Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi on Holding Trump Accountable

0:00Ben Meiselas:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. By the time I hit my 50s, I'd learned a few things.

0:34Ben Meiselas:Like how family is precious. Work can always wait. And 99 % of people over 50 already have the virus that causes shingles. Not everyone at risk will develop it, but I did. The painful, blistering rash disrupted my life for weeks. Don't learn about your shingles risk the hard way. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them.

1:19Ben Meiselas:With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. Best thing that's ever happened to you financially. Go. Easy. Sold my car on Carvana. Amazing offer. Really? I hit$200 on the scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No. How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once. Okay, that's fair. It's like the lottery, except you always win. Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly! Inexplicably good. Offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana.

1:57Ben Meiselas:Pickup fees may apply. If you're the type of person who wants data, not assumptions, PreNuvo's Whole Body Scan gives you a deep understanding of your health. Screen for over 500 conditions, including many cancers, autoimmune disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and more. Add blood panels to test over 80 biomarkers, and you've got information about your body you may never have had before. Book your scan at prenuvo.com. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com. MAGA Mike Johnson just said he's canceling all votes. He's sending all the members of Congress home. There's going to be a recess. And if you listen to what he said at this disastrous press conference that he held, Maga Mike Johnson says he needs to give Donald Trump some space to figure out everything about Epstein.

2:48Ben Meiselas:He goes, we're just being transparent. The DOJ and FBI is doing what they need to do. I think it's our obligation here in Congress to give the Trump regime space to figure out how they're going to deal with Epstein. So we're good. We're going to take a vacation right now. Peace out. We'll see you later. Watch him. This is what he said moments ago. As I've said many times, there's no daylight between the White House and the House. You have to allow the legislation to ripen, and you also have to allow the administration the space to do what it is doing. The president has said clearly, and he has now ordered his DOJ to do what it is we've all needed DOJ to do for years now, and that is to get everything released.

3:29Ben Meiselas:So they're in the process of that. There's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're already doing. And so this is for political games. I'm very resolute on this. We can both call for full transparency and also protect victims. And if you run roughshod or you do it too quickly, that's not what happens. But I'm convinced that the DOJ is going to do their job, the administration is going to do their job, and we'll do our job. And so we'll see to it. Yes, Matt. So you're going to protect the victims, but Donald Trump is calling it a hoax and saying that the whole Epstein thing, as Trump refers to it, was created by Obama, James Comey, Hillary Clinton and former President Biden to attack him.

4:18Ben Meiselas:Trump called it a hoax. Also, of course, we know Donald Trump's passed with Epstein. Here, Maga Mike Johnson, though, from that same disastrous press conference, he tries to invoke the moral authority. This is a godly issue, and this is about the morality of it. And we're just here to protect the victims. That's what we and Donald Trump are trying to protect the victims. Here, play this clip. No, no. But as you all know, I speak to the president multiple times a day on a typical day, often, always. And what I know about the president's heart on this is that he agrees with everything I've said here today.

4:56Ben Meiselas:He wants maximum transparency, but he's also very insistent that we do not subject people who have already been victims of unspeakable crimes to further public scrutiny. And it would be a very dangerous thing to put those people's names out or to do a release of information in a way that is haphazard where they could be easily unmasked. And so you have to be very careful about how you do that. I think we have a moral responsibility to do that. We have a moral responsibility to expose the evil of Epstein and everybody was involved in that. Absolutely. And we're resolved to do it. But we also have an equal moral responsibility to protect the innocent.

5:35Ben Meiselas:And that is a fine needle to thread. That's what kind of bothers me the most about it. You're invoking the victims to try to cover up for the perpetrators and cover up for Donald Trump's involvement. And we know that Trump has ordered thousands, literally thousands of FBI agents to go through the files, not to help the victims, but to find if Donald Trump's name was in it, which we believe it was, to flag every time Donald Trump's name was in it in order to cover up for Donald Trump. Donald Trump has his own criminal defense lawyer in a case where Trump was convicted on 34 felonies as the number two in the DOJ right now.

6:21Ben Meiselas:And Trump is sending that guy, Todd Blanche, to now speak with Ghislaine Maxwell as she fears for her life what the FBI and DOJ are going to do. I'm going to do a whole other video about that. Her brother Ian says she's fearful that she's going to get killed right now. Here's what Donald Trump said about his own criminal defense lawyer, who he made the number two, now going to interview Ghislaine Maxwell in prison here. Do you support the Justice Department seeking any interview with Ghislaine Maxwell? Do you urge the attorney general to see? I don't know anything about it. They're going to what?

