← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Steve Schmidt on Occupied DC and Glenn Kirschner on Judges Calling BS on Trump's Epstein Games
01:07:45
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- [00:00]
A
All right, welcome to the Jim Acosta Show. It's another day that ends in Y and Donald Trump's salt on American democracy. Tonight, he says he plans to tour D.C. with the National Guard now that he's taken over the nation's capital. I'm reporting to you live from occupied D.C. and if you think that sounds like hyperbole, listen to this. The Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen, describing it this way. They're calling it occupied Washington. Parts of the nation capital, they say, have started to look like occupied territory with massive military transport vehicles dotting the city. As you can see, my big guest for the hour, Steve Schmidt, as always, great to see you. I think it's about 2,000 National Guard troops here in Washington now from a handful of Republican states. I was down on the Mall earlier today, you know, working on some reporting on all of this. You know, you can see that they are descending. And I saw a growing number just outside the National African American History Museum, and they don't seem to have much to do other than give Trump this show of force.
- [01:03]
B
This is an appalling moment. The use and abuse of the United States army to frighten Americans and to be engaged in this type of performance theater. But, but theatrical though it may be. Right, this is what fascism looks like. If I had said in May of 2024 on any of the corporate television networks that this would happen, you would have been labeled a nut. And yet, here we go. Yeah, and I, I was just in Los Angeles doing some work and. Excuse me. Fumble.
- [02:00]
A
That's all right. That's okay.
- [02:02]
B
You recover here.
- [02:03]
A
We'll fix it in public.
- [02:07]
B
You know, I, I can't describe the climate of fear inside the Hispanic community. Yep, it's immense. The fact that you have National Guard troops federalized from Mississippi deployed to an all black city on this immense lie, that the disorder is so great that the US army has to be deployed in order to deal with it. And in the end, let's be clear and honest about it, it's for an audience of a few million people, you watch a constellation of democracy snuff films. That's what you can, I think accurately call the programming on Fox or Newsmax or oan, but wherever it is, that's.
- [03:06]
A
Full blown brain watching now.
- [03:08]
B
Yeah, they love watching this. And so anybody who has any familiarity with the founding of the country, the founding documents the quartering of the troops in civilian areas. The occupation is as un American a thing as a person in power could ever conceivably do. And one consequence of this, one Consequence of this will be that the U.S. military, which was the most respected institution in the country, will be profoundly alienated regarding the affections of the American people. The era of thank you for your service has, has officially ended in America, even if we haven't caught up to that, to that reality. And that's Donald Trump's fault. And there's going to be a lot of consequences to that.
- [04:17]
A
And Steve, you and I, we both have great respect for the military, people who serve in the military, people who serve in the National Guard. I mean, they, they're, they're leaving their families behind in places like Mississippi and Tennessee to come here. A couple of things. I mean, you're absolutely right in terms of what's happening on FOX now. And they're, they are playing for that audience. There's, there's no question about it. FOX has gone from fascist propaganda to fascist pornography. I think that's, that's very true. But I'm just trying to think of what, you know, if you're a family going into the National African American History Museum, which is a beautiful facility and just covers the entire experience of, of, of African American people in this country, and you, you stumble into the Mississippi National Guard. That's shameful. That is shameful. And I've been posing this question all week. What would these states do?
- [05:08]
B
Jim?
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A
Yeah. Now, what would these states do, these red states do if a Democratic president sent Democratic National Guard members into their backyards?
- [05:19]
B
Jim, I lost you there. You froze up on me for a minute.
- [05:26]
A
And so, no, no, I was saying is, I, you know, I was saying, what would a family going into the National African American History Museum say if they were to stumble into the Mississippi, members of the Mississippi National Guard right there? And what would the state of Mississippi or these other red states say, people in those states say, if a Democratic president were sending in members of the National Guard from a Democratic state? I mean, obviously we have trouble.
- [05:54]
B
Well, we're at that line, right? Which is the next transgression will be the deployment of federalized National Guard. And when that happens. Yeah, these are U.S. army forces. The U.S. army forces under, under the command of Pete Hagseck will be sent, let's say, from Idaho or Montana. Some of these National Guards, if you talk to officers, particularly in states like Montana, like Idaho, where you have reserve officers, will comment on how politicized the National Guard has become, which is bad. But that when we see deployment of National Guard into Democratic led states as occupation forces, you're on the edge of a crisis that's unprecedented in the country since Fort Sumter. And it's a very, very serious, very, very dangerous situation.
- [07:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I had been saying that I thought this, this was a distraction from the Epstein files. I think that's still true. I think it is a distraction from the Epstein files. There's no question about that. But it can still be a dangerous distraction and an escalation that just takes us down a path. I think Trump wants a confrontation, he wants a spark, he wants unrest. So this just kind of blows up. And, you know, I'm looking at what he's proposing for mail in balloting. I mean, again, you and I know this all too well. This is all. It could be one or two. That could all be bullshit, or it could be deadly serious. I tend to err on the side of taking it as deadly serious. And they're stealing congressional seats from out of the state of Texas. And I think he wants this to be such a giant goddamn mess by the time we get around to the next midterms that there's unrest. And these National Guard members, anybody who thinks they're going home in a month or so, they're just kidding themselves, they're fooling themselves. And so this is just heading to a bad place.
