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- [00:01]
A
Live on a Thursday with the, the trailblazer of independent media, the person who is our North Star, as a lot of us jump into this pool, Jim Acosta. Good morning.
- [00:11]
B
Morning, Scott. Thank you. That's very kind.
- [00:14]
A
Well, it's, it's, it's true, and it's, it's increasingly true day by day. I want to hear about your speech in Montana. You talked about the future of democracy, and I think more people need to hear your message. Tell me what you were saying.
- [00:27]
B
Well, I appreciate you bringing that up. I, you know, I don't do this very often, you know, go out there and just sort of let it rip and, you know, talk about, you know, what I think about the state of our country and the threat to our democracy and so on. But, you know, these aren't normal times. And I just, I just thought, let's do this. Let's give this a shot. You might feel the same way. It's a little uncomfortable getting out of that reporter's skin and, you know, taking off that reporter hat. I've been doing this for, you know, more, more than a year now of just kind of letting it rip. So I thought, okay, can I do this in front of an audience? So I did it in front of an audience, and, you know, I, you know, I, Scott, I just think that we're in a lot of trouble right now. And, you know, you have the President of the United States. I mean, just look at the headlines this week. If the reports are true that the FBI is going after a reporter at the Atlantic for, you know, doing a story about the alleged drinking habits of the FBI director. I mean, that's, that's pretty crazy. If you look at the reporting that apparently the DOJ conducted a raid over at the office of Louise Lucas, the state senator in Virginia, after she had worked on redistricting in that state. I mean, you know, James Comey last week, the seashells, you know, case and so on. I mean, I will say when I did the speech in Montana, you know, one of the biggest laugh lines that I got, and I try to inject a little humor into this. This is part of what I do. I have a lot of corny dad jokes. But, you know, I, I, I made sure that the crowd there did not have any seashells on hand. I knew we were in Montana, pretty far away from the beach. But I just, you know, just to be clear, you know, seashells are not allowed, and you cannot arrange them into the numbers 8647. And I, I, I don't even know. If I say 8647 on your show, does the FBI come bursting through my door just because I mentioned those numbers? And so if you don't laugh, you'll cry. But I just think that there's a lot right now that we have to be very concerned about. And if the public is not paying attention, then we haven't done our jobs.
- [02:35]
A
Scott, I got a lot to ask you about that, but you chose Montana as your venue. We have some great independent journalists in Montana. I'm sorry, is Montana receptive to that message? Since not exactly a purple area. At least not.
- [02:48]
B
Yeah, I thought, I thought, well, why not? Let's go to one of the reddest places in the country just to see what happens. And I will tell you, they now have. I got sort of a crash course on Montana politics. While I was out there. Our friend Marisa Giorgio, who has the Grounded podcast on Substack, she invited me out there. So I, I said, okay, let's do this. And, you know, it is, it is a very red state. But only recently, you know, they've had Democratic governors. They had John Tester as a Democratic sen. Senator. And this time around, you know, with the two Democratic congressional districts, there is the potential that one of those districts could turn blue. The one where Missoula is located, that's where the University of Montana is located. So, so, you know, it's, it's maybe more of a blue dot in a red state, but the state itself, I will tell you, Scott, I went for a wonderful hike on Sunday with the family of the late Congressman Pat Williams. You know, as part of my payment for, for coming out there, they took me on a nice hike, which was terrific. And, and, you know, they, you know, they, they really believe that things are changing out there. And as we were driving out to this hike and we were going through a pretty trumpy area, this was way outside of Missoula. We were seeing signs about, you know, defending the free press, defending democracy and so on, and so. And I barely saw any Trump signs. You know, you know, you and I are in the dmv, and so if we go out to the Skyline Drive in Virginia or something like that, you know, I know this from growing up in Virginia. Used to see a lot of Confederate flag out in that neck of the woods. Now you see a lot of, or you used to see a lot of Trump flags and Trump signs. These days, you don't see that quite as much. And I found that to be the same case out in Montana. Similar case out in Montana. And my sense of it is, is that people are, no matter where you are in this country, getting very disillusioned with what is happening. I think it's probably in large part because of gas prices and Trump breaking his promises on the war in Iran and Epstein. But I sense a shift in the tides.