6:57Meet her? They're going to, your deputy attorney general has reached out to Ghislaine Maxwell's attorney Yeah, I don't know about it, but I think it's something that would be sounds appropriate to do.

7:10Ben Meiselas:Let's bring in Democratic Congress member Raja Krishnamoorthy. Congress member Krishnamoorthy showed you those clips. I guess Maggie Mike Johnson is sending you all home in Congress right now. What do you make of all of this? Well, he wants to change the topic, my friend. He doesn't want to talk anything about Jeffrey Epstein or the Epstein files. I don't know if you saw, but one of my colleagues today successfully, I guess, moved to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell to appear before the Oversight Committee. And this is a fellow Republican named Tim Burchett. There's tremendous infighting within the Republican conference right now.

7:48And I think that Democrats are united. Let's just release the files. Let there be sunshine and transparency on what's happening here.

7:59Ben Meiselas:What happens next here? I mean, with he thinks it's going to go away. Is it going to go away? Or I mean, do you think Americans are just going to forget about everything that's happened because it's the summer and go, all right. I mean, Trump, you see Trump trying to change the topic on everything. It was actually the biggest scandal is Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. He just repeats the thing over and over again. It ain't working anymore for him. I don't think so. I mean, like when you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, Scott Perry. I mean, these are the people that are kind of the most vocal, among others, within the Freedom Caucus, repeatedly bringing it up every single day to the point where they've basically frozen the Rules Committee.

8:42The Rules Committee, for your viewers, is essentially the committee that enables votes to happen for legislation to come to the floor. And basically, people like Thomas Massey and others have essentially frozen that process such that we can't take any votes at this point. And so that's in part another disaster that is awaiting us. but I just want to say one last thing which is I got to tell you my constituents and others that I talk to are so frustrated about this whole situation they're like okay release the files have full transparency and then fix the darn economy which is tanking for them I'm on the phone with people and they're getting laid off man there's tremendous chaos in the economy uncertainty prevails with small businesses.

9:36And, you know, people can't afford to buy a home because their home mortgage rates are like 6.75%, which is super high for most people. And so I think that everything is compounding to create tremendous frustration with Donald Trump right now.

9:54Ben Meiselas:And I think that's the best point, which is obviously, I mean, Donald Trump was the one saying he was going to release these files. Then he covered it up and everyone's like, what are you doing? And now it's a mess. And now we're embroiled in this coverup where everyone's like, just, just, you know, we know the FBI has it. Stop with this. We're going to speak with Elaine and get her to write his statement, or we're going to release the grand jury testimony, which is just, you have 300 gigabytes of stuff, redact the victim's names. Nobody at all is saying, release the victim. No one's saying that.

10:28Ben Meiselas:Release the file and then move on to the stuff that you said you were going to do. Because as you point out in Chicago and Illinois and across the country, people are suffering. We have this disastrous budget bill and all Donald Trump wants to do is enrich himself. And I think finally people are seeing it. What are you seeing out there? I think that's absolutely right. I think that, look, I mean, his disapproval rating on the economy is 60%. So 60 % of Americans now disapprove of his handling of the economy. And by the way, roughly 60 % disapprove of his handling of immigration. And now a majority of Republicans even have come to the view that they believe in a legal pathway for people who might be here undocumented because they've seen ICE act out of control.

11:18My theory about this, by the way, is I think that the Jeffrey Epstein stuff contributes to people's distrust of the administration such that they're starting to open their eyes a little bit to the other problems that beset them. And now as the pink slips are starting to go out for layoffs, as small businesses are suffering, as people learn about the large lousy law, which he calls the big, beautiful bill, I think they're just getting frustrated and upset. And I think that does include Republicans as well in unlikely places.

11:59Ben Meiselas:Right. Because you have them with the Epstein files saying we've been transparent. We've given you everything great. And people are like, no, but then move that to every other. He goes, inflation is gone. I fixed it. And people are like, no, this is now the golden age. No, I've brought back$17.2 trillion from my trip to the Middle East and business is booming. No, I'm going to create something called Stargate and we're going to invest$500 billion into AI factories across the country. Now they're talking it's going to be one small data center, maybe, you know, and so every lie, lie, lie, lie. And people, how about the 90 deals in 90 days, with regard to the tariffs, so that the tariffs would go away or at least go down.

12:55I don't know if there are nine deals. I don't know if there's even one deal in 90 days at this point. I think his credibility is eroding in part because of all these different dumpster fires. And now you see the Jeffrey Epstein situation. And I think that just is like the, you know, the coup de grace, that's the top of the cake, whatever you want to call it, which is, you know, this guy can't be trusted. Now, I'm not saying that the MAGA base has flipped on him or anything like that. I just think that there are some cracks and maybe they'll start listening to other voices. And that's where we have a chance to maybe appeal to them on certain issues so that we can kind of get back to some rationality around here.

