← The Kinzinger Report
Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:06]
A
I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy. After serving over a decade in Congress, I help you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. So before we get into the news, I want to take a moment to recognize the Americans who lost their lives in the B52 crash yesterday at Edwards Air Force Base in California. They serve this country and they gave everything for it to their families. And to everyone at Edwards, you are in our hearts today and to the whole military, really. Thank you. Our top story today, the president's Justice Department is now investigating California Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife. It's not entirely clear what he's being investigated for, but Newsom says federal agents are knocking on his friends doors, digging through years of documents, looking for a crime. And he says the reason is simple, because he might run for president in 2028. We're also going to get into growing doubts on the Iran deal. New details on Trump's financial disclosures, of course, updates on the Free Ballroom and the president shrugging off Ukraine as our allies scramble to keep him at the table. Quick reminder, like subscribe share this with somebody who needs to see it and hear it. Okay, so let's get right into it. So first, the Democrat that many expect to run for president in 2028 just landed on the President's list. By the way, Wall Street Journal just put out people on President's List. And I'm on there, too. It's an honor. On on Monday, Gavin Newsom said that he and his wife were under federal investigation. He's the Democrat most people expect to run in 2028. And he didn't mince words. Here's what Newsom said.
- [02:11]
B
In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends and former employees not because they found a crime, because they're simply trying to find one. They're demanding records. They're abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents. Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets. He's coming after me because I'm considering running for president.
- [02:36]
A
So to be fair, the investigation runs out of Sacramento in the Eastern District of California, not D.C. according to reports, the part involving his wife centers on her taxes. And it began last year, growing from whistleblower complaints inside state government. His own Former chief of staff pleaded guilty to federal charges there last month. So I'm not going to jump to any conclusions and call the whole thing a setup. I don't know that. And we'll have to see what comes out of this. But that being said, it's hard not to see the pattern here. Newsom joins a growing list of Trump's enemies that are being investigated. We've seen the DOJ go after former FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Letitia James, and Senator Adam Schiff. In each case, Trump demanded the prosecution first. Two of those cases have already been tossed out. An investigation is not a conviction, and if anyone broke the law, they should answer for it regardless. But when a president spends years demanding his rivals be jailed and the cases keep arriving right on cue, the burden is on him to prove that this is about the law and not a list. We're going to keep a close eye on this story, and we'll keep you updated as we learn more next. Trump's own CIA director is quietly doubting the deal that he's selling abroad. On Sunday, the president announced his Iran deal is done. And of course, he's calling it historic because that's what he does. But new reporting from Axios shows his most senior people aren't sold on it. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the president directly that US Intelligence raises serious doubts about whether Iran will ever make the nuclear concessions we're demanding. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth raised concerns, too. But in public, the pitch keeps shifting. On Hannity, the vice president was asked a very simple question. They're agreeing right now to eliminate the enriched stockpile. And if they don't get to a point where they agree to stop enriching, then they don't get the other benefits of the bargain, the technical details, as in whether Iran actually stops enriching and who inspects it. The president himself has called getting that uranium back unnecessary. Now, except for from a, quote, public relations standpoint. Even Senator Lindsey Graham worries that Iran's read of the deal does not match what our negotiators claim, drawing the ire of the president. And yet another revealing moment where we can see the control Trump has over the current Republican Party. Take a look.
- [05:21]
C
Lindsay is skeptical.
- [05:22]
A
Yes.
- [05:22]
C
I'll have to talk to Lindsay. He'll be in big trouble. Lindsay's good. Lindsay's fine. He's not skeptical. He's just fine.
