Hello. Welcome to Hot Topic. So glad that you're here. Excuse me. Living Live at 5. It's been a long day. Got a little bit of a fog going on. So thank you for joining us here on the Don Lemon Show. Remember, hit the like and the thumbs up. And let me know which platform you're following us on. If it's YouTube, if it's Instagram, if it's TikTok. So let me know. Substack, we're all here. So again, thanks for joining us. Like and thumbs up. And it does affect the algorithm. More people become aware of our conversation, our channel.
So look, I have been visiting college campuses. I was at Ohio State the other day. I'm at Harvard today. I've been talking to students. They are paying attention to what's happening with Cornell University. Also, they're paying attention to what's happening today or last night with the president of the United States threatening to, well, I don't know, bomb, but saying it's okay if Iran bombs LA or San Diego.
Look, I hate to, like, you know, agree with politicians, but Gavin Newsom today, I hear, is calling for the 25th Amendment. I've never really called for that, but I think it's... I think, yeah, I don't know what you think, but I think, yeah, anytime you have a president of the United States saying that it's okay to bomb American cities, and especially San Diego, oh, look, any city, but San Diego, where there's a huge military presence, and those people in many ways, many times, end up making the ultimate sacrifice, meaning they go away to fight for their country and they don't come home, and their families don't come home, and you have a president of the United States saying that, yeah, I think he should be removed.
I've been saying forever, I don't know if you guys have been paying attention, that something is going on with this man. Something ain't right, as we say. Something ain't okay. So again, hit the like and the thumbs up. Let me know how you feel about this and we're going to go on and talk about it, okay? And let me know again if we're on all the platforms. I would really appreciate it.
So less than 24 hours ago, Donald Trump had plenty to say when there was a microphone in front of him. He thought it was cute. He thinks it's cute. He thinks it's fun. And he had a crowd cheering him on last night in Nebraska. He stood on that stage and he casually talked about Iran being able to take out two American cities, Los Angeles and San Diego. Two American cities with a combined population of five million people. And when he was actually asked about it after that, about his comments at the White House today, suddenly Donald Trump has nothing to say. Watch.
So there he is. Now he has nothing to say. When did you ever hear Donald Trump have nothing to say? And God, Pete Hegseth, those brown shoes, please. Come on, man. This is not 2011. What's going on? You say something outrageous. You say something reckless and then you run away or you pretend like it's no big deal. And you saw there he made no attempt to defend his words. The words that came out of his mouth. No attempt at all. And I want you to listen again. This is the president of the United States, okay? Suggesting that he would let Iran commit genocide by bombing both Los Angeles and San Diego. Here it is.
And again, remember with the war, it's just artificial. It's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let him take out Los Angeles. Let him take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it's going to be over with very soon. It's essentially almost over with. And they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you, they need it. But it's going to end very soon and it'll end one way or the other. And your gas and your gasoline and all of the things. And don't...
Not only was the last part a lie, that your gas and your gasoline and all that's going to go, he's been saying that forever. He wants people to believe that. Why should people believe that? It hasn't happened. As I said this morning on the 10 a.m. show, 10 a.m. Eastern live every day. Remember that. As I said, you've been saying that, oh, well, this war is only going to last a little bit, a couple days, then it was a couple weeks, and then it was a couple months. Soon it's going to be a year, and then we'll be in one of the forever wars that he said he wanted to get rid of. This guy is a total liar. Donald Trump is a big fat liar.
And he knows that what he said was, oh, someone must have told him because now he doesn't want to answer it. And then Fox News and conservatives are going to put people are going to play. People have TDS. Don Lemon has Trump derangement syndrome. No, you have Trump derangement syndrome. As I said before, San Diego alone is one of the most important military communities in this country. These are the Americans that the commander-in-chief he's supposed to be protecting. So if you are going to stand in front of the country and you're going to invoke the possibility of a foreign adversary taking out our cities, you damn well better be prepared to explain what the hell that you meant. Why did you say it? But he couldn't, of course. One is because he's a coward. When someone is that insecure, when someone has to put his name on everything, when someone is that self-indulgent, they're a coward. Apparently, the courage disappears when the applause disappear. When the MAGA cult aren't there to give him the boost that he needs, and he runs away, he can't say anything.
