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Elon Musk's Nerd Coup · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:41
  Speaker 5: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: On today's show.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We got Donald Trump and Elon Musk seizing control of
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the federal government's money spigot, accessing all of our private
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  Speaker 1: information like social security numbers, purging federal law enforcement of
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  Speaker 1: nonpartisan FBI agents and prosecutors who aren't loyal to Trump,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and shutting down multi-billion dollar agencies that they're not legally
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: authorized to eliminate, starting with USAID. We'll hear from a
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: USAID vet about what is actually happening and what it means.
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  Speaker 1: We'll also talk about the Democrats. who seem like they're
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: trying to get off the mat. Over the weekend, the
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  Speaker 1: party elected Ken Martin as its new chair, and Democrats
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  Speaker 1: in Congress are starting to use the limited power they
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  Speaker 1: have to fight back. And later, Lovett talks tariffs with
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  Speaker 1: our old friend Brian Deese, who is a top economic
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  Speaker 1: advisor to Presidents Obama and Biden. But first, America's dumbest
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  Speaker 1: trade war, with two of its closest allies and biggest
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  Speaker 1: trading partners, seems to have ended before it even began.
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  Speaker 1: We started today. Ready to talk about a trade war.
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  Speaker 1: And then just before we started recording, first Mexico goes down,
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  Speaker 1: then Canada goes down.
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  Speaker 3: Trade war is over if you want it.
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  Speaker 1: So over the weekend, Trump announced 10% tariffs on Chinese
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  Speaker 1: goods and 25% tariffs on goods from our toughest adversaries,
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  Speaker 1: Canada and Mexico.
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  Speaker 2: That would mean every time a U.S.
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  Speaker 1: Company imports products from those countries, food, cars, medicine, electronics,
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  Speaker 1: they would have to pay an extra tax to the U.S. government,
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  Speaker 1: and then most companies would make up for the added
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  Speaker 1: expense by raising the prices they charge American consumers. The
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  Speaker 1: tariffs were scheduled to go into effect on Tuesday night,
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  Speaker 1: but then Trump agreed to last-minute deals with both Canada
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  Speaker 1: and Mexico to pause tariffs for one month. Mexican President
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  Speaker 1: Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 additional troops to the
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  Speaker 1: border to help with illegal immigration and drug smuggling. which
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  Speaker 1: Mexico also did at the beginning of Joe Biden's administration.
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  Speaker 1: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would implement the $ 1. 3
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  Speaker 1: billion border plan that it had already announced in December,
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  Speaker 1: launch a Canada-U.S. joint strike force to fight drug smuggling
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  Speaker 1: and money laundering, which it also announced in December, and
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  Speaker 1: the new thing, appoint a fentanyl czar, a Canadian fentanyl czar.
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  Speaker 3: That guy's always late for work.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: As far as we know, as of this recording on
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  Speaker 1: Monday afternoon, the tariffs on China are still going into
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  Speaker 1: effect as planned, though we're keeping a close eye on
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  Speaker 1: Xi Jinping's Twitter feed. Just got to keep a close
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  Speaker 1: eye on that while we're recording. Now, why was Trump
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  Speaker 1: doing all this in the first place? Here's a sampling
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  Speaker 1: of the explanations he's offered over the last few days,
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  Speaker 1: including threats to start trade wars with our European allies
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  Speaker 1: as well.
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  Speaker 6: We put tariffs on. They owe us a lot of money.
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  Speaker 6: And I'm sure they're going to pay. The UK is
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  Speaker 6: out of line, but I'm sure that one, I think
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  Speaker 6: that one can be worked out. But the European Union is,
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  Speaker 6: it's an atrocity. We may have short-term, some little pain,
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  Speaker 6: and people understand that. Canada's been very abusive of the
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  Speaker 6: United States for many years.
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  Speaker 7: What I'd like to see Canada become our 51st state.
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  Speaker 7: As a state, it's different. As a state, It's much different.
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  Speaker 7: And there are no tariffs. So I'd love to see that. But, uh,
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  Speaker 7: some people say that would be a long shot.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Some people do say that's a long shot.
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  Speaker 4: He, he doesn't mean so bizarre right after that, which was, uh,
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  Speaker 4: if they, if, if people were smart about the pain,
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  Speaker 4: they'd be for it, but they're not smart about the pain.
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  Speaker 3: He says something deeply, deeply troubling.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, that's, that's right after unlike him right after, um,
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  Speaker 2: All right. What do you guys think?
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  Speaker 1: Did Mexico and Canada cave to Trump's pressure and just
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  Speaker 1: his tough negotiating tactics? Or are these just fake concessions
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  Speaker 1: that just let everyone save face?
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  Speaker 5: Does that seem leading to you, that question?
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  Speaker 4: It seems as though Trump really enjoyed beating the ever-loving
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: shit out of the Colombians. And now he's like feeling
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  Speaker 4: tough and he's ready to move up the chain of
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  Speaker 4: regional economies. And he's taking that quick victory out for
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  Speaker 4: a spin.
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  Speaker 5: Are we at like King Hippo if it's Mike Tyson
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  Speaker 5: punch out? Where are we at?
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  Speaker 3: I always struggle. I never got the timing right. I
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  Speaker 3: never got the timing right.
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  Speaker 2: Who's the first person? I always struggled. I was terrible
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  Speaker 2: at that game. That's like the drunk Russian.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 5: That sounds right.
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  Speaker 3: King Hippo.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the fentanyl czar is going to have
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  Speaker 5: some free time because I think USCBP had some data
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  Speaker 5: about seizures at the northern border in 2022, 2023, and 2024,
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  Speaker 5: and they found 70 pounds of fentanyl at the northern
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  Speaker 5: border as compared to over 66,000 pounds at the southern border.
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  Speaker 5: So I don't think the fentanyl issue was one with
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  Speaker 5: Canada as much as it was with Mexico and with China.
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  Speaker 4: Also, he said some number, I think he said like
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  Speaker 4: there were 200,000 fentanyl deaths, but the number is actually.
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  Speaker 4: Lower and had been dropping and so he's already going
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  Speaker 4: to be able to declare that he's brought the number
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  Speaker 4: down the debt you know he can already from his
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  Speaker 4: fake number.
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  Speaker 1: Here's so obviously trump thinks this is a big win
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  Speaker 1: he'll get some coverage that says it's a win from
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  Speaker 1: from regime media and his people his his supporters will
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  Speaker 1: all say it's a big win maybe some low info
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  Speaker 1: voters out there if they're paying attention at all we'll
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  Speaker 1: see headlines and think oh maybe trump won but As
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  Speaker 1: you heard in the clip, Trump's problems, at least his
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  Speaker 1: stated problems with Mexico and Canada, and especially Canada, is
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  Speaker 1: that they have abused us. They've treated us poorly economically.
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  Speaker 1: He's got all these economic concerns about both of them.
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  Speaker 1: He doesn't like the trade. He says that we don't
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  Speaker 1: even need Canada for all the stuff that we buy
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  Speaker 1: from them.
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  Speaker 2: We can make it all here. This is ridiculous.
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  Speaker 1: And yet all he got from either of them were
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  Speaker 1: announcements about border security that they had already made or
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  Speaker 1: already implementing or had already implemented in the past without
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  Speaker 1: threats of a trade war. So I don't know what
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  Speaker 1: he got at all or what he's doing. There's a
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  Speaker 1: potential that as he tries to renegotiate trade deals with
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  Speaker 1: Canada and Mexico, because he's going to open up the
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  Speaker 1: trade deal that he himself negotiated with them last time,
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  Speaker 1: that maybe he'll try to bring up some of these
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  Speaker 1: issues again. He's upset about a trade deficit, I guess.
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  Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't think he got anything.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a moment, he did yet another press
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  Speaker 4: availability from the Oval this morning, sort of his daily
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  Speaker 4: ritual at this point.
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  Speaker 3: And he said, who the hell negotiated these deals?
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  Speaker 2: You did.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, Jared Kushner did.
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  Speaker 3: We're in your deals. These are all part of your deal.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to, it's like, you know, we've just
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  Speaker 4: been in this endless, we were right before recording, so
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  Speaker 4: I'm like, I wonder what Trump is thinking about this,
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  Speaker 4: which is always just sort of a fool's errand to
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  Speaker 4: try to figure out.
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  Speaker 2: So you never know, like is this- The one that
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  Speaker 2: we face much of the show around.
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  Speaker 4: And that's the contradiction- at the heart of this show, but, but,
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  Speaker 4: but it's, it's, are we like, and I think there's
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  Speaker 4: always a mix right between his sort of feral desire
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  Speaker 4: for just new cycles, right? He's just, he's ravenous for
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  Speaker 4: new cycles and he's, he got a great one out
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  Speaker 4: of Columbia. He's going to declare that this was a great,
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  Speaker 4: he feels this is a great one for him, right?
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  Speaker 4: He threatens these tariffs. Uh, the media goes nuts. He
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  Speaker 4: gets these concessions that he can brag about, declare victory.
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  Speaker 4: And we're onto the next fight tomorrow. But then part
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  Speaker 4: of it also is he is, this is now a cycle, right?
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  Speaker 4: He has said, I will tariff you unless you come
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  Speaker 4: to the table and negotiate, right? He's showing that, you know,
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  Speaker 4: they never apply this on sanctions, but they do on tariffs,
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  Speaker 4: which is the way you prove that if you concede something,
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  Speaker 4: you might be rewarded by Trump is he withdrew them, right?
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  Speaker 4: He's showing he's willing to be capricious and put in
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  Speaker 4: place these disastrous tariffs that would harm both countries, but
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  Speaker 4: he's also willing at a moment's notice to withdraw them.
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  Speaker 4: So he's setting, now we have a 30-day cycle. We're
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  Speaker 4: going to do this again in 30 days, I guess.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot easier
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  Speaker 5: to get either real concessions or just lip service out
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  Speaker 5: of the Canadians and the Mexicans than it will be
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  Speaker 5: out of the Chinese. Xi Jinping is not going to
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  Speaker 5: bend or break easily. And so it does look like, ultimately,
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  Speaker 5: I think the results matter a lot less to Trump
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  Speaker 5: than the politics. There were stories in the Wall Street
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  Speaker 5: Journal a week ago about how the Canadians didn't know
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  Speaker 5: what he wanted. They were on the other end of
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  Speaker 5: this fight. They didn't know what they were negotiating over.
