← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
How the Paramount Deal Threatens a Free Press plus the Dangers of an AI-Powered Pentagon. Steve Schmidt and Norm Eisen discuss with Jim.
00:55:47
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Jim Acosta show. It is another day that ends in wine. Donald Trump's assault on American democracy. And that may include an assault on the free press. It sounds like it includes an assault on the free press. The First Amendment, the media in this country, it's also a holy. Schmidt. It's Friday. My friend Steve Schmidt is here as always. And Steve, you know this, this headline hit a lot of people over the head last night. I, I really was disturbed by it. I think we all knew this was coming. But Netflix pulling back its offer, they're, they're not going to raise their takeover offer for Warner Brothers Discovery, basically ceding the ground to Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellisons, the Trump friendly MAGA Ellison's to take over Warner Brothers Discovery. And in addition to that, potentially CNN and I don't spend a whole lot of time talking about cnn. It's just not my thing. But we got to talk about it. We can't have a situation in this country where one giant MAGA friendly company is in control of this, this much of our media. What do you think Steve?
- [01:20]
B
Well, I, one of the foremost political issues of our time is dealing with the Consol power that's occurred and the overreach of that power into every facet of American life through big banks, through big technology companies, through big ag companies. If you're in, if you're a farmer, if you're a rancher. And so this has been building for a long time. This is obscene. It's a corrupt act. David Ellison walking into the State of the Union accompanied by Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The thumbs on the scale at the federal government. I mean what, whatever our new economic system may be, let's dare not call it free enterprise. This is what fascism looks like. Trump's got his paws into every deal. The level of corruption here just unspeakable. And so we have to look I think with some circumspection about this in that an era has come to an end. The corporate media such as it has been the, the, the world changing broadcast network brought into existence by the visionary Ted Turner. It's effectively dead and its ratings are low. And the American people know that there is and are going to be new credible sources where they can get information from. And we have to understand the First Amendment is not an entitlement for CNN to have ratings. What it's an entitlement is for us to be able to provide broadcast without interference and talk about whatever we want to talk about. But you know, this show that they have with Scott Jennings that shows an obscenity and it's a democracy snuff film and the panels, the argumentation between the good and the right, as if there's some place to accommodate in the between zone with where we're going to put human beings into the concentration camps that used to be warehouses, right? It's all banalities, insanities. And we've seen what Barry Weiss has done to cbs. She's going to do it to cnn. And what it means is that the water, the river, so to speak, is going to have to find a new channel to the ocean. But the water always does flow to the ocean. And that's just like the truth and information. So I don't, I don't mourn for cnn. What I think is tragic is over a long time, the loss of credibility in all these networks, the settling of the lawsuits that shouldn't have been settled, Mark Benioff, who owns Time, Bezos at the Washington Post, they've destroyed these institutions, but new ones will come into being.
- [04:41]
A
No, I agree with you and I agree with everything that you just said. I mean, I do think that, you know, when 60 Minutes is in trouble, we're all in trouble. And when CNN is in trouble, we're all in trouble. I mean, when 60 Minutes under Barry Weiss shelved that story, that expose on seacot, the El Salvador and gulag for American immigration detainees, I mean, that was, I think, you know, a big wakeup call. And people need to understand that if you have the same people who are running CBS into the ground, remember the other day the anchor of the CBS Evening News said, we salute you, Marco Rubio. The newscast, that was one of the more shameful moments I've ever seen in broadcast journalism. And I, I worked at CBS News under Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer and you, that just would have never happened under those two anchors. And they, you know, this anchor would have been fired for saying that. And the person who told him to say that would have been fired for having put that in the broadcast of Cronkite. And, you know, to have those Barry Weiss folks take over CNN, I mean, Anderson just left, Anderson just left 60 Minutes because he didn't want to deal with Barry Weiss. And now she may take over cnn. This is, these are not good signs. And I, you know, for the life of me, I agree with you with Scott Jennings. That guy is an ass. And he was a person who, you know, was critical of Donald Trump after January 6th. And I knew Scott at that time, and I thought, okay, well, you know, good for him for saying that. He's completely changed his stripes. He's become maga. And it's an embodiment of what, you know, cable news can become when you're just paying people to lie on the air. And I just, you know, for CBS and CNN to become this MAGA state TV monstrosity. We already have Fox in this country, Steve. They're a bunch of clowns over there. They're, they, they carry his water daily. They're Kool Aid drinkers. And now we're gonna have another major institution, you know, this big media conglomerate also controlled by Kool Aid drinkers. It's not good for anybody.
