Jim Acosta

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2:01But don't worry, Trump says gas prices will drop just after the midterm elections. Meanwhile, we're selling bridges on the Jim Acosta Show. So see me right after the show if you'd like to buy a bridge. I'd want to sell to you. Here to discuss this MS now anchor in host of the 11th hour, Ali Velshi, weeknights at 11 p.m. Eastern. Ali, it is great to see you. Thanks, my friend. We're in to be back with you. Great to be back with you. And you know how that works. That's simple economics. That's right after a midterm elections, the gas prices drop like a rock. I don't understand it. It's so weird because I have a background in economics. So people call me and ask me, what do you think this means? And it's like, I don't know because it's not economics. It doesn't actually mean anything. Don't ask me. I actually know how economics work. But he's saying crazy stuff, which is typical. You know, that's not best in saying crazy stuff. This just doesn't make sense, right? The war goes on. The war that he apparently stopped and was going to end. And you know who knows what he's talking about.

3:01But he also doesn't set the price of oil and gas. So he was gaslighting about how the prices are low, right? He's been doing this for several weeks. He makes speeches in which gas prices are weighed down. That's just not true. Gas prices over the weekend hit their highest price for that time of year ever in history. And now he's got some sense that they'll come down right after the midterms. What does that mean? Is it got something to do with the midterms? Or is there going to be a piece agreement? Like, what does that actually mean? Because he's telling you mission accomplished. He says that they're in complete control of the straight-up hormones. And this is all empirically false and provably false. So I just don't know who's left. Jim, is it just, is it this base of 30% who will just listen to anything he said? Or is it this group who believes what Hague Seth and Trump have said that it's okay if you suffer for a while because the cause is greater? Americans are just not believing that. They're not believing that they're involved in some great, it's not World War II, right? There was a mission involved. I think he just feels like he has to shovel out content and that the people on Fox will

4:01air it and they'll air it without any kind of scrutiny or anything like that. Let's play this. They kind of threw some of this over there. I mean, yeah, play it. Let's play it because I like that. People think I'm crazy when I say it. Certainly, but right after the election, because they like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They're going to be tumbling down and we'll get them down. I think for gasoline, we'll get them below $2 a gallon. But not until after the midterm. I think it's going to take a little bit longer than the midterm. And I think he says something like, and that's how they want it to be or something. Yeah, I don't know what that means either. He's referring to 1980. He's referring to inauguration day, January 20, 1980, when the Iranians released the hostages at right afternoon, right when Ronald Reagan was sworn in. The Iranians have got the sense that they can ruin a presidency, right? And to some degree, they did. I think that wasn't the deciding factor, but it was a big factor in Jimmy Carter's loss. So they he's thinking, okay, they're going to try and wreck things for Republicans by

5:06keeping prices high or whatever it is doing. And then right after the midterm elections, they'll understand that he's still the president and he's still in control. So they're going to stop this. What he's underestimating, and this is not a, I'm not talking in favor of the Iranian government here, he's underestimating everybody's threshold for pain. He's also underestimated the Canadian threshold for pain with the trade war. So right, so he's not under, you think the Iranian is just going to get up on November 4th and say, well, he's still president. I guess we should stop the silly war. Yeah, I don't understand that either. And it seems to me if he has any control over it, that he would want this to end now, that he will want to end now. Before his party gets wiped out in the midterms, I was like, wait a minute, is this the whole degree? Have we found the law stark? The proof that he really wants the Republicans to get creamed in the midterms? Yes, right. He just said that. A little bit more to say, you sacrificial lambs will all go because the price of gas is too high and everything's too expensive. And then I'll still be president of November 4th, and the Iranians will think this isn't worth it anymore. It's just, there's no logic to it. There's a way to end a war and it takes work, right?

