A rush transcript of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” airing on Sunday, August 3, 2025 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the “This Week” transcript archive.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC “THIS WEEK” ANCHOR: The president fires the top official in charge of the jobs report because he didn’t like what he saw. THIS WEEK starts right now.
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JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Mr. President, why did you fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Because I think her numbers were wrong.
STEPHANOPOULOS: President Trump removes a Labor Department official overseeing monthly jobs reports, baselessly claiming she cooked the books, as his new tariff regime takes shape.
TRUMP: Well, they have to pay a fair rate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: This morning, Jon Karl reports on the economic fallout. Plus, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Deepening crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we are talking about a matter of minutes and hours to stave off further debts now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Humanitarian groups sound the alarm on an imminent famine, as Trump’s Mideast envoy visits Gaza. Ian Pannell is on the scene. Plus, Doctors Without Borders U.S. CEO Avril Benoît.
Redistricting battle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the motion prevails.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Republicans in Texas moving to redraw the congressional map. We’ll speak with former Attorney General Eric Holder about how Democrats plan to fight back.
Plus, political analysis from Chris Christie and Donna Brazile.
And —
GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, “THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARDS THE SKY” AND HISTORIAN: In those stories, you come to understand now nuclear weapons are not like any other weapon in the human arsenal.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The head of the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Martha Raddatz speaks with historian Garrett Graff on his new oral history, “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, it’s THIS WEEK. Here now, George Stephanopoulos.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to THIS WEEK.
Suppressing statisticians is a time-honored tool for leaders trying to solidify their power and stifle decent. It’s happened throughout history. Most recently in Venezuela and Turkey, where presidents punished officials and economists who do not tow the party line.
It has not been part of the American tradition. But late Friday, it happened here. President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after baselessly claiming she rigged July’s employment report. Today, we’ll examine what that means for our economy and our democracy.
Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl starts us off.
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JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It was a double dose of bad economic news for President Trump on Friday as the market reacted to his latest tariffs and the grim new jobs report showing the unemployment rate up and new jobs down.
The stock market tumbled. The Dow losing 2.9 percent on the week. Its worst weekly performance since early April when Trump first announced his liberation day trade war.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (April 2, 2025): My fellow Americans, this is liberation day.
KARL (voice over): The president’s reaction to the bad economic news, first, shoot the messenger. He fired the person responsible for compiling the data, the chair of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer.
KARL: Mr. President, why did you fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
TRUMP: Because I think her numbers were wrong, just like I thought her numbers were wrong before the election. Days before the election.
KARL (voice over): Without providing any evidence, Trump accused McEntarfer of fudging the numbers to make him look bad. Also insisting, again with no evidence, that she had rigged job data ahead of last year’s election to help Kamala Harris. In fact, the final jobs report before the election didn’t help Harris at all. It was even worse than this week’s report.
MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, ALLIANZ CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER: There wasn’t much evidence that they are politically driven all this. It’s just the nature of the exercise.
KARL (voice over): The Bureau of Labor Statistics is non-partisan. It compiles economic data that has been used by economists, investors and academics for more than a century. As for the newly fired McEntarfer, she was confirmed by the Senate in January of 2024 in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 86 to eight. In fact, then Senator J.D. Vance voted for her.
William Beach, who was appointed by Trump to serve as BLS commissioner during his first term, said the firing, quote, “sets a dangerous precedent and undermining the statistical mission of the bureau,” while calling McEntarfer, quote, “a very fine analyst and a good colleague.”
At least one Republican senator suggested Trump’s move was, quote, “impetuous.”
SEN. CYNTHIA LUMMIS (R-WY): It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.
KARL (voice over): In addition to shooting the messenger, the president is pointing fingers, putting the blame for economic turbulence on Jerome Powell. He appointed Powell as the Federal Reserve chairman in 2017. But this week, he called him a, quote, “suborn moron” for failing to cut interest rates.
All of this comes as the president announced a new wave of tariffs set to go into effect this Thursday. This new round raises taxes on imported products from nearly 70 countries. Many economists are warning the impact of the earlier tariffs is now just being felt, and that consumers are going to see higher prices.
NATASHA SARIN, YALE BUDGET LAB PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER: Apparel prices are going up by some 35 percent as a result of these tariffs. And computer prices are going to go up by some 20 percent.
KARL (voice over): But Trump’s tariffs are now facing a serious legal challenge. A federal appeals court raising questions about whether the president has the authority to impose across the board tariffs without congressional approval.
