Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Friday, Ryan Graham, great to see you,
Speaker 1: my friends.
Speaker 2: Nice to see you, Cristl.
Speaker 1: Emily is going to jump on here when she is ready,
Speaker 1: but there are many things to discuss this morning. Once again,
Speaker 1: very hard to whittle down a quote unquote mini show
Speaker 1: for today, but we've got breaking news with regard to
Speaker 1: the Democrats cave with regard to the Republican ce our
Speaker 1: budget situation, so a lot of fallout from that one.
Speaker 1: We've got a bunch of new developments with regard to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Yesterday the stock market ended in correction territory, so continued
Speaker 1: chaos and tumult there, and then we had some really
Speaker 1: significant court decisions as well with regard to Doge. In particular,
Speaker 1: multiple federal judge is ruling that those probationary employees have
Speaker 1: to be rehired. But Ryan, since we don't have Emily
Speaker 1: here yet, we can start with the demon dem conversation.
Speaker 1: That's right, So just a little bit of backstory, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that this gets into like annoyingly technical inside
Speaker 1: the Beltway kind of stuff, but the government is going
Speaker 1: to shut down tonight at midnight if they don't pass
Speaker 1: some sort of funding Republicans made a bet, effectively that
Speaker 1: Democrats would cave and go along with whatever funding resolution
Speaker 1: that Republicans put together. So they put together a partisan
Speaker 1: proposal that does things like raised defense spending, lower all
Speaker 1: kinds of domestic spending priorities. Ryan is intimately familiar with
Speaker 1: the details of how they're screwing over the DC public
Speaker 1: school system and DCCD city government. There's a provision in
Speaker 1: there that protects Republicans from having to ever take a
Speaker 1: vote on Trump's tariff program, which is increasingly, you know,
Speaker 1: totally unpopular. It also just hands to Trump and Elon
Speaker 1: the ability to basically do whatever they want, which, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, they already are, but this sort of codifies
Speaker 1: that they would have a blank check and be able
Speaker 1: to jade Evance actually told the Republican caucus that we've
Speaker 1: already got plans for how we're not even going to
Speaker 1: follow this budget plan. We're just going to do whatever
Speaker 1: we want. Rhino, get your reaction before I play some
Speaker 1: of the fall on here. But the other piece that's
Speaker 1: really important here is Republicans control the White House, they
Speaker 1: control the Senate, they control the House. This is one
Speaker 1: of the few times when they actually need Democrats for
Speaker 1: anything in order to keep the government open because they
Speaker 1: need to get that sixty vote threshold in the Senate,
Speaker 1: so they need seven or eight Dems. Probably Ran Paul
Speaker 1: is going to vote against this, which means they need
Speaker 1: eight Dems to vote with them to end a filibuster
Speaker 1: to be able to vote on this budget resolution. So
Speaker 1: it's one of the few moments when Democrats have leverage.
Speaker 1: Democrats in the House all hung together, Haqeme Jeffreys, to
Speaker 1: his credit, whipped against this Republican budget bill. Everybody except
Speaker 1: for one in the Democratic caucus voted against it. The
Speaker 1: Republicans had a similarly you know, partisan It was sort
Speaker 1: of like a lockstep party line vote. The Republicans control
Speaker 1: the House, so it passes through the House and it
Speaker 1: gets to the Senate. Chuck Schumer was making some noises
Speaker 1: like maybe he was going to fight, maybe this would
Speaker 1: be the place where he took a stand, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: yesterday evening, as many people would have anticipated, he decides
Speaker 1: that he's going to cave. So, first of all, Ryan,
Speaker 1: is there anything that you would add or clarify about
Speaker 1: that setup of where we are as of this morning.
Speaker 2: No, that's about right, Yeah, And the Democrats met for
Speaker 2: a very long and what we were told testy lunch.
Speaker 2: They always have their their Tuesday lunches, and this one
Speaker 2: went extra long with you know, some Democrats arguing, look,
Speaker 2: we believe that this is an unconstitutional power grab and
Speaker 2: an effort to destroy the government and hand it over
Speaker 2: to billionaires. Chris Murphy, as we'll play later coming, you know,
Speaker 2: said publicly said just that much. In the meeting. A
Speaker 2: bunch of Democrats said that, like, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: We have been out here saying that this is this
Speaker 2: is unconstitutional what they are doing, and it's a threat
Speaker 2: to our democracy. And now we're just going to rubber
Speaker 2: stamp it, which will then give our imprimaitor to it.
Speaker 2: We'll say this is now a bipartisan effort. And there
Speaker 2: was this whole gimmick that human was trying to do
Speaker 2: where let's vote for, you know, to move forward on
Speaker 2: the bill so that we're not filibustering it, but then
Speaker 2: we'll vote against it when it's on the Senate floor,
Speaker 2: and nobody's nobody's fooled by that anymore. So yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's essentially, and I don't want to be too provincial
Speaker 2: But ye know, they're taking one point one billion dollars
Speaker 2: out of the d C operating budget, two hundred million
Speaker 2: out of the DC public schools budget starting immediately, like
Speaker 2: over the next year. Just that's just an absolutely extraordinary
Speaker 2: amount of money. And DC gets federal money because it
Speaker 2: is not a state, So the federal government insists on,
Speaker 2: you know, basically having control over the city. And I
Speaker 2: can't imagine like what that's going to mean for the
Speaker 2: for city services broadly, but in the in the schools
Speaker 2: in particular, they're already you know, facing layoffs and shortages
Speaker 2: and high class sizes, yeah, and dilapidated buildings.
Speaker 1: And DC has long gotten a raw deal because it
Speaker 1: costs a lot to host the federal government in your city.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you cannot tax an embassy, you cannot tax
Speaker 2: a federal building, and you cannot tax a nonprofit. And
Speaker 2: what is Washington made up of? Exactly embassies, nonprofits and
Speaker 2: government buildings, and so there's very little tax base. So
Speaker 2: the deal is the federal government comes in and backstops
Speaker 2: some of that, not as much as they should, but
Speaker 2: some of it. And I think it shows how little
Speaker 2: ability Republicans have to actually do anything structural about the
Speaker 2: federal deficit. If the only way that they can achieve
Speaker 2: some savings is taking it from poor kids in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Right like that, that's not a game changer
Speaker 2: for you. Might make you happy for some twisted reason
Speaker 2: because you're sick, but it doesn't actually do anything about
Speaker 2: the federal deficit. We're talking about of this is that
Speaker 2: over ten years, this would reduce the federal budget deficit
Speaker 2: by seven billion dollars. And part of that is because
Speaker 2: they cut twenty billion from the IRS, which will they
Speaker 2: estimate and I think they underestimate. We'll add about add
Speaker 2: forty billion because there'll be sixty billion in extra cheating
Speaker 2: that we don't select as a result of this. I
Speaker 2: think there'll be a lot more. But let's say that
Speaker 2: that's right. So out of the seven billion they're saving
Speaker 2: over ten years, a billion of it is coming out
Speaker 2: of washing the DC's budget for the next year. That's cowardly,
Speaker 2: it's not impressive, and it's not a structural solution to
Speaker 2: what they think is a structural problem.
Speaker 1: Although it's hard to take them seriously that they really
Speaker 1: think that this is a structural problem when they're set
Speaker 1: to give away trillions intax cuts to rich people, so
Speaker 1: we're concerned about it.
Speaker 2: Are about hundred it's hundreds of millions for weapons, billions
Speaker 2: for weapons, like all these different weapons programs are are
Speaker 2: singled out. A billion for this carrier, you know, hundreds
Speaker 2: of millions for these jets, hundreds of millions for these subs.
Speaker 2: Out of here, you're not serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's something really interesting and unusual happening in
Speaker 1: this Democratic Party debate inter debate though, which is that?
Speaker 1: So Schumer and Kirsten Chillibrand both notably from New York,
Speaker 1: will come back to that sort of led the charge
Speaker 1: to try to convince their fellow Democratic senators to cave.
Speaker 1: And Schumer, of course is the minority leader, so he's
Speaker 1: the one that makes the announcement. Guys, I'm voting for cloture,
Speaker 1: I'm voting for this cr I am compelling enough of
Speaker 1: my Democratic colleagues to join me that we're going to
Speaker 1: give Republicans the votes that they need to be able
Speaker 1: to pass this thing through. And instantly there is absolute
Speaker 1: fury at Schumer, not just from you know, the AOC types,
Speaker 1: but really across the board, including fury that showed up
Speaker 1: immediately on MSNBC, which of course is normally their role
Speaker 1: is just a rubber stamp whatever it is that the
Speaker 1: Democrats decide. So let me go ahead and pull up.
Speaker 1: Also noteworthy this is you know Aaron Rupar that clipped
Speaker 1: this and other like sort of CenTra is like vote blue,
Speaker 1: reliable Democratic type and you know, typical of or really
Speaker 1: emblematic of how wide and broad the fury at this
Speaker 1: cave really is within the whole of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and take a listen to this
Speaker 1: kind of levers.
Speaker 3: The one thing they have leverages in the Senate where
Speaker 3: you need a filibuster proof majority on a cloture vote,
Speaker 3: that there's essentially an up constitutional assault on the government
Speaker 3: right now. And I think you would agree with that assault.
Speaker 4: These guys are the worst and we got to fight
Speaker 4: them every step of the way, as we say.
Speaker 5: But looks telling people, But he's telling people on the floor,
Speaker 5: we are not even going to listen to this c R.
Speaker 5: This is a people of paper that we will impound
Speaker 5: and rip up the moments that it's passed. If that's
Speaker 5: the case, how is voting for cloture not essentially an
Speaker 5: infra motor on the very same assault on the constitutional order.
Speaker 4: They're already even without this CR, they're already doing it, right, Okay,
Speaker 4: they are gonna They did it to the Department of Education.
Speaker 4: But I can tell you I've been through shutdowns before,
Speaker 4: the old It's not that this CR is good. It's
Speaker 4: not that.
Speaker 2: Voting for it is good.
Speaker 4: It's horrible, but the alternative is worse.
Speaker 1: And we And in addition, Chrises also made a good
Speaker 1: point with him, which is, hey, the people who would
Speaker 1: be most impacted by a shutdown are the federal government
Speaker 1: employees themselves. Their union said, don't vote for this. So
Speaker 1: how how can you justify, you know, caving in the
Speaker 1: situation and voting along with the Republicans and handing them
Speaker 1: even more unchecked power. And then, by the way, after
Speaker 1: his first guest is Chuck Schumer, the very next guest
Speaker 1: on Chris Haes is Bernie Sanders, who is out there
Speaker 1: making the case for why this is a you know,
Speaker 1: a horrific move for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Right in that clip, you guys can go back and
Speaker 2: watch it again. You have Hayes like audibly scoffing and
Speaker 2: laughing at the Senate Majority leader like that. That's where
Speaker 2: the that's where the Democratic Party is at this point.
