How Epstein BROKE Trump: 2028 plot dies, MAGA shrinks, Revolt builds (MELBER REPORT)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]This is a note I received from Steve Bannon uh which says very simply my name Trump 2028 and is signed. Um this came with this hat. Uh and I mentioned this now. He sent this a few weeks back and I didn't mention it in our coverage and I don't think we should always overrespond to these types of things or trolling.

[00:00:22]But now that the president uh is again discussing an illegal third term, the speaker of the house uh Republican Mike Johnson uh dismissed it and said there's no path to that, which is fact check true. Legally, there is no path. And this is all back in the news. I I want to discuss that as sort of my second topic in this breakdown. Um again, just looking at some notes I wanted to share with you guys. The first thing politically that we have to keep in mind is what is true and what the goals are.

[00:00:51]So, if somebody is trying to trick or the the word of the year now, troll you uh and you care about truth and evidence, what's really going on politically uh before we even get to the obvious constitutional fact that you can't run for a third term. And I think first is Steve Bannon, who's someone that I've interviewed and reported on and dealt with, um is a political communicator. That's something he prides himself on. and he continues to bring up the idea that Trump could be something other than a lame duck. And I say it that way because even before again the law, uh Bannon, who was the leader of the homestretch victorious 2016 campaign, who's been in and out of the White House, uh may be doing something that is more political than practical here. Meaning whether or not you get to an attempt to hold power past 2028, which you have to take seriously giving everything going on, and I'll get to that. First you have to look at what is often called in political science the Overton window which a lot of people know about but it's basically the idea that if this is the realm of what is accepted sort of traditional or conventional ideas in political debate and boy has that changed lately but if this is the idea that you want to go and shoot out of that you want to be putting ideas over here to expand the window of what's acceptable and any side could do that I mean as a communications tactic it's actually neutral that you could do that around this conservative idea that you want taxes not only low, you want taxes to go to zero. Well, no government runs on zero taxes, but just as an example, uh you could start pushing that idea and get that out there in people's heads. Um so that the the negotiation you do offer sounds uh maybe more rational to some or less extreme than the zero, right?

[00:02:38]That's just the window. You could do a liberal example, whatever. Uh here we're talking about something very serious.

[00:02:43]We're talking about people who were caught trying to overthrow the 2020 election. Uh who were in some cases criminally indicted and convicted. In other cases, we didn't get to trial.

[00:02:52]Donald Trump in our legal system was never tried on those matters because he actually won re-election when he ran again, as you know, in 24. So, in all fairness, some of those were adjudicated, some weren't. But we're dealing with people from Trump on down who did try to overthrow the 2020 election. So when they talk about other plots to mess with the outcome of elections or break laws, we're not starting at neutral. We're starting from the inference of they've done this before, tried it, plotted. Um but before we get to that, in the Overton window, Donald Trump constitutionally, legally is a lame duck. Midterms are this year.

[00:03:28]Maybe he'll do well and he'll be an empowered lame duck, but his time is still running out. And if you look all throughout history, lame duck, when you are headed towards the end of your power as a president, uh tends to be when you become less relevant. The Congress and others are serving in different terms.

[00:03:43]Senators are doing six-year terms. A president who's approaching his last three, two, one year left, uh is dealing with people who are very much looking past him. And so politically, there is clearly an effort to make Trump seem like he's going to last longer, expand his power. There's also efforts to do that by abusing power and we can report on that. I I I cover that a lot.

[00:04:05]If you're watching, you probably know about that. But if this is a communications tactic, even introducing the very idea that something illegal that can't happen in a democracy like ours is possible, plausible that expands it. And then you could imagine if he wants some other thing, some other role past 2028, which I'll talk about in a minute, suddenly that sounds like according to Bannon's pitch, a middle ground from going all the way out here to the idea that we would end democracy and our constitutional rule. So that's number one. Um you're normalizing other options if you allow that to happen. And so while we've seen this tactic before, you say something's a joke or you let an outside person float it, then you take it back. It's very unpopular if you tell Americans that you don't respect their vote and you want to end democracy, even for those who are very loyal to Trump on other issues. And so we've seen the limits of that. Trump keeps having people basically float this then back off it.

