← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Steve Schmidt nails Musk for calling Sen. Mark Kelly a "traitor" and legal expert Tristan Snell talks about Garland's legacy as Attorney General.
01:18:08
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Jim Acosta Show. It's Tuesday. You can see on screen there is Steve Schmidt. Always love talking to Steve Schmidt. And, you know, you and I booked this appearance a week ago or so, and it just so happens you are the perfect guest to talk about what we're going to talk about first, in that you were an advisor to Arizona Senator John McCain, presidential candidate John McCain, maverick John McCain. And you have another Arizona senator in the last 24 hours being referred to as a traitor by Elon Musk. That's where we are right now in America, ladies and gentlemen. You have Elon Musk, the world's richest man, ahead of Doge talking about slashing things like Social Security. He calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He. He's got his minions running through agencies of the federal government, vacuuming up people's personal data. Well, yesterday, the Washington Post reporting this, that Elon Musk called Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona, a decorated Navy pilot and former NASA astronaut, a traitor in a post on X after the senator visited Ukraine and expressed his support for the country and its war with Russia. I mean, I said this the other day, Steve, after, you know, Trump gave a speech before a joint session of Congress. I said it the other day when Lindsey Graham came out and was trashing Zelensky. John McCain would be rolling in his grave over all of this. But to have Elon Musk refer to Senator Kelly, a veteran, an astronaut, as a traitor, you know, can we. Can we put Elon Musk in a spaceship and launch him into outer space? I mean, your thoughts.
- [01:51]
Steve Schmidt
Well, great to be with you, Jim.
- [01:55]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [01:55]
Steve Schmidt
And good to see everybody. Let me just say this, that what Elon Musk said does not indict Captain Mark Kelly, US Navy's character. It indicts Elon Musk's. And it shows this profound arrogance, a unbridled megalomania, an assertion really, of mental illness fused with a malevolent political dogma that is a acute national emergency in a growing global crisis. And so what we saw here is a venomous strike by a serpent at the leg of a great American. And so Captain Kelly has the right stuff. There's a book about this. This man.
- [03:03]
Jim Acosta
Great movie.
- [03:04]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [03:04]
Steve Schmidt
Is an aircraft carrier qualified combat aviator who's flown into harm's way, who stood by his wife's side through a terrible event when she was shot in the head.
- [03:19]
Jim Acosta
Correct.
- [03:19]
Steve Schmidt
By a deranged assassin at a town hall meeting. A man of rectitude and probity. If you are a mother or a Father, you want your child to grow up to be Mark Kelly. In this country that was forged by great men and women into the greatest nation in the world, all of those people had to deal with low men and women. And so when Donald Trump attacks John McCain, he attacks all of the POWs, he attacks Admiral Stockdale, he attacks the men of the 8th Air Force in the 15th bomber group held in German lufts, doing the most dangerous duty of the Second World War. He repudiates our history, and he poisons our virtues. And the lifeblood of a nation is not wealth. It's not riches. It's valor. It's a commitment to human dignity. And Mark Kelly's life of excellence refutes Elon Musk's incandescent bullying and arrogance and bluster through action. Indeed, that makes Elon's words as cheap as his ideology.
- [05:03]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [05:04]
Jim Acosta
And, you know, to me, you know, how does Elon Musk have the time, quite frankly, to go after the character of a Mark Kelly when he's so busy blowing up rockets, presiding over a car company whose stock has plummeted in the last couple of weeks, is presiding over this Doge effort that has, I mean, almost united the entire country against what he's doing? But on top of that, you know, there's. There's a better question here. And, and that is. And it. And it. It ties to Trump. Is there a kind of desperate envy going on here? A sad, pathetic, desperate form of envy? Mark. Mark Kelly is. Is twice the man, five times the man that Elon Musk will ever be. He's. He's five times the man Donald Trump will ever be. And I, I. And I wonder if that's part of the reason why a Donald Trump went after a John McCain and said, I like heroes that aren't captured and that sort of thing. And, And Elon Musk goes after Mark Kelly when he goes to Ukraine and says, you know, these are the people we must stand behind, and the struggle for freedom and the struggle for democracy, the struggle against tyranny. And there's just something sad about Elon Musk and Donald Trump when it comes to people in uniform.
- [06:31]
Steve Schmidt
Well, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna divide the question, and let's stay on Elon Musk.
- [06:39]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [06:40]
Steve Schmidt
And so I was in Germany two weeks ago, and I was spending some time in a room and was with a bunch of German parliamentarians, and one of them asked a version of the question that you did, which is. Which is why?
- [06:56]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [06:56]
Steve Schmidt
And I said, maybe it's because He's a Nazi. His grandparents were. They were Canadian Nazis who never had the chance to live in the Reich, so they moved to South Africa. And maybe when he did the Hitler salute three hours after the inaugural, three times, he was trying to tell you something. And maybe, just maybe, when you look at the brutalism of his ideology, the rise of his techno fascism, you can give consideration that he has a meaningful intent to obliterate something sublime and divine, which is the notion that our purpose is the pursuit of happiness.
- [07:44]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [07:45]
Steve Schmidt
Elon Musk, in attacking the Polish foreign minister Radislaw Sikorski, I think, revealed for all of us how he thinks about all of us, because he called him a little man.
- [08:01]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Tell us about that.
- [08:03]
Steve Schmidt
Elon Musk's point of view. We're all little men and women, aren't we? Insignificant. And if you look at his treatment of people who work for us in the government. Civil servants.
- [08:18]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [08:18]
Steve Schmidt
His approach is that they're insects. And trust.
- [08:22]
Jim Acosta
Correct.
- [08:24]
Steve Schmidt
Even if you agree that the government is bloated and that there should be a massive downsizing, there is a respectful way to treat human beings who have spit. Spent their careers in a position of service. But, yeah, the dogma that Elon Musk is advancing is a dogma of a new tech feudalism. And so the soft and muddled, benign Silicon Valley tech utopianism of the garage of Hewlett and Packard and kind of the gentleman philosophy of Steve Wozniak has turned sinister. And what you see right now is an assertion of control.
- [09:15]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [09:16]
Steve Schmidt
These men are going for it.
- [09:19]
Jim Acosta
They are. Yeah, that's right.
- [09:22]
Steve Schmidt
Right now. And they must be stopped. And so are two bifurcated things that are happening right now. One, there's an absolute collapse of political opposition in Washington, D.C. with few exceptions, within the Democratic Party under the appeasement wing of the Schumachs and the sleepiness of Hakeem Jeffries leadership. And in the country, there is the tip of an uprising. And so there is, as a fruit of that uprising, chaos in the financial markets.
- [10:16]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [10:18]
Steve Schmidt
Collapse of the Tesla stock.
