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- [00:00]
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- [00:46]
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- [01:41]
Adam Kinzinger
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- [01:53]
Charlie Sykes
Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast and YouTube video. I am Charlie Sykes. Well on Friday we did not get the full Epstein files. What a shock. Donald Trump has put his name on the Kennedy Center. It is now the Trump Kennedy Center. He's also installed this amazing hall of fame with new platforms plaques in the White House. If you actually haven't heard the story, stick around. If you think it's a parody, I am sorry to tell you it is in fact. Really it is real. Yes, this is in fact real life. And of course we continue to edge closer to war with Venezuela. Stick around because we have a lot to talk about. And joining me on today's podcast, our weekend podcast, our good friend former congressman Adam Kinzinger. Adam, how are you today?
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Adam Kinzinger
I'm great. Buddy, how are you? Just awesome. Doing great. And I love this time of year because it's like the next week. I usually cannot give a crap about politics. Yes, I'm good.
- [03:03]
Charlie Sykes
No, you know what? I have always checked out near the end of December, and we will probably be having a rather more restrained schedule. But, But I have to tell you, you know, this guy does not stop. So where should. Let's work our way up to the big stuff here. The Kennedy Trump Center. As you probably know, the board voted to add Trump's name to the center. And then they apparently put the sign up on Friday morning. It's already up. So the inshinification of the White House continues. The insidification of the Kennedy center continues. This guy wants his name plastered on everything in the world except the Epstein files. Right. That's the only. He doesn't want his. He doesn't want his name in something.
- [03:44]
Adam Kinzinger
It's exactly. And it's amazing. Did you see, I think the, I don't know if there's only like one Democratic commissioner on the board, something like that, but she said she kept trying to be recognized during that vote. They would not. Or she would start speaking and they would mute her. And then they called the vote. She tried to say no, they wouldn't let her. And then they claimed it was unanimous. I mean, this is just, it's the kind of kangaroo court stuff that's happening. And, you know, it's, I think the thing that the kid. I mean, look, and this is not, it's for. First off, it's not legal because it's a congressionally named thing. Secondly, it's going to be gone in three years, period. There's nothing with Trump's name on it. It's gonna be left in three years. Yeah. 1201pm, January 20th. That'll be the first thing the next president does. But, but it's like the thing that drives me nuts is, you know, Charlie, you know, these people, too, I always thought they were, like, generally honorable people that cared about things in this country, and we're all holy and things are very sacrosanct, and all they do is sit around and think about how can I be the person that impresses Donald Trump next? How can I do it more? And you can impress him by putting his name on things. It's going to be. Every red state is going to have a Trump airport by the time this is over. It's just insane.
- [05:08]
Charlie Sykes
No, I mean, the, the, the best knowledge I can come up with, as you know, I have two large German shepherds. And I spent lot of time with them, Eli and Augie. And every morning, Eli and Augie go outside and go into the woods and they mark their presence. Right. This is what they do. I feel like Donald Trump is kind of going around Washington. He's going around the entire country and marking his presence. Okay, so, you know, a number of interesting things happened this week leading up to the bizarre ranty speech. We'll get to that in a moment. So Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, is known for no drama. Right. She was the adult in the room. Turns out she's kind of a Chatty Cathy. What did you make of her revelations that Donald Trump has an alcoholic personality? I mean, once again, Adam, the voice is coming from inside the house, right? I mean, how many of these accounts have we heard over the years?
- [06:02]
Adam Kinzinger
I mean, countless. And this is what I didn't fully understand about her is, did she not think this was gonna come out? I believe that. So, sure, okay. The, the pictures were kind of a sneak attack. I love them, by the way. But, you know, that's fine. They have a right to complain about the pictures because they, you know, whatever. But the article, I mean, you know, the fact that she says that, the fact that she went after J.D. vance, called him basically a guy with an essence, no moral sinner and. No. Yeah, he's the conspiracy theorist. And then he changed because of, you know, who Donald Trump is, Mark. You know, it just went through the litany of stuff. I, I guess what I don't understand and what still kind of confuses me is like, everything she said is true, I think. But, like, did she not think this was coming out and then. Because then when it comes out, they're complaining about it. This is what I don't get. I mean, you're, you've been on the producing media side, you know, that I haven't been on. Why would somebody give an interview like this and then be upset when it comes out? That's what I don't understand.