- [08:14]
B
Well, I think that let's jump to the end. And the question is, are American soldiers going to be ordered to raise their weapons and to point them with the safeties off on those weapons and their fingers on the trigger at American citizens? And are they going to be prepared to open fire? Are they going to be prepared to, on the behalf of Donald Trump, open fire on American citizens like Chinese troops did in Tiananmen Square? And if Donald Trump's ready to give that order, and that order is ready to be carried down from Pete Hegseth to the General of Northern Command and on down and so on, at the end of the day, there's going to be a junior officer, maybe a West point graduate and NCOs there, and they're going to have a decision to make. But here's the deal. I have no intention of living under a military occupation. And I know there's millions of us.
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A
Hell no.
- [09:26]
B
One of the takeaways I had in Iraq during the time I spent there in 2005 upon arrival, was that two years into the war, the United States army didn't have the ability to secure the road between the airport and the Green Zone. And if you had to stack up on the Defiance scale, which people you'd rather be fighting an insurrection against them or Us, I'd take the Iraqis over the American people any day of the week. But it's time to start talking out loud about what happens. And it's not for me to say. Yeah, it's a question for Carolyn Levitt. But when you cancel the election or suggest that it should, or say that he should be president for life, what do you think will happen? Yeah, what do you think will happen?
- [10:27]
A
I mean, I think what is going to happen is you're going to see political violence in this country. And I think that's what Trump wants. He wants the violence that he unleashed on January 6 to be unleashed by the other side. So it's game on. And I'm with you. I mean, it has been reported that these national guard troops in D.C. are gonna be carrying weapons. And I'm in D.C. right now, and it sounds like I'm joking when I'm saying occupied D.C. but that's what it looks like when you're down on the National Mall in parts of Washington. And, you know, my concern is exactly what you just said. And I hate the fact that these young men and women are put in this position. I don't think they. You and I both, you were bringing up Iraq, Steve. I mean, we remember the multiple deployments, the rotations of deployments that just crush these families. Is that what we're going to be putting these National Guard troops to through the next several months? It's unreal.
- [11:30]
B
It's utterly abusive of the soldiers, their families. It degrades the effectiveness of the force. It takes them out of their training cycle. They're up there doing nothing unless there is some percentage of them that believe they're there to subdue some wilding black population. And this is important to understand. And this is where causality matters. I mean, there are two preceding events here, and one of them is regarding the Central Park Five, who were five young black men who were accused of a crime they didn't commit. Donald Trump printed ads, right, calling for the death penalty against them. And this was 1980s New York. This if that racist real estate developer. If you could have waved a magic wand and say, wow, I wonder what it would be like if Donald Trump ever became president. Well, here you go. Yeah, right. Second, secondarily, Donald Trump, with the deployment of the military, is saying that crime is out of control in the nation's capital and the greatest act of mass violence in our lifetimes that took place in the Capitol was incited by him.
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A
That's right.
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B
And this is the type of lie that demands Submission to The idea that January 6th was peaceful, that January 6th was a glorious day, that these are patriots, not criminals. And so what you're witnessing in addition to the deployment of force, is the rationale being a deployment of the lie to sustain it. There's a very important moment in the recent history of the country, and I was at a series of meetings right after Katrina that when I sit around and tell political stories with friends, the single greatest meeting I've ever been in my life was when a guy named Russell Honore, the Ragin Cajun. General Russell Honore. General Honore took command of Task Force Katrina. And I was at one of the first meetings with the Governor, Ray Nagin, all the congressional delegation. Dick Cheney was in the meeting. It was incredible. It was incredible. Right. Like the type of guy that he is. And there were film at the time where you had army troops deployed in New Orleans with their weapons up.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And Russell Honore was out there right in the faces of the troops, a three star general of the United States army saying, lower your weapons, you're in the United States. These are not an occupying. This isn't the enemy.
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C
Correct.
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B
What are you doing? So I don't want to see in a free country the military. And I said this last year, and I may. You and I may have talked about, about this. I've driven across the country six times in the last five years. The last time I did it was in. Was in April. And as I started out that trip, I wondered, and whatever substack I was on, I said, I wonder if this is the last time I'm gonna drive across this country without there being military checkpoints.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And here we are.
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A
Yeah. Well, and, and military checkpoints, you know, in places like Washington D.C. who knows where next could they be outside polling stations? I mean, I think we have to assume that ICE will be patrolling near polling stations.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, and I mean, this, we're just, I mean, it's hard to wrap your head around. We're only six months in, maybe seven months in at this point, and he's just getting warmed up. I mean, you know, it's funny that you mentioned Katrina. We are at the 20th anniversary of Katrina. You know, Steve, just as I covered Katrina, I was in Biloxi, Mississippi when the storm hit. Actually came in the eye, came close to Biloxi. And then the levees broke in New Orleans and unleashed all hell in the great city of New Orleans. But I remember we ran out of food covering that storm and it was the National Guard who showed up and brought us those MREs. I had an MRE, a couple of MREs one day, because we literally ran out of the food out of the back of our news vehicle at that time. So I've always had good vibrations about the National Guard. I just think they're just wonderful people, weekend warriors, the folks who work in regular jobs and then go out and do this to serve their country. And I just hate that they're being abused in this fashion. And I just don't know, Steve, how we leap to the point where we're shooting at each other. And that's the thing that scares me. What is it going to take? Part of it, I guess, is because of FOX and what we're seeing on the right in conservative media. They're dishing this stuff out. But see, the other thing that is happening is what's happening inside our government. We're now being led by a government of insurrectionists. You have January 6th people and Ed Martin, who was showing up outside Letitia James House in New York the other day. He's apparently leading the weaponization task force or whatever this cockamamie job that they gave him over at DOJ. There's another guy at DOJ that was discovered was at January 6th. The guy Trump wants to be at the Bureau of Labor statistics was at January 6th. That's what concerns me, is that you have the people who are the civilians who are making the decisions in terms of deploying the National Guard and weaponizing our military are basically insurrectionists at heart.
