The Trumpapalooza tumbleweed: Why Republicans are staying away

0:00This is a global production. Trump is calling this his party because he thinks that it helps Republicans if his name is on the ballot. He doesn't give a shit about what anyone says in opposition to him. It will ruin our lives if we try and cross him. We won with him and we're going to die in flames with him. How loud has he been talking about how tough and great he is? It's kind of a reflection of his nervousness. The Republican party as a whole has been furious with Trump. What the hell is happening in the United States of America? And you have to wonder what the hell is happening in the White House residents? President called me two nights before Thanksgiving last fall. He said, Mike, we got to do a midterm convention. And I said, that's not a thing. And he said, make it a thing. Okay, so we're going to do a midterm convention. September 9th and 10th. First time in history, any parties ever done this. We're going to Dallas, Texas. You all could have been anywhere in a country. And we're going to have everybody there. Two nights of urban media on national television. We're going to parade all of our stars across the stage.

1:01We're going to highlight the great work of people like Monica DeLude Crew is okay. We're going to talk about what we've done for the people. And then the president is going to look right in the camera and say, I am on the ballot. So Trump is heading to a midterm convention in Dallas. And so are we. The only problem is no one else is. Donald Trump is going to be leading the bill on both nights. But Donald Trump's poll ratings are in the toilet. So how much help is a Donald Trump rally going to be for the Republican party? Welcome to the news agents USA. The news agents USA with Emily Matles and John Soapal. It's John. It's Matles. And it's Miles. And we've got to talk about the Republican convention, which I think we can put in inverted commas. Because this is the first time that there has ever been a midterm convention. It ain't really a convention where people are going to kind of nominate who their candidate is for the presidency. Because there is a sitting president at the moment.

2:03But it is. And this will shock you. I'm sure it is all about Donald Trump and not really about anyone else. And Miles, you're there. You are in Dallas. A keen convention goer. What's it like? Well, you know, John, I think that that probably tells you in brief everything that is happening here in Dallas. I am of course no friend anymore of the president of the United States. But folks like me are flooding into town. And the people who are not showing up are the Republican candidates who are supposed to be the stars of this convention. Politico did a survey the other day of 70 Republican members of Congress and asked them, will you be attending the convention? More than half either said no or that they were still checking their schedules. If you've ever hosted a party and people tell you they're checking their schedule, that's just because they're too scared to tell you no.

3:03They're not coming to your party. But like I said, there's a lot of pro democracy figures coming to town. A lot of Democrats are coming to town. One of the reasons I'm here is I'm hosting an event with a dozen Epstein survivors who are who have brought with us all 3.5 million Epstein files to Dallas. And at that same venue where we've set up this pop up library of the Epstein files Senate candidate Democrat James Talleriko will do a press conference on Thursday morning. These are the folks who are coming to town and it's already evident with the vibes here to say nothing of the fact that this administration is worried about whether they're going to fill seats in the arena. So Trump is calling this his party really that the Trump elusa or the Trump Alampa or something like that because he thinks that it helps Republicans if his name is on the ballot. And I guess that's the unseen piece of this jigsaw. The Republicans that are staying away clearly think he is no help to them at all.

4:09But just a couple of weeks ago we saw that case of Darlene Graham, the sister of Lindsey Graham now deceased the South Carolina Senator who was trying to win the primary to win his seat. And at that moment and I wonder if we can play that clip Trump said pretend that my name is on the ballot. He's good at pretending. I mean we don't get a lot of truth but he's good at pretending. Pretend my name is on the ballot and lo and behold she wins the primary she's through. I guess we don't yet know whether that helped her or even hindered her. Where do you think people are in terms of whether they need the Trump name on the ballot now? Well I think rather than listening to Donald Trump and his supporters you should find out what his opponents want to happen and his opponents are relishing and how much Donald Trump is bear hugging the candidates in these midterm elections. Remember as John noted at the outset Donald Trump's poll numbers are historically low.

