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The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show - Episode 5 with Beto O'Rourke and Rep. Eugene Vindman
00:40:53
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
These messages come up in the chat and that'll let us kind of know that we're live, but could be any moment.
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Beto O'Rourke
Got it.
- [00:18]
Jim Acosta
All right, everybody, welcome to episode five of the Jim Acosta Show. Happy Friday. Tgif. As you can see at the bottom of the screen, I have former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke with me. I'm going to be talking to him in just a moment. We're going to get his take on everything that's happening in Washington right now. There's a lot to get into. I'm not sure, Beto, we have enough time to get into everything. But we're going to do our best in this next several minutes or so. But in the meantime, you know, it might be Friday, but it's just another day that ends in y. Here in Washington, the chaos continues as Trump escalates the Elon Musk led Doge assault on the federal government. Trump called for the international development agency USAID to be closed. The New York Times reporting virtually all employees at the agency were already set to be put on indefinite administrative leave as of today. And meanwhile, more Doge drama. The Wall Street Journal reporting a key Doge staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department's federal payment system resigned yesterday. On Thursday after the Journal says he was linked to a deleted social media account that made racist comments. According to the Wall Street Journal, back in September, the staffer had posted on X, quote, you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. So already an embarrassing episode for Doge when it comes to who's on their staff. One update to the story, we should note Vice President J.D. vance called for that employee to be reinstated since saying in his words, stupid posts on social media should not ruin a person's life. I want to jump right into this and talk to Beto O'Rourke about this because, Beto, you served in Congress and I've been asking around Washington. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before. We've had government shutdowns, you've had furloughs, that sort of thing. But for the president of the United States to appoint, or maybe anoint is the better word, a tech billionaire to just sort of run wild through agencies of the federal government and say, I'm going to shut this down. I'm going to shut that down. I want access to this data and so on. It's, it's really just surreal and unbelievable. What are your thoughts?
- [02:31]
Beto O'Rourke
Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably the intent, Jim. I think this, this kind of blizzard of bizarre behavior, this Torrent or blitzkrieg of executive actions one after the other. You know, you're an extraordinary journalist. Probably you alone don't have the capacity to follow and run down every single one of these stories. And those of us who are working or taking care of kids or just busy with life, imagine what that's like for the average American. And so I think the intent is in flooding the zone is just to give people an opportunity or an excuse to kind of give in and give up and throw in the towel and say, you know what? I don't even understand what's going on. This is crazy. I hope these guys can figure it out. Or I'm invested in the drama and the conflict and the confrontation and the chaos. And this is entertainment. And let's remember that, you know, Trump is president in large part because he can command our attention so effectively. He understands the entertainment industry perhaps better than any president since Ronald Reagan, perhaps superior to Reagan's command of that. And so he's trying to put on good TV and have us chasing every single one of these stories to extraordinary distraction, with the end result that we end up unable to effectively counter this assault on government of, by, and for the people, this undermining of our democracy and this almost destruction of rule of law. Part of my understanding of the genius of America, even if we've never fully realized it, is that the whole premise of this country's founding is that we're all created equal and that we will all be treated equally under the law. That is not the case right now. And, in fact, we are going in the wrong direction. And now's the time for all of us. I mean, we certainly expect our representatives in Congress, you know, public leaders, to hold the line, but each of us can help them to do that. The Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. That's the Capitol switchboard. You can talk to the office of any senator, any member of Congress in the House, and you can encourage them to do whatever you think is most important. They're in the Senate. Hold the line on Trump's nominees if they're in the House. You know, don't give them the votes that they need now that they have this really slim MAGA majority, which is going to be very hard to govern with. Don't help them out. We can provide the pressure and kind of the public support, maybe even the willpower for members of Congress to do the right thing. So I think that's one positive step that we can take in the face of this disaster that is the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration.
- [05:26]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, that's great. And I think you're absolutely right about that. And just to the point of, you know, what is going on here with Elon Musk and the access that he has to the federal government, I mean, the Washington Post reporting this, the Treasury Department is appointing an ally of Musk to a senior position at treasury overseeing the US Federal payment system. That's according to two people with knowledge of the matter. This, of course, raises more questions about Musk's powerful role inside the government. And Beto, I guess, you know, what this I think raises questions about is what's been called the broligarchy, whether or not we have an oligarchy in charge in Washington. I mean, it is pretty extraordinary to see the kind of sway that Elon Musk has right now. I'm going to talk about this a little later on the program. He's on the COVID of Time magazine, for Pete's sake. I mean, it's not Donald Trump on the COVID of Time magazine. It's Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute desk raising the. I mean, you've heard the term shadow president thrown around. It sure feels like that.