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  Speaker 2: Turns out the answer was a fentanyl czar.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, they wanted a new czar. But Trump looks like
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: he's taking action. He's getting stuff done. He's making progress. Um,
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  Speaker 5: he's picking big fights. So it's splashy. It's getting covered.
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  Speaker 2: You're right.
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  Speaker 5: State media is covering it, but so is every other
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  Speaker 5: news outlet that's, you know, trying to follow this administration.
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  Speaker 5: So I think it's really smart politics for him.
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  Speaker 1: I think though that you just have to ask yourself
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  Speaker 1: like Justin Trudeau and Claudia Shane bomb right now, what
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  Speaker 1: are they thinking? Are they thinking, Oh, he really got us? No,
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  Speaker 1: probably not because they didn't have to give up anything.
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  Speaker 3: Well, Trudeau's out of a job.
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  Speaker 2: So he's thinking, right.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not like, sure, everyone can say whatever they
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  Speaker 1: want and he can say whatever he want about how
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  Speaker 1: he pulled one over on people. But like the two,
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  Speaker 1: the two people, the two countries he supposedly pulled one
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  Speaker 1: over on are probably pretty happy right now because there's
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  Speaker 1: no trade war and they didn't have to spend any
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  Speaker 1: more money than they were going to.
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  Speaker 4: I was, um, I clicked on over to click on
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: over on over to CNBC to see what those guys
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: were up to. I don't really check in with them
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  Speaker 4: very much. I thought today was a great day. They're
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  Speaker 4: there every day, you know, which is crazy.
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  Speaker 1: But Yeah, Jim Cramer this morning said it's really bad
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  Speaker 1: and it's going to be a really long, bad day.
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  Speaker 5: Well, you know what you do with a Jim Cramer prediction?
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  Speaker 5: You bet the other side, almost exclusively.
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  Speaker 4: But they had the oil industry types on to talk
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  Speaker 4: about what they thought about. All of a sudden, they
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  Speaker 4: were all being very, very careful not to say anything
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  Speaker 4: to offend Mr.
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  Speaker 3: Trump.
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  Speaker 4: But they talked about how they had negotiated, basically from
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  Speaker 4: their own pressure, they had pushed for Trump to lower
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  Speaker 4: the tariffs on oil.
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  Speaker 2: Oil, right?
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  Speaker 3: So it's, you know, like, why is he doing that?
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  Speaker 4: Well, he's facing, the lobbyists are getting through, which is
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  Speaker 4: just a reminder, by the way, that tariffs are a
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  Speaker 4: great mechanism for Trump, not just to have new cycles,
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  Speaker 4: but to keep American industries in heel. But you say
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  Speaker 4: it's like a, you know, I'm sure they're relieved that
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  Speaker 4: these tariffs aren't going into effect, but like the auto
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: industry that is incredibly interdependent is jeopardized by the threat
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: of these looming tariffs that will hang over these companies
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  Speaker 4: for months to come. based on these free to trade agreements,
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: build a whole bunch of interdependent industries, oil refineries and
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  Speaker 4: all the rest that depend on the United States not
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  Speaker 4: being a malicious actor that suddenly on a dime decides
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  Speaker 4: they're going to throw a giant tariff on our closest neighbor.
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  Speaker 4: And so like, yeah, like we're on the other side
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  Speaker 4: of this right now, but the threat is still there.
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  Speaker 4: And Trump knows that the prospective threat of tariffs is
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  Speaker 4: more useful to him than ever implementing them, sure. But
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  Speaker 4: I don't know how you get out of a cycle
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  Speaker 4: where people start to decide the United States is not
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  Speaker 4: worth doing business with.
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  Speaker 2: Right? No, no.
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  Speaker 1: I think, I think the whole thing is damaging for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Damaging to us probably, uh, as, as people want to
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  Speaker 1: do business with us. Uh, because at some point someone's
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  Speaker 1: going to say, well, I'm going to call this bluff
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: because so far he, all he does for the, his
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  Speaker 1: first term. And now this term is he threatens and
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  Speaker 1: then maybe he slaps a small tariff on something or, or,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: or targeted tariffs here, but it's not, not really a
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  Speaker 1: big deal.
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  Speaker 2: I also think that, um, you know, there was this
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  Speaker 2: whole debate.
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  Speaker 1: Is he using the tariffs as a negotiating threat or
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: does he just really believe that tariffs are good? And
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  Speaker 1: by nominating and then confirming Scott Besant for treasury secretary,
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  Speaker 1: he seemed to be of the view that tariffs are
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  Speaker 1: just a good negotiating tactic. But then of course, over
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  Speaker 1: the weekend, when it seemed like that was going to happen,
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  Speaker 1: all of the MAGA people are all arguing Trump's point
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  Speaker 1: that tariffs are actually great. And this is, you know,
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  Speaker 1: Trump himself posted, we should get rid of the income
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  Speaker 1: tax and just have tariffs. And these tariffs are going
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to fill our coffers and we're going to have so
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: much more money and we're going to show these countries blah, blah, blah.
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  Speaker 2: And it's like, well, what happened to that now? Well, yeah,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the J.D.
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: Vance theory of the case is you throw in the
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: tariffs and you create a big domestic industry. But these
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: are all long game proposals that will take decades to
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: play out. And Trump's just dicking around and doing a
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: political move. Like it's clearly just naked politics. He wants
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: to look like he's taking action. I think it's pretty
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: effective in that sense.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I talked about this with Dees briefly, but like
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: when I woke up, I was like, let's see what's
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: happening with this trade war. And I just checked the Dow.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: I don't know if I checked the Dow in the morning.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: I'm not a Dow checking guy. But then you look
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: and it's like the people that are, you know, so
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: keyed into this are not that afraid.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: It like went down a little bit. Then they saw
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: the Mexican deal and it kind of ticked back up again.
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  Speaker 4: So they all like there is a kind of collective
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: belief that at the moment in the morning, I was like,
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  Speaker 4: it's either a delusion or not that this Trump is
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  Speaker 4: just bluffing.
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  Speaker 3: He doesn't actually want to do this. But Trump is
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  Speaker 3: so emboldened.
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  Speaker 4: And gain so much power from the fact that we
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  Speaker 4: don't totally know what he'll do and we're not really
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  Speaker 4: sure what he means. And we pay for that. We
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: pay for that by the fact that the whole world
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  Speaker 4: today was focused on what was.
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  Speaker 3: Going to happen today.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I also don't really understand. I know how he thinks
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: about it, but I don't really understand what kind of
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: political win he thinks he's getting two weeks into his
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: administration in one news cycle.
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  Speaker 2: It's like, great.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone's going to forget about it in three days unless
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  Speaker 1: we get 30 days from now and then he makes
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: up some other big fucking... problem that canada and mexico
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  Speaker 1: doing he does this all over.
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  Speaker 5: Again yeah i just think it's like the casual news
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: observer the just the headline person like uh you see
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  Speaker 5: trump he beat up on the canadians he got some
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  Speaker 5: concessions like good for him doing stuff.
• 15:09
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  Speaker 1: with mattress purchase. That's helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20% off site-wide. Plus,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: two free dream pillows with mattress purchase. All right, let's
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: talk about Trump's war at home against the government he leads.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: The president has essentially given Elon Musk the keys to
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the kingdom, and the world's richest man is now acting
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: like he's the one people voted for. Here's the headline
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: from the libs over at the Wall Street Journal. Musk
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: moves with lightning speed to exert control over the government.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Elon and his gang of Gen Z dogebros, Got a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: couple of 19, 20, 21-year-olds right out of college, fresh
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: out of college, and now they are just running around
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the federal government.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: J.C., who is in the Oval Office today.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: Rupert Murdoch.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: And Larry Ellison.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: Larry Ellison.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Just hanging out.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: During the press avail, they asked Trump about the Wall
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Street Journal saying that this was Trump's dumbest trade war.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: He didn't love that.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: And he didn't like it. He said he's going to
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: have to bring that up with Rupert. And I guess
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: he really meant it that day.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Rupert was sitting.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: Right there with a question with us.
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: We didn't talk about that.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I did wonder if some of the market stuff and
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Rupert and Wall Street Journal and the old establishment Republicans
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that basically no longer exist started getting him like, hey,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the markets could be fucked here.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Well, this was the whole thing. The whole first term,
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: his China policy was flip-flopping back and forth between hardline
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: hawks and the market whisperers like Mnuchin and others who
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: were saying, don't do it. You don't want Dow to
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: go down. You don't want the S & P to drop.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So anyway, so Elon and all of his fucking nerds,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: they're running throughout the federal government now. Um, they demanded
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and ultimately won access to the treasury department's payment system,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: which is how the government pays its bills and delivers
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: benefits to people that are already mandated by law. So
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: by the time it gets to the payment system, it's,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it's all a bunch of career officials. They're nonpartisan. They're
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: just like, it's just the spigot. They're just turning it on.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: All right, now we're just paying the bills. Um, So
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: now this means that Elon and his crew has access
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to the personal information of every U.S.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Taxpayer, social security numbers, all of it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Elon then claimed without any evidence whatsoever that Treasury, he
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: discovered that Treasury was making illegal payments, including to some terrorists,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and that he was shutting them down.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Seems bad. What's your level of alarm on this one, guys?
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: Presumably we're mailing the checks to those terrorists, so probably good.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: see that address go there.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: Uncle Sam's Venmo. Do we have the ISIS account?
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: It just sort of like, seems like that's like a,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: you're kind of over-promising and under-delivering. If you found terrorists
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: in the payment system, we'll see where the checks are going.
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: I meant hummus, not Hamas. How do we route that
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: money in the wrong place? Who are we sending hummus to? No,
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: it was payment for.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Payment for hummus, I'm sorry.
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: We split that app.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: It was hummus for Hamas, unfortunately, and condoms.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: Which was just made up and you said it again.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: Anyway, this is pretty... First of all, I didn't know
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: that Uncle Sam had a Venmo. This seems alarming and unprecedented.
