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The Situation Room

Treating Chronic Pain; Helping Families Survive High Food Prices; Americans' Opinions of Trump Administration?. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired September 05, 2025 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROOKE SOUTHERLAND, YOUTUBER: Today's video is more broke meals, meals to make when you're broke.

[11:30:00]

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These YouTuber sisters are a different kind of momfluencer.

EMILY ANDERSON, YOUTUBER: We're going into the Dollar General market first.

REEVE: Making super low budget food videos for people who are broke.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have a clearance event? What?

REEVE: How to eat on a dollar a day, a week of meals for $10.

These videos are in demand as a growing number of people are struggling to afford rising food, power, and rent bills.

SOUTHERLAND: It doesn't look like inflation's going anywhere, except up.

REEVE: Since last year, eggs are up more than 16 percent, coffee 14 percent and beef 11 percent.

SOUTHERLAND: Oh, my gosh, that is $43.

REEVE: There are fears tariffs could raise food prices more in the future. Electricity prices have grown more than twice as fast as the cost of living. And Central Services, a food bank here in Morristown, Tennessee, says it's seen 22 percent more new families this year than last.

Brooke Southerland and Emily Anderson have expertise in how to make something from nothing because they did it as kids.

ANDERSON: Most of the time growing up, it felt like it was me and Brooke against the world. I'm going to try not to cry.

REEVE: Southerland says she wanted to start making these videos after their older sister died.

SOUTHERLAND: When my sister passed away, me and my mother were going through her purse, and I got this little card out and it was from the food bank, and it said her next available date to pick up a box of food.

She had never told anybody that she was struggling like that. And that just made me sad that she thought she couldn't talk to family about her food insecurity.

REEVE: The sisters say they want viewers to feel less shame about having to make tough choices.

ANDERSON: You all taking one, take away the extra pack of franks, hot dogs.

SOUTHERLAND: And get a bit.

There are some viewers that think that vegetables are the most important choice. And, to me, that just shows that they have never had to really struggle. Fresh vegetables are really a luxury in some instances, and that -- it shouldn't be that way at all.

REEVE (on camera): Sometimes, you have to go to a whole bunch of Dollar Generals?

SOUTHERLAND: Yes, everybody in our area wants to save money, and they take everything off the shelves before we can get to it.

No.

REEVE: How many hours a week do you think you put into this?

SOUTHERLAND: Eight, 10 hours.

REEVE (voice-over): We talked to more than a dozen people in downtown Morristown. Everyone was mad about prices.

LINDA BRADLEY, TENNESSEE RESIDENT: Sometimes, things is four times what they was a year ago. A roast I used to get for $12, $15 is $35. It's awful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything just keeps going up.

TONY MAYES, TENNESSEE RESIDENT: I used to spend $40 a week now. Now it's $140 or something like that. I just don't think it's going to go down for a long time. They're not concerned with people like us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They said these tariffs that they have got on, it's going to bring prices down. They're not, because it's going to have to charge more to make up for them having to pay to bring it in. I just see everything's going downhill.

REEVE (on camera): Did you vote for Trump this last time?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I didn't. I didn't see no choice of a good president. No choice, I'm not choosing. Maybe we will get somebody good in the office and it'll change, not before I'm gone, though.

(LAUGHTER)

REEVE (voice-over): For Southerland, she says she wants to keep the conversation positive. And to do that, she bans certain words from her Facebook page.

SOUTHERLAND: The banned words I can give you a list as long as my leg, Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, tariffs, Trump, Biden.

REEVE (on camera): So I was looking for videos kind of like yours on TikTok, and the nasty comment I saw the most -- and maybe that's just my algorithm -- was: "Well, this is what you voted for. That's what you get."

Did you get -- do you see stuff like that?

SOUTHERLAND: Yes, the politicians are politicians, and they're doing a job. They're making money. But we are here together. We are real people. And we need to help each other get through this, get through these hard times, because they're not seeing us on a personal level. But we can see each other on a personal level.

REEVE (voice-over): Elle Reeve, CNN, Morristown, Tennessee.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Well, just ahead, from vaccine skepticism, the fallout from the Epstein files, we're finding out what radio and podcast listeners across the country are talking about.

That's next in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:39:04]

BROWN: It's Friday, which means it's time to find out what radio and podcast listeners across the country are saying about what's happening here in Washington and beyond.

Today, we have conservative radio host Jason Rantz out of Seattle and journalist and podcast host Tia Mitchell out of D.C.

All right, great to have you both on.

Jason, let's kick it off with you. Curious what your listeners' thoughts are on yesterday's tense Senate hearing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Before we get to that, I want to listen to the Democratic -- Mark Warner and RFK Jr. discuss the aftermath of COVID-19.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., U.S. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: I don't think anybody knows that, because the -- there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC.

