Fascist Frat Party

Summary

I've Had It – Episode Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: I've Had It
Episode: "Fascist Frat Party"
Date: January 15, 2026
Host: Jennifer Welch
Guest Co-Host: Jim Acosta (filling in for Angie "Pumps" Sullivan)
Theme: A candid, comedic, and fiery discussion about America’s current political climate, the proliferation of MAGA authoritarianism, media complicity, and the urgent need for genuine accountability and activism. The episode oscillates between political grievances, cultural observations, and sharp-witted banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life in MAGA-Dominated Washington, D.C.

• Jim Acosta describes the shift in D.C. since the MAGA resurgence, likening the atmosphere to his "worst nightmare." There’s a sense of division, where even the restaurant scenes seem segmented by political allegiance ([00:55]).
• Welch and Acosta share memories of the White House, with Acosta lamenting the drop in reverence during Trump’s tenure, comparing it to a “frat party” with literal keggers on White House office balconies ([02:56]).

2. Grievances—From Sports to ICE

• Acosta vents about criticism surrounding his alma mater (JMU) making the college football playoffs and condemns the shifting, big-money nature of college sports ([04:21]).
• He also rants about NFL officiating, criticizing the inconsistency of instant replay ([05:15]).

3. The Case for Abolishing ICE

• Welch emphatically states, “ICE needs to be abolished. I think that this is an organization that’s behaving like ISIS” ([07:01]).
• Acosta: “If they are not going to take the position that ICE should be abolished the moment a Democratic president comes into office, then you really shouldn't be up on the stage ... We've become a Putin-like thugocracy.” ([07:50], [09:09])
• Both agree that ICE represents a larger threat: the potential formation of a national secret police intended to intimidate and suppress rather than enforce laws.

4. Trump’s Psychological Make-Up, Racism, and Power

• Welch and Acosta dissect Trump’s personality, suggesting he’s an opportunistic narcissist obsessed with “winners,” unconcerned with ideology unless it serves him ([10:25]).
• Acosta shares chilling anecdotes from the campaign trail, describing how Trump incited violence and personalized attacks against journalists ([12:05]).
• He introduces the concept of "kayfabe" (from pro wrestling) to explain Trump's approach to the press—at first a coordinated performance, which devolved into real antagonism against the media ([12:05], [15:13]).

5. The Media’s Erosion and Complicity

• Welch argues that corporate ownership (Bezos, Ellison, etc.) of news outlets has led to an unsafe work environment for journalists and enabled Trump’s abuse ([17:53]).
• Acosta warns: "We have a system of state-compromised media in this country. We do not have a free press the way that we did a couple of years ago." ([19:51])
• He critiques the “both sides” coverage around January 6th and laments anchors now acting as tools of power, not public accountability ([22:56]).

6. Fox News and Performative Masculinity

• Welch and Acosta mock Fox News hosts’ obsession with ‘real’ masculinity, speculating about repressed sexuality: "Men sucking straws. He thinks that's weak...I mean, I'm just going to say my gaydar...internal gaydar...pinch!" ([30:54]).
• They highlight the hypocrisy and weaponization of homophobia among MAGA figures, who routinely attack LGBTQ+ communities while apparently struggling with their own identities ([32:51]).

7. Democratic Leadership and the Push for “Fuck You” Attitude

• Strong criticism of Democratic leadership’s measured responses: “Chuck Schumer needs to resign ASAP today. Like right now.” ([35:56])
• Acosta contrasts the bold, effective style of figures like Minneapolis’ mayor with the passivity and preservationist politics of senior Democrats ([37:19]).
• Calls for bold actions: court expansion, impeachment of justices, and direct attacks on dark money influence ([38:29], [43:09]).

8. The Power of Grassroots and Dark Money Threats

• Both hosts stress that true change will only occur through a massive, sustained grassroots groundswell (a “blue tsunami”) and elimination of super PAC/corporate money that “outguns and outnumbers” regular citizens ([43:09]).
• Acosta highlights the unholy alliance between Trump and Elon Musk as a central threat to democracy ([45:08]).

9. Accountability and the Urgency of the Moment

• Acosta: “There has to be accountability...No man or woman should be above the law in this country. And Donald Trump sure as shit should not be above the law in this country.” ([46:13])
• There is a deep frustration with Democratic timidity and the normalization of authoritarian moves (e.g., the Supreme Court’s grant of immunity to Trump).

10. Hope, Nostalgia, and the Fight for America’s Soul

• The episode closes with a shot of anxious optimism. Acosta: “I refuse to give up...I just won’t do it.” ([76:39])
• Calls to remember the “beautiful thing” that is post-WWII American pluralism and not to let it die under authoritarianism ([50:13], [55:15], [76:39]).
• Acosta and Welch urge listeners: withhold money and attention from enablers, protest, and boycott; “Start standing up, not just to Trump, but to all of the enablers. And a message has to be sent. This is running out. Which side are you going to be on, our side or his side?” ([77:28])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ICE's escalation:
  Welch: “ICE needs to be abolished. I think that this is an organization that's behaving like ISIS.” ([07:01])
• On media complicity:
  Acosta: “We have a system of state-compromised media in this country. We do not have a free press the way that we did a couple years ago.” ([19:51])
• On accountability:
  Acosta: “There has to be accountability. You have to have a situation where there's accountability...otherwise, how do we get through this? Because it's gonna send the message to the next MAGA president, J.D. Vance … he can go on for another 30 years.” ([46:13])
• On Democratic passivity:
  Welch: “Chuck Schumer needs to resign ASAP today. Like right now.” ([35:56])
• On masculinity and MAGA hypocrisy:
  Welch: “Their idealized man wears a full face of makeup every single day. And I don't care if people wear makeup...But at least it's a free country. You don't hear people saying it's a free country anymore.” ([59:13])
• On never giving up:
  Acosta: “I refuse to give up. I just won’t do it.” ([76:39])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• D.C. and MAGA's impact on political climate: [00:46] – [02:54]
• Sports grievances and shifting priorities: [04:21] – [05:43]
• Argument for abolishing ICE: [07:01] – [10:25]
• Trump’s psychology and media manipulation/kayfabe: [10:25] – [16:52]
• Media landscape, journalistic suppression, and corporate complicity: [17:53] – [24:42]
• Fox News, masculinity, and homophobia in MAGA: [30:06] – [35:16]
• Democratic leadership critique and boldness needed: [35:56] – [43:09]
• Dark money’s impact and Musk/Trump alliance: [43:09] – [45:08]
• Urgency, hope, and battle for America's future: [55:12] – [77:11]

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Tone and Style

• The conversation is forthright, irreverent, earnest, and rich with pointed humor ("he's just whizzing all over the nation's capital like a stray dog" – Acosta, [57:14]).
• Both hosts freely use profanity, mirroring their passion (“You have to say, fuck it ... because these young ass wipes ... they have to touch the hot stove” – Acosta, [66:31]).

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Summary Takeaway

This episode of I've Had It is an urgent, raw, and sharply funny call to arms against rising fascism, media complacency, and establishment passivity. With Jim Acosta’s firsthand anecdotes and Jennifer Welch’s biting wit, the podcast cuts through political bullshit, insisting that only a relentless, hopeful, collective response can save the American experiment from permanent decay.

Final Hopium:
"I refuse to give up. I just won’t do it." – Jim Acosta ([76:39])

Transcript

[Jennifer Welch]

So are we supposed to start the podcast? Ready? One, two, three. Patriots gay trio. They Triots, Black Triots and Brown Triots. Pumps is not here today, but I have an amazing co host filling in for her. She had an obligation and is none other than Jim Acosta. And this is what you have to do, Jim, right now. After I do the. After I do the call to the Patriots, the gay trio, the Black Triots, the Brown Trio, I say, and all of the people who try to marginalize them and then pump says can fuck off.

[Jim Acosta]

Fuck off.

[Jennifer Welch]

There you go. Yes.

[Jim Acosta]

I have no problem with saying the F word, by the way.

[Jennifer Welch]

I love it.

[Jim Acosta]

That's not something I've had it with.

[Jennifer Welch]

Me neither.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Welcome to I've had it.

[Jim Acosta]

Jim Acosta, great to see you. Good to be with you, Jen.

[Jennifer Welch]

Really nice to see you, listener. We're in New York and so you journeyed up from Washington, D.C. what's it like in D.C. with the Maga takeover? Is it different? Are the vibes different?

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, Jesus Christ. It is. It's my worst nightmare. I thought we were rid of this clown four years ago ago, but no, they've come back with a vengeance. Fortunately, the D.C. restaurant scene is set up where, you know, the. The MAGA people have their restaurants and their places they like to go, and they're not the places I like to go.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay.

[Jim Acosta]

So I won't say where those places are because I don't want them to show up there, but so far, so good. It's okay, right? Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

The last time I was in dc, I was invited to, like, a creator event at the Biden White House. A Christmas party.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And I'd never been in the White House, and I was so excited.

[Jim Acosta]

Pre. Pre demolition.

[Jennifer Welch]

White House, Pre demolition. So it was like, in December and last December, and it was Biden's final like. And we were in there, my husband came with me, and we were walking around and I just said, josh, like, next year, think about the energy in this place and think about all the fuckery and all of the emotionally stunted dweebs that are going to be walking around in the White House.

[Jim Acosta]

Like Stephen Miller, basically. Oh, my God, a thousand Stephen Millers. No, I mean, you know, I covered the White House for almost eight years, and just about every day I walked through those gates, I still was like, holy shit, I'm at the White House.

[Jennifer Welch]

That's so cool.

