Jim Acosta: Trump Can't Take the Heat

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Many of you have been asking, what can I do? What can I do? All right. In segment two, we're going to talk about a tangible thing I think people should be looking at doing to combat Trump's threats to our democratic republic.
But up first, former chief White House correspondent for cnn he's now an independent journalist and host of the jim acosta show on sub stack it's jim acosta how you doing bro hey tim good to see you again good to see you too for our audience's benefit you know every once in a while i like to give them a reprieve i'm not playing any clips from last night's presidential address you know having to hear the voice it was an interminminable one hour and 40 minutes. I fell asleep.
I'm just going to be honest. I fell asleep.
I dozed off before I even made it to the Ukraine section. I am kind of at the view that these things, even when it's not Trump, are basically pointless in the modern era and they have very little impact.
So I'm wondering what your assessment is of that and if there's anything you saw last night that you think might matter, even on the margins. Yeah, I did a substack right after the speech was over with Michael Fanon.
And Mike says to me, he's, Jim, I love you, but fuck you for making me watch that. And I said, that's fair.
I said, honestly, that's fair. I mean, it was a bullshit-a-palooza.
I mean, this is what we expect from Trump now. And I kind of agree with you, Tim.
I think this thing has just turned into, you know, hee-haw. I mean, I think the next president would be well-served to just do it from the Oval Office.
Or like, what did they say in the olden days? You would just like send a letter down. Send a letter.
On a horse down Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, you know.
Yeah, just send the letter. Just send the letter.
That's where I'm at. It kind of annoys me.
I don't know. This is maybe a meta commentary about the media, but just like the pomp and circumstance of it all.
I mean, we're here in Trump 2.0. I mean, I, he didn't obviously respect any of the traditions, uh, you know, at any points, like, why should we continue to have respect for it? It's it's like oh and they're kind of there's the first lady and she looks beautiful today and here comes the cabinet i don't know the whole thing is just kind of like to me it's like this is from another era and it's a fake it feels fake i guess it is and i i loved hearing from the people last night who were saying can you believe congressman green and what he did and you know after know, after Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and their antics from whatever last year or the year before, every year for that matter.
And Joe Wilson, you lie from when Obama was president. I mean, honestly, when Donald Trump is up there and he's referring to Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas, why is anybody getting their knickers in a bunch over, you know, what the decorum is of this ceremony? complete bedlam at this point right yeah this is where i'm on the fetterman side i'm a rare person on the fetterman side i'm like just wear sweatpants to the program if this is what you're gonna do that's no sense putting on your suit for this okay there are a couple of minor things i think that is just worth mentioning because they could have some impact trump said that elon musk

is his shadow president uh heads up doge and then there's a big well very lengthy applause on the republican side for elon who kind of stood above like evita waving down on everybody there's already been a filing with the court about this because as you know the white house technically says that Amy Gleason, a woman that lives in Tennessee, is really running Doge.

Yeah.

And so. this because as you know the white house technically says that amy gleason a woman that lives in tennessee is is really running doge yeah and so i again i think they're possibly making themselves vulnerable to you know legal ramifications as far as you know getting these cuts through so like maybe a minor you know impact in that last night i don't know what you think about that and evan broadly yeah this is like the usual suspects who is kaiser soze you know and you know, impact in that last night.
I don't know. What'd you think about that and Yvonne Broadley? Yeah, this is like the usual suspects.
Who is Kaiser Soze, you know, and you know, who is this lady from Tennessee that's heading up Doge? I mean, but this just goes to, and I, you know, Tim, I saw this the first time around when I covered Trump and Trump 1.0. I mean, you know, one of the things that folks should keep in mind as a saving grace and all of this is silver lining is the sheer incompetence that the Trump team brings to just about everything that they do.
And the Doge project is no different. I mean, yes, it's led by the world's richest man, and he's built these successful companies to some extent.
But at the same time, look at when they put this wall of receipts up on the website, and David Fahrenthold over the New York Times is picking them off one by one. Nope, that one's not true.
That one's exaggerated. They counted this one three times.
You know, it's sort of like your uncle where you have to, everything he says, you have to divide by six. I mean, that is the Trump administration and that's Donald Trump.
It all flows from him. The bullshit flows down from him and everybody, you know, does what he does.
It starts at the top. Yeah, there's a little more legal news on this, but just a couple other things in the speech.
The thing that did strike me before I dozed off was no economy focus. This is not an exaggeration.
This is not the Joe Biden use of literally. He literally spent more time on trans youth sports, whatever you think about that issue.
He spent more seconds speaking about that than he spoke about cost of living issues. You know, he had somebody in the crowd who was, you know, kind of hit in the head by a trans volleyball player, I guess.
You know, he had Riley Gaines was in the crowd. He's talking about trans for a while.
And then like he quickly pivots to the economy. And he's like, Joe Biden really fouled up the economy, right? And then he was moving straight on to Gulf of America.
I mean, he barely talked about it. And I thought that was pretty telling since that is like, I think his most real vulnerability at this point.
Yeah. And Tim, I mean, the takeaway, I woke up with this thought this morning and that is, you know, he never really is going to be the president for all of us.
He's never really going to be the president for all Americans. And, you know, I've made a few wisecracks at the top of this, but I'll get serious here for a moment, because I know, Tim, you care about this too.
You worked out on behalf of John Huntsman, who was a serious Republican back in the day. And, you know, it's a real damn shame what has happened to the Republican Party.
They're standing up and applauding, taking Greenland from Denmark. They're standing up and applauding, taking the Panama Canal, even though Donald Trump is not committing boots on the ground to doing either of those things.
And so what is he talking about here? He's just, this was sort of like, you know, Donald Trump takes us off to fairyland. It was like a Kash Patel bedtime story.
And I think a lot of people are rightly appalled by what they saw last night. You talk about the way he was going after the trans community, the LGBTQ plus community, the way he was going after African nations.
I mean, almost every one of the bits of waste, fraud, and abuse he was outlining as part of the doge cuts dealt with people of color and and faraway countries the so-called shithole countries that he's talked about in the past and it just occurred to me you know taking that all in and i i know you fell asleep i was bored quite a bit at times but when i woke up this morning i just thought you know he's just never going to be the president for all of us and that's just a damn shame and the way that it's coaxed the party you're right like. Like I did notice this.
The most boisterous cheer, I think, was for the Gulf of America. I know I wasn't in the room.
And to me, that just says, again, whatever. Honestly, I'm living down here on the Gulf of Mexico, and I dare you to sue me, Eagle Ed Martin.
But again, it's just like that's not serious. That's not about caring about your fellow America.
It's a troll. Like what they were cheering for was not that they were excited that the body of water's name changed.
They were cheering because they want Jim Acosta to be sad. You know what I mean? They want, like, liberals to be mad, right? And that's what they like.
And also taking jabs at Mexico. Yeah, right.
I mean, you know, it's one of his favorite punching bags. I used to say during the first term, it's the three M, the Mexicans, the Muslims, and the media.
And, you know, this time around, I mean, you can add a few more to that list. And I just think that the constant, you know, railing against wokeism and so on, it's just sort of scoring cheap points.
It's beneath the dignity of the office. It's beneath what the office should be.
And you were talking about

