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The Jim Acosta Show
INSIDE EPSTEIN'S ISLAND BREAKING NEWS WITH REP. ROBERT GARCIA AND IHIP'S JENNIFER WELCH
00:52:35
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- [00:00]
Jennifer Welch
The world should see the files to.
- [00:02]
Megyn Kelly
Know who Jeffrey Epstein was.
- [00:04]
Jennifer Welch
Individually, our voices were whispers.
- [00:07]
Megyn Kelly
Together, they've become impossible to ignore.
- [00:09]
Jim Acosta
Epstein and Maxwell didn't just abuse her.
- [00:12]
Robert Garcia
They trafficked her to a network of.
- [00:14]
Jim Acosta
The rich and powerful.
- [00:18]
All right, welcome to the Jim Acosta show. And there is breaking news in the Epstein Gates scandal. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released new photos and videos from inside Epstein Island. And here to discuss is the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia. Congressman, thanks for coming on.
- [00:35]
Robert Garcia
Yeah, sure thing.
- [00:36]
Jim Acosta
We were just showing some of those images a few moments ago and I was telling viewers earlier in the day when we broke this, you know, midday, that I hadn't really seen anything from inside this island before. And it is very disturbing stuff. What are you taking away so far from what's been released?
- [00:57]
Robert Garcia
Well, I think first it's really important that when we receive information from other sources, obviously the DOJ is not giving us anything. You know, Pam Bondi and Donald Trump continue their cover up and they refuse to turn over the Epstein files as they should. So when we are gain information, photos, videos from other sources and in this case we've received a response to inquiries from us from to the Virgin Islands, their government, where the island of course, Jeffrey Epstein's island is and was, and also from various banks. We're going to put that information out to the public. And so late last night we received these videos and photos that obviously that your viewers are seeing right now. These have never been seen before. We've also received about approximately 5,000 pages of documents. Many of the documents are financial records from JP Morgan Chase as well as from Deutsche Bank. These are the first of multiple batches of documents that we will be receiving from them. And we hope to put out as much financial information and records as we can in the days and weeks ahead. It's very complex to also do redactions as you can imagine, to protect the survivors. And some of the pictures that we put out today, even, even that limited batch, we've had to make some redactions of course to protect certain names. But we're gonna, when we get something, the public is gonna know about it and we're gonna put it out to the public.
- [02:26]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and I just want to ask you about a couple of those photos. And we saw a couple of them just in the last couple of minutes. But there was one of this room where there seems to be like a dental chair and some weird masks on the wall. I'm wondering if you, you know what that is. And then There's a chalkboard with some redacted names on it or words on it. I'd like to know what that is, and maybe there's only so much you can say. There's also a phone that has a list of contacts on it with some names redacted. Anything you can tell us about. I know you can't say a whole lot about these redactions, but were they redactions that your, your team made? Were they made by the, the Virgin Islands Department of Justice? What can you say?
- [03:06]
Robert Garcia
Those are redactions that our team made. And we are committed completely to protecting any information around and about any survivors and the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. And we've made that commitment directly to them and to their families. And so we're going to continue to do that. As it relates to the phone, I think it's clear that these are some names that he had on some type of speed dial on his phone. We are trying to gain more information about exactly who those people were, and we're making some progress on that. On the board that you saw there, that he had this kind of large blackboard in some type of living room den that he had. There were some, some names there that we thought were important to, to remove, to protect those, those victims. But as you can see, it's really creepy and really creepy and it's just, it's sick that this man and Ghislaine Maxwell went on to abuse children and women and girls in these spaces. And I think it has been, it's been hard to go through them and to know that we're talking about, in many cases, 13 and 14 year old girls, that dentist chair and the masks that are on the wall.
- [04:28]
Again, I.
- [04:28]
Jim Acosta
Think, very disturbing, very disturbing. And you were saying at the beginning of your comments that, you know, this is coming out as Trump and the Department of Justice, they're still sitting on these files. And there was a law passed to release these files. And Trump signed that law, you signed that bill into law. And so my question is, you know, what are we waiting for? Do we know? Have they given any excuses? I mean, what's happening?
- [04:55]
Robert Garcia
They have told us nothing. And I remind the DOJ and the Attorney General that not only is there a law that was passed in a bipartisan manner by both houses, we also have a subpoena that's active by the Oversight committee that was passed months ago, and they refuse to address either the subpoena or the law passed by the Congress. And so sometime left in their, in the law is where they have a couple weeks to comply, but we have gotten no indication that they're going to meet their deadlines. And certainly if they choose to release something, it'll be interesting to see what they actually put out. They should put the entire batch of documents and just release them to the public. We know that they're in their possession. They could release everything today. If they truly wanted justice for the survivors, they could release all. All of the documents today. And, you know, the videos that people are seeing, of course, are. Are the island itself and the. The home and estate that were on the island in. In the Virgin Islands. But we also know that the doj, from what we understand from. From sources and others, that there are, you know, there are videos and, and some. And photos and disturbing documents that, of course, show some of these parties and. And other events and where Jeffrey Epstein committed rape and horrible actions to so many individuals and so many girls and women. That information, and then our ability to redact that information of the survivors is going to be really important in the months ahead, and that's why we're being so careful in protecting those survivors.
