She's Had It. And After This Episode, So Will You. | Jen Welch
Jim Acosta
0:00 Broadcasting live from the heart of New [music] York City.
0:03 This is a Jim Acosta show special report.
0:06 I I should have made a big deal that I'm live in New York right now.
0:09 It's a big deal.
0:10 It It's a big deal.
0:11 Now joining me is Jennifer Welch,
0:13 Jen as I like to call her, from the I've Had It podcast sensation.
0:16 You're a viral sensation right now.
0:19 I was on with you the other day and it got a gazillion views.
0:22 And that had nothing to do with me.
0:23 It's because you're I think it's the chemistry.
0:25 It's the chemistry.
0:26 Yeah, I think we are uh gold star MAGA bashers together.
0:31 And I think people enjoy that right now.
0:32 It feels therapeutic.
0:33 Thanks for having me.
0:34 You're the queen and if I were cooler I would say yes, queen, but I
0:38 [laughter] I shouldn't say things like that because that that's
0:40 when my kids cringe when I do things like that.
0:42 But it's great to see you.
0:43 And I mean Hegseth this whole thing
0:46 about putting troops You usually start your show
0:49 or do you do a I've Had It This is what I've had it with.
0:51 I've had it with with Pete Hegseth.
0:53 I call him Secretary Axe Body Spray.
0:56 [laughter] You know, he wears the little American flag pocket square.
0:59 He thinks he's Captain Captain America, but he's really he's really not.
1:02 He's far from it.
1:04 And that's kind of scary that they can't rule this out that they're saying,
1:08 "Oh, well, what's what's the big deal?
1:09 Troops at the polls, you know,
1:11 like like countries in other parts of the world do it all the time.
1:14 What's what's the deal?" So, I think Pete Hegseth,
1:17 number one, he is a crazy like Christian nationalist, insane.
1:21 I don't know if you've ever heard any of his preacher that he trots around.
1:24 His pastor wants to remove the vote for women.
1:29 And the reason they're so fixated
1:32 on the polls is because his bosses' approval rating
1:36 is 30% and they are governing right
1:38 now as though they will never face accountability.
1:42 And they're so impulsive and short-sighted.
1:44 Now the midterms are coming into focus.
1:47 They're rigging gerrymandering.
1:49 The Supreme Court is giving them a an assist.
1:52 So, they are going to intimidate people
1:54 at the polls via using ICE and the military.
1:57 The whole exercise in Minneapolis, in my opinion,
2:00 was to prime the public to get ready.
2:03 You're going to live in a military state.
2:05 We are in charge of you.
2:06 We are the boss of you.
2:07 We have all of these low-T Fox News narcissists that are
2:10 running the government and we get to do what we want.
2:13 Tough titties if you don't like it.
2:14 That's what they're trying [clears throat] to tell the American public.
2:17 Yeah, and and it's in line with I I just read
2:19 this like incredibly disturbing story in the Atlantic today and I I
2:22 mean we can show maybe a little bit of this or I
2:24 can talk about a little bit of this with with the viewers.
2:27 I guess Donald Trump he's given up on trying
2:29 to be like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.
2:31 He now thinks he's like Napoleon or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.
2:36 This is in the Atlantic today.
2:38 And you know, I will tell you that this is not a huge shocker to me.
2:41 I used to hear this stuff during the first term, but this is what it says.
2:45 He's been talking recently about how he
2:48 is the most powerful person to ever live.
2:50 A confident told The Atlantic.
2:52 This is a quote coming from The Atlantic,
2:54 a great story from my friend Ashley Parker and some other folks there.
2:57 But I mean this is this is some nutty[ __] And it's getting nuttier.
3:02 Trump Trump is doing just crazy stuff every day now.
3:06 Yeah, and he's putting his face on passports.
3:09 He's putting his face at the DOJ.
3:11 He's everywhere.
3:12 His arch, his ballroom.
3:14 And I'm going to say that the Democrats need to run
3:17 on a message that is something offers
3:20 the American public something other than Trumpism,
3:23 something other than MAGA, which is not going to be that hard to do.
3:25 Just providing government [clears throat]
3:26 services in a functional sane government.
3:30 But also we need a candidate that will run
3:32 on every single thing that this MFer touch, I'm taking down.
3:36 Every bit of gold, every arch,
3:38 all of the branding where he Oval Office with an arrow for him,
3:43 you know, where he knows where he is.
3:44 All of this stuff needs to be taken down.
3:46 This man has delusions of grandeur, malignant narcissism.
3:50 He talks about insane asylums all the time.
3:53 Right.
3:53 And the insane asylums are going to be full, hopefully,
3:57 as soon as we have this blue wave with all of the people that are going to get
4:01 called in front of congressional hearings and then
4:03 they're going to have a shrink next to them.
4:04 This person is clinically insane.
4:06 And I don't know that there's a big argument against that.
4:09 Right.
4:10 No, I I agree with you and and I think that I mean, you know,
4:12 all of the gold[ __] everywhere,
4:14 that's just going to have to be power washed off.
4:16 I mean, I think you're going to need I'm
4:17 I'm I'm thinking of it as a Service Pro candidacy,
4:21 you know, like those commercial Service Pro like it never even happened.
4:24 You know what I mean?
4:24 Like you need you need a cleanup crew to go in there and the White House
4:27 is going to need like sandblasting cuz he's
4:29 put that gold that gold[ __] is everywhere.
4:32 And it's got to be like harmful if you if you if you huff those fumes.
