Trump's Big Speech Was 'Gibberish,' 'Drivel,' 'Horseshit'

[0:03] Welcome to a Zeteo live stream. I'm Mehdi Hassan. I'm joined by Zeteo Senior Political Correspondent Swin Subsan. Good evening, Swin. [0:11] Good to see you. And only you, not the president. [0:15] Well, we're also going to be joined by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland shortly to give his take on what's been going on tonight. [0:20] We're doing this live stream because Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has given a national address from the White House, [0:27] a very sober speech, read from a prompter, not like one of his rally speeches. [0:31] He spoke at nine o'clock for half an hour and he gave this big speech in which he claimed he alleged that the 2020 election, you'll be shocked to hear, was stolen, was rigged against him. [0:45] He made a series of outlandish, unsubstantiated, conspiratorial and self-serving claims about the 2020 election. [0:51] The mad king who's never accepted his own defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in 2020. [0:56] In fact, he's never accepted defeat at the hands of Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses. [1:00] He says those were rigged, too. A man who's never accepted defeat tonight came out and claimed that the Chinese government interfered in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden get elected and to defeat him, [1:12] which is weird, Swin, because number one, he didn't provide any evidence for this big claim. [1:17] He talked a lot about intelligence, stuck a bunch of documents on the White House website, but none of them actually showed any evidence of hacking or vote rigging or vote manipulation. [1:25] In fact, the opposite. And we'll talk about those documents. Number two, if Xi Jinping, the Chinese government, Chinese dictator pulled this off, why does Trump constantly say he's best friends with him and he likes him so much if he's this nefarious actor, as Trump claimed tonight? [1:38] And number three, of course, the most important point of all is that the U.S. intelligence community under Donald Trump in January 2021 went to Trump and said, [1:48] it's our conclusion. And this was the handpicked director of national intelligence. What is it, Swin? John Ratcliffe. [1:53] And this report concluded, and I quote, and you can read it online, everyone watching and you're watching on Substack and YouTube. We appreciate you all. [1:59] This is the quote. We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. election, [2:07] including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation or reporting results. [2:11] We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered, but did not deploy influence efforts to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. [2:20] That is what the intelligence has always said. So what was the point of this address tonight? [2:25] It was one of the most pathetic excuses for any presidential act I've seen in my entire life. [2:30] I know we've been saying that a lot over the past year and a half. That doesn't make it any less true. [2:36] And also, all of your points, obviously, very good, very true. Ultimately, the reason for Donald Trump and his administration coming out to do this [2:48] is not for it to make coherent sense to people with relatively normal brains like you and I, or I'm sure all of our legions of Zeteo fans here. [2:59] Obviously, we're going to be doing a good bit of fact-checking here because that's our responsibility as journalists. [3:06] But to some extent, them trotting out this alleged intelligence, these declassified whatevers, these bold claims, [3:12] they're not made to actually be fact-checked. They're made to kind of throw a shiny object out there, get people to chase it. [3:20] And at some point, you're chasing your own tail if you're doing that because they're just putting out a whole bunch of bullshit [3:25] that, one way or another, Donald Trump is going to use to continuously justify his and the Republican Party's crackdowns on elections. [3:34] Efforts to steal not just the 2026 midterm elections, but other elections going forward, even when Donald Trump is off the political field. [3:43] That's the point. [3:45] They're just sort of grasping for any sort of patina they can to do this. [3:49] And look, another way that you know it's complete bullshit is because of the way the speech was written. [3:56] We have reporting at Zeteo to this effect. We haven't written it yet. [4:00] So whatever, I'm just going to say it here and we're going to give it to the ears of our listeners and subscribers right now. [4:06] Trump and his White House senior staff have been repeatedly briefed that his administration, [4:12] this time around, the Trump-Vance administration, you know, in their eyes, the good one, not the lazier one of Trump 1.0, [4:19] whatever they want to claim, have not been able to find the smoking gun that China actually managed to flip votes in Joe Biden's direction in 2020. [4:29] This is after Donald Trump and his White House sicked the Bill Pultys, the John Solomons of the world, [4:35] all these guys, the truest of hardcore election deniers, pro-Trump election deniers, [4:41] to go about the federal government, shamble about all these classified documents, [4:46] to try to find a smoking gun that Donald Trump has been insisting for years has been there, [4:51] that China and maybe other nefarious actors flipped votes, hacked voting machines, [4:57] to make Joe Biden the anointed leader in 2020, to stick the screws to Donald Trump. [5:03] Even these guys, the most internet brain-cooked people on the planet, [5:09] who Donald Trump put in highly sensitive position powers, could not find that actual smoking gun, [5:14] even though they were supposedly given everything that they so desired. [5:18] So that is why when he went out there tonight, you and other eagle-eared or eagle-eyed listeners [5:24] may have noticed that the speech was written in this kind of way that was just jackful of innuendo. [5:29] They talk about attempts, they talk about intelligence, but they would never talk about [5:34] that we found a smoking gun that showed the election was stolen by China in Joe Biden's favor in 2020. [5:40] That's why Donald Trump would say all these different asides, where he'd say like, [5:44] oh, we know a lot of bad stuff happened, oh, we can never have