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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
Foreign welcome to the Jim Acosta show. And it's another day that ends and why. And Donald Trump's cover up of the Epstein files. The House Oversight Committee. Breaking news, folks. The House Oversight Committee has received the birthday note that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein on the pedophiles 50th birthday. An official with the House Oversight Ranking member Robert Garcia just confirmed to me that, that they did receive that book that includes this note. Trump says it's not his, but there it is. It's disgusting. I mean it's, it's certainly consistent with who he is and so on. But let's talk about this and more with Wajahad Ali. He's the man behind the left hook on Substack and it's always great to have him on. Waj, great to see you as always. And I, you know, we were just saying right before we got started here, you know, he says it's not his, but I mean, you know, I mean.
- [01:00]
Wajahat Ali
Well, my question, Jim, is clearly it's his, it's, it's in line with his vulgarity, it's in line with his drawing style. But the question I have is did he draw that vulgar drawing with that vulgar sentiment in his capacity as an FBI informant or as a pro pedophile? You know, President, I, what do you think? Because let's not forget that Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, just a couple of days ago dropped that bombshell and he's where he said Donald Trump was an FBI informant. And we're like, excuse me, and then he apparently walked it back. So if he was an FBI informant, folks, because I think we just have to connect the dots, that means that Robert Mueller, if I remember correctly this is 2001, was FBI director. So Donald Trump was working for Robert Mueller. He was part and parcel of the deep state. And then Robert Mueller then depending on, you know, when he signed on to be FBI director, an FBI informant during Democratic presidency and underneath Robert Mueller, Donald Trump was an active member of the deep state. Am I getting the right, Jim?
- [02:07]
Jim Acosta
I think you're absolutely right. I mean, and I do want to talk about that in a second. But let's, let's, let's just talk about this note one more time because to me it's fascinating that the House Oversight Committee now has this, this document and you know, because it was last week or the week before that Robert Garcia, who was a very aggressive member of the Democratic Party and, and kind of a perfect choice to be that ranking member on the, on the Oversight Committee, you know, he was saying just a few days ago that they've only, they've, they've gotten like 97% of what they've gotten so far is already in the public domain and 3% is not. And this is something that Donald Trump has sued over. And I guess the Epstein estate had to turn this over. So, I mean, this is, I mean, they, they are starting to get some interesting stuff. Does this mean that they're going to get stuff that's unredacted? I mean, we're just going to have to wait and see. But I, you know, this is an interesting development. It seems to me that, that this kind of, this level of material is being turned over.
- [03:07]
Wajahat Ali
I think, you know, if we can connect the dots for folks, because there's so much that you get overwhelmed. Yeah, it was the Wall Street Journal run by that flaming lefty communist, Rupert Murdoch, you know that bastion of liberalism, Wall Street Journal that dropped this story.
- [03:25]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [03:26]
Wajahat Ali
Donald Trump, before that whole day was dropped. You remember that, Jim? He threatened the Wall Street Journal editor. The editor stuck to her guns, published the story about this existing. Donald Trump then threatened to sue Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal said, no, we stand by a reporting. Donald Trump then went ahead with his lawsuit. Okay. Then the Wall Street Journal, if you all remember, doubled down and the second Epstein dump that they did was they released the other names of the people in this birthday book. That was Maxwell. The third thing they did was they said that Pam Bondi, his attorney General, informed Donald Trump in May, in May that his name was all in the Epstein files. Which means, and folks, this, I'm using these words and I think these words have to be used more loudly and more frequently. That means that the Trump administration has engaged in an active cover up.
- [04:20]
Jim Acosta
That's right.
- [04:21]
Wajahat Ali
Since May, they've engaged in an active cover up when it comes to the Epstein scandal. And they have lied to the American public. Because I believe it was ABC News a month later that asked him, the cameras were on Donald Trump, are you in the Epstein files? He said, bam, Bundy's doing a great job. No, I'm not in it. So he's lying. And then furthermore, he said all this is a hoax. It's a hoax. But the book now is produced. They now have the drawing. It matches exactly what the Wall Street Journal said in its initial reporting. The reason why Jim and I started this by saying that looks like Donald Trump's drawing is that he does these drawings of sky with these thick black lines. If you could go back to the drawing real quick, Jim.
- [04:59]
Jim Acosta
Of the woman's body.
- [05:00]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah, it seems like it's. Yeah. First and foremost, if you look at the drawing, it's his drawing. If you look at the signature, it's a signature. It's. And if you look at the vulgarity, of course, it will come from the mind of Donald Trump, who chased models in the 90s with Epstein, who sexualized his daughter's own body, who has been accused of sexual assault by two dozen women, and who's held liable for sexual assault by E. Jean Carroll. All of it tracks, Jim. So the question again is, is it FBI informant or is it just Donald Trump?
- [05:30]
Jim Acosta
Well, and the other thing, real quick, before we get to the FBI informant things, I definitely want to drill down on that. The other thing is, is that you're, you're absolutely right to bring up the Ghislaine Maxwell connection in all of this. She's the one who put the book together. And remember when Todd Blanche went down to the, the security was a minimum security, or I was more like a Max.
- [05:48]
Wajahat Ali
Florida is when he went down, which was not minimum security.
- [05:51]
Jim Acosta
That's right. He went down to Florida, talked to Ghislaine Maxwell, and this was the, the interview that resulted in her being transferred over to a minimum security prison in Texas, Club Fed, basically. And it was, remember during that interview, you can see it in the transcript where, you know, she says, oh, I don't remember him doing anything wrong. He's a perfect gentleman. He's a wonderful guy. Wow. It's great he's become president. What about the birthday book? I don't remember that. She said that was the one part she goes, I don't remember the birth, the birthday book, or that Trump did something for the birthday book. So, I mean, that's me. Right?
- [06:21]
Wajahat Ali
Let me stay on Maxwell for a second. Real quick.
- [06:23]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [06:24]
Wajahat Ali
Michael Wolf, who I've interviewed, and Michael Wolfe talked to Jeffrey Epstein and he says that he has over hundreds of hours of conversations and we know that he leaked the fact that Jeffrey Epstein said that he was Donald Trump's closest friend. He said that evidence could have only come. The evidence of the birthday book could have only come from Ghislaine Maxwell.
- [06:45]
Jim Acosta
Maxwell.
- [06:46]
Wajahat Ali
And notice that once that dropped, as Jim said, Todd Blanche was sent. Why is Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, leaving his job in D.C. to go talk to Ghis Maxwell should be the special prosecutor, right? Oh, yeah. What happened to the special prosecutor, Maureen Comey? Oh, yeah. The week before she was fired. And as a result, two days. It was for two days. Todd Blanche talked to Ghislaine Maxwell, we know the transcripts. And less than a week later, folks, Ghislaine Maxwell, in a sweetheart deal that no pedophile has ever gotten since 2008, the last sweetheart deal that was given to Jeffrey Epstein, she got transferred. Folks, there's no reason for this to happen. This is not normal. This is a sweetheart special deal that Ghislaine Maxwell, who was just starting his 20, her 20 year sentence, got moved to a minimum security camp in Texas, which means someone in the prisons waived her sex offender status. And now she is cleared for. She, her status right now is that she hasn't applied for it, but she's cleared for a removal for what she can, she can be on work removal.
