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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Welcome to Breaking Points. We have a
Speaker 2: very special show this morning because we're being joined by
Speaker 2: a celebrity guest host. Tim Miller is host of the
Speaker 2: Bulwark podcast. You can find that on YouTube, and a
Speaker 2: joins us now. Great to see you, Tim.
Speaker 3: Hey, christ I'm excited to dialogue. I heard yesterday we're
Speaker 3: going to be dialoguing today, so looking.
Speaker 4: Forward to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully I'll be a little bit more engaging than
Speaker 2: I was at that particular moment yesterday. It's funny that
Speaker 2: you were WT in the show, though, no, I know,
Speaker 2: I have to be on my time.
Speaker 4: I had to do my OPO before I came on.
Speaker 5: You know, well, I read your book.
Speaker 2: I was telling you I read your book up through
Speaker 2: the elastophonic part because I just like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: I feel like like I was trying to read Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's biography and I just felt like there was too
Speaker 2: much Elon Musk in real life, and I was kind
Speaker 2: of overwhelmed by it. So that's a little bit how
Speaker 2: I felt when I got to that section of your book.
Speaker 3: I hear that totally. It's a slog for me to
Speaker 3: read political books. I try to read mostly gay fiction
Speaker 3: or like autocratic history, which is a little bit close
Speaker 3: to our reality.
Speaker 4: But that's what I'm reading now.
Speaker 3: So I'm with you, and I give you dispensation for
Speaker 3: quitting the book during the early sephonics section.
Speaker 2: Well, you can fill me and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: to you a little bit about the book, which I
Speaker 2: love the title you called it, why we did it
Speaker 2: in a little OJ nod there, about your years as
Speaker 2: a Republican hatchetman and how you sort of transitioned and
Speaker 2: you know, ended up where you are, and also you
Speaker 2: dig into the person types that really populate this town.
Speaker 2: And this is not necessarily a writer or a left thing,
Speaker 2: but the type of mindset that political operatives can get
Speaker 2: in and end up justifying things, and that you yourself talked about.
Speaker 2: You know, you were a compartmentalizer, how you justified flacking
Speaker 2: for politicians who are anti gay even as you yourself
Speaker 2: were a gay man. So I want to talk to
Speaker 2: you about all of that stuff, and then we got
Speaker 2: a bunch of news stories to get through. I want
Speaker 2: to get your take on the China trade war, on
Speaker 2: the latest failures at Newark Airport. Seohn Duffey knows exactly
Speaker 2: who to blame, it's definitely not him. I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about some Democratic Party stuff too, with
Speaker 2: David Hogg and the back and forth with regarding Jim Clyburn.
Speaker 2: There's some news out this morning from that Alex Thompson
Speaker 2: Jake Tapper book too, about how Staffords were concerned Biden
Speaker 2: would be so physically frail that he may have to
Speaker 2: use a wheelchair were he to be re elected. And
Speaker 2: then was say goodbye to you unfortunately, because you have
Speaker 2: other things to do with your life as well, and
Speaker 2: David started going to join.
Speaker 5: To talk about Trump's fake prescription.
Speaker 2: Drug executive order, and I'm going to talk about Hassan
Speaker 2: Piker being detained for hours and grilled about his political
Speaker 2: views at the airport.
Speaker 5: Did you catch that story? I was wondering if you
Speaker 5: had a no.
Speaker 3: I I'm excited to watch your segment on it because
Speaker 3: I saw like he sent a tweet or whatever about it,
Speaker 3: and I guess he was grilled. But I have not
Speaker 3: heard all the details that I'm very intrigued to know
Speaker 3: because I'm the immigration stuff. To me on a list
Speaker 3: of things that I'm not thrilled about from the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: just the treatment of folks, especially over I'm not a
Speaker 3: big Hassan fan, right especially, but like the idea that
Speaker 3: we are going to grill people over their political activism
Speaker 3: in this country or jail somebody over and outbed insane.
Speaker 3: So I'll tune in for it even I'm checking out perfect.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and get to the latest
Speaker 2: with regard to Trump's trade war. As you guys know,
Speaker 2: we covered yesterday that he backed off some of the
Speaker 2: largest tariffs that had been levied against China. Yes and
Speaker 2: press conference, he explained his view of what's going on here,
Speaker 2: let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 6: In addition, yesterday we achieved a total reset with China
Speaker 6: after productive talks in Geneva. Both sides now agreed to
Speaker 6: reduce the tariffs imposed after April second to ten percent
Speaker 6: for ninety days as negotiators continue in the largest structural issues.
Speaker 6: And I want to tell you that a couple of things.
Speaker 6: First of all, that doesn't include the tariffs that are
Speaker 6: already on that are our tariffs, And it doesn't include
Speaker 6: tariffs on cars, steel, aluminum, things such as that, or
Speaker 6: tariffs that may be imposed on pharmaceuticals, because we want
Speaker 6: to bring the pharmaceutical businesses back to the United States
Speaker 6: and they're already starting to come back now based on tariffs.
Speaker 2: So, Tim, I saw you fighting with Stephen Miller yesterday
Speaker 2: online over all of this.
Speaker 5: So I mean, what is your view of what's unfolded here?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it's a reduction of tariffs from trade
Speaker 3: embargo that he had put in place that had I
Speaker 3: don't think any really achievable end or objective moving the
Speaker 3: tariffs up to one hundred and forty five percent. And
Speaker 3: then it's like the dear leader is granted you relief.
Speaker 3: We're down to thirty percent now, but but the tariff
Speaker 3: on Chinese goods before he came in was ten percent.
Speaker 3: So now we have a twenty percentage point or three
Speaker 3: hundred percent increase on the amount of tariffs that consumers
Speaker 3: are going to pay. So you know, if you're a
Speaker 3: new mother or new parent, new father that is buying
Speaker 3: a stroller or a car seat that has components made
Speaker 3: in China, that's going to cost you're gonna have to
Speaker 3: pay a thirty percent tax on that that you wouldn't
Speaker 3: have had to last year. So I mean, this is
Speaker 3: this stuff is going to cost more for working people.
Speaker 3: Steven Miller's pushback to me on this was that, like,
Speaker 3: I want all manufacturing to happen in Asia, which I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm supportive of American manufacturing. There's a lot of ways
Speaker 3: to encourage manufacturing here in America. I don't think a
Speaker 3: totally insane trade war that is haphazard, that doesn't have
Speaker 3: clear objectives. Where the numbers it's thirty one day, then
Speaker 3: it's eighty, then it's one hundred and forty, then then
Speaker 3: it's seventy. Now it's down to thirty again. How is
Speaker 3: that helping to create a manufacturing in America. If anything,
Speaker 3: that's creating uncertainty for businesses that might want to open
Speaker 3: a plant here. Manufacturing was down in April, according to
Speaker 3: you know, the government's kind of assessments. We had to
Speaker 3: slow down to manufacturing, which isn't surprising again because there
Speaker 3: was all this uncertainty out there. So I don't you know, look,
Speaker 3: if we had to do targeted tariffs on microchips or
Speaker 3: on certain pharmaceuticals because we don't want to be reliant
Speaker 3: on China, could we could talk about that. I'm open
Speaker 3: to that, But like this like just sort of totally
Speaker 3: haphazard teriff regime has been a disaster, and the evidence
Speaker 3: of the disasters that they've had to walk down from
Speaker 3: it's without getting any con.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's there's so much there because you know,
Speaker 2: his supporters keep going back and forth from like, oh,
Speaker 2: these this vast terror regime is going to create all
Speaker 2: these manufacturing jobs, which to your point is not true,
Speaker 2: at least not in the short to medium term. We
Speaker 2: already see manufacturing investment declining. And then they when he
Speaker 2: rolls the terraces back then it's oh, it's art of
Speaker 2: the deal. He got all these great concessions. There's not
Speaker 2: even anything that's like face saving in this. They talked
Speaker 2: some about Fentanel. That's the most that we got out
Speaker 2: of this. In the meantime, you know, you've had all
Speaker 2: this chaos, all all this uncertainty. Small and medium sized businesses,
Speaker 2: some of those are not going to be able to
Speaker 2: make it through this period. We still have quite significant
Speaker 2: teriff increase on China. We still have him saying in
Speaker 2: ninety days we may revisit this. So you still have
Speaker 2: this climate of vast uncertainty. And to your point, one
Speaker 2: of the things that drives me crazy here is like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not a total laissez faire free trader.
Speaker 2: I'm open to some protectionist policies. In fact, I think
Speaker 2: what the Biden administration did well, I had critiques of
Speaker 2: them in other areas.
Speaker 5: All trade actually worked.
Speaker 2: Was you know, having the intended impact and was bringing
Speaker 2: back those manufacturing jobs that the Trump administration claims to
Speaker 2: care about. And instead they've taken a hatchet to some
Speaker 2: of the most effective legislation and tools that were passed
Speaker 2: during the Biden administration to actually effectuate the outcome that
Speaker 2: they claim to want and which gets me to you know,
Speaker 2: you raised the in your exchange with Steve Miller. You
Speaker 2: kept referring to Trump as like the dear leader. And
Speaker 2: they float all of these different potential reasons for the terariffs. Oh,
Speaker 2: the terarifts are going to pay down the debt. Oh,
Speaker 2: the tariffs are going to bring back manufacturing jobs. Oh,
Speaker 2: the tariff's going to like make the dollar weaker. Oh,
Speaker 2: the terrorists are going to rebalance trade global All these different,
Speaker 2: sometimes contradictory by the way, potential goals and impacts of
Speaker 2: the tariffs. But I've always thought the real core of this,
Speaker 2: at least visa vi Trump is just he likes the
Speaker 2: power of it.
Speaker 5: He likes to have everything centered around him.
Speaker 2: He likes to be able to go in and say,
Speaker 2: you get your you know, you have to.
Speaker 5: And petition the king, and you get your low carve out.
Speaker 2: Every country in the world is going to have to
Speaker 2: come to me and on bended me and have to
Speaker 2: make a deal with me, et cetera. And so while
Speaker 2: there may be these other ancillary goals or different people
Speaker 2: in the administration, we have different ideas about what the tariffs
Speaker 2: are supposed to achieve. I really think for Trump, it's
Speaker 2: just part of his broader power play for sure.
Speaker 3: And I am probably more definitely not probably more sympathetic
Speaker 3: to you than you to free market. Lais a fair economics.
Speaker 3: And so this is why to me, it's insane that
Speaker 3: it's like only Ran Paul of the ostensible free market
Speaker 3: Republicans that have pushed back on this, and this is
Speaker 3: Trump wants us to be a state managed economy. To
Speaker 3: your point, That's why I was joking with Steven Miller
Speaker 3: calling him Chairman Trump and jear leader Trump.
Speaker 4: That's what he wants. He wants to waive, you know, sign.
Speaker 3: An executive order and I'll set the rates for prescription
Speaker 3: drugs and signings, and I'll check the rate for how
Speaker 3: much people pay for our soybeans, and you know how
Speaker 3: much we pay for the upp of babies that are
Speaker 3: coming in.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: It is the opposite of any pre market economic principles
Speaker 3: that these guys are put that are instituting. And again,
Speaker 3: like there are certain moments, there are certain industries that
Speaker 3: might call for this. We can have we can have
Speaker 3: negotiations about this, but like that's how the American system
Speaker 3: is supposed to work.
Speaker 4: Like Congress is supposed to have out of the purse.
Speaker 3: There isn't supposed to be a aspiring autocrat puts his
Speaker 3: finger on his tongue and decides what the tax rate
Speaker 3: is going to be on various products, and you know,
Speaker 3: just back to like the working people side of this,
Speaker 3: just or small businesses. One example, I'm met a woman
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago. I was at jamz Fest
Speaker 3: and she comes out to me and she's like, here
Speaker 3: in New Orleans, she owns this chotski shop of tourists
Speaker 3: touristy goods, you know, beads and other kind of marty
Speaker 3: gross stuff you would wanted to go to New Orleans.
Speaker 3: It's been here for sixty five years. A lot of
Speaker 3: their stuff comes from China. And she's like, my business
Speaker 3: is gonna shudder over these tariffs, Like I certainly can't
Speaker 3: afford a hundred twenty five percent. Maybe they can survive
Speaker 3: thirty percent, but on these little goods, that's still going
Speaker 3: to be a huge increase in cost for her. That
Speaker 3: is a small business. You know, that is not one
Speaker 3: of these oligarchs that can get a carve out from Trump,
Speaker 3: and they're going to be screwed over this, and there's
Speaker 3: no rationale for doing it. I mean, does Trump and
Speaker 3: Stephen Miller want us to be manufacturing Marty grambiads here
Speaker 3: in America like little chotchkes? Is that the key chains
Speaker 3: that's the future of our economy. It's crazy And so
Speaker 3: you know, look, I think that obviously the incentive of
Speaker 3: this is that Trump wants the power, but the ramifications
Speaker 3: I think are going to be very real for people
Speaker 3: who are kind of outside the corridors of power, who
Speaker 3: can't you know, get the Tim Cook carve out.
Speaker 2: So to your point about Rand Paul, he was on
Speaker 2: with Jesse Waters leveling some I would say relatively pild,
Speaker 2: but still a criticism which is noteworthy at this point
Speaker 2: from the Republican Party. Let's go ahead and take a
Speaker 2: listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 7: If he succeeds in lowering tariffs and lessening the obstacles
Speaker 7: to trade, I'll be right there. I think it's unknown.