another stolen election again. [5:48] He never actually connected the two thoughts in his speechwriter-written speech tonight. [5:52] And that's because even these conspiratorial crackpots who he's employing right now could not find the smoking gun. [5:59] They just cannot agree. [6:00] So on the smoking gun point, on the smoking gun point, what's so interesting is, as you say, innuendo. [6:04] But he also claims to have all these documents, right? [6:06] He begins the speech saying, we're putting all these documents online. [6:09] And people have gone through already the documents online. [6:11] And they found one document on the White House website that the White House released, [6:15] which is supposed to be part of the smoking gun that doesn't exist. [6:17] This is a document that they put out from intelligence, which specifically says the intelligence community, [6:22] this is from the 2020 campaign, the intelligence community assesses that China does not currently intend to covertly interfere [6:28] to try to sway the outcome of the election, although this activity could enable such operations if Beijing made a decision to do so. [6:36] Oh, that's strange because that completely undermines the entire speech. [6:40] Listening to the speech tonight, Swin, you and I are old enough to remember 2002, 2003, the run-up to the Iraq war. [6:45] I feel like Donald Trump has gone full George W. Bush this year. [6:49] The bombing of Iran, the embrace of the neocons, and now standing up and giving addresses to the nation, [6:56] claiming to be citing U.S. intelligence, which isn't really U.S. intelligence, [7:00] claiming to be quoting the CIA, which hasn't really been vetted by the CIA, [7:03] and then insisting on finding a smoking gun that they're so incompetent they can't even find the smoking gun. [7:08] Remember, George W. Bush, they could have planted WMDs. [7:10] I always think about the Iraq war and think, why didn't they just plant some WMDs? [7:12] No one would have known. [7:13] Why did they just keep lying? [7:14] They got so exposed, and today you have Donald Trump doing this address, [7:19] and now we're going through all the information. [7:21] He's being mocked again, rightly so, tonight, because he hasn't got anything. [7:25] And by the way, I want to read one quote to you. [7:27] This was the quote that jumped out to me. [7:29] And we've got Congressman Raskin joining shortly. [7:31] Also, for you, those of you watching on YouTube and Substack, [7:33] stick your questions, your comments in the comments, and we will try and put them to Swin. [7:38] I'll try and put them to the congressman. [7:40] I'll try and deal with them. [7:41] We'll come to as many as we can. [7:42] And we know you're watching live, and you've got a lot of questions. [7:44] But this line, Swin, jumped out to me. [7:46] I'm going to read it to you. [7:47] This is my favorite line from Donald Trump tonight. [7:49] Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, [7:54] stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. [7:59] So this statement is so good because it says that even the statement says they attempted to manufacture illegal. [8:07] It doesn't say that ballots were changed. [8:08] It doesn't say that Joe Biden got any fake votes. [8:10] And the favorite part is raw intelligence obtained by the FBI. [8:14] Do we know what raw intelligence is? [8:16] It means it's unvetted. [8:17] It means it could be a tip. [8:18] It could be anything randomly that the FBI got hold of. [8:22] That's why it's called raw. [8:23] That's why it doesn't go to the president directly. [8:25] And by the way, Donald Trump, if we are now accepting raw intelligence from the FBI, [8:31] I would remind you that the FBI in the Epstein files claims to have lots of unverified intelligence [8:36] about Donald Trump abusing children, which we all rightly, responsibly as journalists say, [8:42] you know what, Donald Trump denies that, and it's not been verified. [8:45] These are just things in the files that the FBI were looking into. [8:49] Well, if we're going to start playing the raw intelligence game, [8:51] does Donald Trump now accept the raw intelligence in the Epstein files, Swin? [8:55] Of course he does. [8:56] He's a completely intellectually and morally consistent human being. [8:59] And surely he's going to say that one plus one equals two on that front. [9:05] But listen, as you have pointed out so often on these and other matters when it comes to [9:10] Trump, when it comes to his Republican Party, every accusation is a confession of some sort. [9:17] They, Trump spewed this horseshit about Michigan and how Democrats were rigging that in 2020. [9:23] With gift cards, apparently. [9:24] With gift cards. [9:25] Just quick context, quick context for people watching. [9:28] This was a voter registration firm in Michigan that was looked at by the AG's office that [9:32] the FBI then looked at. [9:33] No charges were ever brought. [9:35] These were people who raided their offices and they found, yes, they found gift cards, [9:39] prepaid phones. [9:40] Guess what they were for? [9:41] They were for volunteers who come from out of town and go door knocking and the firm provides [9:44] them. [9:45] There was no evidence of them trying to buy votes. [9:46] But I suspect I know where you're going, Swin. [9:48] What were you going to say before I jumped in with the context? [9:50] No, you tell me where I was going with that. [9:53] I think this is my favorite one. [9:56] Elon Musk. [9:56] I think you and I were both going to say, you said accusation is a confession. [10:00] If you're going to talk about buying votes, Elon Musk in the last election in Pennsylvania [10:03] was offering, what, millions of dollars in checks to people for voter registration drives? [10:09] Yeah. [10:09] Yeah. [10:09] It's absurd. [10:12] Like, Trump and his party just want to rig and steal as many elections as they can between [10:17] now and November and now, basically until the end of time for many years and decades [10:22] going forward. [10:23] This speech tonight was laughable in so many ways, and it would be easier to laugh off [10:28] if they weren't for the broader context. [10:30] Because in a vacuum, he did a stupid presidential address tonight to basically say the election [10:35] equivalent of, my saliva cures STDs. [10:39] That's basically what he did today. [10:41] It's