- [17:47]
B
Well, absolutely not to pivot too much. And the deployments on the basis of a lie are, at the point that the legitimacy of them is, at a minimum, highly suspect. And one step further, the legitimacy of them, without question, becomes unacceptable at a moral level, because this is a country founded in the blood of patriots, steeped in liberty, and will not tolerate the United States army occupying the cities in the country. Now, there are two very important aspects to this. And. And the first is the commitment. And you saw this about extraordinary performance leadership by the governor of the state of Washington surrounded by the constitutional officials. Most Americans have never seen the governor of Washington, but he's an impressive leader. And the full use of power by the governors, with the specific purpose of nullifying the illegitimate use of federal authority, is something that has to be talked about.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And you're the chairman of the Democratic Governors association. Right? A conference of governors that is open to the Republican governors who believe in democracy to come to defend Federalism and the 10th Amendment. Right. That's a necessary thing. To do?
- [19:56]
A
Yes.
- [19:57]
B
The second thing is all across the country, the Save America Movement, which is an organization, I'm a steering committee member of democracy groups, groups that believe in liberty. Every polling station in the country is going to have to be covered by multiple angles, by multiple cameras, including by drones in the air. And every American patriot will have to commit themselves to voting and will have to commit themselves to being defiant in the face of any force that says you don't get a say. Because in America, you get a say and nobody can stop you from voting. Not at the point of a gun. We're not going back and we're not. We're not doing it. You stay in line and you vote. We have to, as a country, put a check on this. We have to make it stop. Right. And the way you make it stop, at a minimum, is elected Democratic House of Representatives. All of the leadership deficits in the Democratic Party, all of the problems.
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A
Right.
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B
Put that over here. Yeah, right. There has to be the removal of Mike Johnson as speaker, but Trump is.
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A
Moving the goalpost to go. I hear you, but.
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B
Right. But Texas is going to do Texas and then California. Right. Gavin Newsom's position and so on and so forth. Now, it's important to understand this, you know, for everyone who's listening. And I was actually deeply involved in a cycle where part of my jobs was redrawing lines in 2002. I'm not, I'm not proud of it.
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A
No, you're not alone.
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B
And I've talked. We don't want to live in a country where the politicians pick the voters.
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A
Right.
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B
Okay. So. Right.
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A
That's Putin.
- [22:14]
B
This is, this is, this is an important, this is an important thing to understand about Texas. The Hispanic vote in Texas has performed Republican. And these district lines are built on the premise that that Hispanic support will hold constant going forward. And so in my political career, 30 years of doing this, in almost every instance, without exception, when you try to do these things in an aggressive fashion, for example, manipulate the primary process, if you're the president, you wind up getting the exact opposite result that you're trying to get. Right. So every place an aggressive fascist Republican slash mag legislature takes a seat, you got to take one back.
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A
Yes.
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B
And, and then you have to appreciate that there's going to be overreach because the 2024 coalition that they're banking on being whole in 2026 is already gone. Doesn't exist. They've kaboom. It's gone. And so there are three times in the last 124 years where the incumbent president's party has picked up a seat, the majority in a midterm election. And this isn't going to be one of them. Now. Yeah, the, the, the, the issue on the Senate side is you have a lot of incompetence in the leadership of the Democrats in the Senate because Chuck Schumer is your leader and Kristen Gillibrand is your campaign committee leader. But put aside from that, you have a lot of these Republican senators who are going to be in big trouble in these states.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The economy is cratering and the American people will not, I don't believe, tolerate the arrogance, the officiousness and the aggression of having the army deployed around the country. The Fox audience will like it, and a lot of people on the Mar a Lago patio who, like Trump, will like it, but the vast majority will not like it.
- [25:01]
A
No. And I think the Latino voters in places like Texas who experimented with supporting Trump in the 2024 election, which they already have buyer's remorse over that that's been demonstrated in the polling. They are obviously. And because of what's taken place with these grotesque ICE raids across the country, they are obviously going to swing back towards the Democratic Party and you can steal all the seats that you want. Donald Trump and Texas Republicans, you can lock Nicole Collier into the chamber as much as you want and act like fools. But the people are going to speak. But the question becomes, Steve, are the election results honored? That's, to me, where we are on the dark side of the moon. I just don't know what they do after the people speak. And that may be when the public has to rise up, whether the National Guard is in the troop or the National Guard troops are in the streets, armed, whatever. The public may have to rise up and say that these election results are going to stand whether you like it or not.
