Latest / Pod Save America / Trump's Art of the Fold

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Trump's Art of the Fold · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: your specific needs. Visit rightsideup.com slash crooked today. That's rightsideup.com
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: slash crooked. Code crooked. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Jon Favreau.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we'll talk about Trump ordering investigations into
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: two former Trump officials for the crime of telling the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: truth about him and the 2020 election. We'll cover the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: vote in the House on Trump's big, beautiful bill and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: why passing it may be a bit of an uphill
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: climb from here. We've got just a little bit of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: good news on the fight against Doge and deportations. Then
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Dan talks to legendary physician and writer Atul Gawande about
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: RFK Jr. 's mission to destroy the agency he now runs.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: which has already led to him forcing out the FDA's
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: top vaccine regulator. But let's start with the latest on
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Trump's trade war. So I just want to quickly walk
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: through the facts of what happened this week. No spin
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: on the ball here, so you can all make your
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: own judgments about the strategic genius of our president. First,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Trump announced the biggest tax increase in history on everything
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: we buy from the rest of the world. Then, The
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: markets tanked and lost more than $ 6 trillion in value
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: over the course of a few days. Most economists and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: CEOs said that a recession was much more likely. And
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Trump World responded by saying that they weren't backing down,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: that rumors of a 90-day pause on the tariffs were false,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and that all the economic pain would only be temporary.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Then there was a big sell-off in the bond market,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: which happens when people believe that U.S. Treasury bonds usually
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: one of the safest investments in the world, are too risky,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: which drives up interest rates on mortgages and other loans,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: which could cause a global financial crisis. Then, on Wednesday,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Trump suddenly announced that actually there would be a 90-day
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: pause on some of the tariffs, but China would get
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: hit with even higher tariffs, and there would still be
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a universal 10% tariff on just about every other country,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: though apparently he's going to spend the next 90 days
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: negotiating trade deals with each of these countries. The markets
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: recovered their losses, and this was the reaction from Trump World.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: We begin with the art of the deal. Told you
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: this was gonna happen.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: It took great courage, great courage, for him to stay
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the course until this moment.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: Trump created maximum leverage for himself, and now his team's
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: sitting pretty, taking meetings and doing deals that put America first.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know we had a massive market rebound after
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Trump's 3-D chess move.
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: Tonight, you can definitively say this was not a walkback,
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: this was not something that the bond.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Markets were cratering and you were worried about it. No.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: That this is part of your plan. Many of you in.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: The media clearly missed the art of the deal. You
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: A huge win for the president, a huge win for
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: the country, his biggest accomplishment of the second term, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: there have been many.
• 4:41
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: We're so fucked.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Biggest accomplishment of the second term. Wow, even bigger than
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Gulf of America. Now, some of you may be thinking,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: isn't it more likely that the bond market sell-off and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the sudden prospect of a global financial crisis is actually
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: what led Trump to back down? Well, if so, you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: are not the only one. The bond markets that persuaded
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you to.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: reverse course?
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: No, I was watching the bond market. The bond market
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: now is beautiful. But, yeah, I saw last night where
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: people were getting a little queasy. People were jumping a
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know?
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: unlike these champions.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It is just so classic that he has everyone go
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: out there and say, big win. We didn't back down
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: at all. This was the plan all along. It's strategy,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: art of the deal. He's a genius. What are you
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: talking about fucking bond markets? That's crazy.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Mr.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Trump, why'd you do it? Oh yeah, the bond markets.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Fucking clowns.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: They deserve everything they get.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So sure enough, the markets tanked again on Thursday. Dan,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: do you think the problem is just that not enough
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: people have read the art of the deal? Like, have
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the markets not fully priced in the strategic genius of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump?
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: I was just thinking that we are probably weeks away
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: from an executive order that ties access to federal education
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: funding to making art of the deal required for summer reading.
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sure every world leader is going to get it.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: They're going to send a copy.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Of it before they start negotiating. Yes, it's probably Howard Locknick.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Howard Locknick is right now just licking envelopes and sticking
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: in copies of Art of the Deal to send all
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: over the world. I mean, look, what happened here is
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: this immediate sense of relief on the first day that
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Trump was actually not going to drive the car completely
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: off the cliff. And then a lot of institutional players
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: saw the opportunity to buy low, buy the dip, if
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: you will, on some things, and the markets bounced back.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: But then everyone woke up and realized we were still fucked,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: that the three countries that still had large tariffs on them, Canada, Mexico,
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: and China, make up more than 40% of US imports,
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: that most of the things that we care a lot about,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: car parts, computers, electronics, smartphones, are all coming from these countries, toys.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: And it's going to be massively destabilizing. And then we
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: discovered that the Trump administration couldn't even figure out what
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: the exact right tariff was on China. And it wasn't 125,
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: as they said. So it's actually 145. Because they put
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: so many tariffs on and taken so many tariffs off,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: they forgot they still had the 20% fentanyl tariff on China.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: And so we're still in a very, very bad place.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: There's a cap analysis out today which shows that actually
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: under this tariff regime we're currently in right now with
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: the increased tariffs on China, American families are going to
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: pay more on average, $ 4, 600 per family, than they would
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: under the global tariffs that Trump– reciprocal tariffs that Trump
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: had in place on Monday morning.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Also, the issues in the bond market have not been solved,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and that's going to push up the cost of borrowing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So if you want to get a mortgage, car loan,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: anything else, I don't know why you'd need a car
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: loan because it's going to be pretty hard to buy cars.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Well, that's why you need the loan because they're so
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: fucking expensive.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It's not funny. But yes, it was the bond market
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that scared Trump. We know that. There's a lot of
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: other reporting aside from Trump just telling us. The Wall
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Street Journal reported that Trump was willing to push us
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: into a recession, but not a depression.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: What a hero.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: That was what one of the sources for the Wall
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Street Journal article said. CNN found another source that said
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the bond markets did spook the president. So all the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: reporting matches up with, again, what President Trump just told
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: us himself. Yeah, no, I think that... I think what
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: happened this morning is, we're recording this Thursday, what happened
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: this morning is even if, which we can talk about
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the prospect of Trump making deals with every one of these.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: The White House wants us to think that all the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: countries now are just lining up to make deals with
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump because he has all the leverage. And they're, please, Mr. Trump,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: please make us a better deal on trade. Say we
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: make a deal with every one of these countries. and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: get rid of the reciprocal tariffs that he imposed on
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: them and somehow get a better deal there. Kevin Hassett,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: as top economic advisor, was out today saying, but the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: 10% universal tariffs, 10% on every single country, just about
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: every single country, he's never going to get rid of that.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Kevin Hassett is a particular moron. Like just like he
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: is just on TV all the time. He has no
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: fucking clue what he's talking about. He's got a shit
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: eating green the whole time he's doing it. I mean,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: he actually makes Howard Lutnick look like an effective spokesperson.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And that's saying a lot.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And then you realize like apparently the overall effective tariff
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: rate for the United States when you like sort of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: average out all the different tariffs he's imposed together. it
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: was about 27%. With the pause, it's down to 24%.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: When he took office, it was 3%. So I think
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: everyone woke up, saw that and was like, oh yeah,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: we're still pretty fucked. And on top of all that,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: there's the uncertainty of what happens over the next 90
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: days and whether he gets rid of the pause after
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: 90 days. And so businesses were thinking about hiring or
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: making investments, or opening a factory, all that kind of stuff.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: They can't do any of that because there's no certainty
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: here in the United States or anywhere around the world.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: He has just thrown the whole global economy into turmoil
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: for nothing.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: And companies who have factories overseas, whether it's in China
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: or elsewhere, are nervous to place orders because there's a
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: long lag time. So if you want to decide how
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: many iPhones or certain types of Nike sneakers or whatever
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: else you want to have available in the holiday season,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: you're making those decisions online. now, but you have no
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: idea what they're going to cost then, right? You probably
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: wouldn't make as many iPhones if you thought they were
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: going to cost 145% of what they cost already, right?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Or the same thing with Shoot. What he has done,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: and we can get into all the politics of this,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: but for the markets, for world leaders, for business people
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: who have to make decisions about hiring and investment and
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: new products, he can't be trusted. We have... a true
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: lunatic surrounded by morons in the White House and now
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: you cannot– like the fundamental idea of any sort of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: stability in American government economic policy has been forever eroded
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: and cannot come back without Trump as president. Even if
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: these things don't come back, you just put the tariff on,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: takes it off. Could he add another one? Like a
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: normal person who was– it's hard to imagine a normal
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: person dumb enough to have gotten themselves in the situation
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: but who backed off at the 90-day mark, like right
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: here and put in the place a 90-day pause– the
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: natural assumption would be there's no way they're doing this
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: again in 90 days. But could you really say that
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: with Trump? Of course not.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I really feel like it's underappreciated that this 10% universal
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: tariff is going to stay in place too, because that
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: is just, I mean, like, here's what I'm trying to
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: figure out. We should talk about the politics now, which is, say,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out like his way out of this,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: because I think what the White House has in mind is,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you know, they're going to start announcing, deals with countries
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: right and whether or not we actually make out on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: these deals and it's a it's a good deal for
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the united states they're gonna pretend it is right they're
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: gonna we've seen this with what they did with canada
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and mexico right like oh canada appointed a fentanyl czar
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and so they're they've you know they've art of the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: deal again trump trump may bent them to their his
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: will you know all that shit so they're gonna make
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: any deal seem like it's a huge win for trump
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and they'll probably love the idea that he gets to
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: go out and announce deals one after another But the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: facts on the ground and the economic reality is only
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: going to get worse as the automobile tariffs, the Chinese tariffs,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: which is huge, and I don't think that's going to
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: get solved anytime soon, and the 10% universal tariff, all
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: that's still going to be in effect. And so that's
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: going to make the economic reality worse, even as Trump
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is going out there and touting whatever deals he may
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: get with some of these countries. So I like, I
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: don't know how he gets out of this one.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: There's no path out other than getting rid of all
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: the tariffs and lowering costs. Like what people are going
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: to pay attention to is not the fucking press conference with,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: to announce the deal with Madagascar to lower the price
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: of vanilla.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: What they're going to notice is when they go to
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: the store and everything that they, that was less was
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: cheaper a month ago was more expensive. Now like that,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, that is why Donald Trump is president, was
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: prices went up. And so it is just truly insane. Like,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: I can't just overstate this enough, that a president who
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: was elected to strengthen the economy and lower prices has
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: decided to crash the economy to increase prices. It is
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the exact opposite of what he was elected to do.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: I joked about this in my newsletter. I said it'd
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: be like if George W. Bush- after 9-11, his first
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: response was to give Bin Laden the Medal of Freedom. Like,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: what are we doing?