[Jim Acosta]

It is. It's a cool place to be. And, you know, of course, this fucking guy had to go and demolish half of it within A year of coming back. But, you know, I remember what it was like the first time around when he came in after Obama and they were all just traumatized. I sat down with this deputy White House press secretary Eric, and it looked like he had been in a car accident. I mean, this is how traumatized they were at that time. And you got the sense that these were people who understood how important this place was, how you had to treat it with reverence. And when I covered the Trump people, it was just. It had turned into a frat party. I remember over at the eeob, as they call it, the office building that's next to the White House. The giant.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes. Where the Vice President's office is.

[Jim Acosta]

Where the Vice president, the Eisenhower Executive office, they call it. Friday afternoons, you would see these kids on the balconies with red solo cups. They were throwing like keggers on Friday afternoons during the Trump administration. This is how seriously they treated the fucking place. And when they all got swept out and Biden came back, and I agree with you, it turned back into like the West Wing TV show. Like what you would think, like people who obviously respect the place. But while Trump was there, there was, I mean, and it's obviously the case once again, where they've turned it into a goddamn shit show. He's bulldozed half of the, you know, almost half of the White House. And it just goes to show you what we're up against right now. This is somebody who thinks he's a king. And when you work for the king, you think you're a king. And so they're just going to do whatever the fuck they want for the next three years is how it appears to me. Not to go on a tangent.

[Jennifer Welch]

No, I know. And despite all of those grievances, Jim, I do want to ask you, like I would call it a kitchen table grievance before we dive into the maga.

[Jim Acosta]

Fucker. Exactly. Sor. I jumped. I jumped ahead.

[Jennifer Welch]

I'm glad, because that is something that I think occupies a lot of real estate in all of our brains, because we all care passionately about being Americans and care passionately about each other. And so it's just an all consuming component, but sometimes we get to get irritated at just normal bullshit. So what have you had? At what? Jim Acosta.

[Jim Acosta]

Okay. I have to give a shout out to my alma mater, jmu. I went to James Madison, an up and coming state school in Virginia. They made it to the College Football Playoff. I don't want to get too sportsy, but there was there was a lot of assholes on the Internet, on social media, particularly on Twitter. Some. Some notable sports figures who were shitting all over JMU getting into the College Football Playoff. People like Nick Saban and so on. I'm like, hey, fuck you. This is. These are the rules.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

For getting into the College Football Playoff. They made it in. And by the way, they put up more than 30 points on Oregon. They put over 500 yards in Alabama. Nick Saban, your old school didn't do jack in the College Football Playoff. And so, I mean, I guess they got through the first round, but. But then they got blown out. And, you know, my. My sense of it is, is that we've college sports has turned into semi pro sports. Like, what are we doing here?

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

And are we just going to have it be the top schools with all the money and everybody else can just go fuck themselves? That. That doesn't work. The other thing I have a little bit of a beef with is NFL officiating. I did tell your producer, Sam, I did want to talk about this. I'll just mention it very briefly, but, like, if we have instant replay for. Are you this close or that close to a first down, but we don't have instant replay for pass interference for all the sports fans out there, this has to change. So that's my other grievance from a sports standpoint.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes. Yeah. I'm not that into football because I like to see athletes full face, so I can feel an emotional attachment to their expression.

[Jim Acosta]

Yes.

[Jennifer Welch]

So I love tennis.

[Jim Acosta]

You don't get that with football yet. No.

[Jennifer Welch]

I don't know if they're excited.

[Jim Acosta]

I do love tennis.

[Jennifer Welch]

I love tennis. Love basketball. And both have, you know, in basketball, you see them like, you know, do a replay.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, I like that challenge. I love that move.

[Jennifer Welch]

The challenge is great. But then now in tennis, they have the Hawkeye everywhere except for the French Open, because the French are so stubborn, which makes me kind of love them.

[Jim Acosta]

I love them, too.

[Jennifer Welch]

Like, fuck you. We're not going to be nice to you unless we feel like it.

[Jim Acosta]

I think that's how it should be.

[Jennifer Welch]

But they have these Hawkeye cameras, and so now it's just an instant replay.

[Jim Acosta]

It's amazing. I know. I watch it, too. I love tennis, too. I go to the D.C. open every year. It's a great event and it shows you, like the instant replay of the ball landing by the line and it tells you if it's within like an inch or something of being in or out. I love that.

[Jennifer Welch]

And then at Roland Garros at the French Open. The umpire goes down and looks for a mark on the clay. And there's a gajillion marks on the clay.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And then they're like, out. And so.

[Jim Acosta]

But it's God bless the French.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah, I know. Okay, let's dive into these grievances. Let's first talk about ice, which I think needs to be abolished.

[Jim Acosta]

Yes.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think that this is an organization that's behaving like isis. And you and I are old enough to remember when we would see these videos when America was doing nation building in the Middle East, Right. And people would get kidnapped and they had hostages and they had on masks, and all of these Republicans were talking about how chicken shit it was that they weren't man enough to even show their faces and they wore these masks. And now I see this, you know, similar thing where I'm from originally in Oklahoma, and your producer Sam can attest to this. You'll see a big pickup truck with a bunch of flags in the back of it, totally giving isis. And then these ICE agents with these masks. I'm just. It's just amazing to me how irony is so lost on these people and just how morally depraved they are.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. And listen, we can get into this and expand the conversation and talk about all this stuff, but this is, I think, a defining moment for the Democratic Party. I think if they are not going to take the position that ICE should be abolished the moment a Democratic president comes into office, then you really shouldn't be up on the stage. It just doesn't make sense. Like, yes, you may think, okay, if we triangulate and I'll move to the left over here and then back to the center for the general election. We don't want any of that shit. ICE has gotten to a point. I mean, take a look at what happened in Minneapolis. If we have a situation in this country, country where the government can go out and murder a US Citizen without any investigation that is credible, then we've become a Putin like thugocracy. And that is not sustainable. And we can't have a situation where the governor of Minnesota says, we're going to bring in our National Guard to protect our citizens from ice. I mean, we all know where this is going to end up leading. It's going to end up with people shooting at each other in the streets. And we just can't have that in this country. The problem that we have right now, and I don't want to jump too far ahead, but the problem that we have. I used to call Donald Trump the catch me if you can president when I covered him the first time around.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

Now he's the you can't catch me president. He thinks he is beyond. And this is because of the Supreme Court giving him a blank check, the immunity decision, saying, you can do whatever the fuck you want as president. And he has said, yeah, okay, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And so invade Venezuela, invade Greenland, let ICE go crazy across the country. But you can't have a situation like we had in Minnesota play out all over the country. The citizens are not going to tolerate it. People are not going to. They're just not going to tolerate it. And the governor of whatever state can go out there and say, please remain calm. We can't have rioting in the streets that's going to give them what they want, blah, blah. I totally endorse that view, by the way. We don't want that. We don't want to give Trump and Stephen Miller what they want and end up with blood in the streets. But at some point, it's just going to happen. Like, people are going to. They're going to reach the point where they've had enough. And to me, ICE is the perfect. It just crystallizes perfectly exactly what we're up against in this country, where Donald Trump has said, and this has nothing to do with immigration, this has to do with, can I build a secret police force that can go out there and scare and intimidate the shit out of people and basically say, we're in charge. You're not. You're not. The states be damned, local municipalities be damned. And that is not sustainable.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay. I want to ask you something about Trump because you've been around him more than any person I've ever sat across from. And so this is my opinion of him. He is a guy, he's so narcissistic and he's so into himself, and whatever the shiny object is in front of him on that moment is what he's obsessed with. And I do believe he's a racist, but he doesn't have conviction about his racism like Stephen Miller does. Like, Stephen Miller's a racist and he'll die on that hill.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Trump, conversely, he's for sure racist, but, you know, he's a member of this party that's all about, like, you know, we don't like Muslims and they're super Islamophobic and they don't want anybody who wasn't born in America here and walks In Zoran Mamdani, good looking New Yorker, took on all these billionaires and Trump was razzle dazzled. He didn't see a Muslim, he saw a good looking winner. He didn't give a fuck where he was born. He didn't give a fuck that he has brown skin. He didn't give a fuck about his relig because he liked the fact that he was a good looking winner. And you saw all of the people who used to do your job who are now like joke fringe podcasters and they were pissed like that posobiec.

[Jim Acosta]

He turns around, I saw the video. Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And he, you know, he little, you know, twats out of there really fast. But let me ask you this.

[Jim Acosta]

He had a hissy fit, let's just say it. He had a hissy fit.

[Jennifer Welch]

When you worked in the White House and you know, you would go after Trump pretty hard. I loved it, by the way. I was like inject into my veins, loved it. And so then like the cameras go down. Is there like asshole buddy moments where Trump's like, Jim, you're such a dick. Couldn't you be nicer? Take us behind the curtain of that.

