Latest / Pod Save America / Will Trump Defy the Courts?

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Will Trump Defy the Courts? · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump and J.D.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Vance hinted over the weekend that they may defy the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: courts after a few federal judges have started to put
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the brakes on Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the federal government.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about the brewing constitutional crisis in a bit,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and I'll dig in on the legal issues later in
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the show with strict scrutiny's Leah Lippman, who joins us.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We'll also talk about how Elon's wrecking ball is putting
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: everything from cancer research to consumer protection at risk, so
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: much so that even some Republicans are starting to speak
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: up just a little bit. Just a peep. And in
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: case you were wondering whether Trump and his family are
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: still shameless grifters, it now looks like they've made $ 100
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: million in trading fees on the Trump meme coin, while
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of investors got screwed.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: But are they happy?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It seems like it, honestly. Yeah, they do seem pretty happy.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Pretty psyched. We are recording this the Monday after what
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: used to be known as Super Bowl Sunday, but will
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: henceforth be known is something else entirely, thanks to our
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: new king and savior. Here's what was heard aboard Air
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Force One en route to the big game in New Orleans.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Air Force One is currently in international waters.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: For the first time in history, flying over the recently
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: renamed Gulf of America. This is a proclamation declaring today.
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: February 9th, 2012, as the first ever Gulf of America day.
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: And we're flying right over it right now. So we
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: thought this would be appropriate. even bigger than the Super Bowl.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: This is a big thing.
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: I love the people of Canada. We have a great relationship.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: But if they became our 51st state, it would be
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: the greatest thing they could ever do. It would be unbelievable.
• 3:08
  Speaker 6: It would be a cherished state. Because without the U.S.,
• 3:11
  Speaker 6: Canada really doesn't have a country. And if we say
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: we want our cars to be made in Detroit, with
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: a stroke of a pen, I can do that. Other
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: things in addition to that would not allow Canada to
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: be a viable country. Is that what it is?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: It's a light? A light over the United States?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: American people are taking solid shits. They're sleeping through the night.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Where to begin? Where to begin, guys? I did find
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it notable that Trump was somehow able to insert himself
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: at the center of of one of America's last and
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: certainly biggest monocultural moments. He sat down for an interview
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: with Fox News' Bret Baier, part of which aired before
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the game. He also became the first sitting president to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: attend the Super Bowl, where he was cheered on his
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: way in and left before the second half. What did
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you guys make of him going and basically just being
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: on our screens and in our faces even more than
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: he was during the first term? God, so annoying.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: It's just so annoying. Just giving him my Super Bowl.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: By the way, was that the Air Force One pilot
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: doing that announcement? So we're getting a.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Uniform member of the U.S. military in on your political
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: announcement about the Gulf of America?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Check out this Norm's fact.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, Apple, Google are changing the name. It's all
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: over the place. As he said, it's an even bigger
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: deal than the Super Bowl. And guess what? Everyone thinks
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: this is stupid. This is, of all the shit that, like,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the polls. It's not popular. Which surprised me. I thought
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: people would be like, Gulf of America, cool. But it
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: turns out even American voters, smarter than that.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: I will say, though, if I were to think of
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: the places that would like it the most, it would
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: be that ring of kind of red America that runs from, like, Clearwater, Florida,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: through the Panhandle, down on the Texas.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Greater Tampa. Greater Tampa, for sure.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know whoever thought of that before this
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: became a thing with Trump. You know, like I'd love
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to know the, someone should do with a history, an
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: oral history of how Gulf of Mexico became Gulf of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: America and a Trump proposal.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: We got to get that person. And the guy who
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: told a seal to become an anthropomorphic singing seal singing
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: about Mountain Dew. And we send them both the gimmo.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: That was maybe, it was definitely number one for a while,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: that song. In 1994, 93, 94. I can't remember exactly
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: which year. I was in eighth grade, so I think
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: it was 94, 95. It was associated with Batman Forever?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. Yes, Batman Forever. That's how I know it.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And then all these years later, 30 years later, 30
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: years later, he's a SEAL.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: That made me a communist on the spot. I haven't
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: consumed the ads.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: That was it for capitalism.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: I was making a delicious orange cake based on a
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: recipe by Nigella Lawson. And then I got a text
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: from my father saying, what is this? Which led me
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: to believe that the halftime show had begun. So I
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: did turn that on.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And then I went back once the oranges were done
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: steeping to making my cake. That's what I did.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Dad's a great guy. Yeah, there were a few questions
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: from parents in our home. Is there going to be
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: another act two? Is this just this guy? Anyway, my
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: thought about First of all, you know, Trump likes to
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: flood the zone and he's out there all the time
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and that's helpful and everyone's made that point. And I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: do think it's a lesson for Democrats going forward who
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: are running for president. But he really does seem this
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: time around like he is more of a king in
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: like the ceremonial sense. And like Elon now is the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: prime minister just doing all the work. And Trump is just,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: he's just posting, talking. He's, like, a little more relaxed,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you know? He's holding court. He's hosting. You always say
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: he's hosting. And then, like, meanwhile, Elon's just running around
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: breaking the entire federal government, eliminating services for people.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's free.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's the worst model, by the way.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: It's a good time. Like, I would like to have
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a Democratic president, maybe next time, who is out there
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: all the time and, you know, just talking about the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: country the whole time. And then there's a whole bunch
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of people doing the work.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: So we're, we are still very much in the honeymoon phase.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: And I think this is really effective for a couple
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: of reasons. One point that Dan and Ben made when
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: they were talking, or I think it was a point
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: that Dan made in that conversation was that this, that
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Trump paid for being compared with Ben Smith, uh, which
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: is a great episode. People should check out, but Trump
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: paid for being compared to Obama. He's now benefiting from
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: being compared to Joe Biden being out there more and active.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: And we'll get into the politics of all these different
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: moves and what people know is happening, what people don't
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: know is happening, but fundamentally, uh, He looks extremely active.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: He's everywhere.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: He's doing things. He seems dynamic. He seems like he's
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: having fun because I think actually for the first time
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: as president, he is genuinely having fun because he doesn't
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: feel bound by any of the advisors who are telling
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: him the rules that he didn't care about in the
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: first place. But let's see what happens when there's two
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: ways in which this eventually has to, I think, give. One,
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: at a certain point, They won't be able to keep
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: up with their own pace. I'm sure they're thrilled with
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: themselves that the press can't keep up and the Democrats
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: can't keep up.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: They can't keep up with this. That's the first.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: And the second is, you know, he called off that
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: first round of tariffs. We are still he is still
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: able to deny that he is responsible for a plane crashing.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Even as he's getting rid of.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Air traffic controller boards, whatever. So let's see what happens
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: when there start to be consequences for governing or consequences
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: of just reality and the crises that happen to any president, right?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about a comparison with Obama for a second, though.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I watched this and I thought, why couldn't we have
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: gone to stuff? Every time Obama wanted to do something cool,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: we were told it was a security risk or it
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: was going to be inconvenience people. And I would just
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: ask everyone to Google Obama and date night.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Remember that?
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: 2009, Obama and Michelle, they get on the plane, they
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: fly to New York, they go to dinner and they
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: go to a show. Fox News and all the conservative
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: media outlets went insane for weeks about what they did,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: whether it was out of touch, the cost to taxpayers.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I would love to know how much it costs to
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: pack up Air Force One, fly to New Orleans, rename
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: a gulf a body of water, and then leave at halftime.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: You know, but like, that's not part of the conversation
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: because of this massive conservative bias that, you know, Fox
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: put on the game and they interviewed Trump before.
• 9:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I just think he's, forget about comparing
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: him to either Biden or Obama, like just aside from that,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: which are all good comparisons, just compare it to himself
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: in the first term, right? Which is, I am wrestling
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: with the fact that we, he seems to be having
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: more fun and is in more places and is more
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: culturally accepted and is part of, you know, right, Fox
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: News is always going to attack everything that a Democratic
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: president does for sure, but just people who don't turn
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: into Fox or the more liberal parts of the media,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: but are just normies in the country. You know, you
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: see the Super Bowl and there's Brad Pitt and there's
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift and there's, you know, New Orleans. And then
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and there's Donald Trump and he's just there and he's
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: part of it with everyone else. And it's also yet
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: compared to the first term, much more dangerous. And everything
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: he's doing is much more lawless. and there are much
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: more consequences. And it just seems there is this sort
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: of disconnect between how he is in the second term
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and how he appears and how he's being received and
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what is actually happening. Though I will say that.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I think he always would have been welcome in New
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Orleans at a Super Bowl, to be honest, in.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: The first term. Oh, yeah, of course.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Just in terms of culturally and people liking him and
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: stuff like that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. But I'm just saying, like, it was...
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know. If he was there the first term,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: there would have been some... I mean, there were companies
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: boycotting stuff. There was a whole different scene there. It
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: was just... It was very, very different.
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: But.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I just think.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: It's... There's a way, there's, look, I think it's just,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: there's a way in which he is right now, like, ascendant.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: And feeling strong and that, like, that crowd feels happy to,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: happy to cheer him and then boo Taylor Swift. And that, like,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: everybody knows that that's what's going to happen.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: And that's what we're going to do together. And that's
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: part of the fun. But they booed her because she's
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: dating Travis Kelsey and it's half Eagles fan.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Everyone making the comparison. It's like,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: come on, guys.