- [06:52]
B
Well, one of the people it's not good for is David Allison. His company is losing money. Companies going to lose money. People aren't hostages. You don't, you don't have to watch it. And I think, as the US Hockey team has, has discovered in this age, everyone is compelled to take a side. There are, there are serious things happening in the country that require people to stake out of position. That's just, that's just the way it is. And when you, when you consider what CNN has been, I think it's, it's always important to remember that in the Chris Licht era, he stood with Donald Trump backstage. And right before Donald Trump went out for a town hall meeting, Chris Lick said, have fun. Are we having fun now? And so integrity is not going to be found at the place where Chris Christie roams on Sunday morning espousing nonsense.
- [08:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
As a guy who was lock, stock in the thick of it with Donald Trump, you know.
- [08:13]
A
Yeah.
- [08:14]
B
And so we have a, we have a lot of corruption in a lot of places. And at the end, the Democrats are going to have to go out and ask for power and they're going to have to talk about complicated issues. They're to say it's a terrible idea for a boy billionaire son of the sixth richest guy in the world to decide he wants to own all the television stations like a Richie Rich and impose on the country his sensibilities through his pretty sinister acolyte, Barry Weiss, and that it has to be broken up. Franklin Roosevelt talked about this through the frame of economic royalists. And it's what we have. You, Sinclair Broadcasting, it owns hundreds of stations. It's a threat to liberty and the question of, hey, in America, what should prevail here? The free enterprise or a paranoia about, well, what if somebody who didn't like democracy owned that many TV stations. Well, now we know. Yeah, you know, the what if wasn't an abstract. So this has to all be broken up. Concentrations of power have to be broken up. And this is, this is going to be a fundamental fault line in American politics.
- [09:38]
A
Yeah. And I, I gotta tell you, you know, I want to move on to Epstein and, and the Hillary Clinton debacle that the Republicans put themselves through. But one, one last thing on this, I'll say is, you know, they brought this on themselves. And I think the Democratic contenders who go out there start talking about 2028, they're going to need to be pressed on, on this issue of free press and on the issue of what kind of media are we going to have in this country and are we going to allow these corporations, these MAGA friendly corporations to gobble up all of these, all of these media entities? To me it's just not, it's just not healthy for our democracy. It's, this is about liberty and you know, the free flow of information in this country. You can't have it suppressed. I mean, the Ellisons are going to control Tick Tock too, you know, and our kids, our kids, our teenage kids are going to get brainwashed by these, controlling the algorithms and trying to make them more MAGA friendly. They already started to do it. But I do want to, I do want to move on to the Epstein cover up because it is a cover up. And the House Oversight Committee controlled by the chairman James Comer, who is another Trump lackey, he held a hearing yesterday. And of all people, they haul in Hillary Clinton. I don't know what it is about the Republicans, Steve, you have more insights into this than I do, I suppose. But they, they seem to. Hillary Clinton has lived rent free in the heads of Republicans for almost half of a century now. It seems it's getting, it's more than a quarter century, it's approaching a half century. They bring her in to grill her on, I guess, Bill Clinton's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And I mean, we've known about, you know, the Clintons and what they're all about for years. I can't imagine she's going to give them any useful information and she just schools them for half an. I don't know if we have some of the sound, but apparently, you know, she said towards the end of this that they were asking her about all kinds of crazy shit, Pizzagate and so on. If we have that, let's play it. I don't know how many times I had to say. I did not Know, Jeffrey Epstein, I never went to his island, I never went to his homes, I never went to his offices. So it's on the record numerous times. It then got, at the end quite unusual because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate, one of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the Internet, that was serving as the basis of a member's questions to me. Yeah. I mean, the other thing that ran through my mind watching Hillary Clinton is that, you know, if only she had beaten Donald Trump in 2016, now the world would be a different place. She sounds much more with it than Donald Trump does, even on his best day. But, Steve, your thoughts on all of this,
- [12:42]
B
huh? It's really extraordinary to watch all of this unfold, the total depravity of it. But every aspect about all of this, every detail of the Ellison merger, every email between Lindsey Graham and David Allison before they walk in there, every ICE action everywhere, we know all. All of it. One thing about CNN.
- [13:14]
A
Yeah.