Speaker 7: With China, we started out at one hundred and forty
Speaker 7: five percent, then we went to eighty percent. Now we're
Speaker 7: at thirty percent. But that's thirty percent more than we
Speaker 7: have on currently, So this will be a thirty percent
Speaker 7: rise in any goods who are coming from China, and
Speaker 7: somebody will pay that, it will be the consumer. If
Speaker 7: the consumer's happy to pay more when they go to
Speaker 7: Walmart or more when they go to Target in order
Speaker 7: to get fairness or to teach China lesson, then so
Speaker 7: be it. But the proof is in the pudding. We'll
Speaker 7: see what happens over the next six months to a year,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 2: Going into Trump two point zero, I saw a lot
Speaker 2: of I would call it cope from the Wall Street
Speaker 2: types and from you know, the total free trade Republican types, who.
Speaker 5: Said some of it was, oh, you know, this is.
Speaker 2: Just campaign trail talk and it won't be any big deal.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the terror regime that he put in
Speaker 2: place was way larger than what he ever floated on
Speaker 2: the campaign trail.
Speaker 5: And the other thing that I heard.
Speaker 2: A lot was well, he's going to use these tariffs
Speaker 2: to actually negotiate to have zero tariffs, so it's going
Speaker 2: to achieve more of a free trade, you know, a
Speaker 2: free trade regime than we had previously. And I'm just
Speaker 2: curious from your years inside the right and knowing some
Speaker 2: of these individuals and the staffers and the dark money
Speaker 2: groups that are involved et cetera. Are you surprised that
Speaker 2: it's just Ran Paul effectively who has anything to say
Speaker 2: about the complete insanity of the way that this has unfolded.
Speaker 3: And if you would have asked twenty seventeen, Tim, I
Speaker 3: would have said, yeah, I'm surprised. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 3: surprised that people went along, but that there are so
Speaker 3: few who didn't.
Speaker 4: It was surprising to me at the start of this.
Speaker 3: I've been pretty beaten down by a decade, and frankly,
Speaker 3: I'm pleasantly surprised that Ran Paul is on Fox doing
Speaker 3: this rather than just kind of sending out one press
Speaker 3: release and checking the box. So good on him for
Speaker 3: doing some economics education on primetime Fox. But no, look
Speaker 3: I don't I do. I guess I was more surprised
Speaker 3: about the business community a little bit, because they don't
Speaker 3: have I understand. And if you are a writer for
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal editorial page, or you are a
Speaker 3: staffer at the Manhattan Institute, or you work for one
Speaker 3: of these superbacks or lobbying firms, right like your your
Speaker 3: career is tied up in finding out post talk rationalizations
Speaker 3: for whatever the Republican Party is doing. And arguing for them, right.
Speaker 3: I've been kind of surprised that the business community hasn't
Speaker 3: pushed back on this harder because if you just can
Speaker 3: you imagine and you almost hate to do those games.
Speaker 3: It's so cliche at this point. But had Obama put
Speaker 3: in place a unilateral ten percent across the board tax
Speaker 3: on every good coming from around the world, thirty percent
Speaker 3: on China, something that is practically speaking, the largest tax
Speaker 3: increase in either of our lifetimes, yeah, like the business
Speaker 3: community would have been their hair would be on fire.
Speaker 3: I mean, like Obama.
Speaker 2: Would be might have been a coup, Let's be honest,
Speaker 2: I'm not even kidding. I mean, or if this was
Speaker 2: like President Bernie Sanders, like forget it would be removed
Speaker 2: from office weeks ago.
Speaker 3: CNBC would be like, you know, one of those you know,
Speaker 3: like chaos scenes from a cafeteria in a nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: moved people are throwing chairs, like throwing desserts at each other,
Speaker 3: and CNBC would be on fire right now. And so
Speaker 3: these guys have rationalized this in a way that I
Speaker 3: think is only because of the Team Jersey.
Speaker 2: I think it's also tim because he is so dictatorial,
Speaker 2: and because businesses are They do want their car ounce right.
Speaker 2: They do want to be able to go pay their
Speaker 2: million or five million dollars and go down tomorrow Lago
Speaker 2: and make their case. And they want him to take
Speaker 2: their calls and get their little exemption so that they
Speaker 2: can survive the slings and arrows.
Speaker 5: I think that's the other thing, because.
Speaker 2: You see, you know, you see the way, even when
Speaker 2: they do try to criticize, they'll front load it with like, Oh,
Speaker 2: you're so amazing, You're so brilliant, this is so incredible,
Speaker 2: you're such a genius, and certainly in all of your glory,
Speaker 2: you'll understand why maybe we need a ninety day pause, please, sir,
Speaker 2: you know, and free in terms of or the other
Speaker 2: go to move that I see a lot is it's
Speaker 2: never Trump's fault. It's like, oh, some staffer has misled
Speaker 2: you and they're undermining.
Speaker 5: You, dear sir.
Speaker 2: So I think it's it's number one the team Jersey,
Speaker 2: certainly for the Republicans, I think for the business community,
Speaker 2: because the bottom line is the bottom line. They see
Speaker 2: it as in their best interest to suck up to
Speaker 2: this guy and overtly bribe him in certain instances as
Speaker 2: much as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Lutnick's fault, right exactly, like what And I
Speaker 3: do think that, you know, the rationalization element is powerful.
Speaker 3: You know, you saw the folks. It's like your co hosts,
Speaker 3: there's folks on the nationalist side. They're like, we wanted
Speaker 3: the tariffs, like this is what he's going to do.
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile, the free marketers and the Ted cruz
Speaker 3: Is the Wall Street journals are like, this is all
Speaker 3: a big game to get down to zero. And I
Speaker 3: think that's part of Trump's political power, which maybe some
Speaker 3: Democrats could learn from, is it's actually good to be
Speaker 3: a little bit vague and to allow people to project
Speaker 3: their own hopes and dreams onto you. And so I
Speaker 3: do think that's a political strength for him. But again
Speaker 3: I don't I do. I do kind of blame the
Speaker 3: rich guys a little bit on all this. Maybe now
Speaker 3: I'm going to sound like the former Republican who's being radicalized.
Speaker 3: But it's like, you really were that scared about a
Speaker 3: two percent increase in the taxes? I mean, wasn't exactly
Speaker 3: trying to push forth, you know, some nineteen seventies tax regime.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, think about how much money you
Speaker 3: could lose, you know, from the economic instability if you're rich.
Speaker 3: I just would have thought that the rational capitalists like
Speaker 3: take would have been to a post Trump because of
Speaker 3: the the you'd rather pay two more percent in taxes,
Speaker 3: you know, in exchange for just having some economic stability
Speaker 3: and having grown ups you know, in charge.
Speaker 4: But I guess not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted their tax cut and they just chose
Speaker 2: to mentally discount everything else. And yeah, I mean you
Speaker 2: make such a good point. We let's put a three
Speaker 2: up on the screen. You can see, like the stock
Speaker 2: market surge a thousand points, and it's up twenty percent
Speaker 2: from its prior lows. It's still lower than it was
Speaker 2: in January when he was inaugurated. And also, by the way,
Speaker 2: you know, the odds of recession have also gone down,
Speaker 2: but are still significantly higher than they were. And all
Speaker 2: to accomplish at this point nothing but like pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: But you know, to the Wall Street point, I think
Speaker 2: there's a few things to say there.
Speaker 5: A number one.
Speaker 2: I think it was Joe Wisenthal who made the point of,
Speaker 2: you know, if you pulled Wall streeterers, like would you
Speaker 2: rather have a Bernie Sanders style millionaire attacks or would
Speaker 2: you rather have all this, They would all prefer.
Speaker 5: The Millionaire Attact.
Speaker 2: So not even like the Kamala Harris more moderate, like
Speaker 2: just you know, oh, we might do a little bit
Speaker 2: of raining in price gouging, which was the most radical
Speaker 2: thing she proposed on the campaign trail, and there was
Speaker 2: a whole melt down from the Stephen Millers and the
Speaker 2: Trumps of the world about price controls, et cetera. Not
Speaker 2: even that, like even a more maximalist lefty position would
Speaker 2: have to be vastly superior to the economic carnage and
Speaker 2: chaos that Trump is creating here. And I do have
Speaker 2: to say, like I'm not a the stock market is
Speaker 2: beyond me. I think a lot of it's just based
Speaker 2: on like vibes and feelings and emotions.
Speaker 5: And I think that's pretty.
Speaker 2: Apparent by the fact that, you know, you have such
Speaker 2: a huge rebound when you still have thirty percent tariffs
Speaker 2: imposed on China. Like if we just started with that,
Speaker 2: there would have been a huge freak out about that.
Speaker 2: But because you start at one forty five, or you
Speaker 2: get to one forty five and then you back off,
Speaker 2: then there's gleean celebration on Wall Street. I still feel
Speaker 2: like they're underestimating the impact that this is going to cause.
Speaker 2: And we saw this sum in COVID the way that
Speaker 2: you know, when things get messed up, it takes a
Speaker 2: while for them to get ironed out. We saw the
Speaker 2: way that you know, four percentage points of inflation, how
Speaker 2: dire that was for American consumers. And now you're talking
Speaker 2: about a ten percent at the best kind of across
Speaker 2: the board tariff around the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I once again we agree, Chris, We're going to
Speaker 3: find something to fight about in a little bit. But
Speaker 3: the uh, I think that the kind of day trader
Speaker 3: types like the volatility, right, so it's good for them,
Speaker 3: Like the hedgehung guys like the volatility is in a
Speaker 3: certain band, they can time the market well.
Speaker 2: Especially the ones who are talking to the Trump administration
Speaker 2: and getting inside tips about when they're going to spike
Speaker 2: the market, et cetera, which I definitely think is happening.
Speaker 3: Absolutely it is happening. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: like the biggest companies are insulated, right, you know again
Speaker 3: the Googles and the Apples, right, and so that's driving
Speaker 3: also a lot of the prices going up. A lot
Speaker 3: of these big tech companies are insulated from this. So
Speaker 3: you know, I think that the pain is going to
Speaker 3: be seen elsewhere, and I also agree there's gonna be
Speaker 3: delayed pain. Look, I've justin Wolfers, the economist, on the
Speaker 3: board pod today and it's like there's a delay in
Speaker 3: you know, there will still be a delay in getting
Speaker 3: stuff under the shelves. So there'll be some stuff that
Speaker 3: is missing because you know, it takes a while to
Speaker 3: get for ships to get across the ocean, and then
Speaker 3: now we're going to have a pile up, you know,
Speaker 3: like we saw post COVID at the ports, because folks
Speaker 3: are going to try to get stuff in just in case,
Speaker 3: you know, Donald Trump's feelings get hurt by something some
Speaker 3: random you know, Chinese diplomat says and he decides, okay,
Speaker 3: we're back up to ninety percent, right, like you want
Speaker 3: to get the you know, the material in while you
Speaker 3: at least know it's only going to be thirty percent
Speaker 3: rather than more. So you know, it has caused it's
Speaker 3: going to cause a lot of just ruption. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: not the worst case scenario, which I guess is good. Right,
Speaker 3: I'm not out here for a recession where everybody, you know,
Speaker 3: where regular people suffer, but like there's still going to
Speaker 3: be real pain. And again, like he was handed in
Speaker 3: an economy that was not perfect but was directionally pretty good.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was laughing at you know, Ross Doubt
Speaker 3: at the New York Conservative New York Times College the
Speaker 3: other day. That was like that was like Trump was
Speaker 3: delivered a pretty good economy that he had a chance
Speaker 3: to build on. And I was like, were you guys
Speaker 3: saying that last year? I don't remember that. I don't remember.
Speaker 5: I don't know what she got till us gone to Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I mean he was delivered like
Speaker 3: what there was two three percent growth and we just
Speaker 3: they zeroed it out in one quarter over this dumb
Speaker 3: trade war. So you know, I don't it's I definitely
Speaker 3: think we might not be in worst case scenario. But
Speaker 3: I also think that people are a little sanguine because,
Speaker 3: like you said, it takes time for this stuff to uh,
Speaker 3: not to trigger your hair, crystal, but to trickle down
Speaker 3: through the through the economy.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on to the dire state of
Speaker 2: our nation's airports, the center of which has been Newark Airport,
Speaker 2: which is I mean, it's just it's so disturbing and
Speaker 2: terrifying that things you used to be able to take
Speaker 2: for granted, like being able to fly on an airplane
Speaker 2: without it crashing and you know, fiery wreckish or running
Speaker 2: into another airplane, are just not things you can really
Speaker 2: take for granted anymore. Let's put this tear sheet up
Speaker 2: on the screen. I don't know if you've seen this
Speaker 2: latest reporting of the New York Times. They're saying that,
Speaker 2: in addition to the multiple equipment failures that we just
Speaker 2: experienced at Newark Airport over the past week and a half,
Speaker 2: they on Monday had three controllers on duty. The goal
Speaker 2: is fourteen. Let me read you a little bit of
Speaker 2: this report. They say as few as three air traffic
Speaker 2: controllers scheduled to work on Monday evening at the facility
Speaker 2: guiding planes to and from Newark International Airport. The FAA said,
Speaker 2: far fewer than the target of fourteen controllers. The staffing
Speaker 2: crisis added strain into an already troubled aviation system, with
Speaker 2: flights to Newark delayed by as much as seven hours
Speaker 2: on Monday because of that shortage. That FAA said in
Speaker 2: the statement it had at least three controllers scheduled every
Speaker 2: hour on Monday evening, but four people familiar with problems
Speaker 2: at the airport said the number of fully certified controllers
Speaker 2: on duty was at times one or two. Staffing shortages
Speaker 2: affected flights at the airport for much of the day,
Speaker 2: forcing the FAA to hold up incoming flights from taking off.
