President Donald Trump's heavy-handed tactics in Minneapolis as people gather to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement and defend their communities, are only going to make things worse for him and turn people further against his agenda, MS NOW analyst Chai Komanduri told "The Beat" anchor Ari Melber on Friday evening.

Melber played a number of clips of recent altercations between protesters and federal agents, showing officers screaming at nonviolent protesters, accusing them of obstructing enforcement, physically assaulting them, and deploying chemical spray.

"I mean, that is just thuggish actions," said Komanduri.

"You know what it actually reminds me of? There's a very famous video ... in 1968, at the Chicago convention, Democratic Chicago convention, Mayor Daley sent the police in to attack people on the floor of the convention," said Komanduri. "And there's a video of Dan Rather, I believe, talking to Walter Cronkite. And Cronkite just calls them thugs. You know, they're just thugs."

This chaos, he noted, "actually led to Americans not choosing Democrats in 1968 because they saw disorder and thuggishness on part of the Democratic mayor of Chicago, and an inability to control themselves on the part of the Democratic Party, that I think is also going to be a factor here."

"You know, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump simply don't what they know is the bully's tactics, which is we're just going to keep punching," he added. "But as George Foreman found out against Ali, sometimes that's not enough. You know, the problem, I think, for Americans is how much damage does Trump do before he punches himself out?"

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A damning new Wall Street Journal poll on Friday delivered a another devastating blow to President Donald Trump's economic boasts, revealing crumbling voter confidence just weeks into 2026.

By a crushing 15-point margin, voters now rate the economy as weak rather than strong, a dramatic swing from July, when the negative gap was just 4 points. Nearly half of all voters say the economy has gotten worse over the past year, while just 35% see improvement.

"Those are among the warning signs for the president and the Republican Party in a new Wall Street Journal poll, which finds that voters think Trump is focusing on foreign affairs and other matters at the expense of their most pressing concerns—rising prices and the overall economy," the Journal wrote.

A stunning 53% said Trump is wasting time on unnecessary foreign matters while ignoring America's own kitchen table issues.

His disapproval rating has widened to 9 points, with 54% disapproving versus 45% approving, up from 6 points in July. On inflation specifically, Trump faces a whopping 17-point disapproval gap, worse than the 11-point hole he had just six months ago.

"Trump says he 'inherited a mess' from his predecessor, but 58% of voters in the survey said that Trump’s policies were most responsible for the current economy, while 31% said former President Joe Biden’s policies were most responsible," the report said.

John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican Adam Geller, said Trump is "basically turning his biggest strength—'I’m the guy who can fix the economy, because I was a business guy'—into his biggest weakness…People don’t think he’s making the economy a priority, which is a huge problem.”

Social media lit up Friday after reports that Donald Trump installed a group of loyalists to a federal review panel set to take up his controversial White House ballroom project – a move critics slammed as an attempt by the president to two-step around the approval process.

The online backlash erupted after reports emerged that Trump appointed four allies to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent agency charged by Congress with advising the president on major design projects on Capitol Hill. The commission is scheduled to review the ballroom proposal next week, even as construction has already begun on underground elements of the project, the Washington Post reported.

While Trump has repeatedly touted his beloved project as “under budget and ahead of schedule,” critics on social media had a different reaction to the panel shake-up.

“Big surprise,” Alaska author and historian Jane Haigh posted on X.

“Rigged?” Peter Elkind, a ProPublica investigative journalist, wrote on social media.

“WHAT’S the POINT?!? Just rubber stamp it,” X user @bkaydw posted.

“NOBODY gives a s**t about his overpriced ballroom,” another X user, J. Canfield, told their followers. “More pressing issues, like getting @ICEgov to turn down the heat should be addressed. Not his stupid ballroom.”

“Because after all, it’s HIS ballroom,” X user James Stillwell wrote.