Finally, a president willing to blame a devastating air crash on diversity hiring and two of his predecessors! Nearly two weeks into his second term, Trump continues to sow bitterness, fear, and chaos everywhere he turns: issuing a spending freeze so drastic and haphazard that his team has to rescind it after three days, demanding that more than two million federal workers resign or face loyalty tests, and vowing to send 30,000 immigrants to Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, three of his most extreme cabinet picks face tough questions in their confirmation hearings—but will it matter? Jon and Dan reflect on a dismal week, what's next, and signs of life in the opposition party. Then, Jon checks in with Senator Chris Murphy about the threats that Democratic leaders are getting, and why it's so important to fight back anyway. 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.
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We'll talk about the nuttiest moments and whether any of it will matter in the end. We'll also get into the nationwide chaos caused by Trump's spending freeze, which the White House backed away from after a judge blocked the order. But even as Trump cut bait on that dangerous and terrible idea, he moved ahead with...
Many more, including forcing every federal employee to resign or face loyalty tests, and preparing to house thousands of immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. What a wonderful country. But first, we shouldn't have to talk about the plane crash in D.C. on this show, because there usually isn't an immediate political angle to a mid-air collision that hasn't yet been investigated. But...
Half the voters decided to make Donald Trump president again, so here we are. The American Airlines flight from Wichita was about to land at DCA when it collided with an army helicopter on a training mission, killing all 64 people on the plane and three in the helicopter. Trump held a press conference the next morning before anyone had any real information about what actually happened.
So, of course, being president, he took the opportunity to console the nation and reassure the public that air travel is safe. Let's listen.
We do not know what led... to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we'll probably state those opinions now. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. And I assume maybe this is the reason.
The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, A real winner. That guy's a real winner. Do you know how badly everything's run since he's run this Department of Transportation? He's a disaster.
On DEI and the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims?
It just could have been.
That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
Because I have common sense, okay? And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.
Later in the day, he did a press event where he signed a memo to the FAA blaming the crash again on diversity programs under Obama and Biden and ordering the administrator to roll them back.
So Trump has been president for two weeks, signed a record number of executive orders, fired a record number of federal workers, and is blaming his own FAA on the first fatal commercial plane crash on American soil in 16 years because the FAA says on its Web site,
That they want to make sure that people of different backgrounds have equal opportunity to get hired, including people with disabilities. Language that was there during Trump's entire first term. I mean, it seems like Trump got what he wanted, which was to, you know, pick a fight about whether the plane crash was caused by diversity.
And so he got what he wanted because that is what everyone has had to talk about all day, arguing about whether the plane crash that has yet to be investigated, the investigation has just started, was caused by diversity. Dan, your thoughts?
We have to begin with just pointing out and saying out loud just how absolutely disgusting and cynical what Trump did is, right? There are upwards of 70 families who are dealing with loss, who are trying to find out what happened. There are communities across this country and the world who have lost community members because of this. It is a traumatic event.
thing for the entire nation to deal with when we have a plane crash like this. And instead of consoling people, instead of trying to comfort people, what Trump did as he does with every tragedy is immediately try to exploit it for his own gain. And
I know this is going to happen all the time over the next four years, but I do think we have to continue to call it out when he does it, even if it is only maybe for our benefit. There is something dangerous about allowing this to just become the normal way in which we do things.
Just reading some rote pablum that your speechwriters wrote for you that you clearly did not care about before launching into this absurd, unfounded attack – That is not sufficient, right? And it should be called out for. And I do think we – you say he got the debate because we are all talking about it.
We as a select group of people of which we are a part of, the rest of the country did tune in for this, right? The plane crash is something that people – gets people who do not pay attention to the news to pay attention to the news. It is when historically CNN's ratings go way up during a plane crash because people – They fly. They think about flying. It is a big deal.
And so people who saw Trump do that today, I'm not convinced that this is some giant political winner for him to see him doing that hours after the plane crash. And so, yes, there will be a big debate about DI, and we can talk about how Democrats should talk about the plane crash and that going forward. But in the moment, what he did was repellent, and I think a lot of people will find it that way.
Sarah Longwell had done some focus groups last year early on, and she was talking to some voters in the focus group who said that they were they didn't like Trump, but they were going to vote for Trump. And I think there's this guy who said, you know, I'm just going to close my eyes for the next four years, not watch them on TV and just enjoy the Trump policies.
And the reason that has never been a real option is because every president faces crises and disasters. And I started thinking about this when the fires hit L.A. a couple weeks ago before he was president. And as people are still fleeing from their homes, as we were all figuring out who should evacuate where and we were trying to get alerts, Donald Trump immediately said,
kicked off this whole thing, blaming Gavin Newsom for the fires, talking about fucking water in Northern California, all that bullshit. And I thought to myself, like, this is going to be the next four years. And even in the best case scenario that any of us can imagine with the Trump presidency, right?
He does a bunch of corruption, still pretty bad, but we all make it, we survive a second term, like... There are still going to be crises. There are going to be disasters. There's going to be tragedies. And when the country tunes in, we're not going to be able to get good information from him.
He's going to pick fights with people he doesn't like and his political enemies and blame people and divide people and make people angrier. And he is going to compound every single fucking tragedy that this country faces. And God forbid, when there is a crisis that depends on all of us getting good information online, like there was last time he was president during the fucking pandemic.
We're not going to know what to do because we don't have... The media has been splintered, balkanized. No one knows where to go for good information. We can't trust our president. We can't trust the government because there's a bunch of fucking bozos that are running the government now. And last night when this first broke, I was terrified, as you all know. Very nervous flyer.
It's like worst nightmare. And I saw on Twitter immediately... Some people on the left were like, oh, this is Trump's fault because he got to the Aviation Safety Committee last week. And also that maybe the freeze affected this and that thing. And I thought to myself, look, maybe some of this could be true. Maybe it's not. But like, I wouldn't want to say this right now.
