Trump Caught in Shady New Yosemite Land Deal

- Jim Acosta, welcome to Runaway Country. As always, this is a light to have you here. - Alex, great to be here. - I'm thrilled to discuss with you that Trump's attempted dismantling of the legacy of the American West. There is a lot happening on this front that I don't think people have had their eyes focused on the ballroom, but really the corruption and cleptocracy, your phrase, is pretty breathtaking just to set the table a little bit for everybody. So, Trump has spent most of his political career selling himself as the guy who sort of understands the waving wheat field imagery of the United States, the sort of most patriotic imagery we have is the American West. And today, this week, this season, the American West seems to be telling Donald Trump, "Go back East, old man." That is a play on "Go West, young man." You wrote on X that America's public lands are under attack. Here's a quote, "Wake up, America. We have become a cleptocracy." And you're referring to, in that tweet, a story over the weekend that Trump is trading as they're attempting to trade public lands in Yosemite to a Las Vegas developer. So, we're gonna talk about the way in which Trump's bruised hands are all over the legacy of the West, including the actual land, the wild horses and the ranches. But let's start with the land. For people who don't know the story that you were highlighting, it's from notice. And they are reporting that a developer, King's Barn, wants to build an upscale development of cabins and homes on the 83 acres it owns right next to Yosemite on its West edge. But it needs Trump and the feds to give them access so they can build a private road to connect that property to Yosemite National Park, which would be very unusual, but very convenient for the rich people who are presumably staying in these homes. Here's an excerpt from notice. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests. In exchange, King's Barn, the developer, would buy an equal amount of land somewhere in California and donate to the park service. Without this new road, visitors to the property would need to drive an hour and a half to reach Yosemite Valley, which is a major inconvenience. The planning process has created a tense environment inside the park service for the people involved. King's Barn's proposal, wait for it Jim, is backed by the full weight of the interior department's top political leadership, according to sources. Jim, where have we heard this song before, where Trump's top brass cozy's up to wealthy investors and sells off the country piece by piece? - I know, it, you know, Alex, it's not just happening in Washington, you know, I get my dander up over, you know, the national park, you know, gems like the reflecting pool and the, you know, White House ballroom, totally getting hosed by this administration. And it's happening all over the country. And I don't know if you've ever been to Yosemite, I've been before, it is absolutely like a, one of the natural wonders of the world, you know, it's like an Ansel Adams playground. And, you know, one would think, and again, I know it's sort of lazy political thinking or cheap political thinking to say, if Obama did this or if Joe Biden did this. - Hi. - But, I mean, really, if anybody did this, you know, it would be pitchforks in torches time. But of course, there's a developer who's given money to Donald Trump, who's possibly waiting in the wings for this piece of land to get locked off in part as part of some trade. So they can have it for their luxurious, whatever. There's, you know, for anybody who's been out of West, we know, yes, there's plenty of beautiful land that is open to development. You don't have to take slices of national parks. And so, yeah, I mean, it does sort of conjure up, you know, Trump likes to conjure up images of himself as sort of like a second coming of Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan, who road horses, Donald Trump, who sells them to the slaughterhouse. - Oh, yeah, we're gonna get to that involvement. - That's the big difference. But I mean, and it is, we do live at a kleptocracy. I don't understand why, I don't know why that was such a controversial thing that set off all the Trump odds and trolls. I mean, that is the government he is running right now, whether it's the White House ballroom or a piece of Yosemite. It's also, I mean, in addition to the breathtaking corruption of like having the interior department, who is Secretary Doug Burgham literally said, the national parks, we need to support and protect every single inch of those, right? In addition to that corruption, he's supposed to be preserving this land not selling to developers. It also gets to the fundamental unfairness that this administration operates on, which is the rich get the access. And everybody else is just a bunch of suckers. Like this is public land, but the public's not going to benefit from its sale. It's going to be the wealthy. They get the private access roads so they don't have to drive the inconvenient hour and a half to get to Yosemite Valley. I mean, it's, when we talk about inequality, this is so, this is the essence of that, right? Which is that the rich can't drive an hour and a half Jim. If they're, they, their time is money. And so therefore, a public land needs to be sold to a developer so that they can have a better access road. You know, it's almost like we're all on the decoy plane. You know, it's something like that. You know, and, and, and by the way, you know, the rich don't need the decoy plane. They can fly their private jet to just about anywhere in the country. This is why another Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, was very passionate about preserving these national treasures. They are national parks for a reason. And these national parks are already being, you know, cut to the bone in terms of funding. Their funding is being looted in part for, you know, Trump's pet projects like the reflecting pool, you know, some of the fees that go into the national park service have been diverted over to that boondoggle. And, you know, this is why presidents both Democrat and Republican have protected our national parks. They are supposed to be there for all time. They're supposed to be there for future generations. I don't maybe Don Jr. and Eric Trump. They, they, their interactions with wildlife are when they're on one of those cheap safari things where you can just shoot the animal point blank range. But the rest of us like to go see, you know, nature's bounty as it, as it once was and as it always should be. And this is just another shameful chapter in this