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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
All right, welcome, everybody, to the Jim Acosta show. It is Monday, June 2nd, the day of our big show here in Washington, D.C. you can see it right here. There it is. We're going to be live doing a town hall here. Coming up later on this evening, my special guest, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Rosie o' Donnell, she's going to be coming to us live from Dublin. My good buddy Mike Fanone, Olivia Troy Tyler, Tara Settmeier, Miles Taylor, Aaron Parnas, Harry Dunn. We're going to be handing out awards. We're going to have a lot of laughs. We're going to let off some steam. We're also going to hear from the federal employees here in Washington who have been really hard hit by Doge and the Trump administration. That is something that I'm going to find very, you know, important for everybody to see tonight. And it's just going to be, we're going to have such a blast here. We can't wait. We're going to be here live at the Lincoln Theater later on this evening. The show starts at 7, 7:30pm the doors open at 6:30pm and so if you're in Washington, you don't have any plans for tonight. You want to come to this live event, you're certainly welcome. There are some tickets left, but we're gonna have a big crowd here tonight. We've been talking to the organizers here and we're already hearing about a good turnout for this live event later on this evening. I want to tell you a little bit about what's happening right now. I am back behind the scenes of the Lincoln Theater on historic U Street. And this is my GRE room. This is where I will be primping. And it takes a lot of primping. It takes a lot of time to get ready. This just doesn't happen overnight. No, but this is. I'm back in the green room right now, but what I want to do is take you, the audience behind the scenes for a little tour here. You can see all of the folks who were setting up backstage. I'll take you into the theater here in just a moment. But this is going to be a lot of fun and hopefully the, the line is still secure. Here's some of the guys here right now getting ready for the show. Hey, guys, how you doing? There's Alex somebody. Oh, you're. Oh, you're right there. It's just very dark. It's very, it's difficult to see back here, but that's okay. This is backstage at the Lincoln Theater. There's Bridget, she's testing the microphone there. This is all going to be a lot of fun. See if I can get into a little bit of trouble here. Just point out a couple of things right here. My producer Matt came up with a Statue of Liberty and a George Washington here, just like in the home studio, the no frills home studio as it's been called. So it'll feel a little bit like home. And then of course, the stage getting set, we're doing mic checks, all of that kind of fun stuff. And yeah, somebody is, Nancy is chiming in and saying good trouble. Absolutely. That's what we're going to be doing tonight, some good trouble. Olivia Troy is going to be here. Speaking of good trouble, I understand she's going to be here at any moment and so hopefully I'll get a chance to talk to her. While we're doing this live preview of tonight's show, I'm walking through the audience here at the Lincoln Theater. As you can see, it's a huge venue. Just a beautiful, beautiful, historic old theater. And one of the things I'm also really looking forward to tonight, my good buddy Michael Fanone is going to be here. He's going to be here as well as Harry Dunn, Akalina Ganel, Daniel Hodges. We're going to be paying tribute to the January 6th police officers, the heroes who defended democracy on January 6th. I, I see some of the questions there about the live streaming. I'm working on basically something a little slightly different. We're going to be recording the event and then playing for you later on. So that's going to be coming on. I'm seeing some questions here. Are you able to bring in Duke? Don't know if the Duke thing is going to happen. I have a joke set up for Duke not being here tonight. He's. He's not always good with crowds. Big crowds might be a problem for Duke. He has, he has a little trouble calming down, so it might be difficult to do that. Here's my producer, Matt. Matt is here. Matt, how are you?
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Matt
Hi, gang. Doing well. We're getting all set. This is last minute. Anything that we. That we've forgotten is. It's probably too late.
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Jim Acosta
It's probably too late. Oh, yeah. Like the poster we were going to put out in front of the venue. That's all right.
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Matt
You know, that's on me.
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Jim Acosta
No, no, that's on me. I think that was on my to do list and I didn't do it anyway. That's okay.
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Matt
I'm going to Hop off, because I'm going to.
