just left off because we have just seen uh the ending of this Senate hearing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegath and General Dan Kaine. This is one of the most significant reviews of the ongoing open-ended war with Iran that the president did not seek Congress's authority or approval for. And yet we know he still needs Congress's money, which is of course at the end of the day your money, and that's to continue this.

[00:00:36]This was Haget's first time there in months. Uh he wants the money to pay for this war. It's about $70 billion more.

[00:00:46]Pentagon is of course doing their best.

[00:00:49]And as many experts and veterans have pointed out, the Pentagon, the military, the people actually carrying out the war do what they are told by the president.

[00:00:58]That is the system. And yet on the political side, this war that the president did not get approval for or build support for is now languishing.

[00:01:08]And you could see that in the hearing.

[00:01:09]If you've been watching MS Now, you've probably seen some of the exchanges which included some tough ones with Republicans. Uh we have a budget issue here. It is an urgent budget shortfall as some have put it. Lines of funding would run out within weeks. The Washington Post reports and that's from the Iran war. That is just one way to describe the cost. When you get into the human cost, it's already 17 Americans dead, 100 troops injured in the last two weeks. These are real people. And I will note, having followed along with the hearing today, that many of the lawmakers in both parties discussed and paid tribute uh to that human cause, to the people actually fighting this war.

[00:01:50]If there was agreement on something today, it would be of course a tribute to those people, Americans, who are braving the war. Uh but the second thing we saw was some unity on the idea that this is not going well. Republicans traditionally, of course, softer on that, saying it in certain ways, sometimes diplomatically, sometimes almost in the mode of excuses on behalf of Trump. But you didn't hear a lot of voices today saying that there's a clear objective, a clear plan, or a clear exit path. Hegsth also, because he's under oath, had to give up a little more factual transparency than I would say he or other officials in the administration are known for. And so he said straight up something that's pretty unpopular when you think about the high prices, cost of gas, people having to change or cancel summer plans because everything's more expensive right now. He mentioned the war has already run up a tab of $ 37 billion. And here's some of those exchanges today.

[00:02:47]what has actually been achieved. We hear a different rationale for this war every few days.

[00:02:53]>> Your fall back to the Biden administration is just a very very u obvious uh excuse for what I think is probably as you described so often gross negligence.

[00:03:05]>> At what point do you stop asking Americans to foot the bill for a war they don't support?

[00:03:10]>> Well, Senator, I obviously don't agree with your characterization. I think your first strategic mistake was to not consult the American people in Congress and make a clear case for the reasons behind this war.

[00:03:22]>> I think the American people to deserve a definition of what it means to win in Iran.

[00:03:31]>> President Trump has by any objective measure failed to achieve his goals.

[00:03:36]>> Guys, we need straight answers.

[00:03:39]>> We need straight answers.

[00:03:41]That last voice, Republican Senator Kennedy basically all but accusing the Pentagon and the administration of not giving straight answers today as well as in the leadup to today. If you watch these type of hearings or their excerpts and you're watching the news, so you're probably familiar, you might have noticed that there was a seriousness, a sobriety, uh, even at times a kind of a hard-headed kind of calm energy, if you want to put it that way, in the room because this is not some other political thing, even by the lower standards of the MAGA era and some of the people that Trump has put in charge of major operations who still seem like they're making, you know, internet content or trolling [snorts] or want to make points on social media. This was a serious hearing about a serious topic. And Secretary Hegth, who is presiding over a very unpopular war and a lot of questions, I will say as an observer, he struck a more serious tone, at least in style, than many other Trump officials.

[00:04:34]And perhaps they know that this is only going to get worse and look worse if they do anything to minimize what I mentioned, the loss of life, the unpopularity around the country, and what are frankly bleak choices ahead.

[00:04:48]Anyone in this country who might be against the war isn't rooting for demise. They're rooting for this thing to end. But how? We are reading reports that Trump is considering two options now that his ceasefire is basically broken. One would be a new 10-day ceasefire to just reopen the straight.

