← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Rep. Jake Auchincloss on GOP complicity in RFK's nuttiness and Ezra Levin on No Kings 2 coming soon.
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Jim Acosta Show. And it's another day that ends in Y and Donald Trump's assault on American democracy and on the American worker. The latest jobs report came out and it showed only 22,000 jobs created last month. Remember when Trump dressed up as a sanitation worker and as somebody who works at McDonald's during the 2024 campaign? He was just playing a working American. It appears he does not get working Americans. He's already. And don't believe these jobs reports. The jobs reports you need to believe are coming out next year and so on. Here to talk about that and a lot of other issues is Congressman Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, Democrat. Congressman, good to see you. Really appreciate it, Jim.
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Thanks for having me on. Please, call me Jake.
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Jake, you know, the old, you know, traditional news guy and me wants to call you Congressman, but I'll go along. We'll call you Jake. Jake, your thoughts on the jobs report? I mean, that is a spooky low number.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Just today, one of the leading manufacturers in my district here in Massachusetts, a textiles manufacturer out of Fall river whose company produces linens and bedsheets, wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal explaining why the president's tariffs, because they're raising input costs for this domestic manufacturer, is actually impacting his business in a way that his competitors who outsource their production are not facing. And this is something that the president and his team just don't understand about trade, is that trade is not a zero sum game. Trade is a positive sum endeavor. And that when the trade deals are architected well, it actually lowers input prices and increases market sizes for American manufacturers. They're getting it wrong right now. We can't, though, as a party just complain that Donald Trump's getting it wrong. Right? We've been doing that for 10 years. His approval ratings are exactly what they were 10 years ago. So what are Democrats going to do differently? Let me put forward a few things. One, we're going to build a thousand trade schools across this country. We need more people who know how to build things in this country again. And then we need to enlist our workers in building 5 million more homes so that we can put downward pressure on the most expensive part of the average family's budget, which is their rent or their mortgage payment. We need to build 100 nuclear power plants over the next decade. France built 40 in 10 years. We can build 110 years and have clean energy dominance and low utility bills. And then finally we got to build more ships in the Chinese Navy. We cannot compete in the Indo Pacific with the navy that we have right now. Let's build a navy that can win the 21st century in Asia.
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Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I mean, getting manufacturing going again in this country and those bread and butter issues that you talk about, you know, they are critically important. I just wonder, you know, there are three and a half years to go until Trump is out of office. And, you know, I guess unless the Supreme Court says, hey, you can't just unilaterally slap tariffs on countries all over the world. I mean, this is the, this is the sort of uncertain world that we're going to be living in until some, some checks are put in place. Maybe if the midterms come along, it'll, he'll pump his brakes a little bit, but, and slow his roll. But I don't, I just don't see that coming. And, and, you know, this has me worried about where the economy is headed.
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It should. It's the largest tax increase in modern American history done unilaterally by one person. So what he has achieved in his first six months is biggest tax increase in modern American history almost entirely on the working class and middle class with these tariffs, because the rich spend a very small percentage of their income on consumption, and so they're relatively unaffected by a sales tax, which is what tariffs are. But the, but the poor and the middle class are very affected by it. So biggest tax increase in modern American history, biggest cuts to health care in American history. That's what he's achieved in his first six months. And we are going to hammer that contrast home going in to the midterms. But again, we also have to, as a party, offer our own ideas for how we would govern better. We need to be the doctors of cost disease. Housing, health care, utility bills, local taxes, they're all affected by cost disease, which happens to sectors that have broad demand but low productivity growth. And Democrats need to demonstrate that we'll cut regulations where necessary to get our economy growing, that we will adopt technology, including AI where appropriate to get to do more with less, and that will take on the special interests that keep prices high, particularly in the health care sector. So we have to offer a compelling alternative to what Donald Trump has wrought.
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Yeah, and you mentioned his team. I mean, a key member of his team, pretty perhaps one of the most well known members of his team, RFK Jr. The Secretary of Health and Human Services. I mean, he had one of the nuttiest hearings that I think I've ever seen up on Capitol Hill when he was being peppered with questions, I mean, from senators from both sides, which we don't see that much anymore up on Capitol Hill, and they were zeroing in on his beliefs on vaccines and so on. He's been very deceptive about that. But there was one point where Senator Mark Warner just asked Kennedy if you knew how many people died during the pandemic, and he couldn't even say that a million people died or 1.1 million people died during the pandemic. What was your reaction to all of that? And I guess the second part of the question is what happens to the availability of the COVID vaccine heading into the fall and winter? That just seems to be kind of up in the air now.
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So, Jim, you're talking to somebody who has been eviscerating RFK for the last year. In December, I wrote an op ed for my local paper, the Boston Globe, exhorting Senator Bill Cassidy to please not vote to confirm him. I laid out his actions in American Samoa, where he derailed their measles vaccination campaign, costing the lives of 65 children from that infectious disease. So this might sound surprising coming from me, but candidly, at this point, I don't even put this at the foot of RFK Jr. RFK Jr. Has told the American people exactly what he wants to do. He literally campaigned on an anti vax platform. He believes that WI fi causes brain cancer. He thinks 911 was staged. He sexually assaulted the family babysitter. He dropped a bear in Central Park. He has profited off of anti vax conspiracizing in a way that has derailed infectious disease efforts. So this man is transparently awful, and every single Republican senator voted for him, bar I think one or two. And now they put on their frowny faces when he does exactly what he said he was going to do. Shame on them. Every single child who dies of measles in this country going forward is on the conscience of those GOP senators who voted for rfk, knowing exactly what he was going to do.
