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Speaker 3: Let's move on to the the man who's always sprinkling
Speaker 3: good luck on everyone, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was on
Speaker 3: Flagrant with Andrew Schultz and the Gang and Brian I
Speaker 3: watched this. Did you get a chance to watch it?
Speaker 4: Sing and tell me about these guys. I don't watch
Speaker 4: this show, so.
Speaker 3: Cccer's friends with them, actually, but they are book you know.
Speaker 3: Charles was talking on the podcast, he's like the cosms
Speaker 3: of a lifelong Democrat, repeatedly in his conversations with Bernie's
Speaker 3: I really wanted you to win in twenty sixteen. He's
Speaker 3: kind of like he's similar. I would say he's sort
Speaker 3: of politically similar to Rogan, probably a little less you know,
Speaker 3: interested in some of the wild conspiratorial so like he's
Speaker 3: not in as deep probably on all of those things.
Speaker 3: But it kind of similar. And there's like Bernie brow
Speaker 3: Ish and he even talked about how the podcast bros
Speaker 3: Have been labeled similarly to the Bernie Bros. In conversation
Speaker 3: with Bernie Sanders, part this almost yeah, this almost sexist
Speaker 3: approach to lumping people in the pejorative categories. O.
Speaker 4: Jay's going to come for you pretty soon. Yeah, keep
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'd come right for you. DEI. But anyway, it's
Speaker 3: the conversation before we kick it over to this one
Speaker 3: fascinating clip. We have a couple of clips, but the
Speaker 3: one we're going to play for verst is really, really good.
Speaker 3: I just want to say the first part of the conversation,
Speaker 3: they're spending like twenty minutes talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Speaker 3: And the reason that's important is I don't think there
Speaker 3: are a lot of Democrats who can sit and talk
Speaker 3: totally organically. Bernie is just like blowing them away with
Speaker 3: his knowledge of like the nineteen fifty eight lineup of
Speaker 3: Brooklyn Dodgers.
Speaker 4: The Dodgers going to LA I think it was a
Speaker 4: formative experience for Bernie Sanders in a way that he said, Yes,
Speaker 4: the early childhood trauma can be and I think you
Speaker 4: can connect it to this sense of like who are
Speaker 4: the wait, who are these oligarchs that can rip a
Speaker 4: community apart? Like Yeah, and as somebody who was as
Speaker 4: passionate about baseball in my childhood as Bernie was in his,
Speaker 4: baseball feels like it is part of the It is
Speaker 4: part of the community. It does not feel like it
Speaker 4: should be something owned by an individual who can do
Speaker 4: something with it.
Speaker 3: That's why you got to go with the Green Bay Packers.
Speaker 4: And one of the greatest sense of senses of injustice
Speaker 4: I would ever feel as a child was when the
Speaker 4: Phillies would not be on TV. What do you mean
Speaker 4: I can't watch the Philadelphia Phillies. That the Philadelphia Phillies. They
Speaker 4: have to be on TV? Yeah, this is insane.
Speaker 3: It's outside You're outside of Philadelphia. Yeah. The reason that
Speaker 3: I wanted to start with that point is precisely because
Speaker 3: I think I'm saying this as a conservative. The if
Speaker 3: you are a If you are an ideological liberal and
Speaker 3: you watch Bernie's fluent, natural organic conversation about the Brooklyn
Speaker 3: Dodgers with Andrew Schultz for twenty minutes, he gives the
Speaker 3: best pitch for democratic socialism, all in the context of
Speaker 3: baseball in the first twenty minutes of that podcast. That
Speaker 3: is changing hearts and minds. Is persuading people that the
Speaker 3: left is reasonable, even if I disagree with it. You're
Speaker 3: a eighteen year old boy and you're listening to that,
Speaker 3: You're like, holy shit, this is completely true. These billionaires
Speaker 3: come in buy up teams. Jack got the ticket prices
Speaker 3: so that a family of four can't afford a vacation.
Speaker 3: Now it's literally the price of a vacation. Yes, can't
Speaker 3: afford to go to a game without it being the
Speaker 3: price of the weekend at a beach for everyone to
Speaker 3: get a hot dog, decent ticket, whatever.
Speaker 4: Punch in the face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so they come in and buy it. Parking, Well,
Speaker 3: they use your money to build the stadium, then charge
Speaker 3: you eighty bucks a ticket for a decent seat, and
Speaker 3: then they take the team somewhere else ten years later,
Speaker 3: once you've already bought your kid's gear, and you've sort
Speaker 3: of emotionally invested in the franchise.
Speaker 4: It's an eighteen dollars eighteen dollars for a coke.