4:36 I would think so.
4:37 I don't know if that's causing some of what he's going through right now,
4:39 but it's it's not good.
4:41 born broken and he has been trying to fix this empty void
4:45 in his life for so long and he has failed forward his whole life.
4:50 And he is setting up this last chapter of his life.
4:54 That's why I think he's so laser-focused on his ballroom.
4:57 Yeah.
4:57 He is going to put an imprint
4:58 and his fingerprints on everything that he possibly can.
5:01 But all of that gold stuff, I just as a comment,
5:04 before I was a podcaster, I was an interior designer.
5:06 And all of those gold applications, there's no rhyme nor reason to them.
5:11 They're just arbitrarily put up around things
5:14 and they are placed on molding where
5:16 a lot of times the applique is wider than the molding that comes out.
5:20 Just from a design aesthetic,
5:22 it's horrible and I do not believe it's the real gold leaf.
5:25 No, it's not.
5:26 He has said that.
5:27 He I think he claimed that to Laura Ingram on Fox.
5:30 Of course it's real gold.
5:31 There's just no way that all of that There's some
5:33 staffer in the parking lot with a can of spray paint.
5:36 [laughter] God damn it, I got to keep spraying these things so they He keeps
5:39 wanting more gold[ __] and I just got to just keep spraying this stuff.
5:42 Yeah.
5:43 It's just non-stop.
5:44 But that he wants to be Napoleon or Caesar?
5:47 I mean, this is you And what I'm surprised he knows who these people are.
5:52 [laughter] Okay, let's just start there.
5:53 He's seen the movie, maybe.
5:55 for him, it's like he believes, "Okay." In his mind,
6:00 he looks in the mirror and he thinks,
6:01 "You're the best president we've ever had." Yeah.
6:03 Why stop there?
6:05 Let's talk about, you know, world domination.
6:08 That's how delusional he is.
6:10 We have a mentally ill senior citizen toddler as a president.
6:15 And a And I understand a crazy person in solitude.
6:18 We all do.
6:19 We all know crazy people.
6:21 The amount of MAGA people that excuse this and support
6:26 this and allow this is really the biggest cancer in the country.
6:30 Little Moses Mike Johnson has all of this power and Trump literally
6:35 has his little microscopic balls in the top drawer of the Resolute Desk.
6:40 He does nothing.
6:41 He's worthless, an absolutely worthless politician who will
6:45 not shut up about how religious he is.
6:48 Yet he helps this president cover up pedophilia.
6:52 Are they talking now about pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell?
6:56 Are you kidding me?
6:57 The Jesus family values Christian party.
7:01 I say this on my podcast and I'm going to say it to your audience.
7:04 MAGA is an anti-family, pro-pedophilia death cult.
7:08 All of their policies lead to death.
7:10 Look at Elon Musk, the richest man in the world has killed
7:14 hundreds of thousands of people currently because of the dismantling of USAID.
7:19 Well, and and the other thing too is I mean, you know,
7:22 they go out there and indict Comey for the second time over seashells.
7:26 And they they have they arrested one pedophile as a result of
7:30 No, he's pardoning them.
7:31 I mean He pardons a lot of these January 6th insurrectionists
7:34 that he pardoned have recommitted [clears
7:36 throat] and guess what crimes they've recommitted?
7:39 Child sex abuse.
7:41 You're right.
7:41 That's right.
7:43 6ers, I think it's more than one handful
7:46 that have now been charged with abusing children.
7:49 It seems to be a feature, not a bug,
7:52 of MAGA men online that post all of these photoshopped images
7:58 of Donald Trump where he has pectoral muscles and a six-pack.
8:02 And he's my you know, he's my guy.
8:05 Very incel.
8:05 That's very
8:06 And then and then they're like, you know, the the Democrats, the demon rats,
8:11 are groomers and all of this stuff and we hate drag queens.
8:14 And then you find out these guys are
8:16 huge pedos and then they're getting charged with crimes.
8:18 But you know what?
8:19 We live in such crazy times, he'll probably double pardon them again.
8:22 Yeah, it's all projection.
8:24 And you know, Jen, you and I talked about
8:25 this too and I was talking about it with Schlossberg earlier.
8:27 He did say that he would support Hakeem Jeffries for speaker.
8:31 And I know you you probably have a problem with that.
8:33 But we did see an establishment figure in the Democratic Party go down today,
8:37 Janet Mills, the governor of Maine.
8:39 She dropped her bid for the US Senate.
8:42 That means Grant Plathner is almost certainly going
8:44 to be the Democratic nominee in the Senate race there.
8:47 Is that the kind of thing that you want to see in the Democratic Party?
8:50 More of these young up-and-coming rising stars kind of out
8:53 of nowhere and knocking these more establishment folks out of the way.
8:57 Yeah, I want to see progressive candidates come through and win.
9:01 What's going to be interesting about
9:03 the Grant Plathner situation is there's a bit
9:06 of a civilized civil war going on within the Democratic Party right now.
9:10 You have centrist corporate Dems versus progressive populist Dems.
9:14 And the centrist argument is vote blue no matter who.
9:18 So, now they're going to have Grant Plathner versus Susan Collins.
9:21 So, are they going to vote blue no matter who?
9:25 Because there is a huge push and there's
9:28 some stuff in Grant Plathner's background that's problematic.
9:31 Yeah.
9:31 Um the the tattoo and I was in a conversation with somebody
9:36 do a lot of stupid stuff.
