← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Rep. Jared Moskowitz slams Trump's Qatari Air Force One Scheme, Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump's love for MBS and Doctor Rob Davidson on RFK Jr's HHS mess
00:57:17
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
Good, good, good. Thanks again for doing this. Yeah, I know we did that one live. What was it? Gosh, I think it might have been right after I got started. And I thought, I gotta get Ruth. I gotta get Ruth.
- [00:14]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Anyway, we'll do it again.
- [00:16]
Jim Acosta
We'll do it again. Yeah. All right. Welcome, everybody, to the Jim Acosta show. It is Wednesday, and Trump really, really wants everybody to stop talking about this free plane he wants to accept from the Qataris, and he really, really wants you to think it's all legal when it's not. As you can see on screen with me, my first guest is Ruth Ben Guy. She is a renowned expert around the world on authoritarianism. And Ruth, frequent guest of mine on my old show and hope to have her as a frequent guest here as well. Ruth, great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us, sir.
- [00:53]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Glad to be talking about this. Corruption is the topic of the hour.
- [00:58]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because it seems that this is one where, you know, maybe people can't understand the crypto thing quite as well. And I get that it's complicated, but a free plane from the Qataris, I just feel like is something everybody can understand. And you have people like Ted Cruz coming out of the woodwork criticizing this, wondering, you know, how this works from a national security standpoint plan. But to me, I sort of wonder whether this will sink in with just regular, everyday Americans who just don't want to see the President of the United States selling out the White House. I mean, he was on Truth Social, his favorite forum for lying, and he said the Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force, Department of Defense. Not to me, when the White House said, no, it's going to his presidential library or whatever it's going to be called. Maybe it'll be a casino at the same time after he leaves office. And, you know, he's just flat out lying about this. His hand has been caught in the Qatari cookie jar, I guess.
- [01:58]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Yeah. And, well, the symbolism, it's none too subtle of seeing the President of the United States flying around and giving the status of Air Force One to a foreign plane. It kind of brings home the idea, even if you don't follow corruption, that this president could be bought, that he's not wholly our president. He's flying in a foreign plane. And of course, there are national security, huge national security issues, which this administration is very loose with, has rolled back a lot of protections against infiltration by Russia and China. They're, I would say, Willfully, almost like lowering down the gates of the fortress of national security in many, many ways, including by appointing Tulsi Gabbard, who, you know, Parro, the Kremlin sometimes. And so this is apparently not a big concern of President Trump, that there are national security problems. But the symbolism of him flying around in a foreign plane, that was gifted to him personally, just kind of says it all. If you study what I study, which is the personalization of power.
- [03:18]
Jim Acosta
Right. And talk about that, why is that important and what is it about? I mean, you and I have talked about this before. You know, he craves the trappings of an authoritarian dictator. And so he feels right at home in this part of the world.
- [03:33]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
He does. And we often have the focus on Russia, rightfully so, for many years, but there are other players. And in fact, a mainstay of US Foreign policy has been to cozy up to the Saudis because of oil. And the Saudis and the Gulf states are making a huge bid right now to kind of whitewash themselves and present themselves as players. And we know that Trump, the people he has always admired are autocrats, whether it's communists like Xi Jinping or the Gulf states, the Saudis. And so he wants to associate with them. And so we're seeing a reorientation of foreign policy to doing deals with them. But because he's an authoritarian, the authoritarians do not kind of see a divide between public and private. Everything is theirs in the sense that they don't see public office as serving the public. Government becomes a tool to enrich themselves privately, enrich their families and their cronies. It's a totally different mentality.
- [04:43]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And I've traveled, I mean, covering presidential trips with Obama and Trump. And you go to places like China or Saudi Arabia. I mean, you're clearly not visiting a democracy where people have personal freedoms. And, you know, and in Saudi Arabia in particular, I mean, this is a place that is led by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, and he is somebody who presided over the murder of a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. And to hear Trump lavishing praise on mbs, as he did during this trip, I thought was very disturbing. And at one point, Trump says to mbs, mohammed, do you sleep at night? How do you sleep? Critics doubted that it was possible, what you've done. But over the past eight years, Saudi Arabia has proved the critics totally wrong. He's your greatest representative. Greatest representative. He said to the audience there, and if I didn't like him, I get out of here so fast. He Says, I like him a lot. I like him too much. I mean, some of those words, I mean, it's just sort of over the top lavishing praise way beyond what a President of the United States, I mean, sounds like. Maybe sort of, you know, the head of a company that goes down there looking to drum up business, not the President of the United States. But every once in a while, Trump says something that, you know, I say, for as dishonest as he is, he's remarked he could be remarkably candid, even accidentally so. But when he says to mbs, how do you sleep at night? I kind of have the same question. How do you sleep at night?
- [06:09]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Yeah. And it's important to remember that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered not only because he criticized the Saudis in general, he also was looking into the corruption and corruption. There's 100 years of victims of authoritarian states. One of the most dangerous things you can do is be looking into their corruption. That's actually what had Alexei Navalny killed and his mentor Boris Nemtsov. They weren't just opposition politicians, they were anti corruption researchers. And Trump is at his most candid sometimes when he's talking about his feelings toward these autocrats. Something that literally, I thought about this like for a whole day and a half when he had his infamous meeting between quotes with Vance and Zelensky in the Oval Office. And after he said, you know, Putin had to go through things with me about the Russia investigation was though he was feeling guilty. He put Putin through this terrible stuff and he was failing as a partner and now he had to make up for it. And so the same with M. He's like, I like him too much. That's why I'm giving him so much, because they're doing all these defense deals and there's implications for intelligence, all kinds of things. And so it's almost like he professes weakness in these moments, but to sell himself personally and sell the United States to these autocrats as like reliable partners who will do their bidding, it's very chilling, actually.
- [07:49]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, it is. And. And one summit attendee, this is in Saudi Arabia, told CNBC, Trump and MbS, it's a bromance for the ages. I mean, to me, it's that that pretty much typifies things. But Ruth, the other thing that has been going on is the Trump family has been cutting these business deals left and right after their father's return to power. The AP reporting that Eric Trump has announced plans for an 80 story Trump Tower in Dubai, the UAE's largest city. He also attended a recent cryptocurrency conference there with Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial. He's also the son of Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. And so all these business dealings, as tacky as they seem and appear to the public, I mean, they also have the feel of what goes on in sort of two bit banana republics where the people who. It's an oligarchy.