[00:05:08]You'll recall that would be still trying to get back to where we started before he launched this war. Option two reportedly would be a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force Tran's capulation capitulation. Now, that's Axios's reporting. The Post says US intel believed that strikes are unlikely to move Iran and that it's unlikely to soften its negotiating position because of US military action. Another way to say that is what commanders have said throughout and what uh Kaine mentioned today. The United States has extraordinary bombing capabilities, but it is a matter of strategic reality and modern military history that the United States has never run a bombing campaign or an air war to total victory. That is to say, if you want to take out a major country, you end up having a ground war. That's what we had in Iraq. Very few people think that's where we should go. So option two, if it is just more and more bombs, according to again the current general in charge under the Trump administration, even by his testimony today, that's not going to solve this thing. Now, Republicans are worried about the blowback. Many Republicans say they're now boxed in. The Times reporting the collapse of the ceasefire presents them with a political worst case scenario months before the midterms. Politico quotes one ex-Rep Republican saying, "This whole thing has become a persistent dark cloud over the whole GOP." Here's what we were hearing recently on Fox.

[00:06:40]>> The clock is ticking for President Trump to get out of this war before voters head to the polls.

[00:06:45]>> He promised to keep us out of of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars. Uh and now he's in one.

[00:06:53]>> It's making a lot of Republicans nervous. It's already, as we know, unpopular.

[00:06:58]>> Unpopular, nervous, bracing for a route.

[00:07:02]We began with the substance, the lives lost, the cost, the way this war was launched without congressional authorization. Something that after enough time can become a violation of the War Powers Act and other limits on the executive's power. That's the substance. What I'll tell you tonight from observing this hearing and we're about to bring in our expert guests is this is one of those times where the substance is also driving the politics.

[00:07:26]Rare I know but the substance the problems with no exit ramp the problems with Donald Trump's approach to the war.

[00:07:34]The lies or mistakes he has made thus far because he said many things that aren't true about the duration and the exit and the US strategic position. All of those substantive failures are now stoking a political failure for the Republican party that may explain the very different tenor uh we saw in this relatively tough hearing today. I want to bring in Reverend Al Sharpton, host of Politics Nation here at MS Now, president and founder of the National Action Network and New York Times contributing writer and MS Now analyst Molly Jong Fast. Uh welcome to both of you. Uh Rev, I mentioned that because uh we got a lot of news viewers who follow stuff closely and they're used to some frankly clownish hearings. Uh this one was pretty serious. Uh it had Republicans also asking some at least mediumtough questions. Uh what does that tell us about where we're headed? It tells us that I think uh that the Republicans all the way up to the White House realizes they're in more serious trouble than they thought and that the performative uh kind of glib uh way of dancing through a hearing was not on the table today at all which shows they feel the vulnerability. I mean when you are now back with rising gas prices again and other things they can't play with this.

[00:08:50]their constituents are talking to them.

[00:08:52]Their candidates in midterms are talking to them. When you have a Senator Kennedy from Louisiana implying that they're not telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God. Then they know this is no time to clown. You going to have to really try to appear serious. The problem is that the serious stuff is damaging. No matter how they uh try and and and verbalize it or go around it, the facts are the facts and the facts speak very ill of them that had no strategy in the first place. And that I I really think people forget Trump came in this war when he saw the Iranian people marching and he thought the government was going to topple and they'd ride in and help push them over the cliff the people already brought them there. It didn't happen. uh the uh they killed the supreme leader. They went through all of that. It did not destabilize them. They totally un underestimated and had bad intel who they were fighting and now they don't know what to do.

[00:09:56]>> Yeah. And and the questioning from say Kennedy out to Democrat Murray Mali was don't tell us the war is won or Iran is boxed incompletely when we can see them projecting strength. I mean it just becomes and it has echoes of Vietnam or other times where governments Vietnam you had both parties over a time involved in in lying to the country about that Democrats and Republicans here it happens to be one party it happens to be the Trump Republican uh White House doing it but don't tell us uh that they're decimated and cowering when look at how they can project force.

[00:10:34]This was an exchange here I want to play with Senator Murray. Take a look.

[00:10:40]>> On April 8th, you said, and I quote, "Their missile program is functionally destroyed, launchers, production facilities, and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated and almost completely ineffective.

[00:10:53]Mr. Secretary, Iran has been firing at US milit military bases in the region and ships for the last week. How is it possible if their capabilities were quote functionally destroyed three months earlier as she claimed for them to be doing this now?

[00:11:09]>> Well, Senator, Iran is at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in uh in the past decade.

