← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Paul Krugman on tariffs, Jessica Yellin promotes her new Substack, plus Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen discuss their great new book on the 2024 campaign.
00:54:51
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
Welcome to the Jim Acosta Show. It is Thursday, Friday Eve, as I like to call it. And today we're talking about the art of the retreat. Stocks fell hard as the markets tensed up yet again today. Despite the big gains on Wall street yesterday when Trump caved and reversed course on tariffs. The White House sounding less confident today, the thrill is obviously gone. It was just 24 hours ago when we were told that Trump's very stable, genius superpowers were working their magic. As it turns out, that's not the case. The dow down about 1,000 points, closing the day about 1,000 points down. That was after that wild swing upward in the market yesterday. As you can see with me today, Paul Krugman, noted economist, former New York Times columnist. Paul, great to see you. Thanks for doing this.
- [00:48]
Paul Krugman
Good to be on, not so good to be in the market, but good to be on.
- [00:53]
Jim Acosta
Not too good a day on Wall Street. And what's your sense? Did it surprise you too much that it dropped back down today? I mean, obviously, I mean, you know, what he did yesterday was comical if it wasn't so terrifying. But your thoughts?
- [01:07]
Paul Krugman
Well, I'm actually, I think the market, it really should have dropped. It should have given up all of the gains from yesterday because now that we've had a chance to look at this thing, the latest plan from Trump, it's actually no better than what we, if you actually work out, you know, how high is the overall average tariff rate, it's about the same. This was, and if you added the other stuff, this is, I mean, you would be hard put to devise a set of moves on tariffs that would be as destructive as what we've just seen. So it's kind of maximal uncertainty, maximum destruction of confidence combined with minimal, I don't know if there's any upside. But anyway, this is really amazing.
- [01:52]
Jim Acosta
And we don't know where the markets are going to go next because yesterday they recovered because he caved on these tariffs and today it went south in a hurry. It recovered a, a little bit from some pretty steep and kind of scary losses earlier in the day. But the reality is we're in for a bumpy ride. The White House yesterday was saying this was the art of the deal in action. Stephen Miller tweeted yesterday, you've been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American president in history. I mean, none of this is giving any confidence to anybody who has any money in the markets right now.
- [02:29]
Paul Krugman
Well, I mean, the market's going to do what it's going to do and it's a very. I always quote my old teacher and colleague Paul Samuelson, who says that the market has predicted nine of the last five recessions. The market is not a particularly good gauge of what's happening. But if you think about it in terms of the economics, what we have now is we have an announced set of tariffs which are for three months, and then something will happen. And nobody knows, including Trump himself, nobody knows what happens at the end of three months. We've just seen the tariffs that were supposed to be a final ultimate game plan lasted a week. And if you were a business person thinking about making an investment, should you build the factory over there or should you build factory over here? Well, either way, you have a 50% chance of being left completely stranded because tariffs are zigged in that way instead of that way. And this is really destructive for the economy. And now what we're learning that it has, I mean, I've been looking more at the bond markets than at the stock market, which are under. And it's turning out that when you impose, if you look at the size of what Trump just did, we didn't do it. But we're looking at something that is a bigger shock, basically a shock to the economy that overall is probably about 10 times as big as the Smoot Hawley tariff that took place at the beginning of the Great Depression because tariffs then were rising from an already high base. Now it's starting from near free trade, and trade is three times as important to the economy as it, it was in 1930. So you've got this order of magnitude larger shock. And it turns out when you hit the economy that hard with basically winners and losers, you start to produce financial crisis because people there are key players who suddenly find that their portfolios have collapsed. And these are market makers. So you suddenly find hedge funds forced into fire sales of bonds. And this is really, it's a bigger nightmare than even the pessimists imagined.
- [04:39]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and. And why are the bond markets so important? Because that, according to a lot of the reporting out there, that is what prompted Trump to reverse course, that it, it got spooky, sent jitters into even to the White House. And, and that was part of this.
- [04:58]
Paul Krugman
Yeah, because. Yeah, yeah. But I have to keep the, the flow of money, flow of payments going on. So, you know, stocks go up, stocks go down. That has economy. But if bond markets start to freeze up, if financing starts to freeze up, then the economy grinds to a halt. I mean, we had a object less than that in 2008. After Lehman. And so that's really critical and it's just not. If people start to lose faith in US Government debt, which is, we're seeing that at the edges now. And my God, the whole world basically runs on US Government debt. Treasury bills are the ultimate collateral. They're so ultimate, the collateral that sometimes interest rates on treasury bills go negative because they're better than cash. And in times of stress, people start to hold treasury bills. So you look at everything that's going on with crazy tariffs, erratic tariffs, and then lots of rhetoric about punishing countries and maybe we're going to force them to convert their short term loans into long term. And it's almost, it's calculated to undermine confidence in, you know, this is, I'm sorry, I'm a little incoherent here, but it's just so stunning.
- [06:15]
Jim Acosta
No, no, it, it is, it is stunning. And I think we're all kind of in this moment where we're strapped into the roller coaster, we don't know where it's going and the tracks may be gone at the other end of the ride. And that's the scary part in all this and the way this all got started. Paul, I wanted to talk about this because I, I posted about this in my substack post this past weekend. You highlighted some of just the crazy numbers that Trump was throwing out there in that original Rose Garden ceremony when he had that crazy chart next to him with all these numbers that appear to be pulled out of thin air. We still don't know what those numbers were.