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: Like Elon Musk, just an unelected tech billionaire wrestling away
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: congressional authority to spend money in the Treasury Department's role
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: in the whole process. And I don't know, like this vindictive,
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: unstable man calling USAID evil and leftist Marxist terrorist supporters.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: This all seems like a pretty bad setup.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I forgot to mention that When they originally demanded access,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: they were told no by the career official in charge
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: of the payment system at Treasury, who was acting Treasury
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Secretary at the time before Besant was confirmed and had
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: been appointed i believe by donald trump in the first
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: administration so this is no crazy marxist lib and he
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: said no that's crazy you can't have access to the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: pain system you're not like this group of kids that
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you brought in from silicon valley they're not even government
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: employees and they don't have uh They don't have security clearances. No,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: we're not giving you access to the sensitive payment system
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: that distributes trillions of dollars every year.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And then he had to step aside. They got him
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: right out of there.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: It's also, you know, it's like a, it's obviously like
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: the most sort of sensational example. But it's also just,
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: if your goal is getting government spending under control, obviously
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: this is dangerous money.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: And unhinged.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: It's also very stupid because if you're trying to get
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: overall government spending under control, I don't care how many
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: 19-year-olds you brought with you from Doge and I don't
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: care how many fucking sofa beds you bring into the OMB,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: you're going line by line through the fucking ledger. Like,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: this is a vast apparatus.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: There are.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: But also.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: It's the wrong ledger. You didn't need access to the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: payment system. There's the federal budget that you could just
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: go line by line through.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: But that's my point.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: These people have so little knowledge or respect. I want
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: to get to the danger that this poses, the moral
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: and ethical risks that this poses. But let's just start
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: by pointing out this is a stupid thing to do.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: This is a stupid way to try to achieve what
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: they want to achieve because it is not actually about results.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: It's about being the stars of a drama, the drama
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: of reforming the government from the inside with our daybeds
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: and our doge and our hardcore and our emails and
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: our exciting, exciting progress. And that to me is driving
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: all of this, not the actual practical realities of what
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: anything they'd, on their own terms, what they want to do.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Well, but that's the key, on their own terms.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: If what they want to do really is cut spending
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in the government and that's it, then the whole thing
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: is really stupid and they're going about it the wrong way.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: But maybe that's not what they really want to do
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and that's why they tried to get access to the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: payment system in the U.S.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Government.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And where the shit really hits the fan is we're
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: going to go into probably a debt ceiling crisis in
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: March when they're trying to raise the debt ceiling and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Treasury already is using extraordinary measures to keep us from
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: hitting the debt ceiling because we should have raised it
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: As always, we're raising it late, as we have for
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the last two decades. And Treasury and that department are
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: responsible for making sure that the U.S. keeps paying our
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: bills and that the full faith and credit of the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: United States government is respected and counted on all over
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: Also, apparently, even in past financial crises or debt ceiling fights,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: the political staff have never done this. They've always let
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: career civil servants handle this kind of sensitive information. And
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: by the way, There was some reporting about the identities
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: of members of the Doge team, these tweens and teens
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: running around the place.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I don't think there are any tweens.
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: You don't know that.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: You don't know that there were tweens. I like calling
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: them tweens. Good job, Tom. Now the U.S.
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: Attorney for the District of Columbia is threatening to arrest
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: people or prosecute people that, I guess, expose their identities
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: or put them at risk in some kind of way.
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: And now you've got Elon's army of dipshits and losers
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: on Twitter saying, now doxing the reporters who reported on
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: the Doge staffers and leading them getting threats.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: So this is just incredibly facistic. The U.S.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Attorney for D.C. who now, who used to be the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: guy who defended all the January 6th rioters.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: He's a good guy. He was now made the U.S.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: attorney in D.C.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: The, the, so much of this too, like it's Trump,
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: how Trump is threatening tariffs, how Elon is operating Doge.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: It is all kind of, childish kind of buffoonish people
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: drafting off the, the like stability and success and institutions
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: that they don't respect at all. Like Elon and this
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: group of people, they don't care or know why we make,
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: why we did things the way we did for a
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: really long time. They don't know or care why we
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: had these independent parts of the government. They don't haven't
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: thought deeply about why it's actually a very good thing
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: that when the treasury says, Hey, we have four months
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: until we're out of money. that both Democrats and Republicans
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: that are negotiating over spending in Congress respect that. And
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: more broadly, they don't respect that like, yeah, cutting the budget,
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: finding waste and fraud, like these are time-consuming and difficult
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: projects that require audits and negotiation and compromise that are
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: slow and annoying and frustrating and imperfect. Like they don't
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: respect or care about that process at all.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: It's not hardcore.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: It's not how they do it in business because they
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: don't understand the value of like democratic legitimacy. They don't
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: appreciate or care about these institutions. And the fact that
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: they belong not to like Elon or Trump, but they
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: belong to us. And that basic lack of respect, like
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: humility is just absent.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: It's absent.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And I know it like kind of almost goes without saying,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: but I think it's worth saying.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because billionaire tech founders don't run their businesses
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: like a democracy. That's the whole point. They're like, they're
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: authoritarians in their own little fiefdoms. And they look at
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the federal government and they're like, oh, it's so wasteful
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and inefficient. And why can't they just run? Why can't
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the person in charge just make all the, make all
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the calls there too.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, wait a minute. Right.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: We tried that. We tried that.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: The system that we have here, democracy, this seems, I
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: don't know about this.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: And a lot of people thought it was stupid to
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: do it the way we decided to try to do it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: They're like, what do you mean you don't have one
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: person making all the rules?
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: Isn't that going to be messy?
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: Yes. Yes.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: But it turns out it has some perks.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: When Besson found out about the whole thing, apparently he
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: told the journal, the Wall Street Journal, or sources told
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal that they have only read-only access
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: to the payment systems and that they cannot cut off
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: any payments themselves, which contradicts Elon's tweet where he said,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: we are stopping these payments immediately.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: So a little unclear what's going on there.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Who knows what's going on? It changes hour to hour.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: We have no idea.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Doge also busted into the USAID building this weekend. That's
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the agency responsible for humanitarian assistance around the world. And
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: they demanded access to classified information and personnel information. When
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: USAID security officials resisted, they were put on leave. Elon
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: then tweeted that USAID is an evil criminal organization, a
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: viper's nest of radical left Marxists who hate America, and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that it's time for the agency to die. This was
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: quite a tweet spree Sunday. USAID's website and Twitter account
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: were then taken down, and staffers were locked out of
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the building in their email accounts. Even staffers all over
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the world in some very dangerous places could not access
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: USAID contacts, their emails, nothing. Then on Monday, Secretary of
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: State Marco Rubio announced that USAID would become part of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the State Department and that he was now acting administrator.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Trump also weighed in on all this insanity.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Let's listen.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Would it take an act of Congress to do away
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: with USAID?
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 26:59
  Speaker 8: I don't think so. Not when it comes to fraud.
• 27:02
  Speaker 8: If there's fraud, these people are lunatics. And if it
• 27:06
  Speaker 8: comes to fraud, you wouldn't have an active Congress. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 8: I'm not sure that you would anyway.
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: I love the concept, but they turn out to be
• 27:12
  Speaker 7: radical left lunatics.
• 27:15
  Speaker 9: And the concept of it is good, but it's all
• 27:17
  Speaker 9: about the people.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that he says he loves the concept there.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: I don't think you do.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Of course, you do need a law passed by Congress
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to completely defund and eliminate an agency. Anyway, it's obviously
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: not how the people who actually work at USAID see it,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the way that Elon sees it. We talked to Brittany Brown,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: who was a former division head at USAID, right after
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: she got back from a protest outside the agency's headquarters
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in D.C.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: On Monday. Let's listen to Brittany.
• 27:46
  Speaker 10: I'm Brittany Brown. I was at USAID for four years,
• 27:49
  Speaker 10: starting the second week of the Biden administration. And I
• 27:52
  Speaker 10: stayed through January 20th at noon of this year. So
• 27:56
  Speaker 10: about 10 days ago, what happened was they put a
• 27:59
  Speaker 10: stop work order on all US foreign assistance and that
• 28:03
  Speaker 10: impacted about $ 60 billion of assistance. I think we've seen
• 28:07
  Speaker 10: now in the last three days that it really is
• 28:10
  Speaker 10: an attempt to shut down the US Agency for International
• 28:13
  Speaker 10: Development or USAID. What is really important about this versus
• 28:17
  Speaker 10: just like a pause on assistance is they didn't just
• 28:20
  Speaker 10: stop new money from going out the door. The thing
• 28:23
  Speaker 10: that's like really scary to me is the guy who
• 28:25
  Speaker 10: is in charge of holding together the humanitarian portion of
• 28:30
  Speaker 10: the ceasefire with Israel in Gaza. He cannot access his
• 28:34
  Speaker 10: email or computer. He's the one who's supposed to be
• 28:37
  Speaker 10: like actually making sure the humanitarian portion of that is
• 28:41
  Speaker 10: working and he can't get into his email. The woman
• 28:44
  Speaker 10: who is running the humanitarian response in Sudan, where we
• 28:48
  Speaker 10: just declared a genocide, she can't access her email or
• 28:51
  Speaker 10: get into her systems to try and move money, to
• 28:54
  Speaker 10: try and move commodities so that we actually can support
• 28:56
  Speaker 10: the people who are now without any international support. These
• 29:01
  Speaker 10: are all people that I know. I spent the first
• 29:05
  Speaker 10: seven months of the first Trump administration at the Trump
• 29:08
  Speaker 10: White House as Trump's senior Africa person. And I saw
• 29:13
  Speaker 10: firsthand that things were rarely what they said they were.
• 29:17
  Speaker 10: And that is why I feel so panicked about what
• 29:21
  Speaker 10: they're saying versus what is happening. I think this is
• 29:24
  Speaker 10: a test to see, is Congress actually going to stand
• 29:28
  Speaker 10: up for their right and for something that the Constitution protects?
• 29:31
  Speaker 10: USAID is a really safe organization to test this with.
• 29:35
  Speaker 10: It is difficult to explain to the average American why
• 29:38
  Speaker 10: spending $ 60 billion today overseas makes sense. It's not like
• 29:42
  Speaker 10: the people in Wisconsin are concerned about what is happening
• 29:47
  Speaker 10: necessarily in Somaliland or in Eswatini. They're thinking about Wisconsin.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So it seems to me, again, that if President Trump
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and Elon Musk wanted to root out wasteful spending at USAID.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: They could have just conducted an audit of the agency's
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: budget and then asked their Republican-controlled Congress to make a
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: bunch of cuts. Clearly, that's not what happened. Tommy, what
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: do you think is going on here and how big
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of a deal is this?
