5/19: The Takeout with Major Garrett

Primaries, primaries, lots of them. Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania, all interesting, but today really comes down to President Trump's grudge match, the most costly in history, against Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie. Is it a slush fund or due compensation to victims of a runaway Biden Justice Department? Senators in both parties want to know and fear it is much more slush than justice. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tries to explain. And this is our last week of clips from CBS Radio News, one more time with Edward R. Murrow reporting. He prays you will believe, and when you hear it tonight, trust me, you will believe it. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, everyone. I'm Major Garrett in New York. Welcome to The Takeout. Genuine political potency does not flow through primaries. Winning means prevailing in the general election, not primaries. That will be the 2026 acid test for President Trump, who has, as I'm sure you've noticed, for weeks now been on a crusade to impose party discipline by devoting his personal energy and millions upon millions in party dollars to defeating wayward Republicans. Tonight comes the biggest contest of Trump's purity passion play, the 4th congressional district of Kentucky, wherein Thomas Massie resides as a sort of living embodiment not of Trump derangement syndrome but Trump defiance syndrome. Trump plainly detests Massie, who has defied the president on the so-called big beautiful bill, the Iran war, the Epstein files, among other matters. This primary is, as you might have already heard, the most expensive in American history. More than $32 million spent for the president to vanquish a member of the House Republican conference. Most of this money is coming from GOP-friendly outside groups sicced on Massie by the White House. Money in politics, though it doesn't always seem this way, is finite. There is only so much sloshing around. Regardless of Massie's fate tonight, win or lose, come October and November, the White House might wish it had some of the money spent to defeat him available for other races. Now, later tonight, speaking of other races, we will have results from Kentucky, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and I will be here to bring them to you right here, starting at 8:00 PM. There was other primary news today about the Texas US Senate race. Trump, to the surprise of almost no one paying close attention, endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in next Tuesday's runoff. Paxton is a MAGA loyalist with a list of criminal and ethical investigations longer than the tale of a west Texas tornado. Trump spurned Senator John Cornyn because he was not loyal enough. Many Senate Republicans who serve with Cornyn responded with clenched jawed dismay. The frequently candid South Carolina Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham, said Paxton, with his many political blotches, will have an uphill battle against Democratic nominee James Talarico. Paxton will win, Graham assured, but it will cost more money, money, he noted with some regret, that will not be available for potentially tight Senate races, from the Republican Party's point of view, in Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire. By the way, more than $100 million has already been spent on Cornyn's behalf. Such is the front-end cost of party purity and primary standoffs. It's also worth noting where Trump is on the political spectrum right now. He is enforcing discipline from a place of weakness, a weakness really not before seen. Trump said today the Iran war is popular. It plainly is not. The New York Times/Siena poll found 64% of the country considers it the wrong decision. Our most recent CBS poll shows only 29% of the country believes the economy can be described as good. That's the lowest number of Trump's second term. And cracks are appearing in the sturdiest pillars of Trump's demographic support. Since 2016, as I'm sure you know, Trump has thrived on the support of non-college-educated white voters. Our newest poll shows that support lower than ever, 46%, down from 68% in early 2025. And these are the numbers that will matter most in November's midterms, not the fate of Massie tonight or Paxton next week. We won't get to every race tonight, but we will have many insights and look-ins, and we're going to start with Ed O'Keefe, who has all things Thomas Massie from Kentucky. Ed. Major, good to see you. The congressman is in the building preparing to look through results that come in now in less than an hour. 6:00 PM Eastern is when the polls close here in the 4th congressional district of Kentucky. For those of you familiar with the geography of this state, it stretches from the suburbs of Louisville up here to the suburbs of Cincinnati and keeps going to the northeastern corner of the state that borders West Virginia. And the race is between Thomas Massie, the incumbent, and Ed Gallrein, who is the Trump-backed insurgent challenger who got a rare, somewhat ethically/legally dubious visit yesterday from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, at an event just down the street from us here, who made an 11th-hour appeal to Republicans in this district to vote with the president's preferred choice, Gallrein. But Massie is convinced that this is a pretty evenly divided contest and one that he can prevail in, despite the fact, as we've noted, $32 million plus spent on advertising, mostly by outside groups opposed to Massie's re-election. We spoke with the congressman in his hometown of Vanceburg, Kentucky, on Monday, had a wide-ranging discussion about the president; about Israel, his concern and his opposition to funding for that country; and opposition to the war with Iran. And take a listen to what he had to say. Based on results we've seen recently in Indiana with state senators, in Louisiana with Senator Cassidy, other races in the past, it seems that being a Republican in this day and age requires loyalty to President Trump. Well, I don't draw too much from those races. First of all, Senator Cassidy also alienated some of the constituencies, whether it was for cutting spending or whether it was for MAHA. But he voted to impeach Trump. I have never done that. I've never even said an unkind word about President Trump. And then you have the state senators in Indiana. They, sure enough, crossed Trump, but they made the mistake of crossing their constituents. Their voters wanted them to redraw those lines, so they went against