such a bald-faced, like, he didn't get anything right in any stupid line he said [10:46] tonight. [10:47] But the reason it's so terrifying is, please, go ahead. [10:51] No, I always am delighted that we have bumbling fascists, not smart fascists. [10:54] If we had smart fascists, that speech tonight would have been a very dangerous speech. [10:58] It's still a dangerous speech. [10:59] Let's not play it down. [11:00] But clearly, he did not deliver on anything compared to what we were worried he might claim. [11:04] I mean, even the claims he made were so absurd. [11:06] And on that note, let us go to a very prominent Democrat who knows this subject very well, a [11:11] former House impeachment manager for Donald Trump. [11:13] Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland is here tonight. [11:16] Good evening, Congressman. [11:18] Great to be with you, Mehdi. [11:21] Swin Sup Sang is with me here, our political correspondent. [11:23] Just tonight's craziness. [11:26] Let me start with a very simple question. [11:28] It comes from Gary on YouTube, one of our viewers watching right now. [11:31] He says, is this his first step to try and delay the midterms or do something to the midterms? [11:36] What was the forward-looking part of this? [11:38] What should we be worried about tonight with this speech? [11:41] Well, this is the middle of that campaign. [11:44] He's been trying a whole bunch of steps. [11:46] Again, he was throwing spaghetti on the wall, but it was just gibberish and drivel. [11:51] It was, you know, a tale told by a lame duck president filled with sound and fury signifying [12:01] nothing. [12:02] And we can go and refute each, you know, each component, which we should. [12:07] But remember, the whole thing is utter nonsense. [12:10] And I suppose it was a minor success for the White House in that we were not talking about [12:15] the Epstein files. [12:16] We were not talking about the disastrous, illegal, unconstitutional war with Iran, which [12:22] continues to spiral downward. [12:25] We're not talking about how difficult it is for people to make ends meet in America. [12:30] So I suppose they distracted everybody for half an hour or so. [12:34] But the public anger is rising. [12:38] And everywhere you go, I've been traveling around the country, Mehdi, to campaign for Democrats [12:43] and House and Senate races, we're getting huge surging crowds of people demanding that [12:49] we take our democracy back. [12:51] You see very few red MAGA hats. [12:54] Anywhere you go, his support is melting away. [12:57] Swin. [12:58] Congressman Raskin, you were mentioning about the surging support that you're seeing across [13:03] the country. [13:03] Okay, let's say the Democrats do take back the House, maybe even the Senate. [13:07] But let's just talk about the House right now. [13:09] So next year, Democrats have power again. [13:13] The President of the United States, as ridiculous as a lot of this is, it is substantively scary [13:18] in my honest assessment. [13:19] He is using, perverting, among other departments, the U.S. intelligence apparatus to help him try [13:26] to rig elections. [13:27] In plain English, that's what he's doing right now. [13:29] What do you think your party should do once they have gavel power back to investigate or [13:36] do something to hold accountability of what they've been doing right now? [13:39] We need to continue to expose and counter and reject the reign of authoritarianism and corruption [13:47] that has overtaken the entire U.S. government. [13:50] And that means we've got to stop all of the exploitation of the government for moneymaking. [13:57] They've converted the presidency into a for-profit enterprise. [14:02] We need to defend the right to vote and the democracy at all costs against all these attacks. [14:08] And then, look, you know, Tocqueville in Democracy in America said that in our country, voting rights [14:14] and democracy are either shrinking and shriveling away because he understood the autocratic forces [14:19] in the country, or they're expanding and growing. [14:22] And we've got to get democracy back on the growth track. [14:25] And, you know, it's time for us to start electing the president of the United States by popular [14:29] vote the way we elect governors and senators and representatives and mayors. [14:33] The vast majority of the country supports that. [14:35] One thing I agree with Trump about is statehood, but not for Greenland and Canada and Panama, [14:40] but for 713,000 disenfranchised people in the nation's capital who are being trampled every [14:46] day by the policies of this administration. [14:49] So we've got to get democracy moving again. [14:51] I don't want to be in a defensive crouch about democracy. [14:55] I want us moving forward. [14:56] Sure. [14:56] But speaking of being on offense, what should Democrats do once they're back in power [14:59] about what the administration is doing right now? [15:02] With respect to this? [15:03] Well, you know, with respect to the speech tonight, it's almost self-debunking. [15:09] I mean, there was this national intelligence assessment that was done right after the election, [15:18] which demolished and refuted the entire purpose of his speech tonight. [15:23] It said that there was no technical interference, even by Vladimir Putin, who was the real person [15:28] trying to affect the outcome of the election. [15:31] But it did not go technical in 2020. [15:34] It was just massive propaganda and disinformation. [15:37] And that was on Trump's behalf, not against Trump. [15:41] Iran, in their third finding, I believe, was found to have tried to do some of the same stuff [15:49] against Trump, not necessarily in favor of Biden, but just undermining Trump. [15:54] I suppose Trump got Khamenei back by killing him in this war for whatever he was doing at that point. [16:01] But the key finding is the first finding, I think maybe you read it, which simply said there was [16:07] no technical interference with voter registration, with people casting ballots, with the tabulation [16:14] of the ballots or the reporting of the results. [16:16] And they said that definitively. [16:17] And that echoed the finding of 60 different federal and state court decisions rejecting [16:23] and repudiating every claim of electoral fraud or corruption by Donald Trump. [16:29] Let's go back to the big