We Can Do Hard Things
Amanda & Jessica Follow the Money: Who’s Getting Rich and Who’s Getting Cheated
Thu, 06 Mar 2025
Award-winning journalist, Jessica Yellin, and Amanda are together in-person, broadcasting from Washington, D.C. where Jessica has been reporting on President Trump’s recent address to Congress. Today, they follow the money to show us where this administration's priorities are – plus, a way to help organizations who are making a difference in the fight for democracy. -How the U.S. is increasingly shifting away from allies and aligning with Russia -The Oval Office ambush of President Zelensky and its fallout -How Trump’s tariffs are negatively affecting the U.S. economy -The effort to weaken Social Security & Medicaid and what it could mean for the future Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand -- dedicated to helping you manage your “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellin. And also, to get real time, clear and brilliant reporting, go to substack.com and search for her page newsnotnoise and subscribe there. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What major announcements are coming from Amanda's newsletter?
Hi PodSquad! So many of you know that I've been doing something that I haven't done for five years, which is writing again. I've been sitting down first thing in the morning with my coffee and my dogs and writing little stories and then sending those stories to what has become a very large eine entspannte und wunderschöne Newsletter-Community. Wer wusste, dass so viele von euch da sein würden?
Die zweite Newsletter kam heute. Am Montag sende ich eine große Announcement, die größte Announcement, die wir jahrelang gemacht haben, in dieser Newsletter. Also, ich denke, dass Sie nicht missen wollen. Das fühlt sich wie eine presumptive Sache anzusehen, aber ich bin sicher, dass Sie nicht missen wollen, dass die Announcement, die am Montag in der Newsletter kommt.
Also, wenn Sie inkludiert werden wollen, In that big day, go to glennanddoyle.com. You'll see a sign-up box in the top middle of the page where you can submit your email address. You know that I will never share your email address with anyone except myself. If you're on Instagram, go to my page, click the link in bio and you'll see sign up for newsletter as the second button.
Click that button, submit your email address and join our little large newsletter community. See you there.
Hello everybody, welcome back to Calm News. Jessica Yellen is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby Award winning independent news brand dedicated to helping you manage your information overload. What do we need now more than independent news brands and help with our information overload?
She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yelland. And also to get her real time clear and brilliant reporting, please do this. Go to substack.com and search for her page News Not Noise and subscribe to it there. It's so good. You will not regret it.
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Chapter 2: Why is Jessica Yellin reporting from Washington, D.C.?
So this is a very exciting day because usually Jessica is in LA and I am in DC and we are staring each other over a Zoom when we record this. But today I am staring directly into Jessica's beautiful eyes and we are in the belly of the beast right now. Jessica, where are we and why are we here?
Wir sind in... Und ich meine, literally, nicht existenziell, was ich auch wundere, wo wir sind und warum wir hier sind. Aber lass uns einfach über literally sprechen.
Wir sind auf Capitol Hill. Ich bin in die Stadt gekommen, um die gemeinsame Session des Kongresses zu besuchen. I agree. And I think we both look great under the circumstances. I know.
Chapter 3: What were the key moments from Trump's address to Congress?
Okay, so we're recording this on Wednesday. So you were there last night at this point. What was it like? What the hell?
You know, there's two different dynamics to it. One is just how partisan the speech itself was. And, you know, we can talk about the president said a lot of untruths as usual and was partisan, explicitly divisive in ways I've never seen in office before, where he taunted Democrats and who won't applaud for this or that while then turning around and lying about things.
And then on the other hand, so that's the president, among the Democrats, there was a real sense of, I don't want to say disarray, it was just lack of clarity, you know? Some Democrats, they said that they won't walk in. It's a tradition to walk the president in with Democrats and Republicans walking together. So you have a bipartisan support of whoever your president is, is American tradition.
Democrats said we won't do that this year. But on the other hand, and you saw them hold up little signs like at an auction that said, you know, Stop stealing our Medicaid or whatever it was. Don't take our Medicaid.
My favorite one that they held up was, I forget which member of Congress did this, but when he started talking about lowering taxes for people, which he means for billionaires. Who was it that held up a sign that says, you can start by paying your taxes? Oh, I didn't see that. That's hysterical. I love that one.
So there are those. And then there were people wearing pink because that was the original member pussy hat protests in pink. But there is this real divide where some Democrats have argued that if you're saying this is an authoritarian attack on democracy, there is no logic in sitting peacefully and calmly in the chamber. And we want to make a larger demonstration.
And the Democrats are divided on that. And you could see that last night. Some believe that the Democrats have to stay together. And there are a lot of Democrats in swing districts that voted for Trump. And so they don't want to compromise those people. On the other hand, I interviewed Jasmine Crockett. Oh, God love her and keep her national treasure. She really was on fire.
And then this Representative Green of Texas. So what happened was toward the beginning of the President's speech, Representative Green of Texas, who's in his 70s, has been in public service his whole life, has seen what protest does in America, right? And has lived through it. Trump started, you know, in on Medicaid and all that. And he stood up and wouldn't sit down, booed the President.
I've never seen that. in that way all the time I've covered Capitol Hill. And Speaker Johnson had him escorted out. And he later said, you know, I am happy to take whatever punishment is necessary because I'm speaking for those who can't speak. The poor are going to suffer in this country.
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Chapter 4: How are Trump's policies impacting Medicaid and Social Security?
all talk lines from his campaign speech i mean the man just continues to campaign against instead of saying what he's for and that's because he doesn't want us to know what he's for but if you follow the money you know what he's for so i think what i would love to talk about for this whole conversation is jessica follow the money for us what is happening with money that
Just this week, if we take a snapshot, Trump is all about the money, always has been. What is he doing with the money? Because no matter what he says on a stage... What he cares about is reflected in the money and the impact to Americans is reflected in the money. So can you tell us some of those things?