Speaker 2: Just it just can't they can't be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, that's that's exactly right. And you know it's
Speaker 1: not just that he made this decision in this moment.
Speaker 1: By the way, this vote is going to happen at
Speaker 1: some point today and you know, we expect it to
Speaker 1: go this way, but they are still under a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure from their constituents to you know, to go
Speaker 1: ahead and block this.
Speaker 2: It never fails to cave, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, he could fail to cave. You never know
Speaker 1: what's going to ultimately happen. But I mean this has
Speaker 1: been the thing that has been really wild, and we've
Speaker 1: been sending each other, you know, Will Stancil, who's like
Speaker 1: the prototypical moderate sort of anti left Democrat, who is
Speaker 1: posting you have to these people are worthless. They're the
Speaker 1: reason that the country is in the place that is today.
Speaker 1: We need to primary all of them. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: who is this guy You've got near a tandin out
Speaker 1: there retweeting Bernie Sanders clips. And then you know, I'll
Speaker 1: show you in moment some news articles about how even
Speaker 1: some of the like swing district Democrats who went out
Speaker 1: on a limb in their view, to vote to block
Speaker 1: this in the House. They're ready to write checks to
Speaker 1: AOC to primary Chuck Schumer. So this is the This
Speaker 1: is in my opinion. Mind, you cover this more closely
Speaker 1: than I do. This is the biggest rebellion I've ever
Speaker 1: seen within the Democratic Party because it isn't a progressive rebellion.
Speaker 1: It truly is the base moderate Democrats, you know, standard issue,
Speaker 1: normy Democratic base voters who are absolutely furious at the
Speaker 1: lack of fight and the lack of planning here, because,
Speaker 1: as I was going to say, it's not just that
Speaker 1: he caved, it's also that there was no messaging. There
Speaker 1: was no demand that was made, there was no plan,
Speaker 1: And we've known for months, I mean, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about since Trump was elected that there was going to
Speaker 1: be this shutdown fight and this would be a place
Speaker 1: where Democrats could use some leverage and take a stand.
Speaker 1: And yet nothing, absolutely nothing, And.
Speaker 2: That that's the key point. That they never articulated a message.
Speaker 2: Therefore they have no demand here. So if they imagine
Speaker 2: that they did, that's that enough Democrats grow spind here
Speaker 2: and they do block cloture today and we get a
Speaker 2: government shutdown. Then the media will come to Democrats and say, okay,
Speaker 2: what do you want? What's like, what's your demand? Right,
Speaker 2: if you don't like this budget, like what's your what's
Speaker 2: your counteroffer? What are you what are you demanding that
Speaker 2: Republicans do? And right now, all they kind of have
Speaker 2: is well, this whole thing is an unconstitutional power grab.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well, what do you want? Now? What
Speaker 2: they if if they were serious about that messaging, they
Speaker 2: could say, we're going to put into law, you know
Speaker 2: that any reductions in force, you know, done to federal
Speaker 2: you know, federal workforces must be done through congressional with
Speaker 2: congressional approval, Like that could be the thing that they
Speaker 2: would demand, or any any restructuring of the of the
Speaker 2: government must be done through Congress. And then that would
Speaker 2: require getting sixty votes in the Senate. So they're beasts.
Speaker 2: And then you could and you could, as as Americans
Speaker 2: like you could see the virtue in that, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we think that the federal government is too big and
Speaker 2: it's disorganized, and there's a lot of waste, fraud abuse.
Speaker 2: Let's find it. Let's figure it out. Let's figure out
Speaker 2: how we can fund investigations into the waste and fraud.
Speaker 2: Let's see, let's see where we can streamline things. But
Speaker 2: they don't want it. They don't like they're they're not
Speaker 2: doing that. They're just they don't have anything. So I
Speaker 2: think that's I think Schumer understood that they didn't have
Speaker 2: a step to there, and I also think that Schumer.
Speaker 1: But he's part of the reason why they didn't have
Speaker 1: He's the reason.
Speaker 2: He's the reason. Yeah, he's the.
Speaker 1: Guy that was like, you were the one who was
Speaker 1: supposed to come up with that step two.
Speaker 2: So to him, he likes to get out of the way. Strategy.
Speaker 2: Stock market is crashing, Trump's approval rating is crashing, get
Speaker 2: out of the way. It's like a communist revolutionary strategy, like,
Speaker 2: you know, allow things to collapse and hype the contradictions.
Speaker 1: That is that what's going on. Yes, well this was
Speaker 1: the James Carvel. I mean, this is what he said, basically,
Speaker 1: like roll over and play dead and let them destroy everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am a vig Oeland noted, and I
Speaker 1: think that there may be something to this that the
Speaker 1: two Democrats who led the charge to cave. Here are
Speaker 1: the two democratuct senators from New York Meanwhile, you know
Speaker 1: we're going to cover later in the show, markets and chaos.
Speaker 1: Certainly a government shut down would not be good for
Speaker 1: you know, their portfolios and their bottom line. So it's
Speaker 1: also certainly possible that you know, Wall Street got to
Speaker 1: them and it's basically like, you can't do this. This
Speaker 1: is going to be too bad for us. And you
Speaker 1: know that's a core constituency both for Kirsten Gilibrand and
Speaker 1: for Chuck Schumer. Let me go ahead and play aoc
Speaker 1: here on CNN. Who was you know? Really she really
Speaker 1: has led the charge, I would say, in terms of
Speaker 1: trying to bolster Democrats and trying to encourage them to
Speaker 1: have a spine in this situation. And she also got
Speaker 1: asked the question about whether she would talan Chuck sherm,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if fasten this side or not, but
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and take a look at what we've
Speaker 1: got here.
Speaker 2: Vote you think that's wrong.
Speaker 6: I believe that's a tremendous mistake. Yeah. I think, well,
Speaker 6: first and foremost, the American people. If anyone has held
Speaker 6: a town hall or has seen what has been happening
Speaker 6: in town halls, American people, whether they are Republicans, independence.
Speaker 6: Democrats are up in arms about Elon Musk and the
Speaker 6: actual cut of federal agencies across the board. This Continuing
Speaker 6: Resolution codifies much of this chaos that Elon Musk is
Speaker 6: wreaking havoc on the federal government. It codifies many of
Speaker 6: those changes, It sacrifices and completely eliminates congressional authority in
Speaker 6: order to review these impulsive Trump tariffs that he's switching
Speaker 6: on and off. And on top of that, for folks
Speaker 6: who are concerned about effectiveness and government, this Republican extreme
Speaker 6: Spending Bill removes all of the guardrails and all of
Speaker 6: the accountability measures to ensure that money is being spent
Speaker 6: in the way that Congress has directed for it to
Speaker 6: be spent. This turns the federal government into a slush
Speaker 6: fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It sacrifices congressional authority,
Speaker 6: and it is deeply partisan, and so to me, it
Speaker 6: is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand
Speaker 6: the few pieces of leverage that we have away for
Speaker 6: free when we've been secure to protect social security, protect medicaid,
Speaker 6: and protect Medicare.
Speaker 7: You have it?
Speaker 1: So he goes on to say, hey, you know, would
Speaker 1: you challenge Chuck schumergency of course dodges that, but that
Speaker 1: is apparently a live issue. Now, Ryan, I'm going to
Speaker 1: let you speak to that. I'm going to put the
Speaker 1: dog so she stops sparking, be right back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we could put it up in a minute.
Speaker 2: But there's this. There was some reporting from Leesburg, Virginia,
Speaker 2: which is where Democrats are holding their annual kind of
Speaker 2: policy retreat. These House Democrats go, it's a bunch of
Speaker 2: bunch of members of Congress, lobbyists and reporters, you know,
Speaker 2: go to huddle for a couple of days, their set
Speaker 2: their strategy. And AOC was interviewed by reporters out there,
Speaker 2: and that's and that's where she was also getting pressed
Speaker 2: on whether or not she was going to challenge Schumer
Speaker 2: with with with members of Congress who were at that retreat, saying, look,
Speaker 2: I'm a centrist. They wouldn't put their names to it,
Speaker 2: cowards that they are. I'm a centrist, but I am
Speaker 2: ready to write a check to AOC right right here
Speaker 2: at this at this retreat if she will jump in
Speaker 2: the race against Chuck Schumer. It's interesting because Chuck Schumer
Speaker 2: felt an enormous amount of concern about AOC primarying him
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty right after or twenty twenty two. I
Speaker 2: guess is that when he was up twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: so he's I guess he's not up until twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 2: so maybe he feels like he has time to let
Speaker 2: this kind of that this will not be a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they also, like I don't think they've fully
Speaker 1: adjusted to the reality where near where near a Tandon
Speaker 1: and Will Stanzel are hating them, you know, like they're
Speaker 1: used to some level of like minor, quashable, ignorable rebellion
Speaker 1: from the left flank of the Democratic Party, and I'm
Speaker 1: still seeing articles that are written that are like, the
Speaker 1: left is mad. It's like, yes, the left is mad,
Speaker 1: but that's actually not what's important here. What's noteworthy is that,
Speaker 1: you know, normal resistance Dems are disgusted with Democratic leadership
Speaker 1: and what that leads to. It's you know, it's an
Speaker 1: open question, but this is the most tea party like
Speaker 1: that the Democratic Party has ever been in. They're discussed
Speaker 1: with their own leadership, their discontent, enchantment, disenchantment with their
Speaker 1: own media, and their desire to, you know, to challenge
Speaker 1: some of these people and get them ount of there
Speaker 1: if they're not willing to fight.
Speaker 2: And one critique of the of this will Stancil approach.
Speaker 2: You know, he comes he comes from the kind of
Speaker 2: centrist school of you know, fight harder Democrats, right, and
Speaker 2: so they always want to fight harder, and now he's
Speaker 2: ramping it up to eleven. They need to fight harder.
Speaker 2: But because he is so reluctant to embrace genuine like
Speaker 2: left politics, it's like, we'll fight harder for what he's like, well,
Speaker 2: fight harder against democrats. So that comes That means they
Speaker 2: should have pressed their charges against Trump faster. They should
Speaker 2: have impeached him harder, like classic rather than like you know,
Speaker 2: an actual substain of critique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and that is certainly true, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. Like you know, the I was talking to
Speaker 1: soccer about this yesterday, the Brian Tyler Cohen's The Midas
Speaker 1: Touch is becoming a little bit more ideological, I would say,
Speaker 1: and a progressive direction. But really the core of their
Speaker 1: critique is just stand up, fight harder, resist Trump more effectively.