- [04:53]
A
I'm seeing the same thing here in Virginia. Route 15 as you go down to Culpepper, as you go south to Madison county. Used to be you not only see Confederate flags, but walls of Trump signs, they're absent. Route 15 in Pennsylvania, as you go through Perry county, up towards Williamsport, saw a whole bunch of nothing. And that speaks to the moment we're in, where there is an energy problem for the President. There's a. There's a dispassionate Republican base right now. But I agree with your thesis that we're in more trouble than people recognize. And I've been uniquely troubled over the last 24 hours. Whatever reason they have for raiding the offices of Virginia's most prominent legislative Democrat, whatever reasons they have, the timing was not subtle. I mean, the timing was provocative. It's just bonkers. To raid somebody's office 15 days after that person defeated you at the ballot box. Yes, that's going to be potentially poisonous to whatever grand jury or jury they present this matter to. But let's put that aside. Over the course of those 24 hours, Jim had part of the Department of Justice, you know, using some of their resources, time and bandwidth to be clown themselves by name, calling reporters and trying to troll people on social media. I want more out of my Department of Justice. I want them to stop the terrorists, the mobsters and the child pornographers, not to spend their time, you know, playing games with reporters.
- [06:17]
B
Yeah.
- [06:17]
A
Do you notice this Department of Justice as one of the. Or perhaps the biggest threat?
- [06:25]
B
Yes, I think that. And Barack Obama was talking about this. President Obama was talking about this with Stephen Colbert just this week. That. And I've been, you know, I will say I don't want to take any credit or anything because I doubt very seriously that Obama has any time to listen to what I have to say. But I have been, and I'm sure you have, too. I've been screaming about this for several weeks now that there needs to be a law, new laws need to be passed to, to prevent future administrations from doing this. It would be nice if we could prevent this administration from doing this. But my sense of it is that they're not, they're not going to Stop. And that it's going to take a voter revolt come this November to really send the message and for Donald Trump to be know, turned into a, you know, perhaps the biggest lame duck in history for, for some of this to subside. But even then he's got control over the federal government. He's got control over the executive branch. And I think you're absolutely right, you know, for this to come just a couple of weeks after this redistricting battle in Virginia, which was successfully won by the Democrats, which by the way, we should note, you know, they, they responded in this way because Donald Trump starting this in Texas and so on, he just pun, they just punished a bunch of state lawmakers, Republican, state lawmakers in Indian for not getting on board with it. So they're playing hardball right now. And you know, I saw one of the comments go by earlier that disillusionment is not enough. Make no mistake. I'm pissed. I'm an angry American. And I, I, I'm, I, I'm proud of it. And I will say it on my show and I'll, I'll communicate it to an audience if I speak. I think people should be angry and, and pissed right now. I don't, I'm not going full Howard Beal this morning, but my sense of it is right now is that when you have the Justice Department doing what it did at Louise Lucas's office and then apparently they brought Fox News along with them. And I saw some of the, the comments on social media. You know, well, hey, how come, you know, Roger Stone had, you know, when he was busted by the Fed, CNN was there and the whole thing went down on cnn. And, and, and I saw people in the comments saying, yes, but who was president of the United States when Roger Stone got pinched? It was Donald Trump. And so, you know, some of the, some of the troll it, but honestly, I think inside the Trump administration, they are governing by trolling. They are governing through using the federal government to instill fear in the American people. And they absolutely, I mean, I suppose this could be a giant coincidence, but come on, this was absolutely, it seems to me a message that was being sent to Democrats and other states that if you try to respond in kind to what they're doing in Texas and other places, that the Department of Justice will come after you. And that is a massive abuse of power. That is not who we are as a country. And whenever I say this, people say it is who we are as a country because we're doing it right now. But it is not who we should be as a country. And there has to be. There must be consequences. There must be accountability for this kind of behavior, it seems to me. Or what are we doing here as Americans? And the old saying about fascism is that it's one third of society abusing another 33rd of society while the other third watches. We can't just let that happen in this country.
- [09:43]
A
There.
- [09:43]
B
There needs to be pushback in a major, sustained way or else this administration is going to continue to do this. And what we're seeing now is just, you know, kind of kids play compared to what could be coming.
- [09:57]
A
Inviting Fox News along for a raid is not something you do when you care about winning a case. It's something you do when you're trying to mechanize the Department of Justice to send messages to chill people, to change people, people to scare people. You don't do that to increase your odds in the courtroom. Any federal prosecutor will tell you that. I got a lot to unpack from the comments. First of all, people like you and me get the network reference. So did the people in the comments. And Lily was an extra.
- [10:24]
B
I'm mad as hell.
- [10:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, you know what, though? I think they made us watch that at J School, at journalism school, because it spoke to the trajectory that so much of media was going in. Boy, did they nail that. Did they nail on the head with that movie.
- [10:36]
B
Did you like that movie? I love that movie. That and Broadcast News are probably the two best representations of. Of working in a. In a broadcast news operation, it seems to me.
