← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
MSNBC'S Ali Velshi on Trump's tariff cave and Steve Schmidt slams Fox response to market turmoil. Plus grass roots organizer Kristen Crowell.
01:03:14
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
Hey, welcome, everybody, to the Jim Acosta show. It is Wednesday, April 9th. We are back in the Trump cave, I guess you could call it. Trump backed down on tariffs. And the markets, they bounced back, too. I'm looking at the Dow right now. It's up about 2,900 points. And joining me on the show today is the one and only Ali Velshi. Ali, great to see you. My old colleague from yesteryear. It's good to be back on with you.
- [00:26]
Ali Velshi
And you remember, but when you and I first met, I was fully a financial reporter. That's what I did for a living. So. So this is my space. You know, today's a good day to be in it. Most of the days in the last couple of weeks, you know, all of us in this world have been, you know, our head in our hands going, what's going on?
- [00:42]
Jim Acosta
Exactly.
- [00:43]
Ali Velshi
Some crazy times.
- [00:45]
Jim Acosta
It's crazy, it's crazy shit. And I, I thought of you because, not because it's crazy shit, but because of your long history covering the markets and covering the financial sector. You did it for many years at cnn. You've done it at and msnbc. And I have to imagine, Ali, that you've not really covered a business story like this, a finance story like this, where the President of the United States, I mean, essentially single handedly caused the markets to tank over a period of days with this idea that he can put tariffs on basically the entire world. And then earlier today, they backed down. I mean, the former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers tweeted this just a short while ago. Bullies back down. It is tragic to see the United States following banana Republic policy approaches and market patterns. And then Charlie Gasparino, he's over at fo. Yep, we report, you decide. Charlie Gasparino says, let's be clear, what happened? Who capitulated here and why? You know, I don't want to say this because I'm a patriot, I am an American, but it is the White House who capitulated based on everything I hear in all my sources. Ali, what is your take on all of this?
- [01:46]
Ali Velshi
First of all, that's not what the White House says. The White House says, that's right. This is what, this is the art of a game. This is negotiation at work. This is the long game. Now, this is the opposite of the long game, right? The usmca, which was the Free Trade Agreement, nafta, which Donald Trump himself renegotiated, he sort of ripped that up. He's put it back into place, but it was his deal. That's the long game, because these treaties take a long time to develop. NATO is the long game. Thinking about the Iran nuclear deal is the long game. It took 10 years of negotiation, then two years with America in it, and now Donald Trump wants to get back into some kind of deal with Iran. So this is not the long game. This is the short game. And it's a stupid game. And the danger is that what you do when you play this type of game is, sure, you're sending a hell of a signal to China. And by the way, China requires a hell of a signal. And they're the ones thinks that some tariffs, some tariffs are, are important. But what you do in the process is you risk getting yourself into a, you know, an unrecoverable spin for the entire world. And that's the problem. Jerome Powell has been, he's been circumspect about it, but he's talked about stagflation. Now here's the basics here. When your economy is slow and you have a recession, the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. Things feel cheaper, people spend, and guess what? 100% of the time it works.
- [03:12]
Steve Schmidt
Doesn't.
- [03:12]
Ali Velshi
You just have to get to the right level. They have to know how much interest rates. But you cut interest rates, you goose the economy when there's inflation harder to solve. But the opposite happens. The Federal Reserve raises rates, makes buying things expensive, and slowly inflation comes down. That's what's been happening when you have stagflation, when you have a recession or a slow economy, which we may be in or we may be headed toward, and you have inflation at the same time, your one lever interest rates, you can't use them both ways. And Japan got stuck in this for 10 years. And at the beginning of it, Japan was gonna be the most important country in the world. Remember when we were young people, everything was made in Japan. It was all about Japan. And now it's not. Because 10 years of it wrecked this massive economy. That's the danger. We either wreck someone else's economy or we wreck our own. This is not stuff you're supposed to play with randomly, the way this administration is doing it. So it's no long game. It's not sophisticated. It's not, it's not part of a strategy. It's just chaos.
- [04:14]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and when Trump came into the White House, he inherited an economy. Okay, maybe it wasn't perfect. Inflation wasn't great. Pretty good. Yeah, but J.P. morgan, Goldman Sachs, they weren't predicting a recession on the horizon. Now the estimates are upward in the neighborhood of 60%. And I just want to throw this at you, Ali, because just a couple of days ago, there was a misquoted claim, Forbes reporting this two days ago, that Trump was considering a 90 day pause on his far reaching reciprocal tariffs. And the White House described that as fake news. And what did he do, lo and behold, today? And yet he's pausing. These reciprocal tariffs for most countries, as they're calling them, for 90 days.
- [04:55]
Ali Velshi
Right.
- [04:56]
Jim Acosta
And what we've seen in the markets, Ali, is what concerns me. It has been so chaotic when that first thing popped up on Monday where there was the fake news of the 90 day pause, which ended up being true fake news, the markets were swinging wildly. And that also is not good, right?
- [05:11]
Ali Velshi
No, no. And remember, for some people, you know, the gains in the market are generally enjoyed by the top 10%. And again, like everything else in the economy, the top 1% get the most of it. But a lot of Americans, half of Americans have some form of investment. It's either an IRA or a 401k. You may not look at it all the time, but it's there. And there are a lot of people in the last week who sold their stock, they might be 60 or 65 or 70 or 75, thinking, if this is real, I can't, I can't.
- [05:37]
Jim Acosta
Bingo.
- [05:38]
Ali Velshi
I can't stay with this. So people sold stock and lost money, first of all. Secondly, the stock market is not the measure by which one should look at the economy. It was, however, the measure. Donald Trump chose to look at the economy when he was president the first time. But it is indicative of sentiment. And even if you and I, you did, and I do work for a public company, when stocks start cratering, public companies start making decisions about expanding, laying off people, cutting salaries. So people are affected by this. This is not an abstract. There are real reasons to deal with this. Donald Trump said in the campaign, tariffs are the most beautiful word in the English language. They're just a word. Sometimes they are necessary, sometimes they are important and they are useful. But across the board, tariffs, universally, economists say that's just nonsense. So he's doing stuff. And I don't know whether this is Peter Navarro nonsense, because there's a lot of that. Who's in his ear saying this is a good idea? Peter, full disruption of the world order is not a good idea. But as you and I talked, he's doing it with NATO too. So he likes the, he wants to be the disruption president. But this can be very dangerous. It's very hard to pull out of it can be.
- [06:48]
Jim Acosta
And you mentioned Peter Navarro. I mean, Trump has put him front and center in this trade policy and, you know, it just came out of the woodwork once again. This was reported a few years ago that Navarro had this bizarre nickname, Ron Vera, I guess an alter ego. He had quoted this guy Ron Vera in some of his books or in one of his books. And it was unearthed back in 2019 that he just made this guy up and it's basically his name spelled backwards or upside down or whatever. And I'm thinking to myself, I remember covering the White House when Trump was there the first time around and Peter Navarro was there and why he was advising the White House on COVID policy during that time, that will always.