the economy earlier. The most news he made last night is when he said there's going to be a little

bit of a disturbance from these tariffs kicking in. That was a full acknowledgement right there

that Americans are going to feel pain. And one of the things they're already starting to hear

coming out of the financial markets today is, oh, well, maybe Donald Trump is going to

have some carve-outs for some of these tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And so they already know that he has stepped in it with this, you know, grandpa makes up economic policy on a barstool stuff that he spews out there.
And this is the kind of stuff that Americans are already fed up with. That's why they're erupting at town halls for Republicans in

deep red districts. And I think it's just the beginning of that.

Yeah, that's why he's back underwater in the recent poll average for the first time.

One more thing on the degradation of my former party last night. Lindsey Graham

sent this tweet. My take on President Trump's address, inspiring, funny, compelling,

and the Democrats' worst nightmare, Trump 2028. Now, again, again it's a troll and so you hate to play into their games but the problem here's the problem is that so many times things that were trolls became real like the muslim band was a troll at the start and then he did it right like and so you know they are playing a very dangerous game by even doing tongue-in-cheek trump third term stuff i think because you know this guy's going to be 81 and a half years old when it comes time to like you know get down to business on that in 2028 are you sure he's not going to take you seriously lindsey graham because i'm not and he's barely making any sense now i'm not talking about talking about Lindsey Graham.
I guess I could be talking about Lindsey Graham. But I mean, my response to Donald Trump wanting to run for third term is the Democrats should think about getting Barack Obama out there.
It's like, okay, well, if you're going to do it, we're going to do it. And we're going to put Barack Obama out there and then see what happens.
I agree with you. It is a little scary when they engage in that kind of rhetoric.
It is a troll. But I agree with you.
It has to be taken seriously. I mean, Trump, to me, is kind of a he's like a fusion reactor of hatred.
He generates it and he thrives on it. He feeds off of it.
And at some point, I'm a foolish optimist. I just think that the spell is going to be broken.
And we saw this during the first Trump term, during Trump 1.0, I should say, his mishandling of COVID.

Again, it gets back to what I was saying earlier about the sheer incompetence of what they do. They do eventually trip over their own feet.
And so, yes, it's painful. Yes, it's not fun watching what he was doing last night.
But I really do think, as much as he likes to call people like me the enemy and you the enemy, he's his own worst enemy. We're going to go a little deeper with the Dems with Amanda Littman in the next segment, but I just, any sense for what their reaction was last night? I kind of think it doesn't really matter what they do in a setting such as that.
But, you know, a lot of people had feelings about whether it was Al Green shouting at him or the little signs that some of them made. What did you make about the Democratic response? Again, after Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Congressman Wilson, it's sort of like, at this point, what more can anybody do? You know, okay, Congressman Greene gets up and walks out and a number of other Democrats did it.
If that's what they want to do, that's fine. I think you could also just not show up.
I mean, what would that image have been like last night if the entire Democratic Party just didn't show up for the State of the Union speech? I mean, I don't know. It's tough.
And the Democrats are in the wilderness right now. You've seen your party in the wilderness after 2012 when Mitt Romney lost, and they're trying to figure out what to do next.
And then Donald Trump comes along and picks up the mantle. I know, I think this time around, my sense of it is, is that the Democrats are going to be led by the people instead of the other way around.
And you're already starting to see that you're starting to see people say, Dems are not doing enough. They're not getting out there and making more of a stink out of what's taking place with Doge.
And so there are certainly members who will take issue with that and say, Hey, wait a minute, I'm out there, I'm whipping things up. But the party as a whole just looks to be lost right now.
My sense of it is, is some sort of populist figure within the party or on the fringes of the party, or maybe an independent may take the party in a new direction in the way that Trump did with the Republicans. I agree with that.
I mean, that might not happen. But I think that the populace is prime for that for somebody picking up the mantle and demonstrating they can be a fighter and a leader and going any number of directions.
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So we have a couple of news items this morning I want to talk to you about. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's order that would force USAID, the State Department, to pay $2 billion that was owed to contractors for work that had already been performed.
They put these stop payments on. So this is not about future AID payments, but at least it's back pay.
To me, it's interesting because we're going to have a lot of these skirmishes at the Supreme Court because of the extra legal and illegal actions of Trump and Musk. And so it ends up being a 5-4 ruling with Roberts and Coney Barrett.
So on the one hand, you can kind of look at that and say, OK, well, it's good that the contracts that the United States made have been upheld. On the other hand, you're like, boy, pretty tenuous there that it was only a one vote majority.
I don't know. What do you make of that? I mean, yeah, a couple of things.
Donald Trump not paying his bills. Who would have thought that that would have happened? You know, geez, is there a track record there? I can't remember.
What does Google tell us? The Supreme Court is an interesting dynamic, an interesting part of all this. You know, the fact that it was five to four to me is sort of pathetic in a time when we didn't have a hyper partisan Supreme Court judicial branch.
Perhaps, you know, it would have come down in a much more decisive way against what the administration is trying to do. I mean, I mean, let's just be real about this.
Donald Trump is trying to become a dictator in this country. There's just no question about it.
Maybe it's an American form of dictatorship where, you know, he knows he can't get away with everything.

