anything else. we re not going to sleep tonight, right? have a great show. thank you, nicolle. we are excited about the upcoming news. welcome to the beat. i m ari melber. but the big news today is huge, and here it is the criminal trial of defendant donald trump continuing today. you are looking at new images, and i ll explain exactly what it is. you may recall that first court hearing set a lot of rules down. now you re looking at the first one since then, since trump was arraigned, which was a precedent busting moment for america. it was actually just seven weeks ago. at that hearing, the judge warning him about his conduct and scheduling another hearing, which brings us what you have here today. we ll show you what we have. we don t have a million shots. isolated on the left, defendant donald trump sitting right there. this was a hearing on evidence and rules for a protective order. trump had to legally appear in this hearing, which is another step towards his cri
mccarthy knows this and he knows he has to please that constituency in his caucus first and foremost. and for trump, the math is very simple. he must break the biden brand. joe biden won in 2020 because he was the ted lasso candidate. he was the guy who talked about the soul of america who could bring people together, was bipartisan, and he has by and large succeeded on that. trump in 2024 knows he must break that. he must create chaos. he must say, biden creates as much chaos for me. might as well vote for me. i got jokes. that is basically what donald trump wants to do in this campaign, and this debt ceiling or debt default, manufactured crisis, is really just a campaign event that s been staged by his campaign. the words we use and how he put things interesting to hear it put as an another piece of trump campaign theater, because he was booted off some
somebody who may be familiar to her lawyer, and at some point he s going to reveal who it is. we just don t know at this point. that would be a significant moment. you re now with the campaign theater here. what did you hear last night in the interview on 60 minutes that raised some red flags in your mind? i think the payment raised a number of red flags. at a minimum the timing indicates the $130,000 payment was made to influence the election it was 11 days before the election, mend of october, the election mid-november. so i think it was seen as something the voters would find important, and in an election, the campaign expenditure needs