- [06:28]
Beto O'Rourke
It really does. And, you know, I know others have said this far better than I could, but no one elected Elon Musk. As Jamie Raskin said, there's not a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk looking at the polling for whatever it matters in today's world. It's deeply unpopular, what he and the Trump administration are doing. But, Jim, look, I know I run the risk of, of, you know, bringing up the analogy of last resort, but when you look at Germany in 1933 and kind of this consolidation of the oligarchy, the industrialists, the wealthiest German citizens at the time behind the National Socialists and the chancellorship of Adolf Hitler, they initially thought they were serving their own interests and whatever goals they held out for Germany or their private businesses or their corporations or their own personal wealth, only to find soon enough that the consolidation of that power was used by Adolf Hitler to absolutely dismantle and destroy that democracy and that republic, to consolidate all power in his hands and to set not just Germany, but really the world on this horrific path that we are, frankly, still recovering from so many decades later. Now, I'm not saying that that's what is going to happen to America. I am not saying that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler. I'm not saying that history repeats itself. But as others have said, it sure as hell rhymes and we would be well served to pay attention to the analogs that we're seeing right now with Germany in 1933. And if you and I were back there at the time, I think we both would hope that we would stand up in the face of this injustice, in the face of this consolidation of power. And that's what we're asking of one another right now. To everyone who's following us on substack, you, as a citizen in the world's greatest democracy, hold the power in a government of, by and for the people. We are the people. Let's make sure that our representatives hear us. And more than calling that capitol switchboard at 202, 223,121, you can also support the agencies and organizations that are helping everyday Americans who are being targeted by this administration. Give you one quick example, Jim.
- [08:45]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
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Beto O'Rourke
In El Paso, Texas, there's a great group called Las Americas. Las Americas provides defense help, you know, pro bono lawyers who support immigrants who are being targeted by ICE agents under Donald Trump. Right now, as you can imagine in El Paso, where I'm talking to you from, we have tens of thousands of mixed immigration status households, folks who came here legally from Venezuela under TPS who are going to have that revoked, who may have US Citizen children in the household. We want to make sure these families are not separated people are not unfairly and illegally deported. But we need to make sure that we support the lawyers who can get that done. Support Las Americas. If you're looking for a specific action that you can take right now.
- [09:30]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Well, and we should know Beto has a substack now. You can subscribe to him on his substack. And since you brought up immigration, I do want to talk about this issue of Trump going after birthright citizenship because it, again, feels like something from a parallel universe. But of course, Trump talked about this during the campaign, so we should find it to be no surprise that he's doing it now. But federal judges in Washington state and in Maryland have temporarily blocked his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. And I thought something very interesting from the judge in Washington State, something that he said when he issued that injunction of blocking the executive order. He said this, quote, it has become ever more apparent that our president, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. You know, this notion that he can just toss aside portions of the Constitution, I think, goes back to what you were saying earlier about history rhyming and this temptation that he has this Love affair that he seems to have with the idea of being a dictator, acting like a dictator.
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Beto O'Rourke
Yeah. He's made no secret of it. Right. You know, he's openly mused about how wonderful it would be to have the kind of generals that Adolf Hitler had. He openly admires Vladimir Putin. Or dictators in North Korea or China or other places because of their ability to rule with an iron fist, I think is a phrase that he's used. He's invoked things that the most horrific human beings, Adolf Hitler, for one, have said in the past. Ideas like immigrants poisoning the blood of America. You could lift that from Mein Kampf or right out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
- [11:18]
Jim Acosta
He talked about the enemy from within. He talked about the Absolutely campaign.
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Beto O'Rourke
And you would not. You wouldn't be able to skip a beat.
- [11:27]
Eugene Vindman
So.
