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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing under the bulwark. And I'm joined by Congressman Jim Himes of the great state of Connecticut. He is the ranking member on the House Intel Committee. And we're going to be talking about Donald Trump's speech last night. But before we start, Congressman, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate it.
- [00:13]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [00:14]
A
You wrote in anticipation of the speech in the New York Times about your fears for what would happen. And then I saw you today on some of the TV shows talking about the speech. I know this is going to sound a little bit crazy, but did the speech, was it as bad as you were worried it would be?
- [00:31]
B
Well, yes, in the sense that the president just flat out lied on things that the government knows that his government knows to be true, that we have corrupt elections. We don't. That the Chinese interfered in his elections. They didn't. And that a deep state cabal of, you know, federal workers, intelligence, CIA people kept information from him. I'll tell you, in some ways, that's the one that hurts the most, because I spent a lot of time around intelligence officers. They are patriotic, they are superb, they are apolitical. So the President told three huge lies, all of which you need to spend about 2 seconds on Google to find the evidence to show that he was lying about that. But I also expected him, if you read the essay I wrote in the New York Times, I expected him to get more into the source material and say, like, look, I'm holding up this report that clearly shows. And the problem. And the reason I realized, in retrospect, the reason he didn't do that is because he can hold up a report. He. And here, if you're trying to evaluate the credibility of the Chinese claims, let's say go do exactly what he told you to do. Go to whitehouse.gov, right, and look at the section called Chinese Reporting. And what you'll see is document after document after document, which is nothing but black reductions. Now, I'm on the Intelligence Committee, so I know what's behind those reductions. There's certainly nothing that says that the Chinese interfered in our election. You know, again, even the backup that he had, the probably the big story from all that backup is just the comprehensiveness of the effort that Russia made to support him by attacking Biden and Hunter Biden, etc. So, wow. I mean, I, I was a little stunned by the brazenness of it.
- [02:06]
A
Yeah. To your point, I read the documents. I mean, there was one element of it where someone was withholding and just one conclusion on China from the Presidential Daily Brief that they referenced. But they were doing that because they had more comprehensive studies that were coming later, and they didn't want to get ahead of them. It was pretty remarkable how much the Russia stuff really was outlined in those documents, to the degree that it was. But I do want to say, you know, there is always with Trump, like a little, tiny, little kernel that is exaggerated. And in this case, I do think when you talk to people who are in this field, there are vulnerabilities in the machines. That's not to say that they've been exploited, because they haven't. All the evidence shows that they haven't. But there are ways in which they could be updated, the software could be updated, they could be made more secure. What would you do about that?
- [02:54]
B
Going, yeah, look, I mean, you outlined precisely one of the challenges in dealing with the President because he says exactly what you just said, which is that the machines have vulnerabilities, but then he goes a step further and says, and they were massively exploited so that our elections are corrupt. The first part is self evidently true. Every single machine out there, this thing that you carry around in your pocket, has vulnerabilities. And I'm here to tell you that really capable hackers can exploit those vulnerabilities. I'm also here to tell you that there is precisely zero evidence that any of these vulnerabilities in voting machines were ever exploited. And even if, let's imagine that, you know, the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians, who are sort of the featured player in all of this material, had actually gotten into the machines, that's. You're still a long way from being able to compromise an election. Right? I mean, most states in the United States have a paper trail of voting. Not every single one, but most states have a paper trail. Most states, it would be a simple matter if there was a compromise of the border rolls or, you know, for one thing, people would start showing up and not be on the voter rolls or vice versa. There would be votes cast in which there was no existing human. So my point is, number one, of course there's vulnerabilities. There's nothing out there that is not vulnerable to really good hackers. There's also no evidence that it's ever been abused. And even if you could get in, you know, you're still a long way from being able to compromise an election.
- [04:20]
A
Yeah, you, you outlined. Well, let me start with this. Why do you think he gave the speech now?