- [06:51]
Paul Krugman
Well, we kind of been a formula. Initial reports were might have been devised by ChatGPT. That was one of the stories. Apparently ChatGPT and other AI programs will give use something like that if you ask a stupid question. But it's possibly something that is out of the confused mind of Peter Navarro, Trump's trade czar. But in any way they clearly they rushed this. We now know from some reporting that they didn't settle on those first tariffs until three hours before Trump went into the Rose Garden and held up that chart. And it makes, I mean there's a kind of, there's a story behind it, but it makes no sense at all. And they're huge, as we can see. I mean the glitches, the 10% tariff on the herd and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited by nothing but penguins, people were really not. There are no people there. Literally nothing. But we're taxing the penguins and that's telling you that there's no thought going into this. And actually I want to say something. When we talk about art as a deal, that's a really important point here because what's really important is that there are no deals possible. The premise of this whole thing is that we are being treated very unfairly, very unfairly by other countries. And while you can make a case about China, the European Union isn't doing anything wrong. They have a very low tariff on US Exports as we do, or did on their exports. There's no deal for them to make because there's no concessions for them to make because they've already removed almost all tariffs on US Products. Canada, Mexico. What are we supposed to be getting a deal for? So it's unclear how this ends. Basically.
- [08:46]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, the penguins thing, I mean, I'm still chuckling over that. I mean, we're putting tariffs on the penguins. It sounds like we're eating the dogs and eating the cats. But anyway, the other thing, Paul, that I wanted to get into, and we can only speculate on this as to whether or not it's true. Time magazine reporting, others reporting, Senator Adam Schiff called on Congress to investigate whether Trump engaged in insider trading or market manipulation when he paused those tariffs yesterday. You'll recall Yesterday morning about 9am in America, he put out that truth social post saying it's a great time to buy. And then four hours later, he put a pause on the tariffs. And of course, there are accusations of market manipulations and whether some pump and dump thing or dump and pump. Is it possible that that's going on here?
- [09:35]
Paul Krugman
It's entirely possible. In fact, you'd be kind of surprised if it didn't happen. Whether it was a deliberate strategy, I don't know, but it's not. You know, we've got an administration that accidentally includes reporters in military attack plans, so that's true. Sudden swerve in tariff policy wasn't leaked to anybody, wasn't leaked to, you know, to friends and family and God knows who. And that people didn't. I mean, it's highly likely that people had advanced word of it and bet on stocks based on that knowledge. Whether it was a deliberate scheme, we may never know, but. And how big it was and who benefited, well, that would be something for the securities and Exchange Commission to investigate, except under this administration it won't. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's wrong to talk about this. Although the insider trading is, in the end just an additional frill on additional point in a 97 count indictment of what has just happened on economic policy.
- [10:43]
Jim Acosta
Right. And it's not as though they're going to investigate and prosecute Trump. I mean, not this Justice Department. There's no question about it. And what about China? I mean, there's a lot of reporting that China has been bracing for this moment, preparing for this moment for years. They have a playbook. They just have to get it off the shelf and dust it off. They were kind of preparing for this. Maybe not the level of this nuttiness, but they've been preparing for this.
- [11:08]
Paul Krugman
Yeah, I mean, China is not. They have lots of problems themselves, and there's a lot to criticize about their economic management, but they have been aware that the United States is unhappy with them. And that was, you know, even the Biden administration had some pretty serious industrial policies aimed at diminishing our exposure to China. But confronted with this, which is big and also dumb and ill considered, they must be actually feeling quite cheerful because this they can counter. I mean, it's one thing if the United States is doing targeted subsidies on high technology industries or something like that, which we were doing, but this big, dumb tariff at a time when the United States has alienated everybody else, this is. This is a trade war that the Chinese probably think they can win.
- [12:04]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And the other thing that scares me about this, and of course we have no insight into this as well, but a trade war, if it spirals out of control and it gets out of hand, I just worry about Taiwan. I mean, I just think that. I don't think that's an unrealistic fear.
- [12:22]
Paul Krugman
No, that's right. If you ask for what would be the short of nuclear war, what would be the scariest scenario? For me, it probably would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan because. And this was careless. This is. Multiple administrations in the United States were careless. We should have thought about being so dependent on for an island that China claims that is very close to China for semiconductors. And a disruption of the supply of chips from Taiwan would be really, really bad. Now, we started to make some progress in limiting that exposure again under the previous administration. Now, Trump says that the CHIPS act is very, very bad. But, yeah, if the trade war, the whole basis of us. The reason that the United States got into trying to have a system of rules for international trade was precisely because US Leadership going back to FDR believed that trade was a way to bring countries, particularly bring the democratic world, closer together. We thought of trade as an alternative to war. As we think about, the idea was that Western Europe, if we could bind the French and the German economies together, there would be no more wars in Europe, which has worked out so far that if the United States could be closely linked economically to Europe, to Canada, that it would build a foundation for peace. So the flip side of that is that if we devolve into trade wars, particularly if we start them, which we just did, then those can all too easily turn into actual wars. And so that is really, really what you don't want to have happen. But we have careless people. And if the Chinese invade Taiwan, we might be too busy invading Greenland to do anything about it.
- [14:13]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Good Lord. And Paul, I don't want to hold you up forever. I've got Jessica Yellen coming up in a little bit. And then in a short while after that, Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes are going to talk about their new book, Fight, which has a lot of great insights in it. But Paul, we have to talk about the GOP budget bill that is in Congress. It is starting to make its way through the Congress. And the new Congressional Budget Office analysis predicts that the tax plans by the GOP would increase the federal deficit by $6 trillion over a decade. That counts the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, plus the 1.5 trillion worth of new tax perks. Republicans are seeking this all according to Politico, over 30 years, the tax cuts are estimated to add $52 trillion to a national debt that currently tops 36 trillion. I can't tell you how many Republicans I've had on my old show, Tim Burchett was one of them. And they would scream and hop up and down about the deficits and the national debt and this budget bill. I mean, talk about, I mean, we can go in lots of different directions, the way they're trying to pay for this by slashing Medicaid and so on. But just going back to the debt discussion, the bond discussion we were having, they're talking about exploding the national debt of this country with this legislation.