(CROSSTALK)

WARNER: You don't know the answer of how many Americans died from COVID. This is the secretary of health and human services.

[11:40:00]

Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths?

KENNEDY: Again, I would like to see the data.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: President Trump, for his part, did praise RFK Jr. for his performance.

Jason, what have you heard from your listeners about moments like that?

JASON RANTZ, CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST: They too praised RFK Jr. for his performance yesterday.

I think what they saw there, and, frankly, what folks have been complaining about on my side of the aisle for a while now is just a complete unwillingness for some folks to acknowledge the mistakes that were very clearly made during the COVID crisis.

They're not talking about what happened early on, where everyone pretty much gave deference to public health leaders, but when it became clear that they were proposing ideas and pushing ideas that just were not, in fact, based on the science. They still haven't said, I'm sorry.

And now they're telling us that the person who's coming in, given this position because of the lack of support for public health over what happened, listening to them lecture folks is just a little bit too much for the average listener, at least to my show.

BROWN: Who are mostly conservative.

For your show, Tia, are your listeners concerned at all when it comes to leadership from HHS Secretary RFK Jr.? Do they share the main viewpoint from Jason's listeners?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION": So it's very interesting in Georgia because we're the home of the CDC. It's based in Atlanta.

And so there are people who not only from -- just trying to live in the world and find out where the science and what the experts are telling us as far as vaccinations for their children and how to protect themselves if there's another pandemic.

But there are people who work at the CDC or who have friends and family members who work at the CDC who are really concerned about the undermining of the science and the way that the data is being questioned in ways that they find, quite frankly, not just harmful to public health, but harmful to the safety of CDC workers.

There was a shooting last month at the CDC where a police officer was killed. They think it's because, in part, of (AUDIO GAP)

BROWN: Oh.

MITCHELL: ... that the -- that Secretary Kennedy has spread.

BROWN: All right. I want to go to the release of the Epstein files. Obviously, that's been a big talker here in Washington this week.

Jason, Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie are calling for more transparency. Do your listeners want the entirety of these files made public? What do they think about that effort with Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few other Republicans and what House Oversight Chairman James Comer is doing? They are on two different tracks here.

RANTZ: Yes, somewhat. I mean, pretty much everyone's on the same page of they want the information to be released. The question is just about how the information gets released.

This idea that you're just going to document-drop absolutely everything without any regard for what's inside it that could identify victims who don't want the identification or could implicate people falsely because of something that could be taken out of context, I think people are aware of that now that we're hearing directly from a lot of the victims, who are speaking freely, who promise that they're going to put out their own list of the so-called abusers in these cases.

Like, yes, I think people are saying, that's good. We still want the government to release the documentation, but we also want to do it in a responsible way. There are -- there's no doubt there's some people who just say document-dump absolutely everything. But I think the majority of the folks at least understand that it has to be done responsibly.

BROWN: Just to follow up on that, do they trust the redactions in the documents that have been released? Because you heard Thomas Massie raise questions about that.

RANTZ: Yes, you're not going to find very many Thomas Massie fans amongst the Republican Party and certainly not my listeners.

They kind of understand what he's doing. He decided to go up against Donald Trump and they're going to side with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time. That said, you're always going to find a group of people who, when you have something redacted, people are not going to trust it. And as a journalist, I don't always trust the documents when there's

stuff that's redacted. But the reality is, we live in a world and sometimes you do have to redact some of this information. And, again, I think you have to look at the totality of the files before you can cast a complete judgment.

BROWN: Tia, to bring you in President Trump has called the Epstein controversy over more transparency another Democratic hoax. What have you heard from your listeners on the matter?

MITCHELL: So, I think it's very interesting because, again, in Georgia, we're the home of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a huge Trump ally, but she also is supporting Thomas Massie's effort to release more documents related to the Epstein investigation.

And there are a lot of MAGA Republicans who for years have been talking about exposing the deep state. And they really felt that Trump was going to be the vehicle in which that happened. And so there's some confusion. I mean, I think the vast majority of Republican voters still support President Trump, believe him. They trust him.

[11:45:04]

But there's just a little bit of confusion because they were saying, but, for years, you said you were going to help us expose these people who've done wrong. And now it's the perception that you're standing in the way. And Marjorie Taylor Greene says it is causing division among Republican voters, and it could ultimately cause Republican voters to lose enthusiasm for future Republican candidates.

BROWN: Tia Mitchell, Jason Rantz, great to have you both on. Thank you so much.

RANTZ: Thanks for having us.