Like the plane just crashed. Let's just like have a fucking moment. Let's not be like him. And not because like we should be nice, you know, like let's if we want to present people with an alternative and with a real choice, then that requires not acting like Trump when a disaster happens and like immediately just throwing around accusations without knowing all the facts.
And also, by the way, like let's give the country and each other a moment to collectively grieve and mourn and also like find out, you know, reliable information. And so I was like, oh, it's just like it's so annoying, but whatever. It's like random accounts on Twitter. Who the fuck cares? Wake up today, Thursday, and the fucking President of the United States is out there.
The first thing he does is blame diversity. Doesn't even know who the air traffic controllers were. What caused the plane. Whether it was the air traffic controller's fault. Whether it was the FAA's fault. Whether it was the pilot's fault. The helicopter's fault. Or whether it was no one's fault. Because sometimes tragedies just fucking happen. Fires just fucking happen.
Sometimes just things happen. And like, it's just, it is... It's going to be a long four years, man.
It is. Two thoughts on this. One, obviously Trump, without any evidence, as reporters, I think, did a very good job of calling out, blaming this on diversity. It's obviously a lie that this is DEI's fault. Trump doesn't know that. No one knows that. And it's not how the world works.
But it's also the most true thing that Trump and Republicans ever say, because what they truly believe is that what makes America weaker is diversity. That everything that is different from what they view as inherent American culture, white male Christian culture, makes us weaker. It is probably the most true thing. I think this was Charlie Kirk who tweeted this.
I would say I apologize, but I don't, if it was someone else, but was if you want to go back to the 50s, you have to get rid of the 60s, or you have to undo the 60s. And that is what this is all about.
This idea that in their mind, they truly believe that any effort that seeks to add diverse points of view, diverse backgrounds to an institution, which means that it is less white, less male, is therefore a weaker institution. That is what they truly believe.
Well, I mean, what they are saying now is the new thing now is if you are a woman or a black American or Latino or Asian or gay or anything but a white man and you have a job that is a senior position, whether it's in government or media or politics or anything else. You got there because of diversity efforts, because of DEI. There is no way you could have earned that job.
They start with you got the job because of DEI, and then you have to somehow prove that you didn't get the job because of DEI, but that you got it because of merit. I mean, that's Kamala Harris, the DEI vice president. Right. That's where they are.
And that is the stuff that people don't like about Trump, right? When they are tuning in and he is acting like a clown, when he is clearly unable to meet the moment, when he is background noise to low gas prices and cheaper milk, he's fine. When he is in your face, when you want information and he is making about himself, that is what causes people to take a step back to not like about it.
And that is what that was today.
Yeah. And he's got luminaries like Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance and Sean Duffy, former real world contestant who's now the transportation secretary, you know, all parroting the exact same line. It's like all taken. They all have to take turns going up to the podium and just parroting exactly what Trump said.
And, you know, idiots like Sean Duffy and Pete Hegseth, they probably they probably believe it, too. J.D. Vance, like he knows better. Like he knows better and he's just but he has signed up for it and he's just going to fucking parrot the line, the Trump line and just be the be the guy that Trump calls up and says, yeah, no, go ahead and say what I just said.
I mean, that was it was a press conference of two reality stars, one cable host and a former CNN pundit all together to lead our government.
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So I wanted to ask you about the Democratic response. Pete Buttigieg, for example, he posted a tweet calling Trump's comments despicable, which they were, and pointing out that there were zero fatal airline crashes in the four years that he was secretary and then saying, quote, President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA.
One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the president to show actual leadership. and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.
And, of course, I mentioned there were, you know, pieces circulating among Trump critics about the gutted Aviation Safety Committee and also how the head of the FAA resigned last week. And this was after, you know, this... A couple months ago, Elon Musk went after him on Twitter and said he should resign because the FAA sort of demanded some kind of safety fix to a SpaceX rocket.
And Elon was very pissed about that. He thought it was he thought it was regulatory overreach and said that he threatened he was going to sue the FAA. So, you know, that guy's out. So there's no FAA administrator. How do you think Democrats should handle all of this?
I think Pete handled it exactly right, which is we do. Trump wants a big fight about DEI. That's the fight he wants to have. We don't have to take the bait on that, right? We don't have to get down. We don't have to fight on his chosen territory every time. We just have to always remind ourselves that Trump is in charge of everything. He owns it all.
And in this plane crash, he's the person responsible for the FAA whose air traffic controllers were giving direction to the airplane. He was in charge of the military whose helicopter was involved in the accident. He's in charge of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating it.
And after the end of this investigation, if they find out that there were insufficient number of air traffic controllers, as is very possible, that the few air traffic controllers we have were deployed incorrectly, Donald Trump's the person for fixing that problem. He ran promising to fix all of our problems, to put us in a golden age, and he did not do that.
And we should hold him accountable for that. I'm not saying that voters are going to blame him on his 9th or 10th day. for a plane crash that happens on a swash. I don't think they hold presidents responsible for crashing planes, but they do hold presidents accountable for how they address the crisis itself and how they solve the problems that led to that crisis, right?
The voters did not blame George W. Bush for the hurricane hitting New Orleans. They blamed him for the fact that we weren't prepared for it and how poorly we responded to it. And the way that he is responsible, we have to hold him accountable for what happens from this point forward.
Also, I think it's it is useful to our point that we've been making, which is like Democrats don't want to just defend institutions, but want to be the part we should be the party of reform, like have the investigation and whatever reforms need to be made to the FAA. They should be made and we should push for them.
And if there are reforms that should have been made under the Biden and Obama administrations, then like, let's find that out, you know. And look, every single this was, by the way, a former FAA official sent this message to David Shepardson at Reuters who covers aviation for Reuters.
And just so people know, we said every single air traffic controller candidate goes under the same rigorous testing. Very few applicants even make it to the training stage because the process is so difficult. And those diversity initiatives that Trump mentioned don't even apply to air traffic controller hiring. So that's a former FAA official. So that's just complete bullshit from Trump.
