← The Jim Acosta Show
The Jim Acosta Show
Special Edition of The Jim Acosta Show with Rosie O’Donnell, Ryan Lizza, and Don Lemon
01:23:43
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- [00:00]
Jim Acosta
All right, welcome, everybody, to the Jim Acosta Show. It is Wednesday, and as you can see, it is Rosie O'Donnell Day on the Jim Acosta Show. Rosie, how are you? Great to see you.
- [00:10]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I am wonderful. And I'm a huge fan of yours and a big supporter and reached out when you did such a brave thing that you did over there at your job. And I was very moved and inspired and I want everyone to know that and you to know that. And that's why I sent you that little note.
- [00:25]
Jim Acosta
I appreciate it. It really, it warmed my heart. It was just the shot in the arm that I needed. And you've insp with this new documentary that you're doing, Unleashing the Power of Service Dogs for Children with Autism. It's out on Hulu. It's about how dogs can help children with autism. And it is just so beautiful. And I want to talk to you about all of this because there's a lot of news going on here in the States, but I guess we just get this out of the way and somebody's asking this question right now. Did you move to Ireland? You're in Ireland right now. You're in Dublin?
- [00:57]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I am. I'm in Dublin, Ireland. I read Project 2025, which I assumed all Americans would do and was surprised to find out that many people did not. Once I read that, I made a plan to leave should he win. And that plan was executed on the day in November that he won, she said, raising her eyebrows. And I made the plan and we were out by the 15th. My plan was to be out before he was inaugurated. And I have relatives, my grandparents are from Ireland, so I have birthright citizenship options here. And it was the only country I considered coming to. And I took my little 12 year old non binary autistic child and we showed up. I have two cousins here. They've been wonderful. And it's been a glorious transition. I have to say, Jim, I was not one of those celebrities who said, I will leave if he gets. I never imagined leaving the United States. I didn't even travel very much, you know.
- [01:58]
Jim Acosta
Did you think about this beforehand and say, okay, if he wins, I'm gonna do this? Yes, because kind of kept it to yourself.
- [02:05]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I kept it to myself. I talked to my therapist about it. I talked to my family, my grown children, and I told them and all my friends and family said, oh, you'll never do it. Because I'm someone who, like, if someone says to me, I got tickets to the Riviera in Italy, and we can go. And I'm like, you know, Miami's nice. You know, I'm not one of those. It's, yeah, kind of far. And I'm not a big traveler. I'm not a big, like, leave the United States person. So it surprised all of them and it kind of surprised me. But I was certain there was not a moment's hesitation. When I read Project 2025, when the Supreme Court said that he had presidential immunity, I knew that we were on the verge of fascism in America. And even though that was unimaginable to most 63 year olds like me, I knew that's where we were going. And I have no doubt about his level of cruelty. I have no illusions about him having a heart. I know him deeply personally. Although I've never spoken to the man, I know him from how he's treated me over the last 18 years when he was not the friend. Yes, he does. He does seem to be obsessed.
- [03:18]
Jim Acosta
And what is that? Do we know what that's about? It's because you criticized him in the past.
- [03:22]
Rosie O'Donnell
I mean, you know, he had Miss America pageant, Miss Teen America, this Tara O'Connor I believe her name was, and she was in the Village, she kissed a girl, she was drunk. And the Post printed it. And he, right before the View was live, had a press conference to make her publicly apologize. And it looked to me a lot like a pimp and a prostitute. And I said that on the View. And then I proceeded to tell factual, accurate information about his bankruptcies, about how he was not a self made man. I told facts that anyone could have googled and found out. And he went batshit crazy. He went on every single show. I went to a sports bar with my children, who were very little at the time. Yeah, Because I thought, well, at a sports bar we could get them grilled cheese and chicken nuggets. And he wouldn't. He was on a sports show talking about what a horrible person I am, a degenerate. Every word he could use for gay. That was not something. I remember that, yes. Calling me fat and disgusting, misogynist, homophobic, every way he could. And he did it for 18 years.
- [04:31]
Jim Acosta
And it says more about him than anything else. I mean, that the fact that he said all those ugly things back in the day and the fact that he's. He remains obsessed with you, it says to me that you got his goat as, as we used to say.
- [04:43]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, you know, I grew up in New York and I remember when his planes were repossessed off the runways at LaGuardia. I remember when they put out the documentary and he was talking about how poor he was. I remember the stories of him pretending to date Madonna, of him calling people and pretending to be his own publicist, lying about his book sales being number one. The man lies chronically, chronically, like a teenage boy.
- [05:08]
Jim Acosta
Well, and I say this all the time, that New Yorkers know him better than anybody. They're the least surprised people in the world. Whenever you talk to people from New York who've been in New York for a long time about Donald Trump, they just roll their eyes and they say, I've known about this since the 80s or whatever.
- [05:22]
Rosie O'Donnell
I mean, yes, the same with me. I grew up knowing about that. This man was the laughingstock of New York and no one took him seriously. I would never have him on my show. And he asked over, over and over. And finally we did a thing where Listerine was paying money for everybody who would come on and sweep. All they didn't get to talk to me. All they did was enter through the curtain and sweep the floor and they would pay us $1,000 to charity for everybody who was sweeping. Well, one day I let him come on the show to be a sweeper, and that was the only time he was ever on my program. And he was mad at me because of that as well. But he was never a man of any merit that I wanted to waste time to speak to. And I think that gets his goat in a manner that he doesn't know how to deal with.
- [06:11]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, and. But he's somehow gotten back in the White House. I mean, I think I read that you have a big problem with the show the Apprentice. And I do think you're right, that it did sell people a bill of goods and it portrayed something about him that just doesn't exist.
- [06:28]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, listen, it was pure fiction, Jim. It was pure fiction to say that this man was a business giant when he had been bankrupt six times. To say he was a self made millionaire when he got all his money from his daddy, to say that he was some moral authority when he had all these affairs on all of these wives and all of these sexual abuse charges. It was like Mark Burnett, the producer of the Apprentice, taught him how to take a lie, say it long enough and make it the truth. He had a little family owned grifter business in New York. He was a logo slapper. He didn't build. He slapped his name on buildings that other people built and usually they were not very high quality buildings either.
- [07:12]
Ryan Lizza
That's true.
- [07:13]
Rosie O'Donnell
And so if you grew up in New York, all of these facts were available to you and daily you would get them in the newspaper. So it wasn't a surprise.
- [07:22]
Jim Acosta
And I remember when I covered them during the campaign in 2016, I would go into Trump Tower. It was the first time I had ever gone into Trump Tower. And I was like, oh, this is going to be good. And I go in there and I'm like, why is this place such a dump? Why does it look so shitty? Like the gold plating and stuff was kind of faded. And you would go down to the men's room and it was like, wow, this is kind of like Penn Station. I mean, it's not that.
- [07:46]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, well, he has no taste. He's very gaudy. He thinks that gold lame will fool people. And, you know, he would probably sell it as gold if he had a chance. His stakes went out of business. I remember I had, somebody gave me. He had some liquor company at one point and somebody gave me a bottle, closed bottle of his liquor with two bugs in it, like there were two dead flies in it in a sealed bottle of liquor. And I kept it on the counter for many, many years. But, you know, this man has failed at almost everything he's ever tried. And to think that so many people believe the lie that Mark Burnett told over and over. Mark Burnett not born in this country. Mark Burnett, who made a lot of money off of this. I always said, does he have a conscience? Does he feel any remorse over what he let loose on our nation?
- [08:43]
Jim Acosta
And it's still letting loose. And he's put incredibly irresponsible people in some very important positions. I know because of the issue of autism being near and dear to your heart. We have to talk about RFK Jr. And this is just being reported today. CBS News reporting today, the National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his effort to study autism. And it will allow external researchers pick for Kennedy's autism studies to study comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of the U.S. population for the first time. I mean, it just seems like an incredible invasion of privacy to go on this wild goose chase chasing after his conspiracy theories.
- [09:27]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, and we cannot forget that the Nazis first came after the disabled people and they had to compile a list before they did that. And who the hell is RFK Jr to tell people who is a worthy human being and who is not? Who does he think he is saying the first credit against them was the first complaint he had against them, they will never pay taxes. They will never go to the bathroom unassisted. So some woman who's taking care of her autistic child, who helps the child in the bathroom, as millions of Americans help people they love every day in ways that maybe are not the most appealing to other people. They do it because they love their family members, and their value is in their innate being, not in how well they pay taxes or use the bathroom. And I think the fact that the Kennedy family created the Special Olympics, and here is this rogue Kennedy, this embarrassment to the rest of the family, going about with, first of all, that he tried to get into Kamala's cabinet, and she said, oh, no, no, no, no.
- [10:34]
Jim Acosta
Exactly.