• 11:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: It's just bitter, bitter Eagles fans.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: They're everywhere.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: They've done way worse to, like, Santa Claus. They throw
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: batteries everywhere.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: He used to get booed more. He used to get booed.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: One of the most unpopular presidents in American history. I mean,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: he was booed everywhere he went.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: He was booed at tons of games.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, but I do, I think like, look at
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: this time in Joe Biden's first year, it was like
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: 60% approval and his staff was like pushing around and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: that he was the second coming of FDR. And it
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: was like, that was taken, you know, somewhat seriously by
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: various outlets. Right. So that's just I mean, it's true.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: You know, and when we were sitting there like Joe
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Biden's doing great. Look at that. So I guess we'll see.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And he was and Joe Biden was in the CIA box,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: He was in the CIA box. Yeah. So we heard
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Trump once again talking about making Canada our 51st state, though,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: every time he brings this up, it sounds like it
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: started from like joke to maybe he's serious to that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: one that we just heard. That sounds like a threat.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was they it's good for them to
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: do this, but also. They wouldn't have a country without America.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And with one stroke of the pen, I could make
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: sure the cars are made in Detroit, which I didn't mean.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: What is he? Is he in Mexico invading them? What
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: is he talking about? Tommy, how are our poor Canadian
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: friends taking all of this? They don't like it. There
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: was a YouGov poll.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: 77% of Canadians oppose Canada becoming a part of the
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: United States. Trump also keeps claiming that the U.S. is
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: subsidizing Canada, which he just doesn't understand what a trade
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: imbalance is. We buy a lot of oil from Canada. Thus,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: we buy more of their stuff than they buy of
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: our stuff. But it is really pissing people off up there.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, there was a sketch on a sketch comedy
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: show in Canada where you had two guys at a
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: grocery store and they were talking about what products to buy.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And one guy keeps scolding the other for buying American
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: things and replacing it with the joke is that they're shittier,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: inferior Canadian versions of whatever it is, even maple syrup.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: And it's pretty funny, but it went super viral there.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: And then I was talking to a Canadian friend today.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Sketch comedy in Canada. What's that like? Sharp comedy?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Do we like sketch comedy?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: They're famously good. Yeah, we owe a lot of our Canada.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: We stole it from them. That's one of our biggest imports.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: What was the famous one? This is killing me.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Kids in the Hall came from Canada. But a ton
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: of like Jim Carrey, a ton of SNL people. Everybody's
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: from Canada. Yeah, but on top of that, there was
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: that one clip of Canadians booing the National Anthem at
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: a hockey game that went viral. Apparently that's happening over
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: and over and over again at NBA games, NHL games, etc. So,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I do also think you have to
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: view this in the context of last week he announced
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: that we're going to annex, ethnically cleanse, and then occupy Gaza.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: We're picking fights with Denmark over Greenland. There's the Panama thing.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So whether or not he's serious, he's pissing everybody off.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And we didn't play it because there was just too
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: much sound to play, but Gaza is another example where
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: he has the press conference, says that they want to
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: own Gaza, doesn't rule out sending troops. The next day,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: he walks back the troops. The White House tries to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: walk the thing back. Then he gets asked about it
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: on the plane on the way to the Super Bowl
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: and he's like, own it. Like owning a resort. Like
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: we're going to own it and develop it. Like he
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: doubled down. It is ethnic cleansing. Two million people live there.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: He wants to push them out and steal their land.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: That is illegal. Also on the Canada thing, I heard,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I saw a piece that last week Trudeau was caught
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: on a hot mic telling people that like, telling people
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that like Trump is serious about Canada and that he
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: thinks that Trump wants their minerals.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: What are we doing?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Are we like a feudal lord now? What are we doing?
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: It's really hard to, it's like hard to think about
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: how to talk about this. I saw it, Tim Miller
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: make this point over the weekend. I thought it was
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: a good one. Because he pointed out that Trump talking
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: about Gaza in this way, I assume Trump talking about
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: Canada in this way, it's breaking through, right? It's the
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: kind of thing that gets beyond where conversations around USAID
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: and NIH grants and.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would hope so. Yeah, well- The President
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of the United States talks about annexing the country to
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the North, yeah.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: But then you'll sometimes see from Democrats, they'll go like,
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: this is a distraction, right? And like, I agree, right? Ultimately,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: like if this is just part of Trump's kind of
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: malign trade war to kind of bully Canada into accepting
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: certain terms, like it is in some sense a distraction.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: But I do think it's worth just like taking a
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: beat and saying, well, so everyone gets to find out
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: about it. We don't address it because it's a distraction.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: And so then all the culturally relevant conversations happen without
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Democrats offering a serious response beyond like, Distraction.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Distraction.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: That's what we're saying when everyone's like, what is this
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Gulf of America Canada thing?
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It's a distraction. Distraction from what? It won't help egg
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: prices come down. And like, it's hard.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: It's hard to deal with and it's meant to be.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: But the answers that we seem to offer most often
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: are like, distraction, boy, this is crazy, and constitutional crisis.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: As if like if you add the word constitutional, it
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: like unlocks a new set of like controls.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: But I do think it's worth just being like, hey,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: we really benefit from the fact that the world's largest
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: border is safe and that there aren't skirmishes between us
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: the way there are in the Himalayas between China and India.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Or Europe. Or Europe.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Russia and Ukraine.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: We benefit a lot, right, that France and Germany aren't
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: building trenches as often as they used to.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Or even more basic than that, Canada doesn't want to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: be the 51st state. It's not popular. No one there
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: wants to join the United States. I thought that as
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the United States, we believed that people get to determine
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: how they are governed. That seems to be a fundamental
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: value in the United States. So what are we talking
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: about anymore? What are we even talking about?
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: And it is true that there's nothing in the Constitution
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: that requires people want to become a state before we
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: make them one. But it's just sort of the way
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: it's often, at least at its best, been done.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Core values as a nation.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: But the other piece of this, too, is it's like
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: that I feel like what's under assault is this idea
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: of like there's a stability premium we pay. And it's
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: expensive in a lot of different ways, but we get
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: a lot for it, right? It's like we have an
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: America premium. And for America premium, you don't have to
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: worry about a war with Canada. And you can kind
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: of trust that there aren't going to be a 19-year-old
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: political apparatchik in the payment system. And you know that
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: there's some kind of divide between the military and law
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: enforcement and the political appointees of the government, even if
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: we've not always honored that. And we can have an
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: extremely trusting relationship which creates a lot of economic benefits
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: for everybody. And now we have these doofuses running around
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the government being like, what are we paying for? Why
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: are we doing this? What is the value of all this?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: And our two options right now are to convince people
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: that the benefits of kind of common sense and stability
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: are worth it, even though you don't feel the pain,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: or allowing these guys to rip things to pieces so
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: terribly that we start to experience what America, how bad
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: America could get to prove to everybody, I guess, that
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: we were right the whole time as we slowly claw
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: our way back.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Believe me, I've been thinking about a third option and
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we have it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Important correction, Big Balls, Mr. Balls, got a job at
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: the State Department, so he's no longer at Treasury. This
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: is the Doge 19-year-old.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I think they threw him like a goodbye party at
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Treasury at the systems office. Hey, take a couple.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Of these social security checks with you for all your service.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Which I imagine being like the severance office.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: The other thing, like, to Tommy's point, yeah, like, it's
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: like severance, like, just, just.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Turn your, turn it off. Just four people there and
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: then suddenly, well, I know, I know Big Balls.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard season two yet.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I know Big Balls is different than the other one.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Everyone know that, right? That Big Balls was the one
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: who was fired for leaking information. He's not the racist.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: He's not the racist.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: All Doge bros look the same to you. But the,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: but like, I was also like.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Just sort of like taking a moment to like, think
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: about it. It's like, okay, what is he complaining about exactly? Like,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: to Tommy's point, we actually, if you take out oil,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: We don't have a trade deficit with Canada. They buy
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: a ton of stuff from us. We get more out
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: of it than they do. They are our biggest export partner,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: which means that they are our biggest customer. 17%, 70%
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: of everything the US sells around the world, we sell
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: to Canada. They are, and like, no, I'm glad we've
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: moved beyond a society that believes the customer is always right.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: But as a rule- Like you don't like fucking try
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: it out. You don't like poke your biggest customer in
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: the eye over and over again.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: It's just fucking stupid.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Well, now we'll see what happens because some real news
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: from Trump was the announcement that he's putting 25% tariffs
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: on steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So he did this in his first term. Trump announced
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: similar steel and aluminum tariffs that were meant to target China,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: but ended up impacting U.S. businesses that rely on those materials,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: whether they get them from other countries or not. Trump
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: later carved out exemptions to the tariffs for the rest
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of his term. And Biden rolled them back even more
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: when he got into office. The tariffs reportedly just went
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: into effect right before we started recording. It's Monday afternoon.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: And apparently there are no exemptions this time. So I
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: don't know. It seems like these are not just a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: negotiating tactic. And it's real since they have now been levied,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: just like the China one.
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: One.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Hard for the world to call a meeting, you know?
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Let's all get together. Let's get on a Zoom.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a negotiating position, but it is real. You know,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's just both. Like, Trump has just shown
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: us that he wants to tariff first, ask questions later.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, interestingly.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: That's good, Tommy. The U.S. stock market was up on Monday.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So Wall Street is kind of brushing it off. They
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: were like European steel producers that took a hit.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: But like, I don't know.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: It's just weird how the economic system is just kind
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: of like taking this in. I have the same reaction
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Because the economic– it's like– If you're probably it's going
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to be felt by like people who are in these
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: industries and then consumers will have will pay higher prices
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: for things that we buy that are made from steel
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: and aluminum that are not made in the United States.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: But even domestic steel producers, they didn't really increase their
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: output that much the first time around in the first
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: administration after the tariffs were put in place on imports.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: So it's not benefiting anybody. Right. And there was some
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of them were interviewed and they were like, I like
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I liked his protectionist instincts. But the first time around,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it just ended up making everything more expensive.
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: Yum.
• 20:57
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• 22:36
  Speaker 1: It turns out people's views on Trump's tariffs are mixed
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: at best. A new poll from CBS over the weekend
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: about Trump's first few weeks in office show a slight
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: majority favors tariffs on goods from China. but even bigger
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: majorities oppose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and Europe.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe because most Americans see those countries as our allies.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The poll also shows that 66% of voters think that
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices, though his
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: approval rating is at 53%, with around two-thirds of voters
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: describing the president as tough, energetic, focused, and effective. What
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: do you guys make of the poll, and especially the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: discrepancy between how people feel about Trump's economic agenda and
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: his focus on lowering prices and how they feel about
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Trump's presidency overall?