And then, you know, Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic, she's a former DHS official. You know, she pointed out that in 2023, FAA identified 19 serious runway incursions, which is the most in almost a decade. So this is not... like completely out of the blue. There was a series of close calls over the last couple of years that alarmed a lot of, you know, air safety experts.
And the causes have been varied. It's either air traffic control staffing shortages, which by the way, the New York Times reports, there was one air traffic controller at DCA the night of the crash when there should have been two. Pilot inexperience, demand for air travel, outdated technology. And of course,
Knowing all of this and knowing that that DCA is already a very crowded airport and there's also like military flights and training flights like the one that took place the night of the crash that happened. The FAA actually added flights to Reagan last year over the objections of a lot of local lawmakers. And why did they do that, Sean?
Well, Congress did it. And why do they do it? Because they want to land at DCA instead of Dulles when they come in for work.
But again, it's like... And you know what? So just find out what we need to have safe fucking air travel and do it. And it doesn't matter whose politics that fucks up. Just do it. But I will say that... In just two weeks, the Trump administration is, you know, we're going to talk about the freezing all spending. We're going to cut government.
Elon Musk is telling people to quit and to take buyouts. And if you... There is waste in government. There is efficiencies to be had. There's an abuse. There's fraud. All that stuff is good, right? We should all clean up government. We should make it more efficient. But they are...
gutting government and want to gut government so badly that it's going to get to the point where basic government functions that all of us depend on, like air safety, like the FAA, like air traffic control, are going to be in jeopardy because these fucking people don't think we need government.
They think that government is there for them to get rich and for them to do favors for their friends and punish their enemies and they don't see a real use for government in helping protect the American people.
We're going to get to the freeze and the hiring thing in a second, but just on this point, there's a shortage of air traffic controllers. You know what's going to make it harder to get more air traffic controllers? Cutting federal spending, making it higher to hire people, and then just shitting on the federal government so much that no one wants to work there.
Yes.
How are you going to get enough people, qualified people, who can do the job in the pipeline? Because as this FAA official pointed out, it's hard to become an air traffic controller. You need people of certain training and qualifications. And so you need a very big funnel to get them in.
And you're not going to get enough people, qualified people, to do the job if you don't have the money to recruit them, you don't have the money to pay them, and you make working in the federal government seem like it sucks.
Especially if... A lot of people who are training to be air traffic controllers who are in school to be air traffic controllers and the ones who aren't white men.
What are they going to why are they going to want to be in the federal government when now anytime that they, you know, if they get the job of air traffic controller, the Donald Trump and his administration or potentially future Republican administrations are going to call them DEI hires. And if something goes wrong, they're going to get blamed because they're DEI hires. What the fuck are we doing?
So let's talk about the freeze. The other big news this week was the completely out of the blue Trump administration memo announcing a freeze on all government grants and loans.
The memo followed executive orders last week calling for the government to stop spending money on woke projects, not really defined well, and it immediately plunged nearly every function of the federal government into complete chaos.
Democratic and Republican officials all over the country were fielding panicked calls from people in their states who were worried about not being able to access funding for Medicaid. The Medicaid portal was briefly shut down. Head start classes, free school lunches, college financial aid, medical research, and a lot of other programs at the White House said...
were not part of the freeze, but somehow were still temporarily interrupted. A bunch of nonprofit groups immediately challenged the memo, and a federal judge agreed to put it on hold for six days. The White House then rescinded the memo after the judge agreed to put it on hold so they could comply with the judge's order. But then...
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt tweeted that they weren't actually backing down and that the rescinded memo was only intended to avoid confusion with the judge's order. Then a second federal judge, considering a lawsuit brought by the Democratic attorneys general, said of Leavitt's post, quote, I can't cross-examine the tweet.
Not yet.
Not yet. But said he may need to grant a longer term restraining order because Levitt is making, quote, a distinction without a difference.
We later learned from reporting in The New York Times and The Washington Post that the White House Office of Management and Budget put out the memo without getting approval from senior officials like White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or even Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. And they were all pretty pissed about the fallout.
The entire episode gave Democrats a chance to show the fight that they'd been lacking over the last two weeks. And let me tell you, Dan, they were pretty happy with themselves. Let's listen to Chuck Schumer.
People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time.
Dan, I want to know, when's the last time you can remember being this aroused by a rescinded OMB memo?
Look, John, everyone has their thing. And I would say that OMB mail-ins have never been my thing, but I am also not here to kink-shame people.
Don't kink-shame people.
I am not kink-shaming anyone, especially the Senate minority leader. So live your life, Chuck Schumer, whatever floats your boat.
Wow. Wow. On the process point about how the White House rushed this decision and generally stepped on a rake, what happened to the whole, this is a professional White House now. Susie Wiles is running it like SEAL Team 6. Yeah. What happened? I thought this was the Trump White House that was finally figuring it all out.
RIP to all of those beat sweetener pieces written by all those White House reporters about what an amazing job Susie Wiles would do now she'd make all the trains run on time. Look, to be fair here, it is true that this version of the Trump White House is better run than the first version. But that doesn't mean it's well run.
The fact that some minion in the Office of Management and Budget, which currently does not have a director, can put out a memo that vaguely shuts down trillions of dollars of federal funding in a moment without running it by anyone is one of the most... evocative examples of incompetence I've ever seen in my life.
And then the fact that they put this memo out, it's not even like this was a bad idea. This was like a well-executed bad idea. The memo was so vague, no one had any idea what it meant. It really shut the spigot off and caused mass chaos across the country. One memo written by, once again,
An OMB nerd, which is what we always call them when we work with them, like a nerd deep in the OMB, sends out this memo, shuts down Medicaid funding, housing vouchers, everything, total disaster. Then the White House, instead of just being like, throw the OMB minion under the bus, all defends this. Stephen Miller, who did not sign off on it, went on CNN to defend it.
And they defended it up until the moment a judge took it away and Trump got upset about the bad press coverage and they rescinded the memo.
