Elon Musk holds a rambling Oval Office press conference and admits that he and DOGE will make mistakes as they rampage through our government, even as congressional Republicans move forward with a budget that promises massive cuts to healthcare, education, and food assistance to pay for Trump's tax cuts for billionaires. Jon and Dan discuss whether Musk's antics could undermine Trump's agenda, what the Senate's confirmation of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard means for the GOP, and the White House's attacks on the press. Then, they debut a new segment: "Wait, Did That Really Happen?," featuring this week's most absurd scenes. Later, Lovett sits down with Rohit Chopra, recently forced out as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to discuss why Trump and Musk are so determined to shut down the CFPB, and what it means for the rest of us. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Chapter 1: Why is Elon Musk's Oval Office appearance controversial?
Elon Musk holds an Oval Office press conference where he admits that he and the dogebags haven't quite gotten everything right while breaking our government and our laws.
And while they brag about finding a few billion in cuts, we'll take a look at the trillions that Republicans in Congress want to cut from the budget in order to help pay for their $4.5 trillion tax cut for people like Elon and Trump.
Chapter 2: What are the implications of Trump's proposed budget cuts?
Then, Lovett sits down here in studio with Rohit Chopra, who Trump forced out as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week so that banks and credit card companies can go back to screwing us. Great times. Great times. But first... Big congrats to Bashar al-Assad and the measles for getting Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. confirmed as cabinet secretary. Big congrats to measles.
In the end, every Republican senator but resistance hero Mitch McConnell voted yes on Gabbard and Kennedy. So rest assured that our health and national security are in good hands, Dan. Things also look good for Kash Patel, even though he was reportedly purging the FBI before even being confirmed.
But the big news this week, at least according to a very excited President Trump, was his announcement of reciprocal tariffs. He said this was the big one. This was the big one. He said, I had three great weeks, but this is the biggest one yet. He was asked about those tariffs after announcing them in the Oval Office. And here's part of the presser.
And prices could go up somewhat short term, but prices will also go down. Would you also direct agencies to study the impact they would have on prices in the U.S. ?
no there's nothing to study there's nothing to study it's going to go well you know the united states is going to become a very very strong economic economically country yeah prices could go up prices could go down yeah there's nothing to study don't worry about it so
An announcement that lots of shit we buy is about to be more expensive. Just a few days after we learned that inflation is rising again, the biggest one-month jump since August of 2023. What do you think, Dan? Promises made, promises kept?
Yeah, it seems great. It seems like things are going exactly as planned. I mean, it is noted that Trump went at the convention to declare that the inflation crisis would end immediately. Inflation has gone up. He is doing things to raise prices.
And that's even before we get into the potential impacts of his mass deportation plan, what a giant tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and the wealthy would do. And I think it is just worth – we're living this in truly insane time. We're going to talk about a lot of the really insane, dangerous, and dumb things that are happening over the course of this podcast.
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Chapter 3: How does the Senate's confirmation of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard affect the GOP?
But it's also possible that politics really hasn't changed that much and Donald Trump simply won the presidency because – People were really mad at the incumbent administration because prices were too high. And now Donald Trump is the incumbent administration and people are still mad the prices are too high.
And instead of trying to address that, as he promised he would do, he is doing things that would actually exacerbate the crisis. And so we will find out soon enough whether political gravity is a thing that still exists.
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that people still think that prices are too high. On Tuesday's show, we talked about the CBS poll that showed 66 percent of voters think that Trump is not doing enough to focus on prices. Echelon Insights, which is a Republican run polling firm. They just came out with their latest poll right before we started recording.
43% of voters said cost of living is either the biggest or second biggest issue facing the country. And the next closest issue was immigration at 29% and then political corruption at 23%. Seems like there's plenty of that these days.
but number one 43 are still concerned about the cost of living so no it wasn't vibes no it wasn't just in people's heads it was a real concern about prices throughout the biden administration a real concern about costs and people are still concerned that donald trump is not focusing on costs and now these reciprocal tariffs which is basically any country that has uh levied a tariff on our goods now we're levying tariffs on any goods that are imported from them but again
Tariffs are charged to the U.S. companies that are importing the goods, and then the companies pass on the price increases to us. So we will be paying more. Someone said it's like we're shooting ourselves in the foot for other countries shooting themselves in the foot. That's what a reciprocal tariff is.
The other thing about this that is... notable is because inflation went back up again, the Fed is now less likely and highly unlikely to cut interest rates again, which we often treat interest rates and inflation as two separate but related things when they're actually for the voter the same thing. If interest rates stay up, credit cards are more expensive. Buying cars is more expensive.
Getting a home loan is more expensive. Your costs are more expensive. You're locked into your homes. And so Trump, maybe he will just fire the Fed chair against the law. He will bully him into lowering interest rates.
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Chapter 4: Is the White House waging a war on the press?
But in a world in which he is not demonstrating to the Fed that he is trying to bring down inflation, he is going to make his own situation worse because they are going to feel like Trump is an untrustworthy partner in this or an unreliable partner and are therefore going to keep interest rates high for a much longer period of time.
And again, we're going to talk about the Congress moving, trying to move Trump's legislative agenda, which is just a giant tax cut. And that tax cut is not primarily for most people in this country who are concerned about inflation. Most of the tax cuts are going to billionaires, big corporations, the wealthiest people.