- [10:35]
Rosie O'Donnell
And then he went over to the enemy side and kissed the golden piece of turd. I could not believe it. And I can't believe what he's allowed to get away with. And I can't believe that the public is not calling for his firing immediately.
- [10:51]
Jim Acosta
Well, and I think part of it is because, you know, you have Signalgate and Pete Hegseth, you know, and that's just been a daily embar over at the Pentagon. But I consider what's happening over at HHS and in our public health sector with RFK Jr. S leadership perhaps to be the most critical emergency that this country faces right now. You have.
- [11:11]
Rosie O'Donnell
I agree with you 100% in West Texas.
- [11:13]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [11:14]
Rosie O'Donnell
And his lies about vaccines and all of that is responsible for the outbreak of measles. And who is he? He is not a medical expert. He is not a doctor. Who does he think he is? It boggles my mind, his hubris. It boggles my mind, his e. How does he think he has the right. Because his last name is a Kennedy, and he has none of the qualities of his father or his uncle, none of Caroline or JFK Jr. He has none of Ted Kennedy. He's like this rogue Kennedy who has gotten away with being a horrible spokesperson for the American people. And how dare he? How dare he? I hope, honestly, Jim, that I never have to see him because I was friendly and used to play poker with his wife. And I asked her, before he went to the Trump side, how did it feel to marry a Kennedy? That must have been pretty trippy for you. You know, and I got to know her and felt, this is Cheryl Hines. Cheryl Hines. And we played poker during COVID twice a week with about six or seven women we knew in la. And, you know, I don't know what I would say if I saw her. I don't know. I hope I never have to see him in person because I don't know that I could be able to contain my disgust with him. Yeah.
- [12:32]
Jim Acosta
He said the other day, genes don't cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin. So even, even as the head of hhs, he's still peddling this thing. And we know autism rates among children have increased. This is according to the New York Times just recently. They've increased nearly five fold since 2000, when the CDC first began collecting data on the conditions incidence in children. The CDC's report attributed some of the increase and its prevalence to more screening for the condition. Researchers have pointed to several other factors, including greater awareness of what autism looks like.
- [13:05]
Rosie O'Donnell
100%. Yes. And, you know, they didn't discover all of this mountain range until recently, and I'm pretty sure the mountain range was there before they discovered it. Listen, nobody was talking about autism when we were in School. I'm 64. I don't remember. I don't remember one person mentioning that word. When I first heard about autism, it was through the movie Rain Man. It was through, you know, Judge Wapner. Judge Wapner, you know, and I had no understanding of what it was. And so when I had a child who was fully verbal at 1, who had a college level vocabulary at 5, I was reeling that we were dealing with a different kind of computer brain system. Most of us are on apple point and click. And she's like coding fast in a million. And, you know, she has party tricks. She tells me about the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean that's ever been measured. She knows facts about the Mariana Trench that would make her win on Jeopardy, you know, and I constantly Google to see when she goes to bed. Is that true? It's true.
- [14:12]
Jim Acosta
Wow.
- [14:12]
Rosie O'Donnell
You know, there's a great. There's some sort of hybrid intelligence that happens as well now. It's a spectrum. It's from people as brilliant as Albert Einstein to people who sadly cannot talk. But that doesn't mean their lives are worth any less than the next person.
- [14:28]
Jim Acosta
That's right. They're children of God. And Rosie, I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about your documentary. In case folks who are just tuning in, Rosie has a new documentary on Hulu, unleashing the power of service dogs for children with autism. And we see examples of your child and the amazing things that she can do. And I was watching this and thinking to myself, this is. I mean, I thought my little girl was brilliant. Obviously, when she was we all think our kids are brilliant. I was watching this video of your child, and I was like, wow, right?
- [15:03]
Don Lemon
Nine years old.
- [15:03]
Jim Acosta
And you said, this is different.
- [15:05]
Rosie O'Donnell
This is different. 9 years old. When I said to her, will you sit down and talk about how Kuma has changed her life? And she says that we left it in the documentary. I really would like to, but I have a lot of drawing to do, you know, like she, you know. And there's Caleb, the beautiful boy in the documentary who was so giving and his family so loving and so articulate. He could express every emotion he felt about the dog verbally, whereas my child expresses it in a different way. Her stimming stopped. She was stimming incessantly. Her stimming was lessened. Not that there's anything wrong with stimming, because it's how they regulate themselves.
- [15:42]
Jim Acosta
What do you mean by stimming? And for folks who don't understand that.
- [15:45]
Rosie O'Donnell
Stimming is anything from flapping your hands to incessant moving your hands. And for her right now, it's running. She runs the perimeter of every room that she's in, so we have to move the couches and the chairs away from the wall so she can run the entire perimeter of the house and then crash as hard as she can into the couch. And that's what her body needs, that kind of stimulation in order to regulate herself. And when she's more upset, there's more stimming that happens, and that goes on. Now, when she would be a little out of control with the stimming, I could give a command to Kuma, the service dog. And that dog would lay on top of her. That dog would put. Yes. Would put his head on her lap. Would put his head near her hands that couldn't stop moving and couldn't stop touching her hands.
- [16:35]
Jim Acosta
It's his own language.
- [16:36]
Rosie O'Donnell
Exactly. It's its own language. And this dog is a miracle. And the fact that Guide Dogs of America does this service, Jim, for free, because the machinists, the machinists union, years ago, had a man in the union who went to get a dog, and they told him he was too old, he was losing his sight. And what did they decide to do for their union brothers and sisters? Create their own Guide Dogs of America service so that no one would be able to be turned down because of the age of the person applying. So they did, minus the red tape. And they've been doing it for 50 years. And it is the most unbelievable group of people I've had the privilege of meeting and Knowing they changed my heart. I feel like the Grinch. My heart grew 10 times that day. To spend 10 days with 10 blind people, 10 parents of autistic children, and 10 veterans from different wars who are now suffering from PTSD and or mobility issues due to cancer from the burn pits. To have to interact with them all of that time for two weeks away from your own child, that, you know, was the scariest part for me, to tell you the truth. I didn't know how they would do away from me for that long because we had never been separated for that long, ever.
- [17:57]
Jim Acosta
Wow. Wow. And so. And so tell me about how the dog came into your. Kuma is the name of the dog, and how Kuma came into your life. I mean, how did this. How did. Did you put the pieces of the puzzle together and say, wait a minute, maybe a dog might help? Did somebody come to you and say, you know, try this?
- [18:13]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes. You know, I was at the end of my rope because when she was 9, she started turning inward and turning darker. And this photos I can show you of her up till eight or years old, happy and laughing and bubbly. And then 9 to 11, we were in the dark place, and some of her drawings had knives in them or bloody hands. And I would say, what is that? And she'd say, they got stabbed. And I was like, well, where did you hear that? And she, you know, she just was in, like a morose kind of. Kind of sadness, and I didn't know how to reach her. I felt like she was drifting away. So I, being a person of privilege, had the access to the UCLA Autism Center. I had access to therapists and to OTs and to PTs, and we did every service and every therapy that had been recommended to us, and still she was floating away. And about three years ago, I became friendly with Lyle Menendez. Lyle Menendez had written me in 1996 and thanked me for supporting him and his brother and speaking so highly of Leslie Abramson and the work that she did during their trial, trying to convince America that sometimes fathers committed atrocities against their children, and these two boys were victims of that. And, you know, the public was unwilling to hear. But I spoke out for him in 96, and he wrote me right when my show premiered. And I said to Barbara Walters, we were having dinner one night, and I said, I got this letter. It was thick, you know, like many pages handwritten from Lyle Menendez. And she had interviewed them a few months before. And she said, just like she always would, Wozie, he's a manipulator please, whatever you do, don't return his call. You know, so I kind of.
- [20:03]
Jim Acosta
That's a great. Barbara Walters. Barbara Walters.
- [20:04]
Rosie O'Donnell
Thank you very much. I did love her very much. She was quite something, I can tell you that.
- [20:08]
Jim Acosta
Amazing.
