Tell me.

Well, so here's the thing.

Uh, so yesterday when we're going around town doing these interviews for this corruption documentary, I'm on Capitol Hill, and I see Congressman James Comer, the Republican who runs House Oversight and Government Reform, right? The guy who should be investigating Trump's corruption, and again and again and again defends the president.

I went up to him and I asked him about this, and I fully expected him to say, "It's nonsense, the Don Junior stuff, fake news," like Kash Patel did, like the attorney general did.

They both dismissed the fact that one of Putin's close friends who travels with him, who won the equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Russia, donating to Trump's wedding, or Donald Trump Junior's wedding, is a problem.

But I, I, I, I get Comer aside on the sidewalk and I ask him about this, and instead of pushing back He admits he is very concerned about this too.

He said those words to me.

What are, what are your worries about how much damage he can do to the Kennedy Center in the time he has left?

Including Donald Trump.

Including Donald Trump.

And, but, but here's the thing that they know.

They know that Democrats are statistically more likely to engage in mail-in voting.

It's around 35, 30 per 7, 37% of Democrats and around 24% of Republicans.

And so that's enough of a stat- statistical edge in the minds of the president and his lieutenants that if they put this order in place, it could depress the vote in such a way as to influence the outcome of the election.

Now, as you've noted, the Supreme Court has blocked this in its entirety for this election.

... from a, a friend of the family, I mean, Putin?"

But those Republican lawmakers who signed on to this brief, what do you think the calculus was for them? Is it actually about making sure that election administration goes smoothly? Or do you think there's a political calculus being made here?

Well, probably a couple of things.

One, I do think they want to be on the right side of history.

And I do not think this executive order at the end of the day is going to survive.

Number two, you don't have to be a lawyer to read the United States Constitution and see that this executive order on mail-in ballot is so flagrantly unconstitutional.

And Donald Trump, of course— as always, is doing himself no favors in the justification for why this happened.

And let me give you an example of that.

But these words matter because then January 6th happened.

I mean, y- you'd been there just the week before, right?

Well, yeah, that was one of the really surreal things for me is I had just come back from a trip to New York City to see a family member, and we had had lunch, uh, on the top floors of the World Trade Center.

I'd never visited the buildings before.

There was a, a beautiful restaurant up there with a great view of the city and out towards the water, and you could see the Statue of Liberty.

And, uh, I'd come back, and I remember sitting there watching that Today Show broadcast, and, you know, as John noted, they were debating whether or not, uh, some thought a helicopter might have hit the towers, maybe a news helicopter.

And within minutes of that, as they're covering it live on the show, you see a fireball erupt from the second tower.

And if there was a single moment that I would say in all of this where you can point and say the world changed, it was that fireball because that is when it dawned on every viewer, every news reporter covering it, this was not an accident.

It's the inverse of where people were 25 years ago after 9/11.

What's going on? How does it feel?

Well, I'll tell you what.

It doesn't feel good to be Donald Trump right now, Terry.

I mean, you and I saw this.

We saw a man disassembling, a man unraveling this weekend.

It's still very unusual to say that we watched the president of the United States over the course of 10 hours on Sunday speaking.

post memes of himself as Hulk Hogan, the wrestler, post memes of himself riding alongside George Washington on a horse, post memes of himself in AI videos as the Green Lantern building the border wall and attacking his enemies.

It's got real substance in it because people should know, people want to know, and they're demanding to know.

Hmm

... that's not a political talking point.

Look, the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, spent something like 10 hours on Monday posting social media memes of him as Hulk Hogan, of him riding horses with George Washington, of him as the Green Lantern at the border.

This is someone who looks genuinely unwell and very detached from reality.

If he had been connected from reality when he called GOP leaders this spring and demanded they hold a convention in his name, a convention that they're calling Trumpapalooza, he would've walked that back because he would've been able to see how his poll numbers were flagging, his candidates were flagging, and how an event centered around that cult of personality would have the opposite intended effect.

Rather than help his candidates win, it would chain them to Donald Trump and his sinking poll numbers in the lead up to a very, very consequential election.

But he's not connected to reality, Nicolle.

What is that about?

Wow

... on the reflecting wall.

"It's time to get the truth out." "It's time to believe survivors." "How is this man still in office?" It's extraordinary, the response that we're getting from folks.

But we don't just want it to be an emotive response.

We want people to do something about it.

