Trump makes false and misleading statements at Kansas rally

[0:00] President was on the trail again yesterday with a stop. He'll be out again today as well. [0:04] Stop in Greenville, North Carolina today in support of Michael Watley, the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat. [0:10] Comes after the president's visit yesterday to Kansas, where he stepped for incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. [0:16] Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. [0:19] So it's notable that the president is spending these critical days there. [0:22] But polls show the race between Marshall and Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, to be in a dead heat. [0:27] President Trump attacked Hamilton last night, making false and misleading claims about the pastor's support for migrants and transgender people. [0:34] The president also claimed that if Democrats win the midterm elections, the United States would see violent protests like the demonstrations happening right now in France. [0:42] If you want to see what is at stake in this election, just look at what's happening in France. [0:50] That's a once great nation that is being conquered, looted and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity and they hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself. [1:04] And as we're seeing in Europe, globalist left wing politicians have treasonously imported millions and millions of third world migrants who are totally incompatible with West and they are incompatible with Western values. [1:22] They despise everything about France and they're destroying that country. [1:27] And we're not going to let that happen to this country. [1:31] He supports flooding Kansas with unvetted refugees who go around killing people literally for no reason. [1:40] And they come in. [1:42] He says it's OK for people to come in from the most dangerous places on Earth. [1:48] They can pour into Kansas. [1:49] Adam Hamilton used church dollars to fund anti-religious transgender activity activities. [1:57] Activities, I mean, and so he used a lot of church money to fund all of this transgender crap that you're reading about, who openly mocks Jesus and he openly mocks Jesus. [2:13] He promotes a document listing 125 different genders. [2:19] Now, prior to the president's rally, Hamilton's campaign released a video of him welcoming Trump to the state, telling the president he'd always be willing to sit down and have a civil conversation with him. [2:30] I want to bring in MSNOW White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez here on set with me. [2:35] I mean, look, we're watching the pivot to the culture wars in real time. [2:38] It makes sense that Republicans are going back to that well. [2:41] But when you're in a state like Kansas that really should not be in play in the way that it is right now, given the past history of the way people have voted in that state, [2:50] what does it say that that is the closing message that Trump is bringing there? [2:53] And is this what White House advisers and allies hoped this swing would look like? [2:58] The answer to your last question is no, it's not what they hoped it would look like. [3:02] It's not what Republican candidates, as you know, Ali, hoped that it would look like. [3:07] Why? Because they had hoped that at this point there would be no more Iran war. [3:12] They hoped that gas prices would be down. [3:14] And none of those things have happened. [3:16] And the president isn't necessarily focused on trying to make an argument around the economy other than saying, [3:22] I've done a good job. I'm going to continue to, you know, be the best president and just give me just give Republicans two more years of full control of Congress with the White House. [3:35] But there there is no cohesive message. [3:38] And yes, the White House argues that their their biggest argument is Democrats. [3:43] And you've heard J.D. Vance say this as well, which is that Democrats are going to turn the country into a socialist communist country. [3:49] We've heard that before from Republicans. We've heard that before from President Trump. [3:53] But he doesn't necessarily have a strategy when it comes to the message. [3:58] And sources close to the president will admit that they you know, they said that it's a really difficult. [4:03] It's really difficult for the president or Republicans to make any kind of coherent, cohesive message to the public because of the fact that gas prices are not coming down. [4:14] Cost of living is not coming down. And the country is still at war in Iran. [4:18] And they've lost the confidence of the country on those very issues, even as the president himself is complaining about the fact that he feels the message isn't getting out there in the right way. [4:26] He always thinks of himself as the chief and best messenger for the party. [4:30] And this is the message that he's putting out, again, not in line with where polls are telling these candidates and this president that voters are begging to hear from them on these very issues. [4:40] You brought up Vice President Vance. He's been out often town hall over the weekend and in a new interview yesterday. [4:47] Vice president, they're defending President Trump and the Trump family's businesses. Watch that. [4:54] They were already very, very wealthy family. And I think it's a family. [4:57] I think it's a family that suffered extraordinary financial consequences for him being president the first time. [5:03] And I think if you look at the long sweep of the first Trump administration, obviously that four year period in between and the second Trump administration, [5:11] I just don't understand the argument that somehow politics has made Donald Trump or his family much better off. [5:18] I mean, their lives were nearly destroyed. Their business was nearly destroyed. [5:21] They tried to throw the president in jail for something like 900 years. So I don't see the benefit there. [5:27] What I would say is I don't think there's evidence that the Trump family has become enriched by politics. [5:32] I think that the fact that the fact that the fact that their lives were so destroyed or almost destroyed, I should say, [5:39] is I think evidence that they've sacrificed a lot for politics. [5:42] And his wife both had coins. He got a Netflix deal for the documentary. You're fine with those. [5:47] I mean, I think the president's allowed to earn a living and allowed to live his life. [5:51] And I don't see again, the question is, is he profiting off of his office? [5:55] I just don't see any evidence that's true. [5:59] OK, so as for the evidence that that's true, according