their voters. The difference here is I'm going for my voters in the minor instances where it conflicts with Trump, and that's what's got Washington, DC, mad. But I'm going to win. Look, I had three congressmen campaign with me on Saturday, and that's what you see in this race that you didn't see in Bob Good's race in Virginia. You had members of Congress go to Virginia and campaign against him. You can't find any members of Congress willing to do that in Kentucky. What do you make of the defense secretary, a cabinet secretary that doesn't normally campaign for any member of either party, showing up today, he says on his personal time, to campaign against a sitting congressman? How much personal time do you have when you're supposed to be monitoring a war in Iran? I think it shows how serious this race is, but it also shows how in trouble the other side is. You don't send the secretary of war to Kentucky during a war if you think your candidate is up 10 points. That's what you do when you realize your whole campaign is imploding If you lose, is it because of the pressure from the president? I normally win 80 to 20. If the president had merely endorsed a warm body-- that's his affectionate term for my opponent is a warm body from central casting-- I would have won 60/40. The difference in this race, what people need to watch is it's a referendum on whether the Israeli lobby can buy a seat in Congress and how much they're willing to spend to try and in order to intimidate the entire Republican Party into having zero dissension on foreign policy toward Israel. You know that kind of criticism doesn't sit well with fellow Republicans, at least in the House Republican conference, that there are others who've accused you of all sorts of things regarding Israel, regarding the state of Israel, regarding the Israeli government, regarding Jewish Americans. Are you antisemitic? They're trying to tell you that it's antisemitic for me to expose the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition has spent millions of dollars in this race; that a dual citizen, Miriam Adelson, who even Trump says is more loyal to Israel than the United States, has spent millions of dollars in this race. Those are mere facts. And it's really-- OK, but it's a yes or no. Are you antisemitic or not? Oh, hell no. I'm hell-no antisemitic. But here's the danger that AIPAC runs. They've been too cute by half. They've tried to get Mike Johnson-- and he's willingly done this-- conflate in resolutions on the House floor that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism, or even worse yet, that if you don't support Benjamin Netanyahu's war in Gaza, then you're antisemitic. That's absolutely false, and it does Jewish Americans a big disfavor to equate the two. You hear the congressman talking there about various wealthy Republican donors who are financing these groups. Miriam Adelson is one. Paul Singer is another. These are organizations that have donated in Republican primaries and in general elections in the past, and Massie points out they are the ones that started spending before groups associated with the president. Another thing to point out, Major, when the president talks about him being the worst congressman there is, worst Republican Congressman, Massie points out, look, my voting record with the House Republican conference is about 90%. I'm with them 90% of the time. It's on the Iran war, the Epstein files, and federal spending mostly-- aid to Israel being another and all foreign aid-- that I vote against my party, but I'm with them 90%. If that's too disloyal for this president, well, I'm voting the conscience of my district, he says. Ed O'Keefe, thank you very much. We turn now to Georgia primaries for governor and US Senate. Skyler Henry comes to us from Atlanta. Skyler. Major, certainly a lot to look out to. They call this the Peach State. Well, the headline's certainly juicy. Let's start with the Senate. There is a three-man race on the Republican side to see who will go up against the incumbent, Jon Ossoff, in November. Those are the two members of Congress, Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, and the outsider, the former Tennessee Volunteer football coach, Derek Dooley, who has the support of the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, so much so that the two have essentially been in lockstep all across the state. Governor Kemp saying that it is an outsider's perspective and voice that is needed not only to win in this primary tonight but also who could defeat Jon Ossoff, who I mentioned is running unopposed and is the incumbent in this race. We will be at his watch party a little later on today. And it is certainly interesting, given what we have seen in recent polling, the surge in momentum for Dooley, who, as I pointed out, was widely viewed as an outsider. Very little political experience whatsoever. And so we will be watching that race to see what will happen. Collins and Carter touting themselves as, quote, unquote, MAGA warriors but also people who have run with their conservative agenda. So I think that will be something interesting to pay attention to as we look ahead to tonight. Something else we should point out about that race in particular, no one has exactly surged out in front, so to speak, at least according to polling. And that is something sort of interesting because of what could potentially happen as it relates to a runoff, which would be scheduled for June 16, given a smaller window, so to speak, to try to go up against Ossoff, who has amassed this massive campaign war chest of about in the eight-figure ballpark. And so I think that is something that we will be paying attention to as the polls close here at 7:00 PM. Further down ballot, we are watching what is happening in the gubernatorial races as well. On the Democrats' side, there is the former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is someone who is well known here in the metro Atlanta area. But if you talk to certain voters, they have raised their skepticism whether she can actually do the job as governor because she didn't run for that second term following the first one. And so a lot of people wondering whether she is committed to the job. Some other interesting Democratic candidates in that race as well. On the Republican side, what will happen with the Trump-endorsed candidate, Burt Jones, going up against the billionaire Rick Jackson, who came in late in this race but has certainly raised a lot of money and is surging in the polls as well. A lot to look forward to as the polls close here at 7:00 PM.