- [07:09]
Charlie Sykes
Well, maybe she just thought that this is somebody who's not going to burn me because they wanna have access or whatever, or just a matter of ego. But once again, it's like every single time that we open the, sort of pull the curtain aside and somebody who has seen Donald Trump up close and personal, you get these really, really disturbing pictures. I mean, going back to Trump 1.0, and yet somehow you. It never seems to register with his base. Okay, so this comes out. It's embarrassing. His chief of staff is saying these things. And then the next day he tells the nation that he is going to address the nation. And all of the networks, amazingly, decide that they're going to carry this thing live. Did you watch this thing?
- [07:55]
Adam Kinzinger
I did.
- [07:56]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, old man, you know, I think it was Tom Nichols, you know, old man, you know, barges into your living room to, you know, lecture you ungrateful whelps, you know, so for 18 minutes, old man yelling at the clouds, telling people to get off his lawn. I mean, what was that, Adam? What, what did we just see?
- [08:14]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, so I, the whole time, you know, and I, again, later, you know, I know you talked about this, you know, there was the time limit or whatever, the like 15 minutes. And I, I, I'm like, okay, later, maybe he was just rushed. Although if you have a, a rushed speech, you just do a shorter speech. Nobody needs a longer, never in history has a longer speech made a difference. And I just, I watched that and I'm like, this is a guy who is angry because he sees the numbers. I think he understands that his numbers are underwater and he's mad because they shouldn't be underwater. They shouldn't be underwater because he is amazing. And this is truly in his mind. And this is the thing you have to understand when you think about a narcissist. Like, yes, they have this image of themselves as a four year old boy who's still scared, but to compensate for that, they've built this image of themselves in their head where they're the center of the universe. They can literally do no wrong. And so if the economy is bad in a certain way, it's bad on purpose. And, and America just doesn't see the point in why it's bad. They don't understand. And keep in mind, Donald Trump, again, Charlie, everything is about him, literally everything. He doesn't care about the country. He just doesn't. And so when you only care about yourself and you've gained whatever it is, three or four billion dollars this year, like, of course you should be happy about where the economy's at. Donald Trump is rich. And so I can't imagine that there was anybody. You know, you saw the typical flying monkeys try to do there. That was the best speech ever. He's the greatest communicator ever.
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Charlie Sykes
Scream, though.
- [09:55]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, it was, I don't think there was a single person that really on CIA Truth Juice could tell you that that was a good speech because what it seemed like was exactly what you let in with, which is, I'm an American. I'm sitting here watching My president and he is yelling at me for having an opinion that he doesn't like and that doesn't go over well.
- [10:16]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, in case anybody missed it, let's, let's just play a little bit of a clip of Donald Trump rushing and ranting through this speech.
- [10:26]
Adam Kinzinger
They were drug dealers, gang members, and even 11,888 murders, more than 50% of whom killed more than one person. This is what the Biden administration allowed to happen to our country and it can never be allowed to happen again. We had men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody. Crime at record levels with law enforcement and words such as that, just absolutely forbidden.
- [10:58]
Charlie Sykes
That does not strike me as a man with a great deal of confidence or is exuding confidence. Again, quoting Tom Nichols was basically Donald Trump telling the entire country, quiet piggy. And this is the thing is it feels as if things are cracking a little bit in terms of the adults in the room. Time and time again, Donald Trump is doing things that in the past you would hope that somebody, some staffer would say, no, no, no, you don't wanna do that, you don't wanna say that or why don't way. It's, it's as if everything is all out of bleeps to give. I mean it's just no discipline whatsoever. No control. We are seeing unfiltered id.
- [11:39]
Adam Kinzinger
Yep, yep. Look, in the first term you had, as bad as that is, I would pay money to have that term back.
- [11:46]
Charlie Sykes
Never thought we'd say that.