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Yeah, you know, you make a good point, Jake. I mean, there are so many folks saying these days, oh, fire RFK or step down RFK and so on. I mean, honestly, I mean, he's there because of Donald Trump who said, I'm going to let RFK Jr run wild on public health. Just totally irresponsible. And you're right. A lot of Republican senators who just said, oh, you know, okay, you know, we're not going to stand up to Trump.
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That's right.
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And now we may all pay a price. And I don't even know. I mean, I'm hearing this just anecdotally from folks they don't know. You know, can I go to the drugstore and get a COVID vaccine this winter? I mean, we just, I saw Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York is making some moves in her state to make sure it's available without a prescription. Down in Florida, who knows? It's, it's wild.
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So, Jim, again, this is where Democrats need to, yes, criticize, but also then do better. And there's a few concrete ways we can do that. So one, as you said, we have to offer our own vaccination guidelines. You've seen California, Oregon and Washington team up to provide their own guidelines and regulations for vaccines. Massachusetts just did so today as well. So that people have science based evidence to rely upon, both physicians as well as payers and patients. But we also now, I think have to talk about public health as part of our platform. So one, that means, yes, going back to Covid. I know people don't want to talk about COVID but so much of the, of the distrust stemmed from there. And Democrats have to say closing the schools was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe. It happened too much in the blue states and the blue cities. We own some of that. It was wrong. Here's how we're going to fix it. We're going to surge one on one tutoring to all the students who have been left behind. And we're going to put in place protocols that ensure that the schools are the last to close, the first to open in any future epidemic, because public health was not getting those decisions. Politics was, and that was a huge mistake. But we also now have to actually make good on what Maha has promised. Maha has talked about chronic disease and the influence of big food and big Pharma. Well, those are popular issues and there is real resonance there, probably because there is real validity there. But now Democrats have to actually govern on it. So let's go, let's take on big food. I mean, two thirds, I think of the, of the empty calories that children consume come from soft drinks. We should 100% take on the, the big soda industry. We should tax them, tax their advertising, use it to fund community health centers. Let's do it. Let's Democrats do it.
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Yeah, no, I mean, you make, you make some good points. And I do think, you know, you can go down the rabbit hole and have a whole argument and debate on a bar stool over what we did during COVID I think there were some good intentions as well when it came to schools. I mean, sending kids off to school in the middle of a pandemic could have gotten teachers sick and bus driver sick and administrator. I mean, and then what happens to the schools if everybody gets sick? But I get what you're saying it was. I mean, I had kids at home and they were looking into a laptop, you know, camera, to do their classwork, and it was. It was a giant bloody mess.
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It was a mess.
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Yeah.
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And, Jim, the advantage I had is that one of my constituents is Ashish, John Ashish Jah, who would go on to become Joe Biden's Covid coordinator and probably the. Probably the premier public health specialist.
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He's great.
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Pandemic is great. And he and I had a public interview in May of 2020. May 2020, one year, excuse me, one month after the pandemic really locked things down. And he said, quite clearly, epidemiologically, socially, these schools need to be open. I saw him try to make the case. I made it my day one issue when I got elected. It was too hard. Democrats need to own that.
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Too much. Yeah.
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Fix it.
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Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. It was too much. And I guess, you know, speaking of too much, I mean, we can go in a lot of different directions here, but I have to ask you, I mean, because of your background, what you're wondering about Donald Trump saying he's going to change the name of the Defense Department to the War Department. I mean, it's. It's just. I mean, again, it looks like another distraction from the Epstein files. You know, it looks like his goose is cooked with the Epstein files. We could talk about that, too, but, I mean, it's going to cost a lot of money to change the branding of the Defense Department to the War Department. It also, I mean, kind of flies in the face of him saying he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and all the saber rattling. I mean, it's just. What do you make of it?
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He likes to talk alpha, but then he acts beta. He is a very insecure man. I think that has been quite patently obvious over the last decade. Right. He feels small. And we all know bullies in our lives, right? And bullies usually grow from a place of deep insecurity. And so he talks alpha, but he acts beta. So changing the name of the Department of Defense and Department of War, it feels like an alpha move. I'm sure he and Pete Hegseth had a. Had a high five over it. But then Vladimir Putin comes to Alaska, and he puts American troops on their knees to roll out a red carpet for a man who then, 24 to 48 hours later, strikes US facilities in Ukraine with weapons. That's not an alpha move. That makes America look weak on a global stage. He pulls funding for Radio Free Asia such that now in Indonesia, where there used to be one hour of American programming and one hour of Chinese Communist programming, there's now two hours of Chinese Communist programming and no American programming in Indonesia, probably the most important Southeast Asian nation. That's not an alpha move. That's something that makes us weak. He slaps tariffs on India in a chaotic way that sends Prime Minister Modi to China to watch a military parade alongside Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. That's not an alpha move. Right. Just because the Pakistani prime minister compliments him on his efforts. And this is a guy who tries to project strength, but in fact, his actual actions are those of someone who's quite weak and quite insecure. And if it were just him as a man, that's his problem. And, like, he can wrestle with that with his therapists. The problem is he's the commander in chief, and it makes all of us as Americans less safe.