Speaker 1: And you know you said this was a fascist threat.
Speaker 1: The fascist threat has arrived and now you're just like
Speaker 1: laying down and capitulating, and so that is the core
Speaker 1: of their critique. What's noteworthy, though, is that the people
Speaker 1: who are by and large satisfying that desire to see
Speaker 1: people who have a strategy and are putting up a
Speaker 1: fight are people like AOC, are people like Bernie. Most
Speaker 1: of the people who are demonstrating a backbone and putting
Speaker 1: up a fight in this moment happened to be on
Speaker 1: the progressive left. So you know, that's what's sort of
Speaker 1: interesting in this moment is like, yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's particularly ideological, and yet the people who are there
Speaker 1: raising up as heroes at this point are the aocs
Speaker 1: and the Bernie's of the world. So for example, with
Speaker 1: this you know, centrist rebellion and them being like AOC
Speaker 1: we challenged humor, it's because they're excited about Medicare for all.
Speaker 1: It's for this reason. And also for these particular House Democrats,
Speaker 1: they feel like they were they say here, feel like
Speaker 1: they walked the plank. In the words of one member,
Speaker 1: they voted almost unanimously against the budget measure, only to
Speaker 1: watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light. Complete
Speaker 1: melt in complete and utter meltdown on all text chains.
Speaker 1: A senior House Democrat said, people are curious. Some rank
Speaker 1: and file members floated the idea of angrily marching onto
Speaker 1: the Senate floor in protest. Others are talking openly about
Speaker 1: supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GP
Speaker 1: spending bill. And even you know, for AOC herself, who
Speaker 1: came in of course defeating a long time establishment member
Speaker 1: and started off with that protest outside in Nancy Pelosi's office.
Speaker 1: I mean, you literally wrote the book on her evolution.
Speaker 1: She has much more embraced the tactic of let me
Speaker 1: see what I can get on front, you know, on
Speaker 1: the inside. So for her to come out swinging against
Speaker 1: democratic leadership, even for her is a brain from the
Speaker 1: way that she's been operating the bulk of the time
Speaker 1: that she's been in the House, right.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you think back, you know throughout history,
Speaker 2: like who was in the French underground resistance. You know,
Speaker 2: in Nazi occupied France, it was it was leftists, it
Speaker 2: was communists, it was socialists. The Centrists became part of
Speaker 2: vich France. You know, they collaborated with the incoming government,
Speaker 2: and that that was the case with resistance to fascism
Speaker 2: all over the world. And that's why you had socialists
Speaker 2: so popular for decades after World War Two all around
Speaker 2: the world, not just Europe but everywhere else where there
Speaker 2: was fascism and authoritarianism and Vietnam wherever it was. These
Speaker 2: socialists and communists, like the hardcore left that went underground,
Speaker 2: stuck to their principles and fought and died for their country.
Speaker 2: And if you were not active in that, you know,
Speaker 2: you were considered a trader for decades. It's after World
Speaker 2: War Two, and so the rhetoric now is the same,
Speaker 2: Like obviously we do not have Nazi occupied the United States,
Speaker 2: but the rhetoric coming from Democrats is the same, and
Speaker 2: they feel like they're under siege, and so they're turning
Speaker 2: to people who are actually willing to fight for something. Now,
Speaker 2: what happened is that because the socialists and communists fought
Speaker 2: for something, they were then given a hearing for their
Speaker 2: actual policy ideas, you know, after they after they came
Speaker 2: to power. So right now all they want from AOC
Speaker 2: and Bernie is this energy. They like the fight. Will
Speaker 2: they start listening to them on a policy level? Next?
Speaker 2: Is that is that step two of this party evolution,
Speaker 2: I don't know. And there's enormous corporate and you know,
Speaker 2: billionaire counterweight against that happening. Of course, Yeah, at least
Speaker 2: it opens up the possibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, given your coverage of the the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and these fights, you know, going back years, do you
Speaker 1: see similarities with the Tea Party rebellion? Do you think
Speaker 1: we're going to see primary fights against some of these
Speaker 1: members who are deemed you know, insufficiently like insufficiently strong
Speaker 1: against Trump in this moment.
Speaker 2: It is funny that I'm talking about marching on the
Speaker 2: Senate because that's literally what a couple of uh Tea
Speaker 2: Party members did. M Tea Party kept passing uh you know,
Speaker 2: repeals of Medicare and cuts the government spending, and the
Speaker 2: Senate would just immediately dispatch with it and go back
Speaker 2: to kind of business usual. So they went down to
Speaker 2: the Senate physically and stood in the stood in the
Speaker 2: Senate chamber and we're like, you know, they're like, what
Speaker 2: do we have to do here? And they were people
Speaker 2: were like who are you guys, and why are you here?
Speaker 2: And kind of ushered them out. Now those guys control
Speaker 2: the party. Uh So there definitely are some similarities, you know,
Speaker 2: seeing Hayes shift or laugh not shift, but like laugh
Speaker 2: and space. Yeah, you know you needed the Tea party
Speaker 2: without Fox News would not have existed like it needed.
Speaker 2: It needs a giant media megaphone to change what the
Speaker 2: what the party rank and file understands as where they're
Speaker 2: supposed to be. Yeah, so if you get a shift
Speaker 2: from MSNBC and say that like the New York Times
Speaker 2: and CNN, then then yeah, you could see the party shift.
Speaker 1: I mean you also do have massive growth of these
Speaker 1: Minus Touch Brian Tyler, Cohen Kyle channel, like all of
Speaker 1: these liberal to you know, progressive left channels that are
Speaker 1: blowing up in size and are taking this boscher of
Speaker 1: you know, you you've got a fight, so you have
Speaker 1: that as a as a megaphone too. But yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have even if you're just covering this fight on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: that would be different then and you genuinely have you know,
Speaker 1: like Hayes head on Chuck Schrumer then immediately has on
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders. Even if you're doing that, it's profoundly different
Speaker 1: from the way MSNBC has operated as just like whatever
Speaker 1: democratic leadership says we are backing that full stop. Other
Speaker 1: views are not even going to be like tolerated or
Speaker 1: represented here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if Schumer gets what he wants, which is
Speaker 2: the bottom falling out of the Trump administration, he may
Speaker 2: not end up getting credit for it. You know, He's
Speaker 2: people are going to remember that he facilitated it. And
Speaker 2: so somebody like a Chris Murphy or shots or somebody
Speaker 2: like that, yeah, might come in and take over the
Speaker 2: mantle from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are saying, hey, let's
Speaker 1: get Chris Murphy as a Senate Minority leader and get
Speaker 1: this guy on it here, which is interesting. And Murphy
Speaker 1: is definitely one who's like sort of stepped up and
Speaker 1: understood actually you know new media. Also, he's always recording
Speaker 1: these straight to camera like here's how I'm thinking about things,
Speaker 1: and here's why I'm approaching it this way that I
Speaker 1: think has garnered him a lot of trust with the
Speaker 1: Democratic base. Let's go ahead and move on to what
Speaker 1: was going on in the markets yesterday. I haven't checked.
Speaker 1: They're open now. I haven't checked to see exactly what's
Speaker 1: going on. I know futures were up this morning, don't
Speaker 1: look me. I know futures are out this morning. But
Speaker 1: this is what things have been looking like. This is
Speaker 1: from how they're long at the washing post. S and
Speaker 1: P five hundred tumbled into a correction today, ten percent
Speaker 1: drop from its prior high on February nineteenth. Trump's comments
Speaker 1: today quote I'm not going to bed at all on tariffs,
Speaker 1: have exacerbated fears and frustrations with his economic plans. Today's
Speaker 1: losses S and P five hundred minus one point four,
Speaker 1: down minus one point three NASDAK minus two. And you
Speaker 1: can see what that looks like on the chart here.
Speaker 1: Since you know, starting in like November going till now now,
Speaker 1: the stock market has been on a sort of long
Speaker 1: and mostly unbroken upward march. But this is I saw,
Speaker 1: I actually think I have this. This is one of
Speaker 1: the fastest drops that we've seen in one hundred years.
Speaker 1: Joe Wisenthal says, there are a lot of Trump aligned
Speaker 1: voices telling people to calm down. Selves happen, and it's
Speaker 1: true people tend to grat panicking. But this is one
Speaker 1: of the fastest selloffs of the last century. While the
Speaker 1: president pursues a policy the virtually no economist will defend.
Speaker 1: And you know, Ryan, you were raising alarms about and
Speaker 1: I saw Johns Hopkins is now laying off two thousand workers. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to the tariffs, get a lot of attention
Speaker 1: on Wall Street. Understandable especially because Trump is they're on,
Speaker 1: they're off, they're back on, this part's on, this part's
Speaker 1: coming back on in April. I mean, it really is
Speaker 1: all over the place and hard to make a co
Speaker 1: I mean it's impossible for any literally anyone to make
Speaker 1: a coherent case of exactly what he's up to or
Speaker 1: why he's up up to it and why you know
Speaker 1: they're saying, oh, there's no pay, no games gain, is
Speaker 1: what Tommy Tuberville said. The Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, said
Speaker 1: that a recession will be quote unquote worth it, And
Speaker 1: the question remains, like worth it for what what is
Speaker 1: it that we're supposed to, you know, accept suffering on.
Speaker 1: What is the goal that we're supposed to accept suffering on?
Speaker 1: Behalf of? But in addition to the tariffs, you have
Speaker 1: this mass vesterity program with the federal government that is
Speaker 1: going to reverberate much outside of just DC and Virginia. Hey,
Speaker 1: m how's it going? She's getting plugged in?
Speaker 8: Love? Would I pop in and you guys are in
Speaker 8: the middle.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the markets. We already got through the
Speaker 1: democratic catastrophe, so we didn't want to hear what you
Speaker 1: had to say about that.
Speaker 8: I'm more towards what you guys think to be honest anyway,
Speaker 8: But I was just saying that, you know, in addition
Speaker 8: to the tariffs causing market termoil, you also have this
Speaker 8: austerity program with the federal government, which you know as
Speaker 8: one example of how that will have a massively larger
Speaker 8: effect than just what Elon is doing in DC.
