← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Historian Heather Cox Richardson and Public Health Expert Jessica Knurick, PhD, RDN
00:57:42
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- [00:00]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Jim Acosta
Welcome to the Jim Acosta Show. It's another day that ends in y in Donald Trump's district of corruption. Trump now claims he doesn't know the people he is pardoning. Now, the American people, though, they are starting to figure this out. They are catching on and blaming Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown more than Democrats. That's according to the latest NBC poll. My first big guest this hour is the amazing American historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose insights are always so valuable. Heather, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for doing this.
- [00:35]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, it's always a pleasure, Jim.
- [00:38]
Jim Acosta
And so I, you know, I, there was a part of me that did not want to focus on the 60 Minutes interview because I was infuriated almost the entire time I was watching it. And, but his comment about not knowing that he was pardoning the Binance guy, to me was astounding. And, you know, we're just living in this second gilded age. I did want to show the viewers at home, you know, this image from Mar a Lago. I guess it was Halloween night, they were doing the Great Gatsby as a theme for the party at Mar a Lago. And it, he, he just doesn't care anymore. I mean, he obviously hasn't cared for some time, but he's really just letting it rip. I mean, he is just, it's not let them eat cake. It's let them eat. It seems to me he is just doesn't matter. We're just gonna, we're just gonna do this, this Great Gatsby thing. All across the country, the poor be damned, the hungry be damned, we're gonna get ours. Your thoughts?
- [01:37]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, first of all, you're not showing there the image of the young woman in the cocktail glass.
- [01:43]
Jim Acosta
I saw that.
- [01:44]
Heather Cox Richardson
Or the image of the young women dancing very scantily clad for the guests at Mar a Lago, which I think is actually part of the story as well. I think, speaking of not caring any longer, having those images at a time when the Epstein files are still hanging out, there was very much a way to say to people like expletive you, I think, exactly. In addition to some other stuff going on with that. But, you know, let's put those two things together. You know, you think about the idea of a Great Gatsby party hours before Americans are due to lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program benefits that 42 million Americans rely on. And these are people who are, you know, these are children. These are disabled. These are people who are working full time. These are, you know, these are really important to all Americans. These SNAP benefits. And people have paid a lot of attention to the contrast between Gatsby's world and the the world of the poor that are also in that novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that came out in 1925. But you know, one of the things that I haven't really seen mentioned is do you remember what Gatsby did for work? Where the money came from?
- [02:57]
Jim Acosta
Oh my goodness.
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Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. Huh. Gatsby was a bootlegger. Gatsby was a criminal. This was prohibition and Gatsby was a criminal. And he worked with or was associated with in the book a fictional character. But in the analog in United States history, the man who is alleged to have fixed the 1919 World Series. Well, didn't something happen this weekend?
- [03:25]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [03:26]
Heather Cox Richardson
Throwing a Gatsby party the same weekend as the World Series as people are running out of SNAP benefits with a man who is just pine just pardoned. The world's richest crypto backer. He's the guy who started Binance was so in your face. It strikes me as being a sort of designed that way. But B, if you look at the rest of that interview that Trump did with Norah O' Donnell of CBS News that was recorded on 31 October, the man doesn't know if he's a foot or horseback. He's not all there. Yeah. So who's running the show? And, and the message that they are sending as they are running the show is I think something we ought to be grappling with.
- [04:20]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I, I think you're absolutely right and we should dive into that. I mean he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange, which by the way, people forget about this. Pleaded guilty to money laundering violations in 2023. Also the same company that struck a huge business deal with the Trump family. And so Norah o' Donnell asked, you know, what about pay for play? Is this pay for play? Let's play a little bit of that because this is one of the more astounding things I've ever heard from a president saying that he's pardoned somebody who he doesn't know. Let's watch this.
- [04:54]
Norah O'Donnell
He pled guilty in 2020, violating anti money laundering laws. The government at the time said that CZ had caused significant harm to US national security essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
- [05:12]
Donald Trump
Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch Hunt.
- [05:20]
Norah O'Donnell
In 2025, his crypto exchange, Binance helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financials stablecoin. And then you pardoned CZ. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
- [05:36]
Donald Trump
Well, here's the thing. I know nothing about it because I'm too busy doing the other.
- [05:40]
Heather Cox Richardson
But he got, only got a. I.
- [05:42]
Donald Trump
Can only tell you this. My sons are into it. I'm glad they are because it's probably a great industry, crypto. I think it's good. You know, they're running a business. They're not in government.
- [05:52]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Norah O'Donnell
World Liberty Financial has denied any involvement in the pardon.
- [05:57]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And Heather, I mean, there are lots of different ways to go with this. I mean, first of all, I, I, you know, he, I, I've Talked about the 25th Amendment on this show. I think, you know, Donald Trump and his people, the way they went after Joe Biden with the auto pen and questioning who's really running the show, who's really pulling the strings inside the Biden White House. If Donald Trump is, he's either corrupt and lying, which he is, or he's losing it, or both. And I mean, to me, you know, this, this reeks of hypocrisy because it sounds as though what's happening is that they're just putting pardons in front of him and he, oh, okay, sure. Oh, they're doing business with Donnie and Eric. Okay, sure, that's fine. I'll do it. That's, that's not a commander in chief who is in charge.