- [11:48]
Adam Kinzinger
Oh my God, can you imagine? But you had people in there that still would put some guardrails on Donald Trump and to Donald Trump's not, not credit but like to Donald Trump's, I'll give it to him, he would, you know, in general stay within a certain guard rail. If somebody said that's illegal, then he wouldn't do it for the most part. Now this time they staffed. It's kind of been a combination of things. So you staff a whole White House and, and you make it clear that, look, Donald Trump does not want to be caged. Okay? So you hire people that are not going to cage Donald Trump. But then there becomes this self fulfilling prophecy where everybody's in there knows that he doesn't want to be caged and so they go out of their way to make him feel perfect and like everything he's doing is great, so there's no pushback. And then they see other people doing no pushback. So they try to not push back harder because they've got to get more liked by him. And so you end up with this, like, weird, vicious circle of the king's court with where they're trying to, like, entertain him more and more. And they're the ones that are supposed to be telling him, you know, the Romans are at the door. And. And it's just. So I use this example. I talk about billionaires in my. You know, we all know billionaire. You and I know billionaires just from politics. And they're all weird. They're all weird. Sorry. If you're a billionaire, you're weird, though. And here's the thing. You're going down the highway of life. If you and I kind of, you know, if I come into school and I'm wearing an orange shirt, I'm going to hit that rumble strip, which is everybody going, you're in an orange shirt. And it's going to kind of take me back to the highway of life. When you become a billionaire, you don't have rumble strips. Nobody tells you anything you do is wrong. You could come in wearing a skinned duck on your head, and people are going to be like, dad is brilliant. And so you just veer off. Yeah, you look, boy, you're. You're handsome. And you veer off and then into this ditch. And that's what Donald Trump is. He's driving right now, like, on the part of the GPS where it's blue and there's a forest. That's where he's at right now.
- [13:55]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, this is a great segue, because Peter Baker in the New York Times has a piece, and I've been thinking about this. Whether or not, in fact, I looked up before I even saw this, I looked up to see whether disinhibiting was actually a word, when in fact, you're all out of fucks to give or whatever. All the red lines are gone. So let me just read you what Peter Baker writes, because I think something is happening here. You know, part of me is like, you know, Donald Trump has always been Donald Trump. But the headline is shouting, ranting, insulting Trump's uninhibited second term. Many of President Trump's supporters love his professional wrestling style of leadership. But some of his recent attacks have sickened even some of his own political allies. And then he starts this way. It all might make more sense if he actually were drinking. By all accounts, President Trump doesn't touch this stuff. So when his own chief of staff said that he has an alcoholic's personality, she was talking about his larger than life nature rather than consumption. Mm. I'm not sure about that yet. In some ways, it may be an apt description for a president who seems even less inhibited than ever, in a way that has many in Washington beyond shaking their heads or even wondering if the leader of the free world has lost it. This got through the New York Times copy desk. The word often whispered by Republicans and shouted by Democrats and never Trumpers is unhinged. It was one thing when Mr. Trump called a reporter piggy or casually threatened to put a half dozen members of Congress to death for accurately stating the laws of war, or labeled all Somali immigrants garbage, or declared that daring to question his physical energy at age 79 was seditious, perhaps even treasonous. But when Trump cavalierly attacked the Hollywood icon Rob Reiner just hours after his body was found in a grisly murder scene, it sickened even some of his own political allies. And he followed the no, he didn't just say that Diddy performance this week by adding a series of plaques underneath portraits of past presidents on the wall of the colonnade at the White House that brazenly denigrated some of his predecessors. This is a great line. In effect, he bronzed some of his cartoonish social media juvenilia and bolted it to the taxpayer owned building where two Roosevelts, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, once lived. So it is as if the process you're describing of the staff, but also psychologically, it just feels utterly unfiltered. And so whatever inhibitions he once had and he didn't have that many are gone. And we have three years to go.
- [16:28]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, I was actually just this morning when I was waking up, you know how you sometimes wake up with panic, doom thoughts. I had that this morning and it was like three more years. I did like the mental math of he's been in office a year. Okay, do that three more times. Right. But here's the thing, and I, it's, it's, you know, you'd have to talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever that knows this better than me. The right words. But like you have a generation of people that now are in power, kind of the younger staffers at the White House and Donald Trump, because he's done the same thing that have basically learned politics on the Internet and Twitter and what do you do on the Internet and Twitter? It's all about, you know, trashing the other side. And you trash the other side with stupid memes, with humor. The goal is to trigger the libs, right? To get everybody mad. If you get everybody mad, you're winning and so you take what, what used to be like this idea that, okay, you can play that online game and the politics thing, and that's, that's part of the method in which you gain and sustain power that you can actually use as a grown up to advance your causes in the United States. And instead that has become the end state. The end state is no longer to govern and achieve things. The end state is to own the people that you dislike. And so what better way to do that than to take this, this House that frankly, all of us, and especially the Republicans up until five minutes ago, held sacrosanct as like this is the most holy place short of God's actual house in the United States of America. And they're desecrating it because to them that is the ultimate spoils of victory. The spoils of victory is no longer fixing the debt, it's no longer fixing education, it's no longer a strong national defense. The spoils of victory is making your opponents either fear jail or get really upset because you're doing things that are beyond the pale. And Charlie, you, here's what drives me nuts is in three years when the Democrats take over, if they do anything, even a tenth of this, Fox News will be running a 4, 800 hour straight outrage segment about how the Democrats put, you know, a picture of Donald Trump up and said this guy wasn't a great president or whatever.