- [07:54]
Jim Acosta
So insane. It's totally nuts. It's, it's totally crazy. And I, you know, I, I, to me, obviously, there's the. Donald Trump has a problem here with this birthday book, and now that it's been turned over to the House Oversight Committee, I mean, this is gonna, this has to be asked about in, in interviews. They're bringing all these guests in. This Alex Acosta guy, no, as I like to say, no relation. But let's talk about the FBI informant thing because, you know, Mike Johnson was tap dancing like Fred Astaire on Red Bull the other day. He was asked by reporters, you know, what's going on with the Epstein files and everything, and he tried to make Donald Trump sound like such a, such a helpful guy that he's been trying to help so much that, oh, he even was an FBI informant at one point in the Epstein case. Let's hear what the speaker of the House of the United States of America, Mike Johnson, said just the other day.
- [08:42]
Miles Taylor
Saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It's a terrible, unspeakable evil.
- [08:46]
Jim Acosta
He believes that himself. When he first heard the rumor, he.
- [08:47]
Miles Taylor
Kicked him out of Mar a Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down. The President knows and has great sympathy for the women who have suffered these unspeakable harms. It's detestable to him. He and I have spoken about this.
- [08:57]
Jim Acosta
As recently as 24 hours ago. It's, it's detestable. It is detestable to the. Mike Johnson says it's detestable to him. The same guy who said it's okay to grab people by the, by the private parts. It's a Monday. I don't want to go down that road just yet. But watch. I mean, Donald Trump, an FBI informant. I mean, first of all, a Couple of things. One is, we should note that Mike Johnson went out to the reporters earlier this afternoon and walked this back and said, oh, you know what, by the way, I, I don't know what I said there. He said something along those lines. He, he's like, I was just talking about things that were already in the public domain, that was never in the public domain, that, that Donald Trump was an FBI informant. And there was one reporter who was up there today asking, what did Donald Trump wear? A wireless. This, this got completely overlooked over the weekends by the corporate media. I was like, wait a minute, the speaker of the House is saying that Donald Trump was an FBI informant? This is totally nuts. And then the other thing we should. I mean, I, I brought this up with Ali Velshi over the weekend. I'm sorry, it. MAGA has, has basically said FBI informants are trash, they're not to be trusted. They were part of January 6, blah, blah, blah, which obviously is not the case. It's. But now all of a sudden, it's a good thing to be an FBI informant, which he's not. Or was it.
- [10:09]
Wajahat Ali
It's a failure of corporate media because it was a bombshell dropped, if I remember, on Friday night, and I'm like, excuse me, the speaker of the House has just announced that Donald Trump was an FBI informant. The same man who's based the last 10 years, part of his campaign is that he's going to clean the deep state. A man who has promised to reveal the deep state as being corrupt and part of this international cabal of like godless sex traffickers. And, and it will be proven through the Epstein files, that man was part and parcel of the deep state, working with Robert Mueller, the man that he attacked for the Russia hoax. You're saying that, that Donald Trump was an FBI informant. So, okay, logically, when did he start becoming an informant? Because he's been pals with Jeffrey Epstein since the late 80s. He used to introduce Jeffrey Epstein as his associate. They used to chase models together. They partied together. There's videos of this. They, Epstein had a model agency. Donald Trump had a modeling agency. So as an FBI informant, was the FBI telling him to go to the Miss Teen USA locker rooms and harass these young girls? Was the FBI telling him to sexually harass these women? He returned to the scene of the crime, by the way, the US Open, where two women at two separate occasions have credibly accused him of sexually assaulted them. When he, you know, said that, you know, praised Epstein in 2002 when he, when he wrote this in his, this perverted thing in his notebook. Was this all part of the FBI plan? And if it was, Jim, let's just follow it logically.
- [11:40]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, yeah.
- [11:41]
Wajahat Ali
Well, well, how, how come his efforts did not lead to Jeffrey Epstein then being convicted in 2008 and the man who was the U.S. attorney at the time, who gave him that sweetheart deal later became Donald Trump's Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta. Okay, okay, suppose maybe, you know, Donald Trump was low level at that time. He wasn't president in 2008. Okay. He was president in 2016. Why didn't he, you know, do more to help these women? Okay, maybe he was really busy. Pandemic. Fine. Now he's president again. He has the House, he has the Senate, he has a Supreme Court. I want to thank Donald Trump for being an FBI informant and getting the worst pedophile in recent history. A man who has raped, along with Ghislaine Maxwell, more than hundreds, hundreds of girls.
- [12:30]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [12:31]
Wajahat Ali
I want you to show your work. I want you to get an A plus on your work. Donald Trump, FBI informant, release the Epstein files.
- [12:38]
Jim Acosta
Exactly. That's right. He's. He's our first FBI informant president, I guess, if you listen to Mike Johnson. And the other thing, too, is Thomas Massie on the Republican side, you know, the, the congressman from Kentucky who's been leading the, the charge on this to release the Epstein files. Asked over the weekend, well, if Donald Trump was an informant, how. What does that, what does that have to do, how does that square with it, this being a hoax? I mean, he would not have been an FBI informant for a hoax. Donald Trump has said over and over again that this is a Democratic hoax. It's obviously not a Democratic hoax if he was an FBI informant. I think that's part of the reason why Mike Johnson had to go out in front of the cameras today and eat crowd and admit that he basically lied to the public last Friday. And it does also, and I want to move on to other stuff, but it does sort of magnify how Mike Johnson as a, is kind of a pathetic speaker of the House. Like, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when being the speaker of the House was a pretty big damn deal. You know, like, there were some people who have held that position who have been terrible people over the years, but then there have been people over the years, like, I mean, like, oh, yeah, Nancy Pelosi, substantial political figures. And here you have Mike Johnson just going out there and just lying in front of the cameras and making shit up. And it's, it's complete nonsense. And it just goes to the fact. To the fact that they've completely, completely fucking covered up this Epstein files thing. Just completely covered it up.
- [14:00]
Wajahat Ali
And one last thing before you move on. In his statement, he talked about, oh, Donald Trump's concern for the women. What women? What concern? September 3rd, five days ago, ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, in a bipartisan type of a press conference, brought the survivors, and the survivors came out and spoke. And after the survivors came out and spoke, it talked about how they were raped by not just Jeffrey Epstein, but also Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump. Instead of talking about the survivors being empathetic, what did he do? He debunked it all as a Democratic hoax. He said that there was a hoax, a question that no one's asked Donald Trump. And I said, every single press. God. The failure of the press. Ask every Republican.
- [14:41]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [14:41]
Wajahat Ali
Do you agree with Donald Trump that the Epstein scandal is a hoax? If you do, are you saying all these women are lying? A simple one, two question, Jim.
- [14:48]
Jim Acosta
You're the process.
- [14:49]
Wajahat Ali
I'm just a mini man driver. Not a single question was asked. So Mike Johnson got freaked out because this was a big press conference and Thomas Massey was there and Marjorie Taylor Green was there. Ro Khanna was there. And the women have said, folks, if Congress doesn't do their job, we're going to release the names. We know the men. So then Mike Johnson being the reek that he is, is like, let me go. Let me protect my pedophile president. He was an FBI informant. Oh, shoot.