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins just announced their laying off two thousand plus
Speaker 1: workers because of some of the funding freezes and uncertainty
Speaker 1: around you know, research and science. So you know, Ryan,
Speaker 1: what do you kind of make of the state of
Speaker 1: the economy and this market movement in particular a.
Speaker 2: Caveat on the Hopkins layoffs. I think about fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: of those were overseas directly directly related to USAID cuts.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: That because Hopkins does a lot of so USA Idea
Speaker 2: was funding a bunch of research, you know, scientific research,
Speaker 2: and which again you know, soft power stuff, and we
Speaker 2: don't know the details of exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 2: So it's about four or five hundred here in the
Speaker 2: US they're getting laid off. But yes, you know, hiring
Speaker 2: freezes all over the place. And what you're hearing from
Speaker 2: Wall Street is we knew that that what that we
Speaker 2: knew there would be what they what Wall Street calls
Speaker 2: anti growth policies, which would be tariffs. But we thought
Speaker 2: that they would couple them, they would temper them and
Speaker 2: couple them with pro growth policies and what Wall Street
Speaker 2: calls I'm not endorsing these views what Wall Street calls
Speaker 2: pro growth policies basically tax.
Speaker 1: Cuts, tax cuts for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so so far they're like, hm, we're getting
Speaker 2: a lot more anti growth policies than we are getting
Speaker 2: at this point pro growth policies. And I think they
Speaker 2: would might even be happier if the quote unquote anti
Speaker 2: grow both policies we're coherent, like okay, what like what
Speaker 2: is your tariff policy? And why are you doing it?
Speaker 2: Because then they can try to figure out how they're
Speaker 2: going to invest. You know, Wall Street is where capital
Speaker 2: gets allocated, and you know, some of it's absurd, like
Speaker 2: we're putting tariffs on Canadian wood. Then they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we can't really put capital into growing more trees in
Speaker 2: the US, like we're growing the trees we can grow.
Speaker 2: That's it. But what they can do is then go
Speaker 2: to Siberia and try to buy more that crappy softer
Speaker 2: wood from Siberia made with North Korean save slave labor.
Speaker 2: But at least then they can plan that out. Right,
Speaker 2: So right right now, they're just kind of confused and waiting,
Speaker 2: and so that's going to tamp down investment and growth.
Speaker 2: And I just checked the tox so it's we're filming this.
Speaker 2: It's nine forty five. Yeah, and it's you know, they
Speaker 2: got a little they got a bounce in the morning.
Speaker 2: I think all the all these traders keep wanting to
Speaker 2: time the boy them right like, is this the bottom yet?
Speaker 2: Let me get in, Let me get in. So far
Speaker 2: everybody who has bought the dip has gotten washed out
Speaker 2: by okay, so we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, because Trump continues emily to say things like this.
Speaker 1: Here he is talking about Canada, and this I think
Speaker 1: is the clip to where he says, you know, the
Speaker 1: tariffs are are definitely going on. I'm not changing. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen.
Speaker 9: No, I'm not looking. We've been ripped off for years,
Speaker 9: and we're not going to be ripped off anymore now.
Speaker 9: I'm not going to bend at all. Aluminum or steel
Speaker 9: or cars, We're not going to bend. We've been ripped
Speaker 9: off as a country for many, many years. We've been
Speaker 9: subjected to costs that we shouldn't be subjected to. In
Speaker 9: the case of Canada, we're spending two hundred billion a
Speaker 9: year to subsidize Canada. I love Canada, I love the
Speaker 9: people of Canada. I love I have many friends in Canada,
Speaker 9: the great one, Wayne Gretzky, the great Wayne Gretzky, the
Speaker 9: great one. But we have many people in Canada that
Speaker 9: are good friends of mine.
Speaker 8: But you know, the United.
Speaker 7: States can't subsidize the country for two hundred billion dollars
Speaker 7: a year. We don't need their cars, we don't need
Speaker 7: their energy, we don't need their lumber, we don't need anything.
Speaker 10: That they.
Speaker 9: That they get it. We do it because we want
Speaker 9: to be helpful. But it comes a point when you
Speaker 9: just can't do that. You have to run your own country.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the you know, the pitch he's
Speaker 1: making today, at least about why teriffs on Canada in
Speaker 1: particular makes sense, and you know what really caused kind
Speaker 1: of the market massive drop there later in the day
Speaker 1: were those comments that no, we're not going to bend
Speaker 1: at all because they have certain tarrafs already in place,
Speaker 1: and then much broader set of tariffs set to go
Speaker 1: into place on April second, the reciprocal teriffs plus supposedly
Speaker 1: going back to the you know, twenty five percent across
Speaker 1: the board terrace with Canada and Mexico at that point.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where we are am.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I continue to think the only way to
Speaker 8: make any sense in Trump's mind of what's happening is
Speaker 8: that to the point about people trying to figure out
Speaker 8: what the bottom is here, he doesn't want anybody to
Speaker 8: be able to figure that out. And I don't particularly
Speaker 8: think that's the most effective way to bring jobs back
Speaker 8: to the United States and to prosecute these politically, So
Speaker 8: I don't think it's the most defensible approach. I think
Speaker 8: his logic is that he genuinely does not want anybody
Speaker 8: to know when he is going to stop. I think
Speaker 8: he does have plans to I don't think he goes
Speaker 8: through for a long time with all of this. I
Speaker 8: just I think he's way too sensitive to the market.
Speaker 8: So I think if this starts to be sustained, you'll
Speaker 8: start to see I mean, I think we've already seen
Speaker 8: some of it, some like kind of more targeted approaches.
Speaker 8: But I think his his strategy is genuinely leaving everybody,
Speaker 8: including his own top staff, out of the loop on
Speaker 8: what his personal plans are to like sort of wave
Speaker 8: the wand at any give a moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a moment there, ran I didn't quite
Speaker 1: get to it where he he sort of acknowledges that
Speaker 1: that borders are just arbitrary lines drawn, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: so based open borders Trump. Okay, so here's a thread.
Speaker 2: That And not to harp too much on this, but
Speaker 2: that on this point on the lumber, he brought the
Speaker 2: lumber up again. Right, what do you mean, what do
Speaker 2: you mean we don't need their lumber like we.
Speaker 1: Don't have especially at a time when construction materials have
Speaker 1: already you know, they were some of the highest ticket
Speaker 1: items in terms of how much their price increased due
Speaker 1: to inflation. So we have a massive housing shortage. You
Speaker 1: already cost too much to build, and so you're just
Speaker 1: exacerbating that and you know, we've been covering it, you
Speaker 1: guys know on this show relentlessly. How housing is just
Speaker 1: such a core issue, creating this sense of precarity and
Speaker 1: sense of frustration and ability to get ahead and this
Speaker 1: sort of like stable life. And yeah, you're you are
Speaker 1: actively increasing one of the main inputs. And there's other
Speaker 1: construction materials at play here as well, coming from Canada too,
Speaker 1: not to mention the eighty percent of our fertilizer from Canada,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, actually we do kind of any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Right that that's where that's where the fertilizer is. Like
Speaker 2: you could, you could produce a lot of phosphorus and
Speaker 2: fertilizer out of Florida, but that would require ripping up
Speaker 2: a lot of the communities there. And also, lumber is
Speaker 2: better the hot farther north that it grows, So we
Speaker 2: could get cheaper, better lumber from Canada, or we could
Speaker 2: get more expensive, crappier lumber from Russia. And what he's
Speaker 2: pushing us is towards Siberian lumber. So we're going to
Speaker 2: pay twenty thirty forty percent more for materials sure worse
Speaker 2: material cost to housing. And maybe the American people would
Speaker 2: do that if you were like, here's why we're doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there is no why.
Speaker 1: To it right, and and I mean hard to like
Speaker 1: really sell people on a vision of we should be like,
Speaker 1: you know, getting more into the tree growing and fertilizer
Speaker 1: making business when in.
Speaker 2: All our national forests and that wood isn't as good
Speaker 2: as the wood way up in the north, and then
Speaker 2: we don't have national forests anymore.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Is that the plan right?
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly? I wanted to quickly go through this thread
Speaker 1: because I thought it had some interesting pieces and then
Speaker 1: we can move on to the next topic. You can
Speaker 1: either go to Ukraine or we can go to the
Speaker 1: court decisions.
Speaker 8: But was sorry, would say super quick point is that
Speaker 8: if you have, if you telegraph a clear plan, if
Speaker 8: you want to reshore some like lumber for example, you're
Speaker 8: you're helping people make that bet on certain states or
Speaker 8: certain strategies for US lumber or US manufacturing or whatever.
Speaker 8: But if people don't know, maybe they're just going to
Speaker 8: bet elsewhere where it seems more stable.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, that's that's exactly right, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if the chaos makes it impossible for anyone to actually
Speaker 1: bet on like reshoring anything because you just you just
Speaker 1: don't know. So here's here's a timeline the trade war,
Speaker 1: and they were ramped up into February. First, market peaked
Speaker 1: on the nineteenth, even as more tariffs went live in
Speaker 1: early March. The real turning point was March sixth. That's
Speaker 1: when Trump said he's not watching the stock market. So
Speaker 1: we've that's been sort of the story of this market movement.
Speaker 1: Is Trump's words really causing these these cycles of crashes.
Speaker 1: Buyers have been crushed in this downturns and is something
Speaker 1: you mentioned before, Ryan SMP has not seen in back
Speaker 1: to back gains for fifteen consecutive trading days, longest streak
Speaker 1: since April twenty twenty four, also the fifth longest stress
Speaker 1: since the twenty twenty pandemic. Market uncertainty is at its
Speaker 1: highest since twenty twenty. Current drawdown in the Magnificent Seven. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something we've been talking a lot about and
Speaker 1: it creates tremendous risk in terms of our economy and
Speaker 1: certainly our stock market. You know, these seven stocks make
Speaker 1: up a huge percentage of our stock market, and most
Speaker 1: of the growth that we've been seeing has been tied
Speaker 1: to these stocks. Tesla has led the the selloff. Here,
Speaker 1: Fifth down fifty percent, Crazy, Nvidia down, Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and Apple all taking significant losses. So that's the magnificent seven.
