The 23-Year-Old Who Asked the Question Every Iran War Defender Can't Answer | Adam Mockler
Jim Acosta
0:00 He is a slayer of middle-aged MAGA men on cable news.
0:05 Adam, great to see you.
0:06 Thank you for having me on.
0:08 Thank you for paving the way.
0:10 Thank you for, you know, being so good at what you do as well.
0:12 It's going to be a great conversation.
0:13 I'm glad we finally got to do it.
0:15 I'm so glad, too.
0:16 And I um I'm I'm a big admirer of yours and I
0:19 love seeing uh the young folks doing these things these days.
0:24 I remember when I I I think I read you're 23.
0:26 If I'm wrong, please correct me as you do with other middle-aged men.
0:30 But um you're 23 and I remember when I was 23,
0:34 I was good at like beer pong and that's basically it.
0:37 That was that was the extent of what I was good at at 23 years old.
0:41 Um I I guess what you know, we should dive into a lot of this stuff,
0:45 but I guess first of all,
0:47 what do you make of the the political mess that Trump is in right now?
0:51 And like folks in your age bracket, I know you don't speak for everybody in it.
0:57 I guess it would be Gen Z or whatever, but like why is he tanking so badly?
1:02 Is it just that he's nuts?
1:03 I mean, I think he's nuts and that's why he's tanking so badly.
1:06 Is it is it Iran?
1:07 What do you think it is?
1:09 It's right now it is Iran and the downstream effects of this war backfiring.
1:14 And it's due to his terrible, terrible instincts on this and the bad advice
1:19 that he got from the people around him like Netanyahu.
1:22 Donald Trump dealt this would be a carbon copy of Venezuela where you
1:25 chop off the head and the rest of the body falls in line.
1:28 Meaning you take out the leader and the rest
1:30 of the regime will sort of be strung along.
1:32 It kind of worked in Venezuela.
1:34 It got quiet after Maduro was captured and the rest of the body fell in line.
1:38 With Venice or with Iran, it's much much different.
1:41 The IRGC is deeply embedded in Iran.
1:44 Uh, a lot of people that work in the banks, the institutions,
1:47 the political scenes,
1:48 they're former IRGC members who are incentivized to keep the regime going.
1:53 They have their claws deep in Iran.
1:55 So, they're not really budging.
1:57 They're kind of holding out in its asymmetric warfare at this point.
2:00 So, due to that, Donald Trump's four to six week timeline got blown through.
2:05 We're now in week 10.
2:06 Is that right?
2:07 Week nine or 10 of this war.
2:08 We are way past the timeline
2:10 and we've gotten zero political concessions from Iran,
2:13 which is what I've been hammering home on all of these shows.
2:15 There's quite literally nothing we can show for it.
2:18 And talking about people my age, yeah,
2:21 we have grown up always seeing headlines of military successes
2:25 in the Middle East in the sense that, you know,
2:27 millennials saw Saddam Hussein was killed in Iraq
2:29 and then we saw that in Afghanistan,
2:31 I'm Jen Z, but the millennials then
2:33 saw in Afghanistan we got a military success,
2:36 but then that turned into a grinding counterinsurgency, right?
2:39 the military success of killing Saddam Hussein turned
2:43 into an incredibly expensive trillion dollar catastrophe where we didn't
2:47 make any progress whatsoever and then we left Afghanistan
2:51 at least 20 years after trillions of dollars in debt.
2:54 So young people have been primed to realize wait
2:56 a minute just because we sink the navy of another country
2:59 just because we sink the air force of another country
3:01 doesn't directly mean it affects or helps us at home.
3:04 In fact we've seen the opposite.
3:06 So now we see the same exact people who
3:08 have been on air defending the first two wars,
3:10 saying those first two wars were going to work out,
3:12 defending this war and telling us not to ask questions about this war.
3:16 That's that's my rant.
3:18 That's the long and the short of it.
3:19 And that's why, you know, you were able to own Scott Jennings the way he
3:22 he was owned because he worked in the Bush administration.