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it reflects a lot of what
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Lovett was getting at earlier, which is, first of.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: All, presidents tend to have a honeymoon period.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: And that's just kind of a tough political reality for
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: all of us Democrats as we're trying to figure out
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: how to fight this. And also, as much as I
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: want to throw all of Trump's campaign promises in his face,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: like the price of eggs is not down, you've not
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: ended the war in Ukraine, et cetera, et most voters
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: get that it was a shtick and they're going to
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: give him some time to actually get things done. But moreover,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: like they just see him doing stuff.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: He's active.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: They might not like all of it, but he's doing things.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: He's taking action. He looks decisive. He's on the TV.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: He's signing shit and holding it up. No one can
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: read what it says, but you know, they, I guess
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: seem to like that so far. And you know, to
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: feel the pain on this stuff, it's going to take
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: some time. Like the, the, the response on, should the U.S.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: annex and occupy Gaza was like 13% in favor, like
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: 47 something opposed, 41% were like, huh? You know, like
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: most people were like, what? You know, and I think
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: over time, if we slap terrorists on Europe and Canada,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: if we really do have a military occupation in the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Middle East again, people will not like that. Like the
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Elon stuff also, I think, will not wear that well
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: over time, but it will take time.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: It doesn't wear that well in this poll. In this poll,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of people who are looking at this
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: and saying, I would like less or none of him.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: A billionaire interceding and having so much sway over the government,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: which I also took as a good sign. Yeah, I
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: think we have a lot of ideological criticisms, obviously, with
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: what Trump is doing. We don't like the way that
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: he's doing it. But if you're not thinking about the
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: value of forbearance and the ways in which it has
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: been done in the past and why a government that
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: moved more slowly and deliberately is ultimately more valuable because
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: over time we all benefit from that, the safety and
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: security of that kind of a system. Trump is like,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: he is moving so fast. They are doing a lot.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: It doesn't, it's not just the perception of it. They
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: hit the ground running in a, in a serious way.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: It's like genuinely impressive, impressive in a dark and sinister way,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: but it's nonetheless impressive. And if you're turning on the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: news every day and hearing about all these different things
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Trump is doing and all the different criticisms coming out
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: of it, You may not like all of it, but
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: like in comparison to how people felt about Joe Biden
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: being basically absent, I imagine for a lot of people,
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: it's a welcome change. Even though you're like, I didn't want,
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: like I was, I wanted the border under control. I
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: wasn't in this for some kind of, for cuts that
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: I don't totally understand. I was in this to get
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: the economy in better shape and prices under control and
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: to feel like I understood what my president was doing.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: So that, I think it kind of reflects kind of
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: what we've been talking about.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I think. the normies just aren't paying attention. And the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: normies are most of the country. And we just had
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: an election where we learned this, where despite billions of
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: dollars being spent to get people to pay attention to
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the 2024 presidential race, there was still a good chunk
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of Americans that barely paid attention. They tended to vote
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. The Americans who did pay close attention
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: to the news tended to vote for Kamala Harris. In
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: these polls even, like, you know, his approval rating among
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Democrats isn't like especially high, right? Like Democrats are still
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: outraged by Donald Trump. And I think to your point,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the energy and he's assigning things and he's effect all that.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I think that is playing extraordinarily well with the people
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: who voted for him, right? With most people who voted
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: for him. I think they're excited. I think most people
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: in the country still aren't paying attention. And I do
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: think I buy the approval rating at 53% for sure.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Or at least in that neighborhood, right? Like I think
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: these polls are all legitimate. I wish pollsters would start
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: asking more questions about like people's views on actions that
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: he's taking or, proposals that he's making on some of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the cuts that are going to happen under the Doge regime,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: all this shit. I just feel like asking about presidential
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: approval and what do you think he's like and is
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: he energetic at this point? I just think it's of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: limited value right now in the first hundred days and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: that we actually need to, you know, like those descriptors
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: of Trump, tough, energetic, focused, effective, like, yeah, they make sense.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I get why people would say that about him. Like,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I get why, you know, he's in a honeymoon period.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It's the beginning of his term. Again, Joe Biden had
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: a higher approval ratings at this time, too. So it's
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: not super surprising, but you kind of got to dig
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in because most people aren't paying attention.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the problem, though. Most people are never going
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: to like.
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: They're never going to pay attention.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Until they feel effects. This is what you were saying.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Well, this is I think we have to this is
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: why I think it's about what happens when people start
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: feeling effects. But like, I do think we should assume
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: that the way people are consuming Donald Trump right now
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: is not going to change that much until a few
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: months for the midterms.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Right. Or, I mean, think back to the first term.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: His lowest approval is January 6th. Everyone's like, obviously, of course.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And tied, maybe even lower in one of them, is
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: ACA and tax cuts. Because in ACA, the country was like, oh,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: we don't like paying attention to the news, but you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: know what? We might lose our health care. And all
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the other shit that we obsessed about and we talked
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: about on this podcast and everyone else in the media
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: talked about, didn't really make that much of a difference
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in his approval rating, but those things that were going
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to affect people actually did.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: So we're waiting for acute moments of focus around big
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: signal political events, either crises or legislative moments, fine. But
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: my point is only that day to day, in between those,
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: this is the kind of Trump we're going to get,
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: a Trump that's kind of everywhere, swamping the news. And
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: we need to be able to figure out how to
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: make an argument during those times, because if we're just
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: waiting for things to either get bad or for them
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: to actually try to pass something terrible, we're kind of
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: just Yolked to his news cycle.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: And even the people not paying attention, I agree, that's
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: the majority. What they're seeing is Trump at the Super Bowl.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Trump doing stuff. And they're like, oh, that's cool.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: That looks fun. Or, I mean, this is, again, the
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Gulf of America thing just keeps popping up. But that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: would be stupid.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Like that's something that breaks through because it's so weird
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and different and like a cultural thing. And people are like,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, that's stupid. Yeah.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: And it's like, is it salient?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Like that's always the question. Oh, I'm sure it's not salient.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: It's stupid, obviously, but like, do they care? Are they like,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: that's fine.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't care, but
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: they don't like it.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I, I look, I think, I think about that,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: like that group of people, right.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Cause like, yes, I think there's Democrats that are inoculated
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: against Trump forever. The Republicans that will love him forever.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: There's this group of people, independent people, like when they
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: see Trump saying Gulf of America, when they see him
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: talking about making Canada a state, maybe they don't like
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: it in the moment, but it's also like, it's hard
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: not to imagine the idea of Trump just like out
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: there every day being like a pro-America guy is not
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: like there.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: One last thing that we should- I just, I don't know.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Before we leave this, like there's 66% who think that
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Trump is not focusing enough on lowering prices.
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: That is a big deal. And I want to note
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: this as well, because there was a long running debate
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: just on the, on our side of the spectrum about,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: is it the economy? Is it vibes with voters being
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: concerned about inflation and high prices during Biden? And there's
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who said, well, no, actually the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: economy is wonderful. And the only reason that people think
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: that are complaining about prices is because they're either partisan
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Republicans or the media is fucking up. And as soon
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: as Trump wins, oh, it's going to be different. Everyone's
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: going to be wonderful. Well, actually, no. Trump has won,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: and 66% of voters think he's not focusing enough on
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: lower prices. And consumer confidence came in last week, and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: it was down.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: So here's what's interesting. I think I agree with you.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I think that that will largely be proven correct, that
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: it was, like, not some media-fueled or Republican-fueled notion.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: I think that's probably true.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: It wasn't headlines.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: But there's two— it was not the phrasing of AP headlines.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: But I do think that there is a two-step process
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: to this, which is Trump is— people are correct— It's forget
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: having an impact on product. Trump is not focused on it.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: He's not talking about it all the time. He's not
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: thinking about it all the time. He's not addressing it
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: all the time. He's actually not doing it the way.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: He's trying to use tariffs as a substitution, which is
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: a real fucking bank shot. Energy is his entire.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Price at this point. But when Trump wants to hammer something,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: he wants to hammer something. I think the bigger test
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: is actually when Trump doesn't magically have the ability to
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: lower prices, but starts figuring out a way either to
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: blame people or to declare victory, then what happens?
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: And I think largely this.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Will be proven to be a serious... political problem for him,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: but he has another turn of it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that people's material conditions are still They
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: still drive a lot of public opinion. Hunter Biden gave
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: all those birds the flu. Hunter Biden did? Hunter Biden did. Really?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: You didn't read that? Is that a thing? No. I'm
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: starting something. You can't surprise us at this point.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: There's nothing that would surprise me.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: No joke.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about our brewing constitutional crisis that Elon Musk
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: and his doge bags have started. By the way, I
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: said doge bags on Thursday. I'm with doge bags too.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: And a source very high up at The Late Show,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert, alerted me today that actually They did something
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: on Thursday. They did something before we said it on
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: They claimed doge bags?
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: So I just want to say, it's all yours. We
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: walk in your footsteps, and I'm glad we're on the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: same page.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we just wanted to get away from
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: calling everyone bros.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Because our culture is not your costume.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: No one's ever called us pod bros in a complimentary way.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: It's never been complimentary.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: How many skirts I have to wear? How many lockers
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I have to get shoved into to stop being called
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: a fucking bro?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Not enough. So what is my bro in those lockers? Unbelievable. Anyway,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: on Monday afternoon, a federal judge ruled that the Trump
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: administration hasn't fully complied with multiple orders to unfreeze federal spending.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: That followed a ruling on Saturday that Doge can't access
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Treasury's payment systems. Only trained civil servants are allowed. Elon
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and Maga World are furious over this ruling. Elon called
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: for the judge to be impeached. Also proposed annual elections
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: to eliminate the worst judges. I don't know if you
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: know that's his new thing. But the most alarming reaction,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I think, came from Vice President J.D. Vance, who tweeted, quote,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. When
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Trump was asked about this by Brett Baier during his
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Fox News interview and then again on Air Force One,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: here's what he said.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: 19 states attorneys general filed a lawsuit and early Saturday,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: a judge agreed with them to restrict Elon Musk and
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: his government efficiency team, Doge, from accessing Treasury Department payment
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: and data systems. They said there was a risk of
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: irreparable harm. What do you make of that? And does
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that slow you down on what you want?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I disagree with it 100 percent.
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: I think it's crazy. And you say you trust him.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact, I
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: wonder how he can devote the time to it. He's
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: so into it.
• 33:48
  Speaker 7: J.D.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Vance said judges aren't allowed to control the executive power.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: What's your take on that?
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: Well, we're going to see what happens. We have a
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: long way to go. And we're talking about fraud, waste, abuse.
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: And when a president can't look for fraud and waste
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: and abuse, we don't have a country anymore. So we're
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Small thing there, but.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: When Trump was talking about Elon and he was like,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know where he finds the time for this.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I know. It just portrayed just a hint of, Trump
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: always is very good about like, I know where the
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: American people are. I know what you're thinking. You're like,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: what's going on with this guy? I gotcha.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: You know where he finds the time? Not parenting. You
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: gotta have a lot of kids and you see them
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: as little as possible. That's how you free up all
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: your time for doging.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Not the first dad to stay late at work because
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: he doesn't like his family and won't be the last.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Trump's also like, I mean, there's no bigger poster than
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And he's probably like, This guy is posting
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: even more than I am.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: He's just in awe. He's like, this is magnificent.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: So I talked to Leah about all the legal implications
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: of this, which you'll all hear in a little bit.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: But just a little spoiler for you guys. Even though
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, guess
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: who decides what constitutes the executive's legitimate power?
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Well, sure.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: I had this moment over the weekend where I was
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: just sort of like, I can't believe I have to
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: go back and try to remember what the fuck Marbury
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: versus Madison was about.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I did too.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: And I was like, what did Andrew Jackson do?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I went into chat GPT and I was like... Oh, great.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: Fucking great. Go to a different oligarch to get your
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: answers to how to fight.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: This oligarch's fucking....
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Stolen IP machine is going to help me figure out
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: the answer how to fight this other oligarch.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I said this on Offline, but part of it is
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Google sucks these days. And so I actually asked Jeff,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I'm like, can you give me a copy of the Constitution?
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I thought that was going to be faster than Googling,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and it was.