picture. [16:30] Joe Biden beat him by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in Electoral College. [16:38] And not even any of these fantastical allegations lays a glove on any of those facts. [16:44] There's zero evidence of any vote change. [16:45] Even tonight, he didn't say, I would have won if X or Y had not been done. [16:49] Even in one state, he didn't say, no, I'm glad you mentioned Russia, because, of course, [16:54] he didn't mention Russia conveniently tonight. [16:56] And yet the documents they posted on the White House website do mention Russia. [16:59] There's an intelligence document posted on the White House website tonight that says we [17:03] assess this is from the 2020 campaign. [17:05] We assess that Russia is using a range of measures primarily to denigrate former Vice President [17:09] Biden, which he never mentions, of course, because that doesn't fit the narrative. [17:12] But even Russia, as you say, and as the intelligence says, did not change any votes. [17:16] And it was a secure election, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security [17:20] Agency, CISA. [17:21] He did a weird impression, Congressman, if you know tonight, of Chris Krebs. [17:24] He did a kind of, oh, they said it was secure, because he's really bothered by Chris Krebs [17:29] and the CISA saying it was secure. [17:31] I just want to remind our viewers that Trump has cut the CISA budget. [17:35] He's cut the FBI task force devoted to looking at foreign interference. [17:39] So he doesn't actually care about foreign interference. [17:41] This is about domestic politics. [17:42] And one other important point he made that Swin and I haven't discussed yet. [17:45] Let me put it to you. [17:46] He said a quarter of a million non-citizens are on the voter rolls, that non-citizens [17:50] are voting. [17:51] Of course, there's no evidence for this. [17:52] Even the Heritage Foundation could not find any significant non-voting over 25 years. [17:57] But is the purpose of that, Congressman, in your view, a justification to get ICE at the [18:03] polling stations in November? [18:04] Is it to try and seize more voting information from the states that courts have prevented him [18:09] from doing? [18:10] What do you think the goal of the quarter of a million claim is? [18:12] Well, sure, everything's on the table. [18:15] I mean, we saw that back in 2020, where Trump threw out all kinds of things in order to [18:24] set the predicate for different kinds of actions, right? [18:26] So there was the plot to throw in counterfeit electoral college slates. [18:33] There was mobilizing the mob online and with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, [18:40] other extremist groups that they organized. [18:43] There was the direct pressure campaign against Vice President Pence. [18:46] There was Donald Trump just calling up Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia saying, [18:51] just find me 11,780 votes. [18:54] So they're trying a whole lot of different things. [18:56] And they're trying to set the predicate for different kinds of attacks on the electoral system. [19:01] Imagine if they put 1% of the energy that they've got into this, into just following the law and [19:08] releasing the Epstein files, right? [19:10] All they got to do is release them, but they're withholding them, suppressing them. [19:13] That's Todd Blanche's main job over there, right? [19:16] Other than getting the $1.8 billion to Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. [19:21] It's interesting that he referred to himself again as the most transparent administration. [19:25] He referred to the Transparency Commission or Task Force that he heaped praise on. [19:30] He also referred to the Intelligence Advisory Board, which contains people like Katie Miller. [19:34] So we're really going to take that one seriously. [19:36] Swin, over to you. [19:37] So, Congressman, obviously, in some respects, not everything, their bark is worse than their bite [19:44] when it comes to their quote-unquote election integrity talk. [19:49] Like, I don't want to be too much of a doomsayer or someone who freaks people out needlessly [19:53] about what Trump and his administration can do in terms of trying to rig 2026 or any other [19:58] elections going forward. [19:59] Having said that, they are trying on a multitude of fronts to tilt the election towards Trump's [20:06] party this and other years going forward. [20:08] What are the scenarios that keep you as an elected representative up at night about what [20:15] they could actually do this year or other years going forward? [20:20] Yeah. [20:21] Well, first of all, we don't have to imagine and engage in kind of hypothetical extrapolations [20:27] at this point. [20:27] They're doing it all over the country. [20:29] For example, if you go to Texas, they are they've shut down dozens of polling places around [20:34] the state. [20:35] Our people are fighting that every single day. [20:37] And we've won a bunch of cases. [20:40] They're trying to throw people off the rolls in certain states because they didn't vote [20:45] in the last election. [20:47] I mean, you look at the attack on voting rights in Florida. [20:50] It's remarkable that the Democratic Party is still standing and fighting back. [20:55] And we've got a very strong candidate for the U.S. Senate down there in Alex Vindman. [21:00] And we've got a very strong candidate for governor, a former Republican, David Jolly. [21:05] But it was a tie election in 2000 at best. [21:10] And that was with, you know, ex-felon disenfranchisement and hundreds of thousands of people excluded [21:16] by Katherine Harris because their names resembled those of former prisoners. [21:22] But in any event, now they say, well, it's a very red state. [21:26] It's a red state because of voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression tactics that they've systematically [21:32] engaged in. [21:32] The Republican Party can't deliver health care to anybody. [21:36] They can't keep prices down. [21:39] They're waging war on the working middle class of the country. [21:43] And the one thing that they do well is try to steal elections by suppressing the vote, [21:49] gerrymandering the districts and so on. [21:51] They spend full time on that. [21:53] That's all they're doing. [21:54] So I'm with you. [21:55] And that means we've got to take