Tommy Vietor
Appearances
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Lots of long descriptions of hideous, awful crimes. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Yeah, and the taxing interest on car loans is, like, a very regressive tax cut.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Don't look at me. Billionaires might be. The tariffs you put in place today are a huge deal. Canada and Mexico account for 40% of US imports and exports last year. 40% of cars and trucks sold in the US are imported. The Canadians slapped a bunch of retaliatory tariffs on us. The Chinese, their statement was like, fuck you, this means war.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
So depending on how long this lasts, it could end very, very badly. And I don't know that brushing it off in the State of the Union is a Very smart play. This issue cannot be that dismissive of jacking up people's costs at a time of high inflation.
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The State Of the Union Is ... Long
So like gas prices are going to... The energy tariffs are only 10%, not 25%. Which is based on lobbying from the oil industry. But like...
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
I think this is crazy. I don't get the end game, but this is what he's been promising to do for a long time. It's the only thing he talks about. He's relentless. He's hellbent. So it's like, it doesn't make sense, but I think he's going to keep doing it because why build up a bunch of nonsense and then stop? I just don't get why he would do this.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
The tariffs on Canada are ostensibly because fentanyl is coming across the border. That's just completely made up. 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl come across the Canadian border. All of it is coming from Mexico. So why the fuck are we tariffing these people? He can't explain it.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
and trudeau took a bunch of steps to try to address his concerns they named a fentanyl czar they spent a bunch of money they put like black hawk helicopters on the border and drones and like he tariffed them anyway so fucking stupid it's like he made up a fake problem canon asked him then make up a fake solution to the fake problem i know and then we still get the tariffs which have real consequences
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
The bar on the Panama Canal keeps changing. Do we want the full canal? I thought we just wanted cheaper rates or maybe to pass through for free. Before, it was about Chinese influence. But today, this Hong Kong-based holding company that owned two ports on either side of the canal sold them to BlackRock. So I thought he was going to take the win on that.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
I thought he was going to do more on that, too, when I saw that story.
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The State Of the Union Is ... Long
But like, you know, maybe Middle East is a tough neighborhood covers it, but the Gaza ceasefire is currently falling apart. Yeah. Israel is currently blockading all aid shipments into Gaza. Things are not on a good trajectory. You'd think you might talk about it.
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The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Like, they just decided they didn't want to talk about it? Right, but why not take the win on getting the ceasefire, getting the hostages back, and then using it as a moment to, like, get everyone in that chamber to applaud for whatever you say about Israel and condemn Hamas? Because that's where you could have gotten everyone on their feet.
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The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Yeah, and initially when he made that comment. What heights? What is he going to do? Trump Greenland? And I don't know if you guys noticed, when he first mentioned Greenland, J.D. Vance and Speaker Johnson kind of started chuckling. And then by the end, they were like, oh. They were excited about the Greenland question. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
I thought it was really weird when he had Kash Patel, his new FBI director, stand up and get a standing ovation. It just felt like the Praetorian Guard was all in the room. And we were supposed to see them. It just bothered me a lot.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Yep. She's going to get the dead people collecting Social Security that don't exist. Right. She's going to arrest a spreadsheet, I guess, with some names on it of dead people. Filing error.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
I think we can doge things we don't like. Oh, yeah. About ourselves. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
On the Slotkin thing, if I were to offer her advice, I would say ditch the cliches. We don't need to say things are as American as apple pie. I would say if you can do the setting over again, have some people there, give it some energy, not just sort of in a random room. I agree. She delivered it really well. It was tight. It had a message. It was coherent.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
It was just like a little bit – it felt like it was from a pre-Trump era. And I think in the post-Trump era, like, we all need to think about ways to really get people's attention and make a speech memorable in a way that will go viral on TikTok and Instagram and be seen by more people than whoever is still watching MSNBC.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Didn't hate that it interrupted Trump and got him out of his flow for like 10 minutes. Wait till the Republicans compare it to January 6th. That's when this is going to get really annoying. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Imagine a version of her speech that is entirely focused on Elon Musk and Doge cuts and going through all the mistakes and fuck-ups in great detail like he did. Like, she did a little bit of this. She did the things that we've all been hitting, the nuclear weapons people who were fired, the Social Security Health Administration. But imagine you ticked all of that.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
It's like, Doge is this unbelievable threat. It's the only thing we should care about. Here's my focus. It's a really interesting idea. Yeah. different.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
This is the time. Do you guys see this CNN Instant Snap poll?
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
44% very positive reviews of Trump's speech. 44% very positive. 25% somewhat positive. 31% negative.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Here's a little more numbers. Yeah, I know what I'm saying. They're all positive, but his are not. 66% say his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. 34%, the wrong direction. That's a little better for him. 80% say Congressman Al Green's interruption was inappropriate.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
It's worth remembering, though, when MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, interrupted Joe Biden, he then had that back and forth with her. He looked really strong and like he was kind of sharp and, you know, making light of it, kind of making fun of her a bit. And it was a good moment for him. And, you know, I don't know if MTG keeps standing and won't sit down and keeps screaming.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
Maybe the sergeant of arms kicks her out. But I do think Dan's point is... right, that it did look a little authoritarian in the moment.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
It's just a bunch of people who don't have a date of death associated with their record. They're not getting benefits. They're just making this part up. And the Mozambique grant for circumcision was to a nonprofit to do HIV and AIDS prevention. You can explain all these things. It just takes time.
Pod Save America
The State Of the Union Is ... Long
He blamed everything on Joe Biden. He ran harder against Joe Biden in that speech than he did in the campaign at times. It was constant.
Pod Save America
Introducing: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
Hey guys, it's Tommy. We're taking a break for the holiday season, but we've got something special for you today. Instead of our usual episode, we're dropping a new one from Assembly Required, hosted by the one and only Stacey Abrams.
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Introducing: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
In this episode, she talks with Celine Gowder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist, about the threats to public health with the incoming Trump administration. They dig into what's at stake with appointees like RFK Jr., how to bring science back into policymaking, and the path forward to driving real change.
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Introducing: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
If 2024 is leaving with a lot of questions about the future, or if you've also found yourself shouting at the TV more than usual, stay tuned for this great episode, because if anyone knows something about not giving up, it's Stacey Abrams. Don't forget to subscribe to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
Pod Save America
Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Thoughts on Rubio? I've noticed this in all of the photos of Rubio in the context of these U.S.-Russia talks. There were a bunch of photos that came out of Saudi Arabia with Rubio, Mike Waltz, Steve Witkoff are all there, and there's Sergei Lavrov in the Russian delegation. Rubio just has this thousand-yard stare in all of them.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I don't want to put him on the psychiatrist's couch, but I do think you can tell he knows this is wrong. Because I do think it's fair to say, okay, after three years of the Biden policy, we got to a place where It was a permanent stalemate, kind of. And a stalemate is not a strategy. So let's not reemphasize diplomacy and try to end the war. But Rubio knows Zelensky's not a dictator, and Putin is.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
He knows who started the war and who didn't. He knows that Zelensky can't hold an election right now because a huge chunk of the country is living under Russian occupation. Another big chunk has been displaced. Another big chunk is at the front lines fighting. How are they going to have people vote in free and fair elections in this context?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And so he just looks like a guy who sold out all his beliefs to get the secretary of state job and now is like living with the consequences. And by the way, has no real power.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I was trying to find this Elon Musk tweet, and I was scrolling for like 25 minutes, because God, all he does is tweet. But he tweeted, Zelensky wants a forever war, a never-ending graft, meat grinder, this is evil. Like, the way they talk about this guy, these are Zelensky's people getting killed. Yeah, the Russians tried to murder him repeatedly in the early days of the war.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
They sent assassination teams to Kyiv to find the guy. And he survived through bravery, through, you know, really tough fighting by the Ukrainians in those early days. And it's just disgusting the way they talk about him. But to your point, John, I mean, like, I think there's some truth that, look, between 50 and 85 million people died in the Second World War.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So the United States was like, the world came together. It was like, hey, maybe we should set up some institutions to prevent this from happening again. That's why you have the UN that was designed to try to maintain global peace. That led to the creation of NATO, which was to counter Soviet expansion and unchecked nationalism among some of the member states like Germany.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Always got to keep an eye on Germany. You do. And both institutions have a lot of flaws, and we can talk about those if you want. But there hasn't been a war between a NATO member and Russia since. And no NATO member has been invaded by another country. So it's been a pretty successful project.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And I agree, it does seem like Trump wants to go back to a time where the great powers divide the world up and they bully people and might is right. And I think the problem with that, there's a lot of problems with that logic, but what you're gonna see is more militarism. You're gonna see more nationalism.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
You're gonna see more development of nuclear weapons as a deterrent because of the US nuclear umbrella is not gonna protect us. Like, I guess it's time to make one of my own. And so it's gangster diplomacy. And you're already seeing Elon Musk tweeting about, he talks about the spoils of battle when he's talking about Doge cuts.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
But I do think he's applying that more broadly and like a really kind of, you know, old school in a bad way way.
Pod Save America
Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
One even simpler explanation is Trump looks at a Russia or a China and sees a kleptocracy. And there are people who think that Vladimir Putin's the richest person in the world because basically at one point along the way, he went to all the Russian oligarchs and says, now you give me half. Or else you're falling out a very high window. But is he happy?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
You can imagine a version of that where, you know, the state functions as just another means for Donald Trump to get paid. And we're already seeing some pieces of that.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, I bet no one knows about the U.N. vote. I mean, look, the U.N. Security Council has been broken for a long time because the Russians and Chinese veto whatever they want. And we veto any criticism Israel and nothing gets done. Right. It's been that way for a decade plus. A UN General Assembly vote is basically just kind of like a show of hands of what you believe.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
It's like a global roll call. And boy, did we show our hand in a new and scary way to the world. I do wonder if the Zelensky-Trump meeting will break through and, I don't know, hit people differently. Yeah. They did say Slava Ukraine at the Oscars. Is that worth anything? No, nothing.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Bullying a man who's like trying to rescue 19,000 Ukrainian children who were stolen, kidnapped and taken to Russia. Like, I don't know. That's pretty fucked up. That's dark stuff.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
You don't look tough. It's like a three on one fight. And it's not about sending weapons or spending more money. It's just about like treating a man with decency whose country has been massacred. I mean, the casualty counts you see from the U.S. estimates are 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 100,000 wounded. The Russian casualties are like double that. And so this war has been a catastrophe.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Like I'm all for trying to end it, but we have to do it on terms that won't lead to a ceasefire that just reignites in a couple of years when the Russians have had time to reconstitute their forces. And that's what Zelensky's worried about.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Elon sort of always seems partly aware of and on board with the Trump policy agenda. No one in the White House wants him to call a Social Security Ponzi scheme because, boy, it's hard to pivot from that to fighting for a $5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in the country, which is their primary objective this year.
Pod Save America
Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Oh, I remember. Under the Affordable Care Act, Obama used to say, if you like your plan, you can keep it. But then some plans were canceled because they didn't hit the mandatory requirements under the new ACA rules. And my wife's mother had a plan that got canceled. And- I remember having that conversation with her and, you know, she was able to get a new one and it was fine.
Pod Save America
Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
It was probably overall better. But like that was not a small thing. That was not a blip in their feelings about the ACA or Barack Obama's standing for a little while.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
But part of what you're making is just a basic government competence argument. And if suddenly a bunch of Social Security checks don't go out, that shatters people's confidence in the U.S. government in a way that I think is really hard to recover from. Again, the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare.gov rollout, was more than just a website being broken for a while.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
It just fundamentally undercut people's faith in the administration to roll out and administer their healthcare, which is a very personal thing.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, people are using it in the morning, at night, for workouts, after workouts, to kind of do a little A-B testing.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So the initial tweet said the reserve would include XRP, SOL, and ADA. That's Ripple, Solano, and Cardano. Then he quote tweeted himself saying, of course, it'll also include Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that will matter in a second. So- This idea has been on the top of the crypto Bitcoin maximalist wish list for a long time.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Because if you own a lot of cryptocurrency early, and then the US government pumps a lot of money into it, your Bitcoin is going to go up in price. The main elected official pushing this idea has been Cynthia Loomis, a senator from Wyoming, who I'm sure everyone here at this table has heard of. Very well aware of Cynthia Loomis.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
She introduced the Boosting Innovation Technology Competitiveness Through Optimized Investment Nationwide, or... Bitcoin?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So you put out the Bitcoin Act, the NAMBLA Act, as Lovett called it, at a conference in 2024 where Trump also spoke. Her bill is basically, she frames it as a way to bring down the debt, which makes no sense. But the gist of it is the U.S. government buys a million bitcoins, which is about 5% of total supply of bitcoins over a set period of time using existing treasury funds.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
they say will be paid for by these existing treasury funds because it's like accounting gimmicks to make it sound like it's cost free but the money's fungible so for spending us government money on bitcoin you're not spending on something else so obviously it's not free well it's only it's only and also it's only fungible if you consider it like a stable asset like the dollar right but it's not it's a it's a highly volatile it's like it's buying stock it's buying stocks
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So the reason I'm talking about this Loomis bill, though, is because there's no details of whatever Trump's plan is beyond these tweets, except that the Loomis plan was just Bitcoin, while Trump's plan included those other cryptocurrencies like Ripple and Cardano, which are why a lot of Bitcoin advocates actually don't like what Trump rolled out, because those other currencies are like jokes.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Like no one uses Ripple. No one uses Cardano. Solana is like a platform through which you make other stuff off it, like meme coins. So the idea that like if you are a Bitcoin maximalist and you believe that Bitcoin is the new gold, OK, I guess you could argue for diversifying like our holdings of stuff, but like not for this other shit coins that no one ever uses.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So the only argument for how those other currencies get into the mix here is because special interest lobbying and corruption. And surprise, surprise, Trump had dinner with the CEO of Ripple in early January. He's now surrounded by these Silicon Valley guys with vested financial interests like David Sachs, the AI czar. So he tweets this out, crypto prices spiked on Sunday about 10%.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Now they're crashing down as we're recording this. And I guess there's like a big White House crypto meeting on Friday. But like, there's a good chance that this tweet was all it was. It was just a chance to pump and dump.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
If you're previously holding these these shares because a bunch of crypto news sites reported on someone making a 50 times levered bet on Bitcoin and Ethereum on Saturday, only to cash it out for a $6.8 million profit on Sunday. So, must be nice. What do you think, guys? Clean out Fort Knox, fill it with thumb drafts?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, give everybody a gift card. Buy whatever crypto you fucking want. There's also no guarantee that Bitcoin price will rise. Like if it was guaranteed to rise, then like the way markets work is it would already be priced at that level, right? Because that's how guarantees work. I mean, so none of this makes sense. You could come along and create a new cryptocurrency that displaces Bitcoin.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
All of our holdings go to zero. Also, the US government holding a ton of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin is completely antithetical to like the libertarian anti-government roots of these cryptocurrencies.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I think we know it swelled during that meeting, Stephen Miller.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Also, Donald Trump didn't give Ukraine really any aid and J.D. Vance voted against the supplemental spending bill for Ukraine aid. So who are we thanking exactly?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Well, to your point, a strategic oil reserve makes sense because you're going to need to use oil.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Finite resource. You could make the argument with crypto that you could make with gold. Like, look, in a pinch, we can't eat gold, right? It only has value because for thousands of years it has had value. But Bitcoin's been around for like 15 years. It could just disappear and no one would know.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Right. And it doesn't crypto is not what you need. Also, long term cryptocurrency will undercut the use of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, which, long story short, gives us a ton of power and influence. And on the corruption part, I mean, I had this really smart reporter on named Zeke Fox on the February 26 episode of Pod Save the World.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And I called him today just like check back in on this. There's this guy named Justin Sun. who is a, you heard of him?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Chinese crypto entrepreneur. He bought $75 million worth of Trump's World Liberty financial tokens. This is a certain crypto asset where the Trump family gets 75% of the profits from that coin. So there's a, right off the top, he just gets a rip of 75%. The SEC just paused its case against Justin Sun. They're investigating him for basically fraud.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Oh, did you see Eric Trump tweeted by the dip on Tuesday? And then this announcement happened Sunday. I wonder if he was in a position to know something about the Bitcoin price.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, they claim to have saved $8 billion on like a DEI program for ICE, when in fact it was an $8 million program.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, so I think in terms of Zelensky's efforts to get more support from the U.S. or get some sort of security deal, you just mentioned a way where it got worse in the near term because it sounds like they're freezing an additional, they're freezing some more money that could be transferred over to Ukraine in terms of weapons stockpiles.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
But the bigger picture problem that Zelensky has is that Trump and J.D. Vance just want a deal and they don't care about the substance of the deal anymore. They don't care if the Russians end up occupying 20 percent of Ukrainian territory or if Ukraine is told that they can't have a real armed forces going forward.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Also, I've been pivoting to TikTok because I'm just trying to reach people where they're at.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So they're just kind of a sitting duck sitting there like Trump just wants a win in the Western press. Now, from Europe's perspective, I think maybe the meeting was clarifying and maybe that could help Zelenskyy because, you know, now there's all these reports that France and the UK are trying to pull together a European peacekeeping group that will give Zelenskyy a security guarantee.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Just, would you say 200,000 more kids getting polio?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I mean, look, we eradicated smallpox off the face of the earth. Like the next goal was to eradicate polio. And I think it was only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fact that it's now going to resurge because of these cuts, like Jesus Christ, what a, what a hit to humanity. On the USAID money generally, I do think like people are going to die.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
There are going to be refugee camps in Sudan where they're going to run out of food. Babies are going to die. There's going to be people we've been giving AIDS medicines under the PEPFAR program that'll be gone in months. Now there's going to be, I personally think that that is cruel and morally wrong and damaging to our standing in the world in the long term as a nation.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
But let's say your view on this is the United States can't feed every starving person anywhere, everywhere, and we can't be the world's policemen. Then you say to them, okay, what about programs that help people that we actively harmed as a nation, right? Early on in this process, we talked about
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
the freeze on foreign aid, stopping programs that clean up unexploded bombs that the United States dropped on Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. If we don't clean those up, little kids pick them up, their arms get blown off, they get killed, they're gonna die.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
The New York Times recently had a story about a doge cut that cut off funding to a program that provides the most meager amount of support to people who are severely disabled because of Agent Orange. Because the United States dropped Agent Orange on their villages during the Vietnam War, and then people who lived there had kids who had these severe disabilities.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Now we're cutting off loans to these people?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
after there is a peace deal, and that's what he really wants. So I think the challenge going into that meeting, now that I've thought about it more, is the US media tends to forget that all these foreign leaders who come in have their own political considerations.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I think we can doge things we don't like. Oh, yeah. About ourselves. Yeah.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And for Zelensky, that meeting going really badly and getting in a fight was not good, but a worse outcome for him would have been getting bullied into taking a ceasefire deal that leaves them vulnerable going forward. when Putin decides to break a ceasefire agreement that he cuts just to kind of make Trump happy. And so it's a bit of a mixed bag. I don't know.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I mean, this is what they want to do. That's just theory of the case. This is economic vision is you throw up all these tariffs and somehow that will ultimately rebuild domestic manufacturing or our ability to produce goods. But it just feels very unlikely. And, you know, we're going to put in place these tariffs on Canada and Mexico and they're going to retaliate.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Like the Canadians have talked about 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods globally. of U.S. products, and then that might expand to $85 billion more. And they're talking about ag products, consumer goods, liquor. I think they're targeting Republican districts, so like bourbon, appliances. And Mexico has not been public about their retaliations, but they're preparing them.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So you made the point like the auto sectors are so entwined between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico, and I don't know how that's going to work. Mexico and Canada account for 70 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. So gas prices could go up. And also we're talking about trade agreements that like Jared Kushner negotiated.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
The USMCA was the updated NAFTA that Trump like was one of the things Trump talked about as a primary accomplishment in the first term.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Well, so, so far it's backfiring. I mean, his, his ostensible political allies are the conservative parties up there, this guy, Pierre Polyev, and he still might be the next Canadian prime minister. But Justin Trudeau's polling was like rock bottom. He stepped back. They did this thing where they, it's called proroguing parliament, where basically the liberal party is now going to figure out.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
It's a new leader. And that person will then become the prime minister when they go back into session in like a couple of weeks. And the liberal party's polling numbers, because of Trump's attacks, have gone way back up. Yeah. Like he is rallying support. And you're seeing Canadians booing the national anthem and all this sort of Canadian nationalism. And it's just it's not working.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
The hopeful version is maybe the Europeans will get their shit together finally and give Ukraine what they need.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah, I just think that Trump is the most relentless messenger in the history of politics. And I think we can't let him talk in a vacuum or else like he's going to pin every failure on Democrats and some not insignificant part of the electorate will think that egg prices are high because of Gaza protesters at Barnard. You know what I mean? And so that's not true.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
As far as I know, that is not true. It's the Jews.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I think you're right, Lovett. It's smarter to talk about these fights around a specific thing like the budget, but I do think we have an opportunity there to drive a message that's really strong, which is that Donald Trump is allowing this
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
unelected, unwell billionaire to break the US government so that you could pretend it's going to save enough money to pay for a $5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in the country. I think that's a good story. We have a good villain in Elon Musk. But we're not going to win this fight with op-eds and MSNBC hits. It's going to be a volume game on social media platforms and local press.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
But I do think part of this- Has been seeing us on Chris Hayes lately, I guess. and the points we're making there. But like, I do think we have to have like, we have to have a motivation. We have to have a story with an enemy and we have to have an alternative. Yes. You know what I mean?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
You're not against it. I'm not against the shadow cabinet. And the Labor Party are spelling it with an OU. I'm up for Trump. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
The Trump people are going to break some parts of the government and people are going to get hurt and they have to understand why that happened. Yes. So we've talked about the Doge stuff, but there's another thing that's happened. So in 2020, Congress passed a bunch of tax credits to make Affordable Care Act plans more affordable. Those were extended through 2025. Those are going to expire.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And if they are not reauthorized, you're going to see a bunch of middle class people see like serious premium increases. We need to explain to them as Democrats why their premiums are going up. Otherwise, it might just happen in a vacuum and people are going to think, oh, actually, government health care sucks.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Yeah. Or the Obamacare sucks. No, it's explained because the Democrats in Congress passed these enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act. We need a better name for them, by the way. It's actually expanded premium support, Tommy. Thank you. That's even worse. And Republicans let them lapse. Yeah.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Trump apparently said to the press corps, oh, this guy dressed up today.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
One thing that I think insulates Trump from a lot of criticism is people think, well, he's rich. He's not trying to make more money. Because somehow people have gotten it in their heads that billionaires don't always want more money and that's how you become a billionaire. I think we need to undercut that by exposing the reality.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
For example, The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits. We need to lift that up. as he's slashing things through Doge or advocating for a $4.5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in the world.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
That's the kind of stuff I think where there's an enemy and it's newsworthy and it's new and it's interesting. I think we can sell that.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Right. I reject that. And I think you're doing a great job. You're the doge of this podcast with all your fucking falsehoods in this episode. Yeah. But yeah, I think like we have to remember as a party, a list is not a message, right? We have to tell a story. It's got to be, there is like a lot of work we have to do as a party. Like there's a bit of a reboot of like,
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Who we like you say, who is Trump? What is he? People are like, I don't know. He wants to make America great again. Sounds stupid. We used to make fun of it. But like, boy, is that simple and effective? We don't need a slogan, but we need people to think like Democrats are like they believe this. They stand for that. They fight for this.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I do think that there's a lesson from the RFK thing where, look, he's a terrible person. I would not want him part of the Democratic coalition.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
I don't think it was a mistake for Kamala Harris not to like cut a deal with him or whatever. Remember that was kind of a narrative, but Republicans, they will let anyone into the tent, including him. And they saw Donald Trump correctly saw that RFK overthrew, uh,
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
decades of misleading and, you know, sort of being emotionally manipulative to people who had been, had children with disabilities, et cetera, had built this constituency and built trust with a community that was like pretty significant. And they saw the value of this kind of like wellness to anti-vax to MAGA to MAHA pipeline, and they were willing to go for it.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And I just, I don't know, like, it's not a good example. It's not something I'd like to emulate, but that openness and willingness to bring people into the tent is something.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Right. Which was also nice. I respect Maggie's reporting, but there were times where I felt like the headline was like this wasn't an ambush. And then the substance of the story didn't back that up. For example. Lindsey Graham is running around telling everyone that he told Zelensky not to take Trump's bait. Well, if this wasn't a setup, then why would he be baited in the first place?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And maybe that's an overly literal meeting. But like Trump's position is you have to come into the Oval Office. You have to bow to my will. You cannot disagree with me even about points of fact. And that's just not tenable for the leader of a country. Fighting for its existence. And so like ambush, not an ambush. It was designed for domestic political consumption. Like J.D.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Vance's speech was his chance to finally talk in a big boy meeting and lead the headlines 41 days into the administration where Elon had been ahead of him every other day. And then Trump at the end says. well, I think it was good for the American people to hear all that, and this will make for good TV.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And if you want to make this all a private discussion about the substance, don't have the fucking pool spray in there for 45 minutes.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
And it's like, why do we want to normalize things with Russia so much? It's a broken economy. It's like a wartime economy now. They just make artillery shells that they use to kill Ukrainians. But one sort of under-discussed bizarre part of Trump's rant, because you also have to think about the original impeachment and how Zelensky was involved, right?
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Because Trump called Zelensky and was trying to held up military into Ukraine in order to get dirt on Joe Biden. But an under-discussed part of when Trump gets really mad is he starts ranting about the Mueller investigation. And he says, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. And then he said, and it came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
So none of this makes sense, but he was talking about how he and Vlad endured something terrible together Like somehow it was bad for Putin to have been perceived by the world as having handpicked the American president? Like they're blood brothers.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
Sir, do you know it was on Hunter's laptop? There's a lot of photos that you probably don't want to see.
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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift
If you haven't tried it and you're over the age of 30, you're just an idiot.
Pod Save America
Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Jesse, who is in the Oval Office today. Oh, yeah. Rupert Murdoch. And Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I meant hummus, not Hamas. How do we route that money in the wrong place? Who are we sending hummus to? No, it was payment for. We split that app.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Anyway, this is pretty... First of all, I didn't know that Uncle Sam had a Venmo. This seems alarming and unprecedented. Like Elon Musk, just an unelected tech billionaire.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
wrestling away congressional authority to spend money and the treasury department's role in the whole process and i don't know like this vindictive unstable man calling usaid evil and leftist marxists terrorist supporters uh this all seems like a pretty bad setup i forgot to mention that
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Also, apparently, even in past financial crises or debt ceiling fights, the political staff have never... done this. They've always let career civil servants handle this kind of sensitive information. And by the way, there was some reporting about the identities of members of the Doge team, these tweens and teens running around the place. I don't think they're any tweens. You don't know that.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Nope. You don't know that there were tweens. I like calling them tweens. Good job, Tom. Now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is threatening to arrest people or prosecute people that, I guess, expose their identities or put them at risk in some kind of way.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And now you've got like Elon's army of dipshits and losers on Twitter now doxing the reporters who reported on the Doge staffers and leading them getting threats. So this is just incredibly facistic.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I think that this is not about wasteful spending or even about USAID. I think this is a broader effort to usurp Congress's role in the spending process and create a precedent that they can then use again and again. Just to be clear, the president does not have the legal authority to abolish USAID.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Congress established USAID's authority apart from state and merging it with state would also be unconstitutional. So this is just a power grab. And I think how it goes... could determine whether there's another power grab. You're seeing some reporting that the Department of Education could be next. That's the thing in Elon's crosshairs.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And it is part of a broader pattern that we're seeing in these first two weeks of them ignoring or breaking the law, ignoring norms to seize power. So they fired those inspectors general at all these agencies. They did it
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
illegally by not giving congress sufficient notice it would have been very easy to give congress 30 days notice and then fire all these people the republicans wouldn't stop them they wanted to have this fight and maybe take it to courts and win in court they have crippled the national labor relations board by firing a member so now the nlrb doesn't have enough members to meet so they don't have a quorum uh that means in practice this independent agency
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
That is supposed to investigate and prosecute labor law violations, cannot do its job. Similar thing happened at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EEOC. They are browbeating Republican senators into supporting unqualified nominees. Like this is a massive, unprecedented power grab. And Democrats, I think, don't really know how to fight it or don't have the power to fight it.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
It also sounds like that OPM letter. went through Elon shop and did not go by people like Stephen Miller and other top White House officials. So I'm sure there's some intra administration.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Well, they didn't know if they should show up for work. So some of them didn't.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I also think there's this lack of clarity now about whether some parts of USAID funding has been unfrozen. Secretary Rubio said that life-saving assistance like medicine, medical service, food and shelter would be exempted from the aid freeze. But no one really knows what that means. And I think that's kind of the point because this uncertainty has just upended everything USAID is doing.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And I think, honestly, I think talking about this as a freeze is probably a mistake. I have zero confidence that the vast majority of this funding or these programs will be turned back on. And I think that, by the way, Rubio used to be a big defender of USAID funding. He said it was critical for our national security, and now he's totally flip-flopped.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
But let's just say that something you're working on is paused for 90 days. If you're a contractor working for USAID in Kenya or Ukraine or Southeast Asia, You don't have 90 days worth of savings to just sit on to see if your job is around in three months. You're going to go do something else.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And it's going to completely cripple all this work that has taken decades to set up, this infrastructure, these contractors, these networks of people in these countries. And to your point, if you're getting antiretrovirals through PEPFAR and you stop, you're going to die.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
But in some instances, it's worse than that. They are folding this into their preconceived ideological anger, and they've decided that USAID funded programs that led to gain-of-function research that led to COVID. This is all kind of getting folded into like prosecute Fauci madness.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And it's like Elon Musk retweeting at Wall Street Apes, which is his source on someone found some 40 million in taxpayer funding that went to some scientists in Wuhan. And it's just like, I don't know. Apparently, this is all just part of a conspiracy theory about how the lab leak was on purpose from, you know, thanks to Fauci's funding from USAID, I guess. That's the new...
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And most of those 6,000 are like so tangential. So people who got random leads who pass along information or were part of a wiretap or God knows what.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Or they were just assigned a case and you don't have a choice.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I'm so sick of this, this is what people voted for line. No, no one voted to give Elon Musk a line item veto for the entire federal government. And voting for Donald Trump doesn't mean we get rid of basic civil service protections for government employees.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Those are in place to ensure merit-based employment, to ensure that political influence isn't dictating every single person who is hired or fired, that there isn't discrimination or arbitrary actions. They have collective bargaining rights. There's whistleblower protections. There's all sorts of workers' rights that don't go away because Donald Trump gets elected president.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I didn't love the USAID press conference setting. The reason being, as we just discussed, the Republicans are about to find a bunch of examples of USAID programs that seem silly even to us or seem like a bad use of money. And if the shorthand is Democrats defend USAID while the White House bully pulpit and Elon's Twitter amplifies all these bad things about USAID, I don't think that's a winner.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I think... I want them to focus in on the Elon piece of this right now, because I do think like it's genuinely scary. It's a he's a nefarious new element to Trump 2.0 that is newsworthy. And he's the shiny object right now. And reporters want to cover it. And everyone knows who he is and want to know what's going on.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And there's been some recent polling that shows that Elon's favorable ratings are underwater. Something comes on cases by like 16 points each. And I think Democrats should drive a wedge in between Elon and Trump and drive both their unfavorables up by talking about why an unelected billionaire is just kind of combing through the government books and doing whatever the hell he wants.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Like that is a weird, crazy, interesting story that no one is going to like. And I think it'll get covered. And I'm good for Brian Schatz for blocking all these State Department employee nominations. I think that's great. Hakeem Jeffries' 10-point plan has some good stuff in there. I read through it all, but I learned about it when I read the outline for this episode.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
So I don't know that it's broken through. I know a lot of it is like planning for down the road. But I don't know. I would focus on the Elon piece right now and just go hard. Yeah.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Are we at like King Hippo if it's Mike Tyson punch out? Where are we at in the escalation ladder?