It could be several runoffs to come in Georgia. Skyler Henry, thank you very much. Now to your friend and mine, CBS News executive director of elections and surveys, Anthony Salvanto, who will be-- be with me-- I will get that. He will be with me tonight as we bring in the results and dissect them. Let's go back to Kentucky's 4th congressional District. You got it up. Tell me what we're looking for. This is how it's an election night, right?

Exactly. You've got you. You've got me.

The big board. We've got a map. We're ready to go. Look, what we're watching here-- and votes are going to start coming in at 6:00 Eastern, so this might be quick. We might know something. But I want to pull back the lens because what you mentioned at the top earlier, I think if you want to understand American politics, you need to understand primaries. And that is these are the folks who choose the candidates that everybody's going to choose between the general, right? So on your point, then, Major, about the president and his influence, you're going to be looking at an electorate smaller than the general election. You're going to be looking at the most committed, most ideological, the president hopes most MAGA. This is nationally, but we did what pollsters do. We asked people, what do you want in a candidate? And take a look at these numbers because you look at among Republicans, do you want somebody who supports everything Donald Trump wants, supports most things Donald Trump wants? Yeah, that's a majority but not everything. But then among MAGA Republicans, look at that spread right there. You've got almost 9 in 10 want somebody who supports at least most, if not everything, Donald Trump wants. These are the kind of folks who vote in primaries. Exactly. And when we look at other states tonight, Georgia, Pennsylvania. We've got Alabama. What's on your mind? So I'm going to take one of those, Pennsylvania, because-- Four House races. --four House races. The road to House control runs through very few states, frankly, and Pennsylvania is one of them. And that is because you have a number of districts, all here in eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River-- we'll break them all down tonight. But suffice it to say, big picture, these are marginal Republican-leaning districts Democrats think they have a chance to pick off, and if they do that, they have a better chance to flip the House. And that, big picture-- I'm going to go back to the slides here, and I'm going to show you this. Because why are those so important? Because there just aren't many toss-ups in the overall House races this year. Partisan gerrymandering, partisanship has made all of this a very narrow window. When we start looking at states like Pennsylvania and a few House races, it's because the race is so tight. And Pennsylvania strikes me as interesting, Anthony, because uniquely on the map this midterm election cycle, it did not go through a redistricting/redrawing of the lines. It has four organically competitive House races. Right. I'm going to give you an example of one, just to pick one, OK? You look at the presidential race in some of these districts we're going to be talking about tonight. And I picked the 7th, but I could have picked any of them. This is a marginal district. This one narrowly voted for Donald Trump. It has voted for Democrats. This is close. What we use is presidential vote as a kind of a proxy for the partisanship of the district. We'll talk a lot about that. But these are the reasons that the parties target these kinds of places. And, of course, one of the enduring lessons of the Trump experience in American politics, he has a dramatic turnout effect on presidential races in which he is at the top of the ballot. Less so in midterms when he is not. Probably the central question this year. Can the Trump campaign apparatus, the Republican campaign apparatus motivate and turn out people when he is not on the ballot? Exactly. Anthony Salvanto, you'll be back with me later tonight. I appreciate it. I'm joined now by CBS News contributor Kyle Kondik. He's the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. So, Kyle, I was talking to Anthony about redistricting. You've recently written about what the net-net effect of redistricting so far this year is going to be. Share it with my audience. Yeah so if you assume that Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina will all redraw to help Republicans win one additional seat in those states-- that's not final yet, but that's what's in process. You get a Republican gain of about seven seats, and then there's a range around it. I have it as 6 to 10 Republican seat gains. One of the things you've got to remember here is that you've got to have the election first to figure out what the effect of redistricting was. And so I could say, oh, well, this district should go here and blah, blah, blah. Well, you to have the election to figure it out, but that's the sort of estimate right now. So that's good for Republicans, but it's not enough if it continues to be a wave-style political environment. Right, and with these prognostications, you really do have to proceed with caution because the atmospherics, quite separate from redistricting and new congressional district lines, keep stacking up favorable Democrats, unfavorable Republicans. Yeah, that's right. So Texas is a good example here of what we're talking about. So Republicans redrew that state to allow them to win five new districts.

