September 30: Republicans Berate Jack Smith in Fiery Hearing

0:00Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily, I'm David Rothkopf. I'm joined by Riley Fessler and Minnestine. We're going to take you through the news of the day who's kicking us off. I'll get us started. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith forcefully defended his prosecutions of President Trump during a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, pushing back against intense Republican accusations of political bias and DOJ overreach. The session of featured heated exchanges over prosecutors secretly obtaining toll records for GOP lawmakers, as well as a blunder attempt by Senator Eric Schmidt to accuse Smith of perjury over a misidentified basketball game. Meanwhile, Democrats are Riley dismissed defense framing his testimony in the Justice Department's actions as essential efforts to uphold the rule of law against Trump's election interference and mishandling of classified documents.

1:01Hey, look, Jack Smith is a hero. He was a hero. He stood up to an incredible amount of pressure. He's constantly under threat and he's still telling the truth. And what was striking yesterday about these hearings was the fact that this career prosecutor, somebody who is above reproach, somebody whose team was largely Republican, somebody whose witnesses were largely Republican, said again and again that there was an extremely strong case that Donald Trump had broken federal law in multiple ways, and that if he were in this job again, he would prosecute him now. That should resonate with you folks because the reality is that means that he should be prosecuted. That means Donald Trump should have been convicted. That means Donald Trump should either be in jail or he should certainly be a felon and not able to have run for office as he did. He would not be the president of the United States. And that's why Donald Trump is doing so much and his allies are

2:04doing so much to shut him down. But the allies are inept and the things they accused him of from Josh Hawley accusing him of illegally getting congressional phone records to Senator Schmitt confusing or deliberately getting wrong or whatever he did saying that he was at a Atlanta Hawks game and meddling in the affairs of the elections rather than when it turns out he was an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland watching Caitlin Clark. They just made fools of themselves. What Hawley accused him of was completely legal activity, which Schmitt accused him of was a fantasy. Smith won the day. The problem is that the justice system remains damaged and unable to actually achieve what it's supposed to do and protect us against people like Donald Trump.

3:10Well, I have a follow up on a story that we covered here yesterday. So now we get your take on it, David. Top Democratic senators revealed that the Department of Homeland Security tapped $20 million from President Trump's one big beautiful bill. Funds originally intended for customs and border protection to finance campaign style ads glorifying the president. Lawmakers and legal experts from both parties condemn the $2.5 million media campaign as an illegal misuse of taxpayer dollars that functions as political propaganda ahead of the midterm elections. Yeah, this is all very fancy language, you know, very fancy. Uh, here's what happened. Donald Trump dipped into the federal coffers, which are full of your money, stole the money to illegally run campaign ads, promoting himself. Uh, it's just it's outrageously wrong. There is no defense for it. It doesn't matter what budget it came out of it wasn't legal. Um, and the Republicans know it wasn't legal.

4:17Uh, you know, to say that the ads were also strange and misguided and unlikely to work as, you know, as another matter altogether. This is just another case of theft of corruption, of taking your money and using it for the personal purposes. Because remember running a campaign, this is the personal interest of Donald Trump. Donald Trump took your money and he's using it for his own personal ends. Not the first time won't be the last time. Horrible behavior. In an audio recording obtained by the New York Times, Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxson privately told donors that President Trump's midterm convention dals hurt his polling numbers, directly contradicting Trump's public assertion that the event boosted Paxson's candidacy. A senior advisor for Paxson dismissed the recording as quote, manipulated nonsense and insisted that recent polling shows Paxson's campaign gaining momentum alongside Trump ahead of the election.

5:20The private marks highlight underlying Republican concerns over Trump's impact on key races, just five weeks before election day as Paxson faced a tight contest against James Talleriko. Hey, look, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack. The DSR network sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio. The DSR daily words matter need to know, silica consciousness, AI energy and climate and the daily blast. Sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest news and expert analysis. You can also support us by becoming a paid member. Paid members get an ad-free listing experience, select episodes two days early, access to live streamed episodes and 50% off of David's need to know sub-stack. Please consider joining us at DSRnetwork.substack.com. That's DSRnetwork.substack.com. Thank you and back to the show.

