Jim Acosta

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1:01Lunatic in the newsroom, listen today. All right, welcome everybody to the Jim Acosta show. I am coming to you live with some breaking news right now. Of course, typically I'm in the studio, but did some prerecordings and was going to bring those prerecordings to you later in the day, but as it turns out we've got to come to you live with the breaking news and that is the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christie Nome is out. She has apparently been fired by Donald Trump and she has been put out to pasture. At the moment it appears that Trump is going to select the Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin Republican who is very magout to be her replacement. Trump put out a true social post that basically says that, you know, Nome is going to be nominated for this other position, but make no mistake. She has fallen out of favor with Donald Trump with this White House, and so Donald Trump

2:03has fired Christie Nome. Of course, this comes on the tail of some really damaging hearings for her this week. She appeared before the Senate and the House Judiciary Committees. And it was during those hearings when she seemed to say that Donald Trump was well aware of this $200 and some odd million dollar ad campaign that was put out over the airways that featured her. And she said that Donald Trump approved of this ad campaign, and that apparently set him off. That's according to some reporting in the Wall Street Journal and the National Review and Punch Bowl and other publications. And this appears to be what set Donald Trump off and put him in a place where he could no longer have Christie Nome as the Homeland Security Secretary. Now, of course, her tenure at DHS is going to go down in history as probably the worst homeland security secretary this country has ever had. She presided over the mass deportation and detention campaign that was going on in this country and is still going on in this country.

3:04That resulted, of course, in the ice killings of Alex Prattie and Renee Good. And of course, the detention camps that the administration is trying to build all around the country. She said very publicly that she was doing basically what Donald Trump and Stephen Miller wanted her to do. So one of the questions I think moving forward is what is she going to say after all of this? Or is she going to be the loyal soldier and just take this new position that Donald Trump has created for her as he gets her out of the way? Mark Wayne Mullen, we should know very Republican, very Maga Senator from Oklahoma. This would open up a Senate seat potentially, but of course, Oklahoma being a bright red state. That's probably going to stay safely in Republican hands. In the meantime, of course, there's the war in the Middle East going on. And there's a lot of questions there. Donald Trump trying to reframe the narrative as to why the U.S. and why he launched this work choice going after Iran. He is now saying that it's because the Iranians were two weeks away from acquiring nuclear

4:09weapons. I had a chance to talk with the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman Jim Himes about this. He says that that is false. So take a look at our conversation that I had with him earlier in the day. Trump's war of choice against Iran is wreaking havoc throughout the region. It's a mess here in Washington too, ladies and gentlemen. Republicans cannot agree on whether we are even at war at the moment when, of course, we are. Let's discuss with the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. Congressman, good to see you. Thanks for coming on as always. Good to be with you. And I guess we can just start there first. Are we at war? It seems to me we're at war. What do you think? Yeah, of course we're at war. I mean, this is like George Orwell 1984 stuff. Of course we're at war. My God, we've got, you know, a good chunk of our military dropping bombs, firing torpedoes, sinking ships, sadly, sadly, sadly, six precious lives gone. Our servicemen. I mean, you know, look, I understand why Republicans in the Congress, not in the White

5:13House, but Republicans are trying to convince themselves this is not a war. Because even they are not shameless enough to read article one in the Constitution, which says that the Congress and the Congress only declares war and, you know, acknowledge their complete abrogation of their responsibilities. So instead they say, oh, this is not a war. It's a police action. It's a special military operation. It's blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's just, it's beyond cynical is what it is, Jim. Yeah, I mean, we had, we had the House Speaker yesterday saying that we're not at war, that this is a special military operation, it sounded very crumbling-esque. I think that's how the Russians described their invasion of Ukraine. So I don't get where he's coming from. Yeah, look, again, it's just, it's just profoundly cynical, right? Republicans want, you know, to be able to cheer on this war, but not to be held accountable for it, which they know they will be, right? You know, gas prices are already up an average of 22 cents a gallon in the United States. As I last checked, the stock market is down 900 points today, again, most tragically, and

6:13I should have put this right up front. There are six service people who will never see their parents, their, their siblings or their children again, all at a time when the total failure to plan for this eventuality is becoming very clear. Thousands of people stuck in the Middle East while the American Embassy says, get out, but we can't help you. The President's complete inability to articulate how this ends. And you know this as well as I do, Jim, the hard question on these things is, not can we break stuff. Our military is second to none. We can break a lot of stuff. What we've never gotten right is the answer to the question, how does this end? Yeah, easy to get in, hard to get out. And he's the one who said, no forever wars, no new wars. We're going to get rid of the war mongers. I was looking at, you know, Chatchee PT last night asking, how many times does Donald Trump said the word quagmire over the years? He's used, he is beaten up on other people for getting the US into quagmires over the years. But I think a lot of folks are wrestling with Congressman is, you know, this case, this, I mean, it almost feels reminiscent of the mid 2000s in that we are not being given

7:14a straight answer as to why we're even doing this right now. Donald Trump now has a new rationale for why we're at war with Iran. He claims that, you know, if we had not done this, that the Iranians were going to have a nuclear weapon within a couple of weeks, let's play this because I think this is very serious. If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon. If we didn't do the B2 attack a number of months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon. And when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen. So we're a very good shape now. I want to let you know that and we will continue forward. But it's a great display of military strength and I'm very proud to have, with some of the people in the room, both senators and congressmen, we rebuilt and women. I mean, you get the sense of what he was saying there, congressmen, I mean, I'll just let the comment where he said bad things happen when crazy people have nuclear weapons. I'll leave that comment, you know, for folks to weigh in on themselves. But I mean, this whole, I mean, is it true that Iran was two weeks away from having