- [08:45]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
It's an oligarchy. And again, the purpose of being in office is twofold. One is to protect yourself from prosecution. But the reason you need to do that is because you've got all these dirty deals. And so making these deals for Trump hotels and real estate, that's the Trump family business. That's obviously conflict of interest. But authoritarians don't even recognize the idea of conflict of interest. Right. And the other thing to say about this is I have a, I have a part in Strongman, which I added a corruption chapter to that book because as I did the research, you know, first I was like, okay, I'll have a, I'll have a chapter on propaganda and violence and personality cults. And then I realized that corruption was key to everything. And so it's not just the corruption of the leader. He, he has his inner sanctum. And there are always family members in there and the family as a whole is enriched. And this has happened with Viktor Orban, who's the muse of the GOP in Hungary. Hungary has been impoverished during his 14, 15 years in rule, but he's become so spectacularly wealthy along with his family, his son in law, all the cronies. There's a French documentary that just came out about this crazy enrichment. And so we're living through, every time we read about this deal and then that deal, we're actually living through this process of enrichment off of public office.
- [10:20]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And I was thinking about this and wanted to bring this up in the context of our interview. And I'm glad you brought up Strongman. It's a great book and it's terrific that you've updated it to include corruption because it's a huge part of this. My concern is in all of this, Ruth, over these next few years is that the Trump family and this MAGA orbit around Trump will enrich themselves to the point where it will be very difficult to dislodge them from power. It will make it more difficult to dislodge them from power because other people will get sucked into this idea that government is for Sale. The White House is for sale. You can enrich yourself in all of this if you just play ball and go along with us. And as you were just saying, it happens in other countries and people who say, oh, that can't happen here. Of course it can happen here. If you don't enforce the emoluments clause or something, you know, things along those lines. If Congress isn't going to pass a law to stop this kind of stuff, of course it can happen.
- [11:15]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Yeah. And you're, you're totally right that this is indeed what happens, is that the, the circle, the circle of those benefiting from the corruption widens. And so you've got all kinds of stakeholders who then become entrenched in the system, and then it's in their personal interests and business interest to keep the corrupt autocrat in power. And by the way, every time one of these deals is cemented, it exposes people if this is a corrupt deal, because the president is not supposed to be doing this. And we don't know what's going on, for example, with all the crypto stuff, because there's no transparency. So then those people get worried that they could be prosecuted. And so they need to keep the autocrat in power because then there won't be any prosecution because democratic processes of justice have been turned back. That's what happens, like places like Turkey and Hungary. And so what you described is the perfect. That's why it's so dangerous, because they can perpetuate the system in a way.
- [12:21]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, yeah. And when these tech bros are down in the Middle east with Trump, when they're traveling along with him, it creates this atmosphere and it just looks un American to have these corporate titans tagging along with Trump as he's going on sort of this fill up my bag dictator tour of that region. Obviously, presidents go on foreign trips, sometimes business leaders come and so on, but this just has a totally different feel and cloud hanging over it. I mean, that's the problem that I have. Ruth, the last thing I wanted to get into with you, because it's been on my mind, I talked about this with Joaquin Castro yesterday, is the cruelty that's being shown towards migrants during this mass deportation purge that's been going on in this country. People like Stephen Miller saying we're looking at getting rid of habeas corpus. Trump wants to get rid of due process for migrants. This is also a hallmark of an authoritarian country, is it not?
- [13:19]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Yeah. I'm beyond words for how upset I am at the scenes of these, you know, mask gangs Basically, who come and surround people and you're just walking down the street, or you're in your house and they bundle you into a black van and you're off. And that's exactly what authoritarian states do. That's what actually happens. In Turkey, for example, you know, you're just walking down the street, either in a Turkish city or you're actually abroad. If you seem to be a critic of the regime or you just fall, you know you've had made the wrong social media post. The gangs come in their black attire and they get you wherever you are. So this is so, so disturbing. And then we have the innovation of sending people off to some foreign gulag. So that's something that authoritarians don't often do. It's like a transnational repression. So it's, it's all very disturbing. And it's another, another measure of where we're going.
- [14:28]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And the question has to be asked of Republicans, and I know that people will say, oh, they don't do anything, they won't stand up to him, and so on. Doesn't mean we can't ask the question, where are they in all of this? Why aren't they do something about any of this? The New York Times has been saying just today, the US has sent migrants from Asia, the Middle east and Africa to Panama and Costa Rica, including families with young children. The Trump administration is also in early talks with Rwandan government to send deportees to that Central African country. And this month, the US Made plans to send Laotian, Vietnamese and Filipino migrants to Libya before backing down in the face of a court order. And one of the problems in all this, Ruth, is that the tentacles are spreading in so many different directions that even Democrats in Congress, even the courts, it's just hard. How do you play whack a mole with this?
- [15:19]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
That's part of it, and that's by design. And I just want to remind your viewers that the speed at which all this has happened is unprecedented. So if you feel like your head's exploding, there's a reason that this does not resemble even early Putin or early Erdogan rulers who came in via election. And even after a couple, they immediately go after the political opposition, like after a coup, like in the first few days, people are in prison by thousands. But they don't also attack all the federal agencies, the economy. They don't do this very often so quickly. So this is part of the problem you're describing?
- [16:04]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Well, Ruth, it's great to talk to you. Always appreciate it. I Feel like we need to book some time where we can just really keep going and going. I didn't want to do that to you because I know you were just telling me before we got started, you had just finished grading your papers and all the schoolwork coming in from your students. And I didn't want to put too much on your plate, but really appreciate your time. Always enjoy our conversations. I hope we can do it again real soon.
- [16:27]
Ruth Ben Ghiat
Me too. Thanks so much, Jim.
