I mean, this is, to me, the first step of what should be a monument to Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone and Officer Hodges and the men and women who protect the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were attacked that day by Donald Trump supporters.

Yeah, exactly.

January 6th is one of the darkest days in our history, but the only light that I see is the actions that those officers and their fellow colleagues took that day to protect our Capitol and keep our Capitol safe.

And the members of Congress who want to whitewash the events of that day should feel immense shame for it.

And so should this Trump administration.

But that's why we at Home of the Brave decided to capture and archive these files, because I gotta give a shout out to my colleague, Tom Joslin.

I work with him at Home of the Brave, and he was one of the authors of the January 6th committee report.

It is the price of groceries, the price of gas, the price of everything.

I mean, this is, to me, the first step of what should be a monument to Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone and Officer Hodges and the men and women who protect the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were attacked that day by Donald Trump supporters.

Yeah, exactly.

January 6th is one of the darkest days in our history.

But the only light that I see is the actions that those officers and their fellow colleagues took that day to protect our Capitol and keep our Capitol safe.

And the members of Congress who want to whitewash the events of that day should feel immense shame for it.

And so should this Trump administration.

But that's why we at Home of the Brave decided to capture and archive these files.

It is the price of groceries, the price of gas, the price of everything.

questions.Yeah.

I kind of agree with that because I think that, you know, I, I made this joke on my Instagram that, uh, we thought this administration was against broadcasting live executions.

It turns out that's not the case, because that interview with Hannity was a doozy, and it makes me think that he was sent in for the kill, that there was someone higher up, whether at Fox News or, uh, in coordination with the White House saying, "Hey, yeah, g- let's give her this actual hard-hitting interview and ask her some tough questions, put her on the spot, see how she does, or, you know, this will be our out because if she, you know, flails in this interview, then, okay, she's done." And, I, I mean, he did ask her tough questions, and I...

God, it w- it was painful, honestly, to watch, and I just think it showed that she was cracking under the pressure.

And don't get me wrong, I know better than most that being White House press secretary is one of the hardest jobs in government, if not the hardest job after president.

And so it is a tough job, but, like, the excuses she was making, too, during that Hannity interview about why she wasn't prepared for her s- first briefing, and she's like, "Well, it was, you know, the morning after a federal holiday, and I didn't get my briefing materials till late." Okay, well, no one had a gun to your head and forced you to the podium.

Who do you think? Who's coming next? Who should we expect to be the next person in this role, if anybody?

I think Scott Jennings is practicing in the mirror his talking points right now.

How did you think that she did?

Yeah, needless to say, I think that reporters like you and Shawn, who came to the briefing room hungry for answers today, left severely malnourished.

And I think that that's the fault on Katie Zacharia and the White House team for not prepping her adequately, and I don't know why they rushed her to the podium.

I know that for Kayleigh, she spent like a week or two prepping before she actually did her first briefing, and say what you want about her predecessors, love 'em or hate 'em, Kayleigh McEnany and, uh, Caroline Leavitt came out swinging at their first briefings.

They came out sharp, confident, and prepared, and they showed that they had the chops to do the job.

I don't think you can say the same about Katie Zacharia.

Now, maybe if she had had more prep time she would've been prepped for a question like their Ukraine question, but to flub an easily predictable question at her first briefing, and then only take questions from three reporters, who I will point out come from friendly conservative outlets, I feel like it just, it didn't set the right tone for her.

Mm.

... like there was preparation for this.

They made those briefings look easy, talking about her predecessors, Karoline and Kayleigh, and I feel like that's where they missed, they had a misstep here with Karoline Leavitt.

There should've been a lot more prep that went into making sure that her first showing came out strong, and I think she came out very weak, and she was reading from her notes.

She seemed a little nervous.

And yeah, those, uh, her predecessors made it look easy because hours of prep went into it.

That was one of my main jobs as deputy press secretary when I was working for Kayleigh McEnany.

We would spend hours beforehand, uh, before a briefing doing murder board sessions.

And here it's you're asking for $100,000 to pay your bill.