9:37 They put they they tattoo themselves with stupid stuff.
9:39 I will just say this, as a young guy, I didn't do it myself.
9:43 And and I and I could prove it, but I won't do it right now.
9:46 When Plathner speaks, I like everything he says.
9:49 And I like the movement that he has.
9:51 I like the how he can galvanize voters around delivering for people.
9:56 I like every single thing that he says.
9:58 And he's going to be the candidate and Susan Collins has been an abject failure.
10:02 She is the president she is the senator that did this nonsense where she said,
10:08 "I think Trump has learned his lesson now." And that was such a dangerous little
10:13 tidbit to put into the public domain because
10:16 I read this New York Times focus group.
10:19 I read the entire article and I saw it once and again and again and again.
10:24 I voted for him again because I thought he learned his lesson.
10:26 And I thought, "Is the bar so low in the electorate
10:29 that we're voting for people that we project a fifth-grade standard on?
10:34 You need to learn your lesson and not make C's next year." She's concerned.
10:38 She's the worst.
10:40 She is the worst.
10:41 She is useless and worthless and she masquerades
10:45 as a moderate and she's anything but that.
10:47 And apparently she's a vicious campaigner, so Greg Gutfeldt better watch out.
10:51 And I mean we do have to get to a guest I think that you've always dreamed
10:57 of having on your show on the I've Had
10:59 a Podcast and that is Jesse Watters of Fox.
11:01 Oh my god.
11:02 I know you would love to have him.
11:04 love to have Miss Priss.
11:06 I would love nothing more.
11:08 Okay, we have to talk about this because I
11:10 one of the things that pisses me off more than
11:12 anything else is that Trump wants to get rid
11:14 of Jimmy Kimmel in in part because I love Jimmy Kimmel.
11:16 I think he's phenomenal.
11:17 But also it just shows you how small of a human being Donald Trump is.
11:20 Like why why do you care about late-night talk show hosts?
11:24 But apparently this is according to Jesse Watters
11:27 himself he was escorted away from King Charles III
11:30 and Queen Camilla after joking with the Queen about
11:32 gun violence at the state dinner welcoming the royal couple.
11:36 Um I guess Watters mentioned that he had this faux pas.
11:40 I think we have a little bit of Do we have a little bit of video this?
11:43 Do we want to play of this some of this?
11:44 I don't know if we want to give Jesse the airtime.
11:47 But if we have it we can play it.
11:48 I think he he mentions that he did this.
11:51 And if we have it we can play it.
11:52 If not we can just talk about it.
11:54 We don't have it.
11:55 We don't have that video.
11:55 But he basically he basically says during this segment that he was
12:01 shaking hands with them and then after talking to the Queen he
12:05 said something you know they were talking about beehives and bees
12:08 and uh he said it was very you know no one got stung.
12:12 And I I guess she said something back and then he goes, "Well,
12:15 if the in DC if the bees don't get you the guns
12:18 will." This is what he says to the Queen of England.
12:21 He's talking about gun violence in Washington.
12:24 Why would you ever say that?
12:25 And shouldn't he shouldn't his ass get fired for stupid[ __] like that?
12:29 He's getting escorted away from the Queen.
12:32 Yeah, his ass should be fired and also you remember his colleague
12:36 in the Fox morning hour said that we should euthanize homeless people.
12:40 You know, so this is just And they never he didn't get fired.
12:44 No.
12:43 Oh god, no.
12:44 Of course they wouldn't do that.
12:45 And so Jesse Watters the fact that he self-reported that is pretty phenomenal.
12:52 You know, you would think that you would just be like,
12:53 "Oh my god, I was so embarrassed." whatever makes him viral or in the news
12:57 or people talking about him that he it doesn't matter.
12:59 He'll he'll he'll say it.
13:01 Yeah.
13:01 I Jesse Watters and that whole group at The Five.
13:04 I mean I love that Jessica Tarlov.
13:06 She's a queen.
13:08 She is always spitting facts and she does an incredible service
13:11 for people to hear just a little ounce of the truth.
13:15 But Jesse Watters is just an interesting case study.
13:18 Like he's always on there talking about
13:20 men all the time what's masculine what isn't.
13:24 It's the weirdest it's really bizarre.
13:27 Yeah.
13:27 Jim it the homosocial nature of MAGA where they have to socialize and they're so
13:33 fixated on men and man stuff and what is masculine and what is a man.
13:39 It is really bizarre to me.
13:42 It's and I have a lot of theories about it.
13:43 Well, and and the state dinner was chock-full of Fox hosts Fox personalities.
13:49 It was you know, the Supreme Court all these figures from the far right.
13:52 And I and I'm thinking to myself, "My god, is this who we are right now?
13:57 Is it Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeldt at a state dinner?
14:01 You know?" It's humiliating.
14:02 It's not good.
14:03 No, it's humiliating and the Supreme Court is just really atrocious right now.
14:10 The Voting Rights Act and what they have done
14:13 and institutionalized racism yet again with the history that we have.
14:18 And surprisingly Clarence Thomas who is hell-bent on dismantling any
14:25 legislation that helped him ascend to where he could be bought
14:28 and purchased by I think his name's Harlan Crow this millionaire
14:31 in Dallas that collects Nazi China as a side hustle.
14:35 It's We'll leave all of that to the psychiatrist.
14:38 Right, but the whole MAGA Trump is as he arrived at Trump 2.0
14:45 after January 6th think about how broken you'd have to be to say,
14:49 "Yeah, I'm going to go work for him." Yeah.