- [06:39]
Jim Acosta
Just to make sure I have this clear, you said that there's some. Some video evidence or photographic evidence of the abuse itself. Is that. Does that appear to be. Yeah.
- [06:48]
Robert Garcia
Yeah, we understand, again, this is just what we have heard from multiple people, that there are videos and there are photos of events and parties that Jeffrey Epstein hosted. As far as what those videos and photos exactly show.
- [07:06]
We don't have a full picture of that, but we think there is a lot of important evidence for our investigation to hold the powerful men accountable that committed all of these crimes. The DOJ is currently sitting on those.
- [07:23]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And of the stuff that your office put out today, the photos and the videos and the records that you're starting to receive right now, I have to just ask the question I think people in the audience are asking, which is, have you. Has there been any thing uncovered that implicates President Trump?
- [07:40]
Robert Garcia
What we've put out, I think, just speaks for itself. They're really images of Jeffrey Epstein's island and estate, and we'll put everything out that we have. And so there, again, these are just images. There's no. There are no people in these images or in these photos.
- [07:57]
But what we do know is that the amount of information that the DOJ has is where the significant evidence for our investigation lies.
- [08:05]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And what should be noted is, I mean, you've had to go your office, your team has had to go around the Department of Justice, you had to go around the Department of Justice to the Epstein Estate to obtain the emails that we saw earlier this fall. You had to go to the Virgin Islands Department of Justice to obtain this, this photographic and video evidence of, from their files. And it just speaks to what's, what is basically a cover up and that they're just suppressing the release of this information even though they've been compelled to do it. It's, it's pretty extraordinary.
- [08:40]
Robert Garcia
That's exactly right. We, you know, we don't know, for example, these videos, these photos, the DOJ may have them in their possession, they may not. But we've had to just hunker down and try to access as much information as possible from the Epstein Estate, from the banks, from the AG's office in the Virgin Islands, from so many other sources talking directly to survivors because of the White House cover up. All of this could be over immediately if Pambani would just release those files. And so we're going to continue to gain as much information as possible and then put it out to the public. And I think in this case, transparency is the most important thing. We want to make sure that anything that we receive that we can legally put out that we do so immediately.
- [09:30]
Jim Acosta
And just finally on the bank records, do we know what those bank records are going to show?
- [09:35]
Robert Garcia
We're just beginning to go through those. We just received them late last night. They are complex statements. They certainly show money being moved and transferred. As far as what exactly it says or where it leads us, I think it's going to take us days and weeks to go through it all. And so we want to be very careful before making any assumptions about, about these records. What I will say though, it's we received a small batch of bank records. We have many more documents from Deutsche bank and JP Morgan that are to come in the future. And in addition to that, there are 20 additional banks where there's no subpoena on right now that also have critical information. And we've been asking Republicans to join us also to subpoena those banks. They have yet done, done that, but we hopefully they do so in the future.
- [10:22]
Jim Acosta
And it sounds like there's more to come.
- [10:24]
Robert Garcia
There's more to come.
- [10:25]
Jim Acosta
There's more to come. All right, Congressman Robert Garcia, thanks very much for your time. We appreciate it.
- [10:30]
Robert Garcia
Thank you.
- [10:30]
Jim Acosta
All right.
- [10:36]
And we appreciate Robert Garcia's time. I mean, the Congressman, I think made some very critical points during that interview, one of which of course is that they're still waiting. They're still waiting for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. And what Congressman Garcia was saying is that their expectation is, is that there is more video and photographic evidence in the Epstein files that are being withheld by the Justice Department that may show the abuse occurring, that may show some sort of photographic or video evidence of the abuse occurring and may implicate people who are involved in this. And so it's critically important, if you listen to the Congressman, and of course, we all have known this for some time now, that this is. That this is finally released to the public as now is expected under the law. Let's bring in my friend Jennifer Welch from the I've had it podcast. Jen is here. Great to see you. I mean, you and I were planning on talking about some other stuff. We're going to get to that. But, I mean, I have to ask you what your reaction is to all of this. I mean, these pictures from inside Epstein island, we've never seen this before. It's crazy, disturbing stuff.
- [11:51]
Jennifer Welch
It's so crazy. And you know when you hear this, that this man is depraved. And it's something that your brain can jump around to, oh, Donald Trump is in the middle of this and they're trying to cover it up. And then when you see stuff like this, it takes you to a crime scene and you remember, like, this is real. These are very serious crimes, a very powerful people. And the fact that after he was convicted the first time that so many people, even the President of the United States, had him to the White House and had Thanksgiving with him after these crimes and his Ponzi scheme of child rape had been exposed, that because he was wealthy, they continued to, you know, hang out with him. And it's just, it's so creepy to see it and know what they did to young girls and know how many people just excused it. It's really disturbing. And I also just always go back to. Because I watched a documentary about this a couple years ago. How does he have all this money? And that is. That has never really been answered as to how he is so wealthy. And I just, I hope that Robert Garcia keeps going. I have little faith in Pam Bondi or Dan Bongino or Cash Money Patel. I mean, it's just the blind leading the blind. But this is that dental chair that is so disturbing.
