IHIP News - RFK Jr’s Confirmation Hearing; Senator Smith’s Plan to FIGHT BACK

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Talking to Senator Tina Smith about the RFK JR's confirmation hearing and the recent illegal action of the Trump regime. Pre-order our new book, join our Patreon Cult, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Confirmation hearings for RFK Jr. are going to start today. This man is so terrifying, unqualified, an absolute non-expert across the board. His own cousin, the daughter of John F. Kennedy, has spoken out about how dangerous he is. But I think all of us want to hear from Democrats, specifically Democratic senators. So we would like to welcome to IHIP News Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota. SEN. TINA SMITH, Hey, you all. How are you? It's so good to be with you. STEPHANIE SY, It's great to be with you, Senator. Thank you for joining us. So, you know, there's this feeling in the, we live in a flyover state and millions of Americans do, and there's this feeling that Trump has just taken a grenade and kind of set it in the federal

government and then gone down to Mar-a-Lago or one of his golf clubs and golfed and turn, turning everything off and you can't help, but kind of freak out. And so my question for you is all of the remaining appointees, is it a fair assessment to say they all saw what happened on January 6th? We all did. Uh, we know that the president pardoned convicted, seditious conspirators, conspirators, violent people. And that if you're okay with that, your judgment is not as such that you should be in a cabinet of the president of the United States. Yeah. Well, first I totally get that. I'm from Minnesota where, which a lot of people think of as a flyover state too, if you're, especially if you're going North. And I

think there's just this feeling out there of like, what the hell is going on? I mean, literally I was texting with my dad who lives in New Mexico at like 1030 last night, he's 95 years old. And he was like, rage tweeting, like, what's going on? What are you people doing? Like, Oh dad, it's terrible. I know, I know what you mean. And I think it's also, we should be really clear. Like this, their strategy is to just flood us with, to swamp us with all this crazy stuff. And then like, watch us run around chasing around after all their stuff. And it's like up to us to be like

disciplined and strategic and to go after the things that are just really screwed up. So, you know, a couple ideas about that today and about, oh, you know, less than an hour, I'm going to be up asking questions of RFK Jr., who wants to run the Department of Health and Human Services. And he's one of the most prominent anti-vaccine advocates in the world. And so, I mean, we've got to kind of marshal our resources here and hold these folks accountable. Let me ask you this. Do you think history will judge some of what's going on right now with your colleagues in the House and in the Senate, that even the unanimous vote of Marco Rubio could be considered historically some form of appeasement. Considering, I go back to my initial question, Marco Rubio knows better. He knows.

You know he knows. Everybody knows he knows. Everybody knows if he was hooked up to truth serum and a polygraph, he would say Trump's a liar and he's dangerous. But he knows that. And despite knowing that, he's going along with the pardoning and all of the illegal

acts in which this president is trying to perpetrate. Do you think the Democrats, you and your colleagues, need to have a very firm line of absolutely zero appeasement? And I want to remind you, his top right-hand guy, Elon Musk, just did two back-to-back hail Hitlers. Oh, I know it. So, you know, it's such a good question. And it's something that I personally wrestle with all the time because you're, you know,

I look at each one of these votes and I go, okay, how am I going to explain this to my kids and my grandchildren, you know, two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now? I mean, the epitome of that is the, you know, the Hegseth vote, this guy who is now going to be the Secretary of Defense. And I mean, I really, truly believe that he is going to be responsible for the deaths of Americans because of his incompetence and because he has no idea for what we need to do to protect our national security. I felt the same way about Scott Besson. I mean, I think actually Marco Rubio is the, I think he might be the only

cabinet secretary that I voted for so far. And then the thing that you're trying to wrestle with, I mean, let's take Rubio. Okay. I mean, I disagree with him on a lot of stuff. Um, but I also, you know, you think to yourself when you're making that vote, like he is going to be in the room when Trump is doing all sorts of crazy ass stuff. And do I want somebody in the room who I believe has some connection to the rule of law and how it should work? Or am I just going to say, no, he's going to get in there anyway and make it, you know, I came down on that side as saying, yeah, I want somebody in there who I can sort of trust to at least believe in the core values of our democracy. But I want to tell something else that I think is happening right now.

You know, yesterday, the day before yesterday, when Trump did this order, basically freezing trillions of dollars of federal funding, obviously illegal, obviously going to have a real hardship on Americans, it's going to hurt Americans and every single state. And I think that sort of flipped something for a lot of us in terms of like, we can't just sort of say, oh, we got to pick our fights here. Like this is something that we have to really battle and really stand up against. And I think you're going to be seeing that you are seeing that already. And it's just, that's just unacceptable. That could be truly the beginning of the unraveling

of our democracy if we don't stand up to it and stop it. Have you found it strange that one of your strange bedfellows because I was glad, of course, to see Mitch McConnell vote with the Democrats, all of the Democrats opposing Hegseth. But, you know, he did it at the very last minute. He has a lot of influence in the Republican caucus. Did he use that influence to try to get one more person so that we could have stopped this dangerous nominee? No, he did not. And what about what happened during the second impeachment when Mitch McConnell gave that stirring speech about how awful Donald Trump was? Well, he could have stopped this and he chose not to. So to me, this is not exactly a profile in courage. I think it is. I mean, of course,