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: I think that this is not about wasteful spending or
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: even about USAID. I think this is a broader effort
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: to usurp Congress's role in the spending process and create
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: a precedent that they can then use again and again. Um, the,
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: just to be clear, the president does not have the
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: legal authority to abolish USAID. Congress established USAID's authority apart
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: from state and merging it with state, uh, would also
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: be unconstitutional. So this is just a power grab. And
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: I think how it goes could determine whether there's another
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: power grab. You're seeing some reporting that the department of
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: education could be next. That's the thing in Elon's crosshairs.
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: And it is part of a broader pattern that we're
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: seeing in these, in these first two weeks of them
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: ignoring or breaking the law. ignoring norms to seize power.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: So they fired those inspectors general at all these agencies.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: They did it illegally by not giving Congress sufficient notice.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: It would have been very easy to give Congress 30
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: days notice and then fire all these people. The Republicans
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: wouldn't stop them. They wanted to have this fight and
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: maybe take it to courts and win in court. They
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: have crippled the National Labor Relations Board by firing a member.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: So now the NLRB doesn't have enough members to meet.
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: So they don't have a quorum. That means in practice,
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: this independent agency that is supposed to investigate and prosecute
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: labor law violations cannot do its job. Similar thing happened
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC. They are
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: browbeating Republican senators into supporting unqualified nominees. This is a massive,
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: unprecedented power grab. And Democrats, I think, don't really know
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: how to fight it or don't have the power to
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: fight it. And Republicans just refuse to.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: And you said maybe they're looking for a fight that
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: they can take to court and win. the thing that
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: has been keeping me up at night for months is
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: that they go to court with some of these fights
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and then they lose. And then Donald Trump says, fuck you,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: John Roberts and the Supreme court, uh, the Supreme court, uh,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: what are you going to do about it? And I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: think that this was, this was corrupt and the justice
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: was wrong and I don't agree with them and I'm
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: going to do what I want.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Bob Bauer, who was a white house counsel, uh, for, um,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: in the Obama administration and, uh, Jack Goldsmith, who was, uh, uh,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: in the white house counsel for, uh, a Republican administration.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: They both wrote this and they said that Russ vote,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: who's going to head up OMB, like his view of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the constitution is, is that you should try to push
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the court and maybe defy court orders because you want,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: or you want the court to give you favorable rulings
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: because the court is afraid that if the court gives you,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: gives Donald Trump like rulings that he doesn't like, then he'll, say,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: fuck you.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: And then that'll be it. Right.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: That the court needs to balance its constitutional prerogative with
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: the fear that Trump will break the rules. And so
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: they negotiate, uh, they negotiate against themselves, but allowing Trump
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: to be unconstrained without him ever having to break a rule,
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: by the way, not dissimilar to what, uh, news agencies
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: are doing when they capitulate to Trump on lawsuits that
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: they're afraid to fight all the way to.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: The Supreme court.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: There are two pieces of it that I think are
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: worth splitting up. One is what they're doing around these
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: firings or the national labor relations board. Um, in which
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: they are basically asserting that any bounds on Trump and
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: his ability to decide who works for him and where
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: in the executive branch are unconstitutional, which is not a
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: theory that Donald Trump invented. It's called the unitary executive theory.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: It precedes him, and it is the way in which
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: Trump's instinctive strongman politics merge with the Republican desire for
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: an imperial presidency, incredibly dangerous in part because that ideological
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: desire for an extremely powerful presidency is is not just
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: in what Republicans in Congress want or what previous Republican
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: presidents want. It's what the Republican courts seem willing to
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: go along with. The other part of this is the
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: power of the purse. And it is interesting that Trump,
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: whether it is because they didn't want to have the
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: fight on this issue or they do think they would
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: be constrained by a court ruling, that they withdrew the
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: federal funding freeze and were willing to kind of give
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: on that, right? It points to the places in which
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: they're still responding to kind of the old rules, at
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: least a little bit. At least that's maybe a glimmer
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: of hope that they are.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: One of the federal judges that tried to freeze the
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: freeze and issued a restraining order said just today, Monday,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: that she doesn't believe that the Trump administration is abiding
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: by the restraining order and ordered them again to.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Stop the freeze.
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: It also sounds like that OPM letter went through Elon
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: shop and did not go by people like Stephen Miller
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: and other top White House officials. So I'm sure there's
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: some intra administration.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: There's well, there's, and they're just, they're benefiting from chaos
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: and incompetence, right? Like Cassidy, uh, uh, uh, Bill Cassidy,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Republican Senator put out a letter today saying PEPFAR still
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: seems to be on hold. Just PEPFAR was a Bush initiative,
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Republican initiative to spend vast amounts of money to combat, uh,
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: HIV and AIDS in Africa. I, I remember when this
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: was a debate at the time, Bush didn't like USAID.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: And so he set it up separately because he wanted
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: it to run through the state department because of the
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: previous Republican problems with USAID. That's still being held, even
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: though they're claiming that these things have a waiver, but
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: on the power of the purse, what Trump is doing
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: here is he's basically saying, uh, I have the latitude
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: to turn off everything and then by noblesse oblige, turn
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: it back on.
• 35:39
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: And I don't like, We have spent a long time
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: watching as the presidency kind of encroached upon Congress's prerogatives,
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: like that's something that was happening under Democrats and Republicans,
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: and it's gotten complicated. And when Obama is president, a
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: bunch of Democrats are defending certain things that now we
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: would not defend, and Republicans are doing the same in
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: Republican administrations. But this is as basic and core to
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: the Constitution as it gets. If the president can decide
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: what to spend or not to spend based on what
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Congress has passed, the Congress is no longer determining how
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: the money is spent, the president is. That is one
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: of the core dangers. That is one of the core
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: reasons we have a constitution. And I agree with you.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: Like my concern too, is that they're going to obliterate,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: that they're going to bash through a court ruling at
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: some point. I think the question is like, how long
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: do we hold that off?
• 36:26
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: Four years ago, what Elon Musk is doing, impossible to imagine.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Eight years ago, impossible to imagine. Four years from now,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: I have no idea.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: And it's also important that like, this isn't just about,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you know, norms and institutions and theories of government and,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and all that, which is our incredible dangerous threats to this,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to the system of democracy. But like, this is just
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: causing needless suffering and death because again, if they, and
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: you know what they're going to do is they're going to,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure come out with, you know, programs and spending
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: at USA ID that seem ridiculous or wasteful.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Again, there's probably plenty of that, right?
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: And no one is saying we shouldn't go through the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: federal budget and go through the federal government. and eliminate
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: wasteful spending and try to find more efficiencies. But pausing
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: it the way they did, cutting it off immediately, like people, children,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of children are going to die because they
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: can't get the medication they need in other countries.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: For what? For nothing.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: We're not going to save money for this. This is,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: you heard from Brittany, this is money that was already
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: out the door. This isn't new money. So no one's saving.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: This is just, you know, there's, I think there was guards,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: prison guards that were guarding ISIS prisoners that just had
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: to walk off the job.
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: They didn't know if they should show up for work,
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: so some of them didn't.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: There's USAID people in dangerous areas around the world that
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: now can't get access to help if they need it.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: All kinds of health programs we're funding around the world
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: that are just going to lead to more suffering and death.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. It's inexcusable.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: I also think there's this lack of clarity now about
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: whether some parts of USAID funding has been unfrozen or
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: Rubio said that, Secretary Rubio said that life-saving assistance like medicine,
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: medical service, food and shelter would be exempted from the
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: aid freeze, but no one really knows what that means.
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: And I think that's kind of the point because this
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: uncertainty has just upended everything USAID is doing. And I think, honestly,
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: I think talking about this as a freeze is probably
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: a mistake. I have zero confidence that the vast majority
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: of this funding or these programs will be turned back on.
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: And I think that by the way, Rubio used to
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: be a big defender of USAID funding. He said it
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: was critical for our national security. Now he's totally flip-flopped.
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: But let's just say that something you're working on is
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: paused for 90 days. If you're a contractor working for
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: USAID in Kenya or Ukraine or Southeast Asia, you don't
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: have 90 days worth of savings to just sit on
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: to see if your job is around in three months.
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: You're going to go do something else. And it's going
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: to completely cripple all this work that It's taken decades
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: to set up this infrastructure, these contractors, these networks of
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: people in these countries. And to your point, I mean,
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: if you're getting antiretrovirals through PEPFAR and you stop, you're
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: going to die.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: That's just how it is.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: And I get the domestic politics on all this. I
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: get that no one likes foreign aid. Most Americans don't
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: like foreign aid. And you tell people it's like 0.7%
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of the whole budget and that still doesn't matter.
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: Well, they think it's 10% is the big problem.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a big problem. But I do think
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: if you.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I think for most Americans, you tell them hey, this
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: kid showed up at a clinic today like they have
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: every day for, you know, once a month to go
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: get some medicine and now it shut down and now
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: this kid could die.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Like for what? For what purpose? So that Elon can
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: post about like vile communists, Marxists?
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: It's, there's a, there's like a, a way in which
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: their kind of base incompetence and then their kind of
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: like viciousness work together here, which is they didn't know
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: or care very much about what USAID did. They didn't
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: care very much or know very much about what PEPFAR
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: did before. They have an ideological set of assumptions about
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: nonprofit work, about foreign aid, that it's all bullshit, right?
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: They've like internalized a bunch of that.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Elon Musk knew that USAID played such
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: a big role in fighting apartheid in South Africa.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, but, but, but the only, the only,
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: just the point that I'm only making is that like
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: the way in which these things work together is they're
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: so fucking careless. They're so, and like, they're just careless people.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: It's so, it's a, it's a glib carelessness that is
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: just like, it's beneath contempt and the stakes are so high.
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: We're just, yes, there are many ideological kind of warriors,
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: but a lot of the people at the top of
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: this are just capricious glib fools that don't, understand that
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: they just don't care that they're playing with matches.