- [13:24]
Jim Acosta
And the masks on the wall.
- [13:25]
Jennifer Welch
What.
- [13:26]
Jim Acosta
What the hell is that? I mean, it's. It was like a hotel for ped. Pedophilia that Jeffrey Epstein was running on this island. And you're absolutely right. The questions need to be answered as to why Donald Trump was continuing to have this friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He claims, oh, I kicked him out of the club. He was a creep, and all this stuff. According to the emails that were released by the Epstein estate, they still continued to talk. Steve Bannon was still talking to him. All of these big movers and shakers were still talking to him, associated with them. And when you talk about the financial records, it's quite possible that the reason why he accumulated all this wealth was through a massive blackmail scheme, that he had the goods on so many people completely.
- [14:09]
Jennifer Welch
And who's. You know, there are names that come up with Bannon and with Mark Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein. One of them is Vladimir Putin. And we just witnessed this week, the United States of America sent, in my opinion, a Russian asset named Steve Witkoff, who is. You and I are more qualified to go negotiate with Putin than Steve Witkoff is. And that's a very low bar. No disrespect to you, Jim, but at least we would know what we were walking into. And Jared Kushner, who is just, you know, he is so malleable and so inspired by doing business with homicidal killers. And you see that they didn't send the Secretary of State. And you see that Vladimir Putin, whose economy's in tatters, they're not paying their military, we're abandoning our allies. And there is a tie with Jeffrey Epstein to Putin having information on Trump, and that consistently keeps coming up. And then you understand why Pam Bondi and Cash Patel have completely sealed this off and they are scrubbing the out of all of these files. I'm hopeful that maybe one of our allies somewhere has a copy of all of this.
- [15:26]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [15:26]
Jennifer Welch
Because this. The light needs to continue to shine on this to expose this corruption that leads all the way to their Thanksgiving dinner.
- [15:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, and you're absolutely right. And maybe Elon Musk has it, too. Not that he's one of our allies, but he was the one that started all this when he said Trump's name is in the Epstein files.
- [15:44]
Jennifer Welch
And.
- [15:45]
Jim Acosta
And you're so right about this Russian connection. There was that email that came out from the Epstein estate. Apparently, Jeffrey Epstein said to the Russians, if you really want to get to know Donald Trump, if you want to know all about him, you need to talk to me. I mean, the tentacles from this are just astronomical.
- [16:01]
Jennifer Welch
That's before we even get to the blowjob to somebody named Bubba, which we.
- [16:06]
Jim Acosta
Were told was not Bill Clinton, by the way, just say, you know, right there's some other Bubba out there.
- [16:11]
Jennifer Welch
My thing about that is, could you imagine Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfield if there was an email from a convicted child sex rapist and trafficker talking about Barack Obama blowing somebody named Bubba and that Putin had evidence on it? Think about the longevity they had with Bill Clinton's, with Monica. They impeached him for it. And the part of this makes me kind of mad at the Democrats because I would just pick a couple of things and just keep hammering, hammering, hammering, hammering, hammering. And I think this goes to the heart of the toxic masculinity that Trump and MAGA are trying to admit to the public, when in essence it's such a con job. But it's just wild. The connections and then the way it goes along with the way the United States government is so obsequious to Vladimir Putin, it all connects.
- [17:11]
Jim Acosta
Well, it's true. And the reason why Wyckoff and Jared Kushner are there is because Trump is out to lunch. I mean, Jared Kushner is sort of there on behalf of the Royal Court of Donald Trump. And you know, when Trump is passing out in cabinet room meetings and Oval Office meetings, we can show this video from yesterday. I mean, he was, I mean the man is in rem mode there. He's out. And how many times did they bitch about sleepy Joe Biden? Fox News did segment night after night on sleepy Joe Biden, who's the real president, who's pulling the strings at the White House. And here's sleepy drowsy Don.
- [17:50]
Jennifer Welch
It's insane. And the COVID that is being provided not only by Fox News, they have spun this by saying Jesse Watters is like he works 50 hour work weeks. And he was able to stay up the other night and posted 160 times acting like that's not shit, posting dementia sundowner hour. And then even Jake Tapper, I noticed today said, well, he's a 79 year old man. That's common for him to take a nap. And just the way this man has been excused and or celebrated or sane washed will be a stain on so many institutions in this country for a very, very, very long time. Because if I were to have asked you on January 7, do you think Donald Trump's political career is over, you would have said yes, he'll never come back from this.
