← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Is America Vulnerable to Terrorism? My Discussion with Charlie Sykes. Plus Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News on the Network's Dover Debacle
00:58:50
Loading summary
Transcript92 lines
- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Jim Acosta
Acosta show it's another day that ends in why and the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump in the Middle East. The price of oil is skyrocketing now at about 120A barrel. That caused markets to freak out with some steep losses on Wall Street. But then Trump said late in the afternoon that he thinks the war is, quote, very complete, perhaps, pretty much. Meanwhile, what is this war about anyway? We still don't know the answer to that question. Iran has replaced the Ayatollah who was taken out during this war with his son. Let's discuss with the great Charlie Sykes, host of to the Contrary podcast, our substack friend. Charlie, great to see you.
- [00:44]
Charlie Sykes
It's great to see you. We have a lot to talk about today, don't we?
- [00:47]
Jim Acosta
We've got a lot to talk about. And I mean, you know, where to begin first? I mean, first of all, I guess just the overarching issue. Charlie, have you been able to figure out what this war is about, why we're there, why we're doing this? No.
- [01:00]
Charlie Sykes
As Donald Trump figured out, why we're there. You know, in the fog of war, there's, there's always questions. And this is the foggiest war of all. And so we don't know. And, and, you know, Trump continues to send out completely mixed messages. You know, in one weekend, he's talking about the possibility of, you know, boots on the ground, but he's also saying mission accomplished, now the war is almost complete. He declared the war end was unconditional surrender, but today it looks like he's pretty desperate to get an off ramp. So frankly, minute by minute, the confusion just seems to multiply.
- [01:40]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, it's wild. It's almost as though, you know, he saw the headlines. I mean, he's a day trader. You and I have talked about this. This is not a new concept about Donald Trump that he kind of goes by the seat of his pants day. He sees the price of oil hitting $120 a barrel. He, he's old enough to know what that means. The pain at the pump is going to be real. And so the stock market freaks out. And so he starts to send out these signals that, okay, maybe we're going to start winding it down, but, you know, the genie's out of the bottle. The ayatollah that was taken out, I was, as I was saying earlier, Ayatollah Khamenei replaced by his much younger son, who is apparently close with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. There are reports out from ABC News just this afternoon that the U.S. is now concerned about sleeper cells operating in the U.S. charlie, you and I are old enough. Remember the post 911 era where we had to worry about sleeper cells in this country. There was, there were a couple of men who were apparently linked to ISIS who almost pulled off some sort of explosive attack outside of Gracie Mansion in New York City over the weekend. That's still being investigated. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle once all of this is unleashed.
- [02:54]
Charlie Sykes
That's the key point. Because the Trumpiest thing, of course, is that when things get sticky, he simply declares victory and pulls out, right, that he says, mission accomplished. This is the greatest war, greatest victory, flawless victory, and gives himself a parade and wrecks a monument to himself. But as you point out, there are a lot of other people that have a vote in this. What is Iran going to do? What will Israel do? Who's really calling the shots here? And of course, the terror threat, which is very, very real and does not go away simply because Donald Trump flips the switch. And I think the instinct of this administration to veto the issuance of that warning document to local law enforcement about the threat, that was a tell that what they didn't want to tell the American people the potential dangers that they have just released. So we don't know, we don't know how Trump will react if there is some significant terror attack, some significant retaliation. Our concern always ought to be, is Donald Trump going to use the violence and the chaos for his own purposes to declare an emergency and unlock presidential powers? So the list of unknowns continues to grow.
- [04:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And apparently, I mean, there hasn't been a regime change. I mean, Trump has talked about how he's taken out the ayatollah and everything. They just replaced the father with the son. Apparently the Russians and the Chinese are going to acknowledge this new ayatollah. So the regime cranks on and we're right back to the whole game of Lucy in the football with the Iranians. It seems to me if, if we haven't completely eliminated their nuclear program, I mean, the Trump administration could come along, Charlie, and say, oh no, we've, we've totally decimated at this time. We've totally obliterated. They said that last year. And then we have this whole thing come along. But Charlie, the other thing I'm disturbed by is the way they are communicating this to the American people. The White House has been putting out these weird propaganda videos that look like they were put together by, you know, 21 year old frat boys. I think we have one of them. We can show the viewers. But, but Charlie, I mean, this is just weird, creepy stuff that they're pumping out over there.
- [05:09]
Charlie Sykes
Well, it's weird, it's creepy, it's incredibly juvenile. It's incredibly disrespectful to the military to equate the actual toll of war with a video game. As Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is an Iraq veteran, put so eloquently, war is not a fucking video game. This is so distasteful. The Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Kupich, put out that statement yesterday talking about how sick it was to try to gamify something where people are dying. But it shows the unseriousness. And I have to say, though, this administrator, the optics, the way they are presenting this is suboptimal. I mean, Donald Trump showing up with a baseball cap, putting out these incredibly juvenile videos. It seems as if the kind of the hubris that tells them, well, we've done this sort of thing in the past. Our base goes along with it. They keep doing it, even when clearly it just feels very tone deaf, doesn't it?
- [06:15]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And I guess there's this one that shows it's something that Trump posted to his Truth Social, and it looks like it's some sort of video and tribute to him that makes him out to be like this sort of godlike figure. I'm gonna play a little bit of this, I think shall be the most unusual thing. Into the news media with Time magazine will have no choice but to say what I want them to say.
- [06:47]
News Anchor (possibly Jim Acosta or another newsreader)
Newsweek, what I want to say. The View, what I want to say.
- [06:56]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, Charlie, what? I mean, this, what it's like a window into his mind.
- [07:03]
Charlie Sykes
It is a scary look, we, you know, you and both of that. The mind is a very, very scary place. But these windows are the megalomania, the narcissism, the hubris of all of this. And you know, to the, you know, the mouth breathing, snickering incels in the, in the basement of the White House who think this is incredibly clever. The rest of the world is watching all of this. And I have to say, I mean it. We may be laughing about all this. Donald Trump is the commander in chief of the most powerful military that has ever existed. And the fact that he is in the grips of this kind of weird cosplaying megalomania is legitimately and objectively terrifying.
