 I'm wondering about Friday. Well, Friday is Trump week. That's T-W. Trump week. W-E-A-K. Trump week. Okay. Tim Epicella. Good morning. Cynthia Sinclair. Good morning, guys. Good morning, guys. Yeah. Big week. You know, it's like every week is a bigger week than last week. So let's try a track on what has happened this week. What comes to mind first. First, and this is the title of our show. Good. We're not at war. We should be so happy we're not at war. But had we been at war, it would have been entirely of his making. He created the, you know, the problem. And then to solve the problem, he was going to go to war. But somehow it stopped and he made himself a hero. Is he a hero, Tim? Not a hero. He lied, bold-faced lied. What's a lie? The lie was that they had authorized this, this attack. And at the last second, he said, well, how many people are going to perish or how many people are going to die? And they said, we don't know, but we'll find that out. And they came back and they told him 150. And he thought of the term proportionality of a drone being shot out of the air versus the deaths and lives of 150 Iranians. And he chose humanity. Well, first off, we know for a fact that when you get your first assessment about any attack, you know what the collateral damage is going to be, the direct damage is going to be. All those things are known and reported upfront. So he knew that upfront. He knew how many lives were going to be, you know, would be most likely killed. And 150 probably light. But the bottom line is he made the story up. He made it up. Yeah. They came to him, my guess, they came to him and said, wait a minute, Trump, you can't do that. You're going to have collateral damage. You're going to have, you know, I don't know, 1500, 15,000, 150,000. Who knows what number. The 150 is made up. And they prevailed on him, you know, and I'm happy they did that. But I doubt that he controlled himself because he has no self-control. He would have been just happy as punch to do this. What are your thoughts, Cynthia? I don't believe he cares enough about human life to care. The story, one bit about 150 people that was not behind his reasoning to say, hey, I'm going to stop this. I don't believe it at all. I'm with him. We all ought to be taking a deep breath on this because whatever his apologies are, regardless of his statements about proportionality, which I can't think, he can't spell that. You know, the reality is we were close to war. The reality is we were an inch away, seconds away. And that guy, you know, he doesn't mind. And Bolton, you know, the two of them, they don't mind starting a war. We were close, man. And you know, this is going to happen again. Well, look at the thread. Remember many, many months ago we were talking about the fact that Mattis, General Mattis, and John Kelly were no longer going to be serving as bookends to keep him contained on the world stage, particularly over the Iran issues in Venezuela. We knew that the departure of those two gentlemen was going to lead to something. And here we are today. Here we are. And you know what? That configuration that we saw a couple days ago, it's the same now. It's not essentially unchanged. So this whole affair could be repeated again and again. Well, all it takes is one bad time and you have an unknown conflagration. He doesn't know that word either. I agree. I think, you know, Bill Weld was quoted as saying that he used to work with Bolton, the DOJ, and that he finds him to be the most aggressive person he has ever met. Well, that's why Trump hired him. Yeah. But look at the statements Donald Trump made regarding this just before this action is, okay, Iran made a very big mistake. That's in reference to the drone that was shot down. Now, mind you, it was a hundred million dollar drone. It wasn't, you know, just chump change. There was a lot of money. No lives involved. No lives involved. And then he said, we will find out. You will find out. So he made that, and no sooner did he make those statements. He said, I find it hard to believe that it was intended. Now, someone loose and stupid made that decision to do that. So here he is. He's threatening them. Then he's saying, ah, it was an accident. So look at the dichotomy of statements and just this split personality on foreign policy on the world stage. Hold that thought because that's really a big thread for our discussion. But let's talk about another thing that, oh yeah. So the cyber command, which is in Virginia, I think, part of the army, I think, it's like a separate command, was found to have been hacking the Russian electrical grid. I don't know where it came from, but when the New York Times called them to confirm the story, they confirmed it. They confirmed it, and they didn't say anything about how this was a big secret. The Times, if you remember, three or four days ago, published the story about how the American military was hacking into the Russian grid. This is breaking the deterrence factor that we've had. We've enjoyed for the past few years on hacking. Nation-state hacking. And this could lead to really bad things, what they're doing, and making it public. But the Times reported what they found. It was their job. So Trump went after them, called them traitors now. So it's not enough to say war on the press, enemy of the people, fake news, which he's been doing since his campaign started in 2015, but it's now treason. Treason in the Constitution. It's a very serious crime punishable by death. Okay, he's calling the New York Times traitors. That is the biggest attack yet on the First Amendment. Well, a couple of days ago, he threatened the Time