- [18:44]
Jim Acosta
That's right. I, and I did. I, I was there at the White House when all that went down. I was there when he got kicked off of Twitter because they were worried he was going to incite another insurrection and, you know, and Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, they all breathed life back into him like some sort of goddamn Frankenstein. He came back and wreaked havoc in the countryside. Now he's back in the White House. But, I mean, just to hammer home this point, here's Trump going off on Joe Biden for being Sleepy Joe. Let's play a little bit of this video.
- [19:13]
Donald Trump
I think Sleepy Joe would say the unemployment rate in the great state of Ohio. No, no, you're in South Carolina, Joe. Joe, you're in South. They come up and. You ever see the guy that knows. No, no, it's South Carolina. It's not Ohio. Okay. Then he goes, all right, Iowa. Did you say Iowa?
- [19:30]
Jennifer Welch
No.
- [19:30]
Jim Acosta
He looks peppier here.
- [19:31]
Donald Trump
You did that, like, seven times. If I did that once, it would be the end of the road, right? Be the end of the road. They'd say Trump has lost it. They like to say that. Anyway, I guess these people are bad people. No, Sleepy Joe. Well, he's running tomorrow. No, but could you imagine if I said just a small fraction of the mistakes he makes, which are unbelievable every speech I actually said the other night, I was watching him when he said about half the population wiped out with guns.
- [20:03]
I said. I said, that's a horrible thing. That's the end of his evening. That's the end of his political career. And then after the debate there, even they said, Joe Biden had a great night last night.
- [20:14]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. I mean, he goes on and on like that. And he did this repeatedly, Jennifer, to the point where I. It's incredible to watch this now. I mean, that. That's a different guy.
- [20:23]
Jennifer Welch
I'm just gonna say totally, totally different guy. I mean, that makes you. When you see him there, think about all of the leaking that came out of that reality show was on about him doing Adderall. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. I just read it on Elon Musk's free speech website, so I just wanted to share that. But here we have. It looks like benzodiazepine stroke. Stroke victim, completely asleep, but his biology is something they can't spin. And this Fox News is covering this stuff. And then he's nodding off as they're all glazing him. Marco Ruby is like, only President Trump could fix the Russia, Ukraine thing. And he's over there just sawing logs. And again, Jim, I just want to go back to this. Sometimes I just have to pause and think, how is it that this abject piece of shit is celebrated? I get him being a crazy person. I get it. I understand him being crazy, having dementia, being a narcissist. I understand a single person having that. I get that. Because we all have somebody in our lives.
- [21:32]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [21:33]
Jennifer Welch
The, the people that go along with this, the industry titans that have gone along with this, the fiscal conservatives that have gone along with this, the national security Republicans that are going along with this, the family values, the, the moral collapse of so many people from Marco Rubio, who knows so much better than the way he's acting, all the way down to your neighbor that lives next door. That's a triple Trumper. The moral collapse of the capitulation in, has made so many people worse human beings with each vote.
- [22:10]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you and I think part of the reason why, and I'll play this video next, is that he pushes people's buttons. He, when he wakes up from his nap, from dozing off, he's, he spews racist hatred, as he did yesterday about Somali immigrants. Let's play this. I mean, this happened during the cabinet meeting. Doesn't get covered enough. Pure racism from the President of the United States.
- [22:31]
Donald Trump
These people ripping it off. And now I'm understanding, and you're going to look at tedxka. I hear they ripped off Somalians, ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions every year. Billions of dollars. And they contribute nothing. The Welfare is like 88%. They contribute, contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country. I'll be honest with you.
- [23:00]
Jennifer Welch
Okay.
- [23:01]
Donald Trump
Somebody would say, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country. I can say that about other countries, too. I can say it about other countries, too. We don't want them to help. We got to, we have to rebuild our country. You know, our country's at a tipping point, point.
- [23:23]
Jim Acosta
We could go bad, I don't know, Garbage. But I mean, Jennifer, this is, and it has to be said, pure racism from the President of the United States. He is a white nationalist.