administration's pattern of just selling this country down the river. It seems to me and Doug Bergen, when you bring up Doug Bergen, the interior secretary, I thought he was one of the normies. And when you, and now he goes into the Oval Office, he does the same deal, dear leader crap as everybody else. And it's absolutely depressing. And it's another example of that, you know, that old Rick Wilson line, everything. Trump touches dies and it's totally true. I, I kind of wonder whether he recognizes that this is an issue though, like on the reflecting pool. Yes, if you're I grew up in Washington, D.C., I have an attachment to it. People who like the sort of institutions of governance like these monuments, but it doesn't hold the same, I think, national, there's not at the same national pride invested in the reflecting pool as there is in something like Yosemite, as there is in the concept of the American West. Trump today is denying that there's any secret deal going on, which is your first indication that he knows this reporting could be problematic. And like he is someone, he's never, he's never really gone out there and espoused the value of like, I don't know, the Lincoln Memorial. But even Trump, now admittedly it was in the first administration, but he recognizes that the place the American West and the National Parks hold in the, in the National Imagination. This is him speaking about our bounty in 2020. - When their eyes widen in amazement as old faithful bursts into the sky, when they gaze upon Yosemites, Yosemites, towering Sequoias, their love of country grows stronger and they know that every American has truly a duty to preserve this wondrous inheritance. And that's what they're doing and that's what we're doing. And we're preserving an incredible inheritance. - Okay, Yosemite is what maybe there's a phrase that that comes. - Not a good phrase, not a good phrase. - Maybe something Trump's been called. I don't know, it's Yosemite, which maybe suggests that he's not a frequent traveler, not a big camper. But nonetheless, he at least tips his hat to the fact that Americans, regardless of party, as you say, recognize this to be part of our national treasure. I just wonder if you think this issue has any more resonance on the right than, for example, like the reflecting pool scandal or the arc to Trump or the ballroom. - I think it does. I think this public lands issue is a huge issue out west. You talk people in Montana and a lot of these states. And in some of these Western states have been written off as they're just hard Republican now. They're Ruby Red, you're not gonna get them back. I'm hearing a lot of chatter that some of these Montana races could be up for grabs. There are people running as independence in places like Idaho, who knows? Maybe it's all full-schooled and it won't materialize in any kind of winds for the Democratic Party. But it does, I think it does remind you that, yes, I think the ground is starting to shift out west. I mean, look what's going on in the Big Ben National Park where they're trying to build the border wall through the National Park and there's a fight over public lands down there. And I mean, I've been to a lot of national parks in this country and I have never seen, I mean, and somebody feel free to tell me if I'm wrong about this. I've never seen a presidential administration wage this kind of battle against the national parks and public lands in this fashion and try to reclaim all kinds of set aside public lands for developers, for fossil fuel, the fossil fuel industry for all sorts of industries and it just goes to, I mean, just, I think that's why it's dawning on people that Donald Trump in the second administration, it is all about the grift, it is all about how many resources can be gobbled up both domestically and internationally for him and his cronies. It is also part of a suite of actions he's taking that I think are seen as full frontal assaults on the West, right? We're talking about this particular development project in Yosemite National Park. But last week, and this is a story that I heard about from friends, I feel like this is a sleeper issue, but this is stirring the pot, I think, in a meaningful way. The New York Times has been investigating actions of the part of the Bureau of Land Management, the BLM, they are rounding up America's wild horses and selling them through an adoption loophole, likely to buyers who are then selling these horses and slaughtering them for cash, which is illegal in the United States of America, just so that you can see what this means, not the slaughter part, but the rounding up. This is how they are lassoed in by helicopter. Let's take a, a watch. Okay, it like breaks my heart to even actually talk about the story. It like disgusts me on a core level. These are federally protected animals, they are transported across the country. They are sold for $25 ahead and then trucks arrive at midnight and take them away. I mean, it is heartbreaking. It is like wrenching to think about those beautiful creatures that are so representative of the spirit of freedom, right, that is, you know, the best part of what we, you know, that is wild horses literally represent, I think one of the most optimistic visions of America that it's wild and free and beautiful, and to see them treated like this and possibly sold off to butchers is like such a profound betrayal. I, I think that you combine this with the selling off of federal lands and it, it resonates. It like, it hits people in the heart, I think. Yeah. And Alex, I don't know about you. It sounds like you're hearing the same thing. I heard from so many people over what the last several days since that New York Times piece came out. It hit, it hit people in the gut, I think. And it made people say, wait a minute, we're, you can just slaughter horses like this. You can just round up wild horses and do this. It's not supposed to happen. And I think the New York Times story, they were reporting that these horses never appeared at a public auction. And there was just some work around where they just end up on a truck and they get shipped overseas to be used for, I guess, meat in other parts of the world. Because we don't want to pay for their care, apparently. It's just so disgusting. And obviously you have wild horse advocates who would figure out something to do with these creatures. But I mean, these horses are what make America, America, you know, Alex, you were talking earlier about how you grew up in the DC area, I grew up in the DC area. I mean, the horses of Chinkatig, the horses of, you know, Karala and the Outer Banks. I mean, they exist in different pockets around the