And so you can sit down at a number of different tables we have, and you can literally call the Justice Department and demand the release of the files.

Every one of these tables has a phone, has a card, has the phone number to call the US Department of Justice, and you have the ability to phone in and say, "I'm sick of this shit.

I think, right? I mean-

What, what is your sense of that race?

You know, I caught up last night with Beto O'Rourke, who, of course, years ago ran for that Senate seat against Ted Cruz.

And, you know, Beto said something very straightforward to me, which is, "James is in a lot better position than I was in." And that's for two reasons.

One, as you note, the Republican opponent in this race, Ken Paxton, is extremely unpopular here in Texas.

He is not liked by the party.

He's not even liked by his former friends.

He's not liked by his former colleagues.

Miles, you do it.

You're doing the Lord's work, but tell us about it.

Well, yeah, Jim.

I mean, look, you and I have talked about this a few times.

There's obviously nothing that exemplifies Donald Trump's corruption like the cover-up of the Epstein files.

And so we felt like it was very important this week, when Donald Trump is trying to put the spotlight on himself, to take away that spotlight and to turn it into a searchlight and put that searchlight on his corruption.

And so this week in Dallas, we have printed, bound and brought all 3.5 million Epstein files alongside the Institute for Primary Facts and opened them up at the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room in Washington you can see the birthday card Donald Trump uh didn't write to Jeffrey Epstein he says which of course he did write to Jeffrey Epstein he sued the Wall Street Journal over that that case was thrown out by a federal judge so Jim all 3.5 million files will be at a physical location not far from the convention site and we also have a traveling bookmobile that will be going around Dallas and going around the country and I'm going to take you in Jim So you can take a look and see what this is like.

You know, this is the entrance to the venue.

What are your thoughts on all of that, Miles, as we get close to these midterms and ballots are going out soon and early voting is going to start soon, all of that? You know what it makes me

You're doing the Lord's work, but tell us about it.

Well, yeah, Jim.

I mean, look, you and I have talked about this a few times.

There's obviously nothing that exemplifies Donald Trump's corruption like the cover-up of the Epstein files.

And so we felt like it was very important this week, when Donald Trump is trying to put the spotlight on himself, to take away that spotlight and to turn it into a searchlight and put that searchlight on his corruption.

And so this week in Dallas, we have printed, bound and brought all 3.5 million Epstein files alongside the Institute for Primary Facts and opened them up at the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room in Washington.

You can see the birthday card.

What are your thoughts on all of that, Miles, as we get close to these midterms and ballots are going out soon and early voting is going to start soon, all of that? You know what it makes me

I

mean, you know this from personal experience.

Well, yeah, that's what the president did in my case.

He first signed an executive order that said, effectively, you are guilty of treason.

And then he turned to his people and said, please go find me the evidence that this man is guilty of treason.

He did it wide open.

That's not hyperbole.

And now, fast forward seven months, we are in a place where they are reaping the political consequences of their inaction and their lack of asking and demanding questions and answers on the front end.

A healthy, vibrant, magnetic organization doing something that the citizens support doesn't need to lower the standards to practically none to attract people to carry out the mission, and that is what is happening at ICE.

They are hiring thugs, Nicolle, and it's not by accident.

This is by design.

I said on your program a number of months ago that Donald Trump railed for years against a supposed deep state that did not exist, and ironically, he is now building his own deep state.

Why did they lower the standards to get people into ICE? Because they know that those jobs are civil service jobs that last over the long term, that when Trump is long gone, he'll have MAGA-aligned people ensconced in these agencies carrying out his vision long after his presidency.

This is not accidental.

You just saw it this week with the FBI saying that they will hire people, this is true, they'll hire people who, or they'll consider hiring people who've hired prostitutes in the past or engaged in acts of bestiality.

What does that mean, Miles?

Yeah

... and he could not win the presidency, and he proved very electable.

In fact, I remember my first meeting with Donald Trump in Trump Tower in 2015 during the transition where we went to go sit with him and talk about national security issues to prepare him to take on the presidency.

And he pulls out this giant map with every county across the country he won shaded in red.

He was still in awe weeks after the election that all of these people who told him he couldn't win were wrong, and so much of the country was shaded red, and he had won them over.

Now, part of that, Emily, was because of Donald Trump's appeal to- Blue collar workers in the United States, and that's where I think it's interesting.

I think the establishment underestimates El-Sayed at their peril.