- [23:37]
Jennifer Welch
100%, he is. And Stephen Miller is his North Star in this. Donald Trump has been racist for decades. And then you, when you think about the type of people that would think, oh, yeah, I'm going to go work for him, you know, you're getting just completely morally corrupt bottom feeders. And Stephen Miller, they call him Mr. Prime Minister around the White House. And he, because Trump doesn't typically care about policy, he Wants to do his interior design projects, he wants to gossip with his friends on phone at night. I heard that he's been eating his meals in bed, having his pudding in bed. As you know, geriatric senior citizens do. No disrespect to any boomer viewers, but Stephen Miller is really psychotic about this in the way he speaks about when you bring in an immigrant, you bring in their culture and then their culture then breaks your culture. This is, this is very white nationalist, fascist and a lot of parallels to the 1930s Germany. And they get really, they get their panties in a wad when we call them out about this. But we must remain clear eyed and call it out. No matter how much they try to say, you can't call us this and you can't call us that. We must continue to call out this behavior for all of the marginalized groups in this country where the government is now piling on. And it's difficult enough to be an adult. I mean, we all face our problems and then if you pile on that you're a person of color in this country and then maybe you're not a high earner and maybe you might need some SNAP benefits because Walmart doesn't pay you enough. Because no, nobody's forced them to pay you enough. And they have all these yachts and planes and all this. And then you have people that criticize you and call you lazy and then call you a bad parent. And this is at the essence of what this MAGA movement is, is this cruelty and zero compassion. And they do it all in the name of religion because they accuse us of virtue signaling. And I'm going to accuse every single one of them of Christian signaling. They all Christians signal to their supporters. And if Trump just drops, oh, they hate Christians or they hate the Bible. Nobody is more of an abomination to the radical, compassionate character in the Bible, Jesus Christ, than MAGA Republicans. And that's why they're promoting now this whole thing of toxic empathy, because they have a Jesus problem. They have a problem, you know, combining these two. So they're constantly Christian signaling to their base to keep the cult in line. And the most insidious part about all of this, Jim, I lived in Oklahoma City for 51 years. Trump said something that I think is kind of true. He said the Democratic Party has taken black voters for granted. I think there's a lot of truth to that. But nobody has taken rural white working class voters for granted like the Republican Party. And numbers totally support that in Oklahoma. When we had a Democratic governor, 20 years ago, education was 17th in the country. Now Oklahoma is 50th dead last in education. And if you don't like your life in these red states where there have been MAGA super majorities for, you know, 20 years, the people you blame for that are Republicans because they've lied to you. Trickle down economics is a lie. Immigrants taking your job is a lie. It's the AI robots from all of the people that do the trophy presentations for putting boy in the White House.
- [27:15]
Jim Acosta
That's right. And Trump is saying, oh, we're bringing Merry Christmas back. We're going to say Merry Christmas. Well, Jesus Christ would not have said what Donald Trump said about Somali immigrants. That is, that is not what Jesus would do. And the other thing that you mentioned there, Jennifer, which is absolutely perfect and absolutely brilliant, is if the MAGA folks are wondering, why did my Obamacare premiums just double? Why can't I afford as much at the grocery store? It's because they are programming you with reasons to hate other people in this country while they're pulling money out of your pocket. They're, they're programming you with racist ideas while they are pulling a fast one on you and stealing money right under your nose and making you force feeding you expensive health insurance, force feeding you expensive groceries in this country because they don't give a shit about you. They just don't care. What they want to do is keep you hooked into this hate outrage machine that gets pumped out by conservative media. And one example of that, Jennifer, is Megyn Kelly. She is the queen bee of this sadistic empire that has been built by conservative media. And she, let's, let's play what she said about the drug boats, the alleged drug boats that they're blowing up. This is what she said.
- [28:36]
Megyn Kelly
Not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. Like, I'm really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water. I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the sympathies of the American people.
- [29:12]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, really tough. But they, you know, she, she, that's, it's sadism.
- [29:18]
Jennifer Welch
It's pure sadism and it is recreational cruelty. Fox News has served them up this, this level of cruelty because there's a lot of rage and anger in the country. And Fox News and the Megan Kelly's and the right wing media ecosystem has such a jump on us and they serve up conduit in which they can, you know, travel with their rage. And because we are tribal, human beings are tribal as a species, they, they play on that. And the Meyen Kelly is a prime example of my hypothesis that, that once you triple trump something in you has you break, you become a worse and worse person. This is a woman who. Conservative. Yes. Do I agree with her on anything? Probably not. But back in the day when Trump went after her, that she's got blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. Humiliated Marco Rubio, humiliated Ted Cruz. It's unbelievable that he can humiliate these people. Humiliate them. I mean, unforgivable. I'm drawing a boundary, you're out of my life type situation. They all go crawling back to him. And if he was like, cool or better than what he is, I might kind of get it. But he's awful. There's never any contrition. And he gets off, he gets off on humiliating these people. And so they just debase themselves and then whatever that is. And I was looking at the podcast charts the other day and like she's like in the news, like number one. Number two, millions of people consume that.
- [31:02]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [31:02]
Jennifer Welch
And so there's a, there's a problem in the United States where he has broken something in us, where people traffic in recreational cruelty that has turned into real cruelty with Alligator Alcatraz. What we saw when people went to El Salvador, Ice and all of the cruelty that's going on with that. And it's hard to stay focused on one thing at a time because they're all so mean and crazy. But I, I'm very happy that we're all building this kind of ecosystem for people to come feel a sense of community. Because it's abusive. Hearing her say that is abusive. What Trump is doing is incredibly abusive to individuals and to our whole national psyche.
- [31:50]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you. And I, and I hate even bringing up Megyn Kelly because she puts out these garbage views, I think to get the rest of us to talk about her and, and that feeds the monster. The monster gets food. But I hope that, you know, if somebody is searching around on YouTube or wherever and they're a Megyn Kelly fan and they hear you and I talking about her. I mean, maybe they'll get some sense of, of reality. I don't know.
