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US POLITICS - DEMOOCRATS SEN. ADAM SSHIFF Schiff Joins Jim Acosta Live to Respond to Trump's Latest Scandal PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvrUfUQQ3MA Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I am disgusted. The behavior of Donald Trump and his administration disgusts me as never before in my life. I have had a low level of concern about the obnoxious behavior of Donald Trump for several decades but what is happening Peter Burgess
Schiff Joins Jim Acosta Live to Respond to Trump's Latest Scandal Sen. Adam Schiff May 16, 2025 344K subscribers ... 370,639 views ... 13K likes Join the conversation: → https://www.schiff.senate.gov → / senadamschiff → / senadamschiff → / senadamschiff Transcript 0:00 right there senator Schiff great to see you on the show thanks for Hey Jim how are you i'm doing fine really appreciate the time uh I understand this is your first Substack is that correct uh it is in this form certainly and great to see you appreciate your work hey I appreciate your work as well thanks so much no I was just laying out for the the viewers at home there and they're chiming in they're giving their comments as well this is a slightly different experience than uh your typical cable news interview so we'll get some feedback from the viewers out there but I mean I think we should just get right to it i mean you know Trump's trip to the Middle East has really put his you know his pension for corrupt authoritarianism on display and I was talking about the Air Force One gambit he obviously wants to take this uh this gift from the Qataris to the tune of $400 million and I understand you're requesting that the uh Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General launch an inquiry into all of this what can you tell us about that well they've already acknowledged that when they did 1:01 their legal analysis and of course here we're relying on the incredibly independent objective analysis of Pam Bondi uh but they've even acknowledged that it would be unlawful unconstitutional for them to accept this aircraft this 400 million dollar gift from the Qataris if it went directly to the Trump Foundation so they want to launder it through the Defense Department which doesn't make it any more legal uh it just pulls the defense department into this scheme to enrich the president and so what I want to know from the defense department is a number of things first of all what is this going to cost taxpayers if they have to somehow retrofit this aircraft if they've got to go through and extensively debug it make sure that there's no electronic surveillance if they've got to bring it up to the standards of an Air Force One and all the rest of that what's it going to cost the taxpayer how long is it going to take if this isn't going to be ready for a couple years it means that basically 2:01 Trump is going to get this aircraft on his way out the door and it's really about just the private use of this plane by the president but also what is the DoD doing to protect themselves from being a party willing or unwilling to this this graft this scheme uh what does it mean also for our national security because the Qataris aren't stupid they want something for their $400 million investment if it were just a nice gesture Jim as the the president likes to claim they would have given you the plane or maybe given you know someone off the street the plane no they gave it to the president for a reason right and and you know to me I mean I the question I wanted to ask today is what is this oprah you get a plane you get a plane i mean apparently Christy Gnome the DHS secretary wants her own new plane as well that's been coming out in the headlines today and you mentioned Pam Bondi the attorney general um signing off on this i I I I know that you have 3:01 uh chimed in with a tweet about a story that was in ProPublica in the last 24 hours talking about how she sold between a million and 5 million worth of shares of Trump Media uh the same day that Trump unveiled his terrorists i I I mean the larger picture here and I've been talking about this on my show is that you know there just doing this in plain sight just acts of blatant corruption and the question has to be asked what can be done about this I know Democrats are in the minority in the Senate over in the House difficult to hold hearings but is there any way to shame these Republicans into holding some hearings here I think there is you know in the in the near term probably not to the extent of holding a whole hearing on But nevertheless confronting our colleagues here in Congress with the just the blatant graft and the danger that it poses forcing them not to look away can be really impactful and to give you one illustration I put a hold on Ed Martin's 4:02 nomination for US attorney in DC this was someone with no prosecutorial experience someone who was a stop the steel lawyer someone who said we should go easier on people who beat cops someone who was promoting avowed Nazi admirers this is a partial list and the longer we uh held his nomination the more that we brought out to the public about his unfitness for office the bigger a burden it became to the Republicans on the judiciary committee to the point where his nomination went down uh they knew that wouldn't pass and so they moved on so it can have a an impact that kind of oversight is important but I think it's even more important visa v the public um and because the numbers are so big with the Trump graft it's hard for people to wrap their head around it because it's out in the open it's hard for the country to wrap its head around 5:00 it and in fact the Trump administration is quite aware of this the defenders say 'Well it's all out in the open it's transparent.' As if transparent corruption makes it any less corrupt but to give you one other quick