[Jim Acosta]

Okay, so in the beginning, this is the way I explain it to people. Donald Trump, I think, went into all of this thinking this was sort of like when he was a player on the New York scene and that the New York Post, the New York press, they're basically there to perform a PR role. You know, I show up, I give a press conference, I do my thing where I look around the room like this on the Apprentice, and the fawning New York press corps just sort of asked me questions that helped me sell my products, my shitty Trump wine, my shitty Trump vodka, the planes and so on. He thought that was gonna be how it worked going out on the campaign trail and into the White House. But if you go out on the campaign trail and you're gonna say we're gonna ban all Muslims coming into this country, or if you say that, that all Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals, or if you're gonna say that I can shoot somebody on fifth Avenue and get away with it, the political press is not the New York press and they're gonna respond differently and they're gonna start asking hard questions. There was a press conference in New York in May of 2016 where he kind of went off on me and he says, oh, you're a real beauty. I know who you are. And you know, but I think at that moment he thought this was still Kayfabe you know what that term is from professional wrestling? It means it's all pre coordinated. That's the term for it in pro wrestling. You know, I do this, then you do that. You body slam me here, I throw you into the ropes over there. My sense of it was he thought all of this was an act. Now, during the campaign, I will tell you, it did not feel like an act to us. We would be in the press corps. We called it the press cage at these Trump rallies. And there would be tens of thousands of people, and he would whip these people into a frenzy, calling us the disgusting news media, the dishonest news media, the liars, the scum, and so on. And his supporters would come up to the press cage. These were the bike racks that were assembled around us to protect us. We also had bodyguards, and they would scream at us and call us a traitor and all this other stuff. It got to the point where not only did we need bodyguards, we had to run to our cars after the Trump rallies were over because we were worried they would kick the shit out of us. Trump never got the message that the hostility that he peddled, the outrage that he put out there, was absorbed by people and then directed back to us. He gets into the White House, he and I have that press conference where he calls me fake news and so on, and it just sort of ratcheted up and got worse and worse and worse. And I think what happened in his mind was it just. It changed from being an act to, oh, I think I see what I can do now. I control this army of people. I control, you know, through this cult, like, following, this ability to go after certain segments of American society. And it was early on in his administration where I kind of got the sense that things were starting to change, because he still had this mentality very early on that, okay, this is still an act. I got a call from Hope Hicks one day after a press conference. Do you remember her? She was totally the lady that was his press aide. She was a former Ralph Lauren model or something like that.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes, she's really pretty.

[Jim Acosta]

Didn't know what she was doing. And she calls me after this press conference, like, February of 2017. So a month after he gets in. And she goes, jim, I just wanted, you know, I talked to the President, and he said that Jim was very professional today and that Jim gets it, Jim gets it. And I'm like, get what? I don't get shit. Like, I'm here doing my job, asking questions. This is not an act. This is not a show. And it was the next day that he first put out the tweet that the press in the United States is the enemy of the people. And it was pretty much from that point forward that he just sort of decided, if I can't, if we're not going to have this pro wrestling kayfabe thing where I do this and then you do that and it's all pre arranged and pre coordinated, I'm going to destroy you, I'm going to crush you, I'm going to knock you out of the way. And he's been behaving that way ever since, to the point where in 2018 when he had one of his supporters was sending pipe bombs around, remember that whole thing, sent it to cnn, sent it to a bunch of other media outlets, Democratic figures like Hillary Clinton and so on. And we received actual pipe bombs that could have detonated and hurt people. Our people went to Trump's people and said, you're going to get somebody killed. And he did not care. He said, I'm going to keep calling you the enemy of the people. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, I asked her and a press conference, will you guys stop calling people the enemy of the people, Stop calling the press that. And she said, no, we're not going to stop doing that. And it turned from what he thought was an act into we're coming after you.

[Jennifer Welch]

So what you're describing, if I were your therapist and this was a work.

[Jim Acosta]

Relationship, it feels like therapy.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah, I was sorry I went on too long ago. I love it because I think this is interesting and I think it's important. I would say, Jim, it sounds like you're an abusive relationship and you need to draw boundaries and you need to get out of this. So obviously Donald Trump is an abuser. He's physically abused women, he's an adjudicated rapist, he's an emotional abuser, he's a psychological abuser. And he's doing it at a mass scale right now. We know that, we've known that you can read, you know, testimony from his first wife and go on and on this. That's never going to change. He's going to go into the ground and abuser abusing people. What I'm interested in right now is the trickle down abuse that has happened. And as it pertains to being a journalist, you have people like Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison that own these news organizations and they allow for the president whom they're beholden to. They have all this fuck you money, but they won't tell him Fuck you, right?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And they allow for this abuse to be hurled at their employees, making a very unsafe workspace. And to me, this is a really big story, but there's so much fuckery going on. We don't talk about it, but there's, there's been such a receding of decency of I'm your boss and I'm going to take care of you. I'm not going to allow you to be abused by this man. We are protected by the Constitution. The courts will protect us. And that is something that we really haven't spoken about. The corporate media throws their reporters, either dictates what they can say or what they can cover and how they can cover it and what phrases they can use, which I think is a form of abuse, not to mention very anti first amendment. And they also are throwing them around groups of people who will rile up the rubes to send. And I've been down, FOX has covered me before. And so I've been in the hot seat of the maga. We hope you die. We hope you get gang raped. All of that stuff.

[Jim Acosta]

I've gotten all that shit.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah, but what do you have to say of somebody who worked in corporate media and how the people that own corporate media are treating their employees? This trickle down abuse that they've picked up that Trump has normalized, and now these industry leaders who should be advocating for safe, good workplaces and safe spaces and they're allowing, well, he's an abuser, so we're going to abuse our employees too. Like if you think about Jeff Bezos spiking the story of the endorsement of Kamala Harris or what Barry Weiss is doing right now to those poor journalists at CBS that are serious journalists at 60 Minutes. So will you speak to that? And yeah, and also, Jim, to your experience with when you started realizing, oh, these corporations don't care about journalism anymore.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. A couple of things. One is, I have to tell you, when I was at CNN and was the White House correspondent, I felt like I had the backing of my company. Jeff Zucker, I have to give him a shout out. When he was president of CNN, he stood behind me 100%. I never thought for a moment, gosh, I better be careful what I say or else my boss is gonna come after me. I mean, if I, you know, if he didn't like a question that I asked or a story that I did, he would tell me he was a good boss in that way. But in terms of the job that we had to do to hold Trump accountable, he was 1000% behind me. No question about it. That has changed in our current media environment. And as I've been saying lately to folks on my show, when 60 Minutes is in trouble, we're all in trouble. And when Bari Weiss is spiking a segment on CCOT and the Gulag that they're running down there in El Salvador, a torture prison, basically, that the US is basically in business with, that's a big story. That's a big problem. And when she can spike a story like that because they're now owned by the Ellisons, which are MAGA friendly, that's a massive problem for this country. And I've been describing it this way. I think we have a system of state compromised media in this country. We do not have a free press the way that we did a couple of years ago. If we have major corporations that are in charge of our media outlets that are under the thumb of the current administration, then you really don't have freedom of the press. You have corporations running media companies that are subject to the whims of a mad king president. And that is a huge problem for all of us. Just the other day, the anchor of the CBS Evening News ended his newscast by saying, we salute you, Marco Rubio. I mean, not only was Walter Cronkite spinning in his grave, I was hoping he would come back from the great beyond to choke the living shit out of him and say, what the fuck are you doing?

[Jennifer Welch]

Put out a statement. And it was like, we love America and we won't apologize for it. And I'm like, that's not your job. Your job isn't to feel emotion towards America. Your job is relentless pursuit of the truth.

[Jim Acosta]

Also. Get the fuck out of here. We all love America. That's why we're doing this. The reason why I do my job and I like doing my job is I love this country, right? I fucking love this country. My dad came from Cuba in 1962, three weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis, fled communism. My mom, her folks were from the New York area. They came through Ellis Island. One of my great grandparents was a maid at the Dakota Building here in Manhattan. And these two families came together and there I popped out and I went to the White House and gave Donald Trump a hell of a fucking time. That's America. And I'm not saying that I'm exceptional or anything like that, but it's exceptional that something like that can happen in this fucking world.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

And when I saw CBS doing that, I said, what the fuck is going on? With these people because we all love this country. That is beside the point. What we should be having in this country is a free press that can hold the goddamn president of the United States accountable without everybody worried whether they're going to lose their fucking job. That's. You can't have a situation like that in this country. And that is why things like what we're doing right now is flourishing and thriving. Because the American people can sniff this out. Yes, they can see the pandering and the nonsense. And the other night, the anchor on the CBS evening news on January 6th is saying, well, on one hand, the White House is saying that Nancy Pelosi is responsible for January 6, and on the other hand, it was the rioters. No, motherfucker, we saw it on goddamn television. It was a bunch of Trump thugs that he egged on and incited and sent to the goddamn Capitol. He's the one who did it. There is no both sides to that fucking story and the fucking story. And there was a time in this business when the anchor of the CB I worked under, Dan Rather. In the early 2000s, I was here in New York working under Dan Rather. And there was a time in this business where the anchor of the CBS Evening News, if he got a call from the White House or the president of CBS News got a call from the White House complaining about the story, they would say, go fuck yourself and hang up the phone. And that is that, ladies and gentlemen, is how shit should get done in this country. The president of any news organization, the anchor of any evening newscast, should be able to tell the White House press secretary. I used to get calls from the White House press secretary when Obama was president. Jay Carney would call me and complain about, you guys are covering Obamacare. Like, you know, like, what the fuck is going on here? The Obamacare website comes out. This actually happened.

[Jennifer Welch]

Oh, yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

Remember, it didn't work right away. Obama was out there saying, it's going to be like orbits. You're going to be able to, like, if you book your flight, you're going to be able to buy your health care. And the website didn't work. So we went on and we were on all day long saying that the Obamacare website didn't work. That's the news. I didn't. He called and Jay Carney, and God bless me, he's doing his job, calls me in the booth, which is the workspace. We called it. You know, you and Wolf are really out of control talking about the Obamacare website. And I was like, we didn't build the fucking thing you did. And that is how it should work. The government can get mad at you for doing your job, but you ought to be able to say, right, back off. I'm doing the news. This is how it works. And we've gotten completely away from that to the point where, I mean, if the anchor of the CBS Evening News feels that the corporate overlords are making his life a living hell, then he should go on the air at the end of his broadcast and say, they're making my life a living hell. I can't tell you guys the truth. I quit and do it on national television and walk the fuck off the set. And if you're not gonna do that, you're part of the goddamn problem.