- [15:30]
Paul Krugman
I mean, the whole out of 10 extremely vocal deficit hawks over the past couple of decades, maybe one was actually sincere. The other nine were all using it as a way to basically, we have to fight the deficit, and that means slashing your spending. But of course, we're also going to cut taxes for rich people. So it was always mostly a phony claim. And you could get away with that to a certain extent. I mean, the United States had maybe still has, I'm not starting to have debts. We had a lot of running room, advanced countries that are stable, responsible, and especially if they happen to be owners of the world's reserve Currency have a lot of leeway. So under ordinary circumstances I would say, okay, we probably should do something about the deficit, but I'm not particularly worried about this. But to be doing it at exactly the moment when you are totally undermining US Credit policy, when you are possibly destroying the dollar's international role, when you are already having major tremors in the bond market over this stuff spillover from the tariffs. Yeah, this is one more nail in the coffin. And I think it is important so to look at when people say that Trump is a populist, look at this tax policy. We're going to raise tariffs, which is an extremely regressive tax. It falls most heavily on lower income, falls heavily on the working class. We're going to slash programs that are a lot of people, not just the poor, but a lot of people in the working class, again depend on at least the possibility of being able to get Medicaid and food stamps if necessary. We're going to slash all of that so that we can have tax cuts for the 0.01%. Now, this is, you know, this is as anti populist as you get.
- [17:29]
Jim Acosta
It's very anti MAGA too. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Paul, but I mean I know this from being out on the campaign trail. I've visited all 50 states. Just about every MAGA rally that I've been to was within a couple of miles of a Walmart. And if we're slapping tariffs in the neighborhood of 150% on Chinese goods and coming into this country, isn't that going to adversely affect Walmart shoppers? I mean, I'm just.
- [17:53]
Paul Krugman
Yeah. To wear my comments back for a moment. If you look at, it's not just that working class people spend more of their income because they aren't saving as much as people with high incomes. It's also that they tend to buy goods. They tend to buy imported goods. High income people spend a lot of money on services. They go on vacations. They spend their money in expensive restaurants. And the cost of a meal in an expensive restaurant is very little that is the cost of the food. It's more about the preparation and the environment. But if you can't afford to do that, you're buying food in the grocery store, you're buying stuff for your home in Walmart. And it's very heavily stuff that is being is hit directly by these tariffs. So you have, it's the, basically the tariffs are the biggest tax increase in possibly the biggest tax increase in American history. You'd have to figure that out. But it's actually a big tax increase that falls squarely on middle and lower income Americans and it's not being used to pay for anything productive. It's being used to partially offset the cost of massive tax cuts for the wealthy. So, my God, people, I will say people who, working class Americans who voted for Trump really were, they were, they were taken. I mean, we can talk about why that happened. That's a whole other discussion. But clearly they were taken for a ride. They did not understand what they were voting for.
- [19:29]
Jim Acosta
Well, Paul, I really appreciate it because I know you're in a slightly different time zone. Thank you for staying up and having this discussion. It's just, it means so much, I think, to a lot of the folks who are tuning in because people are worried right now and a lot of folks who are watching this may be close to retirement. My God, I, I so worry about those folks.
- [19:49]
Paul Krugman
It's, it's, it's terrifying. I mean, I, you know, I'm in the class that doesn't need to worry about it that much, but I realize, you know, this is ordinary families trying, literally, people trying to put food on the table will be hurt, hurt badly by all of this.
- [20:03]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Thank you, Paul. Great talking to you. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much.
- [20:07]
Jessica Yellen
Great.
- [20:08]
Jim Acosta
Paul Krugman, great columnist. It's fantastic that he is on Substack. And you know, if you, if you're not following Paul on Substack, you really have to, you have to subscribe to Paul because the, the way he breaks things down and puts it in plain English, it's, it's invaluable. And, and so there aren't many people out there who do it like Paul, so I'm really happy to have him on. I've got us another great guest, my former colleague, Jessica Yellen, longtime buddy of mine. We have not been in touch as much as we should have been in recent years, but I'm just so excited that I'm going to get to talk to Jessica. If I can just plug this in correctly. There it is. And she has a new show starting on substack at 5:00 today, as a matter of fact, I believe, and I think Jessica is going to be connecting in just a second here. There she is. Hey.
- [21:01]
Amy Parnes
Hi.
- [21:02]
Paul Krugman
It's so nice to see you.
- [21:04]
Jim Acosta
It's been so long. What the heck's going on?
- [21:07]
Amy Parnes
I don't know. Just hanging out here doing independent media.
- [21:10]
Jim Acosta
It's fun, right?
- [21:11]
Amy Parnes
You look like you're having so much fun.
- [21:13]
Jim Acosta
I'M having a great time.
- [21:14]
Amy Parnes
Yeah. And it's just like you get to be your own boss.
- [21:17]
Jim Acosta
You get to be your own. For the first time in the longest time, I like my boss. I have to say that's not a dig at anybody. It's just a joke.
- [21:26]
Amy Parnes
I have to.
- [21:27]
Paul Krugman
Right.
- [21:27]
Amy Parnes
You don't have to be worried now.
- [21:28]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, no, exactly. And you are starting a show on substack in about 40 minutes. So I have to. I can't hold you up for very long. But that's exciting. It is.
- [21:37]
Amy Parnes
I've been doing, you know, news elsewhere, and I've seen what you've done and how much fun you're having, and I'm launching with you. So thank you for being my first guest. I can't wait to talk to you about your impressions of then versus now and, you know, your unique insights and.