to President Trump's most recent financial disclosure, [6:04] his revenue in 2025 jumped to at least two point two billion dollars compared to the minimum of six hundred twenty two million dollars in 2024. [6:11] Before he returned to office, it's a pretty big jump. [6:15] And that can largely be attributed to about one point four billion dollars in new revenue from cryptocurrency businesses that directly benefited from his actions as president. [6:25] Vance has to do what he has to do in defending the president on this, obviously. [6:29] But I think the numbers are pretty clear and they tell a clear story. [6:32] And then you're also watching polling from the American public catch up with the fact that these financial disclosures, [6:38] these claims about what is helping the president and his family profit off of the office that he is currently in. [6:44] The public is fully aware and the polling is showing that they're concerned about corruption. [6:47] Right. The polling is clear that Americans are not happy with how much they think the president is making off of his time in office. [6:54] It's not just him, but his sons, his wife, Melania. [6:58] She also inked a deal with Amazon for that documentary about her life. [7:02] And the question is, would any of that have happened? [7:06] Would she have inked that kind of deal if they hadn't come into the presidency a second time? [7:11] And with the president himself, he's making money off of his cryptocurrency ventures with his sons. [7:16] He's making money off of meme coins. [7:18] He's making money off of all kinds of things that he puts the mark of the presidency on repeatedly and sells that to the American public. [7:29] And then there's also the donations that he solicits from companies and from private donors for his pet projects. [7:38] One thing that I think about when we're hearing the vice president say those things and the president himself also dismiss all of these conflicts of interest [7:46] is the fact that one of the president's first acts when he came into the White House a second time was to fire so many inspectors general. [7:55] Those are the watchdogs across agencies that would be looking into maybe not the president himself, [8:00] but other business dealings that those agencies are doing that that either administration officials or the president's family are potentially benefiting from. [8:12] And right now there are there are not those inspectors general. [8:15] There are people put in place that are Trump loyalists to oversee any potential conflicts of interest and wrongdoing and grifts that are occurring across the federal government. [8:25] And this is where Democrats come in and say part of the reason that they're pushing for the majority in the House, [8:30] a potential majority in the Senate, although I still believe it's a tough climb, [8:34] is because they want to hold hearings, accountability, issue subpoenas, [8:38] have gavel power to be able to investigate some of these claims of corruption that we've seen reported in the press and other places. [8:44] And that's largely why we're seeing this White House push for not just the idea that if they change majorities that the president will be investigated. [8:54] But there's also these new fears about what this government might do to prevent people from voting. [9:00] And I know that you've done a lot of work in the space of what it looks like to have federal election monitors, [9:05] which on its face is not strange. [9:07] But what are you finding as we hit two weeks until the midterms? [9:10] So the administration says, the Justice Department says that they're going to be sending out 1,000 election monitors across the country. [9:17] That looks like a big number. [9:19] But when you talk to election officials, secretaries of states across the country, which I have, [9:23] as well as former Justice Department officials who worked on that election monitor program, [9:27] they say that's not actually a big number. [9:29] It would be 20 per state if you even divvy it up like that, roughly. [9:34] And in Wayne County, Detroit, you know, Wayne County, Michigan alone, there's 500 polling locations. [9:41] So election monitors are not necessarily the biggest, you know, nightmare scenario that election officials are worried about. [9:50] They're more worried about, is the president going to try to do something late in the game, [9:54] like declare a national emergency or potentially just send federal agents or ICE agents into the vicinity, [10:00] but not necessarily at polling locations because they would run into legal trouble there. [10:05] But with election monitors, they say that they aren't, they don't think they are going to disrupt anything. [10:11] The ones that were sent during the primaries, abided by the rules, [10:15] they're also very limited in what they can actually do. [10:18] States dictate, and they, in certain states, election monitors can't even go into the polling locations. [10:26] They have to be standing 100 feet or so away. [10:29] So what election officials that I talk to look at this as, [10:34] as an attempt to intimidate voters from even going to polling locations in the first place, [10:40] but not necessarily a gambit to actually stop them from physically voting or interfere at a polling location. [10:48] But I think you're tapping into one of the key fears, and one of them is that just the specter, [10:53] the possibility of hearing about election monitors, wondering what role they might play, [10:58] could be enough to make voters not turn out in the first place. [11:02] And then, of course, in the backdrop, you talk about these nightmare scenarios. [11:05] I, you, all of us have been doing reporting on the Democratic groups that have been tabletopping and planning for, [11:10] what if it looks like this or this to disrupt these elections? [11:13] I mean, we hope that everything goes as it normally does. [11:17] And also, you and others will be doing a great job of making sure that if there's an irregularity, [11:22] our viewers are aware of it and we know what's going on. [11:25] MSNOW White House reporter Lara Barron-Lopez, thank you for coming on with us. [11:28] Hey, it's Rachel. [11:30] I am so glad to see you at the end of that clip because this is where I get to tell you about a new way [11:34] to watch all our clips and all of our shows and everything on MSNOW on your phone or your tablet or your laptop. [11:42] You can watch things live or recorded. [11:44] Plus, you can ask me and all the other hosts and reporters questions in our weekly live chats. [11:49] You can go to ms.now slash membership or just click below. [11:56] Thanks.