Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue their all-out assault on the federal government, shuttering USAID, rooting out and firing workers linked in any way to diversity initiatives, and breaking and ignoring laws as they go. Jon and Dan hash out all the latest, including Trump's plan to have the US "own" and redevelop Gaza, Democratic pushback, and whether federal judges will step in to stop—or at least slow—the madness. Then, Tommy talks with Sen. Brian Schatz about Democrats' all-night floor fight against Trump's OMB pick, what they think is working, and how they're gearing up for the big battles ahead. 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 are Trump's new proposals regarding Gaza?
The website is there because George W. Bush signed it into law thanks to a law that was sponsored by Senator Barack Obama and Republican, extremely conservative Republican Tom Coburn to make sure that all the government spending in the entire budget is online for everyone to see. That's the only reason that they're all finding all this fucking spending that they're like,
oh, this is the greatest scandal in history. And they just, like, stumbled over it because they weren't fucking paying attention to anything the government did up until now unless it, like, had something to do with their companies and making sure they couldn't make more billions of dollars. I can't stand these.
It does make me wonder if transparency is a mistake. If you have people with massive megaphones just pushing out out-of-contact misinformation to large-spots people at a time which the media does not have the capability or the reach to push back, it's not particularly great.
There's so many examples of this, but the one that really took off this week is a real, a huge scandal, huge scandal. Here's Donald Trump describing it at the prayer breakfast this morning.
Did you see what happened yesterday where they found hundreds of millions of dollars of money was fraudulently given to newspapers and I guess Politico? I don't know, they're here. Good, I hope you're enjoying your breakfast. No, they gave money to all this out of U.S. aid.
So, again, huge scandal. Trump also truthed about it early on Thursday morning, saying that billions of dollars had been stolen, quote, much of it going to the fake news media as a payoff for creating good stories about the Democrats. What a scandal. What a scandal.
Well, think of all the good stories they've read about Joe Biden. Money well spent.
And just in case you think this is Donald Trump, no, the brain rot is now Trump, Elon Musk, just dozens of fucking MAGA Doge accounts online, Musk fanboys, Trump fanboys, everywhere, right? They all think the right-wing media, they've got Fox, it's everywhere. The federal government... purchased $8 million worth of Politico Pro subscriptions.
Politico Pro is separate from regular Politico and it's for CEOs and companies and governments. And it's basically, I don't know, you learn information about legislation and analysis and very complicated.
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Chapter 7: How does the podcast analyze Trump's rhetoric?
Like, how do you read this?
I don't know. I just don't know. I've certainly had conversations with, I mean, seven to 10 Republicans who have a real stomachache about this thing in particular, because as as much as I disagree with many of them about almost everything, a lot of them don't want, you know, babies dying on their conscience. And the question is whether they're going to exert themselves.
So this weekend, the Republican senators are going to be meeting with the president and we'll see. I mean, you know, I think it's not a I mean, it's probably a safe bet to to assume, no, they will not step up. And even if like handicapping wise, maybe I still think there will be instances where they stand up for themselves. what they think is important. I think there has to be more time elapsed.
And one of the conversations I'm having with some folks is, I don't think the question is time elapsed. I think it is damage done. And if they're doing the damage super quickly, you may not have six months Um, but I think there's also a human psychology element, which is if it, if it sort of piles up over six months, it's easier to get there to displaying your independence.
If it all happens at once, it looks like to them, you know, you're immediately turning on the newly inaugurated president. So they've got a tight rope to walk. Um, some of them do that more skillfully and frankly, more honorably than others. And, um, My job is obviously to articulate, to try to slow them down, to articulate to the public where I think the country is going in the wrong direction.
And that part, on some level, is the easy part. But I'm still trying to find three or four votes for certain things.
Um, because that is the job and um, and I think we should all Hope that our democratic senators are in the business of describing how horrific all this is in the business of trying to slow it down but also in the business of Trying to do the senator thing which is to find four votes to stop all this crazy shit And if it if it is if we're unable to do so then um
then at least we know that we've exhausted the possibility and that we can go, you know, rhetorically speaking, full thermonuclear.
Yeah. Let's talk about the Democratic Party right now because we don't have a leader right now, right? Like we have former presidents, we have congressional leaders, but there's not like a single person guiding the party on messaging and policy like you would have if there were a Democrat in the White House or a major nominee running for president.
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