- [16:28]
Jim Acosta
All right. Good to see you, Ruth. All right. That's Ruth Meng yet who to me is just a national treasure. The way she has been able to become basically a household name in this country because of the way she focuses on authoritarianism is hugely important. It's hugely important because, I mean, people might say, oh, this, this sort of thing, it can never happen here. And so on. It is happening here right now. When we're talking about, you know, sending migrants here, there and everywhere, even countries not of their origin to in as part of this immigration crackdown, we all have to pay attention. I want to bring in Dr. Rob Davidson next. You might remember Dr. Rob. Hey, Dr. Rob. Good to see you.
- [17:13]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Good to see you, Jim. Thanks for having me here.
- [17:15]
Jim Acosta
It's been a while. I was just about to tell the viewers out there that folks and you're all over the place, so people know you anyway. But for the folks who don't remember you and I used to talk all the time during the COVID pandemic. You were a cable news fixture during that time. Everybody wanted to talk to you to get your take on all of this. And now we have a very different public health emergency, it seems. And it's self created. It's sort of like the self created crisis in our financial markets with Trump and the tariffs. He's injected RFK Jr. Into our public health system. And just today he was defending this is according to the Washington Post, was defending his messaging on vaccines. And amid a growing measles outbreak, questions were going back and forth. Mark Pocan, the Democrat from Wisconsin, asked Kennedy if he would vaccinate his own child against measles. Kennedy paused before answering. Probably. But then he went on to say this. I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me. And he did not directly answer whether he would vaccinate his own children against chickenpox and polio today. So we clearly we have an anti vax kook as the HHS secretary.
- [18:22]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, yeah, your words. But I would have chosen the same words. And you know, I think I agree with him. People should not take his medical advice. I agree. The problem is he put himself up for and was and was confirmed as the secretary of the, you know, of the health arm of the United States government. Right. That is control of Medicare. Medicaid is the kind of the biggest platform for public health messaging and policy in this country. And so, you know, he really can't take on that job and support the people he's supporting in roles like surgeon General and CMS administrator without expecting that people are going to look at his health care decisions and his rhetoric on health care issues and think that that is what they should be doing. Right. It makes it harder for patients and regular old citizens, but it makes it harder for us, too, as physicians trying to actually practice good medicine in the face of all this. Yeah.
- [19:19]
Jim Acosta
And I mean, I do want to talk about some of your concerns about some of the other picks in these other public health roles, but since we're talking about RFK Jr. I have to bring this up because people are bringing it up in the comments. And I knew this was going to happen, so I'm going to bring it up, too. I was going to say, here he goes again. RFK Jr doing weird stuff in public parks. NBC News reporting. RFK Jr posted photos of himself and his grandchildren swimming in waters known to be contaminated during a Mother's Day hike in Rock Creek Park. The National Park Service says you shouldn't do this due to high bacteria levels. Anybody who has lived in Washington, I think, for two weeks knows this. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. You're not supposed to swim in the Potomac River. You're not supposed to go in the creeks. These are public waterways through a big city. These are things he should know as a grownup and a grandparent. And yet here we are.
- [20:09]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I mean, I was born in 1971, and this has been the case since 1971. Right. They have posted. It's posted. Right. It's posted there, telling people this. So a couple of problems with this. Right. It is a health risk to he and his grandchildren. People can raise their children and grandchildren how they choose. You know, no one suggests otherwise. But to, to needlessly and recklessly endanger them. I mean, they talk about high coliform counts of bacteria. That's E. Coli. If we remember the Paris Olympics and triathletes coming out of the water vomiting because they were being told, well, if you want to compete, you got to swim in the sand. And, you know, despite dumping all sorts of chemicals in, those levels were definitely above what they should have Been. Well, these folks were competing, you know, at an Olympic level, like maybe their only time in their life. So they're like, hey, I'm going to take that risk. This is like, this is a guy just out on a hike with his grandkids a taking this risk. So that's reckless, that's stupid, that's needless. But then he's also, again, the head of HHS and posting this publicly. I mean, I will admit I don't always drive the speed limit. Okay. Sometimes I go faster than I probably should. I always wear a seatbelt. But I understand driving faster has a higher risk of potentially getting an X and all that. I don't go crazy. Maybe five over, seven over. I don't post pictures of that. I guess I'm saying it now, but this is just. I'm also not the head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration or the Secretary of Transportation. And so this guy's purportedly the mouthpiece for public health. And he's telling people this is okay, don't worry about what the National Park Service tells you. Don't worry about E. Coli that can cause kidney failure and skin infections. Just, you know, just do whatever you want and, you know, the consequences be damned.
- [21:55]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And our buddy Mike Fanone just chimed in with a comment as the comments are coming in, said he pees in that water. So that, you know, all the more reason. But my thought was maybe RFK Jr. Was fishing for another brain worm. I don't know. But, you know, this is somebody who has not made, you know, good public health practices really stock and trade in life. But.
- [22:18]
Dr. Rob Davidson
And he's profited off of bad public health. Right. He's profited off of his anti vax messaging and.
- [22:24]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [22:24]
Dr. Rob Davidson
And so that's. I mean, he's supposedly, I would imagine, not profiting off of endangering himself and his grandkids, but again, just doing something stupid that can make other people sick.
- [22:33]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [22:34]
Dr. Rob Davidson
It's hard to. Hard to understand.
- [22:36]
Jim Acosta
And I did want to ask you about this because I have not tackled this on the show. It is a interest of mine that I want to get into this Maha movement, this Make America Healthy Again movement, which also, I feel like at the end of the day is going to be some kind of grift. But anyway, you are concerned about the nomination of Dr. Casey means for Surgeon General. She's a wellness influencer. Those words alone give me pause. But your thoughts.
- [23:04]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, listen, Dr. Means, and she did graduate medical school. She gets to use that title. She didn't finish a Residency. And honestly, that's fine. I know people who didn't finish residency. It wasn't for them. Essentially you make the decision to go to med school around age 19 or so, and you start taking all the classes and then you start residency sometime in your mid-20s. And people's, you know, they change, they decide they don't want to, no problem. That's fine. Guess what? You probably shouldn't be the head of the Public Health Commission service corps in the United States. You probably shouldn't be giving medical advice. We as doctors really do depend on the Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, Reagan and Bush. One Surgeon General put the little warning on the box of cigarettes, right? Everyone knew they caused cancer. They called them cancer sticks. But they put the official seal of the top DOC of the United States government on the cigarettes and said these cause cancer, right? That led to fewer people getting cancer. Hopefully that led to the lawsuits. That really curbed the ability for cigarette companies to advertise to kids and to get them hooked early. This is a real job, an important job. And to put someone there who didn't. Right. Who didn't, decided they didn't want to pursue that field, that's one negative. And the other to someone who then took their medical degree, the MD behind their name, and used that to peddle very strange views on medicine. I mean, she, I think she said everything has to do with good energy and bad energy and rejects like an organ based system of disease processes. I mean, is that like good humors.