6:07Especially one that you started that's not particularly clear on why you started it. That's where his energy should be, but how many times have you and I heard from people who are saying, it's not that into it. Like he's kind of bored with the war, but we're in it. And people actually die and prices are up. You now have to solve this problem. You can't just sort of wish it away. Right. And the other day, he described it as small potatoes, which I thought was absolutely shameful. But you mentioned the trade war with our besties in Canada. I guess they're becoming frontamies, but this is how the AP put it. The US is banning the import of some dairy products and motorcycles from Canada along with most alcoholic beverages so much for what is it? Moulson, that kind of is a little bad. As part of a trade, a little bads part of a trade war with that shows little signs of cooling off. Ban will take effect September 29th comes after retaliatory terrorist promise by Canada kicked an earlier on Tuesday on $20 billion in USS imports. Allie on your, based on your Canadian roots. What? First of all, is there a way to unwind this before these other terrorists kick in and how

7:09bad have relations gotten between them? It's bad. It's bad. On two levels, one is it's bad because it's just insulting, right? They're trade disputes that go on all the time. In fact, the history of America and Canada, they're trade disputes that go back like a couple hundred years, things to do with softwood lumber and stuff. That's the nature of the game. There's a mechanism for resolving those disputes. He's ignored all of it. So one of the interesting things is these products you just mentioned, he's talking about a ban. Yesterday, he talked about a ban on Bombardier planes. Banning is really something you do when a product is dangerous or spoiled or the country is a human rights abuser or something. However, it's possible that he has greater legal ability to ban things from Canada than he does to tariff them or at least to tariff them. That's part of this. It might actually be legal. Number one, number two, the list of stuff that he's talking about, first of all, you're going to piss off a lot of new Englanders if you don't like Canadian Bearing. But he's got like molasses on the list and things like that.

8:11He's down to, this is like a western where the guy is running out of bullets. Right? He's down to the stuff that, okay, this is what you've got in your quill. And that's part of the problem that he's running out of stuff. He was just like Iran. He was assuming they would fold. Everything to him is Venezuela. Everything is, you go in, you take the guy out and then you basically, it's a vast state. Right. Canadians are not interested in this. They understand that they're going to get hurt way more than Americans are. It's a much bigger piece of their economy. But Canada import exports about, above all of Canada's exports, almost 70% go to the United States. So, what's going to happen is Canada's just going to learn that it's got two coasts on two oceans on the Atlantic and the Pacific and then they're going to start building their factories and their pipelines and all that to go to the coast. So, stuff can get on ships and go to Asia or stuff can get on ships and go to Europe and the rest of the world. They'll learn that and they'll bring the 70 down to 60 and the 60 will go down to 50. Even if they have a friendly American president and relationships get back to normal, we will

9:11never go back to Canadians fully trusting America. And that is a problem because it's not just a trade relationship. Jim, as you know, it's five eyes, it's NORAD, it's NICL, it's military partnerships and joint exercises. Canada is not just a big hat that keeps you warm in America, it's actually a big protective shield for America. It totally is. I so agree with you and I talked about this. I went off the other day because, I mean, to me, it's sort of like pissing off the most loyal friend you've ever had. Somebody you could totally, that neighbor next door who would come over if your power was out, he would come over and bring over his extension cord from his gen, I mean, was that, that's the kind of, and then he's tweeting out these stupid memes of how the US is going to take over all of North America, you know, in this kind of stupid shit. But the danger to this alley, I would argue, is in addition, everything you just said, is in the way that the Europeans talk about America now, that we're now unreliable, that we've got to start planning for the future. We've got to make other partnerships. Yes. And the Canadians are starting to talk that way as well. That's dangerous.

10:13And Mark Carney's had a leading hand. By the way, Mark Carney, who's doing a great job as prime minister, remember, the Liberals are not going to win the election, right? Donald Trump won, started talking about the 51st state, and suddenly what was a 20 plus point lead by a populist conservative fizzled, and Mark Carney becomes the prime minister. Number one, number two, all the provincial premiums who are like the governors are in on this fight. Mark Carney and Rob Ford are on the same side of this. In Canada, there is far apart on the political spectrum as you can get. In fact, Rob Ford, the premier of Ontario, is often thought of as the Donald Trump of Canada. And he's telling Donald Trump he can kiss his ass, and he's got a particularly large ass, as he says, because he's a big guy. Like, and this is good politics in Canada too, right? It's great politics in Canada. It's united Canadians around something. But the sad part, Jim, as a guy who grew up in Canada and consumed American TV and American music and American food and American culture, Canadians love America. Right. If they're not traveling in Canada, they're going to America before they're going to Asia or Europe or anything like that.