- [18:57]
Charlie Sykes
Right?
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Adam Kinzinger
They will create this massive outrage and everybody will have selective memory and forget the, everything that Donald Trump did for four years.
- [19:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I'd like to say that's not true, but I think it will. Okay, so before we pass on to other weightier things, this, this colonnade, what he did with the plaques. And I wrote in my newsletter on Friday, I got a lot of, of texts and emails from people saying, okay, is this real or is this a parody which, which we, which we often have. And Peter Baker alluded to it. So what he did. And maybe we could show a picture of, of this. He had the pictures of all the former presidents up, except for Joe Biden, when there's no picture of Joe Biden, just an auto pen, which people thought was really juvenile and petty, but it was like, hold my beer, we have a lot more to go. So they put these bronze plaques which were obviously written by Donald Trump. So for example, underneath the non portrait of his predecessor, President Joe Biden, it says, and this is not a parody. This is what is in the White House. Sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history, taking office. As the result of the most corrupt election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our nation to the brink of destruction. And then he has a second, because he couldn't fit it all in one plaque. So he has a second plaque. Nicknamed both Sleepy and Crooked, Joe Biden was dominated by his radical left handlers. They and their allies in the fake news media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline in his unprecedented use of the auto pan. And then, despite all that, President Trump would get reelected in a landslide. And all in caps. Save America. This is not a parody. This actually is up there. And he's got this stuff, you know, making fun of Barack Hussein Obama and all of this sort of thing. You know, this is who he is. And again, no one in the White House, no one in the permanent staff, nobody in his cabinet, nobody in his inner circle says, you know, you don't need to do that. You know, it's one thing to, you know, put out a stupid social media bleed, it's another thing to actually bolt something to the wall. You know, the text. This is the White House. It's a sacred place. Donald Trump just, it's. But you're. But you're right on, you know, 1201 on January 20, 2029, they're going to take down, you know, all of these plaques, right? They're going to rename the ballroom. I don't know what are they going to rename the Trump Ballroom. They're going to rename it the Barack Hussein Obama Ballroom or the Nelson Mandela Ballroom. They're going to do all this, and there's going to be absolute just, you know, just craziness about all of this. But your point about how politics has not become about governing anymore, you know, just watching your former colleagues in Congress flail on healthcare and everything, you realize that really fewer and fewer people are actually willing to put in the work, the policy work, the work of government. And it's one of the reasons why so many of these folks are just leaving Congress going. I can be just as prominent being on social media or being a TikTok star as I can being a member of the Congress of the United States. Because the Congress of the United States basically does fuck all. What do you think?
- [22:12]
Adam Kinzinger
Yep. If you are. If. Yeah, if you're a serious person and you're like, you see Congress as a bit of a sacrifice, actually. You know, and I'm going to be honest, when I ran for Congress, I wasn't one of these that was like, oh, this is a sacrifice for me. I wanted to be a congressman, right? But there are people that, that run and they're like, you know, oh, I just want to take my small business experience or whatever. Those people have no interest in running anymore because there is, maybe they do. And they immediately get in there and they're like, well, whoa. But you don't. You cannot really make a difference on big issues in Congress at the moment. Now, that could change, and I hope it does, because in theory you do have power. It's just Congress refuses under Mike Johnson to exercise it. But the thing that Congress has become, because it used to be, you know, before all the social media age, you used to, or even the 24 hour news cycle, if you wanted to be famous in Congress, that would actually take 20 years. You'd be famous in your district because your district votes for you. But you'd have to be some chairman of a major committee to get on CBS Evening News a couple times and maybe people would know your name. Now you think about it, how many people in the country want to be famous? A lot, right? You can immediately become famous in politics. Now you say the most outrageous thing possible that gets you elected to Congress, which gets you a forum constantly that to say increasingly outrageous things and attack your opponent and you can become famous. I mean, think of all the names. I mean, I know everybody's all a fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now I'm not, but who would have ever heard of her except that she did insane things and got famous and that unfortunately, Congress has become a big TikTok incubator, if you will.