- [07:32]
Ali Velshi
They got it from Amazon.
- [07:33]
Jim Acosta
They literally got him from Amazon. But he was, he was apparently advising Trump on these tariffs and saying, oh, Trump's not going to back down on all this stuff. And this is a guy who made up this alter ego.
- [07:43]
Ali Velshi
Yes.
- [07:44]
Jim Acosta
It's just nuts.
- [07:44]
Ali Velshi
Yeah, it's nuts. And the point is he's a China hawk. And again, we have to separate the idea that is there validity? Because often you've covered Trump for a long time, there's often some validity in a sentiment that he has. Right. So China floods the world with a lot of goods and electric vehicles are one of them. And there's probably something that should be done about that because the Chinese, the BYD electric vehicle, their cheapest one is 12 and a half thousand dollars. So if you put 100% tariff on it, it's $24,000, $25,000, which is still less than you can buy an EV for in the United States. So if you would like to have an EV economy, there are going to have to be tariffs. However, I grew up in Canada, you don't put tariffs on oranges because you can't grow oranges in Canada. Right? So if you like oranges, the oranges come in for free. And you sell America potash, which is fertilizer, because we do have more of it. We sell American lumber. It's a complicated thing. I just came back from Central Asia. I was on the old Silk Road. Right? That's where they mastered the stuff. China has this, Rome needs this, Turkey needs this. We trade the things with each other that we need. We put a 50% tariff on the country of Lesotho, the landlocked country of Lesotho. Right? Landlocked by South Africa, where their major industry is women who from home sew textiles for Chinese owned companies that get sold as like jeans or T shirts in the United States. So we're punishing them for those jobs, which we don't want in America. We are not looking. If you look, we have a 4% unemployment rate. We'd like some more manufacturing jobs. Some because we'd like the jobs, and some because we need to make things like semiconductors and important things in America, so that if there's another Covid, we have a secure supply chain. What are we. Why. Why are we in a fight with Lesotho? Why are we in a fight with Canada?
- [09:25]
Jim Acosta
Why are we in a fight with islands? With penguins? Why are we fighting with penguins? I like penguins. They're great.
- [09:30]
Ali Velshi
It's wild. It's so nonsensical. And that's part of it. When the White House says it's not chaos, the thing we have to understand, and the thing that might save us, might save democracy, and it might save our economy, Jim, is that it is chaos. They don't seem to have the wherewithal to get this right. There is a way to do this. Trade is not. Trade around the world is imbalanced. There's no question about that. America gets a lot of benefit from that situation happening. But if you wanna approach this, you do have to take a long game. You get into negotiations and you talk to the world and you say, we need to make this a better, fairer thing.
- [10:03]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, there's. I mean, there are a couple of thoughts that come to mind. One is, it's sort of like that line from the Dark Knight when the Joker says, you think, I have a plan. I mean, there are times when I think Donald Trump is, you know, basically operating with that mindset. He's just chaotically careening from one thought to another in his head. And then there are others who are saying, you know, could this be like a pump and dump thing where there's market manipulation going on? Whatever it is, it underlines the major problem in all of this, and that is the President of the United States. One person alone should not have the ability to make the markets go bananas like this.
- [10:35]
Ali Velshi
And treaties, as you know, are not the purview of the President. That's right. So in this particular case, this is all being done on the pretense that there's some sort of national emergency. Well, again, I go back to Lesotho and ladies sewing jeans. What's that got to do with our national emergency? Our steel supply, our semiconductor supply, These things may all have to do with national emergency. It's not true, but at least you could make the argument if you wanna do this, if you wanna restructure the way the world trades, there's a way to do this. There's something called Congress. You get them involved, they're experts at this. You negotiate it, it's hard won. It takes years to do it. And that would be the long game. You'd run for office. And we don't think he's running for office. But one would run for office in four years and say, look what we did, look how we changed it with.
- [11:19]
Jim Acosta
Mike Johnson, he's asked about this. And the speaker goes, well, we're gonna give Trump the Runway to do whatever he wants. And so Congress, you know, at least the Republicans in Congress, not his Runway, they're too afraid. Exactly, it's our Runway. But they're too afraid to confront him. You have some Republican members of Congress who have been trying to craft legislation that would curtail the President's power in this area, but it's just kind of like they don't have, they don't have the numbers to do it.
- [11:42]
Ali Velshi
And he's only starting to realize because of some of the protests, and the protests happened before the markets tanked, that this could end up being very, very bad for Republicans in the midterms. Now, the thing is, with Donald Trump, it's warp speed, right? Everything's happening. But by next week we'll be talk about a completely different topic. And who knows what this is, but this is dangerous across the board, this idea. And Elon Musk said it right when we talk about a recession, he said, look, you gotta go through a little bit of pain to get some gain. That's not where Americans are right now. A brand new Quinnipiac poll this afternoon said Americans are very concerned about the economy as they always are. It's the top issue in every election. But the top of that top is consumer goods and food. Okay. That's their number one concern. Then it's housing, the affordability of housing.
- [12:28]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [12:29]
Ali Velshi
Then it's, it's jobs because our unemployment is low. So people are not terribly fearful of their jobs. If we get into a recession, jobs will start to become one of those things. They need the president to be a custodian of those things. He won the election saying it was about the economy. And I will never discount that for people. Yeah, it is about the economy. So don't torpedo the economy. There's a way to.
- [12:51]
Jim Acosta
Well, and he was elected to bring prices down and these tariffs are going to do the exact opposite of that. Talked about this during the campaign. Ali, you host this Gray show on msnbc, Velshi on the weekends. And you talked about this all the time. A lot of us have talked about this. But it didn't get through people's heads that he would actually do it. But for as dishonest as he is, in a lot of cases, he does mean what he says, and he did need to do this. And this was coming. This was always coming.
- [13:15]
Ali Velshi
Yes. And so, you know, today he said people were getting a little bit, you know, scared. So that's why he's done this 90 day pause. Who knows? A bunch of people were calling for it. I don't know who got in his ear and said what to him. I can't tell. But we've got this 90 day pause now. We still have tariffs on most countries at this point. The Chinese tariffs are massive. And to the extent that Donald Trump's approach to negotiation is always, let's set it up here so that when we get here, you think you got a deal with China, there might be something to be said, but there's a different way to do this, Right? There's a way to go to everybody in the world who thinks China is manipulative in trade and say, let's have a multilateral approach to what we do, a collective approach to what we do with China. And by the way, that's why NATO works. It's because of these collective approaches. And Donald Trump doesn't like that. He likes bilateral approaches to everything. Right. He wants to be.