8:18a nuclear weapon? No, of course not. They've never been two weeks away from having nuclear weapons and I've been watching this very, very closely, you know, in the decade or so, I've been on the intelligence committee. I imagine we spend a lot of time and a lot of resources to figure out exactly how close the Iranians are to having a nuclear weapon. And by the way, before the attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran that the president referred to there, they weren't even close to two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. It's a fairly complicated thing to take a lot of uranium and turn it into a nuclear weapon. Look, could they have done it back in the day before? Apparently, we obliterated their ability to do this. I think that was the word that the president used. When we took those raids on the nuclear facilities, but even before those raids, they weren't anywhere close to two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. Look, I think what the president has done, I would take a little bit of issue with something that you said. Marco Rubio settled on an explanation. It was just an explanation of malpractice and you can run the video.

9:21Don't take it from me, Mario. You said, we were sure that the Israelis were going to attack. Right. We were sure that the Iranians, therefore, were going to attack us and therefore we had to attack with the Israelis. I mean, again, Marco Rubio, I've heard him say it three times and he said it on camera, so it's not a debatable proposition. When he said that, though, and here's why I think the president is grasping for the weapons of mass destruction. If you're over the age of 25, those words and George W. Bush and the Iraq War mean something to you, but the reason the president is abandoning the Marco defense is that think about what he said. Here we are, the most powerful nation. The biggest superpower humankind has ever known and we don't have the ability to maybe talk to Israel about launching an attack that we think could result in counter attack. We don't have an ability to push the Iranians to say to the Iranians, look, if the Israelis go and you come after us, it's the apocalypse for you. Marco Rubio's explanation makes it sound like Luxembourg.

10:22We're just, you know, bystanders to this thing. And I think that the president and the administration has finally realized that that is an explanation that is not going to fly. So they're grasping for the weapons of mass destruction defense that ended up, you know, not working terribly well for George W. Bush. No, and it's something, I mean, I was out on the campaign trail with Donald Trump in 2016 covering his race for the White House the first time around. He used to savage George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell over those phantom weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq. And I just to go back to this Israel question, though, I mean, did Marco Rubio commit what is sometimes considered a gaff in Washington that is accidentally telling the truth? Is that what occurred? Because he has walked that back. He tried to walk back the next day and then the reporter saying, oh, no, no, you said this. But that sounds like a, that sounds like a plausible explanation. I mean, he's on camera saying it, right? And then right behind him is Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, saying exactly the same thing. And look, it's not surprising to me. I have personally, in a gang of eight meeting and a gang of 20 meeting.

11:24That's what the appropriators and other rankers and chairs. I've heard, I've now heard him say it three times. And yeah, the problem with it is that it does sort of give the game away here, right? It makes us look like we're completely passive and reactive to the decisions that are made in Jerusalem, which by the way, I think is a really dangerous thing. And you're already starting to see volatile political personalities blame this on Israel. Now I would be fascinated to know what the conversation between the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the United States was three weeks ago when he came through. But to have Marco Rubio basically pin this on Israeli decision making raises all sorts of questions, not least of which is what's going to happen out there when people start flammable people, irresponsible people start saying this is all Israel's fault. That is not something that the state of Israel needs right now. Right. And there's also the question of, and I've heard this from a number of people since all of this began, that Prime Minister Netanyahu has a vested interest in staying at war.

12:28And I mean, I don't want to get into the whole Gaza discussion that's a whole other can of worms. But I mean, it has been said not by irresponsible people, that BB Netanyahu, as long as he stays in military conflict and kind of keep, you know, some of those domestic political concerns of him, of his, excuse me, at bay. And he can't do that if everything suddenly is at peace. I mean, he has been, you know, under investigation in Israel. The Israeli people, when they're not at war, had made it clear that they had had enough of him. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I sort of hesitate in this moment of great seriousness to speculate on Netanyahu's political things. But one thing is undeniable. I mean, you can go back and run the video and show the photographs, you know, BB Netanyahu has been a booster and a cheerleader for war in the Middle East for decades. And prior to the Iraq war, again, there's video out here, BB Netanyahu promised people that the Iraq war would lead to a, you know, fabulous transformation of the Middle East.

13:31I'm reminded of, and I've met with him many number of times, when you meet with BB Netanyahu, all he does is talk about the evil in Iran. And he's not wrong about that. He's not wrong about that. But in the background, you know, he has always been an advocate for a military solution to Iran. And so, again, I don't want to speculate on his politics, but, you know, anybody who is half awake knows that he has spent decades trying to beat the war drums with respect to Iran. And, you know, ultimately, twice now, because remember, it was Israel that initiated the 12-day war in which we ultimately used our military to take out the nuclear facilities, but twice now, he has actually led an attack. Again, if Marco Rubio is to believe, to be believed, the reason we're in this is because they decided that Israel was going to go and that it was, therefore, obvious that Iran was going to retaliate against the United States. Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool stuff daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the

14:32fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you needed to know. Join us for cool stuff daily as we take a quick look at science, tech, and the, wait, what stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. Subscribe to cool stuff daily now because the future is happening fast and it's way to fun to miss. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz, I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And what are your thoughts, Congressman, on this whole war powers issue?