Not only Stephen Miller, who works in the White House, but Republican politicians all over the country defended the memo. The Speaker of the House. Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia, was like, this is misinformation spread by the media and partisans and all these Democrats. This is hysteria and blah, blah, blah. And then the White House was like, oh, yeah, we take it back, actually.
But I do think that it is revealing about the argument that Stephen Miller was making and Russ Vogt, who is going to run the Office of Management and Budget, the man who authored Project 2025, they believe that the president does have the power to control all federal spending and decide who gets what money, even though it is the job of Congress, according to the Constitution, to appropriate funding.
And... Donald Trump and Donald Trump's White House now believe that they have the power of the purse, not Congress, in contradiction to the Constitution, and that they get to just not spend money that they don't agree with that Congress has appropriate. So I do think that they are gearing up to eventually challenge the this is known as the impoundment act.
which just makes clear because it was clear in the Constitution before that, but makes clear that presidents may be able to delay spending certain money or they can maybe not spend extra money if they have achieved the goals of the law with the with the money that they already spent. But they are not allowed.
Presidents are not allowed to just not spend money because it doesn't comport with their political positions. If Congress has passed a law appropriating it. And Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt don't think that's – they think that the president is king and gets to do whatever he wants with his power.
And so it's going to go – they're going to eventually challenge this, and it's going to go to the Supreme Court.
I mean, that's fine. They work for the king, so maybe that's less surprising. The person who is more surprising and alarming in this is Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House. The power of the purse is their singular power. It is the greatest check and balance they have over the functioning of the executive branch. It's how they dictate policy. have influence on what happens?
And Trump was like, no. And he's like, okay, more please, sir. I mean, it's just absolutely embarrassing.
They have all decided, except for, I don't know, maybe three Republican senators at most, four. And I haven't seen anything from any House members that Donald Trump, because he was elected, he can do whatever he wants. And that their role is just to cheer him on and go on TV, I guess, and on all their favorite regime media channels and talk about how wonderful Dear Leader is.
Why do these people want their jobs? Just go make money somewhere. You could probably make more money in the private sector. What are you doing? You're not making any decisions on your own. You're just there to fluff Donald Trump.
I mean, that's an image you're painting. Yes.
It's, you know, Chuck Schumer. Chase in your head, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer's got you going. Unfortunately, unfortunately.
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So let's start with the Democrats now that we're back on Chuck Schumer's arousal. The Times had a story on Wednesday about how Democratic governors got on a call with Schumer to push him and the Democratic caucus to do more to oppose Trump and his cabinet nominees. More about them in a minute.
Because, you know, things like the spending freeze are pummeling the states, but the governors themselves can't really take action to stop it. Presumably the details of the call were leaked, presumably by the governors or their staff to The New York Times reporter Reid Epstein. What do you make of this piece, the blame shifting and just zooming out sort of like the Democratic response in general?
And, you know, it does appear like the party has found its footing on their response to the to the OMB spending freeze.
I mean, basically, I think Reid Epstein got a window into a lot of the conversations that are happening in the Democratic Party right now. There has been, particularly in at least the first week of the Trump presidency, a tremendous amount of frustration at how elected Democrats more generally, but congressional Democrats in particular, have acted. I have ranted, I believe, on this podcast and in
Multiple other forums on the internet about Democrats voting for Trump nominees, like to what end? Like, what do you think the upside of that is? Why would you want to put your name? Like, do you really want to have endorsed Sean Duffy? Is that really what you want?
Is that an ad you're going to run in your race about your bipartisan credentials? I did support Sean Duffy.
No one knows who that is. Or the billionaire hedge fund manager who's going to help implement the Trump tariffs. What's the upside? What's the argument for it? Some of it is unfair in the sense that there's nothing Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats could do to stop any of these appointments from happening. No Senate Democrat voted for Pete Hegseth, right?
No Democrat's been the 50th vote for one of these people. Like, that has not happened. They've just voted – like, I don't understand the votes, but they've been in places where there were enough Republicans that put them over the top, so it didn't really matter. I mean, they have very limited legislative authority to stop stuff, but there is just this frustration that –
There's just been too much silence and too much equivocation from Democrats in their messaging where it's like we just can't figure out the right way to talk about Trump because before it seemed easy to us because we felt like we had all the political high ground because even if we lost the presidency in 2016, we had the majority of voters were anti-Trump.
Now, the polarity voters pick Trump and we're just like – everything is on one hand, we disagree with Trump. On the other hand, we also agree the borders should be secure, right? It's just there's like all this equivocation. In the response to the federal funding freeze, Democrats did better, right? They got louder. They spoke more strongly. They spoke with one voice.
Now, I don't think we should break our arm patting ourselves on the back over it because – but I think you should get credit. It was better than it had been to date. Yeah. And I think if there's a lesson to take from it,
It is that the things that Democrats were saying about the federal funding freeze was not our typical like pay on to institutions that sort of sounds like something on the cutting room floor from Hamilton. But instead, we just talked about like how people were getting hurt, right? This program in my district can't get money. These people can't pay their rent.
This Head Start program is closed and parents don't ever take their kids because of this. Like it's just like – Very simple, granular, real-world impacts on real humans. And I think there is a lesson in that going forward, that with more of that and less of the stemwinders about democracy.
I think a good lesson, too, is just say what you feel. Just go to the mic, get to your favorite platform, all the platforms, whatever, and just say how you feel about this. And there was plenty of things I heard Democrats say over the last couple days about it that... We're cheesy or made me cringe.
I'm not going to criticize any of it because it is more important to get out there and talk quickly and show some emotion, show some anger over this on behalf of the people that you represent, not just anger at Trump of anger on behalf of people who are getting screwed by Trump. I think that's an important distinction and just do it. And sometimes it's going to hit. Sometimes it's not.
Sometimes you're going to say things that, that resonate. Sometimes you're going to say things that make people cringe. It's okay.
Like this is going to be, it's going to long for years, but I think just getting out there and talking and doing it, you always say like everything, everywhere, all at once, like that is better than sitting and waiting and thinking about where, how's this going to pull and what should I say? And we need a caucus meeting first and we need to just, just go out there, go out there and talk.