The people around him know he can't get away with everything, but he's going to give it a hell of a try. And for some of the people on the Supreme Court, I'm not going to mention any names, to go along with this is disgraceful.
And to me, you know, it's no wonder, you were talking about poll numbers. It's no wonder that confidence in the Supreme Court is, I think, near an all-time low, if it's not an all-time low.
And I tend to agree with, you know, when Biden was on his way out, not to say, I know it's probably not fashionable these days to praise anything that Joe Biden does or says, but when he was talking about term limits for the Supreme Court, I mean, I've long felt that that needs to happen. It is ridiculous that you can put hyper-partisan people on the Supreme Court in their 40s and hope that they live for another 50 years.
To me, it's just sort of a gross exploitation of the checks and balances and trying to find loopholes to rig a system that's supposed to protect all of us and uphold the rule of law. You say the American form of dictatorship and what he's trying to do, really, they think

that he has unlimited Article 2 powers for the executive branch.

It doesn't matter what Congress actually passed legislation as far as funds are.

Supposedly, they have the power of the purse, but we can actually do whatever we want and

we can just stop payments.

We can stop things that have been approved by Congress, signed by previous presidents. We can do whatever we want.
Then the question is, does the court allow that? And if the court doesn't, then eventually that becomes kind of the next step of this question of, are they going to try to defy that? Luckily, we have not reached that point yet. But I just think when you look at these things, when there are just cut and dry cases like this that end up 5-4, we'll see where Amy Coney Barrett ends up.
But it's hard to imagine that she won't end up on the other side of this when the circumstances are slightly less egregious. You're absolutely right.
I think that's where the rubber is going to meet the road here because if the courts say, no, you can't do this, and he keeps defying the courts, what do we do at that point? I mean, I don't know if anybody has really answered that question. And, you know, the last time around, at the end of his first term, you know, we were all pretty damn lucky that he left the building.
And, you know, my concern this next time around is, you know, no matter what happens in the upcoming election, you know, he's just not going to want to give this up. I was with him on January 20th, 2021.
I was at that ridiculous departure ceremony that he had at Joint Base Andrews. It looked like a dictator going off into exile.
I was with him on Air Force One for that last flight to West Palm Beach. Really? I guess I didn't know that.
I was. I was in the pool that day.
Yeah. This is before they were kicking people out of the pool.
Who else was in the pool? Who else was in the pool that day? Was it Steve Holland? Gosh, it was a lot of the regulars, the AP Reuters, all the people that they don't let in now were all there. But CNN had the pool seat that day.
What was that like? It was surreal. And a couple of jokes were made, you know, Jim, I hope you make it the whole flight.
You know, you know, do you have your parachute? And my hope the whole time was that he was going to come into the press cabin and talk to us. But he hid in his little area of Air Force One, didn't come back to talk to us.
Sulked. And sulked, exactly.
And my thought the entire time was, Jesus Christ, we got so lucky here. We got so lucky that he got on the goddamn plane and went back to Florida.
Because who the hell knows what would have happened if he had just stayed, or if the people who had stormed the Capitol on January 6th had gotten worse. I do worry about what is going to happen to this country if and when he has to relinquish power, hopefully when.
And I wrote a little bit that day for my old place. I thought about writing a book about some of this stuff because that day to me was sort of like when we were all sort of hanging by a thread.
And thank goodness, I don't know if it was some, you know, ounce of shame that was left in him. Probably not.
It was maybe Ivanka talking to getting on the, I don't know. But I was there at Joint Base Andrews when Don and Eric were crying.
It was just a whole scene. And I just kept saying to myself over and again, Jesus Christ christ we got so lucky here that he just actually left it's not very masculine the tears over losing an election it's like the child not exactly not the not the strength that they like to project what happened when you landed did they like they just the the because he doesn't have the beast anymore what he just has like had like a limo waiting for him and he went to Mar-a-Lago and you guys were off duty or you stayed outside Mar-a-Lago? Like what happened? Yeah, I forget all the terminology, but you know, once the inauguration happens, Air Force One becomes a different plane.
It has a different designation. Air Force One is technically the other plane that was taking, going to be taking Biden around.
But that point, he landed at a general aviation airport in West Palm Beach. I remember he and Melania came off the plane.
They both went their separate ways. And then he got into a Secret Service limo.
And then he left and we were all yelling questions at him. He just wouldn't take any of our questions.
The only contact that we had was with a press aide named Margo Martin.

And I won't forget, I sort of forget the exact words, but I won't forget the thrust of what

she was saying, which is, you know, he's not very good at sitting still.