15:37And I mean, have we gotten to a point now where this needs to be reigned in? I mean, we have this conversation. It seems every few years, sometimes with different presidents, as to whether or not the president of the United States just has too much latitude when it comes to waging war around the world. We've seen Donald Trump attack what seven different countries now, Ecuador was just the latest on the list the other day. I mean, we don't even have enough gas in the tank to talk about Ecuador. It seems to me right now there's just so much going on. But where do you think things should stand on that? What are your thoughts on that? Because I think there are a lot of Americans who are like, wait a minute, you have an unstable president in the White House who can just do this. And I mean, Donald Trump seems to be the poster child for that. Yeah, I mean, let me say three things about that. Number one, we're going to vote on the war powers resolution in the House later on today. I think that just as it failed in the Senate, I think it's going to fail in the House. Frankly, I don't think that matters in any practical sense. It really matters from a constitutional sense because again, you can read the constitution. It is Congress that is supposed to be declaring war, which of course is why all my Republican

16:40colleagues are saying, oh, this is not a war. But anyway, look, regardless of what happened on this, even if both houses had passed that resolution, Donald Trump would have vetoed it. He would have ignored it. You know, he wouldn't have meant anything. What's ultimately going to get Donald Trump out of this war is, at some point, he realizes that this ends his presidency, right? Here's the guy who won because he said, I'm not getting into wars and I'm going to make everything cheaper. Well, guess what? Everything is now more expensive. And if there's one thing that Americans see on a literally daily basis, it is the price at the pump. Yeah. And there is no way that gas prices already, almost a full quarter, a gallon, more expensive than they were a week ago. Unless this somehow magically ends today, that number is going up and that is the end of the Trump presidency. Now, he'll still be a lame duck for three years, but it is going to be that that causes him finally to pick, I don't know if it's next week or next month, but finally, we realize is what a catastrophe he has gotten himself into that he declares victory and we all go home. Now, what sort of shape that leaves the region and is a different question?

17:43Lastly, Jim, in here, we don't have to go too far down this thing, but history shows this is not a Trump thing, right? Every president has overstepped, in my opinion, as a member of Congress, their constitutional authority. You know, Obama bombed Libya without congressional authorization, Clinton bombed the Balkans without congressional authorization in the 90s. I think it's a really interesting question that you ask. On the one hand, you know, yeah, a lot of bad things come out of our jumping into war without debating it and thinking it through. On the other hand, and again, here's where we get into the sort of history professor mode, you know, war is very different than it was when the Constitution was written in 1787, you know, back then, you know, a British fleet would set sail and they would get to the United States 12 days later. You know, we're in a different world. And so I think it's worth in a sort of academic constitutional way reflecting on where we are, but there is a reason. There is a really good reason that Congress is supposed to debate this. Well, and just to pick at that scab a little bit, I mean, one of the things that I think we've all seen over the last year or so and it seems to be the case with Donald Trump

18:47is that, I mean, okay, maybe he doesn't need to go to Congress and get an official declaration of war and so on, but it seems that he's not even consulting with Congress or doing the kind of notification that we've seen presidents from both parties do with the gang of eight that you're a part of and that sort of a thing. Is he not even going that route? I mean, I remember Mark Warner, your counterpart over in the Senate, just being hopping mad during the whole Venezuela thing. And it seems as though they're just not even doing the consultations that presidents from both parties have done in the past. Am I getting that wrong? Yeah, I don't want to let it go by. Look, the Constitution is super clear, you know, the Congress declares war and you can try all you want, you know, even though we're, you know, launching missiles and flying planes and killing people and losing people and torpedoing ships, you can try all you want to, to say it's not a war again, because the Constitution is clear as can be. You know, there's that old saying, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck. But yeah, so let me, let me give them this, Jim, and I woke up on a Saturday morning to

19:51read about the attack on Venezuela, I'm a member of the gang of eight. This time, you know, four days before there was a gang of eight meeting in which the Secretary of State said there are plans, you know, to do this, no decision has been taken. And he did call around to members of the gang of eight prior to the attack. So we're doing a little better, but we are still way, way short of what the Constitution demands. Okay. All right. Well, that's interesting, because I, I think that that's important information. And, and the other thing that I want to get to, and this gets to, you know, your, your wheelhouse on the intelligence committee is, I mean, where is this going to go from here? Because, you know, Trump is not just attacked Iran. I mean, he has, you know, basically abroad about a response from the Iranians that has just hit the entire region. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of big technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing

20:51the business world and our lives. So each week on big technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to big technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And you and I both know because we've been there, done that in terms of the 2000s and what happened with the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the war on terror, is that when you start blowing things up in that part of the world, you can, you can sometimes, for lack of better words, create more terrors, create more extremism, create more of a, a threat to the homeland. Is that a possibility that you think we're going to have to be grappling with for years from now? Because I mean, Iran is a country of 93 million people. We're bombing the hell out of a city in Tehran that is 9 million people. And there are other parts of the Middle East that are getting hit right now in the Iranian

21:51response. What does that do long term in terms of our safety here in the United States? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. And forgive me for asking it. Yeah, no, it's a scary question, right? Because you don't really want to imagine that we can bring about regime change and then all of a sudden, you know, the regime in Tehran looks like the Swiss, right? I mean, we've just never been able to achieve that. And so a much more likely outcome is the Venezuelan outcome where the same gang of bad guys is in charge. You just got the lead bad guy as we did in Iran. We got more than the lead bad guy. But my point is, you know, if Donald Trump sort of washes his hands of this, declares victory in three weeks because gas prices are now a full dollar more than they were three weeks ago. And the regime is in place. What's their lesson? Their lesson is holy smokes. This can never happen again. And now we are going to build a nuclear bomb, right? And right. You know, in the intelligence world, we've spent a decade debating whether the Iranians had ever taken the decision to build a bomb.