- [14:08]
Jim Acosta
And I think he also likes this idea. I mean, he was talking about this last night. He was saying, I know what the hell I'm doing. And he said, I have all these world leaders kissing my ass. I mean, this is kind of a window into who he is and what he's all about. And one of the things that I've been thinking about, Ali, is, and I'm gonna talk to Steve Schmidt about this in a little bit as well when he gets on the program. But the common denominator in almost everything that he's done since he came back into the office is stuff he can do unilaterally that can cause the most panic and chaos. And whether it's pardoning the January 6th rioters, whether it's unilaterally cutting thousands of workers from the federal workforce, and then the tariff thing, which Congress has let him do unilaterally, it's all basically stuff he thinks he can do. It's the dictator for one day.
- [14:54]
Ali Velshi
It's not the art of the deal.
- [14:56]
Jim Acosta
It's not the Art of the deal. It's not the art of the deal. It's the dictator for the first 100 days thing, which he said, one day, it's 100. But I mean, you know, when, when I want to ask you about NATO and Ukraine, because you've been there so many times. But the last thing is when the White House says, oh, this is the art of the deal. I mean, you just.
- [15:15]
Ali Velshi
No, no, that's bullshit.
- [15:17]
Jim Acosta
Right?
- [15:17]
Ali Velshi
Yeah, Right. Because. Because what Trump said today in announcing the 90 days, you know, the pause is he talked about how many countries. I think he said 70 or 75 countries have called us and said they want to negotiate. Well, that's the normal course of events. Trade representatives talk to each other all the time. And they would have called and said, we're not really keen on this whole sort of thing. How do we work it out? That doesn't. That's not capitulating. That's what they do for a living. I will tell you, you look up north to Canada, where I come from. Before Donald Trump's election, Justin Trudeau was running 28 points behind a populist Conservative, and that caused him to resign. Donald Trump gets elected. They. They put Mark Carney into the job. Carney was the head of the bank of Canada and the head of the bank of England. Boring jobs. But if you're worried about your economy exactly the kind of person you want. Now, Carney's. The polling indicates that it'll probably be a liberal majority government in Canada because Canada has said the populist guy was interesting for a minute, but now we've seen how that works in the United States. We'd like zero of it. We would like a custodian of the economy who can get things done. And Americans are soon going to say, we would like a custodian of the economy who can get things done. They're not always hot and sexy, but. But they need to be done. That doesn't appear to be what we have. We got a guy who comes out with a six shooter in every direction every day.
- [16:38]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Sort of the Yosemite Sam school of governance. The other thing is, I mean, you know, when they say the art of the deal, it's just. It's laughable. It's the art of the squeal. I mean, all of his buddies on Wall street were screaming at him, and I think he just relented. And that may just be what happened here. And let's talk about Ukraine. Ali, you've been there several times now. When he had Zelensky in the Oval Office the other day. I'm sure that just what you must have just been like, face palm.
- [17:06]
Ali Velshi
Never seen anything like that.
- [17:07]
Jim Acosta
And, you know, this idea that you can cut a deal with Putin without Zelensky at the table, without Ukraine at the table, which seems to be the thrust of what Trump is doing, just seems to be doomed to fail and hurt the Ukrainians in the process.
- [17:23]
Steve Schmidt
Yeah.
- [17:23]
Ali Velshi
By the way, China tried to do this a year and a half, two years ago, I think it was. And Biden and the rest of the countries, not only NATO, but the other countries that are involved in this effort, said no, no, if you'd like a negotiation, we'll prepare the table, but Ukraine must be party to the negotiation. Can't have a negotiation that involves Russia and sponsored by China and no Ukraine. And yet we continue to do this. We continue to behave this way. But then the berating of Zelensky in front of the cameras in the White House was wild. I mean, this is a guy who, his career with Donald Trump started with him trying to roll Zelensky, didn't work, got Trump impeached. And this is a guy who America did not think, America and the west did not think was ready to, to conduct this war. Thought he was in over skis. And he has turned out to be quite a remarkable custodian of that country. But it's a hard job. They will collapse when we fail to help them. Now, there may be something called NATO 2.0. I'm making that up. But your Keir Starmer has been gathering the other NATO countries, Canada seems to be involved in that. There may be a version of NATO that involves America less. But I always remind Everybody that Article 5 of NATO, which compels any country to respond to an attack against any other member country, has only been invoked one time in the entire entirety of NATO, and it was after 9, 11, in support of the United States. The United States has been the only, only beneficiary, military beneficiary of NATO in its entire history. So it would be very sad for me if, if we are moving our way out of that, but we are doing something that doesn't look great. Steve Witkoff seems to have a remit to try and fix things. He's a developer. I'm not sure what his qualifications are for this, but let's hope.
- [19:08]
Jim Acosta
Well, and apparently he was on, he was on Signal in the Signal chat in Russia when they were, you know, talking about attack plans on the Houthis. So, I mean, I don't Know what that says about Wyckoff. But you know, the other thing in all of this, I was in Norway over this past week at a journalism conference and. And people in Europe are freaked out right now. They are really worried about what's happening. Right. I talked to a Danish journalist who was at this conference and he said that Denmark hasn't really faced a crisis like this. Talking about Trump's threats to invade Greenland since World War II.
- [19:39]
Ali Velshi
Yes.
- [19:39]
Jim Acosta
And this was a serious editor of a Danish newspaper. He wasn't being hyperbolic or anything like that. Doesn't have a podcast like me being hyperbolic. He was being very serious. And they're just freaked out over there. And major US Allies, major NATO allies, countries that have been there for the United States. And it just seems to me like in the case of the tariffs, you piss off your friends, you are tempting fate.
- [20:04]
Ali Velshi
Norway's got a border with Russia. Norway is one of the countries. It's moved its military headquarters into a mountain, into the Arctic Circle. These countries have been flying sorties every single day. NATO jets taking off, doing exercises up there. They've been worried and ready for a long time. If you're in Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, these are countries that think about this a lot. They really, if you're Polish, I mean, all you think about is one of your neighbors is gonna invade you. It's just in your blood. So they take this very, very seriously. They feel that if you give up Ukraine, which is not a NATO country, so that's, you know, Trump's argument. They're not actually a NATO country. You give up Ukraine, you simply empower an expansionist. Vladimir Putin, who has stated very clearly that these are. He said very much the same things that Hitler said in his invasion of Sudetenland. Right. We are. It's an umbrella for German speaking people. Vladimir Putin has said we are there to protect the German speaking people in Ukraine. There are lots of German speaking people in the Balkans. Some of 25 to 40% of the population of those countries are Russian speaking people. So you have to be careful because we've read this book before. We know what happens when people say, no, no, we're not really. We're not expanding. We're just extending an umbrella of protection over our people. That's somebody else's land. You can't do that. If you'd like the people, you can invite them back home. But they happen to seem to want to live in the Ukraine, so let them be.