- [07:43]
Jim Acosta
Yes, say that. Yes, there. I mean, it's almost, it's screaming out for the 25th Amendment when he puts this kind of stuff out There, I mean, because it's just, it's cuckoo for cocoa puff stuff. And Charlie, one thing I do want to get into with you because you come out of the former world of conservative talk radio. It sounds as though when you check in with a lot of the guys in the manosphere these, these days, the podcaster bro sphere, they're not on board with this. You know, they feel betrayed by Donald Trump. A lot of people in MAGA feel betrayed by Donald Trump that he's launched into this war of choice, that he's gone back on his promises on the campaign trail to avoid forever wars and that sort of thing.
- [08:22]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, and we have to sort of divide Trump media world into two. I mean, you have the, basically the flacks and the hacks who are going to accept anything Donald Trump says. You know, what does America first mean? Literally whatever Donald Trump says it means. Right. There's that we call that the Sean Hannity group. And then there are the MAGA adjacent folks who actually took Donald Trump at his word, who believed him when he said that he was not going to start these forever wars. Who believed him when he, when he said that unlike those Bushes, I would never send the US Military in regime change. But leave aside the manosphere and the influencers, I do wonder how this is playing with his base out of the actual world because going back to 2016, this was a very potent part of his message and there were a lot of voters who actually did believe Donald Trump. Now, obviously, you know, it's up to them whether they should have done that. But I wonder whether they are going to feel betrayed, particularly as the cost of this rises. I'm talking about the cost of the casualties, the cost of, cost of living, the cost of oil. And I think there's a potential for this to be a longer term break.
- [09:35]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And there's a lot of reporting out there, Charlie, that it's been Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, who has been whispering in his ear, trying to talk him into doing this. Apparently there's been some reporting that Lindsey Graham went over to Israel, talk to Bibi Netanyahu about how to persuade Trump to do this. And then Graham is on, on Fox talking up, beating the drumbeats of war for, for toppling the Castro regime in Cuba. Toppling the communist regime in Cuba is, I mean, we're running out of places for Lindsey Graham to bomb. But I guess we have a little bit of that. Let's talk about this on the other side because I want to get into this because it's fascinating to me.
- [10:13]
Lindsey Graham
I'm not looking for a fair fight. If we get in a fight, I want to win it. I want to win it quick. I'm in Miami. You see this hat? Free Cuba. Stay tuned. The liberation of Cuba is upon us. It's just a matter of time now. You see this hat? Make Iran great. President Trump said the only way to make Iran great is for the people to take over. We're marching through the world. We're cleaning out the bad guys. We're going to have relationships with new people that will make us prosperous and safe. I've never seen anybody like it. This is Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump is resetting the world in a way nobody could have dreamed of a year ago. He is the greatest commander in chief of all time. Our military is the best of all time. Iran is going down, and Cuba is next.
- [10:59]
Jim Acosta
This. I mean, Charlie, this is some. First of all, this is some goofy state TV shit. And I'm gonna talk about this a little bit later with Julia Jeske of Decoding Fox News. But, I mean, Charlie, just to get to the crux of this, this is not what Donald Trump campaigned on. Lindsey Graham can say, oh, this is. This is Ronald Reagan all over again. This is not what Donald Trump campaigned on. And I, you know, forgive me for saying this, but is this the only way that Lindsey Graham can get an erection anymore? I mean, is to. Is to talk about buying.
- [11:28]
Charlie Sykes
Wow. Okay, So I was about to say, Lindsey Ram is going through some things lately, but I'm glad he's got some hats out of it. I mean, he may have these multiple wars, but at least Lindsay has a freaking hat. And remember, it was a week before we had those reports of a potentially enhanced Lindsey Graham berating Danish officials. You know, about Greenland. I mean, he was in the room and he was insulting the Europeans because it was Greenland a couple of weeks ago. And now this obviously excites him. And of course, this over the top. He is the greatest leader ever. This is Ronald Reagan. No, I am old enough to remember Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan did not behave the way that Donald Trump is, including this ongoing disrespect for the men and women of the US Military, as we saw during that transfer. I know you're going to talk in the next segment about it, but.
- [12:24]
Jim Acosta
But give us your thoughts, because, I mean, I was blown away.
- [12:27]
Charlie Sykes
I thought, you know, if anybody had any question about whether or not showing up in a baseball cap to one of the most solemn, you know, events, I mean, ceremonies in the US Military and then not taking that hat off. If you don't think that's a problem, then why did Fox News choose to state news? Why did they choose not to run that video? Why were they running sanitized video from a previous event? And again, this may not be the most important thing, but, you know, given the fact that we've, we've, you know, had these reports for years that Trump thinks of the soldiers as the suckers and the losers.
- [13:04]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [13:04]
Charlie Sykes
Then when he does that, inevitably people are going to, you know, it's going to revive that. And what I wrote in my newsletter today was these things like the video or the hat may seem trivial, but the triviality of the mind of the people who are running the war, that is not a trivial thing. And we're seeing, again, this juvenile triviality, the kind of, you know, play acting you see from Lindsay or from Pete Hegset and right out of the White House. That's not trivial when you're dealing with matters of life or death and the potential of world war.
- [13:37]
Jim Acosta
Exactly. And I mean, you know, Donald Trump is not volunteering his sons to go over and fight in this war in the Middle East. And I mean, just over the weekend, you know, he, in addition to the dignified transfer ceremony that, I agree with you, he completely made a mockery of wearing that, that goofy baseball cap. I mean, you just don't do that when you're the President of the United States. But he's playing golf in Florida. I mean, I mean, should. Should the president of the United States be playing golf one week into a war? There was a seventh US Service member. It was announced there was a seventh US Service member who was killed in all of this. We're just getting these reports in, but I mean, I just think this is tacky. We know Donald Trump is tacky, but this is, I mean, this takes the cake. This is disrespectful to these service members.