- [13:15]
B
Is that the Saudis now own 24 of it. Right. So the government that, that killed Jamal Khashoggi, I guess we won't be seeing any, any of the 911 files coming out on CNN. So. So it is. It is all of it a forced, wrapped inside a blanket of insanity, pedaled out for consumption, lowest common denominator crapola. And in the Republican fever dreams deep in the swamp where the grittiest creatures like Comer live, who said just this past week that I'll do anything that Trump tells me to do. Yeah, that, that. There's an. There's an important. The executive in the American system is given power by the Constitution. There's a co. Equal power. And the co. Equal power is the courts. And the other co. Equal power is the Congress, and the Congress is our power. That is where the people's power is vested. Co equally. And so these people, like Comer, have taken the power of the people who. It's not theirs to give away. They gave it away to Trump. And so what the people have to do is take power away from all those people who gave our power to Trump. We have to say we need that power back and we have to give it to new people who understand you work for us, not for all of the crooks, the corruption, the insider deals, all of it. And that is the fundamental question at hand is will the Democratic Party ask for power to break up an abuse of power by its concentration into too few hands, by people who've gone off The Rails. Look at the guy who wants Time magazine. This is a guy who has the whole Hawaii shtick going on. Right. With the cartoon characters at his company with the Hawaiian shirts, ohana to everybody. Fascist, just like that.
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, right.
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B
And so integrity is not going to be found at those places. It's going to be found at different places and millions and millions of people can find it. Yeah, you're a leader in, in the, in the type of places where people can go to look for it. Well, independently, New age. And we have to, we have to, we have to, we have to accept that.
- [15:55]
A
No independent media. I mean, you know, this is, this is going to be the refuge, I think, for people who are looking for information. And you know, as for the, the Clintons being hauled in to talk to the oversight committee. Where's Howard Ludnick? Where's Howard Ludnick that there's, you know,
- [16:12]
B
apparently burning his Epstein pictures.
- [16:14]
A
That's where Epstein pictures. Apparently there was a photo
- [16:19]
B
lockers. That's what he's worried about.
- [16:21]
A
That's right. There's a photo that emerged of, of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, with Jeffrey Epstein on Epstein's Island. It was released as part of the Epstein files by the doj. It's been removed from the Justice Department website. Steve, how much do you want to bet that that Lutnick or Lutnick has had his team go through the Epstein files and scour them and say, guys, can you search my name? And if you find any bad, can you call Pam Bondi and say we gotta take this down? I mean, is it, is it that pathetic that, that that is possibly going on behind the scenes there?
- [16:59]
B
I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna find out.
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A
We're gonna find out.
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B
I mean, it's likely going on behind the scenes. I mean, I, I think, I just think dispositionally, you and I are probably at the extreme end of the rope in terms of not inclined to believe in the conspiracy theories.
- [17:21]
A
Correct.
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B
And, and, and man, this is, this is, this is like this wouldn't be approved for a cheesy Siri somewhere. Too much. Right. Unbelievable. The level, the level of lying, dishonesty, depravity and these people. Pam Bondi involved in the COVID up of child sex crimes that clearly the President is implicated in by being in apparently the unredacted files. There's a million mentions in it.
- [17:58]
A
Yes.
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B
Million matches.
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A
Yes. And apparently the, you know, npr, other news organizations, and I think it was Roger Solander who originally reported this. There were files pertaining to Donald Trump and accusations of pedophilia that were removed and covered up. And, you know, these are allegations. You know, we don't know if they're true or not. We have to say that. Make sure we say that. But what the hell is going on when those files are getting, you know, redacted or removed? Why is that? Who's going through these files and saying, oh, whoops, we didn't mean to put that one out there. Oh, pull that one back in. I mean, there's something going on here that doesn't. That doesn't smell right. The other thing I want to get to is the incompetence. And this may be our saving grace in all of this, Steve, because I don't want everybody to get down in the dumps and too depressed going into the weekend. The incompetence that is going on inside our government right now. Apparently, the military shot down a DHS drone down by the border. They used a laser. I guess they're. They're around with lasers inside the U. S. Military these days, and they don't know what they're doing. They think they're playing star wars or something. Battlestar galactica, Buck Rogers to show some. To use some references only Steve and I would know.
- [19:23]
B
But Gil Gerard.
- [19:24]
A
Yeah, Gil Gerard, great show.
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B
I used to love that show.
- [19:28]
A
But I mean, you know, maybe the incompetence of these goofballs will be our saving grace. Apparently, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, wants to use AI in anthropic and its AI Tool to conduct surveillance and. And carry out military actions and so on. Anthropic rejects Pentagon terms for lethal use of its chatbot. Claude, these are headlines from the dystopia. But, Steve, you know, I. I don't think I want Pete Hegseth to have the ability to use AI to do military targeting and surveillance when they are shooting down our own drones down at the border with lasers. Help me. Does any of this add up?