22:52They were certainly putting themselves in the position to do so. But after this, the lesson will be very clear to the remnants of the bad regime, which the number one thing we do is build a nuclear bomb because when that happens, we do and ever get attacked again by anybody. And oh, by the way, we probably ought to double down on the placement of terrorists cells in the region, you know, in Amman, in Jerusalem, and maybe in London and Washington in New York, too. So, you know, we're in a little bit of a bind here because you sort of hate to imagine just because history shows we're not very good at bringing about regime change. But if we don't bring about, or if regime change doesn't happen because the Iranian people make it happen, we now have a wounded animal. And if there's one thing that's more dangerous than an animal, it's a wounded animal. No question about it. And then the other thing that we're seeing take place is that the Iranians are trying to use drones to inflict damage. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I believe the Pentagon has said that the six servicemembers who died, there was a drone that hit them. If I'm not mistaken, if I'm mistaken, please let me know.

23:55It seems to me that we're now in an asymmetrical environment, sort of like the Russians in the Ukrainians, where the Ukrainians learned that they can be very, you know, inventive and innovative with the use of drones. Now we're seeing this unleashed in the Middle East with the Iranians using drones themselves. It seems like there's a little bit of a genie that's come out of the bottle here, with respect to that. What's the threat to civilian airliners now coming in and out of that region? I mean, all of that is a fair question to ask. No. Well, yeah. And it's not just a question, it's the reality, right? I mean, yes, the facility that was killing those six American servicemembers hit by a drone. We had a government facility in Riyadh, hit by a drone, drones are sort of wreaking havoc all over the place. And it's very difficult, right? We're really pretty good at shooting down missiles. Now whether we can continue to do that for weeks is a different question. But drones fly slowly at a very low altitude, and as the Russians are learning, as the Ukrainians are learning, they are very, very hard to defend against. And the problem here, Jim, and we have to get to the crowning irony in a moment.

24:55The problem here is that to win this thing, the Iranians don't need to sink in American aircraft care. And I don't think they're going to be able to do that. You know what they need to be able to do? They need to create havoc in the region, shut down the Straits of Hormuz, raise the price of oil to $100 a barrel. When that happens, the world is going to say, this must stop. By the way, Donald Trump is going to say, this must stop. So that's how they win. And they do that with drones, not with their own destroyers. Now, here's the crowning irony, it's sort of a breaking story, so I don't want to give you a ton of detail on it because I don't have it. But apparently, the United States government, which has spent the last couple of the last year humiliating the Ukrainians, apparently, the US government is now asking the Ukrainians to provide assistance in the region using the expertise that they have learned in how to take down Russian drones. So I mean, this is not a script that would ever be greenlighted in Hollywood because you just can't make up this stuff. So because of our hesitation to help the Ukrainians, they've had to get innovative with drone technology and repelling drones, and now we may have to call on the Ukrainians to

25:58help us with a run. I mean, you can't make that. And you know what I would do if I were JD Manz, I would really say thank you. Yeah, that seems to be a sticking point for him, saying thank you. And we should be saying to the thank you to the Ukrainians for more than just that. I guess, you know, and lastly, and maybe this is or is not in your wheelhouse, there has been some speculation in some talk as to whether we have the military capability to continue doing this for very long. I mean, forget about the high cost of this. It's been estimated that might be a billion dollars a day. I'm hearing people talk about if this could go 50 to a hundred billion dollars before it's all said and done, but putting the dollar amount aside, whether we have the military capability to keep this going and still have the ability to, if we had to, walk in shoe gum and repel some other threat that is actually legitimate at the same time. Are you concerned about that? Yeah. In fact, if you talk to the military experts and I won't claim to be one, but I certainly listen to them, there's a math problem that we have in the region, which is that we

27:02are using extraordinarily expensive, defensive weapons like Tomahawks, which you know, take months to build and cost millions of dollars to build to shoot down things that take weeks to build and cost a couple of thousand dollars to build. That is a really, really ugly math problem. And again, you should get somebody who really understands the inventories and how fast you can build drones versus how fast you can build Tomahawks, but there is a very real risk that as we burn down, our very expensive and as Israel burns down, their very expensive defensive missiles that Iran will be cranking out the cheap drones and causing real havoc. And that's how the Ukrainians have held out against the Russians. Exactly. Exactly. And I did say finally earlier, but I'm going to say finally, finally, lastly. And this is me being me. So forgive me if I'm taking you down a road. You don't want to go down. But I mean, the presence of the United States, it seems to me is not playing with full deck when he's talking about drapes and ballrooms and the things that he's talking about these

28:06days. This is not having George W. Bush in charge during a war. This is having somebody who is just a very, he's just a bird of a different feather. And that's putting it diplomatically. Are you concerned about just his ability to carry us through this? I mean, Pete Hegseth is talking about the Don Road doctrine. I mean, that's cast of characters. This is not like the Bush and Cheney and Colin Paladay's. Yeah. Or from it. You get a real insight into the character and the culture in the White House when they're objecting to the press coverage of six dead American service people. They can't see the world in anything other than the lens of, is this good personally for Donald Trump? And look, I'm not going to speculate on Donald Trump's mental state. There's other people who do that for a living. But I am going to tell you that all you need to do is to watch the guy for about 15 minutes to know that what makes him happy about the prospect of a war is lots of big explosions that if it were a reality TV show would be really impressive because it shows our