[00:05:04]At one point it was a joke, another point's an outside adviser, but it keeps coming up. And so I think that's one part of it. And I mentioned this because Bannon is Mr. Bannon sent this to me and I presume I don't know who else he sent it to, but he's talking to reporters. He most recently talked to the economist about it. He's using different methods to put this out there to normalize and launder these ideas. Uh Trump obviously likes doing that. He puts the hats out when he's meeting with Democrats and other things in the Oval Office. And so that's a bit of the strategy part. The fact that they were caught trying to hold on to power and overthrow the 2020 election is the context for all of this.

[00:05:44]And I got to tell you, just being clear here in the the breakdowns I share, I find it really extraordinary sometimes how the country lived through this insurrection. It became the biggest federal probe in our history. And all these people went to jail for crimes against the United States, sedition, violence against police. And Trump, of course, let them all free on the first day in office. something that JD Vance and others said he should not do even after the election u because that's how extreme it was and I'm I'm just sometimes noticing that maybe because it's negative traumatic or there's so many other things going on people really seem to try to put that aside people either because they uh want to sort of normalize the world we're in or they don't want to think about it or they want to focus on other things but that's the baseline for all of this whether you're talking about the rule of law or this hat and where it fits in or political violence. There was political violence on January 6 famously. Um I actually wrote an essay about this. This is of course before the 24 election. Um that it was called the coup conspiracy.

[00:06:47]Uh and it was one of the uh versions of the January 6 report. And I always mentioned you don't have to buy this.

[00:06:52]You can go download the January 6 report and read that part for free online. Um, but I did chart in there something that has sadly remained relevant, which is how many people around Trump did try to overthrow the results of the election and some of the plots they pursued that failed are more important now perhaps than they were then because he did lose and he we did transfer power on the 20th and it seemed like a different moment.

[00:07:16]So, you have to remember he tried to get Cydney Powell to use the military to go after ballots. They just failed.

[00:07:24]Giuliani warned they would end up in prison if they actually did try a kind of military-style coup and that was abandoned. They tried to do fraudulent electors, which was seen as very far-fetched. The idea that you would go into Congress the day of the January 6 certification and just, you know, wave around some paper and say, "No, no, actually the state we lost, we won." And that that would somehow help members of Congress overthrow the election. Now, that failed. uh they even tried to give some of those papers to Mike Pence who was not going to join uh that kind of coup. But I mentioned that all now, not just as history, but to say that when they're now talking about a third term, that might not be the way he holds on to power, but it could be one of several ideas or plots that is being tested and pursued. And by the time you get to an election, if they do hold on to Republican power, maybe maybe that's good enough quote unquote for Trump. But if you imagine a scenario in 28 that looks more like 20, where the party has lost power and they are looking for a way to hold on either directly uh through Trump staying in office as the outgoing president or by claiming that the losing Republican nominee won.

[00:08:37]You can imagine several of these different plots. Now in the in this report I actually went through several of them and several went were public and so they've been documented. Um looking towards 24 there are already these sort of seemingly I want to say unlawful ideas to circumvent what is obviously the limit on the president serving two terms.

[00:09:00]Doesn't mean much if you say he can't serve two terms and then you call him you know Mr. extra president and he's still in office but you have some different titling obviously if he's holding on to power and breaking the constitution he or any politician then that's that. Um but one of these sort of out ofthe- box probably unlawful ideas was oh well what if he ran as vice president and assumed the presidency or you could imagine in the same scenario because Trump addressed it this week so I'm just responding to the discourse that's out there. You can imagine a scenario where president has a different name and the vice president is the former president but starts trying to basically carry out the duties of president. So it's just a little switcheroo. Uh there are a lot of reasons why the military shouldn't take orders from someone other than the commander-in-chief and the Supreme Court should back that up. But you can imagine those things. Now Trump ruled that out.