Speaker 1: Hedge funds sold global stocks at their fastest pace in
Speaker 1: four years. So the hedge funds are, you know, selling off,
Speaker 1: and I think those institutional sales are part of what
Speaker 1: is leading the significant decline. He says. This is the
Speaker 1: fastest drop of such magnitude since twenty twenty. Also, this
Speaker 1: chart comparison of Trump one point zero this green line
Speaker 1: versus Trump two point zero. That's how things are looking
Speaker 1: currently down eight percent since January twentieth, which exceeds any
Speaker 1: drawdown scene in Trump's one point zhos first year. Clearly
Speaker 1: been a shift in Trump's approach. Furthermore, sentiment has shifted
Speaker 1: in the complete opposite direction. The survey now has a
Speaker 1: bearish reading fifty nine point two percent. You've also got
Speaker 1: the US lagging global market. So again an indication like
Speaker 1: as if you needed any, that this is something that's
Speaker 1: really specific to the particular policies that are being pursued
Speaker 1: here in the US of A and not reflective of
Speaker 1: some larger global phenomenon. And then here's some one last
Speaker 1: thing that's that's interesting too is that there was some
Speaker 1: good inflation data this week that seemed to indicate Okay,
Speaker 1: inflation is coming down, moving in the right direction. I
Speaker 1: will say there are some caveats to that, number one
Speaker 1: being that this was a measure of inflation prior to
Speaker 1: most of the tariffs being put into place, so still
Speaker 1: a lot of question marks about what that impact will
Speaker 1: ultimately be. But they say, you know, even with those
Speaker 1: numbers coming in better than expected, they're still continued to
Speaker 1: that really didn't change the game or make people, you know,
Speaker 1: put people more at ease in terms of this this
Speaker 1: sell off in the economic position. And you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen all kinds of measures of you know, possibility of
Speaker 1: recession on the rise actually can pull up. JP Morgan
Speaker 1: had this very like the dramatic statement, I'll find that
Speaker 1: while you, guys, Emily, why don't you go ahead and
Speaker 1: reflect on some of those comments from that thread.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, again, I think it's just the same
Speaker 8: type of thing that like, I'm generally I think there's
Speaker 8: actually some real meat to how Trump has approached this
Speaker 8: when it's compared with how it was approached by Biden
Speaker 8: or how it would have been approached by some type
Speaker 8: of like middle of the line republican establishment republican. But
Speaker 8: I think that's just like what's frustrating is that there's
Speaker 8: a better way to do all of this that would
Speaker 8: have managed some of the fallout. So that to me
Speaker 8: is just like a lack of a sort of a
Speaker 8: lack of clarity. You don't have to telegraph everything. You
Speaker 8: don't have to, you know, give you don't have to
Speaker 8: try to game the markets one way or the other.
Speaker 8: Oh there's that beautiful quote, the most beautiful quote. You
Speaker 8: gotta read this, crystal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a note from JP Morgan's analyst,
Speaker 1: and oh you can get we can get Ryan's reaction
Speaker 1: to that fifty Days of Gray while that was fast.
Speaker 1: Also the Reconciliation bill and a Swan song Fernado. Here's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about the stock market. It cannot be indicted, arrested,
Speaker 1: or deported. It cannot be intimidated, threatened, or bullied. It
Speaker 1: has no gender, ethnicity, or religion. It cannot be fired, furloughed,
Speaker 1: or defunded. It cannot be primary before the next midterm elections.
Speaker 1: And it cannot be seized, nationalized, or invaded. It is
Speaker 1: the ultimate voting machine, reflecting prospects for earnings, growth, stability, liquidity, inflation, taxation,
Speaker 1: and predictable rule of law. So this is the Wall
Speaker 1: Streeters very much in their feelings on this one, for sure,
Speaker 1: like all the unconstitutional power grab, the defunding of Medicaid,
Speaker 1: like the destruction of the CFPB, like they're all about
Speaker 1: all of that. But when you mess with the stock market,
Speaker 1: that's where we that's where we draw the line.
Speaker 2: To the barricades.
Speaker 1: That's your incredible stuff. You guys want to go to
Speaker 1: Ukraine or the court cases next? We could do either
Speaker 1: one dealer's choice. All right, we'll pull up. I've got
Speaker 1: the I've got some Ukraine stuff here. So you guys know,
Speaker 1: Zelenski agreed to a US proposal for a thirty day ceasefire.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of waiting on response from Putin as
Speaker 1: to how he would receive this. And he received it
Speaker 1: in a very Putin like way, you know, rejecting it
Speaker 1: and asking for conditions which you know are probably are
Speaker 1: totally unacceptable to Ukraine, probably unacceptable to the US as well,
Speaker 1: but framing it is like, yeah, I'm open to that,
Speaker 1: as long as you do everything that I want you
Speaker 1: to do. Here are his comments, and go and pull
Speaker 1: this up. I'm not sure I've been listened to this.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this is dubbed. We'll find out. We'll find out
Speaker 1: together here in real time.
Speaker 11: With the we agree with the propositions to stop hostilities,
Speaker 11: but we proceed from the fact that such ceasefire should
Speaker 11: be such that would lead to a permanent peace and
Speaker 11: remove the initial original causes of the crisis. We agree.
Speaker 1: So there you go the details as far as you
Speaker 1: know the conditions that led to the crisis, you know
Speaker 1: some of the things that they floated outside of just
Speaker 1: this state and from Putin is like all these regions
Speaker 1: that we took, we want to keep them. Not only
Speaker 1: do we not want Ukraine and NATO, which you know
Speaker 1: that one is pretty obvious. We don't want any foreign
Speaker 1: soldiers like European peacekeepers or anyone else to be in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Ukraine has to be fully demilitarized, et cetera. So I mean, Ryan,
Speaker 1: how do you how are you reading this response? The
Speaker 1: Trump administration is trying to spin it as hopeful. Zelenski
Speaker 1: is very much like I told you, guys like you
Speaker 1: can't deal with this dude, really and so how did
Speaker 1: you read this exchange?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he also talked about the Ukrainian soldiers who are
Speaker 2: in the cursed region and apparently about five hundred of
Speaker 2: them that this does seem to be confirmed, about five
Speaker 2: hundred Ukrainian soldiers rendered there. There are there are many
Speaker 2: more Ukrainians who are occupying the Karsek region of Russia,
Speaker 2: and according to Putin, Russia has those folks surrounded Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Says that that's that that's not the case, that he's
Speaker 2: he's bluffing. And so what Putin is kind of what
Speaker 2: Putin is saying here is if we do a ceasefire,
Speaker 2: what about these guys. I don't want to do a
Speaker 2: ceasefire with these Ukrainian soldiers on Russian territory, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of an ironic thing for him to
Speaker 2: complain about, given that he wants a ceasefire with Russian
Speaker 2: soldiers and the Ukrainian territory. So so he said, like,
Speaker 2: who who who like decides whether or not along this
Speaker 2: two thousand mile front, somebody has broken the ceasefire? What
Speaker 2: do we do with those soldiers? So, I mean, those
Speaker 2: are actual questions that that could be answered. It does
Speaker 2: seem like he's buying for time perhaps to try to,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of push the Ukrainians completely out of Kursk,
Speaker 2: so that when there is a ceasefire, he has lost
Speaker 2: no territory and he has only gained territory. And you know,
Speaker 2: he also floated that he's ready to do a call
Speaker 2: with Donald Trump YEP, which I thought was interesting, called
Speaker 2: him donald Trump, not the American President.
Speaker 1: Oh is that what? I didn't know that interesting? Another
Speaker 1: thing is we as we talked about actually when you
Speaker 1: and I co hosted this week, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, well, what incentive does Russia have at
Speaker 1: this point for a ceasefire? And that gets to what
Speaker 1: Ryan is saying about, you know, Kirsk in particular. But
Speaker 1: they feel like the a thirty day ceasefire would only
Speaker 1: benefit Ukraine and allow them to sort of regroup and
Speaker 1: rearm and reassess, et cetera. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that they're probably wrong about.
Speaker 8: That unless a thirty day seas fire does involve like
Speaker 8: significant territorial concessions on Ukraine's behalf. One of the interesting
Speaker 8: things about Kursk. I hadn't thought about it this way,
Speaker 8: but I talked to George Beedy of the Quincy Institute
Speaker 8: earlier this week, and he would saying he thinks what's
Speaker 8: happening in Curse right now is actually a sign of
Speaker 8: potentially Russia trying to get through or get to negotiation
Speaker 8: seriously more quickly, because as soon as you sort of
Speaker 8: get curs out of the way for them, they'll and
Speaker 8: so maybe it is like I feel if it was
Speaker 8: you or Ryan who said maybe buying time, like that's
Speaker 8: actually possible that in a way, it seems totally counterintuitive
Speaker 8: because it looks like they're making significant advancements on the battlefield,
Speaker 8: but it takes Cursk off the table for them. So
Speaker 8: long as they do that in a way that makes
Speaker 8: the deal work, they can can take it to the
Speaker 8: Russian public and you know, come away from the negotiations
Speaker 8: looking like they were on top. So that's it's a
Speaker 8: reading that I hadn't thought of actually that I found
Speaker 8: pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: That is interesting. I wanted to play this sound. This
Speaker 1: is Andrew and Politano, who has been you know, he's
Speaker 1: been pushing for He is kind of, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the un orthodox view with regard to Ukraine. He's
Speaker 1: been pushing for peace, etc. He just is back from
Speaker 1: interviewing Lavrov in Moscow and he says he doesn't think
Speaker 1: Russia has any interest in the cease fire. Lests take
Speaker 1: a listen to.
Speaker 10: That when this is over. He came over to me
Speaker 10: and we just chatted almost like you and I are
Speaker 10: without the cameras on us at all. And I did
Speaker 10: say to him, does President of Putin have any interest
Speaker 10: in a ceasefire at this time?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 10: This was a day before Secretary of State Rubio announced
Speaker 10: to that Ukraine had agreed to ceasefire. He looked at
Speaker 10: me and he said, why would we do that now?
Speaker 9: Wow?
Speaker 10: Because they believe that they're within interest of consummating their
Speaker 10: goals in the war.
Speaker 9: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And that actually dovetails maybe. Surprisingly, his assessment is the
Speaker 1: same as what US intel agencies are telling the Washington
Speaker 1: Post right here. This is Putin still intends Ukraine domination.
Speaker 1: US intelligence reports say, while offering a cautious assessment on
Speaker 1: ceasefire chances, spy agencies say Russian leader is determined to
Speaker 1: hold sway over Kiev. This is, you know, source to
Speaker 1: classified US intel reports, including one earlier this month, cast
Speaker 1: doubt on Putin's willings to end the war against Ukraine,
Speaker 1: assessing the Russian president is not veered from his maximous
Speaker 1: goal of dominating his western neighbor. According to people familiar
Speaker 1: with the analysis, Ryan, what did you make in particular
Speaker 1: of this, you know, leak to the strategic leak to
Speaker 1: the Washup Post.