- [20:09]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yeah. But she told me not to. And it was the height of. Of the beginning of my show, and I didn't quite know how to answer some of the questions he had. And it wasn't until three years ago when a new documentary came out with new evidence about Roy Roselio from Menudo, who was sexually abused by Jose Menendez. Yes. In the same house that the boys grew up in. And a Lyle, sorry, an Eric letter that he had written to his cousin that was not introduced in evidence way before the murder about the sexual abuse from the father. And so these two new pieces of evidence started a habeas corpus, I believe that's the technical term, that they would get it relooked at so they could possibly be re sentenced or maybe perhaps have another trial. And that was what the documentary was about. And so I went on TikTok and I said, I believe them. I believed them 30 years ago and I believe them now. About two days later, my phone rang and woman said by CELL phone which you know, was not publicly available. Hello, this is Rebecca Menendez. I am Lyle Menendez's wife. And I was like, lyle Menendez has a wife, and he has had a wife for 30 years, a brilliant wife who is a lawyer and who has never once been seen in the public, but she has supported him and loved him and helped him with his case for all of this time. She's a remarkable woman. She told me that he wanted to talk to me. So I said, well, give him my number. And on Mother's Day a few years ago, the phone rang and it was him. And we talked for two hours that day. And, you know, can you imagine, though, you're in prison for three decades and you have your group of people, your seven or 10 people outside that are relating to you. It's difficult to relate to someone who's in prison on death row, not death row, but life without life without the possibility of parole, what they call it in the jail, which is what I learned when I went to visit him and how I saw the service dog. I said to the service dog handlers, oh, you must be getting out if this is your 12th dog. And the guy looked at me and said, no, ma'am, I'm life without. And I didn't know what he meant. I said, what do you mean life without, he said, without the possibility of parole. And it just made me weak in the knees. Jim. I didn't know what to say to him here. He had given 24 years of his life training these dogs for years at a time to give to other families, and he was never to be released from prison.
- [22:41]
Jim Acosta
Wow, that's incredible.
- [22:42]
Rosie O'Donnell
And I was very moved, and I said, who do you give these dogs to? And they told me that it was vets, it was people who were blind, and it was kids who had autism under the age of 12. And I said, oh, well, I'd like to thank you on behalf of autism parents. I don't have a dog, but I'm sure that if I did, I would be great. Russ, the man who runs Guide Dogs of America, said, why don't you have a doctor? I said, I never heard of this. And I've been like the queen of Google for autism since. You had Googled everything since she was diagnosed, I did a deep dive to try, like every parent does. You know, when your child is diagnosed with autism, you don't get a guidebook.
- [23:26]
Jim Acosta
No.
- [23:26]
Rosie O'Donnell
Nobody tells you, here's what it's going to be like. Because if you meet one child with autism, you've met one child with autism. Caleb's autism is not the same as Clay's autism is not the same as someone else's autism. It comes in a variety of flavors and spices and different kind of neurodiversity, and it should be celebrated, not ridiculed, not considered a disease, and not put on a list of people who don't. Someone doesn't deem as worthy as the next.
- [23:59]
Jim Acosta
Since you brought up the Menendez brothers, what do you think's gonna happen in that case? Because it sounds as though, you know, there was a ray of light, that maybe they might get a day in court, might get released, something might happen, and then it doesn't. Now, it doesn't look like that's going to take place with the new prosecutor out there.
- [24:16]
Rosie O'Donnell
I believe that it will take place, and I believe that Gavin Newsom has to stand up and say, enough is enough. You know these boys. It has been proven every member of their family and the deceased parents, siblings, are in support of them. Every single member had. There was so much evidence of the abuse that the first trial was hung by both juries. Each boy had a separate jury, hung juries, both of them. The second trial, they decided because of the O.J. simpson case and the embarrassment to the. To the DA that they were not allowed to use sex Abuse as part of their trial. So they had no defense. That's when they were given life without the possibility of parole. It was totally, totally a mistrial of justice. It was a. I'm not saying it right, but they did not provide them with a fair trial. They told them they could not use the defense. That was the truth.
- [25:16]
Jim Acosta
And enough has been raised in this case. Questions have been raised. Serious questions have been raised in this case to the extent that it. It warrants reexamination. It warrants a new look as to whether they've served enough and should be able to be free.
- [25:36]
Rosie O'Donnell
They were 18 and 21 years old. Their brains were not fully formed yet. There's all kinds of laws now about children, people who are considered children because their brains have not fully formed in their early 20s and their teens being given life sentences. Is that fair to do in our country? Is that fair to do? And there's extenuating circumstances for these men, and they have impeccable records in jail. Lyle has done so much. Eric has done so much. Eric is an amazing artist. He's done murals all over the walls at the prison when you're inside. And Lyle has done the beautification project. They both counsel inmates who have been sexually abused and are trying to get through it. They have done remarkable work while they were incarcerated.
- [26:27]
Jim Acosta
And I have to say, it's amazing to me that you've made this one of your causes. And I do think that it's incredible what they've been through. And it seems to me, I think you're right. I think justice is coming. It's just taking its time. And I have to ask you, Rosie, because you're in Ireland right now, I just wanted to know what's your life like? Because, I mean, do you go down to the corner and go to the pub and they say, rosie, and does that?
- [26:55]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, no, no. I'll tell you the big difference. My show was not on here, okay? So there's no real recognition now. I would say maybe twice a day, someone will say, welcome, Rosie. That's it. Or if people see me, they nod and they wink, but nobody stops you. It's a very different culture. I was reading about Beyonce being here with her little baby years ago in the park in Dublin, and no one coming over to her, and her never having felt that before. So there's a freedom and there's a lack of value on celebrity that America puts on it that is just absolutely over the top.
- [27:33]
Jim Acosta
Or maybe they know and they just leave you alone because they say, hey, that's exactly right.
- [27:37]
Rosie O'Donnell
And people, top of the morning to you.
- [27:39]
Jim Acosta
That kind of thing.
- [27:39]
Rosie O'Donnell
They say, well, at a pub, they'll say, can I buy you a pint? I'm like, sure. They go, why'd you move here, sweetheart? I said, donald Trump. They said, give me a hug. They want to hug me, right?
- [27:49]
Jim Acosta
You get lots of hugs.
- [27:50]
Rosie O'Donnell
I'm sure I get lots of hugs here in Ireland for my political stances. I can tell you that. It's a country that I've aligned with a lot of their policies and beliefs. And it's very freeing to be in a country where you don't worry that half the people looking at you are thinking that you're the worst thing that ever walked because you're against the fascist in the White House.
- [28:10]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well. And do you think you'd ever come back?
- [28:14]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, I would love to come back, because that's my country, and I was born there, and I have children, and they all live there, and, you know, they're gonna have babies soon. And my one daughter has four children, and she lives in Wisconsin, and we don't see her as often as we would like to. But when my other ones have children, I know that I'm gonna want to be an available, participatory grandparent. And I'm waiting for the country to right itself. I'm waiting for the people to stand up and say, no, this is not innately who Americans are. We are not cruel people. We are not people who don't care about our neighbors. We are people who do. I grew up on Long island in the 1960s and 70s, and my mother died when I was 10. And you know who took care of us? The mothers in the other houses of suburban Long Island.
- [29:06]
Jim Acosta
Bingo.
- [29:07]
Rosie O'Donnell
They took us to get our first doctor's appointment when we needed to. They took us when we broke our arm to the emergency room. They fed us. They clothed us. Jackie Ellard's mother, Bernice and Leonie Norton, who just lost her husband this week, they took care of us as if we were their own. And that's the America that I know and love. And I. Yes. And I want to come back, and I want.
- [29:34]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [29:36]
Rosie O'Donnell
This feeling as though you are better than someone that you can put into a group that you can name. The attacks on trans people when they're less than 1% of the population, the most vulnerable people that. That we have in the gay community, to attack the trans people is just so unbelievably un American.
- [29:58]
Jim Acosta
It's un American, and it's almost as Though you've been hearing me when I yell at the TV when those ads come on, because to me, it is classic Trumpism in its rawest form. And that his, I think his mind tries to think of who is the most vulnerable population out there, what is the most vulnerable segment of society out there. And let me put my finger on those people. Let me pick on those people, because it'll score points.
- [30:27]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, he does. He's trying to amass the underbelly of hatred that the civil rights movement started to address. And with the arrival of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell, I put in that list, too, telling Obama that he would not help him in any capacity and would block him at every turn, and then doing it, not allowing him to appoint Merrick Garland, who. I question whether or not that would be a good appointment now, however, they wouldn't appoint him because they didn't want to and nobody made them. That's what really gets me, Jim, is I'm watching what Trump is doing with this man who he sent to El Salvador, who was innocent of any crime, and he is refusing. He is refusing due process, and he's refusing to let him come back to demand that he be returned. How dare he?
- [31:21]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you. And he has, you know, made comments about maybe applying that to Americans that he would. Wants to go after what he calls the homegrowns. You know, when the President of the United States starts talking about going after the homegrowns, it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning of this, Rosie. And I do think that we are in a place right now where it's not about left versus right, it's about pro democracy versus anti democracy.
- [31:46]
Rosie O'Donnell
I completely agree. It is no longer left versus right. And I feel as though we on the left have to be more considerate and understanding of the lies that were fed to these people who are not perhaps as knowledgeable about television production and whether or not the news is actually the news or entertainment. Many years ago, as you know, they switched the news from its own division with its own integrity into the entertainment department. And the fourth estate was blown apart.
- [32:22]
Jim Acosta
And look what's happening. And everything else.