- [21:27]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, folks have tried that in the past to disastrous results.
- [21:31]
Ali Velshi
Disastrous Results.
- [21:32]
Jim Acosta
And Ali, your show on the weekends on msnbc. Everybody should watch. I was a guest on Ali's program.
- [21:38]
Ali Velshi
And hopefully you will be again. That was a great conversation, and I.
- [21:42]
Jim Acosta
Hope you enjoyed being on Substack.
- [21:44]
Ali Velshi
My first time. Very exciting.
- [21:46]
Jim Acosta
It's just kind of. And you're seeing all. Everybody sending their comments.
- [21:49]
Ali Velshi
I love it.
- [21:49]
Jim Acosta
The hearts.
- [21:50]
Ali Velshi
I love it. Thank you.
- [21:51]
Jim Acosta
Describe it as social media. Cocaine is just all these hearts flying up into Ali's nose.
- [21:55]
Ali Velshi
Very nice. Because. Because the rest of social media isn't that nice to. So I hear you.
- [21:59]
Jim Acosta
No, I know.
- [22:00]
Ali Velshi
Back on Subseciac.
- [22:01]
Jim Acosta
No, it's great. And you should.
- [22:02]
Ali Velshi
Because.
- [22:02]
Jim Acosta
And I think you'll get hooked on it because it's so much fun to have this sort of conversation where people are chiming in and I'll see the comments and the questions and sometimes I'll be like, oh, that's a better question than what I was going to ask Ali. Let me ask that. But it's great to catch up with you. Ali and I worked many years ago together at this one cable network and just had a ball working with one another. And it's always good to talk to you. Really appreciate it.
- [22:25]
Ali Velshi
And you, my friend, thank you. Thanks for all you're doing. And let's do this together many times.
- [22:29]
Jim Acosta
I love it. Let's keep that conversation going. Good to see you, Ali.
- [22:32]
Ali Velshi
All right.
- [22:32]
Jim Acosta
All right. Take care. That was the great Ali Velshi. You know, one of the things that's great about Ali Velshi, and you can talk to a lot of people about a lot of different things. When somebody is as worldly as Ali Velshi, somebody who's been around the world. And, I mean, he and I were talking before we got started here, and he was talking about, you know, how he's been traveling abroad and he just goes to cool places. And Ali soaks up all of this knowledge and then brings it back home. You know, he's been to Ukraine several times. Brings it back home and delivers. Delivers it to the viewers and just does an incredible job. So we're continuing to talk about Trump caving on the tariffs. They said for days and days he would never cave on the tariffs. This just shows you what a great negotiator he is. This just shows you he's in charge of everything. And don't worry, everything's gonna be fine. And despite that, everybody on Wall street was saying, no, you're about to cause the next Great Depression. Somebody who I always enjoy bringing on the program is the great Steve Schmidt. Steve Schmidt cuts through the bullshit better than just about anybody that I know. His detector doesn't take any. And so that's why we're going to bring Steve Schmidt on the program. I mean, Ali's the same way. He's terrific. But we got to bring in Steve Schmidt here because we got to talk about this tariff stuff. And there he is right there. There's a new sheriff in town. It's Steve Schmidt. How are you, man?
- [23:54]
Steve Schmidt
I'm good. How are you? Hello, I'm Tulsa, Oklahoma.
- [23:58]
Jim Acosta
Oh, good. Oh, okay. Can we ask what's going on in Tulsa? Or maybe I shouldn't.
- [24:02]
Steve Schmidt
Beto O'Rourke and I are speaking tomorrow together.
- [24:06]
Jim Acosta
Great.
- [24:07]
Steve Schmidt
Through an audience here off of Black Wall street, which was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan in 1921. Interesting historical area, but going to talk in Oklahoma. This is a state where Mark Wayne Mullen is up for reelection. And my political take on this is there are no Safe seats in 2026.
- [24:38]
Jim Acosta
Interesting. Oh, we got a little freeze there from Steve. Steve, you still there?
- [24:44]
Steve Schmidt
People will have to make a decision to stop some really epic vandalism and.
- [24:53]
Jim Acosta
Oh, you're good.
- [24:53]
Steve Schmidt
Now, races. It's gonna go well.
- [24:59]
Jim Acosta
I, I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let your signal stabilize there a little bit there. But that, I think what you're saying is absolutely right, Steve. As we wait for your, your thing to stabilize there, there are no safe seats. And Ali Vel, she was just talking about this a few moments ago where it looked like, you know, leadership in Canada was going to change to the other party. And then people up in Canada said, you know what, what Donald Trump is doing down in America, we don't want that up here. And so we'll bring in Prime Minister Carney. But I mean, when you look at this tariff situation, I have to think your head is about to explode. But at the same time, you and I have been talking for many months now. This was entirely predictable. Entirely predictable. And we're not out of the woods. They're celebrating over at the White House. They're celebrating not causing a Great Depression. Way to go, guys.
- [25:44]
Steve Schmidt
Well, the 27 year old white House press secretary said what happened today was the fault of the media who caused a panic because they don't understand the art of the deal. And I guess my question is, asides from the branding deals, where a schlepper like Trump was able to associate his name with luxury in the minds of a substantial enough portion of the population, aside from that, which I think is an incredible deal at some level incomprehensible. But that's not the type of deal making they're talking about. What are the deals? What are they? What was the deal in Atlantic City? What, what deal has Donald Trump ever been involved in? And I, and I, and I, and I, and I guess I have a question for you as a White House correspondent. It. Yeah, right. I don't understand why anyone in that room. Well, I, what deal?
- [26:50]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, what's the deal here?
- [26:52]
Steve Schmidt
What, what, what is. And so it's all nonsense.
- [26:57]
Jim Acosta
It's all nonsense.
- [26:59]
Steve Schmidt
Nothing has stopped today, by the way. There's no reprieve, there's no 90 day reprieve from the incoherence, from the madness, from the sycophancy, from the vandalism of these institutions, the full spectrum attack on American liberty, on American democracy, American institutions by his yes men and women, the fecklessness of the opposition. I just drove across the country and I went to Medgar Evers house in Mississippi. And standing in Medgar Evers driveway, I thought about politics. The truth of the matter is Mississippi governor's race could have been won by the Democratic Party, could add a Governor Pressley there. But the Democratic Party is not a national party and the United States of America barely needs a national opposition movement. It's not a national party, it's a regional party, it's a coastal party, but it's disinvested from Mississippi, from Oklahoma. It's turned its back on state after state. Democratic Party is invisible in the intermountain West. It's invisible in the south, visible in the Midwest. That's very true. And so, and so this disaster, and it is a disaster, obliterates in a profound way the hatfield and the McCoy arguments over stupidity that we've been yoked to for a long time. And now we're going to have to take care of this as the American people. And we will. This is not the end of this. And what side will win is not in doubt.