• 35:45
  Speaker 7: Oh, wow.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: I actually read, because I'm like, all right, what does
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Article 3 actually say? And then I, yeah, the whole thing. It's,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: believe me. Robert Byrd over here. Yeah, exactly.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: But so I guess like I, like I am curious
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: what Leah has to think about this. And, and, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: I do think some of this is posturing and some
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: of this is what, uh, presidents of all stripes and
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: all administrations have said some version of, uh, these courts.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: I am a constitutional officer. I have the right to
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: say what I believe the constitution is to be. And they,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: they are not the sole arbiters of what's in the constitution. But, uh,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: to me, like some of this is negotiating, right? They
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: are sending a message to courts to, to trim their
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: sales and to be mindful that they're not afraid to
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: push it to the limit. The point that, uh, Liz
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Cheney made this point. Several other people made this point,
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: which is you don't just get to ignore court rulings
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: you dislike.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: You have to appeal them. Now, on a lot of issues,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: that's what they're doing, right? They are appealing them.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Including this one.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Including this one. And so they are appealing them. They
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: are seeming to have some respect for the process. So
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: there are some signs that that is, if not fragile, temporary,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: like different memos from legal officials inside the DOJ and
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: other parts of the administration explaining why this court ruling
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: doesn't need to be followed in certain ways. To me,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I like have two broad categories that I'm concerned about.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: One is they take a signal case. They take it
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: all the way to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court rules
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: against them and they violate it. Either they violate it
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: explicitly or they violate it implicitly by putting some kind
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: of a legal adjust, some kind of way of making
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: of claiming to abide by about actually ignoring it.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Very worried about that. That is terrifying. Day to day.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: What I've been thinking about is, you know, Trump is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: trying to do all this activist shit inside of these agencies.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: That's his prerogative as president, right, to put people in place.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: They're going to execute what he wants them to do.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: And inside these agencies, they're putting in place Trump loyal lawyers.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Some of them are going to be better than others.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Some of them are going to be more conservative than others. Conservative,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: small c. And the question is, how much are those lawyers,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: the outside of the spotlight, in the day-to-day work, grinding
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: work of these agencies, how much are they going to
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: worry about legal challenges from states, attorneys general, from outside
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: advocates and groups, from individuals, from employees? How much are
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: they going to make decisions the way previous administrations would
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: have in one way or another being guided by the
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: fear of lawsuits because they know practically they just can't
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: fight everything all the time all at once. They have
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: to make decisions about where they're going to push harder
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: and where they're going to be willing to not take
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: legal risk. And what I don't know in watching this
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: right now is over time, will they become less concerned
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: about those kinds of risks because of rhetoric from J.D.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: Vance and because of the actions of the higher level
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: people inside the administration? I think right now we don't know.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: And that's really nerve wracking because That daily check on
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: the power of the administration, that kind of risk aversion
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: of lawyers is like really, really, really important.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: The slightly optimistic version of this, and I don't share
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: this view really, is that there was sort of a
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: willful or maybe accidental misreading of what the judge said,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: because it was a little bit sloppily worded or confusingly worded.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: And some people were interpreting his ruling as saying even
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: the secretary of the treasury was did not have access
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: to the treasury payment system, which is like kind of
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: self-evidently ridiculous. I think what he actually meant was the
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: treasury secretary could not give unauthorized people access to this
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: payment system within treasury. And you're right, like fight it
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: out in court. But like, I think my takeaway from this,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: which drove me nuts is that Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: even like the far right fringe, like Alex Jones, it
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter how much power they have. They can have
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: the white house, the Congress, the courts, the media, social media,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: They are always the victims and they're always whining about
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: how they're being attacked and it's unfair and like going
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: after these judges and it just, it drives me crazy.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And I'm just hoping, hoping that they will rub voters
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: the wrong way just to hear them bitching and moaning
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: all the time.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, they have vanquished Congress, right? Congress has given
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: up any kind of resistance to the president, just abdicated
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: power because it's controlled by Republicans. And so they've got
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Congress and, you know, they're feeling pretty good about the
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: country and where public opinion is. And, I think they
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: have decided that the judiciary is the last obstacle, the
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: last villain left.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: You missed one, which is the media, which they now
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: view as an unnecessary, sort of like a kind of
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: ignorable component.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Yes. Just for sadness' sake.
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: And some of that is, look, the attacks on the media,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: but some of it is just the balkanization of the media,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: which we've talked about a million times. So, yeah, definitely.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Offensive word.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Balkanization. Shame on you.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: It's Trump's president. It's fine. Uh, and so they are
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: going to, it's interesting. There's two tracks here, right? There's the,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the legal track where they, you know, right now they
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: are trying to come up with an agreement. The, the,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the defendants and the plaintiffs here and trying to work
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: out who, who gets access, who, how, you know, all this.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: And the judge was like, I'll give you till Monday
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: night and you can do that. So it's proceeding along normally. Right.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: But the public relations component of this, the messaging component
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is everyone in MAGA world and Doge world and everything just,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: attacking the shit out of these judges and saying that
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: they're corrupt and they're awful. And we should, and Elon
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Musk being like, we should vote judges out. I mean,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: it's fair. So the danger to me is maybe not
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: necessarily in what happens in this individual case.
• 41:02
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Although maybe it is, but the, now we are turning,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: turning the guns toward the judiciary system and turning everyone's
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: fire towards the judiciary system on the right. And on the,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and like, that's where.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I think it's dangerous. I think it's, look, I think there's,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, Judges have been murdered.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: In the past.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would add you're less physically scared than Mitt
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Romney talked about. They are physically scared. I think that's real.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I think that they are being cowed into making less
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: far-reaching rulings.
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: Yep.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: But then you look at Elon.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: It's also some of this is just like, God, the
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: combination of just like the malevolence but the idiocy.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: It's like they should be impeached.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: And it's like, do you know that that word is
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: just to launch a trial? You understand that the Senate
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: won't convict? Have you thought about it?
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Do you not care?
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: You're just firing off notions in a fit of pique.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Because these judges will not be removed. There's no two-thirds
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: vote to remove these senators.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Willful ignorance. He doesn't care. He's like, I'm smart about
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: rockets and cars, and so I must be smart about
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: everything else. And if I don't know about it, who
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: the fuck cares?
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: If I don't know, it doesn't matter. It's not important.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: And actually, it shouldn't be important.
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: It's embarrassing that you care about that. There's this back
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: and forth between Elon and Lawrence Summers, who was a
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: treasury secretary among the several treasury secretaries that wrote in
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: the New York times declaring that democracy under siege because
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: of what they're doing.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: And like institutional move of the week.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, sure.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: And then like institutions defending institutions inside of creaking institutions,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: but the, yeah, institutions in institutions getting institutions.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Uh, but, uh, the Atlantic was like, damn, we should've
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: got that. God damn it. That's our fucking New York times.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: That's it. This is where we eat.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Uh, but, uh, like watching them go back and forth,
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: it's like Elon, it's just like, kind of falsehood that
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: he probably believes, you know, like if we don't get
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: this out of control, spending under control, America will be bankrupt.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And it's like, well, first of all, no.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Actually, if we don't get USAID under control, we'll be
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: fucking fine because that's not where spending is. And also, okay,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: let's say there is fraud. You know, there's this little
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: bit of like, Summers has to do this, Summers has
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: to do this, where he goes like some version of like, I.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Love your passion. hate fraud myself.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: And it's like, if you show up at a police
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: station and say, I was really worried about crime in
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: my neighborhood, so I arrested some people.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: They're all in my trunk.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: The cops aren't like, love your passion. They're like, you're
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: arrested because that's not how we do it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: The cops are like, I also think crime is important.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Just letting you know. Thank you so much.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: I don't want you to think that we don't respect
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: how much you take crime seriously because we do too.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: You'd be like, are you insane? That's not how we
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: do this.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: And like this idea that like, because there might be
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: fraud somewhere in the government, you can send a group
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: of fucking neophytes deep within the bowels of government to
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: cut off into payments is absurd on its face. Anyway,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: we have to like indulge this idea that like, Now
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: we all take stopping waste, fraud, and abuse very seriously.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I don't think he's saying the wrong thing.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I think it's the right messaging.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I know, me too. Ro Khanna was doing this earlier.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: You don't want to seem like you're opposed to government efficiency,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: but obviously now they're just rampaging through the government Venmo
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: and shutting shit off.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Left and right.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just lamenting our situation.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Me too. No, I love it. I felt the same
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: way because I've seen the messaging memos and it's like,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: You know, the young people, Gen Z, they like Doge
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: and what Elon's doing because, you know, they see government
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: as sclerotic and inefficient and they like the move fast
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and break things ethos and they want to get stuff
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: done and they like the results. And it's like, yeah, yes,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: of course, we all want that. We all know that
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: government is slow. We all know that government can be inefficient.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated. We
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: all worked in the fucking White House. We tried to
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: reorganize the government. We tried to find efficiency. It's hard
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: And honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it's
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: some of the stuff we should have done.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: You could do some of this. You just got to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: talk Gen Z to them. You're like, I can dig
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: these Doja Cats.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: That was horrible.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Oh no.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: That was fucking horrible.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: They got good vibes.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: They're just not going about it the right way.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to throw a no cap on the internet.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: No cap. Fuck.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Fuck. This is why we're losing. Fuck. Yeah. The technology
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: in the federal government, at least when we were there, sucked. Yeah.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: It was gateway computers. Gateway computers. Remember healthcare.gov?
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Gateway computers. And you had no, there was no service
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: in the basement of the West Wing. You couldn't use
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: your phone because there was no service. The gateway computers.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: So you just had to sit there.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Five bars of the OEOB though.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: But anyway, the fact that, you're right, that the fact
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that you have to do that now, all of that
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: throat clearing before you're like, But you know what? It
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: is bad that when everyone has signed off on a payment,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Congress has mandated it by law, and everyone's fine with it,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: then some random 19-year-old racist, maybe it was a 26-year-old racist.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Big Balls is not racist. 26-year-old racist. 25-year-old racist, whatever
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: he was. The guy who thinks that all the Indians
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: should either go back to India or be automated out
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: of a job. Sorry, not that guy. Yeah, they're in
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: charge of just cutting off payments now. That's how we
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: fix waste and fraud?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: The reason I bring it up is only because I
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: do think as we talk about how to talk about this,
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: part of it is that there's a lot of ways
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: in which we're kind of doomed to speak this way
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: right now because we all kind of understand that there's
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: a lot of people that just don't trust Democrats at all.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: And so, like, we have this, like, extra step we
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: need to take to kind of, like, I don't know,
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: figure out over time to claw back some credibility. But, like,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Trump doesn't have to do that when he talks about
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: a democratic prerogative, right? He's always like, well, they're making
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: some good points. No, he just says they're fucking criminals.