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Yeah. And some of it. And again, this gets into a sort of a circular argument. Are these distractions? Is he a threat? I think he can be both of those things. He can be doing both of those things at the same time. I mean, just curious if you have thoughts on the whole Epstein matter. I mean, it seems to me it's an extraordinary moment that I'm not sure we're paying enough attention to, and perhaps that's because Mike Johnson did Trump's bidding and sent you guys home early for the summer and that sort of a thing. But, I mean, the President of the United States is mentioned multiple times. This is according to his own Justice Department in the Epstein files. And we don't know what that. We don't know exactly what that is. And that in and of itself, I mean, if Joe Biden was in the Epstein files, I can just imagine everybody would go crazy, Democrats and Republicans, and they probably would have been released by now.
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The file should be released. I've signed the discharge petition to begin that process, and we'll continue to support that effort. I think there's two things, to me, that are at least two that are critical takeaways. The first is, let's also reflect that if indeed, Donald Trump were spread across the Epstein files as a consistent predator of underage women, do you think it would actually Rattle his position with maga. Do you think that many members of Congress in the Republican Party would distance themselves from him? Because here's the hard truth. They wouldn't. And that reality, not the fact that he could be implicated, but the fact that he almost certainly is and that it wouldn't change the fact that Republican members of Congress would do his bidding. That tells you everything you need to know about the modern Republican Party. They are cowards who consider themselves courtiers to mar a lago who will do the Dear Leader's bidding regardless of his moral depredations and failures. That tells you all you need to know about the GOP today. The second big takeaway is that I think one of the reasons this resonates so much with the American public is that it speaks to a deeper corruption that I think Americans feel like really challenges their confidence in the American dream. And again, Democrats need to offer an alternative. We need to be the party that talks about banning stock trading by members of Congress. We need to be the party that talks about reforming the justice system for expedited due process. We need to be the party that talks about getting rid of partisan primaries and gerrymandering so that voters feel like every election is competitive and every politician has to earn their vote. We should be the party that talks about getting dark money out of these elections. We shouldn't sit here and wring our hands for a constitutional amendment to get rid of Citizens United. Let's just do it. When Democrats have the trifecta in Washington. We should campaign on that promise.
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Yeah. No, and I think it can be argued pretty. I mean, pretty solidly that Washington has gotten sleazier in the last seven months. I mean, I just read that.
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Oh, yeah.
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That Eric Trump is now a billionaire. I think I read that. I think that's. That is wild how. I mean, he's not even. I, I don't want to say anything negative about somebody, but, I mean, was he. Is he considered to be the one who is most likely to be a billionaire? I mean, they're just. It just seems to be just open season. You know, just make as much money as you can, roll up the. The truck and just load up the money and. And off you go these days.
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Well, the, The Trump meme coin, which is what you're referring to with how the Trump sons became billionaires, on paper at least, is the most corrupt thing that Donald Trump has done. It. I get it. That's a high bar. But I will stand by that statement. He has issued a meme coin, which Basically monetizes the presidency. It allows any actor, domestic or foreign, to buy a share in Donald Trump, to do so in a cryptographically secure way, meaning it can't be forged and in an entirely anonymous way. It'd be like if he opened up a Swiss bank account and allowed people to deposit money into the Swiss bank account in a way that nobody in America knew about, but that he knew about, and that those donors could then talk to him and say, hey, I gave you money. What can you do for me as the President? United States? Now that's obviously a problem, period. It's a violation of the emoluments clause. It's illegal. Nobody should be able to do that. It's a real problem because it's open to foreign actors, the Qataris, the Russians, the Chinese, the Venezuelans, the Turks. I can basically guarantee you they have all bought shares in Donald Trump and they will be cashing in.
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Yeah. No, I mean, this is like Nepo babies on steroids. I mean, it's just. It's unreal. And. But I do want to get into something you wrote about, and I don't want to let too much time expire before we get into it, because I know your time is tight. But you wrote, I thought, what was a very important piece in the New York Times. And it's on an issue that we don't spend enough time on as a country or, or on programs like this. And it's what you describe as digital dopamine. It's getting kids hooked on online garbage, on their phones, on social media, on all kinds of things, betting apps. And you wrote in the New York Times, as the father of three children under six, I do not want their brains programmed by corporations like software. That's exactly what's going on. I think it's just perfectly put there. Your thoughts on all this and how big is this?
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It's the emerging cultural fault line of America. On one side is the online realm rapidly expanding, where the merchants and miners of dopamine are trying to hijack the reward system of your brain, particularly within what's called your ventral striatum, which is where dopamine is released. It feels good, and then it motivates you to repeat that behavior. It's really the origins of addiction. Particularly vulnerable to those feedback loops are young men because they have very sensitive reward seeking systems and they have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. They've got immature judgment. And so young men right now are being routed towards digital dopamine, basically towards just quick hits of dopamine delivered through software, not through in real life effort. Social media, pornography and then online gambling are three of the most prominent examples of this. And they're all about to get way more addictive because they're all going to be infused with AI bots. You've got Metta with its internal documentation saying it's okay for their bots to have sensual, quote, sensual conversations with children as young as 12. You've got online gambling taking over sports, even at the level of high school sports. And what it's leading to is young people spending more time on their phone than ever before and spending less time outdoors than the average federal inmate. That's not good for our country because we want the other side of this fault line in real life effort to succeed. We want people building stuff that matters together. Energy, housing, ships, taking care of one another in real life effort needs to be prioritized. But right now the oxygen is being taken by these online dopamine hackers.