- [10:20]
Jim Acosta
That's right. No. And I've been calling what we've been seeing lately the great American Pushback. I'm very patriotic about what we're seeing right now. I think it's something that should give a lot of people hope for what is taking place when thousands of people pack themselves into Bernie Sanders Sanders rallies. It's not just the folks who are showing up these Republican town halls and giving them a piece of their mind. It's the folks who are Just showing up at any town hall. And this is the moment to do that. This is the moment to let your elected leaders know that you are not on board with this bullshit. And I mean, you talk about Elon Musk and the way he looks at people as insects and so on. I mean, the way he's talking about Social Security. Steve, you've been in American politics for a long time, and in what way, shape or form has anybody with the kind of authority that Elon Musk has, has ever talked about Social Security? I mean, I mean, just in the last 24 hours, he has talked about going after Social Security in a way that has prompted the White House to come out and say just today that, oh, no, no, Donald Trump, don't worry, he's all on board with Social Security. He's gonna protect your Social Security. He's gonna protect your Medicare and Medicaid. I mean, to me, what this speaks to is what you just said a few moments ago. At what point are they ever gonna have the opportunity that they have right now, the chance that they have right now? And so they, yes, you're absolutely right. They are going to go for it. And when Elon Musk talks about Social Security the way that he's talked about it in the last 24 hours with Kudlow or whatever it was, I mean, there's the tell right there.
- [12:01]
Steve Schmidt
Yeah. I want to say something and I want to preface it by saying everything I talk about is through the prism of civil disobedience and peaceful, non violent protest.
- [12:17]
Jim Acosta
Yep.
- [12:18]
Steve Schmidt
So, absolutely. Contact has been made on a line in an assault that was aggressively waged by Trump and Elon Musk. And now all over America, that assault is in contact with the American people. And the American people are called to rise up against this. So our public lands are under attack. If you live in a western state, must rise up against that. But there is no point of contact right now from a bricks and mortar perspective that is more important to gather at than every Tesla dealership in this country. It must be blockaded. There must be a constant, absolute application of pressure on this administration until these illegal, unconstitutional, immoral actions stop. Including the threats against Canada, the threats against our allies. And this will not be led by the Schumacher who are effectless and incapable. It will be led in communities. Bottom up. The courage of one will give courage to others.
- [14:09]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [14:10]
Steve Schmidt
Go stand outside a Tesla dealership with a sign, alone. I promise you, you will not stand alone for long.
- [14:21]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [14:22]
Steve Schmidt
Push back on this.
- [14:24]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [14:25]
Jim Acosta
I mean, I've seen the bumper stickers that people have put on their Teslas, saying, I bought this before I figured out that Elon Musk was crazy. And that's the kind of stuff that you're seeing out there. I do want to pivot a little bit to the economy right now because, I mean, I did not foresee us having a financial crisis in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. But I don't know, maybe we will. It just, it seems like it's going in a bad place and, you know, when you've lost Jim Cramer, you know you're in some deep shit. Media reporting that CNBC host Jim Cramer went off on Trump for fueling recession fears and cratering the stock market, noting competitor markets are crushing us and accusing Trump of potentially, quote, manufacturing, end quote, a recession. Jim Cramer is speculating that Donald Trump is manufacturing a recession. The stock market was down. The Dow Jones was down another 478 points today. Trump, despite all of this, said he's got this plan to double tariffs on steel, aluminum from 25% to 50%. He again referred to Canada as they should become our cherished 51st state. He said on Truth Social, this would make all tariffs and everything else totally disappeared. Steve, I want to just throw you that grab bag to see what you wanted to do with it. The 51st state thing, to me, I don't know, maybe it's because I was a correspondent who covered the White House and I tend to chase the bright shiny object from time to time. But talk about the biggest dipshit idea that has come out of Donald Trump's mouth. It's hard to come up with a top 10. The 51st state thing might be in the top 10, because, you know, I can't imagine the Republicans ever winning the 51st state of Canada in any presidential election. So, I mean, obviously they would be shooting themselves in the crotch from an electoral standpoint. It would be like adding California's total of electoral votes to the jackpot. But I mean, when you've lost, Jim, when Jim Cramer is saying that Donald Trump is potentially manufacturing a recession, I mean, I didn't have that on my bingo card for the first hundred days.
- [16:34]
Steve Schmidt
All of this is utter madness. Yeah, this is, as the Senator of the French Republic pointed out.
- [16:45]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [16:46]
Steve Schmidt
Our Nero, guided by the hand behind his back and under his shirt, the ketamine addicted Nazi puppet master. A phalanx of sycophants, and they're making their movement and he will wreck the American economy. And so there's an urgent matter, an immediate political proposition what's the purpose of opposition? It's to make you stop. We must impose our will on them, which is to stop. Stop the insanity and hold the line until independent courts of law can rule, until the American people can sweep this away in the midterm election.
- [17:53]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [17:53]
Steve Schmidt
And then face this in the mirror at the next presidential election. And here's the thing. The Democratic Party, or maybe an independent candidate, will have to go to the American people with a plan to do two things. One, comprehensive absolute ethics, lobbying and campaign finance reform across the board to clean it up. And that's right. These vast concentrations of power across the American economy, across the agricultural technology, all of it, the big banks, they must be broken up because they have become a profound threat to our democracy, to our liberty. When we talk about democracy, remember, the south had democracy, it was for slavery. The north had democracy, it was for freedom.
- [19:03]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [19:04]
Steve Schmidt
So they must all be broken up, liberty restored, the pendulum rebalanced. But that's for later. For now, this must stop. And let me say something about Canada. This is immoral. And the silence of America's democratic leaders on this question, who cannot find their way to outrage or coherency on the threats being made and the economic warfare being waged across our closest ally along the longest undefended border in world history, is an act of moral idiocy and appeasement that knows no names. And I want to. I want to say something very, very directly about this. Canada is the world's oldest multilingual democratic confederation in world history.
- [20:18]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [20:19]
Steve Schmidt
And as Dean. Wonderful country said, as it said, it was present at the creation, at the moment, the most decisive day in world history in a thousand years. June 6th of 1944. American boys and Canadian boys and British boys and Polish boys and French boys.
- [20:43]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [20:43]
Steve Schmidt
The boys of 25 nations stormed the beaches and they purchased in blood forever.
- [20:53]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [20:54]
Steve Schmidt
Their national dignity and sovereignty and purpose. So Canada is a giant country by land mass, but it is a giant nation in world history because of the achievements of its people in the work of freedom.
