Latest / Pod Save America / Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift

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Trump’s Ukraine Fallout and Crypto Grift · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: no safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Jon Favreau.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Tommy Vitor.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we've got Elon Musk calling Social Security
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme on Joe Rogan the same weekend Donald
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Trump announces... He wants to spend our tax dollars on
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a strategic crypto reserve, which is definitely not a Ponzi scheme.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We also got new tariffs coming. Woo-hoo! Just as a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: bunch of new polls show that people actually don't think
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Trump's doing a great job bringing down inflation. And then,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: as Donald Trump prepares to give his big speech to
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Congress Tuesday night, we'll talk about the new debate on
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the left about how Democrats should be pushing on Trump
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and whether they should be pushing back at all. But first, guys,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: we got to talk about the... Absolute shitshow of an
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Oval Office meeting on Friday where Trump and J.D. Vance
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: ganged up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an ally whose
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: country has been fighting off an invasion by Vladimir Putin,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a brutal dictator who used to be our adversary. Hopefully
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you all got a chance to hear the bonus episode
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Tommy and Ben did about this over the weekend. A
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: lot has happened since then. After Zelensky was basically kicked
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: out of the White House because J.D. Vance didn't think
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: he was sufficiently grateful for U.S. support, didn't say thank
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: you enough, Zelensky flew to London to meet with European
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: leaders about negotiating a peace process that doesn't entail just
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: giving Putin everything he wants. Meanwhile, the Russians could not
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: be happier. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration is, quote, rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: This largely aligns with our vision. Hard to argue with
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that after Axios reported that Trump was set to hold
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: a meeting with J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and National Security
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Advisor Mike Waltz to talk about the idea of cutting
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: off American aid to Ukraine altogether. Waltz told Fox News, quote,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: If you're wondering how Republicans are feeling about all this,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: especially previously pro-Ukraine Republicans... Here's a sample of their reaction
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to Friday's blowup.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: Millions of American hearts swelled with overflowing pride today to
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: watch President Trump put Zelensky in his place.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Instead of showing gratitude, he interrupted and berated his hosts.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Am I embarrassed about Trump? I have never been more
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: proud of the president.
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: I was very proud of J.D. Vance.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It's going to be Putin and President Trump in and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the people on our side that will end up making
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: this decision for the future of Ukraine.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Look, this is one of the great moments in the
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: history of American diplomacy.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Jesus.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: These fucking.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Was that start and end with Stephen Miller?
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: I think we know it's swell during that meeting, Stephen Miller. Relax.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: These real housewives fucking... Luann wasn't grateful enough for the invitation.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Also, Donald Trump didn't give Ukraine really any aid, and J.D.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Vance voted against the supplemental spending bill for Ukraine aid.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: So who are we thanking exactly?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I love Tommy Tuberville there. I'm assuming that was him
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: who said, yeah, it's going to be Trump, Putin, and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: everyone on our side deciding. It's like, what? What are we?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Our side? Tommy, now that you've had more time to
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: process what happened on Friday, do you have any other
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: thoughts on the fallout and whether things have gotten better
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: or worse since then?
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think in terms of Zelensky's efforts to
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: get more support from the U.S. or get some sort
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: of security deal, you just mentioned a way where it
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: got worse in the near term because it sounds like
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: they're freezing an additional There's a freezing, it's more money
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: that could be transferred over to Ukraine in terms of
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: weapons stockpiles. But the bigger picture problem that Zelensky has
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: is that Trump and JD Vance just want a deal
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: and they don't care about the substance of the deal.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: They don't care if the Russians end up occupying 20%
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: of Ukrainian territory or if Ukraine is told that they
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: can't have a real armed forces going forward. So they're
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: just kind of a sitting duck sitting there. Like Trump
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: just wants a win in the Western press. Now, from
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Europe's perspective, I think maybe the meeting was clarifying and
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: maybe that could help Zelensky because now there's all these
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: reports that France and the UK are trying to pull
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: together a European peacekeeping group that will give Zelensky a
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: security guarantee after there is a peace deal. And that's
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: what he really wants. So I think the challenge going
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: into that meeting, now that I've thought about it more,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: is the US media tends to forget that all these
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: foreign leaders who come in have their own political considerations.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: And for Zelensky, that meeting going really badly and getting
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: in a fight was not good, but a worse outcome
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: for him would have been getting bullied into taking a
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: ceasefire deal that leaves them vulnerable going forward when Putin
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: decides to break a ceasefire agreement that he cuts just
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: to kind of make Trump happy. And so it's a
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: bit of a mixed bag. I don't know. The hopeful
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: version is maybe the Europeans will get their shit together
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  Speaker 3: finally and give Ukraine what they need.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Love it. What was your take on the meeting? There's
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: been a lot of speculation that Trump and Vance plan
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: to ambush Zelensky. Maggie Haberman and other journalists who cover
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the White House are reporting that the Trump people are
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: saying it was spontaneous. What do you think?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. Like part of this is just
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: like none of this makes sense.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Like none of the none of like what they're saying
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  Speaker 2: aligns with what they're actually doing.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Like I'm trying to like separate. The meeting is disgusting, right?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Like this is fucking disgusting. This is a guy flying
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: from a war-torn country. He basically saved his country in
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: part by like sheer force of personality and personal bravery.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: He flies across the world to the United States, our
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: ally up until three months ago. Now he's trying to
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: grovel for his country's life to sign a mineral deal.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: That also doesn't make any sense. That doesn't include any
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: security guarantees. He's agreeing to do it because he's just
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: trying to get through another day with Donald Trump and J.D.
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: Vance.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: He's sitting there He's getting questions about why he's not
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: wearing a fucking suit.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Trump apparently said to the press corps, oh, this guy
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: dressed up today.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That was before. That was before the meeting.
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  Speaker 2: He's in a waking nightmare. The question I have is, okay,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: let's say all this played out behind the scenes. Not
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: in front of the cameras. Take away the aesthetics of it.
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  Speaker 2: In the morning, Marco Rubio thought signing this mineral deal
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: and ostensibly becoming more entwined with Ukraine was a good idea.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: By the afternoon, it's no longer a good idea and
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: everything Trump is doing is making sense. There's all these
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: sort of like post hoc rationalizations for Donald Trump, like
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: even in the days that have followed, like you go
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: like try to read about this meeting and it's people saying,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: is Trump abandoning the World War II order for spheres
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: of influence? Like, no, he's just a careening asshole. And
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: there's this whole intellectual framework like evolving around him to
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: justify what he's saying. Like even Vance in the meeting,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: he says, we tried the pathway of Joe Biden. thumping
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: our chest and pretending that the president of the United
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: States' words matter more than the president of the United
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  Speaker 2: States' actions. And so therefore we're capitulating completely in our actions, right?
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  Speaker 2: Like why does what follows from there, a kind of
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  Speaker 2: diplomacy in which the aggressor is ignored, right? Like let's
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: say they do want peace. They do want a deal
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  Speaker 2: at all costs. Wouldn't that involve putting pressure on Vladimir
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  Speaker 2: Putin as well? Where is that? Like you can't really
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: make any sense around this because it's a bunch of
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: people acting emotionally, trying to rationalize Donald Trump's various like ego-driven, grievance-driven,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: assumption-driven foreign policy. And so we end up like having
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: these serious conversations about these like fundamentally despicable and unserious people.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: That was my reaction.
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Like, I don't think it was an ambush or planned.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I think what was planned is both Trump and J.D.
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  Speaker 1: Vance don't like or respect Zelensky that much because as
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Tommy said, they just wanted to get a deal. And
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I think they're are just annoyed at the whole situation
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: that they have to like go through all the motions
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: here and they have to deal with him and treat
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: him like he's an ally.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Or that like he's an equal partner or even a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: partner at all. Like, I don't know if you, I'm
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: sure you guys did this. I'm sure you did this
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to me. Like I went back to the transcript and
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: read it like so many times to see where it
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: went off the rails because it also like, it was
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: going fine.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: It was at times a little bit chummy even.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: They're joking about their disagreements.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And it starts, the bad part starts with the reporter
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: asking Trump if he's too aligned with Putin, which is
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: obviously a trigger for him, right? Like that's just going
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to set Trump off and like that couldn't be pre-planned, right?