5:11He is in the low 30s which is catastrophic territory for an American president. But then you just look at the other little data points here Emily like the fact that they were charging between 25,000 and $100,000 a seat at this convention from the actual candidates who need to be spending their money on running for re-election. And now to fill seats the administration has been sending text messages the Republicans rather have been sending text messages to random Dallas residents telling them they have free tickets to come see Donald Trump. And so many people didn't believe that was real thought it was a scam that the local news here in Dallas has been running segments saying if you get one of these text messages don't worry it is real. They are giving away free tickets that tells you everything but like I said look at what Donald Trump's opponents want him to do in light of the vibes being off if you will. People like Governor Gavin Newsom of California have said that he hopes Donald Trump will continue to bear hug these candidates and be the figurative name on the ballot in November.

6:20Take a listen. President Trump said he is going to hit the trail for Republicans hard down the stretch. Are you hoping that he gets out there? That could be great. Yeah, I don't know the name. That would be spectacular. I invite him in California and wherever he wants to show up. I could be fantastic. It is amazing how everybody is turning their back on him. Members of the Republican Party and how all these off the record comments and quotes they want nothing to do with him. He lives in that fish ball. He lives in the bubble of Sean Hannity and a few folks that just tell him how great he is. He needs to get out I think it would be amazing so he can understand how he can historic presently. Historically unpopular. If you got out he would understand that and maybe you change your ways. Maybe you do things a little bit differently. Understand the struggles of real people. You can drive by one of these gas stations and see record breaking diesel prices and talk to some of these farmers. That is Gavin Newsom and he is hit on what is the core concern for voters.

7:21Which seems to be oblivious to Donald Trump and he just doesn't give a shit at the moment. The fact of the matter is that his war in Iran and his tariffs policy is driving up costs for ordinary Americans. He is going, yeah, I know, I know tough. I think it is a real tension there. I was really a really interesting piece on Axios this morning talking about how Trump is on his own. There is no one in the White House who dares to contradict him but they all know that on most of the issues he is wrong. He is an 80 year old, irassable old man who doesn't want to be told he is wrong. He thinks he is right. He doesn't give a shit about what anyone says in opposition to him. Whereas once you would get pushed back or people trying to say look Mr. President, maybe it would be better if we did this rather than that. They just think you know what, it will ruin our lives if we try and cross him. He will come after us. We have just got to, you know, we won with him and we are going to die in flames with him as well and there ain't nothing we can do about it.

8:27That seems to be the fatalism that has sort of resulted in this convention taking place over the next two days. Because no one wants to say to him, you know what Donald, this is better if it doesn't happen. And that's why you have Gavin Newsom standing there rubbing his hands. I think Gavin Newsom has nailed linguistically how to speak to or about Trump and that is to use superlatives which we know Trump adores but against him. So he calls him the most historic president. Yeah, he's historic. He's historically unpopular. He's got the highest prices. Yeah, you love high. You love big but they are high gas prices. He's absolutely nailed that calm tone that goes right to the heart of all the things that Trump doesn't want to hear. But if you look at what others are saying on Trump's own team, Tom Barrett, Michigan, first term Republican, he's not going. He says I can't control what the president is going to say at the convention but I can control where I'm at. In other words, whatever shit he comes out with, I might have to do the damage control back in Michigan. Susan Collins, who we know is fighting quite a tight race in Maine.

9:29She's not going. A lot of the people that are actually seriously worried about their seats will not be anywhere near Dallas this weekend. And Trump has posted the Republican National Convention tomorrow night in Dallas is really hot. The American Airlines Center home to Dallas, Mavericks is totally sold out false. Everyone wants to be there false. We're asking those candidates that are in tight races up a little down a little even to speak. We want to save the stage for them. Well, he's going to save an awful lot of stage if they don't come. And the fact that he's speaking twice, I think Melania is not on the speaker list. It's a very strange assortment of who will actually end up on the stage. Do you know? Do you know who we're going to hear from miles? Well, even Trump speaking both nights was a recent revelation. Originally, he was only supposed to speak on Thursday night. He was going to close out the event and JD Vance was going to keynote the first night and that's how it was going to be. And then somewhere at some point behind the scenes, someone demanded that Donald Trump be at the top of the building both nights.