11:14Now they're not going to Maine. They're not going to Michigan. They're not going to Las Vegas. It's a big hit. So true. You know Canadians. Like to make a Canadian angry takes work. It really does. And I mean, to me, you know, again, it's sort of what you were saying earlier about having that very comfortable warm hat on top of your head. I mean, you know, America is so blessed to have had Canada on its northern border for almost our entire existence. I mean, talk about it. I mean, we don't have problems in Europeans. Just like any other part of the world has because of Canada's existence. 5,500 mile, undefended border. The largest undefined, like in other words, there's no soldiers on the border. They may occasionally be a soldier because something's going on, but there's, it's not guarded. It's, you go through a booth, right? And I'm going to ask you a few questions and you show your passport and you get in. Like this is, you, there was a library or something at one point. So isn't there a library on the border? You used to be able to go in from both sides. And now Canadians have to drive across the border and go in.

12:17But that's how Canadians and Americans on the border think, right? The new bridge in Detroit, it's the Gordy Howe bridge. Gordy Howe is a Canadian who played 27 seasons in the A&S. She'll never played for a Canadian team. And yet the Canadians claim him as a remarkable hero athlete hero and the Americans claim him. That's how Canadians and Americans who share a border and share trade think. Yeah, we're in different countries, but we're, we're cousins. We're relatives. We're more than friends. Yeah. It's a bad thing. And by the way, this is where it falls into the same category as Iran, right? We're trying to make a deal with Iran, except we had a deal with Iran. And then we, and then we, we, we, we, we, we have a deal with, not only do we have a deal with Canada, we have a deal that Donald Trump, because he ripped up the old deal, NAFTA, and came up with US, US MC, it's his deal that he then ripped up. So what's a deal worth from America anymore? Yeah, no, it's so true. And the other thing I wanted to get into on a different topic before you go, Ali, is, you know, this warning from this, I guess he's an eighth anthropic researcher term whistle

13:18blower. This is how the Wall Street Journal describes it. Anthropic researchers quitting the artificial intelligence industry over fears that the lab and its competitors are racing to build systems. They won't be able to control a sign of mounting safety concerns within top AI companies, Jacob Coxson, a researcher who specializes in training new AI models by having them consume vast amounts of data, said he is leaving the company because he doesn't want to participate. In an industry wide rush to build AI systems, that goes on to say that could spiral out of control and destroy humanity. I mean, that he's worried that such systems could do that. And I, you know, I watched a lot of sci-fi growing up and I had all the terminator movies and everything else. Yeah. And, you know, like, I don't know what we're going to do here because it seems to me there's a real bipartisan. It's not even partisan. It's not. It's not partisan. Everybody is worried that this is getting, we're getting way ahead of ourselves with this technology. And how do we put the genie back in the bottle? I will say this is an important thing for you and I to think about because we both spent

14:19a lot of time reporting on data centers and the bipartisan backlash against data centers, which is really valid. I think we may be missing the other part of this. The data centers are about noise and electricity consumption and water and prices and all that kind of stuff. And it's really, really important. We should be spending a lot of time talking about self-learning AI. What he's arguing is that by the end of next year, perhaps, we could have technology that is so far beyond us that we may not be able to control it. It is the stuff of your sci-fi horror movies. It's not, I know these foregone conclusion that that's going to happen, but there's zero regulation, A, because we're not very good at regulating anyway, and B, because this administration has zero interest in regulating these companies. And I think we have to think about this as a society. We should probably be at the front end of this. People social media almost wrecked our democracy, and it's not nearly as potentially dangerous as this. It's dangerous to sentiment. This is actually dangerous to our grid and our operations and our national security and your life. So I'm not an alarmist.

15:20I don't hate AI, but when a guy inside tells you we're headed toward something that might be uncontrollable, I think it's worth us taking that seriously. Yeah, totally. And Trump and the Republicans seem to be very much on board with AI and data centers. And so I assume many Democrats as well, but Trump lately has been saying if you're against data centers, then you must want to be backwards and poor. I mean, they're really trying to almost, I don't know, convince themselves that there's not a problem in addition to trying to convince MAGA, which, you know, a lot of these places are these data centers are being built in places where there are a lot of MAGA people who don't want this stuff in their communities. And we have to, we have to just think about what we're getting at. Look, I think AI might solve diseases faster than we ever thought. Yes. I think there are a lot of great things about AI. I just don't understand our reticence to get it in front of reasonable, fair regulation that allows businesses to flourish, but keeps the rest of us safe. Totally, totally true. Ali, always great to have you on really appreciate host of the 11th hour on MS now.