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KARL (on camera): Previous trade deals including NAFTA and the U.S./Mexico/Canada agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term didn’t go into effect until they were approved by Congress. If Trump loses in court, it could up end most of his new tariffs and also the various trade deals that he has negotiated over the last several weeks.
George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Jonathan Karl, thanks.
After the president fired the head of the BLS on Friday, we invited the White House to provide a guest to respond. They declined.
But we’re joined now by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Larry, thank you for joining us this morning.
I guess this firing of the BLS commissioner goes in the category of shocking but not surprising.
LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY: Yes, I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did. I’m surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly.
This is a preposterous charge. These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals. There’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number. The numbers are in line with what we’re seeing from all kinds of private sector sources.
This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. It — firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial. This is really scary stuff. And it can hardly be surprising that when the rule of law is a bit in question, that there’s a big uncertainty premium in the markets that is operating to both make their be less investment, which slows the economy down, and also means there’s less supply so that there’s more inflationary pressure.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Adding to that uncertainty is the president’s campaign against Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, saying he’s been a moron, I think was the word the president used for not lowering interest rates so far. What’s the impact of that?
SUMMERS: Look, I think that this kind of political Fed bashing is a fool’s game. The Fed doesn’t listen. So, short-term interest rates aren’t going to be different because of it. The market does listen. So, longer-term interest rates are going to be higher, which is going to make it more expensive to buy a house. This is hurting the economy, not helping.
I think the president understanding that. And what the president is doing is recognizing that for all kinds of reasons, of which his policies are very important ones, the economy is at a lot of risk. And he’s looking to set up a scapegoat if the economy performs badly. That’s what this attacking Chairman Powell is really about. It’s not really about trying to change policy. There’s no chance that that’s going to happen to any substantial degree.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The jobs report on Friday probably does increase the chances that the Fed will cut interest rates in — in September. What’s your take on what that report told us?
SUMMERS: I think it told us that the economy is closer to stall speed than we thought that it was. The July number was weak. The big deal is the downwards revision for the two months before that. And that means there’s a real possibility that we’re in a stall speed kind of economy, which means we could tip over into recession. That wouldn’t be my prediction right now, but the risk is greater certainly than it was before. And it’s a risk we don’t need to be taking, but it’s a risk that’s made more serious by these tariffs.
What your viewers should understand is that these tariffs are not job creators. When you raise tariffs on steel, for example — yeah, there’s some people who work in the steel industry, but there are 50 times as many who work in industries like the automobile industry who are now going to be much less competitive when they try to compete all over the world.
So, this is a immense gift that we are giving to our country’s adversaries. By alienating our allies like Canada, like Europe, we are making it much easier for China to grow and flourish in the global economy. And I just don’t understand why we would want to do that, especially when what we’re getting out of it is an increase of more than $2,000 in the bills that typical middle-class families are going to have to pay.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the markets have been pretty complacent about the tariffs so far. Are we seeing their impact in this underlying jobs report?
SUMMERS: I think that that is an element in it. I think both the direct effects of the tariffs, but probably more importantly, this sense of uncertainty that anything could happen and who knows what business is going to be attacked next? Who knows what the rules are going to be?
In an environment like that, what should a business do? It should sit and it should wait. Wait in terms of hiring people, wait in terms of new factory construction. What’s keeping the economy going in significant part is not anything actually that’s coming out of the president’s policies.
It is all of the investment that we’re having in data centers which is coming out of the tremendous progress that some companies are making in technology, and that’s keeping the economy going. But we’re taking needless risks here — needless risks both on the unemployment side and, George, on the inflation side which makes it harder for us to respond to any incipient recession threat when inflation is above target and when Americans say that cost of living is the biggest issue that’s facing them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Larry Summers, thanks for your time this morning.
SUMMERS: Thank —
STEPHANOPOULOS: Now to the escalating hunger crisis in Gaza. Devastating scenes of Palestinians inside the territory as protesters in Israel held mass demonstrations last night calling for the release of hostages.
Chief foreign correspondent Ian Pannell reports from Tel Aviv and inside the Gaza Strip.
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IAN PANNELL, ABC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This week, desperation and devastation in Gaza, hunger and starvation ravaging the war-torn strip with little reason to believe the end of the war is near. The U.N. this week saying widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.
Zanab Abu Halib (ph) dying from malnutrition this week at just months old. Her doctor saying she had no pre-existing medical conditions when she was born.