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And then Trump says- Oh, you see the hatred he's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: got for Putin pointing to Zelensky. It's very tough for
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: me to make a deal with that kind of hate.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: He's got tremendous hatred. So like we start the meeting
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: by Trump scolding the guy. Keep in mind, scolding the
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: guy that he had just called a dictator. twice over
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks. We're like complaining about Zelensky
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: not saying thank you. And Trump has called this guy
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: a dictator twice. So then he scolds him while he's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: sitting right there in the Oval Office for having too
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: much hatred to do the deal. But then even Trump
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, he's like, I just want
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: to get a deal. I'm aligned with Europe. I just
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: want to get something done. I got something. And the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: whole thing probably would have gone away then. if fucking J.D.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Vance didn't jump in after Trump finished his answer.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: He was the chief arsonist.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: No one asked J.D. Vance for a follow-up answer on that.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: J.D.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Vance just jumped in after Trump win and did this
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: whole thing where you said, he also just gets the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: whole timeline wrong. He's like, Putin invaded Ukraine after Joe
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Biden just tried to talk tough and didn't engage in diplomacy.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So Zelensky's like, well, that's not the timeline. Zelensky's basically like, yeah, well,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: he's been trying to invade the country and he's been
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: at war with us since 2014. And then he also
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: throws in, by the way, during the first answer, and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: God bless, now President Trump will stop him.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Which was also nice.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: I respect Maggie's reporting, but there were times where I
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: felt like the headline was like this wasn't an ambush,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: and then the substance of the story didn't back that up.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: For example, Lindsey Graham is running around telling everyone that
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: he told Zelensky not to take Trump's bait. well, if
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: this wasn't a setup, then why would he be baited
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: in the first place? And maybe that's an overly literal meeting,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: but like Trump's position is you have to come into
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: the Oval Office. You have to bow to my will.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: You cannot disagree with me even about points of fact.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: And that's just not tenable for the leader of a
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: country fighting for its existence. And so like ambush, not
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: an ambush. It was designed for domestic political consumption. Like J.D.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Vance's speech was his chance to finally talk in a
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: big boy meeting and lead the headlines 41 days into
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: the administration, where Elon had been ahead of him every
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: other day. And then Trump at the end says, well,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: I think it was good for the American people to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: hear all that, and this will make for good TV.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: And if you want to make this all a private
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: discussion about the substance, don't have the fucking pool spray
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: in there for 45 minutes.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one moment where where Zelensky calls him JD
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: and then JD calls him Mr.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: President.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: And so like, you feel like it's quite personal, but
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: like none of this should be personal, right? Like it's
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: not just about Trump calling him a dictator. The United
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: States sided with Putin a week earlier at the UN.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Like these are supposed to be, it's all like Vance
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: and even Rubio. Like you go look, we'll talk about
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Rubio more in a minute, but like, These guys were
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: all like the end of America's namby-pamby, soft, emotional foreign
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: policy is over. We're doing hard-nosed decisions based on pure rationality.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And it's like, if that's the case, a fit of
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: pique in a meeting shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter at all.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: They are allowing this to be 100% personality-driven.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I liked David Sanger's piece on this, which is he's
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: basically arguing that the overall goal here is that Trump
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: wants to normalize relations with Russia. And Ukraine is standing
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in the way of that. Zelensky is standing in the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: way of that. So with that larger context, any meeting
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: was like it could have gone better in terms of
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the theatrics of it. But like it was always going
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to be Trump being like this guy is an impediment
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to normalization with Russia, which is what I want.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: And it's like, why do we want to normalize things
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: with Russia so much? It's like a broken economy. It's
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: like a wartime economy now. They just make artillery shells
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: that they use to kill Ukrainians. But one sort of
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: under-discussed bizarre part of Trump's rant is Because, you know,
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: you also have to think about the original impeachment and
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: how Zelensky was involved, right? Because Trump called Zelensky and
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: was trying to held up military into Ukraine in order
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: to get dirt on Joe Biden. But an under-discussed sort
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: of part of when Trump gets really mad is he
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: starts ranting about the Mueller investigation. And he says, Putin
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: went through a hell of a lot with me. And
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: then he said, and it came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom. Like,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: so none of this makes sense, but he was talking
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: about how like he and Vlad endured something terrible together.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: like somehow it was bad for Putin to have been
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: perceived by the world as having handpicked the American president?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Like they're blood brothers. It's actually really, really strange. It's
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: kind of like a Stockholm syndrome. Like this is like,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: you're saying like, why would the US want to normalize
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: relations with Russia? And again, this is why like, this
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: is none of this makes sense. And like all these
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: sort of pathetic weasels around Trump trying to make it
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: make sense are obviously part of the problem. It's like, no,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: of course not. It's a failing Petro state, right? That
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: it's like been depleted. It's like, America, it's so fucking
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: pathetic that because of Donald Trump as a figure, a
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: singular figure, we're now becoming a vassal state of this tiny,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: weak country because, like, Donald Trump has these ego-driven, like, psychosexual,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: personal issues with this one dictator who, in his bones,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: he knows is so much tougher than him. And by
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: the way, Zelensky, too, right? Like, part of this resentment
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: is that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump know that, like,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Zelensky is a stronger and tougher man than they are.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And you can just feel the seething kind of, like,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: weakness of these two human beings in front of this
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: actual leader.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Uh, he also, when he gets mad, when Trump gets mad,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: he just has like conspiracy Tourette's and he just like
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: goes through the, that's where, that's where that came from.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Like where he just went down the road of like, Putin, Russiagate, Hunter, laptop, bathroom, video.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know at that point what's happening.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: He always got to the, what do you always call
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: the FBI people that were sleeping together?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Struck.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: The lovers.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: He almost got to the lovers.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Lisa Page. I'm surprised he didn't mention Adam Schiff.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Sir, do you know it was on Hunter's laptop? There's
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of photos that you probably don't want to see.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: There were a few incursions on there, but I don't
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: think it had anything to do with what we're talking about.
• 15:30
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• 17:10
  Speaker 1: talk about Secretary of State little Marco Rubio for a minute,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: who looked not excited to be in that meeting. As
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: a reminder, here's an example of what Rubio used to
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: say on Ukraine and what he's saying now.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Look, Putin can't win.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: No matter what, there always has to be a real,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: legitimate Ukrainian state that we have a relationship with. And
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: I don't know why we can't begin to openly say
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: we will support them as long as they are willing
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: to fight, even if it's an insurgency.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Thoughts on Rubio?
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I've noticed this in all of the photos of Rubio
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: in the context of these U.S.-Russia talks. There were a
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: bunch of photos that came out of Saudi Arabia with Rubio,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Mike Waltz, Steve Witkoff are all there, and there's Sergei
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Lavrov in the Russian delegation. Rubio just has this thousand-yard
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: stare in all of them. I don't want to put
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: him on the psychiatrist's couch, but I do think you
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: can tell he knows this is wrong. Because I do
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: think it's fair to say, okay, after three years of
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: the Biden policy, we got to a place where It
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: was a permanent stalemate kind of. And a stalemate is
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: not a strategy. So let's not reemphasize diplomacy and try
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: to end the war. But Rubio knows Zelensky is not
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: a dictator and Putin is. He knows who started the
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: war and who didn't. He knows that Zelensky can't hold
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: an election right now because a huge chunk of the
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: country is living under Russian occupation. Another big chunk has
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: been displaced. Another big chunk is at the front lines fighting.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: How are they going to have people vote in free
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: and fair elections in this context? And so he just
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: looks like a guy who sold out all his beliefs
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: to get the secretary of state job and now is
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: like living with the consequences. And by the way, has
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: no real power.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's what he that's what he looks like
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: in all these pictures. He does sound like he's trying
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to sell this new Marco Rubio and how he thinks.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I think we have a clip of him, what he
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: says now. What specifically do you want to see President
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Zelensky apologize for?