3:26 And I mean, just to, you know,
3:27 to to play off of what you were saying a few moments ago,
3:30 I remember being out on the campaign trail with Donald
3:33 Trump in 2016 when he would savage George W.
3:35 Bush for getting the US into a quagmire
3:38 in the Middle East that resulted in uh, you know,
3:41 just a a a a total catastrophe from a foreign policy standpoint,
3:45 emboldening Iran, by the way, creating ISIS and and all sorts of things.
3:50 And you know, I I just it it's it's
3:53 shocking to me that Trump went back on his word.
3:55 And I think that's a big part of why Jenzers are pissed off,
3:59 too, because they sort of they bought into this in 2024.
4:02 They were kind of a big voting block
4:04 that helped Trump get back in the White House.
4:06 I think that's oversold a little bit as to how much
4:08 they played a role in that, but they were a factor.
4:11 And I he just completely obliterated that that promise.
4:14 Yeah.
4:14 I mean, listen, for a lot of Jenzer's most formative years,
4:18 we didn't fully a lot of people weren't fully paying attention
4:21 throughout middle school and high school to what Donald Trump was doing.
4:24 Throughout COVID, it was just a blur
4:26 where people were socially isolated and both sides
4:29 were battling it out during the 2020 election
4:32 in in a lot of young people's minds.
4:33 So, Trump was able to gain that and regain the trust
4:36 of some younger people who didn't fully remember his first uh term.
4:42 And he wrote he he he pulled the rug again in even worse manner.
4:46 He made the promises that he would end inflation on day one.
4:48 He actually said that and that there would be no new wars.
4:51 Now he started a new war that has backfired so badly that inflation is spiking.
4:55 I mean give me a break.
4:56 It's crazy.
4:57 Yeah.
4:57 You can't make it up.
4:58 And that leads us to this confrontation that you had with Scott Jennings.
5:02 I don't play many CNN clips on my show because,
5:04 you know, I don't want folks to think, "Oh, Jim, he's he's,
5:07 you know, he's bitter about CNN and so he goes off
5:09 on CNN." I I I I I love many of the people there.
5:13 I had a great experience there.
5:14 I love what I do now.
5:15 I love it even more.
5:16 But from time to time,
5:17 we have to talk about what's happening in corporate media,
5:20 as I call it, legacy media.
5:22 And and and there's just a lot that's going wrong.
5:24 And one of the things that is going wrong in corporate media is Scott Jennings.
5:28 And it's because he's basically paid to to lie and be a a MAGA,
5:33 you know, uh carrying, you know,
5:35 water carrying uh spokesperson for Donald Trump.
5:38 and it and it blows up in his face on a lot of different occasions.
5:42 Let's play that clip of you guys.
5:43 I know you've watched this clip and listened to this clip a thousand times.
5:46 You're probably hearing it in your sleep, but let's watch it uh with the viewers
5:49 here and then talk about on the other side.
5:53 Been at war with us for 40 seconds.
5:55 We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war
5:57 with a country that starts with the letters IRA that we are currently failing.
6:00 That is going to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt.
6:03 I was only a few years old while
6:04 you were in the administration defending prior endless wars.
6:07 Now this war is failing.
6:09 Eight weeks is endless to you.
6:10 Okay.
6:10 You said it was going to be four to six weeks.
6:12 You have the attention span of a net.
6:13 I debated you on TV four to six weeks
6:15 ago and you said we were weeks away from it.
6:17 Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend
6:19 the fact that this war is not going your way.
6:21 Wait one more time.
6:22 Not going.
6:23 Name one political concession.
6:24 Name one political concession.
6:26 Honestly, I'm not going to help.
6:30 Yeah.
6:30 I mean I just every time I hear that an angel gets its wings.
6:32 I maybe that's just me, but but Adam, um, what was happening there?
6:37 And were you surprised that he blew up like that?
6:40 I'm not surprised cuz I used to work
6:41 with with Scott and he had kind of a bad temper,
6:44 I thought, when I worked with him.