- [15:15]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it, it is. It's just totally pathetic. And I mean, the question that needs to be asked of Donald Trump is why are you in the Epstein files? What did you do? Why. Why are you in there? I mean, he was told back in May he's in the Epstein files by his own Justice Department. And then they try to cover it up with that memo on July 7th. And I mean, to me, he just hasn't been asked the right questions about this. And it's, it's kind of a sad state of affairs over at the press corps. I don't, I don't. I just don't know what they're doing. But let's talk about other stuff, Orange, because I, We've got other stuff to talk about. And the other thing that is really important that happened today is that the Supreme Court apparently said, you can go ahead, that Trump's secret ICE Police, masked no badges, ICE Police hopping out of black vans with no marking on them, they can just go and sweep people up and racially profile them. That's basically what the Supreme Court said today, that they, that they can basically go ahead. This is what the Associated Press reported. The Supreme Court cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations for now. In Los Angeles, latest victory for Trump, the conservative majority lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that roving patrols were conducting indiscriminate stops in and around la. The order had barred immigration agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location. And so what the Supreme Court did, and they didn't even put a, I mean, this wasn't even a full opinion that was released on all this. They're going to deal with this later, but they're now giving the Trump administration, which is pumping tens of billions of dollars into this operation, carte blanche to just grab people because of the way they look, because of the way they talk right off the street. This is not America.
- [16:59]
Wajahat Ali
No, you're absolutely right. The Supreme Court today, the six compromised, corrupt right wing hacks that constitute the majority, my framing and I stand by it, just gave Donald Trump and his increasingly authoritarian regime a pass to racially profile and to harass and terrorize innocent Los Angeles residents. Folks, I want to remind you all that Wall Street Journal, you know, that flaming communist leftist rag mentioned that Stephen Miller deliberately unleashed these master armed ICE agents in LA at Home Depot in 711 with the Express intention for escalation. Stephen Miller has used the word invasion to rationalize the unleashing of the military against the American public. And lo and behold, folks, it's connected. Donald Trump and J.D. vance now are declaring essentially war against anyone who they deem to be a drug trafficker or a terrorist. We still don't have any evidence that the people that they unilaterally bombed in that, in that ship in Venezuela were drug traffickers. Right. So the war abroad connecting to the war at home. Stephen Miller also said, oh, the people who are opposing law enforcement, they're insurrectionists. He's using that word because then allows Donald Trump to do what? Invoke the Insurrection Act.
- [18:12]
Jim Acosta
Right, yeah, absolutely.
- [18:14]
Wajahat Ali
Crack down. Speaking about cracking down, National Guard, armed National Guard members right here, 20 minutes away from me in D.C. patrolling, wasting their time. Right now he says he's going to unleash them in Chicago. Right, Right. So now you have the Supreme Court as this one final check to say, no, you can't do this. Even Megyn Kelly, they're losing Megyn Kelly. Even Megan Kelly, I know if you saw that went viral, she's like, I don't think the, I don't think it's legal for Donald Trump to be unleashing the National Guard because these red, you know, these, these red MAGA reeks, they live in these places, folks. They realize this is bad for business. But the Supreme Court, through the emergency docket, Jim, has allowed Donald Trump essentially to get away with his dismantling of.
- [18:55]
Jim Acosta
It's bizarre.
- [18:56]
Wajahat Ali
It's the emergency docket, and he's batting almost 100. If it wasn't for the Alien Enemies Act, I think that was the only one in which they said, no, you can't invoke the Alien Enemies Act. But they're rubber stamping everything.
- [19:09]
Jim Acosta
Which is why Justice Sotomayor said, it's a maga. It's a, it's a goddamn MAGA Star Chamber.
- [19:14]
Wajahat Ali
I mean, she, she said it was. What do you say? Speed up. Donald Trump has this Supreme Court on. Speed up.
- [19:20]
Jim Acosta
He does. And we should, I mean, we really should talk about Megyn Kelly and Joe Rogan and somebody's. I saw Joe Rogan the other day was tearing Trump a new one over the Epstein files. And I'm like, hey, welcome to the fucking show. Welcome back to the NFL. They, you know, they finally realize that Trump's numbers are going down the toilet. And so, you know, that's the canary in the coal mine right there. When Joe Rogan and Megyn Kelly are starting to tear Trump a new one, that means that he's fucked. And you know, he is, he's completely screwed. On this immigration thing, this was like the one go to bread and butter thing that Stephen Miller was like, ahaha, you know, my precious, like Gollum. He thought that this was going to be their, their ticket to the midterms. And yes, you know, perhaps to some extent it may work with, I don't know, some sliver of the electorate on this crime issue. I mean, I'm not convinced of it, but they seem to think that that's the case that came out yesterday. Go ahead.
- [20:14]
Wajahat Ali
It's not working. He's negative, he's negative double digits on the deportations. He's now negative six on immigration. He's negative double digits on inflation in the economy and negative double digits on Epstein.
- [20:26]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, they, they are losing. And on the economy, I mean, you know, I was going to bring this up a little later, but we should, I, I was obsessed with this over the weekend. We should show the video of this watch over at the White House. The Mar A Lago, you know, at the White House, they, they, they've recreated Mar A Lago. I guess Trump's confused that he's at the White House all the time. He's so old, he's confused that he's, he's stumbling around the Oval Office for some reason. Oh, yeah, I was reelected. So they, they're recreating Mar A Lago at the White House, and there it is. It's basically an Olive Garden patio or an Applebee's patio that they've paved over the Rose, Rose Garden and replaced it with. And this is happening as the, as what, 22,000 jobs were created in August. American, the American people are losing faith in the idea that they can get another job if the job that they have sucks. I mean, he's completely screwed over the American worker. He's taking health care away from people via Medicaid. And then they're setting this up. It's like Mar a Lago, but paid for with your tax dollars.
- [21:30]
Wajahat Ali
Absolutely. And this is like, you know, at least Mary Antoinette allegedly said, let them eat cake. These MAGA extremists are so cruel. Not even cake, not even crumbs. So the job numbers, like you said, the economy is terrible, folks. Healthcare costs have gone up. So that's what happens when you have RFK Jr. A man with brainworms, be the director of your Health and Human Services. They've already passed the big beautiful bill from help that will add $3 trillion to the debt, give permanent tax cuts for the rich, 1 trillion dollar cuts to Medicaid farmers. I don't know if you saw this over the weekend. Farmers who voted for Trump are now openly begging the government to help. Yeah. So they're, they're praying now. There was a clip that we played earlier on Democracy Ish, where they're literally, they're reduced to praying. There says, we have nothing else except we were just praying. So the white farmers who voted for Trump are praying to God for some miracle to help them because they're saying the tariffs, the taxes, we can't go on, price of groceries have gone up, trade wars have all been disastrous. Economists are now worrying of a recession. Like you mentioned, the job numbers came out terrible. Only 22,000 added. The worst since the pandemic when Donald Trump was a president. US Currency has gone down, tourism to US has gone down. Immigrants aren't coming to this country, foreign students are no longer coming. Right. Everything is pointing downward. People are literally freaking out. They do not have confidence in the US Economy. Everyone's using the words like stagflation or recession. And as this is happening, you had two pieces of news. This piece of news where the world's richest white men are having a great time at the Rose Garden Club in the White House. And then a couple of days ago, you found out that as everyone is getting poorer, Donald Trump and his children, his family, have $5 billion off of crypto.