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Even the stated rationale for this trade policy, this trade war,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: which betrays a lack of understanding even of the basics
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: of economics or how trade works, even the stated rationale,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: and again, they're in conflict, one is like, oh, we're
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: going to bring in a whole bunch of revenue from
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: all these tariffs but if trade is rebalanced the revenue
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: goes down and then the other is oh we're going
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: to bring back manufacturing we're going to bring back jobs
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to america we're going to be boomtown right if even
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: if that worked it wouldn't be for years and years
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and years so is the trump administration's bet that the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: american people really have a stomach for economic calamity and
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: sacrifice because they know that years from now, manufacturing will
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: come back here. Is that, you think that's what they think?
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: But I mean, but also you have Howard Lutnick out
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: there talking about how robots are going to replace all
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: the workers.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: So you like, but yes, maybe you are on shoring
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: our supply chain. Like, I guess like, which, but you're
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: not the, it's not like there's going to be this
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: like renaissance of blue collar jobs in a world of automation,
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: but also some of the things are not built in factories.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I saw Chris Hayes posted this, but it's like, are
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: we going to build a banana factory here? Like the
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: tree factory? Because of the lumber? It makes no fucking sense.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: There are things that we just don't grow or make
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: in America. We don't make shoes in America. We make
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: very few shoes in America. We're all of a sudden
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: going to build an entire shoe industry here?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Coffee, bananas, avocados, lots of other fruit and vegetables. It's idiocy.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: It's pure idiocy. The other argument they're trying to make is, oh, well,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump said, do not retaliate and we won't retaliate.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And because none of these countries except China retaliated, that's
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: why we took off the retaliatory tariffs. And now we
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: have isolated China and the rest of the world will
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: join us in putting pressure on China to cave. And
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it's like, Why is the rest of the world going
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: to join us? What makes you think that? After you've
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: threatened to, you know, take over Greenland, invade Canada, make
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip into some kind of a resort. You
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: pissed off all of our NATO allies. You're beating up
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: on Europe every chance you can get. And by the way,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: they're already now talking to China about maybe like maybe
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: doing a deal with them.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: But yeah, do you know why?
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: We even, we still have like more of a, like
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the more stable superpower right now.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Well, we put, we put a 10% tariff on all
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: of their products. You know, who did put a 10%
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: tariff on all of them? China. So it was like,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: we were pushing people into the arms of China.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: It's the exact opposite.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Like it is like the rationale are all conflicting and
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: they don't make a lot of sense. Like you can't
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: say we want to bring many, like, this is all
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: about a manufacturing Renaissance. We're also going to gut the
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: chips act, like, which is entirely designed to build manufacture
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: manufacturing industry here in America. But then every part of
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: it just does the opposite of what they say it's.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Going to do.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: It is truly one of the stupidest things that any person,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: let alone president, has ever done. It's so disconnected from
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: what they think it's supposed to do.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: The only way I see they get out of this is,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: like you said, they do a couple deals, and then
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: when people are forgetting about what they've promised– in keeping
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: some of these tariffs on permanently. They just get rid
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of all the tariffs. They claim victory. We did a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: big deal with Europe. We finally... President Xi was like,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: thank you, Mr.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Trump.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you. This was a great deal. You're such a
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: master negotiator. I could learn from you. That's what he
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: told me. And he wrote me all these letters, and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: he loves me now. So they do this whole thing,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and then he's like, so I'm getting rid of all
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the tariffs because it's a new American century, and everyone
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: loves it. Whatever. And none of it's true, but at
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: least he gets rid of the tariffs.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: That's the only thing I can say. Who gives a
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: shit what Kevin Hassett said? Do you think Trump's like, well,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: we can't undermine Kevin Hassett's credibility. That would be wrong.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: We need this guy. So yeah, they can say they're
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: going to keep him on and then just take him
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: off at some point. But Trump's reality here is tied
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: to prices. And as long as he is jacking up
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: everyone's prices, he's going to pay a price. The medium-term
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: consequences of this are baked in. Even if he takes
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: them all off tomorrow, he has already done real damage
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: to the medium-term economic growth in this country, to job creation,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: to– investment to GDP, all of that. I don't think
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: you're going to get a lot of that back. Will
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: the stock market bounce back maybe slowly over time?
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: But all these people are supposed to build all these
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: factories here. That's not going to happen now. No one's
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: going to do that. No.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Could we narrowly avoid a recession?
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. Chances of a recession only dropped
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a couple percentage points, at least with JP Morgan's calculations
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: based on the pause. So not out of the woods
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: there at all. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's
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• 20:52
  Speaker 1: feel like the simplest and most effective message for Democrats
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: here is that Donald Trump is single-handedly tanking the economy
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: because he's a lunatic surrounded by sycophants. Am I missing anything?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: No.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Any more complicated than that?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: No, you got it exactly right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Because looking around, it seems like it might be a
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: little more complicated.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: I would say the reality is very easy for everyone
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: to see. The best messages are the true and obvious ones.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: And this one could not be more true and obvious.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: And this is a thing that the tariffs, the insanity
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: of the tariffs, the market crash has broken through to
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: people in a way that nothing else has broken through in,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: thus far, the Trump administration and Trump 2.0.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: You're watching your 401k disappear. We'll do that.
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, more than 60% of the country is invested
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: in the market in some way, shape, or form, almost
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: entirely in retirement accounts, but it's north of 60%. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: so people are tracking it. Crashes in the stock market
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: are similar to gas prices in the sense that the
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: stock ticker is on the TV. It blares across everywhere.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: It's almost any news site you go to, it's on
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: the front page, particularly when there's a market crash, you
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: see go up and down. So it's like, even if
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: you're not in the market, you're getting a lot of
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: like sirens going off about the economy being in trouble.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And this is before the price increases really.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, even if the market was doing great, the
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: price increases are the much bigger political problem for him.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: I think the macro political problem for Trump and the
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: way that why this is important for Democrats to hammer
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: this is The entire reason that Trump is acceptable to
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: a certain segment of voters is his belief. It's a
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: false belief, but it's born of the fact that he's
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: a wealthy businessman, that he played a fake businessman on
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: a reality TV show for a decade, and then oversaw
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: an economy that people have very fond memories of. Now,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: He really did nothing to make that economy good. He
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: just managed to not mess up Barack Obama's economy. But
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: because of that, people believe that he– and even some
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Democrats believe he is a competent manager of the economy.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Is he corrupt?
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Is he a clown in a lot of ways?
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Did he spark a violent insurrection? Is he a convicted criminal?
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: All those things, yes. But on the issue I care
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: about most, he has his shit together. He knows what
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: he's doing. And there is nothing that has happened over
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: the last few weeks here that suggests he has any
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: idea what he's doing. And I think he really has
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: eroded the fundamental core of his political identity to voters,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: the reason why they support him despite everything else. Not
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: the MAGA hat base, but just like the rest of
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: the country, like that last 14%, 15% of people who
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: don't love Trump but voted for him. Those people... are
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: waking up to the idea that he is not what
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: they thought he is. And that is tremendous. And that's
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: why we've seen his approval rating sink precipitously over the
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: last month here.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: The only thing I would add about Democratic message is
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: to make sure that we are bringing the rest of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party into this, Republicans in Congress and elected
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Republicans everywhere, because we just saw in Congress this week,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: they want to insert a provision into the the budget
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: resolution bill that we're going to talk about soon that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: basically ties Congress's hands so that they can't take back
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the power to levy tariffs from the president of the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: United States because Republicans, they don't, they don't want it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: They want to make sure that Trump has all the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: power to do everything he wants. So they are all in,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: they are all in on the trade war. They are
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: tying themselves to Donald Trump. I think people have to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: know that Republicans aren't just like letting this happen. They
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: are actively making it so that only Trump can, can
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: levy tariffs and continue to tank the economy.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: I think this is a very important point, is that
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Democrats should be, like congressional Democrats, elected Democrats, just people
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: out in the streets, should be pressuring Republicans to take
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: back the tariff power from Trump. And I know that
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: that is not going to happen. Jake Sherman of Punchbowl
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: has tweeted a thousand times now that there's no way
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: that the House is going to do that. And even
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: if you could get together 60 senators, you're not going
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: to get to a veto-proof majority. That doesn't matter. We
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: need people to know that this is a choice Republicans
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: are making, that they are on board with these price increases.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: And they're so feckless and so lame that they are
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: going to go along with it. And these members are
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: going to be under real political pressure in their states
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: as these prices go up. It's the farm states who
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: are going to be suffering mightily from not being able
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: to export to China. It's going to be every person
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: who is trying to buy electronics from China, just across
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: the people trying to buy new cars, all of that.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: And we want to make sure that you're exactly right.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2026, but
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: all these Republicans are, and they should pay a price
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: for this.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And all the Republicans who might run in 2028, if
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: he lets other Republicans run, if he lets us have
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: a presidential election.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: It's a topic for another day.