16:22He's burning the midnight oil. Or as I said before, we got started at the 11 o'clock PM oil. But it's a great show every night and occasionally I join in, and it's all including tonight. So maybe tonight as well. That's right. So I'm looking forward to seeing you on my show. Thanks for having me, my friend. Sounds good. Good to see you, Ali. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Ali, Vell, she a great guy and an amazing business journalist. Always really great to have on the show. Did you hear there's a Trumpa pollusa going on? You know, you would think as unpopular as Donald Trump is right now that it would be a terrible time to host a Trumpa pollusa, but the Republican party is doing that right now. Down in Dallas, Texas. Let's bring in George Conway to talk about this. My friend George Conway, great to see you, George. George has a huge. He's got his own sub stack out there. He's lighting it up on all burners these days. He's with the bull work and you can't stop George. You can only hope to contain him. George, great to see you. Great to see you, Jim. And you know, Trump was on his way to Dallas and we were playing that nutty sound by

17:25your reasons. Oh, the gas prices are going to come down right after the election is over. He also was saying, oh, Republicans want to come to this Trumpa pollusa. Why are you pissed about this? Why are you asking this stuff? And we should play this. He got so angry about it. And then let's talk about it. Several Republicans and competitive races are not coming to the convention. Do you understand why they're deciding not to come? Everybody that's got everybody's coming to the convention. Everybody wants to come, but we only want and the people that are coming. By the way, we're going to be sold out tonight just to understand who you with. ABC News, sir. ABC fake news. The worst you are the worst of all in my opinion. The reason that some people are not coming. You know she got him when he does that. George, we have moved to the front side. This day is slightly behind. It's all it's all is ego. This is all ego pollutes sides. Not Trump pollutes it's ego pollutes. I mean, the whole way that he's conducting himself this year is to the

18:26detriment of the Republican party and Republicans know that. I mean, he's got this huge war chest that people keep talking about and a billion dollars. I don't know how much in it, but he's going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of it on what? Glorifying himself. Well, you know, I mean, there's no there's no amount of puke perfume you can put on that pig to make it not smell at this point. And the problem, the problem is that money could have been used actually promote individual candidates because the idea, and this is that you've seen parties do this before and other midterm elections when a president is lagging in the polls, you know, they they don't talk about the president. The president stays home because he knows that he's not going to do himself ultimately any good if his candidates lose, but this guy does not care about that. And it's kind of interesting because I think it's Trump's incredible narcissism, which has gotten to the point that he's delusional.

19:29He's basically psychotic at this point where you know, that's the function of Natalie Harp is to is to indulge all his fantasies and he lives in his own world where affordability is a hoax and we're going to take over the straight support moves and now every, you know, he gets to redesign all of Washington and have his ballroom. I mean, he's living in his own world like the last, you know, like the last phases of a lot of dictators. And he, he, what brought him to power was the ego was what brought him to power because people said, yeah, I want to be like him. I'm tired of worrying about other people. I'm tired of hearing about the poor and the downtrodden. I'm, what about me? And this is a guy who basically preaches like a, like a pre, like one of these, you know, war was by me, a mercy, these Ben's preachers, the pre the gospel, the political gospel of self help me look at me.

20:32And we all get to look at me and we get to be great through him. That's how, that's how magna has functioned. And now it's not so great, but he's still talking about himself, but his people are paying five dollars at the pump. That he's taking them down. He's taking them down. It's so true. And it's such a great comparison, George, that he's sort of like these late night crooked televangelists who all they really want to do is just fleece the shit out of their people and just soak as much money as they can so they can buy another jet or buy another car. And you know, I just, I find it to be, it's kind of tragic and sad in a way that so many people fall for this stuff. You know, my question though about this week is, you know, in addition to it being a Trump of Paloza and it's suckering a lot of people in his party, there's a lot of Republicans who are not going to go anywhere near this thing. Susan Collins apparently is concerned. She's not going. Oh, concerned. She's very concerned.