it seriously. [21:57] We've got to be fighting back every single day. [21:58] What are Democrats not doing right now to fight back that if you were leader or speaker or [22:04] whoever, you would be advocating that they should be doing right now to fight back, that [22:08] they're not? [22:08] Well, look, we have teams of hundreds of lawyers around the country who are working on every [22:14] attempt to strip people of their right to vote, to make it more difficult to register, [22:19] to throw people off of the rolls. [22:22] My colleague, Joe Morelli, who is the chair or he's the he'll be the incoming chair, but [22:29] he's the ranking member on the House Administration Committee, which will oversee any voter contests [22:34] that take place. [22:36] He's right now leading the fight for us in there. [22:38] And we are all on his team helping. [22:40] But I guess what I would say is we need to build a landslide so large they can't steal it. [22:47] The Republicans do best when it's a very thin margin, when we just beat them. [22:52] So like Hillary Clinton beat Trump by two and a half million votes in 2016, that big victory [23:00] that he was so proud of. [23:01] She beat him in the popular election by two and a half million votes. [23:05] So we didn't go around and, you know, spend the next four years trying to, you know, undermine [23:12] the government on that principle, which undoubtedly they would have done. [23:16] But I will say we need a landslide that is too big for them to rig the election. [23:24] Congressman, one thing that was very clear about this is he's obsessed with the Save [23:27] America Act, which is this voter suppression act that we've talked about at Zeteo before. [23:31] He talked about getting it passed. [23:33] He said, pick up your phone. [23:34] He made it about that at the end, right? [23:36] This was the kind of build up to what he actually wants. [23:38] He's so obsessed with this act that when he went on TV to talk about Lindsey Graham's death, [23:42] all he would talk about was the Save America Act. [23:43] He said Lindsey Graham's death is a blow to the Save America Act. [23:46] That's what a weirdo he is when someone dies. [23:48] Mark, one of our viewers on Substack, says, what's next after this ineffective call to [23:53] pass the Save America Act? [23:55] Are you worried about that passing? [23:56] But can I just add to that? [23:58] For people watching at home or people who are on the street who hear about this who [24:01] are not partisans, don't follow this stuff closely. [24:04] I wonder how many of your constituents you come to and say, yeah, we should pass bills like [24:07] this, because why shouldn't everyone have photo ID when they go to vote? [24:12] What do you say to them? [24:13] I say, first of all, Donald Trump's own election official, who he mocked, as you pointed out [24:19] in this speech, said that the 2020 election was the safest and most secure election in [24:24] American history. [24:25] We don't have a problem with election fraud. [24:28] When Donald Trump called up Raffensperger and said, just find me 11,780 votes, he wasn't [24:33] trying to block election fraud, he was trying to commit election fraud. [24:38] Donald Trump is the one who is trying to steal elections and overthrow elections and incite [24:44] insurrections in the country and conduct political coups. [24:48] That's where the problem is coming from. [24:50] And Democratic and Republican and independent officials across the country agree that our [24:55] elections have been fair. [24:56] They're fine and they're transparent. [24:58] They're open. [24:59] You can go and find out what's happening there. [25:01] So, again, what should millions of people do? [25:04] Millions of people should be determined and resolved to vote and should go out and knock [25:09] on doors like I'm doing this weekend. [25:11] We're going to Pennsylvania 10 with Janelle Stelzen, who is going to beat an insurrectionist [25:16] in this election. [25:17] Scott Perry, she came within one percent two years ago. [25:21] And our Democracy Summer Project of high school and college students from the Mid-Atlantic, [25:25] we're going to be descending on that district. [25:27] And we got Democracy Summer Forces all over the country doing that. [25:30] If you're a lawyer and you want to get involved with Mark Elias, the ACLU, the NAACP Legal [25:36] Defense Fund, other people fighting to defend the right to vote or the League of Women Voters, [25:41] get in touch with me and I'll put you in touch with them. [25:43] But if you're if you're not a lawyer or an election specialist or expert, the best thing [25:49] you can do is go out and build the landslide all across America. [25:53] Before I let you go, Congressman, I'm going to do a quick pivot because another very important [25:56] issue for our viewers and subscribers, and I know you voted on this this week, was the [26:00] Masi Khanna Amendment in the House on aid to Israel, on foreign aid, but cutting three [26:05] billion dollars in aid to Israel. [26:07] I believe you were one of the hundred or so Democrats who voted for that amendment. [26:10] Yeah. [26:10] Even Nancy Pelosi voted for that amendment. [26:12] What a what a what a what a sea change in the Democratic Party. [26:16] What do you say to your colleagues who voted no, who want to keep sending aid to a government [26:23] that is accused at at minimum war crimes, at worst, genocide? [26:28] What do you say to almost a hundred? [26:30] You know, I say I think it was pretty split, right? [26:31] A hundred or so each way. [26:32] What do you say to your colleagues who've carried on voting to send more money to Benjamin [26:37] I think that, you know, amongst the Democrats, we had people voting. [26:41] Yes, we had people voting no. [26:43] And we had people voting present. [26:46] And I think there was a real common denominator in the message, which is we need a dramatic [26:52] change in the policies that we see coming out of Israel if we're going to pay for it. [26:58] People do not want to pay for perpetual war and human rights violations in Israel. [27:07] And we don't want to see continuing cycles of terror like the nightmare that we saw on [27:11] October 7th and then the nightmare of the violence unleashed against Gaza. [27:17] We want to interrupt that. [27:19] And it was it became a referendum on Netanyahu's leadership