- [26:10]
B
I think that we will know who won the elections. Elections are administered at local levels. We'll know what the counts are. I think that trying to stop an election in the United States would have the gravest consequences. We know what it is. There's no reason, there's no reason to talk about it at all. But I think it's important historically to appreciate this. At Lexington and Concord, there were the first killed, and then there were people who stepped forward and took their place. And hundreds were killed and hundreds more came forward after that. And so a lot of Americans have been to the cemetery in Normandy. I've been there many times. Those graves all face west towards home. A fascist with an army in the street. What would they say about what the obligation of an American patriot is at that hour? And so the use of the army to threaten the people, masked agents in the street, is a moral proposition, is unacceptable. And the American people can't tolerate this and should not tolerate this and must not tolerate this. And over these coming months, I think that there will be a rising tide of defiance, yes, a rising tide of despair, a rising tide of anger and hopelessness. But then it's going to give way to hope. We do not have to tolerate this. He is not a king. And these sneering, arrogant, officious, fascist children like Carolyn Levitt, the whack jobs like Laura Loomer, the unfit whack job, Pete Hegsett, Cash Patel, every one of these people. And what we have to do isn't just get rid of them, it's to make sure this never happens again. And what the Democratic Party has to stand for is building prosperity for ordinary people at a time of profound technological change, the era of artificial intelligence and the job dislocation beginning. But what must happen in this country is a transfer of power from the elites to the people and a weakening of the presidency, a weakening of the power of the tech executives. Five people who control all the world's information is not okay. We must weaken the power of the pharmaceutical companies, the big AG companies, across the board. The accumulation of power, power, it's pooling, has to be broken up. And it's not for the first time that we find ourselves in this position. But we have immense problems in the country. And those problems, right start with we now have masked agents and a deployed military against the people. And when you look at the video of the ICE agent who's undisciplined, ill, chained, utterly obese, in exchange with a citizen filmingham and says the libs ruin this country. What is he? He's a militia member. Like he's part of the Matador Al Sauder militia. He's a storm riding around in his protect the culture vehicle with Donald J. Trump. The SA has its own vehicles now. What does protect the culture mean? What culture is that, by the way? Is that Italian American culture or is it a very sick, twisted variant diseased part of the American culture that Pete Hag says sick? Pastor Doug Wilson believes in the culture of that slavery was good for the black, that women should be submissive to the man because it says so in the Bible and they shouldn't vote that part of American culture. What does defend the culture mean? Because I'm going To tell you what it means. It was a slogan on a white supremacist pamphlet. It's David Duke language. But it's made it all the way from the KKK rally on cheap paper to gold embossed lettering on the back of federal vehicles.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And here we are.
- [31:37]
A
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, Steve, you and I have not seen a challenge like this in our lifetimes. And it is going to take a level of determination that I think a lot of Americans are not prepared to commit to at this point. And I think a lot of us who are watching now, participating in this discussion right now, we may be sure. No question about it. Hopefully, we've taught our children well and they are, too. We were raised by good people. And so I suppose our folks, if they're still with us, yep, they're on that bandwagon as well. But it is going to take a summoning of the true spirit of the American people, the spirit that you and I grew up with in this country, the right stuff. That spirit of the American people that I don't think is gone. I don't think it's been broken. I think it is feeling defeated. I think it's feeling depressed. I know it's exhausted because you talk to people all the time. They're just. They're just exhausted. But we're just going to have to dig deep and figure this out, how to get there, because there is no other alternative. The old, the other. The. The alternative is, Is a. Is a great deal of suffering. And I don't, I don't. I don't think. I think there. I just, I, I'm with you in terms of. I don't know if we're there.
- [33:12]
B
Where.
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A
It'S all going to fall apart, because I just. I see so much good in so many of us, and I hope that that's not too Pollyannish.
- [33:20]
B
No, I have no doubt whatsoever about our ultimate triumph. But as they say, the days are long, the years are short, and all of this is incompatible with the American character. I believe. I know, have total confidence about how to defeat Trump. Here's what I worry about, like the anxiety that I have. Right. And I'll give you a perfect example around the Texas Democrats. Okay. If they had stayed in Illinois until December 8th, it would have been impossible for Abbott to take the seats. And that's what was required in this moment, was to hold out in Illinois until early December. It would have put a burden on those people, and it would have had a lot of Gratitude from a lot of people across the country. And that's what it would have been, is a Texas stance, a showdown. And what was required was to communicate to Greg Abbott a version of holster your fucking weapon and stop pointing it at the head of liberty and end the special session madness and we'll come back. Until then, what you're proving in the showdown is that these seats for Trump is far more important to you than running the state, that you alone raise your hand as chief executive to swear an oath to death and hold out.
- [35:27]
A
That's right.
- [35:29]
B
Instead, they went for 12 days, and when they fled, they said, we're fleeing this moral disaster, so how can it be that 12 days later they're back and the thing they fled has passed? But now I see all these people all over television who fled, who came back saying that it's victory? And then I'll point out somebody, you go back to 2024 and say, well, we got to learn a lesson from this election, because, shit, we can't lose another one.
- [36:09]
A
Yeah.
- [36:10]
B
And you see Chuck Schumer in March when he makes the decisions that set in motion what comes to be the vehicle by which we have masked men. And he comes out and he says, we're winning, we're winning, we're winning. And now with the US army on the streets with weapons pointed at the people, you got folks who made it 12 days, which isn't even a decent hunger strike. Right. That's an impressive fast. Right. They made it through an impressive fast. And they're back and they say we won.
- [36:56]
A
No, I agree with you.
- [36:57]
B
And if people don't pull their head out of their ass about that, I don't know how to fix that problem. I don't know what to say about it, because that's not winning, it's losing. You lost five seats because they couldn't make it to December.
- [37:11]
A
Yeah, well. And I think you're absolutely right, and I want to put a pin in this and table this to the next time you and I talk. But until the Democrats start acting like Republicans, you better get ready for living in some sort of form of Putin's Russia right here in America, because that's what Donald Trump is delivering right now. Until the Democrats start acting like Republican, as ruthless as the Republican. That's why I like a little bit of what Gavin Newsom has been doing lately, because at least there's a little bit of ruthlessness to it. And that's the only message that. That's the only language they seem to understand right now. But My man, Steve Schmidt. Thank you so much as always.