[Jennifer Welch]

A Christmas miracle has taken place. So we decided to go do a live show in Atlanta on January 31st. And we were for sure, like, the ticket sales are going to be lackluster. Nobody's going to become. I'll be damned if it didn't sell out in like a couple of days. So the organizer was like, you should do another day. And I'm like, that's a pretty big, pretty big ass, pretty big app for two old broads like us, right? So we added an additional day. Ticket sales were getting about close to halfway. February 1st, Center State in Atlanta. And it is also a matinee because we are going to normalize matinees. We are going to normalize a reasonable start time. We're not going to start a show at 8 or 9pm past bedtime, wake up the next day feeling hungover, strung out. Why did I hang out with all of these radical leftists, anti fascists. We're not going to do that because we're pro matinee, we're pro democracy, we're anti maga, and we're anti fascist. Come see us. It's going to be so fun.

[Producer Sam]

I love getting together at a live show with all of the people. It's such a community.

[Jennifer Welch]

All right. I am famously not into like New Year, New Me bs that happens at the first of every year. But there is something that I am going to change, and I want to start eating meals at home more and only eat out maybe a couple of times a week. And. And the problem is, listener, I just don't know how to cook. But I have partnered with Cook Unity and signed up for their program. And here is what is so incredibly cool about it. They have this chef's table that they're launching. It is incredible. It's a two week Collaboration where chefs celebrate lunar New Year with symbolic fortune filled dishes and behind the scenes storytelling. Two chefs in particular I'm absolutely obsessed with. One is Fabiola Rivera. She has these amazing meals. Another one that I recently had was by Dustin Taylor and I ordered roasted salmon with crisp potatoes. I'm trying to eat more fish, more protein. Again, I don't know how to cook. So this partnership that I have at my apartment with Cook Unity is really making 2026 off to a much better start. Listener taste, comfort and craftsmanship in every bite. From the award winning chefs behind CookUnity, go to cookunity.com had it or enter code had it before checkout. To get 50% off your first order. Again, that's 50% off your first order by using code HATTIT or going to cookunity.com had it.

[Producer Sam]

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[Jennifer Welch]

A couple of things about that you said. And then I want to move on to Fox News. Yeah, but you.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, good.

[Jennifer Welch]

You said. I know you said that. You know, they say we love America. And I always think this is a red flag. The Republicans do this a lot. They'll say, well, I'm pro family. Everybody's fucking pro family.

[Jim Acosta]

No, you're not.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah, and they're not. But anytime it's a red flag for me. Anytime, somebody has to be Captain Obvious, right? And so Barry Weiss and Larry and David Ellison and this propaganda that they're trying, I mean, it's, it's further than Fox. I mean, it is.

[Jim Acosta]

Even the little North Korean lady who reads the news is like, like, dial it in. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a little out of control. Even the North Korean lady is offended right now. Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay, let's move on to Fox News. And recently, I saw an interview with Jesse Waters and J.D. vance.

[Jim Acosta]

Yes. And I know what you're talking about.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. It was just in the last few days. And first of all, I just want to say that for me, when I hear men talk constantly, alleged heterosexuals talk constantly about masculinity, and real men do this, and those guys are betas, and real guys do that, I always think, why are you talking so much about this Jesse Waters?

[Jim Acosta]

He does this all the time, right?

[Jennifer Welch]

Men sucking straws. He thinks that's weak. Eating soup. The way they sit, the way they posture themselves. And I had never seen Jesse Waters in person. And I have excellent, excellent gay DAR gym. Excellent. Like, I grew up.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh.

[Jennifer Welch]

I mean, so we were at the dnc, Punks and me. And we were really excited to be there. Right. Like, invited. And you've. That's your world. You've done. But for us, it was like, oh, my God, we're at the dnc. And it was like, Kamala, you know, and it's like the Bratz summer and all this stuff. It was really fun.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

So we're up kind of where all the news channels are, and, like, Nancy Pelosi walks by, and she's walking by, and she's chewing out her aids. I was like, oh, my God, that's incredible. And she's walking so fast. And then here comes Jesse.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, God.

[Jennifer Welch]

And I mean, I'm just gonna say my gaydar. Internal gaydar pinch.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

So then I started really digging into a lot of his reporting, and a lot of it is on this issue of masculinity, this hyper masculinity. And I've learned that for Josh Hawley does this too.

[Jim Acosta]

Right. It's another.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes. Have you seen the photograph that he took with the kicker.

[Jim Acosta]

With the kicker from the Kansas City.

[Jennifer Welch]

And it looks like a gay engagement announcement.

[Jim Acosta]

I know people are like, well, just do it. Just do it. Like, you're gonna have a great life. Just go.

[Jennifer Welch]

And my point. This is really important. I want to say that living. Growing up in Oklahoma, and the reason I have such excellent gaydar is because all of my very best friends are gay men. And a lot of these gay men were had to be in the closet in front of their families or at their work because homophobia is so horrific.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And so I have no problem with people that have to passively be in the closet. That's their business. And I understand that everybody gets to a place where they're comfortable being open on their own terms. And it's not my business.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

But I believe within the MAGA movement and a lot of the personalities, like, you know, Benny Johnson, the content creator on the right, and others that they're constantly talking about either masculinity, Alphas versus Betas, or men sucking on straws, sucking on ice cream, sucking on soup, in the case of. Of Jesse Waters. And it reminds me of when I hang out with my gay guy friends.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And we're talking about guys.

[Jim Acosta]

Right.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's kind of gay.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. And I mean, with Jesse Waters, it's like, you know, dude, you just talk about this way too much. I mean, honestly, like, you know, it's okay. We'll be here for you.

[Jennifer Welch]

Right.

[Jim Acosta]

I mean, one of the coolest things about our line of work is, I mean, I feel like, because I was, you know, at my college radio station and college and stuff like, that we have been able to be around all walks of life.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

And a lot of these MAGA dudes, they didn't kind of grow up in that same environment. They grew up where they had to be like this good white Christian boys.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

You know, we have to like girls or else, you know, fuck. My parents will freak out and everything. And I almost feel sorry for them because they didn't get what we got growing. I know you were up in Oklahoma. I grew up in the D.C. area, so it was much more multicultural, diverse, and everything else. And we've had gay people in D.C. since, I mean, since before I was born. And they were out and pretty open about it. I have some pity for people who feel like they have to repress this stuff and stuff it down. It's like you're just missing out on having a great life. That's what's going on here. And with J.D. vance, I'm like, you know, we know that the couch fucking thing is a lie, but it kind of fits.

[Jennifer Welch]

But it's fun.

[Jim Acosta]

You look like a couch fucker, you.

[Jennifer Welch]

Know, well, and I. And you sound like one I do have pity for. But when it comes to them weaponizing homophobia to rile up the people that you're talking about that haven't lived in multicultural places. And to say, oh, look at this, you know, look at these gays. Look at these crazy drag queens. Look at these trans people. Don't look at Elon Musk, the ketamine billionaire who's fleecing the entire country right now. Look at this drag queen. So I get really upset when they weaponize it and the one who does it the most is somebody like. Like my nickname for him, the speaker of the House is Moses Mike Grinder Johnson. And Moses Mike Grinder Johnson.

[Jim Acosta]

I love all your nicknames.

[Jennifer Welch]

Thank you.

[Jim Acosta]

When you, when I had you on and you talked about cankles, McTaco tips, taco tits. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

So the thing of beauty, little Moses Mike, he. He and his wife have a pray the gay away, you know, which is just. It's torture and mental abuse, which, you know, he's completely abdicated Congress. And this, this is my big push right now. And I want to run this by you. I want to do it. What do you call this? Kylie put in the parking lot? Scramble the jets. Let's scramble the jets. You know how millennials use that kind of corporate speak? Let's scramble the jets on this. The jet I want to scramble today is that Chuckle Schumer needs to resign ASAP today. Like right now.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. No. And my producer Sam, who's here right now, we had this conversation in the car on the way over here. One of my favorite things that I've seen in recent days is the mayor of Minneapolis, Jay Levi, saying, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. And to me, that's what the Democrats need right now. And it sort of reminds me when you talk about Chuck Schumer, let's go back and talk about Mitch McConnell a little bit. And I mean, you know, he steals Supreme Court seats to the point now we have a MAGA majority that takes away women's reproductive rights.

[Jennifer Welch]

We have a handmaid on the Supreme Court.

[Jim Acosta]

And we have a situation where, where Donald Trump can do whatever he wants with immunity because of John Roberts in that Supreme Court. Mitch McConnell made that happen. And it's one of the reasons why around Washington, and he was quite proud of this, so were the people around him. They would call him Cocaine Mitch. You know, they loved, you know, like, he was like a badass. He was like a Mexican cocaine Mitch. Yeah, he was like a Mexican cartel drug lord.

[Jennifer Welch]

Seriously?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, that was a nickname. Google that shit. We've all memory hold everything.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think about a lot of things when I see him. Cocaine is not one of them.

[Jim Acosta]

Well, but into like crazy furniture eating MAGA Republican Die Hards, you know, he's a badass in their world.

[Jennifer Welch]

He got shit done.

[Jim Acosta]

He got shit done.

[Jennifer Welch]

Evil, nefarious, horrible shit.