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I don't want him to have a slush fund, but for the United States having a sovereign wealth fund, it's a conversation worth having.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Oh, yeah, yeah. That sounds right. King Hippo. Yeah, I mean, the fentanyl czar is going to have some free time because I think USCBP had some data about seizures at the northern border in 2022, 2023, and 2024. And they found 70 pounds of fentanyl at the northern border as compared to over 66,000 pounds at the southern border.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Yeah, I don't... I think we can critique it. We can make fun of that.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Look, they need to step up. Like... Good to do a press conference today. They've been slow. There's all these reports of the Democrats, the congressional Democrats doing a conference call to figure out their response as the news changes. The OPM memo gets rescinded, whatever. Be a little more nimble. Take some shots. Don't worry about the words being perfect.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Make sure you try to get it to the people who need to hear it. Maybe don't use the word aroused. Maybe don't defend the most unpopular spending we do and defend some of the popular spending. But look, yeah, points for fighting, I guess.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
I do think everyone really needs to keep an eye on these media lawsuit settlements with Trump. It's not just ABC and their defamation suit. It's not just Facebook and their $25 million, you call it whatever you want, to Trump and to his library. There's reports that CBS might settle a suit that didn't even involve Donald Trump. Which is fucking crazy. The most ridiculous one.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that they edited, like every news organization edits everything always, and Paramount might settle that. And by the way, they happen to have a Paramount Skydance merger with that's sitting before the Trump administration, but suggesting that those things are connected would be untoward, so I wouldn't do that.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Literally in the Oval Office with Rupert Murdoch. So if we see the biggest media organizations in the country and their corporate overlords preemptively caving to the Trump administration and settling lawsuits. They could have won.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
That is a very scary signal about press coverage and fighting for the First Amendment right to cover the White House in the second administration, and we need to keep an eye on that.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
So I don't think the fentanyl issue was one with Canada as much as it was with Mexico and with China.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
We've been dealing with this guy for a decade and Trump's like, we gave $50 million to Hamas for condoms and then they use the condoms as bums. It's completely made up because some dork over at Doge, she was 19 years old and has the Twitter handle bigballs69420 misread a spreadsheet and didn't realize this funding was going to like Mozambique or something.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And then the response though is like factcheck.org has Trump administration makes unsupported claim about 50 million for condoms to Gaza. It's like, oh my God. And then- We're done.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
And Twitter's successful. The Elon fluffers are out in force. They're everywhere. They're attacking everything.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot easier to get either real concessions or just lip service out of the Canadians and the Mexicans than it will be out of the Chinese. Xi Jinping is not going to bend or break easily. And so it does look like, ultimately, I think, the results matter a lot less to Trump than the politics.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
There were stories in the Wall Street Journal a week ago about how the Canadians didn't know what he wanted. They were on the other end of this fight. They didn't know what they were negotiating over.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Yeah, they wanted a new czar. But Trump looks like he's taking action. He's getting stuff done. He's making progress. He's picking big fights. So it's splashy. It's getting covered. You're right, state media is covering it, but so is every other news outlet that's trying to follow this administration. So I think it's really smart politics for him.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Well, you know what you do with a Jim Cramer prediction? You bet the other side, almost exclusively.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
Well, yeah, the J.D. Vance theory of the case is you throw in the tariffs and you create a big domestic industry. But these are all long game proposals that will take decades to play out. And Trump's just dicking around and doing a political move. Like it's clearly just naked politics. He wants to look like he's taking action. I think it's pretty effective in that sense.
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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup
you know he makes up some other big problem that canada and mexico doing he does this all over again yeah i just think it's like the casual news observer the just the headline person like oh you see trump he beat up on the canadians he got some concessions like good for him doing stuff
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah. I wonder if Mike Waltz has any Houthis in his contacts.
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War in the Group Chat
Do we really believe that Trump is sated? Do you think if Paul Weiss takes another case against him he doesn't like that he'll be like, ah, we had a good meeting with Brad back in the day? Not a fucking chance. Right. See, with Mark Zuckerberg, you can cut a million dollar check to the inauguration. You can settle the lawsuit for 25 million and bribe Trump that way.
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War in the Group Chat
But do you think he's going to side with you over Elon Musk in the next big AI fight? No way, buddy. Or like TikTok, right? Which Zuckerberg would rather have banned. And now is our moment to establish some guardrails and everyone is just caving.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah. yeah i just think that there's an argument just on the on the merits for the for their bottom line long term to fight now and not well that that is a good argument yes but long term i don't know like they think that short term this is good for them and maybe they're right individually but long term you know i don't think you want to be in a country like this
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War in the Group Chat
I mean, my big takeaway was the point you made about Trump calling it a precondition for formal negotiations. That is the strategic approach we took to negotiating with the Taliban or the North Koreans or the Iranians.
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War in the Group Chat
What are we doing here? I mean, the anti-Semitism definition, I'm not entirely sure what anti-Semitism definition is. is going to pass muster with the White House, I assume one that is pretty expansive. And as we've discussed before, that is a problem.
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War in the Group Chat
Because a lot of those definitions of anti-Semitism, like the IHRA definition, includes a completely legitimate criticism of the Israeli government or Israeli government policy, or suggests that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are the same thing, which they are not. It can have a hugely chilling effect on free speech.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah, exactly. And then but like also just big picture, it is what are we talking about? This is so heavy handed, like the White House is dictating whether student protesters at Columbia University are allowed to wear masks. What?
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War in the Group Chat
And the broader context being that Mahmoud Khalil, this Columbia student who was swept up by ice and disappeared to Louisiana. I mean, there's this unprecedented attack on one of their own students. And I understand that that could create fear, but it seems like it could also be a time to fight for the kids who are enrolled in your institution.
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War in the Group Chat
I think Levin made an important point, which is like, I think UPenn has like a $22 billion endowment. So you could fill some of these gaps in the short term and you could probably pay the legal fees to fight here.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah, I mean, reading that time report was haunting. It's one of those things you read and it just sticks with you because what is happening to these people is just so profoundly wrong and enraging. And obviously we all want murderers deported, but what is happening is ICE is just sweeping through communities and picking up Venezuelan men
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War in the Group Chat
and and deporting them with no due process in most cases seemingly because they have tattoos just do we trust the the cultural fluency of ice agents to determine what tattoos mean your back like but that's what we're doing now and the story of this one man uh his name is andre he's a makeup artist he is a legitimate asylum case because he fled the maduro government in venezuela and by the way trump just slapped a bunch more sanctions on the venezuelan economy today he's going to put more uh uh
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War in the Group Chat
He's going to sanction other countries that buy Venezuelan oil starting April 2nd. So we're crushing their economy, making it so there's no Venezuelan country to go back to, but also shipping Venezuelan men who try to come here and seek asylum to El Salvador.
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War in the Group Chat
And the Trump administration sent this man, Andrea, he's a makeup artist, to rot in hell in this gulag in El Salvador, I think just because he had a couple tattoos on his arm. And because Nayib Bukele is an authoritarian sadist, he allowed this time photographer to witness what happened.
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War in the Group Chat
And we have this account of Andre weeping and crying for his mother, and in the response, getting slapped and beaten and thrown to the ground, having his head forcibly shaved. And I just think if you- This guy had no hearing, no hearing. If you hear a story like that and your response is to shrug it off and not think that could be me, that could be my family, that could be someone I love.
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War in the Group Chat
I think there is something wrong with you because this should shock your conscience. This is evil. It should not be how the United States of America-
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War in the Group Chat
should act i know we have fucked up in some of our worst excesses uh after the war on terror or other um dramatic events but like this is so profoundly wrong it was it it's it's hard not to throw your phone through the wall when you read about what's happening these people
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War in the Group Chat
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War in the Group Chat
To manage a crisis. This happened on March 11th through 14th, which is like Tuesday through Friday. Everyone should be sitting at their desk where they could presumably get on the J Wix, the top secret email system and fire off a classified message to each other or walk downstairs into the sit room and have a meeting about this, this who the target they want to bomb. It's insane.
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War in the Group Chat
Oh, I don't know. Or he's just irrelevant. I mean, my big takeaway from the kind of the messaging flow and sequencing is it seemed like Stephen Miller is the end all be all decision maker on this chat about whether they're bombing Yemen.
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War in the Group Chat
He sort of comes in and says, this is what the president said in the meeting, so this is what we're doing. It's like Mike Waltz, you're the national security advisor. You haven't talked to the president. J.D. Vance, you're the VP. You haven't talked to the president.
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War in the Group Chat
He was like, I don't like the Atlantic, though. I'm like, okay, well, your staff does because they copy him on deliberations.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah. J.D. Vance is big, kind of an isolationist case against striking the Houthis, which big picture I tend to agree with. But he comes at it by arguing that a much higher percentage of goods come from Europe than and are at risk from the Houthis than U.S. goods. Through the canal.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah, because if you think about the Suez Canal, it connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea down to the Indian Ocean, so it links Asia to Europe.
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War in the Group Chat
And it's just weird that he makes all of this about Europe and European goods because the bigger argument you usually hear about the Houthis scaring ships out of the Red Sea is that everyone ends up going around the Horn of Africa and all shipping takes longer and everything is just net, net more expensive for everybody.
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War in the Group Chat
How is this about Europe and not Israel? The proximate cause, the reason the Houthis are firing missiles and drones at ships is because they're doing it, they say, in solidarity with the Palestinian cause because they want the war in Gaza to end or they want humanitarian relief to get into the Gaza Strip.
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War in the Group Chat
This is clearly an effort to help out Netanyahu because the Houthis are also firing missiles at Israel.
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War in the Group Chat
I was thinking about this. I made a video for the Crooked Media Instagram about some previous multifaceted mix-ups with the wrong people getting CC'd on email chains. Remember when we sent about 30 emails to Lyle Lovett? thinking we had copied John Lovett. Yeah. Oh yeah. And then he finally replied. It was like, Hey everyone. I made me.
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War in the Group Chat
because someone removes them and you forget. Remember Jen Psaki got in trouble for this. She like forwarded some opposition research by accident to John McCormick, who then I think was at the Tribune. We've all done this. We've all AOL IM'd the person we're talking shit about directly instead of talking about them amongst the group, you know, with our friends and colleagues.
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War in the Group Chat
See, I was going to say he should have recommended some targets and just sort of like mixing it up, getting involved in the conversation, see if anybody noticed. But yeah, I mean, to those who are there were some people online who were like, how dare he leave? Why would he do that?
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War in the Group Chat
I do think in this, you know, legal climate, there is some actual risks to you if you're perceived as violating the Espionage Act.
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War in the Group Chat
That is, I think, like... Who do you think's in that one? Peter Baker? No, it's probably like Steve Wyckoff. I'd listen to an hour and six minutes of an hour and a half of Steve Wyckoff talking with Tucker Carlson about their entire foreign policy agenda, and I can't wait to listen to the rest after this. But I bet...
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War in the Group Chat
I bet when all these guys are traveling, they are just absolutely breaking the rules and ignoring the Presidential Record Act and talking on signal all day long.
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War in the Group Chat
Yeah. I mean, just look, Signal is broadly viewed as kind of the gold standard and the safest communications app because it's open source and it's got really strong encryption. But we don't know. We don't know if the Mossad has broken it or the Chinese or the Russians.
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War in the Group Chat
If they can get access to your device itself, it doesn't matter if it's encrypted flying across the transom. If they are on your device somehow, then they've got what you're saying.
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War in the Group Chat
A couple observations. People, Democrats in that district hate Ken Calvert, hate his guts. He's been around for decades. They can't get rid of him. And they were really grateful to Roe for coming out. I mean, we had a similar experience. You did love it. I mean, I think Roe said the crowd we saw was about a thousand people. It's definitely several hundred. I was expecting like 50.
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War in the Group Chat
And everyone we talked to, whether they're from the 41st district or not, they were scared, they were angry, they were desperate for any guidance on what to do in this moment and any kind of leadership and someplace to channel their energy.
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War in the Group Chat
And I think the Democratic Party needs to view these events as a huge opportunity because all of us are having the same conversation about how things feel worse this time and it's scary and there's no marches, there's no clear sense of activism and people seem a little more resigned to what's to come.
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War in the Group Chat
And the reality is there are millions and millions of people who are desperate for someone to help them channel their energies. And I think Roe, AOC, Bernie, people that are getting out into the country and doing these town hall meetings and listening, It's going to go a long way. And it's not just the midterms and sprinting towards 2026.
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War in the Group Chat
It's that you want these Republicans battleground districts to feel vulnerable and to see headlines of like a thousand people for Ro Khanna in my district. And maybe I shouldn't follow Elon Musk and Donald Trump down every fucking path. So I thought it was great that Ro did it. It was it was great to have been there and talk to a lot of people. And I'm glad we went.
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War in the Group Chat
Fun to say. Yeah, I liked it. It's a term of art. It's a legal term of art. It means repeatedly filing frivolous, redundant lawsuits with the intention of harassing the other party more than winning them, but fun to say. That was a big takeaway for me. I agree with you.
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War in the Group Chat
I think Paul Weiss has $130 million per year in pro bono support already, so I imagine they will just fold the $40 million into that and call it a day. There was one part that was weird where there seemed to be a disagreement between the White House and what Paul Weiss thinks they agree to around hiring
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War in the Group Chat
Paul Weiss, the White House says that Paul Weiss agreed to merit-based hiring and not doing anything DEI related, which is a problem because a firm like Paul Weiss should be able to hire whatever lawyers they want, including people from diverse backgrounds. It's a good thing for them as a practice.
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War in the Group Chat
But there was also a piece of it where the White House said they agreed to retain some expert in employment practices to review their hiring. To like audit the firm or something. Right, which is super weird. Like some outside expert is going to tell them how to hire. That seems bad. So yeah, the principle is terrible.
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War in the Group Chat
It's the funniest person you could possibly include on that group chat, too. It's perfect. Unless it was a Houthi.
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War in the Group Chat
It's vexatious. Yeah, I think the first mistake was sending Brad Karp to negotiate. You should have sent Paul Weiss.
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War in the Group Chat
But I agree. In the first term, we all complained about... the collective action problem among Republican elected officials and Trump senior staff, right? Cause they would complain to Maggie Haberman on background, but never quit or like put anything on the line.
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War in the Group Chat
Now, uh, the, the, the, the problem, the collective action problem has broken containment and is in academia and with CEOs and law firms and the media and, And they're all just preemptively caving. And like, not only did Paul Wei say they're going to lose clients, but they said that other firms were trying to poach their clients.
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War in the Group Chat
That's the good stuff. Yeah. That is shitty. But also I wanted to say, did you expect a fight with the president to be easy? Right. We're all going to like when you stand on principle, you might lose money. You might lose status. You might get harassed. You might deal with risk and hardship. That's the point. And like there is a decent chance that they made things so much worse in the long term.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Yeah, last night was one of those times where I sort of thought to myself, if we were slowly sliding into, you know, an authoritarian state, what would be happening differently than a purge at the FBI and the Pentagon?
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
I just want to point out that before C.Q. Brown was the chairman, he commanded the Pacific Air Forces. He was the chief of staff of the Air Force. He was the deputy commander of CENTCOM. He logged 130 hours in combat. This guy was like eminently qualified for the job. And he was fired because he is Black.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Pete Hegseth, as you mentioned, sort of questioned in his book whether Brown had been promoted. because of his race. Hegseth later said on a podcast, I think last year, that Brown had to be fired because any general involved in quote, DEI woke shit has to go. In C.Q.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Brown's case, that meant literally just like talking about his experience as a black man in the United States after George Floyd's murder. And then you mentioned the head of the Navy was fired. That was Lisa Franchetti. She was the first woman to lead the Navy. About a month ago, Trump fired the commandant of the Coast Guard, who was the first woman ever to lead a branch of the U.S. military.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
So they're just pushing out all women and all people of color. And again, as we talked about before, like the military is very diverse at the lowest ranks at the senior level. It is almost exclusively white men. And Trump is just destroying any diversity that was, you know, had been improved by the Biden administration.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
And as these guys are ranting and raving about DEI, they're putting Pete Hegseth in charge, who is a weekend Fox anchor. And then Lieutenant General Dan Cain is going to be the replacement chairman. He's the guy that Trump always talks about, Raisin Cain, who he met in Iraq, who said, I can kill ISIS in like two hours, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Cain doesn't actually meet the statutory requirements needed to hold the position. He was a three-star. You needed to have been a combatant commander or a service chief. Trump can give him a waiver. But again, the idea that this is like a fucking merit-based appointment is ludicrous on the facts.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
He said that Mark Milley, the former chairman, should be executed, so I guess it could be worse. Yeah, that's true.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
I feel for these workforces because you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Either you stay in, maybe you have to go along with something because you're ordered to that you know is wrong, either morally or legally, or you leave and potentially someone worse and more loyal to Trump gets your job. I mean, it's terrible.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
I mean, I'm no AI expert, but the idea that you can just put a five-paragraph, like, what I did at camp this week letter into the machine, and it can just tell you if your job has value seems... Like it's the machine that checks whether kids are good or evil in Willy Wonka.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Of course I have, yes. Love the basilisk.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Just save it as a .csv file. That's exactly right. I think that's good. It's just a .csv. What is it? Rococo basilisk? It's Rocco's basilisk. But that's Elon's drug dealer.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
It's that. Also, at some point, you're the secretary of, fill in the agency name, education. You're ostensibly running the thing. You're supposed to be in charge. You want your little fiefdom to be yours. You want to decide who you're... hiring and firing. So I think there's probably just an ego piece of it. But it also seemed like a legal part.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Just a pure political ad. Yeah, indistinguishable from a campaign ad.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Kristi Noem has also been doing kind of the job as performance art. Have you seen this? Lots of costumes. I think there was a, she was in a cowboy hat. She might have been on a horse at one point. This is what Trump wants. Bulletproof vest in some photos. Really kind of living the part.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
This is Schrödinger's segment that I'm alive, but I want to die.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
There's a lot on the cards I didn't get to. There's a lot of the cards I didn't get to on Bill Maher. I haven't been able to listen to that. When he walked out, was it a Huffy walkout? You know what?
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Yeah, they made fun of my Stephen A. Smith thing. They just made fun of me being like, who the hell is Tommy Vitor? I'm like, you just excerpted our interview. Obama pod bros.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Thanks for saying I shower, John. Yeah, you do shower. We would rather have our dress code than have to just put on like a half pound of bronzer every time you walk into the studio.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Gutfeld's in a long-sleeve tee every goddamn day. Gutfeld has the most hilarious wardrobe and posture on all of television. The Five has been on a lot.
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It just seems like Zelensky's negotiating a gunpoint and he feels like he has no choice. I mean, it's as simple as that. The war is still raging. I think to honor the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, the Russians fired the largest drone attack since the war started. So, you know, he is getting attacked by the Russians and then now the Americans are coming in to extort him.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Yeah. I mean, I think the theory of it. Well, first of all, I mean, there was a report in the FT today that Putin said Russia was prepared to offer to help the U.S. on some sort of cooperation on extraction of these minerals. Oh, wow. That's so helpful. He wants in on the action. I mean, the kind of Trump theory of the case is that.
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increased economic cooperation might be seen as a turn to putin for to invade again i don't think that's remotely credible so i think it's very likely that putin is viewing this as a chance to refresh his army and rearm and then you know try to take the rest of ukraine in a couple years were you shocked by the un resolution I mean, yes, but no. Right. I mean, we've we've picked a side.
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The great thing about going to Loli is you're guaranteed not to see Bill Maher.
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And I think the U.N. resolution just showed how much of a change there's been in U.S. policy.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
That's like the common thread. I mean, Trump refuses to say the Russians invaded. He refuses to say who's the aggressor.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Very bad that the AFD doubled its support from the last time, but most of their success came from mobilizing new voters. So it just tells you there's a lot of energy there. So there's some AFD voters who support their really disgusting policy views. I think there's some people that view it as a way to give a middle finger to the system and just show a protest. Where have I heard that before?
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Yeah, exactly. The more traditional conservatives, they got the most votes, but they underperformed politically. The Social Democrats had the worst result for them since 1887. So a tough day for former Chancellor Schulz. So it's most likely that Friedrich Merz and the CDU will go into coalition with the Social Democrats. And that's the next government.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
And that's kind of the best possible outcome in terms of what's next for Germany and their ability to govern. What's the worst, Tommy? What? The worst is they form a government. They can't get anything done. It collapses.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
And then in the next election, you see the AFD do even better because the real growth in this election was on the far right for the AFD and on the far left, especially among 18 to 24 year olds. The far left and the far right did really well because everyone is just furious at the two traditional political parties.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
And, you know, now we just have to see if they can form a government that seems responsive to the people.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
Yeah, they're Euro skeptics. And so that's, you know, worrisome in the longterm. And then Friedrich Merz, who's the head of the CDU, which is Angela Merkel's party,
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
He said during the campaign that his top priority is going to be strengthening Europe as quickly as possible so they can achieve independence from the United States because they know the Americans are now largely indifferent to Europe's fate. And he also said that Elon Musk's interference in German elections was not less dramatic and drastic than what Russia did.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
So they're just viewing a future without us. Wonderful. As is Zelensky. Wonderful.
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Jen Psaki takes a deep dive into the state of the Democratic Party in her new original MSNBC podcast, The Blueprint with Jen Psaki. As President Trump's second term takes shape, Jen and her guests will dig into what lessons can be learned from the 2024 election and help uncover a blueprint for how to respond to the current moment.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
As you could hear there, it's got some temperament issues. I think if an anabolic steroid morphed into a person, it would be Dan Bongino. Fortunately, when you give people power, usually they settle down. Yeah, they chill out. To Lovett's point is right about the experience. The deputy director is always a career FBI agent.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
When we were in the administration, this guy, Sean Joyce, who had one of the best Boston accents I've ever heard, but he had been in the bureau for like 30 or 40 years. He did all these operational meetings. He was deep in the weeds of everything. He was always briefing the deputies committee. Dan Bongino has none of that experience.
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Search for The Blueprint with Jen Psaki to follow and listen to the series. New episodes drop on Mondays. Love it. I'm going off script here to say we love Jen Psaki. Huge fans. One of the smartest, most effective people in Democratic politics. Amazing show on MSNBC. Check out her podcast.
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I mean, he was a secret service guy turned gadfly political candidate, turned Fox News host, turned podcaster. And I think this is even more dangerous this time around because Kash Patel has no experience. He's never worked at the FBI. He's like, what, 44 years old? He's like a little bit of experience on the Hill and a little bit of time at the DOJ, but he doesn't know what he's doing.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
And so I'm not one of those people that you see a lot of liberals kind of lionizing the FBI, like, how dare you criticize the institutions? No, they've made a lot of mistakes. They screw up a lot of stuff. It's an incredibly conservative organization, by the way, very Republican. But the FBI is supposed to protect us from terrorists, foreign intelligence operations, organized crime.
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Finally, a Podcaster at the Top of the FBI!
They're not just It's raiding Mar-a-Lago. Public corruption. Right. That's not their only job. And now it's run by two people who have no idea what they're doing. And the only explanation for how they got the job is loyalty to Trump. And if I were to think of the two parts of government, you could most easily weaponize against political opponents.
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It would be the FBI and the IRS just giving the kind of tools you have in your toolkit.
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A huge chunk of American shipping goes through the Panama Canal. It has gotten more expensive, but that's mostly because of drought. People usually attribute to climate change, not China.
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Do you see the TikTok CEO sitting next to Tulsi Gabbard, the future director of national intelligence? What a country.
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Another kind of foreign policy adjacent one is he's going to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And I'm just very interested to see what that means in practice because there's lots of reporting about connections between the Mexican government and the cartels, elected officials, or the Mexican military and these cartels.
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I want to know, are they going to get tagged with providing material support? Are we going to go back to the campaign rhetoric where we all were talking about – using the U.S. military to bomb Mexico, bomb the cartel drug manufacturing facilities.
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That's right. I mean, I guess my, like, we'll talk about this later, but my modus operandi for Trump 2.0 is to take it all literally and assume he's going to do these things. So if we're going to call them terrorists, presumably then you kill the terrorists because that's usually what you do with terrorists if you're an American government. So stay tuned.
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Well, Dan's- Enjoy Severance, you elite prick. We're watching, Dan and I are watching Yellowstone. What was it? Lioness 2? What was it called? Special Outs.
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I think that Greenland, he really does want the territory. I think with Panama, he's probably just trying to get a better deal, a better rate. But as far as I can, I looked into this a couple weeks ago when he started talking about it again. I think that they are charging us the same rate as everyone else, this ACP, the Panama Canal Authority.
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I think the big, big picture on this is Trump's brain was frozen in the 70s. And he remembers when Reagan used to attack Jimmy Carter over the Panama Canal all the time. And it was a huge political issue. And he's just bringing it back.
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I don't know. I think Lovett was Googling this feverishly during his speech. Don't tell people all the magic.
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Right, right. When we were laughing, what did Claudia Sheinbaum, the new president of Mexico, threaten to call the United States like greater Mexico or something?
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Well, little X was like, can you please stop carrying Vivek around on your shoulders?
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As you guys know, John Lovett had a SimpliSafe. He set it up himself. and top-of-the-line sensors and technology. You can turn it on and off from his phone. They kept Lovett safe, kept Pundit safe, and it'll work for you too. That's because traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in, and that is too late.
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Yeah, profoundly frustrating 24 hours. I mean, I thought Dan's piece on this in Messagebox, his newsletter, which you all should subscribe to.
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It was excellent. There was lots of less thoughtful commentary on Twitter about how, once again, Dems suck and Republicans rule because we gifted Trump this political win. And I just wish, and while that is true, the politics of this did not end well for Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. I wish people were pointing out, though, that the vote in the House... to ban was 360 to 58.
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So like 186 Republicans voted for banning TikTok or divesting TikTok. It was 79, 18 in the Senate. So you had 31 Republicans in the Senate. So this is a overwhelming bipartisan decision. The reason they did it was national security concerns, which they've done an absolutely terrible job explaining to anyone. So no one understands why this happened.
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But I also think part of the story of how Trump went from wanting to ban TikTok and trying to do it on his way out the door to getting to saving TikTok is also that he met with a big donor named Jeff Yass or Jeff Yass, who said something to him that led him to flip-flop on this issue. And I think Jeff Yass owns 15% of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. So there was a big money angle here.
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And then TikTok wasn't shut down. They shut themselves down So they could put up this little, please save us, Mr. Trump, that they shouted from their tall tower. And then they gave him the win. And they're like, oh, Mr. Trump saved us to suck up to the incoming administration. So it was just like, it was so obviously a stunt.
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And people were like, the commentary on Twitter in particular was just so fucking credulous.
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Probably, but Jeff Yass bought a ton of shares of Truth Social at the time and put a bunch of money into the Trump team's pocket. I think it could be a why not both situation.
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And they made a big show of like declassifying all this information around the Ukraine, Russian invasion of Ukraine. So why not do that again here? You know, there's a way to put information into people's hands.
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There's actually a Steve Bannon thing. He always says, we're going to fix bayonets.
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I mean, by law, by dance has to provide the Chinese Communist Party with whatever it wants. Basically. And the broader context is the Chinese have hacked into basically every single telecom company in the United States. We've been unable, the United States government's been unable to get them out.
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We've learned over time that this op that's called Salt Typhoon, they've managed to get audio and text messages of calls from Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, senior political officials. So there's this ongoing hacking war happening. And the idea that the Chinese national security state wouldn't use TikTok when it's on all our phones.
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Trump wants to force a sale to someone more supportive of him, like Elon Musk. I think the critics of this ban are right to point out comments from senior U.S. government officials where they said that like real momentum behind TikTok's ban came when there was tons of pro-Palestinian content on there about Gaza. And I do think that was sort of bizarre.
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You're buying nothing. You are technically buying a digital playing card, but it's not supposed to be viewed as a security or an investment or a donation to Trump. You're buying nothing because you like the thing.
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But people buy and sell and trade these things because they know with some of these meme coins, also called shit coins, you can see huge rips to the upside where there's like Dogecoin and all of a sudden Elon Musk likes it. And you can see people pile in and the price goes up.
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You can see the value go way up. And if you bought a million of them for one cent and it goes to a dollar, you make a ton of money. So that's what seems to have happened here. A company connected to Trump owns 80% of these Trump coins. They also get a fee on the sale of these coins.
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I saw a guy named Connor Grogan, who's a director of Coinbase, estimated on Saturday that Trump's team had made 58 million in fees from all of the Trump coin sales. So Trump, they launched this Trump coin. Trump promotes it on True Social. The thing goes to the moon. And then they launched the Melania coin. And it seems like a bunch of people saw that happen.
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And maybe they sold their Trump coin to buy Melania coin. Well, maybe you sold the Trump coin because you're like, oh, no, they're going to launch a thousand of these things. The value is going to go down. Whatever happens, people just started selling like crazy. And the price just collapsed. And it's called a rug pull in the kind of like the coin world. Yeah. So, I don't know. We'll find out.
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All the schmoes who buy late lose out and all the people who own it early win. This is the hock to a coinification of the presidency. And, you know, normally you might see like regulators investigating what happened here. Maybe law enforcement gets involved. You think Trump's going to have his DOJ dig into what happened?
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And he's now going to write the regulations for how crypto is regulated. So this is the new world, folks.
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I think credit, good for those people. There are arguments you can make for the utility of Bitcoin or the blockchain or other of these technologies. There's no utility to a meme coin or a shit coin. It's just for shits and giggles.
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And for the president of the United States to launch this thing the day before he's inaugurated and then someone pull the rug on everybody who got in late, he's harming his own people who might have bought in.
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What you should take from what I think we take away from those quotes, though, is just how egregious this was. This is like shockingly irresponsible, borderline illegal.
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Basically my son Dan Pfeiffer from Delaware. Everyone from Delaware got a pardon.
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I mean, I would like to be I would love a little more specificity if I were her. Yeah.
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What do you open the thing? It's like commutation. Come on. Yeah, pardon is so much better. But like back to Cassie Hutchinson, I mean, I don't know her. She's been on the show. She was a witness. She was someone that Republicans accused of committing perjury before the committee. And also someone who was at the lowest level, right?
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She was an assistant in the White House, has no resources, is not going to be able to hire like the fanciest lawyers out there. So I would be a little nervous if I were her. I will just say, because... And Trump called her out at his overflow speech. Yeah, he did. He went after her basically by name.
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Every personal political decisions Joe Biden makes, he tends to make only with his family and like one or two aides and then just roll it out right away. And it creates a political nightmare. Right.
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Right. There's all this reporting about how he decided to run for reelection without really running it by staff. There's reporting that the Hunter pardon was made in concert with, you know, like a family meeting. And then they kind of rolled it out weeks and weeks ago and then did the rest of them this week. So, yeah, I mean, I think the the.
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And the timing, the communications plan wasn't really there for a lot of these. I do think it's going to really hurt Joe Biden's reelection chances. It hurt how he was talked about. He could have put Hunter in this last batch and buried it all. I guess there was kind of the question, the issue of sentencing that complicated things timing wise. I guess.
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The Leonard Pelletier one is interesting though. He's a Native American activist who's been in jail since 1977 for allegedly murdering two FBI agents. But it's been very controversial. And I think, you know, people have been trying to get him released for years and years and years now. I mean, Amnesty International called him a political prisoner, et cetera, et cetera.
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Yeah, but also there's this presumption of guilt. And you see shitty people like Rand Paul tweeting about how now we know... You know, Fauci is guilty for his actions during the pandemic. And maybe that maybe who cares?
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Tommy? January 20th, 2025 is Liberation Day. It's just a giant Bill Pullman ripoff from Independence Day. Yeah, no aliens. How dare you, first of all. It's funny also that Dan criticized Trump for being too wonky, too policy focused. Didn't expect that. I sort of had a similar reaction. It was sort of remarkable in how unremarkable it was.
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Well ... he's back.
My memory of the 2017 inaugural address is all that one line about American carnage. And then I rewatched that speech after I watched the 2025 version. And it's actually amazing how similar the two speeches are. We're going to make America great again. We're going to protect our borders. Some hand waving about unity.
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Well ... he's back.
You should, everyone should listen to Strict Scrutiny this week. They go deeper on this. It was very interesting.
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Well ... he's back.
He updates this one with new, more modern grievances, like the judicial system being weaponized, the battle against inflation and the need to invade Panama. But there's like verbatim lines at the top. Like in 2017, he said, for too long, a small group in our nation's capital have reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
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Well ... he's back.
I also everyone should go watch this just to see the look on J.D. Vance's face at the top where he starts talking about all the things he didn't want. And he looks like so pained and kind of constipated. Speaker Johnson is like twitching and looking around and staring into the middle distance. It's it's.
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Well ... he's back.
And Melania and her big, goofy fucking hat is just hiding her eyes and looking down. And it's so pissed the whole time. And then Trump starts talking about how her feet hurt and how she wanted to go home. But he made her come here. It's so weird.
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Well ... he's back.
2025, for many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. So it was, you know, just kind of like stump like the same thing. I did note, though, for all Joe Biden's attempts and efforts to be a decent person and have a dignified transfer of power.
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Well ... he's back.
Trump still took a dump on his entire presidency in existence right next to him. So that was kind of him, cordial of him.
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Well ... he's back.
Watch what he does, not what he says, and focus on those midterms.
Pod Save America
Well ... he's back.
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Well ... he's back.
I mean, I think moving all the events inside and only doing things with tech CEOs and billionaire donors while the MAGA faithful have nothing to do or go to some giant arena where they get ignored, that's kind of a perfect metaphor for how I imagine this whole thing is going to go.
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Well ... he's back.
Well, there were Proud Boys marching through the streets. Idle hands, devil's playground. But I mean, I do think this is why you're seeing like the Steve Bannon fight against Elon Musk and the tech oligarchs, because they're worried that their populism is erasing the minute the votes were counted. And they're not wrong.
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Well ... he's back.
That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
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Well ... he's back.
It sounds like, oh, maybe someone started it to target them. That was my takeaway in the moment.
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Well ... he's back.
He also said that in the overflow of speech that maybe Nancy Pelosi wanted January 6th to happen. And that's why she turned down the 10,000 troops he says he offered and noted that she's guilty as hell. So that was said in the Capitol where the insurrection happened four years ago.
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Well ... he's back.
No, the Panama Canal Authority. It's a semi-autonomous government entity controlled by Panama operates the canal. There are ports and infrastructure getting built by the Chinese on either side of the canal. Panama is one of the countries that signed a deal with China for the Bell and Rove initiative. So maybe he's referring to that.
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Well ... he's back.
But there were a lot of factual errors in this part of the speech. He says the United States lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal. Most of the deaths happened during the French construction portion. Such a good fact check. They quit on. But also, well, also the people who did the work were from the Caribbean. They were not American citizens.
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Well ... he's back.