- [24:36]
Jim Acosta
From like the 1800s and stuff?
- [24:38]
Dr. Rob Davidson
You stole the words. What I was just gonna say, like, we used to not know about the germ theory of disease. We thought good humors, bad humors, you would bloodlet people, you know, when they had the bad humors. And guess what? Science research, you know, public dollars and research financing helped us learn that that wasn't the case. And we got antibiotics and we got treatments for cancer and treatments for heart disease. I've, in the past week, I've taken care of two people having acute heart attacks. Guess what? We had to put them on a helicopter, fly them somewhere where they put a catheter up into their heart and opened up the artery. We didn't exercise the bad energy by like singing to trees and having a seance. We did real medicine to help those people. We don't need someone like her. She and her brother, he's also a wellness influencer, former food lobbyist, who, you know, who wrote a book and profited off of their, their bizarre health views and now kind of taking that to the surgeon General's office. I hope it doesn't last, but we'll see.
- [25:35]
Jim Acosta
But the scary part of it is that it will cause a brain drain in our public health infrastructure. And that's one piece of this because you have the goofballs and the wackos and whatnot coming in all these different positions. And of course they have their orbits of goofballs and wackos that they want to staff around them, that the career folks who are there, maybe they're a few years from retirement, maybe they have offers in the private sector. They're just not going to put up with this business. And the thing that I get concerned about is what happens if another pandemic comes our way. I've, I've often said on my show and I've said it to other people that the RFK junior Cabinet selection to me is the, is arguably the most dangerous one of them. All right. Because of that, we just came out of this pandemic. We should have learned these lessons already.
- [26:23]
Dr. Rob Davidson
We should have. And basically we're giving a nod to weird conspiracy theories, giving a nod to non medical views in healthcare. I will tell people and I will try to encourage people like your physician. My wife's a family doctor, I'm an emergency doc. We are still practicing evidence based medicine. That is our job. The vast majority of doctors out there are doing that. The problem is the infrastructure. And the big sounding board of the US Government is kind of stating these views that go antithetical to what we're trying to do. And my wife has a family doc. Every day in the office has conversations about vaccines that people got their information from some uncle on Facebook. Well, now they're going to get it from HHS.gov you know, that's a real problem. And that is going to pervade that information stream.
- [27:12]
Jim Acosta
And they're talking about taking fluoride out of water. I mean, these are basic things that we all grew up with. You mentioned you're about this. We're the same age. This is all stuff that we grew up with. You got your shots when you went to public school. You had fluoride in your water in most places. Like these were just sort of given things and now it's, you know, it's been thrown to the lines of. And the conspiracy theorists.
- [27:37]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, it's. I mean it's troubling. I agree with you. I think this is a very dangerous pick. You know, I think maybe hegsets 1A, 1B, who knows? But maybe, maybe not my area of expertise. But, yeah, I think when we're. We're. We're messing around with people's health. When he hires a guy like David Guyer, who basically had the Maryland medical board charge him with practicing without a license for giving treatments to kids with autism that weren't medically sound, and now he is supposedly heading up this task force that's going to figure out what's causing autism when this guy has already done fake, fake articles saying it's vaccines that do it, and RFK Jr. Has said it's vaccines. I think that's incredibly dangerous. I think measles outbreak in Texas that has spread is incredibly dangerous. And I hope not foretelling years to come where we have bigger outbreaks. I've never seen measles. I've had a couple of cases of unvaccinated kids that we did test, and we had them go isolate. Fortunately, they end up being negative. Haven't seen that yet as a practicing physician, but we fully expect to. Right. And so we're all going back and doing our continuing education, learning about diseases like polio, like measles that we thought we got rid of, and now they're making a comeback. And you can only say this is because of people like RFK Jr. And now he's taken it to a bigger stage.
- [28:56]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And, I mean, you know, here's another example. This is in the Associated Press today, and, you know, on Trump's pick for surgeon general. She wrote in a recent book that people should consider using unproven psychedelic drugs as therapy, and in a newsletter suggested her use of mushrooms helped her find a romantic partner. I'm reading from the ap.
- [29:19]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I don't. I don't know what. I have nothing to say about that. Like, that's great. That's great. If she wants to use mushrooms for romance, I think that's great.
- [29:28]
Jim Acosta
But don't learn several. Yeah, don't we learn in basic science that some things could be coincidental? You know what I mean? It's sort of that whole thing where people said, I got. I got the COVID shot, and then. Then I had the flu or then I got Covid. It's like. Well, you might have simultaneously. Like, things can happen simultaneously. I learned this, and I'm not a scientist, I'm not a biologist.
- [29:49]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah. Correlation does not equal causation is what we say. Just because things happen around the same time doesn't mean that one causes cause the other. Again, my patient having a heart attack I just saw the other day on Mother's day a mother who was doing the dishes and then developed chest pain. Guess what? Doing the dishes didn't cause the heart attack. Although I helped her convince her husband that maybe that was the case and maybe she'll get out of that for a while. But yeah, that didn't cause it. Right. It was genetic risk factors. It was everything else that does do that. And we know how to modify those risk factors. If someone like Casey Means were involved, they might say, okay, well, go home and just don't do the dishes and maybe this won't happen again. Maybe it'll be okay. I don't think that's what we should expect. Another part of her past that really troubles me that I haven't seen reported as much as her views on contraceptives. She's gone on and on about how contraceptives somehow impair women's ability to have babies. They do allow women to control when they have a family. Right. And then when women go off of oral contraceptives, they are able to get pregnant. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have stated this clearly. Research has shown it. And yet she was on Tucker Carlson just last year spewing about this and creating this disinformation that might frighten women from using this proven, safe, effective tool to manage their desire when they have families. It goes on and on. I feel like there's no part of medicine she hasn't touched with these crazy ideas.