And I just thought to myself, yeah, he's, you know, and I try to tell people, you know,

at that time I said, you know, because it was fashionable for folks to say, that's it,

he's done.

We don't have to worry anymore.

Yay. And I was like, nah, he's, this guy's not done.
He's not done. Right, you guys.
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And the point of this is that the whole press corps can't be on the plane, right? So you choose representative outlets. Just explain to people like how that process works and why it's so alarming that they've decided to change it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the way I try to explain it to folks is, you know, you obviously can't have a couple hundred members of the press on Air Force One or in the Oval Office. It would just be total chaos.
And so what the White House Correspondents Association tries to do, what the networks try to do, is put together a pool of reporters. And Tim, you know how this works, but I'll explain it.
So there's one representative for the TV networks every day. There are a couple of wire service reporters like the AP and Reuters.
And then you have some print reporters from like the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, that sort of thing. And that forms the pool.
And they represent the larger White House press corps. They're with the president when he's at an event behind the scenes talking to people.
They're on Air Force One in case he comes back to the press cabin. They're in the Oval Office in case he makes some remarks.
And because we can't put all those things out live at all times, the people in the pool put together a little note on their phone. They send it out to the WHCA, which blasts it out to everybody in the press.
That way, everybody has near instant information as to what is going on with the president pretty much at all times. And then at the end of the day, they'll put out a note that says, okay, the White House has told us we don't expect him to do anything else today.
You have a good night. That's a wrap for the day and so on.
And we've sort of relied on this system for years now, going back multiple presidents from both parties. And what Trump has tried to do just in recent days days and some of this goes back to when i was covering the white house first time around they took away my press pass and i had to go get it back this time around it's sort of that approach but on steroids and so when the ap said well we're not going to call it the gulf of america we're going to call it the gulf of mexico because that's the damn name for the thing he kicked them out of the press pool pool, which means no more Oval Office, no more Air Force One.

And now they've gone even further, Tim, as you know, and they've said, well, we're going to decide who is in the press pool, which is absolutely ridiculous to think that.

And it's part of the reason why we saw the other day in the Oval Office when Zelensky was in there with Trump.

You heard that moron ask the question, why aren't you wearing a suit to Zelensky? I'm Ryan Glenn. Yeah.
So you're going to end up with sycophants. Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend is shouting a question at the Ukrainian president.
That's just idiocracy. Which I hear is at the top of his resume.
I think that's the thing that he's like, well, first of all, you know, I used to work at a Dairy Queen, but above that is who I date. But anyway, I'm succumbing to tomfoolery here.
We do tomfoolery. It's just a joke.
I mean, that's how they do things in totalitarian countries, Tim. We can't have the leader of the free world doing this.
Yeah, well, just you telling the story about him leaving, I think, to me, puts a fine point about why this matters. Because on the one hand, i could see us and people are like who cares

if it's the ap or if it's you know the first day it's not like they put just the craziest people and like they're like we're gonna replace the ap with axios you can't get mad at us for that right like but but the thing is they will know when there are things happening that are sensitive or controversial or whatever right and it's like okay and so if the white houseents Association is deciding who's in the pool, then it's like neutral, right? But if they think something bad might happen that day or it's the day where Mr. Trump's going to be sad and sulking, they can be like, okay, well, today we're going to put in Newsmax and, you know, Matt Gaetz has a new podcast.
He can be in the pool and whatever. The blaze or, yeah.
Yeah. And like that kind of shows the concern yeah there's no question and you know there's just something wrong and they said this during my press pass case the justice department lawyer said this in court that the white house should be able to pick and choose who who covers the president and you know it's just silly it's just not how we do things in this country and the way i describe it to folks and yes you're absolutely right you know folks may not care about who gets kicked in and who's left out and blah blah blah you know why don't you be big boys and girls and just deal with it the problem is is that okay trump gets away with it now the governor of missouri wants to do it now the mayor of los angeles wants to mayor of los angeles says hey i don't like the way the la times wrote this story about the way I handled the fires.
Get them out of here. I don't want this.
Oh, oh, the courts have a problem with that? Donald Trump did it to the AP, so that means I get to do it too. And so then what the hell? Do we have a free press anymore? Right.
Slippery slope. And Tim, one of the things that you should take a look at, and maybe you already have, is when Caroline Levitt put out the note about we're going to pick the people in the press pool, they said, well, but the networks will continue to be able to go in there and get their video and everything.
So they know that Donald Trump is so addicted to being on camera and being on TV that it's like, oh, we're not going to mess with the networks. The networks could come in.
Nevermind. Don't worry about that, guys.
You'll come in and get your pictures, but we'll screw with the AP. We'll screw with this little guy over here and so on.
Because he doesn't read. So not as much of a problem.
Just with the Sharpie when he just writes out, I hate this story, you know. This is too important to not mention today.
Just this morning, we have news that CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that the U.S. has paused intelligence support for Ukraine.
He said Trump has a real question about whether President Zelensky is what was committed to

the peace process.

And he said, let's pause.

There was a story out of the U.K.

It's a tabloid story.

So, you know, we'll see this as an ongoing news story, but that U.S. also told the U.K.

that they can't share intelligence.

I assume Prime Minister Starmer will tell them to pound sand, if that is true.