Speaker 2: Right, Whenever whenever there's this intel leak to the wash
Speaker 2: and Post, you have to ask, Okay, why did the
Speaker 2: CIA leak this? And in this case, I think it
Speaker 2: would be to you know, send try to message to
Speaker 2: Trump like the same thing that Neapolitano was saying that
Speaker 2: I know that, Hey, we know you want a peace deal,
Speaker 2: but Putin really doesn't want one right now? You know there,
Speaker 2: you know there there may have been a much better
Speaker 2: deal on the table. In March of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: the Buid administration and the UK and NATO insisted that
Speaker 2: Ukraine fight on instead, and now they're at a place
Speaker 2: where they as as Trump said in the White House,
Speaker 2: you have no cards. Yeah, So you're appealing to the
Speaker 2: good will of Vladimir Putin, just right, Good luck with that.
Speaker 2: I think you know what Putin could do, and I
Speaker 2: think understands he could do. His focus his energy on
Speaker 2: getting the Ukrainians out of the Curse region and then say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm done, Like everything we have is ours, and you
Speaker 2: keep fighting if you want, and if you keep fighting,
Speaker 2: will keep fighting. But if not, we're going to keep
Speaker 2: this terror, We're going to keep this territory, and then
Speaker 2: they will all they will buy definition kind of you know,
Speaker 2: politically dominate. You'd have a rump like hard right Ukrainian
Speaker 2: resistance government left. Yeah, but without NATO you know, funding,
Speaker 2: and with you know, twenty percent of its you know,
Speaker 2: country gone, and with you know, the difficulties of reconstruction.
Speaker 2: You could imagine you know, Russia having successfully kind of
Speaker 2: neutered the threat on their border.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what do you think of that, Emily? I mean,
Speaker 1: in some ways, I think it's increasingly clear that the
Speaker 1: Biden administration pursued the worst possible strategy. Like I have
Speaker 1: actually become more sympathetic to the people who were like,
Speaker 1: you got to give them everything, because what they did
Speaker 1: instead is give them just enough to create this sort
Speaker 1: of stalemate situation, just draw out this war to the
Speaker 1: last Ukrainian you know. They obviously the greatest failure was
Speaker 1: blocking the Piece deal that you know, was on the
Speaker 1: table early on. Not that there were any guarantees there either,
Speaker 1: but there was very live possibility and the Ukrainians were
Speaker 1: in a much better negotiating position at that point than
Speaker 1: they are now. I mean, that really was sort of
Speaker 1: the cardinal sin and now at this point where you are,
Speaker 1: you're left withero zero good options to pursue. Ultimately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 8: I completely agree with that. And it's one of the
Speaker 8: weird things about Donald Trump and JD Vance's meeting with
Speaker 8: the lens is that Zelenski and Joe Biden were ideologically simpatico.
Speaker 8: Like they're they had the exact same ideology of how
Speaker 8: Ukraine should be seen by NATO countries as an essential
Speaker 8: buffer state that should essentially, and I'm putting it in
Speaker 8: my words, not the way they would say it be
Speaker 8: used as you know, a weapon is the wrong word,
Speaker 8: but as a buffer and Ukraine should be you know,
Speaker 8: treated that way by NATO, almost in this like colonial way.
Speaker 8: And Trump Advance don't believe that's in America's best interests,
Speaker 8: but as a they're the ones now tasked with disentangling
Speaker 8: the United States from the situation and helping at least
Speaker 8: in theory helping Ukraine stop the slaughter. And so it's
Speaker 8: a really strange position to have an administration that disagrees
Speaker 8: with decades of the foreign policy consensus that they're now
Speaker 8: trying to exit from, and the leader of the country
Speaker 8: that you're trying to negotiate with is actually of the
Speaker 8: opposite view. It's just like super weird to see that
Speaker 8: play out, and so I think it's very That's where
Speaker 8: the Trump Putin conversation gets dicey, obviously, because they kind
Speaker 8: of agree about how Ukraine has been used by NATO,
Speaker 8: and so it's just like, does that mean ultimately Ukraine
Speaker 8: ends up losing territory that would have retained a couple
Speaker 8: of years back because of the hubris of the Biden
Speaker 8: administration and NATO leaders in Europe. Probably well.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of political peril here too
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure the right tends to fully appreciate,
Speaker 1: because you know, the the view on the right has
Speaker 1: become quite preemnant that like, you know that we need
Speaker 1: to pull all the military aid from Ukraine. You know,
Speaker 1: we need to make a deal, regardless of what that
Speaker 1: takes and how much territory Putin is allowed to acquire
Speaker 1: like whatever it takes. And you know, it's a few
Speaker 1: frankly I'm sympathetic to. But when you look at the
Speaker 1: recent polling with regard to Trump, there is actually a
Speaker 1: lot of discontent with the way he's handled the Russian
Speaker 1: Ukraine war, with the people did not like the Oval
Speaker 1: office blow up at Zelenski, And there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of not among Republicans so much, but among independents and
Speaker 1: among Democrats and among some Republicans actually there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of like, Russia's the bad guys. Ukraine are the
Speaker 1: good guys. This is our ally, this is our vote. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean we've seen this before. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly the same as Afghanistan, obviously because we were
Speaker 1: in there for so long and because our troops were involved.
Speaker 1: But you know, people wanted out of Afghanistan. But then
Speaker 1: once we got out of Afghanistan, it was the most
Speaker 1: devastating thing to Joe Biden's presdency. I mean, we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the economy and certainly about the genocide
Speaker 1: and Gaza, but in terms of just the drop and
Speaker 1: approval rating, the war that people wanted to be ended
Speaker 1: was the thing that was most devastating to his approval
Speaker 1: rating RNE of his entire term.
Speaker 2: Right, And I guess you could imagine, now these aren't
Speaker 2: American forces, but you could imagine that, you know, scenes
Speaker 2: of chaos, if things completely fall apart.
Speaker 1: It's just it's an admission of American failure. And voters
Speaker 1: don't Voters don't like that. Voters don't like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, well, what have we been funding all
Speaker 1: these like what if we It looks like American weakness,
Speaker 1: And that's in a lot of ways it is American weakness,
Speaker 1: I mean, frankly, and I think, you know, voters really
Speaker 1: don't enjoy having to reckon with that, even if you could,
Speaker 1: you know, I like, it's really not Trump helped to
Speaker 1: create the conditions of this war, but obviously it's a
Speaker 1: Biden administration that owns this policy. But if he's the
Speaker 1: one that brings it to the end and forces that
Speaker 1: reckoning with the reality that this was a massive American failure,
Speaker 1: voters may well punish him for that.
Speaker 8: Voters I think in America sort of back the blue globally.
Speaker 8: They like the United States being seen as the policeman.
Speaker 8: And it's in right, like online right circles where I
Speaker 8: you spend a lot of time, it's easy to get
Speaker 8: to lose sight of the fact that the American people
Speaker 8: are not with the I guess broader project at the
Speaker 8: online right, like they're probably with the New Right, the
Speaker 8: sort of dvance ideology on different things, like you know,
Speaker 8: you can zoom in on the question, particularly of spending
Speaker 8: more money on Ukraine and not closing the border, like
Speaker 8: that was exactly why they designed that Senate bill that way.
Speaker 8: So you know, you it's easy to mistake those things
Speaker 8: for agreement with the broader project of disentangling from being
Speaker 8: the policeman of the world and the person who understands this,
Speaker 8: interestingly enough, just Donald Trump, because that's what he's sort
Speaker 8: of doing with Greenland and Panama, and he knows that
Speaker 8: that's his voters are like fine to see Greenland, Like
Speaker 8: people on the right, they're like, yeah, we're we're gonna
Speaker 8: boss Greenland around because we're the United States of America,
Speaker 8: and that's a it's just easy to mistake one for
Speaker 8: the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but I
Speaker 2: do think that if he got a long term cease fire,
Speaker 2: that he would be rewarded for that, yes, but domestically
Speaker 2: from voters like I do. I do think people, you know,
Speaker 2: if he could, if he could get out of it
Speaker 2: somewhat cleanly, even if there are significant concessions made. Nobody
Speaker 2: can name, you know, the regions of Ukraine that we're
Speaker 2: fighting over, like nobody really cares. I think that people
Speaker 2: would like to see the money stop going over there, especially. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, the the resentment towards that heats up when
Speaker 2: you know things are when the economy is going poorly
Speaker 2: at home. Yeah, you wrap that up. I think he
Speaker 2: would be rewarded.
Speaker 1: So the more he destroys the economy here at home,
Speaker 1: the policy Well, all right, let's go ahead and get
Speaker 1: to these couple of court decisions before we wrap up here,
Speaker 1: because these were pretty significant ones. Yesterday we got from
Speaker 1: this judge Alsop, who I'd never heard of before but
Speaker 1: apparently is like very well respected in judicial circles. I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever that means anyway. He said that he
Speaker 1: issued a preliminary injunction on Trump's firing of federal workers
Speaker 1: in probationary periods, including some of the largest agencies, the
Speaker 1: Veterans Affairs USDA Department, of Defense, Department of Education, Department
Speaker 1: of Interior, Treasury must reinstate all fired probationary employees effective immediately.
Speaker 1: Eric katz Here from gov exec says this will impact
Speaker 1: the vast majority of those fired. Rough math about twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand employees just won their jobs. Back story here
Speaker 1: with more details from what he describes as a fairly
Speaker 1: explosive hearing this morning, So including some language from this
Speaker 1: judge that these firings were sham firings and in particular
Speaker 1: pointing to, you know, the way they did this, which
Speaker 1: really is just you know, you had a lot of
Speaker 1: workers who were getting perfect performance reports and maybe even
Speaker 1: up for promotions or just got promoted, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's why they were in their probationary period. And the
Speaker 1: justification they used is they sent out these mass emails
Speaker 1: that said you're being fired for poor performance, regardless of
Speaker 1: who the employees were. And so this judge was like,
Speaker 1: we see what you're doing here, Like, obviously these people
Speaker 1: were who you know, some of them were performing well,
Speaker 1: and you just said poor performance, you could get away
Speaker 1: with firing, with mass firing, Ryan, all of these employees
Speaker 1: that happened to be under this probationary status and oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, off as of personnel management, like, you
Speaker 1: don't get to do this. The individual agencies have control
Speaker 1: over their own HR personnel. Even in this ruling though,
Speaker 1: which was like fairly sweeping, there's a warning though that
Speaker 1: like if they do go through each individual agency and
Speaker 1: do what's called a reduction in force and do it
Speaker 1: through the proper channels, like they're allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately for these workers. You know what he's ultimately
Speaker 2: describing as sort of a technicality, Like he's saying, you lied,
Speaker 2: and you did this illegally. Like there are laws in place,
Speaker 2: federal laws in place that apply to the executive and
Speaker 2: your your theory of the unitary executive where the president
Speaker 2: can just you know, do whatever he wants. It does
Speaker 2: not fly. And here are here is how you have
Speaker 2: to you know, reduce the number of employees that you
Speaker 2: have in say the Veterans Affairs Department.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: Here it's laid out very clearly. Follow these rules and
Speaker 2: you can do it. So that's what that's what he's
Speaker 2: telling government. Like what what what the government did is
Speaker 2: they had, oh PM, the Office of Personnel Management fire
Speaker 2: every probationary employee send them boilerplate letters saying you're fired
Speaker 2: for cause because you're doing a bad job. And his
Speaker 2: argument is a o PM, you know, does not have
Speaker 2: the ability to fire somebody at say the VA and B.