country. And what are we doing? Like, what's happening? And it just seems to me it's yet another data point. It's another example of how even the most nefarious representatives of various industries in this country are just given carte blanche to just do whatever the fuck they want. And I, you know, each of these stories that you're doing, which I think is so great that you're doing it, need to be held up as exhibit A, exhibit B because there's a lot of folks, MAGA has become a cultural thing in this country. MAGA has become a cultural thing in this country and you go to Western states, you go to Southern states where it has been very MAGA and very Trumpy. You know, my sense of it is, and this is anecdotal from talking to folks, I was out in Montana earlier this year, is that the fever is starting to break. Yeah. Some of this is starting to change. And I think it's, it's these kinds of examples that make people wake up and say, oh, you know what? It is, he is just the shyster from, from Queens. Now I, now I get it now, we got the con man, it took seven or eight years for a lot of folks to figure this out. And I don't want to shame anybody for being late to the party. But this is always who he has been. It is own, and I covered this during first term, covered both of those campaigns, three of his campaigns. It's always transactional for Donald Trump. And at the very, at the root of almost all of these horrible examples of just pieces of America getting sold off to not just the highest bidder, but sometimes the lowest bidder there is, there's some donor, there's somebody with a connection, there's somebody who knows somebody, somebody who knows Don Jr., someone who knows the kids, it's almost always that case. You can go through each one of them and find these examples. And so, you know, I assume at some point people in, in, out west will want Donald Trump to go back on the horse that he wrote in on, but it's, it's happening if it's still alive and it's happening slowly. I, I, you know, reporting suggests that the reason the BLM is doing this is because they don't want to spend the federal funding to care for these horses. And they're like, what are we instead redirecting it to the ballroom? The idea that we're using public taxpayer funds to sell off the wild horses and redirect money towards Trump's malignant narcissism is a travesty. And I will say, I'm with you, Jim, we have reporting this week that Trump is really losing ground in the west in like red state America, where it may not be the wild horses and they're a, like alleged slaughter, it may not be the selling off of the national parks, but those actions together with what he's doing to ranchers on American beef imports, beef prices are through the roof. America's herds are at their lowest levels in 75 years. And now Trump to deal with the issue of affordability on beef is trying to bring an imported beef from countries unspecified, slashing tariffs, starting today. And that plan is backfired spectacularly among ranchers and, you know, west residents of western states who are like, you're killing us, man, you're killing us. And the USDA is making this attempt to make it slightly easier for ranchers to process their own beef in the United States as a kind of hat tip towards their industry troubles. But like it is a catastrophic mess. He's created out there. And the sum total of it is, if you're in the, if you're in the great open west, you see the horses getting rounded up and killed off, you see the public lands being sold. You see your own industry being devastated purposefully by the president of the United States. What conclusion can you draw other than he does not give a shit about us? Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, you can add to that diesel prices. You know, people complain about $4 a gallon gasoline. That's, that's a lot less than what people are paying for diesel. And that's killing the farmers right now and the tariffs on Canadian products, that is going to start to hurt people who rely on lumber and other products that come in from Canada. And so you can just go down the list. It's one thing after another. And I, I'm, I'm right there with you. I suspect that things are going to start changing. We might see some anecdotal evidence coming up in the, in the 2026 midterms, where you'll see a race, you know, in this state, where a district over here or a flip over there, you'll say, okay, things are starting to change. I mean, I know Iowa is not exactly the best, but you know, when, when Josh Turek, the guy who's running for the Senate, the Democrat who's running for the Senate in Iowa is doing as well as he's doing right now, it just gives you a, a sense of a barometer that things are really shifting and they're shifting against Donald Trump. You know, I, you know, but all that, putting all that political stuff to the side, I'm with, I'm right there with you. These headlines, and I just think, you know, it's, it's outrageous. I, you know, as part of my travels as a correspondent, White House guy, I've been to all 50 states, I, I firmly believe, you know, people, you know, fly over country or these states are boring almost, almost everywhere I've been. They're wonderful people and just amazing places to see in this country. It's one of the, that's one of the great things about this country. You know, that's why foreign tourists used to like to come here. And tourists from Europe used to like to come here and go out west and act like cowboys. And now they don't want to come because of all of the policies that have turned off our friends and allies around the world. So it's, it's a mess. The American West is not a resource to be extracted. That's right. Upshot is I, my bet, if I have to bet on which one's going to last longer, the American West or the East in the form of Donald Trump, my bet is always going to be on the West. I think so. Go West. Go West. And Trump, yeah, it can stay East. Jim Acosta, you are exactly the person to talk to and perhaps one day we can do a show live from a national park. I would love that. Which one? We'll take the long way. We don't need a private road. I vote for Old Faithful. Could we do a live thing? Totally. You just have to get it done. You just have to time it right. Got time and right. Just need every 15 minutes. We'll take a quick break. That's it. Exactly. Perfect. Thank you so much, Jim. It's a pleasure if you are not subscribed to this YouTube channel. What are you doing? You can find out all the, you know, pressing urgent news about horses, about beef, and about the parks. What else is there in life? Exactly. Where's the beat? Good to see you, Alex. Thanks. - Take care.