I've never seen Donald Trump meet a microphone or a camera he doesn't like unless they are being fair. They're fairly criticizing him and then he says, oh, no, it's fake news. I don't want to talk to them. I want to kick them out. One thing we know about this 80-year-old grandpa is that Donald Trump loves playing the tough guy when nobody can challenge him. But not to worry, he did find something important enough to talk about, and that's his stupid, dumbass reflecting pool that nothing was wrong with that needed minor repairs. And then now he's costing us millions of dollars because he needed a deflection from this war. His reflecting pool. He really is a narcissist. Speaking of reflecting pools, ask grandma about the damn reflecting pool. Did anybody ask him about that? Suddenly the batteries are back in and he wants to... Oh my gosh. He has everything to say. Are you kidding me? Los Angeles and San Diego can potentially be wiped off the map, but no time for that. But he has time for a reflecting pool. Hit it.
I got a vision. And they also the grass which they destroyed, you know, they destroyed the brand new beautiful grass at the reflecting pool. The grass was destroyed with the letters, the famous letters, and that's been just about completed too. We put all new grass in again. And this is brand new grass. This is all new with about 100 loads of brand new topsoil. So this is going to be very healthy grass.
What the... Oh my God. Are you guys sick of this? This man is Looney Tunes. He is not right. Donald Trump is a lunatic. He is crazy. And MAGA, I guess MAGA likes it. They like a nutty president. They like a president that wants to bomb them. I thought they supported the military. I thought you liked having states' rights. Those are states, send it back to the states. That's why people run their own states. We support the military. We support the blue. Except when we don't.
And this is exactly why I continue talking about this story. Words coming from our president can move markets. It can terrify our allies. It can terrify our enemies. Except lately, people aren't paying... Our enemies are not afraid of us. They don't give a damn about us anymore. We're not the world power that people think we are. We're not respected. The words from the president can embolden enemies. It can scare the hell out of millions of people. So you don't just get to casually throw Los Angeles and San Diego into some deranged geopolitical rant and then you pretend you suddenly can't hear when somebody asks you about it.
This one thing I believe is big enough to push him out of office because what if he says some other thing where, and I know people, I haven't even watched conservative news, they can't take a little joke or they got it out of context. Nobody got it out of context. We have eyes and we have ears. Stop telling us that. We have eyes and ears. Shut the hell up. I hate it when they do that. And guess what? That's not the only... It's enough, but it's not the only controversy that Trump is trying to leave behind. Remember those campaign-style TV ads that were being paid for by us with our taxpayer money? Remember that? After the criticism, Trump now says that MAGA Inc., his super PAC, will pay for the ads going forward, but the taxpayer money has already been sent and spent. So, let's look at the ads.
Why did you change your mind, sir, on the taxpayer-funded ads, and will you reimburse the government for the millions?
Well, the ads were really good. They were promotion for the country, done by many presidents before. So we'll decide.
Paid for by the people. So apparently after weeks of defending this, somebody finally discovered that his concept, this advertising concept, should be paid for with political money. Now, this is the thing. When I said, oh, I can't believe that these two networks actually ran the ads on their network that talked against them. Those very same networks. No shade to the networks. I actually like MSNBC, CNN. I love the people there, but on everything else. This is why I said you did not have to run those ads. These ads were political ads this close to a campaign. This is not... This is promotional and political. These are not public service announcements.
And then there's what Trump pulled in Maryland today. Did you guys hear about this? The president showed up to take a victory lap over a massive new defense project. $3.7 billion being invested in a new shipyard in Maryland, a Navy contract worth up to $2.9 billion, and an estimated 3,100 direct jobs. Now, let me let you in on a little secret. Just like he took credit for the Obamacare money that you're getting back, he took credit for this because this was Wes Moore. This is the governor's initiatives. It's a big project, this big money. It's a big photo op. And naturally, Donald Trump wanted the credit for it as he always does. There was just one inconvenient person missing from the stage. And that was Maryland's Democratic governor, Wes Moore, who's actually doing one hell of a job in Maryland. Moore's administration helped to negotiate the damn deal. But when it came time for the cameras, the Democratic governor was nowhere near the microphone.