14:50 Think about how broken all these billionaires are that have
14:53 all of this money bank accounts that could choke a bull.
14:56 And they thought, "You know what?
14:58 I have a choice.
14:59 I can ride this out for 4 years, be quiet,
15:01 sit my billions over here and just mind my business.
15:05 Or I can go humiliate myself Yeah.
15:07 at these meetings and make participation trophies and hand them out.
15:11 And Trump then brags about it.
15:13 Tim Cook, I can call the CEO of Apple and make him kiss my ass.
15:19 And they still do it.
15:20 You know who was at the dinner last night?
15:22 Tim Cook after Trump humiliated him online.
15:27 It's unbelievable.
15:28 I mean could you imagine have that kind of money
15:30 that[ __] you money and not saying, "Fuck you.
15:32 I'm not going to your dinner." No, exactly.
15:34 And and I mean you know,
15:36 the King of England is there and he's got to be looking around and saying,
15:40 "Where where the[ __] did we go wrong?" Well, he's he's he's lecturing them.
15:45 He lectured them, but they are all too stupid to understand.
15:49 He was speaking about the Magna Carta.
15:51 He was he dropped all of these
15:54 Trump thinks that's a Magna Carta the Magna Carta.
15:56 Right.
15:56 He dropped all of these veiled references.
15:59 And then immediately after that he goes
16:01 to New York the King meets with Mom Donny.
16:04 And you know, I don't think it's any surprise at all that the rest
16:08 of the world looks at Trump and sees exactly what we see.
16:13 Yeah, he's the King and Trump's Burger King.
16:15 I mean that's basically [laughter] I saw that meme and I was like, "Yeah,
16:18 that's pretty that's pretty much dead on." You know,
16:21 my my concern is and just to get serious
16:24 for a second and this goes back I was talking you know,
16:26 Jack Schlossberg brought this I guess it's
16:28 on everybody's mind especially with the Supreme Court decision.
16:30 Is that they have made such a mess of things now.
16:33 And they've let Donald Trump run wild with the immunity decision.
16:38 And he doesn't want to get beat.
16:39 He doesn't want the Republicans to get beat because he
16:41 knows what's coming if the Democrats take control of Congress.
16:44 What in the hell do we do as a country if they do[ __] with these midterms?
16:50 If they are putting troops at polling places.
16:53 If they are sticking ICE outside of election sites.
16:57 If they are you know,
16:58 screwing with these maps so much the Supreme Court you know,
17:00 all these cases go to the Supreme Court and they're like,
17:02 "We don't know what to do." I I I guess
17:05 are folks just going to have to take to the streets.
17:06 I don't want to Last time you and I were the last time you
17:08 and I got together we we got Elon Musk whipped up into a frenzy.
17:12 Let's do that again because I do think
17:15 it will take people taking it to the streets.
17:17 People need to send the message to Donald Trump you cannot steal our democracy.
17:20 And I think that's the direction he's pushing us right now.
17:22 He wants to steal it.
17:23 I think there's one final component to this that will
17:28 change some things and it is the economy.
17:30 And right now the stock market is being
17:32 propped up by what are called the Magnificent
17:35 Seven which are all of these AI billionaires
17:37 that bend over and make Trump participation trophies.
17:40 They are trading trillions of dollars to to uphold the S&P 500 and the Dow.
17:46 With what's going on at the Strait of Hormuz it's imminent.
17:50 Republicans always tank the stock market and the economy.
17:52 He just Trump has just done it a lot quicker.
17:55 And so that's going to happen
17:57 and that's where the country club Republicans right
18:00 now they're fine cuz they look at the 401(k)s and they're like, "I'm good.
18:03 That's[ __] up.
18:04 That's[ __] up, but my money's still there.
18:06 I'm fine." That's when industry titans when
18:08 their stock starts tanking will call senators and congresspeople.
18:13 Because money is what Americans worship beyond anything else.
18:17 They don't care if people take to the streets.
18:19 Look at the disdain in the way these billionaires treat their customers.
18:23 Look at the way MAGA treats their electorate.
18:26 So when that happens that's when you will see all of a sudden balls are growing
18:32 all over Congress and it will be enough
18:35 is enough and we're going to rein him in.
18:37 And the same for the Supreme Court.
18:39 The Supreme Court is not delivering wins for Donald Trump.
18:43 The Supreme Court is uh delivering wins for corporate America for the oligarchy.
18:49 They have been primed to do that.
18:51 This isn't like, "Oh,
18:52 we're going to do this for Trump." They're doing it for corporate America.
18:56 It's a long game.
18:57 Yeah.
18:57 It's a long game.
18:58 Uh Jennifer Walsh great to see you as always.
19:00 We appreciate it.
19:01 Thank you so much.
19:03 And you may actor Ben McKenzie yes from The OC fame.
19:06 Sorry Ben about that.
19:08 He is out with a hot new documentary
19:10 that warns that cryptocurrency could sink the US economy.
19:14 I I watched this whole thing last night.
19:15 It is riveting.
19:17 Um let's discuss.
19:18 Welcome Ben.
19:19 Great to see you.
19:20 Oh, great to see you Jim.
19:21 I'm excited to be here.
19:22 I'm excited too.
19:23 And I I'm a little older than you, but I was a huge fan of the show.
19:27 I I I saw during your documentary you deal with that and you
19:31 show all the goofball TV anchors who go on and on about the show.