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Well, I apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: for him that it became. Because he found every opportunity
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: to try to Ukraine-splain on every issue. Maybe Zelensky doesn't
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: he doesn't.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Ukraine-splain?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: The Ukraine-splain. Like, again, it's like, it's so emotional, right? Like, oh,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: he should have been more, he should have shown better manners.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: This fucking Emily Post bullshit. I went back and looked
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: at Rubio's, uh, the Senate confirmation speech that he gave.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: And he says, the post-war global order is not just obsolete,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: it's now a weapon being used against us, right? And
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: this is him, again, trying to find a way to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: make sense of his involvement, right? And I do think
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: that there is a critique of the way in which
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the Biden administration didn't want to lose, but didn't want
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: to win in a bunch of different ways all around
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: the world. And by the way, for decades, an America
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: that's just slowly watching China grow more and more powerful
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: as we welcome them into the economic order, which are
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: things that he talks about. But the other side of
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: that is meant to be a stronger US, a more full-throated,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: less morally relativistic defense of our values, of our principles,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: some kind of a strategy. But then you look at
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: what's happening, it's like we're capitulating, to Russia. And they're like, well, actually,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: it's because, you know, we're not going to worry about
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: what's happening over there. We're going to worry about what's
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: happening in our own backyard. Okay, but we're also basically
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: threatening Canada with invasion, threatening Panama with invasion, throwing tariffs
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: on our neighbors. Like, there's no logic to any of this.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And Rubio, because he's just the fucking world's biggest weasel,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: is just trying to figure out what he can say
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: day to day just to get him into, I guess,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: a bed.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So I kind of think that there might be a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: logic to it. Can I give you my... Sure. Like,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I think that Trump... And look, I don't think this
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: is like he has... Trump has planned out everything and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: has been really thinking deep about this and writing it
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: in his memoirs, you know? I think he respects rich, powerful,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: ruthless leaders. And it seems like he wants to carve
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: up the world with Putin and Xi... And maybe you
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: got your Kim Jong-un's in there or your BB's, anyone
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: with nuclear weapons, right? He knows that if you have
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, then you're pretty powerful. And he knows they're
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: bad guys. He knows they treat their people horribly. He
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't really care about that. He likes the idea that
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: he can deal with a few, what he views as
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: tough leaders directly. He thinks he's a great negotiator. He
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't like the idea of the UN and NATO and
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: places where you have all these voices in some countries
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't think should have a seat at the table,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: an equal seat at the table with everyone else because
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they're weaker than the other countries because that's too democratic
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't like democracy that much. And the idea
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of him, this is like when he always brags when
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: like Xi came to Mar-a-Lago and, you know, and then
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: he gets to wine and dine him and impress him and,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm good with Putin and Kim Jong-un likes me.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Like he, I think he loves a world where He
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: can deal with a few tough bad guys. He's a
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: good negotiator. And he looks at– and they do all
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: want like client states. He sees like Putin. Putin wants Ukraine.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Putin may want Eastern Europe. He sees Xi wants Taiwan.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And he's like, well, I better get some client states
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of my own. Maybe I'll go after Canada. Maybe I'll
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: go after Panama, Greenland. Like it feels like that's his
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: vision of the world. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: I was trying to find this. Elon Musk tweet, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: I was scrolling for like 25 minutes because, God, all
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: he does is tweet. But he tweeted, Zelensky wants a
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: forever war, a never-ending graft, meat grinder, this is evil. Like,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: the way they talk about this guy, these are Zelensky's
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: people getting killed. The Russians tried to murder him repeatedly
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: in the early days of the war. They sent assassination
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: teams to Zakiv to find the guy. And he survived
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: through bravery, through, you know, really tough fighting by the
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Ukrainians in those early days. And it's just disgusting the
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: way they talk about him. But to your point, John,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, I think there's some truth that, look,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: between 50 and 85 million people died in the Second
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: World War. So the United States was like, or the
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: world came together and was like, hey, maybe we should
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: set up some institutions to prevent this from happening again.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: That's why you have the UN that was designed to
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: try to maintain global peace. That led to the creation
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: of NATO, which was to counter Soviet expansion and unchecked
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: nationalism among some of the member states like Germany.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I always got to keep an eye on Germany.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: You do. And both institutions have a lot of flaws,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: and we can talk about those if you want. But
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: there hasn't been a war between a NATO member and
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Russia since. And no NATO member has been invaded by
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: another country. So it's been a pretty successful project. And
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: I agree, it does seem like Trump wants to go
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: back to a time where the great powers divide the
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: world up and they bully people and might is right.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: And I think the problem with that, there's a lot
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: of problems with that logic. But what you're going to
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: see is more militarism, You are going to see more nationalism.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: You're going to see more development of nuclear weapons as
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: a deterrent. Because if the U.S. nuclear umbrella is not
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: going to protect us, I guess it's time to make
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: one of my own. And so it's gangster diplomacy. And
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: you're already seeing Elon Musk tweeting about, he talks about
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: the spoils of battle when he's talking about Doge cuts.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: But I do think he's applying that more broadly in
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: like a really kind of, you know, old school context.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: in a bad way way.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: This is how Trump operates domestically. This is how Trump
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: has operated in business his whole life, right? Like it doesn't,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you don't have to have some grand theory of international
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: order to just view the world as he does as like,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: there's people I think are tough and powerful and there's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: people I think are weak and why should I give
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a shit about the weak people?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I think what you're describing is like the end result
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: of what happens when someone like Trump is just sort
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: of emotionally, instinctively driven towards relationships with Russia and Putin
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: with Xi that he finds that easier and less of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: a headache. But where are the iPhones from? Where are
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the chips from? All of this is like, the idea
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: is like, oh, you're just going to carve up the world.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: There's stuff moving across those lines already. The amount of chaos.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Well, he's going to be like, yeah, I can deal
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: with Xi directly. I'll keep the iPhones coming. Yeah, sure. Oh,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I realize it's all bullshit, but I think he believes it.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I think he hasn't. I think that it's a J.D.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Vance view. Like, I don't think it's just Trump. I
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: actually think he now has an Elon and J.D. Vance
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: in like I think he has a movement of people
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: around him. And they're all you know, they look to Orban.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: They look to Hungary and they're like, this is the way.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: I think they look. I think they see. I mean,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: just take them at their word like the U.N. World
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Trade Organization, like these are institutions that have become sclerotic
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: the same way they and they don't see the benefits
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: of or live in a kind of glib luxury of
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: the security and stability these institutions provide while attacking what
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: are genuine excesses and problems of working within those organizations.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And rather than doing the hard grinding work of reforming them,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: they want to burn them down. But we will live
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: in the dangerous kind of poor world that results when
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: they're long gone. And Donald Trump doesn't know better, but
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Marco Rubio knows better because he used to say it
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: out loud.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: One even simpler explanation is Trump looks at a Russia
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: or a China and sees a kleptocracy. And there are
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: people who think that Vladimir Putin's the richest person in
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: the world because basically at one point along the way,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: he went to all the Russian oligarchs and says, now
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: you give me half or else you're falling out a
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: very high window.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: But is he happy?
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: You can imagine a version of that where, you know,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: the state functions as just another means for Donald Trump
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: to get paid. And we're already seeing some pieces of that.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: And again, yeah, I completely agree. And in his mind,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: it's like, and I deserve that because I'm the one
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: running everything. And I got my other rich friend Putin
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: over here, my other rich friend Xi, and they're tough
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: guys too. Look how tough, how many times are you
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: talking about how tough they are? But sometimes the way
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that I think the left has framed it is, oh,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that that Donald Trump is like a supplicant to these
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: guys or he's like a stooge for them. And like that,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I think Putin and she probably think that about Trump.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: But I think Trump thinks they're his buddies. They're all
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a bunch of tough guys, you know, standing across the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: globe together.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why it's like, look, you know, the U.S.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: sides with Russia at the U.N. against our ally. And
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: like how many people in the U.S. actually know about that?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: and how many people in the U.S.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Actually care about that. And by the way, notable that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Orban and Bibi joined, too, in the new club there
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in that vote.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: But I do think some of this is like, you know,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about this before we recorded. It's like,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you know, the democratic legitimacy of these institutions, right, like
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: were in the post-World War II era, came from Americans
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: having a fear of the Soviet Union, drilled into them
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: by propaganda, but also the actual threat posed by the
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union that people lived with every day. And then
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: the Cold War ends and we kind of just continue
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: with these institutions, never really making a kind of coherent
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: argument for them, why they're important, why we're doing this,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: why we spend this money, right? We were resting on
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: the kind of goodwill and legitimacy that came from generations before.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And now Trump puts these things under attack. And in
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the same way, we're told it's a trap to talk
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: about why USAID is a good thing. We're now once
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: again in the trap of trying to defend this order
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: because It seems like what what what Trump and these
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: guys are daring us to do is say, all right, fine,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: burn it down. We'll prove you right when everything is terrible.
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: We're just out in the streets chanting rules based order,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: rules based order.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet no one knows about the U.N. vote.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, the U.N. Security Council has been broken
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: for a long time because the Russians and Chinese veto
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: whatever they want. And we veto any criticism Israel and
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: nothing gets done.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: It's been that way for a decade plus. A UN
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: General Assembly vote is basically just kind of like a
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: show of hands of what you believe. It's like a
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: global roll call. And boy, did we show our hand
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: in a new and scary way to the world. I
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: do wonder if the Zelensky-Trump meeting will break through and,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: I don't know, hit people differently.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: They did say Slava Ukraine at the Oscars. Is that
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: worth anything?
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Bullying a man who's like trying to rescue 19,000 Ukrainian
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: children who were stolen, kidnapped and taken to Russia. Like,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's pretty fucked up. That's dark stuff.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sure MAGA base thought it was awesome. Right? Of course.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: We know that. They've been saying that. I agree, Tommy. Like,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I think I had some people text me who are not,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: you know, political junkies like us and are just like,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: that was so embarrassing, awful, scary. What the fuck is happening?
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: You don't look tough. It's like a three-on-one fight. And
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: it's not about sending weapons or spending more money. It's
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: just about like treating a man with decency whose country
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: has been massacred. I mean, the casualty counts you see
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: from the US estimates are 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 100,000 wounded.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: The Russian casualties are like double that. And so this
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: war is a bit of catastrophe. Like I'm all for
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: trying to end it, but we have to do it
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: on terms that won't lead to a ceasefire that just
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: reignites in a couple of years when the Russians have
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: had time to reconstitute their forces. And that's what Zelensky's
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: worried about.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Turning to all the damage that Trump is doing here
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: in America. The AP reported last week that the social
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: security administration is preparing to lay off at least 7,000
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: people close multiple field offices, and could get rid of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: up to half its workforce. Most of the agency's senior
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: leadership is already gone. Martin O'Malley, the former Maryland governor
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: who ran the Social Security Administration under Biden, just told
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: CNBC that with this level of cuts, quote, you're going
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: within the next 30 to 90 days. People should start
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: saving now. We also found out what Doge Master Elon
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Musk thinks about the program during his latest Joe Rogan
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: appearance last weekend. I mean, the government's one big permit scheme,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: if you ask me.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you can tell me better than anybody.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Seems like the task of making the 2026 campaign ads
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: just got easier.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: It's also just like, ugh, Social Security's a Ponzi scheme.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: It's just like mid-90s Republican talking points is where we're at.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: It's actually a Ponzi scheme. The trust fund runs out
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in 2050. The trust fund's always running out.