- [32:25]
Rosie O'Donnell
It's, can you believe what's happening? Any. And, and I am so, so upset that ABC paid the money for George Stepanopoulos. Correctingly, yes. Calling him a rapist, which the judge said. Which the judge has said. And that they sued and they paid. And it reminds me of the stories we would hear in our neighborhood about the guys who would show up and say you owe us 250 a week. And you had to pay them. And once you paid them, they had you for everything.
- [33:04]
Jim Acosta
That's right. It doesn't make the problem go away. And that's the mistake that's been made.
- [33:08]
Rosie O'Donnell
Here in the US that makes the problem go away.
- [33:10]
Jim Acosta
That's the mistake that's been made here in the U.S. people think, well, if I just put a quarter in the Trump intimidation racket tollbooth, the problem will go away. And it doesn't make it go away. It means you gotta keep going through the toolbox.
- [33:21]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, it doubles it. And it makes him do it bigger and more. Now he's suing 60 Minutes for billions of dollars, not just the millions that he got from abc, but for billions of dollars. And he has this Supreme Court full of his cronies that are an embarrassment to the Supreme Court's legacy. And here we are in America going, we don't know how to stop him. Well.
- [33:47]
Jim Acosta
People have to start speaking out.
- [33:49]
Rosie O'Donnell
And having the courts and judges and people stand up and speak out, and that's what we must do. And don't let the fear of him stop you, no matter who you are, no matter what you think. Because once democracy dies in America, it's over for the world. World.
- [34:09]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Rosie, it has been such an honor and just a real pleasure and a joy for me to connect with you and have this conversation. You are, I mean, the light you are shining in this interview, I have to tell you, I've been keeping an eye on the comments as you've been speaking, and people have just been overjoyed with a lot of, I mean, just about everything that you've said since coming on. So I appreciate everything that you have said and I encourage everybody to watch your new documentary. I can just tell it's absolutely from the heart. Okay, Rosie O'Donnell, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. I'm going to try to bring in Ryan Lizza because Ryan is also supposed to be on the program this hour. We're doing a special hour of the Jim Acosta show right now. And I typically come on at 4:00 and, you know, we, we had to bump it a little earlier because Rosie puts her kid to bed at this hour. And so she was gracious enough to come on this afternoon in the evening for her over there in Ireland. And there's, there's Ryan Lizard right there. Hey, Ryan, good to see you.
- [35:22]
Ryan Lizza
Good to see you, Jim. How are you, man?
- [35:24]
Jim Acosta
I'm doing great. I just had a fascinating conversation with Rosie O'Donnell. Her signal was kind of losing its strength there at the end, and it may have dropped off, but it was right there as I was saying goodbye to Rosa. So it kind of worked.
- [35:36]
Ryan Lizza
But that was. I saw a good chunk of it there at the end. I missed the beginning.
- [35:41]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. She's passionate, man. And I will tell you, I mean, everything that she says is absolutely from the heart. And, I mean, she has some very important things to say about RFK Jr. And what's been happening in the Trump administration and public health as she has been caring for her child with autism. And it's something that, as she was saying during that interview, one child with autism. Okay, you understand that one child and what they go through, it doesn't tell you what every other child with autism is going through. And so it was helpful to have her educate all of us about what parents and her situation go through. And it sounds like she just has a beautiful thing going over there in Ireland. So I appreciate her time very much, but it. Ryan, good to see you. And I guess welcome to Substack, right?
- [36:27]
Ryan Lizza
Yeah. Thank you, Jim. Obviously, I think, you know, anyone who jumps on here from the MSM owes you a bit of a debt of gratitude.
- [36:37]
Jim Acosta
Oh, man.
- [36:38]
Ryan Lizza
And I think, as I told you and a number of other people, if it doesn't work out, I'll be sleeping on your couch. Hopefully that's fine. Yeah, I'm gonna pull out. I'm all in on this endeavor, and I have to say, after just three days, it's just been a amazing, fun experience. I feel like in newsrooms in Washington right now and New York, nobody's having fun. And part of that is because what we're covering, right, It's. It's. It's. It's. It's dramatic, it's disorienting, it's terrifying sometimes. So, you know, there's not a lot of fun to be had. But even aside from that, people are miserable in newsrooms in Washington and New York and the substack, the whole culture is so different and so inspiring. And so I texted Hamish today, one of the co founders, saying, you have just built an incredible platform here, and I should have done this years ago. So that's my view. Two and a half days in, maybe a month from now, you know, I'll have a different view.
- [37:55]
Jim Acosta
Well, I predict you're going to be a lot happier going independent in the days and weeks ahead, and you're just going to like it more and more. I've enjoyed it because of the independence of it, because, you know, and I enjoyed working with my colleagues and my whole place, and there were editors that I really liked and executives and so on, and, and my old boss, Jeff Zucker, and so on and so forth. And you enjoy all that. But, you know, you and I are in a similar place in life, somewhat long in the tooth. Maybe I'm a little older than you, but, you know, you sort of put the tools in the tool belt to the extent that you can kind of do this on your own and you know how to stay out of trouble and you want to give people news and information. You have a passion for it and you can just make it work. And this is a great place for that to happen.
- [38:41]
Ryan Lizza
Yeah. And it's almost like a light goes on once you do it for a couple of days and you realize, like, oh, this might actually work out. And the psychology just flips around completely. Where I think, why the hell was I ever giving my intellectual property. Two thoughts. Why was I giving all of my intellectual property and writing to some of these places? And also, why the hell did I spend all of that time on Twitter writing without anyone giving?
- [39:13]
Jim Acosta
I thought about that, too. Like, why are we putting stuff on Elon Musk's crazy website? You know what I mean? Like, and I still succumb to it.
- [39:22]
Ryan Lizza
I think it's great. It's been an interesting experience because I've had this back and forth with Politico. Wait, but before I get to that, I wanted to say two things about Rosie. One, her comment about being in Ireland and how people there don't make a big deal. That is a classic. You know, I've got a little Irish in me. I've been over there a bit. That's a classic Irish. Thing is you don't, you know, you don't. You play cool. You're not impressed by anyone who's famous.
- [39:49]
Jim Acosta
I'm sure they're very polite over there.
- [39:51]
Ryan Lizza
They're very polite. Your Irish readers are probably the least impressed by, you know, viewers are the least impressed by you, Tim.
- [39:57]
Jim Acosta
Totally. No, there's no question about it. And, you know, I really like that about what she had to say. And I mean, also, how many times have we heard from celebrities? And I know she said that she didn't say this out loud before we got. Got reelected, but how many celebrities have we heard from? We said, if this happens, I'm leaving. Well, she did it. She did it.
- [40:16]
Ryan Lizza
Yeah, she, she actually.
- [40:17]
Jim Acosta
You got to give her that.
- [40:17]
Ryan Lizza
Yeah, yeah, that, that, that, that, that's fair. I, I Don't think she'll be the last one to do it. I think one of the, one of the most unsettling dynamics of the last few months is how many conversations I've had with people who I never thought would say this, but seriously have that kind of conversation. Some of them, because they're, they're worried. They have personal people, you know, names we know, and they're personally worried about being targeted by the Trump administration and others just, you know, normal people who are so despondent over the direction of, of this administration. And, you know, it's a, those convers, I'm sure you've had those same conversations. They're real. So I don't think Rosie is going to be the last person. Now, one other point. Yeah, go ahead.
- [41:07]
Jim Acosta
No, go ahead. No, go ahead.
- [41:09]
Ryan Lizza
She, you know, she was you, and I think maybe it was you that said this. And the, the, you know, so much of what Telus News, my new publication, what we really want to own, the space we want to own, is all of the reporting on the weaponization of the government. I mean, that is the story. When we talk about the erosion of democracy and democratic backsliding, like where it's happening. I mean, we still have elections, you know, knock on wood, all of the trappings of democracy still exist. We still have three branches of government. But the, the, the weaponization, the, the, the use of the federal government as a tool to attack and target Trump's perceived enemies. That, to me is the, the, the core anti democratic thing that's going on. And that's right for atelos, you know, that's what T E L O S news. That's what we really want to own in terms of reporting. And when you were talking about the targets, I don't think that's an accident that they are the most difficult people to defend, whether it's elites like journalists, lawyers, academics, you know, Ivy League universities, very hard institutions and people to defend because they're, frankly, not that popular. And then, of course, on the other end, poor, disenfranchised immigrants and minorities. And I don't think that's an accident. And it's not the first time we've seen this from a government.
- [42:43]
Jim Acosta
No, there's no question about it, but we're in a new place. And I think what you touched on and what Rosie was touching on is absolutely important. And as you were talking, Ryan, about, you know, this aspect that hasn't, hasn't really been covered enough, and that is the weaponization of government, it brings me back to what took place, what was it a couple of weeks ago when Trump basically declared a fatwa against Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs when he announced that this, you know, this executive order, he's directing the Justice Department to investigate two people for what? For telling the truth. Miles Taylor wrote an op ed in the New York Times anonymously calling out the BS going on in the first Trump administration and Chris Krebs for saying it was a free and fair election back in 2020. I mean, again, this is all about chasing his, his grudges.