- [24:04]
Charlie Sykes
It is. And just stepping outside of Congress for a moment, it is interesting. And you've watched this, we've actually lived this. Watching the sort of the window of outrage continually move on the right that it is. And I've compared this to meth dealers. You know, that in order to stay relevant and famous, you need to be the person peddling the pure grade meth than the guy down the street corner. Which is why there are folks on the right now who are all tied up on this. Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, you know, fight. And I have a little bit of sympathy for Ben Shapiro a little bit. He went to Charlie Kirk's organization tpusa and he gave a full throated denunciation of Tucker Carlson. Like, what is Tucker Carlson doing, you know, platforming a neo Nazi like Nick Fuendes, you know, why are we, you know, listening to the bullshit coming from Candace Owens? And part of me was, I'm sorry, saying, okay, you're right. But, you know, if only you'd been warned, Ben. If only, right?
- [25:06]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah.
- [25:06]
Charlie Sykes
Because, I mean, so you've been growing these baby alligators, you know, in the bathtub for years, and now you are shocked to find out they've grown up and they are. They're roaming down the street, they're eating people and they're turning on you. But the thing about Ben Shapiro is, you know, I knew him back in 2015 and 2016. He knew what was coming. See, the thing is, a lot of these people who are just completely blindsided the moral weight of Ben Shapiro knowing that the gates of hell were being opened up and the anti Semites, the mouth breathers were coming back. And so now listening to him being like, I am really shocked that, you know, when I bent the knee to Donald Trump and these folks that now suddenly we have this explosion of hate and sewage, like, Ben, you actually once knew this. You made a choice to go along with it, and here you are. You know what I'm saying here?
- [26:00]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah.
- [26:00]
Charlie Sykes
You know, it's.
- [26:01]
Adam Kinzinger
It's cancer. It's cancer. So it's like, it's. It's like people that have the. I remember this story like 15 years ago, this lady had like a pet ape or something and then it turned on her. It's like, yeah, least surprising story ever. I kept a pet ape. And. But yeah, the. Listen, this is why, okay, I'm glad, you know, Ben Shapiro's up there making the case and trying to defend it. But I don't think they're going to win. And here's why. Is because I think there is a real analogy here to cancer, which is when there is cancer in the body, what do you do? You do everything humanly possible, even at the cost of the health of the rest of your cells, for hopefully short period of time to kill the cancer that is within the body. Because if you don't, if you think that your 8 trillion cells are going to overcome the 4 billion cancer cells because there's more of them and you're just going to convince these cancer cells to get in line. You're not. And all these cancer cells do is they turn other good cells into cancer cells. And that's what happens with corrosive ideology. It's not just acute analogy. It's because you and I and every human has to fight light and darkness in our heart, right? We have these dark parts of our heart, these fears, these like prejudices that every day we try to overcome with goodness. When somebody with authority speaks those fears that darkness back at you and it gives you permission to let it overtake you. And now you can really put the weight of that moral choice on somebody else. Nick Fuentes, he's famous. He's the one that actually says, Jews are terrible. I'm going to put that on him and agree with him. But that's what cancer is. And so those light, I mean, it's great when lightness overcomes darkness, but the idea that you let that darkness into the right wing philosophy and somehow it's not going to metastasize, I think is extremely unrealistic. Until you hit a wall and destroy yourselves, only then will you wake up.
- [28:13]
Charlie Sykes
That's, that's.
- [28:14]
Adam Kinzinger
Well, only then.