In theory. In theory. One of them, Henry Cuellar in south Texas, conservative Democrat, we actually think he's favored to hold on to his seat. Vicente Gonzalez, another south Texas Democrat, that's a toss-up race. And then maybe at least one of the other ones is not a 100% slam dunk for Republicans. So a gain of five could instead maybe be four, three, maybe even two if things go really poorly. Right, because one of the things that the professionals who draw district lines-- and politicians are professionals at this-- look at is a sort of partisan voting index. And if you redraw lines and go from 10 favorable to your party to 4 or 5 or maybe 5 and 1/2, you are taking a calculated risk that you can withstand an atmosphere that's negative and still win a seat. Right, and the key thing for Republicans drawing lines-- this is less so for Democrats, like in California-- is that you know as a Republican, or at least you should assume that the map is going to be stress tested in the context of 2026 because it's probably going to be a Democratic year to some extent, maybe a 2018- or 2006-style Democratic wave. And so when you're drawing the lines, it's like, well, yeah, Trump won the district in 2024. Yeah, but this is not 2024 anymore, and nor is it 2028. It's 2026. You've got to account for that. And do you have similar analysis about Florida? Because when Florida was redrawing the map very quickly, the governor, Ron DeSantis, drew it himself, handed it to the legislature, and within a week, it was approved. I heard some Republicans and quite a few Democrats in Florida say, wait a minute. This is a competitive map, and Republicans may come to regret some of these decisions. Yeah, so that's designed to allow Republicans to win up to four new seats in Florida. One of those districts we have as a toss-up, a new seat in south Florida. It's not quite clear who's going to run there yet. And then a few of the other ones are Republican leaning but not like safe Republican. And there are a few other seats that were changed in such a way that go from Trump by 35 to Trump by 15. I think Republicans will still hold those, but again, you are spreading yourself a little thin. The other thing about Florida is that they do have antigerrymandering language in their state constitution. It's still going to clear that hurdle legally. Right, and the court there, it's a bunch-- the court is mostly Ron DeSantis appointees on the Florida Supreme Court, and so they may just basically agree with the legal arguments that the DeSantis administration is making, but maybe they won't. So that's a moving piece here too. And as we learned in the commonwealth of Virginia, even if voters approve, if that is procedurally brought to the voters in an unconstitutional way, the state Supreme Court can step in and invalidate, which is exactly what happened in Virginia. Yeah, you've got to be open minded about the possibilities here. One difference is that the Supreme Court of Virginia, I don't think you would describe that court as being allied to Democrats in a way that you might say about the Florida court being really clearly Republican leaning. But again, I think you can make a pretty reasonable argument it's a Republican gerrymander. Whether that court would ultimately disagree or a lower court would agree or a lower court would, open question. Kyle Kondik, great to have you on board. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