[Jim Acosta]

Exactly.

[Jennifer Welch]

But he had power and he wielded his stick.

[Jim Acosta]

And he's the reason why Donald Trump is president. Now, had Mitch McConnell rallied like a few Republicans in the Senate impeached and convicted him in the Senate, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess right now. But anyway, the point that I'm making is, is, does anybody call Chuck Schumer Cocaine Chuck? Nobody's gonna call Chuck Schumer Cocaine Chuck.

[Jennifer Welch]

I call him Chuckles.

[Jim Acosta]

And listen, he's had a long career, you know, and people. Some people like him and so on. To me, the Democratic Party, they just need new blood. And when I saw Jacob Fry say, get the fuck out of Minneapolis, I was like, that is what the Democratic Party needs. They need that right now. They need. Actually, they needed it yesterday. And until they get to that point, they're sort of fighting this battle with one arm tied behind their back, in my view. And they're just going to continue to get run over by Trump and the Republicans. And, you know, going into this campaign cycle, they have to be talking about a few things. One is the Supreme Court. And I think if Mitch McConnell is going to steal seats and make the Supreme Court maga, then Democrats ought to be talking about expanding the Supreme Court.

[Jennifer Welch]

Supreme Court and impeaching.

[Jim Acosta]

And. And they. Well, they should certainly be talking about impeaching, I think, impeaching some justices. Well, and maybe it might involve, like.

[Jennifer Welch]

Ethics, you know, ethics complaints against Clarence Thomas.

[Jim Acosta]

Clarence Thomas, I think. I think it's very likely that Donald Trump will push Clarence Thomas out of the way and put in, like, an Emma Beauvais or Judge Alien Cannon or something obnoxious like that on the Supreme Court. One of the reasons why Donald Trump is doing everything that he's doing right now is they want to preserve that Republican Senate, because if Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito leaves the scene and there's a Democratic Senate, the Democrats, I would think, are gonna say, go fuck yourselves. We're blocking this appointment until the end of Trump's term. But if they can, if Republicans can hang on to the Senate, then Trump can keep adding people to the Supreme Court. But my sense of it is that if a Democrat gets out on the campaign trail and is not talking about national health care, abolishing ICE and expanding the Supreme Court, they're going to have a really tough time. It's going to be some tough sledding out there for those candidates, because my sense of it. And I had this town hall event at the National Press Club the other day on January 6th, you know, celebrating those police officers who defended the Capitol that day, on a day, by the way, when a lot of the national press wasn't really doing much of that. And I set up my town hall you know, real president would have these cops over at the White House and put his arm around them and say thank you for what you did for our country and defending democracy. But you know, to me, what you need right now and what I picked up on at that event is that people are pissed. And I'm not just talking about Democrats, I'm talking about independence. I'm talking about even some, like, left leaning Republicans, centrist Republicans. People are getting. They see a woman getting murdered in Minneapolis by the government. People are starting to lose their shit. And if you are not talking to those emotions and where people are right now, you're just gonna have to. It's not gonna work out for you.

[Jennifer Welch]

So I agree with everything you say about that mayor. And when he said that, and Chuckles and Hakeem will say, we don't have the majority, blah, blah, but you still have your voice. And I wanna say, do you remember during COVID the when we're all shut down and Trump's talking about like injecting bleach and light and he's just nut, right?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. I was there that day.

[Jennifer Welch]

I mean, it's just crazy.

[Jim Acosta]

I remember being on the air and saying, do not take medical advice of the President.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

You know, you will hurt yourself. And there were people getting poisoned. But anyway, sorry.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. And I don't really. I'm not an Andrew Cuomo fan at all, but he did something smart politically at the time. And every night he had cameras in front of him and he was like the country's therapist.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And he wasn't the president, he wasn't the governor of the other 49 states, he was just the governor of New York. But he got on TV every night. And I lived in Oklahoma and I watched it every night because I was craving leadership of a sane person. And the Democrats have their voice and they refuse to use it. And when you talk about what the Democrats need to campaign on, I think another issue they're going to have to address and the base has moved on this. And this is a national awakening that is occurring. And AIPAC money is toxic. Any Democrat that is going to be accepting AIPAC money is going to face uphill battles. And you can look no further than what, you know, Zoron, he took on far right APAC money, he took on billionaires. He didn't take a cent of PAC money. Completely transparent. And my problem with Chuckles, Hakeem, Cory Booker and a lot of other corporate Democrats is they're sitting there getting their marching orders from Deloitte and they are the. This preservationist party where they're preserving the Democratic Party that lost. Preserving the past two times to a unhinged mentally ill moron.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And they're still trying to preserve that program. And yeah, you, when you didn't see Chuckles, went to Zoron's swearing in.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Inauguration Hakeem didn't. And Hakeem, a lot of his voters in his district live in New York City. And this is a big thing. And they. The problem with Democrats is they think they're smarter than their base and they treat the base a little bit condescendingly. And I think they're going to be in for a very rude awakening at, like, women that I know in Oklahoma who for sure have been Republicans the majority of their life are woke ass, no corporate PAC money, rich women trolling around the city that are serious about this stuff. And it's happening nationwide.

[Jim Acosta]

No, I. I hear you. And to me, like, okay, Erica Kirk can go off and shoot off fireworks at the Turnpoint convention, and yet Hakeem Jeffries is worried about going to Mamdani's inauguration. It was just like. I would take it one step further. I would say that the presence of dark money in our politics from all of these super PACs is destroying our democracy. Agree. And the Citizens United decision that opened up the floodgates on this. I talked to Sheldon Whitehouse about this the other day. It is destroying this country. And we have to get to a situation where either there are rules of the road because, you know, they argued in Citizens United that, hey, corporate donations, that's like free speech. No, it's not. Right. There's no way that a schoolteacher has the same amount of political influence as ExxonMobil. That's just horseshit. So the whole premise of it is built on a lie. And until we get and inject some sanity into our campaign financing system in this country, the people are outgunned and outnumbered. The other day, Elon Musk tweeted out that he had dinner with Trump and Melania again. Remember Elon over the summer saying the reason why the Epstein files haven't been released is because Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. Have a nice fucking day. And then they went to war with one another. And everybody in the media said, oh, look at this. Oh, it's a war of words. And I was like, there's no fucking way this is gonna last, because Donald Trump needs Elon Musk and Elon Musk needs Donald Trump. And Elon Musk will spend. He just got a trillion Dollar compensation deal with X or whatever the Tesla or where the fuck it is, he will definitely spend that kind of money to try to lock the system that we have in place right now where Republicans can still run the rest of the country into the ground. And to me, until you get that kind of dark, corrupt money out of our politics, we're in serious trouble. And that is why, and I think a lot of others have made this observation, it is going to take a tsunami, a blue tsunami in the midterms terms to get the Republicans that message that, hey, you know, the bills are coming due, you can't run the country like a Putin thugocracy anymore. It's just not going to work.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. And I also think that Elon Musk and Trump hate each other, but I do think they have a shared goal and that is preventing the blue tsunami. Because the blue tsunami means that Congress is going to haul Elon Musk big balls and a bunch of other people's ass in front and say, what crimes did you commit? And it's going to get really serious. And the same with Trump, because I believe, and this is just my opinion, that Trump and all of the bottom feeding morons surrounding him and Elon Musk and all the bottom feeding clinger honors that surround him, I think they commit crimes every day. And I think to reconcile all of this is going to take hardcore, not integrity Democrats, fuck you. Democrats, fuck you for fucking over our country. We are serious about this. We are prosecuting. We're going to uncover every document, every phone call, everything you did. We will be relentless about it. And that's the mindset they've got to have because I think the electorate is going from we've got to get him out, but also we want accountability.

[Jim Acosta]

There has to be accountability. You have to have a situation where there's accountability. And I talked about this the other day with fanon, the former MPD police officer who almost got killed on January 6. You know, he said, and I think it's true that it's more than just the Dems win back the Congress and the White House. We have to change this John Roberts Supreme Court decision that gave the President of the United States a blank check. No man or woman should be above the law in this country. And Donald Trump sure as shit should not be above the law in this country. And I think the Democrats have to talk about it in these terms that, listen, if we get back in there, and I'm not saying I'm part of the Democratic Party, but I'm saying this is the way the Democrats should communicate. They should say when they're back in there, if you guys are going to cling to this idea that Donald Trump is unaccountable, it's just not going to work. And that means adding seats to the Supreme Court so that that immunity decision can be overturned and so Donald Trump can be held accountable for his crimes. I mean, right now, he's talking about taking over Venezuela for years in order to control the oil industry. And what world is that saying? He's talking about taking over Greenland and blowing up NATO, and what world is that saying? And so unless the Democrats wake up, and my sense of it right now is, to your point earlier, they're just sort of like. Like, you know, nibbling around the edges. That's just not gonna get the job done. And the people are gonna lead this. I tell people all the time, and I do, when I get invited to speak at groups and so on, I say this to folks. I get. I am much less worried about Trump derangement syndrome, which is what you and I get accused of, than I am about Trump depression syndrome, which is that people get so down in the dumps and they get so defeated that they think that there's no way to fix any of this. And you just can't live like that. You have to live in a world where there is hope and that this can get turned around and Donald Trump should be held accountable for what he's done. Otherwise, how do we get through this? Because it's gonna send the message to the next MAGA president, J.D. vance. You think J.D. i mean, Donald Trump can barely stay awake in the Oval Office or in a cabinet meeting. J.D. vance is in his early 40s.

[Jennifer Welch]

I know.

[Jim Acosta]

And is backed by people like Peter Thiel.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes.