Speaker 2: The delays primarily affected flights coming to Newark from the
Speaker 2: contiguous US and parts of Canada, lasted on average more
Speaker 2: than an hour and forty minutes and up to almost
Speaker 2: seven hours, according to an online FAA advisory. So on
Speaker 2: top of that, as we know, and we'll talk about
Speaker 2: a little bit more, there were multiple three different equipment
Speaker 2: failures complete failures at Newark Airport. Sean Duffy, the head
Speaker 2: of Transportation, is trying to spin and miss and redirect
Speaker 2: the blame anywhere he possibly can, and he thinks he's
Speaker 2: found the culprit.
Speaker 5: Let's go ahead and take a listen to him.
Speaker 8: We've all been reporting and seeing what's happening at Newark Airport,
Speaker 8: and I think it is clear that the blame belongs
Speaker 8: with the last administration. People to judge and Joe Biden
Speaker 8: did nothing to fix the system that they knew was broken.
Speaker 5: Your thoughts him.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't want to pretend to be an
Speaker 3: expert on the air traffic controlling system.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure that the Biden.
Speaker 3: He is an actor, a reality show actor at least,
Speaker 3: so like, could the Biden administration have done more stuff
Speaker 3: on this?
Speaker 4: Maybe? I don't know, but I.
Speaker 3: Think the important context here is that we're just going
Speaker 3: through a period where Elon Musk is going to the
Speaker 3: government running roughshot and randomly cutting a bunch of employees
Speaker 3: like based on essentially nothing like not based on performance,
Speaker 3: but just based on whether their employment what their employment
Speaker 3: status was, you know, or based on whether they had
Speaker 3: a DEI description and in their job description, right, And
Speaker 3: so I think that, you know, these guys need to
Speaker 3: take responsibility for what's happening.
Speaker 4: They're in charge.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 3: It's been a while, it's I guess it's only been
Speaker 3: three and a half months. It feels longer, but I
Speaker 3: do think it's their responsibility. And I just want to say,
Speaker 3: like as the whatever former Republican stand in here, like
Speaker 3: there is something to be said for like we want
Speaker 3: to make more efficient government. We want to make sure
Speaker 3: that we're not bloated, that we're not wasting people's money.
Speaker 3: I'm for all that, but is air traffic controllers the
Speaker 3: right place for that?
Speaker 4: I mean, that seems like a.
Speaker 3: Pretty essential service, and it is. And for me, somebody
Speaker 3: that actually cares about this stuff thinks that our debt
Speaker 3: is out of control, thinks it's crazy that we're paying
Speaker 3: one hundred million a month and interested in our debt.
Speaker 3: They're not even doing it. They're not achieving anything on this,
Speaker 3: Like the guys in the hill. Simultaneously to what all
Speaker 3: of this disaster happening at Newark, the Republicans on the
Speaker 3: Hill are proposing a tax bill and a budget bill
Speaker 3: that's going to add twenty trillion into the debt over
Speaker 3: the next ten years. So we are cutting all these
Speaker 3: people and putting ourselves at risk, putting our own citizens
Speaker 3: at risk who are flying around the country because we
Speaker 3: don't have enough air traffic controllers in service of nothing.
Speaker 3: It's just like the tariff situation. It's like it'd be
Speaker 3: one thing if we had, if there was the objective
Speaker 3: was being met, you know, And we are building more
Speaker 3: manufacturing plants here, we are cutting the debt down. I mean,
Speaker 3: I still don't think it probably would be worth it
Speaker 3: to cut the debt to have only one air traffic
Speaker 3: controller on a new or exact it would be one
Speaker 3: thing if we were actually achieving the objective. But they're
Speaker 3: not doing that. They're going to add to the debt
Speaker 3: and they're cutting people just again I think, in service
Speaker 3: of power and wanting to make sure they have political loyalty.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, the most obvious place to cut is the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: and they're increasing the Pentagon budget. They want a trillion
Speaker 2: dollar Pentagon budget. Cutting various government staffers is actually going
Speaker 2: to end up costing you money, you know, especially in
Speaker 2: a place like if you think of the most clear
Speaker 2: cut example is the IRS, where you know, if you're
Speaker 2: slashing and burning the IRS, guess what, you're not going
Speaker 2: to be able to collect as much tax revenue from,
Speaker 2: especially rich tax chiefs because they're the hardest ones to
Speaker 2: go after because they've got lawyers and tax shelters, and
Speaker 2: so it requires more resources. And so yeah, you're going
Speaker 2: to end up actually spending more money after you cut
Speaker 2: and fire all this workforce. And to your point, you know,
Speaker 2: they did fire hundreds of FAA employees. Now they swear, oh,
Speaker 2: they had nothing to do with safety, But if you
Speaker 2: talk to the actual the air traffic controls, the people
Speaker 2: that work at the agency. They say, just because they're
Speaker 2: not like directly an air traffic controller doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: they're not an important support for that system. So that's
Speaker 2: point number one, point number two RUSS voting on the
Speaker 2: project twenty twenty five. People like Carters Jarvin, who's one
Speaker 2: of the you know, intellectual I guess architects of this
Speaker 2: argv as skare quotes very much merited. Their whole program
Speaker 2: is to traumatize federal government employees. So you go in
Speaker 2: with an agenda explicitly stated of traumatizing all federal government
Speaker 2: employees and then lo and behold, you have a staffing
Speaker 2: crisis that is causing massive safety risks for the American people,
Speaker 2: and you want to wash your hands of it, like sorry,
Speaker 2: you don't get to you don't get to. And the
Speaker 2: other piece of this is, you know, this goes to
Speaker 2: sort of like a broader ideological point, which is everybody
Speaker 2: hates government until you want to like land your plane safely,
Speaker 2: and then suddenly you would like there to be air
Speaker 2: traffic controllers. You were like there to be a new
Speaker 2: system in place so that the copper wiring isn't like,
Speaker 2: you know, burning out and causing the radars to go
Speaker 2: out for you know, for long periods of time. And
Speaker 2: I do think that Republicans have had obviously the most
Speaker 2: sort of vigorous just across the board anti government ideology,
Speaker 2: but it is also something that Democrats starting dabbling with
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter, but really starting with Clinton, embraced as well.
Speaker 2: You know, Bill Clinton famously like the Arab big government
Speaker 2: is over. And I think that that assault on government,
Speaker 2: which has stripped government capacity and made it so the
Speaker 2: government is less effective and is actually less efficient at
Speaker 2: delivering services to people, creates a sort of doom loop
Speaker 2: where then because government isn't working, then it justifies more
Speaker 2: cuts to government. And next thing, you know, you're here
Speaker 2: at this situation where there is a chronic staffing crisis.
Speaker 2: And it does, in fairness to Sean Duffy, it actually
Speaker 2: does predate the Trump administration.
Speaker 5: They've just exacerbated and made it worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a couple of things, and that one they
Speaker 3: definitely are trying to try to intimidate people to get
Speaker 3: them to quit. I mean, getting people to self deport
Speaker 3: from the government was like a stated objective of what
Speaker 3: they're doing with DOJ and I also agree with you
Speaker 3: in addition to the IRS just on the costs. The
Speaker 3: way they did it was illegal, So a lot of
Speaker 3: the people they ran out of government, you know, are
Speaker 3: going to end up suing the government and getting back
Speaker 3: pay for not working. So that's not efficiency, right, So
Speaker 3: I don't you know, again, I don't know how many
Speaker 3: of the people that quit, if any, were actually air
Speaker 3: traffic controllers. But the idea that they are trying to
Speaker 3: push people out of the federal workforce rather than recruit
Speaker 3: the best US people, that is just their own stated objective.
Speaker 3: And you know, look, when it comes to that broader
Speaker 3: mission of undermining government that you're talking about, I'm more
Speaker 3: sympathetic to out than you are. I still think that
Speaker 3: there's a bloat in the federal government. You talk to
Speaker 3: anybody that works in the federal government, they'll say there is,
Speaker 3: by the way, you talk to anybody that works any
Speaker 3: big organization, they'll say, we've got bloat.
Speaker 4: In our organization.
Speaker 3: But to me, the right thing to do is to
Speaker 3: balance that with how do we modernize it, how do
Speaker 3: we actually make it more efficient? Not like fake nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, efficient like doge right, and the Obama administration
Speaker 3: actually puts some effort into this, maybe not as enough.
Speaker 3: And I mean that's like the craziest thing about Trump
Speaker 3: surrounding himself with all these tech geniuses.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's got Elon.
Speaker 3: Who who I hate, but say what you want about him,
Speaker 3: like figure it out better than the existing companies, you know,
Speaker 3: how to get the low orbit satellites going so that
Speaker 3: people can have Wi Fi. I mean, he wasn't like
Speaker 3: the inventor of that, but his company was able to
Speaker 3: do it. Marky Andreesen, who's around Trump, literally was the
Speaker 3: inventor of Netscape, the browser.
Speaker 4: So he's got all these tech.
Speaker 3: Bros who've come around to him and rather than you know,
Speaker 3: using their expertise to figure out, how can we make
Speaker 3: the government more efficient, how can we make services better,
Speaker 3: how can we perform at a higher rate, Like they
Speaker 3: decided to take a blowdors to the place and now
Speaker 3: and then they want to wash their hands of it
Speaker 3: when there are problems associated with that. And to me,
Speaker 3: I think that's the craziest.
Speaker 4: Part about it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they I mean, it's much easier to destroy
Speaker 2: than to build, you know, And I think you see
Speaker 2: this in real time. Like I think Sean Duffy genuinely
Speaker 2: would like to improve the air Draven control system at
Speaker 2: this point, but that's you know, building out and refurbishing
Speaker 2: the system that actually will take a congressional appropriation. You're
Speaker 2: going to have to deal with Congress. It's going to
Speaker 2: take time, it's going to take money, et cetera. Whereas
Speaker 2: just Elon Musk coming in with the chainsaw and not
Speaker 2: caring that it was unconstitutional and let the courts catch
Speaker 2: up after the fact, like that's much easier to do.
Speaker 2: The reality for these guys, I think Andresen and Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and Peter Thiel and those types is they want
Speaker 2: to completely defenestrate government so it can't regulate their businesses,
Speaker 2: so that they can do whatever they want without getting
Speaker 2: hamstrung by like oh I discriminated and now the Department
Speaker 2: of Laborer is mad at me, or oh my Tesla
Speaker 2: auto driving didn't really work that well, and now you
Speaker 2: know people have been killed.
Speaker 5: In a car crash and I'm having to answer to
Speaker 5: the federal government.
Speaker 2: They want to get all of that out of the way,
Speaker 2: and especially in the context of you know, both of
Speaker 2: these guys are major players in terms of the rapid
Speaker 2: development acceleration of AI. And that really, I think is
Speaker 2: a big part of their motivation is they want just
Speaker 2: total wild West, no regulatory regime whatsoever when it comes
Speaker 2: to AI. So it serves the interest of this specific
Speaker 2: handful of oligarchs, and.
Speaker 5: That really is their goal.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you go back to the FDR era,
Speaker 2: you had a bunch of industrials and industrialists who were
Speaker 2: engaged in the government.
Speaker 5: And this is the point that roconomkes.
Speaker 2: They were engaged in the government in service of building
Speaker 2: out capacity and actually making the government work better and
Speaker 2: deliver more for.
Speaker 5: The American people.
Speaker 2: And here you have a complete reverse And they'll even
Speaker 2: describe it this way, Frankly, the Curtis we talk.
Speaker 4: About doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they and they actively talk about wanting to do
Speaker 2: a reverse FDR that strips down the capacity of the
Speaker 2: government and traumatizes those federal government employees so that oligarchs
Speaker 2: can have more control and can operate with total and
Speaker 2: complete impunity.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, and you could imagine an alternate universe, you know,
Speaker 3: bizarro world where you had Elon Muskin marking and Dreesen
Speaker 3: in there grabbing the best people from Silicon Valley and
Speaker 3: figuring out how do we modernize our FAA system, Like
Speaker 3: how do we figure out how we can get the
Speaker 3: ACELA to go from DC to New York faster than
Speaker 3: you know, three hours and forty five minutes or however
Speaker 3: long it takes now, right, like, how do we update
Speaker 3: all these things in ways that will actually you know,
Speaker 3: allow a Maria to compete better in the twenty first century.
Speaker 3: And and none of the they're not even paying lip
Speaker 3: service to that, right. All they're there to do is
Speaker 3: deregulate AI and crypto and like real frankly, like that
Speaker 3: like that is what cash. It's like a smash once
Speaker 3: out of this and they're getting it right, like we
Speaker 3: are not, Like the dj is no longer investigating crypto scammers,
Speaker 3: Like there's not a real effort you know, to regularly
Speaker 3: to AI. The Elon's positions a little more complicated on that,
Speaker 3: but but in Reason's position as clear, like wanting total
Speaker 3: deregulation of AI so that they can have you know,
Speaker 3: that power for themselves, and and that that's just like unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's just like the reality of what we're dealing with
Speaker 3: with these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's absolutely right, is why I always I
Speaker 2: thought that the project needed to be opposed on principle,
Speaker 2: because having the richest man on the planet unelected and
Speaker 2: given vast control over the entire federal government is just
Speaker 2: even if even if he did have worthy goals, which
Speaker 2: he doesn't, but even if he did have like goals
Speaker 2: that I thought were noble and could be good, I
Speaker 2: think that project has to be opposed in principle because
Speaker 2: of the damage that it does to our democracy and
Speaker 2: because you know, we don't want to be ruled by
Speaker 2: oligarchs and there you know, have to deal with their
Speaker 2: conflicts of interest and wonder whether or not whatever they're
Speaker 2: doing at the FAA has to do with modernizing the system,
Speaker 2: or whether it has to do with like stealing a
Speaker 2: contract from Verizon, which.