- [06:44]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, yes, I think every, you know, it's the old thing about every accusation is a confession. Right. So there is that. But you also wonder if they're putting the stuff out there that they are now about former President Joe Biden because they are trying to soften the blow of just how bad Trump is right. Now, I will point out that in that interview, in the transcript that was released of that interview, which was not itself complete, Trump mentioned Biden 42 times. I mean, the man was on a loop. It was all about how terrible Biden was, how great Trump was, and he really did not engage with questions. And what you just showed was not the same as the transcript, which itself is interesting, considering the fact that Trump sued CBS for allegedly changing a transcript, that vice president, the editing, the editing of the vice president, Kamala Harris. But in fact, he stammered quite a bit when o' Donnell said, how are you getting around accusations of pay to play and he said, I didn't want you to ask this question because they'd had an argument about whether. Not an argument, they'd had a discussion about whether or not she could ask another question. So even what you showed was significantly cleaned up. But it's not just about pardons. Like, what else is happening in that White House that is being directed by people who were not elected by the American people and may or may not have our interests in mind. And I keep coming back to the fact that when the White House invoked the Alien enemies Act of 1798, Trump said later he had not done it, and yet it signed in the Federal Register with his name. So either he doesn't remember it, or somebody else signed it. And, you know, you think about the things that are happening. Number of times we hear the White House did this or the administration did that, or sometimes even Trump did that. And then as you work your way down through the information, it turned out that the person really pushing things was Stephen Miller, the deputy White House Chief of staff, or was Russell Vogt, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, or perhaps in this case, Don Jr. And Eric Trump. I mean, you just. We don't know. We just don't know that.
- [08:53]
Donald Trump
That.
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Jim Acosta
That's. That's exactly right. I mean, and just the other day on this, you know, cognitive decline issue, he was confusing an IQ test with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, and he was bragging about how he aced his cognitive tests, and he was accusing AOC and. And Jasmine Crockett of not being able to compete with him on an iq. He's just mixing these things up. And it just sounds like, to me, I mean, just to be in the most charitable way possible, it just sounds like somebody who is slowing down and just isn't really, you know, he's just not all there. He's just not all there. Yeah.
- [09:32]
Heather Cox Richardson
No. And, you know, he's been talking about those cognitive tests since 2018. So this has been going on for a while. But, you know, even so. So for me, even if he is in terrible shape, which I think he is, not being a doctor, but having had family members with dementia but seeing similarities between their behavior and his, the question remains, what are we going to do about it? Because the fact that we have a president who is in this shape performing the way he is doing, the things he is doing today, when we're recording this, which is Monday, November 3, it appears the administration is blowing through the deadline for the president to ask the approval of Congress under the War powers Act. From 1973 for permission to continue his attacks on Venezuela. And they're simply saying we don't have to do that. So long as we use drones, we can attack anybody we want. Well, that's just bonkers. But if that's the case, things that any other president. I'm sorry, let me interrupt myself.
- [10:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
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Heather Cox Richardson
He knocked down the freaking White House.
- [10:39]
Jim Acosta
He knocked down the freaking White House.
- [10:41]
Heather Cox Richardson
If that had been Biden, he would have been impeached and convicted within two days.
- [10:47]
Jim Acosta
That's right. That's right.
- [10:48]
Heather Cox Richardson
It's not going to happen. What are we going to do about it?
- [10:51]
Jim Acosta
Well, and that, that's part of the reason why I think that there's something wrong because he's just acting in ways people who have had family members who go through dementia and these types of issues can relate to some of the behavior and whatnot that we're seeing. I mean, but getting back to the corruption issue, which I think is probably the most undercovered thing right now, is the corruption that is swirling inside this administration. The Washington Post, which is still a shell of its former self, does occasionally have some good stories from time to time. One of the ones that they put out today is it says this that many publicly identified donors to Trump's ballroom over in the East Wing that they knocked down have high stakes business deals before the administration ranging from billions in contracts to federal investigations of their companies. According to a report released Monday by Public Citizen, more than half of the companies that donated are facing or have recently faced federal enforcement actions tied to alleged wrongdoing. And so people are just paying money to his ballroom to get, to get out of hot water on a whole range of issues when the government is coming down on them. And so, I mean, this to me is, is, you know, it's like this, it's like going back to the Gatsby picture. It's just another gilded age that we seem to be living through. And the most corrupt president we've ever had happens to be the president at the same time.
- [12:13]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, the two go hand in hand.
- [12:14]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [12:15]
Heather Cox Richardson
And why did CBS News pay him the sum of money it did for allegedly misediting the Kamala Harris interview? Because they had a merger in front of the administration. So, I mean, absolutely, this is extraordinary corruption. And I agree with you. I think maybe the crypto stuff isn't getting covered as much as it should be because it's very hard to understand if you're not involved in that world. It's easy to miss the difference between an exchange and the currency. And A stablecoin and a meme coin and all the different kinds of coins and where the money's coming from and what's stable and what's not. And I think people just kind of throw up their hands around that. But, in fact, we know that going into this administration, President Trump was in real trouble for money, and now he is floating in it thanks to cryptocurrency.
- [13:07]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and the other thing I want to get to is, you know, in terms of that 60 Minutes interview was, you know, the way he seemed to be saying. I mean, he did say that the ICE enforcement actions are not going far enough because, you know, along with the. The rot that is going on inside this country when it comes to corruption is the rot that is going on when it comes to our national character, I believe, and our ability to say that is cruelty. We're not. We're going to. We're not going to be a part of this. And Donald Trump last night basically said, I mean, these horrific ICE videos that we're all seeing flooding into our social media feeds these days, he's saying that those tactics that we've all seen, people being tackled, their windows being smashed and so on, aren't going far enough. Let's play a little bit of that and talk about it.
- [13:57]
Norah O'Donnell
Videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?
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Donald Trump
No, I think they haven't gone far enough because we've been held back by the. By the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.
- [14:18]
Norah O'Donnell
You're okay with those tactics?
- [14:20]
Donald Trump
Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.
- [14:30]
Norah O'Donnell
Well, you promised in your campaign that you were going to deport the worst of the worst. Violent criminals, rapists.
- [14:36]
Donald Trump
Well, that's what we're doing.
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Norah O'Donnell
But a lot of the people that your administration has arrested and deported aren't violent criminals. Landscapers, nannies, construction.