- [37:59]
B
Good to see you, Jim.
- [38:00]
A
Good to see you, as always. I appreciate it. I know. All right, we got to save something for next time. All right. Thanks, Steve.
- [38:06]
B
Got to take care.
- [38:07]
A
All right. Appreciate it. Bye bye. Good stuff. I'm going to go straight to Glenn Kirschner, my pal, Glenn Kirchner. He's waiting in the wings. And the great Glenn Kershner is, you know, he also is of the same vein that, you know, this, this democracy is in trouble right now. And a lot of this is that a lot of the battles are taking place in the courts. And I want to get to that with Glenn right now. Glenn, great to see you, as always. Thanks for joining. It's. It's been a minute. I, I do want to pick up a little bit on what Steve Schmidt was saying a few moments ago. Your thoughts on what's gone down in Texas and, and what does this mean, you know, heading into the midterms? Because I'm kind of curious how the courts are going to sort this out. Obviously, California is going to go next, and then there are going to be some red states that are going to, you know, perhaps want to counterattack here. But your thoughts?
- [39:07]
C
You know, Jim, two words. It's on. You're going to do it in Texas, we're going to do it in California. You're going to do it in another red state, we're going to do it in another blue state. That is the only way I think we can fight fire with fire. You know, the Dems have kept the gloves on for far too long, in my humble opinion. I'm a street fighter from New Jersey, so my inclination is that somebody always needs a good smack in the head, at least figuratively speaking. But here's the thing. I hope there are legal challenges launched against Texas, and of course, that will inspire legal challenges to be launched against California if Governor Newsom goes through with it. But if this is the way they're going to try to steal elections, then we got to get into the ring and mix it up with them. And I think maybe at long last we have learned that lesson. And the thing that I do know from my days growing up in Jersey is, you know, bullies will back down if you start confronting them, standing up to them, and, and that is what we need to do. We're not going to cower in fear. We're not going to try to appeal to their better angels. We're going to go toe to toe with them. And I believe that the forces of Good. Literally, the people who care about the rule of law and respect the Constitution in the long run, are going to win. Because the way Donald Trump. I can't even call it governing. I call it ruling. The way Donald Trump is ruling and the way the Department of Justice is behaving. Not sustainable. It is not sustainable in the long term.
- [40:47]
A
No, that's the perfect way to describe it. And the question, though, is when does it become unsustainable and what happens between now and then? Because a lot of bad stuff can happen between now and unsustainable and when the levy breaks. I mean, to me, right now, seeing National Guard troops on the streets of D.C. i mean, this is. You know, you said you're from New Jersey, by the way. Lena Haba was found. I think this was just reported in the last hour. A judge says that her. Her service as U.S. attorney is unlawful, so we'll see how that gets sorted out. But I. I'm a D.C. kid, and it. It makes my blood boil to see National Guard troops from red states patrolling this city and doing so in such a performative way. They're down in the National Mall. There's nobody here in August right now, by the way. Half the town. Half the town is checked out. They're at the beach. It's just. This is all performative stuff. But what makes this sinister and disturbing is where it could head from here. And if Trump just says, you know what? I'm just gonna. I don't care what the crime statistics say. They're gonna stay. They're staying for the long haul.
- [41:52]
C
Donald Trump's goal, I think, has always been militarizing the streets of America, and he has taken more steps in that direction now than he did in the first term. But we have to remember, you know, his zeal to use force against the citizenry. In the first term, it was his own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who said, donald Trump asked us, why can't the military just shoot people in the legs? And Secretary of Defense Esper said, in his estimation, this is a quote. It was not just a question from Trump, it was a suggestion.
- [42:34]
A
That's right.
- [42:34]
C
Good news, because I'm also an old army guy, six and a half years active duty, and what I was taught in both officer basic training and again at the Army's JAG school, where we go after we graduate law school, but before we start our first active duty assignment, I was taught that we must obey lawful orders, but even more importantly, we must disobey patently unlawful orders. The real challenge Jim, for soldiers and sailors and seamen and all military members, is how do they decide what's a lawful order and what's an unlawful order? Shoot unarmed citizens, civilians in the legs. That's a patently unlawful order. As we learned the hard way during Vietnam, when Lieutenant Cali gave orders and followed orders to, to kill everyone in the village. The court said, you do not have a legal defense of, I was just following orders. You must disobey orders like that. So. But the problem is there's not a whole lot of black and white. I mean, there's a lot of gray. There's a lot of gray because when Donald Trump says, I'm ordering the Marines to deploy to the streets of Los Angeles, that's probably not a patently unlawful order until we see what the Marines do in the streets of Los Angeles.
- [43:54]
A
They're already there.
- [43:55]
C
They're there. And if they engage in civil law enforcement efforts, guess what? That is a violation of the law, the Posse Comitatus Act. But soldiers and sailors and Marines disobey military orders at their peril because if they're wrong, they get court martialed. I know because I court martialed many an army soldier for committing crimes in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But so there's this incremental creep when it comes to militarizing the Streets of Washington, D.C. and Donald Trump is taking advantage of that creep and that gray area. There will come a time, Jim, I believe. I think Donald Trump's end game is to unlawfully retain the power of the presidency and ask the military to protect him and help keep him in power. That is when our instincts will have to kick in, it will be a patently unlawful order. And the good news, and I hope your viewers will hold on to this, I happen to believe there are more Mark Milleys than Mike Flynn's in the United States military who understand their oath of loyalty to the Constitution, not to an aspiring dictator in the Oval Office. And I have to believe the military will hold strong. And when we heard some of these National Guards, men and women in the streets of D.C. saying, We don't know what we're doing here.