- [11:27]
Beto O'Rourke
So we must take this seriously. It's not entertainment, it's not frivolous. It's not throwing it up against the wall to see what sticks. He's been very clear about what he's going to do. Here's the mind blower for me. If. If you and I are having this conversation 50 years down the road or great, great, great grandkids are studying US history from the year 2025, they will not be able to believe it that this guy said he was going to do all this shit. He said, I'm going to be a dictator on day one. That immigrants are poisoning the blood of America. I'm going to have the largest mass roundup and deportation in American history. I'm going to model it on Eisenhower's Operation Wetback. There's going to be a blueprint called Project 2025 that spells out exactly what I'm going to do. And then he did all that stuff, and people of the future are going to be like, were you guys fucking crazy? Like, he told you exactly what he was going to do, and then he started to do it. Well, we missed the turn in the road at the election in November of 2024 to stop it, but it doesn't mean that time has completely run out for us. But the window is closing. And if there's anything that we can do to raise the urgency to meet the critical moment that we're in, we all have to do it. And hats off to the representatives and senators and public servants out there who are calling the alarm and doing everything they can within their power. They need us to have their backs, and in some cases, they need us to push them out there. I mean, some of them are a little bit Slow to move. And that switchboard number 202, 224, 3121 call that. You think it doesn't work. I was in Congress for six years when my office would get deluged by phone calls or emails or texts or faxes. And we had a fax machine back then, you better believe that we paid attention. Why are people so pissed off? What's the urgency? What's on their mind? It would force you to focus and ultimately to act. So let's remember we still have power. This is not over yet.
- [13:27]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, people are pissed off, and quite frankly, they have a right to be. I mean, and I've been sort of waiting for this moment for when people would kind of, you know, stop going for a walk and disengaging and, you know, sort of, you know, binge watching TV shows just so they can avoid paying attention to all this stuff. You kind of need to get a little pissed. You need to get a little.
- [13:49]
Beto O'Rourke
Absolutely.
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Jim Acosta
And you need to be a little more engaged. And I was talking to Mike Fanone and Harry Dunn yesterday, and I was making the point. Mike Fanon and Harry Dunn have done enough. You know what I mean? They're courageous. They're going to keep going. They're going to keep charging. But my goodness, we can't just let the Mike Fanones and the Harry Duns of the world do all the work for us, carry the weight for us.
- [14:10]
Beto O'Rourke
And Mike Fanone's mom, I watched your interview with them and I just harrowing to think about his. I forget how old she is, in her 70s, having SWAT teams sent to her house, being doxed for the public. I mean, if you want to go after Mike Fanon nonviolently because he's a public figure, you know, maybe that's your business. To go after a family member, especially his mom, is absolutely unconscionable. And for the president or the vice president or the attorney general or those in positions of power in the public trust to do something about it, to remain silent is absolutely unforgivable. But to your point, Jim, we can't allow him and his mom to fight that on their own. We have to be out there as well. And let's remember what we're made of and who we are as Americans. The civil rights and voting rights marchers who risked and in many cases lost their lives to create the world's greatest multiracial democracy, to ensure that we are, in fact, treated equally under the law, that it is one person and one vote in this country, those who landed on the beaches in June of 44 in Normandy, knowing that they might very well not come back, and thousands of them did not. To fight fascism abroad, to save democracy here at home. That's who we are as Americans. Let's remember the great stuff that we are made of and put it to use right now at this moment of truth for our country.
- [15:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, history has a. Has a way of calling generations to a cause that they didn't think that they would ever be called to. And I think we're in that moment right now. Beto O'Rourke, thank you for bringing the fire. You certainly brought the fire today. And can I just say on behalf of a lot of people who are probably watching right now, we missed it. We missed seeing some of that fire from Beto work. So it's great to talk to you. Hope we could do this again. You and I could go on all day about this, I suspect, but I don't want to hold up any. Any more of your time than I already have. But thanks. A lot better. Really great to talk to you.
- [16:11]
Beto O'Rourke
Likewise. Keep the faith. We'll see you out there.
- [16:13]
Jim Acosta
All right. We'll do all right. You too. Thanks. Bye.
- [16:15]
Beto O'Rourke
Bye.
- [16:16]
Eugene Vindman
Bye.