Her mother saying, “If she had enough nutrition at five months, she would have been able to sit up or grow. But it hasn’t happened.”
This is the moment that we crossed from Israel into Gaza.
This week, we were taken across the border into Gaza, where huge stockpiles of vital food and medicine await delivery.
There are literally mountains and mountains of aid waiting here to be delivered to the desperate people of Gaza. Here you have sacks of fortified flour, essential supplies to make bread. And yet, according to the U.N. and almost every other aid agency, just a mile or so down this road, people are starving to death.
The IDF telling us aid agencies aren’t distributing aid fast enough.
You hear what they say. What’s coming in right now, this is from the head of the U.N., is a trickle. And what’s needed is a flood.
LT. COL. NADAV SHOSHANI, ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES SPOKESPERSON: Well, I’ll tell you this, as we’re speaking, there are trucks waiting in Gaza after Israeli inspection, and all the U.N. needs to do is pick them up and stop talking.
PANNELL: But in a statement to ABC News, the U.N. saying their drivers are navigating air strikes, damaged roads, and criminal gangs. And the Israeli authorities need to grant them the conditions to deliver aid safely and effectively.
As the humanitarian crisis continues to unfold, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in the region, visiting one of those controversial U.S.-backed aid sites in Gaza that have beenplagued by chaos, violence and death, as President Trump aims to develop a plan to mitigate the crisis.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did. I spoke to Steve Witkoff. He had a great meeting with a lot of people. He had a meeting on getting the people fed. And that’s what we want.
PANNELL (voice over): On Saturday, Witkoff in Israel meeting with families of the hostages, telling them, we have a plan to end the war and bring everyone home. Hamas releasing this harrowing video of hostage Evyatar David, looking painfully emaciated. His family agreeing for us to show it.
Evyatar’s brother, Ilay, speaking at a mass rally to bring the hostages home.
ILAY DAVID, BROTHER OF EVYATAR DAVID: They are on the absolute brink of death. In their current, unimaginable condition, they may have only days left to live.
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PANNELL (on camera): Well, pain for the families of the hostage, but also suffering inside Gaza. The Hamas-run health ministry saying that there have been six new deaths due to famine and malnutrition, bringing the total dead to at least 175 people, including 93 children.
And, George, I can tell you, when you see that mountains of aid, it’s shocking to know that children are dying from hunger not far away.
George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Ian, what do we know about this plan that Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy, was talking about to the hostages families, that he has a plan to bring them all home?
PANNELL: Well, interesting. We managed to obtain audio of that meeting between Steve Witkoff and the hostage families. He says that Hamas have agreed to demilitarize. Now, that would be huge if that’s the case. Their Public statements certainly suggest they haven’t.
He also said, we’re very, very close to a solution to the end of this war. But the devil’s in the detail. How are you going to do that when even these partial deals that have been negotiated in the past seem impossible right now? Also saying he’s going to bring all hostages home at once.
Well, again, over the last couple of months, it’s been impossible even to bring them home in tranches. So, it’s a very ambitious plan. He seems confident. That’s what he’s telling the families, what he’s saying publicly.
I’ve asked Israeli sources about the negotiations. They don’t want to talk about it at the moment. And I think it’s also doubtful whether or not the Netanyahu government wants an end to the war once the hostages are over or to continue and finish the job.
George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Ian Pannell, thanks.
Let’s bring in now the head of — the USA CEO of Doctors Without Borders, Avril Benoit.
Avril, thank you for joining us this morning.
You have teams throughout the region. What can you tell us about the humanitarian crisis right now?
AVRIL BENOIT, USA CEO, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: People are starving. People are desperate. The patients that we’re seeing are malnourished. We have seen women deliver prematurely. The newborns are at risk because mothers don’t have enough nutrition themselves to breastfeed. Even premature babies at much higher numbers than you would normally see.
We’re also seeing people coming in with all the catastrophic injuries that you would expect in an open zone of air strikes and continuing hostilities. They’re coming in with those trauma injuries, third-degree burns to their entire bodies, children with their faces blown off, all — all the major orthopedic cases, the trauma. And their bodies are not strong enough to even fight, to — to be able to withstand the risk of infection. They’re — they’re not recovering properly. And that’s — that’s exacerbating the problem in the health facilities because, of course, you would want people to have all the chances in the world to be able to overcome their injuries, to discharge them, to make room for others. And so, as a consequence, the — the hospital infrastructure, which Israel has largely destroyed, with the clinics and other outpatient facilities that we have and with the rest of the humanitarian organizations that are trying to support the medical needs in Gaza, we are completely overwhelmed and starvation is making things all that much more catastrophic.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, what are the steps that need be — that need to be taken?