- [04:21]
Jim Acosta
All right. He's got to go do stuff. Bethany is here, my old colleague from cnn. She's shooting some behind the scenes stuff. The bar is getting set. This is a very important part of tonight's festivities. I'll be waiting until after I'm done performing. I have a thing where I don't do. I don't, I don't partake. I try not to partake too much before going on stage and doing the whole thing. Because you gotta, you gotta keep it together. You know, that's the thing. You gotta keep together. But you can see it's a beautiful venue here and, yeah, always. Matt's always doing a great job. Absolutely true. You can see there's a beautiful venue here and from what we understand, we're gonna have a really good turnout tonight. So that's gonna be very exciting. Where else can I take you guys? Oh, this is cool right here. We're gonna go to the front of the theater right now. Yeah. Somebody's saying keep it together. Absolutely. Check out how cool this is. Look at that old historic bust of Abraham Lincoln. Very cool. It's just an old, it's just a classic old theater here in Washington and getting stuff together out here, too. Check it out. This is great. We're putting all the finishing touches together. We're hoping to sell a lot of beer, if that's possible. That would be great. You know, maybe I'll have, you know, one, maybe, maybe one to quench my thirst. It might get a little, a little dry. It's been a dry day in D.C. kind of warm. But all of this looks great. All of this looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. And so if you're in D.C. and you want to swing by, I think we can, we can work. Yes, we are right next to Ben's chili bowl. Somebody just mentioned Ben's chili bowl. That's absolutely right. And there you go right there. When you do that many mic checks, it's got to work, right? It's got to. It's got to be good to go. Audio folks, back here getting everything ready. Oh, my goodness. Rosie's on the line right now. Can I bring in. Hey, Matt, Rosie just. Apparently Rosie's on. Am I allowed to bring in Rosie early? Could try. Rosie's going to be with me later on this evening. I'm very excited about that. Rosie's going to be coming to us live from Ireland and which is a very exciting development and I think we're going to be testing that out here fairly soon. So this is going to be cool. This is going to be a lot of fun. Rosie's saying hi. All right. Now, I wonder, could I. Do I ruin the surprise by bringing Rosie now? Oh, let's see. What did she say? I'll be calling soon? I think she just said, I'll be calling in soon. Okay, I won't. We won't spoil the surprise just yet. Somebody has chimed in, said, we love Ireland. Of course we love Ireland. We love Ireland. That they've thrown out the welcome mat. They've rolled out the red carpet for our good friend Rosie o' Donnell. Yes, people who are just tuning in are asking questions. Will Jasmine Crockett be there? As a matter of fact, yes. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who is a rising star in the Democratic Party. She is going to be our big newsmaker. As all of you know, Congresswoman Crockett has really been lighting it up on the town hall circuit doing these live events. She just won a webby a few weeks ago. I was there in New York when she won that Webby. And Jasmine Crockett is going to come here tonight. She's going to address the audience and then hopefully take a couple of questions for us before she gets going. Uh, yeah. Rosie just said Jasmine Crockett is a superstar. She's absolutely a superstar. And one of the things that's amazing about Jasmine Crockett is, and, and this has been sort of my mantra since, you know, moving into this new role that I'm at, is that you just can't. You can't be afraid. You can't hold back. This is not a time. This is not a time to hold back, folks. You got to just call it out. You got to say what you think. You got to say what's on your mind. You gotta tell it like it is. And Jasmine Crockett has been doing that since the get go. Nobody had to give her the memo. Nobody had to give her the talking point. She just speaks straight from the heart. And that's what we love about Jasmine Crockett. She is absolutely fearless. She has been standing. Somebody just said she has been standing up to mtg. She absolutely has been standing up to mtg. You know, and I might make mention of that this evening. It's just possibly on my mind that that could come up as something we need to talk to Jasmine Frocka about. And. Okay, I see. I see somebody who's here, who's going to be here later on tonight. I'm getting a Little winded walking around this theater here, but Olivia Troy just rolled in. Let's see if we can throw her on for just a moment here. There she is. Olivia Troy. Hello. Hello. How are you? Good to see you. Hello. We're doing a little live preview. This is just a preview right now. You're one of Olivia's friends, I think is actually. She's my amazing guy. Erin, makeup is here. The makeup for campaign ads. Wait, where are the taco hats? I wanted to know where they. In the fall dressing room. Okay, good. Okay, so we have the taco hats. Okay.
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Matt
I'll give that away.
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Jim Acosta
I gave it away.
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Matt
Everybody on the substack, don't tell anybody.