- [32:15]
Jennifer Welch
I think it's important that we cover what they do because I think one of the errors of progressive politics or democratic politics is assumption politics. We assume that people are going to think Megyn Kelly's crazy. We assumed that nobody would ever vote for Donald Trump again after January 6th. We assume all of these things because that's, we, we internalize what we would do. And so we project that onto the masses. And that assumption politics has been a fool's errand for people on our side of the aisle. And I'm just going to say pro democracy. I'm not even going to say progressive or, or Democrats, just pro democracy people. Assumption politics is a fool's errand and we need to aggressively call out this cruelty and also call out at the same time. Megyn Kelly claims to be a big Christian. She is a part of the whole family value. She's riled up about kids. Riled up that she thinks, you know, kids are going to school and trans teachers or making other kids trans and, you know, wieners are getting whacked off at school. And she promotes all of this insane cat litter stuff. And at the end of the day, what she just said is so inhumane and so dehumanizing, it's complete. Her Christianity, her, her feigned compassion for the well being of children, she just disproves all of it. So I think it's important. She's a total fraud. But I do, as unpleasant as it is to talk about, Jim, I'm glad that you played that video because we have to respond. We have just let the right wing media echo chamber grow into this crazy cancer and we have to start negating it.
- [34:00]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you and it's part of the reason why I do it as much as I can, because to me, you know, years from now people will study, you know, this outburst of American fascism and how the hell did that happen? Oh, it must have been just Donald Trump. No, there are all of these mini mes who have carved out these little media empires for themselves and they have contributed to this very serious problem, this very serious threat to our democracy and what I say, the American way of life, people, oh, democracy, that's a little pie in the sky. The way of life that Jennifer, you and I grew up with in this country, which should not be destroyed by these lunatics who are trafficking in, what you say, this sort of, this cruelty.
- [34:44]
Industry that they're trying to pedal out there. The other the other thing I have to ask about before we go is I know you're from the south, and so I was curious what you thought of Afton Bain in that special congressional election in Tennessee. No, she did not win, but she took a district that was Trump pro Trump by 22 points in 2024. And I guess she finished in double or single digits. She almost won the darn thing. And what does that say about the South? Because last night she was giving her victory speech and she was saying that there's this new south that's rising up of people who are, you know, progressives who are tired of being kicked around, who want to, you know, want to fight back. Is there hope for that in the South?
- [35:23]
Jennifer Welch
Okay, here's my thoughts on all of this, and I have a lot, and I think they're really important to share. First and foremost, if you poll people in red states, what do you think about gun control? Majority want it. What do you think about woman's right to choose? The majority want it. What? In Oklahoma and my state, a few years ago, they took it to the people to vote to legalize marijuana. And we voted to do it. So individually. Progressive causes, when they're pulled individually in red states, a majority wants those things. The problem is the democrats abandoned a 50 state strategy a long time ago. And had they not abandoned it, Afton Bain could have won that race. And when you abandon a 50 state strategy, you get a mass problem in that state where people are doubling down, tripling down on Republican policies. But furthermore, the Republicans, for decades in the south have injected religion into politics. It's delivered through the churches, too. When I was growing up in Oklahoma City, I remember I was a young adult and I remember there's churches everywhere, Jim. And I remember a church on the marquee. It was like, vote for George Bush today. And this was the dumb one. It was like, but, you know, said not, not the dad, but the other one, vote for George Bush today. And I remember my husband and I thinking like, you know, it's just such a scam. It's such a scam that he does this compassionate conservatism and all he cares about are his rich friends and, you know, Darth Vader as his vice president. I just thought all of that was just so terrible at the time. Yeah, George Bush and Dick Cheney. But the democrats abandoning a 50 state strategy has allowed the Democrats to become the boogeyman. And so, so many people, even though individual, individual, individual, they're progressive. There has been such a propaganda campaign against Democrats through churches where they have taken people that literally believe in spiritual warfare and said the Republicans are the angels and the Democrats are the demons. That's why you see on social media all the time, you demon rat. And so they can never vote for a Democrat because the Republicans have diabolically and brilliantly branded it to where people actively go out and vote against their best interest because otherwise they think they're voting for a demon. And I think the Democrats, this shows you the Democrats need new leadership that go 50 state strategy, grassroots. We have litmus tests of if you take corporate PAC money, I think we can spend the one advantage they have, Republicans taking all this corporate PAC money. If Democrats will swear it all off, I think we can spin it and say we're not beholden to anyone. And at the same time it provides Democrats a strategic cover with social issues like trans issues or LGBTQ rights to where if somebody says to like an Afton Bain, well, you know, what about the trans and the bathrooms and all these things, she can say, I don't know about any of that, but I'm for an economic policy. And if you're trans, if you're black, if you're white, if you're a woman, whatever you are, that goes for everybody because I'm an American and I believe in equality. And I think if we just keep beating that drum and we can get back to a 50 state strategy. I read the other day, Jim, I almost died. I have to share this. Yeah, Oklahoma Trump is polling at minus 10 right now. I just, I can't believe it. Because the state always brags about not one county has ever gone blue in like the last million election cycles. But Oklahoma City is getting very, very, very purple, almost blue. Same with Tulsa. And I just think that if, if the Democrats could fund a 50 state strategy, we could swing and get an FDR style.