and nobody could support it. [27:24] It's led to the tremendous, dangerous isolation of Israel in world opinion. [27:31] And it's it's contributed to, well, the kind of chaos that we see spreading throughout the [27:38] Middle East right now. [27:39] So I guess at this point, we need to stop feeding Netanyahu in that way. [27:46] And I think we sent a very sharp message about that to Netanyahu. [27:49] And that's true of people who are lifelong pro-Israel supporters and people who also feel [27:55] the pain very seriously of the Palestinians, like my colleague Rashida Tlaib, who's a Palestinian [28:01] American. [28:02] You said we sent the right message. [28:03] Those of you who did vote yes, did do that. [28:06] It is an important message. [28:07] It is a big change in the Democratic Party for a lot of people. [28:10] But a lot of your colleagues still astonishingly voted to carry on sending weapons to Benjamin [28:15] Netanyahu and Itmar Ben-Gavir and Bazar Lilsmoch. [28:17] One of them is Haley Stevens in Michigan, who's in a very tight Senate race primary. [28:21] You mentioned going out and knocking on doors. [28:24] A bunch of your colleagues have endorsed in that race, some for Haley Stevens, like Senator [28:27] Gary Peters. [28:28] She's got $28 million in AIPAC support right now, according to today's New York Times. [28:33] Others of your colleagues, like Ilhan Omar, just came out for Abdul El-Sayed, who's also [28:37] running in that Senate primary, very critical of aid to Israel. [28:39] Are you going to be endorsing in that race? [28:41] I haven't said anything about that race yet, and I haven't had time to closely scrutinize that [28:46] one. [28:47] Let me just say, though, back on your other point, which is, you know, in fairness to [28:52] all of our colleagues, we didn't write that amendment. [28:55] We don't control the floor. [28:57] We don't control which amendments get brought up. [28:59] We don't get to decide precisely on what we're voting for. [29:01] And I think even for those of us who voted yes, we thought that Massey's amendment was a [29:07] blunt instrument. [29:08] And, you know, he would not be everybody's favorite introducer of an amendment because [29:14] he's categorically opposed to foreign aid, which the vast majority of Democrats are not. [29:20] I don't know if there are any Democrats who take his position on that. [29:23] We are not isolationists. [29:25] And, you know, there are a lot of politics that we don't share with him. [29:30] So I know a bunch of people didn't vote yes for that reason. [29:34] But also the truth is that that's, you know, this was obviously not going to pass. [29:40] And it's not a great way to conduct foreign policy. [29:43] But we're in the minority position. [29:45] So we didn't get to draft what we were voting on. [29:48] So it was a very blunt instrument. [29:50] And I think everybody voting was unhappy with the way that the thing was structured. [29:55] But we clearly need to move forward. [29:57] And I'll tell you from lots of meetings in the Democratic caucus about this, Mehdi, we [30:01] are determined to move in a different direction towards peace and social reconstruction for [30:09] Israelis, Palestinians, everybody in the area. [30:12] We've got to move to a completely different paradigm. [30:15] So there's national security and there is peace and human rights for everybody. [30:21] And we leave the era of terrorism and violence and war behind. [30:24] We definitely need a new paradigm. [30:27] I'm conscious of your time. [30:28] It's late night. [30:28] Thank you for taking time out for Zeteo viewers and for our viewers watching on YouTube and [30:32] Substack. [30:33] One last, last related question on this topic. [30:35] Of course. [30:36] To tie together both things, which is we talk about election interference, election influence. [30:39] Big money in politics is bad, whether it's from outside of the country when it's illegal [30:44] or inside of the country when it's coming from super PACs. [30:46] I think we can agree on that. [30:48] I assume you're a critic of big money in politics. [30:50] Yes. [30:51] And I hope everybody will support my bill called get foreign money out, which is all about [30:57] rejecting foreign state and corporate money in our politics. [31:00] Exactly. [31:01] And then you've got a group like a pack, which says, well, we're not a foreign lobby. [31:05] We're Americans spending a lot of money in democratic races. [31:08] Twenty eight million dollars, according to today's New York Times, in this Michigan Senate [31:11] race. [31:12] A lot of Democrats I've had on the show have said to me, we should stop taking APAC money. [31:16] This is a toxic group. [31:17] It's funded Republican election deniers again to square the circle. [31:20] Do you agree with that? [31:21] Do you think Democrats should stop taking money from APAC? [31:24] Well, I have not taken money from APAC to my knowledge. [31:29] Different people mean different things by that. [31:30] I had people accusing me of taking money from APAC because there were J Street people who [31:35] gave me money. [31:36] That just struck me as bizarre. [31:38] So, you know, I certainly know I've never taken money from APAC PAC, if that exists. [31:44] The super PAC is called the United Democracy Project. [31:46] They're involving themselves in a lot of primaries, as you know. [31:48] Yeah. [31:49] Yeah. [31:50] Look, I've always been a champion for public financing of elections. [31:54] I'm a complete opponent of Citizens United, which I think is another Supreme Court fraud on [32:01] the public. [32:02] A corporation is not a rights bearing political citizen of the republic. [32:07] And if you go back and look at what Chief Justice John Marshall said in 1817, he said a corporation [32:12] is an artificial entity, invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law, possessing [32:19] only the rights conferred upon it by the state legislature. [32:22] And so the framers would be absolutely baffled to think that someone saying that this economic [32:29] entity chartered by the state has the right to essentially go out and buy elections and drown [32:35] out, you know, the kind of money that citizens, you know, have. [32:39] The reason Exxon and Mobil have so much money is not because people agree with their politics. [32:46] It's because people drive their cars to