- [16:16]
Jim Acosta
Bye. So that was Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas congressman. And I think he's fired up. I don't know what you think, folks, but he was not mincing any words there. And honestly, I think it's. It's. It's about damn time. It's about damn time that folks out there get a little pissed off, get a little angry and start, you know, letting people know what you think. I mean, I mean, I'm sorry, as we were saying earlier, you know, Mike Fanon's mom should not be the one bearing the brunt of this. It's time for folks, regular folks, everyday folks, everybody out there to get engaged. And I'm seeing your chat comments, seeing all of this come through, and a lot of appreciation there for Beto O'Rourke and for good reason. I'm going to add Eugene Vindman, the freshman Democratic congressman. He is joining me now, and he's going to have a lot to say about everything that's taking place in Washington right now. And Eugene is Congressman Vindman, I should say, has more of a ringside seat than the rest of us. And so let's just see if I can get him linked in with us right now. Let's see here. And this is the great thing about Substack is that we can just do this kind of guerrilla style. Right. We could just, we're just doing this down and dirty as BDI called this podcast the other day. It's no frills. So between now and I don't know when I'm going to try to get some frills. But in the meantime, we've got some great guests who have been joining us so far on the program this week. We're loading. Congressman Eugene Vindman from my home state of Virginia. He's going to be joining us in just a few moments. And you know, one of the other things that we need to talk about, and I think we could talk about this with Congressman binman, is Project 2025. Keep in mind, Donald Trump, and we talked about this all week long. Donald Trump said over and again during the 2024 campaign he had nothing to do with Project 2025, even though there were several former Trump administration officials who were involved in drafting and putting together Project 2025. But take a look at what's been taking place over the last couple of weeks, his efforts to slash the size of the federal workforce, like usaid. We talked about that. At the top of the program, his effort to eliminate the Education Department. Those items come right out of Project 2025. And keep in mind, one of the key architects of Project 2025, Russell Vote, was just confirmed by the Senate to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget over at the White House. And so, I mean, it's almost like you got, you've got two doges being set up here. You have obviously what Elon Musk is doing and his cohorts. But you also have Russell Vogt, a less known figure, no question about it, running, running the Office of Management and Budget. And he comes right out of Project 2025. All right, let's just see here. Eugene Binman, not working at the moment. Let me just try this one more time, see if we can get them in here. Because anytime you can get a Vinmin on the show is a good day. I'm just hoping we can get them now. Sometimes it just takes a couple of, couple of tries to get Vinmin or to get any guests, I should say, onto the programs. So obviously, Project 2025 is on the minds of a lot of Americans right now. When you're witnessing what we're witnessing here in Washington right now, the Trump administration has made no mistake what they're planning on doing. And as we were saying, at the top of the program, you have Elon Musk's DOGE team going into various departments of the Federal government, as it turns out, an ally of Elon Musk is going to have a key role at the Treasury Department in charge of that federal payment system that the DOGE team got access to. And that is going to be critical. If you have somebody who is an ally of Elon Musk involved in something like that, certainly that is going to create an opportunity for Elon Musk to basically do whatever he wants in terms of seeing policy changes take place over at the Treasury Department, getting access to data over at the Treasury Department. It's a very worrisome sign. We're having a little trouble getting Eugene Vindman into the. Into the conversation here. I'm going to keep going just in case we can't get them. I'm going to try one more time, folks. It's a Friday. You're going to have to just bear with me a little bit. Maybe I can get Duke over here for a little. For a little timeout. It'll be like halftime for the show. Let's see here. I'll try it one more time. Perhaps it's possible he got called away, so I'll have to find out if that is indeed the case. All right. Well, in the meantime, while we're waiting for Eugene Binman to join us, this was an interesting item that came out of the Washington Post today. The United Kingdom is saying that security officials, or I should say security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a backdoor, allowing them to retrieve all of the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud. That is, that raises a lot of prospects as to what is going on in this country and whether or not security officials in this country are demanding that kind of access. Obviously, that raises a lot of privacy concerns. I'm going to try. Let's see, look. We'll try Eugene Binman one more time. And if we can't get them, we'll just move on with the rest of the program. Because I do want to talk about Time magazine. Let's see. He just may not. We may have lost. We may have lost Congressman Vindman. We might bring him back next week. If we can't get them in there, that's okay. We've got other stuff to talk about. The other thing I do want to talk about. I'm sure you saw this. I'm sure you saw this today. Time magazine. He made the COVID of Time magazine. Elon Musk made the COVID of Time magazine sitting behind the Resolute desk. The same Resolute desk, by the way, where the President of the United States typically says for the folks at home who don't know what the Resolute desk is, the Resolute desk is the desk in the Oval Office. If you've got a cover of Time magazine with Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute desk, that is not going to sit well with Donald Trump, who has prized appearing on the COVID of Time magazine. Other people appearing on the COVID of Time magazine nearly all of his adult life. Raises the, raises the question. I was just talking about this with Beto O'Rourke a few moments ago. Who is really the president of the United States? Is it Donald Trump or is it Elon Musk? Is Elon Musk, as I asked Beto O'Rourke a few moments ago, is he the shadow president? Ah, there we go. There's. There's Congressman Vindman bailing me out at just the right moment. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. I, I've called you Eugene so many times. It's still kind of a force of habit to call you Eugene, but I'm going to call you Congressman Jim.
