'3 HUGE LIES': Rep. Jim Himes SLAMS Trump's speech

[0:00] The president told three huge lies last night. Number one, that our elections are corrupt. [0:04] They're not. Oh, and by the way, only the election of 2020, which he lost, is corrupt. [0:08] 2016 when he won and 2024 when he won, those were fine, no problem. But 2020 when he lost, [0:13] that one was corrupt. Can I ask you this? Because again, I'm a simple guy. Who was president [0:18] in charge of the 2016 election? This is a good one. Exactly. Exactly. And to your point. [0:25] It was Barack Obama. It was Barack Obama in 24, which was okay. That was sleepy Joe Biden. [0:32] But the only election that he says was rigged was the one in 2020 when he was president. [0:38] Exactly, Joe. So there's that lie. There's the lie. And this is in some ways the most pernicious one. [0:42] This deep state that the CIA or the FBI tried to keep this information from the president. And, [0:48] you know, he needs to say that, of course, because as you point out, it was his CIA. It was his FBI. [0:53] And the reason that really troubles me is that the intelligence community, Joe, [0:56] as you know, is full of amazingly patriotic people who get paid an awful lot less than [1:00] they should to do amazing and dangerous work. And last night you heard the president, [1:05] and by the way, working with the leadership of our current intelligence community, [1:09] slag those people off and lie about them. And most importantly, this whole China thing. [1:15] You read this thing. And by the way, I have with me, the American public can look at this. [1:19] This is a declassified intelligence community assessment prepared by the Trump leadership [1:25] in 2020 at the very end of his term, which says that the Chinese, it just says it in black and white, [1:31] the Chinese did not interfere in the election, full stop. Did they think about it? Did they do what [1:36] they always do, which is think about whether they can, you know, meet up and coming politicians [1:40] in California or whatever? Yes. But this thing says clearly that it was, as you pointed out, [1:45] the Russians who intervened just as they did in 2016 to help Donald Trump get elected. [1:51] So what we saw last night were three pernicious lies in the service, and your previous guest, [1:56] Sky Perryman, made this case very, very well, in the service of creating just enough doubt and anxiety [2:02] about our elections that when he loses, as he's going to do in November, he can say, [2:07] well, we've got new evidence of what I told you about in July in Georgia, in Michigan. And I have [2:12] sent armed DSH agents to DHS agents to take control of ballot boxes. Joe, that's the moment that our [2:20] democracy ends. Congressman, in the document that you just held up from 2021, we should remind our [2:26] viewers, because there's so much going on, that the current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, [2:30] was the director of national intelligence. So he knows. The man who was seated in that audience in [2:36] the East Room last night and stood and applauded at the end of that speech. He knows it's all nonsense, [2:40] because here's a quote from that report, quote, we have no indications that any foreign actor [2:46] attempted to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting [2:52] process. That's from that assessment of the Intel Committee in 2021. So you started to get into it [2:57] there, Congressman. But as we've been saying this morning, this speech was a pretext. He wants the [3:03] Save America Act pass. I don't think that's going to happen unless suddenly some of these Republicans [3:07] in the Senate changed their minds, which they could. But what do you believe specifically the [3:13] president is setting up right now? Is he going to use the National Guard? Could he use ice at [3:17] polling stations? What do you see coming? Look, in contrast to 2016, now he has all of the tools of [3:24] the federal government as his disposal. So let me just sort of play out that scenario. You know, [3:29] it's 9 o'clock on election night, and he realizes that he's going to lose control of the House of [3:33] Representatives, which is very likely, and maybe even the Senate, right? And so what he does is he [3:38] said, you know, he says, I've just gotten a report from the director of CIA or, you know, [3:43] the director of National Intelligence that the Iranians are currently conducting an operation [3:47] to damage the voting totals in California and Georgia and Michigan. And therefore, I have ordered [3:54] federal agents to take custody to save our elections from the Democrats and whoever it is he's going to [4:00] pick on, the Chinese in all likelihood, because that's what we heard last night. And they will [4:04] seize the ballot boxes in order to keep those ballot boxes secure. Now you have ballot boxes being [4:09] loaded into the back of DHS vans. The chain of custody is lost in those very sensitive locations [4:15] where, you know, the races could be won or lost by a couple hundred votes. And what do we do? What do we do? [4:20] The chain of custody is lost. We will never know if that scenario, in fact, plays out who won the [4:26] elections. And that is what last night was about, just getting enough of his people. And by the way, [4:31] I'm pretty familiar with his people because I was one of the last guys out of the chamber of the [4:35] House of Representatives on January 6, 2021, when his people broke windows, murdered police officers, [4:41] and went after, you know, members of Congress and senators wanted to hang Mike Pence. That's the level of [4:46] violence that his loyalists are willing to engage in. And I can't tell you how uncomfortable and [4:51] tragic it was for me to watch the president lie in the service of that mission and to watch his [4:56] people, like John Radcliffe, who I have known for many, many years, just stand by, instead of saying, [5:01] I have some principle, I have some integrity, I'm going to resign. That's the old world. That was [5:06] really painful to watch. Well, you know, and there are these police officers who died whose [5:17] families certainly think that their deaths, their suicides