- [45:17]
A
Exactly.
- [45:17]
C
That's a good. That's a good sign.
- [45:19]
A
That's a good sign.
- [45:20]
C
We have to encourage and embolden them and support them.
- [45:23]
A
No. And, and Glenn, it explains why Pete Heath and the people, people of the Pentagon, have been busy trying to purge the place. It was just reported in the last day or so that Tulsi Gabbard has been doing her own Purge. @ DNI. And you know what it tells you? It's been going on at DOJ as well. What it tells you is that there are good people in the government who don't want to go along with this crap. And that's why, I mean, that's why they're trying to persevere. But the one thing that we haven't talked about, Glenn, and it's something we should get to, is the word. That is the name that makes Donald Trump really lose his mind these days, and that is Jeffrey Epstein. He does not want to hear the name Jeffrey Epstein. He will do anything possible to change the conversation, change the national conversation. And I thought this was fascinating on Wednesday when the, when a US Judge said, federal judge said that the Trump administration, if they want to see Epstein files released, you know, you don't need to come to the judge and ask for grand jury testimony to be released. You're in the Trump administration, Donald Trump. You can do. Wave your magic wand. Didn't you say, I alone can fix it or I have a pen or he could do this? And so it kind of revealed a big lie, maybe one of the big lies of 2025, that Donald Trump, if he wanted to right now, could release the Epstein files. We're one day away from when they're supposed to start turning over to the Congress. That's a whole other conversation. But your thoughts on what this judge said. Pretty interesting stuff.
- [46:50]
C
Yeah. So the three rulings from three federal court judges exposing the diversion that. That is the motion to unseal the Epstein transcripts. These stories give me justice. Goosebumps, Jim, here's why we have not, not one, not two, but three. This is a clean sweep. Federal court judges, one in Florida and two up in New York saying to. To Pam Bondi and her dirty DOJ officials. I will never call it the dirty DOJ, because there are 100,000 good people still there.
- [47:23]
A
Good people there. That's right.
- [47:24]
C
Career public servants. They are holdovers. They have served both, you know, Republican presidents and Democrats. They're being purged. But it's going to be hard to get rid of all of the good public servants from the Department of Justice. They're trying to hold strong. They've had their most success by getting people out of the civil rights section, by perverting the responsibilities of civil right DOJ attorneys. But I'm getting sidetracked. So these three court rulings from three federal judges said in substance, and then I want to quote two of them directly because.
- [47:53]
A
No, please.
- [47:54]
C
Beautiful language from the the judge, they said, listen, first of all, have a legal basis for me to, to order the unsealing of grand jury transcripts. I filed these motions, Jim. And let me tell your viewers, when we seek to unseal grand jury transcripts, it's when there's a law enforcement purpose. For example, when I was a homicide prosecutor in D.C. i was prosecuting a suspected killer. And, and somebody over in Prince George's county in Maryland, across the district line, was prosecuting that same suspected killer or investigating them. Somebody across the river in Virginia, one of my friends at the Alexandria or Arlington State's Attorney's offices were also prosecuting that killer. Yeah, I needed to ask the judge if I could release my grand jury transcripts to my fellow prosecutors in other jurisdictions in furtherance of having a complete investigation of this suspected killer. Everywhere he's killing people. That's why we ask a judge to unseal. Or there's a terrorism exception, or there's actually like a, a banking law exception that I don't know anything about because I'm not a, you know, I didn't deal with paper crimes. I dealt with brains on the pavement myself. So that's when we do it, right? So when Pam Bondi, and she signed this motion herself. Jim, do you know how unusual it is to have political appointees Interesting, the highest leadership in the Department of Justice filing motions in court with no career prosecutors on the motion. You know who's on these motions? Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, both former Trump defense attorneys, and Jay Clayton, who is the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. A Trump flunky used to be the SEC chairman during the, the first Trump administration. This guy is going to do Trump's bidding all day long. Three presidential appointees signing a motion that is usually signed by a career public.
- [49:55]
A
Servant might as well be Trump, might as well be Trump.
- [49:57]
C
It is Trump. It is Trump. It's an extension of Trump. So, and here, now let me get to the quotes, because this is beautiful, because here is what Judge Richard Berman said about this motion where they're asking for grand jury transcripts to be unsealed, but there's no legal basis for it. It's not a law enforcement purpose. You're not fighting terrorism. It's not a banking violation. That's what the rules provide. There is a catch. All in some jurisdictions that say, well, if there's a searing public need, and it's, you know, long ago enough, 50 years, 100 years ago, maybe the judge has the inherent authority to, to grant the Motion to unseal, but it's very, very rare. So, Judge, Judge Richard Berman, who's the federal court judge up in the Southern District of New York who just issued his ruling in the Epstein case, they also filed the motion in the Maxwell case, said this. And it picks up on what you were saying. The government, meaning the Department of Justice, is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosures to the public of the Epstein files. And by comparison, this motion to unseal a grand jury transcript appears to be a diversion from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in DOJ's possession. There you go.
- [51:23]
A
There's the ball game.