- [20:13]
B
Well, again, we're. The requirements for leadership as. As we come into 2028 require talking seriously about some really important things. And this is, this is one of them. It cannot be that the society is so idiotized that we're unable to. To discuss any of this the way that our grandparents were at the advent of the nuclear age. But every country in the world should share a deep, deep, deep concern about an arms race and an escalation of technology that hands control of weapons from the hands of human beings to autonomous machines. Yes, that this should be illegal under American law. And this Will. Will require legislation passed by Congress. This is, this is the, this is what Eisenhower warned about.
- [21:22]
A
That's.
- [21:22]
B
George Washington said, beware of political parties that poison patriotism. Eisenhower said, beware the military industrial complex. We've never had anything like it. It could become a tremendous threat to liberty. I don't even. Part of the problem is with Pete Hagseth is he is so lawless, he insists on being called by an unlawful title. There is no Secretary of War, so there is no place even in addressing him that's not drenched in dishonesty. And so when you, when you look at surveillance, what do. What does he mean by surveillance? Surveillance on the American people. Surveillance over a battle space so untrustworthy doesn't begin to describe Pete Hegseth and any of these people or any of the technology companies. And in the end, we have to set rules of the road, and you would hopefully have a president and you would hopefully have allies that you could say, we have to have an international summit to begin dealing with some of these issues. There are issues of genetic concern, privacy issues. Hundreds of different issues in the brave new world that we're entering into at warp speed. One of them is in this moment, the rapaciousness of all of the technology companies for land, for water.
- [23:05]
A
Right.
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B
I mean, have no doubt these technology guys are going to be talking about building pipelines from the Great Lakes to power all their.
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A
Yeah. And the data centers that they want to put in every community.
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B
Not good for us.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. And, you know, they're. None of these, none of these firms are talking about, hey, we're going to use this to unlock cures for this or that. At the end of the day, they need the data centers to use us, the people. Right. As their products. Right. To sell us advertising. That's. That's what the cost of your electricity is going to go up to support as we have a new wave of this insanity coming for our kids is going to be 100 times worse than the first 15 years of it, and we shouldn't tolerate it.
- [23:52]
A
No. And, and I think you're absolutely right about needing rules of the road for AI. We don't, we don't have that right now. It's the Wild west. And that is what has allowed big tech and the social media companies to run wild and, you know, get our kids addicted to the. These apps and these phones that destroy their mental health, that damage their mental health. And the same jackasses, the same kinds of jackasses are going to be running these AI companies. And it just Seems to me in the other thing that, you know, needs to be mentioned is that this technology is being unleashed through, throughout the world. Donald Trump and his cronies have apparently sold off AI chips to, to shakes in the Middle East. And, you know, this, this is a genie that can't get put back in the bottle, it seems to me.
- [24:50]
B
Well, it's, you know, at the end of the day, we, we're not going to be able to stop technology from advancing, nor, nor would we want to. But there are limits to what these companies can be allowed to do, and we should not tolerate predatory behavior. Google is not entitled to its own nuclear power plants.
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A
Google.
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B
Google is not a country. Google's a company and it's an American company. And so when we look at the totality of everything that's happening, in 200 days, we're going to have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic Congress, right, that seeks policies that make the CEOs nicer to the leadership. Isn't what we the people are looking for, for.
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A
Right.
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B
There's, there's going to have to be a deconstruction of the accumulations of power that have become a threat to all of our liberties.
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A
Yeah, no, it's so true.
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B
Have to be a lot of laws passed. There have to be some constitutional amendments passed.
- [26:10]
A
Yeah, well, Steve, it is, it is a brave new world. But, you know, I, I think that to your comments earlier, this movement towards independent media where people can come and get the real deal, to get real talk, to get real news, I mean, this is, this is the direction that we're going. And, you know, Steve and I are both united in this call for the folks out there to support independent media. Subscribe, share these programs, like these programs, everything that you do to support these programs, it all matters. But Steve, always enjoy ending the week with you. Really appreciate it. I know you got to get on the road, so I'll let you get on the road, but I'm sure we'll be talking between now and the next time.
- [26:50]
B
Good to see you, Jim, as always. Have a great weekend.