- [23:25]
Jim Acosta
I just saw this. I just saw this watch that. Apparently, Eric Trump, and he's not even supposed to be, like, the smart one. I mean, you know, on snl, he's the one that, you know, picks his nose and he's babbling and he doesn't know what he's saying. Apparently, he's worth a billion dollars. Apparently, he's worth around a billion dollars. How did Eric Trump be worth a billion dollars? This is. I. I guess if you can create a crypto, you can become the President of the United States. Your family can create cryptocurrency. And there are people who are so gullible, they will buy it. And then there are. There are foreign actors who obviously want to bribe the President. The emoluments clause, I guess we just torch that. And if we go to the Supreme Court and ask the Supreme Court, you know, can. Can. Can the President just get bribes from people overseas if they buy his family's cryptocurrency, I guess that that shit goes down, too. We can do that.
- [24:13]
Wajahat Ali
It's. It's. And you know why I'm so glad not enough people are talking about this.
- [24:17]
Jim Acosta
It's crooked.
- [24:18]
Wajahat Ali
Carter had to sell his peanut farm because he wanted to avoid conflict of interest because the president is supposed to be the servant of the people. Donald Trump and his family have made up to $5 billion.
- [24:32]
Jim Acosta
Unreal crypto.
- [24:34]
Wajahat Ali
Okay? He has passed the first pro crypto legislation, the Genius Act. He has deregulated crypto. He has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, you know, the criminal, because he's so tough on crime. The criminal creator of Silk Road, the digital hub of sex trafficking, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking also, which was one of the hubs that used crypto. So this president, total conflict of interest all up in crypto, his family, all up in crypto. And just surprise, surprise, this same president has passed the first pro crypto legislation.
- [25:12]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And apparently somebody's saying maybe they should pray to Gavin Newsom instead of Trump. Gavin Newsom did come up with a clever term for the Mar a Lago patio at the White House. He said they should call it the pedophile patio. Did I Have that correct. Let me just make sure I have that correct. But I think he's calling it the Pedo Patio.
- [25:33]
Wajahat Ali
Oh, I like it.
- [25:35]
Jim Acosta
No, no, the Predator. The Predator Patio. That's what Gavin News is calling. He's calling it the Predator Patio.
- [25:40]
Wajahat Ali
Although the Pedopattio Pedo Patio actually sounds right. And speaking. You know why you can make the case, Jim, and I've been saying this. Why this is the pro pedophile party. The GOP is now the group of pedophiles.
- [25:51]
Jim Acosta
People like, watch, watch, watch.
- [25:53]
Wajahat Ali
Because Ghislaine Maxwell raped girls alongside Jeffrey Epstein.
- [26:00]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [26:00]
Wajahat Ali
That's the Farmer sisters account. That's Virginia Giuffre's account.
- [26:04]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [26:04]
Wajahat Ali
Stalked them, groom them, and also raped those girls.
- [26:07]
Jim Acosta
Multiple. Yeah, yeah.
- [26:09]
Wajahat Ali
Donald Trump, and no one's explained why, has given this notorious pedophile, an accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, a sweetheart deal where she's a minimum security camp right now. Where in Texas. He has yet to release the Epstein files.
- [26:25]
Miles Taylor
Number two.
- [26:26]
Wajahat Ali
Number three, the Russ Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road. He got pardoned. No one's talking about that. The hub of sex trafficking, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking online. And then finally, another big piece of news from last month that people aren't talking about.
- [26:42]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [26:42]
Wajahat Ali
Donald Trump's U.S. attorney of Nevada. Why, oh why did they allow an Israeli senior cybersecurity official to flee to Israel who was arrested in an FBI sting for trying to solicit sex from an F. 15 year old? Thank God, folks, this is a true story. An Israeli cybersecurity official, along with seven other men was arrested in FBI sting for trying to lure a minor into sex. A 15 year old. Thank God the 15 year old was actually an FBI agent. Those other seven men are here. That Israeli cybersecurity official is in Israel and people are like, who allowed this? So when I call it the pro pedophile party, am I wrong?
- [27:21]
Jim Acosta
Jim, I. No, I mean, you're not wrong. And the, the, the craziness of all of this, the, the mad hypocrisy of all of this is I, I think you and I've talked about this before. I can't tell you how many, how many Trump rallies I've been to over the years and how many Q signs, how many QAnon signs. They used to, I mean, I remember leaving the Trump rallies, heading back to the car, and you know my producer Matt, who produces a show, he was with me at the time. He can, he can attest to this too. They would, they would chant, where we go One we go all they would. I mean this was how crazy. Like you know, Jim Jones drink the Kool Aid cult. Like the people that the Q people were at the Trump rallies. They saw Donald Trump as their savior. There you go. Donald Trump was. There was the guy who was going to get the pedophiles. He was going to bust the Pizzagate, you know, sex trafficking ring of little kids and Hillary Clinton and all this crazy bullshit. Nons you would see like the people at the Trump rallies with the, the homemade cardboard signs with the scribble scrabble on it and the shit would make. It would look like a Glenn Beck diagram connecting all the dots of how they thought all of this was leading back to this Democratic run cabal. And he's the one, the one guy right now as president, United States who could release these goddamn files and he won't do it. And he's got the Republicans so freaked out over this that Mike Johnson last Friday was floating this crazy nonsense that he's. That Trump's an FBI, was an FBI informant and something that he's called a hoax. The whole thing is a goddamn cover up. And I just, to me, you know, not to, it's Monday. Not to go on a, you know, a rant.
- [29:06]
Wajahat Ali
It's worth it on this.
- [29:07]
Jim Acosta
But, but I mean, honestly, he's the one. He, he is the one that they put, poured all their hopes and dreams into and he's completely. Oh, there goes Duke. He's completely betrayed the whole damn thing.
- [29:18]
Wajahat Ali
You know, I think it's so important and if we could stick on it for just a second, why I think the Epstein files is what I call one of Trump's two Achilles cankles. The Epstein files and the economy. Yeah, especially what you said because you were on the road, you and Matt, you know, you saw it. QAnon was a fringe nutty conspiracy theory that got mainstreamed by Trump and Republicans. And it posits folks that the rest of us, anybody who's opposed to Donald Trump, anybody, law enforcement, media, Jim Acosta Lee is part of an international cabal. Wait for it. I'm not making this up.
- [29:56]
Jim Acosta
I would. Yeah, we were all accused of being.
- [29:58]
Wajahat Ali
Sex traffickers who worship the devil and drink children's blood. I'm not making it up. It is so vile that it radicalized individuals to commit violence. Jim mentioned Pizzagate. But in 2020, the FBI warned that QAnon, if it became mainstreamed, which it was deliberately by Donald Trump and Cash Patel and Bongino and Republicans could threaten to radicalize Individuals or groups to violence. Ashley Babbitt came with violent intent. The January 6th insurrection. She was radicalized by QAnon. Vance Boebert. We don't talk about him. The Trump voting supporter who had the list of 70 Democrats he wanted to kill last month, and he ended up killing Melissa Hortman and others. He was also radicalized by QAnon. And what Jim is saying is, the reason why I think Donald Trump is stuck is they said there's only one man, only one man who can prove the deep state exists and who will purge the deep state and unleash the Epstein files, which is the holy grail that connects it all together. It'll be Donald Trump. Except, yeah, Donald Trump is all over the files.