21:33She's very concerned. Is one of her lessons? I doubt it. She may learn November 3rd. We'll find out. But the other thing too, and all of this is the speaking lineup. I mean, it's all about, as you said, it's all about Trump. MS now had a great graphic of like who's speaking at the R&C event. Todd Blanche. I mean, that to me is insane. The Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, the Epstein file's fixer. It's incredible. It's a disgrace. I mean, no Attorney Generals are not supposed to do that. They're supposed to be a bright ball of experience. Not this one. Not this one. Yeah, I mean, it's all going to be like an extended cabinet meeting on TV where people are people who work for Trump are going to go up and say, oh, Mr. President, there's nothing better. You've done so much for the country, and you are amazing. And then he's going to give one of his classic two-hour speeches. I mean, if he still has the stamina to do that, and he's going to ramble, and he's going to talk about, he's going to create lots of clips for Aaron Rupar

22:36and to put online and for you to, for us to make fun of tomorrow, the day after. And hopefully, one of the problems he's got is that I don't think people watch him. They're tired of watching him. Hopefully people will actually see him. We need more people to see what this guy is talking about, while they're grocery prices have gone up, and while they can't get liquor from Canada anymore, or whatever. I'm glad he's doing this. Yeah, yeah, he's done all. No, it's so true. And people are starting to make the connection here. I mean, they're starting to understand that, you know, this is emperor has no clothes, emperor has no marbles. They can hear him talk about how great everything is, and then go to the gas pump, and figure out that, okay, this is a pack of lies. But speaking of that, and speaking of his craziness, I was looking at your sub-stack, and you were talking about something that really got me pissed off, which is Donald Trump lying about

23:399-11. And, you know, conjuring up this story about how he was there that day, and these firefighters raised him away from, you know, the buildings coming down and so on, and you set on your sub-stack, more evidence that the president of the United States is psychotic. He's been called out on lesser versions of this lie for many years. Once upon a time, he knew he was bullshitting, but he has convinced himself of it now. And, you know, this is some crazy stuff, and he lashed out and put a true social post going after the New York Times and going after Maggie Haberman and everything. And, uh-oh, the might've lost, did we lose George's connection there, we might've lost George's connection there for say, let's, we'll get George back on. Let's play, we have some of that sound again from yesterday. Let's play Donald Trump talking about 9-11 if we can play that really quick. Two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen. Big strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arm, said, gotta get out of here, and they literally lifted me up.

24:44This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself, but they made me do that. Totally, totally made up stories. Let's bring George back. I think we've got George back. George, you're listening to this and you heard it yesterday when he said this. And he tried to come out today or yesterday with his true social posts. I said, of course I wasn't talking about that day. Well, what he's talking in that moment, it sounds like that's exactly what he's saying. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, he is not connected well with reality. He is his entire life. He's been a bullshit or any's told intentional lies because he doesn't care about and doesn't, doesn't, doesn't all, doesn't care about the difference between truth and lies, whatever instrumentally helps him at a given moment. And we remember from what he really did on 9-11 was he went on the radio and bragged about the fact that he said he then had the biggest building since the World Trade Center fall. His building, I think it was 70 Wall Street, became the biggest building, which itself was untrue actually because there was another building

25:49that was right in between. And I think one of the things with Donald Trump is he's aligned with sociopaths, right? So see paths lie, psychopaths lie. And they lie to manipulate other people, but over time, because they also lie to boost their own egos. And as they get older and as they get they face more reality and tougher on them, they start living in their own world. And something I've been trying to write about lately. And this, they become psychotic. And I think this guy, you know, we see some of these truth post, truth social posts that he's done over the weekend where he has a magic ring and he's zapping people with his magic ring. And he, you know, he's picturing himself as God sometimes. I think he gets carried away and actually convinces himself that he was carried from the rubble. And then when he's put a brought back to real world, pretends that he didn't say what he said. And he is not there. And, you know, I mean,

26:54it's the man, you know, there's a reason why his doctors keep giving him that dementia test. Because he's not really there. And they're worried about it. And I saw something in Axios, not my favorite outlet today where basically people in the White House have just stopped telling him things that he doesn't want to hear. I was going to ask you that. Yeah. What do you think about that? Again, I think it's this is just sort of the late stage lunacy. This is a, this is a process that psychologists and psychiatrists and political historians have written about, written about with other leaders at other times. You know, I don't like the Nazi analogy exactly, although he is authoritarian in tendency, in his tendencies. And there's no moral limits to what he would do if he could get away with it. But it keeps reminding me of the German movie downfall. Yes.