Reporter in the Oval Office. There was, I believe, four Time Reporters doing an interview in the Oval Office. And he showed the document, the letter from Kim Jong-un. And he said, okay, this is off the record. I'm going to show it to you. And apparently one of the reporters took out his phone camera. And I don't know if he took a picture or was attempting to take a picture. Sander said, no, you can't do that. And so that was the end of it. And then as they're asking him about whether or not Jeff Sessions was instructed to, you know, go light on the investigation and the testimony, he brought this thing up. He said, you know, I could jail you. I could jail you just, you know, to let you know that you tried to do something you shouldn't have. Yeah, maybe some jail would be good for you. He said, quote, you make some friends in jail. My God. Who's the president of the United States? It's more like a worm. So what do you think, Cynthia? About which part of all that, because that's a lot to unpack. Let's talk about the First Amendment part of it. The First Amendment part, well, that's the part that is, I think, the scariest. We have death threats going out to so many journalists right now. And instead of saying this is part of our democracy, a free press, he's doing just the opposite and he's doubling down and putting all of our, all of our, you know, reporters out there in more danger, which I think is wrong. And I think a lot of the story does is wrong. A.C. Salzburg, the publisher of The New York Times, you know, got on, this is interesting, on Murdoch's Wall Street Journal yesterday. There's a long article about it from The New York Times on The Wall Street Journal. He also got, I got a national public radio and said, you know, we really can't tolerate this kind of thing. He calls us all these names. He calls us the failing New York Times. And we're okay with that. Because as a matter of fact, all his Michigas, you know, that craziness, all his Michigas is actually made The New York Times very profitable. More prosperous than... And The Washington Post. And The Washington Post. And they're doing a good job. And they're free reporting fairly. But when he calls The New York Times, the failing New York Times, Salzburg says, it's okay. You can call me that because we're not failing. My P&L looking better. Anyway, I mean, that's how upset he was that he would go to another media and publish his story, another media, two of them. And I know of The Wall Street Journal and NPR, both. So we have a crisis on the First Amendment, you know. Yeah. And by the way, let me say that there's another part to the First Amendment that came up this week. And that's the establishment clause, the separation of church and state. So there was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which departed previous president, said that across commemorating something in some community somewhere, I forget where it was, was okay, even though there were people who sued to have the cross removed. And that's really disturbing because it was not an unanimous vote. And Sotomayor and, let's lose the other little lady judge. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a sense, Kagan did not write a dissent, which is interesting. But what troubles me about it is that there was a long line of cases that you can't put, not on government property with government money, which is the case. Right. You know, we do have that establishment clause, but it has been eroded from the time of Bush, Bush II, you know, or before. Oh, Ronald Reagan, I think, really tried to get that unraveled. Right. And so, you know, what happened now is the United States Supreme Court reversed the precedent that has existed for all these years. And what they said, and I forget who wrote the opinion, what they said was it's old. This cross is old. It has historic moment. Give me a break. How do you define old? You know, that's 100 years. Well, how about 90? How about 80? How about 50? How about 30 or 20 or 10? What's old? So, you know, they just crushed the precedent. And now we have another huge blurred line between church and state. Which creates conflict amongst the people. Yeah. And divisiveness. It's divisive. Conflict is divisive. Yeah. Can I just tag on to that New York Times article about the grid attack? Because I think it was a huge First Amendment issue and a story on that. But what was the underlying issue? And that is someone, the CIA, or during the briefings, either chose not to let him know this was going on or they told him that it was going on and he still went on court. So either or, it's not a good situation. Right. And I think they chose not to tell him about this. He's away. Terrible. Yeah. It means he's not in touch with his own intelligence community. But we knew that a long time ago. We knew that when he ran him down in front of Putin. And he's done that so many, anyway. I mean, it's no surprise that the intelligence agencies are over here and he's over there. Well, remember. The Twain do not meet. Remember, just after election, he invited a couple of the Russian diplomats into his Oval Office and blabbed out, you know, some secrets that he wasn't supposed to release. And I think we're back in those days where no matter what he hears, they say this is confidential, top secret, top secret, top secret. It still comes out of him. And yet, and yet there are people who still support him no matter what happens. I understand. I want to cover one more thing before I break. And that's the clean energy, you know. Obama initiated, I guess it was without statute, it was an executive order, a program about clean energy. And