[00:11:17]>> I mean, that's the problem is with having a secretary of war who's also a weekend cable news anchor is that he talks a lot. And what these Democrats did, which I think was effective, was that they brought up things he had said previously and then the contradictions that had happened since then. And there's so much public record of him saying one thing and then another and even Trump too. But I think what's so interesting about this and so important is when you think about the Vietnam War and the and the regulation, the legislation that came after that, that postNixon anti-corruption war powers act that was meant to prevent something that's happened now, which is these endless wars with no, you know, with no buyin from Congress and and this Congress has centered this administration on that already.

[00:12:09]>> Yeah. And Rev. Sometimes with Trump to fact check him, we say, "Oh, we got to go check the data." Uh, military and foreign policy issues can be complicated. You got to check, oh, what what what is the state of the Iranian military, right? And what are the reliable sources for that? But with the lies about the timeline, all you need is a calendar. It's very easy to fact check this. We have here starting March 1st, we'll put this up, four to five weeks, uh, was the claim. March 7th, a little while, then we got very soon. Then you got the Vietnameesque moving of the goalpost. Actually, tough talk. As long as it's necessary. April 5th, days, not weeks. Well, if you have a calendar, Rev, we are more than days away from April 5th now. April 15th, very soon. May talking victory. June close to having a deal. That deal of course came and went. They're at war again right now. And some say they've never really stopped being at war because the ceasefire deal didn't hold.

[00:13:04]Uh what do you think about how that calendar is in the minds of the American people going towards the midterms?

[00:13:09]>> There's only one way the calendar could in my opinion uh say to the American people is that we are being misled consistently. And the more we're being misled, the more they are are taking us for fools. You know, I had an old friend that had this expression, a fish wouldn't get caught if they kept his mouth shut. I think that the reason that they >> never heard that one.

[00:13:31]>> Yeah. Well, uh, neither did Donald Trump and and Hansen [laughter] because if they had not talked so much, they wouldn't be caught where they are now. They are being insnalled by their own words, not the Democrats, not what somebody's leaked. Uh, this wasn't in in somebody's book. They've said it on mic on camera over and over again. They set different uh dates, different go uh uh posts, and they were not able to reach what they announced. uh when you look at groceries which fits into this and gas uh Americans feelings would you describe the cost of groceries as affordable or unaffordable now that's one of those questions they ask not can you afford groceries some people have the money for the for the month they have their budget set but a vast majority which statistically includes a lot of Trump voters Molly at this juncture say they would describe it now unaffordable >> yeah and you have gas again for over $4 a gallon and that is the thing is even if you're not completely read in on the nuances of the Iran war. You have to fill up your tank with gas and so you go to the gas station and gas is more expensive and that is just the lived experience of voters and we all know you cannot tell voters that their lived experience isn't real or isn't happening. And Republicans are cruising into the midterms. We're in the summer travel time and people are trying to fill up their car with gas and they can't afford it.

[00:14:56]>> Yeah. Uh really a bruising day for the administration on the hill. Revan, Rev. Alan, and Molly are with me. We're going to do our short break, 90 seconds, and continue with our great guests.

[00:15:09]>> You said at the start of the war, it'll be four or five weeks.

[00:15:13]>> Well, you keep this a far bigger job that we're doing. If you look at it, after a week and a half, not four weeks, a week and a half, two weeks, we stopped them from probably. But I don't want to have the word probably.

[00:15:27]Uh Donald Trump struggling with the timeline. Uh that hung over the the difficult hearing today for Secretary Haggath. Uh as I mentioned, questioned by Republicans and Democrats alike at times pressed on the timeline. Rev. This is uh this is Trump as a wartime president. This is not Venezuela where whatever you want to call it.

[00:15:45]>> Uh I would say in all fairness that it was an act of war. Uh and we wouldn't look kindly on a country coming in and trying to take any of our leaders. Uh but ultimately the administration avoided a war.

[00:15:57]>> So they they went in they had act war but the ensuing government kind of let it be. Uh this is not that we are at war much longer than the president said and he and this is him as a wartime president. Your your view?

[00:16:08]>> This is him at a wartime president that got elected saying we would not have wars that he would not have engagement.

[00:16:16]So it's not only that he's the wartime president. It's the opposite of what he promised the American people. That's a b is he cannot show where our interests are being served. The American people are the ones paying the higher gas prices. The American people are seeing other things increase in terms of of of the consumer goods and and necessities they need. So one, you told us there would not be a war. Even if I was going to adjust uh to you, Mr. President, you've because you give me a good reason. You haven't given me a good reason and the timeline you announced keeps going further and further further away. So, how much do you expect even the most staunch Republican or MAGA person to take before they understand?

