The clock is ticking on SNAP benefits. If Republicans, who market themselves as the “family first” party, fail to reach an agreement on emergency funds for SNAP, millions of Americans will lose the ability to feed their families.
Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) joins Jen from her D.C. office to expose the hypocrisy of Trump and his MAGA lapdogs, who bathe in their riches as their constituents struggle pay for groceries, rent, and their healthcare premiums. “It’s absolutely ridiculous that the narrative from many of my Republican colleagues are like, ‘well, if they want to eat, they should get a job and work hard,’” Sen. Rosen recounts with a disgusted shake of her head. “Will you tell that to the disabled veteran or to the senior, or to the children or to the people who work really hard but just don’t make enough?”
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Jacky Rosen is a U.S. Senator from Nevada. She serves on the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees and has been a leading advocate for veterans, renewable energy, and affordable health care.
The transcript has been edited slightly for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. We’re thrilled to have back with us Senator Jacky Rosen from the great state of Nevada. Welcome!
Jacky Rosen
Well, thank you for having me. I always enjoy being with you.
Jen Rubin
You had a little speech on the Senate floor, concerning Donald Trump’s desire to pay himself $230 million. Tell us about that, and tell us about how Senator Scott responded.
Jacky Rosen
You know, imagine that. Donald Trump… well, we know how often his feelings get hurt, which is pretty much every day, and he says on his own accord, I am your retribution, I’m all about the retribution. So, his feelings were hurt by an investigation into, some things that people thought were not legal.
And clearly to say, I’m not a lawyer, but I believe he was convicted over 30 times. So, Donald Trump’s feelings were hurt, so he’s decided that he’s asking the Department of Justice, and I want to be clear, the Department of Justice is the United States Department of Justice, not his private law firm. It belongs to the taxpayer, it belongs to the American people, it is for us, not for him. He is asking for damages of $230 million, and then he goes on and says, isn’t that strange? I get to approve my own payout. So this is like the… a fox guard in the hen house. He’s gonna say, I think you hurt my feelings to the tune of $230 million. I get to approve the payout, and it’s paying myself. And we can’t even do the oversight right now to see if that check’s been written. So while he’s building himself a big beautiful, ridiculous ballroom, while they’re eating off gold-plated China at the new Rose Garden called Club… I think it’s called Club Mar-a- it’s not Club Mar-a-Lago, but it’s Club Rose Garden, or something like that, Club Trump. He thinks everything’s his country club—people are hurting. He could have put this money… well, if we ever see his tax returns, he’d see how charitable he is. Probably not too charitable. Could have gone to SNAP, could have gone to anything. And instead, he’s taking hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and just laughing, writing himself a damn check.
And Rick Scott, well, they had… they objected to condemning this. He didn’t even address it, he just said, well, you’re all… Democrats are ridiculous, and he walked off the floor, because every Republican here is scared out of their minds of being in the, in the crosshairs of Donald Trump, because they don’t want, his anger. And they need to stand up, because we’re United States Senators, we’re the first power in this country, we have the oversight in this country, and you’re just seeing another spineless act over there.
Jen Rubin
It’s remarkable that these people all want to get re-elected, but they don’t want to do their jobs. If they’re just an adjunct to Donald Trump, it seems like a waste of time and oxygen.
Let me switch to something that is very serious that you have also talked about, and that is the unnecessary, illegal cutoff of SNAP payments, that the administration is threatening to stop, come November 1. Now, as we know, 24 state attorney generals plus 3 governors have sued because this is illegal. What would this mean for a state like yours, which has so many people who, in one form or another, get food relief?
Jacky Rosen
Yeah, and you know, there’s food insecurity, really, across this country, and it’s not that, you know, people say, oh, well, people should just go get a job. You know who gets SNAP? Children, disabled veterans, seniors, people who are working but don’t make enough when they work, and there’s nearly 500,000 people in Nevada that this is going to hurt. And it’s absolutely ridiculous that the narrative from many of my Republican colleagues are like, well, if they want to eat, they should get a job and work hard. Well, you tell that to the disabled veteran, or to the senior, or to the children, or to the people who work really hard, but just don’t make enough. And this country was such bounty, and my Republican colleagues, who have so much wealth amongst all of them, that they don’t consider those among us who need the help. And the Trump administration, this is a Trump shutdown, this is a Trump issue, they have the power to release the emergency funds to make SNAP recipients whole, so they continue to release that, and we’ll be glad to send you the screenshot, but I believe it was in September, the agency, USDA, that’s where SNAP comes from, they put out on their website, all the statutes, how they could move the money, use the money, so everyone would continue to get paid. They had a plan. Well, nothing really dies on the internet. We have that screenshot. It suddenly disappeared.