This is a really important point because I think one thing that's held Democrats back is we're waiting for the message. We don't know what it is. We haven't analyzed all of the results yet. We haven't done a bunch of exit polls or focus groups with first-time Trump voters or whatever else.
And people are – we're flummoxed. We're all going to fucking die waiting for the catalyst results.
I mean, they're supposed to come in like six weeks, so I hope not. But it's just – The election shook Democrats to their core. Like what we thought worked did not work in any way, shape, or form and blew up in our face. And so they're waiting for the right thing to say.
But if there is one lesson of the Trump era is that volume and frequency is much more important than precision when it comes to messaging. You just get out there and start talking. By the way, because that's the game he's playing. It is. Just talk all the time. Because if you're talking all the time, it increases the number of chances that someone will actually hear what you're saying.
And if you happen to fuck up and say the wrong thing... If you're out there five minutes later, you're going to pay less of a price for it. This is one of the things that really hurt Kamala Harris was she was out there so much less than Trump. So when she did make a mistake like she did on The View, it haunted her in ways. Trump was out there saying crazy shit on a podcast three times a day.
But because he was doing it, there was always a new thing coming after it. There was less political consequences for doing it.
Same problem with Biden over the last four years. I mean, let's not like if you speak every six months. Yeah, right, right. But yeah, no, it is a volume game. And just someone added this up, but apparently like in Trump's first term in his first week, he was in front of the press or in front of cameras speaking for like four hours the first week.
Biden in his first week was a little less, maybe like three hours or something. The first week of Trump's second term, it was like eight hours. Yeah. He was in front of camera. I mean, he did that fucking awful press conference about the plane crash this morning, Thursday morning.
And he did like another press avail as he was signing the more executive orders, blaming Biden and Obama for the plane crash later in the day. And he was taking more questions.
For even as nuts as Trump was in 2017, that he was still abiding sort of by a... what is now an anachronistic model of political communications where you try to stage manage stuff, right? We're going to have like, this is the story of the day. If we do X, we can't do Y later because it'll ruin our headlines about our EOs. It's like, nope, just do it all. It's always happening. It's never ending.
There is no news cycle. And Democrats could learn some lessons that like, we obviously have a huge megaphone disparity here. Like we don't have, we have a very small handful of politicians who can get real attention, but, It's great if we can all speak with one voice because that will help about one thing. But that's not going to happen every time. So just get out there.
Yeah. So the spending freeze fiasco has done little to slow Trump down. Keep signing orders and memos targeting immigrants, government workers, trans kids, educators, parents, just about everyone. In the past few days, he's issued the following executive orders that will deny federal funding for schools that teach kids about racism and discrimination.
Penalize schools that don't teach content that is patriotic enough. I guess Trump gets to define what that means. An executive order that will deport international students who protested the war in Gaza will revoke their visas. ban gender-affirming care for trans children, and send tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants to detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.
The White House also sent a mass email offering more than 2 million federal employees a buyout if they just reply to the email and write the word resign. We're going to talk about the email in a second, but on the executive orders, which one of these seems real? Which of them seem like bullshit?
Most of them are bullshit in the traditional sense of the president having the authority to implement what he said he is going to do. Not just what you mentioned here. Across the board, most of these... Executive orders – they're not even really executive orders. They're really presidential memorandums. They're just – they're missives, right? They are press releases with signatures.
He doesn't have the authority to do the things he's saying. There is no legal precedent for him. Some are very clearly in violation of the Constitution. I mean, we'll hopefully be struck down, but who knows. But there is not a ton of actual legal power in it. But I think that really undersells the danger here.
So let's take the example of the ones in education trying to deal with, quote unquote, critical race theory or forcing patriotic education. The federal government has almost no role in what local schools teach. Even if they were to use federal funding to try to put policies in place, that's very limited. 90% of school funding comes from state and local communities.
Even in the states where they have actually passed laws putting some of the stuff into place, studies have shown that they've had very little impact. In many cases, they have not been as impactful as the conservative legislators would think because teachers still – there's not someone in the school telling teachers what to do. But –
There is a chilling effect of these sternly worded but very vague missives declaring that things are now illegal or not allowed, or if you do them, there will be retribution. For example, Michigan State University this week canceled their Lunar New Year celebration because they thought, according to reporting in the Lansing Journal, that it might violate anti-DEI policies.
It's because they're confused. They don't know. Here's this thing. We have no idea what it actually means. Are we going to get ourselves in trouble? Are we going to face political blowback? Could there be a big fight over this? Could there be retribution from the government?
And even if you – I'm sure that if the general counsel of the university looked at it and was like, obviously, we would win this fight. You don't want the fight. You can't afford the fight financially, time-wise. And so you're going to see people making a lot of decisions to avoid getting on the wrong side of Trump on some of these things.
And I think about here in California, like up where I live, the public schools every fall do Ruby Bridges Day to celebrate Ruby Bridges and to teach about segregation and desegregation in the schools. And everyone, if you can, is to walk to school that day like Ruby Bridges did.
I don't think this would happen here, but you could see in another part of the country people wondering whether that was too woke to have. Is Black History Month going to be too woke? People are going to trim some of that stuff back because they're worried about violating, angering a federal government. Even the federal government has no statutory authority to enforce these policies on you.