[Jim Acosta]

And Elon Musk. And that motherfucker can go on for another 30 years. You don't. He's going to stay the hell. He's going to fall asleep in the Oval Office. He's going to work day and night to give this kleptocracy, this oligarchy, exactly everything that they want. And so people need to wake up and understand that their government is this way of life, as I like to call it on my show, this way of life is being taken away from you right now as we speak, unless you get up and fight.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. And I just think J.D. vance, it's just my personal opinion here, is the biggest political prostitute in the planet. He has changed his opinion, his name, his religion, his eyeliner thickness on a whim at all times, he goes out.

[Jim Acosta]

There and says, we don't have to apologize for being white.

[Jennifer Welch]

Oh, my God. That's insane.

[Jim Acosta]

What are you doing, man?

[Jennifer Welch]

Like, have you ever. I've never even thought of such a thing. That's in other.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. And I just think that, that he is, he's the future of maga. It is a, it is a fascist, authoritarian, white nationalist maga.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's worse than Trump.

[Jim Acosta]

It is worse than Trump. It's Trump with staying power. You know, Trump the other day is, you know, he's, he's, he's asking, am I going to go to heaven? Am I going to go to heaven? Yeah. It must be dawning on him that the sand in Dorothy's hourglass is running out. You know, in the wilderness.

[Jennifer Welch]

The curtains are closing.

[Jim Acosta]

The curtains are closing. JD Vance doesn't have to worry about that. This whole crew of guys who are gonna try to come in after it, they're not worried about that. The American people have to show that movement the door. I'm not talking about Republican presidents wanna come in and act like Mitt Romney and folks like that. Everybody can deal with that. Everybody can stomach that. If Mitt Romney had been president, said Donald TRUMP In 2016, you and I probably wouldn't be talking right now. That's right, Jen. You'd be down in Oklahoma enjoying your life, interior design.

[Jennifer Welch]

You'd be doing that thing.

[Jim Acosta]

But the reason why we're all fired up, the reason why I talk about politics in the news the way that I do right now, is that I am deeply worried that this is coming to an end. This way of life that you and I grew up with, you know, our young producers who are sitting off camera, they don't, they have, they don't have. I know they don't understand what you and I grew up with. I know this beautiful thing that came out of the end of the Cold War and the post World War II era. It's a precious thing and it's being taken away from us right now in real time.

[Jennifer Welch]

This episode of I've had it is brought to you by Wild Grain listener. Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. Plus all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less. I find this incredibly helpful because I really. I don't cook very much and I don't know how to cook, but I oftentimes get so tired of having to go out and get food. This subscription has changed my life. I absolutely love bread. Pop them in the oven, turn on a show, go back and I have fresh, delicious bread and pastries. Listener there's nothing like having an artisan bakery in your freezer to chase away the winter chill. Now is the best time to stay in and enjoy comforting homemade meals with Wild Grain. I highly recommend recommend giving Wild Grain a try. Right now, Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off your first box plus free Croissants for Life. You go to wildgrain.com had it to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free Croissants for Life when you visit wildgrain.com hattit or you can use the promo code hat it at checkout Out.

[Producer Sam]

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[Jennifer Welch]

This episode of I've had it is brought to you by booking.com listener booking.com offers a wide variety and array of hotels and vacation rentals across across the US So you can find exactly what you're booking for. There's something for everyone, even those who are impossible to please. Let me give you a prime example of this. My family, my husband, my two sons. I do not want to share a bathroom with them when I travel with them. We recently went to Los Angeles and I was looking for two hotel rooms where the boys have two beds and their own bathroom. My husband and I have our own bedroom, one bed with a bathroom and then an additional powder Bath. Because I just don't want to share space with Messy boys. Because booking.com is so easy to navigate and so easy to use, I found exactly what I was booking for. Whether you're booking for yourself, your partner, your picky teens, your sleep light rise early mom, or your high maintenance group chat, you can find exactly what you're booking for. Find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com booking. Yeah. Book today on the site or in the app. I have a son in law school and a son that's a freshman at usc. And my husband and I talk all the time that we're worried about their future. And what's really sad is when you get to my parents, boomers, you know, they, the worry that they have, they should just be enjoying their retirement. My mom and dad just say, we're just so worried for you guys and for our grandkids and our great grandkids. Like, these people should be living out.

[Jim Acosta]

And they can't afford a house. I mean, the average age of a person buying a house now is in their 40s.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes.

[Jim Acosta]

That's a, That's a goddamn travesty.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's insane.

[Jim Acosta]

And so we've got it. You. We got it. And, and listen, I, I talked to Heather Cox Richardson about some of this the other day. There. People have to look back to our history to understand that there is some reason to hope because there are different movements that come along. This is what I was going to get to earlier, you know, in 2008, you know, when I was out on the campaign trail, you know, the folks that I worked with at my old place would say, you know, Hillary Clinton's got this locked up. Don't worry about this Barack Obama guy. Hillary Clinton, it's going to work out. She's going to be the. And I would, I was out on the campaign trail with Obama and I would see him in these gymnasiums and these auditoriums, and I'm like looking the way young people respond to him. Yeah. And I was like, guys, this is different. This is something different.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

And he defeated the Democratic establishment and just roared into the White House and became a political phenomenon in this country. People forget about this. Heather Cox Richardson was explaining that in the late 1800s, during the time of Teddy Roosevelt, there was a whole era of progressivism that came along, a whole new era of independent journalism and a new wave of journalism that came along. Eras can change when the people lead that change. And I think that we're on the cusp of that now. If it's not crushed by the powers that be.

[Jennifer Welch]

I agree. I just completely agree. All right, let's play had it or Hit It.

[Jim Acosta]

Okay.

[Jennifer Welch]

Oh, my God. Welcome to had it or Hit It. I would hit it. Had it. Had it. I think hit it every day, sometimes twice a day. All right. Jim Acosta. Had it or Hit it. The Trump Kennedy center, that.

[Jim Acosta]

I went over there that day. I grew up in the D.C. area, going to the Kennedy center and stuff and taking my first dates when I was in my 20s and stuff to the Kennedy, and I was like, oh, I'm hot. I'm taking this girl to the Kennedy Center. Damn. Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Did you make out with him after that?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, it helped. It certainly helped. Dinner in the Kennedy center helped. And I revere John F. Kennedy. He's one of my heroes. And Bobby Kennedy. Not the insane one, but the.

[Jennifer Welch]

Not the brain worm.

[Jim Acosta]

No, not that one. And I did this. Sam and I did this. On the day that it happened. We went over to the Kennedy center when they were putting his name up there, and I did a little report from over there, and I said, I'm reporting from the scene of yet another crime committed by Donald Trump. Yes, he has vandalized this building, and he's a vandal, and he's putting his name all over. It's like he's just whizzing all over the nation's capital like a stray dog.

[Jennifer Welch]

You covered the Obama White House. Were you there when he wore the tan suit?

[Jim Acosta]

I was.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay. Imagine if Obama. Remember how the Fox their narrative was. He's arrogant, he's aloof. He thinks he's a king. Do you remember them saying that about Obama?

[Jim Acosta]

I remember that.

[Jennifer Welch]

The fact that there's. I guess you can't shame the shameless, but nobody feels any embarrassment or shame. And then the pictures. I haven't been in D.C. since the aforementioned Christmas party, but is it true? I've seen these images online, these portraits of, like, Donald's presidential mug shot on the building. On the government building.

[Jim Acosta]

They've got it on the Department of Labor. I call it the Kim Jong Un treatment there on the Department of Labor. It looks insane. And if you're. I mean, one reasons why we saw it is when they. When some of These characters in D.C. put up the Trump Epstein statue in front of the Capitol. We ran. We ran down and did a report on that, but off in the distance, you could see the Department of Labor, and they had the Kim Jong Un, like banner of Donald Trump. It's all batshit crazy, and it makes Me think he's just in the throes of this mental breakdown because he knows this is all coming to an end. And so he's just like, let me put my name over here.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

Let me invade this country.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think those Walter Reed visits, I think something was revealed.

[Jim Acosta]

Something's going on.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. And here's just this is this.

[Jim Acosta]

They found the mark of the devil.

[Jennifer Welch]

On this is I'm gonna bring up something petty just because I like to be petty. And I think it's fun and therapeutic.

[Jim Acosta]

It's cathartic. Yeah. Let's get it out.

[Jennifer Welch]

You know all of the talk in the MAGA movement about masculinity, right?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And then their idealized man wears a full face of makeup every single day. And I don't care if people wear makeup. If you're vegan, if you're non binary, I don't give a shit. When we grew up, do you remember how we used to say it's a free country all the time? Like even in Oklahoma there'd be some redneck and he', go, well, that guy's dressed like a girl. But I don't know what that is. But at least it's a free country. The whole thing was, I'm going to mind my own business.

[Jim Acosta]

Yes.

[Jennifer Welch]

You don't hear people saying it's a free country anymore that much. And I just think it's interesting that the idealized alpha male in the MAGA movement wears a full face of makeup every single day. There's. I've only seen one photo with the makeup off, and he was at his golf course and his pants were pulled and hiked like way up.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. And I'll tell you, you can see the outlines.

[Jennifer Welch]

He was out of drag. It was. I understand why he wears the makeup. I do. Because it is an improvement.

[Jim Acosta]

Right.

[Jennifer Welch]

Doing this gender affirming care. I support some of the.

[Jim Acosta]

Some of the shades are a little off, though.

[Jennifer Welch]

They are.

[Jim Acosta]

You know, and when he does it on the hands, I say it's all about the blending. You can't, you know, maybe it's Maybelline.