BENOIT: Well, I would concur with all of the experts who would say, we need to flood the zone with as much food as possible. The problem with the GHF is, of course, it’s unsafe. It’s an inefficient way to deliver aid. People have to cross very unsafe zones to reach those areas that are controlled by the IDF and military contractors from the U.S. And then there are insufficient quantities. You end up in — in our facilities that are near some of those GHF distribution sites in the south, we always have lots of injuries and deaths as a consequence of every single delivery.
And the injuries are not only people being shot as they’re leaving the zone with their bags of flour, but it’s also from the trampling that happens, the injuries that happen when people are — are crushing and jumping over each other because of all the gunshots against unarmed civilians who are just trying to survive with a bit of food aid.
And the problem with the air drops, of course, is that it’s incredibly expensive. You don’t control what’s happening on the ground, who really receives the aid. It also has created extremely insecure conditions on the ground. And you can’t even drop that much. So each one of these very spectacular visual displays of the parachutes landing on the ground is really the equivalent of a few trucks.
What we need is to flood the zone, get all those trucks with the permissions to go in. Obviously, a ceasefire, a real permanent, lasting ceasefire will make it safe enough for the humanitarian organizations to be able to deliver the aid to people in Gaza who desperately need it. The situation for the hostages is absolutely horrific as well. If no food aid is coming in, everyone is at risk. Even aid workers are at risk. So when you talk about, you know, my own colleagues who are eating every second day and scrounging around for food, you can imagine that everyone is.
So this is — this is part of the problem is that the aid coming in is controlled by Israel. And that is why in this genocide, we look to Israel to have an approach that is humanitarian. And of course, for the U.S. to back what Israel is doing makes the U.S. complicit as well. It’s just an obvious connecting of the dots. So we very much hope for everyone’s sake, all the civilians inside Gaza, including hostages, but of course all of the people, the families, the children, that there’s an end to this with a real, lasting ceasefire, because for sure this cannot last long.
Even the U.N. was estimating today that one million women and girls are at risk of starvation right now. And of course, as the days go by, with an escalating, mounting numbers of malnutrition cases, it becomes that much more imperative for us to flood the zone with as much food and aid as possible. To do that, to get those trucks into the places where people need it and so that they can reach it without risking their lives, we need for the fighting to stop. We need that ceasefire desperately right now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Avril Benoit, thank you.
Up next, an ABC News investigation into how Americans in majority non-white neighborhoods are facing higher property tax bills. We’re back in two minutes.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: Back now with an ABC News investigation about Americans facing property tax bills that are disproportionally high. A new analysis by our ABC Owned Television Stations data team shows that happening to homeowners in majority non-white neighborhoods. It’s called highballed tax assessments.
And as our senior political correspondent Rachel Scott reports, high taxes can leave homeowners homeless.
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BONITA ANDERSON, BALTIMORE RESIDENT: That’s where we used to gather to bring the family together.
RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 70-year-old Bonita Anderson, this Baltimore house became a safe haven. A place that her five children and eight grandchildren could call their own.
But a cancer diagnosis in 2020 changed everything.
ANDERSON: When I started feeling better, that’s when I got the mail.
SCOTT: Then it was a letter from the city of Baltimore, letting her know she owed about $5,000 in back taxes from the last year.
ANDERSON: That’s what I paid. But they — they say they applied that to other taxes — tax years versus applying it to the year that it was for.
SCOTT: By 2022, the city of Baltimore put a lien on Bonita’s house that was then auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Take me back to that moment when you realized that you would be losing your home.
ANDERSON: I sat down. I said, “Oh my God, I’m 70 years old and I’m homeless.”
SCOTT: Bonita is one of many across the country who found herself highballed, facing disproportionately high property tax bills and ultimately losing her home at a government sale.
LAWRENCE LEVY, EXECUTIVE DEAN, HOEKSTRA UNIVERSITY NATIONAL CENTER FOR SUBURBAN STUDIES: If you can’t afford to pay your property taxes and you keep missing your payments, government is going to auction your property off for back taxes.
SCOTT: Property taxes are based on an assessment, the government’s best guess of how much a home is worth.