[00:09:54]He said that was quote too cute. But again, when you're dealing with people who were caught trying to do this once and they're now both publicly laundering these ideas and perhaps and there's a group third term project and others that are looking at this trying to figure out these ways, then yeah, I think you have to take that seriously. Now, I mentioned all the plots that were discarded. When you look across world history and other semiconstitutional, semi-democratic systems, there are other ways that you could try to circumvent a constitutional limit, a term limit or a limit on one ruler's power um without simply running them for a third term out in the open or running them for more positions. Uh, you know, I'm a lawyer and there are quite specific examples that would potentially be more enticing for the court for the Supreme Court to approve than just saying you want a third term and you're blatantly breaking the law. Now, I am not going to brainstorm or list those for some would-be autocrat right here. There may be examples that uh people around law and constitutional history could think of. There may be some they can't. But in the same way that in reporting uh we don't disseminate uh step-by-step instructions to make an illegal bomb. I'm not as a lawyer who's who's again written about this and and wrote the coup conspiracy essay and interviewed a lot of these players but on both sides. Uh I'm not going to actually give you all those steps or release them in public. Um, but I don't think it's a spoiler or secret that there are other steps and so we should all be quite vigilant, those of us who still care about the rule of law and democracy in a nonpartisan way as this is all being brainstormed. Uh, the last point I want to walk through, again, this is uh in my report for if you're watching, maybe you're still interested, but here's the last point. How would this actually work if we get closer to them really pursuing 28? Well, the first thing that would happen is you would actually see a candidate like Trump, if they're really going to test whether they can do it, try to declare that he's running for office. We still have laws in this country about how the money is organized and how you get on the ballot.

[00:12:04]We have states, some run by Republicans, some run by Democrats. And so the first test point in the courts if Trump literally pursued a third term would be to declare he's running for one and try to get on the ballot legally under the law constitutionally he'd be ineligible.

[00:12:21]That's what Speaker Johnson said. No path. That's what members of the Supreme Court have referred to in past cases because there have been many cases on term limits where they're enforced. Um although no one has been as brazen as to try to just run for a third term since the constitution got the second the 22nd amendment limiting it. Um and so if he tried you would quickly have a case on that and the lower courts would rule against it because there's clear precedent. The constitution bars you from any third term as president. The Supreme Court could just leave that stand and then he literally wouldn't be on the ballot. So it would be a big public loss and kind of humiliating for trying to become a dictator and losing that way. or the Supreme Court could take the case and affirm it or you can imagine is there a world where this Supreme Court uh changes it. It's really a matter you can't predict. You can show that Justice Barrett who was even appointed by Trump recently said, "Well, the 22nd Amendment is the answer on that," which is bad news for him. That's a no. Uh Justice John Roberts doesn't show any interest in uh breaking the Constitution like that that we've seen.

[00:13:23]So, if you're counting votes just based on that, it doesn't seem they would do that. And that's how this would be tested if uh Steve Bannon uh is being serious and not just trying to broaden the window and if Donald Trump thinks that this is something he should actually pursue. So, the first test of this would come then and all evidence suggests that wouldn't get very far in the courts. The backup alternate which B and others are alluding to is maybe there's some other way whether Trump calls it cute or not to try to see whether you can hold on to power, stay in office, um somehow share power, uh etc. So I don't see it as our role as lawyers and journalists to publicly outline all those steps. Um, but I do think when you look at the 2020 plots which ranged from valid lawsuits which they have every right to file and they lost uh and the Supreme Court didn't take didn't see any case that challenged Trump's loss. So they never took a Trump Biden case in 20 um to things they did that were questionable like the alternate electors in the beginning you're allowed to line them up but by Jan 6th after you've gone through the process um you can't just commit elector fraud. That's why some of the lawyers got in trouble. Um to the military plot I mentioned which failed to having states meet to override uh the voters in their own state. That's something they tried and failed to do. You might remember Giuliani giving presentations uh to what ultimately happened which was the hijacking of the certification process. They actually delayed it. They actually committed crimes. You remember they actually according to the juries of the United States committed sedition. uh if all of that went that far, again, not talking about only Trump who was not convicted of those things in fairness, uh but others around him were in service of trying to overthrow his loss. If all that already happened, then yes, we should take very seriously ongoing public or semi-public discussions about how to keep Trump in power in 28, even if the president currently says he doesn't want to do it by running for a third term. So be vigilant about what we know about the past to protect the democracy in the future. Hey, it's Ran 50. Don't forget to subscribe.