- [23:47]
Eugene Vindman
Go ahead and call me Eugene. It's totally okay. Nothing has changed. I mean, I guess a few things.
- [23:52]
Jim Acosta
Have changed, but for you and me, change, yes, absolutely. Different offices, but same mission. And that is, to tell the truth out there. You know, I was talking about Elon Musk a few moments ago. Congressman Vindman, I don't want to have you weigh in, unless you want to, about Elon Musk being on the COVID of Time magazine sitting behind the Resolute desk, which is another one of these surreal, bizarre world moments that we've had in the early days of this Trump administration. But what are your thoughts settling into your office there in Washington up on Capitol Hill, and these reports of Doge, Elon Musk and his and his allies and his aides. Some of these aides are as young as, what, right out of college or something like that, sort of running rampant through federal agencies and departments demanding access to data and so on. What's going on here? What do you think?
- [24:43]
Eugene Vindman
Well, you know, I think President Musk has become unhinged now. You know, obviously, look, he's exerting a ton of influence, really levels I think never seen before on the White House. It is hard to tell who's in charge sometimes given the scope of his activities. And they're highly chaotic, disruptive, and frankly, damaging to our national security. So, I mean, this, this, this agency or entity, Doge, I've taken the call the Department of Government INEFFICIENCY because of how much chaos it's cost causing. Think about what they did at usaid. First, completely lawless, obviously, because Congress authorized usaid, the President signed it into law. A president. And so it has a mission. Only Congress and the President can actually disband it. He's gone into this agency with, you know, these kids, access classified systems installed by reports, AI, you know, off the shelf, you know, aftermarket AI systems, and now is eliminating tens of thousands of jobs. In my district, 15% of the population is federal government employees. So this is going to have enormous impact on, on my district. That is going to be economic impact and frankly, national security impact. So I, I'm happy to talk about that, Jim. Obviously in the military there's this paradigm where you have a number of different elements of power. Military obviously is one of them. But then you have diplomacy, you have economy and stuff like that. This soft power that you get from something like USAID has real world consequences. If you're going to eliminate a $40 billion program which is a tiny fraction of the federal budget, then you probably need to look at doubling the DoD budget of 980 billion in order to balance out the scales of that soft power. Yeah.
- [26:58]
Jim Acosta
Because I mean, one of the things that USAID does is it sort of puts a positive face on the United States of America. They're going into countries all around the world which could be, you know, subject to unrest and so on. You know, militaristic authoritarian governments might emerge. But if you have the United States there doing aid and providing humanitarian support, that's sort of a billboard ad for democracy. A billboard ad for the United States of America, isn't it?
- [27:30]
Eugene Vindman
Yeah. And then even more locally, think about, I have a ton of agriculture in my district. I sit on two committees, Armed services and Agriculture. And so the American farmers, American producers, a lot of their production is actually bought by USAID and then sent overseas in diplomacy. So it's a win win. And our local farmers, our local producers now are going to be in a position where their contracts, things that had already been, those obligations are not going to get paid. And so they're going to be, our farmers are going to be left holding the bag. We're not building goodwill. We're, we basically bought, you know, thousands of lawsuits because the, the way these employees have been treated, that is the Department of Government Inefficiency at work right there.
- [28:21]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And Congressman, I mean, one of the questions that I have, and I'm glad that we have you on, because I did want to talk about Russia and Ukraine. Apparently there's a meeting in the works between Trump and Putin. So I want to ask you about that. But you know, one of the parallels that I'm seeing right now is, I mean, Elon Musk kind of reminds me of one of these Russian oligarchs who was buddies with Vladimir Putin. And they have, they wield tremendous influence in Russia. And we certainly don't want to import, you know, we're talking about imports these days with the tariffs. So we don't want to import Russian style oligarchy into the United States.