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: It's a topic for another day. But like, you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: your J.D. Vance's, your Marker Rubio's, like reporters, if they
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: talk to them, Everyone should get on the record about
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: how much they love Trump's tariffs because they're going to
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: say it. And we want the video of them talking
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: about how much they love this for when they try
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to run in 2028 and be like, what? As the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: economy has cratered then and be like, what were you
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: talking about? I don't know if I liked that at
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the time. I wasn't saying that was great. I was
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: quietly upset about it and trying to convince him to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: stop it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, it really, it's just like, as we think
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: about the politics, it really is as if It's the
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: equivalent of George W. Bush walking into Lehman Brothers and
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: just collapsing the whole thing himself.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And then bragging about it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: And then bragging about it, yes.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did it. Like standing on the rubble of
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers with his megaphone. Too soon?
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't even know. Who's to be
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: offended by that? I don't even know.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: We'll see. So we've also heard some Democrats criticize Trump's tariffs,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: but also offer qualified support for some tariffs. This has
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: sort of been a running theme here that people are
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: getting mad about online. Gretchen Whitmer, most notably, gave a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: big speech in D.C. this week where she disagreed with
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Trump's tariffs. She was very clear about the damage that
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: they're doing to Michigan right now. But she also said
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: she understands the, quote, motivation behind them. And then she said, quote,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not against tariffs outright, but it is a blunt tool.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: You can't just pull out the tariff hammer to swing
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: at every problem without a clear, defined end goal. What
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: did you make of that and this message in general?
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Why do you think some Democrats like Whitmer feel like
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: they need to offer some qualified support for the idea
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of tariffs? What's going on here?
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it– I mean, we should
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: be– very clear that globalization and trade has hurt lots
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: of people in this country, right? And that is particularly
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: true in Gretchen Whitmer's state of Michigan, right? Which we've
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: seen as manufacturing based in the auto industry suffered greatly
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: from trade deals. And so she is responding to this
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: idea that not everyone benefits from trade, right? And that
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: tariffs have been in the past a useful way to
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: push back. I think the problem here is we're overcomplicating
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: the simple. And when you talk about it in this way,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: where you say, like, as you said, she criticized, she
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: took Trump to task on it. Like, she was not,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: this is not a suggestion that Gretchen Whitmer was mealy-mouthed
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: about this at all. She was not. But I think
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: when you, the way a lot of Democrats have done
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: it to say, like, you know, Trump's doing it wrong,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: but tariffs are a useful tool, he's just using the
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: tool wrong, suggests that there is some sort of, it
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: like almost buys the premise of Trump's argument. And I
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: think it's just the better argument here is that he
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: is a chaotic clown stumbling about the world stage, hurting
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: American families by raising prices for no reason. And the better,
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I think the way to do it is, you know,
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: like let's take the tariff power away from the president.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: And so we, I think we can be, we're going
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: to negotiate, you know, tough and fair trade deals. We're
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: going to push back against countries who try to do it,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: but this is not the way to do it. Right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: And I think just, I just feel like you're wedded
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: to this old way of thinking, I think. And it just,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: it dilutes the message. And I think Gretchen Whitmer, who
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: may be president of the United States one day, can
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: still use tariffs if she sees fit in the appropriate
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: way a few years from now when she's president, even
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: if she doesn't mention them now. You know what I mean?
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I have a policy problem with this and then a
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: political problem. I'll start with the policy problem.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Let's hear your policy problem because that's why people tune
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: in this podcast.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: The policy problem is that there's not a lot of
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: good economic data, and I'm being generous there, that suggests
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that tariffs work in terms of bringing back lost manufacturing, right?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: If you have a nascent industry that you're just trying
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: to grow that's brand new, maybe tariffs can help grow
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: that industry in the And you want to be able
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to make sure that we have the capacity in the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: United States to produce something here and not rely on
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: another country that may be an adversary. There's an argument
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: for tariffs. Trump tried a bunch of tariffs in his,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: not as many tariffs as now, but some in his
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: first term.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Well, Biden kept them on, too.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what? I remember headlines in 2020
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and 2021 talking about how Trump's tariffs cost Michigan auto jobs, right?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: And so I do think that some elements of labor
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and some folks in the Midwest who are right that
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: globalization has hollowed out manufacturing jobs in the heartland of
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: this country. I get that. But the remedy, tariffs as
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: a remedy has not proven to work very well. And look,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see what happens with the Biden's industrial
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: policy with some tariffs, but also some like the CHIPS Act, right?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Like actually investing in manufacturing in this country, giving incentives
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and grants and credits to companies who are going to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: create manufacturing jobs here and, and all that.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: So I'd like as, as part of a larger industrial policy, great.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the politics of all this, which is,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I get that right after Trump won, Democrats were like, well,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: he's more popular than he's ever been. And, you know,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: it was a definitive loss and all this. We are
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: now at the point with Donald Trump, where if you
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: look down the road to 2026 and then 2028, and
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: you think that Donald Trump is going to somehow regain
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: the popularity he had right after this last election, then
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I can understand trying to tread carefully and saying like, well,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: here's where I agree with Donald Trump, but here's where
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I disagree. But if you're looking at everything that's happened
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: over the last month and you're looking at what he's
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: done on his economic policy now, which as you just said,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: he was elected to be the president to bring down prices.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Now we're witnessing him becoming very unpopular on the issue
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: that he's supposed to be like had the highest approval
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: on the economy and that's just going to keep going
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: down and so if you look ahead like you have
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to imagine a world where uh if the economy craters
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: or things keep going south don't you want to be
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: a democrat who now was saying this fucking guy is
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: tanking the economy And I want no part of this
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and I want no part of the policy. And it's
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: absolutely crazy. And just like go at him knowing that
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: even if, you know, he's still sitting at 46, 45,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: 44% now, like it could get worse. And if it does,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you want to be one of the Democrats who was
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: saying now this is fucked up. Like, and it's, it's
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: very different, but it's almost like Barack Obama coming out
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: against the Iraq war when the rest of the party
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: was for it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I mean, that's a more problematic analogy than
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: your rubble of Lehman Brothers, I'll tell you that.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: True, true.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: So I'd say a couple of things to that. One
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: is I don't think what the Democrats who are mentioning
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: that tariffs could be useful– I don't think what they're
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: trying to do is make some sort of common cause
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: with Trump voters or understand– I don't think that's what's happening.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: I think what's happening is that there remains large constituency
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party who believe that tariffs are a
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: useful tool. And that includes, among others, organized labor. And
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: that there may be times, for instance, on steel and
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: aluminum and other things where you can raise the price
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: of imports to the point that it will push people
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: to using domestic steel.
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: But my issue here is not about the policy utility
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: of tariffs. It's just like, let's have a simpler, clearer message.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: And it's the message that you have there. I don't,
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: I just don't, I think people, I think people online
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: are a little too, you know, Josh Barrow has a
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: very long, very smart op-ed in the New York Times
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: today about this point exactly. He takes it to a
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: policy direction, which is this is a reason the Democrats
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: could have, we can use the fact that Trump is
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: acting this way and has shown the failure of protectionism
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: to become you know, more like develop a message that
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: is more forward looking on trade. I think the fear,
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: I think the fear that some people have is that
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: we're going to make the classic mistake of Donald Trump
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: is is now tough on trade. So we're going to
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: become the biggest defenders of globalism and free trade possible.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, you attack the New York times. I will subscribe
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: to New York times fucking twice.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, you're going to attack institutions. I am going to
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: read the declaration of independence of my children online every day.
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: And so the, you'd see this world where like there is,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: there is a nuanced position between every single thing that
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump has said about trade is wrong. And he
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: is a, and everything. And that global trade is great.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: And I think there are people trying to find, maybe inartfully,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: trying to find the right place in the middle there.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And I'm just saying we should have an alternative vision,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: even if the easier political argument is just Donald Trump's tank,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the economy. But I think that trying to message the nuance.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Of tariffs as a tool.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's too nuanced. I agree with that. And actually,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Whitmer had a couple lines like this in her speech,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: which I thought was good. She's like, where I agree
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: is we need to create more jobs in America. We
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: need to make more stuff in America. We need to
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: have manufacturing in America. And then I think Democrats need
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: to talk about the vision for making sure we are
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: building things and creating jobs and creating manufacturing and new
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: industries of the future right in America. And a couple
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: of ways to do that are making sure that we're
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: investing in education, which Donald Trump is gutting. Make sure
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: we're investing in innovation and science and medicine and technology,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: which Donald Trump is gutting. And you can talk about
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: what is going to attract new businesses and jobs to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: this country instead of just leaning on discussion about tariffs
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and policy and.