- [31:02]
Jim Acosta
That's right. They thought he was the wizard of Q or something like that, you know, and if they. We did they just go to enough Trump rallies. Donald Trump will become president and he'll. He'll bring down the whole cabal. And, and it just ended up being such a farce, such a fraud that was committed on these folks. And I mean, you know, I, I don't feel any sympathy, honestly, for folks who believed in this shit, who thought that Donald Trump, a con man who has lied tens of thousands of times, you know, who would tell people they can inject themselves with disinfectants and that the COVID virus would go away. And I mean, all of the stupid lies are, you know, that Ted Cruz is involved. Ted Cruz's dad was involved in the JFK assassination. Barack Obama. That guy was somehow going to solve the whole QAnon thing. It's just, to me, it's unreal. And I, I just think it's. It's completely. It's completely nuts that he has gotten away with this up until this point. But it's up to the press. And this goes back to what you and I were saying earlier. Watch. It is up to the press to hold his feet to the fire on this. I'm going to talk about his confrontation with Yamiche Alcindor. It's absolutely disgusting and appalling. I want to show that at the end of the show, I want folks to remain on the line here and tune in for this. But the questions have to be asked of him, no matter how much pressure is brought to bear on these news organizations and how many names he calls different reporters.
- [32:24]
Wajahat Ali
But can I ask you, because I think if you're going to do it at the end of the show and I'm going to lose you, and just to tease it up, you know, I. I don't want to steal your thunder. You're going to mention what Yamiche Alcindor, black woman, very important black woman. You know, one of the perpetual punching bags of Donald Trump. Jim Acosta was another. Brian Karam was another. He hates women. He hates black women. She was just doing her job, asked this question, and then he. He responded to her way. Jim. Yeah, I was hoping. What really pissed me off was the. What he called her. I'm sure gonna show the video. But also what really pissed me off is that no one else stood up for her.
- [33:00]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, let's repeated her question. No one, like, talk about it. I'm gonna bring Miles in a second. Everybody, let's. Let's take a few more moments to talk about this. Listen.
- [33:14]
Miles Taylor
Be quiet.
- [33:15]
Jim Acosta
Listen. You don't listen. You never listen.
- [33:18]
Wajahat Ali
That's why you're second grade.
- [33:20]
Jim Acosta
We're not going to war.
- [33:21]
Wajahat Ali
We're going to clean up our cities. We're going to clean them up so.
- [33:24]
Jim Acosta
They don't kill five people every weekend. That's not war, that's common sense. Yeah, that's. So Yamiche asks about Trump's shypocalypse or whatever he posted over the weekend. The ridiculous thing. First of all, his body doesn't look like that. I wish people in MAGA world would stop making him look like he's Rambo or something. We don't want to think about what his body looks like, but it does not look like that, first of all. The other thing is, is that Yamiche was asking a very good question. You know, Trump is saying, I like the smell of deportations in the morning. That's just sick. And then he's going to turn Chicago into a war zone. So good for Yamiche for asking that question. But you're absolutely right. Watch. He will attack correspondence of color. He will attack correspondents who are women. He will do it every day of the week. It's who he is.
- [34:13]
Wajahat Ali
And, you know, good for Yamiche, but it just pissed me off. Even listen, you know, listening to that again, it's just. It's so. I want the corporate press to realize this, Jim, and I think you agree with me.
- [34:24]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [34:24]
Wajahat Ali
If he can do that against Yamiche, he'll do it against you. If he could do that to Jim Acosta, he'll do it against you. It doesn't matter. No matter. No matter how much you bend the knee, the bully gets more empowered. The bully doesn't respect you. The bully says, oh, I got a Buck from him. I'll come back and get five bucks. Next week, I'll get ten bucks. And so you need some type of a pushback. Even one person standing up like Yamiche, standing up to him, it unravels him, because at his core, he is a weak man with weak chins and weak knees and now weak cankles. And they hate. These strong men, hate being humiliated, they hate being mocked, and they hate being ridiculed. And I think if you just have some people stand up and do their job in the corporate press. Sir, do you think that these women are lying? All the women who came out on September 3rd and accused Glenn Maxwell and Epstein of raping them, you call it a hoax? Are you suggesting that all these women are lying? A simple, I think, fair question. Who's going to ask it?
- [35:26]
Jim Acosta
That's right. And I will tell you when. When Trump went after me, called me the enemy of the people and so on. Peter Alexander with NBC News stood up for me in that moment. I remember Peter will always be my friend. I will always thank him for that. I will always think highly of him for doing that. And it is what the press should do. Another reporter, in that moment, we kind of. You couldn't really hear because of the chopper sound, but he calls Yamiche darling. I'm going to talk about this at the end of the show. So disgusting. It's so awful and it's so chauvinist, and he's. He just comes across like a pig, as usual. And. But that another reporter should jump in and say, Ms. President, you should not talk to Yamiche like that. That is inappropriate. And you. You deserve. You. She deserves an apology, and you owe her an apology. And that's what somebody should say in that moment, in my opinion. And they won't do it because their bosses will get pissed at them and. And they might get yanked off the beat. But the right thing to do in that moment is to stand up for Yamiche. I'm going to talk. I don't want to give too much away, but I'm going to talk.
- [36:28]
Wajahat Ali
He sounds like a man who would party with a pedophile, chase models ages 14 to 20, sexualize his own daughter, talk about grabbing women by the pee, and then draw a lewd photograph of a woman.
- [36:42]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [36:42]
Wajahat Ali
Or Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday party. I don't know. That's what he sounded like to me.
- [36:47]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and he sounds like an. I mean, that's just the way he just. That's what he sounds Like, Wash. Great to see you, man.
- [36:54]
Wajahat Ali
No, thanks so much, everyone. Go subscribe to Jim Acosta show. Thanks so much. And take care.
- [36:59]
Jim Acosta
And subscribe to the Left Hook, of course. Good to see you, bud. All right, take care. Thanks. Watch. He's. He's always. He's a man after my heart. He does not mince words. Let's bring in Miles Taylor, my friend.
- [37:13]
Miles Taylor
Miles Taylor, also man after your heart.
- [37:16]
Jim Acosta
Man after my heart. At all times is Miles Taylor. And Miles, how are you? I mean, you know, I don't know where to begin. The. We should, I guess, play off the Yamiche thing a little bit. She asked a very good question.
- [37:29]
Miles Taylor
Yeah.