- [31:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, it really worries me as just like a layman, you know, that we're going to be in a position now where the next pandemic that comes along, we're just going to be willfully unprepared and we're going to have the wrong people in all these important positions. Last time around we had Dr. Fauci, we had Debbie Burke. We had some good people in there.
- [31:27]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Real people.
- [31:28]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, not this time around, but. Dr.
- [31:30]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Rob, real quick, the work they're doing to dismantle Medicaid and potentially kick 7 to 10 million people off of healthcare, the kind of the lower income folks, the people most at risk if we have another pandemic, you know, people who maybe they don't want to cover vaccines as routine care. And these people don't get vaccines because they heard it from RFK Jr Casey means now they get measles, now they get polio, and now they don't have health coverage. Like it's a double whammy. They're bringing it from every angle. And that's partly why I'm Coming on your show and talking to whoever I can. Why we started a podcast, Paging America, to talk about this. Why the Committee on Healthcare does this work. All of that, I think. And I appreciate you using this platform to help, help talk about this issue.
- [32:13]
Jim Acosta
Well, check out Dr. Rob Davidson's podcast, Paging America. We can find you on subset. We can find you on all the socials and always appreciate you talking to us. And I always learn something. So thank you so much. I can't believe we almost said good humors, bad humors at the exact same time.
- [32:29]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like good minds, right? Think alike, but yeah, anytime. Happy to come back and great to talk to you again.
- [32:34]
Jim Acosta
Great, great. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Dr. Rob. Really appreciate it. Great stuff. Always enjoy talking to him. And it's interesting you talk to folks like Dr. Rob and others, you know, who were just fixtures during the COVID pandemic. I mean, people forget how much we relied on their expertise. Thank God we had people like that back in those days because, I mean, you know, you just need that kind of expertise in our lives. You can't have just people going around saying, well, you know, I put some butter on it and, you know, everything is okay. All right, next, I'm going to bring in Congressman Jared Moskowitz. I just am typing his name into the substack machine as we speak, and we're going to bring him up hopefully in just a moment here. But. And he, he's just hopped on the substack machine. And a lot of folks, of course, know, doc, not just Dr. Rob Davidson, but Jared Moskowitz. He's all over social media. He's all over cable news. He's a fixture in a lot of news programs because he has been so feisty. He has been one to sort of light up those hearing rooms when, when these committees hold these hearings and all these important topics. And as we get ready to, to talk to Congressman Moskowitz, I do want to bring up a couple of things. One is that apparently there's some testimony going on right now up on Capitol Hill. Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, also repeating the notion that has come up that, that Stephen Miller and of course, Donald Trump has brought up as well, that there's this idea floating around inside the administration of doing away with habeas corpus. And I mean, you know, if Kristi Noems, the DHS secretary and perhaps, you know, you can't give her, you know, too much credit here because is she really in charge of that department? We don't really know. But, you know, this is, this is a major problem. All right. I just want to make sure I've got Congressman Moskowitz coming. Let's just make sure he is. Let's see here. But as folks probably saw last Friday, I mean, this is one of the more disturbing developments that came out late last week. Stephen Miller, of course, who is the deputy chief of staff over at the White House, came out in front of the White House, in front of the West Wing and basically said that the White House was looking into whether or not they can suspend the idea of habeas corpus in this country, which is the ability to challenge unlawful detentions. Let's see here. Maybe, maybe we just need to give it another second here with Jared Moskowitz. I'm going to try this one more time and hopefully we'll get it right. Sometimes these members, they're moving from meeting to meeting and hearing to hearing. But I mean, and I talked about this with Congressman Joaquin Castro yesterday, the idea that we would have a situation in this country, and I talked about this with Ruth Ben Ghiat earlier on in this program where we just do away with the idea of challenging unlawful detentions. The ability to challenge your being jailed is just outrageous. And there's Congressman Moskowitz right there. Congressman, good to see you.
- [35:55]
Jared Moskowitz
What's going on, Jim? How you doing?
- [35:56]
Jim Acosta
Hey, I'm doing all right. I, you know, it takes time. I, I describe it as the substack machine, but somewhere, I think in San Francisco, there's about like a thousand squirrels spinning in a wheel furiously to power this stuff. Hamsters, hamsters, hamsters. And, but glad we got you up here on the program. Really appreciate it. How are you doing?
- [36:17]
Jared Moskowitz
I'm fine. Why? Is something going on?
- [36:19]
Jim Acosta
What a time to be alive.
- [36:21]
Jared Moskowitz
Are you not entertained, Jim?
- [36:23]
Jim Acosta
My goodness. Well, if we could all get a free plane from the Qataris, that would be one thing, but when it's just Donald Trump, that's an entirely different one.
- [36:31]
Jared Moskowitz
Can you imagine for a second, just take an out of body experience. You manage for a second if Barack Obama had accepted a plane from the Qataris, I mean, they would be calling it the Barack Hussein plane. Okay. I mean, like the, the, the terrorist memes and jokes that they would be telling would, would be, it would be endless. Okay? You, you, you would think a meteor had hit the, the world, okay. And we were at a, you know, an extinction level event.
- [37:00]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, we might get there, you know, but, but here, 100 days in.
- [37:04]
Jared Moskowitz
But, yeah, but here, you know, we're draining the swamp, and yet the swampiest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. The person who literally wrote the memo that said this was fine was a former lobbyist for a guitar.
- [37:18]
Jim Acosta
Exactly. I know you can't make this stuff up. And so that begs the question, what can be done about this? And I suppose there's not a whole hell of a lot. I mean, I was saying my program yesterday, I'll say it again today, and I know it's pointless to ask this question, but where are the Republicans on all of this? I saw Ted Cruz, made some comments. When you've lost Ted Cruz, I suppose you might be in a world of hurt, but, you know, there's just been no appetite to take him on.
- [37:42]
Jared Moskowitz
They lost Laura Loomer on it. They lost Ben Shapiro on it. Right. Eric Erickson and Josh Hawley said some stuff, you know, Rick Scott said he was uncomfortable. There were more Republicans who have called this out than anything else so far that the administration has done. But let's just run through it real quick. Right? So 7. 747, 800 series, $400 million plane that he's getting from Qatar, gonna cost at least $500 million to retrofit it to turn into Air Force One will take several years. Okay. Maybe it'll be ready by the time Trump leaves office. Interesting. Finally get. We're finally getting, like, some sort of admittance that he's leaving office. That's good news. The Qataris brought that out. Thank you. To them.
