‘This Is What They Call A Self-Own!’ Jim Acosta Torpedoes Ex-Trump Aide David Urban Over Project 2025 in Heated CNN Clash

A segment on Monday’s episode of CNN Newsroom got heated after Democrat strategist Julie Roginsky brought up Project 2025, drawing loud calls for a fact check from former Trump campaign advisor David Urban — and a laughing reference to turkeys by anchor Jim Acosta.

The discussion kicked off with a discussion of the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (with a crypto-inspired acronym, “DOGE”) for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration that will be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Acosta reported that “devout Trump loyalist” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) would chair a new congressional oversight subcommittee that would work with this new DOGE agency. In a recent Fox News appearance, Greene vowed that their work would include taking a critical eye to “government funded media” like NPR and grant programs for scientific research.

Roginsky scoffed at Greene’s involvement in this effort, commenting that Republicans had been running on combating waste, fraud, and abuse “for many years” and there were Republicans who had knowledge on these topics, but “Marjorie Taylor Greene is not one of them.” The Georgia congresswoman was “very good at being on TV” and “sending out invective to piss of the other side and her own side as well,” but was not a “serious” legislator in Roginsky’s assessment (past analyses of Greene’s congressional record have found a lack of bills she’s sponsored that actually became law, but several filed seemingly just to troll). Cutting a program that provides “toilets in Africa” was not going to actually achieve a balanced federal budget, Roginsky added.

Acosta pondered how efficient it was really going to be to have a new federal agency and then this congressional subcommittee overseeing that, while Urban took the position that all 100 senators and 435 congressional representatives should be focused on government efficiency, but the “discretionary part” of the federal budget was “pretty small.”

Acosta brought up his chat with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) earlier that morning in which the congressman applauded the idea of government efficiency but said Democrats would fight attacks on programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“Yeah, but those are nondiscretionary, Jim,” said Urban. “You can’t touch those, right?”

Roginsky reacted with a confused look on her face as she tilted her head. To be clear, the federal budget is split into two types of spending — discretionary and nondiscretionary. Discretionary spending is designated each year by Congress through a series of appropriations bills (or at least it’s supposed to be handled that way; Congress has been a serial offender of their own processes and not finished the appropriations bills by the annual deadlines and that’s where these periodic stories of “continuing resolutions” and “omnibus bills” come from — as well as the threats of government shutdowns). If Congress doesn’t pass an appropriation bill authorizing the spending, it doesn’t happen. Nondiscretionary spending (including Social Security, Medicare, and payments on interest on the national debt) is the opposite: the spending continues without any additional action by Congress, unless they pass a bill ending or changing it.

“You certainly can touch those,” said Acosta. “I mean, it might not be politically advisable, but you certainly can touch them — Congress has tried before.”

Urban responded that the “scope of the mandate” for DOGE was “trying to figure out where the silliness is” in the federal budget.

“Let me be very clear here,” said Roginsky. “You have Project 2025, which is a piece of paper –”

Urban interjected, calling out “Oh, Jules! Come on!” as Roginsky insisted, “I’ll give you an example of what they want to cut,” mentioning several items that were proposed to be cut from non-discretionary spending in Project 2025, including putting lifetime benefits on Medicaid or housing, which could result in people being cut off from dialysis or cancer treatments or becoming homeless.

Roginsky pointed out Trump’s appointment of Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, who was one of the architects of Project 2025, and argued that meant the Trump administration did in fact intend to target budget items “much broader” than smaller wasteful projects like DOGE was supposed to look at. This was “something Trump ran on,” she said as Urban scoffed again. This set of proposed cuts “actually affects people’s health care, it actually affects where people live — and that’s a problem, that’s actually a seriously huge problem, not just for Democrats, but for some Republicans who I assume don’t want to throw Grandma off of dialysis because she hit her lifetime limit on her health care benefits,” she said.

“Yeah, Jim, where’s Daniel?– where’s Daniel Dale when we need him, buddy?” said Urban, calling for CNN’s resident fact checker. “This is a Snopes moment! Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025!”

“He put Russ Vought in charge!” Roginsky interjected.

“I appreciate you bringing up Daniel Dale,” said Acosta. “We’ll have him on sometime, soon, I hope.”

“You need to acknowledge, Jim, that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025!” Urban insisted.

“I was just about to say that — right, David — I was just about to say, Donald Trump out on the campaign trail, time and again, disavowed Project 2025 –” said Acosta.

“Thank you!” replied Urban.

“– but I will say,” Acosta continued as Roginsky grinned, “he put one of the architects of Project 2025 in charge of the Office of Management and Budget.”

Acosta attempted to get Urban to “admit” that Trump “was not telling the truth” when he said he had nothing to do with Project 2025 (Vought is far from the only major contributor to Project 2025 among Trump’s appointees so far), and it was “all just a snow job,” but Urban persisted, demanding that Acosta instead admit that Trump said he had nothing to do with it.

“David, that was a bigger turkey than what I’m going to have on the Thanksgiving table later this week, I’m sorry!” joked Acosta.

“You guys are going to get four Pinocchios — both you and Julie both!” shouted Urban. “Come on, Washington Post, Daniel Dale!”

“For what? For putting somebody in charge, who wrote Project 2025, in charge of OMB?” asked Roginsky.

“I think this is what they call a self-own, David,” said Acosta.

After some additional discussion about the nomination of former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, Acosta wrapped the segment and thanked Roginsky and Urban, commenting that he would “give Daniel Dale a call after the show’s over.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.