And a quick programming note. I will be hosting special primary-night coverage beginning at 8:00 PM Eastern, right here on CBS News 24/7. Please tune in for instant results and, of course, analysis. Still to come on The Takeout, the ceasefire with Iran. Is it going to crack into a million pieces? The Strait of Hormuz, how long will that chokehold last? My conversation with Aaron McClain. Plus, reaction to the Justice Department's, quote, "antiweaponization fund." How Trump allies are trying to defend the idea of taxpayer funds going into the pockets of the president's allies for their legal defense and other matters. The Takeoutreturns in 90 seconds. Welcome back to The Takeout. President Trump said today he will know, quote, "very soon" whether or not the US will need to strike Iran or if it can cut a deal over nuclear ambitions. This comes one day after the president said he held off an attack after US allies in the region asked him to. I was an hour away. We were all set to go. You're talking about yesterday.

Yes. We were going to be striking-- it would have been happening right now.

[INAUDIBLE] Yeah, it was all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded. They're loaded to the brim, and we're all set to start.

CBS News National Security Analyst Aaron McClain joins me now. He also hosts the most excellent School of Warpodcast. Aaron, we'll get to the Strait of Hormuz, which we've talked about before, but there's an interesting thing that happened today that I want you to dig into for my audience's benefit. The United Arab Emirates alleged that one of its nuclear plants was attacked by Shiite militias backed by Iran in Iraq, not Iran. Walk my audience through that. So Iran maintains a network of proxies throughout the region. Before October the 7th, 2023, this network was extremely robust and essentially constituted a kind of Iranian empire, if you like, through Iraq, Syria, down here into Lebanon, where you see Hezbollah. And there's an extraordinary concentration of these Shia militias still active in Iraq. And during hostilities in March and into April, you actually saw these militias firing on American and Israeli targets throughout the region. What seems to have happened are drones took off from here in Iraq, traveled either over the Persian Gulf-- it could also have been through the interior of Saudi-- and hit this power plant right here on the coast of the UAE. It's a nuclear power plant. You don't want to hit those things with drones, and one of the drones exploded. Right. No real damage or injuries, but this is a nervy sort of situation, is it not? And is this kind of an underappreciated front or component of this hostile environment? It's certainly not gotten as much attention as has the direct violence between Israel and the United States on the one hand and Iran on the other, but that kind of exchange happened throughout March and April. It's still clearly simmering now, which raises the question, what is the direct Iranian role in directing these proxies? Did it order this attack? Did it merely give its tacit approval, or can it not control these guys? We don't know for sure. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. All right, let's go back to the Strait of Hormuz. Our colleague James LaPorta reported today that there's a new US Navy assessment of how many mines might actually be in the Strait. That's right. So we are looking at mines here essentially in these international channels that run through the center of the Strait-- separate, of course, from the Iranian channel up here in the north and the Omani channel here in the south that Americans would like traffic to move through until we aborted so-called Project Freedom a couple of weeks ago. These mines are a serious threat to shipping. You don't want to hit one of these things, whether or not it sinks your supertanker or not. Again, like landing a drone at a nuclear power plant, it's a bad day. It's the kind of thing you want to avoid, and it's a very serious matter. And I read today, Aaron, that compared to last week, traffic through the Strait has doubled, but it's still a fraction of what it was before hostilities began February 28. A tiny fraction, and that's why, Major, I think if we see hostilities start again here in the next few days, the president really has two broad options. One is a narrow campaign, a restarting of Project Freedom that focuses on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, while setting the conditions to guide traffic through the Strait. But the problem with that is, as happened with Project Freedom, once you start that operation, Iran is likely going to escalate, the way it escalated the last time around with striking targets throughout the United Arab Emirates. And once that happens, you have to decide whether or not to hit what's firing at you in Iran. So I actually think the second possibility is more likely. The president goes back to his rhetoric from early April of going after bridges and power plants and hits the Iranian economy hard, simultaneously with an operation in the Strait. Because is it your sense, Aaron, that there are very few legitimate military targets in the interior of Iran that were not taken out in the early phases of this war? Well, a fair amount of reporting indicates that even though they were hit pretty hard, there are missile sites in particular that are left. There are nuclear sites that still were not addressed. That is to say that that nuclear dust, as the president likes to say, is buried there. So there still are military targets, and we don't know what the president would do. And, of course, we don't know if the president will do it. He keeps going back and forth between threats. One day, two days, five days. We don't even know what the deadline is. I don't know if you've ever been at a bar late at night, Major, and there's somebody belligerent suggesting they want to get into a fight, but they keep saying to their friends, hold me back. Hold me back. That's kind of what the president did with Oman and Saudi Arabia and the UAE a couple days ago. Hold me back. And he's done it a number of times, all the way back to the original ceasefire where he said it was Pakistan that asked him not to continue attacking Iran. Aaron, I've only read about such things. I have no personal experience whatsoever. Aaron McClain, as always, thank you so much. Coming up, the Department of Justice is broadening out-- that's one phrase-- the conditions of a settlement between the president and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump and his family, according to this document, can no longer be investigated by the IRS. We'll talk to Justice Department reporter Jake Rosen about all of this and some reaction to it. That's next here on The Takeout. Welcome back to The Takeout, coming to you all week from New York. Today, the Justice Department expanded the settlement between President Trump and the Internal Revenue Service. Paperwork signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reveals that the IRS can no longer prosecute or even investigate President Trump, his family, or, quote, "affiliated individuals or businesses." That's very broad and sweeping language sure to attract some scrutiny, maybe political, maybe legal. All this comes a day after the Department of Justice created a nearly $2-billion fund for those who assert they were unfairly targeted in the Biden era by the Justice Department. Vice President JD Vance, at the White House Briefing Room today, defended this new fund. This is about compensating Americans for the lawfare that we saw under the last administration. And by the way, anybody can apply for it. Republicans can apply for it. Democrats can apply for it. As you know, the president of the United States has pardoned a number of Democrats who he felt were actually subject to this lawfare. I mean, if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this particular fund, he is welcome to. On Capitol Hill today, senators had lots of questions for the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche. Do you seriously think this arrangement is appropriate, the president telling the federal government to settle a case and let him pay billions to the people that he chooses? What you just described wouldn't be appropriate, and that's absolutely not what happened, and that's not what's happening now. So you just set up a series of facts, most of which were not true.

