Capehart and Continetti on Trump's warm welcome of Mamdani

Well, as President Trump plays nice with one Democrat in the Oval Office, he's called six others traitors and said the social media video that they posted could be punishable by death. For analysis of the week, we turn now to Capehart and Continetti. That is Jonathan Capehart of MSNOW and Matthew Continetti, Wall Street Journal opinion columnist and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

David Brooks is away this evening. Welcome to you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Jonathan, let's jump into that meeting in the Oval Office, because President Trump went from calling Zoran Mamdani a communist, threatening to strip his citizenship, to complimenting

him, stepping in to defend him in the Oval Office, as Liz reported earlier. What happened?

Threatening also to send the National Guard in if he were to win the election. It was the most extraordinary moment for me, the most extraordinary moment of the Trump presidency. I was wondering if Merilek Mamdani would be the Volodymyr Zelensky of the day. And instead, what we saw was an incredible love fest. And by love fest, I mean the President of the United States

just heaping all sorts of compliments and, dare I say, love on Mamdani. And I think there's three things happening here. Game respects game. And so I think the president looked at how Mamdani ran his campaign, how many votes he got in the election, a million votes versus President Trump got 700-something thousand

votes when he ran in a presidential election in New York City. You could tell that the president respects Mamdani as a result of that. And the third thing, the president at various moments in that meeting totally undercut Republican arguments

against Mamdani, including Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who's gonna run for governor of New York, who had been calling the mayor-elect a jihadist for months. And when asked, the president said, no. It's extraordinary.

Matt, what surprised you about what stood out to you? And also, is it harder now for Republicans to go after Mamdani in the same way?

I think if you had to cut ads tonight, yes, it would be hard. But this relationship is only just beginning. I think over the course of the Trump era, we've discovered there's a difference between meeting Trump and rally Trump or social media Trump. And in meeting Trump, if you're not Vladimir Zelensky, typically meetings go very well with Donald Trump.

And he wants to convey that he is a good host, he's welcoming, and so he wanted to convey that same atmosphere meeting Mamdani, much to the surprise of the Republicans. The other thing here is they're both outsiders. They're both populists. In the democratic world, in the democratic socialist world, populism is expressed through

Israel-Palestine and through economic issues. In national populism, Republican populism, it's expressed on the border cultural types. But there is still this kind of fundament that connects them and I think that's why Trump was a little bit nicer than a lot of us

expected. What about the affordability issue? I mean our latest polling shows there is no more single important issue for Americans today. When asked about what should be the president's top priority, lowering prices, 57 percent said that should be it. The next closest issue is immigration, at 16 percent. Jonathan, this is an issue that mayor-elect Mamdani has been laser-focused on. Was that informing some of this meeting, too?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the president's been talking about quote unquote, the affordability issue, this new issue that's out there. No, that is why Democrats won elections up and down the ballot around the country, particularly governor in New Jersey, Virginia, and obviously Mayor-elect Mamdani in New York City.

And so again, for the president to tie himself to Mr. Affordability, Zoran Mamdani, I think the mayor-elect got more out of this, I'm sorry, the president got a whole lot more out of this meeting, I think from his point of view, than the mayor-elect did.

I mean, affordability elected Mamdani, but it also elected Donald Trump last year. Inflation was one of the number one issues that got Donald Trump the popular vote for the first time in 20 years for a Republican. The issue is how are you going to get to affordability? And I think that's where the two politicians diverge.

Mamdani wants to have more government-controlled solutions, more price controls. Donald Trump, with that big asterisk of tariffs, is usually about deregulation, tax cuts, more supply.

We're going to have an experiment, which means reach that affordability end quicker. AMNA NAWAZ I also want to ask you about this week, a

remarkable video we saw from six Democratic lawmakers, all of whom have national security and defense backgrounds, urging military members to disobey unlawful orders. Take a listen.

Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right

here at home.

Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.

You can refuse illegal orders.

You must refuse illegal orders.

No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

AMNA NAWAZ Now, President Trump called for them to be arrested. He called it seditious behavior from traitors, punishable by death. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt was asked if the president was calling for the execution of members of Congress. Here's what she had to say.

CAROLINE LEAVITT, White House Press Secretary Nominee for President-Elect, U.S. Congress

of the United States Congress of the United States Congress of the United States Congress

of the United States Congress of the message to members of the United States military, to active-duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president's lawful orders.

AMNA NAWAZ, The Cook Political Reporter, The Washington Post. Jonathan, I asked Congressman Crow about this yesterday. He was featured in that video. What specifically they're asking military members to do? He said it's not about a specific order. Is it clear to you why they put this video out?

REP.