- [09:31]
Jim Acosta
Okay. If you're on substack right now and you heard about the taco hats, do not say anything to the people who are showing up tonight. That would be bad. But listen, I wanted to give everybody a quick sneak preview of what's going on here behind the scenes. This is very cool. And taco hats are the one. Yeah, apparently. I don't know. I heard from Olivia that there were some people who noticed the taco hats, and there were some people, from what I understand, who were not pleased about the taco hats. And you might be able to guess who that was. There were. There were some groaning. There was some moaning in a certain building here in Washington where folks weren't too happy about that. Ooh, somebody's asking about Glenn Kirschner. Glenn Kirschner, from my understanding, is going to be here in the audience. I hope to hear from him as well. I plan to hear from him as well if he is here in the audience. I have, I have that set up to talk to Glenn as well. So, I mean, listen, we're going to, we're going to have a certain amount of time. We're going to about 90 minutes, maybe two hours if I can stretch it. And we're going to try to get as much as we can in here. One of the other things that you're going to hear tonight, if you're just tuning in, is you're going to be hearing from the federal employees who've been impacted here in Washington. And so some of the folks from the American Federal Government Employees Union will be here. Liz Oyer, who has made a name for herself blowing the whistle on these sketchy pardons that Trump has been doing. She was the pardon attorney at the doj. She's going to be here tonight. She is going to be speaking out. So listen, there's a lot going on here. You're going to hear from federal government employees who have been really hard hit in all of this. And so, yes, we're going to have fun. Yes, we're going to try to lighten things up. We're going to try to uplift people who have been going through a whole lot. But we also really want to hear from the folks who have been heavily impacted by what has been taking place here in Washington since, you know, who got back into office since Elon Musk who just, oh, by the way, left the other day. Don't let the door hit you in the rear end on the way out, Elon Musk. Ever since Doge came in like a bull in a china shop, a lot of federal employees have been hurt. And so you're going to hear from some of those folks here tonight as well. Okay, I think that'll probably do it for now. But one last look at the Lincoln Theater. Very excited about this. One last look at our zoom link that we're getting set up on stage here. That is how we're going to be bringing Rosie o' Donnell in live. This is gonna be very exciting. We've got a lot of bells and whistles. You know, whoever said that this show was no frills. We've got frills here tonight, folks. We got a lot of frills. And Rosie's going to be coming to us live later on this evening from Dublin. That's going to be a lot of fun as well. Yeah, somebody's making mention of some other things with Elon Musk. I don't think we're going to get into that tonight. We're going to try not to get into. We're not going to try to do that tonight, but we're going to tackle just about everything else under the sun. Looking forward to all of you being here in Washington tonight. For those who are planning on coming to the show, I'm very excited that you're coming to the show. It means a lot to me from the heart that folks would come here, you know, and spend their hard earned money and give up so much of their time when folks are going through so much right now to take part in this. It's going to be an amazing evening. I feel very blessed that so many folks have gotten involved and contributed to all of this. My friend, Tara Settmeier, she's going to be here. Aaron Parnas, who has been amazing fighting for Gen Z, he's going to be here. I mean, Miles Taylor, who has been, you know, targeted by Trump, he's going to be here, he's going to speak out. I mean, this is going to be, this is going to be a lot. And you know, to me, this was one of the reasons why I wanted to do this is to, as best as I can, reflect what has been going on here in Washington since the beginning of this year. I grew up in this area, born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area in Virginia. Oh, I see somebody's driving in from Virginia. That's great. And so this area, you know, it's given me so much. You know, I'm a probably a product of the public school system here. This area has given me so much. And so I want to give a little bit back. That's what this, this night is about tonight. And so as you can see, I'm a little excited about this. Yeah, maybe some pre show jitters, maybe a few pre show jitters. I don't know, could be, could be a few butterflies here. But very excited about this and so glad all of you were able to tune into this live preview. And listen, stay tuned. We're going to try to turn this around after the event is over, get this to our subscribers out there after the event is over. But we want to make sure for the folks who bought the tickets and put themselves through the trouble of getting down here and taking the time out to come in that they are rewarded for that. So they're going to see it first and then we'll work on it for everybody else. But in the meantime, so honored, so thrilled that everybody here in Washington is able to come to this. So thrilled that I've been able to have this audience here on Substack since the beginning of this year. It has meant the world to me. And listen, let's, let's break a leg tonight, guys. I haven't heard from Fanon yet in person, but I understand he's on his way. There's some really cool phenomenon merch that's going to be on sale, I'm told. What else can I think of here? That's about it. I, you know, listen, this is going to be a lot of fun anyway, really appreciate you guys tuning in right now. If you're here in Washington, get a ticket, make sure you get down here. Later on tonight, we're gonna be at the Lincoln Theater on historic U Street here in Washington D.C. uh, the doors open at 6:30. Show starts at 7:30. I'm repeat. Somebody just said please repeat the details of the show. I'm doing that right now. We're going to repeat the details of the show right now starting at 7:30 tonight. But the doors open at 6:30 right here on historic U Street in Washington, D.C. at the Lincoln Theater. There's still some time left if you want to make it down here. You got, what you got about three hours to get your buns down here. So if you can make it, that would be amazing. Oh, gosh. Not, not only driving in from Virginia, but from Warren County, Virginia. Somebody said, wow, that is a haul. That is commitment. I really appreciate it. We're gonna have some my show merch. There's gonna be a lot of stuff. I know my books are going to be here, some signed autograph books if you want some of that too. So forgive the stream of consciousness here, folks. I'm just trying to relay to you everything that has gone into this incredible live event. A lot of work has gone into this. My producer Bat, and the whole team here has been simply amazing. But anyway, in the meantime, I'll see you later on here tonight. Still reporting from Washington, and tonight it's at the Lincoln Theater. I'm Jim Acosta. I'll see you later on. Be here or be square. All right, take care. Bye. It was pretty dorky at the end.