Yes. So in the middle of the speech or toward the beginning, he pointed to the gallery and there is Elon Musk standing there smiling, you know, as if he's this savior who's helping to downsize government. Did he have a chainsaw or no chainsaw? No chainsaw this time. That's weird. Not even a gold chain on his neck. I don't know. It's a different look. So a couple of things. One is,
You have Doge continuing to do its work. I want to make this very clear. My reporting is that what they're doing inside the agencies and including agencies that are precious and crucial to Americans' survival and well-being, Medicaid, Social Security, is taking steps to disassemble the institution, okay? So,
People who are in a position to know tell me that they are firing people who are vital to solving problems. If your grandma and the number on her Medicaid and her Social Security don't match and she can't get her benefits, somebody has to problem solve that and marry them, right? The people who help with that being fired, right? The basic fundamentals of how it works are they're getting rid of it.
They're even getting rid of, they've listed for sale the buildings that are Sie sind also auch innerhalb des Sozial- und Sicherheitssystems und lügen darüber, was sie finden. Der Präsident in seiner Rede ging weiter und weiter und weiter darüber, wie Menschen, die über 130 sind, Beneficien sammeln. Und da das nicht möglich ist, ist es offensichtlicher Fraud.
Well, people inside tell me, no, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect showing up, which is a syndrome in which you say you know so much because you are so uninformed, you don't understand what you're talking about. And they just don't understand how data is recorded at Social Security. In the beginning that made sense, now it's a lie. So Trump's lying about Social Security. The question is why?
A lot of people are saying that the reason that he focused so much on Social Security in that moment is because he's trying to make the case for, taking that away subtly, where people are like, oh, I guess that's a fraud, so we should let go of Social Security.
Are people talking about that? Yes and no. It's not to take it away, it's to break it so badly that recipients are desperate, struggling, literally starving without medications, suffering, and then desperate for any help. And that will give the government an excuse to say, We have to privatize this.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of Trump's proposed crypto reserve?
Like we can't get those medical supplies, but we can dip into the closet where we keep them. So this is like survival stuff.
This is like if there is a crazy thing. This is the kind of stuff you keep in like your basement or your attic where you're like, well, if all the power goes out, we have this stuff.
This is the idea about reserves. Yes, it's like the government's go bag. Okay. And he's just said we want a go bag of crypto. Oh gut, because that will get you through the night. Crypto is a digital number keeper on the computer. It's not a thing you need to dip into in a crisis.
It's really a transfer of taxpayer dollars into crypto funds, into these five cryptos that Trump's supporters are invested in. And it is a way to sort of formalize the crypto market to make those investors profitable. I mean, there's no other way to say it.
It's a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to some of the wealthiest investors in America, which is happening in the backdrop as they're saying we need to cut Medicaid and change Social Security. It's a currency. It's publicly accessible. Anybody could buy in. And we do. You could say that about American gold currency. Our dollar doesn't have you don't eat dollars when you're hungry.
And they would argue that they need this as a backstop in a time of crisis. Right. Crypto is the future, they say. And America should be leading in this new future tech future. And one can have a debate on that, but the idea of just funneling this money into these companies at this time is wild when they're saying we need to downsize everything.
And it's so bad that one of Peter Thiel's protégés, who helped stand up the Trump pack, who is one of Trump's biggest donors, has said, cut it out, guys. This isn't cool. Like, not into it. And there's another whole thing there, which is the tech elite at odds, like who's getting rich off everything.
Yeah, he's like, but wait, you didn't tell me before I invested.
I thought you were only enriching the AI, bros. So we can come back to that another time. We also can't talk about the money piece without acknowledging this week Trump slapped these massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico and increased tariffs on China. China and on cue as predicted by every legitimate economist left, right and center. The stock market tanked.
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Chapter 6: How are Trump's tariffs affecting the U.S. economy?
This is why Breitbart is one of the three that are now allowed in the Pentagon, whereas NPR and AP, the Associated Press, is not.
It's gotten so bad that I think of Breitbart as like the legacy press of the right wing like at least they have reporters who ask questions that then they share as information sam that's a slippery slope and we're starting to find bright art as our best and last option okay
So they had in the Oval Office a reporter from some outlet, I can't remember in what name, but it was one of these like rando places. And Zelensky shows up wearing fatigues, which he always does all the time to kind of project wherever he goes, my people are at war, I stand with my people.
This is solidarity with his people who have been at war and under siege for over three years and all of his... People who are fighting actively now. He's not going out in a suit and tie because his people are at war. He is with them in solidarity.
So he shows up wearing what he always wears. We've always seen. And he does what's a veil, a press availability. They call it in the Oval Office. Whenever the president takes meetings with world leaders, they invite in the press. That's why you see those two people sitting in the yellow gold chairs in front of the fight. And they ask questions and the press leaves.
It's called a pool spray, is what we call it.
And this is, by the way, always, this always happens, even if we are like serious adversaries with someone. They go in the back room and talk all their smack and work out their business and yell at each other. But when they sit in the gold chairs as leaders of nations, they are respectful of one another, even if we're adversaries.
And that is always, always, always true. And that used to be my job. I was one of the reporters who would get escorted into the Oval Office and shout the questions and then run out and tell everybody what happened. So I've been there many times and it was unthinkable to imagine what they were seeing. So they're in the chairs. One of these rando reporters from new outlet on the far right says,
asked Zelensky a rude question about why is he dressed so disrespectfully in the Oval Office. Side note, do we not remember that Elon Musk stood behind the president wearing a baseball cap and a Doge T-shirt? Like, it's not a problem when he does it, but it is a problem when the leader of a country at war, whatever. Obviously, it's deeply cynical, felt like a setup.
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