10:37I wonder who that someone was. I bet JD Vance. Yeah, probably. But as we were looking at the schedule here, I mean, you know, I'll see most of the Democratic members of Congress who are here in town doing fundraisers and events. A lot of them were planning to do events to counter program Donald Trump on Thursday. And then many of them came to town earlier when they saw that Donald Trump was also going to be speaking on Wednesday. So, you know, that is noteworthy. But look, if I've learned one thing about the guy and he did this so much with us in the first term, you can judge his sort of mental state. You can judge his level of panic by the volume of the projection. How loud is he being talking about how tough and great he is is kind of a reflection of his nervousness. And I'll give you an example of how I saw that begin this week, which was on Sunday. The president spent about 10 hours on social media. He was posting memes. He was posting videos of himself as Hulk Hulgan, the wrestler.

11:39He was posting AI-generated videos of himself riding on horses with George Washington. He posted AI videos of himself as the Marvel character, the Green Lantern creating a magic border wall. This is very surreal. I saw, I think it was a UK journalist tweet out what the hell is happening in the United States of America. And you have to wonder what the hell is happening in the White House residence when for 10 hours the man sits there posting on social media. But that to me showed his nervousness leading into this week. It was all of these images and iconography about how strong he was as the reporting was starting to spin up about how bad this convention was going to look for him this week. And you talked about all those kind of memes that were posted. And another which has caused enormous controversy is the one he's posted as him as the USA ice hockey player who has got Mark Carney as the Canadian ice hockey player. On the floor and he's battering him with his second, you know, it just really isn't this Natalie as in travel with Natalie Natalie?

12:46Why would she do that? She's posting this stuff. He is posting this stuff as if this is okay for an American president to be shown. I mean, when Canada is your kind of closest ally. You're splitting the head open of Mark Carney. I mean, it's just a weird place to be isn't it? Well, let's just talk about one thing. You mentioned James Tallerico and I know you're going to be catching up with him a little bit later. But where do you see and where does he see his chances now in this race? Because I mean, will people, I mean, presumably he's chosen Dallas because he realizes that Ken Paxton versus Tallerico is a fight that he would like to kind of get in on because Ken Paxton is probably not the strongest Republican candidate. They could have come up with and Trump thinks that he can win it for the red team at this point. 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.

13:48And you know, Beto said something very straightforward to me, which is James isn't 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. He's not liked by the voters. He's a very unlikable candidate here in Texas. You hear Republicans on the ground, grown about him as their nominee. That's part one. Part two though, is that Tala Rico has this much more direct appeal to sort of independent voters in Texas. I think even more so than Beto did when Beto ran for that seat. And of course, you've got the headwinds against the Republican party. Notably, a number of different surveys have shifted that race from Leanne's Republican to now a genuine toss-up race. And we've got to go back to where we are here. We are in deep red Texas. The fact that Republicans are doing their convention here says everything.

14:54Conventions are normally held in a state that a party thinks is aspirational, a purple state that they might try to win over to their side. You rarely hold it in a place that is safe ground. The fact that that race or that convention rather is being held here in Dallas this week shows you how nervous Republican voters are. But look at what the other Republican senator in Texas, Ted Cruz, had to say about all of this. Oh, listen, we have a real race in Texas, but you know, we have a real race in most states across the country. It's a midterm. But Texas is Texas. I am fully aware of this, but you know what, Texas like other states, we got a bunch of liberals in Texas. Now we have more conservatives and more common sense Texans than we have liberals, but the liberals are really ticked off and they're energized. And I'll tell you, if you look at this race, James Talleriko, I think is a dangerous candidate. I think substantively he is radical and extreme. But he's very good at seeming charming. He's very good at seeming innocuous. Personally, I prefer my wolves in wolves clothing, not in sheep's clothing.