But this, to me, is even more alarming than the military aid issue. Because A, it's immediate, right? Like they already have a lot of the military aid that we've sent them.
And B, it could cause problems, like, as we speak on the battlefield, if Ukraine isn't able to get information about what's happening with the Russian troops. So I don't know.
Any thoughts on that and the broader treatment of Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, to me, I agree with you. That is a very chilling development.
And, you know, if we're not going to be sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians, when they're fighting for their survival, you know, what are we doing here? And it just seems like every time, and I've noticed this since covering him during the 2016 campaign, every time Russia is involved in the equation, every time Vladimir Putin is involved in the equation, for some reason, that's where Trump goes. That's how Trump sides and comes down on things, is with the Russians and Vladimir Putin.
And it's just the damnedest thing. And maybe one day the mystery will be solved, The Scooby-Doo mystery will be solved and they'll pull the head off of whoever and it'll be old man Withers from the haunted amusement park.
But to me, I just don't get it. And maybe we're all going to figure this out one day, why Donald Trump is just always partial to Vladimir Putin at every turn.
And the sad state of affairs in all of this is that the Ukrainians have been courageously fighting for the survival of their country. I remember speaking with a special forces soldier on one of my shows a couple years ago, and she brought me a metal coin that was made from the metal of a Russian tank that was blown up in one of the battles over there.
And then she was later almost killed in an IED explosion. I've met a couple of fighter pilots.
Their codenames were Moonfish and Juice. They couldn't give their real names.
They've both since died since I interviewed them. And it's just the tremendous toll that this country has gone through.
And to think that the United States of America is just going to throw them to the lions, to me, is disgraceful. And it's going to be something I think this country and all of us are going to regret for many, many years.
And this just gets to, you know, trying to put out the defense shield for Trump 2.0 in Europe, which is what they're trying to do right now. How can they run out the clock on Trump's term and protect Europe and protect Ukraine in the process process and it may just involve these other countries doing the intelligence sharing that we're not willing to do and it's just a damn shame all right i'm gonna take the lens back here because the whole controversy around you regarding cnn is like this guy's too mean to trump he has trump derangement syndrome right like you're you're criticizing the president like you got to be more fair and to me a lot of this is related to the fact that nobody has memories of anything before 2015 anymore we all have this mass amnesia and um i went back and watched an old clip of you and i gotta say you're looking a little more tan now you're're looking a little more confident.
You're blossoming in your 50s.

We're going to pull up a clip of Jim Acosta.

Of the 40-somethings Jim Acosta now talking to Barack Obama.

Let's listen.

Okay.

Earlier when you said that you have not underestimated ISIS's abilities,

this is an organization that you once described as a JV team

that evolved into a force that is now occupied territory in Iraq and Syria and is now able to use that safe haven to launch attacks in other parts of the world. How is that not underestimating their capabilities and how is that contained, quite frankly? And I think a lot of Americans have this frustration that they see that the United States has the greatest military in the world.
It has the backing of nearly every other country in the world when it comes to taking on ISIS. And I guess the question is, and if you'll forgive the language, is why can't we take out these bastards? Big wind up there.
You knew the bastards was coming and you may be a little nervous. But I mean, a fair, veryama you could tell obama didn't like it he's harum halfway through the question like that's how shit used to go right and there's nobody screaming around back then whenever that was i think it was 2014 about saying like oh jim acosta biased jim acosta has obama derangement syndrome and so i really did i had i had a bad it's true how do you deal with that asymmetry right like what do you think like in this media and age like how we how we navigate where we've gotten to well of all the clips you could have pulled i'm glad you pulled that one too because there could have been there were some ones that you could have pulled that way you had some clunkers probably i'm sure people thought that was a clunker too but yeah you're right it is disappointing i i do remember that day i think the daily caller and a bunch of these places that like to come after me were like jim acosta destroys obama and all this stuff and i'm like i just i mean i just you did kind of i used to have this philosophy and that is i grew up with blue collar, and they don't mince words.
And I used to think, like, what's the kind of question that my dad would ask? What's the kind of question my mom would ask? Or the people at my dad's grocery store or my mom's restaurant, what's the kind of question they would ask? And put it in those kinds of terms. And I remember at the time, the White House press team for Obama, they were furious with me.
And then I think Jeffrey Goldberg with The Atlantic or somebody did an interview with somebody on the Obama team, might have been Ben Rhodes or somebody at that time. And I think Jeffrey Goldberg said, well, yeah, that's all well and good, but why can't we get the bastards? And then later on, Ben Rhodes said to me, he said, because we had a conversation about this, he said know jim you when you asked that question it actually made us think well how are we communicating the successes that we're having on the battlefield against isis eric schultz who used to work for obama would send me emails every now and then and say hey we got one of the bastards when they would blow somebody up with isis and so i you know i i think that sometimes a tough question, even maybe a slightly pugnacious question, can do some good.
And it's why we should have reporters that are willing to ask these kinds of hard questions. Not why are you not wearing a suit today when Elon Musk two days earlier was wearing an Occupy Mars t-shirt in the Oval Office.
I just think we're well served when somebody's doing kind of the Sam Donaldson thing or the Dan Rather thing. And I'm going to keep doing it.
You just worry that's gone? I mean, I just think we're well served when somebody's doing kind of the sam donaldson thing or the dan rather thing and you know i'm going to keep doing it you just worry that's gone i mean like i just think cnn's in such a tough spot right now i mean you know fox obviously is totally in the tank msbc's rejiggering the networks nobody's watching i mean i has somebody who just left that world like how worried are you that that type of just no bullshit, willing to challenge a politician

no matter who, do you worry that's just kind of gone?

It's not gone, but it may be going away.

And the problem is that in this environment, everybody is suspicious of everybody else's

motives.