6:46 But what did you think of that?
6:48 I mean, there were some clear angst building due to the failing
6:51 of this Iran war for weeks and weeks and weeks.
6:54 There were a lot of repetitious talking points being used
6:56 by Scott Jennings in the sense that he would constantly say,
6:59 "We destroyed their navy.
7:01 We destroyed their air force.
7:02 we might be able to get their nukes.
7:04 Time and time again, he would run the same three lines.
7:06 And time and time again, I would try to force an answer,
7:08 but the show moves on rather quickly to the next segment.
7:12 So, I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to be
7:15 debating people on panels who aren't bound to any sense of facts,
7:19 any sense of timelines, he'll just he'll make predictions and blow
7:23 past the timelines and make more predictions.
7:25 Not even bound to any sense of decorum that I
7:27 can also sort of break the rules a bit.
7:29 Not even that I broke the rules.
7:30 I was kind of just trying to force a question in the way
7:32 that not many other people do and he snapped on me.
7:36 I also want to point out something that really,
7:38 you know, really I think was the most defensive part,
7:40 not even that moment in particular, but him saying afterwards,
7:43 you know, I think a little more civil debate would be good.
7:46 That's a quote from him the other day on Okconor and company or something.
7:50 I think a little more civil debate would be good.
7:53 Are we joking here?
7:54 you have built your entire mainstream media career
7:57 over the past few years off of being, you know, the condescending on television.
8:01 And I don't even think that's a stretch for me to say.
8:03 I don't think that's something that he would disagree with either.
8:06 His entire stick is, you know, what I was flung into six months ago.
8:11 And you know who I learned some
8:12 of this aggressive technique from is Scott Jennings himself.
8:15 I'm 23 years old, so I'm a little bit of a sponge at this point in my career.
8:19 I learn from the people around me, whether it's Michael Avanat for some reason
8:23 or whether it's the people I'm on panels with.
8:25 You want to know something interesting?
8:26 The first time I was on with Scott Jennings,
8:28 I learned from some of his body language.
8:29 You know, he's he sits in a confident posture and I picked that up.
8:32 And I realized the way that he plays this game.
8:34 He plays this game in an asymmetric way and is constantly condescending.
8:37 So I said, "F any of the rules that people want to bind
8:40 me to, I'm learning how to play this game as well." So,
8:43 we can't live in an information environment where the president
8:46 of the United States is constantly flinging at the wall,
8:50 making fun of people's deaths, being combative in interviews on camera.
8:54 You know, a lot about that.
8:55 Of course.
8:55 Of course.
8:56 And then me for me to try to force a question,
8:59 then people tell me to shut the hell up.
9:00 I'm like, I'm sorry.
9:02 Yes, I'll I'll beef with some people on Twitter after and and make my point.
9:06 It's very important to drive this narrative.
9:08 Please remember to subscribe.
9:09 Um, it's so important to support independent journalism.
9:12 It matters.
9:12 It matters when you subscribe.
9:14 It matters when you like.
9:15 It matters when you share.
9:16 It matters.
9:18 Uh and it matters when you watch.
9:19 So, thanks for tuning in.
9:21 No, and I mean, you know, one of the things is a couple things.
9:24 I think Scott, what Scott does is what
9:25 a lot of uh right-wing pundits do these days.
9:28 They get the talking points,
9:29 and they literally do get the talking points from the White House.
9:32 the White House political people, the RNC,
9:34 I I know this for a fact from my days anchoring
9:37 on CNN is that a lot of these and and the pundits tell
9:40 me this, a lot of these talking points that they spout
9:43 on TV are provided to them by the White House and the RNC.
9:46 They're emailed out or blasted out and they're here are today's talking points.
9:49 And sometimes it's literally a document because there there
9:52 were times when I would report on these talking points.
9:54 I'd obtain them from friends of mine who are pundits
9:56 and say these are the talking points that they're putting out.
9:59 So Scott is just he's just literally just doing what
10:02 they want him to do over at the White House.