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: But in some instances, it's worse than that. They are
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: folding this into their preconceived ideological anger, and they've decided
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: that USAID funded programs that led to gain-of-function research that
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: led to COVID. You know, this is all kind of
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: getting folded into, like, prosecute Fauci madness. And it's like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: you know, Elon Musk retweeting at wall street apes, which
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: is his source on someone found some 40 million in
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: taxpayer funding that went to some scientists in Wuhan. And
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: it's just like, I don't know, apparently this is all
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: just part of a conspiracy theory about how, uh, the
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: lab leak, uh, was on purpose from, you know, thanks
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: to Fauci's funding from USA ID, I guess that's the
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: new theory of the case here.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: And again, you have the richest man in the world
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: with one of the biggest platforms, now one of the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: most powerful people in government, just accusing entire organizations of
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: being criminal enterprises. And you can see the slippery slope, right?
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Like you can see where now, you know, Pam Bondi
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and Kash Patel get in there and they start processing, well,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: this is criminal activity.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: We're going to investigate it. Like this is how it goes.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Unless anyone thinks this is just about foreign aid, the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Trump administration also pushed out the head of the Consumer
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Financial Protection Bureau. Rohit Chopra and ordered the agency to
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: stop all investigations and enforcement actions against banks and payday
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: lenders and credit card companies. They have saved just consumers
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: billions and billions and billions of dollars in refunds. And
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: they've got consumers. It's a great agency.
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: There is no simpler like the delta between what Republicans
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: claim that CFPB is and what CFPB is. That is
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: one of the biggest and starkest gaps in in politics
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: is an agency that has such a singular, simple purpose,
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: which is to go after big corporations that are defrauding
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: and fucking over consumers and getting them money back. It
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: is being punished because it, well, it's being punished in
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: part because it was originally Elizabeth Warren's idea. That's its
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: original sin, but it is so fucking effective. It is
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: such good government. They, they, they put, they put Mick
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Mulvaney in there the first term to try to destroy it. Uh,
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: Biden was able to put in Rohit who did an
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: amazing job and now they're going to try to destroy
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: it again.
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And as Tommy mentioned, Wall Street Journal reports, and now
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post, that Trump and Elon are preparing an
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: executive order to try to shut down the entire Department
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of Education. This was the campaign promise from Trump. They
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: acknowledge in the order that they can't shut the entire
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: thing down by executive order. They want to go to
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Congress to do it, but they want to move some
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of the functions out of the Department of Education. Of course,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you know, most schools are funded by local and state taxes. But,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: you know, for poor schools, get a lot of Title
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I funding from the Department of Education. All of student
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: financial aid, the federal financial aid program is run out
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of the Department of Education. Students with disabilities are funded
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: through the Department of Education. It goes on and on
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: and on. The New York Times reports that more than 8,000
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: federal government webpages have been taken down, including thousands of
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: research papers that were available on the CDC website, informational
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: IRS videos about how to avoid tax penalties, and the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: state-level hate crimes data on the Justice Department website. Speaking
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: of which, there is an ongoing purge at the DOJ
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and FBI. Trump is firing any prosecutors or FBI agents
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: that had anything to do with any of the criminal
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: investigations that led to his indictments.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Well, in fairness, that's because they were also incredibly ineffective.
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: Got to get some good prosecutors in that can get
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: a fucking conviction and get them in jail.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: At the FBI, employees were given until 3 p.m. Eastern
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: time on Monday to fill out a questionnaire about whether
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: they were involved in any way In investigations into January 6th.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: That's such a funny trap to set for prosecutors.
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: Should I fire you?
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Y or N?
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: The FBI has estimated that the number of people who
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: were agents and staff could be about 6,000. This comes
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: after DOJ fired about 12 prosecutors in D.C. who had
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: been brought on to investigate January 6th cases.
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: And most of those 6,000 are so tangential. So people
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: who got random leads who pass along information or were
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: part of a wiretap or God knows what.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: And by the way, that's the real concern is that
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: so many of these people are like career officials who've
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: been at DOJ or the FBI for a decade. Some
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: of them are very senior people with like counterintelligence experience
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and they're going after national security threats and they've been
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: working on all these cases and now they're just going
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: to be gone.
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: Or they were just assigned a case and you don't
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: have a choice.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: There are seasoned prosecutors who have no reason to be fired.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: And it's not as though America is short on white-collar
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: crimes to prosecute. So it's fucking terrible.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, you talked about the unitary executive theory. J.D.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Vance tweeted today, look, unelected bureaucrats should not be resisting
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: the president of the United States. They work for him.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: He gets to staff his government with who he wants.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: And then he is answerable to the people. So the
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: people elected Trump and Trump gets to have the entire
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: government he wants.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: So everyone else should just shut the fuck up basically. Um,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: why is that wrong?
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: You know, I was thinking about this earlier, which is this,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: that we are watching these guys make these kinds of
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: simple arguments against these like hard one institutional, uh, protections, right?
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: Some of which are imposed by Congress. Some are just
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: norms that evolved over decades, if not centuries. And a
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: lot of those norms, institutions, processes that are designed to
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: constrain the executive were put in place in the kind
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: of like long before the internet. And they were put
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: in place when you had a kind of like elite
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: bipartisan set of actors that didn't feel like they had
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: that kind of established this order long ago. And it's
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: sort of been in place in a way that was
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: like never really defended, right? We took no one really
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: making the argument for why the DOJ is separate from
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: the presidency and why that's a good idea and why
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: that's important. There's no real, there hasn't been a real
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: kind of, I don't know, like legal, broad-based kind of
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: public legal argument against originalism and like kind of the
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: values of what we've learned about constitutional governance over the
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: last 200 years. But what we do have is just
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: example after example after example of why we put these
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: restrictions in place. And they were meant to stop presidents
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: from abusing power. The reason we have bureaucrats who are
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: not accountable to the president and can't be fired by
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: the president is because of the spoil system. And because
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: when the government was filled with cronies, it didn't fucking
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: work and it was a corrupt bargain.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: Why is the.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: DOJ separate from the White House? Because the presidency is
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: too powerful. And when the DOJ isn't separate from the
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: White House, it means the president is not accountable to law.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: There's an answer to every one of these questions. But
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: It's like they're relying on the fact that we're fighting
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: these guys on every fucking front, and they can just
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: spout off and make these sort of claims to the
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: power of the people.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Well, we're left kind of falling behind. Well, actually, there's
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a good reason. RFK was actually an attorney general.
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: I'm so sick of this, this is what people voted
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: for line. No, no one voted to give Elon Musk
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: a line item veto for the entire federal government. Voting
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: for Donald Trump doesn't mean we get rid of basic
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: civil service protections for government employees. Those are in place.
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: to ensure merit-based employment, to ensure that political influence isn't
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: dictating every single person who is hired or fired, that
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: there isn't discrimination or arbitrary actions. They have collective bargaining rights.
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: There's whistleblower protections. There's all sorts of workers' rights that
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: don't go away because Donald Trump gets elected president.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I do think that, you know, people don't necessarily love bureaucrats.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Even the name has a connotation that's not too positive.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And I don't think Even during the campaign, we didn't
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: want to talk a lot about Schedule F and how
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: we wanted to replace all of the government workers with
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: loyalists because we knew that.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't really pop in the polls.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that as he's doing all this, those
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: of us who are paying attention are rightly freaked out.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: I think what's going to have to happen is adverse
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: consequences from having a government completely gutted and really good
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: professional people who've been there forever and not there. And
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: when something happens... It's going to have to be like, well,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, it's your government. You and J.D. Vance said
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: it's your people. You get to pick who you want.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: You're running the whole thing. You don't have the deep
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: state to blame anymore. So it's your fucking fault.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they have to.
• 49:15
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know what else.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: To, yeah, there's just, um, there's just like, I don't
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: know what the equity is and just a defense of
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: the annoying, difficult, hard work of like democratic governance. And like,
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: you know, I think about like just the prospect of
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: the trade war and it's like, it's not good TV, right?
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Like the difficult work.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: Of diplomacy behind the scenes to gain contentions without threatening
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: your partners and without creating a scandal.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: It's just not good TV.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: You're not sticking around for the readout of the bilat?
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: Right. What Trump figured out is that democracy isn't good TV.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: It's incumbent on us to figure out how to make
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: it more like good TV.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: But it's hard.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: It's hard. Maybe next Democrat should try to take over Greenland,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. According
• 50:13
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• 51:00
  Speaker 1: We love ZipRecruiter. We've used it at Crooked for years now.
• 51:02
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  Speaker 1: it for free. That's the same price as a genuine
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  Speaker 1: smile from a stranger, a picture-perfect sunset, or a cute
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  Speaker 1: dog running up to you and licking your hand.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's nice.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Crooked. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to hire. Speaking of Trump getting to do whatever he wants,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: one more Mad King move I want to talk about
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: here that just drove me crazy. So Trump apparently ordered
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers... To begin releasing water from
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: two reservoirs in California's Central Valley because he mistakenly believes
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the water from the Central Valley will flow three hours
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: south to Los Angeles.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I think people, I think people, because south is down.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: I think it's because south is fucking down.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I guess, I guess what's supposed to, you're supposed to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: release the water from the reservoirs up there and then
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: it'll flow right into the hydrants in the Palisades.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Right. That's how it's going to happen.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Is the word valley doing nothing for him?
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: So he mistakenly believes it will flow down here to
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, helping us put out fires that are now
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: 100% contained in advance of an atmospheric river event that's
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: predicted to dump 10 feet of snow and up to
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: 20 inches of rain in the area this week of
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the Central Valley, where he just dumped out all that water.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: According to the Washington Post, Trump released enough water to
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: supply as many as 7,000 households for a year. And
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: now that water won't be available to Central Valley farmers
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: who really need it to irrigate the fields. later this year.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Trump talked about this, quote, long fought victory at the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: White House on Monday.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: Let's listen.
• 52:52
  Speaker 9: All we're doing is giving Los Angeles and the entire
• 52:55
  Speaker 9: state of California virtually unlimited water, which they could have
• 52:59
  Speaker 9: done five years ago, which I told them they should do.