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Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah.
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Jim Acosta
I mean, farm workers.
- [14:46]
Donald Trump
Now, look, look, the other aspect of.
- [14:48]
Jim Acosta
This, too, is in addition to Trump's just callous disregard for, like, any kind of humanity whatsoever, he just lied repeatedly throughout this interview. I mean, he lied repeatedly. And getting back to 60 Minutes, I mean, one of the things I was disappointed with is that I. And part of this, I mean, think Nora did a fine job, but you have to stop him when he's lying. And you have to correct the record. You can't just let these lies fly. The way he was lying there about, oh, they're just going after the criminals or making it sound as though they're just going after. It's just not the case.
- [15:21]
Heather Cox Richardson
Right. In fairness, it's a little hard to stop that flood.
- [15:25]
Jim Acosta
That's right.
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Heather Cox Richardson
And, you know, so, you know, she was trying to push back, but no, he straight up lied. But, you know, I actually think that's really interesting. And in that you and I know what's going on. We follow social media, we see these stories, we read a number of different documents about what's happened. What is Trump seeing? You know, he gave an interview with Yamiche Alcindor, I think it was last month, in which he said that he had talked to the governor of Oregon who said that, in fact, what he believed was happening in Portland was not. And we know that the Fox News Channel showed a video clip of what purported to be a recent video of Portland, and it was not. It was intercut with images from 2020. Now, similarly, we know that in the last few days, the Fox News Channel has shown AI videos, theoretically of black American women. I forget what it was. Something about their demands for snap payments. You know, you wonder, and again, if you look at what the Department of Homeland Security is showing in those videos that it shows in, which seems to indicate things like the attack on the apartment building in Chicago is in fact an attack on people that they have tricked out to look as if they are malefactors. Right.
- [16:49]
Jim Acosta
Right.
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Heather Cox Richardson
So you wonder if there is. I mean, I don't know. I will tell you one place I stand very firm is I have no doubt that in 25 years there's going to be slew of books about who was really pulling the strings here and how Trump became convinced of something that wasn't real. And, you know, you just kind of wonder what he thinks is happening. If you remember, and you listen to the way he talks, he sounds a great deal like Stephen Miller, who is convinced that anybody of color is by definition a criminal, especially if they came across the government without documentation.
- [17:31]
Jim Acosta
So it sounds as though, Heather, I mean, and this ties back to what we were saying at the top of this, that if you go through the 60 minutes transcript and I. And I heard I saw a post from SV Date, who is a great reporter for the Huffington Post and is over at the White House covering that beat every day I used to know when I was over there myself, he put out a post that said if you look at the 60 Minutes transcript of the interview, this is the Donald Trump that America needs to see. It wasn't the one that was on display during the 60 Minutes interview with the favorable editing that he accused 60 Minutes doing with Kamala Harris. And he does sort of have this tendency, and I noticed this back when I was covering the first time around. And, and he's obviously worsened since then, where he just runs through the greatest hits in his head, what he sees to be the greatest hits. What he sees is the things he can say in any given moment to sort of get himself out of any sort of a question. And sometimes just flat out lies and says, I didn't know that guy that I pardoned. And it seems to me that is exactly what you're talking about. And I, and it makes me, I think it's a very important question because it seems to me the thing that they accused the Biden people of doing, they themselves are now doing.
- [18:40]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes. And he doesn't have anybody around him to provide the kinds of guardrails that will keep a presidency on an even keel. To the contrary, we have a presidency that is blowing through legal guardrails right and left. And, you know, one of the things that really showed up again over this weekend is the administration's real determination to get the Democrats to cave to their wishes on the continuing resolution to fund the government by creating extraordinary pain for the American people. And now a government, now that a judge, two federal judges have said that the government must use the emergency reserves in the Department of Agriculture to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the month of November with the potential for using another pot of money, another $23 billion. What did we see today? We saw the administration doing the absolute minimum it could. At the same time, you're seeing health care premiums go through the roof. And now on the horizon, the idea that the shutdown will hit home heating as winter starts. And then you had Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secret Transportation Secretary, saying he was thinking about grounding the entire air fleet. I mean, they are literally trying to force the American people to do what the figurehead of Donald Trump wants. And yet is it really Donald Trump doing this? The whole thing is just a dumpster fire.
- [20:07]
Jim Acosta
You're absolutely. It's a total dumpster fire. And to your point, I mean, NBC has a new poll out that shows 52% of voters blame Trump and the Republicans versus 42% blaming the Democrats. And I think that the folks at home are catching on to exactly what you're saying, which is they don't like this idea of Trump holding the poor over the barrel, of holding the, the hungry in this country over a barrel and saying to the Democrats, well, if you don't go along with this and re, and help us reopen the government, you know, poor people are going to go without food stamps and SNAP benefits, they're going to go without all sorts of other public assistance benefits. And, and the American people are just not, they're not going to go along with that. And I, I think the other thing that you put your finger on, and to me it's, it is kind of the whole ball game is whether or not the Trump administration is going to abide by these judges rulings. What happened today was the administration said, yes, we'll go, we'll go ahead and start paying for some of these benefits out of the $4.65 billion in contingency funds that will cover about half of, of each eligible household's benefits this month. But they're not willing to do more than that. And so there it's, you know, this, this thumbing their noses at the judges just every step of the way. It makes you wonder, can our Constitution, can our, excuse me, our Constitution handle this? Can our, can our way of life, can our, can the checks and balances sustain this?
- [21:38]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I guess that remains to be seen. But I will point out you mentioned the 25th Amendment. That's not going to happen under this current administration because you got to lot of cabinet members signing onto it and they are not going to do it. But the Republicans, the Senate Republicans could stop this any freaking time they wanted to.
- [21:56]
Jim Acosta
That's right.