- [28:15]
Charlie Sykes
And the thing is this, this was foreseeable. It was predictable, it was, you know, predicted. And so, you know, I go back to, you know, Ben Shapiro, who's a very smart guy, and I remember, I remember when he decided that, that he was going to go along with Donald Trump, I think he said something like, well, you know, he's done the worst that he could possibly do. And this was like right before January 6th or something like that. No, it actually could get, it actually could get a lot worse. Okay, so the other thing that, that, you know, I had kind of a knee, I had a kind of a knee jerk reaction, I'm willing to admit to the whole Donald Trump, Rob Reiner thing. I said, what did we learn from that? And, you know, nothing, absolutely nothing. Because he's always been like this, he's always insulted people. But I'm willing to step back and say that, you know, that this isn't more of the sign of the mask being dropped, being, you know, him, the, the, you know, being disinhibited, to use that, that, that word, because. But again, this is who Donald Trump is. But, you know, you may have this darkness in your soul, but that doesn't mean that the darkness cannot, to use your word, cannot metastasize and grow. And so someone has been murdered and he puts out that social media tweet, and who knows, he obviously knew nothing about the circumstances, said it was because of tds, and you know, how much he hated Donald Trump. As if this had anything to do with Donald Trump whatsoever, which of course it did not. It had to do with this family tragedy. And then after it blew up and even after some of his supporters were sickened by this, he's asked about it in the Oval Office and he doubles down and he says the same thing again, that he wasn't a fan of Rob Reiner, Russia, Russia, Russia. He was not good for the country. And that's where you get to the point where, okay, we've known what's in Donald Trump's heart. There's just no attempt any longer to conceal it. And I guess, again, people are like, well, I'm really, really surprised, or I'm really appalled to find out that Donald Trump has this heart of darkness. Like, well, hey, we've been telling you for a decade, but how do you think that happened? I mean, the man has literally no empathy at all. And I think that was on display, wasn't it?
- [30:33]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah. I mean, look, it's. Again, you imagine a man who is. Everything is about m. So Rob Reiner dies. This is the number one story. So what's Donald Trump's first instinct? How do I make it about me? And he doesn't even consciously think of that. Like, how do I make this about me? It just. It says to him, it's like, you know how if you get hit on the knee and your knee bounces, it's a reptilian instinct. And. And so he's got to make it about him. So what does he do? Oh, Rob Reiner. Rob Reiner didn't like me. Rob Reiner was killed by his tds. And, and the thing is, is, yes, he got pushback on social media and maybe a little on Fox News, and I'm sure he saw that. But I guarantee you, Charlie, I guarantee you I would put every last dollar I have on the fact that not a single person in the White House came up to him and told him that what he did was wrong. In fact, I would be willing to even make a double bet with my child's money in the future that, like, in fact, people probably came up to him and said it was brilliant and amazing. And that's the thing. Charlie is like, yeah, he can look and maybe get, like, some feedback on Fox News when kill Meat or whatever, but guess what? 30 minutes later, kill Me is going to be on his knees again talking about how amazing Donald Trump is. This is something. A pushback like this will last 22 minutes against him, but the praise is constant, and the praise overwhelms any kind of moral thought. And, you know, it's like, I think about after January 6th, there was this period of about three months where all these people that got arrested felt moral shame and were apologetic for what they did until Fox News surrounded them. Marjorie Taylor Greene is key on this, by the way. Every time we think about her, we need to remember this. They surrounded These guys in jail and started calling them martyrs. And what, what happened? All of a sudden, the people in jail that were remorseful about what they did on January 6th all of a sudden took on the mantle of martyr and started singing songs. And now we're heroes. That's what happens with Donald Trump. So, yes, he puts out a terrible tweet. He might for a second be watching Fox and be like, I shouldn't have done it. And then there's this line of people that come into the Oval Office and tell him it's the best thing they've ever read, and he's good to go.
- [32:59]
Charlie Sykes
I think that's exactly right. I would not take that bet in any way whatsoever. And they not only were telling him that was okay, they were saying, you know, this is what makes you special, because this is what this, this is, this is you at your very, very best. And so it does.
- [33:15]
Adam Kinzinger
You're unfiltered. They love unfiltered Trump.
- [33:18]
Charlie Sykes
And clearly, you know, Susie Wiles is not prepared to come in any longer. And I mean, she's, I don't know whether she's done or not, but obviously the fact that you had that ridiculous, absurd address to the nation, you know, the day after the Susie Wiles piece, you know, a normal chief of staff would say, this is not a good idea if you are going to address the nation. You know, say something consequential like, we're invading Venezuela tonight. No, not, not. I'm butt hurt about the polls. I mean, that's, that's what presidential advice, by the way. How embarrassing for, you know, NBC, CBS and ABC that they agreed to televise, that they, they, they did not have to. So give me your sense.