Speaker 5: Is something that SpaceX is accused of doing while they're
Speaker 5: in there.
Speaker 4: Starlink.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a great report from from Jeff Stein
Speaker 2: at the Washington Post about all of that. All right,
Speaker 2: let's talk a little bit about you, Tim, so we
Speaker 2: can put your book jacket up on the screen, which
Speaker 2: I really recommended people, you know, wherever you are on
Speaker 2: the ideological spectrum, I think it gives a really great
Speaker 2: insight into like the very particular DC mindset of political operatives.
Speaker 2: The headline here is why we did it, Travel from
Speaker 2: the Republican Road to Hell. And you wrote this about,
Speaker 2: you know, your own journey from being inside the you know,
Speaker 2: the belly of the Visa and the Republican Party working for
Speaker 2: Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, John Huntsman, you know, working for
Speaker 2: some dark money groups as well into being a very
Speaker 2: vocal Trump critic. So just sketch out for our audience
Speaker 2: who may not know all of your background, a little
Speaker 2: bit of like what you were up to and what
Speaker 2: it was about Trump that really, you know, turned you
Speaker 2: off and made you into this very vocal critic.
Speaker 4: Well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: As some folks came to me to ask me to
Speaker 3: write a burn book, like mean girl style about all
Speaker 3: the people I worked with the Republican Party, and I
Speaker 3: was like, that's basically like that wouldn't feel good unless
Speaker 3: I also like burned myself a bit on the you know,
Speaker 3: And so that was basically how the format for the
Speaker 3: book came out. I was like, I'd liked on my
Speaker 3: own choices before I started, you know, taking the fire
Speaker 3: torch to other people, and look, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: was in Republican and politics from the time I was
Speaker 3: a kid, Like I was my neighbor was a friend
Speaker 3: of a guy running for governor of Colorado, and I
Speaker 3: was just a political dork. I wanted to be in politics.
Speaker 3: I was sixteen years old. I volunteered on that campaign.
Speaker 3: I looked like I was twelve. I hadn't gone through
Speaker 3: puberty yet. Everybody asked me who my parents were when
Speaker 3: I was at the campaign office, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know. My dad's that's a you know, working
Speaker 3: at his mutual fund. So, you know, I was just
Speaker 3: kind of a precocious politics nerd. That guy won the
Speaker 3: governor's race in this very exciting, kind of close late
Speaker 3: night race, and I got very addicted to, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of the competition of politics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was just like as a sport, right, Like
Speaker 4: it was a sport.
Speaker 3: And so there were some earnest things we could talk about,
Speaker 3: Like there was some earnest things that drew me to
Speaker 3: the Republican Party over the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: But like pretty.
Speaker 3: Quickly I became just kind of like a hired gun, right,
Speaker 3: like a hatchet man.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the competition of it.
Speaker 3: And you know, I had some directional political beliefs that
Speaker 3: you just laid out. The people I worked for. I
Speaker 3: worked mostly for the moderate Republicans. I have a few
Speaker 3: people that I worked for that are on my shame
Speaker 3: list that I did, you know, because you have you know,
Speaker 3: if you're a political operative, sometimes you got to take clients,
Speaker 3: but you don't have to you sometimes you choose to
Speaker 3: take clients in order to help yourself succeed. So you know,
Speaker 3: that was basically my background. And then Trump comes along,
Speaker 3: and honestly, it just was not a close call for me,
Speaker 3: and he was just so far beyond the pale. His
Speaker 3: rhetoric around immigrants in particular was you know, my red line.
Speaker 3: But like even you know, beyond that, like he just
Speaker 3: did not appeal to me in any possible sense of
Speaker 3: the word. He was anethical to the earnest parts of
Speaker 3: why I became a Republican. And so, you know, after
Speaker 3: Jeb lost, I got asked by some of those dark
Speaker 3: money guys you mentioned, to be the point the spokesperson
Speaker 3: for a group opposing Trump, and I did it without
Speaker 3: really even thinking about the consequences. Honestly, Jeb and my
Speaker 3: dad both said to me, like, you're being crazy.
Speaker 4: What if Trump wins?
Speaker 3: I was like, through whatever you know I got, I
Speaker 3: don't know, he can't win, and so bad judgment there, maybe,
Speaker 3: But do you think.
Speaker 2: If you had thought he was gonna win, do you
Speaker 2: think you would have?
Speaker 3: I wouldne I was very much in comic Cozi mode.
Speaker 3: I found Trump repellent, and so I always say that
Speaker 3: whenever sometimes I get liberals will come up to me
Speaker 3: or Democrats, longtime democrats particually like older mother figures, and
Speaker 3: they'll be like, I'm so proud of you, like you
Speaker 3: did the right thing, and I'm like, I actually don't
Speaker 3: like I feel uncomfortable at that compliment because honestly, if
Speaker 3: it was Ted Cruz, I don't know, it would have
Speaker 3: been a closer call for me, Like I might have
Speaker 3: gone along with it, you know, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: My husband might have divorced me, so I might not
Speaker 3: have done it because of him. But Trump was Trump
Speaker 3: was something unique about Trump that that I just thought
Speaker 3: everything about him, from his personal life to his ideology.
Speaker 3: To spoke about immigrantsly spoke about people was just unacceptable
Speaker 3: to me. And so you know, so I dove in immediately.
Speaker 3: I was I was one of the ogs on the
Speaker 3: never Trumper side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, to be honest with you, some of
Speaker 2: what she just said in Trump one point zero, I
Speaker 2: would have been a little resistant to like the idea
Speaker 2: that he was this particularly unique threat. And then it
Speaker 2: wasn't just sort of like you know, revulsion, oh the
Speaker 2: norms and oh he's uncouth and whatever. But in this way,
Speaker 2: you know, I also think I've politically evolved recently to
Speaker 2: feel like, you know, the liberals who were like really
Speaker 2: concerned about the norms and really concerned about the rhetoric
Speaker 2: and really concerned about his character, they had a point.
Speaker 5: They had a point, like.
Speaker 2: The most deranged Trump derangement syndrome person ends up looking
Speaker 2: like they were kind of mild. Yeah, in comparison to
Speaker 2: what has unfolded. And you know, I was really raising
Speaker 2: an alarm in advance of this election, I thought because
Speaker 2: he I thought that he would be in basically yolo mode.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court had given him complete and total immunity effectively,
Speaker 2: and they had spent four years trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to move out of the way any even moderate
Speaker 2: guardrail that had kept him even somewhat hemmed in in
Speaker 2: the first administration, and even I have been horrified and
Speaker 2: shocked by the speed of the dissent in this particular administration.
Speaker 2: So you know, I certainly, I certainly have also tried
Speaker 2: to learn from what is unfolded and you know, evolve
Speaker 2: in my own political views. Let me ask you to
Speaker 2: respond to what the haters would say about you, which
Speaker 2: is that you know you previously you were doing what
Speaker 2: she needed to do and saying what she needed to
Speaker 2: say in order to serve the Republican side and your
Speaker 2: Republican bosses. And now are you just doing the same
Speaker 2: thing to serve you know, your your liberal audience and
Speaker 2: to appeal to the MSNBC folks that you're speaking to
Speaker 2: on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: I love talking to the haters.
Speaker 3: That's fine, No, I mean, look, so just on the
Speaker 3: money side of things, not that I'm doing great, I'm fine,
Speaker 3: but like the amount of money the people around Trump
Speaker 3: are making right now is going to shock the conscience.
Speaker 3: I mean, like Jason Miller also opposed Trump, like me,
Speaker 3: initially he was with Ted Cruz as a JEB but
Speaker 3: forgot got Jason Miller and he posted Trump said Kelly
Speaker 3: and Jason Miller just got a contract from India that's
Speaker 3: like one hundred thousand dollars a month or something, or
Speaker 3: I forgot. I don't have in front of me a
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month maybe, And so
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not bringing in that much on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you we're doing okay. And so I'm not
Speaker 3: looking for sympathy. But like, the way to whatever I
Speaker 3: do well in the Trump Republican Party was to stay.
Speaker 3: And a lot of my friends have have, you know,
Speaker 3: expanded their houses.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of my former friends have them.
Speaker 3: So you know there's that I hear what you're saying,
Speaker 3: and I think, look, anybody that is in the business
Speaker 3: of talking about the news, I'm sure you guys think
Speaker 3: about this. We especially in this day and age, you
Speaker 3: see what your audience likes and doesn't like. You know,
Speaker 3: even if you don't read the comments, you see it
Speaker 3: in the metrics, right, And so I understand that people
Speaker 3: would be skeptical of all this, But I really I've
Speaker 3: I tried my very best to just say what I
Speaker 3: want with what I think, and I only care about
Speaker 3: what I care about and not be pretend outrage about
Speaker 3: things I'm not outraged about. And you know, and during
Speaker 3: the campaign in twenty twenty four, people were very upset
Speaker 3: at us over our thoughts about Joe Biden, which maybe
Speaker 3: we can talk about in a second.
Speaker 4: I was horrified by Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: And I have not The Bowler audience is pretty bideny,
Speaker 3: you know, center left folks. So like, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of big Biden fans. To the extent that big
Speaker 3: Biden fans exist, a lot of them were.
Speaker 4: Bowler consumers of them.
Speaker 3: Ola, Yeah, a lot of them were unhappy with my
Speaker 3: views on him, and I just I didn't move an inch.
Speaker 3: If anything, it radicalized me more because I was like,
Speaker 3: screw you guys. I was like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: Are you saying this? I I you know, I was
Speaker 3: pressured into lying on behalf of Trump back when I
Speaker 3: was a Republican, and I refuse to do it. And
Speaker 3: now I've opposed Trump, and you're trying to bully me
Speaker 3: into you know, arguing, you know, trying to tell people
Speaker 3: that to not believe their lying eyes about Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Like, no, I'm not going to do that. I I.
Speaker 3: So, you know, look, I mean I think that we're
Speaker 3: doing the best we can to give people what we
Speaker 3: honestly think every day. I think that there's no doubt
Speaker 3: in the YouTube game, you know this. You know sometimes
Speaker 3: that the little thumbnail has to be a little a
Speaker 3: little more crazy. Yeah, but that's just like part of
Speaker 3: doing all this and so you know, I mean, I
Speaker 3: think that there's a little bit of that, and that's
Speaker 3: probably a fair criticism for my haters.
Speaker 4: But no, I'm not. I'm not changing my views on anything.
Speaker 2: Have you have you ideologically, like do you see your
Speaker 2: political views your political ideology as having.
Speaker 5: Shifted or yeah, just talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: How would you just yesterday as that I've gone fully
Speaker 3: native with the left, and so I was like, I
Speaker 3: was hoping Emily is gonna be on today so we
Speaker 3: could hash that out.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, well, I'm hoping, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the whole reason you're here, so I can win
Speaker 2: you over to being a social democrat.
Speaker 5: By the end, Bill Crystal.
Speaker 4: Might be full social democrat. But that's for another day now.
Speaker 6: I know that.
Speaker 5: Actually him and Nicole Wallace, I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, okay, yeah, you know, look, I've changed on some things.
Speaker 3: I guess I'll just say this first. Yeah, when I
Speaker 3: said I was ernest to get into politics, I was,
Speaker 3: and I was a bush kid. I was like the
Speaker 3: compassionate conservative thing, which Crystal maybe you saw through the
Speaker 3: way I saw through a Trump. I believed it, like
Speaker 3: I really did. And obviously the Iraq War it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's eventually I got disillusioned by it, but initially, like
Speaker 3: as a kid, as a high school kid, I believed it.
Speaker 3: And I was radicalized by the Elian Gonzales thing. I
Speaker 3: was like one of my first political awakenings. So I
Speaker 3: was like, I was four people coming to this country.
Speaker 3: I believed the land of milk and honey, Reagan, you know,
Speaker 3: shining city on the hill, stuff like that was what moved.
Speaker 4: Me as a kid and drew me to the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: And so when you see the Janet Reno thugs like
Speaker 3: putting a gun in front of the kid's face who
Speaker 3: was playing communism, that was like a thing that got me.
Speaker 4: Excited when I was young.
Speaker 3: And it's that, you know, confirmed for me that whatever
Speaker 3: I'll be on the side of the compassionate conservatives, whatever you.
Speaker 4: Want to call it.
Speaker 3: So to me in a lot of ways, like the
Speaker 3: Trump movement is a total rejection of the things that
Speaker 3: brought me into the Republican Party. You know, like I
Speaker 3: was into like the kind of altruistic jingoism rather than
Speaker 3: this like horrible cruel jingoism that they have now. And
Speaker 3: and you know, so I think the core of the
Speaker 3: Trump movement is anacthical to what what brought me to
Speaker 3: being a Republican. That said, once you're freed from you know,
Speaker 3: I think it's like anybody, right, if there are a
Speaker 3: few issues that you really care about, and then if
Speaker 3: you're in a party, a lot of people, particularly political
Speaker 3: junkies or operatives, kind of like sign up for the
Speaker 3: rest of the stuff.
