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Trump’s 100-Day Disaster: Tariffs, Fear, and Lies | A Conversation with Jim Acosta
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May 6, 2025
As Trump’s first 100 days reveal cruelty and chaos—from deporting a sick child to damaging the economy—Steve Schmidt & Jim Acosta expose the danger of rising authoritarianism and why bold Democratic leadership is essential. Subscribe for more and follow me here: Substack: https://steveschmidt.substack.com/subscribe Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thewarningses.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveSchmidtSES/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thewarningses Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewarningses/ X: https://x.com/SteveSchmidtSES
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0:00
Welcome, everybody. It's a special 100 Days of Trump edition of the Jim Acosta Show
0:05
As you can see, joining me is Steve Schmidt, the man, the myth, the legend
0:10
Steve, can we reveal the location where you are coming from, or should we just keep that our little secret
0:15
Well, I'm in Paris, America's first friend. And in about an hour, I'm going to go over to Lafayette's gravesite
0:26
and when Lafayette was in command of American forces at Yorktown at the moment that independence was won
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when the white flags went up over the British lines, he exclaimed, humanity has its victory
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Liberty has its country. There you go. And when American soldiers came to Paris in the first world
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They marched straight to that gravesite, and their commander said in a speech to the assembled French, Lafayette, we are here
1:09
Very good. The eyes of our alliances are something that's of profound importance, these values we share
1:18
And last night, Trump's lies stopped cold on our northern border as the Canadian people rebuked the insanity and elected a tough-as-nails principled leader
1:31
Yeah, Mark Carney. Trump in no uncertain terms that he's not the leader of the world
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He's not the leader of North America. He'll never be the leader of Canada
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And he's an awful leader of the United States. And that was an important message to hear
1:48
Absolutely. And I mean, I'll just give folks the headline because I'm sure they saw it last night
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But let's go over it. Canada's liberals, according to the AP, celebrated election victory in a stunning turn of fortune
2:00
The country would not know until later today whether the party of Prime Minister Mark Carney would have an outright majority or need help in parliament
2:08
But the populist conservative leader, Pierre Paliyev, he was in the lead until Donald Trump got involved in this race and then was essentially voted out of his parliament seat in this election
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Capped a swift decline, as the AP put it, in a reversal of fortunes for the firebrand Paliyev
2:28
And this is this is I mean, this is case in point. Trump was telling the Atlantic yesterday, not only is he the leader of the United States, he's the leader of the world
2:37
And oh, Canada, he is mistaken. He is mistaken. And what I would say about Polly Eve with regard to its implication in the United States, it's a foreshadowing of what's going to happen to Chuck Schumer as the Democratic minority leader
2:54
The reality is, is that the Schumercrats, the appeasement wing of the Democratic Party that just can't meet the moment that says, well, we sent a tough letter two days ago
3:06
The silliness, all of that will be rebuked. And what happened to Polyev, this is a guy who was prime minister shoo-in to not only is he not prime minister, he lost his seat in parliament
3:21
He's gone. He's looking for a job tomorrow. And he amazingly is saying, well, I'm going to retain power as the conservative leader, even though he lost an election that was his to lose
3:35
And that won't come to be. But it's an important moment up north because, you know, at the 100-day point, we can understand that Donald Trump is a fascist
3:45
This isn't in dispute anymore. And two, this has been a moral, political, constitutional, security, and economic catastrophe for the United States
4:00
And it's still on spooling. And it will get much, much worse over the course of the summer
4:06
And Steve, here we are at 100 days. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, because you're a deep thinker on all of these things
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And I thought we'd make it a little special doing live outside, make it look a little different because we're at this 100 day mark
4:20
But, you know, my question to you, Steve, is what is what is, I guess, the lesson learned in these first 100 days
4:29
You mentioned that Trump is a fascist. I think he is definitely governing as a fascist
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when you take a four-year-old kid with a U.S. citizen kid with cancer and send him off to
4:39
Honduras. That is the that is the ultimate act of just cruel heartlessness. But I wonder if this
4:45
is 100 days of bending the knee and it gives us a sense as to where bending the knee gets you
4:52
Is it 100 days of fear? Is it 100 days of fascism? What do you what do you see
4:58
What I see most profoundly, causally, how did this happen? Step outside of all of the passion of the moment, the month, the week, the pressure, right
5:17
Yells at some, you know, buddy on social media. Trump has always been a symptom of a decaying society
5:27
We live in a sick country where we have hundreds of school kids that have been blown away really without anyone doing everything, anything about it right over over 20 years
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We have a lot of brokenness in America. We had an opioid epidemic that killed a million people and no one talked about it really until about 2016
5:57
when you were north of a million people dead. What you are seeing in this moment
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is the profound corruption of America's elites, their fecklessness, their dishonesty, and their weakness
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So whether it's Brad Karp at Paul Weiss, whether it is Sherry Redstone at Paramount who wants to be a billionaire