- [14:28]
Charlie Sykes
This is the key. It is disrespectful. It is deeply unserious. And the answer to your question is just try to imagine if it was President Kamala Harris or Barack Obama or Joe Biden who was behaving in this particular way. Any of the things that we just mentioned, what the reaction would be on the right, what Congressional Republicans would be saying, the outrage would be absolutely endless. But again, Donald Trump is acting as if he can. There are no rules. There are no guardrails. Right. There are no consequences. And this may be his superpower, the shamelessness, but it's also, this is the Achilles heel of authoritarians who think that there are no limits, that they don't need to listen to any of the warnings. They don't need to listen to anyone that tells them, Mr. President, maybe you've made a mistake here. This is where authoritarian regimes create this, this feedback loop, this bubble that frankly, Donald Trump seems to have inserted himself in.
- [15:28]
Jim Acosta
Right? It's the emperor has no clothes and, but he does have a baseball cap. But I mean, you know, I just. And Charlie, you and I remember during the war on terror, there are a lot of folks out there who may not remember this. George W. Bush eventually decided, if I'm not mistaken, to stop playing golf out in front of the cameras and just, I don't think he played very much at all because the war in Iraq was dragging on, the war in Afghanistan was dragging on, and you had, I mean, at least with the Bushes and the Cheney's and believe me, I am no apologist for that crowd, but you know, at least there was a sense of dignity to the office. Whereas this, I mean, look at Pete Hegseth swanning in front of the cameras, going on 60 minutes, talking a bunch of shit like he's in a locker room. And you know, it's just totally, it's just beneath us as a country. I just think we're better, we're better than this as a country.
- [16:24]
Charlie Sykes
Well, no president in American history has behaved as disrespectfully as Donald Trump is right now. And by the way, the Saturday Night Live portrayals of Pete Hegseth are awfully good. However, they're, they're, they're good because they are so close to the actual truth. It's the gap between the, the parody and the actual reality. When you watch Hegseth and then you watch them, you know, Saturday Night Live doing, you're just like, yeah, this is, this is the guy. This, this juvenile cosplaying, you know, dick wagging. It's a. And again, this is a deeply unserious bunch at a very, very serious time because they, the consequences for people in the world, people in the military, people back home who may face a terrorist there. This is very, very serious. And I don't think it's too much to ask that the people who we have put in power would show at least a modicum of seriousness, which we are not seeing from this group.
- [17:20]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, no, there's a lot of overcompensating going on. Whether it's Lindsey Graham or Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump. It just seems to be an epidemic of Overcompensating. And to our earlier conversation, Charlie, my concern is we don't know how this ends up. We don't know how this plays out. And this is not one of those situations where Trump thinks, oh, he can just back out of this situation or that situation and the stock market will calm down or his poll numbers will come back a little bit when it's a matter of defending the homeland. I mean, we're in between Homeland Security secretaries right now. We had these supremely incompetent ICE Barbie in Kristi Noem, who's now on her way out, being replaced by Mark Wayne Mullen. And I, you know, I know a lot of people on D.C. there is not a chorus of confidence when it comes to Mark Wayne Mullen. People aren't texting me and saying, wow, what a pick. He's the best. We are totally great now, you know, we have nothing to worry about when it comes to Homeland Security. And Donald Trump and Stephen Miller seem to think that Homeland Security is all about locking up brown people. The department was created so we don't have another 911 and they're stirring up this hornet's nest in the Middle east and they've got rank amateurs running that department.
- [18:35]
Charlie Sykes
This is a really, really important point, and I keep coming back to this, that both the FBI and the home and Department of Homeland Security have been gutted in terms of their anti terrorism capabilities. Cash Patel apparently wanted to distract attention from his beer guzzling in Milan, fired members of the unit that had been specifically focused on Iranian terrorism. And he did it the week before we attack Iran. Meanwhile, under Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, what is the Department of Homeland Security which again was formed in the wake of 911 to protect the country from foreign terrorism? What is it focused on? It is focused on going after people domestically, going after brown people in the United States. And then of course we had this amazing story over the weekend which I know you've, you've read from the Wall Street Journal that talks about the fact they've been targeting Americans. They are, they are. You know, ICE has been going after, has been going after American citizens. And so the question is, you know, are they going to make the pivot or have they so denuded Homeland Security? Have they so have they so stripped the Department of Justice and the FBI of their ability to do what they were supposed to do, the number one job, the Prime Directive to protect the homeland from terrorism. Have they done that? Or have they been so obsessed with their own Trumpian MAGA agenda? And I Think there's going to be a huge reckoning on that.
- [20:01]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you. And you can add to that the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, going around trying to prove Donald Trump's batshit crazy election conspiracy theories. That seems to be what her job is now at this point instead of being in charge of defending the homeland. And Charlie, again, another job that was created in the aftermath of 9 11, the DNI was created so you wouldn't have stove piping of information, intelligence information, going to the CIA and the DIA and all of these other agencies. And you don't have one place that warehouses and brings out all, all that information together. And Tulsi Gabbard is just not up to the job. And if we're now in a kind of post 911 type of national security era, these people are just not up to the assignment. They don't understand the assignment, it seems to me.
- [20:48]
Charlie Sykes
I'm not even sure that is the assignment in this administration right now. They have assigned them to do other things that will seem really. And then again, I always think about what historians are going to make of our time. They're going to look back on this and recognize just this weird moment at which this country was vulnerable. And it's that moment we decided to cut ourselves off from our allies, cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, pick fights with the rest of the democracies, and then focus this massive security apparatus internally against fellow Americans and residents of the United States. I think this will be an extraordinary chapter in American history. Extraordinary ugly, no question.