He minds the way it reflects on him, no?

Correct.

I think that he doesn't mind the corruption at all if it's kept quiet.

But when this instance where he's getting a lot of negative media attention, especially right before the midterm elections, that doesn't bode well for him or other administration officials to be asking or answering questions about this.

But I will say that she was given this ambassadorship in the first place for a reason, because she was part of the Trump family for so many years, having been engaged to Don Jr., that they wanted to find a soft landing spot for her after their engagement ended.

And so that was the reason she was given that ambassadorship.

And so I think now when this is coming to light and they're facing pressure to oust her, they might oust her, but she knows where too many of the bodies are buried, that they're going to want to keep her close and keep her on good terms with the family.

So what is the fundamental motivator for the president right now with these waiting two years to go?

Why do you think they've done nothing as Trump has destroyed all those institutions?

Yeah, it's, it's sad because I don't recognize the party that I feel like I once belonged to, and, uh, Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image, and all of these Republican politicians have just bent the knee, and, um, they followed him.

And it, right now, you would think that with people being so disheartened with him and with even, um, uh, people who voted for him numerous times, uh, souring on him, that some of these Republican politicians would find their spines and actually stand up to him, but we, we really don't ever see that happen.

That is, unless they get primaried out or, uh, they choose to retire, and usually it's because they're being forced out.

Um, and so I, that's the only time we really ever see these Republicans find their voice and, um, act courageously.

And so it is, it is very disheartening because it doesn't really make sense politically when you think that, and as of now, they actually probably have, um, the ability to criticize him more.

And we've seen some tepid cri- criticisms of him from folks within the party who are now trying to distance themselves from him just a couple weeks out from an election, but, uh, uh, they've had the last several years to criticize him on things that I would think they could rightfully criticize him on if they were truly conservatives, like his asinine tariffs that have driven the cost of everything up, like him launching this war of choice with Iran when he campaigned on being the peace president and not getting us into another forever war, or like him saying that he was gonna release the Epstein files and have, um, transparency and accountability for the Epstein survivors and all of that.

[somber music]Sarah, talk about the ad.

Sarah, how do Republicans fighting for their seats explain to voters who were struggling to put food on the table to gas up their cars that they are spending $20 million in DHS money on these ads?

to see the Trump administration try to justify these ads by calling them public service announcements.

Public service announcements are like ads that say don't do drugs, kids.

Not President Trump is the best and playing in the background songs that say love me, love me, love me.

That's what some of these ads are doing.

And so they are just wasting everyone's hard-earned taxpayer dollars by running these ads at a time when they're kicking people off their health care.

They're kicking people off their SNAP benefits.

When the president hears that sound, how will he react to Ken Paxton criticizing him?

I mean, apart from cabinet secretaries showing up occasionally to take the White House podium at c- the day some days, um, there's no routine briefing anymore, right?

No, I don't think that they've held a briefing in like almost two months other than the ones that you listed of like, you know, Vance and cabinet officials who have done it like one or two maybe.

But, um, that, which is a disservice to the American people because, uh, that is, you know, what the role typically of the White House press secretary is supposed to be, is communicating, um, you know, the policies of, uh, the administration to the American, uh, public.

And we're not getting that right now.

And so, you know, they love to say that he's the most transparent president in US history, and they're not host, ho-ho-- uh, they're not hosting briefings.

And we also see that he's banning media outlets.

And, uh, which was also just crazy that they were allowing in Chinese Communist Party outlets [laughs] to cover, but then banning American media outlets.

Or does he double down and get more reckless, more extreme, more inclined to, to be an election denier going forward for 2028, redouble the efforts to tilt the playing field? I mean, what's your general sense of what those two la- these, these two last years are gonna look like?

Is this part of a bigger strategy or how do you view it?

Yeah, I think that the White House is pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with.

And we haven't we've seen them before defy court orders.

So it doesn't surprise me that they were dragging their feet on this and they didn't want to let these reporters back onto the White House campus.

Eventually, they did so.

But they did so after reporters had to go multiple times to the White House campus and try to be let in.