BROWN: Millions of Americans live with chronic pain every single day.

Coming up, Dr. Sanjay Gupta answers your questions about how to treat it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:13]

BROWN: Happening now: Two months after flash floods devastated Central Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is signing new legislation referred to as Heaven's 27 Safety Act to protect kids who attend summer camps across the state, after the Guadalupe River's fast-rising waters roared through several vulnerable camps on the Fourth of July.

One of the hardest-hit was Camp Mystic; 27 children and counselors died after flood swallowed some of the cabins where they were sleeping, leaving no chance to escape. I was a camper at one of those hard-hit cabins, and I was on the ground reporting firsthand on the devastation and the stories of heroism in Kerr County in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

I also spoke with the parents of one of those Camp Mystic girls who died in the flood. She demanded this legislation be passed as a way of honoring her daughter's legacy. The bill signed today will require camps to place their cabins away from floodplains, install emergency warning systems, and train staff on emergency evacuation routes.

Well, the CDC estimates 50 million adults in the U.S. experience chronic pain. If you're one of them, you know it can take over every aspect of your life.

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has a new book about it that's called "It Doesn't Have to Hurt" and answers your questions about how to find relief.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We got so many questions about this topic. Let me see if I can get to a few quickly here.

Karen Duke wrote in and asked about diet. "What effect does diet have on pain? Which foods, drinks should be limited or eliminated? And what food drinks are helpful?"

Look, this is something that I thought about a lot, wrote about quite a bit in the book. Just as a top line, if you think about it, the food and drink that you put into your body is the only choice that you make in terms of what signal you want to give from your outside world to your inside world, the food and drink.

Obviously, we breathe in air, but we don't have as much control over that. So you have to be really thoughtful when it comes to this. And that's true when it comes to pain as well. We are very inflamed. Most people carry around a lot of inflammation. And if you have a lot of inflammation, things are going to hurt worse because of that inflammation.

So focusing on an anti-inflammatory diet, really trying to increase the amount of plants in your diet, that was a message every pain researcher sort of mentioned. But I will add something else to this as well, which, is if you have pain, think about keeping a food journal. Really pay attention to what you're eating and then correlate that.

When your pain is worse, figure out what you ate and see if there might be a correlation there. Everyone is different, so there are going to be some foods that are going to be more pro-inflammatory for others, cause more pain ultimately than others, so pay attention to that.

Arun Jindal in San Francisco wrote in and asked: "I really wish there was a way to measure the pain like body temperature. How far are we from that?"

Arun, this is what they say is the search for biomarkers. People want a biomarker for pain. And this has sort of been a Holy Grail in the pain world for some time. How much does it hurt? It's really hard to do. But we did spend some time with these researchers in San Francisco who've been doing this incredible work putting these deep brain stimulators into the brain and basically listening to the brain and then, when someone has pain, figuring out what is changing in the brain.

And they found that they could find areas in the brain that changed. They could predict when those areas were going to change and they could even interrupt the pain in those areas, which was incredible. Now, obviously, not everyone is going to have brain surgery for pain, but the point is, we're learning a lot about this relationship between the brain and pain.

There are other things that happen in emergency rooms. People will get their heart rate and their blood pressure and their breathing rate measured to try and correlate that with pain. But, ultimately, the patient is the North Star when it comes to pain. You have to listen to what the patient is saying in terms of pain no matter what any biomarker might potentially show you.

And, finally, Evelyn from Boca Raton asks -- she says she fell backwards and landed on her lower back 14 years ago and despite doing P.T. and dry needling and medications, the pain has not gone away. And she wonders about meditation and deep, controlled breathing.

First of all, I got to say I feel for you. My mother went through this. She had a spine fracture. She had terrible pain. And I realize it just hijacks your whole identity, sort of takes over your life. One thing I will point out is that there have been these studies looking at meditation and the impact on pain.

Anecdotally, we have known that there's a benefit for some time, but now there's increasing evidence that meditation can have a really tangible, measurable impact on pain. In fact, this research coming out of the University of California, San Diego, they gave some context. And they said meditation for certain pain conditions can be the equivalent of five milligrams of OxyContin in terms of pain relief.

[11:55:16]

So that was pretty remarkable. Both have a half-life. Neither are going to last forever, meditation or medications, but both can work to give people some relief. And I think that's a pretty inspiring message.

Those are some of the things that we -- I talk about in the book, and, hopefully, they can provide relief for people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Fascinating information. Sanjay, thank you.

You can watch "DR. SANJAY GUPTA REPORTS: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO HURT" Sunday night at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning. You can keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer and @PamelaBrownCNN.

"INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is right after a short break.