- [04:24]
B
Well, I think I think there's three things going on, maybe four. Number one, this is his thing, right? I mean, my God, since he was sworn in on in 2016 and he had the biggest crowds ever, you know, it was sort of obvious that he didn't, you know, this has always been his thing. He's broken enough. You know, you and I, when we lose something, we're like, God damn, I lost. Move on. This is just like, you know, it's his white whale, right? Point one. Point two, he is remarkably unpopular right now. I mean, I think he's as unpopular as any president has been, you know, in the midterms in our lifetime. And that leads me to point three. He knows that he is likely to get clobbered in the next election. The House is likely to become Democratic controlled and maybe even the Senate. And this is what worried me most. Look, we're all used to Donald Trump telling bald face, obviously disprovable lies. But, you know, if you look on social Media, there is 20% of the American public that, you know, the man could, you know, tell him that he was, you know, Donald Trump could say he was the lead ballerina and the Bolshoi Ballet and they'd be like, oh, yeah, clearly, clearly, you know, that will accept whatever he says.
- [05:32]
A
He was right.
- [05:33]
B
And, you know, what he's doing is, and this is what really worries me is he's setting the foundation for an attack on the election. And I mean, you know what that looks like.
- [05:42]
A
Well, you painted a picture of that. You did paint a picture of that on tv where you talked about. I'll just paint the hypothetical and you can explain why you think it's realistic. Close elections for certain House races in Georgia or some other states, States, California, New York, whatever. Trump comes out the night of the election, says, I've just been briefed by my intel committee or our community, the CIA, that the Iranians have been interfering with these elections. They've hacked the machines. We need to send in the feds to seize these ballot boxes to make sure that they are secure. Suddenly, the chain of custody of the ballot boxes is disrupted and no one knows what, if anything, the federal government is doing with those votes. And there's no real way to check if they're up to no good. Is that a realistic scenario in your mind?
- [06:34]
B
It absolutely is, Sam, because anything is on the table. I was there on January 6, 2021, when something happened that was absolutely inconceivable and beyond the imagination of any American. When thousands of criminals and violent people egged on by the President broke windows, knocked down doors, attacked police officers, and conducted a lethal raid on the Congress of the United States to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. So you really think I'm gonna say, oh, no, Donald Trump would never do that? Of course he would. And there's a myriad of other possibilities. I mean, that's really probably the ugliest one, because once ballot boxes in one of a hundred really sensitive locations around the country are in the back of a Department of Homeland Security van, it's game over, right? There's no way of knowing what the real result is. But let me give you another scenario which maybe is a little bit less complicated. You know, again, you're down to, you know, a couple dozen really sensitive locations. They're in Georgia, they're in Michigan, maybe North Carolina. You know, the President says, oh, my gosh, in these locations, hundreds of illegal aliens are voting and patriots need to show up and stop them. And I'm sending in the National Guard or DHS to stop them. Now you have a polling place in Georgia where there are hundreds of armed federal agents or maybe even MAGA civilians armed. And now we saw this in Minneapolis. We see it wherever ICE operators. Now there's a reaction, right? Whoever it is, you know, starts getting up in the faces of these people and says, you know, says the law, which is you can't be armed around a polling place. Now we have a scuffle. Now somebody gets shot or, you know, whatever know, dhs, ICE has been in the business of shooting people lately. But now we have a riot and potential chaos. And that, of course, is, you know, mana for the President, because in the context of chaos, you know, you can play out any number of scenarios right up to, including, like, there's riots in Michigan. I'm invoking the Insurrection Act. So the US Military restores order. All of these games are the, the, the premise is set by what the President said last night. Because right now, even though anybody who is open to facts knows that the speech was completely up, you know, it feels like 30% of the population, whatever Donald Trump says is true, and they're going to act on it.
- [08:51]
A
So that just begs the question of, in preparation for these hypotheticals, what are Democrats doing? I mean, obviously you're in a state where it doesn't seem like, you know, there's going to be particularly close elections, but you never know. But certainly there are states where you can see this playing out more likely, what conversations are happening that, you know, behind the scenes among Democratic officials maybe, you know, trained lawyers to get ahead of this in a way that you, you weren't able to conceive of and get ahead of January 6th?
- [09:19]
B
Yeah. No, it's a really good question. And, I mean, the good news is that, though you never thought it would happen, here in the United States, we have generations of experience with elections that, that somebody's trying to.