- [38:27]
Jim Acosta
Maybe we should give him the free plane to leave office. Maybe that's. That's the enticement. You have it waiting for him on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews.
- [38:34]
Jared Moskowitz
That's exactly right. But then he's saying, well, it's a gift to the United States that will then go to his library. A library's gonna take five years to build. He's gonna fly this freaking thing. Okay. Before then. So this is all about replacing his. His aging 767, I think, is what he flies now.
- [38:51]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. So the one that really dated back in the 2000s, that one, I think.
- [38:56]
Jared Moskowitz
But it's a flying palace. It's a flying palace, Jim.
- [38:59]
Jim Acosta
I got it.
- [39:01]
Jared Moskowitz
We don't have nothing in return. Nothing. I mean, I mean, even a Jewish mother would be like, here's your $400 million plane. You have to come for dinner.
- [39:09]
Jim Acosta
You got to do something. Something in return. No, but here's the question. I mean, the national security implications of all this. I mean, Donald Trump himself has accused Qatar of funding and supporting terrorism. I'm wondering what the Israelis would think of a Qatari donated plane landing in Tel Aviv for a POTUS trip. I mean, that, to me sounds like something that would not go over well with the Israelis. I mean, the national security implications of all this are important, too.
- [39:37]
Jared Moskowitz
Yeah. I mean, obviously the whole plane's gonna have to be swept and taken apart and all of that. But let's think about other countries out there. I'm not even thinking about the Israelis for a second. I'm sure, sure they're very much taken aback about what's going on. But if you're Putin, you're thinking to yourself, let's get the guy a yacht, right? We have oligarchs here that have yachts. Let's give him one of the yachts. Or, hey, when we're chopping up Ukraine, let's create like a little Trump area, like an amusement park in Ukraine and give that to him. I mean, other countries are now like, what can we give the president?
- [40:06]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I know, it's true. It's sort of like I was on with Charlie Sykes earlier today and it reminded me of one of those game shows where you run through the supermarket with your shopping cart and you just pile as many, you know, goodies in your shopping cart in 60 seconds. He seems to be doing that across the Middle east right now. But I do want to ask you, since you are in the House and you can do something about this, the big beautiful bill in Medicaid, because Dr. Rob Davidson was just talking about this a few moments ago and how the cuts coming to Medicaid could be staggering and potentially really cripple the healthcare system in this country. Any thoughts on that? And what about this bill? I mean, do you see it in its current incarnation or wherever we are in the sausage making process ever really getting to Donald Trump's desk? I mean, it seems to me the Senate's going to take a meat ax to it.
- [40:53]
Jared Moskowitz
Well, look, you know, I don't know where it will wind up when the House will vote for it. It's clear that the Senate's clearly going to change it. So they're going to make a bunch of their members here who will probably cave because we've seen them capitulate over and it's capitulation season here in the House of Representatives. So, you know, let's see who stands up and if they have the votes to pass it. But look, this is everything the Democrats have been saying for the last several months. They're going to cut Medicaid by about $800 billion. And that's exactly what's happening, even though Donald Trump has made a pledge not to cut Medicaid. And so, look, they say one thing, they do another. And so these cuts would be devastating. It would kick millions of people off health insurance in order to pay tax cuts for. For billionaires and millionaires. And I want to be clear, that's a. That's an easy talking point. I want to give you the data. Okay. The old tax rate used to be 39. Okay. This reduction took it down to 37.6. Okay. So we're not talking about taxes, like, going up in dramatic fraction. We're talking about a point and a half, like, almost two points of it going up. And what. We're going to take that money from the poorest among us, and in order to give that tax that, we're then going to add $3 trillion a year, at least, to our debt. So Donald Trump will have added more than $10 trillion to our debt for the life of the first tax cut and then the renewal of the tax cut. So, so much for Doge and having to reduce our spending debt and all of that. The Republican Party is literally. They're twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to figure out how they're gonna sell the American people that they care about spending and driving our country into debt while doing this.
- [42:37]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I mean, I've heard so many members on the Republican side talk about how they care about debt and deficits, and this will obviously blow a huge hole in the budget for this country and drive up the debt. I did wanna ask you about this, since you mentioned Doge. I did look this up. You just said the other day that the Doge Caucus is dead, it's defunct. We haven't.
- [42:59]
Jared Moskowitz
So, Jim, don't talk ill of the dead, okay? All right.
- [43:03]
Jim Acosta
This is not like the Princess Bride. It's mostly dead.
- [43:05]
Jared Moskowitz
It's fresh. We're still in the mourning period.
- [43:09]
Jim Acosta
What happened? I mean, it seems Doge is dead. The Doge Caucus is dead. I mean, that just didn't work out, I guess.
- [43:15]
Jared Moskowitz
Well, I mean, look, so let me separate it. Elon, you know, had the Doge Committee out of the executive branch. He did such a great job, he had to leave the. To save his company, Tesla. Okay. But in the caucus, which I joined because, one, I do think there's waste in government. Two, I think we can make stuff more efficient. Okay? And so I joined. I didn't want to just give the Republicans that lane. And so I did go and make it bipartisan. But the caucus is dead. It's defunct. It met twice in five months. We weren't included in the process. Okay. Elon. And the executive branch did everything without Congress, and that was also a failure. They said they were going to find a trillion dollars. They only found 160 billion, if I use their math, which I think is wrong. So that means they didn't find 85% of what they were looking for. So that's a failure. And the last word of Doge is efficiency. The e. Did they not forget that? They've not made a single department more efficient? Go ask Newark. Okay? That's what Doge accomplished. Okay. So all they did was they.
- [44:12]
Jim Acosta
I guess it gets more efficient if nobody wants to fly. But anyway, you know.
- [44:15]
Jared Moskowitz
Yeah, I mean, they cut people, they cut programs. Some of that's now being restored. So the caucus, which is made up of members here in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, you know, it's dead. We were not included. It has no record of accomplishment.