- [26:52]
A
All right, you too. Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. All right. Holy Schmidt, it's Friday. As I like to say, let's quickly switch gears and bring in the great Norm Eisen, the great democracy warrior Ambassador Norm Eisen of the Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm, great to see you. And Steve and I were just having a conversation about the threat of AI. The threat of an unregulated AI. The Department of Defense wants to use AI for surveillance and military targeting. And one of the issues is that, you know, this AI genie that's been let out of the bottle here in the United States. I know you and your folks have been working on a very important issue and that is whether or not our AI technology was improperly given away in some sort of crypto scheme. And you fired off a letter. Your organization has fired off a letter to the inspector general for the Commerce Department. If I have that right.
- [27:57]
C
You do.
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A
We may have a letter to put up on screen at some point while we're talking here. There it is. See, we do our homework here, Norm. We.
- [28:05]
C
I'm Jim, I'm not always going to name plus, but you know, I'm so very. You're better than AI your AI Plus.
- [28:15]
A
I don't know about that. But Norm, tell us about this because I, I'm glad we're talking about this. It's one of the more undercovered scandals of this administration. But yeah, it's worrisome, Jim.
- [28:26]
C
The Democracy Defenders Fund has over 260 legal cases and matters like this demand that we have made that the inspector general look into the very suspicious circumstances under which the UAE got advanced AI chips. And the. The. That came after years of denying the. These chips to the UAE because of the extreme dangers that run amok AI poses to. To human beings in human existence. Just look at what you and Steve were talking about. And that the fight between the Pentagon and Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies. I was so impressed, Jim, that the Anthropic CEO stood up and said, no, we're not going to let Claude do autonomous lethality. We're not going to let Claude decide whether or not to kill people or. You know, Jim, Claude could even somehow get a hold of a nuclear bomb. We know AI modeling. That's why these chips should not have gone to the uae. We can't.
- [30:05]
A
The UAE could simply take this technology, sell it off to the North Koreans
- [30:10]
C
or the Iranians or the Chinese or others to. There's no guarantee of safety there. Iran, we're in negotiations. They have nuclear breakout capacity or any, any other rogue country in the world. They could change their name from the UAE to the UAI and sell AI be the marketplace. But Jim, it gets even worse because we also saw in that this did not happen in a vacuum. And this is the question that we've put to Commerce. All of this happened after investments in crypto businesses. Hundreds of millions of dollars, about $200 million of investment that we know about by UAE linked senior officials. So you have this extreme danger, so dangerous that that anthropic is even saying to our own Pentagon, no, you can't use AI for autonomous weapons, mass surveillance. UAE could sell that again. Iran, surveill their people, China, anybody, our chips, it's that dangerous. And yet a Trump linked business gets $200 million and then suddenly these chips, we've denied the UAE for years. So we're working, I have to say, very proud to be working with attorney, former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Plotkin. He's ended his term as AG and working with us and others in the public interest to continue limiting. We've thrown down the gauntlet with this demand for investigation, Jim. We're not stopping there. As I wrote on the contrarian in my weekly column last week, each one of these demands for investigation is important in their own right. But we're also building the dossier that Congress can use if they change hands. Schmidt was just saying that he thinks, and we all believe there's a blue wave coming, Jim.
- [32:29]
A
That's right. That's right.
- [32:31]
C
Congress changes hands. Each of these detailed lengthy friends you saw, it's a long letter. We lay out the facts, the law. Let's not forget we're going to put all those together and walk them up to the Hill January 2026 and there'll be a complete, complete blueprint for what they should investigate. This is one of the most dangerous.
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree with you. And as Steve and I were talking about, there are no rules of the road. It's the wild west for AI and AI chips just like it's the wild west for big tech and these social media companies that have, you know, brought a plague of, of irresponsibility to our country and addict, you know, phone addiction, app addiction to our country. You want the same kind of, you know, Wild west mentality when it comes to AI technology that, that as you said, I mean, you know, the Pentagon could just unleash an AI tool to do whatever it wants and it's just, it's a recipe for disaster. Yeah.
- [33:35]
C
Now I will, I will say the good news. There's, there's a wonderful Yiddish saying. You know, Jim, I'm not a, and many English was not my first language. I grew up in a Yiddish speaking home. My parents, my parents spoke Yiddish to each other. And there's a wonderful saying that the refia kempt afir the makkah, that the cure sometimes comes before the disease. And the good news is all of the past year, and you led the way, you were one of the path breakers. All of the past year, we've seen our democracy starting to develop, the body politic, develop the antibodies, the immunities to this, these authoritarian moves. So to have the anthropic CEO stand up to the Pentagon, business has been one of the weaker sectors, Jim.