19:35 I'm not going to do that during this segment thankfully.
19:39 But I do want to talk about this documentary because I you know,
19:43 I I think sort of like you approached this subject with a lot of concern.
19:49 I mean I'm not I'm not sold on this.
19:51 I'm not telling people what to do with their money,
19:52 but to me I felt like this is a Ponzi scheme and you know,
19:57 you you are very up front about this.
19:59 You you call it stupid.
20:01 Um but let's talk about it a little bit.
20:02 Why why did you decide to do it?
20:04 Uh it was the pandemic and you know,
20:07 as an actor there really wasn't that much for us to do.
20:09 Um a buddy of mine came to me uh in the throws
20:13 of it as I was kind of tearing my hair out and he said,
20:16 you know, you really got to buy Bitcoin.
20:17 And to be honest with you, I had not paid attention to cryptocurrency at all.
20:21 I think like probably the majority of Americans even now,
20:24 it sort of seems intimidating and but also a little bit
20:27 scammy and criminal and I just hadn't really thought about it much,
20:31 but the celebrities were out there hawking it
20:33 and everyone was talking about at the time.
20:35 My buddy who who suggested I buy Bitcoin
20:37 had given me terrible financial advice before Right.
20:40 and had encouraged me to invest in a in a stock
20:43 and a company that had supposedly produced
20:45 synthetic blood and it wasn't there enough, but it was some precursor scam.
20:50 Anyway, I'd lost money what I'd invested with Dave before.
20:53 So when Dave came back and said I should buy Bitcoin, I was like,
20:55 Dave, I'm not going to do that, but I but I am interested.
20:58 I I have a degree in economics from the University of Virginia,
21:01 just an undergraduate degree,
21:02 but um I've always been interested in behavioral economics and I've
21:07 always been fascinated with this thing called money that we made up.
21:10 Yeah.
21:11 And my first the first thing I bumped on with crypto was the word currency,
21:16 you know, like so I can buy and sell things with this stuff.
21:20 Yeah.
21:20 And Dave was like, [laughter] I was like he's like, well,
21:24 it's more like you put money into it and you hope
21:25 to make money off of it through no work of your own.
21:28 I'm like, so that's an investment, Dave.
21:29 That's that's something else.
21:31 Anyway, I I became obsessed with it and um uh well, long story short,
21:36 ended up reaching out to a journalist to help me write a book.
21:39 We uh sort of writing articles to prove our bonafides, sold the book proposal.
21:43 And then in this this this was fall 21 in the spring of 2022,
21:48 we went out into the real world and started um
21:51 reporting and uh I just decided to turn a camera on.
21:54 I mean, that's really how it started.
21:55 Um I uh the first day of filming we were at South by Southwest and I
22:01 walked onto the floor of the convention center
22:03 and I saw a guy named Alex Mashinsky Right.
22:07 company called Celsius and um and that guy is
22:11 now in jail and I have an interview with him.
22:13 So it was a wild ride, but um but a but a very fun one.
22:19 Yeah, and it's called everyone is lying to you for money.
22:23 Um I want to play uh some of the the trailer here
22:25 because it's it's really fantastic the way you guys have laid this out.
22:28 Let's play a little bit of and talk about it on the other side.
22:31 Everyone is lying to you for money.
22:34 Cryptocurrency.
22:36 It's pretty stupid.
22:39 No balls, right?
22:40 You might recognize Ben McKenzie [music] from The O.C.
22:43 He's been a critic of the cryptocurrency industry.
22:45 To understand my journey into cryptocurrency, we have to go back.
22:50 You know what's taking off is Bitcoin.
22:52 What's money?
22:53 It's a it's cryptocurrency.
22:54 So if you're saying cryptocurrency, I don't know what that means.
22:57 Wait, what does this like look?
22:58 I have a degree in economics.
23:00 Surely I can figure out this crypto stuff.
23:03 No banks, no fees, electronic gold.
23:06 Have a good time with your Bitcoin and take all your money, buy Bitcoin.
23:10 I had a few questions.
23:13 I can handle the turbulence.
23:14 [music] Up against a multi-trillion dollar industry
23:18 shielded by every celebrity on the planet, I hired a film crew.
23:22 All right.
23:23 Yeah.
23:24 Did you talk to my agent yet?
23:27 We're building Bitcoin City.
23:29 This looks like a normal web of trust.
23:32 They can make the [music] price go up whatever they want.
23:36 What do you say to the people who have been scammed?
23:38 I was crying, my wife was upset.
23:40 Shady dudes end up making most [music] of the money.
23:43 How much have you donated to politicians?
23:45 Bastards, do you have anything to say?
23:47 I I The cryptocurrency industry represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
23:55 Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been lied to.
24:01 [music] Amazing stuff.
24:01 What is this It's amazing stuff, Ben.
24:03 And and you travel all over the place.
24:05 You go to El Salvador where they
24:06 were promised this crypto paradise uh via Bukele,
24:10 the the dictator there who says he's
24:12 the coolest dictator and he's definitely not.
24:15 Um you go to Miami, you go to Austin, you you come to D.C.
24:18 and you expose how politicians are being bought
24:21 and sold with crypto money and I I mean, you paint a very dark picture.
24:25 I guess the crypto uh thing hasn't crashed yet.
24:28 We haven't gone into 1929-ville.
24:31 We haven't had a a total collapse of our financial markets
24:34 as a result of this, although we've had some spooky moments.