- [21:52]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, have I got impressions? I got, you know, impersonations impressions. No, no. I'm excited about this and I can't wait to join you. I do want to just ask you one political question, and that is, I mean, you just heard Paul and I talking about the tariffs and everything. And you spent so many years at the White House covering this stuff. It's pretty extraordinary what we're watching right now. But it does seem as though, because people thought, you know, Trump is bulletproof, he's Teflon and so on, and he's not gonna be affected by any of this. But there's a new Q poll that show Quinnipiac University poll that shows he's at 41% right now. So some of this stuff is starting to have an impact.
- [22:29]
Amy Parnes
I think people, first of all, they understand a tariff is fundamentally a tax. So there's concern about that. And I think he's taking a hit with his poll numbers. And you're also seeing his own base of support start to fracture for the first time. Some of the most loyal members of the Senate are criticizing his policies, some of his donors. And once that sort of unified exuberance wears off, it's very. You can't rebuild that. So we're going to talk a little bit. I'm going to ask you about this. Do you think those fractures will grow deeper in.
- [22:57]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, we got to talk about that. I mean, I tend to think they're all petrified of him and they'll push a little bit. I was sort of taken aback that Ted Cruz was criticizing these tariffs the other day, but maybe he's sort of saying, well, 2028's around the corner.
- [23:11]
Amy Parnes
I don't know, but, I mean, Grassley, who was one of his most devoted loyalists, you know, had a list of alternate electors on January 6th for him that committed is now co authoring a bill with a Democrat to block Trump from having this power to enact tariffs. So that's a pretty marked shift. I defer to you on understanding the Trump magic of how he pulls people back even when they break with him. But it does seem that for the first time, they're maybe willing to say enough.
- [23:40]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, it's incredible the, the ability to primary people. I mean, we saw they were using that as a lever during the Senate confirmation hearings of these various, you know, nominees. I mean, how RFK Jr. Is in charge of HHS. I mean, you know, I wish somebody would draw me a picture as to how that is. In the.
- [23:59]
Amy Parnes
While you were live, I don't know if you know this, he declared that he will solve the mystery of autism in four months.
- [24:04]
Jim Acosta
I saw something about that. It's just unreal. And the stuff that he's saying, and now he's kind of embracing vaccines a little bit. And then is it the Maha people that make America healthy again? People are kind. There's a backlash against that. And you just can't put people in these roles that, well, are like RFK Jr.
- [24:23]
Amy Parnes
I know we've got a lot of. Or Kristi Noem going to that prison in El Salvador with her hair extensions and Rolex watch, using humans as set design. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of people who just.
- [24:35]
Jim Acosta
She has these outfits, she's dressing up, she's cosplaying, she's got the rifles and stuff. And I guess she was kind of pointing one at this guy next to her. People were saying, you don't hold a. You know, please don't do that. Kristi Noem, you know, I live in.
- [24:47]
Amy Parnes
La and I meet producers who tell me, like, we could literally, if we wrote this, people would say it's over the top.
- [24:53]
Jim Acosta
It's true. No, it's very true. And I've always wanted to ask you this, and I'll ask you this, and then I'll let you go, because I know you gotta get ready and all this stuff. But. But when you say news, not noise, what does that mean?
- [25:04]
Amy Parnes
So my whole mission is to give people the information in context, with jargon defined from experts, without all that extra conflict, rage and sort of drama that we add in TV news in order to keep people from flipping the channel. Yeah, it's just like what you need told by a human being. You Know, sometimes. Didn't you feel like we had to be these robotic people kind of?
- [25:30]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, sometimes. It's true. And I mean, when I. That we can talk about this when I come up with you, but that's sort of why I did what I did when I was covering Trump, because I just thought, you know, we can't just. If he's going to act like a maniac, you just can't do that kind of. You know what I mean? Like. Well, one side says, you know, it's. It's okay to pardon January 6th rioters, and the other side says it's terrible. No, it's just terrible. It's just a terrible thing. And I think we can just say that. You know what I mean? And that's sort of what I'm doing. It's just. I'm just saying it.
- [25:58]
Amy Parnes
You led the way, you really did, on just being real in the moment and reacting to what as a normal person would, with a lot of journalistic experience.
- [26:07]
Jim Acosta
Well, I learned from you, Wild times. Well, and I learned from you and all your professionalism, and Jessica and I worked together at the White House together very briefly, but. All right, I'll let you go. We'll talk in just a few minutes. But great to see you.
- [26:18]
Amy Parnes
Great to see you.
- [26:19]
Jim Acosta
At 5:00, switch over to see Jessica. And this is like, we're on a TV channel now. Is that what this is?
- [26:24]
Amy Parnes
I don't know. I know. It's like Substack's the new home for talk and information.
- [26:29]
Jim Acosta
I'm into it. It's terrific. Okay, good to see you.
- [26:31]
Amy Parnes
All right, talk to you soon. All right, have a good show.