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: So I'm very much in agreement that we need a positive,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: forward-looking vision about how to create jobs in this country
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and lift people up and making sure that you're not
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: poor when you work. But just pretending that we can
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: unwind globalization, I don't know.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: I understand the impulse to avoid... Democrats responding to the
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: terrorists by putting on, I was for NAFTA t-shirts.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And like, we're just like, we're going to like
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: put up, like, we're going to put up trade barriers
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and just like pretend that like, you know, globalization was
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: just a policy choice and not the fucking march of technology.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I'm getting a little, I'm getting a little, I'm getting
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: a little Obama now, but that's just my, that's just my, uh,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: my annoyance.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: So even as we're all trying to figure out Trump's
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: next move, there are some pretty serious questions about what
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: happened on Wednesday and before he made his strategic retreat.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: A few hours before Trump announced the pause on reciprocal tariffs,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: he went on Truth Social with a simple message. This
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: is a great time to buy. Signing it DJT. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: in fact, if you did buy on that tip, you
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: would have made a lot of money. Obviously, posting a
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: buy now message on social media is not in itself
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: insider trading because it's very outsider. It's very public. But
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: some folks think that that may have been a cover
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: your ass move and are wondering if any Trump officials,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: family members or other Trump allies in Congress or elsewhere
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: were tipped off about the pause before it happened. Adam
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Schiff and Ruben Gallego sent a letter to the White
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: House asking what happened. Elizabeth Warren went to the floor
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to call for an investigation as well. Doesn't take a
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: huge leap of the imagination to believe there might be
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: something to this, but of course, we don't know. Here's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon with two
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: billionaire friends, Charles Schwab, yes, that Charles Schwab, and car
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: racing magnate Roger Penske.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: This is Charles Schwab.
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: It's not just a company.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: It's actually an individual.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: He made $ 2.
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: 5 billion today, and he made $ 900 million.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: He's in financials.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Did you say.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Being with someone named Charles Schwab is so funny. Like,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: was the Monopoly man not available?
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, on the day you pause the tariffs, the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: markets rallies, and a bunch of rich people got rich.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, like, un-fucking-believable. Thoughts on this? Like,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: is this a, you know, are we heading into conspiracy theory-ville?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Is it real? What do you think?
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's a subject worthy of inquiry. by law
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: enforcement officials, including potentially the Attorney General of New York.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure Pam Bondi's are on it.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: Well, the Attorney General of New York has some jurisdiction
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: here because the markets are based in New York and
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: there is a, I think it's called the Martin Act,
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: which is a specific New York state law where she,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Letitia James, would have some jurisdiction here. So it's worth
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: looking into. It's very believable that these people would do
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: such things and we should look into it. And But
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: also note that there was something called the Stock Act
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: that passed when we were in the White House. And
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: so these government officials would theoretically have to disclose trades made. Now,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: I don't think it would tell you the timing, but
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: it'd be interesting to know who sold stocks on– or
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: bought stocks on this day.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Certainly would. It would be very interesting. Love to see that.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure who's enforcing the Stock Act in this administration,
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: but– Law.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Who's it for these days? I don't know. Trump and
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the Republicans are not simply content imposing the biggest sales
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: tax in history and crashing the economy. They're also hard
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: at work trying to pass a massive tax cut for
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the rich, some of which will be funded by massive
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: cuts to health care and food assistance, and some of
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: which won't be paid for at all. On Thursday, the
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: House barely passed the Senate's budget resolution by a vote
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: of 260. This was after Mike Johnson had to delay
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the vote because the usual kooks in the caucus didn't
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: think the cuts were deep enough. What ultimately got them
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: on board, according to Chip Roy, was a verbal commitment
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: from Republican leadership in the Senate on three big things.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: At least $ 1. 5 trillion in spending cuts. $ 1 trillion in
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits and a
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: dollar-for-dollar match between new tax cuts and spending cuts. This
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: may be a bit challenging for Senate Republicans to achieve
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: because they have people like Susan Collins in their caucus
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: who already voted no the first time around, the first
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: budget resolution, because of the Medicaid cuts that now haven't
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: gone anywhere. And apparently at least four Republican senators have
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: now come out and said that they would vote against it.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: bill if it gets rid of the clean energy tax
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, probably because those tax
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: credits are already being put to use creating jobs and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: businesses in their states. What do you think happens here?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: How do they make all this math work?
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: If you take people at their word, I know that's
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: a ridiculous thing to say, but if you take these
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: people at their word, the people who say that they
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: cannot vote for cuts to Medicaid of this size and
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: the people who say they cannot vote for a bill
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: without cuts to Medicaid of this size With those people,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: you can't pass it. Like if those people all stick
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: by what they believe, it cannot pass. The math does
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: not work. I mean, the politics of cutting Medicaid are–
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: let's look at it this way. The politics of cutting
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: taxes for rich people, even if you just– you paid
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: for it with nothing or you paid for it with
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: only things people didn't mind, right? If you paid for
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: it all with foreign aid to whatever, right?
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: That is still quite unpopular. Just the mere idea of
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: giving rich people and corporations tax cuts is very unpopular.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Cutting Medicaid on its own, incredibly unpopular, opposed by like
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: 80% of people in some polls, including more than 60%
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: of Republicans. To pay for tax cuts for the rich
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: with cuts to Medicaid is like an A-plus answer in
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: a political science 101 class about how to commit political suicide.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: You couldn't find something more unpopular than that. And so
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: will these people do that? Are they willing to do it?
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Are you got a bunch of Republicans who are in
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: tribal districts. Are they really going to vote for that?
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: And they need all those votes. You can't pass it
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: without that. The Senate, a lot of these people are
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: in states where Medicaid is part, like protecting Medicaid is
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: part of the state's constitution. Those states have Medicaid expansion
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: to pay for healthcare. They have cutting the clean energy
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: tax credits comes as jobs from their state. So it
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: seems very hard that they are, it seems hard to
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: imagine that they will pass something that would adhere to
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: this budget resolution. Even if you listen to what John Thune,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: the Senate leader said, He really basically put a giant
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: loophole and said, we'll try to do the best we can.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: He did not really commit. He did not view the
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: commitment as firm as Chip Roy did, if you will.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: And I can't tell. I mean, usually it's the moderates
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: who blink, but that's always the case in the House.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: And I do think when you get to like your
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins's and your Lisa Murkowski's, like they give less
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of a shit about getting pressured from Donald Trump. because
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: they have been here before and stood up to him before,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: most notably on him trying to appeal the Affordable Care Act.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how they get this done. I mean,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: you can see a lot of Republicans in Congress already saying, well,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: we're never going to touch the benefits for Medicaid. We're
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: just going to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And at the levels they're talking about with the cuts
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: that they need, I don't think that's possible. Susan Collins
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: herself said this today or yesterday. She was saying, like
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: $ 880 billion. I don't know how you, there's not enough waste,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: fraud and abuse to get it to $ 880 billion. They
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: could probably find some, you can probably, you can probably
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: do a bunch of Medicaid reforms and maybe even a
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: work requirement, which Democrats wouldn't support, but we don't support,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: but you could then maybe get a, I don't know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred billion of savings. There's no way you're
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: getting up to 880 billion. And so then if you're
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: trying to get the cuts out elsewhere, uh, Like, you've
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: got Medicare, you've got Social Security, you've got the defense budget. Like,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: you just don't have a lot of other options. So
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: then maybe you're left with a bill that doesn't make
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: those cuts, does make sure it does the tax cuts.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: But then, you know, what do your Chip Roy's do
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: and your Freedom Caucus members? Do they just get threatened
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: by Trump and pass the bill?
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: Maybe.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Well, ultimately, at the end of the year, if Congress
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: says nothing, taxes are going to go up on almost
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: every American. And so, which will really be a double
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: whammy for Donald Trump, that he raised prices and raised taxes.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about that. I was thinking about that
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: this week.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: And Republicans are not going to let taxes go up
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: on every American. They may go right up to the deadline,
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: but one possibility of how this could end is they
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: could say that, given all the economic turmoil that is happening,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: we are going to just extend them for two years
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: unpaid for. Or they'll come up with some small number
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: of cuts. They'll cobble something together. Maybe they'll gut some
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: part of the Inflation Reduction Act. You can find some
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: medicaid stuff like a smaller number that is bad but
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: doesn't get to like the core benefits and so they're like.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: A medic or like a um medicaid medicare social security
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: commission that comes up with the cuts and the next
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: two years and if they don't set it all up
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: for you know 2026 or 2028 when you know yeah.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Like every part of this process from the from the
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: start has been to just kick, just punt the ball
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: down the field and then worry about the problems later.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: And there is like, at the end of the day,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: the last move, the way to do that is a
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: short-term extension. This is what happened to the Bush tax cuts, right?
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: They were extended in 2010. Now, different situation because we
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: had a Democrat in the White House and Republicans were
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: about to take over Congress. But the, what the ultimate
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: decision was just, we can't figure this out right now.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: And so we're just going to kick. And an argument of,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: you know, like, economic uncertainty coming out of the recession.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: We're not going to raise taxes at this point, so
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: let's just deal with this. Later on, Obama got a
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: big payroll tax cut in exchange for that to put
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: some juice in the economy. I find it hard to
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: imagine that they're going to solve this problem. Maybe Trump
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: can make all these people vote for it largely unpaid for.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Maybe he can do that. He's gotten them to vote
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: for a lot of other stuff, but these people are
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: all some of the biggest liars in the history of
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: America if they will actually do that.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Where do you think they're going to find the money
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: for universal basic income for every person who lives in Greenland.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Because I don't know if you saw, but there's a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: New York Times story Thursday about how they are moving
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: forward on trying to pressure Greenland to join the United States.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And one idea being floated by the Trump administration is
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: to give every Greenlander $ 10, 000 per year, per person.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: How many people live in Greenland?