- [28:58]
Eugene Vindman
Yeah. So look, authoritarians like Putin, like, like she are actually, this is a fantasy for them. We talked a little bit about aid and accessing classified systems. Well, they're also doing the same thing, personal information at the Department of Treasury. Every single payment. That this, having access to every American's personal data, going into, into three letter agencies and offering buyouts, you know, hollowing out really our national security specialists at the FBI, CIA and DOJ shuddering entire programs that are focused on, on foreign interference. This could not be a better situation for our, our adversaries that want to see chaos. And the way I think about it, and I hate the idea of like sounding too alarmist. Yeah. But I, I believe this 100%. It's not a matter of if something bad will happen when you create this kind of chaos. It's a matter of when. And I'm concerned, I'm concerned about, you know, this costing American lives.
- [30:28]
Jim Acosta
Well, it worried me greatly earlier this week, Congressman, when we were talking about the Department of Justice going after FBI agents and threatening to reveal their identities because they worked on January 6th cases or they worked cases involving alleged criminal misconduct by Donald Trump. I mean, you can't go around and just, you know, trying to intimidate FBI agents. I mean, that to me raises all sorts of concerns. And I think one of the concerns that we might see play out over the next several weeks is kind of a brain drain. You might see people at the Justice Department, people at the FBI, people at the State Department, dod, CIA, say, I don't want to deal with this. Forget about it, I'm out of here. And then it goes to your point, you lose the kind of talented professionals who are needed to stop a terrorist attack to prevent something awful like that happening to this country.
- [31:17]
Eugene Vindman
Yeah. I mean, think about it. It's been, we've had, we have threats to our national security every single day, but the last time there was a serious attack in this country has been some time ago. You're Eliminating thousands at one time of professionals that have been working to keep this country safe for decades. It is about the stupidest thing that you could do. It really is.
- [31:46]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And what do you make of the prospect of a Trump Putin meeting? That's. It's been. Reuters reported on something about this today that this is apparently in the works.
- [31:57]
Eugene Vindman
Look, it doesn't surprise me. They're going to meet. You know, I have no doubt Donald Trump is going to try to make some sort of bargain. I think he's in for a rude awakening. I'm, you know, like, if I have to eat my hat in like a few short weeks, I'd be thrilled if, you know, we can get the stop to the fighting, bloodshed that is, that is a mutually acceptable to both parts. But I think what he's going to encounter, based on what I've seen and my experience, is he's going to get some platitudes. He's going to, and ultimately he's not going to get any real peace. It's going to take three to six months before this administration figures out that, you know, Putin is, is happy to string the US Government along and that if he wants peace, it's got to be pressure, not just on the Ukrainians, which is what we've seen, and even, even additional pressure. When you cut out USAID programs that are there to rebuild the infrastructure, the critical electric infrastructure that the Russians are constantly attacking or programs like I used to work on to investigate war crimes, it's going to require pressure on the Russians. And, you know, if the president can come up with some sort of great deal, I'd be the first one to congratulate him because of the stakes involved and how important the humanitarian issues are, but also the US national security interests are. But I certainly don't want to see a complete folding and weakness on behalf of the United States.
- [33:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, I mean, and that's a concern because I, I was at the Helsinki summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin when he took the word of the Russian dictator over his own intelligence community. And, you know, I mean, you can just go back and Google that one for anybody who's tuning into this podcast at home. I mean, he did this at the Helsinki summit. He basically bowed down to Putin. And the concern is, is he going to do it again?
- [34:04]
Eugene Vindman
Well, he's sort of done that, if you think about it, preparing the groundwork. I mentioned the DOJ program that was investigating and enforcing the sanctions on Russian oligarchs. That office is now closed. The office that investigates foreign agents. You know, Farah, this is now been restricted. And so that's a gift along with a number of other things to Vladimir Putin. Again, if his goal is to bring peace and stop the bloodshed, obviously we're way past 24 hours now, but.
- [34:49]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, he promised to do it right away. That didn't happen.
- [34:51]
Eugene Vindman
Yeah, yeah. There. I think he's going to need to do that by having pressure on the Russians as well as the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are ready to, to, to, to make a deal that would, you know, protect U.S. and Western interests and, and prevent the expansion of Russia to NATO's borders. We'll see if the Russians are and where the president takes this.