- [21:09]
Jim Acosta
Well, and the new prime minister. Yeah, no, the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has made it absolutely clear he's just not going to tolerate any of this nonsense from Donald Trump and nor should he. And it's one of the reasons why he's going to be very popular. It's one of the reasons why Justin Trudeau's popularity shot up there towards the end of his time as prime. And the point that you're making is absolutely right, because we talk so much about. And you Hear, you know, this has been said of America so many times. I'm not the one with the original thought here, but that we, you know, because of our oceans, you know, because of the oceans that, you know, we are, we live in relative peace and without much of a concern that, you know, a foreign nation could do a lot of harm to the United States. But I mean, when you, if we look to the north, another reason why that is is because of our great relationship and friendship with our Canadian brothers and sisters there in the Great White North. You're absolutely right about this. But I want to get back to one thing, because you and I, Steve, had this conversation. This is before. I, I don't know if I, even if I had started the show yet or I had just started the show, you gave me a call. We talked about this topic. I want to bring it up now because I, I do want to bend the conversation back to Elon Musk and the way he went after Mark Kelly. Because this has popped in my head that, and it's this conversation that you and I are having about what it means to be a man, manhood. And I really felt like we had a connection talking about this. And I'm not holding myself up as, like the epitome of this or anything, and I know you're not, you're not doing that either. But one of the things that I was raised with was a reverence for people in the uniform. And one of the things that I see in common between Donald Trump, Elon Musk are just two absolute failures when it comes to being a man. And I don't know if I'm saying this in the best possible way, and I don't want to come across as sounding insensitive or slightly misogynist. I don't mean it in those terms. I just mean it as, you just, it just is a foreign language to me to hear somebody like an Elon Musk go after a Mark Kelly like that in that fashion. And, and I think about all of these ass wipes on social media, you know, these people who have made a cottage industry after attacking, you know, folks like us. And I don't see them as, as being men, and I don't see Elon Musk as being much of a man. I just don't, I don't, you know, he's got a lot of kids and I guess he's, he's capable of, you know, reproduction. But I just, it pisses me this, this Mark Kelly thing is it's been staying with me. I'm just pissed off about it. And it goes. It's taking me back to the conversation you and I had about what? And this is, this is a political problem in this country right now. There are men who are just, they, they're under the trance of Donald Trump because they see what he offers as some kind of example of manhood. And I'm not talking about toxic mas, masculinity or any of those. I'm talking about like the, the time that you and I grew up in Steve. And I'm not pining for an old era or anything like that, but there's just something there that maybe I'm not putting my finger on. Maybe you can help me with that in that what Elon Musk did to Mark Kelly just hits me at that level. It's just wrong. Man to man. It's just wrong. Well, your thoughts?
- [24:55]
Steve Schmidt
It's. It's what we would have understood as a low blow by a cheap guy.
- [25:05]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [25:06]
Steve Schmidt
Against tough guy. And so a low blow is a. Is a low blow. And everyone, everyone would, everyone would have understood that. Look, I think your question is a deep question. I guess I would. I would answer it this way. And, and I, and I'm going to start with a contradiction. First thing I want to say to every maga, bully, thug, screamer who threatens violence that's threatened me. Right. People that I know, people that I'm friends with. What I want to say is I welcome your hatred, every one of you sons of bitches.
- [26:05]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [26:07]
Steve Schmidt
And I will not back down or compromise or bend my knee or meet you in the middle. We'll stand firm on the line, faithfully to the precept of the country that all men are created equal and women endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we have no king, we never will. We are a government of the people, by the people, for the people. And it is the most noble experiment in world history. We are a flawed people, but we are the only nation in the world made up of all the people in the world, where every language is commonly spoken every day. And together we have uplifted humanity like no other combined peoples. We have fed more, cured more, liberated more. It is a record of achievement in the affairs of man. And our shared purpose is to perfect the union. Our country was built by tough men and women who strived and suffered and dreamed and failed. And so, so I want to just say about being a man, what I tell my son.
- [27:22]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [27:23]
Steve Schmidt
Being a man recognizes that toughness and meanness are enemies of one another. That cruelty is not manly, that toughness requires sometimes in your life that you will have to draw a line.
- [27:48]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [27:49]
Steve Schmidt
And you will have to stand on that line. And there will be instances when you will be called to not move backwards from that line, no matter how many other people step backwards. That's what I think it means to be a man. There will be times when you will be called to step off of that line and move forward. There will be other times when you will be called to appreciate that you should never have drawn that line in the first place and to say you're sorry. There will be times when you must ask for forgiveness, and there will be times when you must give forgiveness. There will be times that you must show grace to receive grace. And that when you consider your opposition in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, even after terrible conflict, the wisdom to have malice towards none and charity to all, that is what it means to be a man. A man is judged on their. Their character. And there was an ethos in America that held if you worked hard for a living, you played by the rules, you contributed, you were entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. And Teddy Roosevelt talked about this at length when he talked about the arrogance of one class pitted against another. And what Elon Musk stands for is the proposition that we are to be serfs in a new age of the tech God who will officiously, constantly, and omnipresently dictate all things everywhere at once. So if a Russian criminal army invades a democratic nation and it rapes children and it rapes old ladies and it kills them and it ships their children east and disappears them, and the world's richest man decrees, I want there to be peace because I want the aggressor to prevail. It must be so, because you all are little people and I am a giant, and what came before is no more. I am a God and you are a serf. Hail Trump. And the answer to that is no, sir. You.
- [30:28]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and. And you're right. Goes to who we are as a nation. It goes to what we have deep down in our souls. And I think that is. You know, I read a story. Was it the New York Times? I can't remember. Maybe it was Wall Street Journal. That Donald Trump actually helped Volodymyr Zelensky in terms of his standing back in Ukraine because of the way Zelensky stood up to the bully. And, you know, you and I have not spoken. I don't think we've spoken since the. The Trump Zelensky encounter. But I, I was just enormously proud of the way the Ukrainian leader held his ground there in the Oval Office and the way he has handled himself throughout all of this and the courage that has just been just constantly on display by the Ukrainian people. And I mean, I'm just reading this morning, there are accounts that the Russian army is maybe not decimated, but it is in a sorry state right now.
- [31:42]
Steve Schmidt
It's been destroyed.
- [31:44]
Jim Acosta
It's been destroyed. And to think, you know, what is that? Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? I mean, that expression comes to mind and it makes me worry that we're bailing out. We're not siding with Putin, we're bailing him out in his most desperate hour. Why not let them fall on their face for what they've done to the Ukrainian people the way. You're absolutely right, we have not talked about that enough as a country. The way they rounded up children and kidnapped them and took them to Russia, the Ukrainian children. It's absolutely disgraceful. Putin is a war criminal. And how we could side with the war criminal. And that's not just siding with the bad guys, they're a fucking war criminal. The fact that we can side with them, to me, it makes me sick to my stomach as an American. And you know, that is what Mark Kelly was doing when he went over to Ukraine. I've talked to Mark Kelly before. I've talked to Scott Kelly, his brother. I used to interview Scott all the time on my old show and I used to tell him, you know, when you have the astronaut suit behind you on set, you're going to guarantee you that the producers are going to invite you back on because that's just one of the coolest damn things. I'm also a space nut. The Right Stuff. One of the best friggin movies of all time. Love that.