Donald Trump has the power to… well, he has the power to… where’s the money coming from to tear down the White House? Where’s the money coming from to tear up the Rose Garden? Where’s the money coming from from these strikes on boats near Venezuela? Where’s the money come from? All these other things. How about that $230 million? Did he take that check? Let that go to SNAP. He can fix this, he can fix it now. He is choosing a gold-plated dinner off everyone else’s back.
Jen Rubin
As I understand it, there were actually a few of your Republican colleagues who wanted to do something about this. Senator Collins, Senator Capito, Senator Hawley, and John Thune says, no, we’re not gonna allow anybody to vote on anything and keep people from going hungry. Do the Republicans think they’re being well served by that kind of leadership?
Jacky Rosen
Well, you know, clearly they’re, they voted for Thune to be their leader, and here’s the deal. We do have leaders in our Congress, you know, and there’s a speaker and a leader in the House, and Democrat-Republican leader in the Senate, but the only people we really work for are the people, our voters of our state, and the American people. John Thune’s not their boss, Chuck Schumer’s not my boss.
And so if they really believed this was right, any one of us, any one of a hundred, you know this, probably your viewers know this, we put up unanimous consent, we asked for a vote, we asked for something to pass. There are ways to bring things to the floor, so if Josh Hawley or Susan Collins, or whoever, if they cared so much about it, and I believe Josh Hawley has a bill, he can come to the floor asking for unanimous consent. I’ll tell you, I don’t think anyone’s going to disagree on the Democratic side.
But let Leader Thune say he doesn’t want to vote on… well, Leader Thune is already saying he doesn’t want to, but if he really had the guts, he would come to the floor and say, damn you, Leader Thune, I’m going to do what I want to. I didn’t ask anybody’s permission to go talk about the $230 million. We don’t have to ask permission. We work for our states, and we work for the people of this country. We don’t have a boss in our leaders. The American people are our constituents, and we work for them.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, if we don’t get a resolution from the Republicans, and I don’t think the Congress is even in session, Donald Trump is running around the globe, so it’s a little hard to cut a deal. But at any rate, if they do not make an agreement, and if they allow the Obamacare subsidies to expire at the end of this year, we’re now looking at enormous increases in premiums. What does that look like from your perspective in Nevada, and are people starting to get wind of the notion that they may be entirely priced out of the health insurance market?
Jacky Rosen
Yeah, I’ve been holding so many roundtables, and I’ve been doing quite a few of them on Zoom. I’ve done some with all of our press in Nevada, so that they could hear directly, not my stories, but individual stories. We had a senior citizen, a nursing student, a social worker, who was another student, other folks, we have veterans, so they can tell their stories about, how they use their healthcare, how they get it, and what it means for them, not to be able to afford the dignity, just the dignity. I just want to make sure that everybody hears this, because the whole narrative on the Republican side is anybody who gets any kind of help or subsidy, they’re just bums. Well, that is not the case, and it’s just a handout. That is not the case. In this case, for the ACA tax credits, it’s just about being sure that people can afford to purchase an insurance policy. Nobody lives off their insurance policy. It gives you the dignity of being able to go to the doctor, take care of your health issues, and get your medication.
It’s about giving them the dignity of having their own healthcare. That’s what this is about. And so, I can tell you that the Republican states, so many of them use these credits more… more than some of the Democratic states. I think Speaker Johnson’s district is going to be hurt most of all in this country. You see Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I don’t agree with on too much, come and say, responsible people need to fix this, my kids and premiums are going up double.