Take Bonita’s old neighborhood as an example, where 97 percent of residents are Black and the typical tax bill is around $3,800. A few miles away in the majority white Baltimore neighborhood of Cross Country, homeowners tend to pay lower taxes, but their homes are actually worth 50 percent more.
LEVY: In suburbia, where you have a high level of segregation, the people who are being taxed unfairly based on not accurately capturing the value of their home are people of color.
SCOTT: In Baltimore, where Bonita lives, 92 percent of properties listed at tax sales from 2019 through 2023 were in majority non-white neighborhoods.
And an analysis ABC News and its own station’s data journalism team found that this is a nationwide pattern, causing thousands of people in communities like Bonita’s to lose their homes each year.
We found on average, people in those neighborhoods pay disproportionately high property taxes compared to those in majority white neighborhoods, at times even in the same county.
It’s a story our colleagues heard across the country.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are like up the creek, with nowhere to go, no help, nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just keep praying and asking the Lord to just keep me afloat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s the entire block and entire neighborhood that this is happening to.
SCOTT: What do you love most about living in Baltimore?
ANDERSON: That’s where my family is.
SCOTT: Bonita, now living with her daughter, joined a lawsuit claiming the city of Baltimore broke federal law by selling her house to a private company for pennies on the dollar. The city has defended its actions in court, saying it notified Bonita as required, adding the city did not profit from the sale.
LEE OGBURN, BONITA ANDERSON’S LAWYER: This works for the government because it sells the liens promptly, and it works for the tax sale purchasers.
SCOTT: In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local governments could not profit from tax sales. Instead, the court ruled that homeowners have a constitutional right to any payments beyond taxes and penalties they owe.
Many states across the country have recently changed their laws in light of that Supreme Court decision. Some municipalities even go beyond what the court required, taking extra steps to keep vulnerable homeowners in their homes, like requiring in-person notifications before sale or offering payment plans to redeem a home after it’s been sold.
LEVY: The federal answer to lower local property taxes is more funding for local services. They need more help from Congress and the White House.
SCOTT: As the Trump administration has slashed the federal budget, local governments will have to make up the difference to provide the same services. Experts say they will likely rely more on property taxes, which in turn could mean more situations like Bonita’s, where homeowners in majority non-white neighborhoods too often pay more than their fair share.
You bought that home with dreams of this idea of passing it on generation to generation.
ANDERSON: Mm-hmm.
SCOTT: What happened to that dream now?
ANDERSON: It died.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Thanks to Rachel Scott. You can see her full report, “Highballed” Monday night on ABC News Live Prime. And we’ll be right back with former Attorney General Eric Holder on the battle over redistricting.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LLOYD DOGGETT, (D-TX): Texas map, it is a Trump map. It was not requested by any Republican or any Democrat in Texas; it was imposed by President Trump who has a stranglehold on Congress and the only question here is whether he also has a stranglehold on this Texas legislature.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Texas Republicans advanced a plan to redraw their congressional maps on Saturday, trying to shift five seats to the GOP before the midterms. The rare move to redraw the map for the second time in a decade has sparked an outcry from Democrats across the country, who are now threatening to respond in kind. Let’s talk about that now with Eric Holder, Chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Former Attorney General under President Obama.
Thank you for joining us this morning. Mr. Holder. You’ve been leading an effort to stop gerrymandering. Now, you say it’s time to fight fire with fire. Why the turnaround?
ERIC HOLDER, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE CHAIR & FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, I think we have to understand that the nature of the threat that has been put upon the country through what they’re trying to do in Texas has really increased the danger to our democracy. And as a result of that, we’ve got to do things that perhaps in the past I would not have supported.
This is an authoritarian move by the White House to try to make sure that they can rig the election, the midterm elections in 2026. And so, I think that a Democratic response that is responsible, that is responsive, and that is temporary, is appropriate given these — given these facts.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You saw what Karl Rove, the former Republican strategist has said. He said, we’ve always had partisan redistricting, thus it ever was, thus it ever will be. How is this different?
HOLDER: Well, you know, simply because this is something that has afflicted the nation for, you know, an extended period of time doesn’t mean that it’s right. What we’re seeing now is an attempt by the White House to insulate itself from any kind of congressional scrutiny, any kind of congressional oversight, to make sure that Donald Trump remains the authoritarian figure that he has become. We have a compliant Congress, and he wants to ensure that given the fact that they passed this bill that is unpopular, that takes health care away from people, that gives tax breaks to billionaires, and it puts at risk the Republican majority, he wants to ensure that he continues to have that compliant Republican House of Representatives. And that, I think, is something that we need to take into account.