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Heather Cox Richardson
And that's a place to keep pressure up because again, I think it was just yesterday that Senate former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican in Kentucky, actually came out and said, you know, we have a Nazi problem. And I paraphrase, that's not exactly what he said. But the increasing amount of support among MAGA Republicans for Nazi language and perhaps for Nazism itself is I think also alienating a lot of people who might have voted for Trump because they were upset about the inflation under the Biden administration and are now seeing, you know, groceries are up 1.4%. Halloween candy was up almost 10% this year.
- [22:33]
Jim Acosta
Oh, it was so expensive.
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Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, yeah. And they're saying, wait a minute, we kind of thought we were in this for some, you know, some, some cheaper goods or at least that they wouldn't be getting more expensive. You remember he promised that he'd have prices lower on day one and Instead, we've got Nazis, and that's really not what we were looking for here. So I think we're at a really interesting moment where you've got. I think there's, there's real questions among the Democrats about what they're going to stand for and questions from the Republicans about what they're going to stand for and when. We've done this in the past, the 1850s, the 1890s, the 1920s, during the Gatsby era, what we ended up with was a reassertion of American democracy in a new form. And, you know, every time one of these pieces moves and I watch people react as if it were 20 years ago, I think I can't tell you what's going to happen. I mean, you can see the echoes of the past, but I think we still have opportunity to build a new future. What that's going to look like, I think we have no idea.
- [23:34]
Jim Acosta
I don't think we have any idea at this point. We have these elections tomorrow in Virginia and New Jersey and New York and in California, people overlook. If you're not in California, you might overlook California. They're going to vote for this proposition, very likely to allow the redistricting of that state to keep up with what the Republicans are doing in these other states. And I, I sort of wonder what you think about what we're going to see in these elections, because to me, the mob Donnie thing is very interesting. I think it's very important what's going to take place in New York. And, you know, when you see the Cuomos in cahoots with the Trumps to try to stop something from happening in New York State, something important is going on and they want to make, you know, Trump calls him a communist on 60 Minutes and all this stuff. And the desperation is kind of showing there a little bit. They're afraid of this.
- [24:20]
Heather Cox Richardson
Right. And just be clear, the person who's acting like a communist right now is Donald Trump, who's the pieces of American companies. Yeah. But, you know, one of the things we don't talk nearly enough about in America is generational change. That is often you get a period when there is, for one reason or another, one generation seems to hold on longer than other than people expected it to. And of course, this generation has hung on longer than many have been able to in elected office because of increased access to transportation and better health care since World War II. You know, they can hop on an airplane and go to Washington for the weekend. And of course, that's also broken down the familial and sort of friendship ties in Washington. But what we're seeing, I think, is a much older generation, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, they came up through a different world than today's young people did. And you're seeing that younger generation. And, you know, their world is just different. They grew up on the Internet. They grew up with, you know, after the Civil Rights act, they grew up with shootings in schools. And what they will come up with, they came up with Trump. That's a really good point. A lot of people who are voting now don't remember a world without Trump, and they don't remember when democracy works. So that is, you know, if you're under 55, you don't remember the period before the 1980s. So, you know, who knows what they're going to do? But a lot of that animosity is, you know, they can't possibly have good ideas. Whereas, you know, somebody who gets to sit on the sidelines and look at American history goes, you know, listen, it might not have been the solution I'd have picked, but, you know, young people do a pretty good job when you turn them loose and let them grapple with their. With their world. I mean, look at the framers of the Constitution.
- [26:07]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. No, and I, I tell people all the time, you know, I covered the Obama campaign back in 2008, and I would go out there, this is during the Obama versus Hillary days back in 2008, and I had all these smart people at my old place tell us, there's no way that Barack Obama is going to take this thing from Hillary Clinton. It's Hillary Clinton and she's going to do it no matter what, and the establishments on her side and so on. And I would be in these auditoriums and these gymnasiums and so on with Barack Obama. I listened to the way he was speaking, and it was, you know, younger people than myself, was my mid-30s at that time. Younger people than myself who were just like, they were just mesmerized. And I thought to myself, you know, I. You might think Hillary Clinton's gonna run away with this thing, but I don't know, it seems like this, this hope and change guy might have something here. And I tell people this all the time. You might think that we're all down in the dumps and just nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to work out.
- [26:58]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
And.
- [26:59]
Jim Acosta
And then out of nowhere, boom, something happens. I'm not saying Mamdani is the next Obama or anything like that, but you're absolutely right. Younger generations will shop around when they're pissed off and they feel left behind. And they will. They will start something in this country.
- [27:14]
Heather Cox Richardson
More than that, they will shape the leaders who rise. So, you know, this idea, for example, that Abraham Lincoln came down from the heavens for America is just absolutely wrong. In 1854, he'd had one undistinguished term in the House of Representatives. He was a corporate lawyer, but he listened to how upset people were when it appeared that the elite enslavers were going to take over the American west and make human enslavement national. He listened to the arguments. He absorbed the arguments. He talked to people. And by 1859, he was ready to articulate a new kind of political party. We created him and we are creating the people that are rising now. And, you know, people are make really early choices about who they're going to back for one candidate or another. And I'm like, no, at this point, throw them all out there. Put them all out there. Let's hear what everybody has to say. And for, like you say, whoever ends up being the next great voice, we might not even know who that is yet. We might, but we may not. And that's kind of fun.
- [28:13]
Jim Acosta
I think it's great and it gives me hope, and I think people should have. I know I'm a foolish optimist, but I do think people should still have hope. This. This way we do things in this country does very often produce good results. And Heather, you know that more than anybody. It's just stubborn and it takes a while and it's frustrating as hell. But, Heather, it's great to see you as always. Thank you so much. Heather Cox Richardson. We could go on and on and on, but I feel like I'm stealing too much of your time as it is.
- [28:42]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, thanks. Let's do it again soon.