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Elon sort of like always seems like partly aware
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: of and on board with the Trump policy agenda. Like
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: no one in the White House wants him to call
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Social Security a Ponzi scheme because, boy, does it then go.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: It's hard to pivot from that to fighting for a
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: $ 5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in the country,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: which is their primary objective this year.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I imagine they'll do whatever it takes to avoid Social
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Security benefit cuts because they know how unpopular it would be.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: But I also think they are some combo of idiots
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and liars all the time. So people do need to
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: be on alert for any story about retirees who couldn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: get their benefits on time because that's– you lay off
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: that many people at the Social Security Administration, which I'm
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: sure wasn't the model of efficiency before that.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Those Social Security checks gets paused, you'll see
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: a geezer insurrection that makes it fucking January 6th. Look
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: like a PTA meeting.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, I remember– Under the Affordable Care Act, Obama used
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: to say, if you like your plan, you can keep it.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: But then some plans were canceled because they didn't hit
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the mandatory requirements under the new ACA rules. And my
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: wife's mother had a plan that got canceled. And I
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: remember having that conversation with her and she was able
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: to get a new one and it was fine. It
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: was probably overall better. But that was not a small thing.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: That was not a blip in their feelings about the
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: ACA or Barack Obama's standing.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: For a little while.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And, and to that point, people aren't going to, even
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: if they don't cut benefits, like, Oh, we, we missed it.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: We missed all the checks for Wisconsin this month.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Or, sorry, everyone in Kansas, you're not getting, or like,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: like they, you do that for a month. It's mayhem.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: The, yeah, the, again, it's like, I sound like a
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: broken record, but like, you know, before social security, the
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: poorest people in the country were old people and social
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: security changed that forever. We live in a world that
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: is different because social security is lifted millions of people
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: out of grinding poverty. And you play with that for
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: a week, playing with people's ability to feed themselves, to
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: take care of themselves.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: And they showed their gratitude by voting for Donald Trump.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: At least the first time.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: But part of what you're making is just a basic
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: government competence argument. And if suddenly a bunch of Social
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Security checks don't go out, that shatters people's confidence in
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: the U.S. government in a way that I think is
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: really hard to recover from. Again, the Affordable Care Act,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: the healthcare.gov rollout, was more than just a website being
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: broken for a while. It just fundamentally undercut people's faith
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: in the administration to roll out and administer their health care,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: which is a very personal thing.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Social security field offices are not the driver of our
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: national debt or deficit. These are tiny, tiny costs that
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: provide basic services.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: It's all fake. It's all bullshit.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, but one announcement
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: before we do that. The first State of the Union
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: address is Of Trump's second term. No, it's technically a
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: joint session of Congress.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: But whatever.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: It's tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern. We used to believe
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: in things, have grammar and stuff. 6 p.m.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: Pacific.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: One hour before that at 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. The
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: three of us and Dan. Dan is back here again
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: this week.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: We make Dan fly down all the time.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: We'll be live streaming a preview of the speech on
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the Pod Save America YouTube channel. We'll be talking about
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: what we can expect from Trump and how Democrats should respond.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And talking to Democratic members who are there. We'll also
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: be taking questions from Friends of the Pod subscribers. It's
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: going to be fun. It's going to be a great time.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Then at 9 Eastern, 6 Pacific, head over to the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Friends of the Pod Discord for subscriber-only live chat where
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you can process this freak show in real time with
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: people who get it. No deranged Facebook uncles. I don't
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: know how we can promise that. No screaming into the void.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Just a space to vent, fact check, remind each other
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: that reality still matters.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: That's a lot to promise. There's going to be some
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: jokes about the speech.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I did not write that. You can tell. To ask
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: us questions during the live stream and for access to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the Discord, sign up for Friends of the Pod now
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: at crooked.com slash friends. It's the best way to support
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Crooked in everything we do. Pod Save America is brought
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: to you by Lumen. Did you know that when your
• 34:53
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• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. So same weekend,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Elon called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Trump announced a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: safer place to invest our tax dollars. Crypto. He posted
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: that in order to, quote, make sure the U.S. is
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the crypto capital of the world, he's creating a crypto
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: strategic reserve that would stockpile five cryptocurrencies, XRP, Solano, Cardano, Bitcoin,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and Ethereum. Don't even know what half those things are. Tommy,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: care to explain what this is all about?
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So the initial tweet, said the reserve would include XRP, SOL,
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: and ADA. That's Ripple, Solana, and Cardano. Then he quote
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: tweeted himself saying, of course, it'll also include Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: And that will matter in a second. So this idea
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: has been on the top of the crypto Bitcoin maximalist
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: wishlist for a long time. Because if you own a
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: lot of cryptocurrency early, and then the US government pumps
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: a lot of money into it, your Bitcoin is going
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: to go up in price. The main elected official pushing
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: this idea has been Cynthia Loomis, a senator from Wyoming.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: I'm sure everyone here at this table.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Is aware of her.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Very well aware of Cynthia Loomis.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: She introduced the Boosting Innovation Technology Competitiveness Through Optimized Investment Nationwide, or?
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Bitcoin? NAMBLA.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Bitcoin.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I was trying to follow you as you were saying it.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I'm like, ooh, get it, get it, get it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: So you put out the Bitcoin Act, the NAMBLA Act,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: as Lovett called it, at a conference in 2024 where
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Trump also spoke. Her bill is basically, she frames it
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: as a way to bring down the debt, which makes
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: no sense. But the gist of it is the U.S.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: government buys a million Bitcoins, which is about 5% of
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: total supply of Bitcoins over a set period of time
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: using existing treasury funds. They say it will be paid
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: for by these existing treasury funds because it's like accounting
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: gimmicks to make it sound like it's cost-free, but the
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: money's fungible. So for spending U.S. government money on Bitcoin,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: you're not spending it on something else. So obviously- It's
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: not free.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's only it's only and also it's only fungible
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: if you consider it like a stable asset, like the
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: fucking dollar.
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: But it's not.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: It's a it's a highly volatile.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: It's like it's buying stock.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: It's buying stocks.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So the reason I'm talking about this Loomis bill, though,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: is because there's no details of whatever Trump's plan is
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: beyond these tweets, except that the Loomis plan was just Bitcoin,
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: while Trump's plan included those other cryptocurrencies like Ripple and Cardano,
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: which are why a lot of Bitcoin advocates actually don't
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: like what Trump rolled out. because those other currencies are
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: like jokes. Like no one uses Ripple. No one uses Cardano.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Solana is like a platform through which you make other
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: stuff off it, like mean coins. It's the idea that like,
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: if you are a Bitcoin maximalist and you believe that
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Bitcoin is the new gold, okay, I guess you could
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: argue for diversifying like our holdings of stuff, but like
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: not for this other shit coins that no one ever uses.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: So the only argument for how those other currencies get
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: into the mix here is because special interest lobbying is,
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: in corruption. And surprise, surprise, Trump had dinner with the
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: CEO of Ripple in early January. He's now surrounded by
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: these Silicon Valley guys with vested financial interests like David Sachs,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: the AI czar. So he tweets this out, crypto prices
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: spiked on Sunday about 10%. Now they're crashing down as
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: we're recording this. And I guess there's like a big
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: White House crypto meeting on Friday, but like there's a
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: good chance that this tweet was all it was. And
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: it was just a chance to pump and dump.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: If you're previously holding these, these shares, because a bunch
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: of crypto news sites reported on someone making a 50
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: times levered bet on Bitcoin and Ethereum on Saturday, only
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: to cash it out for a $ 6. 8 million profit on Sunday. So,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: must be nice. What do you think, guys? Clean out
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Fort Knox, fill it with thumb drafts?
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, what are we stockpiling?
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing that's so fucking stupid.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: It's not gold. It's not a, like, what are we,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: it's not a, we're going to run out.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, we have a strategic reserve of oil.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to run out of the fake money.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, if the government ran out of crypto, what happens?
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: What happens?
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Nothing. Nothing happens.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to go stockpile some grass.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, the, like, It's so outrageous on its face. Also,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: I know it's almost quaint now, something that should probably
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: take an act of fucking Congress.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I think it would require one, yeah.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: And then, and like, even just the announcing of the
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: specific currencies, again, like if there was an actual serious,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: like a strategic crypto reserve is the dumbest fucking thing
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: I've ever heard of. It's not strategic. It's not a reserve.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: It's just a bank account that we'd be owning that
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: we just put US dollars into, I guess, hoping that,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: and then some of, one of the other rationales you'll
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: hear is like, well, it will benefit taxpayers because taxpayers
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: would then own a share of cryptocurrency as it rises.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: And like, you know, I like hate to be a
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: small C conservative here. There's a great way for taxpayers
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: to benefit from cryptocurrency if they'd like. They can buy
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: cryptocurrency with their own fucking dollars.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, take the money and treasury that you're going to
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: put in the reserve and hand out some tax cuts.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: No, I don't want a sovereign wealth fund. I don't
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: want any of this shit. Yeah, give everybody a gift card.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Buy what a crypto you fucking want.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: There's also no guarantee that Bitcoin price will rise. Like
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: if it was guaranteed to rise, then like the way
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: markets work is it would already be priced at that level, right?