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B
Yeah, and one of the things that you mentioned, one of the tells was this effort by the, I guess the AI industry to get some protections against state regulations. And there are some folks who brought this up, I remember during that debate and it got quickly struck down because I mean even in Washington it just seemed just the height of shamelessness in that effort in trying to get those protections. But it does show you what the industry is thinking about. They don't want, they don't want to be regulated in this regard.
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So in the 1990s the nascent social media networks, they didn't quite exist in that form at that point. But basically Computer Interactive Services Network won this major provision known as Section 230 that prevented any type of litigation against what would become Meta and TikTok and Twitter and, and the rest. And that immunity shield has made it so that if you're a 18 year old woman and someone publishes non consensual pornographic content of you, you can't sue the company for that, for platforming that you're basically defenseless. We're close to making the same mistake with AI now if and Republicans tried to basically do that section 230 basically do that law that immunize these platforms, they tried to do that for the AI companies and there was an uproar thankfully. But it just shows that the Republicans can't be trusted to put the interests of families first. They're going to, just like they did at Donald Trump's inaugural address, have these tech titans sitting front and center with their platform development. Democrats need to be the party that says, hey, we are pro technology. If you can help us build, you know, housing, energy, you know, new, new cures for diseases faster using frontier technology. Absolutely. I represent Massachusetts. We do technology better than any other state in the union. But it's going to be technology that serves the American people, not turns them, you know, makes them subservient to your profit motive.
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Yeah. And this conversation is taking me back to something you said earlier about a stock trading ban. And I just, just very quickly, is it still the case that, that members of Congress can, can get information about companies during hearings and briefings and so on and just go and do stock trades? Is that, that's still, that's still going on and it sounds like you're very much against that. And what is the status of all that?
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Yeah, I don't, I mean I don't think any member of Congress should be entering the halls of Congress owning individual equities or bonds that they can trade. I just, the perception of corruption that that creates is totally unacceptable. You know, the actual ability to operationalize that I think was probably pretty uneven. I think there were examples during the pandemic where clearly you had some Republican senators trading against the pandemic information probably with the Defense Department stuff. If you were really engaged in the Defense bill and knew if there were some contractors that were going to get hooked up with the ndaa, maybe you could trade on that. It just is just so clearly erodes trust in Washington at a time when we should be trying as hard as possible to build trust back up that it's a no brainer. Of course we should have a stock ban, US Trucks, a stock trading ban. And Seth Magaziner is doing great work on this. The member from Rhode Island.
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Yeah, well, I mean to me it's, it's one of those no brainers. You know, it's sort of like this is something that, that folks should be able to rally around. But again, that sounds like something that Donald Trump is just not going to sign into law while he's in office. I mean, it's just, it's just one of those things and I guess just finally, finally, finally the midterm prospects, your sense of it right now, I mean the apparently the big beautiful bill as it's been called, I call it, lots of other things, is so unpopular with the public right now. They're talking about rebranding that I guess on the Republican side and the Epstein stuff is obviously so unpopular that his Trump's numbers are tanking. But at the same time, you Have Trump, you know, succeeding at this point, it looks like, in redrawing the congressional map of at least Texas and maybe Missouri. We'll see how many other states might he be able to, you know, pull off a straight flush here and block the Democrats from gaining enough seats to win back the majority because of these basically crooked efforts on his part, on the part. On, on the part of his party.
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Yeah, yeah. It's a tragedy in three parts. The first part was Donald Trump and Republicans passed biggest tax hike in American history with his tariffs, biggest health care cut in American history with the one big beautiful bill going to raise health insurance premiums for all Americans and, er, wait times for all Americans. This is not just a problem for our neighbors who are on Medicaid, this is a problem for all of us. Whether you get insurance through your employer, whether you get it through the ACA exchanges, because when you kick people off health insurance and they still get sick, they, they go to the emergency room, the hospitals cross subsidize that by raising your health insurance premiums through your employer. So it's going to cost all of us money, all to benefit the top 1% who didn't even ask for the tax cuts, frankly. I mean, the amount of money that he's giving that the wealthy weren't even asking for, it's so gratuitous. That's the first part. Second part was Republicans spent about 15 minutes talking to their voters and realized it was horrifically unpopular. And then part three is to protect Donald Trump rather than protecting Americans. They are now trying to steal the midterms by rigging a map in Texas, rigging a maps in Indiana and Missouri, potentially Florida. And Democrats have to hit back. I mean, if they're going to put on brass knuckles, we're not putting on boxing gloves. We will hit back hard in California, potentially Maryland. It's not pretty. This is not the way I want democracy to work. I want independent redistricting, I want to get rid of partisan primaries. But I'm not taking a pencil to a knife fight. We are going to hit back so that we have a chance to make a case in a fair election to the American public in 26.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems to me that if this gets to be such an ugly mess that we're uncertain of what the election results are, or you have cases in some states pending before the courts and not having cases in others because of the judicial timeline. And so, I mean, this could just turn out to be a colossal mess. And as one of our viewers is why redraw the lines if you have a winning message? Donald Trump does not have a winning message right now. And so, you know, in 20, in 2020, he tried to steal the election after the votes came in. The way I look at it now is he's trying to steal the election before the votes come in. It is, it is something that people need to wrap their heads around, I think, in a very serious way, because this is, this is trying to just pull a fast one with our democracy. We shouldn't tolerate, it seems to me.