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: 57,000.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That's it? Yeah.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: It's actually pretty cheap.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And they get, I think they get 600 million a
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: year from Denmark. So we're going to try to, I
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: guess we're... Can you imagine, though? Can you imagine the
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: politics of that? We're going to give the people who
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: live in Greenland $ 10, 000 a year, every single person, while
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: your costs are going up, while your taxes are going up,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: while you're cutting your health care.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Your taxes are going up.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Throw that one in a fucking poll.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: Your cost of living is going to go up $ 4, 600
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: this year, and we're going to give $ 10, 000 to people
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: of Greenland.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Paid for by you. You're going to pay for it.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I want this to happen so badly. I would do it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Because you want Greenland?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Because I want Greenland. Because I'm going to move there, yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Pot Save America is brought to you by Bombas. What
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  Speaker 1: more executive orders that Trump signed on Wednesday in the
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  Speaker 1: midst of all of this. He did it in front
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  Speaker 1: of the cameras, the press, White House staff, and for
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  Speaker 1: some reason, Gretchen Whitmer. The orders target two members of
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  Speaker 1: Trump's first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Trump not
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  Speaker 1: only stripped them of their security clearances... He also directed
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  Speaker 1: the Department of Justice to investigate them. Miles Taylor, you
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: might remember as the Department of Homeland Security official who
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: wrote the briefly famous and briefly anonymous op-ed in the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: New York Times in 2018 titled, I am part of
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the resistance inside the Trump administration. He has since come out,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: and he's been a vocal critic of Donald Trump in
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the press. Krebs was... Chris Krebs was head of the
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and said in 2020 that
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: there had been no fraud in the election, which Trump
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: fired him for via tweet. Notably, Krebs later testified in
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: front of the January 6th committee. Where to even begin here?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: That was wild. Watching it live was fucking wild.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: This is... Possibly the most authoritarian, scariest thing that Trump
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: has done.
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Not to just reiterate what you said, but he signed
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: two executive orders targeting individual Americans by name and directed
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: the government to investigate them for the crime of criticizing
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: the regime. Yeah.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: And said that, oh, I think treason. It was treason.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Like just was saying, throwing that around.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: A crime punishable by death. Right.
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: And that has like... I'm not sure why this is
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: not a bigger deal. Obviously, there's been a lot happening
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: this week, so I understand that there's limited bandwidth. But
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: maybe people are like, well, I think probably if you're
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: talking to reporters about this, maybe other Democrats are not
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: talking about it. They would say, well, no one's investigated
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: them yet. They still may. It doesn't seem like there's
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: a lot of– there isn't a lot. In this version
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: of Trump, there's not a lot of let him talk
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: and then we'll just let it fade away. It's like
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: he talks and people do what he says. But even
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: if they never charge him with crimes, The entire goal
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: here is to make it– to scare the living daylights
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: out of anyone who wants to criticize the administration. Essentially
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: to penalize you for free speech, which is fucking ironic
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: given the free speech warriors who surround this president and
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: what he talked about in the campaign. But like individual
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Americans by name– he signed a piece of paper directing
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice to investigate an American for the
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: crime of criticizing the president.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. And for telling the truth about the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: 2020 election. Yeah. And everyone's just like, okay, cool. We're
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: just going to let that happen now. And like, you know,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: if they do get investigated, hopefully they can find law
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: firms that will take their case. Because I just saw
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: in the New York Times too, he's on the cusp
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: of making a deal with more law firms. In fact,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: he also announced that he's going to be forcing, and
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he's able to do this or
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: they will accept it, but He's going to force some
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of the law firms that he already made deals with
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to take on coal companies, to help defend coal companies.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: They'll probably do that anyway, honestly. But I mean, think
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: about this. You're Miles Taylor and you're trying to get
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: a lawyer. A firm is going to have to have
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: a meeting to decide if they can take on Miles
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Taylor or Chris Krebs as clients because if they're not
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: already on Trump's hit list, they will be on Trump's
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: hit list for that. And all of a sudden, they're
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: not allowed in federal buildings anymore. And they have to
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: cut some terrible deal or become part of this lawsuit.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, it is, this is really bad shit.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Really bad shit. Let's play out the investigation. They are
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: sort of investigated, but, you know, the people, either people
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: are like, I can't really do this. There's nothing here.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Or a judge is going to throw
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: it or whatever. You know, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: they both have jobs. They have livings. Like, are they
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: going to, are people going to do business with them?
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Are they going to have clients again? Are clients going
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: to be scared off? They now lost their security clearances,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: which I know a lot of people have. But there's
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: a whole host of second, third, fourth order effects here.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Are they going to be threatened, intimidated by fucking MAGA
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: crazies online or at their home? It is out-fucking-rageous. And
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: it's pretty wild that it just hasn't made that much noise.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And that there aren't more people out there defending Miles
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: and Chris and saying, no, this is too far.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: We have two problems here. Three problems, yes. One problem
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: is that this happened in the middle of a global
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: financial crisis spurred on by the idiocy of a president.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: So that is going to suck up a lot of oxygen.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: So I understand that. The second thing is that a
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: lot of people are not going to want to get
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: involved here because they don't want to have their name
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: on an executive order or their law firm banned from
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: federal government buildings or their university have their funds impounded
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: until they can agree to some sort of deal. And
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: so people are like, People are afraid to speak out,
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: which is the whole fucking point to begin with. The
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: other thing is that Democrats have not– not enough Democrats
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: feel emboldened enough to speak out about this stuff. I
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: think part of that is not that they're afraid of
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: speaking out about Trump. I don't think that at all.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: But I think that they– there is a real belief
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: that the best way to beat Trump is to talk
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: about the economy. Therefore, that's what you should do. That's
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: what they're doing this week. I ultimately think that that
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: is a mistake. I have a lot to say about that,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: maybe in a different forum, but I think this is a,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: that is part of the problem is that no one
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: has an incentive to speak up here. And when no
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: one speaks up, more bad things happen. Right.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: And it's also, it's Trump's strategy and every authoritarian strategy
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: to divide people and pick them off one by one. And,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll target a few law firms and then
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: a few will make deals with me And so then
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: they'll be weaker because the other ones don't and the
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: other ones will be scared. And I'll pick off a
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: few colleges and I'll pick off a few politicians and
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a few former administration officials to get investigated. And everyone
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: else is too scared and it's like a collective action problem.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: And this is why like people need to, this is
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: why like the hands-off rallies were great. This is why
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: it was good that Obama went out and said something.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: This is why it's good that Cory Booker did the,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the filibuster speech. So it's good that more and more
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: people are speaking out. Like there is, we have to,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: there has to be some solidarity here because if, if
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: his job is to pick people off and divide us
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: against each other, then the antidote to that is for
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: people to like speak out with one voice and, and
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: stand up for each other. Even if it's, even if
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: like you're worried about yourself or you're worried that it
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: might happen to you or, or it's someone that, you know,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: you don't think it could happen to you. Like people
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: have to start coming together and not be afraid because
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: this is how he wins. This is how we sort
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: of like continue our descent into authoritarianism. You think Gretchen
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Whitmer was looking around for a fire alarm to pull
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: while this was going on? She was right in the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Oval Office and her office, which I completely believe, her
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: office came out with a statement afterwards that was like,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: she had no idea that these EOs were gonna be signed.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: She had no idea there was gonna be a press
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: avail in the Oval Office. She had met with Trump.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: She had criticized, she, she criticized him directly, or she
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: told him that the tariffs were a shitty idea before
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: he did the pause. Not that she like, you know,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: was the one.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Maybe she was.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe she was.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: Someone get Groucho in those TikTok stories.
• 56:35
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: You never know.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: But so she gets, so she ends up in the
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Oval Office. You can imagine Trump doing this, right? Like he's, he's, he's,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: he's nice to her in person. Then he brings her
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: in and then she has to see this. And then
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: he calls her out because he wants everyone to know
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: that she's there.
• 56:50
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: And allowing this to happen. And then like, what do
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: you do if you're Gretchen Whitmer?
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: You know? Yeah.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like obviously never going to the
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Oval Office with Trump. Like that's just a general rule,
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: but you can just see how you're in the White
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: House with the president. I'm doing this event. Come on
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: in here. She obviously didn't. I will go to my
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: grave believing she obviously would not have gone if she'd
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: known what it was about. I don't think she probably
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: even know there's a press event. He's just like running
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: the Oval.
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: But I do think I thought about this one for
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: a while. Like there is a, There's a sliding doors
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: moment here for her. We're like, you know, she's taking
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: some criticism now for the speech and everything and whatever.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: It's like people will forget about it in a while.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: But there's also a version of this where he signs
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: the EOs, he says something to her and she speaks
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: out about it like right there in the oval while
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: the cameras are on.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: Like Janet Mills did.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: And suddenly she's a fucking hero. And now look, the
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: risk is She was trying to get stuff done for Michigan.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: They talked about some invasive species of fish. And the
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: president was going to help her with.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Is it the Asian carp?
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: It's the Asian carp, Dan. It's the Asian carp. We've
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: been there. We all know. Yeah, we've dealt with it ourselves.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: It's the Asian carp. And I think I was dealing
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: with this in the fucking Senate office.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: You were, yeah.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: It's a big deal.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: It's an Illinois thing, too. There was a military base
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: she was trying to help keep open or whatever. And
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you can make the argument if you're her. My job
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: is to represent the people of Michigan. And I wanted
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to help the people of Michigan. And so having a
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: constructive relationship with the president is the best way to
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: do that. Gavin Newsom did this around the fires, right?