- [34:49]
A
That's right. And that, of course, this is a good sign. You're right.
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C
And that, of course, brings us to the other story, if I may, please,
- [34:59]
A
because I was going to go there, too.
- [35:00]
B
But you go first,
- [35:03]
C
where the cure has come before the disease and involves the two of us and independent media. Because the other big story yesterday breaking at the same time as our demand for an investigation of these advanced AI chips, you also have anthropic standing up to the Pentagon on AI and then the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. And it represents the greatest consolidation and the greatest danger of our American media going the way of Putin's Russian media, Orban's Hungarian media, Turkish media under Erdogan, the consolidation and control. Look how Paramount under the Ellisons has destroyed the perhaps proudest brand in broadcast media. CBS News in 60 Minutes. They've destroyed them.
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A
Yes.
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C
And now they're gonna. Our former home, cnn. We were canaries in the coal mine, Jim.
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A
I know, I know. It's so true. I know. And Norm, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I was gonna. You, you beat me to the punch. I was gonna try to dovetail into this, too. What can be done from a legal standpoint to halt this ungodly consolidation of media in this country. Because it seems to me this is not at all what the founders intended. This is not at all the, the, the world that you and I grew up in with the, the, the likes of Cronkite and Brokaw and Jennings, Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, you know, the great Washington Post under Catherine Graham, you are seeing important media entities come under the grip of these MAGA friendly corporations. And it is exactly like what took place under Putin. Except when you talk to experts in this field on authoritarianism, Norm, people like Ruth Ben Giott and Applebaum and many others will say that what Trump is doing is it's moving faster than what Putin did in Russia.
- [37:12]
C
Yeah.
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A
And so it seems to me something has to be done.
- [37:15]
C
Putin boiled the frog, Trump has microwaved the frog, and there's frog parts all over the American people don't like it. He's the most unpopular and there's, you know, a lot of pushback on him. The here. The pushback started when you and I went to independent media a year ago. We have a robust independent media sector that I predict is going to explode. People are going to flee these propaganda platforms. Number two, they don't have to become propaganda platforms. Even though the federal government will abdicate oversight. States also have antitrust laws. JIM My friend AG Rob Bonta, I just testified in Congress with him this week. We sat next to each other this shadow hearing on elections. Banta has antitrust authority and this is a real thing. If you remember the Microsoft antitrust case when the feds backed out the state AGs led by another friend and mentor of mine, AG Tom Miller, the state AGs use their state powers to push back on Microsoft monopoly consolidation. And so I expect that there will be a big fight about it. I think Hollywood talent but also the unions labor centered movement is going to be very, very important. And, and the court of law, you can expect litigation, court of public opinion also. So look for a full bore opposition but should also friends enjoy your independent media. Subscribe to independent media Jim, I'll bet you have more than twice as many viewers by this time next year because mainstream media's no longer reliable. So thank you for, thank you for your leadership in our independent media world where I'm pleased also to exist as the publisher of the Contrarian.
- [39:28]
A
Well and the Contrarian is just doing gangbusters. And you've been leading the way too. Norman As I like to tell the viewers from time to time, Norm, you're, you're partly responsible for this. You helped push me into the deep end of the pool and I started treading water and, and we've been building stuff ever since and it's been going great and it is about freedom and liberty. And you know, folks in the pro democracy camp get accused of all kinds of, you know, wide eyed Trump derangement syndrome and so on. But Norm, this is about defending freedom, defending liberty, freedom of thought, having the liberty to consume media from wherever you want. That's the American way.
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Jim there's nobody who does it better than you. One of one of my I've been interviewed by everybody and there are other good ones including at our former home of cnn, msnbc, where I guess Ms. Now is the new name, where I frequently and elsewhere there's other great ones but none better than my friend Jim Acosta. And you are both telling the truth and leading the fight. So we appreciate you, Jim thank you,
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Norm, really appreciate it as always. And thanks for sounding the alarm on this AI thing because this is, this has been in the back of my mind is something we need to do. So we're going to like a, like a dog, like a pit bull on steroids. We're going to bite down on this and keep going. Thanks, Norm.
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Thanks, Jim.