16:01Ted Cruz finds somebody charming. That's a kiss of death right there. The old joke about Ted Cruz is why do people stake an instant dislike to him? It saves time. I mean, the other thing about the other thing about that race in Texas is that the Republican party as a whole has been furious with Trump. That he's sitting on this $400 million war chest that he has built up in a pack that's available to the Republican party to fight key races. And he's not opening the coffers at all, but he has spent a bit of money in Texas on trying to help Ken Paxton because of course Donald Trump was the one who got behind him. Ken Paxton has got red of corn and this is exactly going back to your point about Darlene Graham earlier on in South Carolina. This is the tension in the Republican party now, which is that Donald Trump has the power to get candidates over the line so that they are the Republican candidate. Sometimes, I mean, that's I think genuinely, but I don't know. Well, half the time it's worked in the prime reason at least half the time it's worked and half the time it hasn't worked.

17:04Most of the time it has worked. The problem is that he's then voicing the Republican party with candidates who might do terribly in a general election. It's all very well in the primary process having power over the Republican party, but you've got to choose candidates that are electable. And why are we talking about Texas now because Ken Paxton who Trump got behind is not very electable against James Tallerico. And we even heard Ted Cruz there talking about how kind of seemingly charming Tallerico is compared to Paxton. Well, let me just mention that the numbers really quickly here to give people a sense of perspective because the Paxton campaign cannot be that happy at this moment. And I'll tell you what, Donald Trump is sitting on a half billion dollar political war chest. He's given less than 1% of it out to Republican candidates. And so I'm sure the Paxton team was hoping and expecting that Trump's super PAC would come in and at least bring Paxton even with James Tallerico and fundraising.

18:07And I'll give you a sense of how big that gap is. James Tallerico has raised $68 million in this race. Ken Paxton, nine. He's raised $9 million. And so you can imagine the Paxton campaign sees Trump's war chest, knows they're in one of the most important races in America, and could expect that Trump would have the ability to come in and bring that fundraising even. Well, the Trump campaign announced this weekend or the filings came out that they were giving $10 million to the Paxton campaign, even with that $10 million Paxton's going to be more than three times lower in fundraising than James Tallerico. This is not the kind of money Paxton needs to get put over the top and Republicans across the country are frustrated that the president is holding those purse strings tight. Miles, I've started to read the words in some commentary, wave election. And the idea that this is going to be one of those rare events like in I think 1994 or 2006 where there is a massive swing away from the governing party.

19:12And that this is possible this time around that this is going to be a wave election in the house where the Democrats would take it and possibly in the Senate too. Are you seeing it like that or is that just kind of thief or talk that we get just after Labor Day now that we've started the election season proper? Well, I think you see it right here on the ground in Dallas where you should see a completely different environment if the Republicans had the wind at their backs. It's not just the low turnout Republicans that I was talking to yesterday near the convention center were talking about how there's nothing for them to show up for this cycle. There's a frustration that the president that their party leaders have failed to tell the story of why they need to show up at the polls. And so you have this depressive effect on one side on the GOP side, not a lot of enthusiasm about the midterm elections. And that shows up in the polls only about half of Republicans say they feel motivated to go vote in the midterm elections.

20:13But then on the other side you have an incredibly motivated political party and largely because of what the Donald Trump administration has done. The cross tabs of recent surveys show that most Democrats say this is the most important midterm election in their lifetimes and why? Because they think their right to vote is imperil. And this is something we're going to talk about in the back half of the program today. But those threats to democratic rights and the threat to metal in elections has got Democrats so fired up to go to the polls to defend their right to vote that it looks like John. It is shaping up indeed to be a wave election. Yeah, we're going to try and talk you through how Donald Trump is weaponizing the postal service essentially to use to try and so chaos at the ballot box. And what he's doing in Missouri with the Jerry Mandarin there, that's what I tell you.