- [33:11]
Steve Schmidt
Love.
- [33:11]
Jim Acosta
I could watch that over and over again. I don't care that's four hours long or whatever the hell it is. And that's. Ukraine has the right stuff. Volodymyr Zelensky has the right stuff. Mark Kelly has the right stuff. Have you and I been transported to a different dimension, Steve, where the people who are most admired in our book are the ones who are really under the gun right now are the ones who are being called the traitor or being called the dictator. For Zelensky to be called the. I mean, give me a goddamn break. These are heroes.
- [33:44]
Steve Schmidt
They are heroes and we need to, we need to recognize them. The answer to your question is the American people will not tolerate this. The American people know that the Russians stand for a hideous and barbarous proposition and that democracy and freedom and liberty, who is defending it. And so this desecration of our values by Trump will not hold. But I want to. I just want to share a story that I think is a person who's going to be a big figure in American life over the next couple of years, even more so than he is. It's my friend, Bishop William Barber. And I think you look at what Bishop Barber did, a gathering of clergy and a statement of moral principle in opposition to all of this, attached deeply to the moral foundations of the. Of the. Of the country. But I was on. I was on a call on Friday evening late with Bishop Barber, and he told me this story. I'm gonna try to. I'm gonna try to share this story.
- [34:57]
Jim Acosta
I love him.
- [34:58]
Steve Schmidt
In. In 1857, the most hideous Supreme Court decision in our nation's history came down. The Dred Scott decision. And Frederick Douglass, born a slave, is a genius orator and thinker and writer. And this has hit him, devastated him. And so we look at the man who is the most important African American in the 19th century. Right? The preface to King and Obama. A man whose sons fight in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, a few years later. Frederick Douglass isn't a God, not a prophet. He's a man. He's an ordinary man, and he's down. And Harriet Tubman sees this, and she says to him, frederick, who's a very devout man, is God dead? And Frederick Douglass realizes in this instant that he has been guilty of defiling his value, that he's succumbed to what he said was an idolatry, that he put his faith in men and institutions and not God's plan. And so Frederick Douglass is immediately reinvigorated. And he doesn't have X or Twitter or YouTube. So Frederick Douglass has to prepare an oration, a speech. And he goes in the first half of that speech and he denounces the evil of this decision. But then in the back half, he says, consideration must be given to the idea that there is a plan in which this decision is a necessitous chain in a link of events that will bring about the downfall of the whole evil institution.
- [37:26]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [37:26]
Steve Schmidt
Which in that moment in 1857, was stronger than it had ever been in American life. The founders desecrated slavery. They viewed it as an evil that would be dealt with under the umbrella of the institutions that were left for the next generations. But by 1857. It was stronger than ever. And yet in five years time, it was vanquished.
- [38:01]
Jim Acosta
Correct.
- [38:01]
Steve Schmidt
And so as we go through these dark days and troubled times, what you have to have faith in is that a proposition that is shocking in its advancement, that has stunned us all, even those of us who were prepared for it have warned about it for 10 years.
- [38:29]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [38:31]
Steve Schmidt
That as we make contact with it and don't let it go and hold on to it and push it back.
- [38:40]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [38:41]
Steve Schmidt
That in the end, this will all be buried back in the ground with some immutable lessons.
- [38:51]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [38:51]
Steve Schmidt
I'll tell you something. Marco Rubio, the national puta you sign documents, is the son of a Cuban refugee who sentenced a million people to death. As food aid rots on the shelves while you piously tweet out Bible verses. If you were 40 years old in 1959, you'd be Fidel Castro's shine boy, and he would. He's abandoned. Like all of these people have what John McCain called the faith of our fathers. They're trying to raise a new faith.
- [39:44]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [39:45]
Steve Schmidt
We must reject it because it is unholy, it is un American, and it will lead to. To catastrophe here and around the world.
- [40:01]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [40:02]
Jim Acosta
And. And Steve, I mean, you know, I'm. I'm the son of a Cuban refugee. My dad is a Cuban refugee. Came over 1962, three weeks before the Cuban Missile crisis, made a new life for himself with my grandmother in. In the United States. They. They moved from Miami up to the Washington, D.C. area. And then I came along not too long after that. And one of my guiding principles in life has always been that this country is still the greatest hope on earth, even right now. And I know that may come across as like, yeah, right, Jim. But even right now, to me, it is still the greatest hope on earth. And it's because of your commitment, Steve, the commitment of folks like yourself who even in these darkest times, even in this darkest hour, I suppose it could get darker. You still have the faith. You're keeping the faith, and that's what it's all about. You know, when I tell this story from time to time, I had the chance to travel with Obama to Cuba when he was trying to get diplomatic relations going again with Cuba. And I had a chance to ask Raul Castro a question, and I, you know, I was thinking to myself, what do I ask him? You know, there was only one thought on my mind, and that was to ask about that country's practice of jailing political prisoners. And, you know, Raul Castro, he pulled the translator Headphones off his head. When I asked this question, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. And he said, dame lalista, Dame lalista. Give me the list of the political. And he knew damn well who the political prisoners were in that country. He had a hand in jailing those people. And the thing that I cannot understand, I cannot fathom about the current Secretary of State is how you could for one moment be a part of an administration that would turn your backs against. To the people who are on the front lines of the cause of our time, the cause of the ages, the cause of democracy. And I, you know, I. There's a part of me that thinks that Marco is going to come to his senses and maybe before the end of this year, he's going to get out of there, he's going to bail. And maybe I'm being too nice about this, Steve, and maybe you're hitting the nail on the head here, but as a fellow Cuban American, it's just goddamn disappointing to see this happening right now, because defeating the Russians in Ukraine is as critical to what is happening right now as anything else on this planet at this moment. It's that, it's that, it's that vital.
- [42:55]
Steve Schmidt
When I think about in my life and my parents are actually in the room next door. They're. They're visiting, they're pushing 80. The first refugee I met was a guy who worked with my dad, and it was Fanny and Gus, and they were. They were Cuban refugees. And I remember the first crush I had was on Fannie and Gus's daughter. Right. It was, it was a little bit older. Older than I was. But when you think about Cubans in America is that I never ever met a Cuban who was against liberty.
- [43:37]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [43:37]
Steve Schmidt
Ever. Because every Cuban in America was for liberty. But, yeah, that skews the view because not every Cuban is for liberty, otherwise there wouldn't be Castro controlled Cuba.
- [44:00]
Jim Acosta
Correct.