- [05:31]
A
From the very beginning of this conflict, we've been told a war is necessary to stop the production of a nuclear weapon. But that part of the deal has not been settled. It's been kicked to a round of talks. Nobody's even started yet. And some of the president's most senior cabinet members doubt Iran will ever agree to it. So the President gets his signing ceremony and his victory lap. What he doesn't get, what we don't get, is the thing that the war was supposed to deliver, the thing that made the war necessary and was, quote, worth the cost. Meanwhile, we have new reporting on the President's stock trading. And the numbers are something else. This week, CBS News went through the President's latest financial disclosures. And the scale, I've got to be honest, it's staggering. In the first three months of this year, his investment accounts made more than 3,600 trades, worth somewhere between 200 million and nearly $700 million. No sitting president has ever done anything like this. The Trump Organization says he has no say and that independent managers handle it with no advance notice. But the timing is impossible to ignore. On January 6, his accounts bought up, I think close to a million dollars of Nvidia. And the next week, his administration loosened the rules, letting Nvidia sell its best AI chips to China, which is a national defense concern, by the way. In March, they loaded up on Palantir, the defense contractor, and weeks later, the President praised it by ticker on Truth Social. They also bought hundreds of thousands in Eli Lilly, right as the government made calls that helped its weight loss drugs. At a senior hearing, Elizabeth Warren. At a Senate hearing, Elizabeth Warren put it bluntly to the Treasury Secretary, saying that the President is enriching himself by taking advantage of of his position. Clearly, Scott Besant waved it off, saying that the President was not the one day trading. But the truth is, most presidents put their money in a blind trust so that they can't see it or be tempted. The President chose not to do this. Trading stocks as president, unfortunately isn't illegal. And that's exactly the problem. The one man who can move a stock with a single sentence or a post is allowed to own it. Each even if every trade is clean, you at home should not have to take this President's word for it. You should be able to know. So, speaking of taking the president at his word, remember when he swore that his new White House ballroom would not cost taxpayers a dime? And in fact, all the magas went out there and put this on their Twitter? For months, the President insisted that his giant White House ballroom under construction would the East Wing used to stand would be paid for entirely by private donors. In the Oval Office in March. He actually couldn't have said it any clearer. Take a look.
- [08:38]
C
You know, we didn't ask for any tax money. We have no tax. This is taxpayer free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.
- [08:45]
A
Not 10 cents, he said, but the contractor's own internal estimate, prepared for the White House weeks before. He said that set the cost for taxpayers at over $300 million. And by the time he claimed taxpayers would pay nothing, his government had already cut more than a dozen checks to the builder. That's just a pure, straight up, unadulterated lie. The White House says the public money is only for security, not the ballroom itself. But a former Pentagon official who reviewed the plan said you can't separate the two. As he put it, it's one structure. Duh. I don't know about you, but the images of the White House this past week have been stuck in my head. A fighting cage going up on the South Lawn for a UFC night, by the way, sponsored by Saudi Arabia. And right next to it, the East Wing, gone. Just gone. Rubble where part of the People's House used to be. You may not know this, but the White House isn't one of Donald Trump's gold plated mansions. It actually belongs to you and I. And he's just the current tenant. He's basically like a renter. Tenants don't get to bulldoze the place and send the landlord the bill. Actually, if you want to try that, good luck, it's not going to go well. And finally, at the G7 summit in France today, America's closest allies spent the day trying to steer the President onto the topic of Ukraine, while the Iran deal announced. Well, with the Iran deal announced and Russia escalating its attacks by the day, leaders like Macron wanted a clear signal that Washington still wants in on the fight to stop Putin. The President was glad to pivot from his failure in Iran, saying the war would soon be, quote, in the rearview mirror, even with the ink barely dry and his own CIA director voicing doubts. But on Ukraine, he sounded skeptical.
- [10:39]
C
I just. Look, we have nothing to do with it. We sell weapons to them. We don't even give them. Obama gave him $350 billion worth of what gave, which was crazy. The European Union pays us full price for weapons, but it's not that. It's a. This has no impact on us other than we sell weapons. We're thousands of miles away.
- [11:02]
A
What the President doesn't seem to understand is that Ukraine matters to us far beyond the weapons we sell. Think about who Russia actually is, a nuclear superpower that's already hitting us with cyber attacks, interfering with our elections and arming our enemies. Russia won't stop at Ukraine. It will lean on the next border towards NATO allies that we are required by law to defend. The same allies this president keeps riding off as freeloaders, as, by the way, he gives Iran hundreds of billions of dollars. But NATO has never been charity. It's the most successful security bargain in our history. It's kept the peace on a continent that dragged us into two world wars. And the only time the alliance's mutual defense promise has ever been invoked was after 9 11, when NATO troops fought beside Americans like myself in Afghanistan. So if Putin tests that line, the question is simple. Will this president defend our allies the way they once defended us, or will he treat them as customers for our weapons and nothing more? I just want to also briefly mention the president made a huge deal about how blue the new reflecting pond was. Well, if you've spent any time on social media, you've noticed that today it's green. And that's not green because the president painted that way. It's green because the algae is back. That's right. We spent millions and millions of dollars to paint a pool blue only to make it heat up more in the summer because blue does that and we've exploded the algae bloom now. It's always interesting to me. I wonder, will any of the MAGA folks that were putting all those pictures of algae under Obama do the same thing? I don't know. Don't hold your breath. Well, that's it. That's the show for June 16th. I want to say thanks for being here. Do me a favor like subscribe and send this to a friend and we'll catch you right back here tomorrow. Take care.