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whether it is the executives at ABC News that gave Donald Trump $15 million for his library
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Joe Scarborough, I just have to say, this is a profound issue for MSNBC
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and Spinko, their morning show host policed in a fundamental way the permissible boundaries
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of what could be said about Biden. And he looked into the camera and he told his audience one morning, F you, F you
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If you don't believe that this is the best version of Biden that's ever been, he's sharper
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than ever, calls Trump a Nazi sitting next to his wife paid million a year And as soon as the election goes down he the first to genuflect
7:34
at Mar-a-Lago. And now he's what? And so the rottenness, the rot of all of this
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right? I agree. I agree with a lot of that, Steve. And, you know, to me, and I've said this on my show, when 60 Minutes is in trouble, we're all in trouble
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When Scott Pelley has to go on at the end of 60 Minutes and say, you know, listen, our parent company is looking over our shoulder
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This is why, Steve, you and I are here right now. This is why we are having this discussion on Substack, on independent media, because there has to be a way in this country to insulate the truth tellers from the chaos
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from the hate, the fear, the division in this country that we're seeing right now
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And that is a huge component of all of this. And I guess that's why I asked the question to kind of get us started with this conversation
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because I'm trying to put my finger on it. And to me, you know, I hate to go down the road of saying, well, this is a coup d'etat
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or this is a coup that's unfolding right in front of our eyes. But maybe it is a little bit of that when you have the Trump administration going out there
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and arresting a judge when you have the White House press secretary yesterday not ruling out
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the idea of arresting a Supreme Court justice. And now Trump talking about using the military
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using executive orders to use the military and law enforcement roles. You know, it's hard to
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sometimes see these things in real time, Steve. And maybe that's and yes, the elites did let us
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down. And yes, the billionaire tech pro class, when they came out on inauguration day, their masks
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did come down. There's no question about it. But I feel like something else has happened and that
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the people are rising up and they are seeing this for what it is. And that is a hostile takeover
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of this government and pushing it in a fascist authoritarian direction. When you talk about Carolyn Levitt, you just consider this belligerent, striding
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greening little child fascist. her. And I mean it. And all of her lies
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And all of these people. Do not be afraid. The most important thing is to realize in this moment
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that Trump is failing. The economy is crashing. And he's a laughingstock all over the world
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So Donald Trump can have a conversation in his head, just like any random New Yorker on a subway, sometimes talking to himself
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But the idea is he's some type of international arbiter of peace that he'll broke peace in Ukraine
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What a crock of shit. nonsense. The truth is what's changed in a hundred days, the word of the president of the United
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States is meaningless. The word of the United States of America is meaningless. He is erratic
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He is emotional. Now, there is a cohort of people, his court at Mar-a-Lago, his fascists
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that enrich themselves around him, Elon Musk and Bezos and all of these people
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that have tried to ride a tiger. Now, John Kennedy warned me
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you try to ride the tiger, you wind up inside. But when we talk about the zealotry
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when you see these people, they share a religion. They're cult members
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And their demigod is a man that they look at who can do no wrong, who is in their eyes a genius
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or they're weak enough that they won't tell anyone the truth, including themselves
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You know, a couple of years ago, I said this about Marco Rubio. I said it was clear to me that Marco Rubio, if he was in Cuba in 1959
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he would not be in Miami. he would be in Havana harrying Fidel Castro's code
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that he's a water boy, and he would do anything for power
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And at that time, when I said it, both he and Ted Cruz melted down
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Yeah. Who was right? No, I'll tell you right now, absolutely. And I was talking about this on my show in regards to what's happening with this little boy
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with cancer, a four-year-old U.S. kid with cancer sent to Honduras with his mother
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And Marco Rubio is on the Sunday talk shows excusing it and saying, well, his mother was