- [44:01]
Steve Schmidt
So there are Cubans who have served the cause of tyranny. It's just unusual in America to have ever seen one. It's like seeing a polar bear in Central park walking around. Yeah, the genus just doesn't exist here. It's out of place. So it is so despicable and so contrary to the contributions of an amazing cohort of Americans, which are the Cubans that have built lives and economies and enormous contributions to the United States since arriving in the country fleeing political persecution in 1959. And to see the son of a Cuban immigrant asserting the Russian propaganda position.
- [44:57]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [44:58]
Steve Schmidt
To the Polish foreign minister is an astonishment. But you have to recognize. And here's the thing. The man who interrogated Adolf Eichmann was named Abner Les. He was a German Jew, Israeli police captain. His family was lost in the Holocaust. He lied about it, but he was the interrogator. If you read the Les Eichmann interrogations, there are master class in psychology. But 20 years after Eichmann's dead, Les has never talked about it. He's asked a question. Any takeaways from the experience? He goes, yes. So a lot of people talk a lot of bullshit about a lot of things and politics and media and journalism and have no idea. So you know what? Yeah, I do want to know what the takeaway of the guy was. You sat across from Adolf Eichmann for 275 hours and interrogated them.
- [46:10]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [46:11]
Steve Schmidt
And what he said was it made me understand and put at the center my faith in democracy, because there are Adolf Eichmanns all around us, everywhere. They are latent in a democracy, but they become deadly in a dictatorship of the left or the right. In the truth of the matter is. And I'm not a smart enough guy to be able to tell you why, I. I'm not a smart enough person to be able to comprehend these forces and where they bubble up from. I just know.
- [46:55]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [46:56]
Steve Schmidt
That I see a gleam in the eye that my fluency in history instructs me is not a new gleam. And there is a virus and Ebola that rises up and creates a compulsion for some to want to wreck. And there is not a constituency right now of millions in favor of this that must be severed from any intellectual construct around the dynamics of this moment, which is that the Trump voter supports this. This is being executed by a few thousand people in Washington, D.C. around Donald Trump, some of the richest people in the world. And what we are seeing is a profound crisis of indifference.
- [48:13]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [48:14]
Steve Schmidt
In our civil society. But here's the news. The strength of the country comes from the core of its middle class. From its ordinary people.
- [48:31]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [48:31]
Steve Schmidt
From its CEOs, not from the people who give each other certificates and participation trophies for being really rich at Davos.
- [48:42]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [48:43]
Steve Schmidt
It comes from America's. People love it. And so this moment of great contestation comes in an epic year of celebration and anniversary. When we talk about Mark Kelly.
- [49:06]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [49:07]
Steve Schmidt
He is one of the finest men that has ever put on the uniform of an institution that will turn 250 years old. The United States Navy.
- [49:24]
Jim Acosta
That's it.
- [49:25]
Steve Schmidt
Famous around the world.
- [49:26]
Tristan Snell
Yeah. Yeah.
- [49:28]
Steve Schmidt
This year, beginning next month, we will celebrate an instant the shot heard around the world that ruptured history, that divided it in half, that broke it into two. The shot heard around the world that Lexington and conquered the beginning of the American Revolution. A few days later, 250 years ago, George Washington the Virginian takes command. 250 years ago, the Battle of Bunker Hill. 250 years ago, the Congress decrees the formation from amongst the colonies a continental army of the whole. The United States army is born. And then.
- [50:17]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [50:19]
Steve Schmidt
In the need of the moment, the United States Marine Corps is born.
- [50:24]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [50:25]
Steve Schmidt
All of this is the preface to what happens next. July 4th.
- [50:32]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [50:33]
Steve Schmidt
The most important moment since the birth of Jesus Christ and Muhammad in world history. The inception of the United States of America.
- [50:45]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [50:46]
Steve Schmidt
And so Donald Trump is a hustler and a conversation and a criminal who reelected President.
- [50:57]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [50:57]
Steve Schmidt
Because of the failure of a political party to offer anything better and to stop the madness. They face the threat with the politics of joy and Brad Summer gaslighting about a senile 82 year old man who was propped up by his wife and six or seven staffers and one of the most dishonest and outrageous lies ever told by an American administration. And the fruit of all of that dishonesty.
- [51:27]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [51:28]
Steve Schmidt
Is this outrageous crisis.
- [51:31]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [51:32]
Steve Schmidt
That we, the American people will put down, put the bed, move on from, and pray to God, learn a lesson from. Because when we get to the end of this, every American president, wherever they go, will be rolling with a new humility and an apology at the front of every speech for the next 50 years. But until then, let us stop this madness.
- [52:05]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [52:06]
Jim Acosta
Well said. Well said, Steve. I think we should stop it right there. Steve. Great conversation. Always. I just, I could just kick back and crack open a cold one and listen, you just go. I, I really appreciate it. And I, I've been kicking around this idea of doing a town hall because there's so many these gutless cowards out there that won't do it. Maybe you and I should do one and, and I'd be happy to do it. Figure out a place to do it.
- [52:31]
Steve Schmidt
And I'm, and I'm like, can I just say one last thing? You know, we got nearly what we got. We got almost 9,000 people, people on here in the middle of the afternoon. Many more people see it. Listen, I'm not trying to be angry with anyone, but I want, I want to say something to you. I'm begging all of you.
- [52:51]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [52:52]
Steve Schmidt
Stop treating the most powerful people in the world like Joe Biden and the President of the United States, like Like they're Taylor Swift and you're a 13 year old kid. Like you're a fan. Like they can do no wrong.
- [53:05]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [53:06]
Steve Schmidt
A terrible wrong was done here. I'm saying, I'm saying Joe Biden delivered this country through his profound selfishness to Donald Trump. If you see that, if you can't.
- [53:21]
Jim Acosta
See that, I think people see it now.
- [53:24]
Steve Schmidt
You're so blind that won't be able to escape this. And I, God, I pray that you all can see it. Because the lesson, until you do, it's impossible to offer better. We're just the prisoner and one side of the vice by the Schumacher and Maga on the other. And we'll get eaten by the stronger side because we're left undefended by the weak one.
- [53:55]
Jim Acosta
Everyone, I love you, man. And, and I think the last time you and I were talking, I said, let's put a pin in this conversation about what the hell happened in 2024. And I'm doing it again. But so the next time you and I do this, we start the conversation there because I feel like I, I need to let you get this off your chest. But that was, I mean, an amazing conversation. Steve Schmidt, everybody. Great to see you, sir.
- [54:17]
Steve Schmidt
And good to see you.
- [54:18]
Jim Acosta
I'm so glad we talked about this, this, you know, Mark Kelly situation. What you, you've left us with a lot of things to think about. Thank you, Steve. Really appreciate it. Take care and give my best to your folks next door. Tell them thanks for letting us take up some of their time. Good to see you, buddy. All right, my pleasure.
- [54:36]
Steve Schmidt
Thank you.