- [33:58]
Adam Kinzinger
But of course they did it because they want to please him. You know, they're afraid. They're afraid. So they're gonna do it. And, and, and they would do it again if he wanted it next week.
- [34:09]
Charlie Sykes
You know what? I am old enough to remember when networks did not sit around thinking, you know, how, how can we please the President? They, you know, there was once a time, time when the networks thought, you know, maybe we should speak truth to power. And now. And again, nothing about it is subtle. I mean, you know exactly what the thought process is. And at a certain point, it's like, and this is part of the authoritarian playbook, isn't it? At a certain point you go, you know, I could resist, but why bother? It's just easier. It's just easier, you know, to go along with that. Okay, so Venezuela, he put out a social media tweet when he announced this complete blockade. By the way, a blockade is really an act of war, you know, as, as Tom Nichols explained the other day. But, you know, if you look at the social media post, it's like, oil, oil, oil, we're going to get our oil back. It's. Is there any doubt in your mind that in Donald Trump's mind he's thinking we're going to go into Venezuela and we're going to get the oil because everything is transactional?
- [35:11]
Adam Kinzinger
Look, I, Yes. Here's where I'm going to give you my kind of alt theory a little bit on Venezuela. First off, of everything that's happened with Venezuela, the only thing I'm not outraged about that I kind of see was the one interdiction of the oil tanker, only because that is sanctioned oil, you know, etc. Now what I hate is how it's immediately turned into military porn, Right? And like, look at how awesome we have guys that can repel on ropes. I think Donald Trump, in his depth of, of who he is, is a huge weak coward. And so the idea that he's planning to invade Venezuela, it is hard for me to believe because I think he's a coward. I mean, even the one courageous thing he did militarily was the Iran strike. And after he did it, you remember, he immediately is like, timeout, it's over, time out, time out. To my time, it's over. Right. And, and, and so I don't see him as like having the courage, which is good because I don't think we should be planning a war against Venezuela, but I don't see him as having the courage to pull the trigger. I think he's been convinced that ratcheting up pressure will somehow get Maduro to leave. And evidently it's come close a couple of times. But the problem is the more that Trump bluffs, the more Maduro sits here and goes, maybe he's actually not going to attack me. And then eventually Donald Trump has to make a decision. Now, I caveat all that, that's my alt theory, is like, this is all a blu bluff. It's all posture. It all is trying to make him look tough. Now, the other theory is if he does actually pull the trigger and invade Venezuela, it is absolutely 100% about oil. It is not about drugs. Because if you really wanted to go after the drug trade, I mean, I did this as a guard pilot, we did drug interdiction all over the country. If you actually want to go up to the drug trade, you'd actually be focusing more on Mexico and those transit routes, you'd be focusing more directly on, you know, all the countries that it comes through. Venezuela is a minor player in comparison. So, yeah, I, look, I'm not going to sit here and say I know what he's really planning. I just think that the guy is such a coward that it's hard for me to really fathom that he is actually planning to pull the trigger.
- [37:33]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and the other thing about the, the fighting the drug trade is that I don't know that any law enforcement agency has ever said the way that we fight the, the drug trade is to blow up the drug mules. Let's go after the drug mules, let's not arrest them, let's not question them, let's not turn them, let's not go up the ladder to find the kingpins. Let's in fact, because of course, if you're a kingpin and you're the president of Honduras, you actually get pardon. But just to blow these guys up, that doesn't strike me as a particularly effective way of doing it.