What is going on, Miles? Have you given up lettuce?

What did you learn? Well,

I learned quite a bit.

I mean, look, Victor, the top line here, obviously, is that this bombshell whistleblower complaint shows that the Trump administration was allegedly defying a federal judge and building systems... that could deprive Americans of their rights.

One of the things I want to note, Victor, is this is the type of thing when I was at the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration, we would have cringed at the thought of because this is how you make it easier to hack American elections.

Put aside the fact that it sounds like this system could have failed people and deprived them of their right to vote, this centralizes the ability of an adversary to try to hack our elections.

Now, in those conversations that I had tonight with the whistleblower aid attorney who's representing the whistleblower, one of the things was very clear, that this individual feared that the chain of command inside the executive branch and the chain of potential whistleblower disclosures was broken.

There was not a safe place for this individual to go.

Why is DHS using these agents for this? I mean, this seems to be something they're not even trained to do.

By the way, Ambassador McFaul in the last hour, he called it the worst kind of imperialism.

Well, I would go even further than Ambassador McFaul, who's a friend and a great student of history.

And I would note it's beyond imperialism.

This is the thing that the Trump administration has railed against.

This is socialism.

I'll tell you why it's socialism we are talking about the idea of state-owned and operated oil now we still don't know exactly how this is going to be executed but we are talking about in the first case imperialism the united states busting into a country and taking its resources and second donald trump saying it's going to be controlled by the united states government okay Again, the thing he's warned about socialism, communism is the thing he continues to do economically.

But there's a second layer to this, Alex, which is the one I worry about the most.

Has this war weakened the perception of the U.S. around the world?

You know, it, it just get pinged around, and this is how we get policy.

This is exactly how you get policy in the second Trump administration.

Chris, the way you just described it was not exaggeration in any way, shape, or form.

That's how we lived it almost every week in the first Trump administration.

But back then it wasn't Glenn Beck, it was Lou Dobbs.

The late Lou Dobbs was the one Donald Trump would sit up late Watch on TV, hear Lou Dobbs peddle a conspiracy theory, then he'd pick up the phone and he'd direct cabinet secretaries to go do things based off of what Lou Dobbs said.

Now, back then, there were at least some people who were semi-competent, and the people in the semi-competent pool would get those phone calls and we would say, "Yeah, this is not how this works.

Where do you see it?

Right.

She traded in her press badge to go onto the federal payroll, and I think that's the really damning thing about this, is that taxpayers are funding this, and it begs the question, who else besides the people that Will found are on this payroll? And I can tell you, when I was at DHS, lot of bad things happened in the first Trump administration, but the White House tried to jam similar people into DHS at the time.

They tried to get us to hire these SGEs, special governmental employees.

Basically, people that they couldn't get hired anywhere else in the federal government, and most of the time we'd say, "No, you cannot give us this clown car of crazies to put into the department.

We are not gonna hire them as SGEs." In the second term, that appears to be happening in spades.

Mm-hmm

... inside administrations like this, and there are a lot of reasons to quit Donald Trump's orbit.

But it was things like this, the deep deficiency of his character, that so repelled me.

He gets a different trade deal, and now he's back in the White House, and he's saying, "I've got to rip that one up as well now." Why is he picking a war with its closest friend and ally where Canadians have fought alongside Americans in every war for 100 years and have been the nicest, decent, kind of honorable neighbors you could wish for?

You could not ask for kinder neighbors than Canadians.

We have a joke here in the United States that if something's a little bit off about someone, you don't quite know.

They're too nice.

Something's a little weird because they're so nice, that the key and lock moment comes when someone else says, "Oh, they're a Canadian." And you say, "Ah, now I understand.

No one's ever that nice and polite." "Oh, well, it's because they're a Canadian." 160 years of alliance, John, and this is where it started to come apart.

As you note in the first Trump administration, NAFTA was renegotiated.

I, I presume there's gonna be an awful lot more litigation on this, Miles, before we get a settled picture of what this means.

And you just think this is such a colossal foreign policy screw-up on his part.

Well, John, the human toll of what's happening on the USS Abraham Lincoln, as you note, has brought more attention to the cascade of strategic vulnerabilities that the United States is suffering because of this quagmire in Iran.

One of the things that, uh, is noteworthy here is that the USS George Washington is being taken out of the Pacific and is being sent to relieve the Abraham Lincoln.