- [54:38]
Jim Acosta
That was Steve Schmidt, everybody. I'm gonna try to bring in Tristan Snell, legal expert, former prosecutor. He and I have been playing a little phone tag, going back and forth, trying to set up a time to talk about this. And I want to piggyback off of my conversation with Steve Schmidt. If I can get Tristan up through this, as I call it, the Substack machine. I don't know if folks saw this earlier today, but I, I put it out there on Substack and a few other social places that the Hollywood Reporter had had a big write up on Substack and how it's just going gangbusters right now. And so for folks who are tuning in and joining us here on Substack, I, I just absolutely appreciate everything. And there's Tristan right there. Hey, Tristan. Good to see you. I came to you a little late. Sorry about that. I appreciate hanging sometimes when, when, when Schmidt and I get talking, you know, I I seriously, I want to get out the good stuff, you know what I mean? I want to get the small batch bird been out and, and, but I feel like you and I will have the same kind of conversation here. And I feel like Ted Koppel telling the affiliates we may go past the one hour allotment time because you and I need to talk about, I've been wanting to get a legal expert and somebody like yourself on former prosecutor, if I'm, if I'm not mistaken, because one of the questions that I have, and I think it's a question that a lot of viewers out there have, is yes, we know much of what is taking place. What, what Doge is doing, what Elon Musk is doing, what Donald Trump is doing is morally repugnant. But is it legally repugnant? And it sounds as though the courts, some, there are some judges, even Trump appointed judges, Republican appointed judges, saying not so fast, what's been your assessment of this so far? And we'll talk, we talk about other stuff too, but your assessment of that, because that's been on my mind.
- [56:35]
Unknown
Yeah. I mean look, there's, there's a couple of layers of this. One is that you've got the, the illegalities of what they've done, allegedly with numerous courts giving us a sneak preview into how they're going to be deciding these cases. What happens when you have sort of the early beginning of a case, especially under some of these laws, where what you're trying to get is to stop the federal action more than it is to actually recover money. But even in a lot of different cases, you can get either a temporary restraining order or you can get an injunction and a preliminary injunction it's called. And either of those situations, the legal standard that the court is applying is, among other things, is there going to be some likelihood of success on the merits by the plaintiffs? That's one of the bars that the plaintiffs have to clear in order order to get a restraining order or an injunction. The judges that have been issuing these decisions, and you're right, they have been both Republican as well as Democratic appointed judges, a lot of them in the District of Columbia. That's where a lot of these cases are being filed as a federal court in D.C. but a number of them are in other district courts around the country, Seattle, Rhode island and so forth. When the judges are issuing these decisions, they're in effect saying I'm taking a sneak peek at this and it looks like the plaintiffs have a fighting chance. So we're getting some early indications that that, yes, there were illegalities committed here. Now, those aren't criminal illegalities in most of these situations, at least not yet, because we're talking about things like the Administrative Procedure act, which we could get into at greater length. But it's probably the most, what I keep saying is it's the most most important federal law that most people haven't heard of, that it actually regulates what these agencies can and cannot do. You can't just go fire a hun, you know, hundreds or thousands.
- [58:36]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [58:36]
Unknown
You can't shut down an entire program without having fact based, policy based reasons behind it. You can't do it just because, just because you said so. That doesn't work. One of the standards under the, the APA is, is that you can't do things that are arbitrary and capricious. And that's one of, for the, for, for those of us who care about democracy and our republic and the rule of law, that is one of our best weapons to stop a lot of these excesses from occurring.
- [59:05]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and Congress controls the purse no matter what Donald Trump thinks. He can't just go willy nilly and just, you know, take a Elon Musk chainsaw to anything that he sees in his sight. And I've been particularly worried about the folks over at usaid. I talked with a, this was private, a private discussion that I had at a, an event I was at recently, somebody who's fairly high up in usaid and she was telling me about just how people are absolutely petrified there. Some of these folks have been stranded in far flung places. They're doing the work of the United States, doing soft power, spreading the good word that this country can go into other parts of the world and do good things. And this is something that I saw today. I mean, ProPublica reported this and Rolling Stone picked it up that a new memo from somebody high up in USAID first surfaced by ProPublica designates Tuesday as a quote clearing event with the agency's skeleton staff of essential personnel instructed to join in an act of mass document destruction. This memo from this acting executive Secretary USAID calls for purging of, quote, our classified safes and personnel documents at the USAID longtime headquarters, the Ronald Reagan building in Washington D.C. this is in a Rolling Stone article and one of the quotes from this person says shred as many documents first and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break. I'm just reading from Rolling Stone, which was coded, you know, quoting ProPublica some of this, some of this sounds like they're. They're trying to go so fast they know what they're doing is legally questionable, so they go fast.
- [60:43]
Unknown
That's right. That is exactly right. Like you're only. If you are turning on the shredder so much that you're worried about it needing a break because it's smoke starting to come out of it.
- [60:53]
Jim Acosta
Right, right.
- [60:54]
Unknown
I mean, for those of us who are old enough to remember the Iran Contra share.
- [60:59]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [61:00]
Unknown
Do you remember this with Oliver North?
- [61:01]
Jim Acosta
Oh, sure.
- [61:03]
Unknown
What was the name of. I'm old enough Assistant Hall. Bond Hall. And she was testifying that she was.
- [61:11]
Jim Acosta
She went to my high school. A little bit older than me, but she went to my high school in Annandale, Virginia, I believe. I think I'm correct on that. But anyway, I remember, I remember this.
- [61:21]
Unknown
As a kid that she was testifying and she was talking about shredding documents late into the night to cover up.
- [61:28]
Jim Acosta
That's right.
- [61:28]
Unknown
They had done. I remember this. If, but if you're doing that, that's a pretty clear sign that you, that you know you've done something wrong. That's that like.
- [61:39]
Jim Acosta
And they're talking burn bags. We're not even 100 days in.
- [61:43]
Unknown
We're not even 100. Yeah, we're not. We're still in the first 100 days and we're already talking burn bags. So they're committing these things. So that's kind of layer one. One is the illegalities, but then layer two, and this is where this starts to come in, is that then you can have situations where the COVID up is going to be worse than the crime. Right. Are they actually going to be breaking criminal statutes at some point with some of the things that they're doing? If they are taking documents and getting them out of federal custody and into private servers, have they broken federal criminal laws by doing so? If they're taking that data that they've had access to and using it for private purposes or private gain, that's definitely a criminal problem. If they are wantonly destroying documents that they're not supposed to be destroying, my bet is I'm not an expert on this, but I bet is I bet you that there are criminal statutes that are implicated there. And then this is key. Government officials have some amount of limited immunity from. From liability, but only when they're acting with within the scope of their official duties. So as soon as they're doing something that's outside the scope of their job. And guess what? News flash. Burn bags are probably not part of Your job. They're just not. I'm just gonna go on out.