And you can't just be a cantankerous son of a bitch reporter who likes to ask tough questions. And I think that it's okay to have people like that.
We need that in American society. I grew up with Ted Koppel on Nightline and, like I said, Sam Donaldson shouting questions at Reagan at the White House.
And I always thought that was a good thing. And these days, they want to run you out of town on a rail if you're doing that sort of thing.
But Tim, honestly, all of this, you know, give Obama some credit. He answered the question.
He took the question without blowing his top and taking away my press pass. One of the problems that we're in right now is that Donald Trump cannot just take the hard questions.
He cannot handle the heat. And he wants to act like a dictator.
And that is just a different kind of experience than we've ever had before with the president. Ronald Reagan wasn't throwing Sam Donaldson out of the White House because he was yelling questions to Reagan as he was getting on Marine One.
Some of this flows from the guy at the top. And if he just can't handle the hard questions, you've just got to wonder, can he handle the job of being president of the United States? And I think he just proves over and over again, he cannot.
Yes, he's the luckiest son of a gun out there. There's no question about it.
That debate can be put to the side. I think it's also not up for debate that he just cannot handle scrutiny.
He's never been able to handle it, and it's always going to be a problem for him. And that means it's going to be a problem for us.
The unfortunate part is he's's convinced so many people that the scrutiny is bullshit too. And that's the hardest part to affect.
I think in fairness, I mean, Caitlin's still in there asking tough questions. Sure.
You know, I do think having people in there asking tough questions is a more useful use of time than like having four people shout at Scott Jennings. That's just one man's opinion.
But do the tough questions even stick, you know, if he has pulled the wool over? And I think we have to be careful of giving them what they want when they're going after the press. And that's why I have said, if this continues, they continue to abuse the press and throw them out and that sort of thing.
There has to be some sort of collective action on the part of the press. You know, if they really care about having those TV networks.
It's going to require Fox though. Yeah.
There's no collective action without them. Oh, that's true.
And people can go do a Google and find out what rest of the White House press corps was standing up for Fox when the Obama White House was giving them a hard time. The rest of the White House press corps got together and said, no, no, no, you're not going to keep Fox out of stuff.
I mean, that will be a telling moment if the networks say, listen, unless you let the AP back in there, you're not getting your TV pool every day. And then let's see what Fox does.
My sense of it is they may go with the networks on this and say, it's time to back down. But like you said, we're not on Earth One anymore.
Yeah, we'll see. Tim, I know you come from a good place in all of this.
It's gratifying for me to see you out there doing the work that you're doing. There are enough of us who care about this, and that's the important thing.
There are enough of us who care about this, care about the truth, care about holding elected leaders accountable. I generally think we're going to be okay in the long run.
We're just going to have to outlast this moment. All right.
I appreciate it. Jim Acosta, check him out.
The Jim Acosta show on his sub stack. He's a free man now.
Thank you

for coming on. It's like the Shawshank Redemption.
Thanks for coming on the podcast. Up next,

Amanda Littman of Run for Something and author of the forthcoming book, When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, out this May. It's Amanda Littman.
What's up, girl? I'm hanging in there. How are you doing, Tim? Well, I'm alive.
I'm here. We're all here.
I i'm doing my best i didn't make it through the whole speech last night i had to watch a list of this morning i guess i was a little tired after a big mardi gras weekend but uh it was also really fucking long but uh we're doing our best i've been wanting to have you on it's unfortunately donald trump makes it hard to get off of doing just the news because there's so much shit happening but you're doing some work that's more long lead i want to talk about but but before we get to that and running for something i did want to put your kind of your strategist hat on you you did some of that for a little while and um ask you what you thought about the democrats various responses last night AOC and Jasmine Crockett, like, I'm not going. Some of them, she's on Instagram.
Al Green's shouting. Some gals are in pink.
Some people are holding signs. Some people are doing nothing.
What did you make of it? You know, I think the only goal of the responses, any of the responses to the speech last night had to be make it a bigger spectacle than the speech itself and none

of them really succeeded in doing that so a little f for you yeah yeah i don't know i'm kind of of the view here's my counter punch to that i'm me and you are usually aligned on this like i want more is more get out there swing and miss sometimes it's okay donald trump misses a lot of pitches he got elected twice, you know, but

be out there. Dad said, on a night

like that, it's okay Donald Trump misses a lot of pitches he got elected twice you know but um be out there that said on a night like that like it's gonna be tough like what are you gonna do that's not gonna be kind of cringe like it's very challenging to kind of think of something that'd be actually useful and to me it's almost like I just probably wouldn't have even shown up and then woken up this morning and gotten on social media or gotten on the Bork YouTube or gotten on whatever and just started going, you know, about the economy, about Elon, about all the other things that are on message. Like, was it kind of a, was it like a battle they couldn't win, I guess, last night? You know, I think you're probably right that there was no, nothing like in the room or even in online they could have done in the moment.
But I of wish that if they were going to try something they had like made a bigger deal out of it or at least been more organized there's like one-off holding up the signs the pink suits the sort of like boring speech after which was so late at night that who watches that anyway like it was probably a lose-lose but if they were going to try try, I wanted them to go bigger. To the speech afterwards, Alyssa Slotkin, I had to get your take on this because as a former Republican, you know, I was like, this is pretty good for me.
But I do wonder how somebody that's in touch with Democratic grassroots thought about it. I want to play one clip from Alyssa Slotkin.
After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave. We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity.
And that scene in the Oval Office wasn't just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump's whole approach to the world.
He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends like the Canadians in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.
As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s.

Trump would have lost us the Cold War.

On the one hand, Reagan-loving boomers are going to vote in the midterms.

So there's something to be said for that.

On the other hand, what did you think about the Reagan hagiography from the Democratic response?