illustration the Trump memecoin right um and this Gayla dinner they're inviting people to with a promise of access to the president and a White House tour that memecoin whether it goes up in value or down in value uh the transaction fees all go into the pocket of Donald Trump it's it's the most clear graft but because this is out in the open in a way it's really hard for people to understand just how crooked a deal this is and I think people think well how is this gayla different than a campaign fundraising gayla the difference is this money is not going to some campaign right this money is going right into Donald Trump's pocket and I think we need to spell that out for folks yeah 6:00 yeah i mean there was a time when we thought gosh when folks are doing obnoxious things for campaign donations that that was pretty bad stuff and and here he's just he's just putting the money in his pockets i mean I I've been describing it as sort of like those game shows where people run through the supermarket with a shopping cart and just try to pile as many goodies into the shopping cart as possible that seems to be what he's doing with the White House and what with the presidency and it seems to me what you need is you know I was I've been thinking about because you know lawmakers always come up with clever names for bills you know is there a way we could come up with a scam act uh stop corruption and mischief act and limit the president to just what he's supposed to get paid in office i don't know i'm just I'm spitballing here Senator but it just seems to me this is nuts and and is it's almost whack-a-ole everywhere you look he's he's trying to scam the public that's exactly right and by the way I like that that idea for the title of a bill i I will I will put aster and give you credit for that um but you know the other thing is and your 7:01 comment about Christine Gnome and the aircraft is is perfect uh in the sense that they're all trying to get in on the act now um everybody's trying to cash in we have this you the the the real secretary of state not Marco Rubio he's got a very limited profile but uh Witito is the real secretary of state his son is cashing in with the Trump sons right with a a uh stable coin another crypto venture that just got a $2 billion infusion from the Gulf and everybody's cashing in pam Bondi's cashing in christine Gnome wants to cash in and you know who we have largely to thank for this a guy named John Roberts who just happens to be chief justice of the Supreme Court who gave Donald Trump immunity you give a convicted felon like Donald Trump immunity and you make him 8:00 president of the United States and he's going to act like a crook with immunity which is what he's doing and the people around him they know they're getting a pardon on the way out the door so they're acting just as crooked as he is he's absolutely emboldened in all of this and I I covered him during the first administration i think he's far more dangerous this time around there's there's no question about it you know that all too well Senator and I was having a conversation about some of this with Ruth Bengot yesterday while it is it is kind of funny to to laugh at some of this stuff because it's just so outlandish there is a danger to it in that as this this oligarchy that Trump seems to be surrounding himself with as they enrich themselves it almost seems as though the circle can get bigger and more people can get sucked in and pulled in and and enticed to to join in on on the on the corruption and that might make all of these characters a little bit more difficult to dislodge from power i mean as they accumulate this and amass this kind of wealth one has to 9:01 think it makes them harder to beat at the ballot box i I I wonder what your thoughts are on that well I I certainly agree and I think probably the case in point is Elon Musk uh here's Elon Musk in addition to doing the Tesla showroom on the White House grounds because the stock in his company is has been in a nose dive i think even worse perhaps far worse is as Trump has imposed tariffs on these other countries they're coming to Trump to try to get out from under the tariffs but they're also coming to Elon and Elon is pitching them on his Starlink satellite system and they recognize because we see it in leaked cables they recognize that one way to ingratiate themselves with the administration is to buy Elon's product and so you know Elon has the most patent conflicts of interest uh and you know 10:00 they fire the head of the Office of Government Ethics who would be policing this stuff but but you're right and then Elon takes the money he makes from the sales of these satellite systems and plows it into the Trump political operation after that Tesla showroom on the White House grounds he put another hundred million into the Trump political operation so if you're seeing ads I mean I'm seeing ads promoting Donald Trump he's not even running for anything yeah this is this is you know the oligarchs propping up this corrupt president whose numbers are sinking and they want to prop him up as long as they can because the gravy train is is running and they want to get that gravy yeah it's almost like a uh an SNL skit of a home shopping network except it's all of Trump's corrupt schemes and scams that he wants to pull over on the American people you mentioned the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court uh Senator I have to ask you about this very important case in front of the high court today about birthright citizenship it fits right in with all of these other 11:00 you know sketchy unconstitutional things dangerous uh things that he's been trying to do with respect to migrants in this country wanted to get your thoughts on that and whether or not the notion of birthright citizenship could be in danger right now which I mean that opens up a huge Pandora's box in terms of