[00:17:04]I've run out of paper on these timelines and I can't afford the gas.

[00:17:08]>> You know, Molly, on on the politics, I'd love to go big picture with you because, you know, it's what's interesting is we spent a lot of time looking ahead at elections. Uh but it's very clear that we rarely know what the big issue is until right close to it or during the election, right? The idea that a year or two out, you know. So I was thinking, you know, in 16 leading up to it, there were all sorts of different ideas. The truth is that Trump won the electoral college and got went a long way on the wall, immigration, and whatever you want to call MAGA division, which a year out wasn't what either party thought that race was going to be about. 2020 ended up being about co >> right >> uh and the the public seeing Donald Trump as a failure on that crisis 24 >> uh where a lot of Trump's critics thought that should have been about continuing a restoration of the postTrump era. They wanted it to be a postTrump era or that he was disqualified uh by his indictments and other failures. Ended up being and there's a lot of data on this about prices. Yeah, >> that that's what that race really boiled down to for a lot of Americans. Um, could the 26 midterms instead of being about ICE or Trump or corruption or all these other things, could they end up being about this war?

[00:18:23]>> I mean, I think they they certainly could be. And remember, the prices have to do with the war because Donald Trump said in 2024, I'm going to make things cheaper for you. And people were like, great. I mean that is that you know he once again got elected on economic populism because remember in 2016 he was like you're being cheated. I am for you she is for them which was a similar message of you know about other stuff but a similar message in 24. So, I do think that this war affects prices. And remember, we have no historical precedent for someone who runs for president that on two things, right? I'm going to end foreign wars. We're not going to have any more foreign wars. And I'm going to make things cheaper. And what does he do? He immediately gets into numerous foreign wars. And he, you know, make and things because of those wars become more expensive. And and let's not forget I I remember as a teenager when I started getting very active, one of the most solid presidents in the United States history that in terms of the things I cared about was Lyndon Johnson. Did the Voting Rights Act, did the Civil Rights Act, did open housing. What brought him down was the Vietnam War.

[00:19:40]>> And and the same people that cheered him on were marching in the streets against the Vietnam War. one because they didn't we didn't want war and two we didn't see what we were gaining and every day we're seeing more and more. So it happens on either side of the party. These kinds of things could be your debacle. If Lyndon Johnson could not run again after all he did for civil rights and other things because of a war. I think that whomever the Republicans bring behind Trump is going to have a hard road to travel.

[00:20:13]It's like they always say where where Rev and I grew up, >> fish don't have to learn how to swim.

[00:20:18]They're born in the water.

[00:20:21]>> I like that one.

[00:20:21]>> You like that? Could we make Could we make that stick?

[00:20:24]>> Yes.

[00:20:24]>> We're doing a lot of fish things.

[00:20:26]>> Do you have a fish apherism for us?

[00:20:28]>> I fish got to swim. Birds got to fly.

[00:20:32]>> Something >> something. It's something.

[00:20:34]>> Yeah, >> I'll workshop it. The interesting thing about Rev's apherism is the fish usually, I believe, opens its mouth because it thinks it's hunting.

[00:20:44]>> Yeah.

[00:20:44]>> So, it's trying to get the and then it finds out that the fly was actually >> found out there the hunted.

[00:20:50]>> The hunt did. So, there's something there.

[00:20:51]>> That's right.

[00:20:52]>> Okay. Well, >> I'll work on it.

[00:20:54]>> Yeah. We like to learn together. Uh Rev, Molly, thanks to both of you. We have a lot coming up in the show, including the heat on RFK Jr. and alleged election meddling. Uh the DOJ is in crisis [music] because several of Trump's legal demands are hitting those brick walls we've told you about. The system is under strain, but at times it is holding and working. And that brings us to a very special guest. We [music] have seen the New York Times reporters really break a lot of key stories in ways that have upset Donald Trump. We recently had some of those authors on from the Times.

[00:21:24]Well, now he is subpoenaing not only Times reporters, but their families, running into problems in court. And I have a New York Times reporter next.

[00:21:37]>> Department in Washington DC before you issued those subpoenas.