Why does that matter? Well, that's the only United States aircraft carrier near China, near Taiwan, near the Taiwanese Strait.

This is a vital strategic asset that the United States has in place in the Pacific to deter the Chinese from going and taking Taiwan.

And a lot of China watchers are nervous about this, nervous about the United States taking assets out of the Pacific in a moment when there's been a lot of chatter about what the Chinese are doing.

In fact, this literally comes on the heels of the Taiwanese doing emergency drills for the possibility, annual emergency drills by the way, for the possibility that the Chinese might try to take the island.

And that's the, gonna be the challenge, of course, uh, for Angie Nixon now is whether she can do that.

I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane, I think, that we... that they would be more likely to go for.

[laughs] John, I, I, I've got to say, when I heard this story break, uh, I, I had a sort of special insight into it.

And, and the story, of course, is that Donald Trump, to avoid a potential credible threat to his life from the Iranians, uh, was smuggled from Air Force One into a catering cart to fly on another jet so he couldn't be in danger.

But that perspective is I used to oversee the US Secret Service when I was at the Department of Homeland Security.

Years before that, I oversaw their budget on Capitol Hill.

I know a lot about the Secret Service, and my initial reaction was actually, "Look, this is kind of mission impossible." This is sort of cool that the Secret Service found this clever way to remove the President of the United States from a mortal threat.

But the, the cool factor sort of burns off really quickly when you listen to comments like Donald Trump made, when you listen to comments where he got onto that plane and told reporters that they were on a very dangerous flight.

[laughs]

Can you explain to my listeners some of the difficulties and the threats that you faced?

Yeah.

You know, look, no one needs to play the violin for me, Michael.

I mean, I went into this eyes wide open.

I knew from the moment I published the anonymous op-ed against him that I was going to come out in my own name before the election and go after him full throttle.

I knew I was going to detonate my life.

But if I'd done that, Michael, during, let's say, the Bush administration, I'd worked for George W. Bush, loved the man.

If you would, unpack for me what you meant here and who specifically were you referencing?

Yeah

... to a woman who accused him of rape.

He was convicted on that, and he had to make the payment.

That's not the person I'd be comparing myself to in this moment.

But I also have to disclose, Emily, I served with Max Miller in the first Trump administration.

We were not socially close, but I knew and am very socially close with Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary who leveled some of those initial allegations against Max Miller.

And I can remember seeing how afraid she was to come forward about it.

I'm trying to keep up.

What are you expecting to come from these meetings, if anything?

Well, look, Donald Trump is nothing if not impressionable.

And that's what I would expect out of the meeting with Netanyahu.

I've met with Netanyahu multiple times in his office in Israel.

And I can tell you the man.

Also, love him or hate him, the man is a master of statecraft and a master manipulator.

I have watched him take strong-willed members of Congress and wrap them very slowly around his finger.

And I think that's given the Iranians more leverage than anything, perhaps.

So I think this mobile library is no small thing.

It is breaking through.

It is working.

I mean, really, it's it's a testament to Sky and Amanda and the survivors.

Their message has been one of the single most impactful.

things in this country in shining a light on the administration's corruption, hands down.

And when I went to the reading room in New York where they set up all 3.5 million Epstein files, our friends at the Institute for Primary Facts, we looked at it and said, this has got to come out of Tribeca.

Look at the little girl, the 12, 13, 14, 15 year old who was a victim at that time.

I mean, what would normally happen after Zelensky's been at the White House, which he was yesterday, is that we'll suddenly learn today there's been a call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin has put Donald Trump right on where he should be on the whole Russia-Ukraine thing.

You know, John, I gotta take you back to the first Trump administration.

The first year of the first Trump administration, I cannot tell you how many conversations I had with cabinet members inside that administration who were themselves trying to figure out why their boss, Donald Trump, had such an evident affinity for Vladimir Putin.

They were as perplexed by it as anyone else, which to me is pretty alarming, that the president of the United States, his top national security officials cannot figure out why he keeps capitulating to a man who is avowedly one of America's greatest adversaries.

A man, Vladimir Putin, who has spent years targeting US interests, who was responsible for helping to fund movements in the Middle East and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill US troops.

Uh, that was baffling to folks.

My boss in the first administration, John Kelly, who later became Trump's White House chief of staff, I remember we were on a flight to New York City, and he asked me exactly this question, is Trump had just done something, uh, to flatter, uh, Putin.

How serious do you think this is for Donald Trump?