29:06power. I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump never stopped and said, hey, we're going to start this war. What are the implications for the many tens of thousands of Americans that are in Dubai and Qatar and Jerusalem? Should we do something? Should we tease something up? You know, that's not him. And there are very few human problems as complicated or as unpredictable as war in the Middle East. And something tells me that that guy did not have his brain wrapped around the 12-dimensional chest that is fighting a war in the Middle East. Yeah. He's not playing chess. He's sometimes it seems to me eating the chess pieces, but that's just me. And so are some members of his team. But Congressman Jim Himes, as always, thank you very much. I throw a lot at you. Really appreciate it. We covered the waterfront, I think. But thanks very much for your time, as always. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Good to meet you, Jim. Yeah, appreciate it. And I do want to, you know, since the Congressman mentioned Pete Hegseth, we should just play a little bit of tape, Pete Hegseth, talking about the Don Roe doctrine. I mean, this is the Secretary of Defense.

30:07He calls himself the Secretary of War. Talking about the Don Roe doctrine this morning. Let's play a little bit of this. He's pretty established. The Monroe doctrine, the Trump corollary of the Monroe doctrine. Or if you'd like, for short, you can just call it the Don Roe doctrine. I mean, is he serious right now? I mean, he's making jokes and calling things the Don Roe doctrine. It seems to be the Don Roe doctrine doesn't know what the hell it's doing right now. Doesn't know whether we're at war right now. Meanwhile, as the Congressman was saying, driving up the price of gas and exacerbating the affordability crisis in this country. And it seems to be this is playing into the hands of Democrats who are already seeing some real political gains at the moment. Let's talk about this with my old Powell Chuck Rocha, Democratic strategist. He is fresh off the campaign and Chuck, while we got you here, turn that phone sideways, just so we're looking good. I want you to look. We got to have this whole t-shirt and view here. Look at that t-shirt.

31:07What's going on here? I thought that said, don't tread on me. It says, no kings. No kings. Still no kings. Still no kings. I love it. I want to give a shout out to my buddies over at Volt Vets. This is some of their merch over at Volt Vets. They represent veterans who are protesting this war and folks that are out fighting for democratic values. Man, and I love those guys. Those are great guys. And it just reminds you that there are some veterans, there are folks who have served in our military who are on the pro-democracy side of things. They are anti-no kings, which is always a good thing. And Chuck, I know you just got back from Texas. You're a native Texan yourself. And you were working with somebody by the name of James Tallerico, who seemed to be heard of him. I did pretty good on Tuesday. I did okay on Tuesday. What was your big takeaway from that? We got to talk about the Latino vote, which I know that was a huge part of this. Was it all the Latino vote? Because that was remarkable to me to see these very heavily Latino parts of Texas just going

32:11whole hog for James Tallerico. There's a few things. One thing that it's for sure that James Tallerico spent more money, Tom, an effort to reach Latinos than all the other candidates. Judge that by, he actually spent money on Spanish language advertising. He actually showed up in community. He advertised on soccer games. He advertised on Spanish language, univision award shows. He sent out bilingual mailers. He was out in multiple languages having these conversations. So that's the first step is to actually communicate. There's lots of folks that are like, we're working to get the Latino vote and we're going to go do this thing and we're going to have a carne asada. Like, no, you have to spend money and resources. Especially on media, mail, and digital in Spanish and English, but lean into your Spanish because you're already going to be buying a bunch of English. That's the real difference here. And what it proved to you is that all of these counties along the Rio Grande that me and you have talked about have been trending to the right, dramatically swung back to the left in counties along the valley.

33:14Three times as many Democrats showed up, then Republicans devoted each respected primary to show you that something was happening and let me go one step further. Thirty percent of those folks have no primary democratic voting history. They were new primary voters. That tells you how pissed everybody is. And that's what helped Trump in 2024, new voters. And if the Democrats can get new voters to the polls, that's a big indicator right there. And I guess, you know, you mentioned the Rio Grande Valley and the border districts. I mean, that's really helped Trump in recent years. I mean, Tony Gonzalez is in hot water, obviously over some deeply personal issues, a big scandal for him. I was reading that there is a Democrat, but I guess we need to pay attention to who is a Tejano musician. Apparently, he is one his primary and is going to be running in the fall. It seems like we're seeing a big, not just a swing of democratic voters, but democratic candidates, too.