- [37:29]
Jim Acosta
Of Trump about this shypocalypse now post that he put out over the weekend. And it does sort of dovetail with a post that you put out on substack late last week, warning that Donald Trump is putting together his own deep state. And what. I mean, basically what took place today with the Supreme Court, they have cleared the way. People need to understand this. I mean, yes, the Epstein book is big news today. It's going to lead a lot of newscasts and so on, but what the Supreme Court did today, just clearing the way for Trump's ICE goons, they're just going to go wild here with tens of billions of dollars coming in from. From that big, beautiful boulder of bullshit thing that he passed. And they're going to be able to racially profile people left and right and do it in places like ch. But your thoughts on all of this and what the future holds? Because to me, what the Supreme Court did was just sort of clear the way for a lot more than perhaps what the American people are prepared for.
- [38:26]
Miles Taylor
Well, you know, I was struck by his conversation. Not really a conversation. His. His denigrating comments to Yamiche. And it did echo the way he treated people like you and Brian Caram and others. I mean, clearly, this president has no regard for the free press, but it's much worse than that. He has a deep animus towards the free press. And there has never been an American president who's been so dangerous for the free press as this one. I mean, his actions have not been sporadic. They are systemic. And he's actively working to try to thwart the free press. But as you note, Jim, you know, the Supreme Court decision here combined with Trump's own past rhetoric put us in a pretty volatile situation, and one where we should not believe what he said to Yamiche as he was getting ready to go on the helicopter. I mean, he tried to Downplay the meme as a joke. And our friend Amanda Carpenter had a good post about this on Substack the other day, basically saying, when are we going to stop accepting this idea that Donald Trump is just joking? There have been so many egregious actions that he has carried out from the White House that started off with people saying, it's just a joke. He's not actually going to do that thing. And there's no better example than in 2020, when people like me and you were saying, look, Donald Trump says a civil war is afoot and that a coup is in the offing. And he's talking about violence and he's talking about not accepting the transfer of power in 2020. And people said those comments are jokes. He means it offhanded. He doesn't actually mean that. No, he meant what he said. And so it's not just the Chicago meme. Donald Trump means what he says when he wants to go deploy troops into U.S. cities. And you noted a post that I wrote, Jim, about this. And I also today wrote about Donald Trump's likelihood of invoking the Insurrection Act. This is his key power that he will attempt to use to deploy those troops. And by the way, it will be very hard for the courts to push back because the president does have quite a bit of latitude in the broad language of the Insurrection act to go and deploy U.S. troops. Now, he probably won't satisfy the actual criteria. That's why we told him in the first administration it was illegal to use the Insurrection act to go deploy troops on US Territory. Wherever he saw a place he wanted to deploy them. But he's going to do it because he's going to get challenged, he's going to get sued in these places, then he's going to use that emergency power. And we are in constitutional chaos at that point.
- [41:09]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, and you wrote in, in your substack. It's a great substack quote. I am your retribution, Trump told his followers during the campaign, resolving to gut the government of those disloyal to him. Now, less than a year back into power, Trump is making good on that promise to oust legions of federal employees. But instead of merely eradicating a deep state, he is going further and doing something historic, hypocritical, heavy with irony. He's constructing one of his own. And on ice. You mentioned, I think you were there with him during a trip to the border or you were. He was talking about a trip to the border or something like that, and he talks about an ICE agent or a border patrol agent looking like they're out of central casting. He, he thinks he's, this is a movie. He, he, he's nuts.
- [41:52]
Miles Taylor
Yeah, I, I mean, look, the deep state piece, I think folks cannot say enough. I mean, they really, there's nothing that grinds the gears of Donald Trump and his allies like the exposure of their own hypocrisy. I mean, that really, that blows them up. And we've seen that with the Epstein scandal on steroids. But one of the ones I think people need to be pointing out more often is this fact that Donald Trump made up a conspiracy theory about a government of deep staters which never existed. You know, I served in multiple presidential administrations. I can faithfully report back to the American people. There was not a secret cabal of government employees across agencies who were working to shut down the White House and thwart the President.
- [42:39]
Jim Acosta
Now, I'm pretty sure Dick Cheney would have found that when Bush was in office, by the way.
- [42:43]
Miles Taylor
That's right. Now, there were a lot of people, myself included, who said no when the President asked him, asked them to do illegal things. That's the type of resistance we want in any administration. But there was no deep state. Again, the irony here is that Donald Trump, though, is actively trying to build a networked group of loyalists deep into the government that continue to implement his agenda regardless of whether he is in power. That is definitionally what he described as the deep state and the place he is starting, as you noted, Jim, and is with federal law enforcement. Why he's not starting with the epa, he's not starting with the Department of Agriculture. Because to Donald Trump, he has learned that the most powerful part of government is not the courts, it's not the Congress, it's the people with the badges and the guns. That's where he knows power ultimately lies, is the folks who have the power to use force to intimidate others. This is the authoritarian playbook. And so he's starting with those agencies and he has gutted them. It's a two step plan. It's a twofer. Step one, he's gutted them of people who've demonstrated that they have a conscience and a willingness to follow the law. We've watched that all this year. You have covered it better than anyone out there. But there's a second part to that plan and it's not just to save money by firing those people. It's to backfill those people with loyalists. And that's why they are reducing the requirements to become an FBI agent, by reportedly getting rid of the requirement for a college degree, by reducing training from months down to seven or eight weeks, by doing the same thing with ice, by offering student loan forgiveness, by putting these xenophobic memes all over the Internet. They're trying to go recruit MAGA people to come into these permanent civil service positions to advance a MAGA agenda years and years into the future. That's a deep state, Jim. It's very scary and it will take a long time to undo after he's had four years of it.
- [44:43]
Jim Acosta
And people need to understand that. It's sort of like replacing the deep state with the creep state. I mean, he is putting some really nutty, far out, fringy whack job people. People like RFK Jr. People like Kristi Noem, who shot a dog, people like Ed Martin, people like Jeanine Pirro. These are the Cash Patel. These are the people he wants to put in these very important roles. And they're, and they're all, you know, just hacks or wax. I mean, Pete Hegseth, you know, the list goes on and on. And I think that that is, you know, that is probably the more terrifying part of all of this, is that, you know, he, he can just go down the list. And you're absolutely right. When it comes to the people with the guns, the people who are in charge of the people with the guns in these various departments, they are not. These are not John Kelly types, these are not General James Mattis types who are going to say no. They're the kind who are just going to roll over and do what he wants.
- [45:40]
Miles Taylor
Well, and especially in these US Cities. I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Mattis because there's, there's very tangible examples to point to here. And in 2020, during the racial justice protests around this country, Jim Mattis, who doesn't speak out about this stuff a lot, wrote a piece in the Atlantic where he pushed back very forcefully and publicly against Donald Trump as his former Secretary of defense. And he said former. We cannot think of our country and our city streets as battle space. We cannot think of them that way. And yet Donald Trump now has a defense secretary who calls himself the Secretary of War, who is indeed describing our city streets as a battle space, who is goading the president to post memes about our cities on fire as he's sending in that Department of War. We have gone as far as you can from Trump being in a place where he's got adults in the room. He's getting good advice. He's being Told not to do illegal things. He's got hype men now to make him. To encourage him to do illegal things. And, Jim, if you don't write a piece called the Creep State after this. I just wrote that down. Wow, I haven't heard that one yet. Or at a minimum, if you're still looking for a Halloween costume. Yeah, we got this completely takes care of Halloween wing.