Speaker 2: You're lying because you didn't. You don't even you don't
Speaker 2: know if this person is doing well or not. So
Speaker 2: then the administration came back and said, well, it wasn't
Speaker 2: actually o PM that did the firing, it was the agencies.
Speaker 2: OPM was just offering this kind of vague suggestion. And
Speaker 2: they even put an affidavit in from the acting director
Speaker 2: of OPM saying that that was the truth, that he
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with these firings. So the judge said,
Speaker 2: all right, cool, bring this guy in for a deposition.
Speaker 2: I want to hear him cross examined. And then the
Speaker 2: administration withdrew his affidavid. He said, never mind. That's when
Speaker 2: he that's when he lost it on. He's like, I
Speaker 2: think you're lying. He's like, you're presenting an affidavid, and
Speaker 2: then when I ask you to back it up by
Speaker 2: bringing him in for a deposition at any time of
Speaker 2: its convenience, you pull it back. It's like and he
Speaker 2: used the word lying. He's like, I think you're lying
Speaker 2: to me. And the other side had affidavids from the
Speaker 2: agencies saying OPM ordered us to fire these people, and
Speaker 2: we disagree that they were poorly performing it. So it's
Speaker 2: to open and shut pace that they lied and didn't
Speaker 2: follow the procedure. Problem for the workers is they can
Speaker 2: just do it again and follow the action procedures, and
Speaker 2: they're going to release that process very soon, and I
Speaker 2: think it's going to be a bloodbath for federal workers.
Speaker 2: Maybe some of these will keep their jobs and they'll
Speaker 2: you know, go after more senior people or whatever, but
Speaker 2: a lot of people are still going to lose their jobs.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that's right. I think this is definitely temporary,
Speaker 8: and it's really unfortunate for the tens of thousands of
Speaker 8: people caught up in it. But it's an interesting, I guess,
Speaker 8: test of how DOGE was making some of these decisions,
Speaker 8: which you know, DOGE was originally conceived of as an
Speaker 8: outside advisory committee basically that would look at these things
Speaker 8: and then submit recommendations to the agencies, rather than making
Speaker 8: these decisions on its own and coercing the agencies to
Speaker 8: comply with the decisions that they've come to and when
Speaker 8: DOGE took over USDs, there was just like complete confusion
Speaker 8: about what its authority actually was. Probably that's a problem
Speaker 8: with Elon Musk coming in and being confused about what
Speaker 8: the authority actually was. Not confused, maybe like willfully disinterested
Speaker 8: in the actual mechanism of power. You know, we're going
Speaker 8: to do this anyway, goes the thinking. But the probationary
Speaker 8: status has come to be a fascinating question for people
Speaker 8: involved in DOGE because a lot of the people they've
Speaker 8: since learned who were on probationary status were the people
Speaker 8: that they would want to keep, like as a category,
Speaker 8: because it was people who newly wanted to be a
Speaker 8: part of the government. So it went from being a
Speaker 8: really easy slab of fat to cut to actually, well,
Speaker 8: if you think some of these agencies should continue existing,
Speaker 8: albeit in a much smaller form. If you use the
Speaker 8: quote scalpel instead of what did Trump say, the acts hatch, Yeah,
Speaker 8: the hatchet, then in fact the people that sort of
Speaker 8: got booted for would probably be the people that you
Speaker 8: would scalpel in. I think that's going to happen at Defense.
Speaker 8: I think a lot of these probationary folks at Defense
Speaker 8: are probably going to end up being okay. But at
Speaker 8: the other places that I mean, they're trying to get
Speaker 8: rid of so many people that I agree with Ryan,
Speaker 8: you know, if you're at AG or something like that,
Speaker 8: you'll probably still get acxed, maybe even next week.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that, Emily, that like, some
Speaker 1: of the people who just just joined were like, Trump won,
Speaker 1: doges coming, let's go when I join the government and
Speaker 1: do my public service. And yeah, if you're a person who, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, probationary lasts for a you know,
Speaker 1: significant period of time, and as Ryan's point out, and
Speaker 1: it includes some people who just got promoted been working
Speaker 1: in the government a long time, but or who have
Speaker 1: just switched agencies or moved or whatever. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to me that if you're someone who saw
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's election and then was like, now's the time
Speaker 1: when I'm going to work in government service, you probably
Speaker 1: are someone who is poor aligned with this administration. Then
Speaker 1: the people who are not on probationary status. To mention,
Speaker 1: you know, veterans and veterans spouses were more likely to
Speaker 1: be on probationary status as well.
Speaker 8: You're just an ambitious young person like that's like not
Speaker 8: that hasn't been shaped and molded by the quote administrative
Speaker 8: state over the course of decades, a lot of the
Speaker 8: non probationaries.
Speaker 1: Yeah. True, there was one more federal judge ordered to
Speaker 1: stop to mass firings in federal agencies except Pentagon, OPM,
Speaker 1: and NARA, saying the so called reductions enforce broke the law.
Speaker 1: Employees purportedly terminated our return to government employee. So a
Speaker 1: similar decision here, I think this one was. This is
Speaker 1: a separate, even more sweeping order than the one issued
Speaker 1: by judge. Also, he says earlier today for terminated probationary employees,
Speaker 1: but it is only a two week reprieve until further
Speaker 1: litigation takes place. And you know this is the right
Speaker 1: up here, federal judges order the reinstatement of thousands of
Speaker 1: federal workers across the huge swap of the federal government.
Speaker 1: The second judge to order sweeping relief today and reject
Speaker 1: the mass firings as illegal. So you know, you have
Speaker 1: a lot of times when these cases are going to court,
Speaker 1: the challengers are winning, but number one, oftentimes they're a
Speaker 1: temporary reprieve and number two. Oftentimes, you know, they've moved
Speaker 1: thirty steps ahead while you were fighting on this ground,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it just feels like trying to
Speaker 1: mitigate the damage. I talked to the co president of
Speaker 1: Public Citizen yesterday, is involved in a bunch of these lawsuits,
Speaker 1: and that was the way he described it. He's like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the court system is really not set up to handle
Speaker 1: this sort of like full on flood the zone assault,
Speaker 1: and so you are definitionally just trying to, like you know,
Speaker 1: from his perspective in mind, contain the damage and try
Speaker 1: to have something left to rebuild from once these people
Speaker 1: are ultimately done. So you know, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: status of where things are with regards to the courts.
Speaker 1: There was one other piece that I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys want to weigh in on, but I saw
Speaker 1: Trump is pushing for his birthright ending of birthright citizenship
Speaker 1: to go to Scotus and have them way in on
Speaker 1: at least part of that. So that was the other
Speaker 1: big legal decision yesterday.
Speaker 8: And that's one that's been I think engineered in the
Speaker 8: conservative movement, and there's significant disagreement about this in the
Speaker 8: conservative movement, but in sort of like Stephen Miller circles.
Speaker 8: That's something that was intentionally germinated and designed to be
Speaker 8: tested in the Supreme Court. The way that they ended
Speaker 8: up doing it, you know, it's sort of the reverse
Speaker 8: of the probationary employee thing, like this is a very
Speaker 8: they they set this up very intentionally to be tested
Speaker 8: in the courts because they think they can with the
Speaker 8: Supreme Court, they think they can prevail and significantly change
Speaker 8: the way we approach birthright citizenship through an EO.
Speaker 1: Which would overturn a lot of precedent. And also just
Speaker 1: like the very like you know, plane meaning English language
Speaker 1: meaning of the way that the words are written in
Speaker 1: the Constitution. You know, for a lot of originalists, you
Speaker 1: would think that would be a problem, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: So the idea here would be if an American citizen
Speaker 2: participated in a campus protest, that if they had naturalized citizenship,
Speaker 2: or you know, if their parents were not born in
Speaker 2: the United States but they were mm hmm, So where
Speaker 2: would you deport them to. So let's say somebody is
Speaker 2: born here in the United States, one of their parents
Speaker 2: is Mexican, one of their parents is Canadian. They protest
Speaker 2: against Israel, which you can't protest against Israel United States.
Speaker 2: They they get detained, flow into Louisiana, have their citizenships stripped.
Speaker 2: Now they're back down to a green cars. They have
Speaker 2: the green cards stripped. Then where do you send them? Canada, Mexico?
Speaker 8: Like what what's the international waters?
Speaker 2: International water? Peter Thiel's like utopian said them to one
Speaker 2: of these libertarian cryptos owns, like what is what's the
Speaker 2: endgame here for an American citizen who protests against Israel
Speaker 2: in a way that you know, Donald Trump finds offensive?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Like what do they do with him?
Speaker 8: Well, I think that question applies also to people I
Speaker 8: mean whether or not they're protesting who are the kind
Speaker 8: of quote unquote anchor baby test case.
Speaker 2: But at least some of those. But if they're not anchor,
Speaker 2: so quote unquote anchor baby means they were born here
Speaker 2: in the United States. Somebody like mach Mukhalil. He was
Speaker 2: born in a refugee camp in Syria and he has
Speaker 2: Algerian citizenship. So I can imagine, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 2: deport him to Algeria because that's because he has citizenship there. Like,
Speaker 2: if that's what they're gonna do, but if you're born
Speaker 2: in the United States, you're in a United States citizens
Speaker 2: you have no citizenship anywhere else. Like who that has has?
Speaker 2: The Stephen Miller crowd thought about this.
Speaker 8: Like, well, it also requires cooperation of a countries, right,
Speaker 8: and I'm curious how other other countries do don't have
Speaker 8: birthright citizens.
Speaker 2: Rights might be like, no, we're not, We're not participating
Speaker 2: in this thing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I practical question that I'd.
