Trump calls governors 'weak' on call, encourages crack down on protestors

Trump has video teleconference with governors and tells them to increase aggression towards protestors; Brands like Amazon, Disney, and Nike are responding to the protests across the country. Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel discusses.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: You're watching "On the Move" on Yahoo Finance. I'm Julie Hyman along with Adam Shapiro. And it seems as though several news outlets have now gotten audio of the call that President Trump held with governors in the wake of protests that have turned violent over the past several days across America in a number of different cities.

In that call, he called on those governors to dominate the protesters and essentially called for them to crack down. Adam, we have had some crackdowns. We've had some really alarming footage come out of these various protests. And it's scary to think about what will happen-- what will happen if there's further crackdown.

ADAM SHAPIRO: This recording is really amazing. When you consider, you know, presidents in the past, it was George W. Bush, the younger Bush, who said, "A leader is someone who brings people together." And then it was President Barack Obama, who said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We're the ones we've been waiting for." Where is that kind of comment from our president now that brings people together? There's been nothing like that.

RICK NEWMAN: But Trump is clearly out of his element, guys. I don't think there's even a Republican governor. This really is not even political. I don't think there's even a Republican governor who would do what Trump is suggesting. And I just want to point out that Trump seems to be making no distinction between protesters. That's a First Amendment issue.

Remember, last week, Trump was defending the First Amendment-- the right to free speech. That includes the right to protest. And rioters-- rioters are criminals. And protesters are not rioters. Most of them are not. It's possible that virtually none of the protesters are the people engaging in these riots.

So if governors were to do what Trump suggested, I mean, this situation would just get even worse. I mean, I think every governor understands that. If you're going to give people more reason to be upset and create more incidents for them to protest, you just have a bigger problem in the streets of your cities.

- I think one of the interesting things to look at here is how disinformation campaigns on social media are now being set up with regard to the protests. There's reports that there have been Twitter accounts set up with small numbers of followers that were just lost in the last month that are now sending out disinformation about the protest, posting lots of photos of police brutality.

The idea here is that it could be foreign state actors working to kind of foment more unrest just as a kind of business as usual for them. I haven't seen what exactly the countries that are there are being pointed to for this. But it does appear as though there is a movement now among foreign entities to try to dig up more unrest in the US.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, the [? traffic-- ?]

RICK NEWMAN: Julie, let me just point out-- I mean, very-- this is going to be part of the controversy too that follows. Trump is going to be enraged by this. I mean, I think the reason-- it appears to be the reason that we have, not just what Trump said on this call-- we actually have recordings of this call is that some governors or their staffs recorded it and then immediately leaked it to the media.

I've even seen reports that some reporters were listening in on this discussion Trump had so. There were some governors who knowingly want-- let all the details of this, including the recording itself out to the press, which is just going to take Trump even angrier.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, and I just want to point out, as well, with relation to what Dan was saying-- not only do you have foreign actors, but there are a lot of reports. And the president has talked about Antifa involvement in the protests. There have also been reports about white supremacist groups that have been trying to foment unrest, as well, by being more violent element.

Nothing of that has been that concrete up till now. So Dan, to your point, there just seems to be still a lot of misinformation out there. And it's hard to see how and when any of that will be proven.

I wanted to switch gears for a moment and talk about how different companies are responding to all of this, because it's been quite remarkable how quickly we've seen a number of different brands-- Nike, Twitter itself, Citi, Netflix-- either tweeting or putting out ads very quickly in the wake of this more quickly than we have seen, I think, in other sort of what might be seen as controversial times to come in and speak out about this.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Hey, Julie, you know, it's not only when you look at what Nike has put out. Then you think back to what Colin Kaepernick did so long ago with kneeling. And now you have police officers in different cities, some of whom are kneeling. So, you know, it seems as if some companies might be onto something siding with the larger public.

RICK NEWMAN: Nike is one of the few companies that has really ever been willing to embrace something that is controversial with Colin Kaepernick. I'm normally not impressed by, you know, corporate statements of solidarity and things like that. Usually, they're very bland and meaningless.

I think this is a little more encouraging, because we're seeing pretty quick reactions from some companies, which suggest they're not poll testing it or doing focus groups or having the marketing department gin something up. And I think that what that tells us-- I mean, most companies always want to avoid something political or controversial.

I think that what that tells us is, there is less of a political divide on what's been happening than there is on many other things. And companies realize, look, this is not a political issue. You know, everybody is outraged by-- mostly everybody-- I should say-- is outraged by what happened to George Floyd and the riots that are going on right now also. So maybe the way companies are reacting is a signal that, you know, maybe we're actually agree on this issue more than we do on so many other issues.