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Like you can, you can see the rationale behind it,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: but I think democratic politicians, particularly democratic politicians who may
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: want to be president or just run for high office
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: have to start thinking if this is not normal politics anymore,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: if this is not even the first Trump term anymore,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: but this is something much scarier and much more serious.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: Then do I need like is the best way to
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: represent my constituents just like bringing home the bacon and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: talking about the economy or do I have to use
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: my position and the platform that I have to speak
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: out and to fight this guy and to show that
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to fight this guy so that other
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: people won't be afraid to fight this guy because that's
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: what like a real leader wants. do and i realize
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that that takes like it's it's a it's a different
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: thought process it's not going to come to you from
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: your consultants or polls or anything else there's some risk
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: to it but i do feel like we're at a
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: moment where democrats who take that risk will be rewarded
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: certainly by the voters at least by Democratic voters.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: You see that in the crowds, right? The crowds that
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: were showing up for Bernie and AOC, for instance.
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: You've seen that in the crowds that showed up for
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: Chris Murphy and Maxwell Frost when they did their town
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: halls recently, or the event you guys did with Ro Khanna, right?
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: There is a value in speaking out. I don't know
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: enough of the circumstances to know what was actually possible
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: for Gretchen Whitmer, but your point about a tendency to
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: respond to an extraordinary moment with ordinary politics, which is
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: my main criticism of Schumer and what he did on
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: the budget bill, stands for much of the party right now.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, I agree. Stipulating that most everything is awful right now,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: as we've made clear throughout the show and most shows,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: there are a few rays of hope out there that
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: we want to mention from this week. One example, after
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: a huge public outcry, the Social Security Administration has decided
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: not to move forward with Elon Musk and Doge's plan
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: to cut its phone hotline service. This is a quote
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: from the Washington Post story about this. Beneficiaries began lining
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: up at field offices across the country, clutching driver's licenses
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and asking if they must prove who they were in person.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Phone wait times ballooned and the agency's website started crashing
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: almost daily under a crush of panicked callers and visitors.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Besieged by angry constituents, lawmakers demanded that the acting commissioner
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: end the chaos and Now, after nearly a month of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: chaos and backlash, the Doge plans are dead. How about that?
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: That's exciting.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you think? Do you think this was
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: a result of real pressure or was just a catastrophically
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: bad idea destined to fall under the weight of its
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: own stupidity?
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Well, there have been a lot of catastrophically bad ideas
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: that have not yet fallen under the weight of their
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: own stupidity in this administration. Good point. I think, look,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: people showed up. They made their voices heard. That is
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: the only tool in our toolbox right now to push back, right?
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: The Congress is not going to do it. Republicans in
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Congress certainly aren't going to do it. Democrats don't have
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: the power to do it. The courts, and we'll get
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: to this in a minute, can do it, but there
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: are limits to what they will do here. The business
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: community is not going to step up. The tech companies
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: are not going to step up. Universities are cutting deals
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: with Trump. Law firms are cutting deals with Trump. The
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: only way to actually push back on what Trump is
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: doing to stop him from doing the worst things is
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: for people to take to the streets and make their
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: voices heard in ways big and small. And that's what
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: happened last weekend. And we have to keep doing that. Like,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: is that the exact reason why these changes were made?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe, maybe not.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: We don't know. But the fact that people, this is
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: a thing that Trump did that everyone yelled about and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: they yelled about it and they called and they showed
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: up and they had to back down is proof that
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: we can actually, with political pressure, make a difference here.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. On immigration, we got two good
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: rulings from federal judges in New York and Texas pausing
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Trump's Alien Enemies Act deportations in their jurisdictions, or at
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: least requiring hearings for detainees before they can be removed.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Those rulings were directly the result of Monday's Supreme Court ruling,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: where the court overturned Judge Boasberg's pause on deportations to
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: El Salvador, but more importantly, ruled that all deportations without
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: due process are illegal. All nine justices agreed that every
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: person has the right to ample notice and ample opportunity
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: to to challenge their removal. So not the huge win
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: that Trump claimed. And literally, as we were recording, we
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: just got the news that the Supreme Court has decided
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: unanimously that the government must facilitate the return of Kilmar
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: Abrego Garcia. This is the Maryland father that they, with
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: basically no evidence, decided it was MS-13, and then the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: government admitted that they sent him to El Salvador in
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: error because he had legal protections not to be deported
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: to El Salvador that a judge specifically gave him. And
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I haven't read the opinion yet, but yeah, they've told
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: the government to facilitate his return. This is the case
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: that J.D. Vance tweeted at me and said that I
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: obviously hadn't read the court document. about this because he
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: was MS-13. Well, J.D. Vance, I guess you didn't fucking
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: read the court document because all nine Supreme Court justices,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: including Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, think that this guy
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: should be returned. Fuck you too to Stephen Miller, who
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: also asked me if I wanted to live in neighborhoods
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: with foreign terrorists. Well, the Supreme Court does not believe
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: this is a foreign terrorist because they are telling the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: government to facilitate his return. So that is some pretty
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: good news from the Supreme Court.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: It's very good news, and I really hope the government
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: facilitates it.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, it's good news for now.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: The truly dark and horrible news will be when the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: administration tells all nine members of the Supreme Court to
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: fuck off. If that happens, then we're in really, really
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: bad territory.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: Or they tell what's-his-face Salvador to be.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: Which they could. Which they could. But it is, I
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: do think it is good to know that even this
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and especially all nine members, do not believe
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: that as the Trump administration seems to believe, that they
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: can round up people in this country and send them
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: to a fucking gulag in El Salvador with no due process,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: just because the Trump administration tells us, based on whatever
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: evidence they feel like they don't even want to share
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: and won't share, that these people are alleged gang members.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: And that even if they know they sent the wrong person,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: they don't have to bring that person back.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no shit. And one more good immigration story. The
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: other day we talked about how in a small town
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: in upstate New York called Sackett's Harbor, ICE raided a
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: dairy farm and they had a warrant for one undocumented immigrant.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: But then once they got him, they decided to just
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: search the whole neighborhood and they seized a mother and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: her three kids, an 11th grader, a 10th grader, and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a third grader, put them in handcuffs, sent them to
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a detention center in Texas and One of the kids'
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: teachers called the principal, and together they got the whole
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: town activated to protest and demand the kids' return. Teachers
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: played a huge role, made calls to state officials between classes.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: So did the county Democratic committee. This is all according
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: to the Washington Post. They held a rally. Like a
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: thousand people in the town showed up, got the governor involved.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: They finally got the family released, and the kids are
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: now back in class. And the best part of this
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: story is, is that this is serious Trump country. Trump
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: won Jefferson County, where Sackett's Harbor is, by 24 points.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: And this borders our Tom Homan's hometown. He owns a
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: house in Sackett's Harbor, and he grew up there. And
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: one of the marchers at the rally had a sign
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: that said, Humans up, Homan down.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: It's great work.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Absolutely love.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: And I don't know. I just think it's, look, it
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened, and it's horrifying that these kids had to...
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: had to go to a detention center in Texas. And
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: apparently like one of the kids was just fucking uncontrollably
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: crying the entire time because he was, you know, it
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: was a third grader.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: Third grader.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Imagine a third grader going to Texas and then the
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: other third graders in his class and his teacher being like,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: but the whole town, even though they voted for Trump,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the whole town came together and rallied and protested. And
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: I think if the people in that town can do it,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: then people all over this country should do it too.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: I have two thoughts on this. One, it's just that should,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: like what happened there should embolden so many people in
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: this country to speak up on behalf of the people
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: who are being treated this way. And it also just
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: makes me so furious at the refusal of Democrats, including
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in their campaigns, to talk
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: about Trump's mass deportation plans. Because if you can talk
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: about what it, like not just recent arrivals or criminals
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: or all of that, but understand that there are people
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: who are embedded in this community, children who know no
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: country other than this one, being put in handcuffs and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: being sent somewhere and deported like that you can rally
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: the country around that. And we just, we wave the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: white flag on that. And it was a huge mistake.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Huge mistake. And again, there is, it is a false
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: choice to think that we, we can't have a message
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: on immigration that in a policy on immigration that emphasizes that,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: you know, we have laws in this country and we
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: want people to come here legally and some people are
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: going to be deported. And that's how it, There's no
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: false choice between that and speaking out against this policy,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: which is rounding up people who are legal residents and
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: and green card holders and sending them to this fucking
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: prison for the rest of their lives based on no
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: due process. Like it is it is unconscionable. And if
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: you as a Democrat can't draw the distinction between a
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: normal immigration policy and this, then I don't know what
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: you're doing in politics.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Speaking of immigration, this week, Tommy sat down with Lindsay Teslowski,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: the co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. She's the lawyer
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: for Andri Hernandez Romero, the Venezuelan makeup artist who's been
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: disappeared to El Salvador for having tattoos that ICE mistook
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: for gang symbols. The full conversation is on our YouTube page,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: but we wanted to play an excerpt for you all here.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Let's just start with the basics. Andri and all of
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: these men have been thrown in this prison in El Salvador.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 8: We can't speak to them. We can't hear from them.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: We know nothing. You know, they can't speak for themselves.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 8: What can you tell us about him?