• 53:03
  Speaker 9: But the environmentalists stopped them and we opened it and
• 53:06
  Speaker 9: we did it regardless of the state. And now the
• 53:11
  Speaker 9: state seems to be very happy. I spoke with Gavin Newsom, Newsom,
• 53:15
  Speaker 9: and he's very happy. I almost called him by the
• 53:19
  Speaker 9: other name.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: My little nickname for him. He stopped it.
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: He's being very presidential this morning.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to go out on a limb here
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: and say that I don't think Gavin Newsom was probably
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: too happy about this.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: It's so stupid. What the fuck, guys?
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: He makes up a problem, and he solves a problem.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: We're going to be living with that over and over again,
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: but he doesn't.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Care about the.
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: Apparently, was it Padilla who was saying that he wanted
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: to open it up even further... in a way that
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: was extremely dangerous.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he wanted them to release a ton.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: They only gave the local officials hours notice. Usually when
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you do releases like that, you prepare with local officials
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: and farmers and everyone else for many days to make
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: sure there's no flooding. So they almost had to just
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: open it up and cause a whole bunch of flooding.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: And then finally, last minute, they were like, can we
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: just do a little less, sir? Because this is just
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: for your.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Fucking addled mind about water has nothing to do with anything.
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: It's very Stalin being like, we'll double the wheat if
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: we plant all the wheat much closer together.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: It's just so fucking dumb.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: So fucking dumb.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: So the question again becomes, what are the Democrats up to?
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: The good news is we're getting some signs of life
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: from the opposition party. Democrats elected a new DNC chair
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. We, of course, were supporting Ben Wickler,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: but a big congrats to Ken Martin. who we also
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: interviewed and are very much rooting for.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: He's my enemy.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: He's John's enemy.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: On Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out a
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: 10-part plan to fight back against Trump that includes using
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the March deadline to fund the government and lift the
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: debt ceiling as leverage.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned for that.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Our pal Brian Schatz, Senator from Hawaii, says that he's
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: placing a hold on all of Trump's State Department nominees
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: until USAID is open and functioning again.
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: And.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Just a ton of congressional Democrats actually held a press
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: conference outside USAID after trying to enter the building themselves.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, they were not allowed in.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: Our sweet little insurrectionists. Oh, look at you guys doing
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: your little insurrection. So sweet. Sweet little Democrats. Knock, knock, knock.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: What do you guys think?
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Democrats doing enough? Are they making the right moves? What
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: else could they be doing? What's our latest feeling on this?
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: Uh, I didn't love the USAID press conference setting. The
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: reason being, as we just discussed, the Republicans are about
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: to find a bunch of examples of USAID programs that
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: seem silly even to us, uh, or seem like a
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: bad use of money. And if the shorthand is Democrats
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: defend USAID while the White House bully pulpit and Elon's
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: Twitter amplifies all these bad things about USAID, I don't
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: think that's a winner. I think I want them to
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: focus in on the Elon piece of this right now,
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: because I do think like, It's genuinely scary. He's a
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: nefarious new element to Trump 2.0 that is newsworthy, and
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: he's a shiny object right now, and reporters want to
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: cover it, and everyone knows who he is and want
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: to know what's going on. And there's been some recent
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: polling that shows that Elon's favorable ratings are underwater. Something
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: comes on cases by like 16 points. And I think
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: Democrats should drive a wedge in between Elon and Trump
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: and drive both their unfavorables up by talking about why
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: an unelected billionaire... It's just kind of combing through the
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: government books and doing whatever the hell he wants. Like
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: that is a weird, crazy, interesting story that no one
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: is going to like. And I think it'll get covered.
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: And like, I'm good for Brian shots for blocking all
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: these state department employee nominations. I think that's great. Hakeem
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: Jeffrey's 10 point plan has good stuff in there. I
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: read through it all, but I learned about it when
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: I read the outline for this episode. So I don't
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: know that it's broken through. Um, I know a lot
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: of it is like planning for down the road. But, uh,
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: I don't know. I would focus on the Elon piece
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: right now and just go, go hard.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: So Bernie Sanders put out a video over the weekend
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: that I really liked. It was everything you want out of, uh,
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders. And I think like speaks to his sort
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: of moral leadership. He just, it's just a camera. It's like,
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: this is a very dangerous time. There are three things
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: we got to do. One, we got to accurately describe
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: what's happening. Two, we need to find the short term.
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: And three, we need to find the long term. And
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: in the short term, I think he was talking about
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: what Tommy was talking about, uh, I think there's, and
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: the importance of fighting Trump wherever we can. Ezra Klein
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: made this point about sort of also just not taking
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: Trump at his, at his word, right? Like when he
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: claims certain authorities, we shouldn't concede to it.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: Trump today.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: He's trying to be scary and powerful.
• 57:42
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: That's what he wants. He wants everyone to see him as.
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: A strong man.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: Trump today announced a sovereign wealth fund. He can't do that.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: He does not have the authority to create a sovereign
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: wealth fund and we shouldn't lend him, we shouldn't do
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: what we're afraid, what, what, legacy media companies are doing
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: or what judges might be doing, which is because we
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: assume Trump will break the rules to not uphold the rules, right?
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: We should just uphold the rules.
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: And then three, what Bernie talked about was building this
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: long-term political power and making an argument for a positive vision.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: And look, I don't think it's revelatory, but just the
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: kind of clean, simple, to the point, direct way he
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: talked about it, how serious this moment is, how dangerous
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: it is, without high dudgeons. without kind of theatrics, but
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: just to camera explaining it, I thought was really powerful. I,
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: along with you guys, have yelled about Democrats needing to
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: do more on this very show.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: Still think we haven't quite found our footing just yet.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: But I do think just seeing a lot of people
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: on Twitter and Blue Sky, gotta check the skeets too
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: these days.
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: I do not.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Over the weekend, there was a lot of anger at
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the elected Democrats. And I just, I think we should
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: level set on what, how much power Democrats have right now,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: which is almost none. And that is just a consequence
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: of the election. And we probably have less power now
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: as a party than we have anytime I can remember. Uh,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: because Trump's got the courts, he's got the executive branch,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: he's got billionaires all around them.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: They all own media platforms.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Like they have, they got Congress, they have a lot
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: of power and Democrats can yell and scream. And, you know, Tommy,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I had the same thought about the USA ID press conference.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: because of the politics. But then I started thinking to myself,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: you know what? We told them to go fight. They're
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: out there fighting. An election's not in a couple months.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Let them do it for today. They'll get used to it,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and then maybe they'll go to the Department of Education next.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe they'll go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau next,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and they'll find more politically popular things to yell about.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: But I'm glad to see them do it. And, you know,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Schatz is going to hold up these nominees today. But
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: everyone should realize with that too, like that's going to
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: eat up a lot of floor time and it's going
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: to slow things down, which is great. But John Thune
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: is going to be able to get those nominees through.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Like Democrats don't have the power. We have the power
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: to slow things down in Congress. We don't have the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: power to stop a lot of things. We just don't.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: And I think everyone should realize that. And, you know,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: as we criticize Democrats rightly for a lame tweet here
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: or a lame speech there or whatever else, We should
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: just know that, you know, everyone should be suing the
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Trump administration on everything. The Democratic AG should be out there.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: We should take him to court on everything. That's a
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: lever that we can pull. We can do everything. I
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: do think like we're going to have some leverage on
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: funding and the debt ceiling because Mike Johnson is going
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: to need Democratic votes on those things. They're not going
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: to be able to get Chip Roy and all the
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Republicans to get together and vote to raise the debt
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: ceiling and vote to this. So like that is a
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: choke point for us. But there's not a lot more.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: There's just not a lot more. We have to win
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: elections again, guys.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the part that I'm questioning, that I find myself
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: feeling unsure about, is don't get distracted by USAID. We've
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: got to talk about the impact of terrorists. And don't
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: get distracted by the impact of terrorists. We've got to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: talk about the oligarchs. And don't talk about the oligarchs.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: We've got to talk about the price of eggs.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: And then I turn on.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: The television, and there's Trump every day for a couple
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: hours a day, just hitting whatever he's going to hit.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: Just talking about it all.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Talking about it all.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: And, you know, Trump declared that he was going to
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: create a sovereign wealth fund, I mentioned, right?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: It is not, it's barely news. It's barely news. It's
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: a big fucking deal. It's a big deal that the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: Trump is- It's.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: Not a bad idea.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it's a bad idea to have Trump
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: basically create a kind of an administrative-led investment vehicle.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: I don't want him to have a slush fund, but
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: for the United States having a sovereign wealth fund, it's
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: a conversation worth having.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: How else are we going to buy our Chinese spyware out?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't, listen, I would rather put the money
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: back in the hands of the American people, but that's
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: just me. But the, but, but like all, all its
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: way of saying like, maybe, maybe even that is kind
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: of overthinking at this point and like fight everything everywhere.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: You want to fight USA day, fight USA day.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Take some reps.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Just get out there and get out there and take
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: some reps. And you know, I want them to show passion.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: It was fake.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Cause like a lot of people were making fun of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer. Cause he had this series of tweets over
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: the weekend where he was like, You're going to watch
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: the Super Bowl next weekend, and beer's going to be
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: more expensive. You're going to be trying to buy avocados,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: and those are going to be more expensive. And those
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: were his tweets, and everyone's like, there's a fucking emergency.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Elon's breaking into USAID.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: What are you doing? And I'm like, yeah, Chuck Schumer's
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: tweets are dumb.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: There's an expectations management problem.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: But if Chuck Schumer's tweets were amazing... What would that
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: have done?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: Well, there's a funny moment where Schumer gave friends, he's like,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: I've never seen people more aroused than they are right now.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: And everyone's like, ah, no, he's saying they're aroused. It's like,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: who cares? That's how Chuck Schumer talks. What's the difference?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: We played that on Pod Save America. It was really funny.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't... I think we can critique it.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: We can make fun of that.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: No, for sure. But it's just sort of like.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Arousal.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: They're also not going to become different people. Chuck Schumer
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: is going to be a senior citizen Jewish New Yorker
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: out there talking about whatever he's going to talk about
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: the way he's been talking about it for 50 fucking years.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: Look, we need them to... Look, they need to step up. Like...