- [21:30]
Jim Acosta
Charlie. Well, Charlie, great catching up. Thanks as always for your time. Hope we can do it again soon. Good to see you, Charlie.
- [21:38]
Charlie Sykes
Anytime. Thank you very much.
- [21:39]
Jim Acosta
Thanks a lot. As Charlie and I were talking about, I mean, this, this is the story that took my breath away over the weekend. And I have one person to thank for that, and that is my friend Juliette Jeske over at Decoding Fox News. And Juliet is joining us to talk about this. I woke up on Sunday morning and saw the video that everybody else saw and it was just absolutely disturbing what was coming out of Dover, Delaware. Julia, can you hear me? No, she can't hear me. She might have to drop out and jump back in. But just to start this segment all over again, I, you know, I woke up on Sunday morning as disturbed as everybody else was with the sight of this video coming out of Dover, Delaware of Donald Trump, you know, greeting these remains of these U. S. Service members wearing a baseball cap. And lo and behold, it's being reported online and then verified by experts who cover this stuff that Fox and Friends went and put out the wrong video of Donald Trump greeting the the transfer of remains from a year ago. And Julia Jeske of Decoding Fox News is here with us now to talk about this. Julia, it's great to see as always. I think I'm hearing a little bit of an echo. I wonder if, Juliet, we should have you jump, drop back, drop out and jump back in. We're just having some technical problems.
- [23:08]
Julia Jeske
Yeah, I was having no audio whatsoever, so you weren't hearing me at all. You would cut out and then going in and out. I'll try it again. Hold on.
- [23:16]
Jim Acosta
Okay, we'll stand by for you. But anyway, yeah, I mean, let's, let's play this video because I want to show this video, the video of that they played on Fox.
- [23:26]
News Anchor (possibly Jim Acosta or another newsreader)
Turning now to your headlines, President Trump, First Lady Trump Vice President JD Vance and Secretary Lady Usha Vance attending a dignified transfer to honor the final homecoming of the six U.S. service members killed in Kuwait. The solemn ritual returns the remains of troops killed in action. It is considered one of the most somber duties of a commander in chief. President Trump promising the nation that they will all be remembered as heroes.
- [23:51]
Jim Acosta
I mean, you know, I know this is not the most serious story, disturbing story, important story of over the weekend, but when you see Fox showing the wrong video, when you see Fox showing video and the video that was just being played a few moments ago for the folks who were just, you know, catching on to all this and they're showing video from a year ago when, when Trump was there for a similar dignified transfer of remains, but he wasn't wearing a baseball cap. Juliet, you alerted me to this. On Sunday morning, I woke up to a message from you saying, hey, Jim, you got to take a look at this. This is CR Crazy. Fox just played the wrong video. They played video from a year ago showing Donald Trump in Dover, Delaware, not wearing a baseball cap, apparently because they understood what a huge PR Problem Trump was having because he had worn a baseball cap with USA on it. A tacky baseball cap to the dignified transfer remains on Saturday. Julia, what do you, what do you
- [24:49]
Charlie Sykes
make of all this?
- [24:51]
Julia Jeske
You know, I don't have proof that Fox intentionally used the wrong clip, but I have been watching FOX for my job for four years now. And I know that they do all kinds of dirty tricks like boost audio, change audio. And the account that caught that clip was is called
- [25:13]
Jim Acosta
Bad Fox Graphics.
- [25:14]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [25:14]
Julia Jeske
Bad fox. Thank you so much.
- [25:16]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [25:16]
Julia Jeske
And they are anonymous, and so. And they have a smaller following. And I wanted to boost that as much as possible, which is why I contacted you immediately.
- [25:26]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [25:27]
Julia Jeske
And I contacted some other folks and was like, boost this, boost this, boost this. And you, like, immediately made a video about it and, like, went all. All in.
- [25:35]
Jim Acosta
Oh, yeah.
- [25:36]
Julia Jeske
And because I was so alarmed at the idea that they would just substitute the footage because those are different people in different coffins. Like, what are you doing?
- [25:48]
Jim Acosta
Exactly.
- [25:49]
Julia Jeske
Just to hide the fact that Trump was wearing this goofy white baseball cap. And the thing that's also shocking is that Trump surrounded himself with people who will not say, hey, by the way, can you take the cap off?
- [26:02]
Jim Acosta
Take the cap off, Mr. President, you should not have a baseball cap on to receive these remains. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
- [26:12]
Julia Jeske
Okay. Yeah. So that's. That's what was so disturbing about it. And then what ended up happening is later, Asen, who works for Midas Touch, found evidence that they were using the same old clip on other shows on Fox that weekend. And then on Sunday, after they apologized, they made, like, a formal apology for using the wrong footage. They started using footage that didn't show Trump at all. So, like. Which made them look guiltier. Which made them look guiltier because it was like, what are you doing with this whole idea of we, oh, we weren't trying to hide the cap, but now we're just going to show footage that, you know, Trump's completely erased from that. And that's. I mean, that's ridiculously suspicious.
- [26:56]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. I mean, let me just explain something to the viewers, because people need to understand how this works when video is ingested. This is based on my experience working for cable news, you know, for 18 years, when video is now ingested into these digital video systems. So, for example, when the video comes in on Saturday of the transfer of remains over at Dover, it goes right into the system. And then these control rooms at Fox or CNN or msnbc, whatever, they can immediately access that video by, with a couple of, you know, clicks of a mouse or strokes of a keyboard and so on. What makes this very disturbing is that Fox was, I guess, alerted to the fact that Trump was making a mockery of this by wearing a baseball cap. And so some genius somewhere said, oh, why don't we go find the footage of him at one of these dignified transfers last year when he wasn't. When he wasn't wearing a baseball cap. And so they were starting to play that video. The problem, you know, Fox came out and said, oh, it was an innocent Mistake, we didn't mean to do it, so on and so forth. The reason why that's bullshit is because to go into the archive system of a TV news network, it's going into a different system. The videos that it's ingested same day is easily accessible. The control rooms from show to show, they make these, these, these digital video systems pretty accessible. So that way, you know, show A can hand off to show B and they all can access the same kind of video. But to go into the archive that from last video from last year, that's going into a different system. That's, that's going on a different sort of Easter egg hunt, if you will. And that's why this whole thing doesn't add up to me when they say, oh, we just put the wrong video in there, you know, exactly like anybody else would know in cable news that you have that video from Saturday easily accessible.