- [29:02]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [29:02]
Steve Schmidt
The cost of the damage is unknown and the anxiety is of the unknown. Because the thing that we know about the unknown is that terrible things are coming and they're coming because of the character virus, because of the cowardice.
- [29:29]
Ali Velshi
The.
- [29:29]
Steve Schmidt
Cancer of all of this madness on tv watching these government spokespeople scream at the American people. Howard Lutnick and so, for example, if you're a news executive, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, way out, and I'm going to say that there's a responsible party somewhere. At least one person in every American newsroom. I'm going to be an optimist.
- [30:04]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [30:08]
Steve Schmidt
What I want that person to think about tonight is saying, no, we're not going to have Howard Lutnick back on our air.
- [30:18]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [30:19]
Steve Schmidt
Because there's 352 million people in the country and he's got to be in the top 10 with no credibility.
- [30:30]
Jim Acosta
There's no question. Yeah.
- [30:32]
Steve Schmidt
And so we're watching a show that's going to have deadly consequences. And so what you just saw today, this capitulation by Trump, it is a capitulation.
- [30:43]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [30:44]
Steve Schmidt
He's got no stomach, it's got no stamina, it's got no toughness. When you think about presidential staying power, I could sit here and tell you stories for seven hours about Abraham Lincoln didn't win a battle for two years.
- [31:05]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, right.
- [31:08]
Steve Schmidt
This is a weak man. He's an imbecile. His theories are madness. And this will continue to get worse.
- [31:22]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. No, I was saying at the top of the program, I mean, Charlie Gasparino, FOX senior business correspondent, said on their air, let's be clear, what happened? Who capitulated here and why? You know, I don't want to say this because I'm a patriot, I'm an American, but it is the White House who capitulated based on everything I hear in all my sources. So, I mean, for all the run up to this, when Trump was saying, I know what the hell I'm doing, they're kissing my ass, all of that stuff, he was talking like a guy. He's talking out of his ass, but he was talking like a guy who was not going to back down. And I think some maximum pressure was applied somewhere. Some pressure point was hit on Trump somewhere where he had to back down. There was just no question about it. And you sliced and diced it so perfectly, Steve. And there are a couple of slices I want to take a crack at. One is the Democratic Party and why it's failing in a lot of parts of the country. That's a big component in all of this. And Howard Dean tried to tackle this back in the day. He had a 50 state strategy for the Democratic Party. The party has to get back to that. There's no question about it. And then the other component that you hit on is the media. And as much as I'd love to think that if our folks in the corporate media would stand up and be counted and call Trump out for his lies and his madness, there is still the elephant in the room, which is Fox News. And you have people like Jesse Waters saying, oh, if Biden was doing this and crashing the economy, I'd give him a hard time essentially saying, I'm not gonna do that to Trump. Or when Jeanine Pirro says, I'm not worried about my 401k and this is the most powerful news force in America right now. And I just, you know, how the hell do you tackle that? That's. I, that, you know, that is reconstructing, reconstructing our information system in this country to get truth to the American people. Because there are so many people who aren't, they aren't receiving it. Message not received.
- [33:14]
Steve Schmidt
Yeah, so. So I think the shortest answer to reform at Fox, if I understood and I had him on my podcast, McKay Coppins wrote a story about this in Atlantic. And I think, yeah, McKay is one of the finest reporters in the country. But if I, if I, if I interpret the story correctly, the second Rupert Murdoch dies, James Murdoch and the siblings are going to unplug the network and Jesse Waters isn't going to have a job. And since, and since Rupert's 94, I hope you're right. You know, I'm cheering for it to be tonight, to begin his journey to hell. But they have done unspeakable damage to this country.
- [34:03]
Jim Acosta
Unspeakable.
- [34:04]
Steve Schmidt
They have destabilized American democracy in a way that Soviet Russia could not, in a way that Nazi Germany could not. They are a societal cancer. You know, Jesse Water's mother is a child psychologist. And I mean, God, did she raise a sick kid?
- [34:28]
Jim Acosta
He's sick. There's something wrong with that boy.
- [34:31]
Steve Schmidt
Is a. He is a sick, sick person. The whole network is sick. And there's going to be accountability for this. And there's something that needs to be faced and I want to. Nothing goes back to normal.
- [34:53]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [34:55]
Steve Schmidt
Better will come. We have to, as Americans, appreciate something. I just had Chris Whipple, who wrote the book about the COVID up in the White House about Biden's fit.
- [35:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. I'm going to try to have him on in the next day or two. Yeah.
- [35:13]
Steve Schmidt
And what I want to say.
- [35:19]
Jim Acosta
There'S.
- [35:20]
Steve Schmidt
A lot of people, I'm not talking people living in $10 million houses that knew exactly who they were voting for in Trump. What they were, they thought they were getting was a making money card. And what they got was a going bankrupt card. So. So for those guys and their portfolios, I have as much sympathy as the people that invested with Sam Bankman.
- [35:46]
Jim Acosta
Fried. Yeah. Zero, Zippo. Yeah.
- [35:50]
Steve Schmidt
Right, agreed.
- [35:52]
Jim Acosta
Well, there's that. There's that aspect of it, too. You're absolutely right, Steve. I mean, the titans of Wall street, the way they, they've betrayed this country. They, they, they got their comeuppance the last 48 hours.
- [36:02]
Steve Schmidt
The guy I'm to, the guy I'm looking out of my window up on, up on a ladder here.
- [36:07]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [36:08]
Steve Schmidt
If he voted for Trump, I'm not angry at him. No, he was lied to. And you know what? Because he was lied to, assuming he was a Trump voter, he shares something in common with all the Democratic voters. They were lied to. They were lied to by the Biden family, Biden campaign, to some extent, Democratic establishment. And so the whole country shares.
- [36:45]
Ali Velshi
At.
- [36:45]
Steve Schmidt
An ordinary person level, a profound abuse by the powerful institutions and the powerful political parties and the powerful politicians.
- [36:56]
Jim Acosta
That's what we see. What you're saying needs to be said and people need to grapple with this. I will say on my old show, I covered many times when David Gergen was saying that Joe Biden should step aside, when David Axelrod said Joe Biden should step aside. Dean Phillips, the congressman, I had him on my show.
- [37:16]
Steve Schmidt
You were like the only guy.
- [37:18]
Jim Acosta
There's a lot of folks, there were folks who were covering it. I think there was a stubbornness on the part of Joe Biden. He just did not want to give it up. And, and he said he would. He said he would be a bridge. And I think fundamentally, that is part of what resulted in Donald Trump getting back in the White House. I will also say that Kamala Harris got so very close. It is wildly overestimated by so many people. What Donald Trump accomplished on election night, obviously, was not a landslide. And I think had the economy just been a little bit more favorable and had our media system in this country been not so fucked up, I really think that we would not have Donald Trump in the White House right now. I mean, I do think that there's a big part of that. I don't know if it was like this Democratic Party conspiracy to suppress the truth, because I just thought it was all in front of our eyes. Well, it was all in front of our eyes, but maybe I'm wrong.