• 46:24
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  Speaker 1: promo code CRICKED, Don't forget to mention that we sent
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: you to show your support for the show. Terms and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: conditions apply. Well, the Washington Post had a pretty eye-opening
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: piece about Elon's big picture plans. They quote an anonymous U.S.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: official as saying, quote, the end goal is replacing the
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: human workforce with machines. Everything that can be machine automated
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: will be. Yeah, it seems like that. Doge is also
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Newly confirmed OMB director Russ Vogt installed himself as head
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of the agency and immediately shut down the building, told
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: staff to stop pretty much all of their work, and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: suspended its funding. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health, or NIH,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: announced on Friday that it would be making huge cuts
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: to the grants they provide scientists, researchers, and universities to
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: come up with all kinds of scientific and medical breakthroughs.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: The spokesperson for Doge called this, quote, doing away with
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: liberal DEI dean slush fund. The former dean of Harvard
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Medical School, who was not a squishy liberal, said the
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: move would cause, quote, harm and chaos and that, quote,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: a sane government would never do this.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: That's correct.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: That is very true. Even Senator Katie Britt, a Republican
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: who flew with Trump on Air Force One on Sunday
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and whose state hosts major research institutions, told a local
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: reporter the next day that, quote, this is a great quote,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: a smart target. approach is needed in order not to
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high achieving institutions like those
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: in Alabama. She really stepped out of line there. That's
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: pretty courageous. That's bold. Made me think of her State
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: of the Union response.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Ah, simpler times.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: She's screaming.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: She's in that kitchen.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Now she's like, oh, you're losing your state's largest institution.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: They're getting budget cuts. And she's like, ah, we might
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: need a smart targeted approach. Not even like the one
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: that we have. She didn't even say, this approach is
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: wrong and we need a better one. We just, we
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: need a smart targeted approach, everyone.
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: Thanks, Katie.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Just want everyone, just want to flag that. And right
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: before we started recording, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the NIH cuts. So we will now see if the
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Trump folks appeal that ruling. So, We know that most
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: voters generally support cutting government waste, trimming federal budget. It
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: does seem to me like gutting cancer research and a
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: consumer watchdog that takes on big banks and credit card
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: companies is potentially the first really unpopular fight that Doge
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: has picked. What do you guys think?
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Pick this fight. I am shocked by how stupid this is.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, what NIH is saying is that grant recipients
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: can spend only 15% of their grant money on so-called
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: indirect costs. But indirect costs are the building costs. Where
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: you work, maintenance for your lab, the microscope support staff
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: that help you comply with safety regulations. And like the big,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: you know, like evil DEI institutions like Harvard, they could
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: probably eat that 15%. They can deal with this. But
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the smaller research institutions at smaller schools, they're just going
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: to get forced to shut down. And that's why you're
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: hearing Katie Britt weighing on this. Although that fucking moron
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Tommy Tuberville is like, I support the doge cuts and
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: everything they're doing. But he doesn't know where he is.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: It's not just a long term. He also hated the
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: halftime show.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: It's not just.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: That's also from that same interview, I believe. It's not
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: just the long term impact on medical research and finding
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: cures and all the things we want medical research to do.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest employer
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: in the state.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: So this is going to like ripple out into their
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: economy in a big way. And also, it's not like
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: the NIH budget is some runaway fiscal disaster. The bulwark
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: reported that the NIH budget adjusted for inflation is about
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: what it was at the beginning of the Obama administration.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: This is part of the problem, too.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: This is obviously not considered a distraction, according to the experts,
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: so we're allowed to talk about it. But this is
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: the problem where you're only supposed to talk about things
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: in the prescribed correct ways because you never get into
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: the deep substance of the argument. For example, hey, Bunsen
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: burner fucking overhead cost, not a problem. This was not
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: a problem we had. Overhead costs for scientific research, scientific
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: research that can be described as being silly. This is
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: just not a problem America has. Some money that goes
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: towards scientific research is going to come to nothing.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: That's the point of it. That's why you do experiments.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Some of it doesn't work.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Some of it sounds silly and then leads to amazing
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: and magical things. Like if you were starting a rocket
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: company and some of the rockets exploded in the air
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: and didn't reach the moon. If you're not, listen, if
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: you're making every flight at the airport, you're going to
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: the airport too early. And if all your scientific research
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: is producing positive results, you're not taking enough risk on
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: scientific research.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Isn't that from Larry Summers?
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: That is a Larry Summers thing. Yes. And I've heard
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: that from him in person.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: I was thinking over the weekend that I would love
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: someone to describe to the doge bags in Elon that
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: they have found this loan guarantee for this green new
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: deal DEI car company that we need to cut immediately.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: And it's basically just the Tesla loan. What we did,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: let's see what happened. They would have killed it.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Sam Stein at the Bulwark, we're really Bulwark freaks today.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: But he had a story that basically a lot of
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: these Republican Congress people who are not saying anything publicly,
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: their constituents, many of some of whom are federal employees,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: others just have concerns about what's happening in their districts,
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: are getting letters from Republicans saying, I too am concerned
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: about the way in which this is being implemented. I
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: too have concerned about the freeze. I too am worried
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: about your privacy. And there was a Republican member of
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: the House today that I think for the first time
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: making the point that Congress's approval on certain decisions isn't
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: just a good thing to have or a nice thing
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: to have. It is a legally necessary thing to have,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: whether it's cutting budgets or eliminating the Department of Education,
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: that the president simply does not have the right to
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: do anything. So I do think that like, The first
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: step is not like I agree with you that Republicans
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: in Congress have largely just sort of given up. But
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: I think we have to just continue like that. There
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: are going to be some places where normal politics is
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: still working. And those letters to me are a sign
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: that like there are Republicans in closely divided districts that
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: are worried about this shit, that are worried about losing
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: their jobs.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: And that's important.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: That's a good thing.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, is Katie Britton any danger in Alabama?
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe not. But there's this woman who is a research
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: professor at University of North Carolina. And she was posting
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: over the weekend that this could like decimate their children's hospital,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: their outpatient care. She said the first canceled grant hitting
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: our department that I've heard of was for new interventions
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: supporting NICU patients and parents. These are like newborn babies
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: in the ICU. Like just the idea that this, like
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: the damage that this is going to cause. And I
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: do think, you know, Tom Tillis, he's up in 2026.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: He should fucking care about that. He's in North Carolina.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Represents the research triangle.
• 54:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, but I do think that everyone's like, what
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: do we do? What do we do? I think elevating
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: more of these stories as we find them. And I
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: would suggest like everyone out there who has these stories,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: whether it's about medical research, whether it's about any of
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the other, the funding freeze that has been unfrozen, but
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: it's not really unfrozen and headstart programs. People are still
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: having problems with like, just, you know, you got to
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: tell your stories and pass on the stories, send your
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: stories in because I do think the more we make
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: this about like, the people who are feeling these effects
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: or who are worried or who are experts in these fields,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the scientists, the teachers, all these other, you know, instead
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: of just like federal bureaucrats, which of course, you know,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: don't have the best approval rating, then the more it's
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: going to hurt.
• 55:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: The other part of it too is like- Politically.
• 55:22
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Well, both.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: But the, like the inflation reduction act freeze is starting
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: to hit farmers who decided to take a chance on
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: one of these programs, right? There's all kinds of conservation
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: programs that involve required investment. They made the investments and
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: now all of a sudden they're not getting the payments
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: they expected. It's risking their farms. It's risking their families' livelihoods.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: And like that's a real consequence. And there are plenty
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: of partisan people who are pretending it's actually not Trump's
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: fault or trying to elide the fact that it's a
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: political decision made by Trump and that it's the government
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: that's failing them. There are a lot of, I think,
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: people that want that to be the case, even though
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: everything on some level one understands what's going on here.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: And like, you can't deny, like, there's only so much
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: Trump can do to deny that reality. And so making
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: sure people understand that reality is really important. There's another
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: one more point I wanted to make about this, which
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: I like is like, how do we talk about the.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Fact that they're doing this?
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: You know, CFPB, one of the most effective government agencies,
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: has done an incredible amount of good.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: $ 800 million budget, by the way. $ 20 billion returned to consumers.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly what you would want. Not perfect.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: Makes mistakes, I'm sure. But like exactly what you would
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: want your government. Just a tribune for working people against
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: the rapacious giant financial corporations. Trump has sent all those
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: people home. They're still getting paid. So Donald Trump's cost
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: efficiency is he's basically given a snow day. to federal
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: officials because they don't like certain parts of what the
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: government is doing.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Because they attended a diversity training in 2014 somewhere.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: And so right now, the American people are paying government
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: workers to sit at home instead of go after big banks,
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: try to cure diseases, try to prevent diseases in foreign countries,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: whatever it may be. Those people are still getting paid
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: in their houses. Like, I do not understand. That to
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: me is worth mentioning.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: At least they're not tainting our federal government with their wokeness. Yeah.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Doing all of this under the guise of that DEI
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: attack is so pathetic. It is entirely out of the
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Project 2025 playbook, and I do think it helps to
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: remind people of this.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: I saw people referring to the halftime show as a
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: DEI halftime show, which is sort of drawing a little
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: too much attention to what the word DEI is really
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: standing in for.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no. Now it's just any person of color or
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: woman who has any kind of position... of authority or
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: influence is DEI. That's the new thing now.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Benny Johnson, the TPUSA plagiarist, tweeted, hey, NFL, it's
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Trump was elected. We're not going to pretend we like
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: bad halftime shows anymore. And I was like, yes, people
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: famously never complain about the halftime show.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: So Twitter was invented for you. It is going back
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: to your point, though. They're the victims all the time.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: If they have nothing to complain about, they have nothing.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: if they can't complain about how they've been put upon.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: You're in charge, guys. You're in charge of all the money,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: all the power. Two last things here, both related to
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: worthless coins. Trump announced that he was ordering the mint
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: to stop producing the penny on the grounds that it
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: costs well more than a penny to produce them and
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: no one likes dealing with them. Our future 51st state, Canada,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: banned the penny in 2014. Everything seems to be fine there,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: except for the fact that America's going to take it over. Separately,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the New York Times did an investigation into the Trump
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: meme coin and how early investors in the Trump family
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: made millions from the meme coin while everyone else lost tons.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the penny. Lovett, thoughts on the demise
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: of the penny?
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Shocker.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: I have previously held deep thoughts about this, which is
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: not only, so obviously people are pointing out that the
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: penny costs four cents to make.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: That's obviously stupid.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: Nickels cost 14 cents to make. Now, yes, probably a
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: percentage of the penny is more expensive per penny, but
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: just for each nickel, it's a nine cent loser.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: Here's what we should do.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Get rid of the nickels too.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: What we should do is we should go what we
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: have now. I have to go a little bit further.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: Just stick with me.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Don't take my quarter.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: We should go from penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and we
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: should be moving to a 10 cent piece, a 20
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: cent piece, and a 50 cent piece. That is the
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: correct denominations. And then all prices should no longer be
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: to the hundredth place. They should be to the 10th place.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: That is the answer. Trump is doing a kind of compromise,
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: but leaving the dumb nickel in place, which has the
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: most overrated founder on it, who is Thomas Jefferson. Now,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: here's what's interesting. Until 1857, there was a half penny.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: That was when we had the half penny. Then the
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: half penny was gotten rid of. So the penny's been
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: our smallest denomination for a very, very long time. From
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: 1913 to 2024, inflation has increased the value of the
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: dollar by 30 times, right? Which means if the penny
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: was the lowest denomination... in 1913, we could get by
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: with a 30 cent coin today, right? I don't think
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: that's necessary, but we should go to a nickel, a
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: 20 cent piece and a 50 cent piece.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: That's the answer. And that's what, that's how Democrats can
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: have their own positive agenda.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: You know, if you, um, if you pass that idea
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: along to Elon and the, and the doge bags, you
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: might end up being in charge of the U S mint.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: You might be able to mint all the money yourself.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: You could be there in Norman Mineta.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: I'll get in there. I'll get in there and I'll
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: put an op-ed in about you'll never.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Did you say Norman Mineta? Yeah, he was a token
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: lib in a conservative... I thought he was the transportation.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, he was the token. He was a token
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Republican in a Democratic administration.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Who would I be? Yeah, Ray LaHood, sorry. Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: No, but who is the token?