[00:15:34]>> Subscribe.

[00:15:35]>> We counted and we color coded. Red means a guardrail is basically failing. Yellow is mixed. Green obviously means it's working. And working doesn't mean that you agree with all the outcomes, but it means the guardrail of the rule of law is holding. And we've measured this in various ways. Having one or two people on an enemy's list being prosecuted by the government, that's bad. In countries like Russia, anyone who opposes meaningfully Putin's power gets investigated, sometimes imprisoned. His main rival uh actually died in prison.

[00:16:06]So, one or two of those is bad. This so-called enemies list, which Pam Bondi claimed she would not pursue, but they are. We count 14 such cases and counting. Not one of them has won. Not one of them through a fair process has found anything wrong done by the target or the defendant. And yet 14 of these cases are open. Uh this is the number of times the military's already been deployed. These are the many lawsuits which shows the courthouse doors are still open and on you go. The Congress gets a big fat X for failing to be a guardrail. Over on the American public side, I want to tell you the way we report on this. We actually do the measurements and then try to make sense of it. There was a lot of attention and criticism, for example, on universities for buckling to Trump's plots. I mean, when you think about it, universities are a place where you have entire semester talking about the rule of law or philosophical arguments or courage.

[00:16:58]And it was disputing to many people that professors who became presidents and their boards folded. Um, but when you actually broaden out and count it, 57% of universities are fighting those plots. So, we give it a yellow, a mixed bag, but that's a type of resistance.

[00:17:11]law firms doing worse. A lot of them are corporate and only 38% are fighting.

[00:17:16]CEOs, we count 12 who retracted their own past claims that they were against January 6, against that type of overthrow of democracy and now they're donating to Trump or otherwise. And you can count up and I'll put it in the notes on YouTube some of the examples if you want the names of those CEOs and companies. But the real story here led by the evidence is what we say green where guardrails are holding journalists even against more pressure on their employers obviously on people like Jimmy Kimmel who's using the same free speech rights that we use in the formal newsroom side of the company right he's at a different company but you get the idea journalists are continuing to do the work the protest movement is record-breaking uh the tea party against Obama where everyone of course had the right to express themselves was about 700,000 people to over the year. This is 13 million and counting. One of the most massive long-term protests we've seen.

[00:18:09]Polling now a year in, by the way, shows more people identify with no kings than MAGA by 13%. But that's because of the right to protest in the First Amendment.

[00:18:19]Uh, citizen juries are an example where those cases I mentioned that are being brought against rivals, some of them are failing first in the grand jury room.

[00:18:27]They don't get any farther. That's cuz our system still has a guardrail that requires citizens at the front and the end of every prosecution. And then the elections, we know a lot of this comes back to voter suppression, Jan 6, which was an attempt to overthrow Trump's loss in an election. But let's be clear, we just had elections in November in red and blue states all around the country.

[00:18:48]They went forward.

[00:18:50]Whatever happened, this is separate from the fact that Democrats won, which is an indicator of opposition to Trump in an off year, but separate from who won, they went forward. And so these efforts by Trump and others to scare or to make people think maybe there'll be no accountability. We find in the most recent election that also gets a green as a guard rail that's holding. Uh there's a lot more details to this. I kind of wanted to walk you through if you're more interested in sort of how we do this. Uh we had a whole team working on this for days. It's in one newscast, but we've been working on it for many days. I closed this piece, by the way, by quoting Madison, who was one of the founders most obsessed about kings and tyrants returning. That was like his thing. Some people are like Hamilton was interested in banking. If if you see the play, everybody remembers that. Um, Washington was a general, was interested in security, among other things. Madison obsessed with how do you stop these tyrants? How do you check ambition?

[00:19:41]Angels will not just come and do public service. And this was what he wanted.

[00:19:45]Guard rails up and down the system, local citizens on juries, states having their own independent authority, different types of force. So, you have the federal force. Yes, there's a military, but it's not supposed to be used for policing.