Speaker 4: Like that's a pretty common thing.
Speaker 3: And so I think that there were a couple of things,
Speaker 3: and the two that jumped to my mind right now
Speaker 3: are taxes on the wealthy and guns. Like there are
Speaker 3: two things in particular that I was kind of just
Speaker 3: signing up for the program on that was not what
Speaker 3: I was really there for. That I've like kind of
Speaker 3: changed a heart on, right, and that I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: now that I've had some distance from it, I'm like,
Speaker 3: it's some of the stuff is crazy, right, And so
Speaker 3: you know, I have changed my views in a couple
Speaker 3: of things, for sure. But I also think that Trump
Speaker 3: ran as a rejection of the kind of Republican politics
Speaker 3: I liked, right, So it shouldn't be that surprising. Then
Speaker 3: to me, it's more surprising that there aren't more mes
Speaker 3: and mortical walls.
Speaker 4: I mean, I literally ran as a rejection of us.
Speaker 2: Were rejected in a sense, yes, But also you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the first Trump administration, his big
Speaker 2: accomplishment is the tax cut for the rich, you know,
Speaker 2: very George W. Bush, like very Ronald Reaganlake. And the
Speaker 2: other thing I wanted to ask you about is I
Speaker 2: think the people that I have the most difficult time
Speaker 2: with the transition are the people who were most vocal
Speaker 2: in supporting George W. Bush's constitutional abuses, you know, indefinite
Speaker 2: detention and torture and Guantanamo Bay. And I am thinking of, like,
Speaker 2: you know, Bill Crystal and David from Nicole Wallace, because
Speaker 2: to me, there's such a direct line from that to
Speaker 2: where we are now. And I'm not saying that they're
Speaker 2: the same. I think Trump has taken the legal protectual
Speaker 2: justifications of the Bush era in particular, and has expanded
Speaker 2: and radicalized on them aggressively. But you know, the whole
Speaker 2: thing of shipping people off to this foreign goolag with
Speaker 2: no due process is like, well, they're terrorists, so we
Speaker 2: can do whatever we want with them. The whole thing
Speaker 2: of arresting students and you know, deporting them because they
Speaker 2: ride in our ed God forbid, is same thing. Well,
Speaker 2: we see them as supporting terrorists, so we can just
Speaker 2: do what we want with them, no due process. And
Speaker 2: so do you do you feel like there have has
Speaker 2: been any grappling you were you were young, we're actually
Speaker 2: basically like the same age.
Speaker 5: I think we're both forty three.
Speaker 4: But in any case, do you think aging mate publicly
Speaker 4: on the YouTube? Can we cut?
Speaker 5: I'm the wiki?
Speaker 2: All right, listen, But do you think that there has
Speaker 2: been a grappling with the way that that abuse of
Speaker 2: the constitution leads directly to similar more expanded Trumpian abuses
Speaker 2: of the constitution?
Speaker 4: Probably not enough.
Speaker 3: And I'll ask David from this question the next time
Speaker 3: he's on the Board podcast.
Speaker 4: And see what he says about it. Probably not enough.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's funny.
Speaker 3: I get this this criticism from sometimes Glenn Greenwald likes
Speaker 3: to tweet at me and be like he was a Bushy.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, Like I'm happy. I have plenty of
Speaker 3: sins that I'm happy to try to atone for. But
Speaker 3: I was hitting the bong okay during Guantanamo in college,
Speaker 3: like I was not.
Speaker 4: I was not part of the administration. I was not
Speaker 4: even really paying that quotes of attention.
Speaker 3: I was partying, so like you know, and frankly, this
Speaker 3: was one of those issues that I would put alongside
Speaker 3: the ones I mentioned earlier with guns in Texas, where
Speaker 3: I was like casually for Guantanamo. I guess, which is
Speaker 3: wrong as somebody that was not involved in politics, but
Speaker 3: I took a pretty radical shift against it, you know,
Speaker 3: late in the Bush term. I remember getting into a
Speaker 3: big fight with my parents over this one Thanksgiving. I
Speaker 3: remember getting to a big fight with my friend Jamie
Speaker 3: Kirchik maybe on the show about this sometime in the
Speaker 3: late Bush administration, and uh and and John McCain really
Speaker 3: changed my views on a lot of this stuff, who
Speaker 3: you know, to his credit, based on his experience, really
Speaker 3: spoke out quite passionately against the Bush administration's policies when
Speaker 3: it really didn't benefit him. That much politically, So I
Speaker 3: think that that's a totally fair criticism. I think some
Speaker 3: people have grappled with it more than others. But uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't. You haven't seen a really kind
Speaker 3: of I can't at least think of one like kind
Speaker 3: of a full throated, you know, reflection upon the degree
Speaker 3: to which some of the civil liberties abuses during you know,
Speaker 3: the Iraq War and the associated kind of war on terror.
Speaker 3: I guess you know what drew a little bit of
Speaker 3: a pretext for what we're seeing now, and I think
Speaker 3: it's a fara critique.
Speaker 2: Last question for you, and then we can talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about Biden. Then I know you have to
Speaker 2: you have to run. But you talk a lot. It
Speaker 2: was we're goody, okay, you don't have heard out?
Speaker 5: Okay, good?
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: You talk a lot in your book about the various
Speaker 2: characters like you have different sort of archetypes of the
Speaker 2: flavors of justification that people used, who went from you know,
Speaker 2: being sort of repelled by Trump like you were, to
Speaker 2: being in his inner circle, having positions of power, going
Speaker 2: on TV and justifying every last thing that he does
Speaker 2: up to and now including sending people for life into
Speaker 2: foreign goologs from which there is no escape, with literally
Speaker 2: zero due process based on a tattoo that' says mom
Speaker 2: and dad as one example. I was curious if if
Speaker 2: you have any updated archetypes, like, is there a difference
Speaker 2: between the Trump one point zero personnel who sometimes had
Speaker 2: this like, oh well, if I wasn't there, then someone
Speaker 2: else would be and I'm raining things in and had
Speaker 2: those sorts of psychological justifications versus Trump two point Oh.
Speaker 2: It really does feel like it's like the true believers
Speaker 2: who are who are all in at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. You're putting on the spot
Speaker 3: a little bit, because I do think it's different. And
Speaker 3: my one kind of self criticism of the book is
Speaker 3: I wasn't really planning on Trump coming back, and so
Speaker 3: it does feel like a little bit dated, like we
Speaker 3: were like reading some of it, because it's like, man,
Speaker 3: some of the people who had these really complex rationalizations
Speaker 3: the first time around are pretty much full bore this time.
Speaker 3: I guess I would say that the updated rationale is
Speaker 3: really based on what I guess I would call it amnesia.
Speaker 3: I guess I would have the amnich the Trump amnesia
Speaker 3: category this time, probably, which is really just focusing on
Speaker 3: the biggest picture view of the Trump first administration, like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, there was a lot of crazy stuff day
Speaker 3: to day, but like the things, you know, our democracy
Speaker 3: didn't totally collapse, right, the economy generally got went the
Speaker 3: right direction until COVID. He was like basically right about
Speaker 3: some of the COVID stuff, right like this. I'm sure
Speaker 3: you hear all this from friends where it's like, none
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 4: Is really right.
Speaker 3: I mean, like we we got we got through it
Speaker 3: by the skin of our teeth, right. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think that many of the people who give the Anesia defense, Now,
Speaker 3: if you brought them, if you went back in time
Speaker 3: to twenty fifteen and brought them a newspaper with a
Speaker 3: picture of what happened on January sixth and said you
Speaker 3: will support this, they would tell you have trumped Arrangement Center.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're crazy.
Speaker 3: But now they would say, no, you have trumped arrangement
Speaker 3: center for acting like that was such a big deal,
Speaker 3: Like it was a little it was bad. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was bad, but it wasn't as bad as you guys say.
Speaker 3: You're obsessed with it, you know. So I think that
Speaker 3: there is just an on COVID right, they're like, well,
Speaker 3: they focus more on how there was some overreach on
Speaker 3: the left, which I agree with on some of the
Speaker 3: COVID rules, or they focus on the discussion about the
Speaker 3: wet market versus you know, whether it was from the
Speaker 3: lab right, and there's again there's some legit points here,
Speaker 3: but then they don't focus on the anti vax stuff
Speaker 3: or the or the way that Trump downplayed it for
Speaker 3: so long, or like all the other like the Ze
Speaker 3: Prescott right.
Speaker 4: So I do think that there's a little bit of.
Speaker 3: Rationale now that's based on kind of like people's memories
Speaker 3: fading and like trying to tell a story of the
Speaker 3: Trump one point zero that's better than it was, and
Speaker 3: telling a story of the Biden administration that's like the
Speaker 3: worst possible story you could tell about it, rather than
Speaker 3: a a more clear eyed version of what its strengths
Speaker 3: and weaknesses were.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good transition to talk about the latest
Speaker 2: news with regard to Biden.
Speaker 5: We can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are coming out with
Speaker 2: a book that's kind of meant to be like a
Speaker 2: tell all of you know, what was going on on
Speaker 2: the inside and who knew what and when with regard
Speaker 2: to Biden's significant decline, and the big scoop that's out
Speaker 2: this morning is that his physical deterioration, most apparent is
Speaker 2: halting walk had become so severe that there were internal
Speaker 2: discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they
Speaker 2: couldn't do so until after the election. And I mean,
Speaker 2: I I do want to say, like his physical deterioration
Speaker 2: was not really my concern. The mental deterioration was more
Speaker 2: of the concern. But you know, this is of a
Speaker 2: piece with the decline that we were all watching, and
Speaker 2: as you said, you know, the Democratic Party was asking
Speaker 2: us and much of the media too, by the way,
Speaker 2: was asking us not to believe our lying eyes at
Speaker 2: this point. And I think there's again a direct line
Speaker 2: between Biden deciding to run no one within the mainstream
Speaker 2: Democratic Party really you know, challenging him. You did have
Speaker 2: Dean Phillips jump in there. You had Mary and Williamson
Speaker 2: in the race as well, but they blocked even having
Speaker 2: primary contests in a number of states, so there was
Speaker 2: really no chance for anyone to succeed. Direct line from
Speaker 2: that to the reelection of Donald Trump and the world
Speaker 2: that we now live in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had to do my Dean phillips Man culpa
Speaker 3: a couple months ago because you know, I still stand
Speaker 3: by I don't think the way he prosecuted his campaign
Speaker 3: was the most effective, but I was a little too
Speaker 3: mean to him because the premise of his campaign was correct,
Speaker 3: and you know it was then later the summer was
Speaker 3: very clear to me that that.
Speaker 4: Was the case.
Speaker 3: And look, I don't I'm with you. I don't care
Speaker 3: that much about the wheelchair like whatever. But to me,
Speaker 3: it's just one part of this broader thing, which is
Speaker 3: regardless of what you think about some of the smaller
Speaker 3: arguments about whether Biden should have stuck around and the
Speaker 3: debate and whether he could have done it, and whether
Speaker 3: he could do the job, or how much had he
Speaker 3: really declined? Was it just one to right, regardless of
Speaker 3: all that, Like, to me, the biggest possible picture is
Speaker 3: it was ridiculous for them to try to sell us
Speaker 3: on the fact that Joe Biden could be president in.
Speaker 4: Four years from now when he's eighties. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 4: It was a ridiculous proposition.
Speaker 3: The American people saw through it, and we all saw
Speaker 3: it with our own eyes on the debate stage, and
Speaker 3: the fact that it took them so long to then
Speaker 3: come around to it, and the fact that then even
Speaker 3: once they did, you know, we had to have the
Speaker 3: Biden tribute day at the Komal Convention, and then she
Speaker 3: was pressured to not do distance from him, and like
Speaker 3: all this sort of stuff. To me, I really think
Speaker 3: their actions have been shameful, absolutely shameful in the last year,
Speaker 3: and and it makes me very upset actually, And so
Speaker 3: I don't even know. I hope Jake and Alex are
Speaker 3: not watching this. I keep going over my head. I'm like,
Speaker 3: can I even have Jake and Alex on the podcast?
Speaker 3: Mostly because it makes me so mad. I kind of
Speaker 3: just want to pretend I just want to move forward.
Speaker 3: So I probably will, because you know, you have to
Speaker 3: grapple with this sort of stuff. But it makes me
Speaker 3: so upset that, you know, they're asking a lot of
Speaker 3: other people to sacrifice and then not and then not
Speaker 3: doing it, not only not sacrificing themselves, but really making
Speaker 3: an extremely self decision. And I say they because it
Speaker 3: was really the full family and his closest advisors made
Speaker 3: a decision that was very, very selfish. And we're dealing
Speaker 3: with the consequences. And I wouldn't say he's the number
Speaker 3: one reason we have Trump right now. I definitely would
Speaker 3: put that on Mitch McConnell and the Republican senators. It
Speaker 3: didn't convict him after January sixth, when they all knew
Speaker 3: they should have.
Speaker 4: But he certainly plays a role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very central role, very central role. And listen,
Speaker 2: like Kamala Harris could have decided to distance herself from him,
Speaker 2: even in spite of the fact that he pressured her
Speaker 2: not to. But it does just show a level of
Speaker 2: ego and selfishness to your point, that is quite extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I remember him making some comment at the time in
Speaker 2: an interview. He was asked, well, what happens if you
Speaker 2: lose Trump? He's like, well, as long as I tried
Speaker 2: my best, it'll be fine. It's like, I mean, this
Speaker 2: guy's a fascist.