Our democracy is threatened. Our democracy is really threatened by what the Republicans are proposing to do in Texas right now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is there any way to stop it?
HOLDER: Well, I think there are a number of ways in which we can try to stop it. If you look at the people who have testified at the hearings, 100 to one people have testified against it. Editorial boards in the media in Texas have opined against it. The polling shows that the people in Texas are, in fact, against it. So, I think that’s one of the ways in which you try to stop it from actually happening.
And then, if they put in place this really unbelievable gerrymandering — midcycle gerrymandering, we have the capacity to bring litigation. And we already were in litigation against the state of Texas for the gerrymandering that they did in 2020. This really exacerbates that which they’ve already done and strengthens the case that we have brought.
So, there are mechanisms that we can try to use. And in addition to that, I think that responsible Democrats in other states have to take into account the threat to our democracy, the need to preserve our democracy so we can ultimately try to heal it. And I would hope that they will take steps that are, again, as I said, temporary but responsible.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And we’re seeing talk about that in California. We’re seeing talk about that in New York as well. But those attempts are more long shots, aren’t they?
HOLDER: Well, you know, they’re — it will depend on the state. But I think one thing’s interesting. You know, what they’re trying to do in Texas is simply impose a new map on — an unpopular new map on the people of — of Texas. To do it in California, you actually have to go to the people and ask them to suspend that which they have in place, which is a really well-functioning, independent redistricting committee. So, the people will have a voice in what California does. The people do not have a voice, a meaningful voice it appears, so far in Texas.
STEPHANOPOULOS: On another matter, we’ve also seen President Trump accuse the president you served, President Obama, of treason. Suggests he was guilty of criminal acts. It appears that there are investigations now of several former employees who worked under the Obama administration. What’s your response to that?
HOLDER: Well, this is a weaponization of the Justice Department and law enforcement capacities of the federal government. It’s also an attempt to deflect attention from that which really afflicts the president and his administration right now, which is the release of the Epstein files. He’s pointing at a whole bunch of different things. You know, let’s accuse President Obama of treason. Let’s change the name of the, you know, of the Washington football team. There’s a wide variety of things he’s trying to get people to look over there as opposed to confronting that which is in front of the American people right now, which is the release of the Epstein files.
But it also goes back to this redistricting thing. You know, if you have a United States House of Representatives that remains compliant to do that which the president wants to do, irrespective of what their responsibilities are, you end up with what we saw there, where a bipartisan part of the House of Representatives wanted to vote to release the Epstein files. And what did the compliant leadership of the House do? They went into recess so that a vote could never be — happen. That is what they’re trying to do through the Texas — through the Texas gerrymandering.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, the — so, finally, you would release the files if you were attorney general right now?
HOLDER: Yes. I mean, take into account, you know, the privacy interest of various people, certainly of the victims uppermost. But there is investigative material that can certainly be released, that should be released. The focus shouldn’t be on grand jury material because there are a whole bunch of problems with respect to the release of grand jury material. But with regard to investigative files that are in the possession of the Justice Department and the FBI, those materials should be released.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Eric Holder, thanks for your time this morning.
Donna Brazile and Chris Christie are up next.
We’ll be right back.
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RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You said that Jeffrey Epstein stole people from Mar-a-Lago. At the time, did you know why he was taking those young women, including Virginia who was just 16 at the time?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I didn’t know. I mean, I would — I would figure it was ABC fake news that would ask that question. One of the worst.
But no, I don’t know really why. But I said if he’s taken anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he’s hiring or whatever he’s doing, I didn’t like it, and we threw him out.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: The president is still facing questions about the Epstein files.
Let’s talk about it with our political experts, Donna Brazile and Chris Christie.
And, Chris, we just heard Eric Holder talking about it as well. Congress has gone into recess to try to avoid dealing with this issue. Is it going to go away?
CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No. And the reason it’s not going to go away is because it’s not a Democrat-driven issue. It’s a — it’s a MAGA-driven issue. And that’s why it won’t go away.
I think the president could very well deflect if Democrats were the only ones talking about this. But in fact, his base is talking much more about it than he is.
And the other problem, too, George, is that this has now leaked into popular culture. You know, you saw the jokes about the president on the ESPYs. You saw it on “South Park”. And now, you even got this website Kalshi that does futures trading where you can bet on how many times Donald Trump is going to be in the Epstein files.