- [26:33]
Jim Acosta
All right. Okay, thanks a lot. Okay, that's my old friend, Jessica Yellen. And it's great to see her. It's always great to see her. She and I worked together for a very long time. And you guys may remember she covered Barack Obama during the first Obama administration. And I remember there were debate nights when Jessica and I would be in the double box. And I think it was the 2012 campaign. She was covering Barack Obama and I was with Mitt Rom. And so Jessica and I would talk to one another, but we would talk to each other on tv. And it was just like the life of a TV correspondent. You don't always get to talk to your friends off camera. You're kind of talking to them a lot on camera. And that's sort of the friendship that Jessica and I had over the years. But it was great to talk to her just now. And as she was just saying a few moments ago, I'll be with her at the top of the hour on her show that she's starting here on Substack. Yeah. Somebody's asking, are you Jessica's guest at 5? That is what I was attempting to say and I apologize if I didn't say clearly enough. Yes, I will be Jessica's guest at 5 o'clock on the Jessica Yellen Show. And she's been calling it news, not noise, for such a long time. And I love the way she puts that. I think that's a terrific way of putting it because that's what we need. And places like Fox where when the tariffs are happening and Jeanine Pirro is saying, I don't really care what happens with my 401. And Jesse Waters is saying, you know, if Biden were doing this and the market was crashing, I'd be giving him a hard time. I mean, these are literal things that they have been saying over at Fox. And that's what Jessica is referring to when she says noise. I mean, that is it's a noise machine over there. And they anyway, you've heard me go on this rant before, but they just pump it out into people's heads and it's part of the reason why we're in so much damn trouble as, as it stands right now. All right, in just in a moment here, I'm going to try to bring in and this is going to take some Herculean efforts on my part. You know how I enjoy using the substack machine and putting other human beings in these boxes along with us. And so John Allen, Jonathan Allen, longtime friend of mine, longtime campaign reporter, nobody covers politics like Jonathan Allen. And Amy Parnes, also terrific, fantastic political reporter. And John and Amy have written several political books together, you'll recall, over the years. And now they are writing a book about the 2024 campaign called Fight Inside the Wildest Battles for the White House. All right, let's see if I can use the substack machine here. And John's handle on substack is the more complicated one. So I'm going to try to do that one first. He has like letters and numbers and whatnot. Oh, there he is. Okay, so there we're going to try to add John Allen and let's see if that works in the sub stack machine. And I wonder if I should let John Allen establish first add Amy Parnes because Amy's is very simple. Amy does not have a lot of numbers. John's is like a password that you would use for your Amazon account. That's what his account handle looks like. Like, we've got John coming in. All right, you know what? Let's just. Let's just tempt fate here with the substack machine. And let's see. Can I load them both at the same time? There's Amy Parnes. And maybe Amy will. We'll see. It'll be like a race. We'll see who loads in first. Will it be Amy? Will it be John? I have no idea. But it'll be one or the other, we hope. Or it'll be both at the same time. We're testing the limits. It's like the right stuff. Am I dating myself too much? When they would strap. Oh, there we go. Amy. There she is. There's John. Hey, guys. Good to see you.
- [30:15]
Jessica Yellen
Good to see you. How are you?
- [30:16]
Jim Acosta
Good, good. We make. We made the substack machine work. I appreciate it. There are lots of little hamsters spinning in a wheel somewhere in a warehouse in Kansas City making all of this work. But good to see both of you.
- [30:28]
Jonathan Allen
Good to see you. Thank you for having us.
- [30:30]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah, thanks for doing it, Jim.
- [30:31]
Jim Acosta
No, it's great. And a real reporter, John. They're taking his credentials off for the interview. So, Amy, I'll go with you first. And I'll go. Ladies first fight Inside the wildest battle for the White House. I was flipping through this earlier today. The book takes us behind the scenes for several critical campaign moments, including Biden's. The questions surrounding Biden's mental acuity before he dropped out of the race. The book details how senior Biden aides were worried about him in 2023, and senior Democratic leaders were concerned about Kamala Harris's chances. There was also concerns that Obama had about Kamala Harris. Let's dive into all this. It sounds like a lot of scoops in this book. A lot of interesting moments.
- [31:15]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. I mean, so for starters, we take you inside the freakout inside the Democratic Party. So we open the book, and you're inside Nancy Pelosi's living room, kind of watching the debate with her. He is freaking out about what she's hearing from donors and from lawmakers. President Obama isn't watching the debate, which we find out, but he does kind of quickly get on the bandwagon. And he's talking to Pelosi. We found out a couple of times they're having private conversations. And he is also sort of feeling out lawmakers and kind of toying with this idea of a mini primary.
- [31:57]
Jim Acosta
And so John, this is going to feed into, because, I mean, I watch, you know, the comments that come in on my show, and a lot of times you'll hear from Democratic viewers, subscribers, they're just like, stop blaming Biden. I don't want to hear about this. And then you have other Democrats who will say, I'm so pissed at Joe Biden. Why did he do this to us? So there is this divide in the Democratic Party, and it seems like this was going on behind the scenes before he dropped out. And we heard some of this reporting about Nancy Pelosi, but it goes much further than that. It goes inside the White House. There were aides around the president who had these concerns, but then there was this vanguard around him that didn't want him to drop out.
- [32:37]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah, absolutely, Jim. And we go through some of the episodes that people close to him watched and people maybe in that outer ring saw over the course of a couple of years leading up to that debate moment. I think everybody was shocked in that debate. I mean, even the people close to him were kind of was kind of shocked by. I mean, it's the leader of the free world who was struggling like that. And, you know, I don't think anybody would, would ever root for that. But I do, I do think that there was, there were divisions about whether Biden could win. Even before that debate, he was trailing Trump. Most of the leaders of the Democratic Party knew he was trailing. They wanted to get this debate up because they thought it would change the trajectory of the race, and it did, just not in the way they thought it might. And, you know, I think what you see over this is, and each of these players has their own motivation. Some of them, the big motivation is just to win the presidency, or in the case of Nancy Pelosi, to try to save the chance for Democrats to run the House or the Senate, you know, win the House or Senate. And others have their own priorities. And I think with Biden, he has a priority about legacy, and he has a priority about trying to stay in the White House. And, and those are not necessarily the same priorities as the rest of the Democratic Party, which is to stop Trump. And at one point, they were. And I think they just, after that debate, they really stopped being his priorities. Stops priorities stopped being the priorities of the Democratic Party. And that's why you see this huge fracturing.
- [34:02]
Jim Acosta
I mean, I have so many questions. I mean, Amy, you know, I remember Joe Biden saying, I'm going to be the bridge to the next class of candidates in the Democratic Party. And Obviously, he just didn't stick to that pledge. And was there a conversation that went on behind the scenes about, well, you know, Mr. President, you did say you were going to pass the baton here, so can you do that, please?