Speaker 3: Like this, I'm doing a work beach vacation there. I
Speaker 3: was going to a mat Gates event in the in
Speaker 3: the Panhandle, but also my family was at the beach
Speaker 3: and I went out back to the beach to watch
Speaker 3: that interview. I mean, you're triggering me right now just
Speaker 3: thinking about it. I was so enraged. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I've ever been mad or at somebody. And
Speaker 3: also to do the thing where it's like our democracy
Speaker 3: is on the line.
Speaker 2: Right And also you know, as I get a participation
Speaker 2: award for trying my bests, it's like, no, it's not
Speaker 2: good enough.
Speaker 5: You have to win. You have to win.
Speaker 2: And if you aren't the person to do that, you
Speaker 2: needed to have stepped aside a year ago so that
Speaker 2: you know, someone who was more able could carry the torch.
Speaker 2: And I guess the big question is if they've learned
Speaker 2: from this, and I think some have and some haven't.
Speaker 2: This is, you know, in the context of so David
Speaker 2: Hogg was elected vice chair of the DNC And you know, David,
Speaker 2: first of all, I think is very impressive in terms
Speaker 2: of there aren't a lot of Democrats who really understand
Speaker 2: new media, know how to grab attention whatever. Just on
Speaker 2: that metric, he's very effective. But also he's obviously really
Speaker 2: trying to shake things up within the party. He was
Speaker 2: on with Bill Maher this past weekend and made some
Speaker 2: comments that he doesn't mention the name Jim Clyburn, but
Speaker 2: this is clearly directed at Jim Clyburn, who previously you
Speaker 2: made some statement about like what do they want me
Speaker 2: to do or resign and my life from Congress. So
Speaker 2: this sparked a lot of dialogue within the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Let's go and take a listen to a little bit
Speaker 2: of David's home David hog here on Bill Maher.
Speaker 10: What I'm trying to do with this initiative with Leaders
Speaker 10: we Deserve, the organization that we're working with, is to
Speaker 10: challenge democrats that we feel like are failing to meet
Speaker 10: the moment in safe congressional seats that don't risk us
Speaker 10: losing the House and say to them, look, nobody is
Speaker 10: entitled to their position of power, because ultimately, the positions
Speaker 10: of power in this country don't belong to any member
Speaker 10: of Congress that is out there. They belong to the
Speaker 10: people that vote them into office. Part of what happens
Speaker 10: in politics is people want to do two things at
Speaker 10: the same time that are incompatible. They want to keep
Speaker 10: the same people in the positions of power that they're
Speaker 10: in that are individually beneficial to them, and they want
Speaker 10: to get back to winning. But we're not going to
Speaker 10: be able to do that with the same cast of
Speaker 10: characters that got us here. And the answer to that
Speaker 10: is to use democracy within our own party to give
Speaker 10: voters the option of voting for somebody new, so that
Speaker 10: they at least.
Speaker 4: Have the opportion. So you want to get rid of
Speaker 4: the dead would.
Speaker 10: Effectively yes, but it's not just a matter of age,
Speaker 10: to be clear. Of course, there's been a few members
Speaker 10: that have come out that have said, well, you know,
Speaker 10: if I retire, my life is effectively over. And what
Speaker 10: I would say is, get over yourself. This isn't about you.
Speaker 10: This is about our country, about your constituents. Nobody is
Speaker 10: in too. I don't care if you've been there for
Speaker 10: decades or just one term. That seat is not yours.
Speaker 10: It is your constituents. That is who we were there
Speaker 10: to serve. And if they choose to serve somebody else,
Speaker 10: so be it. That's all what all we're trying to
Speaker 10: do with leaders we deserve.
Speaker 2: So the quote that he's referencing there put the next
Speaker 2: piece up on the screen is this from Jim cliber
Speaker 2: and he said, Nancy left her seat, Stanny left his seat.
Speaker 5: I left my seat. What the hell am I supposed
Speaker 5: to do?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: What do you want me to give up my life?
Speaker 5: And so Cliburn and.
Speaker 2: Say listen, we step back from our leadership positions. But
Speaker 2: you know, he continues to hold the seat and run
Speaker 2: for reelection, and that appears to be what David Hogg
Speaker 2: is referencing here. What do you think of what David
Speaker 2: Hogg is trying to do with the DNC and also
Speaker 2: the pushback that he's received for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we might finally get to our disagreement in the
Speaker 4: last block. I don't know. I think everybody can get
Speaker 4: over themselves in this story. I don't know the David
Speaker 4: Hog thing.
Speaker 3: Like if David Hogg had not run for DNC vice
Speaker 3: chair and decided to start a group that was primary
Speaker 3: older Democrat and saying we want to get new youthful
Speaker 3: Democrats in and it's it's ideologically, I don't care, Like
Speaker 3: maybe it's in some this scenarios it's a Dan Osborne type.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a moderate bulwark type. Maybe it's a d
Speaker 3: s A type, Like I'm okay with that program. That's
Speaker 3: a good program getting a younger, you know, more diverse
Speaker 3: both you know, ideologically and you know racially, uh group
Speaker 3: of people into the party. Like I'd be for all that.
Speaker 3: But he decided to run for DNC vice chair right.
Speaker 3: And to me, this is like the thing about all
Speaker 3: this about how just pathetically incompetent the d n C.
Speaker 4: As and I do, like I look at the story
Speaker 4: and it's just like, you know, there.
Speaker 3: Are conspiracy theories out there about how the d n
Speaker 3: C is like orchestrating things, like the DNC can't orchestrate
Speaker 3: a two car parade, Like the DNC can't do anything.
Speaker 3: It was insane for them to put somebody who was
Speaker 3: vastly more famous and to your point, vastly more uh uh,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of online and in the public eye
Speaker 3: than the chairman as vice chair and and and have
Speaker 3: him be a total loose cannon Like what was like
Speaker 3: what is the point of that? Like what was the
Speaker 3: like what did they think that they were going to get?
Speaker 3: And so you know, now you have somebody in the
Speaker 3: DNC who's like firing you know, inside the house and
Speaker 3: going on too Bill Maher and going onto all these
Speaker 3: shows and like critiquing other people within the party. Like
Speaker 3: that's not the job of the dncvice share. It could
Speaker 3: be a job of an outside group that wants to
Speaker 3: do this, but it's not his job on the inside.
Speaker 3: And so now like the DNC rather than focusing on
Speaker 3: what they should be focusing on, which is how to
Speaker 3: beat as many Republicans as possible in the midterms. They
Speaker 3: have this internal firing squad going on, and they're having
Speaker 3: a struggle session about, you know, whether the gender balance
Speaker 3: is right. I mean, it's like the most pathetic, embarrassing
Speaker 3: organization that I've ever seen. And and so to me,
Speaker 3: like that's my takeaway from the story is that like
Speaker 3: these the eye is not on the ball for basically
Speaker 3: any of the characters in this story.
Speaker 2: See, I hear what you're saying, but I would say
Speaker 2: that I support the internal firing squad, and I think
Speaker 2: the lack of an internal firing squad is exactly how
Speaker 2: Democrats ended up as pathetic and losing as many races
Speaker 2: as they did, because what did we hear when it
Speaker 2: was Biden, It was, Oh, we can't have a primary,
Speaker 2: we can't be critiquing each other, we don't want the
Speaker 2: internal firing squad. Everybody's got to you know, stay unified
Speaker 2: and stay united and not criticize each other. And in
Speaker 2: the end that ends up in disaster. Whereas you know,
Speaker 2: to give the counterpoint, the Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama primary
Speaker 2: was pretty vicious, you know, there was.
Speaker 5: It was raucus.
Speaker 2: You go back and watch, they were taking some real
Speaker 2: shots at each other, and guess what you end up with,
Speaker 2: You know, a candidate who was able to not only win,
Speaker 2: but win handily and run for reelection and win quite
Speaker 2: handily there as well.
Speaker 5: I know you remember that.
Speaker 2: One here because you're on the other side around me
Speaker 2: on that particular campaign. But you know, I hear what
Speaker 2: you're saying about, like maybe the wasn't the place for
Speaker 2: David Hog to be to make his stand, but I
Speaker 2: think he's thinking about it. Of if you want to
Speaker 2: improve the party, if the goal of the DNC should be,
Speaker 2: to your point, winning races, and part of that is
Speaker 2: rejuvenating this party and making sure we don't have another
Speaker 2: Diane Feinstein cover up or Joe Biden style cover up,
Speaker 2: that we have people who are actually effective and responsive
Speaker 2: and you know, embracing those small de democratic values.
Speaker 4: It's a fair counterpoint. I would support strategic competition.
Speaker 3: I would just say, to me, this looks like a
Speaker 3: total cluster fork, not strategic competition within the party. I
Speaker 3: just don't Again, if what I was seeing from David
Speaker 3: Hogg was hey, I'm recruiting all these new people who
Speaker 3: are you know, going to be the future face of
Speaker 3: the party and are more reflective of working class voters.
Speaker 3: And I'm going into red states and I'm going to
Speaker 3: recruit people that can actually win in these districts. And
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to go into deep blue districts.
Speaker 3: We're going to find people that are younger, with more
Speaker 3: vigor to challenge that. Okay, I would be for that,
Speaker 3: but I see mostly like tweets and press releases and
Speaker 3: bickering at James Carville and Jim Clyburn and media appearances.
Speaker 4: So I just I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think competition can be good, but being strategic and
Speaker 3: smart can also be good. And I don't think either
Speaker 3: the DNC or HOG over the past month have demonstrated
Speaker 3: a lot of smarts a strategy.
Speaker 5: Well, far be it from me to defund the DNC.
Speaker 2: So we can end on that note, Tim, thank you
Speaker 2: so much, and just tell people where they can find
Speaker 2: you and follow your podcast.
Speaker 4: Thanks Chris.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, check us out with the Bulwark over
Speaker 3: on YouTube, the Borg podcast. You can check us out
Speaker 3: on substack, also the Bulk dot com. And you know
Speaker 3: I'm here in my hole all the time talking, so
Speaker 3: you know, just come find me all right.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim, it was great to chat with you.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thanks christ I appreciate having me.
Speaker 2: So we covered a bit yesterday how Trump announced this
Speaker 2: big executive order with regard to prescription drug prices that
Speaker 2: he said was instantly going to reduce all of prescription
Speaker 2: drug prices by thirty to eighty percent. Joining us to
Speaker 2: break down the reality of this executive order is David Saroda,
Speaker 2: founder of The Lover.
Speaker 5: Great to see you, David, Good to see you. Yeah,
Speaker 5: of course.
Speaker 2: So let me go ahead and start with Trump's comments
Speaker 2: at the press conference yesterday, which were quite a bit
Speaker 2: different than the way he had sold this executive.
Speaker 5: Order on prescription drug prices. To start with, let's take
Speaker 5: a listen to that first.
Speaker 6: I'm directing the US Trade Representatives and Department of Commerce
Speaker 6: to begin investigations into foreign nations that extort drug companies
Speaker 6: by blocking their products unless they accept bottom line and
Speaker 6: very low dollar amounts for their product, unfairly shifting the
Speaker 6: cost burden onto American patients. And we'll be taking a
Speaker 6: look at that very strongly. The biggest thing we're going
Speaker 6: to do is we're going to tell those countries like
Speaker 6: those represented by the European Union that you know, that
Speaker 6: game is up. Sorry, and if they want to get cute,
Speaker 6: then they don't have to sell cars into the United
Speaker 6: States anymore. It's a very big subject, and they won't
Speaker 6: get cute because I'll defend the drug companies. From that standpoint, He's.
Speaker 2: Going to defend the drug companies and force the Europeans
Speaker 2: to pay higher prices. That's actually the plan that he's
Speaker 2: announcing here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little weird.
Speaker 11: In that he's saying that America needs a better deal,
Speaker 11: but other countries shouldn't shouldn't be negotiating for a better
Speaker 11: price deal. And I don't really understand the logic there,
Speaker 11: because he's touting the idea that the United States should
Speaker 11: use its power, its purchasing power, its market power to
Speaker 11: get a better deal for Americans, which I actually think
Speaker 11: most Americans probably agree that it's not fair at all
Speaker 11: that the United States is funding with tax dollars a
Speaker 11: huge amount of the research and development that goes into
Speaker 11: creating lots of medicine across the world, and our return
Speaker 11: on that investment is being forced to pay the highest
Speaker 11: prices in the world. I think his executive order is
Speaker 11: aimed at pointing out that problem, and it is a problem. Unfortunately,
Speaker 11: the solution that he's put forward isn't a solution at all.
Speaker 4: And you don't have to trust me.
Speaker 11: You can look at the price of pharmaceutical industry stocks
Speaker 11: on the day that he announced his executive order. They
Speaker 11: actually went up. And so the pharmaceutical industry does not
Speaker 11: think that what Trump is proposing, and it's not even
Speaker 11: entirely clear what actually that he is proposing, that the
Speaker 11: industry doesn't even see it as anything real at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually we can put E two up on the screen.
Speaker 2: Still are tweeted this, But I checked the stock prices
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. They were up even
Speaker 2: more than the Sofizer end of the day up three
Speaker 2: point six. Mark was at four point four, Eli Lilly
Speaker 2: was up two point eight, Bristol Myers was up three
Speaker 2: point seven, and Santa Fe was up two percent, so
Speaker 2: two point three percent by the end of the day.
Speaker 2: And there are also analysts are putting out guidance saying
Speaker 2: that they do not see this drug pricing executive order
Speaker 2: as a material event, meaning that it doesn't matter at all.