- [43:31]
Ryan Lizza
It's absolutely astonishing to see individual Americans and company universities, law firms, named in executive orders the way that he's. He's doing. And I know there's a lot going on, and I, I mean, I wrote about this on Monday. That, to me, was sort of the moment when I realized, just journalistically, I knew what I wanted to sort of devote my attention to was really digging into the executive orders. And frankly, the one that you just mentioned, you know, exceed, it's hard to say which one's worse, but just anyone that mentions a person by name is just like nothing we've seen in the history of presidents using executive orders. It's just never been what. No president would ever do that.
- [44:23]
Jim Acosta
And he knows what he's doing when he does that. When he names people, people individually like that, he unleashes, he opens the floodgates of hate and death threats and extremists who are going to say all kinds of things on social media and maybe try to swat your house and dox you. And so he knows exactly what dark forces he's unleashing when he does that. And I think that's part of the purpose. Maybe part of it is he maybe is not serious and perhaps not going to see it through, but he knows in the meantime, he can make life difficult for those people.
- [44:56]
Ryan Lizza
Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sure you've seen it yourself when you've been the subject of a social media post from him. Yeah. Going through the Paul Weiss episode just really shook me because I was doing some reporting and just sort of went down a rabbit hole into how Paul Weiss was changing the language on their website. And individual attorneys, some of the top partners at that firm, literally deleting their proudest achievement, proudest achievements from their biographies, and Paul Weiss erasing some of its proudest history from its own history. Just memory, holding it. And, you know, there's one lawyer, and.
- [45:42]
Jim Acosta
That'S what he wants to take place with January 6th and everything else. But I'm sorry, I Didn't mean to interrupt you.
- [45:46]
Ryan Lizza
Absolutely. And that was. And those were the cause attorney who did some pro bono work on some January 6th cases. And then she was also a top prosecutor on the Mueller team before. Before Trump was in office. You go to her page and look at her experience. This entire paragraph about her proudly talking about all of the prosecutions that she was responsible for during the Mueller investigation, that has now completely disappeared. And I just looking at the sort of specificity of, like, comparing the two pages and just thinking, imagine if that happened to me. I was targeted in Executive Order, and I literally was so scared I had to, like, rewrite my own biography. And that just. I don't know. I think everyone has a different moment of, like, extreme clarity about, like, what's going on. And for me, that was the moment. And it was the moment where I was like, all right, I'm actually going to do this. I see all these other great journalists on there, and I'm going to start a publication that's sort of, you know, devoted to reporting about this issue.
- [46:48]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And I know you've got one eye on this podcast and perhaps another eye on your laptop or on your email waiting to see if you've gotten a response from your former employer and you've written about this and they basically came after you and said, you shouldn't be talking about corporate media. What happened there can, you know, it's.
- [47:08]
Ryan Lizza
Kind of a bummer, too. I was looking at the main page of my substack and I'm like, God, all this stuff about Politico that I don't want to. To be writing about this. And it, you know, the first day I wrote an 1800 word piece, Jim, just, you know, from the heart, trying to explain where I've been recently and what I want to do with this substack. And yeah, the piece included some pretty sharp criticism of how the media that I came from, frankly, including a couple of examples of Politico how I feel like they're not meeting the moment right now. I thought it was very respectful criticism, to be frank. And that night I got a couple of urgent phone calls and someone left this garbled message on my phone, and all I heard was like, violation, and you need to take it down. And I thought, take what down? Then 20 minutes later, I got a letter from the top lawyer at Politico demanding that I delete an 1800 word article that was mostly about the Trump administration's weaponization of the government and was mostly about this Paul Weiss reporting. I was just Telling you about, about that, because that hadn't been reported before those sort of changes. And I was just blown away. And, you know, it's scary to get a demand letter like that with all the legalistic language. And they were trying to say that I violated some boilerplate language in a non disparagement clause in my contract.
- [48:45]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. So, yeah, no, if you had another thing to say, please say. But I mean, what I read, when I read your piece, what I took from it was, it was more of a general criticism about the Washington press corps, about corporate media in America, that nobody's really living in a glass house right now. You know what I mean? And there have been including criticism of.
- [49:11]
Ryan Lizza
Myself and saying it took me far too long.
- [49:13]
Don Lemon
Yeah.
- [49:13]
Jim Acosta
I mean, look what just took place at CBS with 60 Minutes. Only the third executive producer in the history of 60 Minutes resigned and said he did it because I can't be independent. I can't make independent decisions. When the executive producer folks of 60 Minutes says I can't make independent decisions, there should be a siren going off in every newsroom in America.
- [49:39]
Ryan Lizza
And I want to ask you a question about that, Jim, because I think it's important to explain why. And why is that? What is different now, to me, what it sounds like is you have corporations that are suddenly reaching their hands down into these newsrooms because of this new regime.
- [49:55]
Jim Acosta
And Semaphore reported, and they just reported this, that the owner of Paramount, Sherry Redstone, in recent days sought to know which upcoming 60 Minute stories were about President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation, triggering a series of events that ended with the Tuesday resignation of the show's longtime producer, Bill Owens. He resigned this week complaining that he no longer had the editorial independence to run the iconic Sunday evening news show. I mean, Ryan, and you and I are old enough to know, like, the history. I mean, 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace. Jesus Christ. What are we doing in this country when we're fucking with 60 minutes, one.
- [50:33]
Ryan Lizza
Of the most fiercely independent shows out there? I mean, the part that's. No, no, it's, it's as bad as, as, as you, as you say it is. And for, for viewers that don't understand, you know, there are people who might not know 60 Minutes as well. This is the gold standard in our, in our business in terms of broadcast investigative reporting. And they're, you know, they really believe in their independence over there. And for this resignation to happen, it meant that a line was crossed that just in, in the old days in our business, did you know Was. Wasn't crossed. There really has been a. A separation between church and state in newsrooms for a long time. It's been breached occasionally, but it's, It's a norm that just has been so important that is now being violated because these big companies are scared shitless about what Donald Trump might do to them.
- [51:32]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And whatever. If they're selling a company or buying a company or spinning off a company. And it's a cautionary tale, and it's why we can't have corporate media gumming up the works of newsrooms in this country. I mean, at some point, for Christ's sake, you have to have independent journalism in this country, or we're gonna be completely hosed. We're not gonna know what the truth is. We're not gonna know what reality is. And I think that's what's going on with what you're trying to do right now, Ryan. And I applaud you for taking a stand and just trying to do it. You know what I mean?
- [52:07]
Don Lemon
Yeah.
- [52:08]
Ryan Lizza
And look, just to finish the story about Politico, I mean, one of the criticisms I made, and I stand by this, is when Politico was attacked earlier this year in a completely fake, illegitimate way by the President, trying to argue that Politico was being funded by the federal government because the federal government paid for subscriptions to Politico. You know, a thousand crazy stories ago, but you might, you might remember that one. And I thought they made a huge mistake. And this is what I wrote about. They sent our White House correspondent on stage at cpac, which is just a sewer of media bashing and right wing conspiracy mongering. And this year included activists who were advocating for having Donald Trump serve a third term and put one of our great reporters on stage. And this was a way to suck up to the Trump administration. That's what it was. And I wrote about that in the piece, and I stand by that criticism because I think it's hard to look, it is harder to criticize people when you're inside. And I think our friends in the press, sometimes it hurts to hear criticism, but it's important to hear it. And so the final leg of this story is I responded to Politico. I told them, of course I'm not taking that piece down, that I was shocked and appalled that they would ask me to do that, especially considering I'm supposed to be a guest of theirs at the White House corresponds dinner this weekend where we're all supposed to celebrate the First Amendment.
- [53:58]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, exactly.
- [54:00]
Ryan Lizza
And I asked them to retract their demand and apologize and gave them a deadline of 4:00 today. So keep us posted.
- [54:11]
Jim Acosta
I guess we got six minutes to go.
- [54:14]
Ryan Lizza
No email yet, but I'm hoping cooler heads will prevail there and they'll back down.
- [54:21]
Jim Acosta
And what stands out to you about where we are right now? I mean, we talked about the threats to democracy and so on, but it seems to me that Trump has gotten himself in so much trouble on the economy that has damaged him pretty badly. And it may have damaged him to the point where he perhaps may not be the threat, maybe in the near term that folks were perhaps worried about. I don't know, that may be naive of me to say that because, you know, who knows, he may lash out as a result of it, to work through those aggressions. But it is pretty striking to see. You know, he gets into the Oval Office basically on the backs of people being frustrated with the inflation and so on, and he proceeds to take a decent economic situation. Not perfect inflation was still bad, just completely botch it. It's remarkable in the first 100 days.