And I just have to say that it's hilarious to see President Trump then complaining about the lack of media coverage surrounding his China summit and Xi's visit.

Were those sort of items obviously coming from the president's head? But was that strategic to distract or was that just trying to keep up with the president? I mean, was that was that his strategy, though, I guess?

Sarah Matthews, as someone who worked in the communications shop in the White House in Trump round one, when you're watching how this is being, how this is playing out, how the president's top communications aides are handling this, what's your view of how this has played out from the ban, the reversal, the lack of the TV coverage the president seeks for something as big of a moment like this?

Yeah.

First, it's such an unforced error on their part, because he's complaining about the lack of coverage, but then he picked the timing of when to institute this ban right before Xi Jinping arrived.

So he can't really complain about it when it was something of his own doing.

And then I have to say too that Trump is the, uh, most un-American president of my lifetime, and probably that we have ever seen, because he doesn't believe in a free press.

He thinks that it's the job of the press to flatter him.

He doesn't like being held accountable, and that is why we have a free press in this country, because they are supposed to ask tough questions, show the American people what's going on inside the White House, and get that kind of information out there, uh, and be an independent media.

Bill Stepien, who worked on his 2020 campaign, was remarking to me the other night, it's pretty hard to argue that now that you've banned, even temporarily, but only because of a court stepped in, banned three outlets from the grounds to, to make that argument.

Like, what does that mean? Like, do these guys have an office in the White House? Like, h-how do you get a seat in the pool? Like, like, maybe just kind of run through for people, like, what actually happens, and then why it's significant.

Yeah.

So you can be credentialed White House media and not necessarily be part of the pool because the purpose of the pool is that it's just a select number of reporters who are on duty to follow the president's movements that day, and that's because you can't have all of these hundreds of credentialed White House media in the room at every event.

You can't squeeze them all into the Oval Office.

You can't take them all on Air Force One, and so it becomes this group of around 15 to 20 reporters, and it's all split up between you have print reporters who are, uh, putting out a pool report of what the president is doing, um, and saying, uh, throughout the course of the day.

You have a TV camera crew that is there that is recording all the video and audio, and then, uh, they're sending that and sharing it to all the other TV networks.

Uh, a radio reporter, still photographers, the list goes on.

It's very believable.

If that is what voters want to hear about and this administration is selling them socialism, communism and anarchy, is that enough to break through?

No, I think that it's very obvious that this administration doesn't have a record of success to run on.

So what do you do when you don't have successes to point to? You have to fearmonger.

And so that's why we see every top Republican out there running on this idea of socialism and communism.

And I look at some of the actions that the Trump administration has taken, and I think, hmm, I think them buying stake in companies like Intel is communism.

So it's funny that they're projecting all of this fearmongering, saying that it's Democrats who want to be these big bad socialists and all of this.

And I don't think that voters are going to buy it.

What is the alternative, Sarah, to have the focus be on Ken Paxton, the man, the candidate? I'm not entirely sure in that race what they think their strength is.

But she talked about how during her time in the first Trump administration and on the campaign trail before she left and resigned after January 6th, she didn't see a lot of Melania.

Yeah, you know, it's so funny because when I was working on the campaign for a year and then at the White House the last seven months of the first admin campaign, I met the vice president.

I met almost every cabinet official, all these things at different events.

I met members of the first family, met all of them at one point or another.

The only person I never met was Melania Trump.

I never met the first lady, even though I was the deputy spokesperson for the president on his campaign and then in the White House.

And I think that that's pretty telling.

And again, my friend Sarah, she broke it down.

Do you think Tr- do you think that is what they're, what is at play here? Do you think Trump has a, has, i- is right to have this kind of optimism?

No.

He definitely shouldn't have this type of optimism.

I think that when you don't have any accomplishments to tout or to run on, you have to fearmonger, and that is exactly what Trump and Republicans are going to do, and we've already seen them do in the lead up to the midterm elections.

They're out there talking about communism and this threat that Democrats are going to ruin America as you know it.

And the thing is that voters, I don't think are gonna be buying it.

