WATCH: Sen. Schiff Calls Out Trump’s Obsession with Kennedy Center, Disregard for Addressing High Costs

Schiff: "It becomes not just absurd, but dangerously absurd that the president is spending so much mental energy on this ridiculousness."

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MS NOW's All In with Chris Hayes to condemn President Donald Trump's latest vanity project - threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center if his name does not appear on the building.

Schiff emphasized Trump's repeated pattern of ignoring the Congress and the courts, putting his interests over Americans' interests, and downplaying the recent the costs of the Iran War and its impacts on our economy.

View the full interview here.

On Trump bypassing the Congress and courts when it comes to renaming the Kennedy Center:

[…] We have those images of the East Wing being bulldozed after, in fact, the president had promised not to touch the East Wing. So, you can't put anything past this president. The court seems determined to stop it. Congress could stop it in a heartbeat if, on a bipartisan basis, for once they were willing to stand up to this president. There's little sign of that. All you hear are from a few members who are leaving the Congress, a willingness to criticize this. But I think, and again, this I guess gets into psychoanalysis: the Kennedy Center not only is a memorial to John F. Kennedy, it is also part of the Kennedy legacy and mystique, part of the whole Camelot appearance, the glamor, the arts, the culture. And Donald Trump just craves to be a part of that, wants his name on that, doesn't want any president to seem greater than he is.

And so any president that he is insecure about, the way he's insecure about Obama, the way he's insecure about Kennedy, his answer is "put my name on it. Let people know I'm the dominant one. I'm the greatest president of all time. My name is on these buildings, and if you won't let me do it, then I'm just going to tear it all down." You add that to the fact that we're in the middle of a war, and it becomes not just absurd, but dangerously absurd that the president is spending so much mental energy on this ridiculousness.

On pushing back against the administration's refusal to uphold the rule of law:

[…] I think we always wonder how much voters take into consideration the need to have checks and balances in the system, how much does that really factor into their decisions. I think, given the extremity of this administration, that will definitely be a factor for voters. They see this president out of control. Even those that voted for him see him doing things he promised not to do. They see him ignoring the pain that his policies are inflicting on them with the cost of living. And I think they want some check on this runaway abuse of authority by the president.

They also, I think, are deeply turned off by the guy who said he was going to drain the swamp - how much he has just turned this into the most lucrative swamp for his family that the country's ever seen. So, I think voters do want to push back on that, and mostly I think we see this over and over again with greater and greater frequency. They're just so disappointed in him, the people that supported him, that I think they're prepared to walk away from him - either vote Democratic or not vote at all.

On the need to expose the real costs of the Iran War:

[…] We are seeing reports like that from the Defense Department Inspector General that the situation is much worse than we know. And part of the reason it's worse than we know is we have not really insisted on oversight in the Armed Forces Committee. […] There's no willingness on the part of the Republican chairs of these committees to demand answers. And so we're getting them from the Inspector General. We're getting feedback from the families. Situations are bad, notwithstanding all of the wonderful things the president and Pete Hegseth are saying about how great everything's going. When you get reports that sailors are trying to jump off an aircraft carrier, you know just how bad conditions really are.

[…] These estimates, like we just got, that the war has cost 40 billion, are almost certainly a dramatic understatement of the damage and the costs. We're going to find out a lot more about that soon. And if we change the Congress, as I believe we will, we'll have an opportunity to insist on that information.

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