- [28:45]
Jim Acosta
All right, sounds good. Thanks. Thanks. Heather, great to see you. The great Heather Cox Richardson. I want to go straight to Dr. Jessica Newrick. I hope I am saying her name correctly. Jessica, how are you? Good to see you. Did I say that?
- [29:00]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
You did, yeah.
- [29:01]
Jim Acosta
I've become obsessed with your videos.
- [29:03]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
I appreciate that. Thank you.
- [29:05]
Jim Acosta
And I. I feel a little like I'm having a pinch me moment today because I'm. I'm being joined by two, I think, very like, amazing women who are just brilliant in their own rights. Heather Cox Richardson. I mean, it's. You can't really hold a candle, and nobody can really hold a candle to her in terms of being a historian who Understands like key moments, American history that matter to where we are right now. And I get a little nervous when I talk to her because I think I'm going to sound like a dummy. I'm probably feeling the same thing right now talking to you about public health issues, but you've been, I mean, just lighting things up on social media and on Instagram in particular. And I want to talk about all these different things and, and get into the stuff that's in the news. But why, why do you think you've been able to sort of strike a chord with so many people talking about this book, this issue of public health? Is it because we're all freaked out coming out of the pandemic? We don't know who to listen to anymore and there's a lot of disinformation. I mean, have you been able to put your own finger on it?
- [30:04]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that we don't have the movement that we're currently seeing in public health without the pandemic. I think kind of one goes with the other, but certainly in the last year with the Maha movement kind of bringing public health to light for better or worse, and a lot of people are maybe thinking through issues that they never thought about before. And it's been really dominated by a lot of misinformation in that space. And there weren't a lot of people kind of speaking to these issues about our food, environment and public health in general. And so I think that people who were maybe interested in it because it was brought to light, we're kind of looking for a more evidence based approach to the whole thing. And so, yeah, that's, that's probably the majority of what I credit the growth to this year.
- [30:45]
Jim Acosta
Well, but you also speak to these, these items that are in the news right now. And I hate to spend so much time talking about the 60 Minutes interview because it drove me crazy last night. But he said a bunch of stuff that I we have to go over and I went over it with Heather and I feel badly that I spent a lot of time doing that. But he lied at one point and said that grocery prices are coming down, they're not coming down in this country. I want to play a little bit of that and I want to get into the snap conversation too. But let's play this thing and we'll get it out of the way, just.
- [31:12]
Donald Trump
Hit an all time high. We're doing really well.
- [31:15]
Norah O'Donnell
Can I ask you, Mr. President, on that point, though, when the stock market is doing well, that doesn't affect everybody. Not everybody's invested in the stock market. But there have been in grocery.
- [31:24]
Donald Trump
One case. People are for one case. There, for one case, are double what they were a year ago.
- [31:30]
Norah O'Donnell
But for people that don't have 401ks or not invested in the stock market, but they've seen their grocery prices go up.
- [31:37]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Inflation.
- [31:37]
Donald Trump
No, you're wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now they're going down. Other than beef, which we're working on, which we can sell very quickly.
- [31:44]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, is that. That's not true. What are you saying? Right. It's just not true.
- [31:47]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
No, it's clearly not true. Yeah, grocery prices are quite high, particularly, you know, in staples that people go to the grocery store and need. And now, obviously, with the reduction in benefits, they're feeling that even more.
- [32:02]
Jim Acosta
And why is the SNAP issue so important? I saw you speak about this in a video. We might as well play one of your videos here talking about SNAP and then we'll talk about that. Let's talk about that.
- [32:14]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Which helps people afford food makes up about 1 1/2% of our annual tax spend, around $100 billion total. The average benefit for a person is about $212 a month, or $7 a day. And almost 80% of it goes to households with kids, elderly adults, or people with disabilities. It's also one of the most efficient programs we have. Every dollar invested in snap generates about $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity. So it helps families eat and it's good for the economy.
- [32:40]
Jim Acosta
That's a really important point, isn't it?
- [32:42]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
I'm, like, nodding, agreeing with myself.
- [32:44]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I was agreeing, too.
- [32:47]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah. So I do think that's an important point. I think that a lot of people who don't know a lot about SNAP are having really strong opinions about SNAP right now. And I think that it's kind of incumbent on us, people who have been studying these and do know about public health nutrition, to really explain these programs and the important impact that they have. And it's not just from a health perspective. I think it's really important to drive home the numbers perspective, too, because a lot of people look at SNAP because of the narrative going on and thinking that it's very filled with waste and fraud and abuse and it's just not the reality when you actually look at the program and how efficient. And so, like I mentioned in that video, every dollar that goes into SNAP generates $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity. Those numbers come from some projection studies that we have. And that's because if you think about snap, it's a program where you basically get an EBT card and you, those people go and they use every dollar at the grocery store, at their local markets, at a farmer's market, they're inserting it back into the economy. So it's quite an efficient program. And, and you know, it's. So I think that pointing out the numbers is just as important right now as pointing out the health outcomes and consequences which, you know, are incredibly important to public health.
- [33:54]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And people forget that, you know, the history of the food stamps program and the SNAP program is that, you know, it, it helped farmers. That was one of the reasons why they launched the program was because it would help people who supply food in this country. And if you pull those people, those recipients out of the economy, you're not helping the economy and you're not helping people in agriculture and people who help put food in our supermarkets. And you're. But there's a moral component to this too, is there not?