- [34:24]
Jonathan Allen
Quite the opposite. I mean, from sources told us starting in 2022, they had already decided that he was going to run, and they pointed to a successful sort of first term so far. They, you know, and he was really dug in. And a source told us that, like Mike Donilon said, it's really hard to walk away from the chopper and the house and the plane. And, you know, you've covered Biden for a long time. He's really stubborn and is increasingly so. And so he convinced other people, even when people were telling him, oh, we don't know if it's a good idea if you run. You know, he was really dug in and intent on running. And so that's exactly what happened happened.
- [35:07]
Jim Acosta
And the book is called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. I only repeat that because somebody chimed in and said, what's the name of the book again? So I like to do that throughout the interview. And I know that there are folks who are like, you know, guys, why are we talking about this? Water under the bridge and so on, but if you don't learn from these mistakes, I mean, you know, how do you correct them? And, I mean, this was my concern throughout the 2024 cycle that my doomsday scenario is that I thought that Biden would have to withdraw after the DNC convention. Like, this was, you know, early on in the administration, I was like, you know, this would be like the doomsday scenario. And he had to do it right before the convention. And there just wasn't enough time for Kamala Harris, I think, to mount an effective campaign. I mean, people can say what they want about Kamala Harris, whether she was a good candidate. She had that gaffe on the View when she said, I can't think of anything I would do differently than Joe Biden and so on. But it is shocking to me. Obama did not think that Kamala Harris should be the candidate. Is that, John? Is that kind of what you got out of your reporting? That's extraordinary. And has the Obama people, have they denied this or weighed in or put out a statement or anything?
- [36:13]
Jessica Yellen
The way they like to put it is that, you know, he was trying to. And he would say this. He said this to Kamala Harris on the day that. That she ends up, you know, kind of grabbing the baton from sorry I'm cutting off my wife calling there. It's okay, but, but, you know, we won't tell the day of the, the baton swap, you know, Barack Obama's position when she calls him and talks to him about an endorsement is he says he doesn't want to put a finger on the scale. And he is at that time trying to get this open convention going. Even as she's racking up endorsements from Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Obama still has this sort of fantasy baseball open convention idea going. I think by that point, Pelosi, who also had wanted that at one point had realized that the time window had collapsed and that there wasn't really enough time to do that. So she wasn't pushing for that in the way that Obama was. And she in fact, endorsed Harris within 24 hours. But one thing that you brought up that I think is interesting, we report for the first time in this book that a small number of high ranking DNC officials started planning out in 2023, what would they do if Biden died or somehow became incapacitated or withdrew at different points in the process. Like if he wins a couple of primaries and then, you know, can no longer run or chooses not to run, what do we do? Then they thought about the primaries. What do we do? So they, they had an idea of, like, what they would have to do at different points. Like he said, he ends up dropping out before the convention. But they knew what they would do if he won the nomination. And in fact, many of them, many of the pro Biden people wanted him to at least take the nomination because that would have left the power in the hands of the DNC chairman to name a replacement.
- [37:59]
Jim Acosta
Wow. So it was getting that detailed in terms. And I thought I read something where one of Kamala Harris's aides had come up with some names of judges who would have to swear in. Kamala Harris, President Jamal Simmons.
- [38:15]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah. Democratic strategist who served as her communications director. He into that job with a spreadsheet in case something happened to President Biden. And he had on the spreadsheet was a list, a whole list of Republican appointed judges throughout the country in case she happened to be somewhere where.
- [38:40]
Jim Acosta
Oh, my God, like, in case she was like on the road in Oregon, you know, talking to a school or something like that. You know, where's the nearest judge kind of thing.
- [38:52]
Jessica Yellen
The nearest Republican judge who was not appointed by Trump. They both wanted the validation of a Republican judge because they felt like they were worried Republicans would not believe that it was, you know, Legitimate if it wasn't a Republican and it couldn't be a Trump judge because, because the Democrats might not see it valid or might see it, you know, some sort of problem or be angry about it if there was a Trump judge. So a lot of planning went into that, Jim.
- [39:18]
Jim Acosta
And, and, and I, I, I want to talk about the myth that the media didn't cover it. And you guys can push back at me and say that's not true, or you could say, maybe the White House had a hand in this. I don't know. But I, on my old show, had conversations with David Gergen, David Axelrod. I interviewed Dean Phillips a couple of times. I mean, we were covering these questions. Fox was covering it every day. Obviously, anytime that Biden sneezed, it was breaking news on Sean Hannity's show. So this notion that it wasn't covered, I just wonder what you guys think about that. I know you weren't writing a media book, but forgive me for bringing up a pet peeve of mine when people say this.
- [39:56]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, I mean, it was covered. We all covered it. We all saw it going on. The White House pushed back so fiercely each time we did, you know, threatening to cut off access. Threatening.
- [40:06]
Jim Acosta
Really?
- [40:07]
Jonathan Allen
Oh, yeah. I mean, just really bad. Calling us horrible journalists for even doing this. Why aren't we focused on the other side? And of course, we are always focused on the other side, but that was sort of their pushback all along. And, you know, we've both done stories, even our last book, Lucky, we focused on how Joe Biden wouldn't do evening events. You know, we, we were all, we were in on this the entire time. And I don't mean in on it.
- [40:31]
Jim Acosta
As if we don't, don't create a clip for Fox to run or something. I know what you mean, though. Yeah.
- [40:39]
Jonathan Allen
About it. We knew about it and we were, every reporter was on top of this and looking into it all the time. So I don't buy that at all.
- [40:46]
Jessica Yellen
And there's a good explanation here for, at least for part of it, which is that if you're a regular journalist, if you were a, a news person, you're not a doctor. And even if you were a doctor, it would not be right to try to diagnose somebody from afar.