10:04 That's the first thing.
10:05 The second thing is that he is he he is a hot-tempered,
10:09 you know, sort of shortfused guy.
10:10 I remember one time I had him on for a panel and I fact checked him
10:14 and he didn't like it and after
10:15 the the segment was over we went to commercial break
10:18 and he kind of looked at me like this kind of give me one of these things
10:22 and he walked away and I was like I was like who who is this guy?
10:26 You know it's like give me a break.
10:27 you come on.
10:28 If you if you spew talking points that aren't true,
10:30 you're going to get fact checked.
10:31 And I don't know how.
10:32 To me, the Iran war is indefensible.
10:35 There's just no way.
10:36 You can't defend it.
10:36 There's no way.
10:37 And that's why they get so pissed.
10:39 That's why Trump gets so pissed.
10:40 I'm so sick of also the asymmetric media environment in which
10:43 people can lie over and over and dodge and obuscate questions,
10:47 but the moment that you try to force an answer out of them,
10:49 apparently you're the one breaking the decorum of debate.
10:53 There was a clip of Medi Hassan that just went viral of him
10:55 forcing the answer out of Michael Nolles and by the end of the clip
10:58 Michael will not answer and the moderator is like Medi Medie nothing against
11:02 that particular moderator but Medi wasn't
11:04 the one that was breaking debate decorum there.
11:06 So yeah, I sent out a tweet the other day about how as you enter more and more
11:09 spaces this I this tweet wasn't meant
11:12 to be like saying I know better than anybody.
11:13 I was saying as you enter more and more spaces you
11:16 begin to realize how human the people in these spaces are.
11:19 and that a lot of the things I've experienced in high school recently,
11:22 like this type of insecurity or fragility still
11:25 translates into the grown-up world that I'm very rapidly,
11:28 you know, getting integrated into.
11:30 And it's interesting to see the real Scott Jennings.
11:33 You know, that Scott Jennings that crosses his arms and sips the mug,
11:36 that's not the real Scott Jennings.
11:38 The real Scott Jennings showed us who he was in that very moment, you know?
11:42 Yeah, he really did.
11:43 And you did not have your hand in his face or finger.
11:46 I I mean I you look at the clip and it's
11:48 like I don't know why is he so pissed off.
11:50 I think he just had like no way to get
11:51 out of that situation and so he started flipping
11:54 out and I I noticed that um you you've also
11:58 been getting some some advice from some very interesting corners.
12:01 Apparently Michael Avanati uh Stormmy Daniels former attorney uh has put out
12:06 a tweet saying uh Adam you can throw what I am about
12:09 to say in the garbage or chalk it up to the words
12:11 of a convicted felon or you can listen because I've walked this walk.
12:14 You need to dial it back two clicks.
12:16 You are flying far too close to the sun,
12:18 but you can't see it because you're blinded by the agilation.
12:21 Be smart and play the long game.
12:23 I'm not sure these are great.
12:24 Oh, and then he goes on to say, don't count on any of the people in the media
12:27 or politics who presently claim to adore you
12:29 like me so much to be there to protect
12:31 you if the hits the fan because they won't.
12:33 Now, Michael, you know, I mean, I the thing I would say, and maybe I don't know,
12:36 maybe I should try to reach out to him and have him bond or something,
12:38 but I don't know why Michael says
12:40 that the people in the media aren't supposed to be,
12:42 you know, walking away from you when you go to prison,
12:45 but that is kind of what happens.
12:47 But, but Adam, your thoughts on that?
12:52 I first of all, I thought it was rather random.
12:56 Yeah.
12:55 Second of all, I actually took some of the advice and, you know,
13:00 I internalized it over the next few hours.
13:02 Listen, I was able to separate the messenger from the advice that he was giving.
13:06 And in that advice, there was something that reflected what my mom
13:09 told me the night before when I was still in New York.
13:11 I was on the phone with her and she was telling me, you know,
13:14 while everything is moving fast and while you have a lot of adrenaline,
13:17 make sure you zoom out, you slow down, you keep the larger picture in mind.