- [55:12]
Ryan Lizza
I mean, my, my view of this is like, you know, in the world of this, I hate. In the world of soft authoritarians, you, you know, it's not easy to. We don't really have too many totalitarian places in the world, you know, North Korea aside. And the modern authoritarian playbook is you got to keep the economy in good shape. Like the base, you, you, the basis of your support to use the government for all sorts of other illicit uses is going to be to keep the economy humming along. So normal people who don't pay as much attention as you and I do just say, well, I don't care about the trade off.
- [55:57]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, yeah. Whether it's Putin in Russia or Bond. Exactly. In Hungary, that's the trade off.
- [56:01]
Ryan Lizza
Exactly. There are normal people in those countries who were, who had better lives after Putin came to power and after Orban did a few things in the wake of some, the financial crisis. And if you don't tend to that, things can, you know, you lose support. So, as we know, Trump's numbers on the economy are way down. And that seems to be the Achilles heel of this project that they've embarked on.
- [56:32]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And the other piece of news that stood out to me today is he stopped going after Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, hoping that the markets will tick back up because he's kind of a day trader, but he goes after Zelensky. So he, he, he's, he has switched off of, of Jerome Powell. And now he's going after Volodymyr Zelensky and accusing him of trying to basically tank these peace talks, which, I mean, I, I don't even know if they're cracked up to be as peace talks if Ukraine doesn't really have a full seat at the table, you know, I mean, it is kind of like peace talks in, in name only.
- [57:06]
Ryan Lizza
And meanwhile, the deadlines for Putin have come and gone. Putin obviously is just pocketing all of the concessions that Trump gave him up front and is a smart and sophisticated enough player to understand how to manipulate Trump. This isn't the first time he's been done this. And all the outrage, of course, is to Zelensky and none of it to Putin, who he gave a deadline to end the war.
- [57:42]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, and he put out a truth social post, I guess it was earlier today, and he was going after Zelensky and he says he can have peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country. And then Trump goes on to say in this truth social post, which is kind of like going, it's kind of like going to confession for him. Maybe it's because I've got the Pope on my mind this week. But Trump then says in the truth social post, quote, I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save on average 5,000 Russian, Ukrainian soldiers a week who are dying for no reason whatsoever. I love how Trump, he has to say, I have nothing to do with Russia.
- [58:16]
Rosie O'Donnell
What is.
- [58:17]
Ryan Lizza
Okay, so I haven't seen this yet. So you're reading this to me for the first time.
- [58:19]
Jim Acosta
I'm reading this to you. This is a truth social post. Yes. That I got off truth social media.
- [58:23]
Ryan Lizza
All right, so that just jumps out to me immediately is why do you say, hey, I'm innocent of this thing you might accuse me of.
- [58:31]
Jim Acosta
I have nothing to do with Russia. There's nothing to see here. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. You know, it's incredible.
- [58:39]
Ryan Lizza
That is, yeah, that's a, sometimes hiding.
- [58:41]
Jim Acosta
In plain sight with this guy. I don't know.
- [58:44]
Ryan Lizza
That's deeply, deeply weird, Jim. And you know, I, I, we're going to spend. How many, how many more years are we going to have to spend trying to decode and psychoanalyze this person? You know, I do, I do feel, sometimes do feel as a journalist hostage to him and his people.
- [59:06]
Jim Acosta
No, it's so true. It's so true. Well, Ryan, great to see you. Best of luck. And I just I'm real proud of you for what you've done with this new startup. I know you and I talked about this a couple of months ago, and, you know, I think it's great when people make a stand, and it's. It's telos. Is that how you pronounce it?
- [59:26]
Ryan Lizza
Telos? Yeah. You know, I. It's a little precious. I realize it means, you know, it's a Greek word for your mission, your aim. And I liked the pun of telus news. You know, tell us.
- [59:39]
Jim Acosta
Oh, tell us. Exactly, Tell us.
- [59:41]
Ryan Lizza
Tell us news. But I wanted it to have that pun where it's both the sort of day to day, like, tell us what's going on, but also not to forget that journalism should be mission oriented. And there's a reason we do this. It's not just to randomly write down what political combatants are saying, but there's a mission behind it.
- [60:02]
Jim Acosta
Good for you. All right, well, good luck. Keep us posted on all the other stuff. I know you're dealing with some other stuff, but keep. Hang in there on the politico front, and best of luck with this new venture.
- [60:14]
Ryan Lizza
I really appreciate it, Jim. I'll see you soon, man.
- [60:16]
Jim Acosta
Good to see you. Okay, take care. Good to see you, man. All right, that was Ryan Liza, old campaign trail buddy of mine for many, many years. And it's just incredible to see the twists and turns that one's career might take. And I, for one, did not foresee that I would be doing a podcast on Substack. I just did not see that happening. And here I am, I'm doing it. So it's been a lot of fun, and I enjoy it because I get to talk, like, almost every day with some cool people. Rosie o'donnell, earlier, Ryan Lizza and Ryan. Ryan. And I could just sit around doing this forever. And then, of course, there is the amazing Don Lemon, who I just. Anytime I can talk to, to talk to Don. It's a good day. Don, how are you?
- [60:59]
Don Lemon
Hey. Great. Wow, that was quick. Usually I have to wait.
- [61:02]
Jim Acosta
I know. They got a few more hamsters in the little substack wheel. It's spinning furiously, and we're firing in all cylinders here. So how did you talk to Rosie go?
- [61:13]
Don Lemon
I was watching some of it, and then I had to bow out to do some work.
- [61:16]
Jim Acosta
She was amazing, and she wrote me a couple months ago to say, hang in there, Jim, and all this stuff, and I wrote her back, and we just kind of exchanged the messages here and there, and she, you know, I reached out to her recently because I saw something where she had said something and you know, she has this documentary coming up and I have to just plead ignorance. I don't know a lot about autism. I know much of what I know about autism is people coming out, experts coming out from time to time and refuting the bullcrap that RFK Jr. Spews about vaccines causing autism and so on. And it's just amazing to hear from Rosie because as she was explaining to this interview, she's basically made herself an expert in this, which is what parents of kids who go through these kinds of issues, what they become. And so it was really inspiring to hear from her.
- [62:07]
Don Lemon
Well, I have a friend who is an autism parent. Right. And her son, I think just turned 21 or 21 or 23. I don't know. She's an amazing mom and she's taught me so much about autism. And it's really something that we need to educate ourselves about and especially about vaccines, as you know, because there's so much misinformation out there with rfk.
- [62:32]
Jim Acosta
And I have to ask you about this, Don, because RFK Jr. Is, he, he's just not covered enough. We don't cover him enough. There's all the craziness with Pete Hegseth and Signal Gate. There's the daily hurricanes that Trump whips up on a daily basis because of the crazy stuff he says. And we're not covering what's happening over in public health enough, even though we just went through a goddamn pandemic.
- [62:56]
Don Lemon
Right.
- [62:57]
Jim Acosta
And you have measles exploding out in West Texas and you've got the guy in charge of HHS not giving a full throated endorsement of vaccines.
- [63:05]
Don Lemon
Yeah, there was a measles. Someone had measles in my hometown of Baton Rouge. My mom and my sister sent it to me saying, this is frightening, it's scary. But you're right about that because we keep covering and look deservedly so, we keep covering, we call the horse race or whatever of politics, but this, it's really important what's happening in Washington right now. And I hate palace intrigue. But now that we, you know, we hear. Jim, I don't know if you, if you heard about this, but you know, you know about the Tesla earnings, you know that Elon Musk says he's stepping back and then now, I thought about.
- [63:39]
Jim Acosta
Bringing this up today. Yes.
- [63:40]
Don Lemon
With you, but we can talk about that. But he and Scott Bessant apparently had this shouting match in the Oval Office in the West Wing.
- [63:48]
Jim Acosta
What do you think? Do you Think it's real. I think it's fascinating. And yes, I think it's real. And I, I, because I know the Trump people and how they operate. And obviously, I think Scott Bessant wanted to get this out there, that he was having a screaming match with Elon Musk, as Elon Musk is about to lead the government. I mean, the fact that, that he got on, on a call last night and said, hey, I'm going to be stepping back from doge to, to spend time on Tesla, this big important company which has taken a huge hit in.
- [64:18]
Don Lemon
The stock market, down 71% their earnings.
- [64:22]
Jim Acosta
In the last quarter. Holy shit. I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. And I mean, Don, you saw this up close and personal because you interviewed Elon Musk. Did you see any of this coming? It's so strange that he gets out on the campaign trail, Trump during the 2024 campaign campaign, spends all this money to get Trump elected, and then is given the keys to the candy store, given the keys to the castle, is able to run rampant across the federal government. And it's ended up being kind of like one of these rockets that he has that blows up. And now he's going to leave to go take care of his company before.