- [62:57]
Jim Acosta
I don't know. Where do you go buy a burn bag? I was just thinking this, you know, I. Is that at Home Depot? Do you get the burn bag?
- [63:03]
Steve Schmidt
Yeah, I don't.
- [63:03]
Unknown
I don't. I don't know where you get those. That's a good question. Yeah. I'll have to go Google sort of like how to crime and, like, figure this out, because it's actually.
- [63:12]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, but for.
- [63:12]
Unknown
As a good prosecutor, usually on. I'm not usually on that side of the ball gym. I don't know.
- [63:18]
Jim Acosta
As a good prosecutor, that would be part of the discovery, you know, the Google searches or the Amazon searches for burn bags, you know.
- [63:25]
Unknown
Right.
- [63:25]
Jim Acosta
Do they come in a quantity of 10, you know?
- [63:28]
Unknown
Right, exactly.
- [63:29]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [63:29]
Unknown
You. You Costco, you can buy them in bulk, probably. Right. So I. I don't know where you get this stuff from, but then, like, then you've got other things, like the servers. If they're. If they're. If they're bringing this data and getting it out of sort of the federal servers and using it for any kind of private gain, or they're privately storing it, that's also outside of the scope of their official duties. So there's. That's a whole other layer that we're not even thinking of yet.
- [63:55]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [63:55]
Unknown
Now, of course, DOJ is not going to be prosecuting any of these people, obviously. True.
- [64:01]
Steve Schmidt
But.
- [64:01]
Unknown
But. But the thing is, the statute of limitations on some of these things could end up running aways. And so for these folks that are. They're just like, I was just following orders, and they're, like, actually doing these things, they've got to remember that they might actually face justice on this five years from now.
- [64:23]
Jim Acosta
That's right.
- [64:24]
Unknown
Things that they're doing today, they could be civilly liable at any time here, and they could be criminally liable. Liable for. After this term is over. So there's a number of layers here. There's being able to stop them for being arbitrary and capricious. And then there are whether some of these things that they're doing could expose people to civil liability, criminal liability, or if they're attorneys, that could expose them to disbarment.
- [64:44]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. I mean, if. If, if the thought running through your mind is, is that, well, the excuse I'll give someday is, I was just following orders. I just want to. Right now, I just want to stop you in your tracks and just say, you need to be thinking about your life choices here. If you're working for Donald Trump. And your excuse later on in life is going to be. I was just following. I'm just saying that may not work out for you, but let me ask you this generally. Yeah, yeah, no, I was going to ask you that. I. One of the questions that I have is about the legality of Doge as, as an institute. We don't know what it is. Is it an agency? And, Tristan, if you could talk a little bit about the other night at the speech when Trump said Elon Musk is the head of Doge, which contradicted what they had been saying in court, that Elon Musk is not the head of Doge. And then a couple of days later, after Trump said that they were against, you know, Trump was telling his Cabinet secretaries, well, you're in charge of who's fired and who's not. It sounds as though they're on very shaky ground legally.
- [65:46]
Unknown
Incredibly.
- [65:47]
Steve Schmidt
So.
- [65:47]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. So there are a number of lawsuits about this already, and they are moving forward, you know, slowly but surely. And then it has come up in a lot of these other cases in which Doge. I insist on using square quotes whenever I say the word in which Doge is actually implicated. It is not. It has not been set up in a way that is legal appropriate. There's just really no two ways about it. They knew they weren't going to be able to set it up and actually create something that would have the power that they wanted it to have by getting it as a true department created by Congress. Generally speaking, if you're talking about a. About a new department, that's usually something that Congress ends up needing to create and then appropriate funds for. So they did a sneaky sleight of hand by taking something called the U.S. digital Service that already existed. That was a small unit of technologists. It was actually created by the Obama administration in the wake of the debacle around the healthcare.gov rollout to basically fix healthcare.gov and a whole bunch of other websites and things throughout the federal government. And they actually made a lot of progress on that, but they were like, great, we're going to use that, change the name, pack it full of a bunch of our cronies and minions, and then use it to basically be a SWAT team to break down all the doors all around the federal government. The thing is that, like, you literally are taking something that had legal authority to make a website better, and then you're using it to shut down entire parts of the federal government. They're acting outside the authority that they, that they ever had. Like, you can't just, you can't just be like, oh, we're going to take the, the, the, the lawn care service for the, the White House, and we're going to use it to put in a bunch of brown shirts to start beating up people in the street.
- [67:42]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [67:42]
Unknown
Like, you can't do, you can't just take a thing and then change it to think and then roll it back out there like that.
- [67:48]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [67:48]
Unknown
Legally, it doesn't work. So in my view, without being an administrative law expert, because, you know, these areas of law are very specialized. However, I've been reading up on this and talking to very smart people who help me understand these things. My take on this is that we're going to see judges find that Doge. Doge has been acting well outside of its legal authority and that thereby many, if not most of the things that it's been doing are null and void. If they wanted to change the color of a button on a federal website, that was in their purview, pretty much.
- [68:25]
Jim Acosta
Everything else was not exactly. If you want to change the drapes at the Department of Education, that's one thing. Tearing the whole damn thing down is quite another.
- [68:34]
Unknown
Can't. You can't, you can't do that. Yeah. This was to design to, like, oh, did it make it easier to check out.
- [68:39]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [68:40]
Unknown
Or make it easier to actually go find your health care plan. And that's what their job was. And most of the people who did that work have quit because they didn't want to be part of. You saw the headline from a few weeks ago that, like, Joe, 21 people resigned. It was the people that were there as part of the U.S. digital service that kind of got dragged into this. And a lot of them are just saying, like, I'm not helping you anymore. I'm not going to let, I'm going to, I'm not going to be there while you tear apart all of these agencies. I'm not participating.
- [69:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And, you know, not to jump around to a different subject, but one of the things that comes up often on my show, and this is an area where I think you can comment with a lot of authority because I see the book over your shoulder taking down Trump. Is that what your assessment is of Merrick Garland, the job he did as Attorney General? You know, I know when you go to cocktail, I see you leaning back in your chair.
- [69:39]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [69:40]
Jim Acosta
Your assessment of where we would be right now had Merrick Garland acted six months sooner, a year sooner. Oh, My gosh.
- [69:49]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [69:49]
Jim Acosta
I mean, what would sadly look like?
- [69:52]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [69:52]
Jim Acosta
Sadly. Am I, am I opening up Pandora's box here and like, yeah, this is.
- [69:57]
Unknown
Gonna be a TED Talk box.
- [70:01]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [70:01]
Unknown
I could, I could get the hourglass so that I can keep myself to a limit. But I'll try to say this. You hit the nail right on the head, Jim. Like, if they had. And here's the thing, and I hate trashing him.