what could be done to migrant families mixed status families these are the kinds of issues that I've been focusing in on on this program lot of people in your state in fear of this right now you know it's difficult to uh extrapolate sometimes from the justice's arguments and whether they're playing devil's advocate or whether they're really the devil Um but uh what I'm taking away from the the coverage I've seen so far is a recognition that birthright citizenship is very clear from the constitution the Trump administration is not going to win on the merits um and so they're shifting to a different objective in that case and the different objective is to try to 12:00 strike down the use of nationwide injunctions and of course what that refers to is um when something unconstitutional like an attack on birthright citizenship takes place and you go to a court for relief um that court has the power to issue an injunction against deporting for example people born in the United States because they're citizens and have that injunction apply nationwide and what the Trump administration wants to do is they want to stop judges from being able to issue injunctions nationwide even though they were thrilled to do it when Biden was president right and uh but now court shopping that they would do and so on yeah oh exactly exactly so now they want to limit what has been a really important tool to protect the American people uh against these unconstitutional acts and it seems like a lot of the argument today by the uh Trump solicitor and a lot of the receptivity on the 13:01 bench had less less to do with birthright and more to do with limiting this really important tool um if if they take that action which I wouldn't be surprised to see the conservative justices try to do it um try to carve out a win for Trump in some fashion that might please yeah exactly yeah that's that's worrisome and I I did wonder you know there's also a story in the New York Times today dhs has requested more than 20,000 National Guard members to help with the immigration crackdown of course we know that the National Guard has been used down on the border before for beefing up you know security along the border and so on uh but a Defense Department official said if the request were approved it would be the first time National Guard troops were used to help enforce the immigration crackdown in the United States and so I it kind of sort of ties in with what we were talking about earlier there are so many different things happening on this front it's hard to keep track of them all but to use the National Guard in this 14:00 fashion would be unprecedented and I think would cause a lot of fear in a lot of communities if you're seeing armor armored carriers and people in you know their military fatigues conducting operations with ICE and so on i mean that that does not sound like America to me no and I I think there are additional problems as well and that is it's going to inevitably create a conflict between the president and the governors about how these guards are used uh it is going to cause the public to have a different perception of the National Guard and what their role and responsibilities are i think it will affect military readiness and cohesion uh if they're diverted to these other missions it'll mean that they're less mission capable in terms of the national security mission uh that they really designed for so lots of adverse impacts uh part of this I think is just 15:00 the continuation of the Trump administration effort at shock and awe the muzzle velocity Steve Bannon was promoting uh they want to do more and more extreme things arrest judges call out the National Guard um send people to maximum security prisons outside the country uh violate court orders i still um takes my breath away that the Supreme Court of the United States this right-wing court um essentially orders the president to facilitate the return of someone who it was clear violation of the law to to deport a render the president is meeting with the president of El Salvador he could ask for the return he refuses to do so he acknowledges he could just pick up the phone he's openly contemptuous of both the Supreme Court and the lower court uh that is really unprecedented and for people who might be tempted to think well you know I'm not a suspected 16:01 gang member why should I care about that um if they can grab anyone off the street and give them a label um or violate a court order and send you overseas or make the argument that as long as they send you overseas before the court can intervene there's nothing the courts can do then really no one is safe yeah that that is scary and and when you have Steven Miller going out in front of the White House and saying 'Well we might suspend habius corpus the ability to challenge unlawful detention in this country you know that that is also um a scary thought and you know taking away people's birthright citizenship uh using the National Guard in this fashion I mean it it really sounds like a militarized campaign of fear that they're trying to spread throughout the migrant communities in this country.' and and a lot of these folks just don't know what to do i mean Sonia Smayor at the Supreme Court today was talking about the possibility if you take away 17:00 birthright citizenship of stateless kids i mean just it's it is it's astonishing what we've seen take place just in the last 100 days or so but to see Steven Miller have the gumption to say that out in front of the White House i can't imagine a Biden administration official going out in front of the White House and say 'We might get rid of habius corpus.' you know and what the reaction might might be to that over on Fox or on the Republican side of things it's astonishing i met with a group of young people today who are the children of visa holders so their parents came to the country many of them