Yeah. And just another example that just popped up that I think is even more consequential, which is the the EO on banning gender affirming care for children. Again, the that is not something that you can do by executive order. I'm fairly certain, though I do not have a legal degree, but a children's hospital and health care provider in Richmond said,
just said that they have suspended all gender affirming care for those under 19 years old because they feel like they have gotten very specific guidance on this from the state. I assume that means that a lot of these Republican governors who like Trump, like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, probably see the federal EO, match it with a state EO. Now,
What's ultimately going to happen with gender affirming care for children? It's a case at the Supreme Court right now. It's going to be decided there. I don't I don't have a lot of hope about how that's going to turn out. Also, Congress with the Republican Congress, I'm sure they're going to try to include. There's been some reporting that they might include like a Hyde like amendment there.
in the budget bill that sort of you know threatens to cut off all federal aid to hospitals and health care providers that provide gender affirming care like they currently do for hospitals that provide abortions that's the Hyde Amendment so I don't think that like I don't think that's the last word here but you're right that the chilling effect is there's going to be schools and hospitals and organizations all across the country in red states and maybe in some blue states or red areas of blue states that
Just take these seriously because it's a fucking executive order from the federal government on Guantanamo. Are we really going to build a 30,000-person detention facility in Guantanamo Bay? Just for context, the Cook County Jail in Chicago is one of the largest single-site facilities in the country, and it has an average daily population of 9,000.
We're going to build a 30,000-person detention facility that who's going to run? And we're just going to send undocumented immigrants? We don't know where they're from, where they came from. We're just going to put them in a detention center for what? Indefinitely? Like, what the fuck?
That we would hold migrants in one of the most notorious prisons in the world, right? Something that has been at Guantanamo Bay has been a recruiting tool for terrorists for 20 years now. And I assume would be run by the military because Guantanamo is a military base. So you would have a military-run prison camp for migrants who came to America.
I know Tom Homan said this is the worst of the worst, which-
Which, by the way, they've been saying that. We thought it was going to be bullshit. It is bullshit. I think the rate for how many undocumented immigrants have been rounded up and deported with criminal records versus undocumented immigrants who the only law they broke was illegally crossing in the first place is like Joe Biden had a higher percentage of deportations that were actually
immigrants with criminal records than Trump has in his first week already. So it's just the whole thing was bullshit. They're not just going after undocumented immigrants with criminal records. They're going after every undocumented immigrant that they find.
I mean, this is something that Tommy and Ben can talk about much better than I could, at It's not like the US reputation is doing fucking great right now. I mean, with Donald Trump as our president, both what is our role and what is happening. Gaza has been deeply damaging to our reputation around the world.
But the idea that we're going to house migrants in a prison camp is – like I said, a notorious prison camp is going to be deeply, deeply damaging to our reputation around the world.
Also, this just happened this week in a speech that Donald Trump gave, and no one paid a lot of attention to it. But after he finished his whole anti-immigrant thing, he was like, and then there's some people, and maybe they didn't come here illegally, but they're just criminals in this country. There's criminals, and they're here, and they're really bad criminals, and you know what?
I think we're going to get approval to just deport them. We're going to send them to some other foreign countries. And I'm like, you're going to send American citizens who are convicted of crimes? You're going to deport them to foreign countries? When is the line that he's going to start trying to send Americans to Guantanamo Bay? American citizens to Guantanamo Bay?
Are there any particular American citizens that you've been worried about over the recent years of being sent to Guantanamo Bay? No. I mean, I just, I mean, the thing is, it has been a running joke for nearly a decade among about us, about being sent to Guantanamo, about, you know, various people who have been, Trump has been sent to Guantanamo and they're building it now.
It's going to be interesting. Like you would feel like you're going to need money to build a lot of money to build the largest prison under American control at a military base. I presume you probably have to appropriate money for that. Maybe they can find it in the couch cushions the way they found money for the wall. But there will likely be a big congressional debate about this.
A big congressional debate. The courts will have a role as well. And look, I think that the scary moment here is what happens when the Supreme Court, if the Supreme Court, you know, hands down a decision that Trump is opposed to and what Trump does. And, you know, so far they, you know, the White House complied with the federal judge that blocked their spending freeze.
And, you know, I guess it was kind of a fuck up in OMB anyway. So whatever, they were fine with it. But You know, it's a very conservative court, and a lot of times they give Trump exactly what he wants, but they hand down a decision that he opposes, and then he says, eh, I'm not going to listen to the court. You know, J.D.
Vance was on a fucking podcast a couple years ago that said, oh, my advice for Trump in a second term would be to fire everyone in the federal government and replace them with all your people. And when John Roberts tells you you can't do it, you say, yeah, you and what army? J.D. Vance is on the record saying that. So, like, what happens... That's the real constitutional crisis.
That's when people start going to Guantanamo. So that's something to watch for. That's coming attractions, Dan. Cool, cool. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but two things before we do that. We all know the news is exceptionally shitty right now, but we really hope you find this show and all the shows we make here at Crooked helpful in sorting the facts from the bullshit.
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Let's start with the buyout. The email had the subject line, fork in the road, which was exactly what the email that Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees had said, fork in the road, right after he took over the company.
Do you have a sense of whether this move is serious, whether the federal government is authorized to spend money on a buyout for federal employees who decide not to come back to the federal government to work?
I have no idea whether they are technically authorized to do it, but I imagine this is quite serious. As you point out, this is exactly what Elon Musk did at Twitter. He has installed some of his closest allies, people who helped him with all of the layoffs at Twitter, at the Office of Personnel Management, which is an obscure but incredibly powerful agency which staffs the government.
I imagine that there probably is some sort of authority that allows you to – because these people are choosing – By doing this, they were not firing them, right? This is a way to get around civil service protections, right? You are not firing them. You are giving them the opportunity to leave.
Now, Judd Legum in his newsletter of popular information has pointed out, he's read the actual missive that the OPM posted on their website. And it's not actually a buyout. A buyout is you take the money for the next nine months and you stop working tomorrow.
Mm-hmm.
What they are saying is basically you leave in September and your job duties will change, but you're not free of working. You might still work. There's a lot of gray area into what would happen. You'd be free of some in-person responsibilities, but it is incorrect in Judd's view. And he makes a very compelling case that this is a buyout.
It's actually just a way to get people to forcible resignation or encourage resignation.
Well, there's also a video uncovered of Russ Vogt, again, Project 2025 guy who's going to be the OMB director, who basically said, we want to make working in the federal government as traumatic as possible for bureaucrats that we want to get rid of.
And clearly that's what they've been trying to do the last couple of weeks is to try to make it so miserable for people that they just leave on their own.