- [64:55]
Don Lemon
That blows up, too. Look, you should. Two things here. One is you should read my subsect what I just wrote. I called it the, we can talk about that, but I call it the confidence men, the men who are hired and do things and they just fail up. So. And that's Pete Hegseth. Right? And Donald Trump knows that he's not qualified. Right. But he thinks that if he keeps, like pulling the strings on the puppet, the puppet will start to, you know, become confident and act on its own. But this Elon Musk thing, one, you know, I've been very careful about what I've said about him because, you know, I'm in active litigation with him. But yeah, sorry, I, I think I saw that interview was very prescient that I did with him. Did. I think, I thought that he would possibly come out and possibly support Donald Trump, but because he said I'm leaning away from Biden, that's what he said in the interview. But I didn't think that he would lean so heavily into politics, which is really dangerous when you have a business and you have to rely on the public supporting you and buying your products. It's oftentimes very tough to be a political figure because it's so polarizing.
- [66:07]
Jim Acosta
And he has made the Tesla Brand toxic to its own customer base. I mean, I was just walking my dog. Duke, earlier this afternoon, walked past a Tesla. The owner put a bumper sticker on it saying, this is the pre madness edition of this Tesla. I mean, you have people having to put bumper stickers on their cars to explain that they bought this car before what Elon Musk did. I mean, that's not good for your brand if you have a brand. It ain't good when people have to put disclaimers on your product.
- [66:38]
Don Lemon
Well, the market hasn't closed yet, but I think most things were up today. But I don't think Tesla is up. I think Tesla was in the red today. So we'll see what happens by close. You can check it out if you want to look at it.
- [66:51]
Jim Acosta
But I think it was up today, but it was recovering from some really bad days. And it's kind of. Maybe it's recovering because says Elon Musk is going to go back and that gives the investor community some confidence. But I'm not sure I would be that confident right now. I just, you know, going back to your theme of confidence and Don, the other thing too, is this Pete Hegseth scandal with Signal Gate. It's absolutely extraordinary. It's absolutely, you know, the fact that, I mean, you and I, because we worked in television, to think that a weekend anchor would be Weekend Morning Ecker would become the defense secretary.
- [67:35]
Don Lemon
It's just kind of.
- [67:36]
Jim Acosta
What. Why did I think this would turn out? Well, I don't know. It just seems to me like you should. The warning signs were there. It sounds like I, you know, Jim.
- [67:47]
Don Lemon
We'Ve seen this movie before. I've lived this movie with confidence men. And I think that the bosses put them there because they're easily controllable and they think that they're, you know, again, they'll just do what the boss says. But you have to have credibility. You have to have some expertise. You have to have, you know, some. You have to be qualified in some way to do those jobs. If you look at, I mean, very simply, all you have to do is look at the previous defense secretaries and their qualifications and, you know, all of the badges and everything on their chests and on their sleeves. And Pete Hexth has none of that. And by the, you know, I talked about how he is so concerned about his public image and his press.
- [68:31]
Jim Acosta
I noticed this.
- [68:32]
Don Lemon
Well, because. And that he accuses people of leaking and he's the one that's actually leaking again. I've seen this story before. I've lived It. And now after I wrote this, right. There's a story out now, Jim, that he is installing a makeup room in the Pentagon.
- [68:48]
Jim Acosta
No. Yeah. No.
- [68:51]
Don Lemon
Yes.
- [68:51]
Jim Acosta
They need to remove the mirrors, not add more of them. I mean, you know, whenever I see him.
- [68:56]
Don Lemon
No, no, no, I disagree with you. I think that someone needs to hold a mirror up to the guy and say, you know, remove the mirrors, the physical mirrors, but, yeah, the actual mirrors. But I think someone should say, look, that interview on Fox and Friends did not help you. And I was sitting there going, watching it, going, oh, shut up, shut up. But then I was like, no, no, no, keep talking, keep talking.
- [69:14]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, it's a slow moving car crash is what. That's what we're watching right now. And eventually Trump will wake up to the reality that Pete Hegseth has to go and it's just gonna. And because Trump, Trump right now is in a place. He's so furious. He's so angry with the media, he's so angry with DC he doesn't wanna give anybody a scalp. He doesn't wanna throw Hegseth under the bus because he knows that means that other people will win and he will lose. And I can't imagine he wants to do it after what has taken place this week where he's had to back down on Jerome Powell. He's had to back down. Apparently there are reports that he may loosen these tariffs on China. He's Mr. Back down. He's Mr. Blink.
- [69:54]
Don Lemon
Yeah, he's not. He, he chickened out. He's a chicken. He chickened out on everything that he said. He did say. I saw the sound bite where he said that, you know, he would consider backing off on lowering them. Not getting rid of them altogether, he said, but lowering them, that is, you know, that's a turnaround. That is a, that's a blink right there. That's a. Yeah. And so I, Scott Galloway, I spoke to recently, I saw and also saw on the Pivot podcast, and he says he believes by a hundred days that Donald Trump is going, there's going to be a correction and an awakening and that he's going, there's going to be some sort of huge fail. We'll see. It's 94 days in. But it does appear that the business community somehow got to him and said, look, you got to stop this crazy shit. Scott Besant got to him. And I believe, which I'm gonna do at 5:00 on my, on my show on YouTube. Is, is there a new sheriff in Dodge? I mean, Doge exactly what happens. Get out of Doge.
- [70:55]
Jim Acosta
Elon Musk.
- [70:56]
Don Lemon
I. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a. There's probably a new sheriff. Maybe it took a while for Scott Bessant to gain the President's confidence and then. But I think also the circumstances surrounding what happened to the market, Jim, you know, Donald Trump is obsessed with the stock market. He's obsessed with his press money and the stock market. Right. And so if either of those are going down, he's going to do whatever he has to do to correct it. And I think he saw the markets, he realized China is not backing down. He realized that people saw Scott Besant as, or see him as the adult in the room. And so I think that that is why the market is doing better than it had been remembered. It's still down. I mean, it's up for the day, but it's still down below.
- [71:38]
Jim Acosta
I know. And I was thinking about ending my show talking about this. And that is, it's sort of the challenge of our time is whether we can start to think collectively as a country as opposed to just our own individual self interest. And I know that that is probably asking too much. But, you know, the financial markets and the financial market cable programs that you see out there, and they're all breathing a sigh of relief because, you know, Trump has come back to the reality that he can't fire Jerome Powell. And then it's all like a big ticker tape parade on Wall street. And it's like, guys, this doesn't mean that the madness has stopped. It doesn't mean that we have left crazy town. We're still in crazy town. So, you know, like, it's not like the investor community can say, hey, great job, guys. All right, let's go, let's go grab a beer. No, well, no.
- [72:24]
Don Lemon
Well, the bar is so low, though, Jim. And I think, you know, when you're, especially when you're dealing with money and you're dealing with inconsistency and because the market likes consistency when you're dealing with that, I think that any sign of some sort of normalcy, people are longing for it. And so, like, okay, okay, there's a possibility he said he's going to back down or lower the tariffs. All right, all right, let's do it. And then that helps the market. They're desperate for some sort of consistency and normalcy, which we just don't have right now. Donald Trump is so erratic. He can do something in the next five minutes. And I'm sure that he will. To rattle the markets again.
- [73:05]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And there's no question. And Don, the other thing I wanted to talk to you about before I let you go, because I know you have to get ready for your show is the situation over at 60 minutes and what an earthquake that is in our industry. I was talking about this with Ryan Lissa, and to me, I talked about.
- [73:21]
Don Lemon
It with him yesterday as well.
- [73:22]
Jim Acosta
When 60 Minutes is in trouble, that's a big damn deal. That is huge.
- [73:28]
Don Lemon
I said, Jim, you can agree or disagree. I said this is another nail in corporate media's coffin. I don't think it's the final nail in the coffin, obviously, but I think it's another nail, especially in the confidence that people have in corporate media, the trust that they have in corporate media. And I think that is why folks like you over here on Substack doing extremely well. I'm doing okay on Substack.
- [73:54]
Jim Acosta
I'm doing great. Watch Don on Substack. Watch Don on YouTube.
- [73:57]
Don Lemon
Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's why we're having such success. And it's from, you know, you saw the New York Times article that our old boss, Jeff Zucker said they don't care if you're on the north lawn and the south lawn and the White House with pancake makeup on and all the lights and the shiny desks. They want people they like, they trust and they care about. And I think that's figures like us people can trust that. I'm going to tell them the truth. I'm also not going to bombard them with frivolous stuff. I'm not going to have false equivalency on my show. I'm just not going to do it. But I think people, you know, people like that, and that's what they used.
- [74:32]
Jim Acosta
To like about 60 Minutes, Wallace, Ed Bradley, Andy Rooney.
- [74:38]
Don Lemon
But it also shows, Jim, that, look, I think they want this. As you and I have talked about, these corporations don't want their business in Washington interfered with or blocked.
- [74:48]
Jim Acosta
Right.