13:20 You keep building that infrastructure essentially.
13:23 And that's something that I was thinking about, you know, in the moment.
13:25 and I didn't fully internalize it,
13:26 but then seeing this random tweet that uh from somebody who has
13:30 seen the highs and seen the lows and seen everything in between,
13:35 true, you know, made me realize he's maybe not the worst person.
13:38 Like people were saying he's the worst person to give you this advice,
13:41 but I was thinking maybe he's the best person to give me this advice.
13:44 He has seen the highs and the lows.
13:46 There was some stat apparently he did like a hundred CNN
13:48 hits in like 60 days or so or like uh six months.
13:51 I don't know.
13:51 He was He had his phone number.
13:53 I I will say we all had his phone number and he was I mean he was at the center
13:57 of a major firestorm there because he was representing Stormmy Daniels
14:01 and that was that feels like a million years ago now.
14:04 And I will say there there are aspects of Michael
14:06 that I like and I think he's an okay guy
14:08 and I don't care if people on Fox will on me
14:10 for saying that but I think he's an okay guy.
14:12 I don't know I don't know the circumstances
14:14 of why uh things ended up the way they did but it is it is incredible how
14:19 this is how much your moment with Jennings penetrated Adam.
14:22 think that's the the long and the short of it.
14:24 And it makes me wonder because, you know,
14:26 for a 23-year-old man, you've got some incredible political instincts.
14:30 What do you see happening coming uh the midterms this fall?
14:34 There was a Michigan state Senate race last
14:36 night where this guy in this, you know,
14:38 fairly Trumpy uh district uh won handily.
14:42 Uh Cheddrick Green 50 almost 59% to 40%.
14:47 And I think this is a district my producer Sam was
14:49 telling me that Trump won by one uh last time around.
14:54 And you know that's I that is not a that's a that's
14:57 a pretty bad canary in the coal mine for Donald Trump.
14:59 Although he was able in Indiana to punish uh some
15:03 Republican state lawmakers there who went against him on the redistricting.
15:06 So I mean it says to me maybe that Trump still has a hold on the party.
15:09 But man is he losing the country.
15:13 Yeah.
15:13 I think that the Republicans are in for a brutal midterms,
15:17 but the Democrats need to understand that is backlash
15:20 to the Republicans and not love for the Democrats quite yet.
15:23 Democrats still need to build out their own
15:25 affirmative message and vision for the country.
15:27 But even without that, I think we're going to have
15:29 a pretty good midterms due to a few things.
15:31 I mean, just very clearly the compounding of tariffs on Liberation Day,
15:36 which cost the average American family $1,000,
15:38 plus the cutting of benefits for Americans that helped many,
15:42 many people tens of millions, plus the Iran war,
15:44 which is now catapulting prices and diesel prices and prices of a lot of goods.
15:49 It's hurting the average person.
15:50 As much as I wish the fake elector scheme or January 6 was the one that did
15:55 him in, I really do think this series of economic events is looking bad for him.
16:00 And like it's not even some crazy prediction that I'm making right now.
16:02 Most polling markets show you that Republicans are in for a brutal midterms.
16:06 That is very common for a president to have, you know,
16:09 a backlash two years into his term when the midterms come.
16:12 It's normal.
16:13 But this is going to be unique because of the unique lies that Donald
16:17 Trump told on the campaign trail and the unique 180 that he did.
16:21 So, I think that uh it's it's definitely going to be an interesting one.
16:24 It's going to be quite brutal for Republicans.
16:26 And I will add that is why they are
16:28 desperate to rig it in any way that they can.
16:30 I mean, nothing vindicates section two of the VRA more than watching it
16:35 effectively get gutted and then watch all of these different cities and states,
16:39 mainly red city, red or sorry,
16:42 blue cities and red states like Memphis getting voter diluted to hell.
16:46 It's like a 60% majority black city and they're diluting it into three
16:50 different districts so the black people don't have any vote or say there.