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A
No, we should not. And it's an example of the realignment of American politics. So Republicans used to carry the mantle, you know, rightfully or not, we can debate, but they used to carry the mantle, the party of fiscal responsibility, law and order and national security. What have we seen now? We've seen a Republican Party that, as I said, literally rolled out a red carpet for an autocrat who hates America. We have seen a party that added $5 trillion to the national debt to hook up the wealthiest with tax cuts. And we've seen a party that tried to overturn a free and fair election, that voted to defund the FBI, that floods our streets with ghost guns. And that, as you said now is appeasing an out of control executive rather than defending the prerogatives of the states. And Democrats can seize these issues. We can be the party of law and order and fiscal responsibility and national security. But we do have to internally then have some hard conversations. We can't be the party of law and order if the cities governed by Democrats have rampant open air, drug use, homelessness problems, shoplifting problems. We got to tackle that as well as the more abstract constitutional issues. We can't be the party of national security if we're not willing to be tough on Iran, for example, so we have the opportunity to seize these lanes, but we do have to seize them.
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B
Yeah, no question about it. Jake, great to see you. Thanks so much. I'll try to call you Jake. It's just, you know, those muscle memories are hard to change over time. But thanks so much and good luck with your efforts. I think to me, it's not even a partisan issue. These, these phones are so highly addictive to our kids right now. And I think what you're working on is extremely important and something I think a lot of parents care about. It's, it's really nuts right now. But thanks for your time, Jake.
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A
Good to be with you, Jake.
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B
All right, good to see you. Thanks so much. That's Congressman Jake Auchincloss. Democrat of Massachusetts. And I will just say, and I, you know, and I, not to, not to, I'm not putting any, you know, markers out there, say this is a candidate I like, this candidate I don't like. And so I think people should keep their eye on Jake Ock and Claus. I've said this before, I'll say it again. The fact that he cares about issues like digital dopamine and our kids getting hooked on their phones. To me, this is a serious politician. This is a serious lawmaker who has the public's interest at heart. So I appreciate his time very much. I'm going to bring in Ezra Levin in here in just a moment. He's going to be joining us in just a few moments from now. He's from Indivisible. You might remember when Ezra was on with me several months ago in the run up to no Kings Day. Remember, no Kings Day that took place was on June 14th. We did it on Donald Trump's birthday and when he had the big dictator parade down on Constitution Avenue, down on the National Mall. And Ezra and his team and a lot of other like minded groups banded together, put together no Kings Day. And it just took the country by storm. There were millions of people out on the streets, in their communities, in the town squares and so on outside schools. You know, just the other day, I'm coming back from the airport, I'm coming back from Ireland, I'm coming down 66 back into Washington D.C. and you know, I'm going under an overpass and standing on the overpass on a pedestrian bridge are people holding no King signs. And this is a few days ago and what, two and a half months after no Kings Day here in America. And so it really struck a chord. And so Ezra Levin's gonna be joining us in just a few moments. My understanding, he's coming out of a meeting. He'll be here with us in just a few moments. But my understanding is right now, or very close to right now, Donald Trump is holding an ability, whatever you want to call it in the White House where he is announcing the rebranding of the Defense Department to the War Department. Folks, I don't know if you were with me earlier in the day for a special edition of the Jim Acosta show when I had Rosie o' Donnell on and Rosie and I were diving into all of Trump's distractions. And as I've said, I want to say this very clearly. I do not think Donald Trump is just doing distractions right now. He is a threat to American democracy. He is taking a meat axe to democratic institutions that we all hold dear. But he is doing distractions. And one of the goofiest, most cockamamie distractions that you can think of is renaming the Defense Department to the War Department. Folks, we have one of the most, if not the most impressive militaries in the world. I mean, I would, I would have to say it is the most impressive military in the world. There's just, there's no question about it. With fine men and women in uniform spread out all across the globe with high tech equipment, war fighting equipment that you just don't see in any, any other country. And why Donald Trump has to do this right now, it's a total, it's an absolute joke. And he's doing this as yet another distraction to get everybody to talk about, especially over on Fox where they can get Pete Hegseth out in front of a camera, they can get various people inside his cabinet out in front of a camera to talk about why this is a good idea. It's a terrible idea. I mean, first of all, the United States of America should not be known for war fighting. Harry Truman started the process of naming our war fighting departments, our war fighting agencies, the Defense Department because we shouldn't be a country that's known for just going to war. You know, I remember covering a Donald Trump out on the campaign trail in 2016 when he was going off on Republicans who were warmongers, he was going off on people like George W. Bush. He goes off on John Bolton all the time, calls him a warmonger. This is what the new right has been saying over the last several years. And here you have Donald Trump just being a complete hypocrite, going against all of those long held, long held supposed beliefs of his and saying he wants to rename the Defense Department, the War Department, of course. And on as, as a viewer saying right now on a Friday. And so folks, do not be fooled by these distractions. They are distractions. You know, this is, this is Donald Trump. This is what he does. The other thing that we need to go over is the, the jobs numbers, the jobs numbers that came out today, 22,000 jobs created in the month of August. And I was talking about this with Jake Auchincloss a few moments ago. Donald Trump is, and I think this was what the ladies with the, I've had a podcast were telling me the other day. He's kind of a one hit wonder. And his one hit wonder when it comes to economic policy has been tariffs and what did Donald Trump say about the tariffs? That if you start slapping tariffs in all of these countries all around the world, that we'd start making things in the United States and we would just instantly flip switches and factories would start up and people would be employed again. 22,000 people were hired last month. Good luck. If you're an American worker out there who hates your job or is thinking about leaving your job because you're unhappy, there aren't any jobs to be had right now because Donald Trump has torched the economy. He has completely screwed over working people in this country by building an economy. Now that is kind of a cat on a hot tin roof. Companies don't know whether to hire right now because they don't, because they don't know what Trump is going to do next. All that these companies know is that they have to send their executives to the Oval Office on bended knee bearing golden gifts and to kiss his butt. That's all company executives know how to do right now. They don't know how to hire people now. All right, well, let's, let's bring in somebody who knows the things about having no kings in this country. And that's Ezra Levin with Indivisible. There he is right now. Ezra, good to see you, my man.