You know, when that kind of stuff is going on, it’s now left, as you know, when it leaves the White House briefing room and goes into popular culture, the White House briefing room can’t control it.
DONNA BRAZILE, FORMER DNC CHAIR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: George, look, this is one story that I would rather not talk about. And I was showing Chris in the green room, June of 2022, I am reading Ms. Maxwell’s sentencing memorandum because I’m trying to figure out why in the heck did they send her from a minimum security to a low security facility? They could have sent her down to Alcatraz, Alcatraz Alligator alley 350 miles away. That’s where she belongs.
For what she was sentenced, trafficking in minors, grooming minors, there’s no way she should be given leniency. It is an insult to the victims, and there’s no reason why Donald Trump should even try to dangle a pardon in front of her.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Virginia Giuffre’s family is not happy about it. Of course, it came after Ms. Maxwell met with the president’s former personal attorney, now the deputy attorney general.
CHRISTIE: Yeah, look, extraordinary interview given what we know.
First of all, the deputy attorney general never interviews anybody. Okay? That’s done by line assistance, not by the deputy attorney general of the United States who’s supposed to be the chief operating officer of the Justice Department.
He also didn’t bring, as far as it’s been reported, any agents with him to take notes. You always have one or two agents with you when you’re doing an interview, so there are other objective people taking notes, so that you can compare about what was said. We don’t know if the if the interview was taped.
Then you add to it the move to the better prison. Now, that is done when you’re trying to get someone to cooperate. You’re trying to say, “Look how nice we could be to you. You didn’t like where you were before. Look how nice — much nicer these accommodations are.”
These are not things that are done by accident, George. These are things that are done on purpose. I think everyone has to start wondering about how objective is whatever the Justice Department is doing, and is it really geared towards trying to get her to give testimony that the president would find favorable to him.
BRAZILE: Again, I go back to this notion, why are we being lenient? Why is the government giving her better digs? OK? I mean, who knows what — she got a dormitory style on, maybe a TV, maybe two towels. I don’t care. All I know is that the victims deserve some type of respect.
The president is also in trouble because he keeps changing the story. He said that he broke up or pushed away Epstein after a bad real estate deal. And now, we hear over the last week that Jeffrey Epstein stole — clearly? Really? Stole one of his girls from the spa. President Trump is responsible for this mess and the only way he’s going to get out of it is if the White House and others, Justice Department, let it all — let it all come out.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ll see if it happens when the Congress comes back. Chris, let’s switch, the Employment Report that came out on Friday, some weak jobs numbers right there. The President’s action? Fire the messenger.
(LAUGH)
CHRISTIE: Look, this is kind of a, something that I’ve been talking about since 2018. When he gets news he doesn’t like, he needs someone to blame because he won’t take the responsibility himself, and this is the action of a petulant child. Like, you give me bad news, I fire the messenger. Anybody who knows how — and look, as governors, we were very focused on this data as well, as it applied to our individual state, because those numbers mattered for how people perceived how you were doing on the economy.
So, we know how important they are. So we used to look at it very carefully. It seems to me, from everything I learned over my eight years as governor, that it would be almost impossible for anyone to try to rig these numbers because so many people are involved in putting them together. And in the end, when it comes to the — to the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the woman who was fired, when that happens, all she’s doing is being a conduit of the information.
She can’t go back in through —
STEPHANOPOULOS: Right.
CHRISTIE: — and start lining — line iteming it around. So, it’s irresponsible from a position of facts, but it also shows you the way he manages.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Numbers do show a slowdown.
BRAZILE: Absolutely. A year ago, 168,000 jobs a month. And over the last couple of months, we’ve — losing jobs. Manufacturing jobs, the president promised, I watched it on April 2nd, Liberation Day, the golden era, and we are losing manufacturing jobs. We are losing jobs in almost every sector but — but healthcare and academia.
President Trump’s economy is dangerous for America. It’s dangerous for America in the world and it’s also dangerous for America’s back home. I have to tell you, I went to the grocery store and now, I’m a big shopper.
CHRISTIE: You are.
BRAZILE: Oh, and look, I had to go to three stores. I don’t want to mention them, but yes, let me do it. Walmart is expensive. Dollar General, Dollar Tree is no longer $1. It’s $1.75, even $5. I had to go to five below to get a backpack and some school supply. It is bad out here.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We only have about 30 seconds left.
CHRISTIE: Yeah.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But this probably does mean the president’s going to get his interest rate cut in September?