24:37 Is that what you're worried about, about,
24:38 Ben, that we're heading in that direction?
24:40 Yeah, very much so.
24:41 So in the film, the film largely takes place
24:43 in 2022 um which there was another crypto crash during 2022.
24:48 Mhm.
24:49 Market had peaked in the the fall of '21
24:51 at the time and it had fallen by 50% by the summer
24:55 or something and all of these crypto companies started going
24:58 bankrupt and I caught it right before uh everything went down.
25:02 So that's why I have two guys uh Alex Mashinsky
25:05 and Sam Bankman-Fried on camera um before their schemes fell apart.
25:10 Um but what happened in the the spring of '23,
25:15 so Sam was arrested in uh November, I want to say, of '21 or '22.
25:21 Uh I I when I testified to the Senate in December,
25:25 sorry, might might have been December.
25:27 Um when I testified in December of '22, I I said,
25:30 if we get crypto further into our banking system,
25:32 this is going to be really really bad.
25:34 There's going to be hell to pay.
25:36 And uh sure enough 3 months later three banks went down.
25:40 Uh Silicon Valley Bank, uh Silvergate, First Republic.
25:43 They were all tied to crypto.
25:44 They all were had heavy exposure to crypto.
25:47 And that makes sense.
25:47 I mean, if crypto is so volatile and there's
25:50 not a lot of real money backing these over-leveraged
25:54 uh currencies that are really more like speculative
25:57 investments um then it can go up really fast,
26:01 but it can also come down really fast.
26:03 And when it comes down really fast and players need
26:05 to take their real money off the table you know,
26:08 sometimes they find that there just isn't anyone on the buying side.
26:11 Um everyone's starting to sell.
26:13 And I worry that um with what the Trump administration has done,
26:17 we we could be creating an an even worse scenario.
26:20 Yeah.
26:21 And there was a quick flash of Eric Trump in there.
26:23 Obviously, I mean, you know, um a lot of what's happening with crypto right
26:28 now is is going on with the first family.
26:30 I mean, Donald Trump and his family, they are cashing in on crypto and and there
26:34 are some some spooky elements to this.
26:37 I mean, I will just run a couple of headlines past you.
26:39 I mean, Forbes just came out with a story.
26:41 I was just, you know, what's the latest in crypto?
26:43 Right.
26:43 Donald Trump.
26:44 There's a Forbes story on what's going on with Eric Trump.
26:47 And it the story goes like this.
26:48 Eric Trump jumped on an earnings call in February
26:51 ready to do what Trumps do best, sell.
26:53 His company American Bitcoin had debuted just a year
26:56 earlier and was already trading on the Nasdaq.
26:58 He says, quote, we are fast becoming the leader in the Bitcoin
27:00 world and I truly think we have the greatest brand of all.
27:03 Eric said, I want to recognize Mike Asher,
27:05 Matt, and everyone at American Bitcoin.
27:07 And the article goes on to say it was a noteworthy closing.
27:11 And everyone at uh American Bitcoin given
27:13 that there is hardly anyone at American Bitcoin.
27:17 I mean, you know, there's I mean,
27:19 what do you think about the first family getting in on this?
27:22 I mean, I Donald Trump has done this too.
27:23 We can talk about that too.
27:24 What do what do you make of that?
27:26 Well, I mean, sort of the obvious, right?
27:28 Which is that Donald Trump um as recently as 2021 called Bitcoin a scam.
27:33 Um he hadn't figured out perhaps how to make money
27:36 off of it at the time, but now he has.
27:39 Uh he also realized,
27:41 I think perhaps um perhaps quite prudently that in the summer uh
27:45 of '24 when he pivoted to all of a sudden loving Bitcoin,
27:48 there was a group of gettable guys, persuadable guys that might, you know,
27:52 be persuaded to vote for him um if he was more in line with them on on crypto.
27:57 Um but regardless, yeah, I mean, he's made he and his family have made billions,
28:02 um multiple billions, it seems like if you look at the reporting.
28:06 Um it did so alone and uh um a lot of it looks like,
28:12 you know, there he's held a dinner for investors in his coin where,
28:16 you know, you get to have a dinner
28:17 with the president of the United States you know,
28:19 not at the White House, but at one of his country clubs.
28:22 Um Mhm.
28:23 That seems awfully similar to payment payment for access.
28:28 Um and then there are reports that uh his stablecoin company received
28:32 a $500 million investment from a sheikh in the UAE and then
28:37 some months later Nvidia chips were were given to the UAE
28:41 and uh and a guy that had previously pled guilty to money laundering,
28:45 uh Changpeng Zhao of Binance, which is the largest crypto exchange,
28:49 uh has suddenly he got a pardon.
28:50 Uh Changpeng Zhao lives in in um in the UAE now.
28:54 So Yeah.
28:55 It's it's pretty dirty stuff.
28:57 It's pretty dirty stuff.
28:58 It's happening to you it's happening right out in the open and you know,
29:02 if you just remove the word cryptocurrency and put regular money,
29:06 um I guess it'd be even more obvious, but it's pretty obvious what's happening.
29:09 Yeah, I mean, just the other day um an investor uh a a crypto entrepreneur,
29:15 I guess, sued uh Trump's uh crypto.
29:20 Yeah.
29:20 And you know, this was being reported, I I guess,
29:23 uh in in the Wall Street Journal that not long after the 2024 election,
29:26 the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun bought 75
29:30 million in digital coins from World Liberty Financial.
