Donald Trump and Elon Musk make their bromance official in a joint interview with Sean Hannity, but polls suggest the American people may already be souring on DC's new it-couple. Trump takes his feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dangerous new levels, calling Ukraine's leader a "dictator." And, after claiming he wouldn't cut Medicaid, Trump sides with the House GOP on a massive reconciliation bill that would do just that. Jon and Dan discuss how Trump is reshaping our relationship with Russia and the world, the potential political ramifications of cutting entitlements, and the latest with the DOGE firings. Then, Dan is joined by former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann to talk about the Justice Department purges, the prospects for the corruption case against Eric Adams, and more. 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: What is the focus of Trump and Musk's recent interview?
And a new Reuters poll shows 71% of respondents agreeing with the statement, the very wealthy have too much influence in the White House. Washington Post analysis headline on Thursday was this, polls show Trump's honeymoon is over. What say you, host of Polar Coaster and author of Message Box?
I'm so glad you segued that Message Box because if you were listening to this on Friday morning, in your inboxes right now is my take on this very question. No thank you to the Washington Post for trying to get in front of me here, but... There are two points here. One is Trump definitely had a honeymoon. He was more power at the outset of this presidency than at any point previously.
But it's the lamest honeymoon in history. His net approval rating when he was elected or when he was sworn in was 43 points lower than Barack Obama's. He was even about 15 points lower than Joe Biden. At the same point, he is the only modern president with lower approval ratings at the outset of the presidency than Donald Trump in 2025. Is Donald Trump in 2017? Yeah.
And but having said that, the direction of the polls is very clear. He is now back. He's back to mid 40s, which was in most of these polls, which is where he was. That's sort of his sort of his the high end of his range for much of his first term. And there are three reasons for this. And they're pretty clear in the polling. One issue pointed out is the economy.
His economic approval rating in the Reuters poll has dropped to 39. It has dropped significantly over the last month. You saw this in the CBS poll that two-thirds of voters thought he wasn't focused enough on lowering prices. The second reason is people don't like his agenda. You have majorities in the Washington Post poll who do not agree with what he's been doing. And that makes complete sense.
He ran on lowering prices and securing the border. But all of the news is about slashing government, weaponization, cozying up to Putin, all of these things. And it's like, presidents get in trouble when they campaign on one agenda and govern on another. And he campaigned as it was bullshit, but he campaigned as a populist, who wanted to fight for the working class.
He is governing as a government slashing, Medicaid cutting, austerity agenda. That's not what people voted for in that asserting him. And the last thing is that Elon Musk is dragging him down in some ways. And one of the more interesting things, like Elon Musk's favorability ratings are fine, you know, 44.
It's not great, but he's actually more popular than just about every politician who's not named Barack Obama right now and Donald Trump. But the better question to ask is, do you approve of the job he's doing? Because the favorability rating includes, do you like him? Seems highly unlikely.
But also all the Tesla, SpaceX, everything he's accomplished for the world and the planet, which some of it is quite good. When you ask, do you approve of how he's doing his job in government? Only 34% of people in the Washington Post approve of him.
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Chapter 2: How are Trump's policies affecting US relationships globally?
Maybe. Maybe Trump just is like, you know, do it or else Elon Musk will fund a primary challenge and I'll send my pardon January 6th goons after you.
Well, he got them last time, right? He did get them to do... This is exactly what... This is how things played out in Uh, 2017 when they pass their tax cut. Now it's a much narrower majority. Now, now you can lose by the time this happens, three people probably. Um, but it is, it's fat. It's fascinating that they are taking on this sort of, it's an, it's truly insane thing to do.
And it's even more insane. Now that the Republican party is branding itself as this multiracial working class coalition that you're going to kick most, a lot of your coalition off healthcare. It's actually probably, it is by the numbers, uh, Way worse politics than repealing Obamacare. Way worse. It's more people for more things in more parts of the country.
And Bannon gets it and like Josh Hawley gets it. But then I guess they were in their their Senate caucus meeting and Ted Cruz was like Medicaid cuts must be on the table. And there was like a lot of applause because it's still a lot. It's still Paul Ryan's party. And I bet I bet we're going to see Elon Musk tweeting about how we need to gut Medicaid.
Oh, the fraud in Medicaid. So much about.
Oh, it's going to be a whole thing. I mean, he's already doing it on Social Security. So I don't think that's going to help their cause either. One thing that might help their popularity is the idea they're floating now to take some of the savings that Doge is allegedly making and return that money to taxpayers in the form of tax refunds or checks or something.
There's this idea floating around that they take 20% of the savings, the Doge savings, and they use it to pay down the deficit. They take another 20% and they hand out refunds to everyone, a $5,000 check for every family. What do you make of that proposal?
It seems like it's probably great politics. It seems like Trump is going to love it because he loves sending checks to people. In his somewhat simplistic brain, just giving people money means that they'll support you. So I think he would like it. I think there are some real challenges to doing it. One almost certainly would increase inflation. So that's one.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: Why is Trump's stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict controversial?
Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's Medicaid policy shift?
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Visit betterhelp.com slash PSA to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash P-S-A. In addition to all the polling, Axios reports that Trump and Elon face a growing doge revolt from GOP lawmakers who are, quote, growing unnerved by what they see as an imprecise exercise.
I would say yes.
I love that. Susan Collins suggested that it's unconstitutional for the executive branch to refuse to spend money Congress appropriated. No shit. and said the administration is, quote, moving too fast.
Lisa Murkowski told CBS News that the job cuts are hitting Alaska really hard and that a lot of the firings are, quote, flat out wrong because people are getting told they're losing their jobs for performance reasons when that clearly isn't true because they've had performance reviews that said that they are... doing an excellent job, and then they get fired.
Meanwhile, the Doge wrecking ball continues to swing with huge cuts and firings happening at TSA, the IRS, FEMA, HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the entire agency that helps respond to disasters for people's homes when a disaster hits, cutting like 80% of that. They're even cutting the NIH unit that focuses on Alzheimer's research. Wow.
In the morning after Trump told Hannity that, quote, Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched. He weighed in to endorse the House Republican budget that would, in fact, cut Medicaid by $880 billion. Why would he do this?
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