They were people who were basically indentured servants doing this work. Several thousand Americans died, but it's not 38,000. Yeah, not 38,000. Not even close.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what advice to give people, but I understand the fear and I empathize with the fear. And also Tom Homan, I think specifically threatened Boston as part of their attempt to intimidate so-called sanctuary cities. It also seems like there could be a bit of a split on policy in the White House.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Like there's part of the White House that doesn't want to completely give the finger to the lower courts. because they know that can piss off the Supreme Court. And therefore they're making these legalistic arguments. Oh, we're in compliance with the law because technically speaking, if you look at the timeline of the flights, we were over international waters when the written order came down.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And this is just a good faith agreement of whether a verbal order came to the security is the same force as a written one, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then there's another part of the White House, probably like the Stephen Miller wing. That's like, Fuck this. Let's get to the Supreme Court. Let's have this fight.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And what we want is a ruling that says lower courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions anymore. And then they are off to the races. And that is scary. And it seems like Pam Bondi is in the Stephen Miller camp. Otherwise, it's hard to understand why you'd call a judge a terrorist sympathizer, because that's pretty crazy if you care about what like judges in the legal process thinks of you.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
They have a different standard. What they say in the courtroom is Caroline Leavitt at the White House briefing, I think, made exactly that point, which is that a verbal order is different than a written order.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Like all of this, the specific timelines for when these planes took off and landed have been published in a number of news outlets. Like I'm not sure what the play is here by the government lawyers that they think they can hide this data from the judge.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah, I actually think Scott Jennings, well, he's an insufferable idiot. Anyone who's watching CNN knows that. But I don't think he's right here because that's a question of framing. I think the Democratic Party's position should be, of course, we should deport terrorists and murderers, full stop. But there has to be a legal process to make those determinations.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And creating a system where any White House can just say, you're a terrorist, you're a terrorist, you're a gang member, and then deport you, that's un-American. And this is not like an unfamiliar argument because our country has lost its mind before. It was called the War on Terror.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Before that, it was called the Red Scare and efforts to prevent people with so-called communist ties or sympathies from coming back to the United States. So I think it's an argument we have to make. And I feel far better about the due process argument than holding up some specific scary individual that did something awful, which is what the White House is going to do.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
There was a great piece in Politico, I believe, about the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, which is the law that's currently being used to expel Mahmoud Khalil for alleged Hamas sympathies or whatever, anti-Semitism. And if you look at the history of how that law came to be and whom it was written by, it was written by a senator named Pat McCarran, who was just a virulent anti-Semite.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And the law was used to keep Jews out of the United States, even after the Holocaust. So it's just a good reminder that the history of these kind of tactics and legal strategies will come back to bite everybody in the ass. You should not support them.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Well, we had a triple uplift desk set up now in the C-suite. What do we call our office?
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Our disgusting little office here at Crooked Media.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
I will say you've taken to the uplift desk, to the standing desk, like a fish to water.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And our listeners stand to lose increased blood flow and all these other health benefits if they don't get an Uplift Desk.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
There's an OLC opinion sitting on justice.gov from 2005 that says the president doesn't actually have to sign a bill for it to become law. They can instead direct a subordinate to, quote, affix the president's signature to such a bill, for example, by auto pen. Couldn't be more clear. U.S. government. Thomas Jefferson.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah, apparently, according to something I was reading, Thomas Jefferson used something called a polygraph, an auto pen-like device as far back as 1804. You can visit it if you go to Monticello. And the idea that these pardons were done in secret when they were like the biggest story in the U.S. political media at the time, so Biden didn't know about them, it's like self-evidently Stupid.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And no one knows what Biden did or didn't sign. The point of a signature is it looks the same. That's why we use them.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
They're just chum in the water for the mega media.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
An extension of the Patriot Act, unfortunately. I don't remember that.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
This is one of those moments where if any other president in history had done this, it would be a five alarm fire. It would be the only thing anyone is talking about because it's incredibly dangerous and frightening sign that Trump is primarily motivated by the desire to punish his enemies. And it's not just this speech.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
He's doing this in the context of having a completely pliant attorney general, Pam Bondi, who like pays fealty to him. We got Kash Patel and Dan Bongino now installed at the FBI. The Wall Street Journal reported that Patel was trying to get a direct line into the Oval Office so he could talk to Trump more easily. Like the deputy FBI director is a right wing podcaster with
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
anger management problems. Trump's floating alien cannon. Talking about her, she's gonna be on the Supreme Court soon. We're threatening the media as all these corporations are preemptively caving and cutting settlements with Trump to pay him off so that their corporate mergers can go through. Things are dark.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
What we've learned in the last few weeks is that the executive branch has a tremendous amount of authority to deport people under current law, including ways that seem capricious and cruel. We've all been talking about the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
What do you think that will help? We'll just cut that.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Here's the pro Schumer straw man, which is the big picture is realistically speaking, Chuck Schumer's choice was vote for this bill or force what could likely be an indefinite government shutdown. Now, during a shutdown, what would happen is Trump would get to unilaterally decide what staff is essential or not essential. He could furlough people. and essentially de facto fire them.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
So if you think Doge is bad, this is Doge on steroids. And we know that the Doge gang liked this because the Wired reported that Elon Musk wanted to shut down for exactly this reason, to supercharge Doge. Now, if we had a shutdown, what would have happened was there would be huge cuts to services people need, like veterans benefits.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Republicans in Congress would then get to force a bunch of very politically difficult votes on reopening some parts of the government, but not others. You need Democrats to hang together on all of those. And voters would almost certainly blame Democrats for this whole disaster until they finally caved.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
So this would have ended up being like Ted Cruz's disastrous government shutdown temper tantrum in 2013, which did real harm to the Republican Party. And in this case, it was even worse because at least Ted Cruz had like a point. He was trying to get rid of Obamacare. Democrats hadn't decided on a clear policy goal or outcome or message. And so what ultimately happened is Democrats vote for a bill.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
That is basically a continuation of the government funding for another six months. There are some cuts, like you said, but they're not drastic. And the alternative was letting people who want to destroy the government destroy it a lot faster.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And for those who say Chuck Schumer screwed up the messaging by saying he was for a filibuster before voting to keep the government open, his public posture had to be that he was shut down the government because in cards, sometimes you got to bluff a even when you know you're going to fold or else you don't have any leverage there.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
So what people are really mad about is not what Chuck Schumer did or even this votes. It's the fact that Democrats have no power. And going forward, the worst thing we can do is convince our base that we've got magical powers to fight Republicans that we don't actually have.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And that what the problem is, is the will is lacking, not the leverage, because then we could get into an endless cycle of shutdowns like Republicans once did.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
That's what Marco Rubio used to declare that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student, was a threat to the United States and have ICE pick him up. But what they're trying to do here with the Alien Enemies Act is far scarier to me, which is create a process that is essentially outside of all existing immigration law and procedures.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
I was talking to a very smart immigration expert who compared it to what Trump did with Title 42 during the pandemic. Which was basically you just expel people from the country. You didn't give them a case to talk to an immigration judge or have any due process. You just said that because of this old, you know, health related authority, everyone's just immediately out. And so.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
So if the courts uphold what Trump is doing here with the Alien Enemies Act, you could see something similar happen, which is the administration can just say that any Venezuelan man over the age of 16 who isn't a citizen or legal resident, they can just say, OK, you're actually a member of Trend de Aragua. You're kicked out of the country.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah. So like what I really I mean, my honest opinion here is there's no good options by the time we got to last week. But Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries created a huge expectations management problem. Like I'm looking at a political story with a photo of the two of them with the headline Democrats are serious about a shutdown. And they also had a lack of strategy.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And that could include people with visas or people here under temporary protected status. And just play that out in your head for a second. You're a Venezuelan kid. You grew up in a neighborhood in Venezuela with a lot of gangs. You fled them because they threatened to harm you. You tried to get asylum in the U.S. And you later get picked up by the U.S.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
We didn't know what we wanted. We didn't have a core demand. We didn't have a legislative imperative or a thing we were fighting for. This is where they totally deserve the blame, I think. And also we have a responsibility gene. We care about government. We believe it does good things and helps people, which means Republicans know we will always fold.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And if not now, well, then, you know, we're certainly not going to vote against a debt ceiling increase. And so what I found particularly frustrating was Schumer's New York Times interview where he suggested that Republicans will eventually come around. Should we play a clip of that? Yeah, let's play a clip of that.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah. I almost threw my phone out of the window of an Uber as I was riding home from the airport. Yeah, I mean, if that's our strategy is hoping the Republicans come around, we are donezo.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And so again, I don't know that this is a good strategy, but here's an alternative, which is basically an accelerationist approach, which is to say, Doge is going to destroy the government in the long term, so let's speed it up. Let's shut down the government. Let's do it at a time when the markets are freaking out about tariffs. It's maximize the impact, maximize the pain.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Now, that's a totally irresponsible, destructive thing to do, but maybe a 20% drop in the S&P, 30% drop in the S&P wakes people the fuck up. and leads to a political course correction by Trump. I actually, I do think he cares about headlines and markets and what business people say to him. And I don't know, I think the markets were flat today, but I think you could feel some weakness for a minute.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
and deported back to Venezuela because you sort of had associations with gangs because of where you were from and get sent back to the place where you were threatened in the first place. I mean, it is really dangerous. dark, authoritarian, scary stuff.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
I mean, judging by the commentary you've heard from his Senate colleagues so far, it does seem like he's safe. I don't like to make predictions. Regardless, we're not a perfect Senate minority leader away from success. I don't think he handled this well. I actually think he handled it quite badly, but there have been other situations he handled well. He got a lot of legislation passed.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
In the past, he's done some good things. There were moments in the New York Times interview that made me cringe really hard when he was talking about inviting influencers to the State of the Union and getting reports about social media impressions that he didn't really understand, but he reads them.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And you're like, okay, it's good that he's outsourcing that to Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy and Cory Booker and younger members. We need more of that. We need more younger members out being the lead messengers. But they did not have a strategy. And I think that's inexcusable for a leader.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah, look, I agree with that. I do think the challenge was probably that they were bluffing a little bit in trying to get this other track going, trying to get a one-month CR extension, trying to help Patty Murray negotiate whatever with Republicans. We just all have to assume that no Republican is going to work with a Democrat for a very long time.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
There's a long profile in Politico people should read about John Thune, who sounds like a pretty decent guy who is just kind of caved at every step along the way to Donald Trump and changed who he is pretty fundamentally.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Real quick, just saw the tweet that Donald Trump has pulled Secret Service details from Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden. So something to know. Effective immediately, apparently. It even says Hunter Biden. It mentions that Hunter Biden is currently vacationing in South Africa. So he's pulling his Secret Service detail while telling the world that Hunter is abroad. Seems pretty dark.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Yeah, we're talking about massive 40,000 person super prisons. So Nayib Bekele is the president of Venezuela. He is a dictator. He's very popular because he made El Salvador much safer. But the way he did that, though, was through mass incarceration. They put 2% of the population of the country in jail.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And many of them were arrested after Bukele declared something called a state of exception, which was there was this horrible spate of gang violence in 2022. They declared a state of exception, which suspended due process rights, constitutional rights. And so what happened was Bukele sent his thugs into towns.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
They swept up all men of a certain age, threw them in jail without any evidence, and just declared that they were somehow associated with a gang. And human rights groups have documented torture, execution, horrific things in these massive prisons. And the United States is now going to pay Nayib Bukele's government, I think, $6 million to take more people and throw them into this...
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
this nightmare of a system. And in so doing further prop up the Bukele dictatorship. And to your point earlier, like Bukele literally mocked our courts, literally mocked our system of justice. And the Trump administration's response was to laugh along with him. And he made this like fascist hype video out of the whole thing.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Quite a housekeeping riddle there. My God. Yeah. It'll be embedded within the secret show on this time.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Just a little bit of media criticism. I think people are doing a good job covering this, but I've seen a lot of stories just state as fact that the people deported were Venezuelan gang members when there's just absolutely no evidence of it. There's literally no evidence. None has been presented.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
I'm not in favor of deporting her, but I wouldn't attend.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
Very much so. And with this German green card holder who was detained at Logan Airport, like whether or not he had missed a hearing and his green card should have been revoked, his treatment was indefensible. I mean, they tortured him. This guy was just tortured.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And I think what's happening in practice is you have a lot of green card holders who are scared to death about whether they should travel. Like, should I travel internationally? Should I travel within the country? Well, in some cases, yes. I mean, there are capricious, like awful sects of ICE.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And apparently this person I was talking to was saying that the CBP office at Logan is a bit notorious and people were not that surprised that it happened there. But I think, you know, what you could imagine happening is Trump came in pledging mass deportation. Things are going slower than he thought.
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A Lawless Trump and Aimless Dems
And in a weird way, the people who have tried to go through the process, tried to get green cards, had visas are easier to pick up because they're less nervous and they're willing to travel and they're willing to like leave the country and come back. And now those people are getting swept up and they're scared to death.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
And then I know hypocrisy is irrelevant now, but JD Vance didn't have anything to say about Victor Orban, their buddy, who is the dictator leading Hungary, who's like swallowed up all independent media.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Long prison sentence. Even the dead ones?
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Well, there's another like Germany specific piece to this. Just allow me to geek out for a second. Germany's got an election on the 23rd. So in like a week, they're going to elect representatives to the Bundestag, their parliament, and then they'll choose the next chancellor. The most likely outcome is that the CDU wins the most votes.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
That's Angela Merkel's party, the conservative party, and that they go into a coalition with the Social Democrats and that'll be what happens. But but right now, the AFD, the far right party, is it like 20 or 22 percent? And that is scary because most Germans are repulsed and terrified by the AFD because they are viewed as dangerously close to being neo-Nazis.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Members of the AFD downplay the Holocaust. They kind of wink and nod and like accidentally, in air quotes, use Nazi slogans. German intelligence has said some factions of the AFD are actually extremist groups. And because of Germany's history with the Holocaust and World War II and, you know, I'm sure everyone's familiar with that.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
They take this stuff very seriously and all the other major political parties have ruled out working with the AFD. And in his speech, JD Vance said, quote, there's no room for firewalls. And that's referencing specifically the firewall that these other political parties have between themselves and the AFD. And he also, JD Vance also met with the leader of the AFD while in Germany.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
And this comes after Elon Musk has been propping them up on Twitter over and over again and doing like Twitter spaces stuff. So- Like this meddling, it might have backfired, but they are openly boosting this far right, some would say neo-Nazi party in Germany.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
It's like... Anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, immigration, fringy, fringy stuff. I think JD Vance is smart enough to know this is wrong and pretty dangerous, but this is the program and he's going with it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
They were strong. Very strong.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Yeah, it's a big body of water. Why are we talking about this? Yeah. Shout out Eugene Daniels and the Correspondents Association. This is not an easy one. I mean, no. Well, initially, this seemed stupid and childish, and I kind of thought the Trump people would like be dicks for a couple of days and then let it go.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
But then Axios had this report this morning where some White House staffer I'd never heard of, like unloaded the clip of anger, things they're mad about in the AP style book. And it was like truly Orwellian. And it just read to me like a literally unconstitutional assault on free speech.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I know the Constitution singles out no law written by Congress shall abridge free speech, but that has been applied to the executive branch as well. And you're right. There's been a lot of strongly worded, high minded statements, but no one's doing anything. Yeah.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
And it made me think about in 2009 when we were in the White House, the Treasury Department offered up a series of interviews with this guy, Ken Feinberg. Was he the Pazar? Yeah, he was the Pazar. He was the Pazar. And Fox News was left out. And all the other outlets came together and they said, we're going to boycott this interview unless you include Fox. So we included Fox.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
That kind of action is what's necessary.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Right. And it was a huge story. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary at the time, was getting hammered about it. Reporters are doing tons of stories about it. And there's been coverage of this. And Jake Tapper, who was hammered as hard at the time, was incredibly sanctimonious about it. I've seen him do some commentaries and things on his shows. I'm not seeing that from any other people.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I say that as a compliment to Jake, by the way. You stood up for the principal there in a strong way.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
It's really hard. The reporters, when they would take up issues like this with us, knew we cared. And we cared about what they thought. And they knew the Democrats cared about what these reporters said about how we were treating them. Trump views them as a foil. They want this fight. They love going after the media. So it is hard.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Good. Good for him. He's honoring it. He's not here. Maybe he'll come in at some point. He's not on Survivor again, everyone.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
But there's got to be some sort of collective action that leads to... a reduction in coverage somehow like something Trump doesn't like. And I don't know what it looks like, but they got to find it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
We do in our guest room. It's super comfortable.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I know what you're thinking. Good disclaimer. He's not on an island. He's not doing the traders or whatever the other stuff is.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
How do you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and then go to work and be like, I gotta do, I gotta read this today. It's just the lethal weapon.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Like our guy, Jesse Waters, he says the absurd thing with like enough of a wink that you know he knows he's full of shit, but enough of his audience takes it literally that he can like, he doesn't pull it off, but like, Kill Me did not pull that off. Nope. That was just like, is this guy to get hit in the head with a hammer before this part? Like what happened here? What is he talking about?
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
No, it's just regime media. That's what it is now. Did you see all the Twitter sleuths who found that Elon is a big Napoleon fan and has tweeted about it all the time? Oh, I did see that. I think that's where this came from. I mean, it's fucking nuts. They're trolling, right? They want us to react. They want us to freak out. But we should.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I feel the same way, man. I don't have any of your flying anxiety, but how many plane crashes do we have to watch on TV?
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
That's so crazy. What are we doing?
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We love SimpliSafe here at Crooked Media, as you guys all know. John Lovett set one up himself, kept him safe for years. He could turn it on and off on his phone at top-of-the-line sensors. Even pundit. Had the SimpliSafe app on her phone. Even pundit. I think. Traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in and that it's too late.
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Yeah. I mean, these are not people working on silly sounding USAID projects overseas. The NSA, that's a serious organization. I mean, also firing FAA officials in the wake of all of these plane crashes just seem nuts. And it does feel like Trump is kind of playing with fire here. And the question is, do these stories get to people before something bad happens?
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Is this Delta crash in Toronto going to change the TikTok algorithm so that the Chinese think we all want to be fed FAA news and maybe people will hear about this and be like, what are you doing? Or does something really bad have to happen? I hope it's not the latter.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
How does it get upside down?
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Can I give you my really pessimistic version of how this would go? And one that makes me scared is there's a worst case scenario, something catastrophic happens. And then there's the thing I worry about is, government services just get shittier and shittier and shittier. And in some cases it's small.
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Like you go to a national park and the bathroom is disgusting because they fired all the people who maintained it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
and then there's really really really bad things but won't be like national news like a veteran will call the va suicide hotline and it won't be sufficiently staffed that happened right or like the bird flu explodes and we're not monitoring it but my fear is people have such little faith in government that it might fold into those pre-existing feelings and angers at the government that trump kind of exploited in the first place rather than lead them to think oh actually this guy's making it worse let's course correct that's my my pessimistic fear
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Doge first, ask questions later. They also they talk about government employees like they're subhuman.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
It's illegal and unconstitutional. No, look, everyone just pause and think about what it means long-term when you make every U.S. government job miserable, and no one wants to do it, and they hate working there. You're going to get bad people to provide crucial services, and we're just losing decades, centuries of expertise and experience in complicated matters, and it's
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I mean, for those who don't watch sports or ESPN or listen to sports talk radio, like Stephen is a legend in the game of winning arguments and shouting down opponents in the most entertaining way possible. And there's been all this chatter about him potentially running for office is sort of like the reason I wanted to reach out.
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I mean, they're saying waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it. So does this mean that this one dude is going to be like...
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inspector of the entire country's tax information and go through all our personal stuff and compare it to other records and i guess somehow find waste fraud and abuse that they will then highlight and i'm sure a very fair honest way is that what's happening here because what what is one person gonna do with all this access
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But also he's a guy who understands the digital economy and attention and how to get it and drive a narrative and keep it better than almost anyone else. And so, look, listeners, there's going to be a lot of criticism of the Democratic Party. Some I agreed with, lots I didn't. You will repeatedly think, why isn't Tommy interrupting him and pushing back on this? And to you, I say two things.
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We just know Elon Musk has just been tweeting lie after lie, misleading information. He's pretending like, you know, the Doge people are finding all sorts of line items and government spending that seems silly when it's all just been sitting on a public website. Yes. They're just mining public data and using it to further their Doge agenda, which is not about transparency or efficiency.
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Yeah, I don't know what the tactic is, but I do think this area is eye-catching and scary. I mean, personal tax information, why does this goober need to have that? Why does this little white nationalist-loving Doge employee need to know my bank account and routing number? I think that's very scary. I think it's also, you can tell a broader story about firing all these IRS people that are just
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there to audit the richest people in the country and make them pay their taxes. So I'd really lean into this one because I think it will land in a way that I wish this weren't the case, but like talking about USAID cuts just does not.
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They're just making it up. They're just firing people. Remember when it was a national story that the Obama administration suspended White House tours during a big budget fight? You can make people care about this stuff.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
One, Stephen A. is legendarily difficult to interrupt. There's bodies littered across ESPN of people who have tried. And two, that's not what I wanted to do. Like, it sometimes... It's good to hear criticisms that are wrong, but like a widely held perspective and not everything he said was wrong.
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Be louder. Maybe like, like the protest and attempt to enter the USAID building was, I think a good idea. Maybe,
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Yeah, I think everyone saw this play coming, this pardon coming, because Eric Adams started kissing Trump's ass, flew down to Mar-a-Lago, just made a fool of himself. But the way this was structured so that Trump can essentially rescind the pardon if Adams gets out of line is brazen, even for Trump, I think.
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Even if it makes you mad, like it's good to hear where people are coming from and what they're mad at the Democratic Party about. And you can learn something.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
So now Trump owns the mayor of the largest city in the country. You can say parrot my talking points or you're going to jail because it sounds like Eric Adams, the DOJ, the U.S. attorney's office, they have him dead to rights. Yep. You know, they'd spell out some of the their feelings on the evidence in these resignation letters. And I do think it's worth emphasizing, no one is defending this.
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Right. No. You have all these conservatives at the U.S. Attorney's Office, at DOJ. These resignations for these people could be career-ending. This is like the pinnacle of achievement for them. Being the U.S. Attorney in some of these New York offices is a huge deal. You see huge cases. You try huge cases, and they're walking away from it. And on top of that, I mean...
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Four New York City deputy mayors are resigning. In the short term, that is going to severely impact the management of the biggest city in the country. There's eight total deputy mayors. Four of them are now gone. And this is coming after a wave of disruption and resignations and dysfunction during the investigation of Adams.
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So it is really, it's like a disaster for New York City, like one on top of the other.
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They are NPCs, yeah. I mean, Bill Cassidy put out a statement about Tulsi Gabbard's nomination, why he was voting for her. They basically said, Donald Trump nominated her, thus I will vote for her. Just giving up his power. But yeah, this is an area where I agree with you. I'd like to see Republicans doing more, but I think Democrats do have some power here. Like, Hochul should... Remove Adams.
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Yeah. Hopefully that happens in the near term. That might be mean that Andrew Cuomo is back in our lives. And that's tough from another perspective. But someone else. Right. It's a big city. You guys don't have more people in New York to run for office. There's a scenario here where this is such an overreach that it weakens Trump. And I think Democrats in New York have to help us get to that.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
It's nonsense. It's an obvious quid pro quo. Can I read you a headline that you might like? Jan 6 rioters argue pardons apply to charges including murder plot, child porn. Defendants argue that Trump pardons should absolve them of additional crimes some discovered during investigations of the Capitol riot.
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I'll tell everybody this was everything I wanted and more out of the Stephen A. experience. I felt like I got yelled at for 30 minutes in a good way. Yeah. And about 10 words in and that was all I wanted.
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My guest today is a commentator at ESPN, the host of the Stephen A. Smith Show, and arguably the greatest sports debater of all time, Stephen A. Smith.
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It's good. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm a big fan, have been for a very long time, so this is exciting and fun for me. Let's just get right into it. There's been a lot of chatter about you potentially running for president in 2028, and you've had to kind of tell folks to pump the brakes a bit.
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If I could briefly sum up what I think your position is, it's that you know the process of running sucks, you don't want to go through it, but if drafted to serve, you would be open to it. Is that fair? Yeah.
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I love that you're talking about politics all the time now because you are a blunt, candid guy. You tell it how it is. And especially when it comes to the Democratic Party, because we're all trying to figure out what happened, why we lost to Trump a second time. Sometimes I think the Democrats, like myself, we're too close to the issue. We overthink shit.
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We read too many polls and focus groups and miss the big picture. So big picture in your mind, like what is the simplest explanation for why Democrats lost? You forgot about you.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I feel like there's two parts to the criticism. Part of it I agree with, which is there were some issues like the border where it wasn't just Republicans talking about concerns. It was a broader set of voters and Democrats tried to be like, oh, that's a distraction. Actually, we should be talking about this thing. It didn't speak to those fears.
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I think Joe Biden got there late when he did what he supported, this bipartisan bill in the Senate that got killed by Trump and then did a bunch of executive orders to try to shut down the border. But he got there late and people were pissed and it didn't change the perception. But the other half of this, I think, is that
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Donald Trump captures attention and keeps it on himself in a way that no other precedent in history has for better, for worse. And I think this is where I wanted your advice, because you're someone you are incredible at crafting a narrative, making news, breaking through on social media.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
You've created your own like sports media empire at a time when people were like, oh, you can't leave ESPN or like do something on your own. Right. Because you'll it's all about the mothership. Right. What advice do you have for Democrats about how to get heard and reach people in this digital age?
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And you're right. I mean, his message is burn it all down. And he somehow gets a pass for having been in charge for four years when all the problems he's complaining about now still existed. But Democrats were boring. We're the NBA skills competition where Wemby's cheating while Trump is the USA Canada hockey game where there's three fights in 10 seconds and you can't look away.
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And like, I just I don't know how to compete with that. We don't have a leader who can compete with that. We don't have a party that can compete with that. We don't have a message.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Doing it in Saudi Arabia is a nice touch. It's kind of like an autocratic human centipede. You know what I mean? Hopefully you don't know what I mean. There was a lot of activity on Ukraine last week. It started, it kicked off when Trump called Putin for 90 minutes and they set up this series of peace talks between the US and Russia on the future of Ukraine.
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We're cleaning house. Look, I think Joe Biden running for reelection was a catastrophic mistake. We will not recover from it for a long time. And I completely agree with you there. But I mean, I want your thoughts on this. Donald Trump is using sports in a really smart way politically. I think he went to college football games and UFC fights are in the campaign. He went to the Super Bowl.
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He did a loop around the track of the Daytona 500 in his limo over the weekend. It feels like he's creating a bond with these audiences that that Democrats don't have. But how do you think Democrats can be a part of that conversation? I can't think of anyone who would go to a to a game like except for Barack Obama going to NBA games because he genuinely loved the sport. But like who else?
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This is why I'm a candidate.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
But let me tell you, if Obama went to the Super Bowl, Fox News would be like, how dare he? This cost $10 million. He put Secret Service there like they would go after him.
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Not a part of those talks is Ukraine or the Ukrainians or Zelensky. Zelensky got a call after the Putin call. where Trump informed him that this was going down.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Hey, man, heads up. 20% of your territory is being occupied by the Russians. We're going to figure out who gets it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Who do you like? You like Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro? You talked to them both recently, right? Who's on your top five?
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Basically, this effectively ended three years of trying to isolate the Russians by the West, basically, this call. And, you know, the Europeans are also not invited to these talks, which again is nuts because the EU and its member states have given something like $145 billion worth of support to Ukraine over the past few years.
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It makes sense to me. I like it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Listen, I hear on one level. Sure. But also, I think I'm with you. I think primaries are good. I think the rubber meets the road in primaries and that, you know, you could do polling all you want. But until you actually ask people to vote for someone, then you don't really know who they support. But let me talk about Trump's action so far. I mean, I saw you say Elon Musk is a problem.
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Do you think he's Trump is overreaching? Is he doing things that might offend those moderates or are those moderates just not even hearing about the details? Of course, he's overreaching.
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And they're obviously more threatened by a Russian military operation than we are because we have an ocean in between. So it was really messy. And then on top of that, Pete Hexeth, the Secretary of Defense slash America's designate if there's ever a case race to decide the future. But not to get home. Yeah. Not good at flip cup, though. Surprisingly bad. You and I can take them.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
You're right. I mean, well, the reason he said that, though, look, you're making a lot of points I agree with. I actually think Democrats have done better more recently in the midterms.
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And I have confidence that we can because we're we're we're now the nerds that read the newspaper and we're highly informed and we knock on doors and we go out and we vote in midterms, whereas sort of the broader electorate that Trump brings in, which is why he kicks our ass in these presidential elections. They're more sporadic voters.
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But but to your point about the mandate, like, of course, he has a mandate. He won the election. He won by a bigger margin than he did last time. Of course, he has a mandate. I think that doesn't give you a mandate to do everything you want to do. Obama won in 2008 with 52.9% of the vote and 365 electoral votes, and Republicans tried to block literally everything he did.
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So I do think there's space between, yes, Trump has a mandate, but the suggestion you see sometimes that Democrats shouldn't be fighting back or that we're the problem for fighting back, that it's the wrong optics or messaging, if you know what I'm saying.
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This is bad, bro. 2004 was bad. We got our asses handed to us by Bush. Lost seats in Congress.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
But so, Hegseth announced at a meeting in Brussels, a NATO meeting, that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to join NATO or get back all the territory it lost since 2014, which is like... maybe true and a fair thing for like an analyst to say, but everyone was like, hey, man, you're part of the team now negotiating with Putin and you just gave him massive concessions before these talks even started.
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Whoa, whoa. Yes, I am. Knocking on doors is good during midterm, Stephen A. No, no.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I personally knocked on doors. It was great. I had good conversations. I got people to give me their ballots. We delivered them. Listen to what I'm saying to you.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
That's not true. I had conversations with people who were not going to vote unless I was there at their door getting them.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Get out there. Do make some content. Well, listen, Stephen, this was a lot of tough love for our audience who doesn't always hear it. I really appreciate this. It was also it was fun and entertaining and good to talk to you. And I think like we need to emulate some of this in Democratic Party. We need like you guys in sports radio talk about the goat debate like MJ versus LeBron.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
We need our own version of that. Like Lincoln, Washington, Obama, Reagan. Maybe you can help me workshop this. We get something fun. Make this interesting. Make this more accessible to people. But I'm very grateful you came on. Let me end it by saying this to you.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
And then he walked it back and then they kind of walked back the walk back. So there's like amateur hour left and right from Hexeth.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
It's good. It's good. Tough love. We got to step up. Stephen A., thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it. All right, man.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Never says. Callback to the first term. Yeah, never says Russia invaded.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
No, it all happened after we recorded.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Yeah, I forget who handed this sort of proposal to Zelensky, but it basically said Ukraine gives the United States half of its deposits of rare earth minerals in exchange for nothing. There was no security guarantee. There was nothing. Zelensky was like, what do I do with this?
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Well, you know what they're very important for is electric vehicle batteries. And I wonder who might be talking about that in his ear.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Well, I mean, as you mentioned the topic, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded or missing because of the war. The war led to inflation, energy prices skyrocketed across Europe, and all those impacts rippled out across Europe and destabilized all these governments. And Biden gave all this direct support to Ukraine.
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rallied the world behind Ukraine, and now Trump is just selling Ukraine out and selling Europe out. And so there's this enormous fear that division within NATO, weakness within NATO will lead Putin to do more, to go into a NATO country like Poland. I mean, think of the Danish intelligence services recently said that if Putin perceives NATO as weak,
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Russia could launch another large scale war in Europe in as few as five years. And the whole point of NATO is to deter these things. So this is this is like a seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy.
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I think what happened was Hegseth went to Brussels, then he went to the Munich Security Conference, whatever, some mouth breather thing that Rhodes would attend or did attend. And probably has. And I think he suggested in some of those meetings that they might pull tens of thousands of U.S. troops out of Europe.
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Yeah, there's sort of two really bad, look, this war's awful. I'd love it to be over. I'd love for Putin to take his troops and go home, but it's going to require sacrifices from both sides, I think, to get to a peace deal. And some of the things Hegsatz was saying are true.
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I mean, basically the Bush administration in 2008 set up this construct where they kind of floated Ukraine for NATO membership, but they didn't get into NATO, which left them very vulnerable, sort of the worst case scenario. And I agree, it is unlikely that Ukraine will be a part of NATO. And it is unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back.
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But I think the worst case outcome here is a negotiation where Putin keeps a lot of territory. Ukraine is forced to basically demilitarize and gets no security guarantees. And Putin uses this period of time to reconstitute his forces and then just roll tanks into Kyiv. And then after that, maybe he rolls tanks into Poland or somewhere, you know, a Balkan country.
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And then, you know, there is like a hot war happening in Europe between the Russians and NATO and NATO is weakened. And like that is the long term nightmare.
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That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
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Putting the eunuch in Munich. Thanks, J.D.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
I have three thoughts. The first big picture, I think JD is cut out of all the big boy meetings. And he saw Pete Hexeth go over to Brussels and screw up these Ukraine negotiations and then get slapped around because Trump didn't like the coverage because he looked like a bad negotiator. Everyone's like, oh, art of the deal guy. You just gave up all these things to Putin.