27:55Where we're basically everybody by the, this is about the last 10 days in the Führer bunker. And people there are barely in touch with reality. You know, Abraham is having a dance party upstairs until, you know, Russian artillery starts hitting them. They're just basically, and Hitler is moving around divisions of bank, the ninth army that don't exist. And this is that's where you get that meme that everybody's been watching for years. And that's what's happening with him. And I, you know, one of the things that tries to me nuts is we're way past the time. We should have been talking about his psychological ignition in his first term. And I, you know, I kept trying to beat the drum on that. But really, we've gotten so, we're the, you know, the press has gotten so used to the lunacy. And people have gotten so used to the lunacy that they don't realize how much worse he's gotten. And how, you know, this guy has the second largest stat cash of nuclear weapons

28:59at his disposal. Right. No, exactly, George. And the thing that concerns me too is, when you saw a lot of the reporting about Trump's 9-11 event, a lot of it was, you know, Trump, the headlines were like, Trump pays tribute to 9-11 first responders. And I'm thinking to myself, no, that should not be the headline from what took place. It should be that he invented a story that was totally crazy and a lie. And I feel like we're all whistling past the graveyard here. And people are not paying attention to what is right in front of our faces, putting his name up on the Kennedy Center. And then when it's taken down, they put a crazy tarp up that's still here to this day, putting the gold stuff all over the place in the Oval Office. I mean, this is, this is crazy stuff. And then he gets out of the arch, the arch, all of it. Yeah. Yeah. And then the whole, you know, the whole bit with the plane and not being able to fly the plane and then saying that it's a lie that makes it crazy. I mean, it's just crazy. And then they see

30:01six, the slide detectors on people in the Pentagon or they do that for him because they all they do is enable him. Yeah. It's really, really a very, very, you know, we have a very sick government run by a very sick man. And you know, this convention is going to be, you know, a tribute to a very, very sick man. And I, you know, I just hope people wake up to it. Well, and the other thing too, that I think is, is very important all this and goes back to the Axiostory a little bit is that in that first term, I was there for the first term, you know, there were serious grownups. You might not agree with them, but like John Kelly, Jim Mattis, you know, Mark Millie, there were serious grownups who would tell him no and say, and they would have terrible fights with them because they would say, you know, listen, you shouldn't say nice things about Hitler's generals and things like that. I mean, that was what John Kelly would fight with them about. Right. Absolutely. And now he's not surrounded by any of those people. So when Axiost says, Oh, well, we can't really talk and he sensed too many more. You don't have people who will do that. That's the part of this. Right. And that's one of the big differences between Trump to and Trump won. Yeah. Is he called those

31:08people out largely because they he understood he didn't get his way on January 6th. He felt, for example, right, betrayed by the Justice Department when the entire remaining echelon of the Justice Department, the senior echelon of the Justice Department left after that was left after Bill Barr resigned. They refused to go along with him and told him, no, we will resign on moss. There's nobody left who would do that. And yeah. And the way that for example, Susie Wiles seems to have survived is she doesn't really jump push back on him all that much. I mean, she does sometimes I gather, but they just sort of let him do his thing because you don't get to be there if you start pushing back too much. Right. And then you start telling him things that he does not want to hear and telling him to do things he doesn't want to do. And that's one of the again, that's the thing about Natalie Harp. I don't think he's having, you know, any carnal knowledge of her.

32:09I think he relies on her for psychological sustenances as Maggie Haven input it. He's she's his binky. I mean, there's this little baby that needs to be soothed 24 hours a day. Well, and apparently he's willing to pay bonuses for it. I'm sure you saw the so- 45,000 for the three pretty girls or something. I think that's what it was. It's really bizarre. Gifts of $45,000 each to executive assistant Natalie Harp communications advisor Margo Martin, deputy director of office, oval office operations, Chamberlain Harris, apparently Walt Notta got one as well. And these are people who make $150,000, $75,000 a year, which, you know, to a lot of people in Maga, that's that's a King's fortune right there. You know, he's such a generous. He's so generous. Man, yes. I know, but I mean, but it is sort of paying, you know, the nurse to keep the drip going, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's sort of like paying doctor feel good to keep, you know, bringing over the good stuff. He relies on this stuff. He