No, they-- To say it-- no, it's not. I mean, I-- The president has set up a slush fund, however you want to say that it got set up, and he literally will get to choose, through his handpicked appointees, who gets paid that fund. That is absurd. The president did not set up this fund. It's not a slush fund. It's been done many times. We have lots of-- Oh, I heard your response earlier to Senator Van Hollen. This is not comparable to the case that you cited. A judge was not involved. This is the president versus himself setting up a fund, and-- The judge wasn't involved in the distribution in the Keepseaglecase at all. CBS News Justice Reporter Jake Rosen joins me now. Jake, walk us through what this new disclosure about what the IRS can or cannot investigate is about and the various legal hurdles this fund may face in the not-too-distant future. Well, a Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed to us that this actually stops any ongoing potential audits or past audits, Major, that could be looking into President Trump, his adult sons, his family, and the Trump Organization. It does not preclude, the spokesperson said, any future investigations after President Trump were to leave office or any potential wrongdoing after today's date. But any tax returns that were filed before today are now immune, essentially, from any kind of IRS investigation. This is notable, Major, because the IRS did not focus on any of the ongoing audits, Major. It focused on the leak of his tax returns from a number of years ago and a contractor that was later convicted and pled guilty of leaking that. And in terms of what a potential longer-term legal fight might look like, Major, in speaking with experts, it's very difficult to kind of see how this arrangement could face a very strong legal challenge because there is a fund with cash approved by Congress that is infinite, essentially, that allows the Justice Department and the attorney general, acting in good faith, to settle individual claims without needing to bypass-- or without needing to go through Congress, essentially allowing or opening the door for this bypass. What this deal does, this $1.7-billion deal, essentially kicks the door in on that, Major. It allows the Justice Department to appoint five people, four of them picked by Todd Blanche or whoever is the longer-term attorney general in the rest of this Trump administration. It also allows Congress to have a say in one of those people. Those people can be fired at any time, and it allows them to potentially move forward in selecting, with no real criteria, who has been weaponized against and how much they deserve to pay.