- [35:19]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Well, Congressman, you got your work cut out for you. It's going to be busy. It's going to be no rest for the weary. It may be Friday or as I said, at the top of this program, it's another day that ends and why. Congressman Eugene Vindman of Virginia, my home state of Virginia, Great to talk to you, sir. Thanks so much for your time.
- [35:35]
Eugene Vindman
Thank you so much, Jim.
- [35:37]
Jim Acosta
All right, let's do it again soon. Appreciate it. Say hi to your brother. Thanks. All right. Well, so, so glad we were able to get Eugene Vindman, Congressman Eugene Vindman on the program. As I said, anytime you get a Vindman on the program is a good time. And I would like to get both of them. We're going to try to work on getting Alex Vindman and Eugene Vindamin on at the same time because, you know, just talking to them both together is a real treat. You always get some very interesting comments from both of them as they've been involved in so many important issues over the last several years. All right. In the meantime, I did start to talk about this a little bit. I do want to end on this New York, excuse me, this Time magazine cover, Donald Trump, sorry, Mr. President, you were not on the COVID of Time magazine despite being the 47th president of the United States. Elon Musk is on the COVID of Time magazine. He's sitting behind the Resolute desk. He was looking like the president of the United States. And I was just talking about this New York magazine reporting on Trump's fixation on the Time magazine cover, saying this, quote, trump has previously lied about how often he's been on Time's cover and even put himself on fake covers displayed in his golf clubs. But this isn't some obscure fixation from Trump's youth. New York magazine says he lashed out at Taylor Swift when she was named Times Person of the year in 2023, he complained about Kamala Harris's August 2024 Time cover, claiming, bizarrely, that she looked like his wife Melania. This is all from New York magazine and the Independent saying this, noting that Trump gushed over being on the COVID of Time magazine back in December, saying, quote, time magazine getting this honor for the second time. I think I like it better this time, actually. Apparently, the president was asked about this in the Oval Office earlier today. Reporter asking, do you have a reaction to the new Time magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your Resolute desk? Trump said, no. Is Time magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. Elon is doing a great job. So Donald Trump fixated for decades about being on the COVID of Time magazine. But when Elon Musk is on the COVID of Time magazine, Donald Trump saying to reporters today, is Time magazine still in business? Yes. Yes, Mr. President, Time magazine is still in business. I'm still in business. By the way, right here on the Jim Acosta show on the sub stack, we're about at the end of the program. I'm going to try to do this. I don't know if it's going to work. Duke, are you over there, buddy? Dookie, come over here. You want a treat? Come over here. Want a treat? Want treat? Trying to. I'm trying to bribe him. This is what it's come down to, folks. It's come down. I also have one of his little toys here. What about this? Want this? Oh. Oh, boy. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Okay, you got to come and get it. You got to come and get it. What do you think? What do you think, Duke? What do you think? Want this? Want this? Want to say hi to everybody? Want to say hi? All right, let's just show Duke real quick. Can we do this live on the sub stack right here? Duke, look at this. Look at this. There you go. Hop up here. Get the treat. Get the toy. You gonna get the toy? You gonna get the toy. There we go. There's Duke, everybody. There's Duke. I've got a treat on the table. Live television, folks. Live podcasting. You know, it doesn't always go as planned. What do they say, like pets and kids and pets doesn't always go. Here you go. There's a good treat for you there, buddy. There you go. All right. Good job, everybody. All right. Well, first week of the Jim Acosta show podcast. That's a wrap on on week one, episode five, and really appreciate once again, Beto O'rourke former congressman from Texas, being on and the program. And also Congressman Eugene Vindman, a Democrat of Virginia. He is a freshman congressman up there up on Capitol Hill in the House of Representatives. Appreciate his time as well. And I just want to say once again, thanks to all of you for tuning in. All week long, the numbers have been terrific. By the way, we're getting well over 100,000 views for each of these podcasts. And just a reminder, shameless plug to end the week on. You can find the Jim Acosta show on Apple Podcasts now. I think I made that happen earlier today. So if you're in the car on the go making dinner, you know, breaking out a bottle of wine, whatever you're doing, which I'm about to do in just a moment, you can listen to it there as well. But of course, keep watching. On Substack, the Substack team has been great all week long, helping me get this show off the ground. More to come. A lot more to come. Going take the weekend off, if you don't mind. But in the meantime, still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a great weekend, everybody.