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So JD decided, I'm not touching the hot stove. I'm not going to talk about the hot war that's happening in Ukraine that matters. I'm going to talk about social media.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
He's attacking the most random people on social media all day long. Yeah, he's just a professional poster and he's mad about it and he wants to go talk to the entire world about it.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
But seriously, can you imagine like the White House comms meeting where you're like, yes, let's send the vice president to this Munich security conference, first overseas trip, huge deal, and then not talk about the single biggest issue facing Europe.
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Well, it's going great over here with no rules.
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Trump's Shocking Cuts to Air Safety and Nuke Inspection
Yes, they are complaining about kind of routine censorship. And remember, this was kind of Mark Zuckerberg's thing that he cried about in his Joe Rogan interview is he wants the American president to be a champion for American companies and just let us do whatever we want. Then there's this question of this Romanian election where there were two rounds. The first round went off.
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They figured out there was all this Russian interference. So they canceled the second round. which is a more controversial thing. But again, talking about that, let's JD say Russian interference in elections. What a ridiculous thing to care about, you know, likes that.
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on social media, people sharing videos of a helicopter or plane dropping water and missing a building and being like, here it is, their perfect example of California and why liberal government has failed, right? Here we have it once again. These liberals can't do it. You need private firefighters. You need a Rick Caruso, whatever it is. And it's like, these are people doing their best.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And from where we were a few days ago to where we are today, they did an extraordinary job.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And by the way, yeah, I just done that too. Like, yes, false alarms, very scary. You do enough false alarms, people aren't going to take the real one seriously. That's the huge, of course.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Well, like I think Newsom said this to you, some version of like the truth requires some patience and requires some time. We're in the middle of it. We're in the middle of it. And the fact, look, pre-deployment problems. Surely we will learn ways to do this better. Some of it will be personalities, individuals who made mistake.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Some of it will be structural, which is much less interesting and people don't give a shit about, which is probably ultimately have been even more important. But just the fact that these terrible fires raged is not in and of itself a sign that the government, that failed just because it looks bad on TV. So much of this is about what looks bad on TV. I don't want to defend Karen Bass.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
I found it shocking that she went to France for the Olympics three times, which I learned from that article. Yeah. Three times.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It's for the most part, though. A climate change hero. Elon Musk. It is like sort of the mirror image of the kind of conspiratorial mindset like that. Whatever. That's fucking nuts. But like, no, most people do not believe that the government is responding as a conspiracy to hurt California. Right.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
But I think like the the mirror image of people assuming that there is some kind of conspiracy that explains everything is in a crisis like this. It can't just be bad. It has to be because people have failed us. There has to be individuals who are responsible.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
There has to be someone to blame right now because I can't handle the uncertainty of just knowing that people are doing their best and it's not working. It has to be something else. It has to be more about a human failure.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It was sort of striking that you could imagine Joe Biden giving a very, very similar version of the speech had Kamala Harris won. And like I came away from it, like he says, overall, we have reinvigorated people's faith in the United States as a true, true partner. Is that true? Have you done that?
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Do you think that's where people are right now as they watch you hand the keys over to Donald Trump? Even if there is some truth to the fact that you have reestablished relationships and had the achievements that you're describing, you live in a world where your presidency will be bookended by Donald Trump and all the damage and policy changes that that brings.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And you can try to pretend otherwise and you can subtly or not so subtly kind of hint at trying to create kind of like political leverage opportunities. on Trump about the position he'll enter the office in, the changes that Joe Biden has made.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
But the speech largely seems to ignore the fact that we're about to transition to someone who is going to do great damage to our policies internationally and our reputation.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah. It's also, you know, okay, you're describing your accomplishments, but we're seeing Donald Trump take office here. We're seeing right-wing movements rising around the world. What have you learned about that? Like, I don't need you to take on your critics. I understand not wanting to engage with them. But like, what have you learned about being president? What have you learned about America?
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And maybe, you know, you don't go to the hardware store for milk. And like, I guess I'm not going to get anything from Joe Biden beyond America's best days are ahead. And maybe that's all we can really expect from him at this point. But it's like this is a dark moment for this country. It will be a dark few years for this country. Pretending otherwise just makes you irrelevant.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah. I'm being very harsh. I also think that's like, this is not a moment where we like, no speech can resolve our frustrations, hope, anger, fear for what's about to come. And that's an impossible position.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It's just like, yeah, it's just sort of like, we're going backwards, man. We're going to face it, whether you can or not.
Pod Save America
Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Can I make the nerdiest analogy I've ever made in this show? You just set the bar pretty high. So in Star Trek Next Generation, every once in a while, there's an episode where they go to the battle bridge. And basically, the bridge is where they have their kind of highfalutin conversations. There's a conference room off the bridge where you sit and you talk about the nature of...
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
of life and what it means to be a space-faring people. But every once in a while, the ship gets so fucked up and so many people are dead and something is so broken that they gotta go to the battle bridge. I just think we need a battle bridge mindset.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
We've been defeated every which way. A bridge-surrection? Yeah, exactly. A bridge-surrection. We're in the battle bridge. The shit is at the fan. The saucer is separated. That's the energy. Pods of America brought to you by Helix. I love my Helix mattress. I have a Dawn Lux, very comfortable. I took the Helix sleep quiz. That's what they matched me with because I'm a stomach sleeper.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
When you take the Helix sleep quiz, you'll find the perfect mattress in under two minutes. But as I mentioned, I got the Dawn Lux and I really like it. Not sure you could take my word for it. Helix has been awarded the number one mattress picked by GQ and Wired Magazine.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It's even recommended by multiple leading chiropractors and doctors of sleep medicine as a go-to solution for improving your sleep. It's definitely improved my sleep, made life a little better, made me feel better in the morning. I'm just a huge fan. And it was a huge upgrade over my previous mattress.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
So go to helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20% off site-wide plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase. That's helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20% off site-wide plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase. helixsleep.com slash crooked.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Keep beating it. Dear diary, you'll never believe it. We were just in the studio and it felt like a normal day.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
maybe it was maybe it was what was happening in our city just look just just it's nice we can beat each other um whoa what what is that so it's starting to me it's like so obvious and transparent that it's just it's like sloppy so yeah no first of all love love advice on masculinity from someone dressed by a stylish to look like east brunswick's coolest bar mitzvah dj
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, I mean, I was trying to figure out what this even really means, like the corporate culture has been neutered. And I think it means yelling at employees is actually I think it's a lot like less like because there's a sort of I think like kind of corporate.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
So Mike Johnson, actually, the next sentence that he says, because he's walking on the Capitol, he says their conditions and he throws out their forest management, water management. It's like, OK, this is a disaster, an emergency right now. California needs money right now. I don't even know what it means to put conditions on California. Nor does Mike Johnson.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
idea, right, that like feminine structures are more flat and collaborative and male structures are more hierarchical and aggressive, right? And I think they, like, they feel like, this is like all me too,
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
yeah it's also like it's such a silly thing but like you know it's it really reminds you of 1984 in the slippery slope no slippery slope in 1984 you're right there in it in 1984 in books and other books the clock strikes 13 like that yeah looks like 1984 but you're 1984 you're never there's no before you're in it you're just in it you'd actually never get the slope you're at the bottom of it who set the corporate culture at facebook mark
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, there's a freedom that comes from being like Trump or wanting to be in Trump's good graces. And people talk about the ways in which it's sort of that you just have to kind of basically agree with Trump and then you're in his favor. But there's a subtle way in which I think what you also get to do is pretend that there are no hard choices in life.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And Zuckerberg does that a bit in this interview where he acknowledges that there are difficult decisions and some filters have more false positives and more false negatives. But what he's doing here when he talks about COVID, when he talks about misinformation in 2016, he's not acknowledging the trade-off. There was a ton of misinformation on Facebook.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
whether it helped or hurt or mattered, I don't know. There was a ton of dangerous misinformation on COVID, right? Maybe some things got swept up in that net that now in hindsight, they think maybe went too far and maybe it was not correct, but didn't need to be taken down, whatever. But there was dangerous misinformation. That was a very real issue.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And if you're gonna do less of that, as you said in your own video, that there will be worse and terrible things you now see on Facebook as a result. There are trade-offs here. You built this platform. And Tommy, to your point about him not thinking about content moderation,
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
I think it actually is like a kind of more damning thing to say to believe him, because I do think whether it was Twitter, Twitter did not start as a platform for people to share their political views. It wasn't about what you thought. It was about what was happening. It was supposed to be about sharing where you are. Facebook was about a post.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
I mean, obviously, it was about ranking hot faces, but but like it was not about politics. It was about politics. posting about your life and your community. They have all been continuously over and over again, caught off guard by what happens when politics and celebrity intercede until they're into their platforms. And then they built something so big, they couldn't control it.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
If you build a building and you're like, sorry, it's too big to make sure it's safe. Nobody gives you credit for it, but they built something too big to be made safe.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It's like no more woke. You got to ban. You got to ban woke. And you better stop doing those things we're making up about you doing all those things that aren't happening. They better stop right now.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, we're just relearning the same things over and over again. Well, that was interesting, too, because I remember he was criticized from the left because he wasn't taking posts down. He was just going to demonetize them or lower them in the rankings. I can't remember.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
There's a part in the interview where he said that, you know, that he that they felt in some way kind of attacked by the Biden administration. And he thought that like, hey, like. you're supposed to be on our team, we're in a world here and we're supposed to be fighting other countries and other countries tech platforms and that at least Donald Trump wants America to win, right?
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Which it feel like a kind of something, it reminded me of what I heard over the years from various, like kind of high up tech people, which is that like, yeah, our companies are making mistakes, but you don't want to regulate them. You don't want to break them up because we're actually in a fight with China. We're actually in a fight with these other countries.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And I think that that is sincerely, sincerely. Yeah, he doesn't like content moderation policies from other countries.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah. Somebody's got to pay the, pay the credit card fee. This was like over the weekend, it was just a, we were just facing this tiny insignificant example of like how anything that is happening in the world gets fed into this like meat grinder of information, because it's just like, everyone asks us, where should we donate? How should we help?
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And so the team vets organizations puts them in an easy place and you can donate the money and the money gets sent to those groups.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And then it's like, no, you're stealing the money. No, we're not. We're not taking a cent from these donations. But then it's like, you're actually doing it to get the email addresses. It's like, hey, guys, we ask people for their email addresses when we want people's email addresses. You think we like we watched our city catch fire.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
We're like, this is a great opportunity to set up a charitable fund so that we can harvest email addresses for future political campaigns.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, that was what I was hoping. That was how I reassured myself. I was unfolding. I was like, oh, this is generating attention for the fund. And maybe people in our audience or outside of our audience that would understand that this is fucking bullshit will see this. It's like, oh, these are great organizations that are helping on the ground.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
But you should feel very happy to do it through votesaveamerica.com slash relief.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah. I mean, look, there are Republican members of Congress in California.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
It is especially galling when you see there have been people like DeSantis, but a bunch of them that have called for conditioning aid to Democratic areas on either side of their state desperately needing aid after a disaster. We have had disasters in Florida, in Texas. We just went through these terrible floods in North Carolina.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Republicans understand the need for aid in an emergency and are completely for it on either side of crises that affect Democratic states.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, it's also like the ideological part of it is just beside the point, obviously. But like disasters, a big disaster in California, it affects the whole country. This is a huge port. This is a huge part of the American economy. A disaster in North Carolina affects the whole country. The whole idea is we help parts of the country rebuild because it helps all of us.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
We are all better off when we know that in a disaster, if there's something that happens to our town, our community, our state, that the resources will come in that come over the top of what you could do locally because that protects all of us.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
So I think that's pretty galling about this too. So the reason Johnson's wasn't there is that this was a specific meeting. This was a meeting with Republicans from New York, New Jersey, California, who are specifically interested in raising the cap on state and local tax deductions.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.
Pod Save America
Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
The reasons that that's interesting is that was one of the ways they helped get the cost down on the original Trump tax cuts. There's a state and local deduction that helps people from high tax states like California, New York. and New Jersey. And Trump is in this meeting with these guys and they're like, this cap affected our people. And Trump was like, I didn't know that. Nobody told me that.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
So this is a meeting of a group of House Republicans trying to figure out a way to make the debt problem worse. That's the goal of this meeting.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And in order to make the debt problem worse, which is what this group of people wants to do, they need either Democratic votes or they need the votes of people that have not been opposed some of the time, a group of people that have never in their time in Congress voted to raise the debt limit.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
And so fundamentally what that meeting is and what a lot of this is, is an admission that Republicans are fucking stuck, that they have to raise the debt limit. They don't have the votes to do it. And they're trying to figure out some way out of it.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Mike Johnson also talked about the possibility of the condition for California tying it to raising the debt limit, which is just a way of saying they don't think they can do it, as Tommy was saying, without Democratic votes.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah, it's like the aid is conditioned on opening up a pipe between Fresno and Laguna that doesn't exist.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Right, well, it's hard to even like, this is an emergency. The disaster relief needs to come quickly. And so it's like, what is it, a condition on California doing some reforms? That seems impossible. How is that even going to be enforced? So it seems more about like some kind of restriction on the money that everybody can declare victory on. That would be the hope.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
Yeah. So. whether or not the mayor should have gone on the trip. I think it's pretty clear that she should have come back once the warning started coming in Sunday. They were pretty grim.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
I do not think she should have been away during this time. What I think is like, what I was like trying to, it's so hard to understand what's going on now. There's so much noise and you sort of step back from it. And there's this debate about Karen Bass.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
There's this, I think very reasonable and important debate to have about how we manage fires in California, water management in California, building policies in California. All valid, all important.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
I think there's an important debate to be had after this crisis about the way in which accountability is broken up and divided between Los Angeles as a city and Los Angeles as a county that I find quite stupid and anti-democratic and makes it very hard to figure out who is responsible and allows a lot of people to pass the buck.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
But I also think like the kind of right-wing propaganda, blaming everything on woke, plus some of these debates that are ultimately, I think, incidental to what unfolded, also obscure that this has been an extraordinary response. There has been an amazing success of local government in the face of unprecedented wildfires to get resources there.
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
These people on the lines for days without end getting in face of climate-worsening
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Will the GOP Hold Disaster Relief Hostage?
uh fires they're not responsible for people building houses on the hills they're not responsible for 30 years of forest mismanagement they're not responsible for long-term water policies they're there trying to figure out how to put this out and like the utility companies getting power back in a bunch of different places all at once like there's a lot of good in the response to that i feel like has been completely obscured like i saw
Pod Save America
Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I don't know. Historically speaking, this country has not always been sympathetic to protesters. I always think about how after Kent State, 58% of the country blamed the students, 11% of the country blamed the National Guard troops who shot them. The sentiment was they got what they deserved. So I do worry that, I don't know, maybe the Trump people think that
Pod Save America
Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
you know, going after a bunch of Gaza protesters will be good politics for them and that they might know something we don't. It makes me very nervous.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think they also think that they can make it about the specifics of the case or what someone said or did versus the principle. And we have to focus on the principle. Yes, exactly.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
When you shoot it from your zone all the way into the other zone without someone touching it after two lines or something like that. Yeah. Thank you. It's a very boring penalty.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Correction. Icing is when you shoot it from your side of the center line all the way past the opposing team's goal line.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I know it's a different story. You had to get them the puck before they crossed. Anyway, my buddy Dan Nathan is a very smart finance guy. He made this point to me. In 2017, Trump did his tax cut first. So that juices the market. It juices the economy. Then he started going with the tariffs. Now they've got it all back assward. He started the trade war.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
He's tanking the markets, weakening the economy, weakening his political standing. And then he's going to try to ram through this massive tax cut that no one actually thinks will be paid for. It feels like a mistake.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Like Bitcoin is like basically correlated with the Nasdaq in the market. Like it's tanking right now.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think he's still just worried about it. He's just like very mad that his in-house interviewer is not asking him the right questions.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
He still thinks of Frasier as a spinoff. Catching strays. Poor Dan's getting a shout out here. Yeah.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
A six-foot guy talks with his 5'4 buddy. His 5'10 friend. Wow.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Also, I just want to point out that Trump has single-handedly resuscitated the Liberal Party in Canada. I'm trying to move us on. Oh, yeah. And we're reigniting nationalism all through North America. Claudia Sheinbaum down in Mexico has an 85% approval rating.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I know this is in Card Save the World. Mark Carney, a former Bank of Canada head, kind of came out of nowhere. He wasn't in politics. Is he the hero we've been looking for? I don't know. It could just be another neolib. But like Trudeau was head of the party for 11 years. He was prime minister for nine years. He stepped down when was that? January. So they do an intra-party process.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
150,000 people decide the next head of the party. So then you become the de facto prime minister. And so the election is supposed to be in October. But everyone figured they would call a snap election because the conservatives, this guy, Pierre Polyev, who's sort of like the Trump of Canada, was up 20 points.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And then fucking Trump put in place all these tariffs and they're booing the national anthem and hockey games. And now the Liberal Party is back and it's like not really clear how it's all going to shake out.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
One of his recent demands was he was telling leaders in Mexico and Canada that they have to send factories to the U.S. Like what political leader can make that choice to shut down a bunch of jobs in your own country?
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
That question, how are you running your businesses on a day when the Tesla stock is down 15% in Twitter at like a multi-hour outage is actually very funny.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And so it was a cabinet meeting, but then there's a whole bunch of people who sit in this sort of outer ring around the cabinet table. So I don't know if that staff from the agency, like does the secretary of defense get one staffer or is it all White House staff?
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think I just wanted to briefly remark upon how Marco Rubio continuing to be like the saddest, smallest man in government because he desperately wanted to be president. It's not sure, not clear why. He doesn't have like big ideas he's trying to put forward, but he wanted to be president. Now he has like the big time cabinet job, right? It's like top three, state, treasury, defense.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And yet he's still getting kicked around by Elon Musk and then even his own team. Remember a couple of months ago, we learned that his spokeswoman had talked shit about him on Twitter and he had to hire her anyway. Then there was a story over the weekend, CNN reported that the undersecretary for public diplomacy,
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
deleted a bunch of tweets where he called Marco Rubio a low IQ individual and accused him of going to gay foam parties. You guys see this?
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Regardless, whether or not he was at a phone party, then he gets attacked in this meeting in front of the entire cabinet by Elon, accused of not doing anything. And then Monday morning, he has to send out the tweets like, I'm a good boy and I did what I'm told. And I canceled 83 percent of the programs at USAID.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
But the remaining 18 percent get transferred to state, which that math does not add up.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Yeah, no, the need for rare earth minerals has prevented conflicts in the Congo for decades now. There's never been a war in the Congo because of rare earths that we mine there.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
There's this clip of Rubio from 2016 going around. We should just insert it right here.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
How great was that, everyone? Also, I don't know that people realize Tesla's stock is down 50%, 5.0% in the last three months. By the dip? And it's because Elon's like, he's a master at manipulating the stock market. It is all smoke and mirrors. It is not revenue. It's him trying to convince investors that he's going to sell the next fleet of robo-taxis and autonomous robots and stuff.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Oh, you digging in and doing a well actually? I just want to say that we've been together longer than the Beatles.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Yeah, I mean, we're tariffing Canada, one of our closest allies, over a completely made up fentanyl trafficking problem. Someone at the White House has to just be like, what are we doing here? Because as you pointed out, I mean, he does need the political capital to get these things, this tax cut through Congress. And it just doesn't look good right now.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
The deal was like, we'll give you money. You give us a tax cut for all his donors. They can't be happier now.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Pazzi of America is brought to you by Aura Frames. Love, who do you think has the most aura here at Crooked Media? Oh, wow.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I got to say, I think it's Dan Pfeiffer. Damn right. Dan Pfeiffer. That's what I was going to say, too. Riz Machine. Riz Central. We all know someone who loves taking photos. Hard pivot here. But all of those photos are just wasting away on their phone or on the cloud. Start putting them to good use with the unique, stylish digital picture frame from Aura Frames.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Pod Save America
Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I mean, I think Love's point is an important one. Congress's position sort of has to be, if you want to cut spending, we will write a bill. Otherwise, we shouldn't exist anymore.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
So I don't like I also think I think Democrats should approach this with some confidence because Trump does not want a shutdown right now. The economy is very shaky. People are wondering what he's doing. Like the people, the voters know Republicans control everything. I don't like shutdown politics are complicated.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
It's especially complicated when you have Elon Musk controlling the most powerful piece of social media with X and the ability to blame Democrats. It'll get rocky, but. i don't know like i would demand something at the very least and i think saying yeah you have to follow the law and actually appropriate money where we say is pretty important
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Yeah. Don't be scared about the midterms now. For God's sake. No, that I would not. Do something.
Pod Save America
Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Yep. Look, most protests aren't popular in the moment, so you can disagree with Al Green's tactic. But at least he had a focus message that was about Medicaid cuts. I like that better than like holding a silly like kind of cutie sign. I think that was always destined to look silly. I think if you look at the Senate, Cory Booker, Brian Schatz, Chris Murphy, there's a lot of people just like.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Putting shots on goal, making a lot of content, putting stuff on TikTok, putting up videos. I think that's the right way to go. Tim Walz is right. They did play too safe. I mean, I remember when he was named as vice president, everyone was really excited to hear him do a bunch of interviews. And then he was bottled up for half the campaign. And that was obviously a mistake.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think individually, all these stories are a huge deal. And collectively, it's like it's an assault on free speech like we haven't seen in a very long time. It should worry everybody. Starting with Columbia, I mean, sometimes when Trump does something that's so far over the line, conservatives react honestly for about 24 hours. You notice this? That happened in this case.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Box is a vertical video. Yeah, you don't have to do, like, a trending meme. That's silly. Just talk. But I do think it's good to get out there. I mean, apparently House members were mad that they were told not to applaud at the State of the Union. And if that's the case, that was bad advice because, like, every president ever who delivers to the State of the Union –
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Creates a trap for you if you do that by, you know, introducing some really emotional story where clearly everyone should be applauding. And if you're sitting on your hands, you look bad. But I don't, it doesn't matter.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Ann Coulter tweeted, there's almost no one I don't want to deport, but unless they've committed a crime, isn't this a violation of the First Amendment? Yes, Ann. Yes, it is. And I think with free speech issues, in the abstract, we should be agnostic about the topic, the people involved, whether you agree or disagree with what they said, whether you find it offensive or not.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
People who are early into a band who scold you if you come to it later.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Some of my sometimes our leftist friends don't build the biggest tent and we all should just welcome people into the Bernie club. I think there's like two competing things that are in my mind. Like, first of all, in Congress, obstruction works. Mitch McConnell built a whole career off it. So let's just obstruct everything Trump does and try to prevent harm.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And then there's the other piece of this, which is like people are looking for something to be for and some sort of inspiration. And when I talked to Alistair Campbell for the Sunday pod, he was Tony Blair's guy. And one thing they did before Tony Blair became prime minister was they like They literally had a big contentious debate about the constitution of the Labor Party, like the DNA of it.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
They had a huge contentious fight, like ripped it down to the studs and tried to reimagine it. And I think the Democrats were missing that process. And it probably won't come until we have a nominee ahead of the 2028 primaries, because, you know, whoever is the top of the ticket kind of reshapes the party around him or herself. But I think we're missing some of that.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
We're missing a process to kind of like Reimagine who we are and our brand and our values and then project it outwards.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
If a lawful permanent resident can be rounded up by ICE agents or the Department of Homeland Security, thrown into jail without charges, without even being charged or accused of a crime, that should worry everybody.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
But also good for Bernie for filling a space and giving people a place to go to get excited and fired up.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think most terrorism prosecutions are providing material support. So if they had any evidence of that, they would have charged this kid with a crime. Exactly, exactly.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I made the general point about free speech. I also think in this specific instance, like as someone who's talked publicly about Gaza and Israel and the two-state solution for a very long time, there is a long-term sustained effort to police speech on this specific topic, especially to define criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic or activism that protests Israel like the BDS movement as anti-Semitic.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And so Trump is building off of not just those efforts to punish protesters, but now they're going to use this as a pretext to punish universities. And just to do a little bit of whataboutism, Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, was giving a speech at Harvard Business School. The moderator made a point about how, hey, if you disrupt this, you're going to get kicked out.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
And he goes, I think we'll give them a pager. referring to the operation that blew up thousands of Hezbollah operatives. Just imagine if a pro-Palestinian, I don't like that speech. I don't like that speech very much, but it's clearly a joke. Imagine if a pro-Palestinian protester said, if you protest, we'll come after you with our hang gliders or we'll put a bomb on your bus.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
Like now, is that kind of comment going to get you deported? Is that material support for Hamas? How are we thinking about that?
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I enjoy the irony of this all happening right as we're learning that the White House has been holding direct talks with Hamas about getting hostages out of Gaza, which I support, by the way. I think it's the right thing to do. I think it's ridiculous that we have to go through Qatar or some other carve-out of conversations with a group holding an American citizen. I don't know.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I mean, if Joe Biden did this, Lindsey Graham would have filed articles of impeachment on the spot.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
I think it's just a chilling effect on these law firms. I mean, they want these lawyers to not want to take cases where they sue the Trump administration or oppose them in any way. And then in some instances, it's just an act of vengeance, like going after Jack Smith.
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Trump's Crackdown on Dissent
There were reports early on that the Trump people were telling big firms do not hire people out of the Biden DOJ, especially the Jack Smith team. So this is sort of part of a longer process of just trying to keep really good lawyers from opposing them in any way.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Important correction. Big Balls, Mr. Balls, got a job at the State Department, so he's no longer at Treasury. This is the Doge 19-year-old.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Let's all get together. Let's get on a Zoom. Yeah, it's a negotiating position, but it is real. You know, I think it's just both. Like, Trump has just shown us that he wants to tariff first, ask questions later. I mean, interestingly... That's good, Tommy. The U.S. stock market was up on Monday, so Wall Street is kind of brushing it off. They were, like, European steel producers that took a hit.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
But, like, I don't know. It's just weird how the economic system is just kind of, like, taking this in.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
But even domestic steel producers, they didn't really increase their output that much the first time around in the first administration after the tariffs were put in place on imports. So it's not benefiting anybody.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
I mean, I think it reflects a lot of what Lava was getting at earlier, which is, first of all, presidents tend to have a honeymoon period. And that's just kind of a tough political reality for all of us Democrats as we're trying to figure out how to fight this.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And also, as much as I want to throw all of Trump's campaign promises in his face, like the price of eggs is not down, you've not ended the war in Ukraine, etc., etc., you said he'd do it in 24 hours.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
i think most voters get that it was a shtick and they're going to give him some time to actually get things done but moreover like they just see him doing stuff he's active they might not like all of it but he's doing things he's taking action he looks decisive he's on the tv he's signing and holding it up no one can read what it says but you know they i guess seem to like that so far and you know the for to feel the pain on this stuff it's going to take some time like
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
The response on should the US annex and occupy Gaza was like 13% in favor, like 47 something opposed, 41% were like, huh? Most people were like, what? And I think over time, if we slap terrorists on Europe and Canada, if we really do have a military occupation in the Middle East again, people will not like that.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Like the Elon stuff also, I think, will not wear that well over time, but it will take time.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And even the people not paying attention, I agree, that's the majority. What they're seeing is Trump at the Super Bowl, Trump doing stuff. And they're like, oh, that's cool. That looks fun.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And it's like, is it salient? Like, that's always the question.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
It's stupid, obviously. But like, do they care? Are they like, that's fine. I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't care, but they don't like it.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, I think we just wanted to get away from calling everyone bros. Yes, that's right.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
You know where he finds the time? Not parenting. You gotta have a lot of kids and you see them as little as possible. That's how you free up all your time for doging.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
The slightly optimistic version of this, and I don't share this view really, is that there was sort of a willful or maybe accidental misreading of what the judge said because it was a little bit sloppily worded or confusingly worded.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And some people were interpreting his ruling as saying even the secretary of the treasury did not have access to the treasury payment system, which is like kind of self-evidently ridiculous. I think what he actually meant was the treasury secretary could not give access unauthorized people access to this payment system within treasury. And you're right, like fight it out in court.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
But I think my takeaway from this, which drove me nuts, is that Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, even like the far right fringe, like Alex Jones, It doesn't matter how much power they have. They can have the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, social media.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
They are always the victims and they're always whining about how they're being attacked and it's unfair and like going after these judges. And it just, it drives me crazy. And I'm just hoping, hoping that they will rub voters the wrong way just to hear them bitching and moaning all the time.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
God, so annoying. It's just so annoying. Just give me my Super Bowl. By the way, was that the Air Force One pilot doing that announcement? So we're getting a uniform member of the U.S. military in on your political announcement about the Gulf of America?
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
I think it's the right messaging. I know. Me too. I'm not. It's my own. This is my own. Ro Khanna was doing this earlier. I know. It's like you don't want to seem like you're opposed to government efficiency, but obviously now they're just rampaging through the government Venmo and shutting shit off left and right.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
You just got to talk Gen Z to them. You're like, I can dig these Doja Cats. Oh my God. That was horrible.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Pick this fight. I am shocked by how stupid this is. I mean, what NIH is saying is that grant recipients can spend only 15% of their grant money on so-called indirect costs. But indirect costs are... the building where you work, maintenance for your lab, the microscope, support staff that help you comply with safety regulations.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And like the big, you know, like evil DEI institutions like Harvard, they could probably eat that 15%. They can deal with this. But the smaller research institutions at smaller schools, they're just going to get forced to shut down. And that's why you're hearing Katie Britt weighing on this, although that fucking moron Tommy Tuberville is like, I support the doge cuts and everything they're doing.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
He doesn't know where he is. He also hated the halftime show. That's also from that same interview, I believe. It's not just the long-term impact on medical research and finding cures and all the things we want medical research to do. The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest employer in the state. So this is going to ripple out into their economy in a big way.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And also, it's not like the NIH budget is some runaway fiscal disaster. The Bulwark reported that the NIH budget adjusted for inflation is about what it was at the beginning of the Obama administration.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, we got to get that person and the guy who told Seal to become an anthropomorphic singing seal singing about Mountain Dew, and we send them both to Gitmo.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah. Doing all this under the guise of that DEI attack is so pathetic. This also, it is entirely out of the Project 2025 playbook, and I do think it helps to remind people of this.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, Benny Johnson, the TPUSA plagiarist, tweeted, Hey NFL, it's Trump was elected. We're not going to pretend we like bad halftime shows anymore. And I was like, what? Yes, people famously never complain about the halftime show. That's what Twitter was invented for. It is to go back to your point, though. They're the victims all the time.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
It is funny. Elon's just raging about these small sums of money and little changes, and he gets 15 billion in contracts from the U.S. government. I'll tell you something. Here's the mistake I made.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, I mean, there was a report over the weekend in the New York Times. Let me back up. You guys might remember just before the inauguration when Donald Trump announced the sale of a meme coin, Trump coin. I think it was the next day. Melania announced the sale of her Melania coin. So the price skyrocketed, then it fell. People accused him of a rug pull.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
It was this whole kind of weird grifting thing that was happening on the sidelines.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, you own most of it, you market it heavily, and then you sell a bunch of your shares of whatever the thing is. And the people who bought in late get screwed and the people who own them early make a lot of money. Kind of like the Hawk Tua coin for those who are big fans of the Hawk Tua podcast.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
The New York Times over the weekend reported that as of last week, at least 810,000 people have lost money on the Trump coin. But the Trump family and its partners have made nearly $109 million in fees because they get paid every time you buy and sell it. Also, a Trump-owned business owns 80% of the supply. So if they wanted to sell a bunch of their coins, they could make a lot of money.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Also, there's all this shady shit that was happening. There was some mystery account that bought millions of Trump coins just minutes after they were offered for like, you know, 19 cents or whatever, and then flip them for a profit of what they think is about $109 million. So it is just this massive grift happening in plain sight.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And it kind of ties into our CFPB conversation earlier, because getting rid of the CFPB means you're going to have small community banks regulated by a different set of regulators. Big banks no longer have a regulator because they're all regulated by the CFPB. And then you have this proliferation of bank-like companies that provide bank-like services, but are not backed by the FDIC.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
There's no deposit insurance and aren't regulated well. So it's just like the wild, wild west of like blockchain, you know, mumbo jumbo bullshit.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
They are, but Dodd-Frank pushed all the regulatory authority to the CFPB. It's not like this zombie set of laws without an agency to enforce it.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
But even in just sort of normal year, the CFPB would modify rules to account for inflation or when the pandemic hit, they made a bunch of changes just to account for the economic shock that was happening. And now there isn't a agency to exist to do that. Well, the other thing too is these banks, like...
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Well, it's like little stuff. Just like one example is like overdraft protection.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Like I remember, I remember standing outside the Iowa Obama for America office and screaming at Bank of America because they had let me buy like seven coffees and overdraw my account every single time and then charge me a courtesy fee of like 25 then escalated to $35 each time rather than just being like, bro, you have no money. and cutting off the transaction, not letting it through.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
And apparently the CFPB, when it was created, there was someone who worked at a bank talking about how their institution kind of reformed their ways of charging those fees because they were worried the CFPB was going to come after them. So the mere existence of this agency was protecting consumers, and now it will just be gone.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
You know what? Unpopular opinion. Fuck plastic straws. It's stuck in turtles' noses. Come on. Suck it up. Use the paper.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
So like- Let's talk about a comparison with Obama for a second though. I watched this and I thought, why couldn't we have gone to stuff? Every time Obama wanted to do something cool, we were told it was a security risk or it was going to be inconvenience people. And I would just ask everyone to Google Obama and date night. Remember that?