- [34:31]
C
Hey, good to see you, Jim.
- [34:34]
B
So tell us about this. So we've got another no Kings Day coming, Is that right? I, this is exciting stuff. I was just telling the viewers before you hopped on, I was coming back from the airport a few days ago, going under, you know, going down 66, going under this overpass and there are people holding signs, no king signs in late August. You know, here we are in late. It's this thing struck a nerve.
- [34:59]
C
It really did. And you know what? I think a lot of people on June 14 thought that they were going to a one day protest. They thought it was going to be good. They thought it was going to be a show of force. They thought it was going to feel empowering. And yes, it was all those things. Gosh, we were in 2,169 communities, 27 countries, every single state in the country, every single congressional district. That felt good. But it turns out no, Kings Day wasn't June 14th. No, Kings Day is every day in this country. This country was founded on the idea that we reject kings. And so, yes, no Kings Day 2. The next official no Kings Day is coming up October 18th. We have the soft launch this week, the full launch next week with the map where people can find an event in their area or if there's not one, they can register their own. But if no Kings One was a response to Trump's ridiculous birthday military parade, this attempt to make himself look like this all powerful autocratic leader. I think no Kings too, it is a direct response to this escalation of authoritarian over this occupation of American cities. First la, then dc, now maybe Chicago or New Orleans. And this secret police force that is roaming the country, terrorizing communities. Look, I, I think we thought we were participating in a one day protest. It turns out we were creating a no Kings era. This is not the Donald Trump era. This is the era no Kings. And we're showing up to make that clear to everybody that, look, we just don't do kings in America.
- [36:23]
B
Yeah. And the, the crowdsourcing dynamic is there. The, the, you know, workshopping ethos is there with all of us. I mean I'm, we're seeing it in D.C. right now. People are pushing back on these masked, you know, secret police looking guys are going up 14th. Why they're going up 14th Street. Not to get too local here in Washington. They're trying to guard the dip and Jenny's ice cream and Ted's bulletin. I mean, give me a break.
- [36:51]
C
And corruption over there with the folks. It's ridiculous, it's offensive. And I will call out if you're in the D.C. area. I'm going to be out there tomorrow. Free D.C. incredible operation is, is coming out tomorrow against the occupation. So if you're excited about no Kings Day too, I hope you are. But you want something sooner this Saturday, tomorrow people will be out in force.
- [37:13]
B
Yeah. And the other thing that I think people need to be protesting against, just my personal view, hey, I'm just a guy here is, you know, this, this crazy. And because we're sipping from a fire hose, it's hard to take a beat and just contempl the impact of all this stuff. But the redrawing of congressional maps. I was just talking about this with Congressman Jake auchincloss. After the 2020 election, Trump tried to steal the election after the ballots came in. Now he's trying to steal the election before the ballots come in. I mean, that's what he's trying to do because his, what he's doing isn't popular, it's just deadly unpopular. And so he's going to try to be a crook and rigged this whole thing.
- [37:52]
C
Your insight here is exactly right. I think one view, one view of this overreach could be like, gosh, that authoritarian is so strong. He really all this power. That's how he's doing all these things. That's why he's doing all these things. It's the exact opposite. These are not the actions of somebody secure in their power who understands they have popular support. They're the actions of someone who knows the public is pissed off and they are going to make him pay politically at the ballot box. And so what do you do? You can either moderate your positions, stop occupying American cities, stop passing the most unpopular policies in modern American history, or you can try to rig the game so you don't have to worry about the public. I spent most of the Biden administration trying to push for democracy reform, to ban gerrymandering nationwide, to get money out of politics, to improve our political system. The Republicans stopped us. They did not want us to ban gerrymandering. And so I would love to get to a point in this country where we do not have gerrymandering, but as long as the Republicans are doing this in Texas and maybe Indiana and Missouri and Florida, or we should not be fighting this fight with one hand behind our back. So I like what Gavin Newsom is doing. I like what they're doing in California. And it happens to be the case that on no Kings Day one, we had hundreds of events all up and down the state of California, in rural areas, in suburban areas, in urban areas. The next, no Kings Day is mere weeks, mere weeks before a vote on a redistricting plan for California. So part of this is saying, we don't do kings. We're pushing back against your occupation of our cities.
- [39:22]
B
And.
- [39:22]
C
And part of this is saying, hey, Democratic lawmakers, you need to be fighting back the same way that we are in California, and we need to be passing this in California so that California is standing up for the whole country with their redistricting plans. I think there's big opportunity, not just next November, but this November. Right now, we should be organizing. And I think no Kings, too, is a way to fuel that fire as we slowly but surely take power away from this regime and put it back in the hands of the people.
