The MeidasTouch Podcast - Congressman Jim Himes on Trump’s Threats to National Security

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas report on Donald Trump’s voters having a rude awakening that Trump destroyed their lives and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Jim Himes about his perspective on Donald Trump’s disastrous term. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Now it just feels like all about me, me, me, me, me, Donald Trump, not, you know, the guy out there working in the trenches trying to make ends meet, trying to pay a mortgage, trying to pay the bills. After 100 days of this dumpster fire of a presidency, even Trump voters right now are speaking out publicly and saying what an absolute mess they're talking about the disaster Trump's inflicted on the economy, the disaster Donald Trump's inflicted on our alliances, and also just the lack of leadership in the White House is stunning to a lot of these Trump voters. Let me introduce you to a guy named Jay, lives in Pennsylvania. And here's what he has to say

about the whole Signalgate scandal. I mean, he's just coming at it from a very common sense angle. And he's like, wait, what are you doing? You're having classified conversations on your cell phone. This is a Trump voter right here. Let's play it. You know, the secretary of defense. I don't mean to sound rude, but what kind of idiot puts his wife in a group chat that has access to military documents?

You know? So it... Were you bothered by the first signal chat issue that came out with the information with the reporter in that chat? I was bothered by both of them. Because let's be realistic. If that was a military officer officer they would have been destroyed but because that's one of trump's buddies it's okay we're not going to do anything about it i know you wanted to play that clip of jay because he says it so simply as i've always said this shouldn't be about democrats republicans

this shouldn't be pundits overcomplicating this. It's like, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing? Let's bring in Democratic Congress member Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congress member. I mean, I think Jay just puts it accurately there. What do you make of all of this? And especially with the news now that Mike Walz, national security advisors, I guess what he's got promoting,

he got moved to a different position. He's now the United States. He has to be confirmed, but he's the United Nations ambassador now. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, look, Jay put it perfectly, which is people are coming to sense that something you really want in a president, which is a sense of accountability, is not there with Donald Trump, right? I mean, we saw this with the stock market, right? When the stock market was going great, right at the beginning of the inauguration, you know, the president puts up a tweet saying, this is the Trump stock market. And then it turns around, he says, no, it's the Biden stock market. And I think, you know, I think if I'd had an opportunity

to ask Jay a question, it's not just about classified information and how vulnerable that becomes to Havana and Tehran and Beijing and Moscow. That may not hit home for most Americans who aren't familiar with classified information and all that stuff. But you know what America sees here? They say, wow, our most responsible national security officials, the folks who look after nuclear weapons and decide whether we're going to put our troops in harm's way are a bunch of yahoos, right? So what about the folks who are like running Medicare? What about the folks who are, you know, running farm programs that American farmers rely on? Do they have any reason to believe that there is any steady hand on any tiller in the federal government? I mean, sadly, when you look at the range from, you know, Elon

Musk to Mike Waltz to, you know, all of the crazy that was unleashed with tariffs, you wonder, is there anybody of any competence inside the White House? You know, as the ranking Democratic member of the intelligence community, you're able to see a lot of sensitive documents. I know there's things that you can't talk about, but while we have you on the podcast, I just want to hear from you just generally, like, how bad, how bad is it right now? And what, what should the American people know in terms of what keeps you up at night that you can share based on the way this Trump regime has handled things? Sure. I mean, it's not complicated

if we start with Signalgate, right? And, you know, what the American people saw there was that before a military raid, the Secretary of Defense, on a Signal chat that included a reporter, put up tactical details, weapon systems, timing, targets that had the Chinese or the Russians, and they've got the capability to do it, gotten that information and handed it to the Houthis. The Houthis would have swiveled around their air defenses and we'd have dead pilots right now or sunken ships. Now, by the grace of God, that didn't happen. So that's obviously a testament to the lack of judgment of our Secretary of Defense and Mike Waltz. Secondly, you know, we get the information that we get because lots of patriotic Americans in uniform or spies for the CIA,

intelligence officers, put their lives at risk every single day. And keeping them safe is the reason we are super careful with classified information. Because if it gets out that we know something that was said in a meeting with Vladimir Putin, just for example, they'll figure out who did that. And that person gets a bullet to the back of their head. And apart from the moral aspects of that, that means we get a lot less critical information. So that's why this stuff is life and death. It's not something to be toyed around or to be screwed around with on a private phone with signal chats on it. Look, we know the Houthis have already shot down, what was it, six, seven Reaper drones. How do we know one way or another with the lack of good data coming to us now and with all of the manipulation, how to accurately assess something like that?

Well, how is that happening? Or if we're looking towards, you know, getting accurate data in Ukraine or elsewhere, you know, is there a mechanism now where the sharing of this data is still in a way that you feel good about the data on the intelligence community? Or do even you have concerns now based on the fact that there are Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and all of these people that you're not even getting the right data to assess this stuff? Well, let's take that at two levels, sort of building on what I just said. Let's imagine, and this is purely hypothetical, but it's possible.