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All right, Good to see you. And you know, that's the great Norm Eisen. And thank God we have Norm and his friends over Democracy Defenders because, you know, they're, they're, they're getting the job done in terms of making sure we don't have these MAGA corporations just taking the country off the deep end. And I just want to close out. I don't, I don't usually spend a whole lot of time talking about my old place, as I like to call it on this show. But I got to talk about it. I got to say something because it really is firing me up heading into this weekend that we, we, we may have a situation, we may have a scenario in this country where a MAGA friendly corporation, a Trumpy corporation, Oracle, will control both CBS News and cnn. In what world is that normal? How is that happening in America? How is that happening? I can understand it happening in Russia. I can understand it happening in Hungary. I can understand it happening in Turkey. But folks, as I've said before, and I'll say it again, just, you know, just go around the world, Go around the world and visit the countries. I don't encourage you visiting all of them. Visit the countries that have state controlled media, where you have government controlled media. These are not places where you want to live by and large, in some cases, they're places don't go to North Korea. These are places you don't, you don't even want to step foot on their soil. And so the question that I'll leave everybody with heading into the weekend is do we want the United States of America to become like Russia? Do we want the United States of America to become like North Korea? Do we want the United States of America to become like China, where you don't have freedom of thought, where you don't have political freedom, where you don't have the ability to read and watch and absorb the media and information that you want to consume and take in? I don't, you know, and look at where Donald Trump is. Right. Norm just made a great point about how deeply unpopular Donald Trump is right now. As I've said on this show, and I'll say it again, Donald Trump is becoming about as popular as Jeffrey Epstein these days. His poll numbers are in the toilet. And so what do we, what do we, what do we want to have in this country? Do we want to have a situation where you have a giant merger of CBS and CNN putting pumping out propaganda every day saying how great Donald Trump is, how great his poll numbers are. I mean, if that's, if that's what we're going to see from, from this monstrosity of a combined CBS and CNN under the, under the leadership, if you want to call that of Barry Weiss, is that what they're going to pump out over the airwaves? Is that what they're going to pump out over cnn? That Donald Trump is the second coming of Abraham Lincoln? Or as he likes to put it out on the campaign trail, that he's more popular, that he's a greater president than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington? What a crock of shit. And do we want that crock of shit going out over the airwaves of CBS News on a daily basis where the anchor of the CBS Evening News recently ended his broadcast and said, we salute you, Marco Rubio? Do we want Scott Jennings anchoring the CBS Evening News or anchoring AC360 and talking about what a great President Donald Trump is and how he's the best president since George Washington and Abraham Lincoln? I mean, what kind of crazy, stranger things up, sound upside down world are we going to become if that's the kind of news and information that we have pumping out over the airwaves in this country? It sounds to me that that's, that's exactly what Donald Trump wants. All you have to do is go inside his twisted mind. I mean, just the other day he was, he was tweeting about sending a hospital boat to Greenland. He can't even stay awake at his own events. And this is the guy who's gonna, who's gonna cow these giant media properties into combining into one another and, and becoming propaganda arms of his administration. I mean, what kind of crazy 1984 is this? And so people need to get a grip. And I, you know, I'm done calling on the Republicans to find their souls. I mean, this to me is a moment for the Democrats. They're going to have to come out swinging into this campaign cycle. I mean, just yesterday was being reported in the Washington Post that advisors to Donald Trump, his MAGA allies, were encouraging him to declare a state of emergency in this country so our election laws can be fiddled with so they can put the fix in for the Republicans to win the midterms. I mean, here it is. This is in the Washington Post. Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a draft executive order that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting. This is in the Washington Post and the Jeff Bezos Washington Post. If he's allowing that to get published, it must be pretty damn serious, folks. But the Democrats are going to have to come out swinging. It can't be, you can't, this can't be the Democratic Party of, well, let's just get the half loaf. If we can get the half loaf, then you know what? Mission accomplished. That's not going to meet the moment. Democrats pro democracy people in this country, we are going to have to insist that this Trump authoritarian experiment comes to an end before he does more damage to this country. Look what he's done with immigration in this country. It is an absolute catastrophe. It's an absolute monstrosity. It is a Frankenstein monster. Look what it, look what just happened the other day. A blind man in Buffalo, a, a mostly blind man in Buffalo was picked up by immigration authorities. And, and, and when they realized, oh, he's, he's legally allowed to be in this country, they, they let him loose. They let a blind refugee loose. This is a man from Burma. He was found dead days after the U.S. border Patrol just let him, they picked him up and then they let him loosen neural. Shah Alam, he is a refugee who lives in Buffalo. And you know, J. Dale Shoemaker, independent journalist up in the Buffalo area, has