- [41:04]
Jim Acosta
That's true.
- [41:04]
Jessica Yellen
And so there was always this desire for us to, like, declare what was wrong with Joe Biden. And it's like, I can't declare what, what's, you know, what might be right or wrong with Joe Biden medically. Like, that's not. That's not my job.
- [41:16]
Jim Acosta
That's not your thing?
- [41:18]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah, no. I mean, I could talk to the White House officials, you know, what is the behavior that we're seeing? And we would get that from time to time, some member of Congress would say, hey, I was meeting with him and he was out of it. And you report it. But, like, there's some limitations, you know, from our need to tell the truth and to have evidence for the things that we are writing.
- [41:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And the thing I would point out from time to time, and I suppose this rankled some people and got under people's skin and other people did, too, is that Donald. Donald Trump was saying batshit crazy things out on the campaign trail that would, you know, you know, Biden was a bit of a distraction from some of these things. When Donald Trump is out there saying, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, Hannibal Lecter, electric cars, you know, windmills. I mean, the whole. It's sort of like, whoa, what the hell's going on here? But anyway, I want to look forward, guys, and maybe you get into some of this. In the book, who's on the horizon for Democrats? Did any of this come into play? I mean, there was this talk of a mini primary. Jake Carville talked about, others talked about it. And I suppose there were some names that were bandied about then as part of a mini primary if Kamala Harris weren't just given the nomination. And of course, the timing, what it was, it wasn't practical to have a mini primary at that point. But what are some of the names that you heard for that period back then, and might they come back and be a part of the conversation moving forward?
- [42:41]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, I mean, I think Gretchen Whitmer, obviously, Wes Moore, Obama, really high on Whitmer and Moore. He thought that incredible ticket. And we report that for the first time in this book. He also, you know, other people. Newsom is always in the mix. I think Booker right now is a pretty hot name in Democratic politics because of what he did last week. But, yeah, I think think a lot of people thought that there were candidates that were better off than Harris. But, you know, one source told us, at least she has a pulse, you know, and that was sort of the view of a lot of many Democrats at the time.
- [43:21]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. What do you think?
- [43:22]
Jessica Yellen
John Large man. Let me just throw out one name that Amy didn't. JB Pritzker is also in the, you know, often named and, you know, people to judge. I mean, I think everybody's heard A bunch of the names. I. What I'll be interested to see is if anybody emerges over the next, next you know, three years that has something different to say and what I think is important, you know, we have all. I think you learned something new on every page in this book about, you know, what actually happened in 2024. But I think one of the really important things is as a voter, as a grassroots donor or activist, I think this book lays out for you what you need to demand from your party leaders, from your consultant class, you know, and from your candidates. Because I think what we saw in 2024 was a kind of mass deception, mass delusion that was kind of pushed out there by the people at the top. You know, they said Joe Biden was fine. They said he was beating Trump. He wasn't. You know, you go through all the sort of things that the Democratic leadership told the voters up until and including Kamala Harris was told that she was going to win. She was, she expected to win on election night. And these same folks who have been running the campaigns for Democrats for, you know, the last 12, 16 years, you know, really forced a false message over different false messages over and over, over again on Democrats. And I think when the voters demand more from their leaders, the leaders will have to respond to that. And the voters deserve honesty and they deserve a party that has a forward looking, you know, vision for the future. Like, what does the modern American economy look like? What does the modern American society look like? And right now they're all very defensive and they're very anti Trump, but we haven't heard a lot of that new idea yet.
- [45:09]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, John. I mean, this is why I like you, John. I like for two reasons. One is you like, you like bourbon and cigars. That's one reason why I like you. The other reason is I think you have your finger right on this. And Amy, you do as well. But I think that there's a very strong possibility that, that other names will emerge, other people will emerge. I don't know if we've had enough of a conversation about Pete Buttigieg. I don't buy that he has this liability that everybody's worried about that will keep him from becoming president. I think he could become president. And I just think that we don't know what the experience is going to be like these next couple of years and what it may get us ready for. I remember covering Barack Obama and all the Hillary Clinton people saying he's not ready. There's no way. It's not going to happen. And all the pundits back in Washington, Barack Obama. And then you'd go to a high school gymnasium in Indiana and you would say, well, you know, I did that. And I said, I think he could become the president because he's really good and young people are fired up.
- [46:06]
Jonathan Allen
Yeah, absolutely. And anything can happen. I think that's why we wrote this book, Jim. I mean, you touched on this earlier, but a lot of people like to read it for what happened and they want the insight, they want the tea, as the kids say. But. But we write it for a playbook. You know, we wrote our last book Shattered, and a lot of Democrats and Republicans came to us after and said, this is. This is smart. This is a good playbook for the future. This is another playbook for the future. So don't just read it thinking about that, but think about what both parties could be from here on out.
- [46:40]
Jim Acosta
I agree totally. Yeah. Well, guys, I can't wait to read more of this book. I've enjoyed it so far. I am of the mindset that people should read this and should understand what happened instead of just like I used to call the 2024 election, the ostrich election. People stuck their heads in the sand. They didn't want to deal with stuff. And, you know, look what happens when you pull your head out of the sand. You know, the stock market is crashing and everything else, but the book is Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. And it, it was a hell of a battle. Was a wild battle. But Amy and Jonathan, great to catch up with both of you. I love listening to both of you talk. And I'm not surprised at all that you have another successful book. Book.
- [47:17]
Jessica Yellen
Thank you so much, Jeff.
- [47:19]
Jonathan Allen
Means a lot coming from you. Thank you.
- [47:20]
Jim Acosta
Of course. Anytime. Good to see both of you. And I can't believe I got you both on at the same time.