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
2009, Obama and Michelle, they get on the plane, they fly to New York, they go to dinner and they go to a show. Fox News and all the conservative media outlets went insane for weeks about what they did, whether it was out of touch, the cost to taxpayers. I would love to know how much it costs to pack up Air Force One, fly to New Orleans, rename a gulf a body of water and then leave at halftime.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
You know, but like that's not part of the conversation because of this massive conservative bias that, you know, Fox put on the game and they interviewed Trump before.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
But they booed her because she's dating Travis Kelsey and it's half Eagles fan. You know what I mean? Everyone making the comparison. It's like, come on, guys. Yeah. It's just bitter, bitter Eagles fans. They're everywhere. They've done way worse to like Santa Claus. They throw batteries everywhere. Yeah. I mean, he used to get booed more. Yeah.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
What is he, is he in Mexico invading them? What is he talking about?
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
They don't like it. There was a YouGov poll. 77% of Canadians oppose Canada becoming a part of the United States. Trump also keeps claiming that the US is subsidizing Canada, which he just doesn't understand what a trade imbalance is. We buy a lot of oil from Canada. Thus, we buy more of their stuff than they buy of our stuff. But it is really pissing people off up there.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
I mean, there was a sketch on a sketch comedy show in Canada where you had two guys at a grocery store and they were talking about what products to buy and one guy keeps scolding the other for buying American things and replacing it with the joke is that they're shittier, inferior Canadian versions of whatever it is, even maple syrup. And it's pretty funny, but it went super viral.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Yeah, but on top of that, like there was that one clip of Canadians booing the national anthem at like a hockey game that went viral. Apparently that's happening over and over and over again at NBA games and NHL games, et cetera. So I don't know. I do also think you have to view this in the context of like,
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
Last week, he announced that we're going to annex, ethnically cleanse, and then occupy Gaza. We're picking fights with Denmark over Greenland. There's the Panama thing. So whether or not he's serious, he's pissing everybody off. And we didn't play it because there was just too much sound to play.
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Will Trump Defy the Courts?
It is ethnic cleansing. Two million people live there. He wants to push them out and steal their land. That is illegal.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, that's really cool. I definitely emulate that.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, we need him to have a Katrina level approval ratings. Yeah, I think these things start as outrage bait. It's just like chum for media attention. It's chum to get MSNBC fired up like Steve Bannon being intimately involved in this, I think is a real clue.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
But over time, I do think the outrage bait evolves into something real in a lot of cases like Greenland invading Greenland, for example, overturning the election. Yeah.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And once Democrats get really worked up about literally anything, negative polarization can take over and Republicans in Congress, for example, decide that politically they would rather be opposed to what the annoying Democrats say than in favor of what the constitution says. And so I do think there's like a real risk here and there's, it's part of a very rapid authoritarian slide, but I agree.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Like, I just don't want to take the bait on it. I don't think we need to have members of Congress putting forward bills to focus on it. Like focus on the here and now.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah. That'd be fun. We should mop the floor with this piece of shit. Great. Run it back, sir.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, I think the mere act of asking him about it suggests we're taking it seriously and their response will be like, chill out, libs. But yeah, I'm with you.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Much like a wedding, it matters. It sounds silly. We're literally talking about where reporters sit in the White House briefing room, which sounds silly, but it matters for a couple of reasons. Because the seating is supposed to reflect a pecking order in terms of which outlets get to ask questions and when. Traditionally, it has gone.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
The Associated Press, major TV networks, other wire services up in the front two rows, followed by big newspapers and so on. The press secretary gets to jump around, but that's how it's supposed to go. So the most influential outlets that are the most serious traditionally get to ask a question. The Trump people want Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend, whose name I can never remember.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, they want to stack the briefing room full of right-wing propaganda sycophants and make sure that more of the briefing room is eaten up by sycophantic questions. And that like lets them get off, you know, get out of the briefing without making a mistake, but also lets them own the media.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And I do think like the things you mentioned at the top, the bigger picture is they just want to control the press. And when you combine this step with kicking the AP out of the pooled press rotation, which for folks who don't know, the press pool is the group of reporters who go with the president into smaller venues or rooms into the Oval Office, etc.,
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And then the White House dictating which non-wire service news outlets rotate as part of the print pool. So instead of the Washington Post, you have some right-wing YouTuber shouting questions at Trump. That really matters. It's a significant erosion of press freedom. And I will say at the same time, Trump is taking way more questions from the press than Biden did or past president has.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
So I don't want to sound hyperbolic here, but, you know, the press core writ large is dealing with industry disruption and a collective action problem that we're seeing everywhere else. And they just do not know how to fight back. They're fighting back by like wearing a pin and they're doing it individually. Yeah.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, just fully kicked out of the White House complex.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Also, the trip started as Usha Vance going, doing a bunch of cultural stops and it evolved to JD Vance, like big footing the trip. And then they never left the US military base because everyone hates them.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
I would like to just quickly start with the dumb part, which is hysterical is the right way to describe that Stephen Miller tweet. The guys are such drama queens. Like we were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered. Entire towns were subjugated. Our treasury was plundered. What are you talking about?
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
So the only way I can make sense of what Trump is doing with tariffs as a policy matter is it's got to be part of a negotiating strategy where he's just trying to convince these other countries that he's so crazy that he's going to tank the global economy so they come to the table and cut a deal.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Because the stated rationale for all these tariffs are self-evidently ridiculous, like cutting off fentanyl flows from Canada, right? It doesn't make any sense. And that's because tariffs are a tool. They're not a strategy. They're designed to protect existing industries against unfair trade practices by other countries like China dumping a bunch of steel or aluminum into the U.S. market.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
, . . . . .. a, P P P P P P P P P P 100實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in and.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
But they're not designed to grow a U.S. industry on its own like the CHIPS Act was, which Trump says he wants to get rid of. And so even like in the most charitable scenario where Trump tariffs the auto industry, so Mexico, it becomes more expensive to create, assemble vehicles in Mexico, so GM and Ford rev up some plants here, that's gonna increase prices for everybody.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Base versus base turnout election. Maybe Elon going there will help motivate some significant number of people to turn out who wouldn't otherwise have known about the election and voted. So we'll see. I do think Elon, he claims the spending is about free speech. It's a disgusting perversion of democracy. So I don't know. Like,
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Ben Wickler was saying he might have spent up to 26 million at this point. He has made himself the face of this campaign. If they win, that sucks. And I'll be very sad.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And if they lose, we need to tie it around Elon Musk's neck, make this an argument that there's a political cost to everything he does of being associated with him of even his money, because that's a pretty significant check on his political strength early on.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And I know Trump doesn't care, But the companies can't eat that hit. So labor costs are much higher in the U.S. than in Mexico. So it's going to raise prices for everyone. So just like none of it makes sense. You know, it's like tariffs when used effectively, they're targeted. But we're talking about a broad based 20 to 25 percent tariff on every country, maybe.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
That makes me so happy. It makes me so sure to get her farewell tour. She had so many meetings. It's awesome. With so many boring, boring briefings.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
She went apartment. I guess they have an apartment for you, but she went shopping for furniture in New York. Nope.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Also, just bigger picture. Eighty one million dollars have been spent on a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. That is disgusting. Citizens United was such a disaster. Our campaign finance system is such a disaster. I don't know how we can fix it at this point with this Congress, with these courts, with these judges, but this is just a terrible way to run a railroad.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And if China is the real threat and the real problem, why are we starting by tariffing the EU and Canada and Mexico and all the allies that we actually need? Or all the countries, as he sort of hinted at.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
You still got to record them, guys. Bad news for you.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Very comfortable. I know you have a guest Helix mattress. Yeah, our guest room's got a Helix mattress. Everybody raves about it.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
I think what the markets think is that what will happen this time is what will happen last time, which is Trump will threaten this universal tariff and then he'll delay it. And then an army of lobbyists will storm into the White House and they'll carve out special deals for big companies like Apple or or GM or whichever foreign leader buys enough Trump coin will get an exception.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Half kidding there. And so I also think that these countries that cut a deal with Trump, they know that Trump only cares about the day one headline. The Chinese in the first term said they were going to buy billions and billions of dollars of American exports. And Trump trumpeted that and took a huge win. And then they bought None. They bought zero additional exports. They just didn't care.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
I mean, Jesus, you'd sit in an office with somebody and they'd tell you.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
So you can give Trump the win on the negotiation and then win for real in the implementation.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
Yeah, I mean, there's another school of thought that some economists think that the Trump plan is to, long story short, like weaken the American dollar by cutting a bunch of deals with other countries and forcing them to stop currency manipulation to make it cheaper to export American goods and thus resuscitate American manufacturing. That too sounds a little far-fetched to me.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
It's just worth quickly pointing out that there's no legal authority to do this. Trump is claiming he's going to do it, or some of his team is suggesting they're going to use a law called AIPA, which allows the president to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency overseas.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
So we're going to declare there's a national emergency in every single country, and therefore we're slapping a 20% tariff.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
There was a great story in the journal about Harley-Davidson and tariffs. Harley-Davidson, great American company. They could face a 50% retaliatory tariff on selling Harleys abroad. So they did the math on a Harley Davidson sale in Denmark. It would go from $28,000 to purchase here in the United States to $124,000 all in with all the VAT tax and everything else over there.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
So it's just going to decimate Harley Davidson. And they dealt with this in the first Trump term. And in response, they actually moved some production from the U.S. to Thailand. So there's like effects you cannot anticipate.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And these materials cross the border like three, four or five times. Are we going to tariff them every single time?
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
He, you know, there was hardly said as much. Yeah, right. Exactly.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
But we can try. Yeah, I agree with you though. I mean, I do think the big caveat is always like if implemented as currently described, I think these tariffs would be disastrous. And we're already seeing polls where you have people saying Trump is too focused on tariffs. Only 23% of people think Trump's policies are making them feel better off financially in the CBS poll.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And to the point on the stock market, like there's been a 10% correction so far, which basically means like the stock market has given up the gains it had from election day until now. But if these tariffs really go into place as described, that could lead to another 10%, 20%, 30%, like a serious hit to the stock market.
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Trump “Not Joking” About 3rd Term
And that's when all of his donors are going to be calling him and be like, what the fuck are you doing? This is not what we bought you for.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But yeah, I mean, you made so many good points there. I think I love this idea of don't wait for your opponent to make a mistake, help them make a mistake and then pour gas on the flames once it happens. I think that's very important. I totally agree with you that there is no singular leader of the Democratic Party.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
There probably won't be until someone emerges in a Democratic primary, you know, which would be after the midterms, which is far too late. We're waiting for that.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I think there's not a singular post-mortem. There's not like a DNC run post-mortem that I know of. I mean, the new DNC chair is, I think, going around the country, talking to people, thinking about what happened. We on this show are having a series of conversations about what happened. I mean, frankly, this is one of them and thinking about ways to kind of rise from the ashes.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But to your point about the kind of images at the State of the Union, it was lots of different groups of Democrats with different forms of protests. And I know something you were famous for in government was message discipline, enforcing message discipline, trying not to let you know, other members of the Labour Party undercut what Tony was doing.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Do you think that that that idea is quaint in an era of, you know, everyone can make a public statement from their phone in the bathroom whenever they want?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
No, you're actually anti-woke. You think we need to, I remember hearing you say this, you felt like you need to focus more on social justice issues in response to some of this bullshit coming out of Trump and et cetera.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I don't have to tell you guys this, things feel pretty bleak out there for Democrats right now. Republicans control the White House, the Congress, the courts, the right-wing media feels more influential than ever. And I think it can be easy to lose hope and worry that we might not ever be back in power.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Yeah, I think that's really well said. Now, let me just say, critics listening to this would say, the biggest mistakes Tony Blair made, the biggest mistakes the Democratic Party made was getting away from our roots as a pro-union, pro-worker party, and instead embracing globalization, free trade. They'll sort of sum it up as neoliberalism generally, and they believe that's what led us to Trump.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
What's your response to that argument?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But I want you to imagine for a second that you're a member of the Labor Party, the British equivalent of the Democratic Party, in 1997. You would have been out of power for 18 years, enduring election after election, of devastating defeats and Margaret Thatcher and this historic period of Tory rule. And so that experience is why I wanted to talk with today's guest, Alistair Campbell.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Let's talk about the US and the UK. I mean, we famously have this special relationship, meaning that we are the closest of allies in the world. There's rarely daylight between the two countries on major issues. After that, the US is historically really close with Canada, democracies in Europe, NATO allies, et cetera.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But in just the past few weeks, I mean, Donald Trump has upended 75 years of US foreign policy. He's voted with Russia at the United Nations. He sided with Putin against Ukraine and all of Europe. Interestingly, Keir Starmer, despite being from the Labor Party, has gotten along better with Trump than most leaders.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But is there a concern you're hearing in sort of British political circles that the transatlantic alliance is broken for at least the next four years, if not irreparably changed?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
He was one of Tony Blair's most trusted advisors during his time as prime minister. You should think of Alistair as the British David Axelrod. But most importantly for this conversation, Alistair was with Blair in the years before the Labor Party finally won back power. And he was one of the key architects of Labor's rebranding and media strategy that ultimately led them to a landslide victory.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Well, and just so folks know, I mean, the people who think Putin's the richest man in the world believe he is. He got there by telling all the Russian oligarchs, you now owe me 50% of what's yours and you don't have it. There will be no debate.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Alistair is considered a master of driving a media narrative and was sometimes even referred to as the king of spin, although I don't think he liked that. We'll talk about how Alistair and Tony Blair helped pull the UK out of the iron grip of Thatcherism and what lessons, strategies, and tactics Democrats can steal from that experience to win back power here.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I was just about to ask. Tell me about J.D. Vance.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Basically, yes. I mean, JD, to his credit, will go in more hostile places, but they love Fox News. It's state TV.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I will. I'll let him know. We text often, yes.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
We also cover what Alistair makes of Donald Trump generally, and also what he makes of Trump just upending 75 years of US foreign policy by turning away from our traditional allies in Europe and aligning with Russia. And finally, we talk about what we can learn from right-wing populist parties all over Europe about the MAGA movement and how to defeat them.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
yeah and look i don't want to go on some whiny tangent about conservative media but i'm very glad to hear that you and many of your friends are exercised about these comments by jd vance because the man insulted hundreds if not thousands of dead british troops and french troops by the way because it's the french uh uk proposal for this peacekeeping force and like when barack obama dared to move the churchill bust out of the oval office it was this goddamn scandal that
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
tailed us for weeks and weeks and weeks because, you know, the Murdoch press, the right wing tabloids, especially in the UK, just, you know, pumped oxygen on the fire and fed the flames over and over again. And like, this seems like, you know, now we have this legitimate breach that I think we should actually be kind of concerned about.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
it did but you know the steve bannon adage of uh flood the zone with is highly effective and we're all just kind of waking up to the next outrage um every day we are going to take a quick break but before we do i want to tell you some exciting news from our book imprint crooked media reads Woodworking, the brand new novel by Yellowjackets writer and culture commentator Emily St.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
James, is now out wherever you get your books. Woodworking is an unforgettable and heartwarming debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows, one of her students. The five-star Goodreads reviews are pouring in, and Woodworking is featured on them and AV Club's most anticipated books of 2025 lists.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Publishers Weekly says St. James enthralls with her depiction of what it's like to be trans in a conservative and insular community and the courage it takes for people to be openly themselves. Get your copy of Woodworking right now at crookedmedia.com slash books.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And if you want to hear more from Alistair, you should check out his excellent podcast, The Rest Is Politics. He and former Tory party MP Rory Stewart cover what's happening in the UK. They also cover US politics, global events all around the world.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
One other thing I love about The Restless Politics is that you and Rory, you talk a lot about international issues, and you guys focus a lot on right-wing populist parties, especially in Europe, leaders like Marine Le Pen in France. We got Elon Musk's buddies over at the AFD in Germany, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Nigel Farage in the UK. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Here in America, we are now dealing with the kind of MAGA version of right-wing populism. Are there common threads you see among these right-wing populist parties that are worth kind of highlighting and then successful tactics to combat them?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
It is a weekly listen for me, as is Crooked Media's own Pod Save the UK, which covers British politics more from the left like we do on Pod Save America here. And it is also just consistently hilarious and worth your time. So with that set up, here's my conversation with Alistair Campbell. Alistair Campbell, welcome to Pod Save America. Absolute pleasure to be here, Tommy.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Yeah, I mean, you know, the interesting story to me about this recent election in Germany, I do love that it seems like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk turned off voters and harmed the AFD. There was this interesting split at the end where you saw this surge in support for left wing parties that I think mostly came from young women, whereas younger men went to the AFD.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And what you're seeing, though, is just a lack of faith in these sort of traditional parties, be them sort of social Democrats or conservative. and a look for alternatives because younger people are pissed off and they feel like the system has not worked for them and they're turning away. And I think that's a big lesson.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Yeah. And I saw in 2019, you were doing an interview with the garden where you said the populism of the right would not be defeated by the populism of the left. Can you unpack that a bit and tell me if you still think it's true?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
So Alistair, the Labour Party over in the UK was on its ass for 18 years, 1979 until 1997, including the majority of that under Margaret Thatcher, who is this towering figure in British and global history, frankly. In 1994, you leave a job in journalism to help Tony Blair and the Labor Party right the ship and finally win back power.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
From reading your diaries and listening to your excellent podcast, I get the sense there were times when you and Tony Blair felt like the Labor Party was as hopeless and divided as a lot of Democrats feel now. How did you guys approach this monumental task of rebranding the party and preparing to get to an election where you could finally win back power?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Oh, it doesn't sound crazy at all to me. I was sitting in an interview with Barack Obama in Iowa in 2007 when a reporter asked him why I wasn't wearing a flag pin, and he answered it honestly, and it became a thing for four more years or however long it followed us around. Final question for you, and thank you for giving me so much time. I was looking last night at this –
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Pew Research does polling asking Americans, do you trust the government? And they've been doing it for decades. And the average peaks at like 77% in 1964, in the beginning of LBJ's administration. Trust levels plummet through the Vietnam War. all the way through the Carter administration down to about 27%.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
It kind of bounces up into the 40s during Reagan, then spikes after 9-11 as people rally together after the attacks, and then bottoms out again after Iraq and the financial crisis and never really recovers. And I think some of the drivers of this loss of trust were Vietnam, Watergate, the Iraq war, and the financial crisis.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And just for listeners, you know, if listeners want to hear you dig deeper into all things Iraq, you and Rory did an amazing two part series on the Iraq war from different perspectives around the 20th anniversary. And it was just like riveting listening. And I highly recommend it. But I'm wondering, I mean, Democrats have now. We used to be the party that didn't trust institutions.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
We didn't trust the intelligence community. We didn't trust the government. We accused Bush of lying us into war. Now we're the ones defending institutions. Now we're telling people to trust the CDC about the COVID vaccine or trust the FBI. And I'm wondering how you think about
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
this loss of trust in government and institutions and how to get it back, but also if we need to change our posture as a Democrat and not be so trusting of the government and maybe not worry about the lack of trust in government.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I think we got it. I think we got there.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I like that. That's right. You never win an argument that you don't join. I think that's important advice. Well, Alistair, thank you so much for your time. Here's to hoping for a Labor 1997 style victory at the midterms in 2026.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
I'm here for it. I know. Yeah. So if we don't win that, I'm going to be talking to you about the passport again. So let me know. Hopefully you have someone in the foreign office. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And so I think we are getting an important point, which is that this wasn't just cosmetic changes. You were signaling to voters that the Labor Party was now different. In fact, you started calling it New Labor.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
One of the things I really like about your podcast is you guys talk a lot about the importance of a political party not just having a day-to-day message, but a 30,000-foot narrative and a story that ties it all together. And as simplistic as it might sound to you and to me, if you ask people what Donald Trump wants to do as president, they'll say make America great again.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And that is a framework for everything he does. Whereas I feel like Democrats often feel like they have a laundry list of policy ideas, but it doesn't feel like a coherent story. How did you think about developing and staying true to that 30,000 foot narrative?
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
You talked about this question of is something too bold. I mean, when you guys won in 1997, it came after this long period of conservative rule that we talked about that included major economic challenges, some intra-Tory party scandals, I assume some exhaustion with the incumbent. And please tell me if I have this story wrong, but the...
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
Before the election, there was a politician named Roy Jenkins who said, Tony Blair took such care not to make any mistakes that he resembled a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor. And I love that metaphor because it gets at the balancing act you have to make in politics between appealing to voters with big, bold ideas and not making a mistake.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
And a version of that debate is playing out in the Democratic Party right now. James Carville said Democrats should take a strategic pause, let Trump self-immolate. Many others, myself included, thinks that we Democrats need to much more aggressively present an alternative. I know Democrats are far from holding a Ming vase right now. We're holding a plate of shit.
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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead
But how do you think about the balance between big old... Yes, full of it. But that balance between big, bold ideas versus kind of running against your opponent or not screwing up. How did you think about that?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, doing a town hall. To his great credit, Ro Khanna is going to Republican districts where the elected officials refuse to talk to their constituents. But all of this is a topper for our Sunday episode this week. Which I did. Who did you talk to? Congressman Adam Smith. He represents Washington's ninth congressional district. He's been there for about 30 years.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I want some shrubs delivered to my door. Uber for shrubs. That's what this is.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Gavin Newsom's taking some shit right now. And I think that the idea in principle is a good one. Maybe the execution hasn't been perfect or great so far, but I support that. I mean, I'd Glenn Greenwald on Pod Save the World, my foreign policy show the other day.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I got a lot of shit from people that just didn't want to hear from him, but I actually thought it was interesting to talk to him about the First Amendment.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
That's not what we need. I completely agree. There is a fundamental threshold issue about human rights and humanity, and we need to give no quarter on those issues ever. If you want to have a separate issue about sports fairness at the high school level, fine. But I think that should be handled by local leaders. And we don't need to demagogue people. And that's clearly what's happening.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
You're a foreign policy expert. Can I ask you some international stuff? Absolutely. So on Tuesday, President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin for an hour and a half or so. Putin says he will agree to a 30-day pause on bombing Ukrainian energy infrastructure. I have no confidence that he will follow through on that. He's already broken it.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, it sounds like there's already been some ceasefire violations. But basically, Putin held his maximalist positions on basically every other part of the negotiation, at least if you read the Russian language readout of his side of the call. What's your level of confidence that Trump can broker some sort of peace agreement?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
And I would imagine you talk with people at the White House and the State Department, Republicans in Congress. What do they say when you ask them, why is Donald Trump giving every concession to Putin preemptively while hammering Zelensky?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Congressman Smith, he was not a big fan of that performance either. And then we've stayed in touch since. And in December, I started talking to him. And he wanted to come on the show to talk about what happened in 2024, his vision going forward, and so on and so forth. And so he was in LA. When was that, Wednesday? Yeah.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, there is a world where Trump, I mean, I think we sort of see it in his demeanor and the words he says, where he is more comfortable with, he feels more connected to, more aligned with autocrats, including Putin. And by the way, Putin's like religiosity is a pretty recent, it's bullshit.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, I've been reading this book about Steve Bannon and his connection to this kind of small group of right-wing literal fascists who are also kind of occultists called traditionalists. And it gets into his ties with this guy, Alexander Dugin, who's this very scary, genocidal Russian thinker. And it's very weird that Steve Bannon met with Dugin and he's kind of Putin's guy.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
And honestly, we had planned to talk for 15 or 20 minutes, but it was just such an interesting conversation that we went and went and went. And all of a sudden it had been 45 minutes. That's great. It's rare for a politician. I know. I was like, this is fascinating. This guy has a lot of big ideas. He's a national security expert. He's been in politics for a long time.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Fascism is very hot right now, especially with young white men. Look at Germany. Look at the AFD party. It's also driving me insane that Trump primarily talks about alliances as some sort of financial burden and rather than understanding that we created NATO ourselves. We constructed it as it is because it a ton of control and power.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
We didn't want the French and everybody, you know, we don't want a massive amounts of nuclear nonproliferation. Some of it happened, but we wanted to fold them into our system. And he just doesn't seem to get that.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
And economic inequality is a completely fixable problem by government through taxation, through redistribution. We could do this. Trump and Pete Hegseth, who somehow became Secretary of Defense, they're conducting this purge of senior military leaders along strictly racist and sexist lines. I mean, I'm not being hyperbolic here. They call it DEI. But C.Q.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Brown, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was fired for talking about being a black man in America in one five-minute video after George Floyd was murdered. Similarly, senior leaders at the Navy and at the Coast Guard have been fired because they are women. How do you think these moves are impacting the armed forces, their ability to recruit readiness?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
He has thoughts about how to build the biggest coalition possible for the party. So we thought, all right. Sunday episode. Cool. Let's do it. And so we're going to listen to Congressman Adam Smith. And then afterwards, John and I are going to do some Q&A from our Discord subscribers. So stick around for that. So without further ado, here is Congressman Adam Smith.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah. I mean, the only good I have a sliver of good news and then some more bad news sliver of good news. I think a judge indefinitely blocked Trump's ban on transgender service members. It's just an insane decision to tell, I think, 13,000 American citizens that they cannot serve their country because of who they are.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
But I did also notice that earlier this week, Trump named a bunch of right-wing activists and allies to boards that oversee U.S. military service academies. So I'll give you a couple names. Mike Flynn, he's now named to the West Point Oversight Board. I'm sure you know him well.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Unfortunately, I did too, because he worked for Obama. Pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Once posted a video where he pledged allegiance to QAnon. Walt Nauta was appointed to oversee the Naval Academy. He's Trump's former military aide who was charged with obstructing the government in the classified documents case.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Charlie Kirk, who we talked about earlier, was named to the board overseeing the Air Force. Charlie has zero military experience. He's just a right-wing propagandist. These are almost like comically terrible picks, but what do these boards do? What is the impact here?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Congressman Adam Smith, great to see you. Thanks for coming to the LA studio.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
So we're talking Wednesday morning over the last week. A lot of progressives, including many of your colleagues at the House, have voiced displeasure with Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats about their handling of the Republican continuing resolution that kept the government open.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I couldn't tell you to this day. Also, that's like an hour. Yeah.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I was wondering what you made of Schumer's vote, rationale, leadership, and if you disagreed with it, what you think Democrats should be doing differently in this moment.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
And that's not helpful. We shouldn't resign ourselves to being silent when people do unproductive things, but we can never control the furthest fringe.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
You have to listen before you can persuade. And I think you're reflecting back frustration that I feel profoundly that I think a lot comes from the Internet and the amplification of the worst voices on Twitter or other platforms. But Congressman Smith, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
All right, John, so we got some great questions from the Discord. I'm going to ask you a few of them. We can talk them through. Andrew wants to know, assuming we make it through the next four years and we're still holding elections at that time, are you afraid that the next Democrat to get elected president will be hamstrung into keeping a lot of the government dismantling happening right now?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
He's trying to rebuild basic functionality will be viewed as too expensive or intrusive outreach.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I mean, I don't want the next Democrat to feel like they need to just go back to the status quo before Trump. We shouldn't just go back to USAID as it was and spend a ton of political capital trying to just run it back. We need to reimagine what these agencies can look like. How can we do it smarter? How can we be more efficient?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I think there will be some challenges, though, because Trump is just... Throwing all Democrats out of what are supposed to be nonpartisan boards or agencies or leadership positions. And I think it is going to start a tit for tat that is going to be hard to put back in the tube, you know, but we have to do it.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
We can't let like these right wing mega zealots run the, you know, I don't care about the Kennedy Center, but that's an example.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
You're going to have to clean house. And it's going to be hard because you're going to have to give up some power because there are independent agencies that Trump has now taken over. And I think we should restore their independence to a lot of these places. We're going to have better governance, right?
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
And our responsibility gene is going to bite us in the ass once again, but it's the right thing to do. We might've said this, but
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah. Janice C37 asks, how concerned should we be about the conservative lean of Gen Z voters? I'll be honest, I'm quite concerned. Me too. Because I think your brain can get hardwired for your political views for the rest of your life when you're younger. The issue isn't really Gen Z voters, it's Gen Z men.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
We're seeing that in data here in the United States, the gender divide is massive among people under 30. The German elections that just happened, there was a huge split among young people where you had younger men going to the AFD, which is the crazy far right party, and young women going to these leftist parties, whether it was the BSW or sort of like traditional communist adjacent parties.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
None of them wanted the traditional social Democrats or the traditional conservatives. They all kind of hated the establishment and the status quo. So it's worrisome insofar as we are Democrats and we want the Democratic Party to get support from young people. But also this young men problem is a real thing that needs to be addressed.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
deliver for them. Uh, super skink asks, are we pro Dem T party or against it right now with all the shit we are seeing? I am super pro. I feel like Dem T party has become a shorthand for just upending the status quo within the party and new leaders. Um, not, you know, voicing the kind of traditional democratic shibboleths, not necessarily, um, Gerontocracy is a big piece of this.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I mean, just know that the Republican Tea Party movement, there was grassroots energy and enthusiasm behind it that helped the Republicans in the near term and the 2010 midterms, but was ultimately very destructive for the party and the country.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah. Morgan L0975 asks, are you finding yourself censoring some of the stuff you want to say or how far you want to go, given the wider crackdown on media and honestly, even for your own safety and that of your family's? Interesting question. I will say one of the great things about doing a podcast is you have to opt into it. So we don't have a lot of like as many rage listeners. Yeah.
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A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
It's when you go on Fox News or something goes viral thanks to some right wing person on social media clip or whatever. That's when you get attacked, threatened, cursed at, etc. So I think that's All people in media need to be aware that this is a very scary time in terms of defamation lawsuits. Trump has said he wants to open up libel law, make it easier to sue people.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
We're seeing major corporations caving to Trump. Facebook cut him a big check. There's a report today about a major law firm that went into the Oval Office and groveled and offered, what is it, $40 million in pro bono services. Insane. Was it Paul Weiss? Paul Weiss. Don't know that guy.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
You haven't censored anything? I don't sell censor, but some of this stuff is in the back of my mind.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Much like knowing your email could be hacked at any time, I'm still a moron.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
But we will. And it's also a good reminder that, you know, for public figures or elected officials, the standard is far higher than commentary about individual citizens. And I think. We focus on elected officials anyway. John, Nish Coleslaw00 wants to know, what are your favorite podcasts, let's say non-crooked media, and newsletters that you look forward to consuming each week?
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Ezra's on a one name basis for you, like Madonna. Everyone knows Ezra. Okay.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I really like Hard Fork, Casey Newton, and Kevin Roos over at the New York Times. I'm happy to say that we talked about us having that show on our network, and then they jilted us and dumped us and went for the New York Times.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Great writer, too. I love this show, Pardon My Take. It's a Barstool sports show. Newsletters, I don't know. Besides Message Box, I'm not a huge... newsletter consumer? They go to my inbox and I forget to get to them.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, it is hard. There's a lot to read. Final question from That's Nick. Can you share some thoughts on Gavin Newsom's podcast, Good, Bad, or Anything in Between? First of all, work in progress. He's had, what, two or three episodes? Yeah. I've listened to two. I've not listened to Tim Walz. I have no problem with him interviewing people on the right, even the far right.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I think the execution could use a lot of work. We don't need a kind of wonky conversation with Steve Bannon about tariffs. We need to mix it up a little more, push back. call him out on some of his shit. And again, I'm not saying this cause like our liberal ears are offended by Steve talking.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
It's well, I think what Gavin was really good at in the last couple of years is going on Fox and mixing it up and punching and counter-punching and the same as his debate with DeSantis. And I just want to see a little more of that energy and less kind of interview podcast energy.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, and both of us have spent a bunch of time with Gavin Newsom off the record. And he's like a super engaging, funny, competitive. Very smart. Smart guy. Like facts and figures just fly out of his mouth all the time. And so he's someone who actually I think could be really good at this format and probably will be. um, we sucked at this job when we started. Yeah.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah. Steve, Steve Bannon, who I, I full disclosure, I've texted to try to get him to come on the show. I'm still thinking about whether it would work. He's a professional propagandist, so he's going to be someone who's very difficult to debate. Yeah. And it's challenging, but I think it's a good skill to learn. It is a good skill to learn and it's good to mix it up. I will say I, um,
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I'm looking for a venue for what you were just describing, which is conversations with people you disagree. I hate debates. I don't like the debate format, like the Jubilee stuff. It's interesting. Like Sam Cedar did a great job. He did a great job. It was compelling. He's super smart. He's got all these facts like at the ready, but I don't,
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Like, I feel no desire to own someone, let alone 30 people. I'd like to talk to someone who disagrees with me in a reasonable way and try to find some common ground. Like, I had Glenn Greenwald on Pod Save the World the other day, and I felt like the reaction from the audience was like, you guys agreed too much. I was like, well, I don't know. Glenn's smart on the First Amendment. Yeah.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, I mean, I think you're getting at something important, which is I think the Times had an analysis week where they said, actually, the real split in the Democratic Party right now isn't really even on policy. It's about how hard should we fight or not fight. And they juxtapose Gavin Newsom talking to conservatives on his podcast with like J.B.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
It's also really hard to do. Look at our phone. Yeah, it's really hard to do. Imagine you're in a conversation with your kid, with your friend, with a political opponent. In real time, you're taking in the information, you're cataloging it, you're finding in your mind why it's wrong and you're spitting back out. It's difficult to do.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, it's valuable. All right. That is it for the Q&A. Thank you again to all the Discord folks. Great questions. Great questions. It's always super fun to pop into the Discord and talk to the folks there because there's really great, well-meaning people sharing interesting information and articles, people from all over the world. So love our Discord.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Crooked.com slash friends if you want to join. Also, John, if you're only listening to our podcasts, you're missing out. Oh, yeah. Because we got full video episodes and tons of exclusive content on YouTube. Yesterday, I recorded- We have a new look here at the studio that we're experimenting with. We got a new look. We got a look in progress. Yeah. I kind of like it. Let us know what you think.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah, tell us what you think, at John Lovett. But yesterday, I recorded, me and Ben recorded a bonus Pod Save the World exclusively for YouTube with Nish Kumar from Pod Save the UK. It's great to see Nish here. He's so funny. He's so funny. He said some things about Nigel Farage that I'm not going to repeat because they're his jokes, but it's worth listening to. We talked about-
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Elon Musk banging around and screwing with British politics. It's not just Keir Starmer. He's now messing with the Reform UK party, which has four MPs in their parliament out of 650 seats. And this is what he's focused on? We're getting real niche here. Wow. Real niche. So check that out. Subscribe to the Pod Save the World YouTube. Subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Talk to you guys on Tuesday. Yeah. See you Tuesday.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Pritzker using harsh words, which I don't I don't really think there's that much of a tension there. But I think what you're getting at, let's just name a specific Gaza. There are a lot of protests of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Gaza. I understand why those protesters were there. I thought the Biden policy on Gaza was awful and immoral and indefensible, and I said as much publicly at the time.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
But I've been thinking a lot about how we should reconstitute a pro-Palestinian rights, anti-war coalition in the Trump era. And it has to be like red rose socialists to Rand Paul conservatives. Everyone is welcome under that coalition or effort to stop the war. And I think the only way you can keep it together is if we do not – tell people how to oppose the war.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
You don't have to use the word genocide to oppose this war. You don't have to be anti-Zionist to oppose this war. You can just think, I support the state of Israel, but I think this is a horrific humanitarian disaster that's not making any of us safer, that's gonna redound against the US, right?