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: You're Tulsi Gabbard.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: You're Tulsi Gabbard, that's right.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: RFK Jr.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Listen, I got a lot of good ideas, and I
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: can show myself able to work with some pretty bro guys.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: The whole thing would save you like $ 80 million, the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: penny thing? I know.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: No, no, the penny is billions.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: The penny is billions. I read that the savings was huge.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know how they're netting that out.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: $ 85 million each year. Huh.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: It is funny what Elon's just raging about these small
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: sums of money and little changes, and he gets $ 15
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: billion in contracts from the U.S.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Government.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you something.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Here's the mistake I made.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: We mint $ 3 billion pennies. That was one of my mistakes.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Obama wanted to do this. Obama expressed his support for
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: this in a 2013 interview.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: He got cowed by the fucking deep state.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: And he said, this is not going to be a
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: huge savings for government. He was right. But anytime we're
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: spending more money on something that people don't actually use,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: that's an example of something we should probably change. He
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: should be in Doge, huh? Look at that guy wanting
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: to cut costs.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Leave a hero, live long enough to become a villain.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know how that whole thing went down. I remember,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I think Cody Keenan, speechwriter after we left, was like
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: on this very podcast once telling us about how there
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: was a request to get it into the State of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the Union, the penny thing.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: It was like a whole thing. I'm sure some, the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: deep state probably killed it.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a, I think there's like a, there's a,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: there's a, There was a couple hiccups. There's an Illinois problem.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I think the nickel thing comes up.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: The nickel thing comes up. There's lobbyists involved. You know,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: government doesn't work.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Tommy, tell us about... Well, you know who it works for.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Works for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Tell us about
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: the shitcoin, the Trump shitcoin. Yeah, I mean, there was
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: a report over the.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: Weekend in the New York Times. Let me back up.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: You guys might remember just before the inauguration when Donald
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: Trump announced the sale of a meme coin, Trump coin.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: I think it was the next day. Melania announced the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: sale of her Melania coin. So the price skyrocketed, then
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: it fell. People accused him of a rug pull. It
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: was this whole kind of weird grifting thing that was
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: happening on the sidelines.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: A rug pull is basically you launch the thing, the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: price skyrockets, you get out when it's high, and then
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: the whole thing falls apart.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you own most of it, you market it heavily,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: and then you sell a bunch of your shares of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: whatever the thing is. And the people who bought in
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: late get screwed and the people who own them early
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: make a lot of money. Kind of like the Hawk
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Tua coin for those who are big fans of the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Hawk Tua podcast. The New York Times over the weekend
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: reported that as of last week, at least 810,000 people
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: have lost money on the Trump coin. But the Trump
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: family and its partners have made nearly $ 109 million in
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: fees because they get paid every time you buy and
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: sell it. Also, a Trump-owned business owns 80% of the supply.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: So if they wanted to sell a bunch of their coins,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: they could make a lot of money. Also, there's all
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: this shady shit that was happening. There was some mystery
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: account that bought millions of Trump coins just minutes after
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: they were offered for like, you know, 19 cents or whatever,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: and then flip them for a profit of what they
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: think is about $ 109 million. So it was just this
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: massive grift happening in plain sight. And it kind of
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: ties into our CFPB conversation earlier, because getting rid of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: the CFPB means you're going to have small community banks
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: regulated by a different set of regulators. Big banks no
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: longer have a regulator because they're all regulated by the CFPB.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: And then you have this proliferation of bank-like companies that
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: provide bank-like services but are not backed by the FDIC.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: There's no deposit insurance. And aren't regulated well. So it's
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: just like the wild, wild west of blockchain mumbo jumbo bullshit.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: But do the big banks still, they're still regulated by
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Dodd-Frank stuff, right?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: They are, but Dodd-Frank pushed all the regulatory authority to
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: the CFPB. It's not like this zombie set of laws
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: without an agency to enforce it.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of the consumer protections run out
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: of CFPB. And if the CFPB is no longer enforcing
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: those laws, the other agencies that have purview over the
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: banks don't suddenly pick up the slack. They are not
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: in charge with those. They do a lot of the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: other systemic regulations, but don't worry.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: They also want to get rid of the FDIC. So that's,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: that's their, that's on their agenda as well.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: But even, even in just sort of normal, normal year,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: the CFPB would modify rules to account for inflation or
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: when the pandemic hit, they made a bunch of changes
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: just to account for the economic shock that was happening.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: And now there's just, there isn't a agency to exist
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: to do that.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Well, the other thing too, is these banks, like Financial
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: institutions are raptors testing the fences and they see this happening.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: And no, I think a lot of the more serious
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: and big financial institutions are not. Some of them do
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: just explicitly break the law as they see fit. But
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: in most cases, what they'll do is be like, huh,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: that thing we were going to maybe try, but we're
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: afraid the CFPB might stop.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: Let's just fucking go for it.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Let's offer a new product that has lower interest, but
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: not tell our customers about it. So they don't accidentally
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: have more interest. Like there's a bunch of shit that
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: these banks can pull.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it's like little stuff. Just like one example is
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: like overdraft protection. Like I remember, I remember standing outside
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: the Iowa Obama for America office and screaming at Bank
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: of America because they had let me buy like seven
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: coffees and overdraw my account every single time and then
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: charge me a courtesy fee of like 25, then escalated
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: to $ 35 each time, rather than just being like, bro,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: you have no money and cutting off the transaction, not
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: letting it through. And apparently the CFPB, when it was created,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: there was someone who worked at a bank talking about
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: how their institution kind of reformed their ways of charging
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: those fees because they were worried the CFPB was going
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: to come after them. So the mere existence of this
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: agency was protecting consumers, and now it will just be gone.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: I got hit with so many overdraft fees when I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: was a Senate staffer, not making a lot of money.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Happened all the time. I am just thinking about Donald
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Trump and Melania launching a shit coin that made them
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: $ 100 million. Well, a bunch of people got screwed. And
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: then there's that professor at UNC who's like, oh, you know,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: we're just, we're trying to do research to make sure
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: we can keep babies alive in the NICU, but no more,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: can't do that anymore. And then the fucking like $ 2
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: malaria nets that we're not sending to protect kids in
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Africa anymore because we've destroyed USAID and the $ 400 million
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: in food assistance that is now, that people are just
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: going to starve. And they're like, oh, I'm making, what
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: the fuck?
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: Well, also it's like, even just do like the apples
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: to apples. Right now they're figuring out how to extend
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: the Trump cap. Like, What is the cause of America's
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: budget deficit? The cause of the American budget deficit are
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: the Bush tax cuts, the Trump tax cuts, the military,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Wokeism.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: And wokeism.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: But, like, fucking, you know, DEI expensive chemical showers at
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: the fucking scientific institute is not our problem.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's all the money we're spending to turn animals
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: trans in India.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Too many, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: That's what Senator John Kennedy.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: Too many non-binary frogs.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: India. That's the problem.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 8: All right. Before we wrap, we do have a couple
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 8: of news stories that broke while we were recording.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 7: Oh, good.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: Trump has signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Gotta love it, though, honestly.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Why did you give him that, liberals? Fucking paper straws.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: You know what?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Unpopular opinion.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: Fuck plastic straws. They'd stuck in turtles' noses.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Come on. Just Suck it up. Use the paper.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: There's cellulose straws. Paper straws are terrible.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do the centrist position here.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. You don't need a straw?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm fine. I like the paper straws. The
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: no straws. No straws at all.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: You like the paper straws?
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: I don't want no straws.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I want straws.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 8: We have more news. The Justice Department reportedly is going
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 8: to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Fuck off.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: Come on.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Can't say I'm surprised on that one. No, that one
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: was coming. If you're a criminal, but you say nice
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: things to Donald Trump, you're not a criminal anymore.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I want to go find my prediction that he's going
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: to end up as a... Homeland Security Secretary.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: I just want you to go. I predicted that last year.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I see you, Kristi Noem.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 8: And Trump has pardoned Rob Blagojevich.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Wow. That was a blast from the past.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Didn't he commute him last time?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: He has commuted him in the past. So this is
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: just kind of wiping the record clean.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: He's on the apprentice.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: Because he let him out. He let him out.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: What is this? At least one dead after two jets
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: collide on a runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona? What?
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: The air travel, guys.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: I don't want to think about it. I don't want
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: to think about it.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: He'll be driving around the country on a bus, guys.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Adrian, what else you got?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: You got news?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: I mean, we've got a lot. If you check it out,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 8: there's a lot of what Trump said.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 8: If you had to PSA news monitoring.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. Yeah. We can't do the press conferences. No,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: that's too much.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 8: It's a lot.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: You know what? Tune in. Dan and I will cover
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: some of this on Friday. Everyone else.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: More as the story develops.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Everyone else, enjoy your Tuesday. Okay. When we come back
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: from the break, you're going to hear my conversation with
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny's Leah Lippman about how the courts might or
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: might not be able to stop Trump and Musk. Two
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: quick things before we do that. Crooked Media Reads is
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: proud to be publishing Woodworking, the fantastic debut novel from
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Yellow Jackets writer and culture critic Emily St. James. It
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: is out March 4th. The story follows a trans high
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: befriends the only other trans woman she knows, one of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: her students. Woodworking is, it says right here, woodworking is
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: your much needed breather from everything else. Yeah, that's good.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: I remember when our CEO Lucinda first read Woodworking as
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: we were thinking about like, do we want this to
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: be part of Crooked Media Reads? And she was like,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: read it in a day and was like, this is
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: one of the best books I've ever read. She like
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: wouldn't stop talking about it.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I also do think too, like, it seemed like
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: like what, how much trans attention you see on like
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: Fox news versus how many trans people you see on
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: Fox news. And the answer is none ever. And like,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: this is just like the term woodworking is like the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: description of this character's experience of being trans. And I
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: think it is worth spending time thinking about the perspective
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: of trans people because so often, uh, they are objects
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: of our debate.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: And look at this. If you're in LA, love it.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: And Emily, you're going to have a conversation about woodworking.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: and a book signing at Skylight Books on Friday, March 7th.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah. Love Skylight Books.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Where is Skylight Books?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: It's in Los Feliz.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, cool. You can learn more at crooked.com slash books.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: And speaking of LA events, Love or Leave It records
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: live every week right here in LA. 12 new show
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: dates from now through May at crooked.com slash events.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: We are having such a good time with these live shows.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Come say hi. We have some really big guests lined up.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: And you just, the stuff we cut.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Where do people get tickets?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, crooked.com slash events.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: There you go. When we come back, Leah Whitman. Pod
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Save America is brought to you by Policy Genius. Talk
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  Speaker 1: slash crooked. Joining us today, our friend Leah Lippman from
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: the best legal podcast on the planet, Strict Scrutiny. Welcome back.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 7: Thanks for having me on this joyous occasion.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Look at your book behind you, for those of you
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: just listening. Leah has a new book coming out. It's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: called Lawless. You want to give us a little quick plug?