- [39:31]
Long, long, long term of rule, of ruling Democratic rule. Because that's how I think it's going to take a generation to fix these 10 months of fuckery.
- [39:41]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and, and who knows where we're going to be three years from now. I mean we're just a quarter of the way into this thing. But you're totally right about the 50 state strategy. And I mean, and Trump damaged himself in trying to win this raise for this Republican who should have won by like 20 points last night. I think he won by 8 or 9 points, just like a 13 point swing. Trump stepped in it yesterday in that cabinet meeting when he said that affordability is a scam. When he said that the issue of affordability is a scam that is going to appear in so many ads over the next 12 months that, you know, this is. This goes to the desperation that they're feeling right now, and they can't. They can only give Grandpa so many cookies to keep him on message, and they just can't do it. I mean, I think that's.
- [40:28]
Jennifer Welch
Yeah, I think, you know how old people, when they get older, they'll like, on their deathbed, like the last year or two, they're like, oh, Jim, I really liked your little sister a lot more than I liked you. You were my least favorite child. They start telling the truth all the time.
- [40:42]
Jim Acosta
That's never gonna happen.
- [40:44]
Jennifer Welch
Here's. Of course, here's my theory about Trump. Like, he cannot not be on tv. He cannot not do press conferences. He can't. He cannot help himself. Nobody around him is like, hey, dude, your dementia is really showing. Yeah, cognitive tests will give you that, but you need to tone down the television. And so I think we're going to start seeing a lot of deathbed confessions from him. I think we might find out who Bubba is.
- [41:09]
Jim Acosta
Well, and the other day he was saying, am I going to go to heaven? He was speculating about whether or not he was going to go to heaven. And my theory on this stuff about building the ballroom. And now he wants to build the Arc de Triomphe or something like that across the Potomac River. He wants to build all this that he thinks will last beyond his years. You know what I mean? And so I think that there's something going on up there, you know, in.
- [41:34]
Jennifer Welch
That I think these. These visits to Walter Reed have definitely. Oh, there. Yeah. He tore down. You know, he also, like, he's. The architect won't work with him anymore because he wants the ballroom to be too really big. I'm an interior designer when I'm not a podcaster. And the scale of the ballroom is such that the architect said, you. I'm not going to sign off on this because it's going to dwarf the original structure. This is, you know, an addition. And so now he's fired the architect and he's torn this whole east wing down, and now there's no plans in place.
- [42:10]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [42:10]
Jennifer Welch
For it. And that just shows you how impulsive he is. Tear down.
- [42:15]
Jim Acosta
It's architectural prosthesis. He's trying to. It's always about size. Have you noticed that? It's. Oh, yeah, he's got to build stuff that's bigger and the crowd has to be bigger, and there's just a complex there. But anyway, you know, not that we want to spend time thinking about.
- [42:33]
Jennifer Welch
I could talk about that all day because I, I have a huge theory about all of that. But we'll do that.
- [42:39]
Donald Trump
We'll.
- [42:39]
Jennifer Welch
We'll gossip about that next time. Time. Because I think that is at the core of a lot of the, the homoerotic images of Trump. There's a lot of that throughout maga. All of these MAGA men have these very homosocial relationships and all of the right wing MAGA echo chamber. Yeah, yeah. It's just. It's really. And then did you see the video where he was blaring.
- [43:04]
One of the musicals? I. Phantom of the Opera?
- [43:07]
Jim Acosta
He does. He loves that.
- [43:09]
Jennifer Welch
It's just like an old queen, you know, that's why I'm saying he's loose lips or sinking ships. And Jim, I promise you this, if he starts loose lip sync ships on one of his rambling press conferences, I think we're going to get some juicy nuggets. And, you know, I don't want to be dismissive of all of the pain and everything that's going on everywhere, but I think that and your viewers coming to this channel and us talking, we. It's a reminder that we can laugh still and we can fight for democracy and we can fight for the marginalized all at the same time.
- [43:44]
Jim Acosta
We can do two things at once. And maybe one day we'll find out who the real Bubba is. We can solve that mystery. You know, I'm dying to know. Me too. We'll figure it out. You and me together. Jennifer Welch. Great to see you. Thank you so much.
- [43:58]
Jennifer Welch
Yes, thank you so much, Jim. I really enjoyed it.