And he's got his no tax on tips thing, if that gets through, that I guess is if you're in the restaurant industry or if you work on tips, right, anywhere, then that helps you. But there's nothing else in that agenda for middle class people. In fact, there's a lot of cuts coming to health care and education that are going to hurt middle class people. Something to watch.
Certainly something to watch. Any comment on the confirmations on Gabbard and Kennedy going through? I know you wrote a message box Thursday morning about what we can learn from the Gabbard vote.
Yeah, I mean, it is deeply alarming that we have an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist at the head of our healthcare system and a You know, someone who has played footsie with Bashar al-Assad and Putin and has also embraced all kinds of conspiracy theories in charge of our intelligence agencies.
That is a just like if you had told people six months ago that that's how this was going to end, people would have laughed at you. People would have treated it as, you know, liberal MSNBC positive America hysteria to suggest such crazy things. And look, I just I think as it relates to the Republican Party. And this is particularly true of the Gabbard confirmation, but also true of the RFK Jr.
one as well, is that the fact that every Republican except Mitch McConnell voted for these folks is proof that the Republican Party as an independent entity is dead. It is now just a vehicle for Trump's whims and desires. They have no independent policy positions, right? They just confirmed someone who spent most of their life being pro-choice to be in charge of the health care system.
They just confirmed someone who is the closest person to Russia in the United States Congress when they were there to be the head of the intelligence agencies. And this is different than when it was before. If you remember in 2017, the Republican House and Senate passed a bill to keep Trump from taking sanctions off of Russia.
When, during the Biden administration, when a bunch of Trump's allies, at the behest of Trump, wanted to get rid of funding for Ukraine, it was the Republican Senate who stopped them. And now it's just like, we will do whatever they want.
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Chapter 5: What does the public think of Elon Musk's role in government?
It was another big week for Chancellor Elon Musk, who held his first Oval Office press conference while two fidgety toddlers looked on impatiently. Elon's four-year-old son and his 78-year-old boss, Donald Trump. Elon droned on about Doge in a weird, rambling monologue that did include one newsworthy admission.
Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bat a thousand.
Oh, well, nevertheless, you know. And sure enough, many things he has said over the last several weeks and months have been incorrect. Here's a real doozy from this week. The Justice Department had to admit in a court filing that one of Musk's dogebags didn't just have read-only access to Treasury's payment system, but was accidentally given full access. Accidentally.
So all this time that Elon and Doge were like, no, no, no, they only had read-only access, no big deal. And then the Justice Department, of course, believes that. And then they file in court. And then suddenly the Justice Department talks to Treasury, talks to Elon. Oh, shit. Whoops. Our bad. So that happened. Doge is also, at least so far, having a rough go at it in court.
They've been kicked out of the Treasury payment system. The federal funding freeze has been temporarily blocked. And the gutting of USAID and the National Institutes of Health have been temporarily blocked as well. Would you make of Elon's weird oval presser and all the latest Doge news?
I have so many questions about the press conference. So many questions. How did it happen? Why was he there? Why was his child there? Why was he dressed like that? Why was he wearing a hat?
He had on a hat and some sort of overcoat. That's his Make America Great hat, but it's in black. The dark MAGA hat. It's the dark MAGA hat.
Would you know because he replied to your tweet this morning?
He did reply to my tweet. Yeah, no, he's about the story that the State Department looked like they wanted to buy like a couple hundred million dollars worth of Tesla, armed Tesla trucks. But apparently it was a request made in the Biden administration and it was to armor maybe electric vehicles that they already had.
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Chapter 6: Can Republicans pass Trump's legislative agenda?
That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash Crooked. Code Crooked at checkout. So, you know, you raise a debate that's been going around in Democratic circles, and it's like, what do people really think of Elon? And how do we talk about Doge and cutting government, knowing that people do want to, you know, get rid of government waste, but maybe what Elon's doing isn't so popular and he's not so popular.
So I got some more data from Echelon on this right before we recorded. Trump's approval is at 52-46, right? So he is still above water. Elon's approval is 43-50. So he is underwater. They asked what you think about Elon's role in government right now. Only 40% approve, 51% disapprove. So that's underwater. Then they asked two questions. One, Elon is right to try and fix broken D.C.
bureaucracies that waste hundreds of billions of dollars and spend taxpayer money on radical ideologies that most Americans don't agree with. Agree or disagree. And it was 50 agree, 42 disagree. Then they did a statement, Elon is wrong to dismantle vital aid programs and other agencies when he wasn't elected and has no expertise in government. And people agree with that statement, 57-43.
And then they asked, which of those statements do you agree more with? And by 50-44, people agreed with Elon is wrong to be doing this and not right. So it's, you know, one indicator, one poll, but it's an early indicator that like, A, it tells you, I think, how to talk about this.
But B, that, you know, while people don't like bloated government and do like cutting waste, they are not super excited about the way that Elon has gone about it.
The way I think to read that poll is that Elon is actually a drag on what would be an otherwise more popular effort.
Yes.
Because if you can only get to 50 on the idea of getting rid of bloat and waste in government because Elon's name's attached, it's because if you send the world's richest man into government who has billions of dollars in government contracts to manage federal spending, that seems pretty sketchy to just about any person.
And so there is a secondary debate about how much we focus on Elon, how much we focus on Trump. I think there's real advantage in focusing on Elon. And I've been sort of playing with a little, not a message per se, right?
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