21:25So we're going to talk a little bit more about what is happening in the Supreme Court with this whole question of the male in ballot. We know from past times past elections that Trump is very suspicious of male in ballots. We also know from past times that he quite likes, shall we delicately say, fudging an election results, even if it results in a riot. So this is something that voters are taking extremely seriously because the latest attempt to weaponize the male in ballots has been going through the courts for the last what sort of six weeks or so. And essentially Trump is trying to make the postal service of America, the defining decider of who gets to vote. And it is so complicated and so legally fraught that I'm going to throw this to miles now miles you do it lucky miles. Yeah, thanks. Just just just describe this multi-month legal battle to the listeners real quickly.

22:30I'll boil it down to this. This is really interesting in how it played out because you didn't hear much about this until the past few weeks in American politics. And that's because when Donald Trump dropped his executive order on male in ballots in March of this year, so many people thought it was so obviously unconstitutional that it was seen almost like an incendiary press release that would get forgotten. There was no sense really in the American political life that this thing could actually come to fruition. And let me tell you why about a third of Americans vote by male in ballot. This executive order would give the president of the United States the ability to tell the postal service. Don't deliver the ballots of the people. I don't want you to deliver. Now, ostensibly the administration says they are doing this in order to direct the postal service to make sure ballots of non-citizens, people who are not allowed to vote, do not get delivered.

23:32But of course, there's no oversight here. There's no transparency here. And the fear of groups that have sued the administration and federal court is that you open up the possibility for this power. What is to prevent this president or any president from simply reaching into the mailbag and taking out ballots they don't like in key states and thereby influencing the outcome of almost any election in the country. You don't need to be a lawyer to read this executive order and to read the United States Constitution and say, this sounds like it's not legal. This sounds like it's not constitutional. These have slowly made these cases have slowly made their way through the courts and the Trump administration for most of this time since March has been told by federal judges do not do anything. Stop. You are not allowed to move forward with this until the case gets further along. Don't prepare to do this. Well, it came out the other week that the U.S. Postal Service had been quietly defying a judge's orders and preparing to implement this policy in the election.

24:40A federal judge said stop. The Trump administration sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court and said we need to carry out this executive order to stop illegal aliens from voting in the United States. And now we are waiting on the Supreme Court to make that decision. But as you noted at the top, Emily, make no mistake. If this were approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, it would be the single most sweeping change in the history of American elections. That's why I would say don't bet that Donald Trump is going to end up victorious on this. Just explain something to me though. Why would it mean, I mean, apart from sowing chaos and sowing a sense of distrust in the whole voting system, the whole mail-in system, why would it necessarily prioritize the votes of Republicans? Like how would that actually happen? The fear of Democratic groups is that the president will direct the Postal Service to basically purge ballots from the polls that are ballots from people in the political opposition.

25:43They have, the administration has requested the voter rolls from every state in the country. Those are the lists of people who are registered to vote in every state. It's terribly difficult to find out who's registered to vote for Democrats and who's registered to vote for Republicans. And a little bit of nefarious activity behind the scenes in that database could result in hundreds, thousands, millions of ballots not being delivered and votes not being counted for candidates on the other side on the political opposition. There's another piece to this too, Emily, which is that last week a whistleblower came forward here in the United States, someone within the United States Postal Service who said, basically, even if you ignore the constitutionality of this, right now the system we are building inside the Postal Service is incapable of carrying out this executive order without causing complete chaos. This is what the whistleblower said. They said the system is designed that if one of the ballots in a batch is determined to be invalid, then whatever batch came in, the whole batch gets sent back, meaning potentially tens of thousands of ballots at a time could get rejected.

26:55And I suppose this is the other part of the piece, which is that if this was a battle about how the presidential election was going to be fought in November, 2028, and you had plenty of time for legal argument and a decision to be taken, and then whatever machinery that needs to be put in place is put in place to accord with what has been agreed, then fine. We're kind of two months away, less than two months. Well, I mean, North Carolina's already started. Yes, exactly. Alabama's already doing mail-in voting. Exactly. So this is a recipe for utter chaos, which is which is which is maybe the other thing. It's not a decisive intervention of Jerry Mandering in the kind of counting of votes. It is to sow chaos and then be able to cast out on the legitimacy of the election because of, well, this was all chaotic and it hasn't been done properly. But I think I won. But I think I won. And therefore I'll tell you what the White House knows right now. Even if they do not believe this will survive judicial muster, that it will survive in the courts.