work. [32:49] And so that's why they've got billions of dollars to reinvest in the kinds of policies [32:54] that are so dangerous to us. [32:56] By the way, one thing I did agree with in the president's speech tonight was when he [33:00] said that America was the hottest country on Earth. [33:02] I don't know if that's strictly true, but with his environmental policies, it certainly [33:07] feels like it. [33:08] Certainly, certainly in the D.C. metro area today where it hit 100 degrees, where you and [33:12] I are. [33:12] Congressman, thank you so much for taking time out. [33:14] We appreciate you. [33:15] The pleasure is mine. [33:16] And, you know, they say in Washington, it's not the heat, it's the stupidity. [33:20] And we got plenty of that. [33:22] We got plenty of that tonight. [33:23] Good night, Congressman. [33:24] Everyone else, stay with us. [33:27] Swin Supesang is still here. [33:28] Swin, he said something very interesting then. [33:30] I want to take some more questions from viewers before we wrap tonight. [33:32] He said something very interesting, Congressman. [33:34] He said, you've got to win big. [33:35] You often hear Democrats saying that. [33:36] It's too big to rig. [33:37] We win by a big enough margin that no one will question the result. [33:40] Well, of course, Donald Trump will always question the result. [33:43] But do you think that's a good enough strategy come November? [33:46] It may be a good enough strategy to overwhelm all the different Trumpian election rigging efforts [33:51] for them to win back the House, maybe even the Senate this year around. [33:54] The problem is the Republican Party right now, even though they're led by someone as addled [33:59] and as petulant and as easily distracted as someone like Donald Trump, they are playing [34:05] the long game here. [34:07] They really are. [34:08] The danger, the primary danger, I'm not even sure, is even to 2026. [34:13] It's so many elections going forward. [34:16] And I think an apt analogy here is talking about something like January 6th. [34:20] As horrific as it was, I think you can easily argue that it was a massive success. [34:25] It is defining an entire generation of conservative policymaking in this country when it comes to [34:32] dismantling or at least attacking free and fair elections. [34:35] So just looking at some of the comments on YouTube and Substack, thank you for watching, guys. [34:40] That's late night. [34:40] We're trying to react to this president's addled brain, as Swin so eloquently put it. [34:45] PK wasn't very happy with Jamie Rask and says, I think we're looking for more specifics [34:49] than generalizations about what will be done by the Democrats. [34:51] You did ask him twice about specific things they could do with the gavel. [34:55] We do want to see more specifics from the Democratic Party. [34:58] Interestingly, you mentioned January 6th when Chris M on Substack says, even if we win, [35:04] I assume Chris, he or she is a Democrat, by tremendous numbers, will we have another January [35:09] the 6th? [35:10] And I think that's an important point, which is once you have introduced the idea that [35:14] violence, political violence is appropriate response to an election result you do not like, [35:18] then it doesn't matter whether you win by 1 million or 3 million. [35:21] It doesn't matter whether it's a House election or a presidential election. [35:24] The response will be, we don't accept the result. [35:27] I genuinely don't see, certainly not a Republican media machine or an activist machine that ever [35:34] accepts a Democratic victory as a legitimate victory. [35:37] No, not only is it a legitimate election if we win for the right in this country, but it's [35:43] an illegitimate one if we decide it's not won, especially if we lose. [35:47] But it kind of defines how they approach just federal governance or any governance in this [35:53] country. [35:53] It's legal and OK if we do it. [35:56] It is right and just if we do it. [35:58] If you do even a scintilla of that, whether it's on the corruption stuff or any of the [36:03] other policymaking, it is illegal and Donald Trump wants to put you in jail. [36:08] That's the bottom line. [36:09] That, I mean, he talked about that tonight. [36:11] He talked about asking for criminal investigations, giving files to the FBI. [36:14] Again, as you said earlier before the congressman joined us, every accusation is a confession. [36:19] These people spent years talking about the weaponization of government. [36:21] They talked about being targeted by the Democratic Party. [36:25] And now they're doing exactly what they claim the Democrats were doing, but weren't doing [36:28] Joe Biden. [36:29] There's no evidence that Joe Biden never got involved in any Merrick Garland decision or [36:32] Jack Smith decision. [36:33] Quite the opposite. [36:34] Biden ran away from prosecuting Trump wrongly, in my view. [36:37] And now you have Trump literally ordering Kash Patel and whatever it is, why am I forgetting, [36:44] Blanche, the current agent, I can't keep track of all his appointees, to go out and prosecute [36:48] his opponents. [36:49] And this is very much part and parcel of that. [36:51] You notice how excited he got. [36:52] You know when Donald Trump's not at a rally, right? [36:54] The Trump we got tonight was snooze fest, Don, reading from the autocue. [36:59] Again, every accusation, a confession, he used to always attack Obama and Biden for reading [37:03] from teleprompters. [37:04] Tonight he was reading from a teleprompter. [37:05] I should remind people who didn't see the story today from ABC News that his own teleprompter [37:10] operator was investigated by the authorities for making money on bets on the prediction [37:15] markets for how long Trump's speeches would be. [37:18] So everyone in Trump's orbit is a grifter, it seems. [37:21] Even the low-level folks are trying to make money off of their access to government. [37:24] But anyways, they had someone else doing the teleprompter. [37:26] He was reading it in a very boring way. [37:28] But he only got excited one time, Swin, when he stopped to go, the deep state, the deep state. [37:33] He got very worked up because he hates the people in those people in the deep state. [37:37] And I think that is at the core of a lot of this, going, you know, vengeance against [37:41] all of those