CHRISTIE: Yeah, because the economy is slowing. Look, here’s the problem. There’s some things that the president’s done with the economy that I — that I agree with. But — but the fact of the matter is these tariffs are the problem. No one, you’ll never hear any responsible economist say, imposing tariffs grows an economy, speeds up an economy. It doesn’t.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s all we have time for today. Up next, Martha Raddatz with the author of a new book on the remarkable history of the atomic bomb. We’ll be right back.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: This week marks 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And today the threat of nuclear conflicts still persists, underscored by recent tensions with Iran and Russia.
Chief global affairs and anchor Martha Raddatz sat down with historian Garrett Graff, author of the new book, “The Devil Reached Towards the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.” They discussed the years of secretive work that ended World War II and brought the dawn of the nuclear age.
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MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were the deadliest single attacks in history. 80 years ago this week, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the culmination of an audacious years-long top secret government program called “The Manhattan Project.”
GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, “THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARDS THE SKY”: We have now effectively every first-person memory we will ever have of these events.
RADDATZ: Author Garrett Graff’s new oral history book is a compilation of hundreds of interviews, diaries and documents from the U.S., Europe and Japan, including first-person accounts from some 500 witnesses to the events.
People like Hideko Tamura Snider, who was only 10 years old when the nuclear bomb fell on her home city, Hiroshima. She wrote, “It was dark all around me as if the sun itself had disappeared and the exploding earth raged in the thick black air and swirling wind.”
But it was not the war with Japan that originally spurred the project. It was Nazi Germany.
CILLIAN MURPHY, ACTOR, “OPPENHEIMER”: We’re in a race against the Nazis. And I know what it means if the Nazis have a bomb.
RADDATZ: “Oppenheimer,” the 2023 blockbuster and Oscar-winning Best Picture told the story of the physicist at Los Alamos labs, but that was just part of the massive project.
GRAFF: The sort of secret of “The Manhattan Project” is in these cities that we build in Hanford, Washington, and Oakridge, Tennessee, you know, classified facilities that employ 100,000 people. I mean, cities that did not exist at the start of the war where we’re building, you know, thousands of homes a month and building factories, you know, the size of multiple football fields.
RADDATZ: Many of those workers in these hidden cities had no idea they were refining plutonium and uranium, the elements needed for an atomic bomb.
GRAFF: Most of those workers learned the word uranium for the first time on the day that Harry Truman announces the existence of “The Manhattan Project.”
RADDATZ: Those who did know the purpose of the project grappled with how it could change the world.
Did they think about the destructive power at the time?
GRAFF: There’s one faction of the scientists, a lot of the refugees from Europe, they are disappointed that the bomb comes too late, and then they have this reaction of saying, you know, hey, we didn’t sign up for this project to bomb Japan. You know, we wanted to stop Hitler. Hitler has been stopped. Let’s not use this.
For some of the scientists on the project, they can name the people whose lives are saved because the bomb is dropped.
RADDATZ (voice-over): Scientists like Commander Norris Bradbury who said, “Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn’t. We were at war and the damn thing worked.”
After the success of the first test, the U.S. military readied the B-29 Superfortress bombers, and on August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay took to the skies and changed the course of history.
HARRY S. TRUMAN, (D) FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.
GRAFF: This is an enormous triumph and the tragedy that is unfolding at the same time in Hiroshima. I mean, the crew of the Enola Gay, they land back on Tinian after their mission; they literally have medals pinned to their chest. And then, they go off to a barbecue party to celebrate this enormous achievement of dropping the bomb, even as Hiroshima is caught in this firestorm, this fire hurricane that is — that the bomb has unleashed behind them.
RADDATZ (voice-over): But the true horrors of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki took nearly a year to reach the U.S.
GRAFF: Reading the testimonies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are — they’re one of the most searing experiences. You come to understand how nuclear weapons are not like any other weapon in the human arsenal, that they are community- and civilization-destroying weapons.
As these final survivors, the Hibakusha or the bomb affected people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass, I think it’s now up to us and our generation and our time to carry forward the mission that they have dedicated their lives to, which is to ensure that they are the final victims in human civilization of a nuclear weapon.
RADDATZ (voice-over): A stark warning for a threat that remains very much a reality. For “This Week,” Martha Raddatz, ABC News, Washington.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: Thanks to Martha and Garrett. “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky” will be out on Tuesday. And we’ll be right back.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: That is all for us today. Thanks for sharing part of your Sunday with us. Check out “World News Tonight” and I’ll see you tomorrow on GMA.
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