27:59What they know is at this very moment, people who vote by mail are asking themselves, should I even vote by mail? Am I allowed to? This is so confusing. Is my ballot going to be counted? And then the White House knows that 38% of Democrats vote by mail and around 24 or 25% of Republicans do not vote by mail. And that's what Republicans do. They know that if chaos ensues from this, which it is, it disproportionately affects the other side and does harm to Democrats. And that's a relatively new thing in American politics. Before the pandemic, in a lot of states, it was actually primarily Republicans who voted by mail. And in recent years, that has flipped. And perhaps not coincidentally, in the past few years, you have seen Republicans like Donald Trump say, we've got to get rid of vote by mail because that system seems to favor Democrats, more Democrats, take advantage of that. It's something Donald Trump wants to do. Do you remember miles before the 2024 election, Susie Wiles was credited with being the person at Donald Trump's side to say,

29:07stop slagging off the mail in the post and vote. You need this. And he seemed to listen to her. And in fact, he did vote by mail himself for himself. Where is she now? Where is that all gone? Is she just being sort of stamped on? I think there's very little influence that Susie Wiles has ever had on Donald Trump, other than a friendly aunt, maybe to sit there and pat his leg and tell him he's doing a great job. I have yet to see a policy where the White House Chief of Staff has played a decisive role in checking the president. Now, I remember this very well from the inside. My former boss, John Kelly, spent a lot of time trying to keep Donald Trump from doing illegal things, not things he thought were wrong or in advisable illegal things. And that was most of John Kelly's job as White House Chief of Staff. And as such, and Kelly kept this very private, but as such, he had a very tense relationship with the president. They were often the two of them having to go into private meetings after our meetings with the president.

30:09So Kelly could say, Mr. President, the thing you just said in that meeting is unconstitutional. You cannot do it. And the two men butted heads. And of course, that resulted in John Kelly getting thrown out of the White House. You don't hear things like that about Susie Wiles. You don't hear Susie Wiles butting head with the president. And in fact, in her own words, Susie Wiles has said her philosophy is let Trump be Trump. Let's just pick up on one other thing that has happened overnight, which is the Supreme Court throwing out a map that Missouri Republicans wanted implemented for the election in Missouri, which would have massively favored them and kind of taken seats away from the Democrats. And although it's a conservative controlled small sea conservative controlled Supreme Court, they said, no, forget it. Yeah, you did. And part of that was generated by a grassroots voter initiative and an effort to oppose those ballots and the Supreme Court basically ruled in favor of letting the people of Missouri have their say over how the maps were drawn.

31:14But you know, John, when I saw this headline break last night with the Supreme Court rejecting this, a phrase came to mind that you hear a lot in politics these days. F-A-F-O, which people know as F around and find out, which is a phrase you hear frequently now, that is sort of the notion that is hitting Republicans in the wake of this decision that the effort to rig the maps in their favor ahead of the midterms could be backfiring in some places. And that includes here in Texas where the maps were gerrymandered to delete a number of Democratic seats and make those Republican seats. One of the consequences of that is you actually make it a much more tenuous election in some of the difficult seats and some of the seats that are still potentially red or blue. And also piss off a lot of voters on the other side politically. And so you hear Republicans talking about that last night I talked to a pollster here in town who said, you know, I think the gerrymandering is backfiring because it's giving the political opposition so much anger and motivation to get to these polls in November.

