Jim Acosta & Michael Lewis

Molly Jong-Fast (0:00)

Hello, welcome to Fast Politics. I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and we have a great show for you today. Later in the show, I'll talk to legendary author, Michael Lewis, about his new book, Blockers, the story of the people who are helping keep the US government from falling apart. But first, we have the Jim Acosta Show's Jim Acosta to talk about Trump's fantasies of Iran nuking two American cities.

Jim Acosta.

Jim Acosta (0:28)

Hi, Molly, good to see you.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:30)

Good to see you. Donald Trump says something wildly incendiary.

Basically, he made the case that anything was worth it to keep Iran from having a nuke. I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the word, just artificial, it's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.

Jim Acosta (0:56)

You can take out a city.

Michael Lewis (0:59)

Let him take out Los Angeles. Let him take out San Diego.

Jim Acosta (1:04)

This is a very small price to pay. And it's gonna be over with very soon.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:09)

It's essentially almost over with.

Michael Lewis (1:11)

And they might keep going a little long.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:13)

They always say they have a big threshold for pain.

Michael Lewis (1:15)

They need it, let me tell you.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:17)

They need it. But it's gonna end very soon. And it'll end one way or the other. And your gas and your gasoline and all of the things.

What does that sound like to you?

Jim Acosta (1:28)

It sounds like we have a 25th Amendment crisis in this country. And I, you know, a couple of things. One is, you know, he absolutely stepped in at big time.

I think that, you know, he, their unhinged and deranged comments that he makes from time to time. I mean, this is as bad as it gets. This is bottom of the barrel stuff to say that, well, you know, you know, we have to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon or else, you know, they could take out LA and San Diego. Why is he singling out these two cities? And why is he going after California? It's always, you know, he always goes after blue states. And, you know, to suggest, to fantasize about two massive American cities, any American city being taken out by a nuclear weapon, to me, is just, it's as dangerous and insane as it gets. And the thing that pisses me off is that, you know, almost immediately, of course, the White House, Trump, his people, his gang, they jump into damage control mode and they start to go after everybody in the media for reporting on what he said. How dare you take him out of context? How dare you, you know, twist things around? And it's like, wait a minute, he's the most dishonest person who's ever lived, you know, that we know of in our lifetime. But putting that to the side, he absolutely said a totally crazy and deranged and dangerous thing. And the way the crowd responded tells you everything that you need to know. The crowd understood what he was saying. He was fantasizing and, you know, hypothesizing about blue cities, or I guess San Diego is kind of a purple city, honestly, getting blown to smithereens. It's totally nuts. And I woke up this morning wondering whether America has finally had enough. Has America finally had enough of this crazy political movement that is so totally contrary to American values, where you have a president of the United States, the leader of this movement, a cult-like movement, just talking about the most bizarre, strange and just unhinged stuff. And I was just waking up this morning hoping and praying that like this is hopefully, maybe this is part of the end of this movement.

That piece of tape right there.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:44)

It was interesting to me watching that because what I thought about was all week, Trump has been on the trail because Republican, the polling for Republicans is just, people are really mad about the price of diesel and the price of gas and the price of things because of the tariffs and food and meat. And I mean, he's just gotten into problems with every single thing that he said he was going to make cheaper. But what I was struck by is there are so many of these soundbites from the trail of Donald Trump saying just absolutely the kind of things that if your grandfather said, you would call a doctor to make sure they were okay. I mean, things like the earlier this week, he talked about shoving it up their asses.