- [47:24]
Jonathan Allen
Yay.
- [47:25]
Jim Acosta
Sub stack.
- [47:26]
Jessica Yellen
Next time a cigar.
- [47:27]
Jim Acosta
Next time a cigar. I love it. I love it. John will always be hanging outside the hotel lighting one up. I would say, ah, I got to sit down and have one. And you always had damn good cigars.
- [47:39]
Jessica Yellen
It's my vice. It's the thing I spend money on.
- [47:41]
Jim Acosta
But you know what? You got to do that.
- [47:43]
Paul Krugman
What.
- [47:43]
Jim Acosta
What's life if you can't live a little bit? Right, right.
- [47:46]
Jessica Yellen
That's. That's right. I've been fortunate enough to be able to buy a decent cigar from time to time.
- [47:50]
Jim Acosta
And what are you smoking these days? I. Not that I'm encouraging smoking cigars.
- [47:54]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah, no, I Right now I'm smoking New World oscuros. It's a pretty full bodied. I buy them online for, I don't know, about six, six bucks a. A cigar. So.
- [48:03]
Jim Acosta
New World Oscuro. All right, I'm writing this down. Okay, very good. I always, I'm always bumming tips off of you. All right, good to see both of you. News and cigars. All right, guys, thanks a lot.
- [48:12]
Jessica Yellen
Take care.
- [48:13]
Jim Acosta
All right. Appreciate it. Thanks, Amy.
- [48:14]
Jonathan Allen
Bye.
- [48:15]
Jim Acosta
Great to see you again. And Amy and, I mean, they're, they're a hell of a combo. They've written a couple of. They've. They've written a few great books on the political scene. And every time they come out with a book, people pick it up because, you know, this is what happens when you're experienced political reporters like Amy and John. People say, oh, that last book was so great, I got to get the next one. And that's, that's what's happened here. And so I get it. There's some people who, who are like, you know, I don't want to hear about this anymore. I don't want to, you know, it's all water. The bridge, as I say, water under the bridge and the entire village under the bridge. You know, there's no question about it. But you have to learn from the past, folks. And I. Somebody just said pritzker. Keep your eye on Pritzker, too. I agree with that. That's another one I would agree with. I think John was right on the money on that one. I do want to end the show. Two things. One is as. As Michael Cohen and I were talking about earlier today, we are still planning to do this live town hall in New York next Tuesday, midtown Manhattan. It's going to be at 6pm at the theater. 555 more details coming, how you can get tickets and so on. So if you're in New York, come and see us. If you can't see us in New York, we're working on getting to other places. You know, this is not the Beatles. I don't have a cast of thousands behind the scenes to, you know, say, yes, we hear the T shirts and we're going to Kansas City and Milwaukee. We'd have. It's just this is all fly by the seat of our pants. But so that's coming. More details coming there. I want to end, and I've been calling it the Dear Leader Files, which is a little tongue in cheek. But I want to add to this, not on our watch. Not on our watch. This might become A new thing for me. And I'm going to tell you why. Because this story deeply disturbs me. It involves a friend of mine, the Washington Post reporting. Others have reported this, of course, that Trump has directed the Justice Department to investigate cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official. Taylor, of course, penned that anonymous 2018 New York title or New York Times op ed entitled I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration, and an anonymous 2019 book that chronicled his observations and concerns during Trump's first term in office. Trump has basically put a fatwa out. I mean, it's disgusting what he's done. He's put out an executive order calling for an investigation into these two men. And all Chris Krebs did was come out after the 2020 election and declare that the election was free and fair and without any massive fraud. And of course, that Joe Biden won the election and so on. And because of that, Donald Trump is pissed at Chris Krabs and Miles Taylor because he wrote a fantastic book and wrote that op ed in the New York Times, blowing the whistle on some of the BS going on inside the Trump White House, that Trump is pissed at him. But Trump is using the power of the presidency, the power of the Oval Office, to go after each of these two men. And as I I posted on Twitter yesterday, I'm not going to call it X, I'll call it Twitter. That is un American. That's not what we do in this country. The president of the United States should not have the ability to personally target his political opponents. And I and many others predicted that he would do this if he got back into the Oval Office. There were former Trump administration officials who got out there on the airwaves, people like Michael Cohen, who would work in his inner circle, who went out there and said, if Trump is put back in the White House, he is going to do this. Now, of course, we can all talk about the stock market and the financial markets going down and what's happening with my 401k and the tariffs and so on. And that's all hugely important. I'm not disputing that at all. But when I say things like, not on our watch, I just want to say for folks who are like, oh, he's editorializing. This is a commentary. What about the news? This is the news. This is the news. And the truth is, it is un American for the President of the United States to declare an executive order that he's investigating people because of their thoughts because of their beliefs and because of the patriotic duty that each of these men did. And just telling the truth. And that's Donald Trump's problem. He can't handle the truth. And so I just want to say that I stand behind both of these men and I think all of us should as well. We should all stand behind both of these men and say to the president of the United States, not on our watch. You're not going to persecute people because of what they have done in the past in terms of speaking out against you and telling the truth. Truth. And it brings me to this. It brings me to this. I went back as I thought of this today, the legendary newsman from CBS News, Edward R. Murrow. He said this in his famous commentary From March of 1954 during the the McCarthy era, which was another shameful time in this country. Edward R. Murrow said, quote, we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not for men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. As Edward R. Murrow said, we will not walk in fear one of another. And I leave you with those words tonight when I'm thinking about Miles Taylor, friend of mine, Chris Krebs, good, decent person, served this country. I think we should all stand behind them and say to the president of the United States, not on our watch. I want to thank Jessica Yellen. I want to thank Paul Krugman. I want to thank Amy and John and their terrific book. Thank them for joining me as well. Still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Good night and good luck.