- [51:24]
C
He told Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton. What you're doing is a diversion, and you know it. But believe it or not, it gets worse. Judge Paul Engelmeier is a Southern District of New York federal court judge who denied the motion to unseal the Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts. And listen to what he said about Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch and Jay Clayton. You are using, quote, demonstrably false reasoning to try to justify the release of the Maxwell grand jury transcripts. Jim, when a federal court judge says that about a DOJ attorney, you know what happens? You instantly get referred. Two places. One, the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility, which is no longer in the business of holding corrupt DOJ lawyers accountable in the Trump administration. And two, your state bar, the state where you are licensed to practice law, and an ethics investigation ensues. I've seen reporting that Pam Bondi has been referred. They should all be referred. And when a judge says to you, you're using demonstrably false reasoning, that is an ethical violation for which they should be held accountable. One more thing, Judge, Judge Engelmeier said. He said the DOJ public explanations seem disingenuous and may actually be nothing more than a diversion to give the illusion of transparency. And the judge down in Florida similarly rejected the motion to unseal the Epstein transcripts down there from the earlier investigation run by Alex Acosta. So these are devastating rulings by federal court judges, but they are putting us on notice of what Pam Bondi and Donald Trump's DOJ officials are really trying to do.
- [53:12]
A
No, I love it. And as I like to tell our viewers, and they'll maybe want to drink when I say this. No relation. Alex Acosta, Glenn, and. And this has been confirmed. Just so everybody knows. The other issue is, you know, I'm damn curious as to what is going to be turn. Allegedly the Department of Justice is going to Start turning stuff over to the House Oversight Committee tomorrow, Friday. For folks who are watching this, perhaps at a different time, and I'm damn curious what they're going to turn over, what the condition of those documents will be, what the redactions are going to look like, given what you just read. And there are federal judges who are basically laughing at Pam Bondi and laughing at Kash Patel and laughing at Todd Blanche and basically laughing at the President for trying to create these diversions. That basically tells us that they're not approaching this with any kind of good faith. And one has to wonder what has really happened with those documents in the process of being turned over to Congress. Your thoughts on that?
- [54:24]
C
Yeah. So, first of all, I hope honest brokers of the rule of law at the Department of Justice and at the Southern District of New York, U.S. attorney's office, which prosecuted Maxwell and tried to prosecute Epstein before he turned up dead in his cell. I hope they have safeguarded full copies of the Epstein files, because we can tell by the course of the grand jury motions to unseal what the DOJ is trying to do, because the judges. Jim also said, you want me to unseal the testimony of one FBI detective in the FBI agent in the Epstein case. But let me tell the public reading this ruling, there's nothing in there that's not a matter of public record that came out during the Maxwell trial. So you're giving the illusion of transparency, but you're playing a game, actually trying to hide, secrete, conceal from the American people what's in the Epstein files. This is like the federal judges saying, release the damn Epstein files.
- [55:28]
A
Right.
- [55:28]
C
So you ask me, Jim, do I have any confidence that they will release anything of consequence? Of course not. They took a thousand FBI agents to reportedly scour the files and put yellow stickies where they found Donald Trump's name. You think we're going to see any of that? No way in hell.
- [55:45]
A
So we're going to know pretty quickly, I guess, via the Democrats on the committee, people like Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, whether or not this, this is all horseshit or not, if I may use some, some barnyard terminology. My, my guess is, is that what, what is going to be handed over is going to be cleansed of any references to Donald Trump, even though Pam Bondi apparently told Donald Trump back in May his name is in the Epstein files multiple times. So I guess we'll know by early next week as to what is exactly going on here. And, and, and that's going to Tell us a lot.
- [56:20]
C
And there is both a FOIA request. The lawsuit has been filed by a great nonprofit organization called Free Speech for people seeking a number of things in the Epstein files, including, and I love this, they specifically asked the judge to order DOJ to turn over all references to any direct communications between Trump and Epstein. Boy, I would like to see those. And I think it's Judge Tanya Chutkan who caught that, that foia.
- [56:48]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [56:49]
C
And we have great confidence in Judge Tanya Chutan. Regardless of how she rules, I believe she will get it right and I'll stand behind that ruling, having tried murder cases against her back in the day. So. And I also know that there has been another congressional request, I think by five Democrats on, I forget the, the committee demanding as the law provides, they can the entire Epstein files be released to them to Congress. So that I suspect will be something else that will end up in court when Pam Bondi inevitably refuses to comply with the law and turn over the Epstein files to those five members of, I believe, the Senate. So listen, this is a long term fight. This is not a marathon, it's not a sprint. It is a quest for justice that will go on forever. And I have to believe the forces that, that care about the rule of law and the Constitution will ultimately win in the long run. But as you say, how much damage can they do before it all ends up imploding?
- [57:50]
A
Yeah, no question about it. And you know, it bears repeating. Donald Trump can do this right now. This doesn't need to go to the House Oversight Committee. This was a campaign pledge that he made. It's a campaign pledge that J.D. vance made. It's something that Pam Bondi said she was going to do. It's something that Cash Patel said he wanted to do. They all said they were going to do it and now they know that they're caught in a, caught in a vice here and there's no getting out of it.
- [58:23]
C
Glenn Kirsten Bongino, too. And Bongino, he's a wild card because.
- [58:27]
A
He is a wild card.
- [58:28]
C
Tried to basically disrespect him by giving him a babysitter a car.
- [58:32]
A
Oh, that's right.