- [38:17]
Steve Schmidt
Yeah, I saw it and every Democratic member of Congress who saw it. And there was one guy, Dean Phillips, who had the guts to do something.
- [38:27]
Jim Acosta
He did absolutely right.
- [38:29]
Steve Schmidt
And. And he was treated like a war criminal because I beat him up. And he was shouted down. And he was shouted down by his colleagues who knew exactly what he was saying was true because they all saw the Same thing.
- [38:47]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [38:48]
Steve Schmidt
They were all in the same meetings. And let me, let me add on, it's not just Anita Dunn and Steve Richetti and Mike Donilon and Ron Klain. And you go in the book, perfectly clear, Ron Klain knows the president is feebled.
- [39:06]
Jim Acosta
That's where I think the failure lies. It was the circle around Biden that should have said, Mr. President, time is up. We gotta go. This is it. There's no time to have a primary process. If we do it now, maybe we have a mini primary process. That conversation should have happened in January of 2024. No question about it. There's no question.
- [39:26]
Steve Schmidt
Right. And. And so beyond that. Yeah, beyond that.
- [39:32]
Jim Acosta
But that's kind of. We're kind of like that's water under the bridge to some extent, along with the rest of the rest of the village, too.
- [39:39]
Steve Schmidt
But here's, but here's the thing about it, right? This is the fundamental question to beat him in 2028. So Tim Walz just went on CNN and he was asked a question by Jake Tapper, and the question is like, well, what happened here? Why did you lose? And Walz's answer is utter gibberish. It's incoherent, Right. It's as incoherent as anything that comes out of the mouth is Tulsi Gabba or any of these other people.
- [40:06]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [40:07]
Steve Schmidt
So in 2016, Jeb Bush has asked a question, and the question he's asked in the debate is, knowing then what we know now, would we have invaded Iraq again?
- [40:18]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [40:18]
Steve Schmidt
So you know what? In 2016, the answer to the question was settled. It was fuck, no. It was a monstrous mistake. But that's not what the question was. The question was, will you tell the truth to the American people about this or will you defer to your brother's feelings?
- [40:38]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [40:39]
Steve Schmidt
Question about Biden's fitness is, while chaos is in flames around us, from Trump, you, Tim Walls, a governor of Minnesota who's on the national ticket on cnn, who's clearly running for president. I'm going to ask you a question.
- [40:58]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [40:58]
Steve Schmidt
What happened? And you know what? He lied.
- [41:01]
Jim Acosta
He couldn't answer. No, I agree with you.
- [41:04]
Steve Schmidt
Tim Waltz dead politically.
- [41:08]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you. I think that what you're saying is true. I think one of the things, though, Steve and I see folks chiming in and saying, why don't we talk about the protests that have been rising up and stuff like that. I am going to do that. And actually in just a few moments, I'm going to bring in Kristen Kral who is with the organization Fair Share America. She's going to be one of the organizing groups holding a rally down in Washington here in Washington tomorrow. We're going to talk to her in just a moment about all this. But the other component of all of this, Steve, that I think is highly important to get to is where the Democratic Party goes from here. And I don't think it's going to be like an establishment, traditional figure. I just don't see that. I think I see a populist movement rising up in this party, rising up in this country. And that movement is going to lead the party. The party is not going to lead the movement. And I covered Barack Obama in 2008, and the Hillary Clinton people, they just wrote them off. There's no way it was going to happen. The party establishment said, no way Barack Obama is going to happen. But I saw him personally out on the campaign trail and I said, I think this might happen because there's just something when the young people get excited, when the grassroots get excited, and they say, and it goes to the conversation you and I were just having, and they reject what the party is putting forward. I think that is the future. I think it's starting to happen now.
- [42:35]
Steve Schmidt
It will not be a movement of personality. It will be a movement of cause, and cause will be America. That is what the opposition movement that will form, will come together. And the coalition that matters is the assembling of a working class, black, white coalition that can compete in the interior of the country, that can raise the flag high and be related to as avatars of American normalcy, which the leadership of the Democratic Party has lost touch with the, with the American people about. Look, Trump being elected is the, is the greatest political failure there is. So there's. I said that there would be hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in January by the spring, and there is. And the movement will grow, but it will not be washing and lead. So, for example, Gavin Newsom, right. He thinks the nomination runs through Charlie Kirks and Steve Bannon. So how about. Yeah, Gavin Newsom goes and does a town hall meeting in Tupelo, Mississippi.
- [43:50]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love the fact that you and you and better are in Tulsa, Steve, because this, you're stirring up good trouble. And what needs to happen is this message that we're all in this together needs to be carried to the heartland. And new voices, different voices, passionate voices like yours and Beto is fantastic at this, are exactly. I can't imagine what's going to happen in this audience it's exactly what's needed. Steve and I always feel like I learned something from you every time we talk, but your passion recharges me. And I'm just saying that. I just want to say that very plainly to you, man to man.
- [44:34]
Steve Schmidt
I appreciate it.
- [44:35]
Jim Acosta
Your passion recharges me. And passion like Beto brings and so on, it recharges me. But that's what we need. We all need that. We all have to recharge after one another. We can't get down in the dumps and. And think that. That this is all fucked and over with because it's just not. It's just not.
- [44:52]
Steve Schmidt
I want to. I just want to say I don't want to go on the show, but if I could share a better story with people, I think I don't want to get in trouble for saying this, but I love the guy.
- [45:01]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [45:01]
Steve Schmidt
And I'm just getting to know him and he's really gracious. I was driving across country to El Paso, and when we hosted, my wife and I at his house, had an opportunity to meet. His son is going to college, a wonderful young man. We went out for great Mexican food. But I was on a call with another friend of mine. Beto was on with a great man, the Bishop William Barber. Oh, I love him.
- [45:29]
Jim Acosta
Great.
- [45:30]
Steve Schmidt
Bishop Barber. Bishop Barber's gonna. And has issued a moral POC proclamation about the morality of this fight about right and wrong and many, many things. But anyway, I'm on this conference call. I'm on a zoom call. Beto O'Rourke and Bishop Barber and, you know, and Bishop Barber talks some. And I. I talk too much, as always. And Beto doesn't say anything. And at the, at the end of. At the end of his call, better workos, he goes, yeah, he goes, you know, I grew up Catholic because I'm just not that effing religious. Right. And he. And he goes. And he goes, but, you know, my faith, My faith, it's in the United States. That's what I believe in.