And so, we have people in Nevada, you know, we like to say we’re the entertainment capital, sports capital, come gamble, come do all this stuff, especially in Las Vegas. But when I have people say, well, I’m gonna take a gamble and not get health insurance, it’s not the kind of gambling anybody should be taking, because the consequences, you don’t get your insulin, you don’t get your blood pressure medicine, you don’t get whatever. The consequences could be your life. So I don’t want anybody to gamble on their healthcare. We need to extend the credits so people don’t fall off the cliff.
And then, I’ll quote Marjorie Taylor Greene again, responsible people, Democrats and Republicans, need to come together to work on how we increase accessibility and affordability, giving the dignity of healthcare and health to Americans. And that’s what I’m fighting for.
Jen Rubin
Before we end on this. When last we talked, the tourism in Nevada, as it is everywhere in the country, is really being impacted, both by prices and price squeezes, as well as our, really, aggressive and, hostile, relations with Canada and, other neighbors. Is that still the case? And what’s your concern as we go into the holiday season, when those people in cold places like Washington, D.C, and New York want to get away for some warm weather, and they may not be able to afford it, or there may be other reasons for not going to, warm weather places?
Jacky Rosen
Well, I think the uncertainty, that’s really the uncertainty. First of all, Nevada, we’re the canary in the coal mine when it comes to tourism, for sure. And so, why? Because why do tariffs hurt us? People ask, why do tariffs hurt tourism?
Well, in Nevada, come see our fabulous restaurants. Come eat in all of them. There’s buffets with chocolate-covered strawberries the size of your head. They’re fantastic! This is why people come. They want to come and eat great food. Well, a lot of that food, wine, whatever that is, we bring it in. Cheeses, we bring it in from all kinds of other places around the world. You want to get married? We’re one of the wedding capitals of the world. We bring those flowers in for your wedding, maybe from other places, tulips grown here, and these other flowers grown in other places. I could go on and on. And so the tariffs are hurting us. There’s other ways the tariffs are hurting us, but a lot of that in the tourism industry. Immigration. These immigration policies, these pictures on television that look like it is the 1930s, with mass men and women stopping people, throwing them on the ground, and shoving them into an unmarked car. You don’t even… this could be anyone kidnapping you. How the hell do you know who they are? If I saw it happen on the street, I…this is absolutely not what we should be doing. So people are seeing that, and then people are seeing the idea of, are people getting stopped for a Facebook post? They live in another country in Europe or somewhere else, and they made some Twitter, or TikTok, or whatever it is, social media post? Now they can’t come into this country. Or they can’t visit their friends, or their visas are getting revoked.
Next year, we’re going to have, I think the World Cup, we’re gonna have the Olympics coming up in a few years. We’ve got all these international sports that are coming, of course, top entertainment coming from all around the world, and people don’t want to come here because they’re scared that if they’re here, that no one’s going to even recognize the passport from the country that they’re here visiting from, and of course, there’s going to start adding fees to coming here. Visa wait times are difficult, so we’re just adding barrier after barrier to international travel. Oh, I want to say one last thing. The coffee tariffs. This is the number one thing that’s killing us, too, and I think that’s hitting everybody, not just tourism. People say, what about the coffee? Coffee’s gone up. Brazil, our number one coffee trader surplus with them, let them send us their coffee. It’s fantastic. We don’t grow coffee here. But immigration, tariffs, and that is really hurting tourism, and the uncertainty of our economy, and jobs, and rent, and what’s really going to happen. And so people just feel anxious all the time they come to me when they see me out as a regular person living real life at the market, or wherever I’m getting gas in my car and they say, Senator, are we gonna be okay? I’m worried. I’m worried.
They don’t tell me what party they’re from, they hold their heart, and they just say, I’m so worried, is everything going to be okay? And, that’s why I’m here fighting for people’s dignity, so we’re gonna be okay, all of us. The U.S. not just stands for the United States, it stands for us.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Well, you can understand why Mike Johnson doesn’t want his members in town, because they might have to answer hard questions about all of these policies that really are so destructive and so harmful.
Thank you, Senator, as always. Thank you for what you’re doing every day for the people of Nevada, for the people of, the United States, and thank you again for spending time with us. We really enjoy it.
Jacky Rosen
Thank you. I appreciate you, too. I always enjoy being on. I hope I see you soon. Be well.
Jen Rubin
Take care.