- [44:30]
Jim Acosta
That's amazing. And, you know, one of the things they have been doing with the federal government, and, my God, it may cause, you know, disasters we haven't really contemplated as of this point. I mean, Trump is trying to get rid of fema. And this is an area where you have some expertise. I mean, you ran emergency management in Florida, and he just dismissed the acting Federal Emergency Management Agency head the other day, Cameron Hamilton, and he was basically fired for saying it would not be in the best interest of the American people to eliminate fema, which is what Trump and Kristi Noem want to do. So, I mean, what are your thoughts on this and what. What might happen? I mean, I think I know what might happen. But what do you think might happen if this actually happens?
- [45:13]
Jared Moskowitz
Of all the things that are being discussed now and not being discussed, this is one that's flying below the radar. That would be catastrophic. Okay, first of all, FEMA needs reform. I'll give the President credit about one thing. He's right that FEMA needs reform. And he started talking about reform before he started talking about removal. And so we've known FEMA's needed reform for years in the emergency management industry. That reform is getting it out of Homeland. Okay? Homeland's become too big, too bureaucratic. They got FEMA running all sorts of grants for immigration they shouldn't be involved in. And As a result, FEMA's gotten away from its core business of response and recovery. So for three years now, I've had a bill to get FEMA out of Homeland. And in fact, I have a bill now with Byron Donald, Republican running for governor, endorsed by Donald Trump. He's on my bill, as is Thom Tillis in the Senate to get FEMA out of Homeland. Okay? And we can talk about block grants to give states more, more buy in, but this idea of getting rid of fema. Let me explain something to you. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, you know that border, the Gulf of America. Okay, I slipped that in.
- [46:13]
Jim Acosta
Sorry. Yeah.
- [46:14]
Jared Moskowitz
If a, if a Category 4. Yeah, if a Category 4 storm came in from the Gulf and there was no fema, those states would be bankrupt, okay? They wouldn't be able to afford that disaster, let alone have the resources that the, that FEMA coordinates because, you know, FEMA brings resources from other departments. And so look, I think this FEMA debate, there's a disconnect in the White House between people in the executive and people in Homeland. And I'm being honest. I think there are three buckets of people looking at this. I think they're the people who are sane, I think the people who are insane, and then I think there are the people who are clinically insane. Okay? And unfortunately, that last bucket seems to be the bucket that is in Homeland trying to eliminate fema. It's why you don't see a lot of members of Congress coming out and talking about the elimination of fema. By the way, the speakers from Louisiana, the Majority Leader Scalise is from Louisiana. It would be terrible for those states. And even Florida and Texas, they would fare better, but they also couldn't survive without fema. But that doesn't.
- [47:17]
Jim Acosta
Well, I was gonna say, aren't these all red states that would get hosed? I mean, I covered more than blue states. I covered Hurricane Katrina. And if, you know, if you had no fema, I mean, FEMA failed spectacularly after Hurricane Katrina, but even if you had no FEMA back then, that would have been even an even worse situation because those folks were just in dire straits. And you can't count on a state that's just been wiped out to go in there with block grants to figure out the problem. It's just, you need a federal response.
- [47:48]
Jared Moskowitz
What Kristi Noem has done to FEMA so far. I think we could see another Michael Brown moment in which FEMA fails in hurricane season. Okay. I'm extremely worried about the damage that has happened under her leadership there to an agency that, quite frankly, she didn't have to use a lot when she was governor. But there are governors, governors of red states that understand how important FEMA is. So reform it. Don't eliminate it.
- [48:19]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And I guess the other thing I want to get into before we let you go, and I appreciate all the time you've given us is. And this is something I have to bring up with every Democratic lawmaker, and that is, where do you think the party should go from here? Right now, there's a new AP poll out that says that Democrats are frustrated. Found that only about one third of Democrats are very optimistic or even somewhat optimistic about their party's future. It seems like Dems are kind of down in the dumps. They don't know how to get out of this. People have varying degrees. I mean, you're very upbeat. You're very funny.
- [48:52]
Jared Moskowitz
That's the caffeine.
- [48:53]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, that's the caffeine. That's the Red Bull kicking in, which is great for a member. I've seen a lot of them in recent days falling asleep during hearings. But not, not, not Jared Moskowitz. But your thoughts on this, are you concerned about it? Do you see leaders out there who you think are taking the party in the right direction? I'm asking you because you seem to be kind of a younger, you know, whippersnapper type congressman up there on Capitol Hill. If I may say so, I'm slightly older.
- [49:16]
Jared Moskowitz
I think you can take bits and pieces from all of this and cobble it up. Right. We're seeing this big debate go on, like from, you know, David Hogg and James Carville. Right. I think they're both right. Right. I think they're both right. I think David Hogg saying we need more messengers, better messengers. I think he's correct on that. But to be honest, we don't need. We don't need better progressive messengers. We have tons of those. What we need is we need more messengers in the center and moderate. Right. To appeal to these folks that are in Trump districts that we gotta win or D plus two districts like mine. Right. That it's barely a Democratic seat. But I also think James Carville is right, that it's about winning elections. That's what we have to do. We have to win elections. And so Democrats should be frustrated. They should be outraged. What's happening is ridiculous. We helped us get here by Joe Biden not jumping out of the race earlier. Okay. There's no doubt that this is partly our fault for letting that go on too long. And we have to own that. And I think that's why our approval rating is down. I think the American people know after they saw that debate that the Democratic Party wasn't telling the truth about Joe Biden. I think there's a lot of hangover about that. And we're blamed for. For Donald Trump's resurrection. But at the same time, Jim, we can't get into a purity fight. Meaning we can't all of a sudden look for the most pure of the most pure of the most pure. And all of a sudden, we can't win elections in the 20 seats that are gonna decide whether Hakeem Jeffries becomes speaker. Making him speaker is the most important thing. It will put brakes on the administration. In fact, CNN ran a story today saying Trump is already obsessed with the midterms because he doesn't want to deal. What will happen if the Democrats get Bingo. Get the House back? Well, the only way we're gonna get the House back is if we put moderates in districts that Trump won by. Okay. And people who can win. Districts like mine. Jared Goldin, right, who represents a Trump district. Marie Gutenkamperez, who represents a Trump district. Those are the districts that we have to win. This doesn't run through progressive circles. That doesn't mean I'm discounting progressives, because we need them to turn out and vote. Right. This is a big tent. Right. This is a big tent. There's plenty of room for all of these ideas. And the Democratic caucus up here is more unified now than we were the last two years. We gotta get the base down there more unified and more upbeat and singularly focused on making Hakeem Jeffries speaker. It doesn't mean we're not fighting for every little thing. Right, but this is about the economy. It's about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. There's a lot of noise that Trump is trying to divert, trying to get us to talk about condos in Gaza and Canada being the 50 first aid and Greenland and all this other nonsense that they tried to throw at us. It's about the economy, which Trump said that he was gonna make better, and it's not. And it's about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and veterans and kicking these people off of their health care and services that they have depended on. If we can stay focused on that, Hakeem Jeffries will be speaker.