16:52 Wow.
16:53 It's incredible.
16:54 And then just today,
16:55 apparently the FBI raided the home of Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas,
17:00 who was one of the big um, you know, forces behind the redistricting uh,
17:05 fight in Virginia, which the the Democrats in Virginia won,
17:09 which of course we should note they did as a as a as a response
17:12 to what Donald Trump has been doing in Texas and everywhere else.
17:15 It's we're redistricting for me, but not for thee.
17:18 And then if you try to do it, we're we're going to sick the FBI on you.
17:21 Now, according to some reports that I see out there that there
17:24 are sources that say that this this investigation
17:27 started during the Biden administration.
17:28 I would love to know more about what
17:30 those sources have to say and who those sources are.
17:32 Is the source Cash Patel?
17:33 I don't know.
17:35 But I mean that that kind of stuff infuriates people too.
17:38 And this this whole notion of the weaponization of the Justice
17:42 Department I'm going to talk about with Frank Figusi in a moment.
17:45 Um, uh, Adam, I think your generation in particular, uh,
17:50 should be greatly concerned about this because we have not
17:53 do been doing this in this country like this, uh, up until this point.
17:57 Donald Trump is the person is the first
17:58 person to really start doing this whole hog.
18:01 And it's I think it's very disturbing.
18:03 You know, I'm going to keep sounding the alarm
18:05 on this exact thing because I will never for the rest
18:08 of my life forget the truth social post that Donald
18:11 Trump sent out to Pam Bondi where he goes,
18:13 "Pam, I need you to target these three people." And it was Leticia James,
18:18 Adam Schiff, and James Comey, right?
18:20 A very specific call to action.
18:22 Two two out of three of those people ended up getting indicted.
18:25 And then it they ended up getting
18:27 thrown out because Lindseay Alagan was a clown.
18:29 Donald Trump was a clown.
18:30 But the point is that type of weaponization is so sickening.
18:33 And I've had this very debate on CNN before
18:36 where I try to force an answer on this.
18:38 I say, "Can you draw me any parallel to Joe Biden or Kla Harris
18:42 directing Merrick Garland to do something because
18:44 they claim weaponization all the time?" Guess what?
18:47 Not.
18:48 They have nothing whatsoever.
18:50 their their best one is that like Joe Biden
18:53 privately expressed concerns about some topic about January 6
18:57 to his close adviserss and those private concerns are like
19:00 the same as Donald Trump directing Pam Bondi to do this.
19:04 So I really want to keep sounding the alarm on that.
19:07 The reality is I've been to a lot of Trump rallies.
19:09 I've had a lot of these conversations with young voters.
19:12 Things like this just don't penetrate as much as gas prices being up.
19:16 And it's very obvious.
19:17 It's obvious why gas price signs are there on the way
19:19 to work for everybody when they drive home or to work.
19:22 January 6 is kind of an abstract
19:24 concept that most people don't fully understand.
19:27 Most people don't fully understand why free and fair elections,
19:30 you know, allow a fruitful, harmonious society in the first place.
19:34 So, I think that we just need to reinforce a lot of these core
19:36 concepts and then people will understand why an independent DOJ is important.
19:40 Yeah.
19:40 And Adam, before you go,
19:42 I I have to ask you this because I was a young political junkie growing up.
19:45 And I have to say I think I would trace my roots
19:49 in being a political junkie to growing up in the Washington DC area.
19:52 I think you're in Chicago.
19:53 Are you from Chicago?
19:54 Is that how you got interested?
19:56 What's that?
19:57 Grew up in Indiana, so a red state.
20:00 And when I grew up in Indiana,
20:02 I had a lot of formative experiences for a few reasons.
20:06 My dad and his side of the family are Muslim.
20:09 My grandpa immigrated from Syria in the early 80s and they
20:12 always wanted to be they wanted me to be Muslim.
20:14 I used to go to Friday prayer with them.
20:16 And then the other side of my family,
20:17 my mom's side, they're more like Christian, atheistic.