people, Comey and Jack Smith and Brennan, all the familiar figures who he [37:46] has launched investigations against. [37:49] And I think going back to our Raskin interview, Democrats need to come in with a much stronger [37:54] agenda for prosecuting Republicans. [37:56] I've said this, sitting in this very chair, I said to our colleague Prem Tucker a couple [38:00] of months ago, the priority should be to investigate Elon Musk and if crimes were committed [38:04] under Doge or during the election, prosecute Musk. [38:07] And that's when Elon Musk went nuts and said Mehdi Hassan is evil. [38:10] It's the only time he's ever responded to me because they fear accountability. [38:13] That's what they fear. [38:15] We've done some reporting on this at Zeteo in past months. [38:19] But look, if you ever have Stephen Miller or Pete Hexer on your show, you can ask them [38:24] what we already know from what they're reporting, from what they've told other people, other [38:28] senior officials, they are genuinely worried. [38:31] Don't let their public bravado fool you. [38:33] They are worried about if the Democrats sweep the midterms and even after that, once they're [38:38] out of power, about accountability, whether that's in the form of expensive investigations, [38:44] them having to pay lawyers by legal liability insurance, or maybe even state or local prosecutions [38:51] or criminal investigations, even if Donald Trump gives them all of these preemptive federal [38:56] pardons. [38:57] They are genuinely worried and spooked about that. [39:01] So to your point, I guess the open question is, is the Democratic Party elite going to follow [39:08] through on this hypothetical threat? [39:11] And I may sound like a cynic, but I'm not entirely buying it at this point. [39:16] I am open to being proven wrong. [39:18] Now, GaryF95, who I think I asked this question earlier on YouTube, has a follow-up, good question, [39:24] saying, what was the Chinese response going to be to this, especially with the Xi Jinping [39:28] state visit approaching later this year? [39:29] It's a great question, Gary. [39:30] I'm going to love when reporters, when they're sitting down with each other. [39:33] Trump has got out of his way to always praise Xi Jinping, even during the pandemic. [39:36] So do you remember before he went all racist and Kung Flu? [39:39] He spent the first month, January 2020, going out of his way to say, Xi Jinping's doing a [39:44] great job. [39:45] The Chinese have this under control. [39:46] My friend, remember that? [39:48] He went out of his way to praise. [39:49] He covered it up. [39:49] He helped cover it up. [39:51] For his family. [39:51] Yeah, exactly. [39:52] And now they're going to be sitting next to each other. [39:53] He's going to be bragging. [39:54] He loves Xi Jinping. [39:55] He's going to be bragging about him. [39:56] And I hope reporters in the White House press corps, our colleagues, will actually say, [39:59] well, isn't this the guy you said was trying to elect Joe Biden? [40:02] President Xi, were you trying to elect Joe Biden? [40:05] I mean, that's going to be a very interesting moment. [40:07] A couple of questions before we wrap up. [40:09] Somebody called Senior Fix, great name on Substack, says, is there a chance that there [40:13] would be such a culture of fear of violence at polling stations created in certain key [40:16] states that it suppresses the vote? [40:18] Swin. [40:21] Maybe, maybe. [40:22] I know a lot of Democratic Party figures and activist leaders who are really working [40:29] over time to try to instill in people that, OK, there are a lot of things to be afraid [40:34] of right now, but you cannot let your fear and them trying to instill that fear through [40:39] propaganda do their work for them and keep your way. [40:42] However, I think it is something that could actually be a genuine problem. [40:47] You talk to activists on the ground who run things like free health care clinics, and they'll [40:52] say that there is a dramatic drop in the past year and a half of like brown skinned or immigrant [40:56] families coming to them for help. [40:58] These things do have a chilling effect even before a policy is even carried out because [41:03] the propaganda works. [41:04] Yes. [41:05] And I would also point out for people with long memories, we talked about the Iraq war. [41:07] Let's go back further than 2003. [41:09] Let's go back to 2000. [41:10] Congressman Raskin mentioned the state of Florida and what Jeb Bush and the Secretary [41:14] of State at the time, Kathleen Harris, did to suppress black and brown Democratic voters [41:18] for Al Gore. [41:20] People forget that there was a civil rights report done after the 2000 election, which [41:24] concluded or investigated and found that authorities in Florida, state authorities, had put up road [41:29] blocks in black majority areas, had had discouraged black voters from going to the polls. [41:34] So this is not new. [41:36] This precedes Trump, the war on black and brown voters and the war on access to free and fair [41:42] elections and polling stations. [41:43] I'm going to end tonight. [41:44] It's past 1040. [41:45] Thank you for your patience. [41:46] I think we're we've done enough debunking of Trump, critiquing of Trump, hearing from the [41:51] Democrats. [41:52] Swin's reporting. [41:53] I'm going to end with one very simple question from Crafty One. [41:56] I love the names online. [41:57] Crafty One on Substack says, Canadian here. [42:01] Are MAGA supporters really that stupid? [42:03] I can't imagine even they would believe that slop. [42:06] Believe it, Crafty. [42:07] Believe it. [42:08] That's why we're in this mess. [42:10] Swin, see you soon. [42:11] Carry on with the great reporting. [42:13] Make sure all of you watching at home, especially those of you on YouTube and those of you on [42:16] Substack, but especially on YouTube. [42:17] Go to Zeteo.com, subscribe to Zeteo, become a paid subscriber, support independent journalism [42:23] so we can hold some of these fascists and autocrats and election deniers to account. [42:27] Support Swin's reporting. [42:29] Support me running my mouth, as I do often here. [42:31] Tell your friends and family. [42:33] It's a numbers game. [42:34] Let's boost Zeteo. [42:35] Let's boost independent journalism across the board. [42:37] For now, from me, from Swin, good night.