[Jennifer Welch]

Really bad at blending here.

[Jim Acosta]

He's blending there too. It's all about the blending. I know this from being a man in television news for many years in person.

[Jennifer Welch]

Is it, Is he really orange?

[Jim Acosta]

It's really orange. And you know, I, I describe it this way. When you're shopping, when you're a guy shopping for dress shoes and it's sort of like you've got black, brown, mahogany, and then there's like British Tan or English tan? That's the shade that he's putting on his face right now. It's that British tan shade. And it looks.

[Jennifer Welch]

This is really petty and gossipy, but, you know, there's all the rumors that he wears the diapers and that sometimes he stinks. Did you ever smell any poop?

[Jim Acosta]

I didn't smell anything.

[Jennifer Welch]

Like, nothing.

[Jim Acosta]

Kinzinger says he smells like butt.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay.

[Jim Acosta]

That's what. That's what Kinzinger says. He's been around. I. I have been in close proximity, but maybe it was after a change, you know, after. After they put the baby powder on, you know, patted his hiney, you know, I don't know, but I didn't smell it.

[Jennifer Welch]

Okay.

[Jim Acosta]

You know, there are so many offensive things about him. Maybe I didn't pick it.

[Jennifer Welch]

I mean, it's unfortunate. I'm glad you didn't smell it. But I love the.

[Jim Acosta]

We're just. We're descending into.

[Jennifer Welch]

I would like the hot tea. Okay. All right. Sorry.

[Jim Acosta]

Little kid stuff, but all right. That's okay.

[Jennifer Welch]

All right. Moving along.

[Jim Acosta]

You're. You're. You're encouraging me. You're a bad influence on me because I will engage and continue. I know my producer Sam's, like, on the way here is like, you know, you really should just go for it now. I'm in the middle of this thinking, I think I went for it and then some, but anyway.

[Jennifer Welch]

But, you know, this is the thing about podcast casting, and this is what's so cool about it, because I think the news and journalism is the gold standard. I want to say that it should be, but people now, because of smartphones, the way they're receiving news, they want to know more about Jim Acosta personally, they want to know more about Jennifer Welch personally, and they want more of a conversation like you have with a friend, where you're talking about something. Something serious, and. And you're like, oh, my God, does makeup look really bad in person? Because that's the human experience. It's more relatable. And so these conversations, I think, are more digestible for people to stay engaged with politics. If we were just really serious the whole time.

[Jim Acosta]

No. And the question that you ask is exactly perfect, because people have asked me this. I mean, what's it like when you're with him in person? I heard he can be charming and all this. I'm like, that's beside the fucking point. You know, he's unleashed ice on this country, and they're murdering people. He is grabbing countries for their oil. Whether he's Charming or not charming, I don't give a shit. You know what I mean? Like, people might have said that about other, you know, 20th century dictators. It's beside the fucking point. Yeah, I don't care. I know Kerry's a nice guy.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think the thing about him is he's charming to some people, not to me. I've always felt like he was a blowhard, you know, and I'm not turn. And people that need superficial flattery, he needs that so much. It's such a. It's so off putting for me.

[Jim Acosta]

It's a term off. Totally.

[Jennifer Welch]

I agree with you. Those meetings where, you know, the cabinet meetings where they're going on and on. The circle jerk of just.

[Jim Acosta]

Or the tech titans bringing in the gold offerings and everything. It's like, dude, you know, have.

[Jennifer Welch]

There's never been an advertisement against being a billionaire. Like the year of 2025. You have all this you money and you have to go make a participation trophy.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

And take it to that man who doesn't even have the decency to blend his makeup on his hairline or his hands before he receives your bullshit trophy.

[Jim Acosta]

It's. It's awful.

[Jennifer Welch]

Awful.

[Jim Acosta]

I know. Well, 2025 was year of bending the knee. I mean, it just clearly was. And it's why we're in the shape that we're in right now.

[Jennifer Welch]

And I'm sure Moses, Mike Grinder, Johnson. Johnson did a lot of that. All right, moving on.

[Jim Acosta]

He did a lot of bending both knees and. And kneeling at the altar of Trump. I mean, not to go off, but. Yeah.

[Producer Sam]

All right.

[Jennifer Welch]

All right. Had it or hit it. The manosphere.

[Jim Acosta]

The manosphere. I've definitely had it with that shit. Joe Rogan, could you have been more wrong about everything? You know what I mean? And if there's one thing that we need to do is we need to get those young guys back. And some of this is happening naturally anyway. If you see the polls for young Americans and the wild shift from they were like, oh, well, they were Trump curious to. No, fuck this noise.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think that some of these men in the manosphere, and there's two in particular that I think Theo Vaughn and then Kylie. What's the guy who's Schultz. Andrew Schultz.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. See, I don't even know some of these ass wives.

[Jennifer Welch]

I don't really know who they are either. But I know that they both had Trump on, they both endorsed Trump. And since then there's buyer's remorse. And I think that in order to really be a good steward of your Microphone. If you endorsed him. And then you see the way he's treating women, which is just a continuation. He has the whole time. But immigrants, the way he's treating the immigrant population, the dehumanizing, sending people to be sexually tortured at sea cot. And an atonement by these people to their audiences that. What the. They got intoxicated on masculinity. They got intoxicated on. We're tough guys. The rules that apply to everybody else don't apply to us. We can skip the. We can skip.

[Jim Acosta]

And the misogyny. Yes, the misogyny. I mean, the Tate brothers putting those guys on a pedestal. Those guys are garbage.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yes.

[Jim Acosta]

They're disgusting, disgraceful human beings. And that's the thing I get worried about the most with these young guys is that. That fascism is contagious. It is something that you can catch the bug. Misogyny is something you can catch that bug and you can become. Cruelty is something you can catch that bug. And I've described this many ways. Trump wants his cruelty to be your cruelty, his abusiveness to become your abusiveness. And we have to show these guys a different way. And I think some of it is talking about these things in terms that Trump would talk about these things, talk about the things we care about without caring so much about, am I gonna offend this person, or should I not say fuck? You know, I've had, like, relatives and friends. You say fuck a lot. Well, it's that time.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's that era.

[Jim Acosta]

It's that era.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

We have to say, you know, I had friends who were like, you should call your podcast Fuck it. You know, Fuck it. You know, Jim Acosta. And I thought about it. I was like, but it's like, how do you put that on Apple podcasts? You have to put the asterisk in there or something that I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get throttled. But we are kind of in that moment where we have to say fuck it, and sort of grab people by their shirt collar because these young ass wipes, like the names you mentioned, it's almost like they have to touch the hot stove, you know, and have their noses rubbed in it before they wake up. And it's like, oh, shit, I guess I better care about this stuff. People get murdered.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's cool that there is a, you know, recoil from this. This where people realize. Men realize that really the most masculine thing is standing up for the most vulnerable.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, that.

[Jennifer Welch]

That is truly the mo. The highest form of being an alpha is standing with the marginalized kid that's getting bullied and standing up against the bullies. And that's something that, you know, look at Disney movies. I feel like it was something that was a part of the American experience, our American experience growing up. And that's something that's been so hard about being alive right now. Is the villains, how they're celebrated, how much people are celebrated? On Fox News, they celebrate this depravity and these horrible villains and these just horrible people. And it's been very hard for me to watch.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah. And you know, to some extent, it's a little bit of a self cleaning oven because I think that in the sense that Donald Trump took us to the edge of, of hell itself. You know, it's like we're not in hell, but we can see it from here. Because he goes so far, he kind of shows us the light a little bit too. I hate to put it that way, but like the way he went after Rob Reiner, after Rob Reiner died, he and his wife, you had even people on Fox, you had people even in the Republican Party, even in MAGA saying that this has gone too far and it didn't happen overnight. It's not gonna happen overnight. The spell is not gonna be broken like a Disney movie. But I do think there are these moments that happen little by little. People say, oh, you know what, this is too much.

[Jennifer Welch]

I think they're blowing their wad. And as much as it's accelerating right now, there is going to be a backfire to it. And if you think about just like I think there was a huge backfire to Charlie Kirk's funeral. And we all saw, I unfortunately saw it online. Him violently get murdered. And it was horrible, Horrible. Most horrible thing. And I oppose gun violence so much. A person who worked with us, he was killed last October. And it just devastated me. Young black kid that had worked for me for like six years. And so gun violence is avoidable and preventable. And nobody surrounding Charlie Kirk even talks about that. But I digress. So everybody saw that and it was horrible to see. Nobody's really talking about what he did. They just kind of ambiently knew who Charlie Kirk was. And then the funeral happened. And it's pyrotechnics, Christian nationalist, Bible thumping. And I was on Hasan piker show kind of right after this happened. And I said, Hasan, where I grew up, I know evangelicals, like I would go to church with them on the weekend and that's their vibe. But country club Republicans look down on Bible thumpers like that. Episcopalians and moderate Republicans, and they put on this huge megachurch church funeral. And I could, you know, like, it just. There was kind of a backlash from that. Like, well, this shit's weird. Like, why are they. Why are there fireworks? Why is all of this talk about, you know, overt religiosity? There's something so off putting about it. And I think that's what's happening with a lot of this. And I think there is going to be a blowback from it. But here's your last one.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Welch]

Had it or hit it? The United States. States of America.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, boy. And hit it is good, right?

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. Hit it is good.

[Jim Acosta]

I will hit that every day of the week. You're talking if. If, you know, it's like that line from Coming to America, if loving the Lord is wrong, I don't want to be right.

[Jennifer Welch]

You know, that's such a great movie.