were directly related to what they [5:27] endured. And obviously, Brian Sicknick dying almost immediately after he had been attacked. [5:36] I think the next day. And these writers claiming they wanted to hang Mike Pence. [5:40] Yeah, hang Mike Pence. And to commit violent acts. [5:42] You know, David Rode, it's fascinating. Two people last night that were standing up, [5:49] and I will say, I do want to be careful about CIA Director Radcliffe because of all of Donald Trump's [5:57] aides. He has, in many ways, from people inside the agency, he's done a pretty good job of holding the [6:03] line on Ukraine and other issues. But you just heard about Director Radcliffe in his other position, [6:10] understanding that there was no evidence, as the Congressman said, that China was doing anything [6:18] to swing the election in 2020. But you also had Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was running [6:26] the Senate Intel Committee. And they concluded in an after-action report from 2016 that Donald Trump's [6:37] 2016 campaign posed, quote, a grave counterintelligence threat because of its openness to Russian influence. [6:51] And I won't read it again. But, you know, the only thing that was proven last night by documents released were [6:58] that it was the Russians, in fact, that were actively trying to influence the campaign in 2020 [7:05] based on documents the White House released, based on Donald Trump's administration in 2020. [7:13] All of these things. I mean, the calls are all coming from inside the House that are damning for [7:18] what the president tried to prove last night. Yeah, it's so hard to cover this because, [7:25] and I feel, you know, for the American public, and I just want to say the clearest explanation I have [7:30] for what's going on. And I'll talk about Radcliffe in one second. But this speech, to me, just shows [7:36] how desperate, delusional, and dangerous this administration, this president is becoming. [7:42] Just on Radcliffe, I think he owes an explanation to the American people. This is a public document. [7:49] This is his dissent that he put out in January 2021 after the election. And the main point he made [7:55] was that he believed that the amount, the effort to shape, not to interfere, not to change votes. [8:02] There's no mention in this document from John Radcliffe that China tried to or changed any votes in the 2020 [8:08] election. John Radcliffe simply made the argument that the Chinese effort to influence the operation [8:14] through propaganda and bots online was larger than the broader assessment that Representative [8:19] Hines was just talking about. And that dissent is actually in this document. It's actually public. [8:25] And so if there's anyone who should be held account now, whether it's by President Trump or if he [8:31] testifies before Congress, it's John Radcliffe. He either allowed this giant plot to happen where all this [8:37] was hidden from the president. He is a member of the deep state or he did not. And which one is it? [8:45] Director Radcliffe, were you part of a deep state plot that hid from the president of the United [8:49] States that China was doing all these nefarious things? I just, I don't understand it. He's got [8:55] an incredibly powerful position and I don't understand how he's trying to use it. And then I [9:00] have a couple of documents I want to talk about as well, but I don't want to talk too much this morning. [9:04] Yeah. You know, you know, Rev, I've got to say there are disagreements and there, if, if John [9:13] Radcliffe saw a Chinese influence in there, I, I personally, I'm glad that he wrote that dissent [9:19] to suggest, and I don't know Radcliffe. I maybe spoken to him one time on the phone for about five [9:26] minutes. But if somebody has a dissent, I put it in there. I think that's a good thing. But the fact [9:34] is, you know, nobody here is saying that we should not be alert to, to Chinese influence on our [9:41] elections. They may try to do it again in 26 or 28, just like Russia has tried to do it in 16, 20 and [9:48] 24. I, I, so I'm, I'm glad they're, they're staying alert to that. At the same time, there's just no [9:55] evidence of what Donald Trump was saying last night. No, there, there's no evidence. And, and I would, [10:02] uh, raise the question that, uh, if this was available to the president, uh, did he discuss [10:09] this with Xi when he went and visited China, uh, not that long ago? Uh, this, uh, it seems to me [10:15] that this is just something to discourage people from, uh, believing the results of the midterm [10:22] elections, which are likely to go democratic. My, my concern is that what will the Democrats do [10:30] to make sure that people do not feel that it's useless to vote? How will they defend the fact that [10:37] they may try to, uh, as, as Congressman Himes has said, confiscate and hold some of the, uh, [10:44] election returns? And how do we beat back that kind of cynicism where people feel it's of no value [10:50] to vote? So Congressman Himes, uh, is there a plan in place or would you suggest a plan that would in [10:58] fact say to people, don't be discouraged, come turn out anyway. Yes, we know they're trying to act [11:04] like everything is rigged, but these are going to be safe elections and we'll protect your vote [11:09] even if they try to, as you, uh, uh, as has been suggested, try to in some ways, uh, take some of [11:16] the ballots and hold them. Yeah. Well, um, thanks Reverend. Look, there's a political answer, a [11:21] partisan answer to that question, which is one thing that the democratic party needs to think about [11:24] doing is making the wind too big to rig. In other words, get people out there. The polling very much [11:30] indicates the level of energy. But then if you set aside the partisan stuff, which we should in this [11:34] conversation, yeah, um, the American people need to be constantly reassured that it's safe for them [11:40] to go to, to go to vote, that it is illegal. It is illegal for federal officers who are armed [11:44] to be anywhere near a polling place and that no matter what the circumstances are, they've got the right [11:49] to go in there and vote.