I think the reason why we should take this very seriously, regardless of the specific powers they may have, is this is the full conservative project of decades now, which is to hollow out the federal government so we can do less stuff.
Then on the things it continues to do, it does them less well, which makes the public more dissatisfied with government, which causes them to elect more anti-government politicians who then hollow out the government some more, rinse, repeat.
And the end goal of this is not just, though, that the government's doing less in health care and education, is what these hardcore conservatives, who are not just Trump types, these are Paul Ryan people, is they're going after Social Security and Medicare. What they do not want is the federal government to be giving people healthcare, and retirement security. And those are sacrosanct programs.
Trump voters love them. The only way you ever get to be able to take those down is to reduce people's faith in government to such an extent that they're unwilling to trust it with their healthcare and their retirement security. And so this is what this project is.
Yeah, yeah. And Social Security and Medicare probably come at the end. Yeah, that's the last thing.
You make it so that everything else is hated. They can do nothing else well that people are willing to say, put my retirement in the stock market, right? Or privatize my Medicare to insurance companies.
And by the way, I think this is part of the reason that they walked back the spending freeze, because it caused the kind of uproar around the country that they know is unpopular. And they want to cut government and cut all those programs and benefits in a much sneakier, quieter way than what happened with like an all out spending freeze that freaked everybody out. So it is it's something to watch.
Speaking of way too much going on at once, three of Trump's most extreme cabinet picks had Senate confirmation hearings on Thursday alone. Health and Human Services Secretary nominee RFK Jr. in front of the Health Committee. DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard in front of the Intelligence Committee and FBI nominee Kash Patel in front of the Judiciary Committee. Let's start with Kennedy.
This was actually his second hearing. The Finance Committee got its turn on Wednesday, and both days were contentious and fairly terrifying. Here's a sampling of some of the Q&A for RFK Jr.
You equate pedophilia to the administration of vaccines? No, it wasn't pedophilia. It was a perfect metaphor. Well, if you have one in 36 kids who has neurological injuries, and if that is linked, that's something that we should study. Is it a perfect metaphor? It's not a perfect metaphor, but there's no metaphor that's perfect. But I am pro-vaccine. Vaccines do not cause autism.
Do you agree with that? As I said, I'm not going to go into HHS with any preordain. I ask you a simple question, Bobby. Senator, I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy, that we can't be a moral authority in this country. Right.
So but that isn't what you said back in New Hampshire in 2023. My question is exactly when did you decide to sell out your life's work and values to get this position?
Senator, I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. Show me a single statement I've made about science that is erroneous.
How much time do you have? So basically, these two days boil down to Democrats trying to paint Kennedy as anti-vax and also unqualified, which he is. Kennedy's trying to say, no, not anti-vax. I never was. I'm being misconstrued. Who do you think came out on top? And are we getting a we're getting a vaccines optional HHS secretary?
That seems like... I mean, if we just got a Fox weekend host as our Secretary of Defense, everything's on the table here. I don't know what's going to happen here. I think there was one... Yes, Democrats focus a lot on vaccines. That is the most... RFK Jr. 's Achilles heel politically with the public. That is the part of him that they are most skeptical of that they do not like.
But I thought some of the smartest questioning came from Michael Bennett in the first day in the finance committee, Michael Bennett, the senator from Colorado. He did this the right way. He did a lightning round, basically, with RFK Jr. He asked him. He read him quotes, and he read them in context and said, did you say this or did you not say this?
And it was some of the things we've heard about vaccines, about various conspiracy theories. But the last one he asked was, basically, do you believe a pro-abortion access comment of his? And the reason why that was smart is that's how you defeat RFK Jr. The only way to actually defeat him.
There are ways to score political points with the public, but to actually defeat him, you need to get a Republican. You need to get four Republicans to vote against him. And one area of concern, and this is a weird thing to say, Mike Pence's political organization is running ads attacking or trying to get Republicans to oppose RFK Jr.
because he has been in favor of abortion access prior to becoming Trump's buddy here. So that is a smart way to do it. Was he getting it confirmed? Probably.
But I thought that at least showed a savvy way to try to actually get some Republican votes or make it more uncomfortable for Republicans to do it with their constituents, which is going to matter more than making them uncomfortable than just getting more Democrats who are already opposed and riled up.
Well, I thought some bad news on that front was he basically said that he would look at the safety of Mifepristone, the abortion pill. And so that's on the table. And then after the hearings, the Susan B. Anthony group, which is an anti-abortion group, said that they now favor RFK Jr. because they think he's going to help them pull Mifepristone off the market and ban the abortion pill.
So that is... pretty, pretty frightening.
Yeah, but it's not good if he gets confirmed. I was just trying to find a bright spot for Democrats trying to keep him from getting confirmed.
My only bright spot, we'll see what happens, is Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, Republican senator from Louisiana, who's a doctor and who voted to impeach Trump, had some really tough questioning about RFK Jr. 's anti-vaccine stances and positions and what he said and basically ended the hearing, leaving it up in the air whether or not he was going to vote for him.
I mean, he's theoretically potentially the fourth. Because we know there's three possibles in Murkowski, Collins, and McConnell. Although not that I have any evidence that particularly McConnell is going to do the right thing.
Also, you could see Cassidy be a no, but then maybe McConnell doesn't vote no on this one, right? So it's tough to figure out. It's not like those are automatic no's at all. Yeah. But I guess Cassidy would be the hope there. We're not going to subject you to separate sections on Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel.
Reminder here, if you need them, Gabbard is an Assad and Putin sympathizer with no intelligence experience. And Patel is a Trump adoring hatchet man with no FBI experience. Both hearings were pretty tense. Let's take a listen.
Gabbard is simple. Yes or no question. Do you still think Edward Snowden is brave? Mr. Vice Chairman, Edward Snowden broke the law. I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.
My understanding is that the performers on this J6 choir were the rioters who were in prison. I'm not aware of that, sir. I didn't have anything to do with the recording. You weren't aware of who made the recording? No, Senator. Your boss has said that General Milley, who served us with great distinction and I happen to have great admiration for, should be tried for treason.