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: Because that's how guarantees work. I mean, so none of
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: this makes sense. You would come along, create a new
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: cryptocurrency that displaces Bitcoin. All of our holdings go to zero. Also,
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: the US government holding a ton of cryptocurrency or Bitcoin
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: is completely antithetical to like the libertarian anti-government roots of
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: these cryptocurrencies.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I thought the whole reason we're doing crypto and
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the blockchain is because we don't trust central governments and
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: banks around the world. And we want like, what was
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: that whole thing?
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: And also, also, uh, if the U S government suddenly
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: has massive holdings of Bitcoins, that's stuck because if the
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: U S announces that we're selling off our Bitcoins, suddenly
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: the price of Bitcoins will fucking plummet. Some of these
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: currencies that Trump is talking about buying, if the U
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: S has any meaningful stake in it, we own a
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: huge share of the global supply of these, of these coins,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: you know, the, like with these Trump mean coins, right?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: All these people that put money into it, they can
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: only get that money out if somebody is willing to
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: buy it at that price. Now, Trump makes money on
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: the transaction fees. And if you want, you could probably, uh,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: you know, show your crypto wallet to Trump and say, look,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: I'm on all your fucking coins, you know, just to
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: get a great deal out of it. But like, so
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: what this is, is like this first, is there so many,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: there's like so many, it's like a Russian nesting doll
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: of corruption. Trump, Trump has these allies who are in
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: the crypto business. He's doing a huge favor for them.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Trump himself is making a ton of money off of crypto, right?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: And so he wants to have crypto succeed. And on
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: top of all of that, you have this now, this
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: legitimated scheme where foreign leaders and governments and anybody who
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: wants a government contract can basically put money virtually directly
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: into Donald Trump's pocket. It's untraceable, but you can still
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: show him.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: You can prove it to him.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Do you think after... Trump and Elon and the Doge
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: boys go to Fort Knox to check out the gold.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: It feels like the Doge should kind of check out
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the crypto reserve if it ever gets off the ground.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: That's a good place for Doge.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I don't know where this came from.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Well, now I'm starting to understand where it's coming from
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: because basically they're trying to equate having a holding, like
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: a reserve of crypto to having a reserve of gold.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: And they're trying to make the argument that Gold is
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: somehow just as insecure or dangerous or a risky asset
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: to hold as these digital mining bucks.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't trust anything except that which makes us money.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Well, to your point, a strategic oil reserve makes sense
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: because you're going to need to use oil.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Gold, you could make a similar argument.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: Finite resource. You could make the argument with crypto that
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: you could make with gold. Like, look, in a pinch,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: we can't eat gold, right? It only has value because
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: for thousands of years it has had value. But Bitcoin's
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: been around for like 15 years. It could just disappear
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: and no one would know.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I don't care about the gold at Fort Knox,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: but I, like, it's not, like, you have oil because
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: in an emergency, if suddenly oil supplies are cut off
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: by our adversaries or there's a price or whatever, you
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: need oil to have the economy function. There's other strategic
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: helium reserve because it's fun to use at parties. But, like,
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: there's lots of... But like you have a reserve of
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: something that you need in an emergency.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Right. And it doesn't, crypto is not what you need.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Also long-term cryptocurrency will undercut the use of the dollar
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: as the world's reserve currency, which long story short, gives
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: us a ton of power and influence. And on the
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: corruption part, I mean, I had this really smart reporter
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: on named Zeke Fox on the February 26th episode of
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Pod Save the World. And I called him today, just
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: like check back in on this. There's this guy named
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Justin Sun, who is a, you heard of him? Yeah.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Chinese crypto entrepreneur. Yeah. He bought $ 75 million worth of
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Trump's World Liberty financial tokens. This is a certain crypto
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: asset where the Trump family gets 75% of the profits
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: from that coin. So right off the top, he just
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: gets a rip of 75%. The SEC just paused its
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: case against Justin Sun. They're investigating him for basically fraud.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They must have just woken up one day and
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: decided they didn't have a case.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: If you go to the World Liberty website, it's just
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump on the front. He is called their chief
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: crypto advocate. His sons are ambassadors in other fake roles.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: By the way, the SEC also paused a lawsuit against Binance.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: It stopped an enforcement action against Coinbase. They are stopping
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: the SEC's crackdown that was led by Gary Gensler under
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: the Biden administration. So basically they are removing any brakes.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: They're removing any guardrails, any transparency. They're going to make this,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: make it basically impossible to detect fraud, to detect corruption.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Like that is the plan.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: That is the plan. Just, you know, they're just bringing
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: more efficiency to government.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, did you see Eric Trump tweeted by the dip
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: on Tuesday?
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: And then this announcement happened Sunday.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: I wonder if he was in a position to know
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: something about the Bitcoin price.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Can we talk about Doge?
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Please. I'd love to hear about Doge.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: They are, they're not batting a thousand these days. The
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Times has a truly humiliating story about Doge taking credit
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: for saving $ 53 million, supposedly, by ending a Coast Guard
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: contract that lapsed 20 years ago and was only ever
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: worth $ 144, 000. Yeah, cry me a river. Tons of examples
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: like that. Justin Timberlake song for that era.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: Go on.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of examples like that. They're just all
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: over the place. They're... Some of them, they're correcting their mistakes,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: but they keep mistaking millions for billions. They're saying billions
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: when they're actually cutting millions. It's a mess.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they claim to have saved $ 8 billion on like
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: a DEI program for ICE, when in fact it was
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: an $ 8 million program.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, so this is what's happening there. We also got
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: word that Trump fired one of the last remaining career
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: officials at USAID, Nicholas Enric, who just wrote a series
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: of memos to sound the alarm that despite Marco Rubio's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: promise to unfreeze all life-saving humanitarian assistance... The agency was, quote,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: never actually given the opportunity to implement life-saving humanitarian assistance,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: thanks to Doge canceling contracts, blocking payment systems, and just
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: putting a bunch of obstacles in the way of getting
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the money out the door. Enrich projected another 166,000 deaths
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: per year from malaria. Another 200,000 children per year paralyzed
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: with polio. More than 28,000 new cases of deadly diseases
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: like Ebola and Marburg each year. And another million children
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: per year who won't be treated for severe acute malnutrition,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: which often kills them. So on this last point, I
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: saw the CNN story over the weekend about this company
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: in Georgia. What they do is they make this peanut paste.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: And they give this peanut paste full of vitamins and nutrients.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: And they basically give this little packet to a child
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: who's suffering from severe acute malnutrition. And they can survive.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: It's this like miracle thing. USAID has been handing it
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: out for years and years and years. The company that
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: produces this had like enough peanut paste for 400,000 kids
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: to save 400,000 kids ready to go right on it.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: They said like from the American people, USAID, all in
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: these packets, ready to go. The United States government had
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: already purchased them. $ 10 million. We already paid for this
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: and was informed by Doge that that the contract was canceled.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: And the guy's like, I have all this peanut paste
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: now that's just going to go to waste. I can't
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: send it anywhere because it's got USAID all over it.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: They told me not to do it. And that's it.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: So now all these kids aren't going to get the
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: life-saving nutrition. So I see this thing. I get really annoyed.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I tweet about it. And I was like, I tweet
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: about Elon doing this with not even saving us money,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: just like not sending this stuff out. We already paid
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: for it. And it's Saturday night. It's Saturday night.
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: It was right before I saw you on Saturday night.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: And I was on the way. I tweeted and then
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: I got home and I'm in bed and I was like, oh, oh,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: he responded.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: My phone wasn't blowing up that night. I was home alone.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: You were home alone. You were home alone. And so
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Elon responded and he called me dollar store John Favreau
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: and said, I'm an imbecilic propagandist who lies to score
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: cheap political points. And then he said, That said, I
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: will investigate this.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: So he's got you dead to rights. But he's not
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: going to do it anyway.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: He's still figuring out the comment card thing.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: And we'll fix it if so. And so then the
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: next morning, so I decide, you know, it's late at night,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: had a few drinks. I'm not going to reply now.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: So I just went to bed. That was smart, right?
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Woke up in the morning, he has replied again. And
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: he was like, the contract has been reinstated. It was
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: already reinstated last week. They should get the payment soon.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: And then he lists the company. I'm like, what company
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is that? It's another peanut paste company in Rhode Island
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: that he had also canceled the contract to. And so
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I wrote back to him like, actually, that's great. But
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the company was in Georgia. It was at CNN. It
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: was this company. And then later Sunday night, MJ Lee
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: at CNN, who broke the original story about the Georgia company,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: was like, I just got a call from the guy
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: in the Georgia company. And he said, it was the
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: contract was reinstated just minutes ago. So then, so this morning,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Elon was like, he replies to me again, and he
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: was like, so just so you know, it wasn't because
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: of the legacy media or Kmart favs. He got upgraded.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: He upgraded me.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: Is Kmart better than Dollar Store?
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I had said that I would at least
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: want to be Target Jon Favreau in my reply to
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: him because I thought I would, you know.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: So now it's like a will there or won't there
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: thing with these things.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I was trying to be constructive.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Sounds basically vaguely for tape.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: How do you tweet this much from a K-hole?