- [39:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, he's acting like a mad king right now. He, you know, he's sort of frantically. That's the madness of King George. He's running around the. His gilded Oval Office trying to figure out how to distract the public. He's talking about renaming the Department of Defense the War Department. Right. I mean, this crazy cockamamie stuff. And. And to me, what you're talking about is. Is exactly the right approach, because you need sustained enthusiasm. I think that was one of the things that hurt Kamala Harris in the 2024 race was that some. There was an initial burst of excitement when she came onto the scene and with the coconut tree and so on. And then just there was sort of a feeling of just things got a little too complacent, a little too relaxed and that. I'm not saying that made the difference. There were lots of things that made the difference. But you're going to need no Kings, it seems to me. No Kings 3, no Kings 4. It's going to have to. It's going to be like the Mission Impossible series, basically.
- [40:40]
C
I think that's right. Look, I'm not a huge fan of sequels, but this is a sequel I will accept. Yeah, I think we need to build on this. And I think the no Kings brand, to your point, it has broken through to people who were not politically engaged in politics before. I think people were caught off guard that there were 2200 events on a single day against this regime. And just to your point, I'm making. I'm on a bit of a nerdy American Revolution kick right now. And I think it is notable that one major feature of the start of this country was Mad King George's. Not just his overreach as an authoritarian, but his occupation of American cities that he occupied Boston, he occupied New York, he was rattling sabers at other cities. And it was that infringement on the Patriots rights that caused him to say, no, screw this, we do not want a king in this country. This is not going to be successful if it's a one day march. No Kings Day 1 was incredible. It was a historic event and its success cannot be just measured on. That was a cool day. We all had a good time and a lot of people came out. It's got to be sustained. It's got to include ways for people to show up on that day and then to funnel into real meaningful activities on the ground from now until election day and beyond. So that's how we measure success here. We had about 300,000 people come out of no Kings Day one into strategic non cooperation training. How do you push your faith institution, your university, media institutions, businesses, Velo airlines to start picking sides in this fight? That's the kind of fight that we need right now. I don't want to treat people as just consumers or even as just voters. I want to treat them as Americans who have a role to play in upholding our democracy. And that doesn't just come on election day. That happens in September and October and November, we got to show up.
- [42:33]
B
Yeah. And I mean the other thing that is, we talked about this a little bit earlier is the prospect of Trump sending the National Guard into places like Chicago. And one of the examples, and I talked about this a lot when he sent people, when he sent the national guard into D.C. one of the things that made no King so successful, and you warned about this before, no Kings one happen, was that people need to keep their cool. Don't get into arguments and fights and confrontations with the cops. And so keep your cool, stay cool. And so far here in D.C. people managed to keep their cool. And so on a big city like Chicago, it worries me a little bit. And I suppose part of the messaging is going to be moving forward. Like you gotta, you just gotta keep it in check. You cannot give them what they, they wanted that in la. They almost got in la. They didn't get in la.
- [43:22]
C
You just said it. Use the exact right insight here, which is that's what they want. I, I believe in peaceful protest because I don't think we should be hurting people. I don't think we should be destroying property. And I also believe it as a cynical political organizer, the way that you effectively organize. Don't give them what they want. They want, they want to fight like that. The thing that works, the thing that works, it's worked in the United States, in the south, it works across the world in pro democracy movements. The thing that works is peaceful protest. And that is not some manby pamby approach. That is smart strategic organizing. Stay peaceful and show up in big numbers everywhere and do not give an inch. That's what we saw in no Kings Day one. We were in 2200 communities. And look, I think it is reasonable to be scared. These guys are serious. They're playing for keeps. They are, they are, they are showing up with military and with secret police force in communities across the country. I, if you're not scared, you're not paying attention. I get that. And also we should hold that in our head along with the reality that on hands off, on May Day, on good trouble lives on for John Lewis's Remembrance Day, on Labor Day and on no Kings too. The main thing you're going to see is boisterous enthusiasm and fun and excitement and people with funny signs and people bringing their dogs and their kids and dancing and music and community empowerment. That's the vibe of these protests and that's the exact right, right thing. Because there is nothing. Donald Trump loves to be feared. He's fine with you criticizing him for being an autocrat. What he doesn't want is to be ridiculed. He doesn't want the sense that the people are joyfully opposing him in huge numbers everywhere. And you know what? We can produce that, and I know we can produce it because we've done it repeatedly month after month this year.
- [45:10]
B
Yeah, got to keep that vibe cool. There's just no question about it. Ezra 11, great to see you, man. Good luck with all your planning as you ramp up. It's October 18th. That's. That's correct. So it's coming up fast.
- [45:22]
C
October 18th. Go to nokings.org and here's my request to everybody watching. You need to tell your friends, family, colleagues, people you see on the street, hey, what are you doing? October 18th, we've got a place to be. Mark your calendars, spread the word. That's how this gets big.
- [45:37]
B
Yeah, I think it's going to get big again. I mean, sometimes the sequel is bigger than the original. You know, Empire Strikes Back still my favorite Star wars movie, but anyway. All right, Ezra Loving, good to see you, man.
- [45:47]
C
Good to see you, Jim.