34:14I mean, I was talking to Gina Hinojosa last week. She's going to be the candidate running against Greg Abbott. For the governorship. Think about this, Jim, the Donald Trump gerrymander, where he went into Texas and made them redraw lines because he wanted more Republican seats in play because he knew he was going to get his ass handed to him in the midterms because of his failed policy. And now a third war, where we're spending all of our money overseas while he's driving up our gas prices. Guess what that does to regular folks? It makes him really angry. And when they're really angry, they vote. So they redraw these districts. Well, guess what? They redrew three of them, now four of them in majority Latino areas based off of the number Trump had got in 24 to make them plus 10 plus 11 plus 12 Republicans based off the Trump number. Right. Since Donald Trump's been in office, the overperformance of Democrats has been at least 18 points. And what that does is put all these seats in play that they thought were safely Republican and Latino areas because of somebody just like you mentioned Bobby Polito, who's running

35:20for Congress in Texas 15 in McAllen, Texas, along with Vicente Gonzalez and other folks that are down there running to where they're all in our plus 10 more districts now, but with as mad as everybody is and the midterms and having good candidates, this is where you see pie on Trump's face in this redistricting, what I like to call a dummy mander. Yeah, I mean, this is blowing up in his face in a big way because now Virginia, Virginia is trying to do their own redrawing of the maps and it looks like they'll be able to do that in Virginia. And so this whole thing may backfire. But how much, you mentioned gas prices, and I think that's a huge thing, Donald Trump not tackling inflation and going headfirst into this wars, a bad thing for him. How much is ice playing into the politics of this? Do you think that a lot of Latino voters showed up on Tuesday because they are pissed about the ice thing and they're saying, you know what, you know, fuck you Donald Trump, you're not going to go after a boiler, you're not going to go after the kids and lock them up in places like Delhi. Is that driving some of this too?

36:20It's a major factor, you know, I've been working for James for a number of months, been in the field with him, seeing what voters are actually saying along with a number of congressional races across Texas and a few things are really popping. If you ask a Latino voter who voted for Donald Trump, if they agree with the philosophy of deportations, they would say yes, if you come to this country and you rape, kill or murder somebody, you should be deported. If you do a heinous crime, get them out of here. But what they didn't sign up for was Otami down the street who's been here for 30 years and the only law he ever broke was coming here as a kid with his mom to try to have a better life. And then they're deporting the grandmother who's watching somebody to take her or this was the final straw. They were uncomfortable with that. But when American citizens started getting shot in Minnesota, that was the final straw. You couple that with rising prices and you get the anomaly of more Democrats voting in Texas than have voted there in forever and outvoting the Republican for the first time in 30 years. And I mean, I think there's also, I mean, that this Save America Act, Save Act, whatever,

37:24they keep changing the name of it, hoping that it'll stick. But and Trump wants to make everybody think that it's just about voter ID, but it's not just about voter ID. I think that's a big issue for Democrats to run on too. I mean, this Save America Act that they're calling it would hand over voter rolls to the DHS. I mean, nobody wants that. That sounds like some 1984 George Orwell, and Trump was posting about it on true social. We can show it. Chuck, I don't think he's going to get, he's not going to be able to ram that through. He can just bitch and moan about that all he wants. He's not going to get that through. People see that as a distraction because just like they see the Epstein files and they see other things that this administration is doing, the war, right? They're all trying to bob and weave because the American people don't want to talk about something about turning over voter rolls to some agency that's been literally killing American citizens in the street. They want to know, what are you doing to make my utility bills cheaper? Everybody's utility bills are going through the roof because of these AI centers of having

38:24to power them. Everybody's gas now is going up because of a war that we've started in the Middle East. And everybody's groceries have been on the rise since COVID and never came down when Donald Trump promised them he would do it on day one and a lot of people and a lot of Latino voters trusted him because they're younger. They're more influenced by social media than whatever. This guy's outside the system. Let's give this a shot. Democrats hadn't really done that much for me in their opinion. And then they get caught in this way and they're like, oh holy shit, I didn't sign it for this. The two most popular things popping is corruption with voters and affordability. These two things are the number one thing that voters saying are motivating them for the midterm. Is there sick us in the corruption, whether it's the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, the wars, the crypto accounts, the DHS, a private prisons where somebody had a contract from just eight days ago filing a company to open up a private prison like you can see through this shit. And the American people aren't stupid. They're not stupid. And the other thing that we got to talk about is Trump is totally freaking out over James

39:26Tallerico. He is saying he's going to endorse and everybody thinks he's going to endorse John Cornan over a Ken Paxton, even though Ken Paxton is the more mega guy. And Trump is panicking over this. Why is he so freaked out about James Tallerico? What is it about Tallerico that has Trump soiling his diapers? Let me tell you that you are a friend of mine and I'm not going to bullshit you. I've done this for 36 years. I've run campaigns and been involved a long time. I go back to running campaigns in Texas to end Richards. I tell all of you that to give me some credibility or what I'm about to say. James Tallerico is what we need at this time. He's a special candidate who talks differently than any Democrat I've ever seen run for a statewide office. And what I mean by that is he's been to Bible school. He literally went to seminary. He knows the Bible. He lives his values. He's got a wonderful family. God, I got to hang out with his mother and his father this last weekend. And they're just salt of the earth, regular people, Jim.

40:29This is what scares the shit out of the Republican party. As you have a guy that can go in the stump and say like James does all the time, this ain't about you hating the Republicans or about the Republicans hating the Democrats. We got a quick looking left and right and start looking at the billionaires screwing over the working people. This is not left versus right. It's top versus bottom. That sounds a lot like Donald Trump, the first time that he ran where he got a lot of working class people to believe in him and then they saw he was full of shit. And the other thing is James Talleriko will get on stage and say, you know what I learned in the Bible was you love the Lord and you love your neighbor. And we are not going to fight hate with hate. We're going to fight that with love. And if you voted for Donald Trump, you're welcome over here. If you're frustrated, he wants to have a hopeful message around family, faith, and affordability. That's his platform. You know what family, faith, and affordability scares are shit out of a bunch of conservative Republicans who think they own the Bible. It's so true. The two Corinthians and everything. And you know, the other thing, Chuck, is the other line that I like from James Talleriko