Jake Rosen with all the details. I appreciate it very much. Coming up, President Trump throwing his weight behind yet another candidate running against a Republican incumbent. Our political panel joins me next to discuss the president's endorsement of Ken Paxton. That's next here on The Takeout. Political-panel time, and when it's a big primary today, as it is, it's even more fun. Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas and Republican strategist Joe Borelli. Gentlemen, I didn't get the pink-button-down memo. Sorry about that. Or your hair. My bad. What the hell? This I can't do anything about it. I'm not going there. Imagine we had that [INAUDIBLE]. I'm not going there.

I used to. I'm not going there. All right, I want to know, quickly, what you both think about Thomas Massie. Do you think he's going to prevail? He talks a good game right now. I think he's dead in the water. I think God bless Lauren Boebert for going out there and trying her best and a few others making last stands for him. I just think he's angered not just the president. I think he's actually angered the base. I mean, this is someone who's taken very decisive actions against some things that President Trump has wanted to do that are very popular within his own party, and that's really fundamentally what Republicans just won't forgive and forget about. It's not about Epstein. It's not about anything like that. It's about, what are you delivering on for your district? And I think by denying Republicans some key votes-- Do you think he gets blown out? I don't know if it's a blowout. I would say maybe five to six points. Zac? I think it is very difficult to win in this environment if Donald Trump is against you. He argues, Thomas Massie does, if anyone can do it, he can. I mean, maybe that's the case. But in this political environment, Donald Trump still has enormous sway with Republican voters, and he has captured the Republican Party. And maybe occasionally people can break out of it, but he is an incredible force within the Republican Party, and they cannot break away from him. Joe, speaking about the president's base, I noted this in my intro tonight because I think the demographic information is taking a shift that's uncomfortable for the president, has to be regarded as such. Because if there's been one part of the demographic MAGA base that has been resilient come what may, since 2016, it has been non-college-educated whites. We have now them at 46%, the lowest we've ever clocked, and we clocked them a year ago at 64%. How worrisome is that or should that be?

James Blair left the White House to do political stuff and to really perhaps right the ship.

Legislative liaison, yeah. I have to imagine that on his whiteboard that we all keep in our political--

There's no number more important. There is no demographic more important than that demographic, which you correctly pointed out brought Trump the wins in 2016 and 2024. I mean, this is a constituency he can't do without. But the reality is we have gas at $4.50. We have a war that's not very popular. Those two things are dragging the president's numbers down. The good news for the president is that the solution to both of those things is the same thing. It's resolving the conflict in Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz. When those things happen, you will see those numbers go back to where I think they should be.

Zac? These numbers are-- these abysmal numbers are directly related to the cost of living for the American people. As Joe was just saying, gas prices high. Grocery prices high. Clothing, cars, electronics, everything is high. They are directly related to Donald Trump's policies, and the American people understand this. They know that the gas prices are high because of the Iran war. They know that the grocery prices are high because of the tariffs. They take a direct line from what they're facing when they go to the store to a direct policy of Donald Trump. And that is why his brand is so toxic, and that is why it is tainting the entire Republican Party field as we go into the midterm elections. When you poll some of these individual issues like, obviously, economic reform, credit-card bills, drug prices, all the things that the president wants to be talking about, those things actually poll quite well with Americans. That's why-- Punching through, though, has been a huge challenge. Punching through the Strait of Hormuz has been a challenge militarily and polls. Joe, I want to ask you about something related to the point you just made, that when the war ends and the Strait's reopened, everything will be fine. I'm a very old person. Formative experience arriving in Washington 1990, prelude to the 1992 presidential campaign. George HW Bush just came off the Gulf War. His popularity ratings were near 90%. And yet over time, something began to fester there, a sense that the job didn't get done. And you are seeing op-eds now written by hawkish Republicans telling the president, get the job done in Iran. If he doesn't, if there is some negotiated settlement that's less than satisfying, is that possibly a problem? I think the operative word is less than satisfying. I think having Iran either allow Americans to remove nuclear material or some other solution to the nuclear-material question is the make-or-break moment for President Trump. Everything else is sort of-- they won't call him reparations. They'll call them easing sanctions. All that stuff can be debated. The nuclear issue was the cause celeb of everyone who supported him on the war. He needs to deliver on that. Zac, 15 seconds. The American people want this war to end, and they want their gas prices to come down. But instead of focusing on that, what do we have Donald Trump talking about? A billion-dollar ballroom. That's where his priorities are. That's what he's telegraphing more important than people's gas prices. And an IRS that can't even investigate him or his affiliated entities. And a $1.8-billion slush fund.

