The price of eggs is still high, the stock market is sinking, but Donald Trump is fulfilling at least one campaign promise: using the power of the government to punish those who disagree with him. ICE arrests one of the leaders of the campus protests at Columbia—a legal permanent resident—and sends him to a detention facility, while the administration strips $400 million in grants and contracts for the university itself. And, with a pair of executive orders, Trump seeks to withhold student loan relief from people who help undocumented immigrants, provide gender-affirming care for minors, or run DEI programs—and he bans a prominent Democratic-affiliated law firm from even entering federal buildings. Meanwhile, Trump refuses to say whether we should expect a recession, more juicy reporting emerges of the Cabinet and Elon Musk meeting last week, and Democrats squabble over how to respond to it all. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss Trump's crackdown on dissent, whether he can be swayed by political pressure, and how Democrats should aim for authenticity rather than the latest meme when making their case. Then, Lovett catches up with Bernie Sanders on the Michigan leg of his "Fight Oligarchy" tour.Correction: an earlier version of this episode misattributed the origin of the 2024 explosives attack on Hezbollah. It was an Israeli operation; we were talking quickly and said the wrong name. We're sorry!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: How is Trump impacting dissent and opposition in America?
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report that Elon accused Marco Rubio of not firing enough people at the State Department and insinuated he's good on TV, but not much else. Marco got mad. Said Elon was lying and then went back and forth until Trump had to jump in and defend Marco. Elon also fought with real world road rule star turned transportation secretary Sean Duffy.
Who, by the way, is the hero in this piece. Yes, the hero who accused Doge of trying to fire air traffic controllers. And then Elon's like, that's a lie. We did not try to give me the names. And he's like, I can't give you the names because I prevented you from firing them. Idiot. He didn't say it, but he should have. Should have.
This all ended with Trump announcing that cabinet secretaries, not Elon, decide who gets hired and fired at their agencies. And then they all tried to make up and pretend they're best pals on social media. Now, I initially thought Elon would be asked about all this when he sat down for a Fox business interview with Larry Kudlow on Monday.
My original segue into this was, and here's what he said when asked about it today. But there is no question. It was just a 15-minute tongue bath from Larry Kudlow.
I don't like the term tongue bath. It was a tongue bath, but it's an uncomfortable phrase.
We should feel uncomfortable. I don't like it. Try watching the interview.
But the cat gives a kitten.
Right. Anyway, here's how it sounded.
I mean, frankly, I can't believe I'm here doing this. It's kind of bizarre. You know how to read an income statement, and you know how to read a balance sheet. You've had some business experience. I'm kidding, but you know about this stuff. I mean, how are you running your other businesses? With great difficulty. Yeah, I mean... Producers are yelling at me to get out.
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Chapter 2: What are the consequences of ICE detaining a Columbia protest leader?
How fun was that New York Times story? We deserve every word of that.
First of all, I love that story. Everybody should take a moment and go.
Good for Maggie, good for Jonathan.
Good for Maggie, good for Jonathan. So there's just one point I wanted to make about the story, which was excellent. It was written in a really strange way because there's lots of what seem like direct quotes from the piece, but they're not in quotes. It's like, It's not written like a New York Times story. It's written like a book. And it made me think two things. One, could there be?
Could there be? And two, are these people already recording each other? I hope so. And if I was somebody in that room reading that story, I would be very paranoid about how that story was written basically as if somebody was in the room transcribing it without any reference to a recording or who the... There's no like... Some sources say Duffy said this and some sources must say that.
It is a narrative as if they were in the room. And I just love that for them and for us.
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?
No, it's White House staff. It's all White House staff. Yeah. They leak. It's usually like senior staff and then the staff around the table.
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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