33:14relies on now to he now to he relied on now to his loyalty during the classified documents, criminal process. Right. So, you know, he's he's not he's not beyond above buying loyalty. And George, before you go, your thoughts about the midterms, we've seen Trump try to do everything possible to pull a fast one, whether it's mail-in ballots, you name it, putting election monitors out there in different places, even in Republican states. I mean, it's pretty scary stuff. Are they so incompetent that they won't be able to pull this off or can they make enough of a massive enough of a train wreck that it really does cause a constitutional crisis and election crisis for this country? Well, they have an advantage. They don't actually have to do things that work. They only have to do things that create uncertainty and create doubt and create chaos. And I think a perfect example of that is the USPS regulation that has been promulgated and is being litigated now

34:15in the spring court. I think the spring court ultimately is going to strike that down. I pray that they do. Yeah, I mean, it's not constitutionally or statutorily authorized. That being said, just the belief that people have to comply with that and just the hoops that people would have to go through to comply with it and just the confusion that has resulted from the announcement of these measures could be enough to cause a lot of trouble. And then if things don't go well on election day, both either at the ballot box for Trump or organizationally in terms of how orderly the vote is, then Trump's going to say, you see, look at all the chaos. This, this, this, you know, and Tifa has interfered with the election. And that's a scary thing. And he's, he is so, you know, he is desperate. I mean, he knows, you know, in his, despite his

35:18adult state, he knows that losing Congress will not be good for him. So he, you know, part of him, he has two things going on at once, which is we're not going to lose Congress unless it's stolen from us. Right. We will stop them from stealing it from us. And, you know, how incredibly a persistent he is, the holding on to beliefs that benefit him, but have no bases. In fact, I mean, you know, he's still yammering on about the 2000 election. I think, you know, he was psychotic that day. I think the perfect moment to this depict that was when he went after the throat of the secret service agent, who was driving the beast because he wanted them to go to to Capitol Hill. This man is not well. And, and, and the pressure of this election could make it all worse. And he make him do things that really could create more of a crisis than we already have. No question about it. Well, George, I hope we can count on you to talk about it. Moving forward here,

36:21make sure you check out George's sub stack. And the bull work, George is doing a lot of writing these days. I'm sure it's going to be some great stuff moving forward. George, great to see you. Thanks so much, George. Thanks, Jim. I'm good to see you. As always, really appreciate it. George, he's, I mean, he's just a, they broke the mold when they made George. So we always appreciate him coming on the program. I do want to say, you know, it feels like the wheels are coming off the Trump presidency, just a little bit, you know, or maybe the slide is coming off. I don't know if we could show this to our viewers here. Apparently the new air grift one air cool aid one was on its way down to Dallas today. And whoops, the inflatable slide popped out. Are we sure that that plane is ready to go? I know they, they, they were so worried about the Air Force one before the grifty Katari brideplane that they would put them on the on the catering cart. And then they moved them into the other plane. And then they, it was a whole plane switcher room. Remember that whole plane

37:23switcher roofing that happened over the summer. Well, today, I don't know if you guys saw this, but the goddamn inflatable slide. That's not one of those little squiggly things that you see out in front of the car dealership. That's the inflatable slide popping out of Air Force one, cool aid force one today. And I just, you know, to me, did they plan to do that? They're, apparently they said later, oh, we were just testing the slide. Really? You're testing the slide. Now, don't you have a whole day before the trip to test out the slide. Apparently this, this happened in full view of the White House Press World, which is why we're getting to see this video right here. But I guess they were able to stuff the, it was like, you know, Clark Griswall putting all the luggage on top of the, the family trexter before the holiday vacation, but they were able to cram that thing back up in there, I suppose. And they're on their way down to, on their way to the Trump of Blues. It says an inflatable slide is deployed from the Qatar Air Force one while President Trump waits in Renoir at JBA Legacy Air Force one waiting behind.

