MS NOW's Ari Melber hit back at an outgoing Republican senator on Wednesday who has been recently vocally critical of President Donald Trump.

During a press gaggle on Wednesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was asked by a reporter about the Trump Department of Justice trying to prosecute people for allegedly damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Tillis slammed the move, arguing that it seemed to be inexplicable that the DOJ would seek to prosecute the alleged vandals when the president pardoned people who beat police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

President Donald Trump's grandiose foreign policy promises have led him headlong into a disaster that he will face severe punishment for at the ballot box, longtime political strategist Chai Komanduri told MS NOW's Ari Melber on Thursday.

Specifically, he argued, Trump led the public to believe he was creating peace with his actions in Iran — and instead he has simply brought the war of his own creation roaring back.

President Donald Trump and his family's self-enrichment schemes, which stand to net them $1.4 billion in crypto profits alone, are more than a moral issue, Nobel Prize-winning economist-turned-political pundit Paul Krugman told MS NOW's Ari Melber on Wednesday — they're an active threat to the U.S. economy.

"We talked earlier in the program about what is wrong with Trump's corruption, how it also violates his own claims and past vows," said Melber. "I thought I would start by asking you in plain English, as an economist, what is the cost to the rest of us, the public, if the government is corrupt or captured, separate from the morality?"

Nobel Prize-winning economist turned liberal political commentator Paul Krugman broke down for MS NOW's Ari Melber on Friday evening why the SpaceX IPO valuation that just made tech tycoon Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire stinks to high heaven.

'You make several critiques," said Melber. "I wonder if you could start with kind of what I've read to be your most conservative kind of math critique, which is you basically lay out why you don't think this thing is worth what it claims to be worth."

Legendary Democratic strategist James Carville took a few swings at President Donald Trump on Tuesday's edition of Ari Melber's "The Beat," pointing out his health decline — as he has done on prior occasions — but also his total lack of interest in working on major policy issues that are rapidly beginning to define his second term.

Nothing better exemplifies this, he and Melber agreed, than Trump's repeated recent claims that he doesn't care about Americans' financial situation because the Iran war is more important. When a reporter asked Trump to what extent Americans' financial situation was motivating him to make a deal with Iran, Trump was blunt: "Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon."

President Donald Trump's Justice Department is headed into illegal territory with their latest move to prosecute 15 protesters from Minnesota for interference with immigration authorities, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MS NOW's Ari Melber on Tuesday.

Weissmann has a number of questions about how this was conducted — which would likely paint a damning picture of the current state of the DOJ.

President Donald Trump's base of supporters is furious with the administration over the deal it is negotiating with the Iranian regime, as illustrated by a devastating supercut that aired on MS NOW's "The Beat" on Monday.

Last weekend, the Trump administration and the Iranian regime agreed to a deal that would immediately open the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that has choked the global economy, and promised to eliminate sanctions on Iranian oil. That deal appeared to fall apart on Saturday and Sunday as Vice President JD Vance suffered what some described as a "humiliation" during peace talks with the Iranians after the country's foreign minister refused to shake Vance's hand.