6:25Look, Paxson is gaining momentum in the same way that a guy who jumps off the Empire State Building gains momentum as he hurdles towards the Earth. He's a terrible candidate. The Republicans hate him. Establishment Republicans hate that Trump back the guy. They actually feel that this is a chance to turn Texas blue for Talleriko to win. Unfortunately for Paxson, if you jump off the Empire State Building, there is this physics phenomenon in which you reach something called terminal velocity and you can't go faster than that. That's not true in politics. You can fall much, much faster. And my prediction is that the acceleration of the fall and undoing of Paxson is going to continue not just through the election, but well beyond. In a similar vein, Iowa is facing a worsening agricultural crisis driven by rising interest rates,

7:28tariff-related costs, and skyrocketing diesel prices from the Orr with Iran, threatening the state's corn belt economy. The financial strain on farmers has severely damaged Republican prospects ahead of the midterms, placing one-safe GOP candidates for governor and senate and unexpectedly tight races with Democrats. Although President Trump announced a future $15 billion steel plant to show support, local politicos, and farmers emphasized that long-term projects offer no immediate relief to young and small-scale farmers currently facing potential bankruptcy. Look, you know, should be news to nobody, should especially be news to no one in Iowa, Donald Trump screws his base more than anybody else. He has hurt farmers again and again, and the first term he hurt them with tariffs and trade wars with China and others that led the Chinese to stop buying American products, Iowa products, Iowa corn, Iowa pork, and to start buying

8:34it from Argentina and Brazil, places that they continue to buy it from. So these things do have lasting consequences, and you know, I think it's fair to say that this will be the case as well. For Trump and for the Republicans, of course, one of the lasting consequences may well be or Democratic Senator from Iowa, a Democratic governor from Iowa, changes in Nebraska, changes in other states that have been squeezed by terrible Trump policies. Well, to wrap things up, major oil companies ExxonMobil and SunCore Energy have turned to the US Supreme Court to dismiss a climate liability lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, which accuses them of misleading the public about fossil fuel risks and driving climate change. Scheduled for oral argument on the opening day of the course new term with the support of President Trump's administration, the High State's case could determine the fate of nearly

9:3560 similar lawsuits by state and local governments seeking billions of dollars in damages. While plaintiffs argue local communities deserve compensation for mounting climate-related expenses, energy companies and their supporters claim that allowing state law claims to proceed would give local government unchecked regulatory authority over interstate conduct. Yeah, well, unchecked regulatory authority or is it the, you know, path to justice for people who are being damaged by these policies? I have no faith that the Supreme Court will do the right thing on this. I certainly know the administration is going to push us in the wrong direction on this. Their goal is that these big energy companies get the kind of impunity that the Trump himself has. And, you know, that's, you know, the goal for all the people, including, you know, the, the, the, the broggarks who are around Trump yesterday at their crazy meeting where, you know, Trump said they had a big breakthrough and they'll sign the documents saying,

10:37AI wasn't really AI, it was kind of superintelligence, and they've all committed to make sure it's all fine. That, and that, that's as far as he wants to go, you know, we have their moral commitment. This is crazy. This is Trump thinking that giving these people a free pass is going to give them money. And I think that's what's going to happen. By the way, if you can hear my dog barking in the background, I apologize. He wants to get in on this podcast in the worst possible way, but this is not going to happen because Min and Nyley are doing too good a job. Anyway, we've got all our other podcasts, all of their podcasts, all of their content creation, streaming to you by every platform, you could possibly imagine, including, you know, we have a special broadcast facility in which we broadcast directly into the fillings of people who are susceptible to that kind of thing. And we will continue to do that, whether my dog interferes or not. Until then, bye-bye.