released this video. Kudos to him for obtaining this video. We're picking up blind people. ICE and cbp, they're picking up blind people these days. We were told they were going after the worst of the worst. We were told they were going after dangerous criminals. That's the lie that Donald Trump sold to the American people. And they're picking up blind people. They're detaining children and babies and putting them in gulags. What is happening in this country? And it seems to me, anytime you criticize Donald Trump or raise any questions about what he's trying to do in this country, he becomes more deranged and unhinged. And, and I'm telling you folks, this is the genesis. This is, this is where he comes up with this cockamamie idea of having state controlled media in this country. And as I tweeted last, I tweeted Thursday night, we have entered the realm of having state compromised media in this country. We are now a country of state compromised media. If giant MAGA friendly companies can gobble up these media entities and turn them into propaganda arms of the administration, then, folks, I regret to inform you, we no longer have a free press in this country. We no longer have the free flow of information in this country if it's controlled by corporations that are under the thumb of Donald Trump. A man who tweets out crazed visions of hospital boats heading off to Greenland. I mean, he may be One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but do we all need to be in the same
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boat
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heading over a cliff? That doesn't sound like, that doesn't sound like the kind of ride I want to be on, ladies and gentlemen, but that's the ride that Donald Trump has put us on. And we have to push back. We have to push back. We can't have a situation in this country where the people who are controlling 60 Minutes these days also control CNN. Does that make any sense to anybody? But that is why it's so very important to support independent media. I've said it once, I'm going to close out the show by saying it again. It does make a difference. And I know I've been beating this dead horse since this old horse left his old place, but I'm going to beat that old horse, that dead horse again and say that it does make a difference to support independent media in this country. I hate to, I don't like somebody who says, I told you so. I don't like that. But my God, I've been warning about this for months. I've been trying to sound the alarm on this for months. We cannot become a country like Putin's Russia, like Viktor Orban's Hungary, where the government controls the information you receive. You know, my dad, as I've said many times, my dad came from Cuba. I remember when Fidel Castro died. I, I, I actually I happened to be down in Cuba when that occurred. Long story. I'll get into it another time. But one thing I will share with you is that when Fidel Castro died in Cuba, where they have state media, there was a, there was a situation where to, to, to, to allow the people of Cuba to pay their respects to Fidel Castro after he had passed away. They took his remains and they traveled his, his, his remains all across Cuba so town by town people could come out and pay their respects to the fallen dictator, Fidel Castro. But at that time, and I tell this story from time to time and it blows people's minds. And I don't know if I've told it on this show. I remember picking of the state newspaper in Cuba while all of this was going down. And do you know how the, the state media of Cuba reported on the death of Fidel Castro. They reported on it as the physical disappearance of Fidel Castro. They, they did not report on the death of Fidel Castro. They reported on the physical disappearance as if his spirit lives on indefinitely as sort of a ghost, a patron saint that looms over everybody in Cuba. Do we want that kind of situation in the United States of America? You know, do we want to have state media in this country reporting on the death of Donald Trump not as the death of Donald Trump, but as the physical disappearance of Donald Trump? Is that the kind of insanity that we all want to be immersed in? That is, that is the direction we are heading as a country. We cannot allow the United States of America to be under the grip of state controlled media. That is the path to tyranny. That is the road to perdition, ladies and gentlemen. And we better get off of it now. We better find that exit ramp right now. My thanks to the great Steve Schmidt. It was another Holy Schmidt. It's Friday, and the wonderful Norm Eisen. I've been in Texas the last few days reporting on the very dire situation in this part of Texas where not only are they trying to build a new warehouse for human beings, a migrant detention center in the city of San Antonio, but just an hour and a half south of here, they have a prison for children and a prison for babies in Dilley, Texas. And I didn't say it, I don't think as emphatically as I'm going to say it now Dilly must be shut down. We cannot have a situation in this country, folks. We got to build a better mousetrap. We can't have a situation in this country. We cannot have one where we are imprisoning babies and little kids because they happen to be from a different part of the world. There's got to be a better way. And as Americans, if we care about our soul and the future of this country, we can find that better way. My thanks to all of you for, for tuning in for another great week. I mean, think about the stuff that we've had this week. Rosie o', Donnell, Robert De Niro, Timothy Snyder, wonderful Steve Schmidt, Norm Eisen. I mean, it has been a banner week for this program. And so anything that you can do to help us and support this cause of independent media and for the folks who do it, it is always greatly appreciated. Really report, really appreciate it. And as I like to say at the end of every show, I'll say it again right here. Still reporting this time from San Antonio, Texas. I'm Jim Acosta. I'll see you next time. See you next week.