41:30is that he says that the only minority who is hurting you right now is the billionaire. That is such a perfect message in this moment. In this goes back to what you and I were talking about when it comes to immigration. And you and I, you know, we do a lot of outreach with the Latino community. People in the Latino community are so hurt right now because they feel targeted by this government. Donald Trump is waging a war on Latino people in this country. But Latino people who were hurting Maga and folks in Maga, they're not hurting the farmers in Nebraska and Iowa who are getting crushed right now by the terrorists. Those people are getting crushed by the billionaire oligarch agenda in this country. And people are starting to fucking figure that out. Many Sanders did really well with Latinos because he talked to Latinos about a rigged system. And Donald Trump thought he could steal some of that, call it that, that some of those verbs and nouns and cobbled together something that could get Latinos on board.

42:32And then he would loop together criminals as if they were all Latinos were all criminals, as if Chuck wrote you, Jim Acastico's, we're from Hispanic heritage, criminals goes of our skin color. When regular folks out there know that that's just not the case. People folks, including this Mexican redneck, if you come to this country and you break a major law, you had your chance, you're going to have to go back. But 99.9% of folks who come to this great country like my family did, Jim, and your family did are trying to become a fabric of America, of a multi-quit quilt shade that's actually built this country to be a wonderful economy. We would have never, our parents and grandparents, Jim, would have never dreamed. People would pay us to be on TV to do the news, run political campaigns. That's the dream of our forefathers and everybody at a certain level. Even if you're Irish, Italian, Jewish, we've all had that same dream in America is that unique experiment where that happens. And that's what's going into fucking Donald Trump and the Republicans because folks don't see all immigrants as thieves and rapists. They see him as brothers and sisters while they're trying to demonize that, I think that's

43:35really going to give them in the midterms. I agree with you wholeheartedly. So let me, since sometimes I like to throw a devil's advocate at folks, what about the question of could James Tellerigo be another better or worse? He can mount a great campaign, he can give a great speech, but he's not going to be able to get across the finish line in a place like Texas. I don't want to throw cold water on everybody, everybody get mad at me, but what is the possibility of that? Is that possible? It's a fair question. And you should ask that question to any candidate. And I'm a horrible consultant because I've told the truth, and let me tell you the truth. The truth is, let's not look at the polls on whether he can win in the general. Let's not look at some thesis papers, some well intentioned white folks wrote about Texas who are from New York. Let's look at what just happened in the primary. That's what you gauge. You know, look at his results in the primary compared to Beto O'Rourks. Does that mean everything? No, but it's real people voting in a real off your election.

44:35And you can judge them hundreds of thousands more people voted. But more than that, 30% of them, as I said, didn't have a democratic primary voting history. That means they had voted in primary before. Most of them were general election voters, but they were motivated to come back. It's showing true motivation. Let me finish this last thought, which is, here's the dagger, Jim, and it's not talked about a lot. 12% of the democratic primary voters in Texas had a Republican history voting in the Republican primary in the past. That means that folks are crossing over to vote for James Tallerico because this happened in places that he won overwhelmingly, showing unlike Beto O'Rourk that there's crossover appeal. But let me also play the devil advocate back to you. It's not easy to do any of this. James Tallerico now has a lot of work to go win back African American voters from Jasmine Crockett. That whole Texas area that went big for Jasmine Crockett, he's going to have to do a lot of work over there. The great news there is, A, he's got a Mexican redneck consultant from East Texas, B, when

45:40he gave his victory speech last night, the first thing out of his mouth was thinking Jasmine Crockett. The second thing was to thank her voters for showing up and the third thing said, I understand I wasn't your first choice, but I look forward to the honor of gaining your vote, not taking it for granted. That's the first step in winning back a black voter. And then the best news is that it's March. He has a lot of time to show up in those communities, give his message to those communities and win those communities back while at the same time getting that crossover voter. And the last thing with the African American vote, Jim, and you know this is what I do. Guess who's a very religious, honorable, awesome vote? Black folks in East Texas go to church and guess what they're going to like? They're going to like the message James Tallerico has about hope and affordability and family because they live it every single day. Someone tells me James Tallerico is going to be hitting some churches in these times between now and November. He may be a little sermon over in East Texas, speaking some good sermons, some good preaching. My man shot great to talk to you as always, really appreciate it.

46:42I know you always bring the heat and you certainly brought it. And I guess we'll see if James Tallerico can bring the heat, it looks like he's bringing it so far. So good to see you. It's going to be a good one. And thank everybody for all the texts and all the stuff that they sent me out while I was down in Texas. You're about me getting my blood pressure up because whoo, I was nervous. Thank you all. And you didn't have anything to worry about. So that was all right. But all right, good to see you, Chuck. We'll be talking. We'll be talking. He good. My man. That's Chuck Rocha. If you want to hear, you know, the straight shit, you got to talk to Chuck Rocha and he certainly delivered that today. I mean, I just, you know, because we're in such a jam right now in the Middle East. I mean, we have to talk about what Donald Trump is trying to do. I was able to get into some of that with Congressman Jim Himes in Connecticut. But we got to talk a little bit about what Donald Trump is trying to do. Donald Trump, and I know I've talked about this before, but I'll talk about it again. Out on the campaign trail in 2016, used to give George W. Bush all kinds of shit over