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so subtitle will kind of give you a sense
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 7: how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: and bad vibes. Basically, how the court is just implementing
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: the worst parts of the Republican Party's platform, targeting different
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 7: groups that aren't part of the modern Republican coalition, and
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 7: doing so by just declaring their feelings, their hurt feelings, quote,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 7: the law.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: And when is it out?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: It is out May, but you can pre-order it now.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Go pre-order it, everyone. Do it now. Speaking of bad vibes,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: I want to start by... teeing you up to respond
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to something that I just know you have strong feelings about.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: Here's the headline. Trump is testing our constitutional system. It's
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: doing fine.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 6: I knew.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: The piece is by Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman. And
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: here's the part I'd love to hear your thoughts on. Quote, Trump,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: who did not ignore court orders in his first term,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: is unlikely to defy a judicial decision. No matter how
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: conservative the justices in the Supreme Court majority might be,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: their primary identity comes from their role as interpreters of
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: the Constitution and laws. They might tolerate a lot from Trump,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: but they won't tolerate defiance of the authority of the judiciary.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: What do you think? How's your blood pressure?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 7: So for those of you not watching the video, my
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 7: eyes are literally bugging out of my face at this point.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 7: This is why you should go to Michigan for law
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 7: school rather than Harvard.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: Side note.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 8: One, the idea that.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 7: Everything is working, the system is working, is just so
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 7: divorced from reality, it is difficult to relay that. I mean,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 7: even if courts are striking down some of what Trump
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 7: is doing— The damage he is wreaking on the infrastructure
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 7: of the federal government is profound, right? Like scaring away
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: all of these civil servants, letting these doge whatevers like
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 7: infiltrate the Treasury Department. These are things that have already
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 7: happened and that courts are not going to be able
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 7: to claw back. And so that's just like a first step, right? Now,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 7: the idea that Donald Trump is just going to respect
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 7: all of these court orders aged really well over like
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 7: seven days, let's say, as his vice president took to
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 7: the media floating the idea that he had floated four
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 7: years earlier.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 7: If you had bothered to be remotely online when he
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 7: was suggesting that Donald Trump fire every member of the
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 7: civil servant and basically tell the Supreme Court, you know,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 7: you made your decision. Try and enforce it. And they're
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 7: already floating, right, as he did previously, the suggestion that
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: they weren't going to obey various court orders that told them, no,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 7: you can't do wildly illegal things. So I can't say
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 7: the system is working super well right now, is kind
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 7: of the TLDR.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: J.D.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: Vance's tweet, and we'll get into the case in a second,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: but his tweet, the money line was, judges aren't allowed
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: to control the executive's legitimate power. Now, I didn't go
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: to law school, nor did I even take the LSATs
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: and get a good score like John Lovett. But I
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: guess that is maybe technically true in that if the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: power is legitimate, they can't control it. But who decides
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: if the power is legitimate?
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 7: Well, so this isn't even a question about courts being
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 7: in a position to decide all of the questions in
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 7: our legal system. It is about the fact that the
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 7: executive branch is subject to the law. And in these cases,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 7: that law is really fucking clear. It is directly compelled
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 7: by the lawmaker in our constitutional system, Congress, who told
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 7: the executive branch, like, no, you don't just get to
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 7: not spend whatever money you don't like that we appropriate. Or, right,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 7: the Constitution is unusually clear, like in the case of
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 7: birthright citizenship. So this is an instance where it's not
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 7: about courts being good or awesome or constitutional caretakers. It's
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 7: just about whether the executive branch is subject to the law.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 7: And there are so many foundational court cases that obviously
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 7: tell presidents to not do things or to do things.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 7: Like one of the biggest presidential power cases is a
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 7: case called Youngstown, where the Supreme Court told President Truman, no,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 7: you can't just seize the steel mills. And J.D. Vance,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 7: of course, has been praising Supreme Court decisions that told
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 7: Democratic presidents they can't do things. Like, for example, the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 7: immunity ruling that let Donald Trump get off scot-free for
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 7: attempting a coup first time around. He was describing that
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 7: as a massive win, right, for the rule of law,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 7: even though that decision told the executive branch you cannot
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 7: prosecute a former president for official acts. So he knows, right,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: this is horseshit. And yes, right, it is wildly inconsistent
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 7: with basic premises of our constitutional system.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to ask you to predict what the
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court might do, but how do you think J.D.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Vance's tweet or his view of the power that the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: executive holds will land with even this Supreme Court? And
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking particularly of Roberts, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, like
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: who knows what Alito and Thomas are probably like, yeah,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: you're right. You got it. We'll just, we'll go on
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: vacation on our private jets. Yeah.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 7: So a few things. I don't think it is going
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 7: to hit well with those guys and it's not going
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 7: to hit well for any number of reasons. One is
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 7: that J.D. Vance is essentially claiming the power, not just
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 7: of Congress, right, to make laws, defies laws, but here
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 7: the power of the courts, right, to again, enforce laws
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 7: that Congress has made. And these guys on the Supreme Court,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 7: they are judicial supremacists, right? Like they think they have
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 7: the power to decide all things. And so having some
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 7: weird dweeb like J.D. Vance tell them, right, like, no,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 7: you don't actually get to have your fingers in all
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 7: the cookie jars is not going to go over well
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 7: with them. And so I don't think they are going
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 7: to be cool with this. And there are going to
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 7: be certain cases where, again, the law is just sufficiently clear,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 7: whether we're talking about federal statutes or the Constitution and
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 7: what the the Trump administration is trying to do is
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 7: just wildly destabilizing in other ways. Like where you had
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 7: the executive branch saying, we're not actually going to spend
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 7: federal money that Congress has appropriated. Like that's horrible for
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: the rule of law, like even for finance bros. Like
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 7: it's bad when the federal government doesn't pay out money
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 7: that Congress said it would. So it's not even like
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 7: this is a big conflict of interest for them when
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 7: they're thinking about rule of law and like my rich friends.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: So the ruling that seems to have really set them
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: all off in MAGA world over the weekend came from U.S.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: District Judge Paul Engelmayer in response to a lawsuit brought
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: by state attorneys general over access to the Treasury payment system.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: The judge issued an order that said only career officials
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: who've had the proper training can access the system, not
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Elon and the doge bags. And some Trump folks interpreted
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the ruling to mean that even Treasury Secretary Scott Besant
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to access the system. Though it seems like,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: at least as of this recording, then another federal judge
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: has given the Department of Justice and the state AGs
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: some time to work out an agreement over who gets
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: access to the payment system. And the DOJ says that
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: so far, despite J.D. Vance's tweets, they are abiding by
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: the order. Is this a case where the actual legal
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: process looks different, or at least I wouldn't say it's
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: proceeding normally, but is at least proceeding on a different
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: track than the political conversations?
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 7: So the legal process is proceeding differently, I think, in
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 7: at least two ways. One is the legal system is
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 7: attempting to deal with something that is in many ways unprecedented,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 7: like the systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts that this administration
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: is doing. And so they are trying to craft these
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 7: orders right quickly. Because what they are doing, right, if
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 7: allowed to go into effect, is just going to have
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 7: these immediate profound consequences that would be difficult to reverse.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 7: And so they are being forced to proceed on a
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 7: pace that is a little bit different than the average
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 7: legal process and, you know, at a volume that, again,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 7: is a little bit different. And yes, right, they are
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 7: figuring out exactly the scope of their orders that they
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 7: are having to do, right, on a pretty tight timeline
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 7: that isn't usual for courts. And that's because the administration
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 7: put them in this position. And so I do not
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 7: take what the administration is telling courts or doing in
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 7: courts to evince a position that they think they can
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 7: deny court orders, right? They are not telling courts that, right?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 7: They are saying they are in compliance. And All of
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 7: the litigation and disagreement is about what exactly these orders
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: require right now and how courts should modify them. The
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 7: other conversation is happening more in the public sphere and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 7: political sphere. And of course, that's a huge warning sign
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 7: because who knows whether it will sift into the former.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 7: But it does seem like at least for now, they
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 7: are not adopting the express position that like, fuck it,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 7: let's just do it and be legends. And that's something. Yet.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 7: Exactly.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 5: Yet.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Well, on that note, there are some actions the Trump
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: folks have taken, like birthright citizenship, right? Which seems obviously
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: illegal or unconstitutional enough that it feels like they are
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: just throwing them out there on the chance that maybe
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: they get five justices to agree with them at some point,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: or they just want to throw it out there, right?
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Just flood the zone. Then there are examples like the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, right? Which is, they
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: know It is against the law to just eliminate an
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: independent agency that was created by Congress. So instead, they
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: just put Russ Vogt, the new OMB director, in charge
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and told everyone to stop working. How much functional dismantling
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: of the federal government do you think they can do
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: within the bounds of the law?
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 7: They can do an immense amount. And that's part of
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: why I just went ballistic when you read the title
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 7: of the op-ed that talked about the system working. Because
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 7: even if, again, courts are striking down everything that is illegal,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 7: even if the executive branch adheres to all of those decisions,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 7: there are still many, many things they can do to
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 7: hollow out the federal bureaucracy. If they put all of
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 7: these administrators on leave. If they say, we're just not
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 7: going to bring any new cases under the Consumer Financial
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 7: Protection Bureau, they are just going to allow consumer fraud
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 7: to run rampant. They're going to cause people to leave
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 7: the administration and administrative state. And it is impossible to
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 7: quickly build back up that infrastructure in the next competent,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: sane administration. And so that's part of why we are
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 7: in a constitutional crisis whether or not the executive branch
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 7: refuses to comply with court orders because they are using
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 7: their power to basically undermine our system of government, our
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 7: system of laws, trying to do it in any number
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 7: of ways, some of which might be legal, some of
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 7: which might be not, some of which courts are going
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 7: to be able to stop, and some of which courts aren't.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 7: And inevitably, when courts strike some of the more outlandish,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 7: obviously illegal policies down, I worry that that is going
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 7: to give the administration cover and the courts cover to
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 7: let other things through because it is going to present
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 7: a facade of the system working, right? And the court
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 7: will look like an independent check on an executive branch that, again,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 7: even if it respects court orders, is acting in ways
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 7: that are absolutely antithetical to a functioning constitutional democracy and
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 7: the rule of law.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: Right. And as you point out, at some point, the
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: fact that government services that people depend on and benefits
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: will be so disrupted, whether or not a court decides
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: that the administration took an action that was illegal or not,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: the results seem like they could be similar.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 7: Right, exactly. So if, for example, there's some uncertainty about
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 7: whether the federal government is actually going to give out
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 7: these payments, there are some organizations that run on a paycheck-to-paycheck,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 7: disbursement-to-disbursement basis. People's health care will be interrupted. Child care
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 7: is going to be disrupted. And even if a court
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 7: stops that later, that is not going to undo the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 7: immense harm that people will already have experienced and that
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 7: the administration is already going to be unleashing on all
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 7: of us.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Obviously, the Supreme Court has an expansive view on executive power,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: at least when it comes to Republican presidents named Donald Trump.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 7: Ding, ding, ding.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: What do we know so far about their views on
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: How much power the president can wield over the federal government,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: particularly civil servants and spending that's been appropriated by Congress?