[00:21:42]>> I can say it this way without getting into the investigation. The the the protocols require consultation.

[00:21:47]>> Did anybody in Washington DC suggest to you or anybody on your team that you should issue subpoenas in this case? I'm >> I'm not going to get into the details that. What I what I can tell you is that we follow those procedures.

[00:22:01]So that is testimony about following procedures in general and that speaks to at least some communication about this.

[00:22:07]The wider effort though by Donald Trump to go after critics and his perceived enemies may undercut their ability to make these subpoenas stick in court.

[00:22:17]Trump and his justice department targeting all kinds of media organizations and prominent media figures as we can see there.

[00:22:26]And all of this is happening alongside major shifts in media. The Ellison family is trying to get its merger approved so it would actually take control of CNN and other properties. The effort did hit a small legal snag. We should note a federal judge has paused the merger for two weeks pursuant to states suing to try to block it entirely.

[00:22:49]And as Trump's DOJ goes after the New York Times, reportedly because he didn't like their stories, even when true, he's also been very public about what in any other era would be seen as itself a confession or a scandal that he views the people taking over these companies, the Ellison's getting CNN for example, as a chance to have a good owner change the editorial coverage.

[00:23:18]You have some good companies bidding on it. I think the people that have run CNN for the last long period of time are a disgrace. I think it's imperative that CNN be sold. The fake news like CNN, >> like the New York Times and like others have abused our people. Wait a minute.

[00:23:36]Be quiet. have abused our people so badly and you should be ashamed of yourself. CNN >> does such false reporting. But now they have new ownership. So maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it, but it's hard to straighten garbage out.

[00:23:52]>> It's hard to straighten garbage out.

[00:23:54]Well, that's his opinion. The new ownership he referred to have completed the deal, but it's still under this legal oversight and now at least paused for two weeks with this review. The concern is that we have a government abusing power to change what you see and hear to distort the very fundamental protections of the First Amendment so that you, the American public, if I may be so grandiose, can hear everything freely and make up your own mind. And against that backdrop, we have very credible allegations that the subpoenas of the New York Times, another important independent outlet, are not actually to solve crimes, which under law would be okay, but potentially may be the kind of bad faith harassment. That means it's the DOJ allegedly and not the New York Times that might be in the wrong. We have a New York Times journalist on this big story next.

[00:24:50]We see this though as an attempt to intimidate the journalists and the Times itself. And [snorts] we're going to continue to report both about Air Force One and on the circumstances around [music] the government use of proseal power to intimidate the independent news media.

[00:25:08]That's the view from the New York Times in this major clash with the Trump administration. And we have a special guest tonight. Michael Grimbomb is the media correspondent from the New York Times. He has reported on the Trump DOJ's dealings in this and other matters, including the subpoenas to his colleagues. He's also the author of Empire of the Elite, Inside Kai Nas, the media dynasty that reshaped America, which is coming to paperback this week.

[00:25:34]Uh Michael, you are in the role of media on media, including your own colleagues, while still trying to do it fairly. Uh but really a one of the most perfect guests we could have on this. what is going on in this case uh and what does the times need to show to beat back what what to a lot of the evidence looks like harassment.

[00:25:53]>> So all eyes are on Thursday uh in the federal courthouse in Manhattan where the judge is going to hold the first open arguments about the Times motion to quash the subpoenas. Uh the Times is laid out in great detail that the uh process by which these subpoenas were issued. Their argument is that it was rushed. Um, there's actually some details in this motion that FBI agents uh with sidearms holstered, not drawn, but showed up in the driveways of these reporters to serve the subpoenas on a Friday night, basically 24 hours after uh the Times published its exclusive report on the security concerns involving Trump's new Qatari Air Force One jet. So, both the speed by which the government jumped to the uh action of subpoenaing independent journalists as opposed to gathering a list of potential leakers within the government, taking the steps that the DOJ typically would under its own guidelines to smoke out leakers within uh the bureaucracy. All of that appears to have been expedited or perhaps we'll find out soon jumped over to go directly after these Times journalists who by the way many of whom Trump has insulted by name over the years. There's a lot of evidence of the president on Truth Social in his comments himself going after the Times denouncing these individual reporters for the journalism uh that they've done about his federal government. So, the Times is effectively arguing that this was the result of an enraged president who called his FBI director, by the way, directly into the White House to oversee the leak investigation. Um, again, about 24 hours after the article first appeared.