- [28:47]
Charlie Sykes
It's.
- [28:47]
Jim Acosta
You just, you know, go into there and click the number, okay, I need this video. Put that in there and so on. Archival video is very, is a very different thing. So that's why, Juliet, this whole thing does not add up to me. And it sounds like a load of bullshit from Fox, which is obviously not a big surprise, but the fact that they think that they could get away with it. And then the other thing that you were mentioning, which is when you show, when you say to the American people, you know, the dignified transfer of these service members just occurred, and you're showing video from a year ago, you're not even showing the video of the remains of the soldiers who just gave up their lives for this war, for Donald Trump's war of choice. I mean, it's horrendous on that level too. But I mean, to think that they could just get away with this, to me is shocking.
- [29:34]
Julia Jeske
Yeah, it is one of those things where I kind of wonder who complained? Was it a family member, was it a veterans group, Somebody who had an eagle eye who said, wait a second, that's not the right footage. Because, I mean, bad Fox Graphics noticed it. And bad Fox Graphics hunted down the other footage and found the date and everything and was able to, you know, say, well, look, this is where they pulled it from. It was from December. And that's the thing is, like, I wonder why they reacted the way they did, because I've seen that network, you know, blatantly lie and just keep going, keep sailing like it's no problem. And so I kind of wonder who complained to cause them to have that reaction. Because, because it was just. It was repugnant to me. I was angry. I mean, it's like that network makes me mad all the time. But this was one of the times where I was like, that's it. When I saw that clip, I was like, I mean, I emailed Aaron Rupar. I said, we need to boost this as much as possible. And everybody started boosting it. And then it got international press. And that was after Fox had already apologized. But it was like, you know, what were you thinking? To give an example of how blatant they are during the 250 army parade, only in the Fox News footage, they added this Happy Birthday song that you could hear, but you couldn't see anybody. And it was always. It sounded like it was all male voices, which was kind of odd. And then I. Because I noticed it when other people started noticing manipulation in the audio, they noticed audio was being boosted all over the place, Applause was being boosted, that sort of thing. I hunted down about 12 other versions of it online. I, like, looked every single source I could find, lined them up. No one else had the Happy Birthday song. No one, including Fox Nation, which is their streaming, their streaming channel. And I was like, who on earth just stuck the song in there thinking they could get away with that? The footage was slightly different, and you could see an audio where they cut off somebody speaking. A paratrooper was giving Trump a gift and they cut off his speech a little bit to fit the song. And none of the other ones had that. You could hear them clear as day. And I'm like, the fact that they do that sort of just brazen manipulation and trickery with footage is why I immediately thought, this is not real. And even my goofy system, I'm one person with hard drives, you know, with external hard drives all over my apartment labeled and everything. All of my clips, every single clip has a date on it. So how on earth would I pull the wrong clip, you know, because I would see immediately it's the wrong clip because it would say the date. I mean, that's what. And I'm like, very low tech. I'm not cable news. I don't have a whole crew of people. And I know exactly what you're talking about because we learned that in grad school, how quickly the footage goes straight to, you know, the control center. Nobody's. There's not this whole, like, oh, we can work on this for hours. If you film it, they're working on it immediately. Especially something like that. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty Outrageous. And I'm glad they apologized.
- [32:46]
Jim Acosta
But no, this was a up. This. But it was an apology with a lie baked into it because they said it was an honest, honest mistake. Juliet, you know, because of your years of covering this, that Fox basically acts like a propaganda arm of the White House, of the Trump team, of the Trump administration. They've been doing this for years. I mean, I mean, I'll just remind folks that, you know, there have been instances where Fox personalities have shown up at Trump rallies and appeared as sort of characters at his rallies. There are also, you know, the, the interviews that Trump will do on Fox and Friends from time to time where they try to wrap it up. They try to wrap it up for, for him because he's getting into unflattering territory and so on. And so that, this is just what they do. They just, they just repeatedly act like, I mean, I want to say like his fluffer, but it's worse than that. They're, they are acting like part of the administration and they are, they are there to clean up his dirty diapers and clean up and clean things up for him, which is what they did over the weekend.
- [33:54]
Julia Jeske
And, and I've seen them do things like look right into the camera and say, thank you so much for voting for Donald J. Trump. Like, what. How is that a news program? You know, not, not to mention Lindsey Graham, who's probably the most egregious about this. He will openly beg for money on Fox all the time. He will be like, lindsey Graham dot com, go to my website right now and donate, because I will help Donald J. Trump. I mean, openly shill. And it's, it's, it's amazing. And they have, you know, they have pollsters on there who use the term we all the time when they're talking about the midterms of we need to win the midterms. And I'm like, how, how is this like. And then you guys criticize Fox will criticize other news programs for being, quote, unquote, biased. And then like, the, the time that, the most recent time that Kaylee, I, I've told you this. When Kayleigh McEnany said your name, because they were talking about CNN and somehow they wrapped you into it. I'm like, he's independent now, guys. You can't. I was gone for a year. Yeah, I wasn't expecting it because they were talking about Don Lemon and Jake Tapper, and then out of nowhere, Kaylee McAnee's. If you saw the whole, the whole unedited segment, she just Goes, she just goes, Jim Acosta.