- [10:46]
A
But the. The Holly Hunter moment where she hands Joan Cusack the tape and Joan Cusack has to duck under fire cabinets to get the thing to the control room to roll the piece on Broadcast News. Yeah, that was. Somebody did good research or had the right consultant, because that was an epitome of so many days in so many.
- [11:05]
B
And I worked at CBS years ago. I don't mean to throw the conversation off course or anything, but I worked at CBS News back in the mid-2000s, and they had those tapes and they used to run down the hallway. So I feel like I got to see just a glimpse of that nuttiness. But it does happen. Yeah.
- [11:19]
A
And the danger we're in right now is one of the. One of the reasons why I departed and quit Legacy Linear Media, because I wanted to be more forthright and unequivocal about it. We need to be able to tell people we're in trouble because the systems that have collapsed, that are being destroyed cannot just be rebuilt. You don't just vote your way out of some of these problems.
- [11:40]
B
True.
- [11:41]
A
There's a grave risk. Some of it does not get rebuilt. And I'm noting in the comments the people from Maine and Michigan, from Alpena, from Ann Arbor, y' all got big elections this year. You are the starting point to fixing what's been broken. But it occurs to me as I watch the state scramble in the Southeast, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, to redistrict.
- [12:05]
B
Yeah.
- [12:05]
A
The courts could prevent Democrats from winning this. You have the Supreme Court opening the floodgate. You have the Florida Supreme Court, which potentially is going to ignore the provisions that prevent gerrymander ring. You have the Virginia. Virginia Democrats did it looks like it's one of those things. It kind of reminds me of the presidential immunity ruling from the Supreme Court in 2024, that the courts, local and federal, could just deliver this thing back to an executive branch which is trying to circumvent the courts.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah, no, I know. And, and that's one of the big concerns that I have heading into the fall is that. And it could be the motivation here from Trump and their political team, which is to get this so tied up in the courts that, you know, you'll have to have multiple challenges to results in various states going all the way, you know, through the process up to the Supreme Court, that we could have a delay in seating a new Congress, that, you know, the results could come in, the Democrats could win the House, maybe eke out a win in the Senate. And because Trump and his people are challenging things in five different things in five different states and 10 different districts, that we don't have a new Congress seated until April, May, June of next year. You know, I've been talking about this on my show. I don't want to sound like, you know, somebody put Jack Daniels in my coffee this morning, but that's a take it to the streets kind of moment, I think, for the American people. And, you know, people need to, you know, I, I just think that they're in the leadership in the Democratic Party. I don't know where they are on this. It seems to me they should be a lot more vocal on this, and they should be just making it very clear to Donald Trump right now, heading into the midterm elections, that if you screw with this election cycle, if you screw with these midterms, if you screw with seating a new Congress come next year, there are going to be major consequences for you and your administration that when the Democrats get the gavel and the various committees that are appropriate on this. There are going to be hearings. Your life is going to be full of hearings. The life of the top administration officials working for you are going to be full of hearings. They're going to be going from one hearing to the next under subpoena, to be asked questions about whether or not you meddled in the midterms and whether or not there's a paper trail, there's a document trail, email trail, text trail, signal trail of you coordinating with various officials to prevent the seating of new Congress. My sense of it is, having witnessed up close and covering the first Trump administration heading into the 2020 elections, is that there was a lot of this going on behind the scenes during the interregnum between the election and January 6th. And my guess is, is that he's just going to do this all over again, that they're going to do this all over again if it looks like it's going to be a landslide and a tidal wave come this November. And so, you know, folks need, they need to kind of strap in and put their helmet and their pads on, because this is going to be, I think, a massive challenge to our democratic process in this country. And, you know, and maybe officials won't respond to a subpoena. Maybe Donald Trump will thumb his nose at the idea of seating a new Congress. Maybe the Supreme Court will go along with him and it will just face this constitutional crisis. I don't want to paint too dark of a picture. It's only 9:50 in the morning. But that to me, going to be a take it to the streets kind of moment in this country. And, you know, you know, we can mark this moment down and we can play this in six months from now. And if I'm wrong, you can say, Jim, you got a little hyperbolic there. You were hyperventilating a little bit. Can, can you calm down now? And I'll say, scott, you were right, I should calm down. But I, I do think that there's a real serious potential for something like that happening.
- [16:08]
A
Couldn't agree more. And I think lionizing and making heroes out of the people who came with weapons to destroy the Capitol last time, making heroes only incentivizes this moving forward. There's a lot of people in the chat, Jim, you need to know this. There's a lot of people in the chat who would like us to flag them if we do the Jack Daniels and coffee show. And, you know, I'm keen on that. When, when the time is right, we can get together and figure out how to how to amplify that? I want to get you out on one broader question, because I talked to folks who were in the White House press corps with you in the first term, and they told me that Trump was at his most careless and stupid when things were going well, and he was at his most dangerous when he was painted in a corner. And I see that the poll numbers flirting with below 30 feels like he's at his most dangerous now.