[00:19:59]Then you have local police, you have local militias, second amendment, uh is controversial, but was also the founders's idea that the government wouldn't have only the only weapons in the whole country. Um, that's Madison.

[00:20:11]And I paired him, of course, with rest in peace, the great Pop Smoke, who said, "I don't care if you're losing. Fight back." And that's part of the spirit we're seeing, too. In very formal and serious ways, in lawsuits where people have to band together and get lawyers and it takes money and planning, and in other informal organic ways, where when ICE acts, and we've seen at times act allegedly unlawfully, people rise up in their own communities. Even if they feel like they're losing or they're down and out, they fight back. Uh so that's our report. This is kind of off top. I wanted to share that with you. Up ahead next uh we will show you more of the conclusions of this report. Uh you can always subscribe or post comments and questions for us and stay informed.

[00:20:52]>> Hey, it's Arian 50. Don't forget to subscribe.

[00:20:55]>> Subscribe.

[00:20:56]>> Trump plotted against the Sixth Amendment right to counsel by retaliating against firms representing his critics. Now law firms fight in court for a living. Yet early on, many buckled under that plot. About 38% of the targeted firms have been fighting back over time in court. A mixed picture at best. Now, Trump also tried abusing government funding to attack campus freedom. And while many people criticized the universities, which buckled and that got a lot of attention, when you look over the year, our reporting finds most targeted universities about 60% just there about 57% are fighting back.

[00:21:34]Now, some of the parent company's CEOs buckled. I mentioned that. But when you look at the actual editors of newspapers, say the Times, Wall Street Journal, and most working journalists, they're not buckling. Even as Trump sues and tries to bar access and recently even oversaw the unusual federal search of a reporter's home, journalists are still reporting and speaking and critiquing the government as the Constitution envisioned. In fact, if you just think about it, a lot of what we know about Trump attacking the Bill of Rights comes from the exercise of that very first right, the First Amendment right to report and speak. It bars the government, of course, from any attempt to censor, ban, or punish free speech, free press, or the right of the people to peacefully assemble. Which brings us to protest. Americans have been exercising that right to great effect, breaking records for protests in this past year against Trump's autocratic bid for king-like powers, really sparking a movement that is now, according to polling, 13% larger than MAGA.

[00:22:41]>> Protest now or bow down later.

[00:22:45]>> Those are your options.

[00:22:46]>> Yes.

[00:22:47]>> Everything this regime has been up to is anti-American. More than 100 community members rally around the Vermont man at risk of deportation.

[00:22:57]>> Like I say, this is where I belong. This is home to me.

[00:23:02]>> Congress makes the laws, not the president.

[00:23:06]>> I believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, and I believe in people treating other people with humanity. I didn't think that >> that our government would be inhumane like that.

[00:23:22]>> It is regular Americans who have been fighting against Trump all over the country.

[00:23:28]Yes, in Washington, but honestly all over the country. And that's what's made the difference.

[00:23:34]>> These protests all over the country are one of the most effective green ratings when you measure the guardrails of this past year. Comparison. The Conservative Tea Party got a lot of attention and drew about 700,000 attendees concerned about Obama's leadership across 2009.

[00:23:50]The past years, Trump protests have drawn about 13 million people. A massive show of public resistance and unity and that can shape public opinion and impact politicians alike. Now, I told you DOJ employees falling down on their constitutional oath. We reported that the US guard rails also require regular citizens at the beginning and the end of every major prosecution. The grand juries that charge and of course the jury of 12 that convicts. And so the DOJ's extreme cases are sometimes dead on arrival because citizens on grand juries keep rejecting cases against protesters against some Trump rivals.

[00:24:32]They've stopped now if you're counting 10 attempted cases that we know about from Bondi's DOJ, including the bungled case against New York Attorney General James. Then there are elections. Trump now muses about an illegal third term or plotting against the midterms. Those are threats to do crime. They got to be taken seriously, especially after his convicted 2020 insurrection. But the fact is, this year elections were still successfully held around the nation.

[00:25:01]That is another green rating.

[00:25:03]Democracy's core guard rail, the people decide, is holding under strain.

[00:25:09]So altogether, it is a rough year for the rule of law.