Do you agree with that? Senator, everybody's entitled to their opinion.
Who put away the Unabomber?
The FBI.
Who put away Timothy McVeigh and his Stalin's stomach for blood?
Brick agents at the FBI.
Who helped investigate Jussie Smollett? What? How did he get in there? Self-aggrandizement set back the fight for minority rights for years.
I think that was local authorities.
It was the FBI that opened an investigation, wasn't it? Wow, I hadn't heard that.
That was quite the turn that I was not expecting. Yeah. What was the point he was trying to make, even up until that point?
I guess that the FBI is great. Man, sure. Sure, I don't know. So Cash Patel has just decided, like...
the old cash patel is just gone he's gone there's i don't know what you're talking about i don't know this guy i didn't go on this podcast with all these white nationalist racists uh like with you know nazi sympathizing views didn't do any of that uh never heard of that person jan 6 choir i don't know what you're talking about he also he broke with trump on the january 6 pardons for the violent offenders the people who were there for he said i just disagree with that
And he was very much like, you know, no retribution, not going to be looking backwards. So that's Kash Patel. I guess he's getting through.
It seems that way. I mean, all the reporting has been he has really assuaged a lot of the very obvious concerns about him with Republicans.
By just lying and just pretending or just saying like, yeah, I was just, I was just saying some crazy shit on podcasts, which I guess, I guess if, if we're ever confirmed, we can say that too, huh?
Where there's not a chance that either of us are ever seeking.
Can we just play, let me just play something you responded to from John Lovett.
Oh no, not the Pundies 2018.
No. Just be like, I don't know any of those people. I don't know what you're talking about.
Oh no, the San Francisco live show. Fuck.
Sounds like my voice, not my voice.
People mix our voices up all the time, so I'd just say that was Tommy.
Yeah, so Kash Patel, FBI, great.
Seems like that's happening. I mean, the fact that whenever you're doing the list of people who are possible no votes, Tom Tillis would be on that list because he is a senator who has to run for re-election, has had moments of sanity in his brief career, but he introduced Kash Patel, so it seems like we're not going to get him.
And then I guess Tulsi Gabbard then is the one who's in most jeopardy. Yeah. Because she wasn't mean enough to Edward Snowden.
Actually, John, you know what the most fucked up thing is, is the person in the most jeopardy may actually be his nominee for secretary of labor because she once endorsed the PRO Act. Oh, God. She was the person.
Yeah, she's actually she's actually not even like OK enough for Trump. Like she's actually a decent like like any Republican president who nominated her. Democrats would be like, wow, that's pretty cool.
On one specific issue, right?
She's pretty pro-labor as the next labor.
Yeah, so there are a lot of Democrats who didn't endorse the PRO Act. Right, yeah, exactly. So she's in the most danger. I'm not entirely sure of the strategy of focusing most of our ire on Tulsi Gabbard on the Edward Snowden traitor thing. I don't... I don't get that either. I don't get that either.
I mean, I understand why that makes... Plenty of targets there for Tulsi Gabbard.
I mean, obviously, it's the Intel Committee. This is like they're very closely aligned with the Intel community, who obviously have very strong feelings about what Edward Snowden did to them. But just from a public perspective, or even trying to peel off Republicans, it seems...
I'd be curious to know what the reasoning was, because there were smart people who were making that case, and I was surprised by it.
Yeah. And those are all the most controversial picks. I think Pam Bondi is also getting three, which is fucked up.
She did. She made it through committee on party line vote last week.
Wonderful. Well, we'll see.
We'll see if we can take down the pro-labor labor secretary.
One last thing before we go. So right before this recording, I interviewed Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, for Offline. which will be out this Sunday. It's a great interview. He wanted to talk about big tech and regulation. He's been talking a lot about social media and loneliness and all the topics we love discussing on offline.
But because I had him for the interview, at the top, I asked him all about these last two weeks and how they were responding and how Democrats were responding. He's someone who has not been afraid to be out there being very forceful, sounding the alarm,
and so i asked him about all that and uh i thought his answers were interesting enough that wanted to play it here on pod save america as a preview of um of sunday's offline episode so you'll be hearing that right now do you think some of the um reticence about speaking up has to do with the fact that some of your colleagues are just personally afraid like do you sense any fear among your either your democratic colleagues or even the republican colleagues
Listen, that is not a conversation that we have out loud, but I don't know how what has happened in the last week doesn't have an impact. I haven't shared this yet, but it is just true. My office has received phone calls and threats that are different than anything we had received prior to the pardoning of the January 6 protesters. We have had to have very different conversations internally.
about how we protect me, my family, and my staff. I assume other offices are getting those calls. I assume those calls are reaching other Democratic activists who speak up online all around the country. And whether or not that reaches the level of consciousness, I don't know. But when your family is threatened with harm, of course it may, at the very least, subconsciously depress your interest in
fighting as hard as you can.
And given the fact that Elon Musk can sort of rouse those people with one or two or three tweets, it probably also has to do with why there hasn't been a concentrated effort to take him on personally, because folks don't want to end up as I have been and many others on the receiving end of sort of his social media storms, because what comes with that is an implicit threat of violence.
Those threats do not seem to have slowed you down. How are you personally sort of handling that?
Well, I just feel like I have a unique responsibility. I mean, I'm one of 47 Democratic senators. I'm going to take some precautions to make sure that me and my family and my staff are protected. But if I mute my voice, then all is lost. And yes, I don't completely understand why everybody isn't fighting as hard as some of us have been.
So I feel like my role right now is to model a kind of vigorous, organic, authentic anger at what is happening to hopefully inspire others to join.
Good for Chris Murphy, huh? Yeah, Chris Murphy's great. First of all, terrifying that that's happening, that he's getting those threats and that other people are and people are scared now of speaking out. But I'm glad he's out there and I'm glad he's not backing down. So, all right. That is our show for today. Everyone have a great weekend because the news is so wonderful.
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