- [16:56]
B
I think so, too. And, you know, that is what happened back in 2020. I know you were over at the Capitol. I was at the White House. And, you know, you just got the sense that they, that desperation was setting in. And I think a lot of what you're seeing this week with Iran, not to, you know, divert from the thrust of your question, but I think what you're seeing with Iran this week is Operation midterms freak out. I think they realize that they're backed into a corner. That, and I've been saying this on my show for a couple of weeks. There's no way that Donald Trump wants this to last any longer. And, you know, and so he's just looking for a way out. And I think that he's, I think he's in big trouble right now from a polling standpoint, obviously, the gas prices are cutting through. You know, it's, it's that old James Carville adage, it's the economy, stupid. And that still rings true today. But people are very pissed about the Epstein files. I had somebody come up to me when I was out in Montana over the weekend telling me that they were very, this was a young voter saying, they're very pissed about the Epstein files. They're very upset about Trump breaking his promise on Iran. And so, and you add to that the fact that people were already highly enraged over his immigration policy and the killings of Renee Good and Scott Preddy and so on, and rounding up little kids and putting them in detention, that, you know, the landscape was already sort of primed for Trump to go over a cliff from a polling standpoint. And then he did the exact opposite thing he should have ever done, which is to launch a war of choice to distract from the Epstein files in a way that made gas prices go up and cause a global energy crisis. And, you know, he sits back. It's so strange because, you know, you listen to him this week, Scott, and he's saying, well, you know, I'm, I'm just happy that the price of oil didn't go up to 200 or 300 a barrel. He's saying things like that. And you know, I'm just, I'm, I'm wondering what the Iranians are thinking when they hear things like that because they watch all of our media. It's like the Russians, they, the Chinese, they watch all of our media, they study our media and they're like, oh, you want, oh, you don't want the price of oil to go up to 200, $300? Okay, let me, let's write that down. And so to me, I don't understand why the Iranians would even contemplate signing a peace agreement, I suppose, or a peace deal with him. My sense of it is, is if they, if they do, it'll be short lived and they'll go right back to trying to, you know, constrain things in the Strait of Hormuz. They, they've got Trump over a barrel. And I, you know cnbc, you know, Trump can engage in market manipulation via Axios and social media and so on and make, make the stocks go up and make the price of oil go down. But it's sort of a short term sugar high for him. And I don't get the sense that, that this is, that this is sust. And I, my guess is, is that he's going to be kind of stumbling through this, you know, kind of hot versus cold war depending on the day of the week with Iran. But we'll see. You know, maybe he could pull a rabbit out of his hat. He's been lucky before but he's desperate to get out of this right now. And these polling numbers, I think they're, I would not be surprised if behind the scenes people like Tony Fabrizio or the other pollsters that he has working for him are just telling him that this is dire, that this is, this is nuts. I, during the correspondence dinner weekend I spoke with a senior Republican advisor here in D.C. who advises some leadership folks up on the Hill who was saying that they are completely panic stricken right now about what is about to take place.
- [20:34]
A
Jim Acosta, I really appreciate you giving us some time. I think we have, we have so much more we could unpack. But where can we watch you next on YouTube? What time does the next thing hit?
- [20:44]
B
Yeah, we'll be on at 4 o' clock today here on substack. YouTube comes on a little bit later in the day. We give the substackers first dibs at the show and then YouTube comes on later in the day and then Apple a little after that. And yeah, today we've got, who do we have today, I think my old colleague Jessica Yellen is going to be coming on.
- [21:06]
A
Nice.
- [21:07]
B
So another former correspondent who has turned to the world of, of independent media, and Dave Aronberg, I believe he's coming on as well. And prosecutor. Yeah. And, you know, this is the beauty part of what we do, Scott. We get to have these wonderful voices on. There's no commercial interruption. There's no, you know, there might be a little sponsorship here or there or, you know, a pitch for independent media. But, you know, you and I haven't had a rap in our ear saying
- [21:32]
A
we gotta go, we gotta go with
- [21:33]
B
this, we gotta run some commercials and that's that kind of thing.
- [21:36]
A
And nobody's yelling and nobody's blood pressure is going up. But we're also talking about serious stuff, and that's serious. Thank you, Jim. Talk to you soon, brother.
- [21:43]
B
You got it. Thanks, Scott.
- [21:45]
A
Jim Acosta is formerly with CBS, just like me and CNN. 10:30am Eastern. 10:30am Eastern. I'm joined by Jamie Raskin right here on Substack. Thanks for watching.