- [70:13]
Jim Acosta
I, I hate that.
- [70:14]
Unknown
I don't, I don't want.
- [70:15]
Jim Acosta
Respected public servant. Servant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [70:18]
Unknown
I mean, he did a. Look, he had a long and storied career as a prosecutor. Unfortunately, I don't think that we're going to look upon his reign as Attorney General being his finest hour. Like, he did a lot of great things. He, he helped win the Oklahoma City bombing case. He helped win the Olympic park bombing case in Atlanta. Like, these were. He was a, he was a very, very highly respected prosecutor for many, many years, and will. And I'll always respect him for that. I don't think that they moved quickly enough. I think they acted with a lot of sort of, like, excessive timidity and caution. They were being a little too careful, a too wary of looking too political. Now, his hands may have been tied. It may have been folks at the White House who tied Garland's hands. We may find out. That might be like a Bob Woodward book at some point. We find out exactly how that went down.
- [71:08]
Tristan Snell
Yep.
- [71:09]
Unknown
But what we know at the moment is that, and, and this did get reported on. There was. I remember there was a Washington Post piece about this, that there were discussions within the FBI and DOJ about going after the, the, the political suspects regarding January 6th in 2021. Right. To go, as opposed to just going after the proud boys and those folks, the boots on the ground guys, the ones who actually assaulted Capitol Police officers and ransacked the Capitol going after the suits, not just the boots, but the, the, the word from higher ups was, no, we're not doing that. It came up, it was proposed, it was pitched, and it was stopped, and it was basically, it continued to be.
- [71:59]
Jim Acosta
That's the story. You're right. That, that's the story. If we can ever get to the, to that heart of the issue. And, and, and, and perhaps there's going to be a great deal of resistance, different kind of resistance to ever getting to that sort of truth. Right. The American people deserve to know that.
- [72:17]
Unknown
We deserve to know what happened because.
- [72:19]
Jim Acosta
We deserve to know what happened is.
- [72:21]
Unknown
The, the investigation into Donald Trump's role And his inner circle's role with regard to January 6th should have begun on the afternoon of January 20th, 2021. It literally should have been the very first thing that he did. Okay, maybe Garland wasn't there yet, but, like, whenever he first stepped into Main justice in February of that year, literally, he should have called a meeting of his. Of his senior staff and been like, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this. They should have named a special council that day. It should have been immediately. And the American people would have applauded, including a lot of Republicans, because we forget the overwhelming, like, the overwhelming feeling among the American people at that point was that everybody who had something to do with that needed to be investigated and needed. Needed to be held accountable and brought to justice. Yeah, people would have been okay with it, and instead they blinked. They didn't do it. And they didn't. Actually. We didn't see Jack Smith get appointed until the very end of 2022, after the House had completed its investigation. And I still maintain, I said this in my book, that if we. If the House investigation had never happened with all of us, the people agitating for it to happen was why the House leadership greenlit it. Because there was so much. There was so much feeling out there among the people that something needed to be done. If that. If the. The house committee on J6 had never happened, I don't know that Jack Smith would have ever happened at all.
- [73:58]
Jim Acosta
Wow. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right about that. And. And folks who forget, I mean, because there's so much that. That has happened, we forget things. You know, I mean, Donald Trump announced his candidacy, what, shortly right after. It was right after that, the launching of the Jack Smith investigation. And he did. He did it because he knew his goose was probably cooked and he had to immediately start throwing sand into the gears.
- [74:26]
Unknown
Right? That's right. And he wanted to create the optics of you are coming for a candidate. It's a. It was all this whole idea of it being political retribution. They were not probably ready to actually put that announcement out there yet. It was the earliest that anybody has ever announced. Except for Fringe Camp.
- [74:43]
Jim Acosta
Yes.
- [74:44]
Unknown
You know it. Yeah, it was. We do forget that. That's a great point.
- [74:47]
Tristan Snell
Yeah.
- [74:48]
Jim Acosta
Well, Trista, let's keep doing this. Let's keep the conversation going. As I warned the affiliates out there, we were running over our allotted time, but it was well worth it. When Steve Schmidt gets going, it's sort of like you can just put quarters in him. He'll just Keep going. He's just, he's a master at these kinds of long form conversations. But I really appreciate your time as well. So thanks for hanging in there and great stuff. Let's, let's do this again and let's talk soon.
- [75:15]
Unknown
Absolutely. Let's do it again sometime soon. Thanks, Jim.
- [75:17]
Jim Acosta
Thanks, Tristan. And Tristan's on Substack as well. He's written a book. It's over his shoulder there. I mean, follow Tristan. The, the commentary he puts out there I think is really spot on. Tristan, great to talk to you. Thanks a lot.
- [75:29]
Unknown
Likewise, Jim. Thank you.
- [75:31]
Jim Acosta
Take care. That was Tristan Snell, everybody. And, and, and you know, he's a great example of what I've been trying to say to a lot of folks. Folks is, which is just have some patience with me. I. There, there are folks who I want to collaborate with me and I want to collaborate with them. And I've. What I've been saying lately is I just watched this movie, Mickey 17, where they, they. This guy Mickey, played by Robert Pattinson, he, he, he makes himself what they call an expendable in this sci fi movie that just came out directed by the guy who directed Parasite. And, and you know, Mickey gets killed. But they have a human printer on the spaceship and they just print out a new Mickey every, every time he gets. And it's out there. Sometimes I wish that I had one of these machines where I could just print more of myself so I could do multiple sub stacks a day and do all of the other stuff that's out there. And I wish I could, you know, have all of the folks on who have been saying, hey, you know, love to do a collaboration. Please just know I'm working on it. The town hall idea, I'm working on it. I would love to do that. I'd love to continue to contribute as much as I possibly can. I'm just a, you know, a washed up newscaster here. I'm just kidding. Just being a little self deprecating. But, but one of the things that I'm so grateful for, and it was on my mind today because this Hollywood Reporter story came out about how well Substack is doing. My hat is off to the people here at Substack for the great job that they've done. You have people that are coming on this platform. Look at, we have 10,000 viewers right now. I feel a little hesitant to hit the end button on the substack machine because we've gotten so many folks on board this afternoon. I hate everybody to go home, but my goodness. This has been going on for like an hour and 20 minutes now. But, but please, everybody know I don't say this enough. I want to say it right now. I am so grateful to all of you for, for everybody who's been watching this little show get off the ground, building the plane mid flight. Let's keep doing it. I'll be back again tomorrow. Got some other fun stuff in store for later on in the week, guys. Thanks very much for tuning, tuning in. Still reporting. And I'll say where I'm not in Washington right now, but I will say later in the week where I was. I don't always like to disclose my movements in detail, but still reporting. I'm Jim Acosta. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Really appreciate it. See you next time.