RONALD MCCAINEY, Washington Post-Election Committee on the President's Lawsuit Against the U.S. Government? Yes, because they are concerned about what the president could do, what the president might ask the military to do. And it's not a stretch when you see judges have issued rulings telling the president and administration to do things or not do things, and the administration openly defying the courts.

So it's not unreasonable for members of Congress who have served in the military to have concern about how that might reach its way into the Pentagon. And, you know, I'm glad you played that clip from the White House press secretary because right there in her answer,

you see the disingenuousness. The members of that video, they said unlawful orders. And what the press secretary said, they're asking them to defy lawful orders. That is not what the members of Congress were asking service members to do.

And one other thing, I was talking to Senator Ruben Gallego yesterday, and he made the point what those members of Congress are doing was nothing more than is what's in the training that service members get just they are just reiterating what they get in training. There's nothing extraordinary about what they said. I want to ask for

your response to the video but also to put to you that Senator Slotkin who's in that video said she and other members of the video have gotten close to 1,000 threats since it was posted. Congressman Crowe posted some of the threats he's been receiving, calling for his family to be killed. It's chilling stuff. But how dangerous is the president's rhetoric on this?

I think a lot of the rhetoric has been very dangerous. I think both sides here have been not covering themselves in glory. On the one hand, you're calling the president a fascist, a dictator in training, someone who's going to issue unlawful orders, even though they can't name

a single unlawful order that the president has given. And then, of course, you have the president himself calling this sedition, treason, punishable by death. If we want to lower the temperature, it will take responsibility on every party. But what has struck me about this

is how it's a partisan split screen. Both parties are playing to their bases here. The Democrats are rallying behind these congressmen, and the Republicans, almost uniformly, are rallying behind President Trump. So I don't think that this is going to have

a long-term effect politically on the president.

Jonathan, do you want to respond?

I sort of bristle at the idea that this is a both sides thing. What we have here in terms of the threats, particularly against these members of Congress, it's that you have the president of the United States retweeting or whatever you want to call it,

threats against members of Congress. He is the one who in language, and if you want to go back to January 6th, in deeds, who is fanning, fomenting the nastiness that is out there. If we want to lower the temperature,

if we want to change the way we do politics in the country, it has to start with the chief executive. It has to start with the president. And he has shown an unwillingness to do that. And it also has to be followed through by all of us, including people who are portraying him

as an authoritarian who poses an existential threat to this country. There's lots of evidence that it's not unwarranted.

Let's talk about another moment this week that an existential threat to this country. There's lots of evidence that it's not unwarranted. Let's talk about another moment this week that brought about some of the challenges we've seen in terms of how the president interacts with members of the press specifically. We saw him host the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, at the White House. He was asked about the 2018 killing of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

And here's what he had to say. DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of

the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former

President of the United States, Former President of the United States, Former President of A few days later, asked about Jeffrey Epstein, the president lashed out at her, called her a terrible person, a terrible reporter, threatened to revoke ABC's license. That followed him calling another women reporter, Catherine Lucia Bloomberg, piggy on Air Force One. What does all of this say to you right now about the president's relationship with journalists and how he views the press?

JONATHAN CAPEHART, The Washington Post-Syndicate Journalist Association Press Secretary, New views of the press with the lowest of regard. He certainly has a problem with women journalists who ask him tough questions, who do their jobs of trying to hold the President of the United States to account. And he takes it personally. The idea that the President of the United States

would talk about my former colleague at the Washington Post as a you know, it is a controversial guy basically insinuating that he deserved being murdered and chopped up with a bone saw in Turkey. The President of the United States used to be the person

who stood for free press, for democracy, for the role of the press in upholding a democracy. And yet there he has no problem undermining that across from someone like MBS and certainly by berating the terrific journalist from ABC who asked very straightforward and pointed

questions. Matt, I'm going to give you the last word here in the minute or so we have left. What do you take away from this?

My big takeaway is we've heard Donald Trump speak this way to reporters and to women reporters since the first Republican debate in August 2015 and Megyn Kelly who was then challenging Trump as the Fox anchor. That's not new. What is new is Donald Trump's political situation and I think he understands that the economy, affordability, these bread and butter issues we've been talking about do pose a real risk to the Republican majority next year.

And I think that's why you're seeing a more elevated, angry Trump in some of these interactions

with the press. You think he's lashing out more because he's feeling more pressure. Is that right?

I think that's, I can only say what has changed.

What has changed is that Donald Trump's political situation has deteriorated since these off-year elections earlier this month.

AMNA NAWAZ Matthew Contenetti, Jonathan Capehart, great to have you both at the table. Thank you so much.

JONATHAN CAPEHART Thanks, Amna. JONATHAN CAPEHART Thanks, Amna.

MATTHEW CONTENETTI, JONATHAN CAPEHART, THANK YOU SO MUCH.