← The Kinzinger Report
The Kinzinger Report
Going Dark | Trump Turmoil Could Kill a Critical Surveillance Tool — June 11, 2026
00:12:54
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:08]
B
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, so much. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. Good to have you here today. If this is your first time, I fully expect we will see you every day from now on. So thank you. Please be sure to follow like subscribe and all that we we're going to start today inside the White House, where according to Politico, the knives are out. New reporting this morning describes a president who's angry, who's isolated and is leaning on a small circle of loyalists that happens to crazy people in charge. The first real casualty may be one of the country's most important surveillance programs, which is set to expire on Friday. And let me just say this up front. I flew missions overseas that depended on intelligence similar to this. And I was in Congress for plenty of these reauthorization fights. They were ugly. Members have real concerns and we still got it done because both parties understood the program keeps Americans safe. This week, I'm not sure anyone in that building can put anything ahead of partisan politics. That's gotta change. We're also gonna cover a new rule on mail in ballots. Fresh Epstein reporting the Iran war escalating again and the president's very crowded doctor visit. So look, if this helps to cut through another heavy day, you know, 15 minutes versus sitting there watching TV for three hours. If this helps, do me a favor just like it, share it, subscribe it so it reaches more people. It's important to get this message out and that's the key. So let's get right to it. So first, the reporting out of the West Wing this morning describes a White House in open turmoil. POLITICO's Playbook reports that the mood around President Trump has turned angry and insular, with the president leaning on a tight group of aides that can reach him directly. One White House ally put it this way, quote, the the knives are out, people are stabbing people. It's chaos. Sounds like a wonderful place to work. Here's what lit the fuse. So last week, Trump named Bill Pulte his housing finance chief as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has no national security background, and lawmakers in both parties objected. The main trouble is the timing. A major surveillance authority is known as Section702 it's set to expire Friday. It lets the government collect the communications, foreign targets overseas. It feeds more than half of the President's daily intelligence briefing. So the deal to renew it is a big deal. And it was nearly done. But then the Pulte pig blew it all up. Democrats now say that they will not vote to reauthorize the program while he runs the intelligence community. And I don't blame him. He has no qualifications. Here's Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. But clearly to get to good faith negotiations, the effort to elevate Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence should be reversed immediately. And then let's see where we wind up at the end of the week. So Speaker Mike Johnson went to the White House on Tuesday to find a way out. He came back promising to pass it anyway, quote, the President has a prerogative, Johnson said, and we're going to pass FISA this week. But he's well short of the votes he needs. And after the meeting, Trump only dug in harder. The White House waved all of it off. A spokesman called Pulte a great selection leading a world class team. Yeah, okay. It's unfathomable to me, though, that Republicans would let one of the country's core intelligence tools go dark to protect one single loyalist. But then again, there's no bottom to what Trump and his lackeys will do to maintain their power, even if it means putting Americans at risk in the process. Trump's impulse control, his impulse for control, is now reaching all the way down into your mailbox. The Postal Service has drafted new rules to carry out an executive order that Trump signed this spring on mail and voting. The newly minted rules dictate that if a state wants the Postal Service to deliver its mail in ballots, it would first have to hand the federal government a list of every voter that's set to receive one. If a state refuses, the ballots won't be delivered to their voters. The same order tells the Department of Homeland Security to build its own citizenship list of voters using data pulled from across the government. Can I just say that if this was any other administration, Republicans in particular would be freaking out. Anytime the federal government makes a list of people, they freak out at the idea of the federal government even knowing what guns you owe. So far, by the way, 23 Democratic led states in the District of Columbia are suing. As we know, the President has spent years casting mail in voting as fraud, even though he does it with no concrete evidence to back this up. We're used to it, but we can't let it cease to outrage us.
- [05:28]
A
So it's no mail in ballots. You see that what's happening in California, they're rigging the election now. Maybe we caught them and maybe they won't be able to get away with it. They tried with me. They did it successfully the second time. The third time we made it too big to rig too many votes. They couldn't do it. They can only go. They sort of gave up at about 9 or 7 when they got slaughtered with the votes that came.