- [35:14]
Charlie Sykes
Like
- [35:16]
Jim Acosta
these are true, but they're trigger words for their audience, I guess is what they've realized. And so my name or Don's name will trigger their audience in some way. And it's very strange. But I mean, this is part of the game that they play. They play this game where they are actually not fair and balanced. I mean, we've known this for a very long time. There's shills for the administration. But they, I mean, Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary, she once told me that they work hand in glove with one another and that, you know, they will, you know, go back and forth in emails between the White House and Fox over how the coverage is going and how the segment should go and what should be included and what not should be included. And it's a very close relationship. And I don't think the American people understand it all that well. The one time we got a peek behind the curtain was around the 2020 election in January 6, when, remember during January 6, the January 6 committee unearthed all of these text messages between Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Mark Meadows. And there were all these text messages that showed that they're very chummy with one another. And they were talking about the fact, I mean, Hannity at one point was talking about how Trump has to stop talking about these conspiracy theories because of the 25th Amendment. And I mean, so I mean, people need to understand when what happened over the weekend was no accident, that was intentional, that was to pull the wool over people's eyes. And Juliet, the thing that scares me, and I wrote about this in my substack today, is that, you know, this is a cautionary tale for where we're going. CBS has already been taken over by Paramount, very Trumpy, the Ellisons and so on. We've seen what their anchor, the evening news Tony Du couple has done. He's made a mockery of that newscast. We've seen what 60 Minutes has done and now they're buying WBD, trying to own CNN. And my concern, Juliet, is that we're going to have this, you know, state media like system in this country in a few years from now where they're really going to have a lot of control over a lot of eyeballs in this country. And they can pull that kind of shit like they pulled at Dover over the weekend.
- [37:14]
Julia Jeske
With Dover over the weekend, it, it's really terrifying. And the, another weird little layer I noticed the day the war started, which technically started at night in the middle of the night. But, but that Saturday morning, this was interesting. The regular cast of Fox and Friends, the A team, as it were, Brian Kilmeade, Ansley Eart and Lawrence Jones were sitting in the studio. And so the Saturday morning cast, and there was no explanation, like, no joke about, oh, we got a call in the middle of the night. No, they were just there ready to go. And I thought, huh, that seems like somebody got tipped off. Because we didn't really get wind of this. It started, technically, I looked it up at like 11:50 is when we started attacking them right before midnight. But it didn't really leak out until about 3:00am and, you know, that's when it really hit social media. And I was like, okay, so Brian Kilmeade lives in Long island and they have to get there early. They don't get there at 6am Right. They have to get in hair and makeup and all that and mic'd up. So how on earth did he get there on time? You know, because they would wake him up in the middle of, you know, they weren't expecting to go into work. So I'm like, I personally think somebody got tipped off because it just seemed completely bizarre that the three of them were there, like, no big deal.
- [38:31]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, like Fox, you might want to have your A team there ready to go.
- [38:34]
Julia Jeske
Instead of having Rachel Campos Duffy say something insane, you know, because she's the weekend host. And the next day she was doing exactly that. She was saying completely nonsensical things. She didn't know what she was talking about. They'd have Jennifer Griffin on there going, what? No, no, no, no, no, no. Like trying to explain to her, Jennifer Griffin. I know, I don't. She's an actual legitimate journalist that's still there.
- [38:56]
Jim Acosta
But Julia, there's one another piece of video I want to show this that you called our attention to. Let's play it and talk about on the other side. That also we gave India special permission
- [39:06]
Lindsey Graham
to buy Russian oil, which I don't know, Scott Besson.
- [39:10]
Jim Acosta
They used to, you know, India's getting
- [39:12]
Lindsey Graham
killed because they decided to buy from. To get. To buy from other people for us in order to cut the trade deal. So they're going to be allowed to
- [39:20]
Jim Acosta
bring Russian oil into the Indian refineries. Just temporarily.
- [39:23]
Lindsey Graham
Temporarily.
- [39:24]
News Anchor (possibly Jim Acosta or another newsreader)
Until we can get that straight open.
- [39:27]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Juliet, explain the significance of this when Brian Kilmeade, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, appears to be realizing on the air how the war on Iran, war against Iran is helpful to the Russians.
- [39:41]
Julia Jeske
Yeah. That was shocking because it did seem like it was dawning on him as he was saying it. Like, wait a second. Like, wait, is this going to help Russia? We're going to. We're going to let India buy Russian oil. What? Like, as he was saying it, it was like, and. And I clipped that thinking, well, that's kind of. Kind of, you know, crazy, not realizing how big it would be. And I think it's. It's close to a million on Instagram right now. It just completely blew up because other people saw what I saw. Sometimes I clip stuff and I'm like, I don't know if I'm just, you know, thinking, this is more exciting than it is. And then I watched the audience just go crazy for it. And that one was shocking because he will say things like, he's done that for a while now. He'll be like, yeah, this Putin guy doesn't seem like he's a good person. Like, duh. Like, I mean, I know that's when goofy. I do. I kind of imitate most of them. Some of the men, I can't do, but I can do my Brian Kilmeade. But he'll do this bit where he is one of the few people on the network who's consistently been pro Ukraine, whereas others have wavered. And so he definitely has strong feelings about Russia and Putin. But it still hasn't seemed to dawn on him, like, hey, the Trump administration is not in line where it probably should be with this whole, you know, a much larger country invading its neighbor for no reason. We should be against that. You know, hey, Brian, kill me. Make it click. But he's, like, halfway there, like, today,
- [41:16]
Jim Acosta
I almost want to cheer him on. Like, yes, you're there.
- [41:18]
Julia Jeske
Almost there. You're almost there. You're almost there. Because people always joke, like, who's dumber? Jesse Waters or Brian Kilmeade. I'm like, man, that's. That's tough that they're dumb in different ways. So it's. That one's. That one's tough. But.
- [41:32]
Jim Acosta
But the other thing that is interesting, the other aspect of what you're talking about that is interesting about, like, that piece of video that you just played is sort of like when those moments when we sort of come out of the state media bubble where they sort of accidentally tell the truth on Fox, that sort of. That was an example of that.