- [45:48]
B
All right, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Ezra Levin with Indivisible, one of the masterminds of the no Kings protests. And it's just been a real. I, I think coming up on October 18th, just a real positive development in American democracy for people are like, oh, it's over. We're finished. It's. It's a wave goodbye. There it goes, off into the ocean, nighty night and so on. No, I mean, look at what happened on no Kings Day one. Everybody was out on the streets. Anybody who was. Everybody was out on the streets. Is that the term? No, I'm running out of gas because it's Friday. Anyone who is anyone, Is that the term? I'm still getting it wrong. Anyway, you know what I mean? Everybody was out there on the streets, and it was a huge, colossal success. It was. It was a much bigger success. I mean, contrast what happened on no Kings Day to Trump's pitiful, pathetic, crybaby military parade birthday party. That was not a party down on the National Mall. It was so. I think he was falling asleep. And it was so quiet. Remember? It was so quiet that you could hear the tank wheels go by.
- [46:51]
C
And they were going, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring.
- [46:53]
B
The little tank wheels were going by and they were making the little mechanical tank noises because it was so bloody quiet on Donald Trump's pathetic birthday bash. So make no Kings Day a big success. Keep it peaceful and you'll continue to drive the mad king crazy. That's my message on that. The other thing I want to say very quickly is story in the New York Times came out today. And again, this is on the subject of media. And, and I've said this before, I'll say it again. I do not like to kick sand into the faces of my friends and colleagues in the news media. I have a lot of respect for the press. I have a lot of respect for journalists. They have a tough job and so on. All of that, you know, having been said, there's a story in the New York Times today that Face the Nation, the long running CBS Sunday talk show is now going to change the way they air interviews in light of that DHS Kristi Noem interview that they had on last weekend where they made some cuts for time to the interview and she got all pissed off and said CBS is trying to do this and take me out of context and so on, when she was just lying and they were taking out the lies and she was filibustering so long they had to cut it down for time. This is a standard practice in the news business, ladies and gentlemen, because journalists should be in charge of what goes on these news programs. And the Sunday talk shows should be sacred. My God. I mean, they're not what they used to be. There's no question about it. Tim Russer, God rest his soul, but journalists should be able to make the decisions as to what goes into these Sunday talk shows. And I worked in network news for 25 years. I've filled on, on Sunday shows plenty of times. I've never met people working on a Sunday show saying, oh, well, let's take things out of context to screw this person. It just doesn't happen. It's because Trump can't handle bad press. He can't handle criticism. And that's filtered down to people like Kristi Noem, who is a totally ridiculous head of the Department of Homeland Security. And so she complains about her coverage just to please the dear leader, just to please the audience of one. And so it's nuts to me. I'm sorry. It is absolutely. It is such a disappointment that my old stomping grounds over at cbs, I worked there many years ago that CBS News would change the way they do face the Nation to placate these, these, you know, what do I want to call them on a Friday afternoon? I want to go have a glass of wine and calm down these wannabe dictators, these wannabe autocrats, these wannabe authoritarians. They want the press to bend the knee. They want people in the media to bend the knee. They want people in the press to show up at the White House and kiss his butt like these, these tech executives, like these cabinet secretaries do. And the one thing that the public is counting on during this, this crisis of a presidency is for the press to not bend the knee, to not back down, to not kowtow. And whole news organizations should not be in the business of bending the knee to a wannabe dictator, to a wannabe tyrant and his two bit cabinet secretaries who dress inappropriately in terrorist prisons down in El Salvador. Kristi Noem is not a serious person. Why are we treating her with that kind of seriousness? Why is Face the Nation changing decades of its policy and how it conducts its interviews to placate Christy Noem who shot a dog and Donald Trump who wants to be a dictator. Make it stop. And I just don't understand why my friends in the press, and I know they're under tremendous pressure and I know that Trump's aides, probably Stephen Miller and Jason Miller and all these people call up these news executives and scream at them on the phone and threaten how they're not going to get this and that unless they kowtow. It is a time for the news executives to, to stiffen their spines and tell these aides to Donald Trump, the wannabe dictator, to go to hell. Yes, that is what old fashioned TV executives and old fashioned anchors used to do. And I've done it myself. If you're on the phone with some of these jerks and they're breathing down your neck and they're trying to get you to change the coverage because they don't like the way things are going because their policies are bad or because Trump's in the Epstein files and so on, you tell them to go to hell. And you, you, you just hang up the phone. Done. We're done. We're done with this phone call. And you, you, you stand up to the bully. That is what the public is counting on. That's what the public wants out of the news media. They don't want news programs changing the way they do things to placate a man child in his cabinet of suck ups. I'm sorry. All right, it's Friday. I had to let off a little steam there. But my goodness, my friends at cbs, it's a crying shame what's happening there to the Tiffany Network, the home of Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Dan Rather, don't bend the knee. Don't bow down to these people, be tough, stand strong, do your jobs, let the chips fall where they may. And that's how I'm going to end this program for the week. My thanks to Jake Auchincloss, Ezra Levin. My another special thanks to Rosie o' Donnell for joining me earlier in the day. On the other edition, if you missed that, you can watch the the recording wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and so on. If you like this program, become a subscriber, hit the like button. Hit the subscribe button. It does make a difference. If you're watching on Substack and you want to support the work of this program, become a paid subscriber. It does help do the work that we do. We're trying to expand, we're trying to grow, we're trying to do things and it does help. Want to thank everybody again for watching all week long. Really appreciate all the support that you've given to this show over these last seven months or so. And still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good evening and have a good weekend. Take care.
- [53:08]
A
Bye. Bye.