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 6: Well, I can tell you a lot about what we
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: learned before he went. But like you said, I can't
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 6: say anything about what has happened over the last more
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 6: than three weeks now because he's been completely incommunicado. And
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: that means no journalists, no lawyers, no family members in either.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 6: even organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: and others who would normally be able to speak with
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: people in detention have not been able to speak with
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 6: him or any other detainees that we're aware of. Andri
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 6: came to the U.S. in August of 2024. He was
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: seeking asylum in He's a gay man. He's a professional
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 6: makeup artist. He worked at a state-run TV station in Venezuela.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: He was persecuted there because they wanted him to put
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 6: up pro-Maduro social media posts. He didn't want to do it.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 6: He was actually physically beaten as a result. He was
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 6: also harassed and physically assaulted because of his sexual orientation.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 6: So he fled like so many other Venezuelans and came
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: to the U.S. to seek asylum. He initially tried to
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 6: come in one time and was told that he needed
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: to make a CBP1 appointment, which is this app that
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 6: during the Biden administration they were asking people to use
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 6: in order to get asylum or in order to apply.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 6: And he went to Tijuana. He made that appointment. He
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: waited over a month for that appointment. And then he
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 6: entered the U.S. Once he was in the U.S., he
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 6: was in ICE detention the entire time. So he's never even...
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: been in the United States for one moment as a
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 6: free person from the moment he crossed at the border
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 6: until the moment they forced him and disappeared him on
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: a plane to El Salvador, he was in custody.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 8: So he was unequivocally not a threat to anyone in
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 8: the United States at any time.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 6: Absolutely not. And just, you know, we've now in researching
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: for his asylum case and doing his declaration and collecting
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: evidence in speaking with his family, I've been asked many times,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 6: is it possible that he is a gay makeup artist
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 6: masquerading as that when he's really a Tren de Aragua
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 6: gang member? The truth is, the same could be said
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: about you or about me. It's outside the realm of
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: what seems to be possible. And specifically as a lawyer,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 6: I would say they've never presented any evidence that would
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 6: indicate that that is true. All that they submitted were
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 6: pictures of the crown tattoos on his wrists, which have
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 6: his mom and dad's name and the crown tattoo, along
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 6: with an article from Newsweek that says that this imagery,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 6: along with many other very common types of tattoos, could
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: mean that someone's Tren de Aragua. What we know and
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 6: what we would have presented had we had our day
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 6: in court, had he been given any due process, is
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 6: that experts have said there are actually no tattoos that
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 6: indicate someone as a member of this gang. There's no
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 6: singular tattoo that you could point to.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 8: I mean, there's a Venezuelan journalist who was talking to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 8: The New Yorker who said, quote, Tren de Aragua does
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 8: not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 8: No Venezuelan gang does.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: So to hear the full conversation, head to our YouTube page, youtube.com
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: slash at symbol pod save America. And by the way,
• 1:12:02
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• 1:12:05
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• 1:12:10
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• 1:12:12
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• 1:12:13
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• 1:12:18
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  Speaker 1: for you there. Okay, when we come back from the break,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: you'll hear Dan's conversation with Atul Gawande about all of
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the deeply concerning things happening in our healthcare system. But
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  Speaker 1: two announcements before we do that, we got a new
• 1:12:52
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  Speaker 5: Tell us about it.
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  Speaker 3: Carol and I talked about how The tariffs and the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: reaction to the tariffs is just utterly devastating Trump's numbers
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: and could presage the collapse of his presidency. The episode
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: was so compelling that within two hours of its release,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: Trump paused the tariffs. Just saying.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: That's what did it. It wasn't the bond market. It
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: was Polar Coaster.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, Polar Coaster might have affected the bond market too.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: It really punches above its weight.
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  Speaker 3: Joining us now to discuss RFK Jr., the cuts to
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: the country's health agencies, and the government's response to the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: measles outbreak is Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, a best-selling author,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: and the former assistant administrator for global health and USAID
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: and the Biden administration. Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Delighted to be here.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: I want to start with the measles outbreak in Texas,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: which has taken the lives of at least two children.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was down in Texas recently to
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: meet with the family of one of the children who
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: passed away. How do you assess the government's response to
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: the outbreak so far? Are they doing the right things
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: or things that someone who was maybe not a vaccine skeptic,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: his HHS secretary, would be doing? Just what do you think?
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 9: Um, Well, a lot of our attention has been on like,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 9: what's he saying? Is he calling for the vaccine? And
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 9: that is such a low bar. Like three months ago,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 9: if this happened, or really in any other administration, you
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 9: would have had the National Security Council pulling people together
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 9: across all of the agencies, including CDC, the leadership at FDA,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 9: also USAID and others working abroad, because Measles is a
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 9: global epidemic. We have cases coming from abroad, and we
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 9: have spread in the United States. They would have had
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 9: all of their clinical people together. We had what we
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 9: called the doctor's group that would get together on a
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 9: weekly basis to look at crisis situations. And we don't
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 9: see any of this happening, right? You would see the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 9: HHS secretary or the head of CDC on calls every
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 9: week with the states having the outbreaks and other states,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 9: public health officials, to get on top of this. Instead,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 9: we've had spread to where a outbreak in West Texas
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 9: has gone over the border to Mexico and also is
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 9: cropping up in 20 states around the country. So this
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 9: is not the right steps.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: So not good is what you're saying? Not good.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: And this is solvable.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 9: We eliminated measles in the United States. Our elimination status
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 9: is at risk. And we have you know, one in
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 9: a thousand kids dies, the fact that there are already
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 9: three people who've died indicates that the counts that say
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 9: that there might be around 500 cases are way under
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 9: what the reality is.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: And what do you attribute the response to? Do they
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: not take it as seriously or is this just a
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: government that is not set up to actually deal with
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: a crisis and have the right people in place?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 9: I think it starts with the skepticism and then add
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 9: in the, there are multiple layers of destruction going on, right?
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 9: There is the attitude towards measles and the vaccine, but
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 9: then there's the fact that there has been doge cuts
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 9: across the government, including pulling $ 11 billion from state public
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 9: health programs to when they rescinded funds that were allocated
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 9: during COVID for strengthening public health. That shut down, you know,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 9: vaccination clinics in West Texas that were trying to vaccinate
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 9: against measles. Then you have all of the work that
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 9: has undone advisory groups, any independent assessment within the government
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 9: on paths forward. And you've purged CDC and FDA of
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 9: many of their top vaccine people. Um, this is a
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 9: systematic dismantling in a chaotic and unsystematic way.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: As you mentioned, RFK Jr. did say that the MMR
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: vaccine was the most effective way to prevent measles, but
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: in an interview on CBS and other places, he seems
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: he can't help himself from raising some concerns about the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: safety of vaccines in general, right? Can you just talk
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: a little bit about what he is getting wrong and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: what the science actually says about the safety of these vaccines?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 9: Um, he's got a million charges that he throws at vaccines.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 9: Here's the thing to know. We have reduced child deaths
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 9: in the last 50 years by 75%. 40% of that
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 9: reduction in child deaths has come from vaccines. And 60%
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 9: of the vaccine death reduction has come from the measles
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 9: vaccine alone. We're now in a world where there is
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 9: about 10 million children who are being infected by measles.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 9: We're over 100,000 child deaths in the world. The United
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 9: States shouldn't be joining that list. And so it's critical
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 9: that we are stopping the direction of travel here. I mean,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 9: we are undoing our global systems and our state and
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 9: national systems for everything from NIH research on production of
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 9: vaccines and improving uptake, people's willingness to get vaccines. We're
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 9: dismantling major parts of the expertise in the FDA around
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 9: approving vaccines and have actions that have, you know, one
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 9: of the first actions of the FDA commissioner was to
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 9: disallow approval of a Novavax COVID vaccine, even though it
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 9: was recommended by the technical regulators. And then you have
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 9: CDC guidance now under political controls. The direction of travel
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 9: we see here is where technical expertise is being removed,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 9: independence to make scientific judgments and recommendations is being undermined,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 9: and communications are being put into the offices of the
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 9: secretary or top officials who are political appointees. And so
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 9: you're seeing... more political controls over critical decisions, and less
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 9: technical expertise.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, along those lines, you know, I think one
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: of the biggest stories of RFK Jr. 's tenure at
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: HHS thus far has been the ouster of Dr. Peter Marks,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: who headed vaccine regulation. You know, in his resignation letter,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: Marks wrote that it had become clear that truth and
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: transparency were not desired by the secretary and that all
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: they wanted was confirmation of misinformation and lies. Can you
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: just talk a little bit about what his ouster means and, like,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: what it could mean? And you mentioned the November the
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: COVID vaccine that was that were approvals delayed, what it
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: can mean for like, I assume the FDA has to
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: approve a flu vaccine later this year, I guess, assume
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: a COVID booster at some point. Like what does this
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: mean for just the day-to-day work that the FDA has
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: to do to get vaccines out into the world?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 9: You put your finger on it. Um, look, moving Peter
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 9: Marks out and having him go, um, was a sign
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 9: of what was to come. But changing leadership is not
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 9: an abnormal thing to do. What went with him was
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 9: the top regulatory capacity and many of their experts. He
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 9: oversaw a wide swath of work that ranged from vaccines
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 9: to getting gene and cell therapies approved for the world.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 9: You know, they were the ones who figured out how
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 9: to look at sickle cell. We have a cure for
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 9: sickle cell with a gene therapy now. And that was
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 9: because of figuring out the way that you could actually
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 9: safely regulate, test, and approve such.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: New tools.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 9: That entire infrastructure has now been weakened. It's alarmed the community. community,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 9: the biotechnology community, the United States has been the leader
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 9: in gene therapy, cell therapy, and in vaccine development. All