- [74:48]
Don Lemon
Their mergers, their acquisitions and all of those things are consolidations and whatever takeover of companies. They don't want that. And so they are cozying up to Donald Trump. They are bending the knee. And now CBS may have to settle with Donald Trump if they want this Paramount merger to go through because Donald Trump is suing them for a lot of money. And that is not this that for me, you know, for the freedom of speech crowd, that is just total hypocrisy.
- [75:19]
Jim Acosta
It seems to me Trump has figured out how. He's figured out how to crack the code of how to hurt the press, how to hit the media where it hurts. And in part because these companies should never have been allowed to take over these news organizations to begin with and have the kind of sway and influence over these news organizations that they've had over the last, what, 20 or 30 years that don, you and I have been in this business. We've seen newsrooms get smaller. We've seen bureaus get shut down. We've seen talented journalists, photographers, producers, writers, and so on get laid off, all in the name of corporate downsizing and saving a little money here and, you know, investor confidence over there and shareholders value, blah, blah, blah. And it just has gotten journalists further and further away from being able to do their damn jobs. And it's now infected 60 minutes.
- [76:15]
Don Lemon
It's 60 minutes, like one of the most trusted news magazines. If not, it is the most trusted news magazine program, I believe, on the air today in anywhere in the world and write 60 minutes or 60 minutes overseas. Right. Isn't there an easy British version of 60 Minutes?
- [76:33]
Jim Acosta
There's an Australian version of 60 Minutes, yeah.
- [76:35]
Don Lemon
I mean, have you seen Good Night and Good Luck?
- [76:38]
Jim Acosta
I've seen the movie, I've not seen the play.
- [76:41]
Don Lemon
I went to see the play the other night and it could have been today. Yeah, I mean, I think the timing is extraordinary. You must.
- [76:51]
Jim Acosta
A thousand bucks for a ticket. I'm a bit of a skin.
- [76:54]
Don Lemon
No, but I, I, maybe I can help you out. Maybe I know a couple of people. A couple of, you know, maybe I can give you some Clooney. Help. We'll see.
- [77:03]
Jim Acosta
Oh, man, that'd be fun. Well, if you would go for an encore, you know, viewing, I would love, we, we could go together. Be a lot of fun.
- [77:09]
Don Lemon
Or go and, yeah, you put in.
- [77:11]
Jim Acosta
A good work for me, you know, look, you know, a little grease the skids, you know, I appreciate it. That'd be great.
- [77:18]
Don Lemon
Are you going to be at the correspondence sooner?
- [77:20]
Jim Acosta
I am, I am not, no. I am fortunately going to be out of town. I've got another engagement, a previously scheduled engagement, so I will not be attending the White House Correspondence center, which, by the way, they should not have a White House correspondence dinner if you're inviting Trump administration officials who work for a president who would shut down the press in a heartbeat if he were allowed to do it. You just, I just don't think it's right. I, you know, as much as I love the dinner, I love the people there. It's not right.
- [77:50]
Don Lemon
It's not right. And again, for the freedom of speech crowd to cancel a comedian, because you don't. That's. That's what comedians do. They roast the administration. I don't know if you have. I've been roasted at the White House Correspondent center by the comedian. And I mean, I even flipped Larry Wilmore off and we took a picture.
- [78:07]
Jim Acosta
You got so much trouble. Jeff was so pissed at you when you did that. That was.
- [78:11]
Don Lemon
He wasn't. I don't know, he said, he go. I think he thought it was okay, but.
- [78:15]
Jim Acosta
Oh, he thought it was okay.
- [78:16]
Don Lemon
Yeah. That's a whole different. That was a whole different time. That was when. I'm just saying in, in general, in the news business in general, there are. I think that kind of old school news boss is. And I call him a boss because I think they're bosses. I think that era may be over. The people, the, the, the news boss that. Who were the bulwark or was the bulwark between us and the corporate.
- [78:40]
Jim Acosta
Jeff, I mean, Jeff Zucker, I have to say, was a incredible boss in that regard.
- [78:44]
Don Lemon
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we need more of that in this day and age. But, but sadly, the exact opposite is happening, Jim. And, and to me, that is really sad. And again, it is showing up. And you know, in the 60 Minute story, the guy said, I don't feel. He said it himself, like, I can. I have an independent. I can be independent in my journalism. And I think he was like saying, you know, this is not credible and there's too much influence coming from the top and too much pressure when, you know. And it's not journalism anymore, it's just sort of business and bowing to power.
- [79:18]
Jim Acosta
Well, and that's why what you do, Don, is so great, because you're getting to do now what you used to do on your old primetime show when you had that latitude to just call it out, call out the bullshit, call out the lies. And that's what we need. That's what people want, that's what people are craving. And yeah, unfortunately, we got to do this every.
- [79:41]
Don Lemon
We should have a regular thing. I would love that. Yeah. If it's just a few minutes so that we can talk about things. Maybe 4:00. At 4:00 on a Wednesday is your time.
- [79:49]
Jim Acosta
Let's do it. We'll make it happen. I love it.
- [79:51]
Don Lemon
We'll call it Jim Lemon.
- [79:52]
Jim Acosta
I love it. I love it. I need one of those little things in the background. I like the neon light thing in the background. That's pretty cool.
- [79:59]
Don Lemon
The Lemon.
- [79:59]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [80:00]
Don Lemon
Here's the thing. Fortunately, the name Lemon, right. There are lots of. Everything is lemon. So I just bought this. I bought this off of the Internet. I think I'm going to get a custom one. I'll see if I can find one that says Acosta. But I like your setup. Your setup is very similar to my. My other setup. I think the wall color was the same color. And you asked me.
- [80:19]
Jim Acosta
This is like Dad's office kind of thing. It's basically.
- [80:22]
Don Lemon
It's great, though. It's not stopping you. I mean, look at. Look at your lives, Jim. You're doing so well here. I'm so proud of you. You know, I'm not going to say that every time, but, you know, it's great. I'm proud of you. And guess what? I was invited to the correspondence dinner, by the way. I'm not going to go to the dinner. I was also invited to some of the parties. I would like to go, but then it's just a lot, and I don't know if I want that negativity in my life. Why should I subject myself to that?
- [80:44]
Jim Acosta
And then you're up until 2 in the morning, you're tired the next day, for what? You know, just to, like, I don't know, look the other way when Kellyanne Conway goes by. It's like, oh, you know, Jesus, I got other shit to do. Sorry. We should go before I get in more trouble.
- [81:00]
Don Lemon
Don't. You're not in trouble, man. All right, guys, we'll see you soon, okay?
- [81:05]
Jim Acosta
All right. Take care. Good to see you, buddy. That's the great Don Lemon. All right, so every time Don and I get together, it just feels like, you know, the magic is back, right? It's. We're having fun again. I always love talking to Don, and he's absolutely right. We should do this more often. And we will do it more often. And I just have to say I had a thing that I was gonna say at the end of the show, but what I want to say, and I don't even know if Rosie is still watching. She. I think she had to put her child to bed. I just want to say what just a real pleasure it was to speak with her. If you missed it earlier on in the program, the live is going to go in record mode, and then you'll be able to watch the recording later. Please watch. You want to watch Ryan, of course, and Don, but please watch Rosie and everything that she had to say, because it was the perfect encapsulation of what a great mom does. And I just am so touched by it. She reminds me of my mom a little bit because my mom's got Irish in her. And it's just a reminder of what moms can do, mom power. And I just want to leave it at the end of this edition of the Jim Acosta show, an extended edition, a special edition of the Jim Acosta Show. Some of you guys tuned in at 4 o'clock, not knowing that I put a note out earlier saying that I would be on at 3:00. And so if it seems like I'm wrapping up a little earlier, it's because we had to start at 3:00 because Rosie is in Ireland and she's several hours ahead of us. And so we wanted to start the show early enough so she could put her child to bed. But my thanks to Rosie O'Donnell if you get a chance to watch her incredible documentary on Hulu, Unleashing Hope, the Power of Service Dogs for Children with Autism. It is now out on Hulu. Make sure you watch and check out Don Lemon's show every time that he's on on substack and on YouTube. And of course, Ryan Lizza, who has started Telus. It's not telos. I was trying to add a little Greek pronunciation there. It's Telus. And just like you would say telus. And he's on Substack now as well, starting his new independent media venture. But anyway, thanks everybody for watching. Really appreciate it. Enjoy all the comments that are always coming in. I know somebody just did a frown face. I didn't know it was gonna be 3:00. I'm sorry. It was because of Rosie. And I would do it every damn time. I would always start early for Rosie O'Donnell. We had a great discussion. If you missed any part of that, you got to go back and watch. But in the meantime, thanks everybody for watching. Really appreciate it. Always enjoy our conversations when we get together like this. And so in the meantime, still reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Have a good evening, everybody. Take care. Good to see you. Bye.