[00:27:38]>> Well, as the kids say, Nixon could never, [laughter] by which I mean he didn't get this far.

[00:27:46]You know, there are tapes of him trying to hint and cajul to get the enemy to get Halddederman to get the but you're pointing out, you know, no, you got the actual FBI director Aiden here doing the bidding as if he's the hatchet man.

[00:27:58]Nixon had a lot more scuffling to get there. You you're covering this. You care about your colleagues, but you cover this objectively as a journalist.

[00:28:05]>> I do. So, go ahead.

[00:28:07]>> No. So, this all broke, you know, the subpoena starting being issued around 700 p.m. last Friday night, you know, by 9:00. you know, we had learned about it uh within the newsroom and were putting up our first story. Now, I've been in touch with the Justice Department, in touch with the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan. Their contention um as Jay Clayton in the earlier segment was saying uh is that this is an issue of serious significant national security that the president at the time of this publication was flying over international airspace uh coming back from his trip from Turkey and that the disclosure of this information would have created some sort of risk for not just the president but with the press corps with the senior administration officials who were traveling with him on the plane. Um they do however keep going back to this idea that there's a national security concern without really specifying it in too much detail.

[00:28:58]>> Well, and disclosure is a word for leak.

[00:29:01]If there are accurate leaks from inside the government, what the administration is effectively saying is they have leakers. They want to find them and this is a method for that. And and I want to show what they're up against in court because Donald Trump's rants and posts, as you mentioned, may doom these subpoenas. There there is law on this in the in the famous Supreme Court case of Bransburg. Official harassment of the press undertaken not for purposes of law enforcement but to disrupt a reporter's relationship with news sources would have the court noted no justification.

[00:29:32]In essence, if you boil it down, no harassment of newsmen will be tolerated.

[00:29:38]The court said even while recognizing the right to do these kind of leak investigations I mentioned. And then our final slide here and you can respond is look at the facts in this case uh issued in this rushed 48 hours which you mentioned includes family members uh which could be of a harassing nature uh reporting also from your paper said that Trump was enraged by the original article uh and onward. So based on this do you think that the government has a a tough road of claiming this wasn't harassing? So, I don't want to make too many predictions because, you know, media case law, we've seen a lot of fascinating decisions in the Trump era.

[00:30:16]And by the way, we know that juries around the country are uh much less sympathetic to the independent press these days. I mean, the reputation of the media has eroded. Um there's often, you know, defamation suits that go against news organizations. Now, in this case, we have a judge in Manhattan who's going to be assessing this. Um, I think that the Times has laid out a pretty uh stunning series of procedural um irregularities on the part of the DOJ. I want to say something about the family members. At first, we only knew that reporters were being compelled to testify in front of a grand jury. To your point, journalists are not in immune from that from from >> test in good faith. Yep. It turned out, and the government only disclosed this days later, that phone records had also been subpoenaed from third-party phone providers, not just for the journalists involved who wrote the stories. In one case, for a journalist's mother who is a psychotherapist in private practice. uh in one case the spouse of a journalist who is in a senior role at a major law firm potentially including sensitive personal professional messages in this drag net of um messages uh exchanged by Times journalists and their relatives.

[00:31:30]It suggests the pattern of a rushed operation. There was clumsiness. numbers were included that were not directly tied to these journalists. And also, as the Times has argued most glaringly, even after this judge in Manhattan District Court was engaged in this case, was uh uh discussing with the parties the motion to quash the subpoenas for the grand jury. the DOJ was separately going to a different judge asking that judge to uh put a gag order on the fact that the DOJ had subpoenaed the third party, >> right? Which is secretive. It's suspicious. And again, the question which we're going to be watching on Thursday, uh is is whether this looks more like a harassment campaign because that runs a foul of the rules. An even slightly more organized DOJ might have planned for that. It looks like they didn't. And and this goes to uh the both the danger but also the kind of rushed incompetence of quarterbacking this right out of the right out of the the president's office oval office. Uh Michael Ginbomb, thanks for joining us here from the New York Times. Uh very close to it. That book out on paperback this week is Empire of the Elite. We had Michael on when it first came out. If you're interested in uh the interesting up and down of media, that's a a book to read. When we come back, we turn to RFK Jr.'s latest problem, the meddling.