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And he was like, it wasn't that. It
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: was just, we just needed a brief pause and no
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: one has died yet. And what I said in the
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: oval about Ebola protection was right. that it is turned
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: back on and it just takes a while for the
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: money to go through all the systems and blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: as he's tweeting this, I'm looking at this guy from
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: USAID who just left and writing a memo like, no,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Rubio gave all these waivers to the life-saving assistants and
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: none of them could be implemented.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the no one has died is not the defense.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: If you're out there being like, I want to reassure everyone,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: no one has yet died.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: As far as I know.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: As far as I know. You know, like, first of all, great,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: first of all, great posting, by the way. Great posting.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: My New Year's resolution really coming in handy.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Remember when you and I were like, when he said
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: his resolution was to post more and we like scoffed
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: because like, why? What's the point? Paid for itself.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, good for you. Also, I've been pivoting to
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: TikTok because I'm just trying to reach people where they're at.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: I'm doing a late, mid-40s TikTok. And honestly, don't let
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: anyone tell you it's not going great.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: It's going good.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: It's going good. 43 is the year of vertical video.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. I was trying to be nice.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Wow. I thought we were in the same generation. We
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: go back to Elon in the cabinet meeting where he
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: spoke to the cabinet before anyone else got a chance
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: to speak. And he said, you know, I'm really support.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I'm here to support you. But the reason we're doing
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: this is because we're in an emergency and we have
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: to cut. If we want to hit my goal of 1.x
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: trillion dollars of cuts, we've got to cut $ 4 billion
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: a day. That's the only way to do it. You
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: got to cut $ 4 billion a day. All of this
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: is just exposing how that is stupid at every level.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: First of all, Actually, you don't have to cut $ 4
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: billion a day. You don't have to scramble through the
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: agencies finding little bits to cut every day. If you
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: have a goal for a giant budget cut you want
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: to make, you can propose it through Congress and you
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: can do it. And by the way, go even one
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: step further. Let's say you don't want to do it
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: that way. You just said you have all these cabinet secretaries.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Go to the cabinet secretaries and say, I need this.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: I need a proposal for this many cuts by this date.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: And I know it's going to be hard. and I'm
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: going to be driving you guys every day, and I'm
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: going to be meeting with you, but you tell me
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: what we can cut. But no, one fucking adult tech
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: bro cannot oversee these cuts across every layer of our government.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: It's going to lead to kids fucking dying.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I had a friend ask me, reading about all this,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and he was like, well, but isn't it possible that
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of waste that we can get
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: rid of there, and that we also want to send
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: out life-saving assistance? Isn't both right? And I'm like, if
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: they wanted to do that, They could have audited USAID.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: They could have used the authority that they have to
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: trim where they could. And they could have then sent
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Congress a list, which they control, a list of cuts,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a list of layoffs that they wanted to do. They
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: could have done all that if the whole thing was
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: about efficiency. I mean, Pete Hegseth, remember, when he got
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: to the Defense Department, was like, I want to cut
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the workforce by 8% at the department. So send me
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: ideas for this by whatever. I'm not saying that Pete's
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: exit is strategic. I was like, well, if you want
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: to cut your agency, that's one way to do it.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: Just like put out a goal. What they have done,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: this is not what they were doing at USAID.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Just, would you say 200,000 more kids getting polio? Yeah.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, we eradicated smallpox off the face of
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: the earth. Like the next goal was to eradicate polio.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: And I think it was only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: The fact that it's now going to resurge because of
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: these cuts, like Jesus Christ, what a, what a hit
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: to humanity. On the USAID money generally, I do think
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: like people are going to die. There are going to
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: be refugee camps in Sudan where they're going to run
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: out of food. Babies are going to die. There's going
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: to be people we've been giving AIDS medicines under the
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: PEPFAR program that'll be gone in months. Now there's going
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: to be, I personally think that that is cruel and
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: morally wrong and damaging to our standing in the world
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: in the longterm as a nation. But let's say your
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: view on this is the United States can't feed every
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: starving person anywhere, everywhere, and we can't be the world's policemen.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: Then you say to them, okay, what about programs that
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: help people that we actively harmed as a nation? Early
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: on in this process, we talked about the freeze on
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: foreign aid, stopping programs that clean up unexploded bombs that
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: the United States dropped on Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: If we don't clean those up, little kids pick them up,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: their arms get blown off, they get killed, they're going
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: to die. The New York Times recently had a story
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: about a doge cut that cut off funding to a
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: program that provides, like, the most meager amount of support
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: to people who are severely disabled because of Agent Orange.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Because the United States dropped Agent Orange on their villages
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: during the Vietnam War, and then people who lived there
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: had kids who had these severe disabilities. Now we're cutting
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: off loans to these people? Like, that's the reality of
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: what's happening.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know what? We are the richest country
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: on Earth in the history of the Earth. And we
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: are not... Elon Musk is worth 400 billion dollars, okay?
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: This is not like, hey, middle class family in Ohio,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: we're gonna, we gotta raise your taxes to help feed
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: starving people in some other country. Like, we have billionaires
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: running all over this country and we're talking about 25
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: cent fucking peanut packets and malaria nets and HIV medication
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: which is now pretty cheap now that we've had it for, like,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: what are we talking about right now we can't fucking
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: afford this?
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the end result of this is
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: not reducing the deficit by whatever trillion dollar goal Elon
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: has set. They want to take that money, they want
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: to put $ 100 billion of it into a crypto reserve,
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: and they want to take the rest and they want
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: to divvy it out to Elon Musk and all these
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: people through a gigantic tax cut for the rich. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: by the way, all the cuts Elon is making would never,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: even if he were to hit his goals, which he
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: can't because he's doing this in such a chaotic and
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: terrible way, even if he did, it would be obliterated
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: by the cost of the tax cuts, which is why
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: they have to go even further and look to cut
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Medicaid or look to cut Social Security, or whatever they're
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: going to do to try to pay for these giant
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: tax cuts. So none of this results in any kind
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: of tangible benefit for actual American citizens, right? And by
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: the way, none of this was part of like, this
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: was not the core of their campaign. They campaigned to
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: lower the cost of goods. We are getting a dismantling
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: of the federal government.
• 57:06
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• 58:29
  Speaker 1: That's squarespace.com slash crooked. Trump said late Monday, which is
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: when we're recording this, that a 25% tariff on all
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Mexican and Canadian goods and an additional 10% tariff on
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: all Chinese goods will go into effect on Tuesday. He
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: backed off these tariffs at the last minute once before,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: so who knows if he'll do it again. Who knows
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: why he changed his mind. But either way, stock market
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: had the worst day of the year on Monday, and
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of shit is about to get very expensive. Unless,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of course, you're listening to this Tuesday morning and he
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: backed off last minute again.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg, for example, car prices alone would increase
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: by $ 12, 000 if the tariffs go through at the levels.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Trump is promising. This comes as the Federal Reserve Bank
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: of Atlanta's estimate now predicts the economy to shrink by 2.8%
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: this quarter. And a wave of new polling from CBS, Marist,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: CNN shows that people think that Trump is not doing
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: enough to focus on the economy and inflation. his approval
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: rating keeps dropping, but the weakest spot is economy and inflation,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: which is ironic because those used to be his strongest issues.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: It sure seems like a lot of flashing red lights
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: for the Trump administration that they're just ignoring. Do you
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: think they don't know, don't care? Do you think they
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: think it's just temporary?