29:33 Uh and now he's he's suing over
29:35 it because he that partnership has apparently imploded.
29:39 But, you know, I kind of wonder where all of this is heading.
29:44 The Trump family being so heavily, you know, while running the country.
29:48 Right.
29:49 Right.
29:49 Heavily invested in crypto and and and in this murky world
29:53 that you unveil in your documentary where there's just there's no oversight,
29:57 there's hardly any oversight, accountability, you know,
30:01 it it just seems to me it's going to lead to a bad place.
30:04 I I I I I agree and one of the you know, even more the corruption is is galling,
30:10 but the uh the degree to which they dismantled what
30:13 the Biden administration had done to try to combat crypto crime.
30:17 You know, there's a crypto crime task force at the DOJ, they disbanded that.
30:21 They've gutted the SEC.
30:23 Um they are trying to work crypto further into our banking
30:26 system via a bill called the Genius Acts that was
30:29 passed last year uh that allows corporations to issue
30:32 their own currencies in the form of cryptocurrencies called stable coins.
30:37 So it's literal corporate money.
30:39 We're now um we because the American people love corporations so much,
30:44 they would love them to also have control
30:46 over our monetary system as well, I suppose.
30:48 Um the reason that these this that legislation got through, in my opinion,
30:53 is that the crypto lobby has spent an enormous
30:55 amount of money uh on politicians and political campaigns.
30:59 In 2024, they spent $240 million, which was 40 something um which was 40
31:04 something percent of all corporate donations in the cycle.
31:07 Um so it's just a staggering amount of money
31:09 and they use the money both to intimidate the lawmakers,
31:12 but also to, you know, I don't want to bribe,
31:14 but sort of encourage them to support legislation favorable to the industry.
31:19 Um so I'm I'm, you know,
31:20 I'm pretty fired up about it because I I think that ironically,
31:24 you know, crypto was set up as a response to the subprime crisis, supposedly.
31:27 Um it was supposedly a reaction to the debacle that was 2007-2008.
31:34 But I worry that if it gets further into our system and there's another crash,
31:37 we're going to end up bailing these guys out Yeah.
31:40 just as we did in the subprime crisis.
31:42 And so crypto would have effectively
31:44 re-created the very thing it's supposedly against.
31:47 Um when I say crypto stupid, that's that's kind of what I mean.
31:51 Yeah.
31:51 And and real people get hurt.
31:53 Uh people who can't afford to dump all their money into crypto,
31:56 they do it and then they get hurt.
31:57 You you talk about this in the movie.
32:00 And one of the things that I was kind of interested in is you
32:02 you did a a lot of uh media uh surrounding the book and that's
32:07 portrayed in the movie and you you ran into a lot of pushback
32:11 from the like the talking head crowd on cable news and so on, the CNBC crowd.
32:16 And and you know, let's face it, on CNBC,
32:18 they basically cheerlead just about anything that's going on in the economy.
32:21 There isn't a whole lot of thoughtful analysis
32:23 as to perils of crypto and so on on on CNBC.
32:27 And you kind of found yourself like defending
32:30 your reporting and defending this documentary because you were
32:33 sort of like the talking head community didn't
32:35 really buy what you were what you were reporting.
32:38 Yeah, I guess so or they weren't really trying.
32:40 I mean, I think, you know,
32:42 crypto has been unbelievably successful or had been until
32:45 at least 2022 in penetrating a lot of media organizations.
32:48 They would set up uh desks to cover crypto.
32:53 They were, of course, funded by sponsors,
32:56 corporate sponsors that were in the industry.
32:57 So, you know, I'll be honest,
33:00 I was a guy I have I'm not a reporter by trade, right?
33:03 I had never written an article before starting to work with Jacob Silverman,
33:06 who I wrote the book with, but um but I always assumed,
33:11 naively, I guess, in retrospect,
33:13 that all journalists had some degree of um I don't know.
33:19 [laughter] Healthy suspicion.
33:20 or common sense.
33:20 I mean, I assumed if you're a financial journalist,
33:22 one of the things that you should understand is what money is.
33:25 Um I would find it hard to cover money if I were a finance journalist,
33:28 if I didn't understand that.
33:30 So, you know, when when we talk about crypto and its private nature,
33:34 that it's basically if it's not money from the government, what is it?
33:37 It's money that's issued by uh people,
33:40 Donald Trump and his family or corporations,
33:42 that World Liberty Financial is their corporation.
33:44 Um that's also true of Bitcoin, right?
33:46 Bitcoin the the Bitcoin that are mined are
33:48 mined the majority are mined by multi-billion dollar corporations.
33:52 So, when we talk about what crypto is, it's really private money.
33:54 That's what we call it in economics,
33:55 as opposed to public money, money that's issued by the government.
33:58 Well, crypto talks about how it's the future of money,
34:01 but actually private money is something we've tried before and failed.
34:05 Uh it was the free banking era of the mid-19th century,
34:09 also called the wildcat banking era,
34:11 and we were trying to expand west and provide credit for an expanding
34:15 economy and so banks were allowed to issue their own notes,
34:18 their own currencies.
34:19 And you were allowed one chapter of your bank and so you
34:22 would set it up as far away from your depositors as possible,
34:25 where the wildcats roamed.
34:26 And once you had their money, what's to stop you from taking off with it?
34:29 So, the system was pretty unstable,
34:31 uh there was a lot of fraud and ultimately it was
34:33 scrapped and uh that's why we ended up with a central bank.