- [46:19]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [46:19]
Steve Schmidt
I believe in the United States. And so, like, when Beto O'Rourke said that, yeah, Beto and I are supposed to be like, you know, he was a Republican, he's a Democrat. Or now that I'm a Democrat, I've been for five years, you know, I'm a conservative Democrat, he's a progressive Democrat. And these labels are always put on us.
- [46:38]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [46:38]
Steve Schmidt
Just in a way that deeply touched me. I just said to myself, me too. You know, that's my faith. And Barber said, told the story Said, you know, Frederick Douglass was deeply depressed after the Dred Scott decision. He thought that was it. Abolition movement had failed. The slave owners had succeeded.
- [47:07]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [47:07]
Steve Schmidt
Harriet Tubman saw it and came up to him and said, is God dead?
- [47:13]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [47:14]
Steve Schmidt
Frederick Douglass knew instantly that he had been guilty of a form of idolatry. He put his faith in institutions, and so he gives a speech. And in the speech, he ponders whether this terrible decision was part of a necessitous link.
- [47:31]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [47:32]
Steve Schmidt
In unforeseen events unfolding that would bring down the whole rotten enterprise. And so that's what we got to have faith in. We got to have faith in each other. We got faith in the country, and we have to have an absolute, unshakable faith about how this ends.
- [47:50]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [47:50]
Steve Schmidt
And for 1923 fans, fans out there, it's gonna end for MAGA like it ended for Whitfield.
- [48:02]
Jim Acosta
Well, Steve, it's always great to talk to you. Thank you. And also for sharing that message about better you're helping me book my show because I gotta get Beto back on here and I gotta get Reverend Barber and I gotta get you back on here as soon as possible. Steve Schmidt. Thank you. As always. The great Steve Schmidt. He is. I mean, you know, you. You might agree with 95 of what Steve said. You cannot disagree with the passion that he brings and the love for America that he brings. And that's what I always enjoy talking to Steve about, is because we just, you know, and it's just like the story is sharing about Beto O'Rourke passion for this country. I want to bring in Kristen Kral. Let's see if we can make this happen. A lot of. A couple of folks, Ali Velshi and Kristin Kral, newbies to the substack machine. But we're trying to make it all happen. We're trying to bring new people in and hear what they have to say. And one reason why I wanted to bring in Kristen. And Kristen, you'll see my invite coming through. You just hit accept and you'll be on. Kristen is with Fair share America. They are one of the organizing groups behind some of these rallies that we've been seeing around the country, and they are doing one here in Washington tomorrow up at the Capitol to talk about basically to say this is what the rally is going to be all about. They're saying no to tax breaks for billionaires and corporations, and they're going to be having this. This event up on the Capitol tomorrow. And there's Kristen right there. Hey. Hey, Kristen. How are you. Can you hear me? I can hear you. You sound good. You look good. How are you? Can you hear me? No, you were, you were doing great. Come back. Hey, Kristen, how are you? Oh, yeah, put the ear pods in. There we go. Oh, now Duke's come back in. Duke. My dog's going nuts. There you go. Can you hear me now? How about now?
- [50:02]
Kristen Kral
I can. Now I can't.
- [50:03]
Jim Acosta
Sorry.
- [50:04]
Kristen Kral
I was trying to do it without the headphones.
- [50:06]
Jim Acosta
No, no. Sometimes you can do it with the headphones. Sometimes you can. I think it sometimes depends on, like if the AirPods are activated, then the phone wants. But anyway, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Kristen Krau with Fair Share America. Kristin, I was just talking to Steve Schmidt about this. I was just talking with Ali Velshi to some extent about this. There has been this grassroots movement rising up in this country. You're seeing people showing up like the hands off events that we saw last weekend. I know you have an event happening up at the Capitol tomorrow along with other groups basically advocating for tax fairness, something we don't have in this country. Tell me a little bit more about what you're going to be up to tomorrow.
- [50:46]
Kristen Kral
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. So Fair Share America has brought over 500 members, members from 32 states all across the country. We have a massive rally planned tomorrow at noon on the steps of the Capitol. And then delegations are going to meet with nearly 200 members of Congress, their representatives, especially those that will meet with them. We know that some members of the GOP are refusing to meet with their constituents to really share the anger and outrage at this GOP budget bill that would put trillions of dollars of our tax dollars into the hands of billionaires at the expense of things like health care, food supports, public education. And we're morally outraged, and we're taking it to them and drawing a line in the sand.
- [51:34]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, it's a very big moment that's happening right now because as you know, Kristen, and this is according to NBC, House Republican leaders are barreling forward with plans to vote on a new budget blueprint to begin work on Trump's sweeping legislative agenda. And it's far from clear whether Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to corral enough votes. But, you know, this is all about Trump's big, beautiful bill and so on. And one of the, you know, pieces of collateral damage in all of this, and it's a huge piece, is the massive cuts that may be coming to Medicaid.
- [52:07]
Kristen Kral
Yes.
- [52:08]
Jim Acosta
And you're hearing from members of Congress who are saying, hell no, you better not touch Medicaid because you're going to affect rural hospitals in my district. And that's why you're seeing even some Republicans rise up and say, no thanks, that's not going to happen. Talk about what the fallout might be of this legislation if they have to try to pay for a lot of these tax breaks on the backs of hard working Americans when it comes to important programs like Medicaid, SNAP and so on.
- [52:35]
Kristen Kral
I mean, I can share that. Stories that we are hearing from people that would be directly impacted are harrowing and haunting. On Thursday evening, Fair Share America held a teletown hall right as the Senate was debating the budget vote. A number of people came offline to talk about their family members. I think about a four year old granddaughter of a woman named Lizzie in Pennsylvania who relies on Medicaid to get treatment for brain cancer. They already have to travel 1,000 miles to get treatment. They also rely on SNAP for food assistance. And they are paranoid, petrified, terrified that if these cuts are enacted, what will happen to that little baby girl, that four year old girl and will, will she get her treatment? And will she be able not just to, you know, this is life or death. And we spoke to a father of, who has a son named Elliot who's, he's a young adult, he's 19 years old. He's relied on Medicaid for his entire Life for 24, 7 home care. And without that home care, his quality of life is completely in jeopardy. And so people are terrified and they're outraged. They are outraged because what this administration has done with Elon Musk as shadow president is they've made it very clear that this is about enriching their billionaire friends. They've made there's no way to hide what's going on. They put it on the table. And we also speak with voters who, and constituents who voted for Donald Trump a few months ago with promises that their lives would be better, that they would be looked after. And to do a 180 and feel just slapped in the face. I can tell you the people that we represent at Fair Share America come from different political backgrounds but are solely trained and furious at this administration. And there will be human fallout if this budget advances. But the political fallout that I predict and what we are seeing on the ground should also be taken into consideration by these members like their constituents are livid. This is not a bunch of Democrats with US in Washington D.C. this is a populist movement. And there Will be hell to pay if they vote with the billionaires against their own constituents and communities.
