Trump GOP LOSES EMERGENCY FLORIDA ELECTION: "We lost by 20 POINTS?!"

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]450 years they've wanted a ballroom here. We're going to have the finest ballroom, I believe, anywhere in the world.

[00:00:06]>> It's going to cost right in the neighborhood of 300 million. It's been expanded and made absolutely It'll be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world, I think.

[00:00:15]>> I think it'll be one of the most beautiful ballroom, maybe the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. I'm doing a ballroom now.

[00:00:21]>> I've been with the architects. I've been with contractors because we're trying to get the ballroom built.

[00:00:28]>> Just like we're ahead of schedule on the ballroom, in a much bigger way we're ahead of schedule with Iran.

[00:00:40]I mean, there's a piece of me that's like pad the walls, take the phone, give him his effing ballroom, Ian. I mean, like like we have never heard him talk. I mean, did you see all the words on the back of that piece of paper in the first clip? Like there are meetings about the ballroom. There is an ability to focus on the ballroom. There is a message on the ballroom. There is there is a cognizance of the global presence of ballrooms.

[00:01:08]Imagine like like now do now do poverty.

[00:01:12]Then then do peace. Then try NATO. And how about economic prosperity for the poor? I mean, I have never seen him.

[00:01:22]I've covered him every day and they'll study my brain when I'm dead for 10 years. I have never seen him focus on anything like he's focused on the ballroom.

[00:01:32]I think you hit on something as a former advisor to a president, which is free political advice for him, which is the ballroom is deeply unpopular, but if he made it a padded room, it might all of a sudden skyrocket in popularity.

[00:01:44]>> [laughter] >> And look, I mean, you know, this funny stuff is actually quite serious. As we were talking about before the break, mockery is a really, really important and powerful political tool. There's a wonderful book by one of the organizers of the Serbian movement Otpor that toppled Slobodan Milošević.

[00:02:01]Srđa Popović, his book is called Blueprint Blueprint for Revolution and it's all about how mockery has been effectively used against these sort of autocratic leaders all over the world to great effect. And I think we we've been seeing it here. If you think about the people in the inflatable dinosaur costumes who are out there protesting, you know, sort of ISIS atrocities, it makes it very hard for, you know, sort of militarized strongman forces to be feared and taken seriously when they're being mocked in that way. And I think, you know, that's the proper way to respond to some of this as we're doing here. I couldn't help but notice when Trump was holding up those pictures of his golden arches, his big arch, of the scene in Spinal Tap, you know, when when Christopher Guest and David St. Hubbins want a gigantic Stonehenge, but they they can't tell how to write the word inches and feet properly. And so they end up with a giant Stonehenge that's only about, you know, 12 inches tall. And I think that's what Trump isn't going to get because, as Ben Wittes of Lawfare, I think, you know, unforgettably coined, Trump is malevolence tempered by incompetence.

[00:03:06]And so what he may end up getting in the long run of history is an arch that he's holding in his hands that's just about that big that gets trampled by the marching feet of democracy from here ever after.

[00:03:18]I mean, I I I want to associate with everything you've just said, Ian. I mean, I I I think there's a political strategy in here, too, that isn't being realized or carried on. And And I I sort of joked yesterday that every Democrat should make that picture of Trump with this crumpled up picture of the ballroom their their image. I mean, and then the rest of us can do the people who brought their democracy back from the brink in Hungary or the people who are now again going to have to fight for voting rights in America because of the Supreme Court decision yesterday or the people who are now doing in the private sector what the US AID used to do as our in our country's name to save the most vulnerable people in Africa and around the world. I mean, there is a seriousness in Trump's commitment to building a ballroom that we should not mistakenly treat it as a side thing.

[00:04:11]That is the focus of the President of the United States with 13 American service members dead in a war that he began in Iran and based on reporting none of his cabinet thought it was a good idea. He sat across from another country's foreign leader.

[00:04:23]None of his cabinet has been able to articulate to Congress or the country the purpose for the war. Three things that are on the table based on Axios reporting don't point to a strategy either. One involves the nuclear program, one involves the Strait of Hormuz, and the other just involves bombing infrastructure. I mean, people should take the seriousness. He He's now talked about the ballroom with more seriousness, more planning, more, you know, things on paper waving around than he's talked about the war.

[00:04:55]Yeah, well, I think Senator Jon Ossoff put up recently a really effective campaign ad that I think quite seriously makes the important point that what we are spending money on in this country under President Donald Trump is 25 billion dollars on an ill-conceived war of choice in Iran, on this ballroom that either is being paid for by taxpayers, as we now learn, or else by sort of the corrupt contributions of people trying to, you know, line the pockets of Trump and his family in some way. And what we are not spending money on is helping people afford medicine, helping people afford health care. In fact, we're allowing those benefits to be cut. This is a president who came to office promising that he would help people with the increasing cost of living and is doing nothing about the walls in which the American people need to live and is doing everything about a gilded ballroom in which he wants to fat his billionaire partners and donors. And I think at the end of the day, that is the serious decision for the American people to make in November, which is whether that is a course they want to continue on because that is the course that the Republican Party right now is abetting or whether we want to change course and get back in the business of supporting the American people.