The target audience of that was no one under the age of 48, 47. Well, excuse me.
It got me. There's a handful of nerds, of never-Trumper nerds who are in their early 40s that it hit.
That's okay. A few never-Trumper elder millennials, and that's about it, which is fine.
That's an audience that needs pandering to, too. Not my cup of tea, and I think not quite speaking to a lot of the democratic bases right now but that's okay not everything has to be for everyone what'd you make of the like uh senders i want to give them credit for stuff because it's like do more do more do more and then they do more and people like they had all these guys doing these uh shit that ain't true videos and i play that for you, but it doesn't really work in audio form.
You have to go on your Instagram to see it. But, you know, where it's basically like all the senators had a similar script about the way that Trump and Elon have been lying.
What'd you make about that? What'd you make of that? You know, I think it's good to give them credit for trying stuff. And I saw that like Elon and a bunch of the right wing influencers were lifting it up, which means they were all lifting up visual images that were like, shit that ain't true about Trump and talking about prices.
So in that sense, I think it's good to farm a little outrage. Is it the most effective social media content? Probably not, but baby steps in the right direction is better than baby steps in the wrong direction.
All right, I'm with you. Is there anybody out there that you think you've been been like they've been really nailing it the last two months i think aoc pretty typically is one of the better ones in which it seems so authentic you know i think chris murphy's stick is not always for me but it does seem true to him and i appreciate that like he seems genuinely furious and is communicating that in a way that really works other than that i think we've still got a got a lot of wide open field for people to step up, which is, again, chaos is a ladder.
Climate, Democrats, just fucking climate. That phrase is right.
Genuinely furious. When people ask me, like, what do you want? I'm like, I want you to be genuinely furious.
There's a lot of things to be furious about, and I actually don't care if it's the thing that i'm

furious about and not all the democrats need to be furious about the same things some democrats you know like you can be furious about whatever it is that you think your constituents are furious about or whatever it is that animates you as a politician and try to bring people along with you and like that i think has been the thing that when people are like the democratic base is unhappy, to me, that is what is missing. Right.
They're like, we are really fucking mad. Like, just be mad, too.
Like, also do stuff, but just be mad, too, for starters. Well, it's because when they're not mad, it makes us feel like the crazy ones for being mad.
I don't want to be gassed. Like, my rage is not misplaced.
It is not invalid. It is totally legitimate.
And if my elected leaders aren't showing that, or if they're like,'re like oh calm down we're going to talk about the price of eggs like there's not an election for this shit for another 18 months be mad right now and then channel my fury into something good but like be mad with me it will make me feel better i agree feelings do matter maybe i'm a i'm a millennial post-modern i want to talk about run for something you've been doing How many years have you been doing this for? Since Trump's first inauguration days. We're going on eight years.
You've been doing the Lord's work. We do also get feedback from people like, what should I do? What should I do? And I think there is a sense of frustration of like, how can I be helpful? I want to help.
And there's phone calling. There's some other things.
But I wanted to highlight what you're doing because I think it's it's so important i just want to set the table at this because i think it's not that it hasn't been important in all of the eight years before that but i think it's as important as ever right right now like in this moment march of 2025 and here's why i say that i just made a list from my memory this morning when i woke up i'm sure there are other examples of this but of wave wave elections, of kind of weird things that I remember happening. I was in Iowa in 2006.
This was a Democratic wave election. This guy, Dave Loebseck, who was a professor at the University of Iowa, who had no money and was a far left lib, like ends up winning a district that nobody even ran ads in, right? Like he just was on the field and he ends up being in Congress.

2009, Scott Brown.

Everybody remembers.

Everybody remembers that.

Massachusetts Senate race.

The Republican wins.

Now he might seem kind of like a typical MAGA Republican, but he ran then as kind of a heterodox centrist kind of populist Republican.

2018, you were around for all this.

Doug Jones.

Kendra Horn wins in Oklahoma City.

Joe Cunningham wins in Charleston.

Max Rose in Staten.