- [34:24]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah. And just on what you're saying there, I mean, Snap inserts $100 billion a year into the, into the economy. Right. And so if you take away those SNAP benefits, not only are you taking away that assistance for people to have access to food, but you're taking away that hundred billion dollars that goes right into the economy that helps farmers, that helps local producers, that helps, you know, grocery stores and grocery chains as well. But yeah, so on the, so that's on the economic side, but on the moral side, which is really like what I would imagine is a more important issue is just that the importance of SNAP is that it helps low income people be able to have access to food. It's not this huge benefit. You know, I mentioned in that video, the average benefit is about $212 a month or $7 a day for the average person in the SNAP program. 80% of those benefits go to households that either have a household that has somebody who's elderly, disabled, or children. You know, about almost 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children. And so, you know, when you're thinking about what, what you're giving access to, it's just helping people to have their basic needs met. Food is a basic need that we all have. And so there's millions of people in this country who are living in what we term food insecure households where they don't always have access to, to the nutrition that they need to meet their energy and nutrient needs. And so SNAP directly reduces food insecurity in this country, and it does a really good job of that.
- [35:48]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And you put out another video that was poking fun at Fox, or at least, I mean, I mean, you were doing more than poking fun. You were pointing out that just like the heartlessness of what they peddle over there sometimes at Fox, you post a video that took on Kayleigh McEnany talking about how great it is that Hamburger Helper is back, that it's, it's in vogue again. Let's play a little bit of that.
- [36:10]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
One trend in Trubrand is making a big comeback as consumers tighten their wallets. And here it is, Hamburger Helper. The mix of Mac and cheese and ground beef is seeing a surge in sales. Harris I grew up on the cheeseburger Hamburger Helper, and it was very good with the extra cheese sprinkled on top.
- [36:28]
Heather Cox Richardson
So my mommy.
- [36:28]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
This isn't satire, but it really does feel like the let them eat cake moment of our time. People can't afford groceries. Millions of people are getting notified that their health care premiums are significant increasing next year, which will reduce their grocery budget even more. We cut nearly $200 billion from SNAP, the Nutrition Assistance program, and gutted programs that supported food banks. And Fox News is out here reframing that reality as a big comeback for Hamburger Helper. The reason the Maha movement has always been so dangerous is that they talk about the things we all want. We all want to see lower chronic disease rates, especially for our kids. We all want low, less environmental pollution. We all want a better food system. We all want to make America healthy. But that movement aligned with a political party that had no interest in improving any of those things. And it has served as a distraction where they can keep posting about Maha wins like a company swapping the color additive in Swedish fish or Coca Cola adding a new option of Coke with cane sugar to their product line while this administration enacts actual policies that are derived from directly making Americans less healthy. Let them eat Hamburger Helper.
- [37:34]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, talk about that, Jessica. I mean, that's such an important point.
- [37:40]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah, I think it's really important when you're thinking about improving the health of a country as a whole. Right. We're trying to make America healthy. I'm not sure when again is. But we're trying to make America healthy. And the idea there is that if you're trying to make a country healthy, you have to look at who is disproportionately impacted by negative health outcomes. And in this country, the main predictor of health is wealth. And if you look at who is negatively impacted by chronic disease rates, it's low income in minority populations at a 2 to 1 rate in it for a lot of these cases, particularly for lifestyle related chronic disease, you look at income brackets and you look at life expectancy and income brackets. And between the highest and lowest income bracket, some studies suggest there's a 15 year life expectancy age gap for men and a 10 year life expectancy age gap for women. I mean, we do a lot of comparing ourselves to other countries, but we don't actually have to do that. We can compare states in this country, we can compare districts in this country, we can compare even cities in this country and zip codes and see these health disparities based on income. And so when you're thinking about, okay, what kinds of programs do we have that can help to improve the health of the people who are struggling most, it is these, it's these public health programs that we are seeing largely being cut under this administration. Particularly in the big beautiful bill, they cut over a trillion dollars of health care. You know, just shy of a trillion dollars of that was Medicaid cut that we're going to see over the next 10 years. Medicaid obviously directly helps low income people have access to health care. We saw almost $200 billion cut from the supplemental Nutrition Assistance program. And by the way, within that, those cuts in the big beautiful bill for nutrition assistance was the SNAP Ed program, which is this education program we have in SNAP that helps people who are on SNAP have access to dietitians and people who can help them to kind of make healthier choices and be able to stretch their dollar on a budget and make more evidence based based nutritional choices. And that was all cut from the big beautiful bill. And so if you're trying to make somebody healthy, you're not cutting programs like that.
- [39:40]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, and I mean a couple of things. I mean when we talk about the Maha movement, I kind of, I've called it the Mahahaha movement. Just kind of like makes me laugh a little bit. Like, I mean RFK Jr goes to tanning salons and he works out in his blue jeans and he takes his grandkids swimming in Rock Creek park. And, and I'm like, this is the guy. And I'm just, you know, among I, I talk about corruption being like the most undercovered thing that we should be covering a whole lot more. But I think RFK Jr. And what he's done to HHS and public health in this country is another One of those things. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are. I mean, I'm very worried that the next pandemic is going to hit us. We're not going to be prepared. We're going to have kooky, cockamamie, you know, snake oil salesman like ideas for how to deal with it. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that. And I do want to get to healthcare because you mentioned healthcare too. But I didn't want to forget RFK Jr because it's like there's so much stuff happening right now that we don't talk about what he's doing enough.
- [40:42]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah, I've been pretty outspoken about my, my thoughts about RFK Jr and the MAHA movement. I mean my biggest concern, to be honest, is because RFK Jr. Has been on the scene in, in the science arena for the last two decades where scientists have had to be debunking what he was kind of talking about. This is not like a political partisan thing. Even when he was running as a Democrat, scientists were out there debunking all of the anti science things that he was saying. And so now obviously he's running the biggest public health agency in the world arguably. And he has a lot of influence on public health. And because of that, what we're seeing, and we know this because of testimony from, from high level kind of officials within the CDC and within our public health agencies who have said that he's not listening to any of the career scientists within his agency. And so the public health agencies are filled with career scientists who stay in those agencies no matter who the president is. That, you know, some of them have been there three, four or five decades and then you have political appointees who kind of change with every president. Right. If there's a new administration, there's new political appointees. What we know is that RFK Jr. Is, is solely working with those political appointees and he's, he has instructed his political appointees to not work with the career scientists. And so when you think about how our public health agencies are being run right now, they're being run from a very ideological place rather than a science evidence based place, which is what we need to see for, for good public health outcomes. And it's very concerning.