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: good to do press conference today. They've been slow. There's
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: all these reports of like the Democrats, uh, the congressional
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: Democrats doing a conference call to figure out their response
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: as the news changes, right? It's the OPM memo gets rescinded, whatever.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: It's like, be a little more nimble.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: Take some shots. Don't worry about the, the words being perfect.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: Make sure you try to get it to the people
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: who need to hear it. Maybe don't use the word aroused. Um,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: maybe don't defend the most unpopular spending we do and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: defense or the popular spending, but a look.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: Points for fighting, I guess.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree with all of that.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: And I just want everyone to know, even if the
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party was perfect and fucking nailed it every single day,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: there is a limit to what we can stop right
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: now because we fucking lost the election. And I say
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: this because people are like, oh, now Democrats are just
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: going to tell us to vote for them in 2026?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we are.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Because that's the only way to stop legislation from happening.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: I took Twitter off my phone again. I think it
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: was good. I think it's good not to have that
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: on my phone.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: You don't want to get into the skeets.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not, I can't, I can't do it. I can't,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: I can't take it anymore.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: I do think everyone really needs to keep an eye
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 5: on these media lawsuit settlements with Trump.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 5: It's not just ABC and their defamation suit. It's not
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: just Facebook and their $ 25 million. You call it whatever
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: you want to Trump and to his library. There's reports
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: that CBS might settle. uh, suit that didn't even.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: Involve Donald Trump.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: The most ridiculous 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris that
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: they edited. Like every news organization edits everything always, uh,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: and Paramount might settle that. And by the way, they
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: happen to have a Paramount Skydance merger that's sitting before
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: the Trump administration, but suggesting that those things are connected
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: would be untoward. So I wouldn't do that.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: And it's like Larry Ellison just in the, in the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: literally in the old office, just for you.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: So if we see the biggest media organizations in the country, uh,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: and their corporate overlords preemptively caving to the Trump administration
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: and settling lawsuits. They could have won. That is a
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: very scary signal about press coverage and fighting for the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: First Amendment right to cover the White House in the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: second administration. And we need to keep an eye on that.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: Well, it's like you talk about like, you know, we
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: need to be nimble. We need to be out there.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: Who's going to hear?
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: Well, there's that.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: But then it's also like journalists themselves are struggling to
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: cover all of this. And so now you have the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: president of the United States who is lying and making
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: shit up and completely misconstruing his various policy proposals on
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: a daily basis. And if anybody covering him slips up
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: for even one fucking second, he's going to be the
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: president suing these people into oblivion while they're where they're
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: where their parent companies have business for the government.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: It's terrifying.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: The media point is really important also because sometimes I
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: feel like all of us are having, you know, there's
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: like a 500,000 of us that are all having a
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: conversation about strategy with each other. And then there's like
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: a country of 300 million people, most of whom are
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: who are paying attention and can barely get some of
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: this information from news sources that are now under intense pressure.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: And so like one of the things we all have
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: to think about is not just making sure that our
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: other tweeters and other Democrats are saying the exact right message,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: but like, you know, getting it out there to more people.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: Got to put some kind of message at the bottom
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: of the Costco samples. Gotta get creative, people.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: Which we can, and we can shop at Costco.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we can still go to Costco. Gotta get messages
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: to those rotisserie chickens. Get the messages to the chickens.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: Just like.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: We've been dealing with this guy for a decade, and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 5: Trump's like, we gave $ 50 million to Hamas for condoms,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 5: and then they used the condoms as bums. It's completely
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: made up, because some dork over at Doge, she was
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: 19 years old, and has the Twitter handle BigBalls69420. misread
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: a spreadsheet and didn't realize this funding was going to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: like Mozambique or something. And then the response though is
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: like factcheck.org has Trump administration makes unsupported claim about 50
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: million for condoms to Gaza. It's like, Oh my God.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: And then we're done.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: And then we're like, what's breaking through? None of this
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: is breaking through. And then I listened to.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Sarah Longwell's condoms.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: Then I listened to Sarah Longwell's focus group this weekend.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: And she's got first time Trump voters, Biden and Trump
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: voters asking them how they're thinking about Trump. And they're like,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Like Tommy said earlier, like they're all, oh, he's taking
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: an action on stuff, he's taking an action.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Like he promised, Hamas is raw dogging again. Promise made,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: promise kept.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: No, one of the people in the book, he's like,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard much, but I heard about these condoms
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: that they're spending. He's like, I'm glad they're cutting all that.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: The condoms for Hamas, that's crazy. And I'm like, oh,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: that fucking broke through.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Of course it did. That broke through. Of course it did. Anyway,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: we got a lot of work.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: And Twitter's successful. The Elon fluffers are just out in force.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: They're everywhere. They're attacking everything. Yeah, no.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Sequoia management partner. I know you know a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: lot about the federal government, fucking asshole.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: Deleted the app? Downloaded the New York Times cooking app instead.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: That's good.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: That's good.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: We may live in a fascist state, but I'm making
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: Mary Me Chicken.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: And you know what? You're making it with ingredients? No tariffs.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: That's right. No tariffs.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Lovett talks to the deputy director
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: of the OMB in the Obama administration and director of
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the National Economic Council under Joe Biden, Brian Deese.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: And just so you all know, we talked in between
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: the Mexican tariffs being paused and the Canadian tariffs being paused,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: but we talked about it both as a negotiating tactic
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: and what it might look like if these tariffs are
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: ultimately implemented, including the Chinese tariffs, which as of this
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: recording are still, we believe, going into effect.
• 1:08:50
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  Speaker 4: Joining us today for a quick and dirty breakdown of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: Trump's trade war, he's the former deputy director of the
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: Office of Management and Budget and director of the National
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: Economic Council under President Biden.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: Brian Deese, welcome back to the pod.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: As of this recording Monday afternoon, 25% tariffs are set
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: to go into effect against a broad range of Canadian imports,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: with the exception of a 10% tariff on Canadian oil,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: though there are last-minute negotiations that could push this off
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: another month. There will also be a 10% tariff on
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: Chinese imports. Trump and Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum negotiated a
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: deal to delay tariffs by at least a month against Mexico,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: with Mexico promising to send more troops to the southern
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: border and Scheinbaum securing some sort of a promise over
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: guns flowing south from the United States into Mexico.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: Let's start with this.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: I woke up this morning and I just opened my
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: phone and I just checked the Dow. I don't live
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: my life yoked to what the Dow does, but I
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: was like, are we in an economic crisis or not?
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: And what I saw was that the markets dipped a
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: little bit. And then upon the news that Trump had
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: this deal with Scheinbaum, they went back up. Does that
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: tell you that there is still a kind of belief
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: that Trump is just negotiating, that even as we're recording this,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: he's threatening these massive and terrible tariffs? but is ultimately
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: just in some way negotiating?
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 11: Look, I think a lot of the market reaction can
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 11: be explained by exactly that, which is initially the market
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 11: thought he wasn't serious and he wouldn't do this. And
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 11: then the market thought, well, he will threaten these tariffs,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 11: but he won't actually put them into effect. And now
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 11: I think there is still a belief that he may
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 11: put them into effect, but they'll only be in.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: Effect for a short period of time because this is negotiating.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 11: All of that is to say, though, the right way
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 11: to think about the impact is not what happens to
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 11: the Dow today. It's what happens to the prices that
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 11: people pay on typical things for no apparent reason. The
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 11: Wall Street Journal called this the dumbest trade war in history.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 11: And it's one of the few times I think that
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 11: the Wall Street Journal actually understated it. This is all self-imposed.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 11: And so even if the impact is only for a
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 11: short period of time or only muted, we're still the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 11: end result is people are paying more for no apparent reason.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: So Let's talk about what the impact could be. Again,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: these tariffs against Canada may go in effect tomorrow.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: They may not.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: But if they did, some estimates found that they could
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: cost a typical household about $ 2, 600.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: But that's an average.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: It'll affect certain goods more than other goods. And because
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: of the unique interdependence of Canada and the United States,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: it would affect some parts of the country more than others.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: I want to.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: Just divide it in half. First, what would be the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: biggest price impacts? And then I want to talk about
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: the broader economic impact.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 11: So start of the price impacts on the goods that
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 11: we rely most on Canada and Mexico for. So fruits
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 11: and vegetables, Super Bowl time, avocados. Most of our fruits
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 11: and vegetables we import from Mexico. The price of those
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 11: things is going to go up by about 25 percent.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 11: Gas at the pump. There are certain regions of the country,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 11: particularly the Midwest, that rely on imported petroleum products from Canada.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 11: Most estimates are that you'd see a 50 cent increase
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 11: in gas in the Midwest, probably more like 25 cents
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 11: across the country, but it could be higher in particular places.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 11: And then the kind of typical goods that you see
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 11: walking down a Target aisle or a Walmart aisle. So iPhones, toasters,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 11: consumer electronics are all going to go up by in
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 11: the ballpark of 25% because when a tariff is applied,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 11: it's not just that the importer pays the tariff, it's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 11: that the competitors then raise their prices.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 5: To match those.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 11: And so the consumer ends up paying most of that.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 11: So in terms of practical and practically, most of what
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 11: you buy, if you're walking down the grocery store or
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 11: you're walking through a Target or Walmart, the prices are
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 11: going to go up. The first order impact is typical
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 11: consumers pay more on things like groceries and gas and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 11: consumer electronics. The second order impact is if that actually
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 11: gets washed away by a stronger dollar, then it hurts
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 11: American manufacturers, which is why I saw a cartoon trying
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 11: to say, what is Trump actually doing, where Trump was
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 11: pissing into a fan and it was spitting all back
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 11: into his face. And usually that's sort of evocative, but
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 11: actually I think that's not an unreasonable way of thinking
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 11: about what's going on here. It's hard to avoid this
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 11: coming back in and being self-defeating in some way or
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 11: shape or form.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: So then what could be the job impact?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: So that's the kind of the consumer price impacts, but
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of interdependence between, so some of the
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: goods that could be tariffs are products that are brought
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: down into the U S to be part of domestic
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: manufacturing here. Who are people who, what jobs are at
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: risk because of this, of these tariffs?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 11: Look, the place I'm most worried about is the auto
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 11: industry because the auto industry is incredibly dependent on the
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 11: interrelationship with Canada and Mexico. Um, a lot of the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 11: parts that go into making a car are produced in
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 11: Canada and they go back and forth over the border.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 11: Anyone who lives in Michigan or has been up in Detroit,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 11: the Windsor Bridge, you know, our auto industry is essentially
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 11: one industry that operates across a border. So to build a,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 11: you know, to build a typical, if GM is building
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 11: a typical car, parts might go back and forth across
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 11: that border five, six, seven different times. And so the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 11: industry right now is really freaking out and saying, we've
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 11: never had to grapple with the question of, is a
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 11: part going to be tariffed, a steering wheel going to
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 11: be tariffed four or five different times as it goes
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 11: across the border?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: How is this going to work?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 11: And by the way, if Canada retaliates and starts to
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 11: cut off access to parts, that's going to have a
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 11: broader cascading impact on our company's ability to actually produce
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 11: vehicles in the first place.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: In the previous Trump term, There was a lot of
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: big talk on imposing these kinds of broad tariffs, but
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: he ultimately did a set of targeted or more targeted tariffs.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: The Biden administration actually left some of those tariffs in
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: place and then imposed a bunch on their own. There
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: was a tariff on electric cars, batteries, certain metals, certain minerals,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: even certain kinds of cranes. Can you talk about the
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: difference in the logic there? between the Biden administration's approach
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: to tariffs and the Trump administration's approach to tariffs?