[Jim Acosta]

And see, this is the other thing that the kids don't know. I feel like I have to.

[Jennifer Welch]

It's such a great movie.

[Jim Acosta]

Introduce them to some of the old Eddie Murphy movies. Yes. Arnold Schwarzenegger. My. I was raised. My dad was a bodybuilder growing up.

[Jennifer Welch]

Really?

[Jim Acosta]

He was. And he wanted to be Schwarzenegger and Stallone.

[Jennifer Welch]

Did you pump weights with him growing up?

[Jim Acosta]

No.

[Jennifer Welch]

Was he like, come on, son, let's pump some weights and do manly stuff?

[Jim Acosta]

I was still kind of a pussy. I mean, I. I tried. I, you know, I tried to be an athlete. It was like, this is taking a lot of effort. You know, I'd rather be on the school newspaper and run for, you know, class president or whatever. Yeah. But, you know, my dad, he could take me to a Redskins game growing up, and if people were fucking with us on the way to the stadium, was he. He'd be like this. And they'd be like, whoa. Like, my dad, you know, like, he was.

[Jennifer Welch]

Was he the Cuban?

[Jim Acosta]

He was the. He's the Cuban.

[Jennifer Welch]

He's the Cuban macho.

[Jim Acosta]

So Cuban. With all this, you're just not gonna. It's not. Not a good idea. Don't.

[Jennifer Welch]

Nobody's gonna fuck with that. Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

And I. That's the era I grew up when. And I. You know, like the right stuff. You know what I mean? Like, I just. It worked on me, you know, Rocky and Rocky iv. I will break you. And then Rocky comes back and went. It just. I. I'm sorry. It works on me, Adrian. Even though Stallone now, it's like, he's maga.

[Jennifer Welch]

He's kind of maga.

[Jim Acosta]

He just looks Weird, but yeah. But I still love him. It's okay. I still believe in it. I don't know. I know it sounds corny, and I get goosebumps thinking about, like, you know, taking my show on the road and going to Iowa and talking to folks in Iowa and stuff like that. I just. You know, people would say to me all the time, how can you keep going to those Trump rallies? How can you keep doing that? You know, they scream at you and they call you names and do all this stuff. And I grew up in a blue collar family. My dad. You know, my parents had me when they were very young. My dad worked in grocery stores, my mom worked in restaurants. But, you know, I would go to these rallies and I would. You know, I would tell folks who would be like, why do you go to these things? Why do you keep going there? I would say, these are the people I know. These are the people I grew up with. I grew up on a bar stool in my mom's restaurant talking to these guys. And I still think that there's a way to bring them back. And I know people are like, what the fuck are you talking about? What are you smoking? I still think that there's a way. And I think at the end of this, we're just in the middle part of this long story. And yes, it's fucked up that he incited a riot on January 6 and insurrection and so on, and he got back into office. And all of that is unfair and fucked up. I agree with all of that, but that doesn't mean we're at the end of the story. You know, the Death Star had to get blown up twice.

[Jennifer Welch]

It can't mean we're at the end of this story.

[Jim Acosta]

It can't mean we're at the end of the story.

[Jennifer Welch]

This cannot. We cannot lose our country to him.

[Jim Acosta]

No, this cannot.

[Jennifer Welch]

He cannot be.

[Jim Acosta]

Especially this particular guy. Yes.

[Jennifer Welch]

It can't be that particular artist.

[Jim Acosta]

Not the casino Biff from Back to the Future.

[Jennifer Welch]

Not the bankruptcy con artists selling grifting bibles.

[Jim Acosta]

Jeffrey Epstein, friend. And all this.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah. It can't be him.

[Jim Acosta]

With the gold all over the White.

[Jennifer Welch]

House, there's a villain that's going to take him, take us out. I want him to be hot. I want him to be muscular. Like your body. Your dad. Yes, yes. Younger. Like, where it's like, you know, he's terrible and he ruined our country, but he sure was hot, you know, or.

[Jim Acosta]

An evil hot lady. First president. I could go. I'd be like, oh, well, you know.

[Jennifer Welch]

Got to Be a better.

[Jim Acosta]

It had to end somehow, you know? Yes, but not this.

[Jennifer Welch]

Agree.

[Jim Acosta]

Agree. Again, I've said too much. But no, not him. I, I 100%. Not the guy who puts orange makeup on his face. Yeah, and apparently, like the, who are the ass wipes? You're saying Theo Vaugh and those. Yeah, he puts orange on his face.

[Jennifer Welch]

And that's who you endorsed.

[Jim Acosta]

And if you kiss his ass, it smells like. What the is he doing? Not him.

[Jennifer Welch]

No, it cannot be.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, but that makes me think Maybe it'll be J.D. vance. Which, you know. Know. Then that does sort of make sense that it would end that way.

[Jennifer Welch]

See, I don't think the only way that J.D. vance.

[Jim Acosta]

But he's a couch, so it can't be.

[Jennifer Welch]

He's a couch fucker. The only way JD Vance cannot win a general election.

[Jim Acosta]

I agree 100%.

[Jennifer Welch]

There's just no way he can win. Donald Trump doesn't even like J.D. vance. He was a gift from the tech oligarchs.

[Jim Acosta]

And I will tell you, he enjoys pitting Marco Rubio against JD Vance, knowing him and how he operates. And his people, they love this cocktail fight, but back. And it's a little cockfight. Little Lidl. Is that what it was? But, but the moral of the story is, is that it can't happen this way. It only happens this way if you let it happen this way. To the corporate assholes out there and the university presidents and the media titans and so on. This only happens if you assholes let it happen this way.

[Producer Sam]

Right.

[Jim Acosta]

So don't do it.

[Jennifer Welch]

Everybody that said no and taken him to court has won. Everybody that has bent the knee. It will never be enough. We could all sit here right now and say, Donald Trump is so great. He has a large penis, his makeup looks fantastic, his hair is unbelievable. And we could, the whole world could say it in unison and it still wouldn't fix him. He will always be broken, so do not give him an inch. If you have fuck you money, tell Donald Trump. Fuck you.

[Jim Acosta]

That's right. I mean, it's just, I know it is. You know, it's sort of like the wizard of Oz. You're just waiting for somebody to throw the bucket of water. Water. And I'm melting. I'm melting. Oh, my beautiful world. This was my mom's favorite movie growing up, so I left it, too. I go back to it from time to time, but I, I firmly believe. And this is where, like, my European friends are like, oh, it's because you guys are Americans and you always think It's a Hollywood ending, and you think you're the best and everything. And I want it to be a Hollywood ending. And I do think we're the best. And I do think we can. We can do this. I think we can pull this off. It's going to be a little mess, and it may not be Gavin Newsom. It may not be, you know, the heir apparents that are floating around on the newsroom. Maybe it'll be Jacob Fry. I don't know.

[Jennifer Welch]

I hope it's somebody new.

[Jim Acosta]

Maybe it's somebody new who just kind of comes out of nowhere. We weren't. We didn't see it coming. Kind of like Obama.

[Jennifer Welch]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

Sort of like Donald Trump. We didn't see it coming. Yeah, but. And maybe it just won't be one person. Maybe it'll be all of us. And I, you know, people could say, oh, Jim, you know, that's because you're from this generation that grew up with Star wars and all that shit. It ain't gonna end that way. I will continue to believe it until I can't believe it anymore, until there is no more. And that's what I bring to this. I refuse to give up. I just won't do it.

[Jennifer Welch]

I want to leave the listener with that Hopium from Jim Acosta.

[Jim Acosta]

We need. Need it.

[Jennifer Welch]

We need it. And we need to remember that none of these corporations are anything without us, our money. And if they want to on their customers, we'll just start boycotting them.

[Jim Acosta]

I canceled my Washington Post. I mean, this is the paper I grew up with. My mom would get it on her doorstep every morning, read it cover to cover every morning. I canceled that thing. When they came out with the editorial and said it was okay to bulldoze half the White House, I click canceled. I canceled it live on my show. I said, no. This noise. We have to start standing up, not just to Trump, but to all of the enablers. And a message has to be sent. This is running out. Which side are you going to be on, Our side or his side?

[Jennifer Welch]

I agree.

[Jim Acosta]

And that's the way it goes.

[Jennifer Welch]

All right, listeners.

[Jim Acosta]

And that's the way it was, as Walter Cronkite used to say.

[Jennifer Welch]

Jim Acosta, thank you so much for joining me in person. Filling in for pumps on. I've had it. I thought you were spectacular.

[Jim Acosta]

Was I okay pumps?

[Jennifer Welch]

You were a fabulous pumps. Much smaller tits.

[Jim Acosta]

I'll work on that. My producers tell me I gotta work out more next time. Much bigger tits.

[Jennifer Welch]

You don't want to be a pussy. You want to be a strong guy like your dad. Listener. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next Tuesday and Thursday.

[Jim Acosta]

Great to see you.

[Jennifer Welch]

Tell you what, I've had it with terrorists. I've had it with that. Listen up patriots, gaytriots and natriots. We have a new podcast that has dropped. It's called IHIP News. It's Monday through Friday. Every day, 15 to 20 minute hot takes on the political landscape of the United States of America. Always served with a side of petty grievances.

[Producer Sam]

We are on all the available platforms, Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever you get, your podcasts and YouTube.

[Jennifer Welch]

Please go rate, subscribe and review so that we will chart upwards with America's greatest legal mind. Pumps, pumps. What does an eagle say? Caca. A little bit more enthusiasm. Caca. That's it. That's, that's caca. That's the patriotism that this country needs. Right, right there.