Zac Petkanas, Joe Borelli with the great, great-- Great looks.

--looks. Coming up, our CBS News Radio flashback. Today, we pay tribute to perhaps the most iconic CBS voice, Edward R. Murrow. That's next. Now for our CBS Radio Clip of Fame. We have leaned into the voice of Edward R. Murrow in these tributes, and why not? Was anyone ever better at melding the observational precision of a writer with a measured, confident voice of a broadcaster? Answer, no. Everyone else was tied for fifth, if that. I, myself, probably tied for 100th. Listen to the sound of victory in 1945. EDWARD R. MURROW: This is London. Tonight, London is a city of song and celebration and thanksgiving. There are fireworks and parties. Air-raid shelters are as remote as the covered wagon. Many words have been spoken, and much drink has been consumed. London has been somewhat hysterical and still is. The organized killing has ended in Europe. The young men of many nations have suffered, sacrificed, and achieved victory. The coming months and years will reveal what will be done with that victory. Organized killing, that's what World War II was. Only Murrow had the guts to say so. No hollow romanticizing this global catastrophe of blood and grief. Of course it mattered who won World War II, and Murrow knew that better than anyone because he was there from the start, Vienna, awaiting Adolf Hitler in 1938. EDWARD R. MURROW: This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna. It's now nearly 2:30 in the morning, and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived. No one seems to know just when he will get here, but most people expect him sometime after 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. It's, of course, obvious, after one glance at Vienna, that a tremendous reception is being prepared, and we're planning to bring you an eyewitness account of Herr Hitler's entry into Vienna sometime tomorrow. We return you now to America. When Nazi Germany, having by this time conquered much of Europe, set its bombing sights on London, Murrow was there for what became known as the Battle of Britain. From a rooftop observation post, he explained the feeling of death from the sky, the stalwart bravery of the British, a battle to survive. EDWARD R. MURROW: Everything is quiet. For reasons of national as well as personal security, I am unable to tell you the exact location from which I'm speaking. Off to my left, far away in the distance, I can see just that faint red angry snap of antiaircraft bursts against the steel blue sky. Now you'll hear two bursts a little nearer in a moment. There they are, that hard, stony sound. There are no words to describe the thing that is happening, the courage of the people, the flash and roar of the guns rolling down the streets, the stench of the air-raid shelters. In three or four hours, people must get up and go to work, just as though they had a full night's rest, free from the rumble of guns and the wonder that comes when they wake and listen in the dead hours of the night. That reportage irreplaceable, immortal for all the right reasons. But if you remember nothing of this month's heartfelt tribute to CBS Radio News, remember what you are about to hear. Remember so that it may never be forgotten, minimized, or denied, Edward R. Murrow at the Nazi prison camp Buchenwald. EDWARD R. MURROW: When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the handclapping of babies. As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others-- they must have been over 60-- were crawling towards the latrine. I saw it but will not describe it. In another part of the camp, they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. D6030 it was. The other showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. The children clung to my hands and stared. We crossed to the courtyard. Men kept coming up to speak to me and to touch me, professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all Europe, men from the countries that made America. We proceeded to the small courtyard. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation. They had not been executed, but the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last 12 years. As I left that camp, a Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris came up to me and said, you will write something about this, perhaps? And he added, to write about this, you must have been here at least two years, and after that, you don't want to write any more. I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard but only part of it. If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry. I pray you to believe. Say it, Edward R. Murrow, you did, and you are to be believed. Happy Tuesday, everyone. This is The Takeout, relentlessly curious, reliably civil, occasionally clever. The Daily Reportis next.