[00:25:16]We're seeing red on the government's side. Trump, the source of the attacks on the rule of law, his appointees, Congress, all failing the Constitution.

[00:25:26]That's as courts and states try to hold the line.

[00:25:29]But the evidence shows the public is leading in this breach. And you can measure it. Regular workers showing courage their bosses lack. Journalists reporting amid these attacks. Citizens defending a constitution that the DOJ is clearly trashing. From the jury box to the ballot box and those record-breaking protests month after month, even against very real threats of government retribution or violence as soldiers roam the streets. And this is actually what the founders envisioned. Strong checks and rights because they expected conniving tyrants can come into power.

[00:26:08]The rights protected because we will need them, not cuz everything's just going to be easy or okay. Things are not okay. The rule of law is losing key rounds. The founders plan for that.

[00:26:21]Madison was fixated on how to systematically thwart future tyrants who might come into office. Or as the late Bashar Jackson said, aka Pop Smoke, drop a slip and get a light pack. I don't care if you're losing. Still fight back.

[00:26:40]But people are fighting back. And that's partly because we still have that power because the guard rails are protecting it most of the time. And the American system makes it a stronger power than any temporary politician was supposed to serve the public. The wider climate is changing. And while people tend to feel sometimes like, oh, president's in charge and the other branches sort of react and obviously Trump has pushed the limits to make it that way quite functionally, that doesn't mean that there isn't reaction to the action. And what we're seeing sometimes very clearly because this case really was probably doomed to begin with on the law and we've been reporting that. But the wider climate that judges in Congress operate in is this extreme, often rejected, unpopular, increasingly lame duck president. And so when there are close calls, right, when a case is easy, it might not even go to the court, let alone the Supreme Court. But when there are close calls uh and a lot of political science and historians have have covered this, it's understandable that the dynamics around the branches matter. For Congress, of course, they matter. These people are up for election. And for the courts, they have lifetime tenure, but they look at what's happening. They can feel it in the temperature. And the temperature has swiftly turned against Trump in these three weeks. If you go back a month or two, you have the Jimmy Kimmel debacle, the free speech debacle. Remember, there were Republicans vocally against that.

[00:28:07]There wasn't a vote to be had, but Republicans like Ted Cruz and conservative voices did criticize that obvious uh unconstitutional censorship. Had they actually gotten Kimmel off the air with government pressure, it could have become a court case. It could go all the way to the Supreme Court. First Amendment prohibits the government from doing that. But we didn't even get that far. They lost earlier. And so, you take it together and it's not that, oh, Trump's on the run. Trump is done.

[00:28:31]Muller flashbacks because those involve predictions about what's gonna happen. I try to avoid that. But what you're seeing in a in a very clear way that you can count you can count the Epstein files loss. You can count the votes on that. You can count all the court cases and the wider sort of ending of this.

[00:28:48]And it's a long ways from the early period when Trump seemed descendant.

[00:28:52]People were afraid. Law firms were cutting deals. Elon Musk was running around saying he was going to rewire government. Now he's fighting with Trump. He predicted, by the way, Trump was in the Epstein files. His so-called Doge project has been shut down early.

[00:29:05]The thing that was going to cut government itself got cut. So, a lot can change fast. Obviously, that goes in both directions. Things could swing back towards the Republicans based on external events or other activities. Um, but when you cover government, you have to have some eye on politics and the politics are moving against Trump. Um, uh, that might have been the simplest or the the most exciting part. Saved it to the end, uh, because I wanted to really walk through this ruling with you, but it's a a full rebuke of Trump's revenge efforts. And the final point, you can always subscribe if you're interested in these breakdowns, is if the revenge efforts were working better, they might distort the very de democratic process that we're in because people then wouldn't just look to the normal tools like the law or the votes. some people would be cowed, would be afraid, would think they would end up in jail. So there is a connective tissue here between the courts upholding the rule of law and thereby also defanging taking a tool away uh from a government that wants to be Nixon or worse, that wants to threaten people to do that which they otherwise wouldn't do in a free society.

[00:30:14]So it all comes together that way. Um, send me your questions and comments and stay informed.