- [42:09]
Jim Acosta
It's, it's extremely concerning. And I, I mean to me what the damage that is being done is that so much disinformation is being pumped out there. You're seeing their school districts in certain parts of the country where they just don't, people just refuse to have their kids vaccinated, the MMR vaccines and that sort of thing. And how far behind are we being set as a society when it comes to guarding against these kinds of diseases? It scares the out of me. You know, what's happening in Texas, for example, with measles, you know.
- [42:43]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah. And I think, I think it's really important to help people kind of understand, too, what the problem with public health. And I've said this many times is it's kind of a victim of its own success. So when it's successful, you don't really think about it, you don't really identify it. Right. So we don't think about the outbreaks that never happened. Right. The pandemics that never happened because our public health agencies, the cdc, was tracking that and prevented it from happening. You know, think of the foodborne outbreaks that don't happen. You don't think of the clean water that you just have access to, to because of public health infrastructure. And so when we start, you may not see it initially, but what we're seeing is we're seeing this breakdown of trust. We're seeing this breakdown of our agencies. So as you say, right now we're starting to see, you know, measles outbreaks happening. The highest measles outbreak that we've seen in years. Right. And so it's not a pandemic or anything like that, but it's just kind of this, these, these small things you're starting to see more foodborne illness outbreak, all of these things that we don't necessarily have to think about all the time, over time could get worse and worse if, if our public health infrastructure is eroded like we're seeing it right now.
- [43:51]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And the last thing I want to talk about, Jessica, is when, when you were saying earlier, you know, about these Medicaid cuts that are about to hit us, and I don't think people have completely come to grips with what's about to happen. I mean, this is reported by abc. Earlier in the day, millions across the country are discovering just how much their plans will cost as open enrollment for the Affordable Care act insurance plans began on November 1st. Enrollment last through January 15th of next year. A recent analysis from the Kaiser Family foundation found that if the enhanced premium tax credits expire, and this is what the Democrats have been holding on to during this government shutdown fight, ACA enrollees will see their monthly premiums more than double, rising by roughly 114% on average. An estimated 22 out of 24 million ACA Marketplace enrollees are currently receiving a tax credit to lower their monthly premiums. And so we're about to see healthcare become extremely unaffordable for a lot of people in this country. And one has to assume that many of, I mean, I covered the health when Obama passed Obamacare, I covered a lot of that. And what people just end up doing is they just, I'm just going to go without health care. And that makes health care cost a whole lot more money. And to me, you know, watching them take a meat ax to Medicaid, watching them take a meat axe to the snap benefits, watching them do what they're doing with Obamacare, it just makes me wonder if they are setting the table for this country to, to finally make the march to national healthcare a national health care system in this country. And is that what this country needs? And I've, I've come around to the conclusion that I think that's what we need in this country. And maybe the Republicans are going to deliver it through their heartlessness. And what they're doing right now, I.
- [45:36]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Mean, that's a very optimistic kind of way to view it all. I would say that that would be the best case scenario for all of, from all of this is people to realize, hey, we need a better solution to health care.
- [45:45]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [45:46]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
So, yeah, I mean, just touching on something you said that I think is really important to drive home is that right now the government is shut down largely because of these ACA subsidies. Right. So the, the ACA subsidies, Affordable Care act subsidies basically help to make healthcare affordable for low but also middle income Americans who, who maybe don't qualify for like something like Medicaid. They qualify for the ACA and then they get a subsidy to drastically reduce how much they have to pay in health care premiums each year. So as a part, you know, Biden kind of extended those under his, under his act, but, or under his law. But they are set to expire at the end of this month and when they pass or at the end of this year. So when they passed the big beautiful bill, what they basically did was allow the subsidies to expire. And so right now we're in a situation where Democrats are basically like, this is our only shot really to like try to extend these, these subsidies so that, you know, health care costs, as you say, don't double or even triple in some instances for, for millions of Americans. And what I really want to drive home, why that's important is because when premiums rise to a level that are, that's unaffordable for Many people, which is exactly what will happen. People just drop off their health care coverage. And I think a lot of people don't realize or rem the Affordable Care act, millions and millions of people didn't have health care coverage. Right. The Affordable Care act pretty much very quickly gave health care coverage to 20 million Americans. And when more people don't have health care coverage, what they do is they delay getting care so they don't go to preventive visits, they don't go to primary care visits, and they use the emergency room as their primary care doctor at the farther down the line when they're very sick, which means that healthcare costs are way higher for those people. And so what we see is we see increased wait times at ERs, and we see costs go up for everybody because the health insurance pool gets more risky because, you know who drops off their health care. If your premiums double and you're a young, healthy person, you're much more likely to say, I'm just not going to have health care insurance. I'm going to drop my health care coverage. And so what that does is it increases the risk pool for insurance and it increases costs for everybody else who have insurance because the risk risk pool gets riskier, older, sicker, because the healthy people are dropping off because they don't want to pay the high premiums.
- [48:04]
Jim Acosta
That's it.
- [48:06]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
And that affects everybody, not just people who are on, you know, who are impacted by the actual subsidy increase.