Donald Trump is a bad man. I'm just telling you, I don't understand why y'all, unless you have the worst tendencies yourself and you like unscrupulous people, you want to emulate unscrupulous people, you think life should be like a horrible reality show drama, then that's why the only reason you would like this person, because he's the person that we raised our kids not to be. He's everything that my parents told me not to be. He's not generous. He's not loving. He is selfish. He's foolish. He denigrates people. He doesn't turn the other cheek. He's a hypocrite. He's slovenly. He's gluttonous. He lies.
The governor's team says the governor was blocked from speaking. Governor Moore, the White House insists that he was invited, but only as a guest. Now, think about how petty that is. Why would you go? Now, would you go to Texas and not invite that governor? Would you go to Florida? Maybe you would go to Florida and not invite Ron DeSantis because you don't like him. Because he ran against you and he talked smack about you. Maybe. I don't know. But I doubt it because you need Florida right now. Would you do that? I say no.
Help deliver, help bring billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to your state and then watch Donald Trump swoop in and then grab the microphone and act like he built the damn shipyard himself. Donald Trump, people aren't buying your crap. They know that you didn't build that. Smart people know that the governor built it. This is increasingly how Trump governs. The credit is his. The blame is yours. And if you're a Democrat, apparently you don't even get a seat on the stage. I'm going to bring in now to talk about this an expert, and that is former Nevada State Senator Pat Spearman, a U.S. Army veteran who served for nearly three decades, and California Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, who represents parts of Los Angeles. Thank you both for being here. I really appreciate it.
Great. I want to begin with you because the president of the United States stood before a cheering crowd, floated the possibility of Iran taking out the city you represent. What did you think?
I thought it was unconscionable. I couldn't believe what I had seen. I watched it over and over again. This man is willing to sacrifice millions of Americans to distract from the fact that his economic policies and his endless war foreign policies are failing the entire country. It's shameful. It's unconscionable. He should be removed from office. The man is a punk and I dare him to show his face in Los Angeles at this point. He already denied us $40 billion in wildfire aid after the largest fires in the city's history. He has already shunned Los Angeles. He used the National Guard to come into our city. He threw ICE into our city. He's used every tool of the federal government to try to break us. And he has failed. And so now he's invited a foreign government. It's pathetic. It's sad.
What do you think's wrong with him?
I think he's become senile. I think all of our worst fears about who he is as a person are being matched with a giant incompetent surrounding of an administration. This is unchecked, unfettered narcissism being spewed from a man who doesn't care about anything but himself. That's why he can talk about the reflecting pools. That's why he can talk about TV ads that propagate and promote his agenda for the country and completely distract from the violence and the harm that he's inflicting on everyday working people who are just trying to get by. And it's one thing to have this economic harm happening across the country. It is another thing to invite a foreign government to bomb a global city like Los Angeles. I'm mortified. This man should be removed from office and it shouldn't have come to this. We are long past overdue for a good old-fashioned uprising. We've got to take to the streets. We've got to call for a transformation.
Pat, look, any city, right? I mean, Los Angeles, any city, but and you think about San Diego, though. I don't know if you heard my point about San Diego. And, you know, there's a huge military presence there in San Diego. You served nearly three decades in the United States Army. When you hear the commander-in-chief casually invoke an enemy taking out two American cities, what goes through your head?
So, first of all, Don, thank you for bringing attention to this and thank you for the invitation to be here. Let me take a step back. It's really worse than that. It's really worse than that. Yes. LA was one of the first cities that he occupied. But guess what else? Los Angeles is the headquarters for Space Command, space activities and satellites. So the president of the United States in front of thousands of people says, take out the city where our Space Command is. Take out the city where our satellite headquarters is. Take out that city. And oh my goodness, let's see what else is there about San Diego. Let me see. Let me... Oh, the USS Lincoln. How about that? That was their homeport. And they were at sea, what, nine months? And so you have... And listen, there is no Republican that can stand up and justify that. Not one. And I hope that reputable news outlets will point that out. You gave Iran permission to destroy one of the cities where a major command is, Space Command. And that wasn't enough for you. You also told them, oh, let me throw in San Diego because nothing's over there. Say, oh, you know, USS Lincoln, that's all right. They take them out, too. And I always say to people, you know, if you want to test to see if someone is racist, let me just call it like it is, then ask them, what if Obama did it? Obama did it. And let me say this. If we would do more in terms of making Republicans justify this lunacy, they would twist themselves into an Italian pretzel because they cannot do it. They cannot do it. And so I'm hoping that you and more of your real journalists will take this information and start talking about it. How do you call in or rain down fire on Space Command? How do you say let's take out the city where you have people who just got back from the Middle East? If that's the way you feel about them, why didn't you just leave them out there and bomb them there? So it is not enough for us to say he's deranged right now. He is a commander-in-chief that ought to be court-martialed.