34:37 So, when crypto talks about being the future of money,
34:39 not only is that wrong, it's exactly wrong.
34:42 It's the exact opposite.
34:43 It's the it's the past of money and and a failure that we revisit at our peril.
34:48 And the other thing that I love about the documentary is that you expose
34:52 the lie that is like this crypto paradise that's emerging in El Salvador was,
34:56 you know, billed as emerging in El Salvador.
34:59 And I know the the documentary was basically shot kind of like a few years ago,
35:03 but has anything really changed in El Salvador
35:06 because the way it's portrayed and I I
35:07 really encourage people to see it simply because
35:09 it exposes Bukele as as basically a fraud.
35:12 And [snorts] he he portrayed himself as like the savior of crypto
35:16 and he's going to bring this country out of um you know,
35:19 sort of third world status,
35:21 uh developing status with with with cryptocurrency and they
35:25 sort of bring kids through these crypto academies, like you portray that.
35:29 And I think at one point you say in the film, not weird at all.
35:32 Not weird at all.
35:32 It's so and you find this guy who was
35:34 supposed to live in Bitcoin City or something like that.
35:37 It's one dude sleeping on a hammock and it just never materialized.
35:42 It's a joke.
35:43 Yeah, I mean, crypto's really just a story, right?
35:45 And and you see in all these scams this repetitive
35:48 theme of a some grandiose story that, you know,
35:52 they're going to change uh they're going to bank
35:55 the unbanked or they're going to um you know,
36:00 be a be in opposition to the centralized quite frankly,
36:05 um accurately described uh uh uh you know,
36:10 collection of financial interests in our regulated
36:11 system that people are genuinely upset about.
36:14 They sort of use that as an excuse to um to perpetrate their schemes.
36:18 But with Bukele, um he there's he So,
36:22 he was trying to build this city in the east of the country, Bitcoin City.
36:25 Nothing is happening there.
36:26 I mean, they've leveled the land to build an airport,
36:28 but there's no they're never going to mine the Bitcoin
36:31 from this they were going to mine Bitcoin from a volcano.
36:34 From a volcano, right.
36:36 of gold.
36:37 I mean, it was all just quite frankly absurd.
36:39 Um in fact, El Salvador's abandoned the Bitcoin experiment essentially.
36:45 It's no longer legal tender in El Salvador.
36:47 Bitcoin is no longer legal tender.
36:48 Yeah, they tried not to talk about the whole 60 Minutes story, remember?
36:52 I remember they did like a whole they went down there and they talked
36:55 to the people and you exposed that there you go to an open market,
36:58 they don't even take Bitcoin or they don't take it in the movie.
37:01 Yeah, I mean, El Salvador, it's a very poor country.
37:03 There's the average Salvadoran only makes about $400
37:06 a month and they dollarized um years ago.
37:09 And so the economy is really conducted in cash.
37:12 I mean, at the at the the average Salvadoran level.
37:15 Um and Bukele's pitch was that because so
37:19 much of the economy of El Salvador is remittances,
37:21 the money that the uh 2 to 3 million people of Salvadoran
37:24 descent living in the United States send home to their friends and family.
37:28 Bukele's pitch was, well,
37:29 we'll build a system on top of Bitcoin called Chivo, which means cool,
37:33 which is the lamest marketing ever,
37:34 but uh that's what you expect, I guess, from Bukele.
37:37 Um we'll build a system on top of uh Bitcoin and everyone will be able
37:43 to send money home without paying the transaction
37:46 fees that Western Union or MoneyGram might charge you.
37:49 And remittances are, you know, a quarter of this economy.
37:51 So, um it was a good pitch,
37:53 but the system went on and and Bitcoin crashed, nobody used it,
37:59 less than 2% when I was uh filming and now it's
38:02 even less than 1% because the whole thing is is gone kablooey.
38:06 So, it was always, it felt like um more
38:10 of a marketing pitch than an actual reality on the ground.
38:13 Yeah.
38:14 Well, Ben, I'm excited about this film.
38:16 I'm excited for people to see it.
38:18 And um I I will say at the very end
38:21 here that I have a friend and I you can't So,
38:23 you can't blame this on me when I say this.
38:25 I have a friend who desperately wants an OC reunion.
38:29 And I I'm ashamed of myself for saying
38:31 this out loud to you so because I you mock
38:33 people who do this to you in the movie
38:35 and so I'm I feel bad about myself right now,
38:37 but I a friend is putting me up to this.
38:39 I just want to say.
38:40 Okay.
38:40 And you and Ben and Seth Cohen That's right.
38:43 Uh you you and Ryan and Seth Cohen come back as crypto bros.
38:46 Maybe I'm and I'm just introducing a plot line.
38:48 I love it.
38:48 I love it.
38:49 I love it.
38:49 I'll I'll get right on that.
38:50 Um but best of luck with the film.
38:52 It's great stuff and you hit it out of the park, man.
38:55 This is like really Oscar-worthy documentary filmmaking
38:58 here and I hope folks see it.
39:00 Uh but Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
39:01 Really appreciate it.
39:03 Broadcasting live from the heart of New York City,
39:06 this has been a Jim Acosta show special report.
39:13 [music] Questions asked and answers [music] found,
39:19 breaking through the noise [singing] and spin around.
39:24 [music] Truth to power, standing ground.
39:29 This is Acosta.
39:31 The Jim Acosta [music] show, from the briefing room to you, the Jim Acosta show.