- [44:00]
Jim Acosta
You're. You're the best. Me too. BT let's do it again soon. The great Jennifer Welch from the I've had it podcast, which is. I mean, it is such a cultural phenomenon because, you know, a news guy like me, you know, I got these thoughts in my head, rattling around, oh, should I say this? Should I say the F word? You know, should I just tell people what I think? And so. And Jen is just like it. I'm just gonna say, you know, all of these thoughts that are absolutely perfect. So she was terrific, and I really appreciate her time very much. Listen, folks, I think that, you know, there's a lot to. There's a lot to process here middle of this week. A lot to process here in the middle of this week. But I don't want to. And part of this for me is a reaction to what I See, in the coverage, because I worked, you know, in corporate news. And there is a fear. Some of it is cowardice. Some of it is, is corporate. There is a fear to say what needs to be said. There is a fear to say what needs to be said. And I'm not talking about writing off the fact that Trump is 79 years old and he needs to take a nap in the middle of a, of a Cabinet meeting. I'm not, you know, that, you know, give me a break. Like, if you're going to call out Joe Biden for being too old, you got to call out Donald Trump for being. To me, that's fair. Is fair. Right? What needs to be called out, what needs to be said that isn't being said enough in our press over the last 24 hours is that the President of the United States said a blatantly obvious racist thing in the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday when he said what he said about Somali immigrants in this country, that they don't contribute anything, that they're not of value.
- [46:01]
In no normal world should the President of the United States of America ever, ever say something like that to the American people or, or even say it privately. I mean, if, if the President of the United States says it privately, it means he's a bad person and we should get rid of them. But to me, that was an impeachable moment. There have been so many impeachable moments since Donald Trump has come back to the White House. But to blatantly say something as racist and as hateful and as nasty and cruel and mean spirited as what he said yesterday. The impeachment proceedings should begin right now, but of course they won't. And we can't even get people in the press to cover it.
- [46:47]
How is this not leading every newscast? How is this not at the, at the top of every front page in America what Donald Trump said about Somali immigrants in this country? And now they're going to send the Department of Homeland Security.
- [47:02]
Up to Minnesota to go after Somali immigrants at the same time that they're sending ICE down to New Orleans to again wage war on Latino people in this country. But now Donald Trump and, and again, this is partly because he is out to lunch and he is out of his mind, and he was, he's falsely conflating the shooting of those National Guard members with Somali immigrants. He did this the other day and he was doing it essentially in, in the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
- [47:36]
But to just go off on some wild tangent, talking about Somali immigrants as if they don't contribute Something to this country. I've been to Minneapolis St. Paul many times. The Somali community there is a wonderful community. And people say, oh, Jim, he does this all the time. Remember when he said about the Haitians in Ohio? They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. He got elected, got put back into the White House. People voted for it. I get that. I understand that there are people who either support that or will overlook that because of their own self interests. But I am not going to say because of all of that, because that all happened and because people voted for it and because he's back into the White House, that it's all excusable. It is not, it is not excusable for the President of the United States to talk about other human beings in that fashion. And I'm just going to say it. And if I had it, if I still had a TV show on some goddamn cable network, I would say that at the top of my show, or at least at the end of my show.
- [48:42]
It is something that we should be all ashamed of. Donald Trump's racism is something we should all be ashamed of. The United States of America should not have a white nationalist president.
- [48:57]
It should not have a fascist sounding president. I mean, I'm not saying he's not a fascist. I, I do think he's a fascist. But to use the language like that in the Cabinet Room and not have a Cabinet member speak up.
- [49:12]
And I'm sorry, not have the member of the press say something like, what is going on here?
- [49:19]
To not have any members of Congress on the Republican side call it out today. Where is the Wall Street Journal?
- [49:27]
Where is Fox?
- [49:30]
Does anybody give a shit on the conservative side of things that the President of the United States is a completely out in the open racist? I think it matters, and I'm sure as hell going to call it out here.
- [49:49]
My thanks to Congressman Robert Garcia. My thanks to Jennifer Welch. Make sure you support independent media. As Jennifer and I were talking about. It is important that we have this independent news community here for us to all share. It is critically important that these, these places continue to not only survive, but thrive so we can continue to bring programming like this to you.
- [50:14]
But first and foremost, it has to, it has to live on. It has to continue to do well because we have to be able to say the things that need to be said.
- [50:25]
You can't have a President of the United States.
- [50:29]
Behaving in this fashion. We're one year in, we're not even one year. How, how much worse is this going to get people.
- [50:37]
Is anybody inside that White House listening? Hello? Hello? Is anybody inside that White House listening?
- [50:45]
You're okay with this?
- [50:48]
We need some of you guys to start talking. Talk to the press. Call up that reporter that you have a decent relationship with. You need to start spilling the tea. You need to start dishing the dirt. We need to know what's going on behind the scenes.
- [51:04]
When Grandpa is coming apart at the seams.
- [51:09]
This is more than just a president of the United States taking a nap in the middle of the Cabinet meeting.
- [51:16]
He sounds like he's totally lost it. And he has a country to run, the last time I checked.
- [51:24]
All right, thanks, everybody, for watching. Still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good night.
- [51:40]
Jennifer Welch
Sam saint.