I welcome his vote no on Hegseth, but I take it all with a grain of salt. I don't know how you feel about this, but that's how I see it. I feel exactly like what you said. You're calling it exactly for what it is. It's performative. He's trying to do some sort of history making at the twilight of his career for his own personal record. It was not for the betterment of the country. And I will never, ever, ever forgive him ever, as long as I live for what he did with Obama's Supreme Court pick. I will never forgive him for that because what the court has done, and I know that you're very active in women's reproductive issues. What the court has done with the overturning of Roe v. Wade has opened up the doors for all of these regressive laws

that the Trump regime is pushing down everybody's throats. And I just think it's so important that all of us remember this, Senator. When Kamala Harris came out and she said that she was running, she and the governor of your state, Tim Walz, started calling everybody weird. And all of the Democrats and moderates were so excited. We're like, yes, yes, we can bully conservatives again. Yes, this is awesome. And we've all felt so united. And it was so good. And it was like, we know we're on the right side of history. We know this is the good fight. And so right now, I think we all feel kind of like this heavy gravitational cloud is just pushing down. And we're looking to people like you and Senator Warren and other members of the House and the Senate to come out and grow some

fangs, just like you're doing in this interview and saying, no, Mitch McConnell's still a world-class POS. We all know it. We're craving that. We're dying to hear that. Pumps, what do you think? Well, I'm so concerned about all that's going on, the consolidation of power by Donald Trump and the illegal activity that he has continued to do

while in office. How do you see going forward to stop his illegal activity? Yeah, well, I just so agree with that. And I'll tell you what what you just said made me think about being at the inauguration. So, you know, I went some of my colleagues says I just can't bear to be there. But I said, no, I'm going to go. I'm going to bear witness to this. And so I walk into the big rotunda of the Capitol. This I just can't bear to be there. But I said, no, I'm going to go. I'm going to bear witness to this. And so I walk into the big rotunda of the Capitol, this, I mean, in my mind, this sacred place of our democracy. And there I see lined up on the podium, the wealthiest millionaires in the world with

prime seating. And I'm like, this is what you need to know about these folks. You're talking about the concentration of wealth and power. And that's what it means. That's what it looks like we need to not be shy about speaking out about this. And I honestly think one of the things that happened in this election that we have to be really aware of is that people want to see us fighting. They can see that things aren't working well in this country. They can see that there's this concentration of wealth and power that is helping the billionaires and just holding regular people back. And they want to see Democrats standing up and fighting about that with some strength

and confidence and sort of like a little bit of muscle, right? And so that's what we have to be doing and demonstrating. And I mean, that's what I'm doing. That's what I did all day yesterday with this illegal action that the Trump administration took to basically say, we don't care what Congress said. We don't care about Congress said. We don't care about Congress passing laws. We're not going to follow those laws. We're going to just do what we say that what we want to do. And there's just like, can I just tell you one other thing that

really demonstrated this for me? Okay. So last night, the administration sends out this memo, Trump administration to millions of federal employees saying basically, you should take a buyout. And if you take a buyout by February 6th, we're going to pay you through September. A lot of people are probably wondering whether they're going to be able to keep their job anyway. But do you know that the kind of line in the memo, it was fork in the road. That's the memo that went out to all the federal employees. The exact same language that Elon Musk used when he sent that memo to all those Twitter employees two years ago. So who do

you think was writing that? It's like a playbook right out of the hedge funds and the private equity folks, except it's our institutions that they're doing this to. And we got to, we just got to call it, you know, stand up. And as my mom used to say, call the kettle black. I agree with that. And I think that you said right now, everybody wants the Democrats to fight for them. And I think it needs to be noted that a lot of Trump's popularity, I believe because we live in a red state, not one county senator, not one county went blue in the state of Oklahoma. There are really good moderate moderates and progressives in the state and in our city that fight the good fight. And I think part of it is they believe that he's fighting for them.

Is he crazy? Does he lie? All of those things. But they see this entity, this human, for lack of a better word, fight for them. And I feel like right now is a time, and I have noticed the other Senator that came on here before is your friend, originally Oklahoma City gal, Senator Warren, and then you, Michelle Obama, AOC. The women are standing up now more than ever. I have seen more women like you and Senator Warren and others stand up to this oligarchy because we know, we know all of the marginalized communities. We are there. And then all of it trickles down. All of the marginalization is going to trickle down, starting with the regressive rights of women. and it's going to trickle all the way down.

And so I want you and your colleagues to know you're always welcome on our channel. We are not scared. We are going to always tell the truth. We are going to fight like hell for women's rights and for the rights of all people. And I can't believe I have to say this, but for democracy, I mean, that's where we are. And so I cannot thank you enough. You're lovely. And I'm so glad that you're fighting the good fight. And thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for sharing your difficult decisions in a very honest and candid

way. It goes a long way with everybody. You get all those gals in the Senate and y'all go fight like hell, Senator. We will. I'm going to go off in a few minutes and you've given me my marching order, so I'm ready to go. All right. I like it. Thank you so much, Senator. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. When everyone's chasing the same finance positions, chartered business valuators stand out. CBVs are an elite group of trusted professionals doing everything from deal advisory to litigation support to succession planning. CBVs are a preferred hire in investment banking, private equity, consulting, and many other areas, with the potential to earn seven figures at the pinnacle of their careers.

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