Because it's dereliction of duty. The UCMJ has one of the things, Article 133, if you were doing something that is unbecoming an officer, unbecoming, and keeping it in line with the good morale and faith of your unit, you don't get a chance to be the commander anymore. There have been ground troops, people who commanded ground troops, who have been court-martialed for less. For less. And so it's not just Article 25. Now we are talking about a commander that has essentially said, yes, I'm the commander-in-chief, but I want you to take out these two areas that are under my command and that our country needs to be safe. And if you talk to any JAG lawyer, they will tell you that I'm right. They will tell you that I'm right.
Isaac, the White House says that Trump is being misunderstood. That was the excuse, that he was describing what Iran could do if it acquired a nuclear weapon, not encourage an attack. Are you buying that?
Not at all. That's why he didn't speak to the press after. He knows what he said. He's been alluding to things like this for a long time. And he's called for violence every chance he can for not just Los Angeles and San Diego, but every city and every state that didn't vote for him. Not only is the man hypocritical, he's also just petty, but he's violently petty. The kind of petty that cost real Americans their life, their dignity, and their opportunity in this country. And that's not a leader. That certainly is not a president. I can't believe this nation put this man in the White House. Now we have a responsibility to each other to take him out of the White House before he costs us something that we can never get back.
Well, he was given the opportunity today, Isaac, to explain exactly what he meant and he didn't answer the question. He didn't take the opportunity that they gave him. Does his refusal to explain make this worse? And doesn't it sort of undercut what the White House put out? Because if he thought it was real, if that's what he was doing, then explain yourself. He's not afraid of microphones or cameras. He says he's not afraid of the media, although he tries to silence them.
He's infatuated with them. He loves the glitz, the glamour. He loves a camera in his face, unless it's too critical of him. And then he banned you from the press room. The reason he didn't have anything to say is because he's too much of a punk to double down on what he knows he said. We heard you. Our ears work. We listened. Unfortunately, we listen a lot to the garbage that comes out of your mouth. And in this particular case, you have called for violence against the American people, 5 million Americans, including the 4 million who live in the beautiful city of Los Angeles that I represent. How many more times do you have to come for us? How many more times do you have to come for the people that didn't vote for you before you represent us like the president of the United States is supposed to? This is shameful. It's unbecoming of our country. It lowers our standing in the world. And if it leads to any actual violence, we will never ever recover from it. We have to push back on this. And we should be calling on the Republican candidate for governor in California, Steve Hilton, who's been endorsed by Donald Trump, to disavow these statements quick, fast, and in a hurry. In fact, if you are a Republican anywhere in California, if we don't hear a swift statement from you by the end of the day, we have to assume that you agree that millions of Californians deserve to be bombed because they don't agree with the policies of authoritarianism, fascism, and harm that are coming from this administration. This is a moment that all of us have to stand in solidarity against. All Americans should be ashamed.
You think Steve Hilton's going to hop in on this? I mean, Pat, you don't think that, do you?
No. No. And before we go further, I had to look up, I said Article 133. It's Article 134, and it's the article, clause one, conduct that prejudices the good order and discipline in the armed forces, that includes neglect, conduct or behavior of a nature that brings discredit upon the armed forces, and then certain capital offenses. So by the UCMJ standards, this is not PAT, this is not PAT Article 134. This is UCMJ Article 134. Okay? What he said when he said bomb Los Angeles and bomb San Diego discredited our forces and is unbecoming the commander-in-chief or the commander of anything. And so are they going to apologize? No. And you know what? In my own state, in Nevada, we have someone that's running for Congress in Congressional District 2 that this man has endorsed. And guess what? He has been caught in a lie. He has inflated his military resume. He has said he is the recipient of the Bronze Star with Valor.
Oh, you're shocked that someone, a Republican, who is a MAGA supporter, that they lied about something?
No, no, no. You know, my mother used to have this conversation with me in our family about birds of a feather, they flock together. But in this day and age, as birds of a feather, they grift together.