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is what they want to do. That's
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: just theory of the case. This is economic vision is
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: you throw up all these tariffs and somehow that will
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: ultimately rebuild domestic manufacturing or our ability to produce goods.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: But it just feels very unlikely. And we're going to
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: put in place these tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: they're going to retaliate. The Canadians have talked about 25%
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: tariffs on $ 30 billion worth of goods of US products,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: and then that might expand to $ 85 billion more. And
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: they're talking about ag products, consumer goods, liquor. I think
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: they're targeting Republican districts, so like bourbon, appliances. And Mexico
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: has not been public about their retaliations, but they're preparing
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: them So you made the point like the auto sectors
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: are so entwined between the US and Canada and Mexico,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: and I don't know how that's going to work. Mexico
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: and Canada account for 70% of US crude oil imports.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: So gas prices could go up. And also we're talking
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: about trade agreements that like Jared Kushner negotiated. The USMCA
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: was the updated NAFTA that Trump, like it was one
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: of the things Trump talked about as a primary accomplishment
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: in the first term.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: And there was a, when he was first talking about
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the tariffs a couple of weeks ago, he goes, He said,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: I look at these deals and I'm like, who negotiated
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: these deals? You did. These are your deals. These are
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: your deals.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: He wants to squeeze our allies. He wants to squeeze
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: them and get a better deal out of them and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: just keep squeezing them and squeezing them until they become
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 54th state. I really think that
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: this is part of it.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's right.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: He wants an economic war against Canada to just beat
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: them into submission. And he's stupid because, like you said,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: it's going to hurt us.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: Well, so far it's backfiring. I mean, his... ostensible political
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: allies or the conservative parties up there, this guy, Pierre Polyev,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: and he still might be the next Canadian prime minister.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: But Justin Trudeau's polling was like rock bottom. He stepped back.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: They did this thing where they, it's called proroguing parliament,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: where basically the liberal party is now going to figure
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: out its new leader. And that person will then become
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: the prime minister when they go back into session in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: like a couple of weeks. And the liberal party's polling
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: numbers because of Trump's attacks have gone way back up.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Like there, he is rallying support and you're seeing Canadians
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: booing the national anthem and all this sort of Canadian nationalism.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: And it's just, it's not working.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: He might, he might be, you know, Trump might lead
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: to a resurgence of the center left all over the world, except,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: except here, I guess.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: That'd be cool.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Well, here we've already been sort of beaten to a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: bloody pulp. But the, the, yeah, like the, I was
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: thinking about just sort of Trump as this negotiator, right?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: And like, it's kind of an old thought at this
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: point that, uh, He'd be richer today if he had
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: just taken his inheritance and put it in the S
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: & P, right? Because he's just not a very good businessman.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: And you kind of see in how he is president
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: why he was such a bad businessman, which is he
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: can't think long term. He can't think strategically. It's very
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: short term. You look at tariffs and you say, all right,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: your goal was to build up domestic manufacturing. And you
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: want tariffs to be one lever in doing that, right? Well,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: some of the things you're tariffing, right? It would take
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: a decade to build tariffs. a steel plant, right? Take
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: a decade to improve our capacity in whatever it might be,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: refining oil, whatever. Like putting on the tariff doesn't result
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: in that at all. We're actually completely dependent on Canada
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: and Mexico for a lot of parts, a lot of supplies,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of materials, right? And so like all of
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: this is so, it's just not, it's a strategic, it's
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: just a guy who had an idea about what makes
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: an economy. You put on the tariffs, the manufacturing comes back.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: And maybe there's some deep, some like very raw sense
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: in which that's, on some level, true. But in the meantime,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: there's just a decade of pain, of economic stagnation. And
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: then the question is, if that does come, right? Like,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: you know, we're going to talk about the Democrats, and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: I believe that's how you pronounce it. But like, what
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: happens when we move from things could get really bad
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: to things are really bad? And right, like, how does
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: that change Trump? And then how does that change how
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: the American people feel about our response?
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Well, Democrats are continuing to workshop their Response strategy in public,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: as we like to do.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: One spicy take on this came last week from the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: raging Cajun himself, James Carville, who wrote in a New
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: York Times op-ed, quote, With no clear leader to voice
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: our opposition and no control in any branch of government,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: it's time for Democrats to embark on the most daring
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: political maneuver in the history of our party. Roll over
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: own weight and make the American people miss us. Unsurprisingly,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: actual elected Democrats have thoughts on this. Here's Bernie Sanders
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: on Meet the Press this Sunday.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: The problem is the Democrats have been playing dead for
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: too many years. I don't think you play dead. I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: think you stand up for the working class in this
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: country and make the point. Thirteen of the people that
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: he nominated to head agencies are billionaires. Their greed is uncontrollable.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: We've got to fight back. That's what these trips to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: Wisconsin and Michigan will be about.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Just... Right down the middle for Bernie.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: She's sort of like, oh, what a question. Should Democrats
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: fight or give up? Bernie, what do you think?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think about Carville's prescription?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: So first of all, so when I was reading it,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I sort of like asked myself a question before I
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: got to the answer. And the question was, does a
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: strategic retreat mean we uh, help them fund the government
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: or to strategic retreat mean we don't help them fund
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: the government.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: And like, so, and then you kind of get to it.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: He says like, actually we should hang back for a while.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: It's not totally clear, but like kind of come in
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: at the last minute when they've already shown themselves to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: be terrible and failures and chaotic, and then come into
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: the last second and say what we stand for and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: help reopen the government, for example. And it sort of
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: gets at, I think the problem here, which is I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: think when you talk about like, should the Democrats fight
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: or should they retreat in an abstraction? Like, I don't
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: really know how you like act on this, right? Like
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: he's doing terrible things. Should Chris Murphy not go to
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: the floor and talk about them? Yeah. Like we should
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: be like, like, I have no, I have no comment
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: on the dismantling of NATO. Like, that's just not how
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: it works.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: So I don't tape your mouth.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that's what James meant.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: No, of course not. And so like, what I took
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: it to mean is like kind of sensationalistic way of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: saying Democrats have to be strategic, but like all in
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: all where I land after reading it, it's like, I don't,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know what we get by hanging back. It's
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: not like we get credits later when we speak more forcefully.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: for the times we were quiet earlier on.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just think Trump is the most relentless messenger
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: in the history of politics. And I think we can't
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: let him talk in a vacuum or else he's going
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: to pin every failure on Democrats and some not insignificant
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: part of the electorate will think that egg prices are
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: high because of Gaza protesters at Barnard. You know what
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: I mean?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: And that's not true.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: As far as I know, that is not true.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: It's the Jews. Still just the Jews.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I think you're right, Lovett.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: Like, it's... smarter to talk about these fights around a
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: specific thing like the budget. But I do think we
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: have an opportunity there to drive a message that's really strong,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: which is that Donald Trump is allowing this unelected, unwell
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: billionaire to break the US government so that you could
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: pretend it's going to save enough money to pay for
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: a $ 5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: the country. And I think that's a good story. We
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: have a good villain in Elon Musk. But we're not
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: going to win this fight with like op-eds and you know,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: MSNBC hits. It's going to be a volume game on
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: social media platforms and local press.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: But I do think like part of this has been
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: seeing us on Chris Hayes lately, I guess. And the
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: points we're making there. I do think we have to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: have like, we have to have a motivation. We have
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: to have a story with an enemy and we have
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: to have an alternative. Yes.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Let's get to that.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: There is a long tradition in politics, and I think
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: this is both parties do this, which is like when,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: you know, your opposition is fucking up, you just stand
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: back And if you put out an alternative, then the opposition,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: you know, then the other party is just going to
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: start taking shots at your alternative. And then people aren't
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: going to like your alternative and blah, blah, blah. And
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: why don't you just stand back? And I get the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: reasoning behind that. But I also think that we are
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: at a moment now where people are so cynical about politics, tired,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: beat down and unimpressed with the Democratic Party to say
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: it nicely. Like we have the party has one of
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the worst approval ratings it's had ever. And I think
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: it is incumbent upon Democrats right now more than ever
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: to like offer a vision, offer an alternative, say what
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: we would do differently. I don't think we need to like,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: you know, have a blizzard of policy plans out there
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: at all. But I think we need to, as we
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: critique Trump, like lay out how we would govern differently,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: how we treat people differently, what our vision of the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: country looks like, what our vision of the world looks like. Like,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, look, we've tried. Well, we're
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: not Trump and we're not MAGA. a couple of times now.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: It didn't work in 2016. It barely worked in 2020.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: It didn't work in 2024. It might work in 2026
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: because it's a midterm electorate. But like, we got to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: think about 2028 here. And we also got to think
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: about just expanding the map in general, because we're never
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: going to win this, like going the way we are.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: We're not going to control the Senate with the states
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: we have. The electoral college could shift and we're going
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: to need to like pick up more states. And like,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: we're just going to have to compete in tough places,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: which means you're going to have to give people an alternative. Yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, Trump, like, Before the election, Trump went to
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: New York and said, I'm going to win New York.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: And obviously that was ridiculous. But you had a Republican
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: politician saying, I can foresee a day where we win
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: in this state.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: And like, it's fascinating. similar, honestly, to like the kind
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: of managed decline globally. It's like there's sort of like
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: a managed decline to the Democratic brand. Like, oh, we
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: just we'll we can't win a state like Wyoming. We
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: can't win in a state like Nebraska, even though in
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: those states, minimum wage bills, union bills, marijuana bills, abortion bills,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: they pass.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: And so that tells you that there's this big delta
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: between what people actually want in their lives and the
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Democratic brand. And we won't make that brand better. We
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: won't fix it by being silent. Now, what I do
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: think is also true is we won't fix it by
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: just being kind of like whiners on the sidelines. And
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: I think that's the point he makes that did resonate
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: with me, which is like Democrats are powerless.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: It sucks.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: We're telling the truth about Trump. He's fucking terrible. But
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: we've been saying it for years. And by the way,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: the part of the problem is we were warning for
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: years about how bad it could get It is now
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: as bad as it could get, and it's no longer
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: a warning, but it sounds like what people have heard before.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: That is not our fault. That is a collective problem
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: with our democracy, a weakness Donald Trump exposes. But it
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: is the reality of like, and which is why I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: think where you get to is like, we just need
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: to offer an alternative. We need to offer something that
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: isn't about Trump. And like, I am even open to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: some of the more kind of like kooky ideas of like, of,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: of people saying this is what our cabinet would be
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: doing right now, right? Like I'm like open to- You.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Want a shadow cabinet?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not against it.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Look at you, you're all British.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not against it.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not against a shadow cabinet.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: Join the labor party, start spelling it with an O-U.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: I'm up for Trump. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I do think like it is, I agree that we
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: shouldn't over-promise and pick fights that give people the impression
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: that we have power we don't have, right? Because that
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: is a problem too, is you're like, We're going to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: We're going to stop. We're going to stop them. And
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: then it's like, obviously, we knew we couldn't stop them
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: because we don't have the votes for X or Y.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: So I agree that it's important not to overpromise. But
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: I still think like you need to fight when you
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: can and just be honest about what power we have
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: and what power we don't.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: The Trump people are going to break some parts of
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: the government and people are going to get hurt and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: they have to understand why that happened.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: So we've talked about the Doge stuff, but there's another
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: thing that's happened. So in 2020. Congress passed a bunch
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: of tax credits to make Affordable Care Act plans more affordable.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: Those were extended through 2025. Those are going to expire.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: And if they are not reauthorized, you're going to see
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: a bunch of middle class people see like serious premium increases.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: We need to explain to them as Democrats why their
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: premiums are going up. Otherwise, it might just happen in
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: a vacuum and people are going to think, oh, actually,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: government health care sucks.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: It's Trump.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Trump will say Obamacare sucks.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or Obamacare sucks. No, it's explained because... The Democrats
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: in Congress passed these enhanced tax credits for the Affordable
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: Care Act. We need a better name for them, by
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: the way. It's actually expanded premium support, Tommy. Thank you.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: That's even worse. And Republicans let them lapse.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, look, I do think that the budget
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: fight is the fight.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: But I also, I'm already like, we're heading into the
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: budget fight and I'm already feeling like, the most popular
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: testing message is just coming right back up and everyone's
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: just going to be like, tax cuts for billionaires to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: cut your healthcare. And it's the right message. But I
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: think we have to be creative in the way we
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: talk about it. Like we just can't sound like we
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: have sounded like the last 20 years. So it is
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: the right argument. You know what I'm saying? When I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: say the right message, that doesn't necessarily mean the right words.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Can't you feel it already?
