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Nicholas Kristof Takes Thousand-Mile Road Trip to Find Woman With Six Cents in Cash

Brett T.
Brett T.  |  10:00 PM on August 01, 2026

New York Times columnist Nicholas "Dog Rape" Kristof has looked into the deplorable conditions under which Palestinian prisoners are held by Israel and introduced us to the children Elon Musk has killed with DOGE's cuts to USAID. He also recently visited Scandinavia and suggested that the United States adopt the Nordic model going forward. He certainly gets around.

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Now, he tells of his one-thousand-mile road trip during which he met Americans struggling thanks to President Donald Trump's cuts in food stamps and healthcare. He featured one woman who has one cent in her savings account to keep it open, $3.78 in her checking account, and six cents in cash.

The post continues:

… account to keep it open, and six pennies in cash.

And the group most likely to live in poverty in America? Children, especially children under 2. They aren't lazy, and they aren't irresponsible, yet they are being set up for failure that will haunt all of us. And while it's easy to focus on Trump's policies, and we should, both parties have dropped the ball and failed so many. A gift link to my column:

Wow, Kristof even provided a gift link to his column so the poors can read it without subscribing to The Times.

Food stamps, $298 a month, sustain her, but they can’t be used for toilet paper or feminine hygiene products. So she searches for them at church-run pantries — lifelines in much of America.

Haircuts are likewise unaffordable. “I’ve never been to a barber or any of those places,” she said. “Never. I don’t have that luxury.”

Many sectors of America — and many Americans — are thriving. Yet my sense is that many of us are blind to how many people have been left far behind. So far behind that they scarcely inhabit the same country as the rest of us. And this pain across America is now magnified by President Trump’s cuts in food stamps, Medicaid, mental health funding for children, pregnancy prevention initiatives and other social programs, as well as by rising gas and food prices. Republicans are also imposing tougher work requirements for benefits; this is reasonable in theory, but in practice such requirements have proved costly to administer and end up mostly just driving people deeper into poverty.

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How about joining the military, he asked in a mostly black community. Nope: "The military is out,” said Glayton Johnson, a retired Army veteran who pointed to [Pete] Hegseth’s impact on the military’s reputation. “No, we’re not going there.”

All of the people in the replies who are moved by Kristof's story demand to know who Trinity Goodman voted for. She voted for Trump, didn't she? So she deserves what she gets. In fact, all of the people profiled probably voted for Trump. No compassion for them.

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Maybe she voted for Kamala Harris, who just purchased an $8.15 million property. We're sure if Harris were elected, poverty would have been eliminated by now.

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