- [52:14]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, he, he promised to come into the Oval Office and, and work on inflation. And, I mean, he, he, he made some pretty basic promises to the American people during the campaign. He hasn't done any of those things. And for as much as, you know, you know, we talk about Biden being out of it and so on. I mean, Trump routinely sounds like he's just completely out to lunch, you know, when. When he's talking about the Gulf of America or when he thinks that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has an actual MS.13 tattoo on his knuckles. I mean, you know, I sort of feel like the Republicans are sort of in the parallel universe right now where they're having to deal with the president.
- [52:53]
Jared Moskowitz
In the last term. He drew a state into the cone. Okay. For a hurricane. Okay. So, you know, the idea that he's looking.
- [53:02]
Jim Acosta
That one hits home for you.
- [53:03]
Jared Moskowitz
Yeah, they look like the idea. Is he looking at fake photos that have been doctored. I mean, we're not.
- [53:07]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Not.
- [53:07]
Jared Moskowitz
We're not far off from what we saw the, you know, the first. In the first movie.
- [53:12]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that to me, is when I hear people, oh, Biden, bye, bye. It's like, you know, if we focus on the here and now, we have the President of the United States trying to accept a $400 billion gift from the Qataris. And yeah, the Republicans are going on cable news and so on, but they're not doing a whole hell of a lot about it. I mean, I'm sorry, but it seems like you need a new law that says you can't do it, even though it says in the Constitution you can't do it. It almost seems like you need to pass a new law that says, hey, you can't do it. Just like there was a law that had to be passed that said the vice president is not here to overturn elections in this country. I mean, it just seems to me, it almost seems like he's handing you guys a gift on a silver platter with this Air Force One thing.
- [53:52]
Jared Moskowitz
It's a total gift. And if we stay message disciplined and don't throw other stuff out there, Right. And keep the attention on this, I mean, this, in my opinion, is a losing issue. It's very easy for the American people, people who are suffering out there, spending more money at the grocery store, hearing about tariffs and their goods going up. And they see the guys getting a free plane from the guys who fund Hamas. I think it's pretty clear for the American people that this is ridiculous. And some of us are visual learners. Right? So they see this plane and it's very luxurious. And then they see the guys in Qatar who are giving the plane, and they're like, we don't understand what's happening here.
- [54:26]
Jim Acosta
And after Trump's had it, what president's gonna wanna have that plane. I mean, you saw how he put the gold stuff on the fireplace in the over level office. I mean, gold leaf, Jim.
- [54:35]
Jared Moskowitz
It's called gold leaf.
- [54:36]
Jim Acosta
I'm sorry, it's not the best. And that that whole place is going to have to be power washed after he leaves. And one would think the same would have to be the case with Air Force One.
- [54:46]
Jared Moskowitz
We'll bring in Surf Pro. We'll bring in Surf Pro.
- [54:49]
Jim Acosta
Like it never even happened. There you go. All right. Maybe I will read ads on this program one of these days. Congressman Moskowitz, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate the extra chuckle here and there as well. You got a future in this business.
- [55:01]
Jared Moskowitz
Yeah, thanks, Jim. You know, I try to. I try to laugh. It's better than crying if you tip.
- [55:06]
Jim Acosta
Your bartenders and waiters on the way out. All right, thanks, Congressman.
- [55:08]
Jared Moskowitz
Appreciate it.
- [55:09]
Jim Acosta
All right. That's Congressman Jared Moskowitz. I need to bring him on often, I think, on this program on the Jim Acosta show because he's absolutely right. I need to laugh these days. There's just too much going on where if I don't laugh, I'm going to cry like the old John McCain line. And that's where we are right now. Got some great stuff coming up in the next day or two. Being a superstitious Catholic type, I'm not going to say who's coming on the program over the next couple of days, but they're really good ones. If I give it away, I feel like it won't work out. That's the superstitious Cuban in me, I think, a little bit. But at the same time, I want to just say one more time how much I really appreciate Congressman Moskowitz for coming on. Dr. Rob Davidson and Ruth Ben Guillot. Absolutely a fantastic show today. Really enjoy those folks. And I'm seeing some folks say so. Pope Leo. No, not Pope Leo. We can work on that. We could work on Pope Leo. That would be a substack with the Pope. Whoa. Now that, now we're talking. This is why I like looking at the comments. It's a workshop here. But as Duke would be great, too. I know Duke, Duke has gotten into this pattern lately. I will say, ladies and gentlemen, as I'm about to end the program here, Duke has gotten into this pattern lately where he takes his naps now during the Jim Acosta show. I do not want people out there to think that my little pet beagle has been abducted. That is not the case. Where's his collar? I think I might have taken the collar off, put it somewhere else, but he now has gotten conditioned to. This is nightingight time from about 3 in the afternoon, 2:30 in the afternoon till about 5 o' clock in the afternoon. So I'll try to make Duke happen before, before the end of the week. But I'm really happy about some of the stuff we have planned over the next couple of days. I'm going to get all of that to you. Hopefully, everything will land. We'll land the plane, to use one last plane reference in all of this, and hopefully not at Newark, if I may slide that one in there as well. But in the meantime, really appreciate everybody watching. Still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good evening, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow. Take care.
- [57:16]
Jared Moskowitz
Bye.
- [57:16]
Jim Acosta
Bye.