Speaker 2: Zero answer to.
Speaker 1: Answer Ryan is they don't really care, just not here.
Speaker 2: But they're going to have to figure out is they're
Speaker 2: just going to keep them in definitely in Guantanamo or they.
Speaker 1: Can just send them to get Mo. Yeah as a plan, right, problem,
Speaker 1: there's like fifty beds there.
Speaker 2: Good luck. Yeah, well, they could do hundreds, maybe even thousands.
Speaker 2: I think George H. W. Bush had thousands there at
Speaker 2: one point.
Speaker 1: The plan is thirty thousand is their goal. Whether they
Speaker 1: can accomplish that or not is another question. Apparently the
Speaker 1: few hundred that they had originally sent to Gitmo, they've
Speaker 1: now is sent elsewhere, either deported them or brought them
Speaker 1: back actually to the US to DHS facilities here. So
Speaker 1: in any case, yeah, lots of work out there.
Speaker 8: They definitely don't see that as a successful experiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it got them the headlines that
Speaker 1: they want, you know well, and actually got them a
Speaker 1: freak out that they want. And I think that was
Speaker 1: probably most of the goal there, to be honest with you.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, and I think actually I shouldn't even be
Speaker 8: so glib about it, because I do think that's part
Speaker 8: of I actually think that did have a deterrent effect
Speaker 8: based on some of the reporting I've seen from like
Speaker 8: Mexico and Central America where reporters are just talking to
Speaker 8: migrants about why they're turning around, and there has been
Speaker 8: significant number of people like literally getting through the daring
Speaker 8: gap and turning turning back around because the risk calculation
Speaker 8: has changed significantly. So yeah, I probably shouldn't have been
Speaker 8: flipping about that. I think it did to some extent
Speaker 8: accomplish what they wanted to, which was a like low
Speaker 8: effort way to deter people from coming in, obviously at
Speaker 8: the cost of the legal questions for them were building,
Speaker 8: But it probably in the interim had some deturn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, border crossings is plummeted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about that, No doubt about that. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: anything else before we let you guys go and get
Speaker 1: on with your day.
Speaker 8: No, I just wanted to say, your hair looks amazing today,
Speaker 8: exceptionally good.
Speaker 1: Thank you. You know, I literally did nothing to it
Speaker 1: this morning. I actually just like woke up and it
Speaker 1: was just like this. That was kind of a miracle.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, woke up like this. I
Speaker 1: my hair did anyway, the rest of me not so much.
Speaker 8: Ryan put more effort into his hair than Crystal.
Speaker 1: Ryan looks great. I have to say I feel a
Speaker 1: little chlobby here. I got my like Elizabeth, there are
Speaker 1: no situation going here. I was like, you know, and
Speaker 1: Ryan's sick, yeah, and he's putting in all this all
Speaker 1: this appearance. Evert Ryan, go rust, get better, take care
Speaker 1: of your kiddos and link.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people should go look this up. But speaking of
Speaker 2: our speaking of Makmu Khalil, the Columbia University sent out
Speaker 2: an email to a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 2: its members just now ish saying that there were da
Speaker 2: chess thugs I don't know what the term they used
Speaker 2: for them, was in residences with warrants last night looking
Speaker 2: for more people to grab and deport. It said they
Speaker 2: failed to find anybody, but they let the community know
Speaker 2: that there were warrants served for more arrests and deportations,
Speaker 2: so they're ramping this up.
Speaker 1: There's also an allegation from a student leader at Columbia
Speaker 1: that the Columbia Board of Trustees was involved in singing
Speaker 1: DHS on Machmud Khalil specifically. So, like I said, it's
Speaker 1: an allegation. It's not fully reported on or confirmed. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you're asking yourself, why did they pick
Speaker 1: this one to.
Speaker 2: Some of the trustees, who would Yeah, because the trustees
Speaker 2: are there's some of them on there who would probably
Speaker 2: have motivation to do that.
Speaker 1: It would be down for that. Yeah, I mean, especially
Speaker 1: given you know, I mean, I know you've been searching around.
Speaker 1: Murtaza has been searching around and like looking, Okay, well
Speaker 1: what did he actually say? And I can promise you
Speaker 1: like Ryan and I have both said more radical things
Speaker 1: on this program than and he has been like hell
Speaker 1: there that they've been able to find that he said,
Speaker 1: don't I know it? Yeah?
Speaker 8: So well, so I just want to say this is
Speaker 8: actually goes to a theory that I have, which is
Speaker 8: the administration was led down a Rosier path, or a
Speaker 8: path that was less rosy than they thought it was,
Speaker 8: by people at Columbia who Colombia has had this incredible
Speaker 8: mobilization since these original protests and the encampment of alumni
Speaker 8: who are like terrified of what they see as rising
Speaker 8: anti Semitism at Columbia and furious with Columbia for the
Speaker 8: way that it's handled the encampments and the protests and everything.
Speaker 8: And I think that the administration was listening to people
Speaker 8: who have been intensely emotionally invested in this for like
Speaker 8: over a year, who had cases that they thought were
Speaker 8: so strong, like Khalil is a really good one. The
Speaker 8: administration clearly did not realize that he wasn't on some
Speaker 8: student visa, and it seems like they were told that
Speaker 8: he was and they acted really quickly based on This
Speaker 8: is just a theory. I don't have any reporting him
Speaker 8: back this up, but just putting the pieces together, I
Speaker 8: think they were really significantly misled by people who thought
Speaker 8: that they had clear cut legal slam dunk cases told
Speaker 8: the administration that, and the administration didn't necessarily do the
Speaker 8: due diligence that it should have because of the intensity
Speaker 8: of the cases that have been presented to them by
Speaker 8: people who have been working on this at Columbia.
Speaker 2: That theory makes sense because if DHS was the one
Speaker 2: who told the administration, let's go get Makmoud Khalil, DHS
Speaker 2: would check its system like, FYI, he's a permanent, yes,
Speaker 2: legal resident, and we can use this obscure law. Believe
Speaker 2: we can get him out. They would know because they
Speaker 2: have the data. If the rumor mill of the angry
Speaker 2: Columbia Trustees or whoever, well they had been tweeting about
Speaker 2: Paul Trump were like, this guy's a student, this guy's
Speaker 2: on a student visa. I saw it on Twitter, and
Speaker 2: it's right, according to Elon Musk, you are better off
Speaker 2: if you get your news from X. Then let's say,
Speaker 2: if you'r DHS, you search the actual immigration records. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, they went in on tweets and then found
Speaker 2: out that he that they were wrong. And now they
Speaker 2: might set this like horrific precedent by accident.
Speaker 1: Well, and but on the other hand, now that they
Speaker 1: are set to this set to you know, lay down
Speaker 1: this horrific precedent, they don't seem too worried about that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, they're leaning into it. Yeah, Saga
Speaker 1: asked Caroline Lovett at the podium about it. She was
Speaker 1: perfectly happy to answer, like, I think maybe they feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: it works out because we get to lay out the
Speaker 1: most maximal's case and then all these student visa ones
Speaker 1: like those are easy. That's nothing after we've been able
Speaker 1: to strip the you know, the the green card status
Speaker 1: and to port someone who was a legal permanent resident.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean even the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: you guys did a great work looking at up this
Speaker 1: Instagram post that all these right wingers were hanging their
Speaker 1: hat on of him saying you wanted to destroy Western imperialism.
Speaker 1: You're like the number one that wasn't even his Instagram
Speaker 1: it's some group. He may not have even seen this
Speaker 1: Instagram post. And this is what you're like, this is
Speaker 1: what you're making your case with. And it's really kind
Speaker 1: of the only specific language example I've seen anyone use
Speaker 1: with regard to him, and it's this Instagram post that
Speaker 1: he didn't even directly have anything to do with.
Speaker 2: It's actually kind of annoying because I think there's zero
Speaker 2: to do with any of the posts.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of annoying because I think there
Speaker 8: are genuinely you guys disagree with me on this, since
Speaker 8: you Sager and I probably do agree on this. I
Speaker 8: think there actually are cases of people who are here
Speaker 8: on student visas who like clearly viscerally hate America and
Speaker 8: probably violated some laws over the course of civil disobedience.
Speaker 8: And there are cases that would have made this much
Speaker 8: much stronger than the Khalil case. And it's like this
Speaker 8: is I think it's indefensible. I think he's just completely stupid.
Speaker 8: So it's that's I find that very irritating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're you commit a crime, like they have
Speaker 2: their power to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I would be, you know, arguing
Speaker 1: against it morally, but I wouldn't be able to argue
Speaker 1: against it legally. And I don't think you would find
Speaker 1: anyone on the right really who objected to that. Very
Speaker 1: few voices would really object to that. And now you
Speaker 1: have you know, summary wings. I don't want to overstate it,
Speaker 1: but there is some schism on the right over this,
Speaker 1: over this action by the administration, and it's just so
Speaker 1: clearly is a violation of First Amendment rights because the
Speaker 1: only thing he's he's not charged with a crime. They've
Speaker 1: made it clear that they're not deporting him or trying
Speaker 1: to deport him based on allegations of criminal behavior. Just
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio's assessment that his speech is political speech, is
Speaker 1: you know, this devastating blow to the US foreign policy
Speaker 1: priorities social security. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So one last anecdote is, so in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: when I was doing a bunch of anti Iraq war organizing,
Speaker 2: I was at the University of Maryland and there were
Speaker 2: a bunch of Chinese students on student visas and they
Speaker 2: wanted to help, but they were like, if we get
Speaker 2: in any trouble, like, we will be out of here tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So we would meet at four am to go put
Speaker 2: the wax, you know, you're like, dip your posters in
Speaker 2: wax and then put them up on the put them
Speaker 2: up on the flyers, and to announce the rallies and stuff.
Speaker 2: So so students have always understood that, and particularly ones
Speaker 2: that grew up in China would have a much more
Speaker 2: visceral understanding of what a police state looks like. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there's it's different than for a Greenheart green card holder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well could have been assumed to be different for
Speaker 1: a Green card holder, but apparently not which the green
Speaker 1: card holder. Yeah, now in court. All right, guys, thank
Speaker 1: you so much as always, and everybody out there, have
Speaker 1: a wonderful weekend. If anything crazy happens today, like for example,
Speaker 1: if Democrats fail to buckle as Ryme put it earlier
Speaker 1: and Shaka ISLAMI we'll do an update later in the day,
Speaker 1: but otherwise soccer and I will see you guys on Monday.
Speaker 1: Have a great day.