Speaker 2: Let's put E four up on the screen, because you
Speaker 2: break down some of the backstory here over at the lever.
Speaker 2: You say, Trump already disarmed the war on drug prices.
Speaker 2: So not only do we have this executive order that
Speaker 2: doesn't have really any force of law, we have Trump
Speaker 2: saying actually he's going to defend the drug prices. You
Speaker 2: have the stock market reacting in a way that was
Speaker 2: positive for the drug makers ultimately, but we also have
Speaker 2: other signs from the Trump administration that they're not serious
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So there is one tool in the toolbox that
Speaker 11: the government could use to lower drug prices right now.
Speaker 11: It's part of a long standing law that's been around
Speaker 11: for more than forty years, which says that when the
Speaker 11: government licenses, when the government funds research and development that
Speaker 11: is turned into, for instance, medicine patented medicines that the
Speaker 11: government can march in. That's the term the government can
Speaker 11: march in and license to other companies the patents the
Speaker 11: rights to make those drugs if the current producer of
Speaker 11: the medicine is not offering them on reasonable terms. Essentially,
Speaker 11: if the Americans cannot get access to the innovation that
Speaker 11: their own tax dollars funded. That's been on the books
Speaker 11: for forty years now. To be clear, it's never been
Speaker 11: invoked so called march in rights, but successive administrations have
Speaker 11: been under pressure to use march in rights under that
Speaker 11: long standing law to say, hey, if you're charging other
Speaker 11: countries one tenth the price for the medicine the taxpayers
Speaker 11: developed and American tax payers essentially don't have or have
Speaker 11: very limited access to the medicines that their taxpayer money,
Speaker 11: their public money supported, we can march in and offer
Speaker 11: the license to other generic drug producers to make lower
Speaker 11: priced versions of the same medicine. Successive administration has been
Speaker 11: under under pressure to use that power. Unfortunately they haven't
Speaker 11: used that power. The Obama administration rejected Congressional Democrats pressure
Speaker 11: pressure to do that. Donald Trump, to your point, not
Speaker 11: only didn't use march in rights, Donald Trump tried to
Speaker 11: permanently prevent any future president from ever using those powers. Obviously,
Speaker 11: the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want any president to use those powers.
Speaker 11: The Biden administration, it did reject a request to use
Speaker 11: marching rights on one particular drug, but the Biden administration
Speaker 11: also put forward a set of guidelines and rules to
Speaker 11: create more clear ways to use those march In rights.
Speaker 11: But now here in the present we have Robert F.
Speaker 11: Kennedy Jr. Who initially told people on Capitol Hill that
Speaker 11: he would be interested in using march In rights, but ultimately,
Speaker 11: when put under a confirmation scrutiny, he said, using march
Speaker 11: in rights when drug prices are too high is not
Speaker 11: something that he is going to do.
Speaker 5: And how does the.
Speaker 2: Biden error reforms They did some modest reforms that allows
Speaker 2: Medicare to negotiate on a handful of prescription drugs.
Speaker 5: How does that play into this?
Speaker 2: Does that give the Trump administration any potential powers that
Speaker 2: they could expand upon.
Speaker 11: Well, look, certainly Medicare is a big buyer of prescription drugs,
Speaker 11: has purchasing power to try to negotiate lower prices. The
Speaker 11: Biden administration program deals with ten particular drugs. It's called
Speaker 11: a formulary. Certainly the Trump administration could push to expand
Speaker 11: the formulary. It is statutory law. It would have to
Speaker 11: go to Congress to do that. Medicare can also try
Speaker 11: to essentially demand so called most favored nation pricing. That
Speaker 11: is to say, if you're going to charge a lower
Speaker 11: price in another country the United States should get access
Speaker 11: to that. There's a question about how could medicare actually
Speaker 11: pressure those prices down for drugs covered by private insurance. Frankly, Crystal,
Speaker 11: it's not really clear what this executive order really is
Speaker 11: beyond Trump saying to RFK and to saying to a
Speaker 11: couple of other agency, you know, go lower the price
Speaker 11: of prescription drugs. But again, I go back to this
Speaker 11: idea that HHS under Trumps has essentially said, we are
Speaker 11: not going to use the one weapon in our arsenal
Speaker 11: march in rights to do any of So when I
Speaker 11: look at the stock price jump of pharmaceutical stocks, what
Speaker 11: I see is pharmaceutical pharmaceutical industry that was wondering whether
Speaker 11: marching rights was going to be in this executive order,
Speaker 11: knows that RFK has already said he's not going to
Speaker 11: use those powers, knows that Trump has tried to permanently
Speaker 11: prevent any president from using those powers. I see a
Speaker 11: pharmaceutical industry that says, oh, that's not in the executive order. Well,
Speaker 11: another example of Trump saying a lot of things, but
Speaker 11: there's not really anything here that is going to bring
Speaker 11: down the price of medicines in the United States and
Speaker 11: not really anything going to cut into their profits. And
Speaker 11: I want to make one other point that's really important here.
Speaker 11: It's not like these drug companies aren't making big profits
Speaker 11: and revenues in other countries. That's the part that just
Speaker 11: should get to everybody, which is to say, they're they're
Speaker 11: making profits in Europe, in other industrialized countries when they're
Speaker 11: charging those consumers there one third the price of the
Speaker 11: price that they charge Americans. They're making healthy profits there,
Speaker 11: which means that what they're doing here is profiteering, and
Speaker 11: their profiteering off of this is so important. They're profiteering
Speaker 11: mostly off of medicines that we the public, we the taxpayers,
Speaker 11: already funded.
Speaker 5: That is such a great point.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that I noted yesterday is this
Speaker 2: is very similar to an executive order that he signed
Speaker 2: also in the first Trump administration. So I think the
Speaker 2: other reason why the drug makers have so much confidence
Speaker 2: that it's not going to matter is because they went
Speaker 2: to court and successfully were able to enjoin and get
Speaker 2: an injunction against that executive order, and so they already
Speaker 2: know effectively how how this story ends. And I suspect
Speaker 2: Trump also knows how the story ends doesn't really care
Speaker 2: about prescription drug prices, because if he did, he could
Speaker 2: put pressure on Congress. He has marchin rights that he
Speaker 2: could use. You've got Bernie Sanders and Rocan out saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we've got a bill that would do what you want
Speaker 2: to do. Why didn't you work with us on it?
Speaker 2: He shows no interest in doing any of that. He
Speaker 2: just effectively wants the headline here because his poll numbers
Speaker 2: have been dropping and he wants to distract from the
Speaker 2: fact that they're also set to do gigantic cuts to
Speaker 2: medicaid in service of cutting taxes for the rich.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 11: I mean, listen, Rocanna has been out there saying, let's
Speaker 11: just take Donald Trump's executive order and put it into
Speaker 11: statute so that if and when he tries to do,
Speaker 11: for instance, most favored nation pricing via Medicare, it won't
Speaker 11: be invalidated by a court.
Speaker 4: That's what happened the last time. So let's put it
Speaker 4: into statute.
Speaker 11: You've got a Republican president, Democrats in Congress willing to
Speaker 11: put it into statute.
Speaker 4: Let's do that.
Speaker 11: There's no sense that Trump is engaged with Congress at
Speaker 11: all to do any of that, so again, I agree
Speaker 11: with you. It's like a show. It's like a circus.
Speaker 11: It's like, it's like, let me get a headline. People
Speaker 11: will I guess I mentarily think that at some point
Speaker 11: in the future, drug prices will come down, and hopefully,
Speaker 11: I guess the hope is what everyone will forget about this.
Speaker 11: We'll forget that he made this pledge that everyone has
Speaker 11: a goldfish brain forgetting their entire world every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 11: I mean, I don't think that's really going to work
Speaker 11: when it comes to something like prescription drug prices, which
Speaker 11: are a constant, a constant expense for millions and millions
Speaker 11: of Americans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, some of us have goldfish brains, but you're
Speaker 2: not one of them. David's already you remember all the details.
Speaker 2: I had to go back and look up this exactly,
Speaker 2: was like, did you do something similar in the first administration?
Speaker 5: Before I let you go?
Speaker 2: We're going to have our June on next week to
Speaker 2: talk about Tax Revolt, your new podcast series, But just
Speaker 2: give everybody a preview of what you guys have been
Speaker 2: up to, because this is some extraordinary investigative journalism.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so listen, this week is tax Week in Washington.
Speaker 11: Donald Trump's tax bill is coming down the pike. A
Speaker 11: big question are they going to cut taxes on Are
Speaker 11: they going to essentially make permanent Trump's tax cuts, including
Speaker 11: tax cuts for billionaires corporations. There's some talk in the
Speaker 11: Republican Party that they're going to try to raise some
Speaker 11: taxes on millionaires, and I think that's a response to
Speaker 11: the fact that, according to poll's, seventy percent of Republican
Speaker 11: voters now want taxes raised on the wealthy. Our series,
Speaker 11: Tax Revolt, it's an audio series. People can find it
Speaker 11: at levernews dot com slash Tax Revolt. Our new series
Speaker 11: takes a look at the history of the anti tax movement,
Speaker 11: where it came from, how it grew into such a
Speaker 11: political force, and as important, why it is potentially fraying
Speaker 11: right now, which is kind of shocking.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, the.
Speaker 11: Last fifty years, tax cuts have been the dominant religion
Speaker 11: of the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: And why is the movement framing? Where did that movement
Speaker 4: come from? That's what our series is about.
Speaker 5: All right, people should definitely go and check that out.
Speaker 2: And like I said, we're going to have urgency on
Speaker 2: next week to break down some of the specifics there,
Speaker 2: David Serta, so great.
Speaker 5: To see you, Thank you, sir, thank you, thanks so much.
Speaker 2: So, guys, there was one more story that I wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure and cover today because it is deeply troubling.
Speaker 2: Hassan Piker, who is one of the most, if not
Speaker 2: the largest, most prominent pro Palestine voice in the country,
Speaker 2: was detained for hours by customs and border patrol as
Speaker 2: he tried to re enter the country. He was flying
Speaker 2: in from France, and he was questioned on his views
Speaker 2: on Israel Palestine four hours. Hassan recently spoke about this experience.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little
Speaker 2: bit of.
Speaker 5: What he had to say.
Speaker 12: I'm sitting there and they're asking me about Trump, They're
Speaker 12: asking me about like Hamas, And he kept saying stuff.
Speaker 12: He kept saying stuff like do you like Hamas? Like
Speaker 12: do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a
Speaker 12: resistance group? Do you think Amas is a terrorist group
Speaker 12: or a resistance group?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 12: He just kept asking over and over again. Right, I
Speaker 12: kept repeating the same statement over and over again. And
Speaker 12: every single time he asked me a question leading a
Speaker 12: leading question about Hamas, I kept saying the United States
Speaker 12: State Department recognizes hamas as a terrorist organization.
Speaker 4: The fact that a lot of the shit that like.
Speaker 12: The Ethan Kleines of the world have like cried about
Speaker 12: over and over again were on ironically brought up in
Speaker 12: that fucking conversation the houthy like did you interview a houthy?
Speaker 12: It says here that you interviewed a Houthi, and I
Speaker 12: was like, or was he actually a Houthi?
Speaker 4: And I was like, he's not.
Speaker 12: You can look to all of the reporting that came
Speaker 12: up afterwards and before I interviewed him that he is
Speaker 12: not a He's not a hoothy. The very fact that
Speaker 12: that was like a point of contention that could have
Speaker 12: fucking gotten me arrested is insane, And I genuinely, in
Speaker 12: that moment was thinking, like, these fucking dumbass slop tubers
Speaker 12: are actually playing with fucking fire.
Speaker 2: So there is a lot to say about this. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, while he's referring to the quote unquote
Speaker 2: hot Houfi that he interviewed a while back, turns out
Speaker 2: the guy was not even a Houfi, which is what
Speaker 2: he's talking about here. But clearly CBP grilling him on
Speaker 2: his political views and stances over the course of hours.
Speaker 2: And what Hassan points to there he mentions Ethan Klein,
Speaker 2: who's his former podcast host, So he's had a falling
Speaker 2: out with primarily over some personal things, but also primarily
Speaker 2: over their respective views on Israel Palestine, and so Ethan
Speaker 2: has been going in and criticizing Hassan for things like
Speaker 2: his interview with the quote unquote hot Hoofi, And so
Speaker 2: he's pointing to the fact that these CBP agents seemingly
Speaker 2: knew about the nature of this online critique, and it
Speaker 2: reminded me of the fact that you have this, you know,
Speaker 2: extreme Zionist radical organization called Beitar that has been claiming
Speaker 2: credit for giving the Trump administration list of students that
Speaker 2: they want to be arrested and ultimately deported and have
Speaker 2: been tweeting out these lists. And there's some indication that
Speaker 2: the Trump administration is using social media for these types
Speaker 2: of operations. That's certainly what Betar Worldwide is claiming confirmation
Speaker 2: of that from the Trump administration. But the fact that
Speaker 2: Hassan was targeted in this way and question in this
Speaker 2: manner obviously deeply deeply troubling, and Hassan himself in another
Speaker 2: portion of his commentary here talks about how he thinks
Speaker 2: this was very intentional to create a climate of fear
Speaker 2: and to try to get him and others to shut
Speaker 2: up about their views that differ from the stance of
Speaker 2: this administration.