- [41:51]
Julia Jeske
And it. In it. And it.
- [41:53]
Jim Acosta
They break character.
- [41:54]
Julia Jeske
It happens more than you think. And it's. It's wild because they have, like, these realizations. Of like what? Like today they made a comment about, like, did you know that the fear of something going wrong with the oil and market can cause the price of oil to go up? Just the fear. And I'm like, you've just discovered how the commodities markets work. Wow. I was sitting there like, what is. You're almost there.
- [42:20]
Jim Acosta
Please clap.
- [42:21]
Julia Jeske
Are almost there. Like all the time. I. Well, sometimes they'll talk about something like, too, like, well, you mean that consumers who aren't happy about something will stop buying. And I'm like, capitalism. We're realizing that capitalism is a thing. I mean, there's times where I just, I just shake my head like they're so close, but yet so far away.
- [42:43]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [42:43]
Julia Jeske
Because, you know, they ultimately have to do, you know, the glorious leader. They ultimately have to just, when in doubt, bow down before the glorious leader and promote whatever the heck he's promoting.
- [42:55]
Jim Acosta
That's right. Yeah. At the end of the day, and this goes back to what we saw over the weekend. It's all about pleasing the dear leader and making sure the dear leader making sure we don't see that the emperor has no, no clothes. Or in this case, that the emperor has no hat.
- [43:07]
Julia Jeske
Yeah.
- [43:08]
Jim Acosta
That is what fox was doing over the weekend, trying to make sure that we didn't see the emperor with his base, his tacky baseball cap on that no president should ever wear at Dover, should not be anywhere near Dover, Delaware. But Juliet, great to see, as always. Thank you so much.
- [43:23]
Julia Jeske
Thanks for having me.
- [43:24]
Jim Acosta
This was fun. Thanks again. Good to see you. And you know, she's, she is doing incredible work, Juliet. So make sure you follow her, subscribe to her, support her work however you can. Because, I mean, I almost feel like Juliet should have like a team of like 20 people analyzing what fox does on a regular basis because of the. That they try to pull on the American people. And this is why. This is going back to my cable news days that I referred to fox as the bullshit factory. I called them the factory because all they basically do is the American people into believing that Donald Trump is a legitimate president who is serious about what he does. And we just need to. We just need to go over again exactly what we have witnessed over the weekend as we are learning the names and learning about the deaths of more u. S. Service members. Donald Trump is treating all of this with the seriousness that he treats a round of golf at one of his golf courses. And, and I mean, we just need to show the picture. Once again, here's Donald Trump. He's out on the golf course. He's down in Florida, I think this is at Doral. And there he is on the golf cart in his white polo, in the. In the blue slacks, in the white shoes, which I. How does anybody think that's a good look? I don't know why people think that's a good look. It's not a good look. He's wearing the baseball cap. And I believe it is the same cap or it is a similar cap to what he wore in Dover, Delaware. If we have that photograph, we should show that photograph of Donald Trump in Dover, Delaware, with the white baseball cap on. If we have that. I believe we should have that. And, I mean, it just says to me, like, my God, what in the hell is going on? Why can't Donald Trump just behave as a president of the United States should behave when you have something like this happen in this country? And it just seems to me we don't have that kind of a president right now. We don't have the kind of president that we need when we're. When we're at war. I mean, Donald Trump can send. Donald Trump can send. He is the commander in chief. There's no question about it. He can send American members of the military, our men and women in uniform, into harm's way whenever he feels like it. And that is where we are right now. That is why you have Lindsey Graham cheerleading Donald Trump on into Cuba at this moment. Are we really going to drop bombs on Havana? Is that. Is that the next move for Donald Trump? But this is what he has unleashed in the Middle East. This is the chaos that has been unleashed in that region. And so, of course, it makes sense that when. And. And there's the. There's the picture right there. This is Donald Trump. This is what the American people who watch Fox News did not see over the weekend unless they were seeing this live. They did not see Donald Trump at Dover at the dignified transfer of remains of US Service members. They did not see Donald Trump wearing that white baseball cap. If they're watching Fox News. If they're watching Fox News, they did not see Donald Trump wearing that ridiculous, tacky white baseball cap. We get it. You claim to love America. You have USA in big letters on your baseball cap. We don't care. What we care about is showing respect to members of our armed forces who make the ultimate sacrifice. And I. You know, for the life of me, I don't understand how the people at Fox can live with themselves. It is dis. It is disgraceful. It is disgusting to try to cover up Donald Trump's bad behavior by showing video from a different dignified transfer about a year ago. And again, let's play it again one more time so the viewers can see this exactly what Fox tried to pull over the weekend. This is the video that they tried to show as they were talking about the dignified transfer.
- [47:37]
News Anchor (possibly Jim Acosta or another newsreader)
Turning now to your headlines. President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President J.D. vance and Secretary Lady Usha Vance attending a dignified transfer to honor the final homecoming of the six U.S. service members killed in Kuwait. The solemn ritual returns the remains of troops killed in action. It is considered one of the most somber duties of a commander in chief. President Trump promising the nation that they will all be remembered as heroes.