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 7: So I think those might be two areas where the
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 7: court's views could diverge, because I think the Republican justices
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 7: have evinced the view that presidents, in their view, should
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 7: have the power to fire most people kind of within
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 7: the executive branch or at least a lot of people.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 7: And so even though the law is right now that
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 7: Congress can protect civil servants, the civil service, they can
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 7: say the heads of the Federal Trade Commission and whatnot
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 7: can't be fired without good cause. There is a decent
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 7: chance that the Supreme Court will overrule those cases and
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 7: change the law to allow Donald Trump to exert more
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 7: control over the federal bureaucracy. Now, on the issue of spending,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 7: I think that that is an instance where the court
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 7: or at least a majority of the justices are probably
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 7: going to say, no, presidents don't have the unilateral power, right,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 7: just to decline to spend money that Congress has appropriated.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 7: The constitutional text is clear, right? Congress has the power
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 7: of the purse, right? This is not ambiguous. This is
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 7: also clear from federal law, you know, after Richard Nixon
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 7: attempted to impound federal funds that Congress had appropriated. Congress
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 7: wrote a law being like, no, knock it off. You
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 7: can't do that. So these things are all pretty clear.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 7: And so I think those might be two spaces where
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 7: the court diverges. And again, that gets back to your
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 7: point where that still gives the executive branch an awful
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 7: lot of power to unleash a lot of havoc because
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 7: if they replace the civil service, civil servants, with a
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 7: bunch of 19-year-old douchebags and whatever else they're planning, the
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 7: operation of the federal government is going to be vastly undermined.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the dark place for a second.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: You may be like, we haven't been in the dark
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: place yet.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah, no, curious where this is going.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I've heard some people say, okay, in the minds
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court, they must be thinking, okay, if
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Trump just refuses... To comply with a ruling or defies
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: a court order, like what recourse does the Supreme Court have?
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: And if they think that the answer is not much
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: at all, will they in advance be wary of delivering
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: a ruling that they think Trump will defy, in which
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: case it's functionally the same thing? Yes.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 7: So a few things. There are some things that they
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 7: can do, right? They can try to hold officials in contempt.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 7: That involves basically sending out the U.S. Marshals, right, to
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 7: haul these people, you know, before the court and potentially
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 7: in jail. Slight problem with that is who controls the U.S. Marshals, right,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 7: the executive branch. Second is I think they can hope,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 7: and I think that they should hope, that there are
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 7: enough people in Congress and elsewhere who would be so
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 7: horrified by the idea that the executive branch would not
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 7: comply with an order telling the executive branch, right, just
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 7: to comply with the law, that this could actually lead
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 7: to a fissure, you know, within the Republican coalition and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 7: lead to some internal checks within the Republican Party, which
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 7: seem to be, you know, the only or a particularly
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 7: important mechanism of pushing back on Donald Trump. And so
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 7: those are some possibilities. But I think it is a
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 7: very real risk that the court is going to look
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 7: at all these cases and wonder, which ones is he
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 7: not going to listen to us on? And in fact,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 7: like if you go back to one of the very earliest,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 7: most foundational constitutional cases, Marbury versus Madison, right? That is
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 7: the case where the Supreme Court said, we can declare
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 7: an act of Congress unconstitutional and decline to enforce a
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 7: federal law. The federal government, they didn't even show up
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 7: at the Supreme Court to defend their position. And Chief
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 7: Justice Marshall and the other justices were rightfully wary about
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 7: whether the executive branch would comply with the decision. And
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 7: so he kind of wrote it such that he didn't
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 7: actually require the executive branch to do much at all,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 7: even in the course of reaffirming the court's power. And
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 7: so I think what you are positing is a very
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 7: real concern that the Supreme Court is going to be
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 7: worried about whether this executive branch is going to comply
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 7: with all of their court orders. And so maybe they
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 7: would budget their capital or at least ask on what
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 7: issues would a decision striking down what the administration has
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 7: done allow us to kind of be Aligned with, let's say,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 7: Republican senators or super majority of the American people. And maybe,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 7: you know, that is an issue or a lens that
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 7: they are approaching these cases with.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a recent potential example of this, even
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: though it may seem smaller scale, which is like it
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: seems like the Trump and the DOJ are just ignoring
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's ruling on the TikTok ban, which is
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: like they've given themselves an extension to get some kind
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: of a deal done. The law says an extension is
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: only allowed if there are already, quote, binding legal agreements
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: in place for TikTok to divest of Chinese ownership, which
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: there are not. There is not a deal in the offing.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: They're not just figuring out crossing the T's, dotting the I's,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: negotiating and need an extension for that. So is that right,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: first of all? And like, why does no one seem
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: to care about this?
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah. So it's so weird there isn't a deal because
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 7: we were told Donald Trump is the consummate dealmaker.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 6: Best dealmaker.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 7: And we'll be able to work this shit out immediately. Yeah.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 7: So I actually think that example is a little bit
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 7: different than the worst case scenario we were talking about
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 7: because the Supreme Court in that decision, what they said
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 7: is this law is constitutional. They did not purport to
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 7: require the president to do something or prohibit the president
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 7: from doing something. And so the president is not technically constitutional.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 7: in violation of the court order. Now, what he is
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 7: in violation of is the federal law itself, right? What
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 7: Congress has said. And that's, you know, going back to
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 7: what I was suggesting earlier, like that too is a
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 7: constitutional crisis. Like presidents do not have the power just
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 7: to say that federal law is optional, right? Like no
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 7: one has to listen to that one, right? That's a
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 7: problem too. But it's a little bit different than the
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 7: situation we're imagining, which is whether he would actually defy
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 7: a court order.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: And no one has brought suit saying, hey, this is
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: a law. The president is not in compliance with this law.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do about it? Like that
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: just hasn't happened yet.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 7: Exactly.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: Obviously, a lot of Americans aren't paying much attention to
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: what Trump's doing to the federal government. And I'm sure
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: one response from people to Trump trying to fire government prosecutors, lawyers,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: FBI agents who aren't loyal is, well, maybe that's bad.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: But like, you know, he's the president. Maybe he should
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: get to hire the people he wants. Can you talk
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: about why what's happening specifically at DOJ and FBI should
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: alarm someone who doesn't happen to be on Trump's enemies list?
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 7: So the Department of Justice is reportedly instituting these loyalty tests,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 7: asking people, do you believe the 2020 election is stolen
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 7: and whatnot, and using that as kind of litmus tests.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 8: And I think it.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 7: Is extremely dangerous to have a federal law enforcement apparatus
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 7: That is all loyalists, right? No people who are going
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 7: to provide any measure of dissent or counter views or
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 7: any sort of independent views. And again, I think you
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 7: just have to look at how the federal government has
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 7: been operating until now and what they are doing with
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 7: the dogebros, right? Like, do you want them to be
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 7: able to replace the people who have insured your Medicare payments, right,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 7: are issued, the people who are insuring, right, that the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 7: Medicaid system is functioning? The people who are insuring, right,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 7: the child care centers get the support that they need.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 7: The people who are insuring that student loan payments, right,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 7: actually are forgiven, like we're allowed. The people who are insuring, right,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 7: you can actually pay your taxes online, right? Those are
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 7: things that federal bureaucrats do. And if you replace all
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 7: of those people with a bunch of hacks, right, who
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 7: don't believe in government, right, and are like freshmen at
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 7: Northeastern who go by Big Balls, Like those things are
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 7: not going to get done. Like when people who are 18,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 7: like they can't even get up at 8 a.m.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: In the morning, right?
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 7: Like these are not the people, right, that you want
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 7: running the basic services that allow all of us to
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 7: function and live our lives.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or, you know, when they say things like, oh,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: don't worry, we're going to replace all of the Indian
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: Americans with AI and send them back and normalize Indian hate.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: You know, it might cause you to wonder, are they
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: going to prioritize government services for certain people and not others? Yes, indeed.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 7: You might wonder that. And, you know, that's part of
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 7: what we are seeing, right, and worried about when you
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 7: look at what Doge and they are doing as far as,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 7: you know, whittling down parts of the federal government. They
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 7: have disbanded, you know, portions of the Department of Justice
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 7: that were designed to go after Russian oligarchs, right? They
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 7: have disbanded, right, parts of the Department of Justice that
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 7: were designed to go after major corruption. And, you know,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 7: they are suspending investigations into, for example, like what Elon
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 7: Musk is up to at like SpaceX and his other companies.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 8: So, yes, right.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 7: Again, if you put in a bunch of hack loyalists
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 7: into the federal government, they are not going to be
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 7: applying the laws equally. They are not going to be
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 7: providing benefits equally. And that, too, is, again, just antithetical
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 7: to how our system is supposed to work.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: Last question. Maybe the worst thing Trump did over the
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: weekend doesn't even have to do with the law.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 7: I know what you're going to say.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: He said he was rooting for the Chiefs, praised Brittany Mahomes,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: only to then attack Taylor Swift for getting booed by
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Philly fans. I mean, I just feel like it was
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: a real bummer of a postscript on the errors tour.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Just the whole way everything ended.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 7: It was, and yet I am choosing to take a
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 7: longer view of this because one of the last people
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 7: Taylor Swift got into a major feud with was Kanye West.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 7: How's he doing now?
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: He had a tough weekend.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 7: I'm just waiting for her to pull a Kendrick Lamar
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 7: on him as her Drake.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe Reputation, Taylor's version when it comes out, will
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: have- The original was a sort of a Kanye-Kim thing.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe this will be Trump.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 7: Or this is the secret hidden album, Karma, right? Oh, yeah.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 7: Where she just unleashes karma on him.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: See, we needed to end this with some hope and optimism. Leah,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us as always. And everyone,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: go pre-order Lawless. It's out in May. And then, of course,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: if you're not already, listen to Strict Scrutiny every Monday.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks so much to Leah
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: for joining us. Dan and I will be back with
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: a new show on Friday. Bye everybody. If you want
• 1:36:38
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