Speaker 5: Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 12: The reason for why they're doing that is, I think
Speaker 12: to try to create an environment of fear to try
Speaker 12: to get people like myself, or at least like others
Speaker 12: that would be in my shoes that don't have that
Speaker 12: same level of security, to shut the fuck up. And
Speaker 12: for me, I'm going to use the that I have
Speaker 12: in that moment to try and see what the fuck
Speaker 12: they're doing.
Speaker 2: So he talks there about how they're trying to create
Speaker 2: a climate of fear. Hassan is not the first person
Speaker 2: who has been seemingly targeted by Customs and Border patrol
Speaker 2: by the Trump administration in this manner. An immigration attorney
Speaker 2: who was returning back to the US was similar pulled
Speaker 2: aside for hours and questioned with him.
Speaker 5: It was specifically about.
Speaker 2: The work that he does, and they wanted to seize
Speaker 2: his phone and get a hold of his client list. Again,
Speaker 2: an immigration attorney, and this ties in with the larger
Speaker 2: project of the Trump administration where they have been either
Speaker 2: overtly or floating the idea of labeling as domestic terrorists
Speaker 2: anyone who supports the Palestinian cause. So Hassan, again, being
Speaker 2: one of the most if not the most prominent pro
Speaker 2: Palestine voice in the country getting targeted is deeply, deeply troubling.
Speaker 2: So that's one category of people we've seen. Of course,
Speaker 2: the way that they've applied this to students who are
Speaker 2: here on visa's even legal permanent residence, like Mahmud Khalil,
Speaker 2: not for any sort of criminal activity, but literally just
Speaker 2: for their speech, for penning and op ed or being
Speaker 2: involved in a protest movement that is pro Palestine. So
Speaker 2: Hassan appears to have been directly targeted because of his
Speaker 2: views on that issue. But that's not the only group
Speaker 2: that they've been going after, as evidenced by the immigration
Speaker 2: attorney who was pulled aside Sebastian Gorka, who is the
Speaker 2: White House's counter terrors are and Ken Clepenstein has done
Speaker 2: great reporting on this. He has floated that anyone who
Speaker 2: opposes the Trump administration's deportation policy should be seen as
Speaker 2: a domestic terrorist. And of course we saw a judge
Speaker 2: who was arrested, you know, in that context, and AOC
Speaker 2: and others who have been threatened with arrest for advising
Speaker 2: immigrants of their rights and the rights that they can
Speaker 2: avail themselves of in this country. He's also so floated
Speaker 2: labeling as domestic terrorists people who are just critical of
Speaker 2: the Trump regime. So the hands off protesters he mentioned
Speaker 2: as well. Of course, Pam Bondi gave a press conference
Speaker 2: where she officially said that people who harbor ill will
Speaker 2: against Tesla that they should be treated as domestic terrorists.
Speaker 2: And we know there have been you know, they really
Speaker 2: threw the book at some individuals whore accused of vandalizing
Speaker 2: Tesla's or Tesla property. So this is part of a
Speaker 2: larger pattern, and it seems like Hassan handled it incredibly well.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I would have been so cool
Speaker 2: under fire as he was. Gave you know, answers that
Speaker 2: they couldn't really use to do anything with. But he
Speaker 2: had the sense that they were trying to get him
Speaker 2: to express some sort of support for Hamas or for
Speaker 2: the Housies, both of which are labeled terrorist organizations by
Speaker 2: the State Department, as he rightly boinds out, so that
Speaker 2: they could have some sort of pretext to potentially detain him,
Speaker 2: arrest him, and hold him for a longer period of time.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, guys, this is I think another
Speaker 2: escalation when you're targeting prominent media figures simply for their
Speaker 2: speech on a topic that is dissonant from the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: from their regime. There were a few other things going
Speaker 2: on here that I just wanted to make sure and highlight.
Speaker 2: There's video that recently went viral of a Massachusetts ICE
Speaker 2: raid where they are trying to arrest a mother. Her
Speaker 2: teenage daughter is obviously very upset. She's also holding a
Speaker 2: young child. There's a crowd that gathers at the scene.
Speaker 2: The agents, I'm not sure if these were ICE agents
Speaker 2: or local police also got involved with this, even though
Speaker 2: they are not supposed to be involved whatsoever in immigration enforcement.
Speaker 2: But in any case, the teenage daughter ends up getting
Speaker 2: slammed and her face pushed into the ground. Let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and take a look at that footage.
Speaker 4: Stop them.
Speaker 13: Definitely a chaotic scene on Eureka Street Thursday, as Worcester
Speaker 13: police and ice agents detained a mother and her sixteen
Speaker 13: year old daughter. That girl's face slammed into the ground
Speaker 13: as she was taken into custody. They have not been identified.
Speaker 13: Worcester Police said officers were dispatched to the area for
Speaker 13: a report of a federal agent surrounded by about two
Speaker 13: dozen people. When police arrived, they say the teen daughter
Speaker 13: was holding a newborn baby in her arms and standing
Speaker 13: in front of the ice vehicle that was trying to
Speaker 13: leave with their mother inside. Officers told her she was
Speaker 13: endangering the baby, so she handed the newborn to a relative,
Speaker 13: but police alleged as the ice vehicle drove away, she
Speaker 13: ran after it and kicked the side of it. She
Speaker 13: was arrested in charge with reckless endangerment of a child,
Speaker 13: disturbing the peace to sort of the conduct, and resisting arrest.
Speaker 2: These are the types of scenes that are increasingly playing
Speaker 2: out across the country and including some of the public pushback.
Speaker 2: You can see there there's a crowd that forms that
Speaker 2: is very concerned about what is happening, that is attempting
Speaker 2: to intervene. The police claim they were called in because
Speaker 2: this is their line since they can't be involved directly
Speaker 2: in immigration enforcement they were called in for crowd control
Speaker 2: and that their actions were consistent with trying to get
Speaker 2: the crowd.
Speaker 5: That had gathered there under control.
Speaker 2: But you know, there has been increasing pushback from the
Speaker 2: public on these draconian tactics that are being utilized, including
Speaker 2: against you know, a teenage girl here who gets thrown
Speaker 2: to the ground. This is I was reading the local
Speaker 2: Massachusetts press. I think you pronounced it Wooster. Sorry Massachusetts
Speaker 2: people if I get that wrong. But in any case,
Speaker 2: there's a local uproar about the way all of this
Speaker 2: went down, and we've seen in other towns where actually
Speaker 2: public protest led to the release of some other immigrants
Speaker 2: who had been arrested and detained, including child who had
Speaker 2: been arrested from school, and the principle and others pushed
Speaker 2: back and they were able to secure the at least
Speaker 2: temporary release. Some good news I did want to share
Speaker 2: with you though, in light of the especially consistent with
Speaker 2: the news about Hassan here, we've been tracking all of
Speaker 2: the students that have been arrested for their speech, their
Speaker 2: pro Palestine speech. One of those is Remesa oz Turk.
Speaker 2: We all watch the video of her getting snatched and
Speaker 2: kidnapped up off the street.
Speaker 5: Her crime.
Speaker 2: The only thing that this administration has ever accused her
Speaker 2: of is penning an op ed for the student newspaper
Speaker 2: calling for divestment from anything associated with Israel. That's literally
Speaker 2: all that she's ever been accused of. She's never been
Speaker 2: accused of any crime, even of saying from the river
Speaker 2: to the sea, God forbid, none of that, just this
Speaker 2: op ed in the student newspaper.
Speaker 5: She was arrested for that.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration shifted her down to Louisiana because they
Speaker 2: thought that the judges there would be harsher Visa VI immigrants,
Speaker 2: and that they would have a better chance of being
Speaker 2: able to secure oz Turk's continued detention and eventual deportation
Speaker 2: for what is very clearly just on the.
Speaker 5: Grounds of speech.
Speaker 2: They lost that battle to keep her in Louisiana, so
Speaker 2: that was a significant win for Rameesa Osturk. She gets
Speaker 2: transferred back to Vermont. They hear her case in Vermont,
Speaker 2: and ultimately this has not been fully decided yet, but
Speaker 2: they did decide while the case the trial is pending,
Speaker 2: they did decide to release Ramesa oz Turk, so she
Speaker 2: is now free for the moment.
Speaker 5: While that case is pending.
Speaker 2: She spoke out about everything that's going on, including why
Speaker 2: she appreciates and respects this country, which I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that I would be big enough to say at this
Speaker 2: particular moment, but just take a listen to her comments.
Speaker 2: Upon her release, I.
Speaker 14: Will continue my case in the courts. I come to you,
Speaker 14: Mike to face to pursue my Gorge studies long I'm
Speaker 14: girl as a scholars and as it's contributed chal developments
Speaker 14: fields with my teaching research on Applight's work. America is
Speaker 14: the greatest Demochrist in the it and I believe in
Speaker 14: those wells that we share. I have faith in the
Speaker 14: American system of justice.
Speaker 9: This is difficult time for my community, for my community
Speaker 9: at toss at Turkey, but I'm so grateful for all
Speaker 9: the sport, kindness and cash.
Speaker 14: My advisor sent me my dissertation proposal to the PISM.
Speaker 2: I was really struck there by. First of all, she
Speaker 2: says America is the greatest democracy in the world. I
Speaker 2: believe in those values that we shared, like the ability
Speaker 2: to hold on to that sentiment at this particular time
Speaker 2: when those democratic rights are very much under assault, and
Speaker 2: that she is burying the brunt of that assault, I
Speaker 2: thought was pretty incredible, and also that even in this
Speaker 2: moment when she's going through such a trying ordeal, she's
Speaker 2: still thinking about the other women that she saw and
Speaker 2: the pain and the anguish that they were suffering inside
Speaker 2: the immigration center. I was actually talking to producer Mac
Speaker 2: before or this segment. It really is incredible the people
Speaker 2: that they have made an example of.
Speaker 5: Every one of them.
Speaker 2: Appears to be just the most kind, big hearted, like
Speaker 2: incredible people that you can imagine, whether it's moss of Madawi,
Speaker 2: if you listen to what he has to say about
Speaker 2: the need for justice for everyone and human rights and
Speaker 2: dignity for all, Mack Mood Khalil, we can actually put
Speaker 2: he just penned an on ed. We can put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen. Remember, this is a guy who
Speaker 2: he is still being held in detention. He was denied
Speaker 2: the ability to be present for the birth of his
Speaker 2: firstborn child, and that's who he's writing to hear and again,
Speaker 2: all because he was just involved as a facilitator and
Speaker 2: a negotiator in the Colombia pro Palestine protest. He says
Speaker 2: to his newborn son, Dean, my heart aches that I
Speaker 2: could not hold you in my arms and hear your
Speaker 2: first cry that I could not unfurro your clenched fists
Speaker 2: or change your first diaper. I am sorry that I
Speaker 2: was not there to hold your mother's hand, or to
Speaker 2: recite the ad hun, or to call to prayer in
Speaker 2: your ear.
Speaker 5: But my absence is not unique.
Speaker 2: Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by
Speaker 2: racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is
Speaker 2: part of daily life. Babies are born every day without
Speaker 2: their fathers, not because their fathers choose to leave, but
Speaker 2: because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells,
Speaker 2: and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your
Speaker 2: mother and I feel is but one drop in a
Speaker 2: sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.
Speaker 2: And again here he is still still detained, still being
Speaker 2: held for the crime of participating in a protest, and
Speaker 2: barred from being able to be there for the birth
Speaker 2: of his child, and still is thinking not just about himself,
Speaker 2: but is thinking about the broader cause and those who
Speaker 2: he says are suffering even more greatly than he is,
Speaker 2: and his wife too, by the way, who is an
Speaker 2: American citizen. I mean his child and is an American citizen.
Speaker 2: His wife is an American citizen. And so while Mahmud
Speaker 2: Khalil's rights are being denied here because of his speech,
Speaker 2: so are those of his wife. Of his American citizen
Speaker 2: wife is also having her life turned upside down because
Speaker 2: he dared to speak out against genocide being committed with
Speaker 2: our US tax dollars in Gaza. So extraordinary individuals and
Speaker 2: deeply troubling times. You know, to go back to Hassan here,
Speaker 2: I do wonder if the timing of this questioning and
Speaker 2: detention has to do with you. He's recently the subject
Speaker 2: of a New York Times profile like his. Hassan is
Speaker 2: a huge has a gigantic audience. I think he's the
Speaker 2: largest twitch political streamer that is out there. But he's
Speaker 2: also had more and more sort of mainstream crossover lately,
Speaker 2: which has also raised his profile, and so I wonder
Speaker 2: if that's also part of what made him a target.
Speaker 2: Kudos to him for not buckley under the pressure and
Speaker 2: speaking out about everything that he experienced, because the goal here,
Speaker 2: like he said, is to create a climate of fear,
Speaker 2: and you cannot allow that to happen, you have to
Speaker 2: continue to speak out.
Speaker 5: On issues of importance.
Speaker 2: And he also spoke about how, you know, having this
Speaker 2: large profile and having this level of national fame also
Speaker 2: gives them a sort of privilege. So very admirable that
Speaker 2: he's thinking about that under those circumstances and not buckling
Speaker 2: under the pressure.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, that is the show for today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for hanging out with me and
Speaker 2: Tim Miller and David Sarota, Emiine Ryan are going to
Speaker 2: be in tomorrow for Counterpoints. Thank you also to all
Speaker 2: of the Premium subscribers out there who have been supporting
Speaker 2: us an enabled our expansion to the Friday Show. Super
Speaker 2: super grateful for all of your support. And we're going
Speaker 2: to have some more big news for you guys coming soon,
Speaker 2: so stay tuned for that and I'll see you soon.
Speaker 4: P