13:42Ben Meiselas:No, or to appeal to people who just didn't vote, who sat it out, who thinks that they're impervious to politics and everybody's basically the same and everything is bad and they're going, wait a minute, your point, you're saying 90 deals in 90 days. So you do none. Then you send out like 16 letters to countries. You were too lazy that you didn't even send out 90 letters. You did like 16. And then you didn't small check them either. And then he goes, the letter is the deal. The letter is the deal. What the hell are you talking? The letter is the deal. What does that even mean? It doesn't make sense.

14:22And I think you know, a lot of people credit him for a lot of sophistication and savvy on economic matters, but it just looks chaotic to the average person. So I'll just give you, this is anecdotal, but you know, in my district, 47 % of the voters supported Trump. And a lot of them were independents. A lot of them were small business people. And now they are basically complaining to me that, you know, the tariffs have caused so much business uncertainty, whether it's, you know, you know, importers or in logistics or in small manufacturing, such that, you know, they're pausing investments, pausing hiring, they're now laying people off.

15:12And it is just, you know, driving people insane. Yeah.

15:17Ben Meiselas:You know, and what I worry a lot about is this mirage of the market kind of rebounding to frankly, where it was under Biden, maybe, you know, some of the indexes slightly up some of them right where they were just over a six month period, but that not reflecting the fact that we now have, or Trump has set all of these traps for Main Street and that every time he does a fake deal or a fake this, the market responds to kind of the Ponzi scheme nature of it, but that we all know lying, the day traders and the quant traders, they may be feasting off of this environment and find it fun or whatever.

16:04Ben Meiselas:But at the core level, when the ships aren't coming in the way they used to, And all of the members of Congress I speak to say, look, our businesses are saying the exact same things that you are saying. I mean, let's not forget an 07 08. That great recession was caused by subprime mortgages and it had a cascading effect. In my view, and I want to hear from you, Trump's set up hundreds of examples of subprime mortgage-like things that any one of these things at any point, you wake up and then all of a sudden it's reported like, oh my God, how did this happen? And I'm like, because we've been telling you, here's what he's done in all of these places.

16:47Ben Meiselas:It's very predictable that he's set up these ticking time bombs. 100%. I think, you know, you just look at the inflation numbers from the other day. We're going in the wrong direction right now. You look at the high mortgage rates, 6.75%. You look at, you know, just the cost of groceries. It hasn't really changed since he came into office. It's stuck at a high level. And you just you as an average person out there, you're about to see, especially if you're making, let's say, 60 ,000, 70 ,000 dollars or less. You're about to see your net income probably go down because of the large, lousy law. And by the way, if you live in a rural area or underserved area and your hospital is about to close and you're going to have further layoffs.

17:45and, oh, by the way, you can't access health care, that is really, really bad. And people are starting to feel that and just a certain anxiety, and they're pulling back on the way that they would otherwise behave in the economy, which is what we want them to do. We want people to buy things. We want them to invest. We want them to buy homes. They're not doing that as much now.

18:10Ben Meiselas:Congressman, thanks for joining us. Come back soon. Thank you. As always, my friend, thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. The truth is more important than ever. Check out our new Truth Over Lies collection at store.midustouch.com. All 100 % USA union made.

18:35Ben Meiselas:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. Still wearing those old cargo shorts?

19:10Ben Meiselas:If your wardrobe's due for an upgrade, but you don't know where to start, you need Stitch Fix. Your stylist learns your size, your style, and your budget, then sends a box pick just for you. They always nail the fit. No store, no hassle, no subscription required. Get started today at Stitch Fix dot com. That's Stitch Fix dot com. Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk.

19:59Ben Meiselas:Get started at Vanta.com. Here's something you may not know. Only 14 % of cancers in the U.S. are caught through routine screenings. PreNuvo's whole-body MRI may help close that gap, screening for over 500 conditions, including most solid tumors, all in under an hour. PreNuvo's body panels also test over 80 biomarkers for a deeper understanding of your health. No radiation, no contrast. Book your scan at PreNuvo.com. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com. Hey guys, finding the perfect gift for the food lover in your life is easy. Thanks to Gold Belly. Gold Belly ships America's most iconic foods straight from world famous restaurants right to your door.

20:43Ben Meiselas:So if you want to treat someone to Joe's Stone Crab from Miami, Franklin Barbecue from Texas, or desserts from famous foodies like Ina Garten or Martha Stewart, Gold Belly has you covered. Just go to goldbelly.com and for a limited time, get 20 % off your first order with promo code GIFT. That's promo code GIFT.