32:21And what you said, Mars, was so spot on that the group that was stopping this in Missouri, which is a pretty red state. I mean, it's Ozarkland. We're grassroots people who might very well have voted Republican, but don't like ship being messed around with, right? They just want legitimate voting systems to exist. Yeah, you have a lot of Americans, Democrat, Republican and independent, who are getting really, really fed up with the powers that be. And there's one data point that I'll flag for you guys that to me is probably the number of the year. And that is Gallup released a survey this past week that found that 89% of Americans now agree that the United States government is corrupt. 89% supermajorities of Democrats, supermajorities of Republicans. It's the worst that numbers have ever been. And guess what? Americans, according to the Gallup survey, now rank themselves dead last in the list of all developed countries.

33:26And this survey in 38 developed countries, Americans now rank themselves alongside Nigeria in levels of corruption. The same Nigeria that spawned the Nigerian print scam emails, we all became familiar with in the 90s and the 2000s, Americans now say their government is that corrupt. Where they pointed their finger, even the Republicans are pointing their finger at their own side with what has happened with Jerry Mandarin, this administration's corruption. And I think you're going to hear a lot more about that number and anti corruption efforts in American politics in the years to come. Miles, if I get an email from Uncle Donald Trump saying, I want to leave you some money in my will. What do you think I should do? What is your make you can? Well, you know, John, it's a little on the nose because this week as people in Dallas got text messages that said, you have free tickets to come see Donald Trump at the convention. Those Republicans who would normally be so excited to get that message, what was the response? It's a scam because Americans see these things and they think it's all a scam. Don't underestimate how frustrated the American people are red, blue or whatever their political affiliation with their government at this moment.

34:38Miles, brilliant. We'll be back in just a second. The news agents, USA, if you get too farman, we thought it was coming down on top of us and too farman. Big strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms, they got to get out of here and they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself. But they were amazing, but they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down. That would be funny if it wasn't so actually fucking sick. This is a memorial speech and it was to one of those who died on September 11th were going to be witnessing the 25th anniversary of it on Friday. And of course, Trump turns up and makes the whole thing about him, not just him, but a complete fabrication of where he actually was when the Twin Towers came down.

35:47He was not lifted from rubble. He was not strong armed by brave firemen out of the rubble. He was nowhere near the disaster that took place that day. Yeah, Trump was at Trump Tower, which is Miles uptown from where the Twin Towers are. And he was in Trump Tower, ringing up local TV stations to comment on it again, falsely saying that he could witness what was happening. And from Trump Tower, you couldn't see what was happening at the Twin Towers. You know, Ed Hock reporting and getting information to you as fast as we possibly can and making sure that it's accurate at the same time. Donald Trump is on the line. And we know him as the man behind lots of real estate in Manhattan. And of course, Donald, I understand you were actually a witness to what happened this morning. Well, I have a window that looks directly at the World Trade Center. And I saw this huge explosion. I was with a group of people. I really couldn't even believe it. And even I think worse than that, for years, I've looked right directly at the building. I'd see the Empire State Building on the foreground and the World Trade Center on the background.

36:52And now I'm looking at absolutely nothing. It's just gone. And it's just hard to believe. And there we have him on 2001 on September 11th talking about how he was in his office and nowhere near being rescued by two burly firemen who lifted me out and say, you know, away from it. And he's now gone on to truth social to say the failing New York magazine wrote a story that I wasn't down at the World Trade Center after the tragedy of September 11th because nobody saw me there. Well, I don't think I would be the first thing on anyone's mind, but I was there obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter with a large group of construction workers. So I was there. I mean, technically, yes. So was I many years later? Yes. So it's obvious bullshit of him going to this memorial or commemoration of 9-11 and saying I was rescued from the rubble by two burly fire fighters. Yeah, I think it's just didn't happen. We can verify that Trump definitely was watching television on the morning of the attacks.

37:57I mean, that is verifiable from the coverage that we've seen. And yet he said that he took a construction crew with him to Loherman, and that was deeply involved in cleaning up the site. And that claim has been called into question by at least one former fire official who was involved in the recovery effort. I don't think he was lifted from the rubble. That would mean that he's not telling the truth. It's true. An incredible thought. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a global production.