47:48weapons of mass destruction that did not exist in Iraq. He did it over and over again. He went after the Chinese. He went after Colin Powell. He went after Connolly's rice. But most specifically, he savaged the Bush family. And basically, you know, destroyed the political career of Jeb Bush because of his claimed opposition to the war in Iraq. Now if you go back and you look at, if you look at the archives, there was a moment when he sounded very supportive of the war in Iraq. That's something he will lie and say that he never said that, but he did say that. But anyway, in 2016, it was something that he said, anybody who covered that campaign was out in the campaign trail with him, anybody who worked for him or was going to those events and those rallies. And I went to a lot of those rallies. We'll tell you, he talked about this time and again. And then, flash forward to now, he has started a war in the Middle East. He has started a war with Iran where now the Iranians are shooting missiles and their

48:52firing stuff. I just read today that Ijab Rajan is now concerned about this. Lebanon is getting hit. Obviously, the UAE has been hit time and again. The Israelis are being hit. Multiple countries are being hit all at the same time. And as we were hearing from the congressman earlier on, and I thought this was some news here, is that the Trump administration is now talking to the Ukrainians to get their advice on how to repel drones. You heard that right. Donald Trump and JD Vance, who shit all over the Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office, do we all remember that? That happened about a year ago. They crapped all over him and said, why don't you say thanks? Remember that from JD Vance? Now we, the United States, are going to the Ukrainians and saying, please help us with drone technology and repelling drones. And the six service members who lost their lives, the latest reporting is hit by a drone.

49:55And so this is what has been unleashed in the Middle East. Donald Trump has unleashed holy hell in the Middle East because Bibi Netanyahu thought it was a good idea. We don't know. But Donald Trump claims now publicly, and we should play this video again, that it was the Iranians were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. That's what he said. If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon. If we didn't do the B2 attack a number of months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon. And when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen. So we're a very good shape now. I want to let you know that and we will continue forward. But it's a great display of military strength and I'm very proud to have with some of the people in the room. I mean, you get what he's saying there. There are two ways of having a congressman, that's Donald Trump's claim. Donald Trump's claim now, this is the latest claim for why we're at war in the Middle East, why our gas prices are going up, why service members are being killed, why now

50:55you have Americans stranded in that part of the world. That's because the Iranians were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. Recall, ladies and gentlemen, that it was last year when we bombed this shit out of Iran, that the White House said that the Iranian nuclear capabilities had been obliterated. They had been decimated. The White House went as far as to say, they put out social media that said, anybody who says otherwise is fake news, anybody who says otherwise is fake news. And now Donald Trump is saying that the reason why we had to attack this time around is that they were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. They're telling lies to cover up the other lies, to cover up the other lies. That's what Donald Trump is doing right now. And what is it about two weeks? I mean, that's the tell right there, ladies and gentlemen, when he uses the word, the word is two weeks, that should tell you something. It was two weeks before he had his own health care plan. It was going to be two weeks before the next infrastructure week, before he had an infrastructure

51:59build. Remember that whole thing during the first term, two weeks is a very big frame of reference for Donald Trump. When he's at a loss for words, he says two weeks and two weeks, you'll have it. And now he's using the same kind of language to talk about the reason why we're now at war in the Middle East. What we're left with, ladies and gentlemen, it seems to me, is that Donald Trump doesn't know why we're at war. Donald Trump does not know why we're at war in the Middle East. He is the commander in chief, and he cannot come up with a good reason for why we're at war. And so think about that, ladies and gentlemen. Think about that, Maggie. Every time you go to the gas station, over the next two weeks, if you want to use that frame of reference, and you're pumping that gas in your car, and the gas is way more expensive than it was a month ago, does anybody remember during the Biden administration? I would see this from time to time, you'd be at the gas station, somebody would put a little sticker on the gas pump with Joe Biden saying, I did that.

52:59I did that, pointing to the gas prices that had been going up. Don't we need those stickers of Donald Trump saying, I did that on the gas pumps at the gas station now, because Donald Trump has done this. He did do that. He has waged war in the Middle East. He has attacked Iran with unforeseen consequences that nobody has any senses to where this is going. And by the way, your prices at the pump are going up. Your prices on everything are going up. At what point is Maggie going to wake up to a Donald Trump is unleashed all around the world and here at home? My thanks to Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut really appreciate his time. I thanks to Chuck Rocha for breaking down the political meteor that is taking off right now that is James Tallerico. And my thanks to all of you for tuning in day in and day out. I don't say it enough, but I'm going to say it here, supporting independent media matters.

54:04Think about the fact that we have experts like Jim Himes and Chuck Rocha on this show. You can do that because the show is doing well, and the show is doing well because you support us. And it's sort of, I don't want to call it a vicious cycle. I think it's a necessary cycle. The more you support us, the more we can do this kind of programming, the more we can have really good important experts like the Congressman and like Chuck on this program. Believe me, it does make a difference. If you're on Substack, we always appreciate your support if you're on YouTube. Make sure if you're watching and you like what you're seeing, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, share the show. All of those things really matter. And I've been hearing from the folks who've listened on Apple Podcasts, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts and you're not subscribing and you're not helping us out on YouTube by liking or subscribing, please go to Substack or YouTube and make a contribution, support this effort. If you're listening to me right now, support this effort. All of that makes a huge difference.

55:06So thank you for letting me get on my soapbox there and saying that one last time, supporting independent media, now more than ever. It matters. All right, still reporting for Washington. I'm Jim Acosta. I'll see you next time.