Thank you. 2018, you were around for all this.
Doug Jones. Kendra Horn wins in Oklahoma City.
Joe Cunningham wins in Charleston. Max Rose in Staten Island.
Susan Wild is still around. She's a great congresswoman, wins in our district in Pennsylvania.
Allred wins in George Bush's district in Dallas, and then ends up becoming the Senate candidate. It doesn't win but like, you can see the long term value there.
Like these people won in unsuspecting places. But in order to win in unsuspecting places, like you have to try, right? And I think that this year in 2026, if the Trump thing is as much of a shit show as we all expect it's going to be, people are going to be able to win in unexpected places so you got to be out there to do it i gave a bunch of congressional examples but you do this like all the way down the ballot so like talk about your do you agree with me that like this is going to be the most ripe time and do you feel like folks are are going to respond to it i think that we have to like we democrats have to mentally and practically prepare to win big in 2026, which feels like an insane thing to say right now.
And the way we do that is by preparing to field as many candidates as possible for as many of these races as possible. And that recruitment work is happening now.
You know, in 20, I think it was 2018, we worked with a woman running for state ledge in Georgia and like pretty rural Georgia in a district that a Democrat had never competed in. In the like 50 years since they had drawn these maps, there had never been a Democrat on the ballot there.
She ran. She won.
Because as it turns out, in a year where there is a wave election, giving people an alternative will allow someone else to show up and like actually take power. we have had this happen so many times over the years but we'll have the first or only democrat to run in that race five years ten years ever who will if not win come within a point or two and all of a sudden the next cycle that district is a competitive race it is like the most basic building block of actually party building and of competing in these elections is to get a good candidate on the ballot and it's not that hard that's like the thing with running for office it is hard work it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of effort but it's actually not that difficult in terms of like logistics and communication that's what run for something is here to do is we help people figure all of that out once they've decided this is a step I want to take.
Yeah, I like that you said that about Jessica, she never ran. And when we moved here to New Orleans, I kind of looked at the statehouse map.
And I said to my husband, I was like, now, if you want to run for statehouse, we could move to Kenner, which is in the New Orleans suburbs, because the Democrats don't run a candidate there. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that in a wave year, a Democrat could probably win in like the New Orleans suburbs, right? Like that's like the Oklahoma City congressional example I gave, right? Like there are places like that where there still is a lag.
The other thing I wanted to just get your take on, because I think sometimes people like assume they can't do it or assume they shouldn't. I think that this is going to be a good year, like across the spectrum.
I talked to never Trumpers all the time who are like, I want to primary my Republican. I'm like, no, like depending on where you live, like just run as a Democrat, like you could just switch parties and run.
You can have some different views. And I think that's probably true for populist lefty Democrats too, right? Like, so I'm not even like, obviously I would prefer the never Trumpers run, but I think across the board, you know, having different types of views, particularly if they reflect where you are, is a good thing, I think, in these types of off years.
What do you think about that? I think that's absolutely right. I mean, especially when we're talking about state, local, or even congressional races, like you've got to run for the place you're in.
We should generally be aligned on values, like run for something has an endorsement process, we want to make sure we're all generally aligned on, you know, what we believe, but there's a lot of different ways to actually put those values into practice, depending on the community and what they want and what the like mechanics of the office are. And that I think when we people are talking about like no litmus test, that's the flexibility we need to be at right now.
Yeah, you had some former Republicans, right? Like, have been run for something candidates? You know, we have folks who really cross the spectrum. Basically, everyone we work with aligns as a Democrat or would align as a Democrat.
A lot of these races are technically nonpartisan. But we've got folks ranging from, like, the most, you know, DSA-type New York City Council candidates to, like, pretty conservative school board candidates in places like Alaska or Kansas or in Texas.
As long as they're all on the same page about what we're trying to accomplish, which is really like a pro-democracy, pro-education, pro-working families, pro-climate change is real and we have a responsibility to do something about it type approach, we can get behind them. Besides Congress, Congress might seem daunting for people.
So like at these lower levels, what other types of races? You mentioned school board, state ledge. Is there anything else that you're working with? So we're thinking about state house, state senate, city council, which especially when we're talking about housing, which I think is going to be one of the biggest issues in the next couple of years, city council or municipal offices, county commissions, which often in plenty of places actually oversee elections.
So if we're looking ahead to 2028, those are the kinds of pro-democracy positions we need. Library boards, hospital boards, mosquito abatement districts, coroners, about 1,300 counties elect coroners.
There's about a half a million elected offices in the United States. Most of them are not Congress, and most of them are totally winnable if someone is willing to put in the work and knock doors.
And they're way more interesting, I think, and more fun than being a member of Congress. What about the recruitment side? And obviously, you guys are doing some, some people are coming to you, folks are listening, they're like, I'm not going to run.
But everybody has networks. Do you have any advice on that as far as like recruitment, find figuring out the offices, finding people?

Yeah, so Run for Something as a site,

runforwhat.net, you can go to.

You can look up at your exact address

what offices are up for you in 2025 or 2026.

Fun fact, since election day,

nearly 25,000 people alone have done that,

gone and looked up what offices

they might want to run for

and started thinking about running for office.

Our total pipeline is only about 200,000 or a little less. So huge number in just the last couple of months.
Once you do that, you'll start getting materials from our team about how to figure out which office is right for you and how to raise the money. But if you're able to identify like the problem you care about solving, if you're able to point to how the office you run for will give you power to solve it and then why voters should want you to win, which is different than why you want to win.
You want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. Voters want you to win because you're going to do something for them.
Everything else we can teach you. What have you seen so far out there? You mentioned a lot of people have come to the site.
There's a lot of conversation about Dems being depressed. Do you feel like you're getting the level of interest in running that you did in 2018, more or less?

So in 2017, and then again in 2018, we had about 15,000 people each year sign up to run for office.

We're about to exceed both those years total in just the first quarter of this year.

Wow.

It is record numbers.

And we're seeing actually most of that come in since inauguration.

And basically every time Doge starts firing people or shutting down federal government offices, you see like another conversation or the terminations, we see hundreds and hundreds more people come into us. At the last couple of weeks, we've been averaging between five and 600 people a day thinking about running for office.
Awesome. All right.
Where do people go for more information? Runforsomething.net. You can learn more about us.
You can give us money. You can volunteer.
You can you can sign up to run and get all the information you have any other hot takes you want to share you know you're always out there doing goody two-shoes stuff maybe maybe you want to let loose on something before before you go you want to feel my uh my big rage today i think this was one of those things yesterday uh if you want to run against a octogenarian or septogenarian democratic elected official,

especially in a primary, I think this will be a really good year to do it.

Okay.

Primarying also.

Primarying also.

I also think it's going to be a good year for primarying.

That's a good place to leave it.

Amanda Levin, thank you so much for all your work and for coming on the pod.

Let's hang out soon.

Thanks, Tim.

We'll see you.

Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Borg Podcast.

See you all then.

Peace.

It doesn't hurt me Do you want to feel how it feels

Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me

Do you want to hear about the deal that they give you

It's you and me And if only could, I'd make a deal with God And I'd get him to swap places Be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building See if I only could I don't wanna know You don't wanna hurt me But see how deep the word lies Underwear and tear it in what's under There is thunder in our hearts Is there so much heat for the ones we love? Well tell me we both matter don't we? You It's you and me It's you and me You won't be unhappy If only God, I'd make a deal with God

And I'd get into small places

Be running down that road, be running down that hill

Be running down that building

See if only God The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.