38:25That's according to, and I think it's a French press reporter who was there at AFP who was witnessing all of this. So that happened today. And as on his way to Dallas, and I just want to point out, he's, maybe he's going to pay a visit to a little prison, low securities prison that's close by, oh, hello, at FPC Brian, there's Galen Maxwell. I'm not sure who drew the arrow there by the way, guys, who came up with this? What is that? Like a plush carpeted arrow? That's just so fucking weird. On the map, showing how close Dallas says the American Airlines arena and Galen Maxwell on the map of the state of Texas there with a little, you know, we have, we have, you know, we have a very fancy graphics department here. In addition to the carpeted arrow, we have the Trump and Galen thing. But I don't know. So maybe he'll take a little trip, maybe he'll take a little drive, Wally's down there in Dallas. But I mean, you know, I will say, and he'll do that stupid dance. Maybe he'll, oh, God, is he going to do the dance? Please don't do the dance. And I

39:27shouldn't even be talking about the Trump of Plutica is people are going to hate watch this thing. I guess people tune in to see that it's sort of like seeing the car crash happen in real time. And I guess there will be some of that happening tonight. But oh, by the way, the geniuses at the RNC, and inside the Trump political shop, they scheduled this at the same time as the NFL season is kicking off. Yes. So the Seattle sea hawks and the New England Patriots, I love this time of year every year, folks. I'm a huge football nut. That's just not like a politician who was told by a focus group. You should like football. I, you know, I bleed the burgundy and gold here in Washington DC being a native of our area. And how in the world did they think that was a good idea to schedule this Trump of Paloza during the kickoff to the NFL season? There's a game tonight. And then there's a game tomorrow night. They're doing one where they flew the teams to Australia that the NFL teams that are playing and are not really happy about according to the sports radio, guys. They're doing that on Thursday night. And then we're heading into college football. So I

40:30don't know what they were thinking in terms of any of that. But anybody who is, you know, in the room tonight, please get your pictures because according to Donald Trump, I don't know if we should be playing this again, according to Donald Trump, it's going to be a sellout. It's going to be sold out tonight. Don't please don't say it's not sold out. I've been to so many Trump events over the years that when I was looking at pictures inside earlier today on on my screen, I saw I was getting to some PTSD. I did not want to be looking at those crowdsizes inside anything that said a convention with Donald Trump. But I did see the and it looked like a lot of empty seats. And I'm just going to say if there are a lot of empty seats, I mean, I'm sure they went on Craigslist or Grindr or Tinder or whatever they went on to get as many free tickets out there as possible. If you go on one of those websites, I'll get you some free tickets. I assume to this trouble. Pelluzit tonight. And but make make no mistake if there are any shots of empty seats. You have a friend here at the Jimicosta show. Please reach out to yours truly. Jimicosta. I'm on the Twitter's at Atticosta. I'm on

41:37other places as at Jimicosta. Send those please send those pictures of those empty seats. You'll be doing a favor to me, your friend, your pal Jimicosta. If you if you send that along. And I will say that, you know, as omens go as convention omens, I don't think a a deploying inflatable emergency slide is the best omen is the best metaphor for the kickoff of Trump a pollusa 2026. I don't think that the sudden deploying of the inflatable slide is a good omen for Donald Trump. Yes, you you I mean, the joke was we're all on the decoy playing together. Folks, maybe some of them are right now jettison jettison jettison themselves off of air because now is a good it's good it's a good time to get going it get while they get as good as they say.

42:41And I suspect that perhaps is that net was Natalie sliding down that slide was that Caroline levitt who was it it looks like one of those quickly things from the from the gas station or from the car dealership but anyway not a good not a good sign not a good signal not a good omen when the inflatable slide we'll get to the bottom we'll find out what happened with the inflatable slide. In the meantime, folks, want to remind everybody we do have a great newsletter that comes out every day. It's the Jimicosta morning memo if you're a paid subscriber you can read the Jimicosta morning memo every day on sub stack on YouTube. Yes, you can read these newsletters on YouTube as well. Just become a paid subscriber you'll get immediate access to that and don't forget our Jimicosta morning memo daily update. I'm saying my name a lot today the daily update comes out every day. You can get about seven or eight minutes of the day's headlines to get your day started. And it's put together a bar great team here at the Jimicosta show so don't miss that as well. That thing is lightening it up on sub stack doing really nicely on YouTube.

43:44So appreciate everybody who is subscribing to this new content that we have here on the show really appreciate it. I want to thank Ali Velshi for coming on today. It sounds like I will be on Ali's show the 11th hour later on tonight on MS. Now always appreciate the great George Conway for joining us today but in the meantime still reporting from Washington I'm Jimicosta. I will see you next time.