[00:06:05]You know, the the other projects, if it's ballroom, you know, for 500, it's, you know, prosecuting your enemies for 200. And the obsession, the absolute obsession with manufacturing crimes to take before grand juries and one-sided presentations of something Jonathan Turley described as as making up a crime in an op-ed yesterday, Tom Nichols. I mean, this this is the whole poo-poo platter of authorita- sort of cracked tin pot dictator. I don't know if author- if it's fair to authoritarians to call this all authoritarian conduct, but certainly the the the full-fledged dictator that the three top generals warned about in the last term.

[00:06:51]And And the real worry here is that people have gotten used to it and they're not taking it seriously. They, you know, we laugh at the ballroom, we laugh at the arch. You know, the war in Iran and the ballroom are the same thing. They are both monuments to Donald Trump's vanity. We didn't go into Iran because there was a pressing national security need. His people around him have You can see them, you know, sweating bullets trying to explain why it was necessary, but in fact, Donald Trump thought he was going to be the great liberator and get another statue somewhere.

[00:07:27]The ballroom, the arch, the war. And And I I worry [clears throat] that too many people have said, "Well, you know, it's not that important. It's just how it is." Seems like the only thing that's breaking through is that all of this craziness has raised the cost of living and gas prices.

[00:07:43]But you know, the message needs to be that this is destructive not only to your way of life, which, you know, it is, and to your pocketbook and to your household, but that a deeply disturbed human This is The Trump administration is putting on the same old show. On one hand, the fantasy of a lavish ballroom. On the other, the country's real problems.

[00:08:05]Billions of dollars in waste, gilded fantasies, arrogance seeping into the walls. It's as if the White House were not a seat of government, but a personal showcase. Moreover, this time the issue isn't just about aesthetics, it's about priorities. While the public struggles with rent, drug prices are skyrocketing, and the health care system grows increasingly out of reach for people, the administration is fixated on the world's most beautiful ballroom. This isn't a matter of governance, it's narcissism manifested in architecture.

[00:08:35]And anyone familiar with Trump's story knows this too for him. Everything must look big, everything must be flashy, everything must play to the camera. But the state is not a stage set up to polish a man's ego. The real comedy begins here. Trump's obsession with presenting himself not as a statesman, but as an emperor making history. If he's going to build a wall, it will be the biggest. If he's holding a rally, it will be the largest. If he's striking a deal, it will be the smartest. If he's commissioning a building, it will be the most beautiful in the world. But this fairy tale of grandeur produces nothing but an inflated shell rather than substance. Today, papers are flying around the ballroom. Plans are being discussed, budgets are swelling, but when it comes to war, diplomacy, the economy, or poverty, we don't see the same level of seriousness. This contradiction is so glaringly obvious it can no longer be hidden. Looking at Trump's past, the picture doesn't change. Exaggerating things, then making someone else pay the price. In hotels, on the campaign trail, on the political stage, it's always the same method.

[00:09:38]First the glitz, then the wreckage.

[00:09:40]What's even more striking is that this spectacle is actually used as a language of power because right-wing populist leaders know this very well. The easiest way to distract people from real issues is to to show them a massive symbol. A ballroom, a golden arch, a colossal monument, a gilded table. These are no accident. They are the architectural version of saying, "I am here and everything revolves around me." And Trump has been doing this for years. He even knows how to turn his own failures into a stage design. When he loses, he claims victory. When criticized, he speaks even louder. When accused, he shouts even harder. That's why the issue isn't just about a ballroom. It's the polished version of an authoritarian reflex, while telling people, "Look at the grand thing I'm doing." One must carefully observe what's shrinking in the background, the rule of law, institutions, civility, the dignity of the state, and the moral dimension of this is even more weighty. Because what's at stake here isn't just money, it's the reversal of priorities. If a government directs resources toward the leader's personal grandeur, rather than alleviating the people's burden, then it's no longer public reason at work.

[00:10:47]It's palace logic. While people are crushed under the weight of medication costs, families are drowning in debt due to health care expenses, and workers cannot breathe because of economic uncertainty, investing in someone's gilded ballroom. Fantasy is not merely a slight oddity. It is a grave political scandal. Moreover, this is not something Trump is doing for the first time. His politics always ask the same questions.

[00:11:10]How does this look to me? How does this reflect my power? What impact will this image have on voters? It's not what the state provides to people that matters, but how the leader appears on screen.

[00:11:21]This is precisely where the rot begins.

[00:11:23]Then there's the issue of war, which makes the hypocrisy even more glaringly obvious. On one side, foreign policy, security operations, deaths, tensions.

[00:11:32]On the other, a fascination with ballrooms. It's as if, while the world is burning, someone goes off to debate the color of the chandeliers on the ceiling. In such a serious crisis environment, for a government that cannot even explain the rationale behind its decisions to the public in a coherent manner, to be preoccupied with luxury and grandeur projects at the same time is nothing short of a political mental breakdown. We've seen Trump attempt to turn conflicts into personal victory narratives in the past as well.

[00:12:00]Every crisis is a showcase for him.

[00:12:02]Every tension, a stage. Every destruction, a photo op. Instead of solving problems, he poses for the camera. Instead of governing the state, he is trying to build a brand that rides on top of the state. And this brand, no matter how dazzling it may appear, is filled with the same things from within, emptiness, anger, arrogance, and an obsession with control.