- [55:01]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And that is why we're seeing these town halls. First of all, you have a lot of Republicans won't even hold town halls because they're so worried about their constituents raising hell. But at the same time, you're seeing these rallies pop up, like the hands off rallies. We have the rally that you're holding tomorrow up at the Capitol. But here's the thought that I have, which is we saw Trump back down on the tariffs today. And I have to think it's in large part or in some part because of his rich buddies down on Wall Street. They're screaming on CNBC and so on saying we need relief. Look at the stock market. Market, look at how it's going down. We're taking it in the pants and so on. Who is there to do that for regular, hardworking folks who may lose their healthcare, who may lose their snap, who may lose their assistance? That's what I worry about is that there aren't those kinds of powerful forces at work for folks like the people that you're talking about, who will suffer real consequences as a result of all this. And I suppose that's where people power comes in.
- [56:07]
Kristen Kral
I was gonna, I was gonna say, Jim, I'm a Wisconsin resident.
- [56:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [56:10]
Kristen Kral
And so just over, just nine days ago, we saw, you know, we saw Elon Musk and the MAGA culture wrap their arms around a Supreme Court candidate, a state Supreme Court candidate. And I can, I can just say, money does not buy everything in this environment. And the vote shift in the state of Wisconsin, every municipality shifted their vote toward, away from MAGA and Trump and Musk towards candidates that reflect their values. And people should be people here in Washington. Candidates who are thinking about running, members of Congress thinking about voting against, should really think twice before aligning themselves so clearly with billionaires against their constituents and people power in this moment. I've been doing organizing for 27 years. This is unlike anything I've ever seen on the ground. And if they think they're going to vote and this is going to go away, they're making a terrible mistake and underestimating the anger and outrage of the American public right now.
- [57:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. So when you hear Trump say, oh, this is all manufactured by the Democratic Party, I mean, I think that's wishful thinking. Part of it is he's lying, but some of it is wishful thinking on his part.
- [57:23]
Kristen Kral
It's a, it's an Excuse to not have to confront what's really going on. And Fair Share America has been part of the organizing effort on the grounds with the hands off events on Saturday. We are. We have organizers in states where Republican members of Congress are refusing to hold rallies or hold town halls with their constituents. We're doing that, and I invite them. If you think these are paid people, please come sit with us. Please come talk to your constituents. Yeah. It's a distraction technique. It's a way to not accept responsibility of the harm that they are inflicting on real Americans. And, you know, again, I think most people know this is BS when they see it. 3 million people don't just hop out of the woodwork like, this is a very outraged moment. That money is not paying us to be here.
- [58:15]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. People are fired up. And it's the rally to say no to tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. This is happening tomorrow at the Capitol. It's around noon tomorrow. It's noon. And Kristen Krau, your organization's gonna be out there. Thank you so much for talking to us about this. I really appreciate it.
- [58:30]
Kristen Kral
Really appreciate you having me.
- [58:32]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And for all the folks out there say they never cover this stuff. I'm covering it. I'm doing it on this show. We'll continue to cover it. I've been calling it the Great American Pushback, and I think that's what's taking place right now. Kristen, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.
- [58:44]
Kristen Kral
Thank you so much for having me.
- [58:46]
Jim Acosta
All right. You bet. All right. Good to see you. So, you know, for all the folks out there, they don't cover this stuff. Why don't you cover this stuff? The Jim Acosta show is covering this stuff, folks. And I. I mean, I'm not saying this like I know that you know that. I know that you know, where am I going with this? That I'm doing this? So really appreciate that. And speaking of these town halls, Speaking of these town halls, drum roll, please. Drum roll, please. I will be hosting a town hall in New York City in Midtown. Yes. We will go to red places. We need to go to red places. But I'm going to be doing this in midtown Manhattan next week on Tuesday, on tax day of all days. You know, we all pay our taxes. There's certain somebody who doesn't pay his. But anyway, we'll get into that right now. More details to come, but if you're in the New York area on Tuesday in Midtown next week, you're going to want to attend this. It's gonna be a lot of fun. My good buddy Michael Cohen will be there. We're gonna try to have some other guests that will be on hand. I don't want to give away the store just yet because it's only Wednesday. And you know, you have to build momentum, you have to build buzz. We have to have groundswell. And it's going to take several days to do this. So we're going to take it on the road, as they say, and try to do it live, as Bill O'Reilly once said. And we're going to try. Yes. Are you going to try to be live streaming? Yes, we're going to try to live stream it. That's absolutely correct. So just hang in there, hang tight. More details to come and all of that. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I did want to say I added a little piece of artwork to the set today. This is a car, a what do you, what do you call it, A courtroom sketch of my press pass case back in 2018 when a Trump appointed federal judge gave me back my press pass. Wonderful sketch artists drew that. And I still have it to this day to remind me of it. And the reason why I bring it up is because and talked about a little bit, I did sort of a breaking news thing yesterday evening to talk about it. The Associated Press won their case against Donald Trump. A little bit of an update. We need to point out that the Trump administration is appealing that case. Surprise, surprise. But I just wanted to point this out that, you know, you have to have, I get it. Folks are a little down in the dumps these days. They're a little worried about what's going on. It doesn't help that the markets are in turmoil. That's got people freaking out. But you have to have a little bit of faith that, you know, we, we do still have some of the pieces of the puzzle here to carry us through this moment in our lives. And, and it is difficult. There's no question about it. We've been having some, some little issues here and there. There's no question about it. But the AP case, that really put some fuel in my tank that yet another Trump appointed judge looked at that case and said, nope, just because you want to, just because Donald Trump wants to call it the Gulf of America doesn't mean we all have to call it the Gulf of America. As I was saying during my breaking news edition of the Jim Acosta show yesterday evening, we don't make your bullshit our bullshit. That's the American way. So we'll see how that case twists and turns. But I did want to point out I did add a little artwork to the repertoire, to the motif here, to the Doge, to my own doge here. So you guys can check that out. But in the meantime, I want to thank everybody for tuning in today. My thanks to Ali Velshi. Please watch his program every weekend on msnbc. Really appreciate him bringing all that expertise. And Steve Schmidt, I mean, ladies and gentlemen, whenever we bring Steve Schmidt on, we learn something. But we also, I think we also absorb the passion that he brings to the table. And yes, somebody was just chiming in and saying, not on our watch. As I was saying last night, not on our watch. Not on our watch. Presidents do cave. Yes, they do cave. And we saw that in full force today. And, of course, Kristen Crowell, thanks very much for being on the program as well. Everybody, thanks so much for tuning in. Still reporting from Washington, I don't know why I couldn't get Duke in here today. He charged in here towards the end of the program. But in the meantime, still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Have a great evening. Bye.