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Right, I agree with that. And so, I mean, since the election, there has been this kind of messy debate about why we lost in 2024, but also what to do going forward. This week, this Democratic data firm called Blue Rose Research released their analysis of why Democrats lost in 2024. It was based on both, I think, like 24 million pieces of survey data and precinct level voter data.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
So like, you know, a lot of inputs here. Some of the core findings are. Hispanic, Asian, and young voters and politically disengaged voters all swung towards Trump. Democrats are losing very badly with young men, especially young white men. The gender gap is massive among young men. Democrats did not lose because of a turnout problem in 2024.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Far more difficult question, I guess, is what course corrections do we make to fix those impressions or, you know, losing young men, for example?
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Drug decriminalization efforts. It seems like there's been a body of research that it's not going well.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Welcome back to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Favreau. Is this weird for you? Me with the sticks? Honestly? Love it. Jon and I are in the studio today. Love It is on its way to Wisconsin where he's doing some campaigning for a very important judicial race. Yeah. That's cool. You and I are going to be out with Ro Khanna on Sunday. When you're hearing this, probably.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Yeah. I mean I – respect and support everyone's right to protest however they want. I also respect and support my right to tell you when you're being an idiot and making things worse. And I think if you look at efforts to defeat authoritarian movements around the world, it only works when there is the broadest possible coalition.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Most recently, there's a damn near neo-Nazi who almost became the chancellor of Austria. And only because three different parties came together to finally form a government did he get blocked from taking power.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
I did know that. There's a bunch of those customers here in this very office.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Same. Also, I feel like shrubs really got a raw deal. It's just not an appealing name. I know. You want this shrub.
Pod Save America
A Democrat’s Tough Love for His Party
Protects your data. Fruit trees? Yeah. I love a fruit tree. Living in California really opens your eyes to fruit trees. It's unheard of in New England. We got a kumquat tree.
Pod Save America
Bill Maher on Hating Donald Trump, the Far Left and 69ing
Boundless enthusiasm. Sure. Hilarious. Wow. Whip smart. This sucks. Sick body. Oh, wow. Great hair.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And it was truly a meeting unlike anything I've ever seen before. So what you're about to hear is a quick reaction episode that Ben Rhodes and I recorded for Pod Save the World. We'll be covering this again next week on Wednesday. Subscribe to Pod Save the World wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. And here is that episode. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
You sign up for something, you forget about it after the trial period ends, then you're charged month after month after month. The subscriptions are there, but you're not using them. In fact, 85% of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I'd probably love it even more now that the entire FBI is being politicized and we can't count on the justice system to protect us at all.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But John Lovett sewed it up himself. I did. Great censors.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I'm Ben Rhodes. And we are doing a little YouTube exclusive episode today based off of President Zelensky's meeting with Donald Trump just now. We were going to plan to do this regardless. But Ben, I didn't expect it to be. the worst meeting ever in the Oval Office. I'm trying to think of an example of a meeting that went worse.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
It's worth noting, like, the meeting didn't start terribly. Again, like we said, there was, like, a 30-minute pool spray. There was actually some, like, kind of chummy moments. Let's just play a quick clip of that. Because Europe really helped.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
So right there, Zelensky is talking about contributions from the Europeans to Ukraine. This is like the third time in a week that Trump has been corrected in the Oval Office about the European contribution to the Ukrainian side. Remember in the meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Macron grabs his arm and is like, actually, no. 60% of what we gave them was a grant, not a loan.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Keir Starmer made the same point yesterday, I believe, Thursday. And then Zelensky today. But, you know, it was kind of like, look, Zelensky had a look on his face where, as you said, Ben, he looked exhausted. By the end of this conversation, he looks like he wants to cry. But it didn't start terribly. Like things just escalated and got worse and worse.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, then Obama was weak because he didn't give enough support to the Ukrainians.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. So, again, this was supposed to be the pool spray before the lunch meeting, before the press conference. The Trump people ended up canceling the rest of the itinerary.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And, you know, according to the readouts they're giving to Fox News or whoever else, it sounds like the Rubio and Mike Waltz basically kicked Zelensky out of the White House and said, come back when you're ready to cut a peace deal. They were supposed to sign some sort of rare earths agreement. The text of this agreement has evolved so much over time.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I mean, there was the infamous Bibi Netanyahu Obama meeting that you and I were both in the room for, but it was nothing even close to what just happened.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Initially, it was reported as just like an extortion, the US demanding half of Ukraine's rare earths or up to $500 billion worth of rare earths. Now it seemed like there would just be some sort of joint effort to mine these rare earths and put it into a fund that would then be used for Ukrainian reconstruction. But the U.S.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
would have some sort of oversight over it and maybe get some of the profits. I don't know. I'm not sure that we'll ever know. Caitlin Collins from CNN asked a very smart question during this press conference, which is that something like 40% of Ukraine's rare earths are in the Far East. So in Russian occupied areas, she was like, Are you going to be able to get access to those?
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Who will protect those? There's been a lot of reporting today about how the mining process for these rare earth elements is unbelievably energy and labor intensive and incredibly dirty. And setting up a giant lithium mine, for example, can take a decade. So the idea that this is some sort of
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
immediate us ukrainian cooperation on the ground that serves as a de facto deterrent from the russians invading is just like sort of nonsensical on its face if you actually understand the details but uh ben i don't know that we'll ever need to know the details of this one because it doesn't seem like it's happening
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. I mean, there is a national security challenge for the US, which is that I think China has something like 70% of the rare earth element supply. They also have something like 90% of the refining capacity. So there could be a scenario where the US really needs access to these rare earth minerals. But like you just said, I mean, this is like a decade long process.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Ben, I remember having a very similar conversation about... You know, people saying there are massive deposits like trillion dollar deposits in Afghanistan that none of those have been mined even as of today. So all of this just seems like very vaporware.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, purely for show. OK, well, like we mentioned earlier, Zelensky wasn't just insulted by J.D. Vance and Rubio and Waltz and Trump. There were a bunch of moron reporters in the Oval Office because, as you might have heard. The White House is taking over control of the White House press pool.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And instead of having like real serious journalists in there from places like Reuters or Bloomberg, they're swapping in right wing zealots who are just their little propagandists. So let's hear an example of what kind of questions those people ask.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
OK, well, we'll cut to the chase and start to play you some of that. We have a very long clip and we're going to play some excerpts, pause and talk about them and play some more, because honestly, it was just impossible to cut it down. It was that. Much of a fucking train wreck. So with that, here is a clip from Zelensky and Trump's meeting in the Oval Office today, Friday, February 28th.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
one maybe something like yours yes maybe some something better i don't know we will see maybe something cheaper than yeah thank you thank you uh that was a reporter named brian glenn he's the chief white house correspondent for real america's voice uh there was a reporter from one america which is another right-wing outlet then that asked what gave you the moral courage and conviction to lead on a peace agreement
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Apparently, a reporter from TASS snuck into the Oval Office pool spray. For those who don't know, TASS is a Russian state owned news agency founded in the 1900s. So interesting move to let the Russian state owned media, you know, the country bombing TASS. the country you're meeting with into the Oval Office, right? Apparently, the White House staff said he snuck in there somehow.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
It doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their security. I'm not sure how you sneak into the Oval Office, but I don't know, man. This is bleak shit.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, I know like American politics are so unserious. It's so frustrating. But this moment really drove home for me. I just I can imagine, you know, this is an existential meeting for the people of Ukraine and for Zelensky, literally. And, you know, suddenly he's getting berated about his appearance. I mean, it's just like truly outrageous.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
So, Ben, I mean, the big picture question is like, where do we go from here? because this meeting was a disaster. I mean, I'm sure Zelensky will try to kind of mop it up. He's doing a TV appearance with Brett Baer on Fox News later tonight that I think he knows will be a sort of a direct line back into the Oval Office to communicate with Trump. It's been interesting to watch this week.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
You had Macron, Keir Starmer and Zelensky all have White House meetings and then all go on Brett Baer's show. It's become kind of the the car wash equivalent. Like when you go to ESPN, you do like a bunch of shows. Now, Brett bears the car wash, but yesterday Putin was speaking.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
He was praising the new minute us administration for quote pragmatism, a realistic worldview, discarding many of stereotypes, so-called rules and messianic ideological cliches of their predecessors. You had Dimitri Medvedev cheering and tweeting in English about how great it was to see the Lenski treated like shit.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And then yesterday, when Trump was meeting with Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, Trump refused to say that the U.S. would backstop a European peacekeeping force if one were to be put in Ukraine after some sort of peace deal. He also seemed to once again suggest the U.S. wasn't fully committed to Article 5 when he was asked about it. He was like, oh, the Brits, they don't need much help.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
They can take care of themselves. And then at one point he said to Keir Starmer, Could you take on Russia by yourselves? You know, like kind of joking, but not really. So I don't know. Pretty dark, man. Like, where do you think we go from here?
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. I mean, look, the more we learned about the rare earths agreement, the more it just seemed like nothing, you know, like initially just sounded like complete extortion. And now I don't even know what it was. I do think, you know, to your question, we should ask, like, did Zelensky screw up?
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I think I give him like all like I have so much sympathy for him, but I think the answer is kind of, of course, he did. I mean, challenging J.D. Vance. getting into that pissing match. Like it, like we, we can look at inputs in DC. People look at inputs too much and they don't look at outputs.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Like the end result of that meeting was a fucking disaster for Zelensky personally, politically, and for his country. So obviously he should have approached it differently. I think the challenge is he's got politics. Trump's got politics, right?
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Like he's not going to walk in there and make a bunch of sort of rhetorical concessions to Putin, uh, before negotiations actually begun a negotiation that he's not part of, by the way. And again, Trump just wouldn't broke any dissent or, you know, actually, like he mocked Zelensky at one point for saying, I don't want to ceasefire.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But Zelensky's point was like, not that I don't want the fighting to stop. He was like, I don't want to ceasefire where Putin then breaks it over and over again and reinvades my country. So, I mean, look, we'd be, like, I think, dishonest if we said that Zelensky had played that thing perfectly or even remotely well. But I do think it was a setup for domestic consumption here in the U.S.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
You're right, though. This is really tough for Zelensky because he showed unbelievable, incredibly inspiring courage in the very early days of that war. And by just sort of like force of personality, brought the entire world to his side, helped rally support in the US, in Europe, everywhere, like public opinion, in capitals, everywhere.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And if he is seen now as having kind of lost that touch, I mean, I'm sure the shine faded during the Biden administration when a lot of Ukrainians felt like they were getting some of what they wanted, but getting it late and getting it slow and not getting enough of it.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But this meeting, I think, is probably going to... I mean, maybe it'll rally people to his side, but it might also make them wonder whether... he's the right person to be the interlocutor with the United States when they're so reliant on us. So a very challenging political moment for him personally, as well as for the country.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. OK, stop. This is the worst OK, stop episode in history. So what you can hear there is Zelensky does this wind up where he's talking about how we can't trust Putin to implement a ceasefire because he breaks every agreement he's ever signed.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. One of many we've been covering recently. Well, I'm very glad that we decided to do this. I had no idea how horrendous it was going to be, but great to get to talk to you, Ben.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I know. I did too. Trying to explain why that was important. All right. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Subscribe to Pod Save the World if you're not already. I'd really appreciate it. And we'll be out with a new Pod Save America on Tuesday.
Pod Save America
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And actually, I was just watching Mike Pompeo on Fox News talking about how the United States pulled out of all these arms control agreements during the first Trump administration because Trump because Putin was breaking the terms of the deal. But, you know, it was hard to tell exactly what kind of sets the meeting off here, Ben. But I do think J.D.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Vance is kind of the chief arsonist because Zelensky pretty quickly calls him out and is like, OK, you seem to know a lot about my country. Have you ever been there? And obviously, obviously, J.D. Vance has not. And he flips out about it and just, I guess, says that any visit to Ukraine is a propaganda tour now.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And so whenever we go to the Favreau's house, Luca literally sprints as fast as she can into their home directly for the dog bowl because she wants to steal Leo's sundae. So that's how you know it's good. Unlike other fresh dog food, sundaes does not require refrigeration or preparation because they're air drying processed. You just pour and serve.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But just to be clear, this meeting was ostensibly about signing some sort of deal between the U.S. and Ukrainians about rare earth minerals. In reality, it seems like it was a setup to get to exactly this moment. So J.D. Vance and Donald Trump could harangue Zelensky in front of the cameras and show what a tough guy they are and, you know, beat their chest on Fox News later.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But Ben, I'm glad you mentioned this. uh, Bucha because, you know, that's another triggering thing for me because you often hear these same conservatives, actually Democrats to talk about how there were some early peace talks between the Ukrainians and the Russians, but they blew up and they often blame Zelensky for pulling out of those talks.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
In fact, those talks blew up because the atrocities that occurred at Bucha were revealed and it became impossible for anyone in Ukraine to imagine cutting a deal with Putin and the Russians in that moment.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, I mean, look, you're you're Trump being offended by reality and people insulting Zelensky is going to be a theme of this thing. The press corps even gets in on the action. But we'll get to that in a minute. But let's keep rolling that clip.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
just gave up the whole game there. They are offended by a campaign period visit by Zelensky to Pennsylvania, which was perceived as an endorsement or support for Joe Biden.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Geez, Ben, I wonder why Zelensky might have thought he'd be better off if Joe Biden was president or Kamala Harris was president and not Donald Trump as he's lecturing him in the Oval Office about how he's gambling and about to start World War III.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Trump is pulling out support for NATO, which has prevented World War Three.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Go to sundays4dogs.com slash world or use code world at checkout. That's sundays4dogs.com slash world, code world. Hey guys, it's Tommy Vitor. By now you've probably all seen footage of the disastrous meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Friday.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Trump is mad. It's earlier on in this Oval Office meeting because this was a very, very long pool spray. And just to give folks a little context, what usually happens is the two leaders go into the Oval Office. They sit down. You bring the pool, the White House press pool in for like a minute or two. Sometimes there's a shadow question.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
They take photos and then they get them the hell out of there. They have the real meeting. There was supposed to be a lunch and then there was supposed to be a press conference. Trump has started doing this thing where he takes like 45 minutes worth of questions during the pool spray, and then they do the press conference just because he needs to be on TV all the time.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
So what you didn't hear that happened earlier was, you know, Trump's entire shtick about Ukraine is the war never would have happened if he was president. But Zelensky, when he was walking through all the times the Russians...
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
broke ceasefire agreements, talks about how the Russians were occupying Ukraine throughout the duration of the Trump presidency and people were getting killed during the Trump presidency.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Trump really didn't like that because it undercut his whole fucking argument that none of this would have happened if I were in charge because he acts like he wasn't actually the president for four years and isn't responsible for anything.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
JD Vance is like sitting on the edge of his seat. He's the happiest little boy in town because he was allowed to go to the big boy meeting and say something. And Marco Rubio.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
They were supposed to do a quick pool spray, which is when the press comes in, shots a question and leaves, and then have a meeting about rare earth minerals, hold a press conference, and then figure out the future of the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship. But instead, Trump and J.D. Vance erupted on Zelensky. They ended up throwing the Ukrainian delegation out of the White House.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
every photo of marco rubio that i've seen in the context of these these russia ukraine talks he looks like his soul is is drifting out of his body in that moment he looks like he's dead inside he knows what is happening is so profoundly wrong but he just sits there silently and then afterwards tweets an attaboy at the boss and look there's all these reports that uh rubio is like the secretary of state in name only and actually has a bunch of little
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
kind of nag a supplicant to who work for him on the org chart, but are actually running the show over at State. So who knows?
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Well, let's listen to the rest of this clip.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Trump ends the meeting later and says, this is going to be great television. So again, giving up the game. This is all about politics for them. They don't care about Ukraine. They don't actually care about anything Zelensky said. This is just domestic politics.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So if the rise of China is like the big agreed upon bipartisan risk to the United States over the next century, this seems like the dumbest possible way to tackle it.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if the tariffs are successful, prices will go up no matter what prices are going to go up. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And then you're going to hear my conversation with James Surowiecki about the substance of Trump's tariffs announcement and why basically every economist seems to think that the way these tariffs were calculated was just complete nonsense. We'll also talk a bit about the stock market reaction.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
James has written about economics for outlets like Fast Company, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and is the author of the book, The Wisdom of Crowds. So stick around for that. And then after the interview with James, Emma and I are going to talk about how a fringe right wing conspiracy theorist is making personnel changes on Trump's national security team.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And then the Democrats big win in Wisconsin, the state of the party and progressive media.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
James Surowiecki, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me on. So let's just start with the basics. What did President Trump announce yesterday?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. Both John and Dan are away this week. Happy Liberation Day to them. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to mix things up a little bit in what has turned into a wild news week, thanks to President Trump's announcement about tariffs and subsequent stock market crash. So joining me today as my co-host is the excellent Emma Vigeland.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah. Can you explain that? I mean, I think the math was basically the US trade deficit with each country divided by the imports from that country. And they declared that the resulting percentage was, quote, tariff charge to the USA, including currency manipulation and trade barriers. This was described by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Twitter,
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
As quote, this is to economics, what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. As I mentioned to you before we started recording, I basically failed the last econ class I took. So could you just explain this to a dumb person?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
She's the co-host of The Majority Report with Sam Seder and one of the smartest political analysts out there. Emma, great to see you. Welcome to the show.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Just a quick question on trade deficits. First of all, what is the 30-second explanation of what a trade deficit is? And why do you think Trump thinks it's bad? And what is the reality of the nature of a trade deficit?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
I'm very excited to have you on. We are going to talk about the politics of Trump's tariffs, the Democratic Party's big win in Wisconsin, some signs of hope about how Democrats are fighting back and how to fix some of these lingering divisions between the moderate and more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Do you think we can heal the wounds from 2016 today? Can we finally do it?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, and there was a suggestion that they may have done this math using chat GPT. Have you seen this? I did see this.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
JP Morgan wrote that Trump's announcement would raise just under $400 billion in revenue or 1.3% of GDP, which would be the largest tax increase since the Revenue Act of 1968, which was used to pay for the Vietnam War, a bunch of great society programs, like a lot of spending. Who is going to bear that cost?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And is there a credible argument in your view that this could bring back manufacturing jobs?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
We're going to move the needle. I mean, jokes aside, I'm really excited to talk to you about this. Because I know you come from more of the DSA, Bernie wing of the party, but you are also pragmatic and constructive and smart and thoughtful. So I just appreciate that about you. And I think... It's a good balance in the show and a good conversation to have and a timely one.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
I think that is the key point, which is that all these companies just want to know what the rules of the road are going to be one years, two years, five years down the road so they can make massive CapEx investments. We're recording this. It's now 1126 a.m. Pacific on Thursday. The S&P 500 is down, holy shit, 4.28%.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That suggests, wow, that suggests that Wall Street analysts were very, very wrong in their predictions about what Trump was going to announce because, you know, they were trading flat for a while. It seemed like they thought Trump would delay the tariffs or announce something more minimal or have a bunch of carve outs like he did last time for big companies or sectors.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Did that whiff by Wall Street surprise you?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, he just fundamentally doesn't seem to believe in the fact that there can be win-win transactions where I give you money for a thing and I'm happy that I have the thing and not sad that you took my money.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So you guys are also going to hear my conversation with a longtime economics writer named James Surowiecki about the details of Trump's tariffs and why the White House's tariff math just made no sense. Then you're going to hear my interview with Susan Rice. We recorded that on Wednesday. She's the former National Security Advisor, Ambassador to the U.N., White House Domestic Policy Council Chair.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
James Sirwicki, thank you so much for doing the show. I really appreciate it.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
We talk about Signalgate, Trump appeasing Russia, RFK's assault on our public health, and a lot more. And then finally, at the end of the show, you're going to hear just a brief interview of a conversation I had with my friend Ashley Parker. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And Ashley wrote this beautiful, funny, tearjerker of an essay about miscarriage and pregnancy loss, which longtime listeners of the show might know is something that unfortunately my wife Hannah and I have also experienced. So that full conversation is available on the Pod Save America YouTube. I hope you'll give it a listen, but you can hear an excerpt of it at the end of this episode.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So like I said, a packed show, but a great one. So let's start with the tariffs. On Wednesday, President Trump made an appearance in the Rose Garden. He announced his long awaited tariffs on basically every country he says treats America poorly on trade. The specifics here were a big mystery until the moment he announced them with his big stupid charts, and they were far worse than expected.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Trump announced a baseline 10% tariff on all U.S. imports, far steeper tariffs on countries Trump declared were the worst offenders, including some of our closest allies like the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and others. China got hit with a 54% tariff. They're vowing retaliation.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Back to Congress. So good. It makes me so happy.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That's all we got. That's all we got. Well, let's talk about the Democratic Party, because ever since November, the Democratic Party, we've been engaged in some recriminations, some infighting. Yes. But also, I think a pretty good faith bit of soul searching about who we are and how to run going forward.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And more recently, the debate has been less about policy or ideological lines and more about how hard to fight. So I assume you're on you're on team fight and team fight very hard. Of course. If so, what are you seeing out there that feels smart tactically or, I don't know, is just genuinely inspiring you?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And to make matters worse and more confusing, Trump's 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars also went into effect on Thursday. So in total, about 90 countries will be affected, including a number of uninhabited islands. So we're going to stick it to those fucking penguins. So we're recording this on Thursday afternoon Pacific time. Markets have closed for the day. The S&P dropped nearly 5%.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Trump got asked about the stock market dip at the White House today next to the roaring helicopter engines, as always, and responded with some new spin. Let's listen.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And we had a candidate for a long time who was just self-evidently too old. But to your point about resting on his laurels, one person who was not resting on his laurels this week was Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. He delivered a marathon 25-hour speech on the Senate floor.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Booker broke the record for the longest floor speech in history, which had been held by a horrible racist senator named Strom Thurmond when he was trying to block civil rights legislation. Here's a clip of what Cory Booker had to say during part of this long speech.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So my view on Cory Booker, on Bernie and AOC doing the town halls, Ro Khanna's town halls, all the members of Congress and in the Senate who are filming vertical video and clearly not comfortable with it and don't want to be doing anymore. It's like, good for you. Keep putting up shots. I'm proud of you guys. More is more. I think the point you made earlier is the most important one, which is
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
We worry way too much about what we say and not about whether what we say is reaching people and breaking through is the hardest part. So we just got to keep putting shots on goal.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
To your point about a simple message, my constructive criticism for Cory Booker would be, again, I'm really glad he did this, but my one note to him would be like, it was not always clear to me what he was filibustering about, like what the core simple message was or purpose of the filibuster.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
A lot of the messaging I saw was about the fact that he did it, which of course is cool and I'm proud of him and I think it's awesome. But it's you know, I think we need to be like, look, the State of the Union protest was you don't have a mandate to cut Medicare. Right. Right. Standing up there shaking his what's his name? God, I'm forgetting his name.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Jesus Christ. Al Green. Al Green. You don't have a mandate to cut Medicare. Booker's. Booker's was less clear to your point earlier, too. I mean. I think Democrats do worry a bit about expectations management. I know you heard that a lot early on. We have no power. We don't have the Senate. We don't have the House.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Even the Tim Walz comments you mentioned earlier about how voters are going to be expecting universal Medicare. On the part of me, the angel on my shoulder, that makes me excited because I would love to see us move to a universal system.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
The anxious political operative on my shoulder thinks back to, you know, the 2020, 2019 debates where we were all fighting about how fast we were going to implement Medicare for all, right? And like, ultimately, the votes were just not there. The political will wasn't necessarily there.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So I don't want to like raise people's expectations and then let them down and have another generation of people feeling like, oh, the fucking Democrats, you know, they promised so much. and they don't deliver. But I guess right now in this moment, all I want to see is people fighting and doing things and like putting their hearts out there and making the case.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And I think that's why I thought what Cory Booker did was good.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
What pristine audio. Emma, Trump has clearly made inroads with blue collar voters in the last couple of elections, especially in communities that were hit hard by NAFTA or other free trade agreements. He believes that tariffs are how he can convince those communities that he cares about them and that he's fighting for them. How do you think Democrats should respond to that?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, he was self-evidently too old. And there was a suggestion in 2019 in a Politico story that he would be a one-term president and viewed himself as a bridge to the next generation. I think all of us bought into that and believed it. And I think the 2022 midterms happened. The White House started to believe its own spin and decided that only Joe Biden could win again.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And then, you know, you're reading... don't want to belabor these books, but there's all these Biden books coming out. And you're starting to read anecdotes about top aides in the Biden campaign talking about how disastrous the debate prep was and how Biden had no second term agenda and couldn't articulate what he wanted to do.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And then also at the same time saying that it was wrong for him to have dropped out or to have gotten pushed out. And I'm just like, how can you possibly believe that? It's like it was not only Joe Biden. I mean, the the the sin was Joe Biden running for reelection. But then the month between the fucking debate and him dropping out just absolutely screwed.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Kamala Harris foreclosed any chance of doing some sort of mini primary type thing. that made her, I think she ultimately would have been the nominee no matter what, but that would have made it look like it came through a legitimate process and not this coronation via a Joe Biden statement. He just sort of screwed us throughout that whole time period.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And, you know, frankly, they kind of kneecapped her publicly in the days following the debate performance by releasing that memo that crapped on a lot of people, including me. Congrats. But, you know, talked about how all the polling showed that Joe Biden was beating all of his rivals, including Kamala Harris. I was like, guys, you're shitting on your own vice president. What are you doing here?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But anyway, so the final question for you, like the flip side of our mostly happy, mostly constructive talk is there are some corners of the Internet, mostly Twitter, where it feels like 2016 never ended. It's like 2016 Groundhog Day. You see, you know, moderates pointing the finger at leftists and blaming them for election losses.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
You see the kind of more red rose DSA crew angry that liberals are punching left or suggesting that anyone who doesn't hold, you know, the kind of like the maximalist policy position is a sellout or a corporate stooge or whatever. How do you think we get past this?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Like, can we heal these divides or is it just the reality that intra-party fighting always feels and is the worst because it's your friends fighting with your friends?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, I'm with you. Like a shared vision of boldness, candidates that look like they're fighting. Barack Obama ran on, you know, not taking PAC money and a whole bunch of efforts to clean up Washington in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandals of 2006, which old heads might remember.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
I totally agree with you that economic inequality is completely out of control and figuring out some just clear, simple formulation for how you're going to get it in line, whether it's a billionaire's tax, whether it's Elizabeth Warren, you know, two percent of assets, whatever it might be. And then I do think like for the next four years, we just have to go about.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
coalition building where we're all mindful of the need to build the biggest possible tent. The coalition to end the war in Gaza in the Trump era has to include the isolationist, Rand Paul, Republican types, and then the far left. And those of us who care about the people in Gaza can't be purists. We can't say that you have to say the word genocide to be a part of this coalition.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
You can't say you have to believe exactly what I believe because that's just bad politics, right? The lesson-
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Look, no, I'm not arguing that. I've been opposed to this war from the very beginning. I'm talking about the way we talk about issues, the way we decide who can be part of a coalition or a movement and just making sure it's as broad as possible because authoritarian movements everywhere, they do well when the opposition, the left usually, is divided.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That's how they succeed because they rarely get 50% of the vote. They're like, winning with pluralities at like 43, 44%, you know, sort of Trumpian numbers. And I think it's just a good lesson to learn. But we covered a lot of ground, Emma. Thank you so much for doing the show today. It was great talking with you. I really appreciate it and hope to do it again soon.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
So thanks so much. Thank you. Okay. We're going to take a quick break before we get to my interview with Susan Rice. But before we do, I just wanted to say that we would be really grateful if you subscribed to the Pod Save America YouTube channel. You guys are probably seeing all these reports and studies about how Democrats are getting crushed by conservatives on YouTube.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That is a real problem because a lot of people, especially young people, use YouTube primarily as a search engine. And what they find is right wing garbage. So please subscribe to Pod Save America. Help us grow. Help us get good information pushed into the YouTube algorithm. And also, as long as I have the mic here and Dan and John can't stop me, subscribe to Pod Save the World.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
my foreign policy show with Ben Rhodes. We talk about the biggest stories in the world every week and how they intersect with policy in Washington. New episodes of Pod Save the World drop every Wednesday. Okay, when we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Susan Rice.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
My guest today served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to President Obama, and as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council. Susan Rice, great to see you.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
All right, Susan, we're talking on Wednesday, April 2nd, which is Liberation Day, according to Donald Trump. Speaking of liberation, though, last night, Democrats finally got a win both electorally and spiritually, thanks to the good people of Wisconsin. Susan Crawford crushed her Republican opponent in the state Supreme Court race there.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
How are you feeling about how the Democrats are fighting back now that we're a few months into Trump 2.0?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
How do you not pee for 25 hours? How do you not pee for 25 hours? I don't mean to focus on the stupid shit, but come on.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
You know, credit to him. Like, I like I love seeing people trying like fight in your own way.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah. Speaking of physical vigor, what territory do you think will annex in Trump's third term? Will it be like Mexico to make it easy logistically? Are we going to go for a nice island like New Zealand or Tasmania? How are you thinking about this?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And when you're ready to travel, Built points can be converted to your favorite miles and hotel points around the world, meaning your rent can literally take you places. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, what are you waiting for? Start paying rent through Built and take advantage of your neighborhood benefits by going to joinbuilt.com slash crooked.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, it always starts as trolling. Then he starts to believe his own trolling. And so I take it seriously. But mostly it just pisses me off. Like, hey, buddy, I don't think your approval rating is going to be at a place where you're going to be able to win a third term. But that's just me.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, I mean, it really is remarkable. I mean, Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada, gave a speech last week where he basically was like, the old cooperation, the old relationship with the United States is now dead. I think a lot of the reaction you're seeing, which I'm hearing from people too, Canadians are genuinely really pissed and angry. And a lot of that is the 51st state
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But there is the economic piece. I mean, we're recording this before we learn what Liberation Day actually means in practice in terms of the tariffs. But Donald Trump is talking about crushing their economy. And we should just be clear that if we crush the Canadian economy, that will irreparably harm our economy, too.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
No, no, we were not signing up for a fight with Canada. It's just crazy. So as I said at the top, you were President Obama's National Security Advisor for several years.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
In the last week or two, we learned that Mike Waltz, who's Donald Trump's national security advisor, he's been holding principal committee meetings about bombing Yemen on Signal, which is a commercially available communications app.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
The Washington Post reported that Waltz and his staff have also been using Gmail for government work, including sharing, quote, highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, end quote.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And we learned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been bringing his spouse to meetings with his foreign counterparts. Susan, what the fuck? What are the national security implications of this just like reckless behavior?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, I mean, McKinley's so hot right now. I mean, I wish he wasn't, but there's just a lot of McKinley emulation happening in the Republican Party. You're right, though. I was just watching a speech by Rand Paul, who was like, hey, this is a massive tax increase, and you're trying to do it through this bizarre tariff authority that has never been used before, and you're going around Congress.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
to over 2.39 million people over the coming three years. Does that sound like a man who's preparing for peace? No, this is a guy dramatically escalating and growing his military and preparing for conflict.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, who just don't seem to care. Last question for you. The Trump administration just pulled Elise Stefanik's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N. There's some reporting today in Politico and other places that the Trump administration has reached out to a bunch of people about taking the job and they've sort of said thanks, but no thanks. It seems like
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Like, none of this is acceptable by the book or how it's supposed to go. And to your point about... the timeline of revving up American manufacturing, you're hearing some people say, well, you know, there's auto plants in the Midwest that are operating at 60% capacity and those could go up to 80 or 90 or 100. You're hearing that even from Sean Fain from the UAW. Right.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
given the names have been floated, that this role will primarily be focused on running interference for Israel and kind of browbeating countries Trump doesn't like. But you were the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Can you just make the case for why this role is important, why it's still important under the Trump administration, how bizarre it is that they can't seem to fill the billet?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, you're probably going to get sent up there to destroy the organization from within to the extent that you can. Maybe you'll get invited to the Signal Chat, though. That could be cool. Susan, great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show and really appreciate this tour of the world we just did.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And finally, here's a quick excerpt of my conversation with Ashley Parker about pregnancy loss. You can listen to the rest of this conversation on the Pod Save America YouTube channel and read her essay at The Atlantic. So one thing I also want to talk about in the piece that is really important
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
is you talk about how after miscarriage, one thing that often happens involves a procedure called the DNC. A lot of people probably don't know what a DNC is, but I won't get into all the detail. You can if you want, but it's essentially indistinguishable from an abortion. And knowing that, having sat through
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
multiple DNCs with Hannah was part of what made like the recent abortion political debate so infuriating to me because very often, you know, women who desperately want to have kids can't and they have to have an abortion. They have to have a DNC to protect their own health, to preserve their ability to have children in the future. But some of the more draconian laws that were passed in states are
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But I was talking to an expert on Monday. He was like, I'm not so sure that that capacity is going to be filled by human beings as opposed to robots. And also like retooling and revving back up these factories, even if they exist already, can take a really long time. So I'm with you. It feels like it's pie in the sky to me.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
essentially require women to be literally near death before doctors are allowed to treat them. And Ashley, I couldn't help but imagine like if Hannah and I went through the pain of the pregnancy loss and then we went to a doctor and the doctor was like, hey man, sorry, I can't help you until her organs are failing. Like I would have been in jail for homicide.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
You know, that was kind of my reaction.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
I had not even thought about it that way. Like if you are pregnant, should you travel to Texas? I mean, that is Jesus Christ was happening in this country. Yeah. And just in your defense, I mean, I don't think you depend. I didn't I didn't know what a DNC was until I learned about it after we we needed one. I didn't know that there was I think people think miscarriage.