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 9: of those industries now are seeing their net valuation hammered.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 9: They're seeing their confidence that they can move and be
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 9: innovative by partnering with the FDA harmed. It's hard for
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 9: them to get communications the way that they used to.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 9: So this is This is the undermining of an entire industry,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 9: and it's a pattern we see in multiple areas. This
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 9: is only one. To take another example, tobacco. The Office
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 9: of Tobacco Control and the FDA and CDC have been
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 9: eliminated for the large part. They still have reviewers. They
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 9: can approve vapes. But the people who would issue, do
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 9: the research, do the guidance, issue regulations and then enforce
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 9: the regulations that are out there, those people are gutted.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: They're gone.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 9: And, you know, that's for one of our biggest causes
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 9: of chronic illness in the country. So the claim is
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 9: that they're trying to do good work by chronic illness.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 9: This is completely the opposite.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean, that all goes along with, you know,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: basically this gutting of several of the health agents, FDA, CDC,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: about 10,000 people have been laid off. Although courts have
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: stepped in, you've had attempts to get funding for NIH
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: research grants and other things. Maybe you could talk a
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: little bit about what that means broadly for the health
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: of the country. What is being lost by gutting some
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: of these, by losing these staff? In particular, I think
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: we were really worried about the NIH grants. You would
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: see headlines about how we've been on the cusp of
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: breakthroughs and cancer and other therapies and other potential cures
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: that are being delayed by these research grants. So just,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: I want people to kind of understand what the opportunity
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: cost is to sort of these doge cuts at HHS.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 9: To see the whole picture, you have to understand that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 9: these are hitting every part of the health and science
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 9: infrastructure that have made the US the leader in this
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 9: space for a century. It starts with core research, basic
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 9: research at the NIH, um, you know, the purge of 10,000
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 9: people now, but it had been 10,000 people just a
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 9: couple of weeks before that as well. So you're seeing
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 9: a quarter of HHS, um, uh, hammered at NIH. That
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 9: has meant, uh, all issuance of new research grants have
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 9: been stopped, uh, research in areas around vaccine uptake, research
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 9: in critical areas around disparities in maternal survival. These are
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 9: being hammered for ideological reasons and that are extending to
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 9: hundreds of millions and threatened to be billions of dollars
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 9: of terminations of grants for universities, which are our core
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 9: base of developing our future scientists across the country. If
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 9: you have a child who wants to be a scientist
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 9: right now out there or are a young scientist, your
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 9: opportunities have been shut down in the space of weeks
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 9: because graduate student programs have been frozen or rescinded actually
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 9: acceptances for programs. So that's the NIH side. They've also
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 9: shifted decision-making over grants from individual institutes, like the Cancer
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 9: Institute or the Infectious Disease Institute, into the director's office,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 9: which is where you have less expertise but more access
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 9: to political controls. And that's the pattern you see now. Usually,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 9: they go from NIH research becomes FDA-proposed solutions coming from
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 9: companies that take the work that NIH does. and turned
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 9: it into products. 99% of FDA drugs came from, started
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 9: with contributions from the National Institutes of Health. The FDA,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 9: we talked about the ways that it's been gutted or
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 9: crippled in significant ways across the agency. Many of their
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 9: top experts and nutritionists, drug experts, lawyers who know how
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 9: to manage the regulatory processes, the communicators and coordinators, those
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 9: people are purged. Then you have guidance from the CDC
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 9: also hindered. And then our effort to move it out
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 9: into the world, Medicaid, we're looking at massive cuts potentially,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 9: Medicare unclear what is intended there. And then at USAID,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 9: where I led global health, You see it being entirely dismantled,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 9: 100% of the staff now terminated, and programs from global
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 9: HIV control to domestic elimination of HIV are significantly hindered
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 9: or dismantled.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: During the cabinet meeting with the president today and then
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: an interview with Fox News, RFK Jr. announced that by September,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: he would have an announcement for the cause of what
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: he said to be a massive increase in the number
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: of autism diagnoses in this country. Let's take a quick
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: listen to what he said on Fox News so you
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: can respond to it.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 7: So this is an epidemic like nothing we've ever seen before.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 7: It dwarfs the COVID epidemic. The cause to our country,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 7: these are children. COVID was killing elderly people at the
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 7: end of their lives. This is disabling children of their
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 7: entire lives. None of the vaccines that are given to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 7: children during the first six months of life were ever studied.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 7: We're going to look at vaccines, but we're going to
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 7: look at everything. Everything is on the table. Our food system,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 7: our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 7: kind of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: In the cabinet meeting, in an earlier interview, RFK.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 5: Jr.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: Says when he was a child, it was the 1
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: in 10,000 kids were diagnosed with autism. Now he claims
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: it's something like 1 in 31 or something like that.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: People hear those numbers. That's obviously very alarming and concerning.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: But this also, given what he said here and just
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: the long-running conspiracy theory about a connection between autism and
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: childhood vaccines, just what's your response to what he's doing here?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: And what's the full story he's not telling us about
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: the science?
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 9: So let's unpack a couple of things. Number one is
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 9: the rise in the rate of autism. we have become
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 9: much more liberal about diagnosing people on the spectrum. And
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 9: we have much more respect for neuro-atypical personalities and people
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 9: and recognize also that there are different kinds of supports
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 9: that enable people across that spectrum. There is not an
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 9: indication that the most severe forms of autism have changed
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 9: in their frequency. We don't completely know. So I can't
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 9: rule out that there has been hidden within that, some
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 9: increase in autism. Second, this claim that we have not
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 9: studied vaccines in children under six months or children under
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 9: a year, which gets repeated, we have thousands of randomized
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 9: patients in trials at those ages, for example, when the
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 9: rotavirus vaccine was approved. We have years of evidence that
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 9: not only are vaccines safe, but as I noted before,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 9: it's the driver of 40% of the last half century's
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 9: reduction in child mortality. In my work at USAID, I've
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 9: been working in places where they are swamped with measles
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 9: and have hundreds to thousands of deaths. And that is
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 9: not the world we need to return to. But we're seeing,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 9: because of poor approaches on public health, return of measles.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 9: We're seeing return of tuberculosis with highest rates of tuberculosis
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 9: we've seen in a significant outbreak in Kansas. We're seeing
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 9: now loss of control in HIV and abandonment of prevention
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 9: programs where we were within years, within five to 10
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 9: years of being able to stop HIV in its entirety.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 9: So what we see him doing is the classic playbook
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 9: of pseudoscience. you cherry-pick the data, you fall back on
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 9: conspiracy claims that people aren't speaking the truth, and you
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 9: have people who don't have a track record of expertise,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 9: such as RFK Jr., speaking to science and making claims
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 9: that you take the mainstream scientists who actually have done
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 9: the work in this area, developed vaccines, pediatricians who have
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 9: overseen work in this space, and you have consistent evidence
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 9: that vaccines are safe. They're remarkably effective. They've been a
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 9: driver of our doubling of human life expectancy in the
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 9: last century.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: There's another part of maybe this is pseudoscience as well,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: but you know, we're talking about the vaccines, the anti-vaccine
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: part is probably the least popular or the least, you know,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: although too many people support it, but least popular of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: the larger quote unquote, make America healthy again, or Maha agenda.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: Another piece of this is fluoride and water, uh, state
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: of Utah just banned fluoride and water at the urging
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: of RFK Jr. He was in Utah to celebrate that. Uh,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator said he's going to look
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: at this, um, What can you tell us about fluoride
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: in water and why these people are concerned and whether
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: it's safe?
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 9: Well, there are some studies that at very high rates
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 9: of fluoride, you can have some damage from fluoride overdose,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 9: so to speak. We have very low rates of fluoride
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 9: in the water. It's contributed to extremely low rates of cavities,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 9: which mean that You know, people have their teeth in
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 9: the United States, you know, as they reach 60, 70,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 9: 80 years of age in a way that we didn't
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 9: used to anymore. Now, there's lots of evidence that our
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 9: oral hygiene has improved a great deal and questions about
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 9: how effective fluoride really is at this point. But the
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 9: fear-mongering that is behind the notion that it needs to
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 9: be– that it should be banned in states– and not
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 9: allowed in this country is not.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 9: Look, it's worth weighing out, is it worth the expense
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 9: and money at this point? And I think there is
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 9: a legitimate discussion to be had on fluoride, but it
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 9: is hardly a danger or a cause of major harm
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 9: in the country.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't be on the top of your list of
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: things to address, as opposed to the other things on
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: the Maha agenda, like clean air, clean water, those sorts
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: of things, which it seems like Lee Zeldin is less
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: concerned about than fluoride, I guess.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, there are things on the, you know,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 9: the Make America Healthy Again agenda that you named that
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 9: are super important, like keeping clean air and clean water,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 9: which we are, you know, there's what they do, there's
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 9: what they say, and then what they do. And what
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 9: they're doing is stripping out work that is vital for
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 9: addressing chronic illness, whether it's diabetes research, whether it's clean
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 9: air and, um, and now, you know, trying to open
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 9: the way to, uh, uh, have it repollute our cities
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 9: in a way that we have not had in, in
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 9: a long time. Um, get rid of our regulation, regulatory
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 9: oversight of tobacco, which is still the biggest killer in
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 9: the world, uh, when it comes to cardiovascular disease. And then,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 9: you know, we have had chronic issues in the United
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 9: States with lead poisoning in poorer populations and minority populations.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 9: And that's a much bigger problem than fluoride when it
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 9: comes to toxic metals and is a major driver of
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 9: chronic illness and disease around the world. So, you know,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 9: is there work we need to do on nutrition? Is
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 9: there work we need to do around addressing our diabetes
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 9: and obesity? Is there work to do on pollution and
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 9: clean air and clean water? Yes, they are not doing that.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: That seems like a perfect place to end it. Dr. Wandi,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be here.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: Thanks. That's our show for today. Tommy Lovett and I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: will be back with a new show on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.
• 1:36:51
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