- [05:51]
B
The White House is saying it is confident the order will be enforced by November and that the administration is simply lawfully enacting the agenda voters chose. A former vice chair of the Postal Service's Board of governors said in simpler terms, stripping this all down to just plain mailing ethics. If proper postage is paid on a mail piece, he told cnn, the United States Postal Service should deliver it. It's worth noting, though, that of course the president has the ability to appoint members of the USPS Board of Governors. Don't expect to see a majority on this board that disagrees with this new policy anytime soon. Meanwhile, the Epstein story that the White House keeps trying to bury picked up another revealing chapter. A new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and John Swan out later this month, takes us inside the administration's response last summer. An excerpt published Wednesday describes an emergency meeting in the White House situation room on July 17 of last year. It came 10 days after the Justice Department put out a memo saying there was no Epstein client list and the matter was closed. That memo did not calm the president's face. In fact, it set it off and created a political crisis at the White House. So according to the book, Vice President J.D. vance gathered the administration's top officials to manage the fallout with a damaging report about the president's ties to Epstein. Also on the way, the chief of staff, the press secretary, the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the FBI directly all took part. Vance opened with a probably understated line, quote, this is a huge problem. The book says Vance pitched a plan to clear the president's name, floating an interview between Tucker Carlson and Jelaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted accomplice. He also pushed to release the files fast to get ahead of Congress. A week later, the deputy attorney general sat down with Maxwell himself. All of that was happening behind closed doors in public. Those same officials and the president were brushing the story aside. It's no big deal. Nothing to see here. Take a look.
- [08:02]
A
He goes crazy over this or that or Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. This guy. Why aren't they talking about him?
- [08:10]
B
So every administration has to manage bad press, but what actually matters is getting justice for survivors of the terrible situation. Holding a top secret meeting in the White House situation Room that's reserved for natural disasters and other crises and making it solely about shielding. The President says all you need to know about who they're actually trying to protect overseas. The president's no longer hiding what he wants out of the war with Iran or how little he cares who pays for it. On Truth Social, this morning, Trump vowed that American forces would take Carg island in, as he put it, assume total control of Iran's oil and gas. Comparing the plan to what he says the United States has done in Venezuela. If you haven't heard it before, Carg island is a small island in the Persian Gulf. It handles about 90% of Iran's oil exports. Military experts have said that actually taking the island would mean putting American troops on the ground within range of Iranian fire, with no promise. It ends the war. But Trump doesn't seem to care.
- [09:12]
A
I don't know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest with you. You make a fortune, but I don't know that America has the stomach. I think they'd like to see us come home, but we did it with Venezuela. Venezuela has worked out great for everybody. We've taken millions and millions of barrels of oil out of Venezuela. We brought them to Houston and various other places.
- [09:32]
B
So he knows where the country is on this. He's floating a ground war anyway because the prize is a fortune that he can make on Iranian oil. And I'm sure he gets cut into it because he does for everything. This is the pattern now. The oil money wants, the inflation that he says he loves, the soldiers he would risk for both. The cost of this war keeps landing on Americans, and the President doesn't care as long as he and his friends come out on top. And finally, a story this week raises a real question about President's health and what the White House will not say. In the medical report the White House released after Trump's latest check in, the figure stood that there was one figure that really stood out, and it was 22. That was a number of medical specialists that examined the President. It's a record for anyone who's held the office. For comparison, George W. Bush saw 12 at his first checkup. His father saw five. Trump saw 11 in 2019 and 14 last year. This year, 22. That's a lot. The White House will not say which specialists they were. They were what most of them were checking up, what they were looking for or looking at. The president's physician says Trump is in excellent health. And Trump posted that everything had checked out perfectly. Why even lie about this, by the way? We all know he's not in good shape. Whatever. By the way, the cardiologist who treated Dick Cheney for years said the figure is an extraordinary number and asked a very obvious question, why so many? Dr. Oz, who now runs Medicaid and Medicare, a sentence I never thought I would ever say in my life. Here we are. Dr. Oz, who runs Medicare and Medicaid for the federal government, had an interesting explanation. If the President's in such perfect health, why does he keep coming back in for checkups?
- [11:21]
A
I think he likes the results. He does really well. He. He aces the test every single day.
- [11:27]
B
And I do actually believe that he
- [11:31]
A
is curious to make sure everything is going in the right direction. He's a very meticulous person.
- [11:35]
B
The White House says it has nothing to hide and calls the exam routine care for someone in the job, but put those specialist counts side by side, president to president. And routine is not what they describe. President's health is a matter, a public matter, because the country is trusting the one person with the hardest job there is. The White House is betting it can keep shrugging these questions off. We'll have to see how long that can hold. Well, listen, this is the show for June 11th. Let's see if, like, yesterday, Trump says things like, I don't care about inflation. I love it. Just feeding the fire to the Democrats for their campaign. That's right. Trump said he loves inflation, that that's what happens when you have a stubborn, stubborn old uncle or somebody that always takes the opposite of what everybody says because he's. You guys hate inflation. I like inflation because inflation's good. Oh, you think the sky's blue? It's actually paint. That's. That's him. He's this old, angry uncle. Anyway, if all this helped you make sense of a heavy day like it, send it to the one person who needs it. And also subscribe so you don't miss what comes next. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care. Of.