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: I know. Well, it's hard, right? Because it's like, part
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: of it is like, you need to be doing two things, right?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: You actually do need to use the messages that resonate
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: with people because we're in a short-term fight and you're
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: trying to make the argument that resonates with people. But
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: at the same time, we're trying to make up for
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: what is ultimately a huge credibility gap. We warned the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: country for several elections in a row about how dangerous
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump was. It was very, very clear. Not enough
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: people believed us. Not enough people cared. Either we didn't
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: reach them or if we did, they didn't take it
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: at face value. And so that requires a deeper You
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: start telling a deeper story about what you believe about
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: the world, and it's going to challenge people's assumptions. It's
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: not going to be exactly what they expect to hear
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: from you.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or, I mean, Tommy, you've made this joke many times,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: which is, like, Democrats have been using the line, we're
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: going to stop tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: and we're going to give those tax breaks to companies
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: who create jobs in America for 20 years more. And so, like,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: is that one of the best polling testing lines? Yeah,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: I bet it is. And I bet when you ask
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: people about it, they'll be like, yeah, I really like that. Like,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: it's not just polls. Work hard and play by the rules.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: If you say it for 20 years and it doesn't happen,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and you just keep saying the same line, it's not
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: going to land well.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: One thing that I think insulates Trump from a lot
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: of criticism is people think, well, he's rich. He's not
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: trying to make more money. Because somehow people have gotten
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: it in their heads that billionaires don't always want more money,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: and that's how you become a billionaire. I think we
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: need to undercut that by... exposing the reality. For example,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: the Washington Post reported that Elon Musk and his businesses
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: have received at least $ 38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: and tax credits. We need to lift that up as
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: he's slashing things through Doge or advocating for a $ 4. 5
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: trillion tax cut for the richest people in the world.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: That's the kind of stuff I think where there's an
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: enemy and it's newsworthy and it's new and it's interesting.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: I think we can sell that.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Everything the tech oligarchs have done in the last 10
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: years has does not suggest that they do not care
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: about their wealth.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: Well, there's, yeah, these people cannot get enough and it's
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: fucking sick. But like, I don't know, this is where
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: I kind of come back. Like, I see what Carville's
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: getting at, right? Because like, what he's saying is like,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: we kind of need to step back from the daily
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: grind to figure out what we mean and what we
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: stand for. And I guess like where I land is like,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of different Democrats that need to do
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of different things. We need the people out
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: there fighting every single day. Like the days of like
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: everybody driving towards one single message are probably over. There's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: like maybe a core message we're driving, but there's like
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different access points to it. And some
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: people like Jasmine Crockett are going to be better at
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: just sort of like going for the fucking jugular. And
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: some people are going to be a bit more academic,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: like a Pete Buttigieg, but also in a really effective way.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: Like there's just like, there's just going to be a
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: bunch of different ways to talk about this.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: And then you've got your Gen Xers pivoting to vertical
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: video and TikTok. Right.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: I reject that.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: And I think you're doing a great job.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: You're the doge of this podcast with all your fucking
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: falsehoods in this episode.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: Um, but yeah, no, I think like we have to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: remember it's a party. A list is not a message, right?
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: We have to tell a story. It's gotta be, there
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: is like a lot of work we have to do
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: as a party. Like there's a bit of a reboot
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: of like who we, like you say, who is Trump?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: What is he? People are like, I don't know. He
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: wants to make America great again. It sounds stupid. We
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: used to make fun of it, but like, boy, is
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: that simple and effective? We don't need a slogan, but
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: we need people to think like Democrats are Like, they
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: believe this, they stand for that, they fight for this. Like,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: we need to reset that.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: Stronger at home, more respected in the world, an opportunity
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: for all, and bottom-up, middle-out, middle-class.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Strength plus experience equals change.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Middle-out, bottom-up. Mega, mega.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: Mega, mega. W stands for wrong, John. But that's an
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: old deep cut. But, like, this is, like, Bill Maher left,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: so we didn't really get into it. But it's, like,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: everybody in the... Like, when you make the argument... Was
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: it as sexually charged as it felt? I mean, I came. But, like,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: you made, like, sexually... Dude, don't push me.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Don't push me.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: You came, he left.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: Uh, yeah. You don't think 69 exists? What are we
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: doing right now, Bill?
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: But, uh, but, uh, like, little.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Treat for all of you who stayed for an hour 20.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: We're having a great time.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: We're having a great time. But the, uh, the, uh,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: like this idea that like, uh, you know, once you've
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: made the argument and they don't want to push back
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: in there, it's like, oh, you're going to cost Democrats
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: elections for 20 years with this pro-trans stuff. And it's like,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump put a pro-choice environmental lawyer at the head
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: of the Department of Health and Human Services because he
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: had built up so much trust and credibility with his base.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: And he has so much power within his party that
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: he had the space to operate, to challenge orthodoxies in
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different ways, both before he became president
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: and after. And as a Democratic Party, to Tommy's point,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: we need to have a core set of beliefs, of
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: values that are so clear, that make so much sense
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: to people, that you then have the space to To
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: kind of like take to challenge people on an issue
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: they may not be agree with you yet.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: To actually lead.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm laughing because I thought about like on
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: the Democratic side and I was like Kamala Harris did
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: three events one day with Liz Cheney and we're still
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: hearing about how it was. That's what caused the end
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: of the election.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: But I actually, honestly, I know.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: She didn't even say, like, you'd think she was, like,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: barnstorming with Liz Cheney and, like, promising her a cabinet seat.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, we're going to, yeah. Honestly, it's more like,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: what if Kamala Harris said, I'm going to make Mike
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: Pence my Secretary of Health and Human Services? Could you
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: imagine it?
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 5: But, like.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: Why is that so inconceivable? It's because, honestly, Kamala Harris,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: the most work she had to do was not just prove,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: she had to prove to every single group of people
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: what she believed in, right? She had no trust with
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: the left. She had no trust with the center. She
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: was starting from fucking scratch.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Well, on the other side of it, too, just to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: prove I'm not just a Liz Cheney fan, you know, AOC,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: one of the best messengers in the party, and we
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't even get her a ranking member slot on the
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: oversight committee.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: Well, when you have a talent like Connelly, when you
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: have a once-in-a-generation communicator Like Connolly just waiting in the wings.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: I do think that there's a lesson from the RFK
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: thing where, look, he's a terrible person. I would not
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: want him part of the Democratic coalition. And I don't
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: think- Great op-ed on measles though. I don't think it
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: was a mistake for Kamala Harris not to like cut
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: a deal with him or whatever. Remember that was kind
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: of a narrative. But Republicans, they will let anyone into
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: the tent, including him. And they saw, Donald Trump correctly
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: saw that RFK overthrew decades of misleading and sort of
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: being emotionally manipulative to people who had been had children
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: with disabilities etc had built this constituency and built trust
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: with a community that was like pretty significant and they
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: saw the value of this kind of like wellness to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: anti-vax to maga to maha pipeline and they were willing
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: to go for it and i just i don't know
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: like it's not a good example it's not something i'd
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: like to emulate but that openness and willingness to bring
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: people into the tent is something.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: It sounds like what you're saying is we need a
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan of the left.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: Of the right. We need a 69.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: All right, we're going to end this thing now. That's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: our show for today. Reminder that we're going to be
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: live streaming our preview of Trump's address to the joint
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: session tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: Pacific.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: We'll have a bonus reaction show in your feed tomorrow morning.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: Talk to you all then. If you want to listen
• 1:19:10
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