really, he was a little behind on that. Should have done that earlier. I mean, look at the state of Hawaii. We've had a clean energy program for, oh gosh, 15 years now, or more. We were early in the history of clean energy. But now Trump has replaced the clean energy program. He's thrown out of Obama's clean energy program and replaced it with coal. Good old fashioned coal. So we're going back, you know, at high speed and think about what that means for climate change. Incredible that he would do that. And, you know, that may not be top story on the headlines, but there it is. And it's emblematic of his attack on the environment, of his attack on clean energy, his attack on climate change. Again, you see it. It's always peeking out at you. You know, the attack on the auto industry, the CAFTA standards. There it is. Same thing. You know, and even the automakers are going, no, we don't want to do this because California will have its high, you know, high clean standards. And we'd have to rule back to this. And we can't make, you know, multiple different cars. You know, it's not efficient. It's not profitable to do so. I think we need to take a minute on this, you guys, and try to figure out what makes him do this and see if we can come up this week, as opposed to all other weeks, with some rational explanation. And when we get back, we will each offer our own thoughts on that. We'll be right back here on Trump Week. Aloha. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests, like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii, who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. All right, pal. Get ready for the day, buddy. Hey, Dad. Hey, Dad. Do we have a gun? What's up? Do we have a gun? Okay, we had a minute to think about why he does these bizarre things. Things that he knows are totally provocative, to a good percentage, if not the majority of the country, that make him look like a fool and a clown overseas. Why does he persist in doing this? Does he think that the base likes it? I don't know if that's true anymore. I mean, for example, there was a couple of articles about how, oh, yeah, the Senate, a lot of people in the Senate don't agree with him on selling arms to Saudi Arabia. They're disaffected with his program. The farmers, you'll see in articles about the farmers in India and Midwest, they're disaffected about his tariffs. They're getting crushed economically. So is it the base? I'm not sure it is the base. Why does he do this to provoke people here and everywhere? What is wrong with the decision process? It's inherent within Donald Trump. It's part of his organic makeup, whether it be through sleep deprivation or some other non-defined psychological issues. It's inherent within Donald Trump to act like this. I don't think it's a strategy. I used to think, oh, he's a great strategist here. He's not. This is who he is. Talk about an example of the Iran near missile launch here. It didn't happen. That was irrational. It was irrational. Unnecessary. So to answer your question, it's a rational thought process that he's constantly up against within himself. But if he gets away with stuff, he's like any pathological person, he's going to redo it, and worse, he's going to double down, he's going to show us how powerful he is and strong, and we are going to pay a price. So, okay, we got away from war here this week, but it'll happen again. And so he succeeded in putting coal back on the table. He's going to do more of that. He's going to dump on climate change. What were your thoughts? I think he does it because of money. I think he's had a lot of big mega donors, you know, just, you know, working over the money for his campaigns, all of his stuff, and he is beholden to them now. And so now he has to do this stuff because he's beholden to them. He's beholden to the Saudis. He has to give them stuff, whether our Congress says no, he has to. I think he plays into all these big oil money people because they gave him money. Cold people. Same thing. That's what he's all about. So partly his base and partly because of the people that he owes money to and that have, you know, fueled his money so far. The other thing just popped up in an article I saw recently. It's the kitchen cabinet kind of thing. It's unofficial people who he relies on for advice. They are really bad guys. They are immoral, unethical guys. But that's who his little kitchen cabinet is. That's where he's getting a lot of this from. Kitchen cabinet and formal cabinet. And that is the power of, if you think about it, the power of acting positions. Never really confirmed with the Senate. They're always acting. And if that one doesn't work out, I'll get another acting position in there. And as long as they're loyal to me, that's fine with me. Okay, let's talk about something, you put it on your list first. And that was his, the rollout of his new campaign. Shades of 2015. Shades of 2015. It was exactly like 2015. The wall, the Clinton e-mails. Winning. You're going to get so tired of winning. This was my favorite though. I'm going to clean out the swamp. That came up again. Really? Yes. And you forgot to mention that there's 182 lobbyists that are now working in the administration. That's cleaning out the swamp. Lobbyists in the administration? Yes. For McColl. Andrew Wheeler is the guy who used to be a coal. Oh, you mean formerly lobbyists? Yes, former lobbyists now in the administration. So I can't think of 182 reasons why cleaning out the swamp. See, I want to die. In fact, lobbyists have spent $3.4 billion in 2016. I mean, so the number of dollars that are being spent by lobbyists to gain access