Let's imagine that we've got a source inside the Jalisco cartels, right? And they're feeding us information about how the cartels are bringing in the fentanyl precursors. Or we have a source inside Beijing telling us what the government, this is what spying is, right? So imagine those sources, and they know that if they get exposed, not only will they be tortured to death and killed, but probably in the case of the cartels, so will every member of their family and all of their pets. And so they're waking up this morning thinking, OK, I'm serving the United States and my life depends on the United States being exquisitely competent with their preservation of secrets. What do you think their conclusion is i mean i know what my conclusion would be if my life depended on you know mike waltz not having signal chats with the director of national intelligence that a reporter can take a picture of so that's a huge liability

for the united states now look our people are good our satellites are good we're going to get good data but americans need to ask the right question this is the second level of which i would answer your question which is you know the objective objective in Yemen is not to blow up a bunch of Houthis. That's a means to an end. And that's to get them to stop shooting at ships in the Red Sea. So you'll know that success has happened when ships can transit the Red Sea on their way to the Suez Canal. That has not happened yet, even though the Trump administration has pounded their chest about the amount of rubble that they've been able to bounce around in North Yemen. So that's how we judge success. Has the mission of opening the Suez Canal to commercial shipping

been achieved? And so far, that has not. Let's take a look at, you mentioned the, even Mike Walsh, while he was in the cabinet meeting, was either on a signal or some app. And when you zoom in, you can see the conversations that he's having. I mean, you see a conversation with J.D. Vance. I have confirmation from my counterpart it's turned off. He's going to be here. Even Rubio, you can see something about there is time, fully there is time. Now, look, we don't know what that reference is, but there, I mean, you may, I don't, but

people may know what that reference is. And for all we know, there is time has major implications in a negotiation that's taking place somewhere, right? Where, you know, I have confirmation from my counterpart. Could be, these could be life and death things. I know that as a podcaster, I'm not showing my phone around, like, other than to show that image. Why do they not? Yeah, look, there's nothing good about this. I gave you the example of, you know, the dude who is working for us inside a cartel in, you know, Mexico. that dude right now is asking himself, oh, my God, is my name getting sent

by the Secretary of Defense to Mike Waltz and some reporter is taking a picture of my name and I'm going to be drawn and quartered and my family will be murdered because of that, right? And that's, again, one example. Another example is we're negotiating with the Russians apparently right now over Ukraine. Right. Imagine, is it possible that, you know, our negotiating position is on that signal chat? Yes, it is. So anyway, it's just Christmas morning in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran and Havana because of the lack of operational security that these guys are showing. Let's just shift gears, talk about the economy. Let me show you another clip of Jay. By the way, Jay is a laid off federal government worker as well who voted for Trump. He worked in the IRS tax advocacy division. He was fired. And there's another part of the clip that I'm not going to show where every day he wakes up to see if he's going back

to work or not. And he misses the team that he worked for. And he's not sure even what his status. It's like the least efficient thing ever. And people should go to NBC News 10, watch that in Pennsylvania. But let me show you this clip, because on the economy, he's like, it shows you the difference between Main Street and Wall Street. He's like, he's like, what's even going on here? Like, I didn't think it was going to be this way.

Let's watch this clip. For President Trump, what were you hoping that he would do? I was hoping he would do something that made sense regarding the economy made some kind of progress in bettering you know the benefits of being a veteran but i mean it just seemed like he actually cared about doing what was best for the country but now it just feels like all about me me me me me, me, me, Donald Trump, not the guy out there working in the trenches trying to make ends meet, trying to pay your mortgage, trying to pay the bills.

Congressman, when you hear that, to me, that's just the reality. Donald Trump can say egg prices are down 87%, which they're not. He can claim gas is $1.98, which is not. But that's what's happening out there, huh? Yeah, you know, it's a very sad clip, right? It's a very sad clip because, you know, apparently Jay lost his job.

And he discovered only recently, apparently, that Donald Trump is all about me, me, me, in his words. Yeah, yeah, that is Donald Trump. And as inflation begins to kick in as a result of the tariffs, folks like Jay are going to be badly hurt. And as we speak, my Republican counterparts are dismantling the safety net that is there to catch Jay when he falls, as he apparently has. If he loses his health insurance, he's going to need Medicaid. Well, the Republicans are going to cut $80 billion a year out of Medicaid. Why? To provide tax cuts to the wealthiest people on this planet. And two things to say about that. Number one, that's just wrong. And Jay's situation is going to get no better. And look, as a Democrat,

I have to think about this. You know, why did we not do a better job? How did Jay get convinced by a con man, an obvious con man, to the point where he's only now discovering that Trump is about me, me, me. I don't blame Jay for that. To some extent, I blame we Democrats who failed to tell the story in such a way as to get his vote and avoid this. So the point I'm making here is that, yeah, this is a tragedy and shame on Donald Trump. But man, it really highlights the need for self-reflection on the part of the Democratic Party. And Congressman, let's just talk also when I have someone like you on here, you know, oftentimes an interviewer comes in with a series of questions, but you're seeing things that I'm not seeing. So I often ask now at the end of these interviews, is there something that you think is just not being discussed out there that you think deserves to get more attention right now that you're focused on and you want the American people to focus on? I'll share with you an anxiety that I don't think people are thinking enough about. And that is my very real anxiety, that we could easily find

ourselves in a war with Iran. Now, it's a really interesting question, right? Because on the one hand, I think that the president himself, I'll give him credit here, is very skeptical of wars, particularly wars in the Middle East, right? He makes fun of the neocons. He's got a lot of people who make fun of the neocons. I also know that it is, in my opinion, I don't know it, obviously, but in my opinion, I believe that Israel is very likely to undertake a strike of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. Now, setting aside whether that's a good idea or a bad idea, I'm not sure I'm smart enough to know, the potential shock to global energy prices if oil can't move through the Persian Gulf on top of the tariffs could really be catastrophic for the global economy and the U.S. economy. So I'm carrying around a lot of anxiety that we will not be statesmen like we being in primarily the White House

in thinking about the very high probability of a shooting war involving Iran. Now, again, this is not an Iraq war. I don't think there's any chance we invade. But if there's a strike on the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, and again, setting aside whether that's a good or bad idea, the impact on energy prices and then the impact that could have on the U.S. economy is really concerning to me right now. Congress member Jim Himes, we'll leave it at that. We'll get you back on in a week or two. Keep us updated on what's going on. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas?

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