- [48:11]
Jim Acosta
And meanwhile, they're having a Great Gatsby party at Mar a Lago while they're about, you know, while they're kicking people off of snap, where they're saying, we may not pay all the SNAP benefits, we're going to let your Obamacare double in the next couple of months. Your food prices are growing up, going up, even though Trump is saying they're going down. I mean, there's, there's so many things happening on so many different fronts in our affordability crisis in this country. And they're saying, let them eat cake. Let, let them, let them fend for themselves. When we have, we have the wealth in this country, we have the, the know how, the ability in this country to create better systems to take care of all of us and make it more affordable for all of us. But, Doctor. Dr. Jessica Newark, thank you so much. You've been so generous with your time. I peppered you with a lot of questions. I hope. I, you know, do I need to set an edible arrangement or something? Just let me know. I feel like I think too much of your time. But, I mean, but it is, it's something we all care about is our health. And the people in power right now just seem to be, they just don't, they just don't care. It's just like you're on your own, Sia, you know.
- [49:18]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Yeah. And I think one thing that this moment has really done in this, in the last year, I mean, a lot of people are worried about this. They're worried about, you know, the health of Americans. They're worried about our food system, they're worried about our healthcare system. And I think helping people to kind of connect the dots and understand what's actually needed to improve these policies and these systems for all of us is really important. So I appreciate you kind of giving time to it, Jim.
- [49:40]
Jim Acosta
Thank you, Dr. Jessica, really appreciate the time. Thanks so much. I hope I did not annoy the heck out of you on a Monday. I know it's a Monday.
- [49:47]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Of course not.
- [49:47]
Jim Acosta
We started the show like seven minutes late and then we. You were late. Everybody just blamed me. It's all my fault. But great to see you. Thank you so much. Dr. Jessica Nurik. Great. Thanks for having me find her on the socials. Thank you so much, Doctor. Appreciate it. No, I mean, to me, you know, I, I know we've all seen that picture at Mar a Lago and, and Heather Cox Richardson is absolutely right. We, you know, you could also, and I didn't want to, you know, pile too much on my executive producer, Matt on a Monday, but she's absolutely. Those images of, like, the scantily clad women and the martini glasses out by the pool. I mean, this is the President of the United States on the eve of kicking people off of stat benefits, throwing a Great Gatsby party. And is that, is that Janine Pirro next to him? Is that Judge Boxwine next to him? Is that who that is at Mar a Lago? And just it tells you everything that you need to know about this moment in time. And by the way, you know, if in fact, 60 Minutes did record that interview right around the time of this party, I mean, it's so, it's, it is quite something for Donald Trump to claim that grocery prices are going down when they're going up. He's claiming that he doesn't know that the head of Binance has been pardoned, that he pardoned the head of finance who is enriching the Trump family as we speak. I mean, you just, there's a whole host of, of, of issues here that all lead back to one Place that this out of touch out to lunch president in name only who let Stephen Miller run the show and run wild on immigrants in this country. All he really wants to do is throw a party for himself. All he wants to do is have golden Ballrooms named after himself. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about me. He doesn't care about our families. He's kicking people off of snap. They've got the government shut down right now because they won't give people a little bit of help help to afford their Obamacare premiums. And they, and they still to this day, to this day. I covered Trump trying to repeal Obamacare back during the first term. He didn't have a replacement plan then, remember? Repeal and replace. They didn't have a replacement plan then and they don't have a replacement plan now. And it is more than a let them eat cake kind of moment. It is a let them eat. It is a let you eat kind of moment. That's what Donald Trump is saying right now. That's what Donald Trump is saying. Couldn't care less about you. Couldn't care less about your. I mean, I, I went and bought Halloween candy and it was ridiculous. I could not believe how much I spent on Halloween candy in this country. Grocery bills are through the roof and everybody has a. I mean, if you live in Virginia, you have a chance to vote. If you live in New Jersey, you have a chance to vote. If you live in California, you have a chance to vote. If you live in New York City, you have a chance to vote. You have a chance to send a message to the out of touch, out to lunch, Golden Ballroom, let them eat. President of the United States. He's been sending you a message. He's been telling you, I don't care about your Obamacare premiums. They could just go through. We Pat, we called it the big beautiful bill and it just screws people who are on Obamacare. Just screws them. And he's telling you he does not care.
- [53:41]
Dr. Jessica Newrick
Care.
- [53:42]
Jim Acosta
That is the message he is sending to you. He does not care how much your Obamacare goes up. He does not. He, he said to Nor O' Donnell In 60 minutes, grocery prices are coming down. He does not care that your grocery prices are still going up. Remember when he was out on the campaign trail back in 2024 and he was posing with all of the, the groceries at Bedminster, one of his other golf courses with golden Ballrooms. He posed with those groceries and he said he's going to bring grocery prices down hasn't done it. The only people he has taken care of are the people in that picture at Mar A Lago who are reliving the Roaring Twenties, who are reliving the Gilded Age, who are living in a great Gatsby novel. Those are the people he's looking out for and himself and his family. The people who are enriching themselves off of your misery, off of your struggles, off of your suffering. Look what happened with the big beetle. They're taking the money from all of us and they're giving it to all their buddies and they're throwing a party for themselves in the process. And I will point out one more time report in the Washington Post. The folks over at Public Citizen came out with this today. You've heard me rail against that new ballroom over the White House. Some of the very same people who are donating to that ballroom over at the White House are in hot water with the government and have all sorts of issues with the government. It's pay for play. It's corruption at a grand Gilded Age great Gatsby scale. And it's all happening as we speak. That is the message that Donald Trump is sending. And the people of New Jersey, the people of Virginia, the people of New York and the people of California. You have a chance to send your message in about 15 hours from now when people go to the polls on election day. And then in one year after that, you have a chance to send another message to that out of touch, out to lunch so called president who doesn't remember who he's pardoning, but he does remember who gets to make out like a bandit in this new Gilded Age, in this new age of Gatsby at Mar A Lago. My thanks to Heather Cox Richardson. My thanks to Dr. Jessica Newrick. It was great to talk to her for the first time. My thanks to all of you still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good evening. I'll see you next time.