and influence within our government is greater than ever. He's advising him on the campaign. Maybe nobody himself, but it's going through the same playbook. If it worked last time, it'll work this time. The idea of going hunting for Hillary Clinton is so ridiculous. It's ancient news. It doesn't matter. But it worked last time, so he's pounding on her again this time. That's so absurd. I hope somebody in the base understands how ridiculous that is. Okay, let's go on. We talked about foreign affairs and diplomacy. In a few days, we're going to have the G20 in Osaka. And he intimidated Xi Jinping to coming. You didn't think that Xi Jinping could be intimidated, but I guess he can. He's going to be there. He's got problems in Hong Kong. He's got to shore up his situation. Problems in Hong Kong mean problems at home. I think the tenement issue a couple of weeks ago is probably affecting his power in China. So he's going to be there. So Trump presumably is going to have a one-on-one with him. Which is interesting, because the G20 is supposed to be multilateral conversation, multilateral agreements, but Trump goes there to do bilateral one-on-one. It's the wrong meeting for him, really. But he's going to try to meet with Xi Jinping. What do you think will happen? Well, the cult and power of Donald Trump's personality will not prevail. And that's the reason why he tries to do bilateral meetings. Because he thinks it's my dazzling personality that will change the day, win the negotiation, and then I get to proclaim it. It hasn't worked yet, has it? In Donald Trump's mind it has. My great beautiful love letters from Kim Jong-un. Well, you know, Kim Jong-un is not going to be... I'm getting love letters. Are you? I don't want to. Kim Jong-un is not going to be at the G20, which is really interesting. So exactly what is the status of that? And Xi Jinping is going, or is there now in North Korea, improving his own relationship with Kim Jong-un. And recently met with... What's his name? Putin. So, you know what? He's forming up alliances and we're destroying alliances. We're isolating ourselves. This is a foreign policy defined by isolation. Maybe that's the answer to your question. Why is he going to the G20? Yeah, to form more and more relationships and more alliances. China. Oh yeah, China. That's why China would go. That's why China would go, to show leadership. Yeah, not because Donald Trump intimidated him. He's got other reasons. And why would Donald Trump go? Because he must be a big guy and he wants to, you know, have his name and he wants to create some consternation there. That's why he would go not to achieve anything because he cannot. Well, I think he wants to sit down with Putin without anybody listening and no note-takers in the room just like last time. Nobody's going to know what they've talked about. Maybe they can talk about the cyber commands attack on the grid. That'll be interesting. I wish I was a fly on the wall for that one. I don't think they'll talk about it. So, what you have is a failed foreign policy. I mean, Europe is in deep trouble. Italy is like thinking about leaving the EU. And Italy has big economic problems. And all of the EU is in turmoil. Britain, obviously, is in total turmoil. The music of Putin's ears. Putin loves it. This is exactly what Putin wants. Exactly. Putin wants to see, you know, for example, there's a big thing going on now in Congress and elsewhere about reparations to the African-American community. Putin would love to see that. Everybody's arguing about it. And there's a big attack on Biden because Biden, you know, has a tolerant hat years ago, a tolerance of segregation guys in the Senate. Putin would love to see that. Let's bring him down. Everybody fights with everybody now, especially the Democrats. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And so at the end of the day, there's nobody left standing except... I'm a useful idiot, Donald Trump. Right. That's very worrisome. So a foreign policy, you know, if you see what he does in foreign policy, it is instructive about what he is doing in domestic policy. It's the same thing. I'm king and I make divisiveness, divisiveness all over town. And I don't make alliances. I bust their chops everywhere in every direction. I ruin things. That's what I'm going to do on the spoiler for everything. So let's go to the 25th amendment. This is nuts. This is beyond nuts. And when I heard that, again, Nancy Pelosi says, if the Senate won't pass it, I'm not going forward with impeachment. That's just crazy. At least an impeachment inquiry, if not impeachment. So it opens up the ability to investigate because just like Hope Hicks comes in and 155 times gets told, I object or you can't answer that, 155 times in the time that she was there. And she had two of them lawyers, two White House lawyers, and a lawyer from the, from Attorney General's office. And I think, what? Why did she need all those other guys? They're all one really bad legal advice altogether now. Oh. And then this other guy today, his name didn't show up for his Trump sex business partner, didn't show up for his, but I'll come next time if you just, you don't have to subpoena me. No, they're just going to drag it out, drag it out, drag it out. What you see is an emerging pattern of dysfunction from all three houses of government. Right. I mean, all three branches of government. Yeah. He's dysfunctional. Don't forget that. He's made the Senate and therefore the Congress dysfunctional. And, you know, the Democrats have not been able to recover, sorry. Nancy could be doing something, but she's not. And then finally, the courts, he's