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given the choice. He left with his mother. We don't know that, by the way, because the mother did not have an opportunity to speak
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to her lawyer. And so what Marco Rubio is asking is that we take the word of Marco Rubio, the Marco
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Rubio-led State Department and the word of Carolyn Leavitt in the United States government
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and the United States government has zero credibility. That's right. Donald Trump has zero credibility
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They have the same level of credibility as did Baghdad Bob when he was standing outside
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the airport with American tanks behind him saying the Americans were not at the airport
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And so what we will see as Trump's numbers collapse is a growing intensity in zealotry, right
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So you have to understand a little bit of astronomy here, right, to get to politics
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When a star collapses, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller until it becomes a black hole
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But as it gets smaller, it becomes denser. It becomes heavier. Its mass increases
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And so the political ogy of that is as this shrinks, and this is a great day to talk about this because we're on the eve of the 80th anniversary of Hitler killing himself
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And he was moving imaginary armies around on maps in front of capitulant sycophants 48 hours before he poisoned his dog and shot himself in the head
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Pretend is the dogma of the Trump administration. And so as we move through this summer, there's going to be profound economic hardship in America
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the last of the container ships that sailed from Chinese ports to the United States
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left at the beginning of April. Yeah. Right? The number of ships has dramatically reduced month over month
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and we'll start to see these shortages play out. And so Donald Trump can investigate the pollsters
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Donald Trump can threaten to lock up the reporters But the American people clearly see the insanity including all of Donald Trump supporters And we about to see a full on assault on federal lands public lands that will enrage blue collar hunters cowboys many many people across this country
15:13
Yeah. And Steve, you know, the other thing you get into the tariffs and the trade policy aspect of all of this, I mean, we're still seeing what appears to be a continued bending of the knee
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Amazon just today, I guess, is disputing a news report that it planned to display the cost of Trump's tariffs to consumers after Caroline Levitt went after Amazon
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When the report came out, she said in the briefing room, this is a hostile and political act by Amazon
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Amazon is now knocking down the story that they were planning on doing this. But when I woke up and heard this report this morning, I was going to say, hey, way to go, Amazon
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I mean, you know, around and find out. You're obviously, you know, your efforts to bend the knee to Donald Trump were ultimately unsuccessful
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Your business is ultimately going to be hurt. But if they were going to slap some some price points on their products and say, hey, you know, this is what you're paying in tariffs
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I was going to say, hey, way to go, Amazon. Way to go. Way to stand up to the bully
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Way to stand up to the dictator. And it sounds as though maybe they floated this out there and now they're backing down
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And again, it goes to what you're saying at the very onset of this special edition, Steve
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The elites, big business, Wall Street, the political class of this country, they're all bending the knee and kowtowing to a guy who is clearly out of control and maybe out of his mind
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And it will define their brands, their companies for the rest of their lives
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The simple truth is that in 2026, the Democratic message is very simple
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Give us power to put a check on Trump. Period. Yeah. Do what the Canadians did, basically
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In 2028, right, you have to start to put some meat on the bones
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And so the most important policy is a serious intellectual approach to break up these companies that have threatened American democracy and to defang America's billionaire class
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And there's a lot of different ways to do that. Now, there will be accountability. If you're a federal agent wearing a mask and chaining a four-year-old, I assure you, you will appear one day before a congressional committee. You may well appear before the International Criminal Court
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That's right. That's right. There will be accountability for evil acts. And every person in the Trump administration that through their arrogance and through their delusions thinks we've arrived at an end of history where Trump is king and they are his lords and they are above the law and we are below their boot
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Yeah. will have a hard lesson. Now, Elon Musk is never going to Mars
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He's not going to be part of the American space program, and he won't be a Pentagon contractor beyond the term of Trump's