worked in the tech sector and they're so they're the children of people who came here legally they have been applying for citizenship but because the process takes so long they've turned 21 they've aged out of it so they've aged out of their legal status and so they they had status they came here lawfully and then through no fault of their own they've aged out of status wow and now they have to worry 18:00 about being deport deported uh and in a prior administration you wouldn't have to worry that we would deport folks in that circumstance but they do have to worry about it uh just over the weekend I don't know if you saw this footage from Worcester Mass oh yes of someone being grabbed by these hooded DHS figures uh her daughter screaming i imagine that's your mother that's being grabbed off the street the the the horror and the heartbreak of it and it is of course designed to frighten people and the the astounding thing to me is just how quickly they've created this climate of fear not just in the immigrant community but at universities in law firms throughout society people worried that a social media post could cost them their job for a administration that once claimed it was against censorship we're seeing so much censorship now um and it's awful and and 19:02 there's there's only one response to this and it is that we have to stick together and and push back and show courage when when Harvard stepped up against this administration it inspired other universities to do the same of course when law firms capitulated it inspired other law law firms to capitulate too uh so the best remedy here is is the contagion of courage yeah and and Senator I mean you you've stood up to Trump for years and I I I I'm sure it must be a big shock to you to see major institutions in this country the media law firms universities basically bend the knee and you know Donald Trump all too well i mean to me it is the exact wrong thing to do because it just it it's just like that Supreme Court immunity decision any opening he sees he will take it he will feel emboldened by those sorts of things and he he he prays on weakness any signs of weakness that's 20:01 he he that's like showing red in front of a bull a red flag in front of a bull so true and you know very you know close to home for you I'm sure must be this case involving CBS where um Trump sues CBS over a 60 Minutes interview with Kla Harris a clearly frivolous case there is no way in the world if that case went to trial he would ever win that case exactly but of course CBS is part of Paramount paramount wants to merge with Sky Dance and Donald Trump can leverage that merger um to extract money from CBS and you just can't give into that you just can't give into that uh but we saw ABC capitulate and settle a similar and meritless lawsuit by Trump exactly and 21:00 when and when those cases are settled that money doesn't go to the Treasury no that money goes into Donald Trump's pocket right into his pocket uh you know in the category of getting in on the scheme you've got Melania Trump is being paid $40 million by Amazon it's unreal for licensing a documentary about Melania Trump yeah and it I think it it makes the case for strong public media um in this country you know PBS and NPR uh they're one of the favorite punching bags of the right and you know they're going after it again i just wonder you know in this big beautiful bill that Trump's been talking about which Republicans appear to be blocking at as well not only because of the cost but because it's going to go after Medicaid and it sounds like when it comes to the Senate comes out of the Senate it's going to be a very different piece of legislation but if there's any way to protect public broadcasting it seems to mean it's now more than ever i think that's exactly right i met with some folks from NPR earlier today 22:02 um who are deeply worried about the uh continuation of public broadcasting at a time when as you say it's just more important than ever um but because their reporting is objective their reporting is factbased because they're not willing to carry a party line by any party um they're a threat they're considered a threat to the administration and so they're a target um it's the same reason they're going after these universities they think these universities are a hot bed of ideas that they don't like and so they want to them by taking away their funding and in the process they're defunding the the the golden goose of innovation i mean this partnership between research universities and the federal government has brought about such dramatic advances in science and in medicine what they're doing is just such a boon to China and 23:01 even Europe and its universities researchers are going overseas they're saying 'I forget about this i don't want to deal with this i'll go to France or Germany.' Yeah absolutely incredible just incredible well and I I want to say I really admire your courage as a journalist oh thank you Senator you put up with hell uh during the first administration and you stood tall there's never been a more challenging time I think to be a member of the press and so I have great respect for what you do what you did and uh hats off to you well I appreciate that and what you said earlier about not giving in that's been my message here is and uh you know we either stand up to the bully or we're all in a a bunch of trouble and to me it's all about not giving into the lies not giving into the fear so and I know that you've been doing that uh during your time in Congress and I I really appreciate the time you've given us a lot of time this afternoon hope we can do it again soon look forward to it it's great to see you again all right good to see you too hope that wasn't too 24:00 excruciating i appreciate the time thanks a lot Senator all right good to see you

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