seated the courts with conservatives and they are taking root now. 170 of them, I looked it up. But you wait, before we go any further, you just coughed. You might have to leave. Sorry, did you see that this last week? Somebody coughed when he was doing an interview. Mulvaney. Mulvaney coughed. And he made Mulvaney leave. He made him stop the interview and say, oh, you can't cough. Oh, I can't believe he did that. You've got to leave. If you're going to cough, get out. And he made him retaped that part of the interview. With ABC. Yeah. In the room. George Stephanopoulos was in there. George Stephanopoulos was in there. It's getting worse. He's dumping on all our institutions. Yes. Nancy, you've got to get, you've got to do everything that's right. Please, Nancy. You've got to get rid of this. Look at the numbers. I think two and a half, three weeks ago, we had 60 that were in favor of impeachment. Then it went, you know. Not 72. Yeah. 73 if you count the one. So, I mean, the numbers are growing. The numbers are growing, but I still think that she's able to stop it, right? And that's the problem. I don't know what she's waiting for. Gordeaux, maybe. And speaking of Gordeaux, we had this conversation before. What about south of the border? Our last topic today. Where are we? We should know. We here at Trump, we should never forget from week to week the Michigas that happened last week. So, what's happened this week about the south of the border? It's not easy. Six kids have died. I saw an interview by a reporter who had been down there in an investigation, and he found, he interviewed two kids, 110 and 115, that were caring for a sick two-year-old because there was nobody else to take care of the two-year-old. Wow. Basic necessities. That's been well documented. Those brushes. They don't get toothbrushes. They don't get toothbrushes. They don't get soap. They just stay in a cage. And by the way, they're not cages. That has been the administration's position. They're not cages. They're holding hands. Detention centers. Detention centers. In fact, the Homeland Security Chief, Mark Morgan just said, well, we're not mass deporting millions of people. It'll be 200, 2,000 families. So he was able to put a finite number on the actual deportions they're aiming at, rather than Trump's millions of deportations. So the millions is to strike nothing more than fear in the hearts of people, and make them feel really quite ill. And the census question is going to come up pretty soon. The Supreme Court, that's really going to be the bell, whether the canary in the mine, see what happens. That will be. Because they haven't, the two appointees from Trump have not followed in lockstep with him on some decisions. I know where Kavanaugh's going. Well, I guess time will tell. That's what everyone said on these other prior decisions. And Kavanaugh did not follow lockstep. Well, I think what Kavanaugh's doing is he's trying to look balanced. But when Roe v. Wade comes up, you know what's going to happen. So let's talk about optimism before we close here. I talked to people on the street. Some people are here in this town. They're singing the Trump song, telling you. And they got all of the points worked out. And you raise the subject, and they give you exactly what his arguments are too. And you don't want to get into an argument because you're not going to change anything, shouting on the street corner. But what about you? Do you feel a level of confidence in him at all? Do you think that he might change? Do you feel a level of optimism for the future? Well, not in regard to him. No, I don't think he will change. The only way I think he's going to change is to get worse. I think the more freedom he's allowed, the worse he's going to get. The more dictator-like he's going to get and all of that. The only thing that I heard that was making me feel a little optimistic because you know me, I'm always screaming about election security. That's the thing we all should be screaming about at the top of our lungs so we can make it happen. Exactly, thank you. But I did hear Chuck Schumer say this week that he is going to do everything he can to push forward those four bills for election security. One of them has got to be able to be palatable by at least enough Republicans that we can get something through so we can start moving forward with election security because as it stands right now, there is none. You think it's going to happen in Congress on election security? No. I don't either. I think there's no reason why it shouldn't. Mitch McConnell could have brought those four bills on the floor long ago and he has actually stated I'm not doing that. Right. Yes. So what's your level of optimism then? For this administration and this president, zero to none. Optimism for the opponents of this administration is stay strong. I think the story will be told whether there's an impeachment or not. The story will be told of how this country was elected this man and this man sold the American public a bill of goods that one hasn't been fulfilled and two, the behavior and the aberrant behavior of this president is not something we want to see in the future. I think that story will be told and I think those who are on the fence or even Republicans who are looking for a candidate to pick other than Trump will do so. If that candidate and if that story is told in such a way that it's palatable to those Republicans and independents, that's my optimism. From your lips to God's ears. Tim Appinchella, Cynthia Sinclair, thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Jay. See you next week. Next week. Aloha. Next week.