Pod Save America
Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Like they think the movies, right? Like blood in a toilet. Right. That's not what it is. It's a really painful and at times it can be a scarring procedure that can prevent you from having kids in the future.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Joinbuilt.com slash crooked to sign up for Built today.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
That's our show for today. Thanks again to Emma for coming in. Thanks to Susan Rice for coming by. Thank you, Ashley Parker, for talking with me for YouTube.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Love It will be back in the feed on Sunday with a special interview with Michael Lewis, the culture-changing author of Moneyball, The Big Short, and countless other great books about his new book on the people that make the government work and why he thinks Elon Musk has no idea what he's doing. You don't want to miss it.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, I was just watching Fox News and there was a host named Will Kane who was doing a segment who was like, look, today the markets are down, the S&P is down, the NASDAQ, the Dow. But what do we mean by down? And then he threw up a zoomed out chart of the market that went back like one year or five years.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
And boy, you know, the cope is strong when these guys are doing a five year chart of the S&P 500 and be like. We're doing like a what's the definition of is kind of conversation a la Bill Clinton in the 90s. It didn't feel like they're on their strongest footing.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But on the Democratic Party piece of this, do you think it's enough to make the argument that you're making, which I find very compelling, by the way, because it's true, against tariffs that there are regressive backdoor way to raise taxes on people? Or does that need to be married up with some sort of positive agenda, even if we have no power at the federal level for four years?
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Yeah, it's worth noting. I mean, on Thursday, Senator Chuck Grassley, who's a senior Republican, and Maria Cantwell, who's a very senior Democrat, introduced a bill that would require approval from Congress for all tariffs within 60 days. Congress also passed a more limited measure regarding tariffs on Canada.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
Now, pretty big open question of whether the House of Representatives would ever call up a bill like this, even if it passed the Senate. I consider me skeptical. But the other piece of this that I just wanted to hit on quickly is, What's so kind of bizarre about this tariff announcement is Trump ran on the threat from China.
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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market
But instead of focusing on China with his tariffs, we are taking this broad based approach. We're tariffing all of our closest allies. And then earlier this week, we're reading reports that Countries like Japan, South Korea were meeting with China trilaterally for the first time in five years to discuss how to coordinate their response to US tariffs. That was according to Chinese state media.
Pod Save America
Will Elon Find the Epstein Files Before It's Too Late?
Beam Dream is good. Tastes really good. Yeah.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
a take so bad it might get you in thrown in jail uh in sarah longwell's defense she was right there i mean seltzer has historically been right she has been someone who's been willing to put out polls that did not match the herded class but yeah it ended up being very very wrong look we we all saw we were getting on a plane to uh to vegas from phoenix and we were uh we were cheering
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I love making up your own system. It's like a it's like a degenerate gambler. It's like I always hit on red sevens.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I mean, it wasn't an original thought. It was sort of the dumbest thing you could pull for in the moment.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
That guy's, I think, I believe, fully red-pilled now. Oh, that checks out. That checks.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty white. That one wins for me because it's when you when you think of the most ridiculous theory, Joe Biden should not run for reelection as racist. I think is number one.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Right. The Commission on Presidential Debates was formed in 1987. This wasn't like the founding fathers. What are we talking about here?
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think if Travis had just left out that one clause about the makeup of the consultant class, he had a great point, which is we didn't do great with young men this cycle.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
My favorite part is when Vivek pretends he's an equal partner in this Doge thing. Yeah. Yeah, just like he's like, you know, Elon walks around with his kid on his shoulders at all times. That's a little silly guy.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You'll be on the lawsuit. I don't like your collective tone.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Look, Joe Biden shouldn't have run again. The hard part about this was what people don't remember is in the 2020 primary, there was also a conversation about Joe Biden's age. I think we all were on the side that he was probably too old to be running then. Said as much on the show. He won the primary. That made them very angry. They didn't speak to us for four years.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And so in the midterms happened, I think Joe Biden took the wrong message from in 2022 that Democratic success in a midterm when a bunch of completely. Outside the mainstream, crazy Republicans ran for Senate seats and lost like Dr. Oz, that it meant that the White House was strong, that he should run for election. And that was some sort of indication of his political strength.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Obviously, it was not. But I felt like from my position, like I was wrong in 2020. Who am I going to tell the incumbent president not to run for president? in that moment outside some sort of like major event or indication.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
We talked a thousand times about the polling about his age, concerns about it. We would constantly ask the question, how do you fix this? And I think almost every one of those conversations started with, I don't know that it is fixable, but if it is, here are the things I would try to do. They didn't really try to do any of those things because obviously there's been all this reporting now that
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Keeping a full schedule was challenging for the president, et cetera, et cetera. So we don't have to belabor all of this, but that's kind of the backstory that people don't remember.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, it's funny that Elon Musk does a lot of business in China, a lot of factories, a lot of Teslas would want restrictions on U.S. outbound investment in China to get knocked out of the bill.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, the only problem with it is it's got to be some percentage performance art, right? They know what they're doing. They know this is so crazy and ridiculous it's going to get me clicks.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Right. That's that's like the tour. I know this is new to you, but yeah, it's not new. Right.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Not anti-vaccine, I just think it will kill you, which I will repeat to everyone I see. Boy, do I feel safe.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
This is- This is a good example of where we need members of Congress to for once be really disciplined at his confirmation hearing and not give speeches and just be like prosecutors narrowing in, asking him question after question to try to get him to say what he really thinks. Because he's also said that he thinks the polio vaccine killed many, many more people than polio ever did.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You know, he says things like he has this veneer of just asking questions or I'm, you know, I just want more data or research. But underneath that are really radical views and they just got to tease him out of them.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, that would be great. He'll be good. He'll be very good on this. By the way, if the J6 committee goes to jail, we should produce a song with them.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think vaccines for me. No. Oh, well, not to the fun. Take this. Not dogs and cats.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
No, that's fine. I imagine more of a rusted root, Dan, if we're being honest.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
For love it. I mean. Selling nitrous balloons and.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, no. I think Kristi Noem is a potential favorite to be the vice presidential nominee. Electoral benefits of South Dakota? There are none. But I do think the Trump campaign knows that abortion is likely to be the single biggest headwind for their campaign. They want diversity on the ticket. That could be gender based. That could also be racial diversity.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think they'll ultimately decide that Donald Trump is going to need to peel off some of the suburban women that he has lost to Joe Biden. They're going to need to try to push back on concerns about stripping away abortion access. She's terrible on the policy, but I do think they're going to view it as an identity. This is a great take. This is a totally fine take.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
This was before the puppy killing thing came out. Key context. The puppy murder. And this was me and Brian Tyler Cohen ranking 10 different candidates. So we had to make a case for everyone we chose.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Well, the adrenochrome was really flying around at that point.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Squeeze their nuts while you judge them so they don't move.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
All of us are really taking this well and not at all getting defensive about our taste. I didn't go off for five minutes about how I was on a different show.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Political science isn't science. And I think you have to allow for uncertainty. And when you speak in such definitive ways, I think you really leave yourself open to being punched down or up. Yeah.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Maybe the one from the live stream he did that night where he was like, ah.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Next year, I want to skip this recording again so that I cannot be held accountable once again. I somehow got on a list that has led me to get dozens of cold emails from random tech consultants. I want to find that list. destroy it and destroy whoever created it.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think what happened is I decided to come in just being a jackass with jokes and you guys were serious and it kind of changed the vibe.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
The irony of you saying this, Dan, is you write books. I wrote books.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Unbelievable. We thought we'd get a little more mileage out of them, but it turns out it's short but sweet. Like the Viagra of Etsy purchases, you know, one-time deal.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You know it doesn't make you feel good. What's the goal? Talk to me.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Who are the big CRM managers? Salesforce. Salesforce. Coming for them, coming for your tower. I want to talk to more smart people off air, experts. Talk to a really smart guy about Sudan and Somaliland today. I could elaborate if you guys want to hear more about it. I love it. Classic Tommy resolution.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
It's really helpful to talk to these very smart, nerdy, nice people and just do it to get smarter on background. That's the thing I like doing. I want to get good at using AI tools. I tried to use ChatGPT to write me a list of resolutions and I failed. So I want to get better at that.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
So Tommy, experts and AI. Experts. Maybe there's some overlap there.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, we'll see who wins. Let us know. Pick your fighter. Finally, I've been reading a book about mindfulness meditation, but I haven't been doing it. I think it'd be good to do it. It's good for you. Okay.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And beautiful performances. And the performances. Incredible.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Well, that's just premature. If only, if only. You got the top right, you're just wrong. Not the primary, the general.
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The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Who was the first one? The first one was the worst, right?
Pod Save America
Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
Well, yeah, I think you make an important point at the top, which is that the Israeli government has not voted on the deal yet. And a far right member of the Netanyahu coalition just announced he might remove himself from the government. So things are pretty precarious. Tony Blinken said that should start being implemented on Sunday. That that would be good news. But let's hope it's right.
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Biden’s Final Warning
But I think there's just a lot of uncertainty in this deal currently. And a lot of it could fall apart before we get to the end of phase three, like you outlined earlier. Phase one, which is six weeks, and is the part that is the most fleshed out with this gradual release of prisoners, of hostages, I should say. And then the Israelis could release over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
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Biden’s Final Warning
The Israeli troops pull back from population centers. Palestinians get to go home, and then aid gets surged into the Strip. But... Phases two and three have not been finalized yet. Those start getting negotiated, I think, on the 16th day of phase one. So phase two is likely to include the return of all hostages by Hamas in exchange for more prisoners and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops.
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
And then the third phase is reconstruction. But. Joe Biden views this as a deal that will permanently end the war. I don't know that Netanyahu thinks of it in the same way. Throughout this negotiation, he has tried to reserve the right to restart fighting at the time of his choosing. And right wing lawmakers that are part of his government coalition want that to happen.
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Biden’s Final Warning
I think Netanyahu should have the votes to get it through a security cabinet and the full cabinet. But I just don't know right now. It's sort of in flux.
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Biden’s Final Warning
Yeah, there's two different votes. I think there's a security cabinet vote and then a full government cabinet vote.
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Biden’s Final Warning
So in a lot of the reporting on the deal, you'll see these background quotes from Israeli or Arab diplomats saying, this deal only got over the finish line because of Trump. Now, obviously, that is a very self-serving quote if you're a Netanyahu official or someone sitting in Qatar or Egypt because you want to curry favor with the incoming administration, not the outgoing.
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Biden’s Final Warning
But I do think Trump deserves some credit here. A lot of this basic framework of this deal, the three phases, the sequencing, et cetera, that was on the table eight months ago.
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Biden’s Final Warning
and this time in these last couple days it seems like trump through his you know steve whitcoff his new emissary was able to apply or willing to apply pressure on netanyahu's in ways that biden was not and i also think that if trump had said bb stick it to biden don't give him a deal let's not do this until i'm officially president that's would have happened so that part i think trump really does deserve some credit for that said
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Biden’s Final Warning
Biden's team negotiated this whole plan. And that's not a small thing because it's the phasing and the sequencing for how the hostages get released and where Israeli troops withdraw from and when. It's complicated stuff. And getting Hamas and Netanyahu on the same page on anything is going to be complicated. So Biden's team, they did the diplomatic spade work.
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Biden’s Final Warning
I think he also deserves credit for bringing Donald Trump into the talks. Biden could have said, I'm going to try to go it alone these last few weeks. I want 100% credit for this. But he didn't do that. He I think reportedly in that Oval Office meeting with Trump said to him, let's do this together. Let's try to get this done.
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Biden’s Final Warning
And that along with pressure from Trump has seems to have made the difference. It's also just worth pointing out that like. When Biden introduced this deal in May of last year to now, a lot has changed. Hamas has decimated. Hezbollah's decapitated. Iran is weakened.
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Biden’s Final Warning
And then on top of Trump putting pressure on the Israelis to do this deal, there's also just the reality that Netanyahu can say to the far right, hey, I know you hate this ceasefire, but Donald Trump's going to give us anything we want going forward.
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Biden’s Final Warning
I mean, I just think like he knows he has four years of dealing with this guy and Trump's out there tweeting there will be hell to pay apparently by both sides. And so he knows that, like, I think he knows he was not in the best graces with Trump when he. committed the mortal sin of congratulating Joe Biden for winning the election in 2020.
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Biden’s Final Warning
It took a while to crawl back from that being in the doghouse. And so I think Netanyahu was like, look, he can say to his right wing members of his coalition, look, we'll give him this one. If I decide to restart the war, Donald's not going to stop me.
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Biden’s Final Warning
And if we want to annex the West Bank- I was going to say, is that a- That's on the table now because a lot of Trump's biggest supporters like Miriam Adelson, who gave him- Tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaigns want the West Bank to be annexed in the next few years. So he just knows he's on better footing with Trump.
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Biden’s Final Warning
I know it's weird, right? Like in a way he kind of split the difference because they're announcing it now, but I think the release if it starts on Sunday, that's kind of timed along with the change of power. But I assumed he would do the same thing, which is just wait, try to draw the Jimmy Carter comparison directly.
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Biden’s Final Warning
no i mean yeah it's not like he's stealing his spotlight a lot no that's right and you know he is uh trump has been dispatching his many friends and surrogates to the middle east into all sorts of countries to have conversations about work that should be getting done by the current president so yeah he doesn't mind stepping on him does this make you look back at biden's record in gaza and decisions in gaza any differently
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Biden’s Final Warning
It makes me feel frustrated that more pressure wasn't brought to bear on the Israelis earlier. There are people who are smart, who I respect, who will argue with me that that never would have mattered, but I don't agree. Yeah. It seems like it could have tried, you know? Yeah.
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Biden’s Final Warning
Tech oligarchs? They're bad. Don't like them. Tech oligarchs bad. What do we think about the wobbly Statue of Liberty as an analogy, as a runner? You know, we didn't get to that, Dan.
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Biden’s Final Warning
I was going to say, yeah, somewhere outside of a wet market in D.C., someone picked up a pangolin and it evolved and morphed into an Obama cosplay. Is it too soon for fucking?
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Biden’s Final Warning
COVID joke? Fine. Okay. You can cut that if you want. Thanks, Tommy.
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Biden’s Final Warning
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
If you enjoyed our discussion, Alistair also hosts the Rest Is Politics podcast, where he and former UK Cabinet Minister Rory Stewart analyze the biggest events in global politics and explain what it is like to be in the room where it happens. I love the Rest Is Politics. It's a weekly listen for me. The Rest Is Politics covers everything from the Middle East to populism in Europe.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
It's a great listen. It's become one of the biggest podcasts of any genre in Britain. If you're a fan of our show, then you should check it out. Just search for The Rest Is Politics wherever you get your podcasts.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Hey, guys, it's Tommy. This week, I interviewed Alistair Campbell on the show. You know Alistair, John. Yeah, love Alistair. He's best known as a political strategist, press secretary, director of communications and strategy to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He's like the British David Axelrod. Yeah, that's how I shorthand it. Yeah. High praise. High praise. Very high praise.
Pod Save America
Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Our episode dug into how Alistair and Tony Blair and the Labour Party came back to power after nearly two decades of conservative rule in the UK and whether Democrats can steal some of those strategies now in 2025.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
It's everywhere. But also lots of people. It's great. It's really great. I love the peanut butter. Still my favorite to this day.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Welcome back to Pond Save America, Senator Chris Murphy. So in an interview with Greg Sargent just before the holidays, you made this point and I'll summarize it, which is basically Trump is full of shit. He has no interest in governing. It was always infrastructure week. He's at it again with this Elon Vivek government efficiency department, which isn't even a department.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And we shouldn't lend these efforts credibility, even when we as Democrats need to be the party of government reform. Can you just lay out what your argument is there?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I talked to Bernie and I was like, well, what do you think we should be doing differently right now? And that was one of the things he talked about. Like, we're not talking enough about money in politics. We're not talking enough about corruption. You have... Joe Biden with an op-ed this week about how we need to remember the insurrection.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Democrats were desperately trying to make this case about democracy, but people didn't either care enough or believe it or make it salient enough in their vote. And part of that is about credibility. Democrats need to make an argument about these kinds of issues. But part of it is message, part of it is messenger.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Do you believe Democrats have the credibility right now to be the party of taking on corporate interests, taking on money in politics? How can we just do a rebrand?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
First of all, I don't think you should put yourself down. You know that both of us went to Williams College and we both did the same Oxford program.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I did. We both went to Oxford the same year. And I just think that puts us in the perfect position to talk about populism. I think that's exactly, we're exactly right for that.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
As we're doing this, you've made this point, everyone's made this point, we're out of power. We just don't have any power for the next two years. We are critics on the outside. As we're laying out our own positive agenda, we are going to have, it seems to me, these kind of two tracks. One that's a quote-unquote...
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
normal Republican politics track where they're talking about budget reconciliation and trying to cut taxes for the wealthy and doing a border bill. And the other is the kind of even more abnormal, unhinged freaks going up for these big and important jobs ahead of national intelligence, ahead of the FBI.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
How do you think about the two sides of this coming fight, the policy battle in Congress versus fighting these terrible nominations and the threat Donald Trump poses through the Justice Department? You know, it's really funny.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah. Here's what I sort of was struggling with as I was thinking about this today, which is we need to make an argument about what we stand for whether or not Republicans are able to confirm these people, right? We need to make an argument of what we stand for, whether or not we're able to stop RFK Jr. or Kash Patel or Pam Bondi or whoever it may be, Pete Hegseth.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But the argument you might make to your Republican colleagues is probably a little bit different, right, than the argument you would want to be making to the American people. Can you talk about that? Like right now, like if you're trying to stop Kash Patel from getting the votes to be at FBI, you're not talking about reaching 200 million Americans. You're talking about reaching three human beings.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
There's there's one part of this that I feel like hasn't been getting enough attention, which is you're talking about how your Democratic colleagues maybe aren't totally honest with themselves or with the situation to understand the threat it may pose to the media, to them. But neither are Republicans. Right. Like if you're talking about a House Republican candidate.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
majority that is razor thin, a Senate majority that's pretty thin with a few people that they can lose. It is not outside the realm of possibility that a weaponized Department of Justice would go beyond Democrats to try to intimidate Republicans too, right?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So I want to talk about the rigging and then I want to talk about how to unrig it. So Puck reported this week that Amazon will be paying $40 million for the privilege of airing a documentary about Melania Trump, executive produced by Melania Trump. Disney and Paramount, apparently also bidders. Mark Zuckerberg announced this week
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
that Facebook will no longer be doing any fact-checking, which is just a capitulation to Donald Trump. Tim Cook of Apple donated a million dollars personally to Trump's inauguration. Are you at all surprised? I'm surprised by how quickly and with such alacrity these people have bent the knee.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Yeah, well, it's a value shift. Partly it's a kind of, I don't know, like an apathy and cynicism, right? Which is, well, that's just how the system works. That's just how the system works. And in a way, Trump preys on people's beliefs about how corrupt the government is in order to institute that very version of a corrupt government.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So let's start from the assumption that we are not potentially going to be sliding towards some kind of autocracy, but we're mid-slide. It's happening. Where are the places right now where we still have purchase, right? Where we, you know, there are still Republicans in closely divided districts that are afraid of losing their House seats. There are still independent media.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
We're one small, tiny little part of that constellation. Talk to me about how in this we arrest this side and start to climb our way up.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Part of it does also seem to be like the kind of rhetoric, and I don't wanna just pick on Joe Biden, but he is, I think, the signal exemplar of it, which is this kind of, for lack of a better term, like kind of highfalutin language about democracy and institutions and preserving them.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Now, you've talked about how we have to attack democracy as it currently exists, which is, I think, a provocative way to make the argument you've been making just during our conversation. But what does a full-throated version of this sound like? How does it sound different than how Kamala Harris sounded in 2024, how Hillary Clinton sounded in 2016?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
So this is going to seem like a small issue compared to what we've just been discussing. But Senator, do you know what time the sun will set in New London, Connecticut today?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
27. 4.36 p.m. Your constituents in New London, Connecticut will be shrouded in darkness by 5 p.m. Now, I went back and I looked at your record, sir.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And you've never been a sponsor of the Sunshine Protection. I have not. Uh, but I, but I actually have a compromise that I want to propose to you. Can you just, what is your current position? Can we do like a half an hour? No, we're not doing a half hour. That'd be so confusing. No. So, so, uh, are you in favor of making daylight saving time permanent for Connecticut? Just for Connecticut? Yeah.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Well, I mean, everyone else can do it, but just would you like for your constituents to have daylight saving time run through the winter?
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I mean, when school starts too early, these kids should be sleeping later. Yeah. Right. Okay. I accept that. My compromise view is that- You were an evangelist on this? I am. I actually was. And through learning and thinking, I have I have changed my view.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And so my view is now that every state should not be forced into daylight saving time permanently. That actually what should happen is every right now, every state can choose between either staying on standard time year round, which is something Arizona and Hawaii does. Right. Or choosing to do the switch. I'm just saying add a third option.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Give every state the right to choose permanent daylight saving time if that state so chooses that if Massachusetts and Maine want it and Florida and California want it, every state can make a decision for themselves.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
Senator Chris Murphy, thank you for your time. You know, we once had a fight about Connecticut pizza, and I have apologized to you in the past about how great Connecticut pizza is. I was in a long-term relationship with someone from Connecticut, which is how I ate so much Connecticut pizza. That relationship has ended. And honestly, it's the worst part.
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As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
But your relationship with Connecticut pizza has not ended. No, no, that has continued. That has continued.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
And that's the beginning. That's how change happens. Senator Chris Murphy, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, man.
Pod Save America
As LA Burns, Trump Plays Politics
It's really hitting me. The other night, I had two and a half drinks. I was like, I guess tomorrow's ruined. I guess that's it for tomorrow. Yep. But not with Z Biotics.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Hi, it's great to see you guys. How are you? You provide me some emotional lift and relief when I listen to you because you're past the terrible big election. And I know it's not great, but it could be a lot worse.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I feel like I've said literally everything I have to say about this election a hundred times over and there's nothing new. You know, this is the part of the election where like there's no debates left. There's no big kind of, you know, there's no October surprise yet. There's just a relentless series of campaign events and interviews and speeches. And it's like, which ones move the needle?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
We'll never know. How are you feeling just in of yourself at the moment? I feel horrible because the fact that it's a tied race is just hard to stomach and understand, given all that we've seen from Donald Trump over the last nine years or whatever it's been. I think with respect to sort of where the campaign is, I mean, look, I talk to smart people on the on the Harris campaign all the time.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
They, I think, all sincerely and honestly believe that this thing is tied. There are seven key battleground states and all the public polls and all the private data we're seeing has it within the margin of error. And so what's really scary is sometimes elections in the U.S. kind of break one way or the other in the last two weeks based on something that's in the news.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
You know, it could be a letter from Jim Comey scolding Hillary Clinton like 2016. It could be Bibi Netanyahu bombing a new country. Maybe we'll bomb Jordan.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
What have they been up to? You know, King Abdullah, you're up. So I don't know. But that's the stuff that makes me worried.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yeah, I mean, it couldn't be any more clear that Bibi Netanyahu wants Donald Trump to win. Most Israeli voters want Donald Trump to win. It's profoundly frustrating, I think, that Joe Biden's Gaza policy has been terrible. Since the very first day when he flew over and hugged Bibi Netanyahu, I thought that was a mistake, just sort of knowing the character of that man.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And if you look at what's played out over the last year, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I think my Twitter algorithm has decided that I want to constantly be fed the most horrific images from northern Gaza imaginable. And it just like shakes you to your core every single day seeing what's happening and knowing the U.S. complicity in that.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I think the problem for Kamala Harris is that Joe Biden is the president and she just doesn't have a ton of space to break from him, especially on foreign policy. I think having talked to people kind of in her orbit, I think she shares a lot of the frustration that you and I might have about Netanyahu and what he's doing.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I just think it's very hard for her to break from her current boss, for lack of a better word.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Boy, that's a good question. I mean, I hadn't heard all those quotes, but I like them. They nailed it. He's going to struggle to refute a lot of these allegations. Yeah, he did say he would like to, you know, grab women by the private parts. I think what I think you're likely to see from Trump is just more kind of overt meddling in British politics.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
You know, I mean, elevating people like Farage, inviting him to the White House. Kind of getting reform on the map even more. There's this weird connective tissue in the right wing in America where we're like they have these conferences where they invite Liz Trust to speak. They're the only people inviting Liz Trust anywhere. You know, it's like it's Bolsonaro down in Brazil.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It's Viktor Orban in Hungary. They all come together and kind of. exchange authoritarian best practices. So I imagine, you know, Trump has a long memory. He does not forget slights. I think he wants to be liked by the UK. He views you guys as one of the kind of places that I think he cares about his opinion over there. He wants, you know, the royal family to like him.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
But yeah, it would make me a little nervous.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I don't think so. I saw these reports. I mean, 100 people knocking on doors. It's nice. Thank you. Appreciate it. But it's a drop in the bucket. But you're right. Elon Musk is currently holding a contest where he's giving away a million dollars every day
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
to voters in certain key swing states who are registered to vote and who signed his dumb little petition, which pretty clearly seems to be in violation of election law, which says you cannot incentivize or pay people to register to vote, which is clearly what his plan is there.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Oh, yeah. You think the Labour Party tips were like, here's what you do. You let the other guys be in charge for 14 years. They ruin everything. They put a literal buffoon in charge of the entire party.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
They were like cicadas. They just did their time. Real quick sports question that I promise I'll answer. Okay. Do you guys follow American football at all?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
We keep having a London game. Yeah, we just keep... Yeah. Are you offended by the fact that, like, this past weekend, my New England Patriots played against the Jacksonville Jaguars? Two of the worst teams in the entire NFL played some of the worst football I've ever seen. It felt worse than when Barack Obama gave the Queen an iPod. It felt insulting.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Well, the NFL is trying to expand into the European market. So there keeps being a London game every weekend. Yeah. But it's just been shit.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Oh, yeah, I think he might have gotten some old DVDs, too. We suck to giving presents. But what could a Labour and Democratic Party line? I mean, imagine if we really coordinated and tried to make this upcoming COP climate summit. Yeah, something, you know, and actually did something on climate change. That would be amazing.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Imagine if there was some sort of effort to work together, not just the US and UK, but nationally on this sort of global refugee crisis and migration and figuring out ways so we can burden share across every country.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
to help people, so you don't have these right-wing neo-Nazi parties demagoguing the issue and popping up in places like Austria, where you really don't want to see a right-wing neo-Nazi party. Germany. There's a couple of things.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yeah, I mean, it was some sort of, you know, global minimum tax. I know that was an idea that was floated early on in the Biden administration. But you're right. I mean, it's funny when every multinational just sort of pops up and is suddenly headquartered in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't make a lot of sense. Not sure how this works.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I love the Coco hangover stories. You have like the occasional good one and they're always funny and they're always, you always paint a picture that just feels very familiar. Thank you. I think, well, sadly, there will be relief, but that relief will only really fully set in after Kamala Harris is sworn into office, given all the shenanigans we saw from Donald Trump the last time.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
So I think there will be relief from a lot of quarters about kind of dealing with this unique threat that Trump poses and hopefully just finally being able to move on from this guy because he is starting to look really old. He's kind of losing the thread. I don't know if you guys saw – He did a town hall Q&A the other day where he just ended up doing a DJ set for 38 minutes. Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Where he's playing like cats and shit. It was crazy.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
No. Well, here's the challenge. I think that right now Republicans are on track to take the Senate, which will block sort of any legislative efforts Kamala Harris might have. It's not clear to me yet how the House of Representatives voting is going to shake out. But there's a chance that, you know, it could be Kamala Harris versus the fully Republican Congress, which is just going to suck.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Because what Republicans do is they say government is bad. They highlight the ways it has failed or has not helped you vote. And they use that cynicism to drive people away from the Democratic Party, the people who support institutions and believe in government and fair taxation and yada, yada, yada. And so, you know, we're going to be in for a rough road, I think, either way.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I think, though, you know, the American system, like the president, is just so powerful, especially on foreign policy, that'll be an enormous relief to get rid of Trump if we can. But knock on wood.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yes. I mean, she will have far more leeway to do things on foreign policy than in any other place. I hope that means more diplomacy. I hope that means getting back into talks with the Iranians about their nuclear program. I hope we can fix our idiotic Cuba policy in the United States. We've embargoed this island for decades now for no reason.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And now, you know, I think they're in the midst of a multi-day blackout because there's no power there.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
for people so there's just a lot of things we could do a prioritization of human rights trying to you know continue to build up alliances whether it's NATO or the EU or other places um and just you know keep our friends our friends yeah tell me um thank you so much for joining us on Podside of the UK we are keeping everything crossed yes we will join you on this very long dreary road ahead I think I think that I think that we can all agree that's that's what it is isn't it for all of us
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Thanks for having me. It was very fun.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And we are doing a little YouTube exclusive episode today based off of President Zelensky's meeting with Donald Trump just now. We were going to plan to do this regardless. But Ben, I didn't expect it to be. The worst meeting ever in the Oval Office? I'm trying to think of an example of a meeting that went worse.