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 11: Yeah, to shorthand it, it's a difference between strategic and stupid.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 11: So there is a real rationale, an economic and national
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 11: security rationale to use tariffs. If other countries are explicitly,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 11: either illegally or unfairly contorting their own industry in an
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 11: effort to try to undermine American industry in areas where
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 11: we have a strategic state, Things where we need components
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 11: that go into building planes and tanks that support our military.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 11: Things like critical minerals that are actually strategic and China
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 11: could have a stranglehold on different supply chains. In those areas,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 11: you can actually see a country like China is actually
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 11: taking illegal action to try to subsidize its industry in
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 11: a way that could then undercut U.S.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: Industry.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 11: It makes a lot of sense to actually step in
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 11: and say, no, we're going to make sure that U.S.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 11: industry has a way to actually build and scale its
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 11: own capabilities. But to put the strategic versus stupid in context,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 11: the total amount of goods that the Biden administration put
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 11: tariffs on, these strategic tariffs, was about $ 18 billion. You
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 11: compare that to what's on the table right now with Trump, $ 1. 4 trillion. So,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 11: you know, people say it's the difference between a scalpel
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 11: and a sledgehammer. This is like a scalpel versus like
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 11: a whole army versus sledgehammers, just hitting anything that you
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 11: could possibly hit. And so even to give the first
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 11: Trump administration some credit under, you know, Bob Lighthizer and others,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 11: the ultimate approach they took to China was more calibrated.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: It wasn't across the board.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 11: It didn't hit everything. It exempted consumer goods. This approach
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 11: is literally saying we'll just put a tariff on anything,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 11: even if the end result is you're pissing into a fan.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 11: It's all coming back. There's just there's not a strategic
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 11: rationale behind the approach.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: So Trump bullies Colombia. He gets a quick win. The
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: damage to our reputation as a safe and reliable trading
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: partner takes a hit, but that's very hard to measure.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: Trump is now, obviously, he's threatening Canada, he's threatening China,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: he's threatening Mexico. He's also today was talking about the
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: European Union. What happens if the U.S. tries to fight
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: these different trade wars on multiple fronts? And how could
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: not just one country independently, but how could countries together
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: respond in a way that harms our economy, that harms
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: our influence on the world stage?
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 11: So we benefit when countries believe that when we say something,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 11: we're going to do it. And that's a little bit
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 11: of the problem with this strategy of constantly threat everybody
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 11: with tariffs, right, is either one of two things happens. One,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 11: you threaten it and then pull it back. It seems
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 11: like what's happened with Scheinbaum even today, the 25% tariff
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 11: is not going to go into effect today with Mexico,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 11: but maybe it will go into effect a month from now.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 11: You do that enough times and people start to question
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 11: whether the United States will actually do what it says.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 11: Or you follow through and the bullying tactic causes other
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 11: people to recognize, well, if you're going to bully us,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 11: we're going to go and find other friends. We're going
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 11: to go and not rely on the United States anymore.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 11: And across time, what that means is when it comes
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 11: to security partnerships, when it comes to economic partnerships, countries
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 11: just aren't going to be as willing or set a
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 11: higher price to actually partner with the U.S. And look,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 11: at the end of the day, we should be prepared
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 11: to stand up more aggressively when countries are cheating and
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 11: breaking the rules. And a lot of that is really
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 11: a story about China. And we should be more aggressive
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 11: in saying, China uses all of its tools of economic
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 11: statecraft to actually flood markets like steel in the U.S.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 11: to undercut our capacity. We should be more vocal about that.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 11: We shouldn't be apologized for saying we're going to stand
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 11: up for American disinterest. The challenge is when you're doing
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 11: that on multiple fronts and not distinguishing between a country
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 11: like China, where you can identify multiple instances where they're
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 11: doing this, and Canada, where it's really hard to put
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 11: like a sentence, let alone a paragraph together of saying,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 11: What is it that we're actually so concerned about or
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 11: afraid about in that context?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: You know, when the U.S.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 11: Stops differentiating between this, then, you know, you start to
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 11: put us in a position where we're not going to
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 11: have many friends or allies around the world.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: Is there any part of you that sees how Trump
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: is kind of wielding America's economic power and think, obviously,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: this is dangerous, this is reckless, this is careless, but
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: there are ways in which Democrats... were not as aggressive
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: as they should have been, that President Biden wasn't as
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: aggressive as he shouldn't have been. Is there some middle
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: distance between Trump's kind of careless and stupid wielding of
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: America's power and our kind of, not just Democrats, but
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: a bipartisan consensus that's been kind of a little bit
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: more deferential and a little bit more built around consensus?
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 11: Look, in the first instance, I don't think we should
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 11: denigrate a number of the goals that President Trump and
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 11: his team are putting forward. They're talking about wanting to
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 11: have more sustained, strong economic growth in this country. We
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 11: should be shooting for that. My concern is not that goal.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 11: It's just I don't think that the policies are going
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 11: to get us there. He's talking about building manufacturing capacity,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 11: industrial capacity here in the U.S.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: Right goal.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 11: The question is, is any of this actually going to
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 11: get there? So I think we should be quite clear
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 11: about saying these are goals that we share. The question is,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 11: how do we get there? And yes, I think that
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 11: there are a number of places where we need to
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 11: ask ourselves really hard questions about, are we using the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 11: tools we have to stand up as aggressively as we
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 11: can for the interests of American workers, American consumers, and
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 11: where our economy is going to go over the medium term.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 11: But I also think we have to maintain this view
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 11: that there, that there is smart and stupid here, right?
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 11: There is a, um, a line between saying, just because
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 11: we have a tool, we're going to, you know, bang
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 11: away at it versus, you know what, like putting more
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 11: costs on typical consumers right now at the grocery store
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 11: and the gas pump is just not a good idea.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 11: And so we're going to, you know, we're going to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 11: stand up and say, we could be using these tools
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 11: more aggressively, but to the end of actually, for example,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 11: having an auto industry that actually gets competitive again and
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 11: that actually competes with China. that would be a goal
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 11: worth actually fighting for. That would be a goal worth
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 11: using our tools more effectively for.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: Before we let you go, you were the deputy director
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: of OMB. Elon Musk has basically helped lead a hostile takeover.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: OMB was the source of that federal funding freeze memo
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: that sowed a bunch of chaos last week. What is
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: your reaction to what's happening at OMB? And what is
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: the power that OMB has if it is not restrained
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: by either deference to political impact or deference to other agencies?
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 11: So the power that OMB has within the executive branch
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 11: and under the constitution is quite limited. Congress is responsible
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 11: for appropriating money and the executive branch must follow the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 11: laws that Congress passes.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 11: But I think we're going to come back to this,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 11: which is an OMB is responsible for them executing those
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 11: strategies on behalf of the executive branches that were appropriated funds.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 11: And yes, I hear what you're saying is quaint, but
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 11: at the same time, ultimately, I think what we saw
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 11: with the funding.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: Freeze is where this is going, which is.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 11: Notwithstanding some of the bluster, it is actually the case
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 11: that legally the executive branch cannot both spend money that
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 11: Congress has not appropriated and it can't fail to spend
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 11: money when Congress has said, so I think we're going
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 11: to have a big, we're going to have a set
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 11: of fights on this. And this is going to get,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 11: some of this is going to get hashed out in
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 11: the courts. But look, I think having worked at OMB
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 11: and having felt the constraints of, uh, of the fact that,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 11: you know, you can't violate, uh, the, uh, the any
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 11: deficiency act or the impoundment act, uh, even if there
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 11: may be some impulse at some point to say, boy,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 11: it would be great if we could stop that. Um,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 11: I think that, you know, I, I am, I am,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 11: I am, I believe that Congress is going to step
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 11: in because one of the few roles that Congress actually
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 11: cherishes in this context is.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: They do have the power of the purse.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 11: Um, and without that, it changes fundamentally, you know, some,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 11: some pretty big tenants of our constitutional system.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: Said like a guy that didn't move a sofa bed
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 4: into OMB, uh, to go hardcore for the record.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 11: Uh, we worked a lot of nights and weekends at, uh, at,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 11: At OMB, through the financial crisis and government shutdowns and
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 11: the like, there are extraordinarily talented professionals who I certainly
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 11: worked hand-in-hand with over the weekend many times during my
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 11: government service.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: If you were hoping Democrats were out there saying one
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: thing about the tariffs, about the trade war, what would
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: that one thing be?
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 11: Why would we want consumers to pay more at the
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 11: gas pump and more at the grocery store and more
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 11: for their iPhones and their consumer electronics when we are
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 11: not achieving anything as a country?
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: Brian Deese? So good to see you. Thanks for doing this.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: And I know you worked hard. I worked with you
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 4: at the time. I worked with you when you were
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: not in that role, but when you were at NEC.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: And you always were so tired looking. God, you always
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: looked exhausted.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: That old nickname, nights and weekends love it. I think
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: that's what we called you.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: All right, this interview's over.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Before we go, two quick things. Love It or Leave
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  Speaker 3: Janelle Bynum has a couple of McDonald's franchises.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: Really?
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  Speaker 3: Which is an interesting fact about her.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that's our show for today. Dan and I will
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