- [58:33]
C
The director of the FBI and the reporting is Bongino was so shaken by what he saw in there because he's been preaching all along, released the Epstein file. So here is my message.
- [58:43]
A
Isn't that interesting?
- [58:43]
C
Bongino, Be the hero.
- [58:46]
A
Better be the hero.
- [58:48]
C
Stand up. Tell the American people the truth about what's in there. Yes, you're going to put yourself in harm's way because all of Donald Trump's perceived enemies, you know, will have to suffer the consequences. But that's okay. Be the hero. Do the right thing. Stand up. You will be remembered well in the books if you do.
- [59:07]
A
That's exactly a great, great point. And I wouldn't that be a plot twist of Dan Bongino ends up being the hero in all this, But Dan, do the right thing. If they force you out, you've got, you've got some cards that you can still play. Glenn Kirschner, great to talk to you, man. Hey, let's, let's keep doing this. Let's not take too many breaks before we do this again.
- [59:29]
C
Thanks for talking, Jim. Great being with you.
- [59:31]
A
All right. Good to see you. Thanks so much. The great Glenn Kirchner. Justice matters. He's everywhere. He's on YouTube. He's got a huge presence on YouTube. So check him out there. Of course, check him out here on Substack and everywhere else. I had hoped to bring in Mike Fanone here at the end of the hour. I think he is handling matters somewhere else and we're going to try to get him on tomorrow. Mike's got some important stuff to talk about and so I definitely want to get him on as soon as possible. And he and I have been talking about perhaps taking a look at how things are shaping up downtown with respect to the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C. and on that subject, I just want to close out by saying, apparently, just to recap our top story, Donald Trump using kind of reverting back to my Walter Cronkite impersonation, Donald Trump will be down on the streets of Washington surveying the National Guard troops. Trump, for whatever reason, has it in his mind that this is some sort of Dwight Eisenhower D Day moment for him. No, this is not. This is definitely not. But he's going to go out there on the streets of Washington and he's going to survey the troops and he's going to do the salute that, the salute that he does, which is not, it's sort of like Pete Hexath doing pull ups at the gym. It's not very inspiring. But make no mistake, the theater that you are seeing, the theater, the performance that you are seeing is dangerous. It's dangerous. Ladies and gentlemen, I was down on the Mall earlier in the day. I saw our fellow Americans in their National Guard fatigues walking up and down the National Mall. It's a beautiful place. They were enjoying a nice, cool, unseasonably cool summer day here in Washington, D.C. tourists were going by, some of them talking. I, I, I could see this firsthand. They were speaking with these members of the National Guard and having pleasant exchanges there. I saw a group of them sitting around a, a picnic table outside one of the food Cafe huts that they have down on the Mall. People who have been down there know exactly what I'm talking about. The concession stands down there. And that is all, you know, I suppose, fine. But the thing that I noticed and the thing that I think America is going to be taking note of here in the coming days is that our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. over the coming months, as people return from their summer breaks and after Labor Day and they, and they get settled in for the fall and the upcoming holiday season, they're going to be witnessing a transformation of our nation's capital. A mutation of our nation's capital. Our nation's capital is going to look like, as the Associated Press put it earlier in the day, Associated Press put it this way, occupied territory. The nation's capital is going to look like occupied territory. Some 2,000 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed in Washington as part of this MAGA occupation of Washington D.C. 2000 for a lie. For a lie. D.C. is not overrun with crime right now. Stephen Miller can bullshit all he wants about that. JD Vance can bullshit all he wants about that and so on. It's not true. It's a lie. Yes, there's crime in D.C. as we've said on this program, the crime in every city in the world. But these troops are going to be here in Washington, sadly. And we support our troops, support members of the National Guard. I support them, but they're going to be here in service of a lie. And it is going to go back to what we were talking about earlier on this program with Steve and with Glenn. When it comes to following orders, when these armed members of the National Guard are patrolling the Streets of Washington, D.C. what do they do in that moment when it's called upon them to do something more than just walk around the National Mall? How does that young man, that young woman, respond in that moment? What are the orders that are being given? Who's giving those orders? Are they coming from the White House? Are they coming from the Pentagon? Are they beheaded? Are they being handed down to the National Guard and then handed down to the individual members who were there patrolling this city? And that is when we will hit an inflection point. That is when we will hit a moment in this country. I grew up in this area. I grew up right outside Washington, D.C. d.C. Is my home. And to think that my hometown, yes, it's the nation's capital, but it's my hometown, is going to be occupied by an undemocratic Putin loving thug of a president, to me is downright un American. As I've said on this program earlier this week, D.C. deserves statehood, not a police state. And so Trump is going to be walking around talking to the members of the National Guard. Of course, they'll be smiling back and they'll be congenial and nice and respectful because that's how they were raised and that's what's expected of them. But I hope if any of them see this or hear this, I hope that they know that there's a lot of us who are counting on them, counting on you to do the right thing and to remember that. And I don't need to say this, but I'm going to say this, that they serve a country. They serve a constitution. They serve a democratic republic, not an individual president, not the current occupant over the Oval Office. They're supposed to support all of us. That's the American way. Occupation is not the American way. And it's up to all of us to show them what is government that belongs to us people, not this emperor wannabe belongs to the people. My thanks to Glenn Kersher. My thanks to Steve Schmidt. Really appreciate everybody for watching this evening. And we'll be talking tomorrow. We'll see how this all plays out over the next 24 hours. I'll be with you tomorrow as well. But in the meantime, still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good evening, everybody. Good night. It.