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
It's worth noting, like, the meeting didn't start terribly. Again, like we said, there was, like, a 30-minute pool spray. There was actually some, like, kind of chummy moments. Let's just play a quick clip of that. Because Europe really helped.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
So right there, Zelensky is talking about contributions from the Europeans to Ukraine. This is like the third time in a week that Trump has been corrected in the Oval Office about the European contribution to the Ukrainian side. Remember in the meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Macron grabs his arm and is like, actually, no. 60% of what we gave them was a grant, not a loan.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Keir Starmer made the same point yesterday, I believe, Thursday. And then Zelensky today. But, you know, it was kind of like, look, Zelensky had a look on his face where, as you said, Ben, he looked exhausted. By the end of this conversation, he looks like he wants to cry. But it didn't start terribly. Like things just escalated and got worse and worse.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I mean, there was the infamous Bibi Netanyahu-Obama meeting that you and I were both in the room for, but it was nothing even close to what just happened.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, then Obama was weak because he didn't give enough support to the Ukrainians.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. So, again, this was supposed to be the pool spray before the lunch meeting, before the press conference. The Trump people ended up canceling the rest of the itinerary.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And, you know, according to the readouts they're giving to Fox News or whoever else, it sounds like Rubio and Mike Waltz basically kicked Zelensky out of the White House and said, come back when you're ready to cut a peace deal. They were supposed to sign some sort of rare earths agreement. The text of this agreement has evolved so much over time.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Initially, it was reported as just like an extortion, the US demanding half of Ukraine's rare earths or up to $500 billion worth of rare earths.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
now it seemed like there would just be some sort of joint effort to mine these rare earths and put it into a fund that would then be used for ukrainian reconstruction but the us would have some sort of oversight over it and maybe get some of the profits i don't know i'm not sure that we'll ever know caitlyn collins from cnn asked a very smart question during this press conference which is that something like 40 of ukraine's rare earths are in the far east so in russian occupied areas she was like
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Are you going to be able to get access to those? Who will protect those? There's been a lot of reporting today about how the mining process for these rare earth elements is unbelievably energy and labor intensive and incredibly dirty. And setting up a giant lithium mine, for example, can take a decade. So the idea that this is some sort of
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
immediate us ukrainian cooperation on the ground that serves as a de facto deterrent from the russians invading is just like sort of nonsensical on its face if you actually understand the details but uh ben i don't know that we'll ever need to know the details of this one because it doesn't seem like it's happening
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
OK, well, we'll cut to the chase and start to play you some of that. We have a very long clip and we're going to play some excerpts, pause and talk about them and play some more, because honestly, it was just impossible to cut it down. It was that. Much of a fucking train wreck. So with that, here is a clip from Zelensky and Trump's meeting in the Oval Office today, Friday, February 28th.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. I mean, there is a national security challenge for the US, which is that I think China has something like 70% of the rare earth element supply. They also have something like 90% of the refining capacity. So there could be a scenario where the US really needs access to these rare earth minerals. But like you just said, I mean, this is like a decade long process.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Ben, I remember having a very similar conversation about... You know, people saying there are massive deposits like trillion dollar deposits in Afghanistan that none of those have been mined even as of today. So all of this just seems like very vaporware.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yep, purely for show. OK, well, like we mentioned earlier, Zelensky wasn't just insulted by J.D. Vance and Rubio and Waltz and Trump. There were a bunch of moron reporters in the Oval Office because, as you might have heard, the White House is taking over control of the White House press pool.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And instead of having like real serious journalists in there from places like Reuters or Bloomberg, they're swapping in right wing zealots who are just their little propagandists. So let's hear an example of what kind of questions those people ask.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
That was a reporter named Brian Glenn. He's the chief White House correspondent for Real America's Voice. There was a reporter from One America, which is another right wing outlet, Ben, that asked, what gave you the moral courage and conviction to lead on a peace agreement? Apparently, a reporter from TASS snuck into the Oval Office pool spray.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
For those who don't know, TASS is a Russian state owned news agency founded in the 1900s. So interesting move to let the Russian state owned media, you know, the country bombing TASS. the country you're meeting with into the Oval Office, right? Apparently, the White House staff said he snuck in there somehow. It doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their security.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I'm not sure how you sneak into the Oval Office, but I don't know, man. This is bleak shit.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, I know, like American politics are so unserious. It's so frustrating. But this moment really drove home for me. I just I can imagine, you know, this is an existential meeting for the people of Ukraine and for Zelensky, literally. And, you know, suddenly he's getting berated about his appearance. I mean, it's just like truly outrageous.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
So, Ben, I mean, the big picture question is like, where do we go from here? because this meeting was a disaster. I mean, I'm sure Zelensky will try to kind of mop it up. He's doing a TV appearance with Brett Baer on Fox News later tonight that I think he knows will be a sort of a direct line back into the Oval Office to communicate with Trump. It's been interesting to watch this week.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
You had Macron, Keir Starmer and Zelensky all have White House meetings and then all go on Brett Baer's show. It's become kind of the the car wash equivalent. Like when you go to ESPN and you do like a bunch of shows now, Brett bears the car wash. But yesterday Putin was speaking.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
He was praising the new U S administration for quote pragmatism, a realistic worldview, discarding many of stereotypes, so-called rules and messianic ideological cliches of their predecessors. You had Dmitry Medvedev cheering and tweeting in English about how great it was to see the Lenski treated like shit.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And then yesterday, when Trump was meeting with Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, Trump refused to say that the U.S. would backstop a European peacekeeping force if one were to be put in Ukraine after some sort of peace deal. He also seemed to once again suggest the U.S. wasn't fully committed to Article 5 when he was asked about it. He was like, oh, the Brits, they don't need much help.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
They can take care of themselves. And then at one point he said to Keira Starmer, could you take on Russia by yourselves? You know, like kind of joking, but not really. So I don't know, pretty dark, man. Like, where do you think that we go from here?
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. I mean, look, the more we learned about the rare earths agreement, the more it just seemed like nothing, you know, like initially it just sounded like complete extortion. And now I don't even know what it was. I do think, you know, to your question, we should ask, like, did Zelensky screw up?
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I think I give him like all like I have so much sympathy for him, but I think the answer is kind of, of course he did. I mean, challenging J.D. Vance. getting into that pissing match. Like it, like we, we can look at inputs in DC. People look at inputs too much and they don't look at outputs.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Like the end result of that meeting was a fucking disaster for Zelensky personally, politically, and for his country. So obviously he should have approached it differently. I think the challenge is he's got politics. Trump's got politics, right?
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Like he's not going to walk in there and make a bunch of sort of rhetorical concessions to Putin before negotiations actually begun a negotiation that he's not part of, by the way. And again, Trump just wouldn't broke any dissent or, you know, actually, like he mocked Zelensky at one point for saying, I don't want to ceasefire.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But Zelensky's point was like, not that I don't want the fighting to stop. He was like, I don't want to ceasefire where Putin then breaks it over and over again and reinvades my country. So, I mean, look, yeah, we'd be like, I think, dishonest if we said that Zelensky had played that thing perfectly, but or even remotely well. But I do think it was a setup for domestic consumption here in the US.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. OK, stop. This is the worst OK, stop episode in history. So what you can hear there is Zelensky does this wind up where he's talking about how we can't trust Putin to implement a ceasefire because he breaks every agreement he's ever signed.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
You're right, though. This is really tough for Zelensky because he showed unbelievable, incredibly inspiring courage in the very early days of that war. And by just sort of like force of personality, brought the entire world to his side, helped rally support in the US, in Europe, everywhere, like public opinion, in capitals, everywhere.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And if he is seen now as having kind of lost that touch, I mean, I'm sure the shine faded during the Biden administration when a lot of Ukrainians felt like they were getting some of what they wanted, but getting it late and getting it slow and not getting enough of it.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But this meeting, I think, is probably going to I mean, maybe it'll rally people to his side, but it might also make them wonder whether he's the right person to be the interlocutor with the United States when they're so reliant on us. So very challenging conversation. political moment for him personally as well as for the country.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And actually, I was just watching Mike Pompeo on Fox News talking about how the United States pulled out of all these arms control agreements during the first Trump administration because Trump because Putin was breaking the terms of the deal. But, you know, it was hard to tell exactly what kind of sets the meeting off here, Ben. But I do think J.D.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah. One of many we've been covering recently. Well, I'm very glad that we decided to do this. I had no idea how horrendous it was going to be, but great to get to talk to you, Ben.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
I know. I did too. Trying to explain why that was important. That's it for today. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back with our regular episode on Wednesday. And please subscribe to the Pod Save the World YouTube page. See you guys.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Vance is kind of the chief arsonist because Zelensky pretty quickly calls him out and is like, OK, you seem to know a lot about my country. Have you ever been there? And obviously, obviously, J.D. Vance has not. And he flips out about it and just, I guess, says that any visit to Ukraine is a propaganda tour now.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But just to be clear, this meeting was ostensibly about signing some sort of deal between the U.S. and Ukrainians about rare earth minerals. In reality, it seems like it was a setup to get to exactly this moment. So J.D. Vance and Donald Trump could harangue Zelensky in front of the cameras and show what a tough guy they are and, you know, beat their chest on Fox News later.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And so whenever we go to the Favreau's house, Luca literally sprints as fast as she can into their home directly for the dog bowl because she wants to steal Leo's sundae. So that's how you know it's good. Unlike other fresh dog food, sundaes does not require refrigeration or preparation because they're air drying processed. You just pour and serve.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But Ben, I'm glad you mentioned Zelensky. uh, Bucha because, you know, that's another triggering thing for me because you often hear these same conservatives, actually Democrats to talk about how there were some early peace talks between the Ukrainians and the Russians, but they blew up and they often blame Zelensky for pulling out of those talks.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
In fact, those talks blew up because the atrocities that occurred at Bucha were revealed and it became impossible for anyone in Ukraine to imagine cutting a deal with Putin and the Russians in that moment.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Yeah, I mean, look, Trump being offended by reality and people insulting Zelensky is going to be a theme of this thing. The press corps even gets in on the action, but we'll get to that in a minute. But let's keep rolling that clip.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
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Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
just gave up the whole game there. They are offended by a campaign period visit by Zelensky to Pennsylvania, which was perceived as an endorsement or support for Joe Biden.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Geez, Ben, I wonder why Zelensky might have thought he'd be better off if Joe Biden was president or Kamala Harris was president and not Donald Trump as he's lecturing him in the Oval Office about how he's gambling and about to start World War III.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Trump is pulling out support for NATO, which has prevented World War Three.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Go to sundays4dogs.com slash world or use code world at checkout. That's sundays4dogs.com slash world, code world. Hey guys, it's Tommy Vitor. I'm recording a little voice note here on my phone to introduce an episode Ben and I recorded Friday, just after the Zelensky-Trump meeting. This was a quick reaction episode. This was not our normal Tuesday pod.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Trump is mad. It's earlier on in this Oval Office meeting because this was a very, very long pool spray. And just to give folks a little context, what usually happens is the two leaders go into the Oval Office. They sit down. You bring the pool, the White House press pool in for like a minute or two. Sometimes there's a shadow question.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
They take photos and then they get them the hell out of there. They have the real meeting. There was supposed to be a lunch and then there's supposed to be a press conference.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
trump has started doing this thing where he takes like 45 minutes worth of questions during the pool spray and then they do the press conference just because he needs to be on tv all the time so what you didn't hear that happened earlier was you know trump's entire shtick about ukraine is the war never would have happened if he was president
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
But Zelensky, when he was walking through all the times the Russians broke ceasefire agreements, talks about how the Russians were occupying Ukraine throughout the duration of the Trump presidency and people were getting killed during the Trump presidency.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
And Trump really didn't like that because it undercut his whole fucking argument that none of this would have happened if I were in charge because he acts like he wasn't actually the president for four years and isn't responsible for anything.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
JD Vance is like sitting on the edge of his seat. He's the happiest little boy in town because he was allowed to go to the big boy meeting and say something. And Marco Rubio, Every photo of Marco Rubio that I've seen in the context of these Russia-Ukraine talks, he looks like his soul is drifting out of his body in that moment. He looks like he's dead inside.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
He knows what is happening is so profoundly wrong, but he just sits there fucking silently and then afterwards tweets an attaboy at the boss. And look, there's all these reports that Rubio is like the Secretary of State in name only and actually has a bunch of little kind of nag a supplicant to who work for him on the org chart, but are actually running the show over at State. So who knows?
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Well, let's listen to the rest of this clip.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
Trump ends the meeting later and says, this is going to be great television. So again, giving up the game. This is all about politics for them. They don't care about Ukraine. They don't actually care about anything Zelensky said. This is just domestic politics.
Pod Save the World
Trump and Zelensky's Disastrous Meeting
This was just us sort of reacting in real time to what we had just seen. We put it out initially as a YouTube exclusive, but we thought given the stakes of what happened and how poorly the meeting went, that it was important to release on RSS2 as a podcast. So here's the episode and thanks for listening to Pod Save the World. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, it's not really a winner. I mean, then there's the specific stories. I mean, I don't know how much you guys have talked about the Samoa incident on the show, but I do think it is. It tells you everything you need to know about this guy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Like the quick and dirty version, right, is in American Samoa, there was this horrible incident where two babies died because the nurses administering the vaccine mixed the measles vaccine with an expired aesthetic and it killed these two children. It was this horrible, horrific mistake.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And it ultimately, you know, the nurses went to jail for it, but it led to Samoa stopping vaccinations for about 10 months and then starting them up again. And then obviously people were very hesitant. So into the breach jumps RFK Jr. and the anti-vax crowd and this sort of information vacuum and climate of fear.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And according to NBC News, what he was hoping to do was basically set up a study comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated babies in Samoa. And what inevitably happens, right, someone comes from New Zealand, they have the measles, an outbreak starts, like dozens and dozens of kids die. In response, Samoa launches this vaccination campaign.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And in the midst of that, RFK is still having his people say, no, no, no, just give them vitamin A and vitamin C. But fast forward six weeks, 95% of kids in Samoa are vaccinated, and there's no more measles related deaths. But just like the fact that what this man wanted was to run
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
This giant, you know, eugenics adjacent experiment on babies, I think kind of tells you everything you need to know about him and how he will approach overseeing the medical community. I mean, like, this is fucking deadly. completely unethical, immoral stuff that he's going to do. And like, this is his approach. This is what he believes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, I guess going against, you know, the establishment or American royalty, that could work. But I think, I mean, you know this better than I do, like what the MAGA movement loves more than anything else is a convert. Whether you are a person of color or you're gay or you were once a liberal, like that's why they love Tulsi. That's why they love RFK Jr.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Those are the people that prove that they've been right all along over in the MAGA movement and the libs were stupid. So I think that's kind of his entire power is his last name.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, she's not remotely qualified to do the job, but I think it's just... good to remember kind of first principles here. They're like, oh, she was in the military. She had a security clearance. That doesn't mean she had access to any information. It doesn't mean she knows how the intelligence community works. It doesn't mean she knows how to manage all of these people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It does seem like her biggest problem is her willingness to believe bad information and discount good information, especially when the bad information is coming from like the Russians or the Syrians and the good information is coming from the US. But then the second biggest problem I seem to have with her or I see for her is that she's a liar.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
You probably talked about her trip to Syria in 2017, where she met with Assad for three hours.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
why she met with Assad, since that wasn't cleared in advance. And they left all the Google Doc changes on, so some reporter found the Google Doc and could see all their spins and lies. Long story short, she goes to Lebanon, dips over to Damascus for a meeting with Assad. and pretended that it was spontaneous. She got there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Assad just wanted to meet with her, but actually the meeting was within one hour of her arrival. So she lied to her colleagues. She lied to her own staff. She lied to the ethics committee about all of this. And it just leads you to the question. Why is a general matter? I'm not like, offended by meeting with adversaries.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
But meeting with Assad in the middle of this brutal civil war where he's killing half a million people is bizarre and gross. And also, did you know that she brought her spouse and she went with Dennis Kucinich, who brought his wife like who brings a plus one to a civil war?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, like, ultimately, Tulsi and the agency she runs is going to be charged with putting together the PDB, the President's Daily Briefing, which is the most, you know, crown jewels of all US intelligence on all the issues happening in the world that Trump needs to know about? And is she going to bring in credible stuff? Is she going to put that document together in an ideological way?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Is she going to continue to disbelieve, you know, the CIA or other components of the intelligence community when they say Assad used chemical weapons and blame somebody else? So I think the question is like, What information is she getting?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
How is she constructing that document for Donald Trump and filtering intelligence information to the president of the United States and other top decision makers? And on top of that, like every National Security Council meeting will usually begin with a lay down from the DNI of the most relevant information on like whatever the topic is, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. you know, Yemen, whatever it is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
So she's going to be kind of doing the PDB process and then repeating that in every national security meeting. It's like, why her? No one can answer the question. Why does this person make sense for this job other than some kind of payback for a political favor?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah. And she's also, I mean, I don't know the things that the kind of the, some parts of the MAGA movement liked about her anti-surveillance pro Snowden. She seems to have flip-flopped on a lot of that. Like it sounds like she's now in favor of section 702 intelligence collection, which is the U S government working with American technology companies to get access to stuff that,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It sounds like she was a huge proponent in 2019. I think she went on Rogan and said that she would drop all charges against Edward Snowden if she were president. Now it seems like she has flipped on that position. So I guess I just don't know where Tulsi stands on anything anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, and I guess that's all that's required for Tom Cotton. He's just like that credulous. He's like, all right, cool. It works for me. 702 is supporting Snowden's staying in jail. I'm good.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And all the, all the secretaries and JD, I mean, they just got up there and they just fluffed the president and said how amazing his leadership had been. It's like, I don't know. It sounds like he did a
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
like, oh, there's a bad social media perception and persona of Kash Patel out there. Whose fault is that?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Maybe him tweeting that he's going to chainsaw off the heads of various elected officials or going on every right wing podcast and talking about his enemies list and all the evil happening in the deep state and lying about his background and pretending he was, you know, the lead prosecutor in Benghazi when he was just like a
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
junior lawyer kind of helping out on the edges like yeah there's a bad sort of sentiment out there about cash patel because he's an unqualified deeply dishonest person and that seems like a bad thing for an fbi director he's a clown that had a podcast on epoch times which is a conspiracy website i didn't know that actually
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
A lot of people confuse is a good person with nice to me. You hear that with a lot of these kind of bro influencers who like, oh, Trump was great when I met him at UFC 64 or whatever. It's like, well, it doesn't mean he was a good person. The single most troubling story about Kash Patel to me, Tim, comes from his time at the Pentagon at the very end of the Trump administration.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, I have two sort of buckets of thoughts, Tim. I mean, the idea of blaming this crash on DEI before there's an investigation and then handing the mic to a real-world Boston castmate turned Fox News host turned Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who then hands the mic over to Fox News weekend anchor turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a lot. It's a lot for me to...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Long story short, there was a hostage being held in the kind of Nigeria area. the Pentagon launched this rescue mission. They had a bunch of Navy SEALs in an airplane who are going to parachute out of that plane, land, walk a couple miles and rescue this guy. And to conduct a mission like that, you need to get permission to fly into the country's airspace, in this case, Nigerian airspace.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And they're about to turn on this operation, green light it. Cash says the State Department got us access into Nigerian airspace. And then right as the plane with the Navy SEALs in it is about to fly into that airspace, they figure out that he had lied. And he just made that up. And so Cash Patel nearly blows up what was ultimately a successful rescue mission.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And also, I mean, the worst case scenario is you fly a bunch of U.S. military aircraft into Nigerian airspace and it gets shot down. And to this day, no one knows why he lied about it. Like Mark Esper, the secretary of defense at the time, writes about it in his book. There were top Pentagon officials screaming at cash. And he was like, who fucking cares? Everything worked out in the end.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And it's just the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I'm very open to any facts. If Cash Patel wants to come on this show or any of the shows on Crooked Media and correct the record and correct me, I am absolutely willing to listen. This is what I read.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Just a DEI hire. What that story tells me is the degree to which Republican senators see things happen where they know a nominee that they're about to vote for just lied and just don't care. And they just think it's a game. And they think that deniability is all that matters and the truth is irrelevant. And it sucks. It's incredibly frustrating. Because what do you do there?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It's like the worst fight in a relationship ever. It's like when you say to someone... you know, you did this and they just won't give you an inch and they give no quarter or they deny it and you know, they're lying. But where do you go from there?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, that's a good way to do it. Here is a general matter. What I think love to see every single senator at these hearings do is stop giving fucking speeches and just use your eight minutes for questions. But that's a perennial problem.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I look, I think use your time to get information, try to pin them down on things, whether it's policy or perjury. But I mean, if it's a really good speech, it's an incredibly compelling, passionate speech that goes super viral on TikTok. That's great. But like I was watching Peter Welch spend like several minutes talking about how much, you know, he was like a RFK scholar in college.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I really like Peter Welch. I think he's like good on policies and a lot of great stuff. But I was like, what are we doing here? It's like four minutes of your time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
That's what they did at the Jan six committee, right? Like they kind of gave it to a prosecutor or gave it to one individual and let you really narrow in. It's a much better way to go.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
You've got a 44-year-old guy with no relevant experience, barely any relevant experience, who's nominated to lead the FBI for a decade. Because Trump fired the last guy he nominated to leave the FBI for a decade after firing the first one, Jim Comey. Yeah, so we should be asking the dude questions. I mean, the enemies list thing is the part of that that pisses me off the most. It's in his book.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
What would Obama have done? What would George Bush have done? What would Reagan have done in a moment like this? I think you go out and give a speech that's thoughtful and that is about the victims and mourning and this sort of like collective wound that the nation is experiencing because of this tragedy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
He published a book with a list of enemies. If that does not bother you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
He talked about it. It is exhausting. Yeah. Tom tells he's up in 26. I guess he must have decided that this is the one he's going to kind of go full mega on. They're never going to like you. They're not going to support you. You're not going to get like you're not going to be accepted by them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
That's a weird one, though. Like, who is that for? It's for the building, I guess, for the FBI when you get there. But does it get you anything from the senators who vote on you, who give you the job?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, I think... They're calling it a freeze. I think we should assume that all of these programs are gone unless otherwise indicated and gone permanently, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, well, yeah, the Egypt, the Egypt money is all about Israeli security operations. So, I mean, in 2023, there was $63 billion of foreign aid. That's less than 1% of the federal budget. But as you know, Tim, when you do focus groups or polling, people think the foreign aid budget is closer to 10%. So there's political, you know, it's a political winner for sure. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I don't think any president in history would go out and do like a freewheeling press conference, even if they did have command of the facts. But it's just this is like the Trump era. Right. It used to be you didn't want to own bad stories or disasters. And now he's just puts himself in the middle of everything. And it's just it's an interesting I guess it's just how communications is now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
But like the money we're talking about goes to fund things like combating Ebola or Marburg virus outbreaks abroad or monitoring the avian flu or cleaning up mines and cluster munitions that didn't blow up in places like Ukraine or Laos and Cambodia.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
But it also, you know, there's also money for like, you know, education in Jordan, the country, which gives us enormous leverage in political influence in these places. And if we just turn that off, like that influence is now gone. And you mentioned, I mean, look, there is a lot of political attacks on foreign aid, but you mentioned PEPFAR. I mean, PEPFAR is George Bush's greatest accomplishment.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It saved 25 million people. It was like universally supported. Recently, I forget which Republican senator started attacking it because like $4,000 were accidentally spent on abortion services in some country and that money was refunded. And I don't know if that got it on the chopping block, but now it sounds like there's, you know,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
AIDS drugs on the shelf in clinics that they're not allowed to distribute. It's just, it's insane.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Totally. I mean, the China infrastructure projects often... are devastating for countries down the road because they create these debt traps that the countries can't get out of. But you know what they don't come with?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
War and Pandemic. We're on the show. We're talking about the CCP. But the Chinese money doesn't come with any strings attached around human rights. So it's a little bit easier. But you're right. I mean, it's not just that we're turning off money that gives us influence in places and China can fill the breach. It's that we're actively being dickheads
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
to people in Panama, Colombia, Denmark, for absolutely no reason. And these are like, Denmark's a NATO ally. Like, okay, let's play this out for me, Tim. The United States military sends a whole bunch more US military members to our base in Greenland. And we just decide we've annexed it and occupied it. Like what happens?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Does NATO have an Article 5 responsibility to respond to this US invasion of Greenland on behalf of Denmark? Like this whole thing is just It's like a farce in some ways. It's insane. But this is kind of the reality of what we're talking about right now. And it makes us look like clowns and unreliable.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, the most interesting kind of thread I saw on this was by a guy named Atul Gawande, who got into all the public health projects that were being impacted by this, the funding freeze. And that, I think, was where people's heads instantly went, just in terms of the risk factor.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
But maybe there's value to this, right? You're commanding, you're owning every story. You have the attention on you at all times. It goes against my instincts, but I'm wondering, I don't know, is this the right instinct?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I guess where I'm struggling with this is I do think that voters want to hear about common ground and working together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But right now we're an opposition party. with no power. So it doesn't fucking matter if we work together with them or not. They don't need us. They don't want us. They don't care.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And so I think you have to act accordingly and raise the awareness in the cost of some of the most egregious things Trump is doing. And that gets complicated when you're talking about areas where clearly Democrats are off sides like immigration. The Lake and Riley Act got a bunch of Democratic votes. It does things that I find
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
like indefensible on a policy level, like just deporting people accused of a crime that just discards all due process rights for, for people in this country. I think mostly it's like, be fucking interesting. Talk like a human being, pick a fight, go into places that are unusual so that whatever you're doing gets shared on social media.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, Tim, you and I both spend a lot of times in safe spaces with people who agree with us, like MSNBC, whatever. But you know, I went on Fox the other day with Jesse waters and, um, That interview is, I heard from more people, it got more pickup than like anything else I've done. So I don't know, maybe we need a little more, a little more combat.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, it's just like the most anodyne talking point. And so whether or not those are the right words to say, who's going to hear that, right? Like, well, there's no pickup of this, of just kind of very boring comments. I've played it twice on the podcast now because it was so boring. So kudos to you for that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Listen, I like on the politics question, like, I don't know, the politics for Ruben Gallego in Arizona are probably very different than a lot of other members. Right. And Ruben was like very vocally for the Lake and Riley Act. And will people be voting on immigration in the midterms? I don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, the Trump's goal presumably is to lock down the border and solve all our immigration problems. And it doesn't mean he'll stop talking about it or making up caravans. But does that reduce the salience? Like, I don't know. It's interesting bet. But yeah, no, I think we're an opposition party and we have to act accordingly and talk like people and be nimble and be interesting.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, like Congressman Pat Ryan sort of been saying and doing interesting things, trying to be out there, trying to be clear cut, clear eyed. I mean, I think, I think what you're getting at and what Democrats are feeling is that there is a leadership void.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
We have, you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the leaders in both houses in the Senate or the, in Congress, but there's not a democratic leader. Like there's not a nominee. I mean, Schumer talked about how aroused people are.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
That was pretty good. That was hard to watch. I'm all right. A little flaccid. A little tepid.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yes. I want a fighter. I also think obstruction works. Mitch McConnell built an entire career off of that. So the senators should find ways to bog down everything Trump does. It's also just like when Barack Obama won in 2008, he got 365 electoral votes. We had huge majorities in the House and the Senate. Did Republicans... wipe their hands and give up?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
No, they fought everything we did tooth and nail and they drove down our favorables into the midterms of 2010. And that to me is the roadmap. It's just all focused on the midterms.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I'd love to hear your, your media training. How many genders are there, Tommy? How many genders are there, Tommy? Uh, The honest answer, Jesse, I don't care. I'm a libertarian. I don't care. You can be what you want to be, Jesse.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Well, I'm not a Democrat, and that we know. What happened? I didn't know you were a libertarian. I actually run the New Hampshire Democratic Party's libertarian party speed. First of all, I don't think that anyone who goes on an unserious show should be forced to treat unserious questions like they're serious.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
The subjects I was sent in advance were like, we're going to talk about Biden's legacy, the pardons and Democrats going forward. So that just gives you some insight. Also, though, I am libertarian on most social issues. I think the role of the government should be to leave people the fuck alone. If you decide your gender is something other than male and female, good. Good for you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Live your life however you want. If you want to have an abortion, the government should leave you the fuck alone. I very much am a libertarian on like a whole basket of issues.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, no, the substance is atrocious. And that is unequivocal. There's a stylistic and sort of process point that was interesting to me that I guess what we're going to be living with for the next four years.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Those are different approaches. And I think they all kind of worked well. The one thing I thought about after the fact that I should have done was just be like, can we talk about Dominion voting? Anything they've been sued for for various defamation cases, just try to repeatedly bring that up. That's a next time thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I want to practice what I preach a little bit, get out some more. I really respect the fact, Tim, that you do a lot of adversarial stuff, like you're kind of at press conferences. That was not a fish for compliments. No.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I've been thinking about this a lot. I've actually taken your counsel. I'm happy to be public about this. I find Steve Bannon very interesting. I listen to his show often. I think... When you listen to Ben and talk, you're usually like a couple of weeks ahead of the curve on where the mega movement is going. I would like to better understand what he thinks Trump 2.0 is like.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I'd love to press him on whether the mega populism he's voted for is represented when you have billionaire, you know, liberal tech oligarchs sitting on stage and Elon running, you know, huge swaths of the administration. I went on a Barstool show when I was in New York and I want to do more stuff where we're just like, I hate the fucking platforming debate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I'm done with the platforming debate where people are platformed. And I just want to go into places where there's a little more, I don't like debate. Like I hate the like, Ben Shapiro owns a 19 year old content, but a conversation with someone that disagrees with you vociferously, like that's a good thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, we all missed a generational wealth opportunity. I lived in San Francisco in 2015. If I just listened to one nice nerd who said, hey, you should buy Ethereum or whatever it was at the time, it would have been cool. A couple thoughts on this, Tim. I think we all have to stop saying bro, tech bro, crypto bros, because it's obviously, I'm a pod bro, it's obviously pejorative and condescending.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I think they don't like it. It's no mystery why whatever comes after that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
We can say what we want, but we should probably not be surprised when people tune out everything after. I was talking to Ro Khanna about this the other day. One thing I think Democrats miss is there is a piece of the crypto story that is aspirational. It's not just like get rich quick. But there is that. It's also anti-establishment.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It's people who felt like they were sticking it to the big banks in the system and kind of operating outside of the control of, you know, whatever they they're kind of pushing against. And I do think Democrats can sound overly negative and like assholes who are just oppositional to this stuff.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
So we have to we have to capture part of that narrative in the hopeful message, but also talk about the fact that Trump coin and meme coins and so much of this stuff is a grift. is a Ponzi scheme. It is going to hurt people. You're going to have more like kind of SBF collapses and Lunatera collapses, and there need to be like regulations that protect people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
So that's the other part of the message.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
It's just about like... persuasion, trying to like not make them feel attacked. And I think, you know, Biden did some good things trying to regulate these tech companies. It was obviously a long past time, but in the process, it seems like we radicalized a lot of rich people who poured money into Donald Trump and Republican coffers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Anthony Albanese in Australia. Okay. He doing anything for you?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
That's a good project for me this weekend. Anthony Albanese. Progressive. You can Google him. The problem is right now, things are a little messy internationally. You don't say. You saw the Canadians. You said Trudeau stepped down. There's a real chance that Pierre Polyev comes to power in Canada, the conservative leader. It looks like the G7. You got South Korea.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
They just had a little martial law incident. They're trying to prosecute, impeach, and remove their president. president. That seems bad. The Germans are about to have an election. We got Elon kick it up dust for the far right party. So things are a little messy, man. I don't know. There's not a lot I'm especially hopeful.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I mean, Keir Starmer and the Labor Party, they had a rough start, but they're going to be in power for a while. They could do some good things. Does that help? David Lammy, foreign secretary. In the UK, I like him a lot. I know him a little personally.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
No. Let's just come together, Libs. We can do this. We're going to make it through this two years. I get into some doomer places like I know you do, Tim, usually around 10 p.m. at night on Sundays. And we've got to pull up. We've got to pull up the plane.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Well, I think he's speaking to a really hard reality in politics in that sometimes really bad things happen in the world, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. And it makes us feel better when we can throw a conspiracy theory around the chaos or around the pain or something to explain this to ourselves, but that's not always going to be the case.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And this might have just been a horrible accident here. We'll figure it out, right? But I saw the same things you did, like people blaming the air traffic controller shortage or the buyout proposal, or like, you know, firing the head of the TSA. And my instinct was to find that gross. And then I saw Trump this morning, and I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm not built for politics anymore, Tim.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Like, maybe this is how it goes. Gross is what it is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I also just want to, before we get into substance again, point out how tan he looks all of a sudden. I know he lives in California, but I, it hasn't been that nice out. So I'm wondering if there's a,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
You know, I'm good, buddy. It's great to see you. Actually, I think in like 2018, I emailed Ben because I used to call him Baby Bannon, which honestly was kind of unfair because I think he left the Bannon world. So we agreed to not be quite as mean to each other online, but I never actually met Ben. So I should probably do that someday.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah. I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with either SSRIs or heroin. I'm not aware of them. SSRIs causing like a euphoric high or a craving or the need to take another one an hour later. I don't know. Maybe you have more experience with these things.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, certainly your body can adjust to their presence in your system and then getting off them can cause challenges, can lead to withdrawal symptoms. But to your point, I think this is kind of a few days or a few weeks long process, not an addiction that can plague people literally forever. for the rest of their lives and can ruin their lives at a moment's notice if they relapse.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
So it's an outrageous and absurd comment.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, he's such a slippery, terrible person. And it did seem like he crammed for the test, but he kind of skipped like the 101. I mean, if you're going to merge Medicare and Medicaid, which is a proposal he floated, you should probably have an idea for how that would work. But when pressed on that, he's like, I don't have a plan. I'd love to work it out with you, a member of Congress.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
At times, it didn't seem like he understood that it was Medicare, old people, Medicaid, poor people. He said Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government. That's wrong. It's actually paid for by a combination of federal and state funds. And again, you made the point about how he was wrong about premiums and deductibles. They don't exist for the vast majority of Medicaid recipients.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
We're talking about nearly $2 trillion worth of federal spending. I think Medicare was 14% of total spending in 2023. So these are enormous programs that he doesn't understand the basics of, let alone how to administer them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
Yeah, I mean, look, we're looking the no votes you're looking for are what Collins, Murkowski, McConnell and Cassidy, that's kind of like the four that people have ID that you need. So knowing that list, I mean, I presumably the ways to reach them would be through talking about the fact that he's clearly pro-choice and now he's pretending to be anti-abortion. Maybe they don't believe him.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
I'm curious what you think about this pitch, Tim. The problem with attacking RFK is you kind of de facto end up siding with big pharma companies The drug companies, the healthcare industry, right, which is not where I like ideologically am like, I don't like those guys either. I also don't think it's smart politics.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
So the question is like, okay, how do you pick an enemy to kind of counteract that? I've noticed that the Wall Street Journal and their editorial page have decided that the enemy is trial lawyers. And they're saying that Kennedy is just going to open up a whole bunch more litigation pathways for his trial lawyer buddies and that he might personally profit from some of those lawsuits.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
And I'm just curious if you think that angle is effective. Like, I remember ATLA being an enemy from my John Edwards for president days back in 2004. People didn't love trial lawyers. I remember my dad referring to Edwards as an ambulance chaser and 24 year old me got very offended. But I don't know. Is that an effective approach?