20:20 My uncle sat me down when I was maybe 10.
20:23 And he told me that I can kind of decide what I want to do.
20:25 My mom and my uncle were telling me, listen,
20:26 you can decide which religion you want to explore.
20:29 You don't have to be locked into going to the mosque
20:31 every single Friday for the rest of your life.
20:33 And you don't have to be locked into Christianity.
20:34 that diversity of youth combined with growing up in Indiana
20:38 and having debates with like my teachers and my friends.
20:40 And I remember like pushing back on my friend's parents
20:42 because they were saying that like I remember this vividly.
20:46 I was about 10 years old and I had a friend's parents
20:48 who were saying that black people should be more grateful for our institutions.
20:52 You've probably heard some argument like this.
20:54 A lot of Americans think this.
20:56 I was struck.
20:56 I had never heard anything like that in the moment.
20:58 And I was like, whoa, that feels wrong to say like great, but whoa.
21:01 I remember pushing back talking about slavery,
21:03 but I didn't fully have the arguments formed.
21:06 All of this kind of combined to then me going to Trump
21:09 rallies when I was 21 years old with my own cameraman,
21:11 my own apparatus, and having conversations and building from the ground up.
21:16 Wow.
21:16 Which is very cool.
21:17 Yeah.
21:17 No, I think that's terrific.
21:18 And I I I kind of did some of the same stuff when I was your age.
21:21 I I got into community access television.
21:23 We didn't have this stuff.
21:24 We didn't have um you know,
21:26 the ability to go online and and do these kinds of streaming shows,
21:29 but you had community access TV.
21:30 And so I went out with my own photographer, you know,
21:33 who was basically a guy who was trying to make it like me.
21:36 And we would shoot these little stories about news in Fairfax
21:39 County and I parlayed that into a reporting gig in Knoxville, Tennessee.
21:43 And I went through local television to the place where I am today.
21:46 But I, you know, growing up in DC, I was a major political junkie.
21:50 But that is a very fascinating background, Adam, that I didn't know about you.
21:53 That's very cool.
21:54 Yeah, I appreciate that.
21:55 And that's a really interesting background with you as well.
21:57 Interesting how you can just build something.
22:00 If you concentrate and take the risk and execute on it,
22:04 it can sometimes take you to wild places.
22:06 It really can.
22:07 Yeah.
22:07 And for folks who And if you don't know what community access television is,
22:11 you watch Wayne's World, that is community access television when Wayne and Gar
22:14 are doing a a show in their basement.
22:16 That's basically what that is.
22:18 Is it like those phones where you have to spin and it's like a rotary phone?
22:22 I'm just joking.
22:23 I'm just kidding.
22:24 That's okay.
22:24 No, I know.
22:25 I know you're teasing me,
22:26 but uh you keep on slaying those middle-aged MAGA dudes.
22:30 And I don't know why Heraldo was giving you such a hard time.
22:32 I kind of thought Haraldo was a good guy, but I don't know.
22:35 Maybe he was like he needed a cookie or something.
22:37 I have no idea.
22:38 But I to an older person who's 82,
22:42 I probably present obnoxious if you're sitting on there.
22:45 And I'm I mean, listen, like I can step in his shoes and I don't know.
22:48 But thank you for having me on.
22:49 I appreciate that.
22:50 You got it, Adam.
22:51 All right.
22:51 Take care.
22:51 Thanks a lot, buddy.
22:52 Please remember to subscribe.
22:54 Um, it's so important to support independent journalism.
22:57 It matters.
22:57 It matters when you subscribe.
22:58 It matters when you like.
22:59 It matters when you share.
23:01 It matters.
23:02 Uh, and it matters when you watch.
23:04 So, thanks for tuning in.
23:08 Questions, answers.
23:11 Breaking through the noise and spin around.
23:16 Truth to power.
23:19 Standing ground.
23:20 This is a cost.
23:23 The Jimmy Costa show from the briefing room to you.
23:27 The Jimmy Costa show.