I think that they gave Trump a chance in 2024 because they thought that he was gonna bring prices down and get a handle on the economy.

Uh, I mean, just your reaction to that as I'm seeing this.

What do you understand about his relationship with Natalie Harp?

I actually knew Natalie Harp during my time when I was working for the administration, and before I joined the first administration, I worked on Trump's 2020 reelect campaign for a year.

And Natalie Harp was a campaign surrogate for us because she was a, a benefactor of Right to Try.

And I remember her messaging me all the time, uh, asking how she could be more helpful, and sh- it was very obvious to me at that time that she wanted to be in the MAGA world and be in Trump's orbit.

And obviously over time she has now risen the ranks to be one of his closest aides.

She is someone who has the ear of the president, and as she serves as an executive assistant for him, but also she is one of the gatekeepers of information for him and controls his social media.

So that is something that he only entrusts with very few people.

Um, w- what is your sense of, of why the meltdown?

Do you think his comments ought to backfire, or do you think that this is in some ways, um, uh, hypocritical for people to criticize him while not criticizing the president for the many comments he has made?

Yeah, in a world where Trump has broken nearly every norm and constantly degrades women, I think it's a little rich to see Republicans clutching their pearls over this comment from Senator Ossoff.

Would I have advised him to make the comment? Probably not.

I think there's a lot of other things that you can rightly attack the president for.

But I will say that it did its job effectively in garnering him media coverage, and that is certainly what he wanted.

He wanted his name to be out there in the 2028 presidential conversation.

But I will say that, uh, the pearl-clutching from Republicans, it's just ...

At what point do we say, "Okay, there are just some standards that we're not going to go beneath regardless of what another political person is willing to do or say?"

Sarah Matthews, of course, the question, will it be enough?

You know, it remains to be seen because obviously I think that we saw that Donald Trump is willing to do anything and everything when it comes to disputing election results.

He already tried to overthrow one election.

He pressured state officials in the past.

He pressured his own vice president to defy the constitution, was willing to spread baseless conspiracy theories and lies, which all resulted in a deadly insurrection on our nation's Capitol.

And the lesson that he learned from that wasn't, we shouldn't try to overthrow elections.

It was, I need to have people in positions of power who will go along with what I want.

clear, consistent communication from their leaders and they are not receiving that because it would seem as though the administration is not clear on why they are there or what their off ramp is.

This is a moment where we've been talking about election analysis for a lot of years, but it is still an issue that would move conservatives to vote for a Democrat.

You know, this is probably what's most depressing about January 6th to me is that I thought election denialism would be over after January 6th, that that would be the end of it, that people would stop with the lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

And five years later, here we are, where most of these Republican candidates on the ballot for governor, as you guys lined out, that is a credential.

in order to be a candidate in the Republican Party nowadays, for the most part across the country, we see that it's a requirement that you have to be willing to go along with Trump's lies about the 2020 election.

But let's be very clear.

There is zero evidence of fraud.

He's never been able to prove it.

And now, is this a result of the isolation that we've seen reported time and again about this version of Trump in the White House?

Yeah, I do think that to an extent, Trump has always been willing to distort reality and bend it into his world narrative.

But I do think that this isolation that's happening in Trump 2.0 is making it even worse, where he can't understand that people are talking about affordability because he only surrounds himself with enablers and sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

So they're telling him, sir, everything's great.

We're in the golden age of America.

And he knows that if he surrounds himself with people like that, then yes, they're going to keep him happy, tell him what he wants to hear.

But what they're telling him is so much further from the truth than what people are actually experiencing.

And do you really think they're just going to fall in line and say, OK, four years or eight years from now?

What are those details what-- that, you know, you mentioned that really jumped out at you?

Yeah, no, and I think you're right.

That this is an unspoken thing in Washington, where this is a pattern of behavior with these old men who are typically, you know, spending time away from their families.

In the case of Chuck Edwards, he's married.

Um, but you know, they spend a lot of time in Washington away from their families, and, um, and yeah, maybe they, they look at these staffers as, "Oh, well, this is my family here." But it's really inappropriate when you look at what he was doing, uh, for these young women.