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Chinese companies will overtake Tesla, which is being bled out, will be destroyed
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Now, Democrats, whether it's the pension funds, right? It's essential that Elon Musk companies be destroyed because, economically, of what he did
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He attacked the Constitution of the United States. And so Elon may say, well, geez, politics was rough
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I'm going to go home to Texas now. Well, a posse is following him back
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And so we're going to run all of these people down as part of an opposition
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Another thing I just want to say, Jim. Well, they may be banishing themselves to the political wilderness, but point taken, yeah
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This has also exposed the fecklessness of a lot of Democrats. It's unmasked them
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Yeah. Right? It's ended in an era. And no person more so than Gavin Newsom
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Yeah. Hollow. Vapid. shallow a saturday night live character who who doesn't understand at the most elemental of levels
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the concept of political leadership in a crisis going on the charlie kirk show the steve
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all of this yeah gavin newsom yeah right should understand why is it that there was a battle
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fought in Gettysburg that killed 58,000 people. Why was that battle fought there
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It was fought there because it was necessary to fight there because that's where the Confederate
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Army invaded. Yeah. And that's where the forces met. So when you have a man who's been sent to a concentration camp and the Supreme Court
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said bring him back and the Trump administration has said no. The governor of California
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wishes to take a nomination that was taken by John Kennedy by Franklin Roosevelt says
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wrong fight, wrong time. We have to, according to my pollsters, it's as despicable
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as it gets. Yeah, talk about putting your finger in the wind and maybe doing some Clintonian triangulation, you know, by going on with the likes of Steve Bannon and so on
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It's just a miss, I think, a miss, a fundamental misreading of the moment. And, you know, you touched on a couple of things, Steve, that I want to touch on as well
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And that is and I was talking about this the other day, you know, this gulag prison warden down in El Salvador needs to understand
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Talk about people who need to understand what is going to happen in 26 and 28
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You're going to be dealing with different administrations. And if you think that the United States of America under a different administration is
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going to look kindly upon you running a gulag in El Salvador and that you're going to have
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this kind of Trump most favored nation status when somebody else comes into office, you're
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really you're just deluding yourself. And so, I mean, Bukele down in El Salvador, he needs to come back to planet Earth and
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realize that this Donald Trump monarchy fantasy land bullshit is just not going to last
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And as for the Democratic Party, I mean, I thought I saw glimmers of the future in the
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past the other night when I saw Al Gore on with Bill Maher and Al Gore really calling Trump out for who he is and what he does And I just wondering you know I thinking to myself and we saw we seen flashes of Al Gore like that since he lost the 2000 election
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But that's where the Democratic Party is right now or that's where it wants to be right now
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It doesn't want to be in this party of triangulation and trying to figure it out
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And let's sit back and let Trump blow himself up. People do not want that. They just don't
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I'm going to tell you, like, I'm seeing some of the lists that are starting to pop up of candidates, right, including by some friends of mine, right, speculating about this
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And I think that across the board, they're delusional. I'm going to tell you who I think is, like, top tier 2028 candidates, right, using a run
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Pritzker. Yep. AOC. Yep. Let me give you two congressional names. Jake Auchincloss and Jason Crow
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Both of them top-tier candidates. Pete Buttigieg. Absolutely. No question about it
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Top-tier candidate. Josh Shapiro. Top-tier candidate. Gretchen Whitmer, who put the folder over her face in the Oval Office, it's done
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Amy Klobuchar is not going to be a credible presidential candidate. Any of the retreads, right, from 2024, not
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No Kamala Harris. It's all over, right? So we're going to have new people, right, talented people
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And if you can't talk without an army of consultants and dial tests, not going to make it
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It's not going to happen. I agree. And so right now, like in this moment, fundamentally, you have 47 Democratic senators
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Yeah. I think it's great that a Chris Murphy is traveling the country and doing town halls