- [38:02]
Adam Kinzinger
And let me give you another example. So when I was in Iraq, I flew an RFC 26 and we basically our job, we flew for the Air Force Special Operations Command. Our job was to go out and to hunt through these various means. We have like high level bad guys. The people that were either, you know, on the deck of cards or like that we would discover are in charge of these large ISIS cells, right. And so, or AQI cells. And so we would go out and do that. And you know, most of our missions would be kind of quiet, but then we'd find somebody we'd, we actually worked with like seals, Delta, British SAS to come and they would either kill or capture the target we had. Now when would they kill the target? The target would be killed if they knew it was too dangerous to apprehend them or it wasn't worth that risk to apprehend them or whatever. But the vast majority of our targets, the goal was to apprehend them. Now if they fought, they would be killed, but the goal was an apprehension. And I can't tell you the number of times I'm looking out of my plane and I see this scene out of Apocalypse now with all these helicopters coming and a little bird would circle around the car we were following, shoot out the engine block, and then they'd wait and see if the guys would fight or get out. And most of the time, you know, our guys would land, they'd Capture these guys, etc. Why would they capture them? And trust me, it would have been much easier to blow up every single one of the cars that we followed. They captured it because they do something called SSE Sensitive Site exploitation after that. And that is where you actually get most of your intel. So you can take. Let's say this guy's driving a boat, okay? And all of a sudden we want to cat. We want to blow the boat up. Everything's gone. Well, say we capture the guy, we look at his cell phone, and we see that he's called this one certain number 20 different times, especially increasing before his boat left. What would that tell you? That would tell you that the number he called most likely was his supplier. So what would you do now? You correlate that with numbers you had that you've also captured. And now you would begin to track through various means where that number is located. And then you can capture that guy and you can look at his phone and see the numbers he's called and work your way up the chain of command. That's how we unraveled Al Qaeda in Iraq. That's how you unravel drug organizations.
- [40:26]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, if. If in fact, that's your goal as opposed to creating the. The bomb porn that Pete Hegseth gets off on so much. So speaking of bombing, you. You had an interesting p. Friday about the drone panic. Talk to me a little bit about that, because that. That was a little episode that I had forgotten about.
- [40:46]
Adam Kinzinger
Okay. And I gotta tell you, Charlie, it. I was double taken when I realized it was only a year ago. For some reason, this one feels like three years ago. So if you remember, of course there was this, oh, we're finding drones. What are these drones? And then it just became War of the Worlds. Right? And then it accelerated when Jeff Van Drew goes on Fox News, he's a congressman from New Jersey, goes on Fox News and says, I am on the Transportation Committee, which I laugh at, because it's like they have no national security information. He's like, I'm on the Transportation Committee and whatever else. And he goes, I'm going to reveal information here. I know for a fact a drone. Oh, God. A drone mothership left Iran, and it's basically parked here, and these are Iranian drones and we need to shoot them down. And Fox News. Listen, Charlie, for weeks ran with this, this, this Iran, and it was all used as the Biden administration, because this is all in the tail of the big balloon episode. Right?
- [41:50]
Charlie Sykes
Right. And remember when we were panicked about a balloon Going over.
- [41:53]
Adam Kinzinger
Yeah, yes, yes. And then all of a sudden, you know, it goes away. And it goes away because we come to realize we every blurry photo is a UFO because it's blurry. But when you have a high power camera and you zoom in on that blur and you see it's an airplane, you go on to the next target. That's why we have no sharp pictures of UFOs because when you actually zoom in on it, it's not an alien spacecraft. But anyway, I brought that up to talk about how that right wing media ecosystem and all media kind of shared responsibility for this one. But the right wing particularly lit the fire on this because it served a political end. Then when it was proven otherwise, they went quiet and people forget.
- [42:35]
Charlie Sykes
I think maybe the reason that I didn't remember it very well was because I do not inject Fox News 24. Seven into my veins. But if you lived in that world, there was a time when every conversation was like, why is Biden letting these Iranian drones and doing nothing about it? Not to mention the whole Iranian drone mothership thing. I mean there's somebody been watching any science fiction movies? There are. No, that's not really a no.
- [43:06]
Adam Kinzinger
No. It's so weird. And then like they're going to drive it from Iran to the, to New Jersey and park it off the coast. Like, come on, if they have a drone mothership, probably they're going to use it for Israel or they're going to keep it secret till they need it.
- [43:21]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I mean, you know, we, we ought to worry about drones in the, the future, you know, particularly the Chinese drones. But, but this was not a real thing. Adam Kinzinger, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Merry Christmas to you and your family. And if I don't, and if I don't see you, may 2026 be better than 2025. Which doesn't seem that hard. I'm setting the bar for a little. Don't you think so? Thanks a lot.
- [43:46]
Adam Kinzinger
Low bar.
- [43:47]
Charlie Sykes
We do this and we're going to continue to do this into the new year because we love. We live in times where we constantly have to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [44:10]
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Charlie Sykes
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