- [47:02]
Jim Acosta
No, it's. When it's Mondays, I kind of. It kind of takes, like old Bessie. You got to kind of crank going. Get the crank going. And my brain.
- [47:09]
Miles Taylor
I've got it all written down.
- [47:11]
Jim Acosta
45 minutes in, I'm finally firing off zingers. It took me while. I apologize. To watch. I was a little slow on the. On the fastball there, but. No, but I mean, you know, when they. I. We should talk about this renaming the Defense Department the War Department. We're not at war. You know, we were. When we were at war in World War II. Okay. I guess you can call it that. But then Harry Truman, you know, said, we're not going to call it that anymore. And Trumpet the other day was going off on Harry Truman. Like, he's getting into debates with Harry Truman. Like, you know, Harry Truman's been gone for a long time. I mean, who's next, Grover Cleveland? I mean, I just, you know, it's. It's weird, but it's also stupid and it's going to cost a lot of money. Anything that says the Defense Department from here to Timbuktu has to be renamed.
- [47:57]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah.
- [47:58]
Jim Acosta
Who's gonna do that?
- [47:59]
Miles Taylor
It is. Here's how I would put it. This is like, there is so much symbolism in that move, and it's not just symbolic, and I'll get to that in a second. But there's a triple symbolism here. Symbol one is Donald Trump, intentionally or unintentionally, and renaming it the War Department revealed he is not the man he said he was. The peacemaking president.
- [48:20]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [48:20]
Miles Taylor
This is another piece of the hypocrisy that really, you know, they can't even figure out how to respond to it. Totally hypocritical. He's not the peacemaker. He's a warmonger. Symbolism piece number two is it reveals that Donald Trump cares not about the rule of law because he's not allowed to change the names of departments, Congresses, and he's just blown completely past that. They're changing the signs, they're changing the names, they're changing the stationaries. So it symbolizes his disregard for the rule of law. But Third, and most importantly, it's symbolic in that it's not just symbolic in that these words aren't just words. They are indicators of Donald Trump's plans for US Cities to turn US Cities into battle space. He himself has said it. Now, again, I don't think Donald Trump has got much of a mind to understand the symbolism of that executive order, but it may be one of the most potent of any he's released as president because it lays bare, I think, his true intentions better than most.
- [49:21]
Jim Acosta
I think that's a wonderful observation. I mean, you know, I remember out on the campaign trail, the way he would savage George W. Bush and the Forever wars. And these days when he goes off on John Bolton, he calls him a warmonger and he, you know, this was how he was able to recruit the likes of Rand Paul. Remember when Rand Paul used to like Donald Trump? Not anymore, but there was a time when he was sort of under Trump's wing. And, and it was in part because this pledge to end the Forever wars that I think they put those in ads during the 2024 campaign, too. They did that, too. And it's just. It, it again, another lie, more hypocrisy and so on. And, you know, this whole renaming the War Department thing makes me wonder whether Don Jr. Has a stake in Vista Prince. You know, I just.
- [50:05]
Miles Taylor
You're on, Jim. You're on. You're on.
- [50:08]
Jim Acosta
I mean, is that, Is that, what, is that what's going on here? They're gonna, they're gonna take the money from renaming everything and put that into crypto. I don't know. It just. And then the other thing I gotta ask you, Miles, is. But if you have a comment, go ahead. But the other thing I want to ask you is because you worked in the Trump administration, the, the paving over of the Rose Garden and it being turned into this monstrosity, this TGI Fridays Cheesecake Factory, you know, outlet mall monstrosity. You know, it looks like he's got the white. It looks like Mar. A lot. It looks like I, I think part of it is he's confused. He thinks he's still at Mar A Lago and he, he, he, he's. He wakes up in the morning at the White House and he's looking for the omelette station at the Mar A Lago, and so they had to build him a patio. So it's not too discombobulating. I don't know.
- [50:57]
Miles Taylor
Well, I, before you said that, I swear to God I was gonna say it makes me feel like when I stay at a Hampton Inn and I go downstairs to go make a waffle. And that's fine, you know, if you're paying 125 bucks to stay at a Hampton Inn. But when it's the Rose Garden of the White House. Look, there will be a day, Jim, mark my words. There'll be a day when people like you get to go to that Rose Garden with gigantic hammers and just hit that faux marble and chop it up and throw it away and it'll be turned into a garden again.
- [51:31]
Jim Acosta
But it'll be like tearing down the Berlin Wall.
- [51:34]
Miles Taylor
That's right.
- [51:35]
Jim Acosta
Tear down that patio.
- [51:37]
Miles Taylor
Get rid of that McDonald's on the white House lawn. This is another thing that I think really does reek of symbolism, though, is just you can't make it up that the president of the United States wants to create a private club where he can entertain donors and frankly, engage in what are clearly acts of corruption. Bringing these people into the White House just mere steps away from the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, you almost can't make jokes about it. But one thing to jump back to real quick, Jim, which would be on the Department of War. Peace. I want to mention that this is already not symbolism anymore. A lot of people overlooked the news about Venezuela. And I'm proud to say, on the treason substack, we were the first ones to point out that this was likely a war crime. The first ones out there in the media ecosystem to say that the strike he did against the drug boat off the coast of Venezuela was likely an illegal act. Now, I don't have any love loss for those 11 drug smugglers who were killed that day. But I will tell you there is international law and the laws of war for a reason. And the administration has released no evidence that those individuals were armed or represented a threat to US Forces in the region or represented an imminent threat to the United States. They very obviously were not. And I've seen dozens of these operations when I was at the Department of Homeland Security, and almost every single one of them goes the same way. You go and arrest. You interdict the boat, and you arrest the people on board. So you can interrogate them and you can find their handlers and you can move on. You don't incinerate them from the sky. But you know this from covering Donald Trump. I know this because he wanted us to do things like it in the first term. He wanted the symbol. He wanted the symbol of people on fire so he could say, I'm tough, don't cross me. Unfortunately, that's a very unlawful thing to do. And when confronted with this on social media, the Vice President of The United States, J.D. vance, said, quote, I don't give a shit. That was, that was basically, or I'm 80% close there with this quote. He said, I don't give a shit.
- [53:53]
Jim Acosta
And isn't part of his personal story addiction in his family. And you know, that's part of the hillbilly elegy and so on. And the part of the country he comes from has been racked with opioid addiction and so on. And I mean, you know, just blowing up drug smuggler boats to me is, you know, okay, you can puff out your chest and beat your chest and you felt good that you blew up a bunch of drug smugglers. But, you know, there's a part of me that wonders, you know, do we know for a fact that they were. I mean, they say that they were, but I mean, that's just, this is coming from the people who lie all the time. So how the do I know if that's true? And it is exactly what you just said. You pull up a goddamn destroyer or something and say, you know, you're gonna come with us or you are going to be blown up. Like that's how this is going to go down. If you point guns at us, you're definitely going to get blown up. Like interdiction, drug interdiction has been going on pretty successfully in this country, you know, for a long time. A lot of drugs get into this country, there's no question about it. But it's not like, you know that, that they're going to stop the flow of drugs into this country by blowing up one of these boats. And it reminds me of what was going on in the Philippines, the extra judicial killings that Duterte was known for in the Philippines where he thought it was okay to just go and murder, just go kill drug dealers and drug smugglers and so on without trials, without anything. They just go out and kill people. And it's, we have a constitution in this country. It's just not, you know, it's not who we are, it seems to me.