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Yep. But I had an observation watching that Bill Maher show, watching Adam Schiff
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Does Adam Schiff not understand he's a United States senator? All right
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That when you listen to Adam Schiff. Yeah. It's like he's dissociated from his office. well
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I think this is bad and not bad specifically what powers will you use
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that you have and please tell me to obstruct and stop this everything
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every nominee should be blocked the Democrats should be an iron wall
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and that starts with having a meeting and I'm just saying this
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there's no credible person, just common sense, knowing the stakes, how do you have a meeting
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where nobody in the meeting says, after the Biden debacle, Chuck, you got to go. My constituents
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don't accept you as the leader of the party. The voters of New York gave you a term. They love you. Run again
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But you got to go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I and the day you and I've talked about this before, Steve, the Democrats are in the wilderness. They they they they're out in the open seas
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It's it kind of reminds me of the Robert Redford movie where he's on the boat and the boat hits the piece of freight ship and cuts a big hole in it
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And it's sinking and he's trying to put it together. I think the movie is called All is Lost, something like that
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And it's just slowly sinking and he's slowly putting duct tape on it and he's trying to put it together and so on
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And it may not be until he's falling to the bottom of the ocean that the arm comes from a rescue boat that pulls him up
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It just seems like that's where they are right now. And you're right
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There are a lot of bright names out there. There's a part of me that wonders whether we're going to see a credible, independent, Ross Perot-type figure this next time around
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I don't know who the hell that's going to be, if it's a media figure, if it's a corporate figure. I forgot to, I forgot, I put George Clooney on that list too
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Interesting. I don't know that George Clooney wants to run for president
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Yeah. But I think that if George Clooney does run, he's thoughtful and he's got an awful lot of public character
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And what he's doing right now, you know, John Kennedy's last speech celebrated the life of Robert Frost
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and it was about the role of the artist in society. And the role of the artist in a free society
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is foundational and elemental. I'm so glad he brought back good night and good luck too
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Yeah. And that's service right now, right? Yeah, there really is. There's nothing, nothing, right
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that's more important, right, when you look at the dimensions of this that aren't talked enough
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George Clooney doing good night and good luck. My friend Bishop William Barber and Reverend Jonathan Wilson Hargrove last night were arrested under the Capitol Rotunda for daring to pray in front of the suffragette statue
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And so this moral man who leads a moral movement came to the Capitol desecrated by the Confederate flag and Trump's insurrectionists on January 6th to pray for the country
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And if you look at the picture, the picture is worth a thousand words
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Yeah. There is a Capitol police officer in jacket, a woman standing
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And Bishop Barber made clear that he was treated with courtesy by the police
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These are first class guys. But the picture, the picture on the back of the jacket of the woman police officer in the Capitol says crime scene
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Wow. And you see these cops bearing down on Reverend Barber, on Reverend Hargrove and other ministers
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And the back of the jacket says crime scene. Wow. And truly no truer words
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What a crime scene it was. And it's a crime scene of the making of the Christian nationalist speaker of the House who proclaims himself a disciple of Jesus Christ, but arrested one of the foremost followers of Jesus Christ, Bishop Barber, and his entourage as they prayed for the country
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This was an act of evil. It is. Steve, thank you so much for coming on
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I want to leave for sure. Pondering what Steve Schmidt has told us
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I'm going to bring in a couple other folks in just a moment. But Steve, always a pleasure
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Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jim. Good to see you, my friend. And I'm always infused with that passion that you bring every time
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Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you, Jim. Enjoy Paris. I'm Steve Schmidt
29:29
This is The Warning. I invite you to join this community where I promise to be honest, blunt, and direct
29:36
about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe
29:42
to this channel and on Substack. Thank you
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