- [48:02]
Jim Acosta
It's absolutely disgraceful. It's absolutely disgraceful. What this shows is multiple things. Not only is Fox acting like state TV and trying to cover up for Donald Trump's ridiculous, awful behavior, but Fox themselves is showing disrespect. The people at Fox themselves are showing disrespect to those service members. Those service members deserve our respect. Those, those service members and their families, my God, they deserve the whole world. I mean, think about what those families are going through right now. Think about what has been lost since Donald Trump started this war of choice in the Middle East. One of those service members who lost her life was a mother. And Fox is showing the wrong video from over a year ago or about a year ago to try to cover up for Donald Trump and what he's done. The fact that he wore a baseball cap to Dover, Delaware, that's, that's what Fox is going to do. And so for Fox to go out there and say, oh, it was just an honest mistake. We didn't mean to do it. Innocent mistake. Bullshit. That is bullshit. And I, you know, I wrote about this today. I am deeply worried about this, folks. I'm deeply, and you've heard me talk about this before. I'm going to talk about it again. I am deeply worried about where we are going as a country right now. Because, folks, make no mistake, Fox is no longer the only game in town when it comes to state TV in America. CBS has decided to become state TV in America. You saw the anchor of the CBS Evening News and one of his newscasts by saying, we salute you, Marco Rubio. After the US Took out Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, that same anchor tried to both sides. What took place on January 6th. We saw 60 Minutes over at CBS try to bury a story on seacot, the Gulag in El Salvador that the Trump administration uses to to warehouse migrant detainees. It's gotten so bad over there that Anderson Cooper left 60 Minutes. He doesn't want any part of it, it seems. And, and just today we learned that one of their stellar correspondents, Scott McFarlane, is leaving CBS because apparently he doesn't want any part of this. He wants to go and do his own thing now. And so what is happening over at cbs, it seems to me what CBS is becoming is another Fox. But we already have one Fox. And we saw what they were capable of over the weekend. We saw what they're, they're willing to do. They're willing to try to, they're willing to pull the wool over the eyes of their viewers and show you images of Donald Trump at a dignified transfer in 2025 to say, oh, look, he was showing respect to these service members who just lost their lives and came home. Are we now we're going to have another network do that? And keep in mind Paramount, the company that bought cbs, that owns CBS now, is trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. And it appears that they're going to do that. They're going to own cnn. CNN is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. So we're not going to have two foxes. We're going to have three foxes. How many fucking foxes are we going to have in this country? What we need is the news. What we need is a commitment to good journalism in this country, to giving it to people straight. If the President of the United States fucks up and wears a baseball cap to the dignified transfer of US Service member remains, by golly, every newscast in the country, every newspaper in the country should show what an asshat Donald Trump is being. That is the job of the news. It's not the job of the news to sugarcoat or whitewash or cover up what the President of the United States is doing. Not when it comes to matters of war and peace. Hell no. Did anybody sign up for that? I don't think so. But it seems to me that that's what's taking place in this country. Unless something changes. And I wrote about this in my substack. It seems to me that the Democrats are running for the White House. The Democrats are running for office in these midterms. They need to stay very clearly that these media consolidations and mergers need to end. We can't have these mega billionaire monstrosities of CBS and CNN and God knows what's next trying to pretend like they're another version of Fox News. What kind of crazy Orwellian horseshit system are we becoming in this country? It's not a free press. It's not a free press, ladies and gentlemen, when the billionaire buddies of Donald Trump can gobble up all of the nation's news networks and then start running propaganda, that's not a free press. And that's why I'm, I'm going to make my segue here. That is why supporting independent media is so important. That is why it makes a huge difference when you're watching this program that you support independent media. If this pisses you off as much as it pisses me off, and believe me, I was furious about this just about all weekend. Not only that Donald Trump wore a goddamn baseball cap to Dover, but that Fox tried to cover it up,
- [53:40]
Charlie Sykes
that
- [53:41]
Jim Acosta
Fox tried to cover it up. That should. Off, that should boil the blood of every American who cares about our military in this country. But Fox doesn't care about that. All they care about is sucking up to the dear leader. All they care about is making him look good. And it's got to end. And that's why I say the next president that comes in needs to break up the Fox media empire. Fox News, you can, you, the Murdoch family, they can, they can own Fox on cable. You should not be able to own TV stations too. That monstrosity needs to be broken up. Paramount, you can buy CBS, but you can't buy CNN too. All of these billionaire who think they can just buy up all, all of these media properties and then brainwash and the American people have another thing coming. And that thing that's coming is democracy, it seems to me, because people have had it up to here with this Horeshit. They've had it up to here with the factory and they don't want other factories up and down the aisle when it comes to our, our choices for what kind of media we want to watch and consume in this country. And so that is why it, that this is. I mean, this is, this is the case that I try to make every, just about every day now. This is why I'm making the case to support independent media. I'm making the case to support independent media because it seems to me right now it is the only path forward. It is the only way forward. Congress and the President, they're not going to turn around and start pumping money into public broadcasting tomorrow. That's not going to happen. That ain't gonna happen, folks. Maybe if we get a Democratic president, Democratic Congress in 2029, we can start pumping money into public broadcasting. PBS, NPR, all the live long day but until then, until then, this is what we've got. We got to figure out a way to. To make sure the independent media thrives in this country. And not just, not just to keep tabs on Donald Trump, not just to hold his feet to the fire, but to. To make sure that these corporate media overlords understand that we're going to hold their feet to the fire, too. Their asses are on the line, too. And we're going to make sure, we're going to make damn sure that they're not going to be able to pull the. That that Fox and Donald Trump was trying to pull over the weekend. That's why independent media matters. It is so you have reliable refs keeping track of what's going on out there in front of the American people out there on the world stage. Because if they can just, if, if they can just pull the wool over all of our eyes and say, oh, no, no, Donald Trump wasn't wearing a baseball cap at Dover. Oh, no, no, we have the footage. Let's show it to you. If that is what we become as a society, we are, we are in big trouble, ladies and gentlemen. We are in very big trouble. Support independent media. Let your voice be heard. Subscribe, like, share. Support these programs, not just mine, but what folks like Juliet does over at Decoding Fox News, where Charlie Sykes does with his podcast. All the great podcasts that we have and support on the show, those hosts that we support on this, all of that matters. Because look at the direction all of this is heading right now. And it has to be stopped. It has to be stopped. My thanks to Charlie Sykes. Always enjoy talking to him. My thanks to Julia Jeske as well. My thanks to all of you for watching. Sorry it was a little bit delayed getting the show on today, traveling back, but I'm back in D.C. and I am still reporting from Washington. And I am Jim Acosta, and I'll see you next time.