One of the instances that struck me was that he skipped votes to go over to one of the staffer's houses to help her decorate her Christmas tree.

Um, I, I can assure you, I worked on the Hill, I would never want my boss stepping foot in my apartment or my house.

Um, and just over the way he would talk to them or send these messages that was like, um, when one of them finally quit because she felt, you know, "My boss is a creep, I'm out of here," that he, he said, you know, "This is one of the most heartbreaking days of my life." I mean, just really, just really inappropriate and just weird, weird ways to interact.

[laughs]

... because he looked at someone like Joe Biden and thought, "How could I lose to this guy?" I mean, he called him, you know, uh, Sleepy Joe, and then obviously i- i- it affected him because he's a narcissist.

His ego won't allow him to see the facts for what they are, that there was no election fraud, and that it was Joe Biden who was the winner of the 2020 election.

And so he's been fixated on this topic and talking about the election, talking about the January 6th rioters because he saw them as fighting for him when he felt like no one else was fighting for him.

I was in the White House during that time, the post-election, up until January 6th, and there were advisors telling him he lost, that there was no evidence, that everything he was trying in court was going to fail, and he refused to believe it.

And when he stopped taking the advice of those people, he surrounded himself with enablers who told him what he wanted to hear.

And I do think that if you tell yourself what you wanna hear and surround yourself with sycophants like that, eventually you start to believe it yourself.

What do you think is behind that?

And folks around him may see that even if he doesn't.

Yeah, I think that voters want him to be talking about quite literally anything other than the 2020 election.

That is not where their priorities lie.

They are focused on wanting the president to lower costs, wanting him to end this war of choice that he started with Iran, wanting him to bring down inflation.

And instead, this is what he's focused on.

His ego won't allow him to talk about anything else.

And he just keeps looking in the past and wanting to relitigate the 2020 election.

What's the message to the average American if the president is benefiting from office and the teleprompter operator is benefiting from his proximity to the president? Is the message supposed to be pay for my early access subscription on Truth Social and you too can be on the inside?

Uh, why do you think this issue breaks through, and we're already seeing criticism on the right?

Yeah, I mean, he said that he was gonna be the guy to drain the swamp, but as you've laid out, he's the biggest swamp creature of them all.

And I do think that there is a difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, and it's that he feels emboldened, and I think he feels like he's owed something now because he was put through so much with the legal troubles.

And so he thinks, "I'm gonna do what I want in this term." And I think that that comes through in the corruption that we're seeing and in the policy choices that he's made.

He's not acting on a- any sort of competency or wise advice from people.

He's just going on his own instinct.

And then when it comes to the corruption of it all, I mean, come on.

Do you, do you see that as a... as, as Trump's approval crashes, do you see that meaning that some of the Republican faithful, uh, are changing their mind?

He can't say both, "Give me the credit for the fact that this took place, but the details are, are someone else's to take the blame for." Are these situations difficult for people working as press secretary, deputy press secretary to manage because they sort of require throwing someone under the bus? Or are they s-- Are, are these manageable situations behind the scenes in ways that may not be obvious to the audience?

I think it gets difficult when, no matter what it is, Trump will take a negative and try to spin it into a positive and claim victory, and for example, with this situation, this is a crisis of his own making.

It's not like we were attacked, and we had to go to war, and then we're trying to end this war.

He started it because I think he thought it was going to be an easier win, something like the operation in Venezuela, and I think he thought, "Oh, I'm gonna do this again," and he was running on this high from Venezuela.

And then obviously the worst thing possible that everyone predicted would happen, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz happened.

All war gaming scenarios predicted that this would likely happen.

And so I-- Trump think, I think thought that they, uh-- he was calling their bluff, and it wouldn't happen, and it did.

Do you think that Americans are connecting the dots on here's why things cost what they cost and a bunch of these decisions like tariffs and the war are optional? Or do you think that Republicans and the administration are doing a good or good enough job of acting as though their policy doesn't relate to what people are seeing when they check out and buy stuff?