- [55:22]
Miles Taylor
I'm glad you cite Duterte. I mean, that was one of the first things that it seemed like to me is, is the extrajudicial killings there. One last thing I'll say, Jim, before I go join our, our friend Nicole on a, on another network. Yeah, this, this forecasts, I think some pretty scary things to come with the President's use of force. And we are very focused on what he's trying to do here in the United States. But I think it shows that even just beyond our borders, Donald Trump is increasingly willing to engage in hostilities against civilians. And it's something that I warned about. After his first term. People like Stephen Miller had had conversations with military officials about whether the president was allowed to bomb unarmed civilians. Of course, Stephen denied that at the time. He said I'd never had such a conversation. And here we are, here we are with the administration bombing unarmed people when they could and should be arrested. I do not think this is going to be a one off. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth himself said that we'll be seeing more of this. And look, I think the lawyers should be ready because there are going to be cases here, I think, where people deserve to be court martialed for following these orders, where people after the fact will be guilty of crimes and where they will not have the protection of Donald Trump's presidential immunity.
- [56:50]
Jim Acosta
You're absolutely right. Well, Miles, I don't want to hold you up. It sounds like you got a good segment coming up. But Miles, always great to have you on. Really appreciate it. And it is the trust treason substack. Great work, Miles, exposing this, too. I mean, it absolutely has to be done. These are important stories and, and you have all the expertise to do it. So appreciate it, as always.
- [57:10]
Miles Taylor
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it. And I'm gonna have to watch the replay to find out what information you're gonna reveal on the Epstein front, so. Damn it, I'm gonna have to watch that.
- [57:20]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, we talked about the beginning of the show and we can show it to the viewers one more time as we say goodbye to Miles. They have released the House Oversight Democrats have. They've released the fact that they have obtained that, that Ghislaine Maxwell compiled book of all those notes that were given to Jeffrey Epstein, including a note purportedly from Donald Trump. He says he didn't send it, but that crew drawing is. Now that's the top story, that, that Donald Trump's purported drawing of a woman with this note to Jeffrey Epstein that was included in this birthday book to the notorious pedophile that has been turned over to the House Oversight Committee and the House Oversight Dems via Robert Garcia, who's the ranking member. He is saying that they now have that information. So I'm supposed to have Robert Garcia on tomorrow. He's scheduled to come on tomorrow, the ranking Democrat of the House Oversight Committee. I'll talk to him about that. And finally, one last time. I. Time is tight, but I do want to show Trump's behavior towards Yamiche Alcindor one more time because I want to make one quick point and then I'll let everybody go. But let's watch that one more time. Be quiet. Listen. You don't listen.
- [58:39]
Wajahat Ali
You never listen. That's why you're second grade. We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our city. We're going to clean them up so.
- [58:47]
Jim Acosta
They don't kill five people every weekend.
- [58:49]
Wajahat Ali
That's not war.
- [58:50]
Jim Acosta
That's common sense. First of all, kudos to Yamiche Alcindor for asking that question, whether Donald Trump wants to go to war with American cities. Because Donald Trump posted over the weekend shy pocalypse now, and it was a rendering of Trump, I guess, posing as Robert Duvall or something in Apocalypse Now. And I mean, first of all, I mean, again, you know, it's so juvenile with the memes and so on. I mean, he's like a, he's like a teenager, I guess. He's a man child. There's just no question about it. But it's an important question to be asked because Chicago is not the only city that has high crime in this country. There are places like St. Louis and Memphis cities and red states. He's not talking about invading those cities or sending the helicopter, the choppers in and, and so on. Like Shypocalypse now, where he says, I, I love the smell of deportations in the morning and that social media posts, just absolutely repugnant stuff. But the thing I want to say is there was a time, and I mentioned this with Wajahad Ali earlier on in the show, there was a time when the press would stand up for other members of the press. And when Trump called me the enemy of the people, my friend Peter Alexander over at NBC News, chief White House correspondent over there, he defended me at that time and told Donald Trump that, that he should not call journalists the enemy of the people. And I just want to say right now, when Donald Trump, and I'm a former White House correspondent, so I guess this is as close as we're going to get to it. When Donald Trump calls Yamiche Alcindor darling and says that she's second rate, that is absolutely way over the line, appalling shit and it needs to be condemned. And I will say I'm very disappointed that the White House Correspondents Association, I'm looking at their social media right now. The White House Correspondents association, which I was a member of for some period of time, has not put out a statement defending Yamiche Alcindor, who is part of that correspondence association. And they should be telling the White House publicly that it is wrong to refer to a female journalist as darling, and it is wrong to refer to journalists as second rate and go off on them in the fashion that he did. It is absolutely disgusting and repugnant that he did that. And it needs to be called out. And it needs to be called out by more than just me on my goddamn podcast. There used to be a time in this city, in this capitol, in the most powerful country in the world, in the United States of America, when the President of the United States would behave in that fashion, that news organizations would rally behind the journalist and say that that's wrong. And God damn it, it's time to get back to that. There is something wrong with the press in Washington right now. And if I have missed it, I apologize. If I missed all of these correspondents standing up and saying, don't say this about Yimi shall cinder, I'll apologize. But I haven't seen that. And I've been looking around and I've known Yamiche over the years, and like every good reporter, she's capable of irritating the President of the United States.
- [62:02]
Wajahat Ali
Good.
- [62:04]
Jim Acosta
Good. That is. That is what a journalist is supposed to do. We're supposed to hold their feet to the fire. We are supposed to call out their. And that's what Yamiche was doing. She was calling out Donald Trump's. She was calling out his. His shypocalypse now ridiculousness, and made a little news where Trump said, well, we're not going to go to war. Which I don't know if that's the case or not, but he said it. So good for Yamiche for asking the question at a time when too many reporters in this town have been cowed into silence, have been cowed into just ridiculous levels of just laying down and not asking the hard questions anymore. The viewer comment, it's as if everyone has lost their moral compass. They have their moral compass. They just don't. They just don't use the goddamn thing. And I'm tired of it. And it's wrong. It is wrong for Donald Trump to call a female journalist darling publicly, in front of the cameras or otherwise. It is disgraceful. It is disgraceful behavior on the part of the President of the United States. And if this former White House correspondent is the only goddamn person in this town who's going to say it, then I'm going to say it. And forgive me if the White House Correspondents association or the National Press Club or somebody has said to Donald Trump in the White House, you should not refer to Yamich Alcindor as darling. She is Yamiche or Ms. Al Sunder. She is not darling. And I know she can stand up for herself. She's a terrific journalist. She's a great reporter. But somebody should say is wrong for the president of the United States to treat the press in that fashion. And I'm going to say it. We are here to hold them to account. We are here to hold their feet to the fire. And that's what Yamiche was doing in that moment. And I remember a time, I remember a time when news organizations and organizations that represent the press here in Washington stood up for the journalists in this town and they should do it. There's there are three more years of this. Stiffen your spines. I want to thank Wajahat Ali for coming on and Miles Taylor as well. Thanks everybody for watching. Still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good night.