Speaker 3: And it's baseball. It's America's pastime. Yeah, And so the
Speaker 3: way Sanders starts that segment is just a fantastic pitch
Speaker 3: for democratic socialism. And there are so few he's willing
Speaker 3: to laugh at their jokes about. Like they say something
Speaker 3: about Bernie's like, we learned how to do arithmetic this
Speaker 3: way by watching baseball, and Schultz goes, well, today, we
Speaker 3: call that autism, and Bernie's laughing at it. And it's like,
Speaker 3: you don't find other democrats, Like imagine Alista slot Can
Speaker 3: just being able to roll with a comedian making a
Speaker 3: joke about that she wouldn't. And it's the same thing
Speaker 3: when Schultz makes jokes about you can only be bigoted
Speaker 3: around your close friends, like Bernie Sanders like, look, I'm
Speaker 3: against bigotry. Schultz goes, unless it's around your close friends,
Speaker 3: and Bernie just rolls your close friend, Yeah, to your
Speaker 3: close friends. So let's roll this clip so that I
Speaker 3: can stop doing summaries of clips. I know everybody loves
Speaker 3: that this is d one.
Speaker 5: It's good about what happened to you in twenty sixteen
Speaker 5: with this Bernie Brose movement where you're your followers are
Speaker 5: seen they have a racism problem, missagy problem.
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a superPAC thing behind that?
Speaker 4: No, it was the Democratic establishment. Oh wow, okay, you know.
Speaker 6: That was just they were sitting there. We had a
Speaker 6: lot of young people, we have people of color, and
Speaker 6: you know, they create this kind of myth with the
Speaker 6: help of the corporate media or all that stuff. You know.
Speaker 7: It's kind of interesting to that note is during this election,
Speaker 7: the podcast space, which the Democrats largely avoided, they feel
Speaker 7: had some influence in the election, and they started to
Speaker 7: label us the podcast bros and said that we were
Speaker 7: sexist and we were racist and bigeted. It's almost like
Speaker 7: it's the exact same strategy to get you out of there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what the liberally China does. They run away,
Speaker 6: look getting again. I would hope that everybody who's watching
Speaker 6: the program is that we as a nation have got
Speaker 6: to and or forms of biggotreat right. Yes, that I
Speaker 6: thought off as a basic assumption. Unless I see your
Speaker 6: close friends, right, it's racism but sexism, homophobia or aenophobia,
Speaker 6: whatever it is. But and you know, liberal democrats talk
Speaker 6: about that all the time. And then you get to
Speaker 6: what we call identity politics. That you're black, you're wonderful,
Speaker 6: you're tremendous, you're yeah, you're the greatest human being on earth. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And rather than say what do you what do you
Speaker 6: stand for?
Speaker 4: Exactly ya? That's why who cares? What do you stand for?
Speaker 6: You know, is every gay person brilliant and wonderful and great?
Speaker 4: Now of course that everybody's um.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So the issue is what you stand for, which
Speaker 6: huts you back to what we discuss every class politics
Speaker 6: in the sense of which side are you on? Are
Speaker 6: you going to stand with working families, Are you going
Speaker 6: to raise the minimum wage to a living wage or not?
Speaker 6: Are you going to guarantee fight to guarantee healthcare to
Speaker 6: all people or not? Are you going to demand that
Speaker 6: the wealthiest people stop paying their fair share of taxes on?
Speaker 6: Those are the issues, and no one cares what color
Speaker 6: you want, you know, what your gender is, et cetera,
Speaker 6: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Ryan, well done again. You just this is
Speaker 3: what's so frustrating is democrats. I just wrote about this morning. Actually,
Speaker 3: like they're on their quest, we can put the next
Speaker 3: hair straight up on the screen, this multimillion dollar quest
Speaker 3: to find the nextra rogue. In The New York Times
Speaker 3: had an interesting three Yeah, The New York Times had
Speaker 3: an interesting report on it. Sorry, yes, I skipped ahead
Speaker 3: about how Democrats are now throwing millions of dollars they
Speaker 3: have spreadshere of influencers to try and create the next
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan when obviously they lost the original Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: Who's somebody who had Bernie Sanders on and then a
Speaker 3: big conversation with Bernie Sanders about universal health care and
Speaker 3: all of these democratic socialist policies that Rogan is pretty
Speaker 3: interested in. And Democrats don't want to change their policy
Speaker 3: offerings or their tone, as evidenced by the fact that
Speaker 3: they're not leaning into Bernie being the guy that can
Speaker 3: help them win back the Rogan instead of astroturfing some
Speaker 3: partisan hack that's going to be exactly the opposite of
Speaker 3: what succeeds on the podcast circuit, which is the anti
Speaker 3: partisan ship of free, willing conversation and authenticity. Bernie can
Speaker 3: go on flagrant just like Trump can, just like Jade
Speaker 3: vance Can and he can go in Theovonne, he can
Speaker 3: go on Joe Rogan, and it's because he's a critic
Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party in the same way that Trump
Speaker 3: is a critic of the Republican Party. You could say
Speaker 3: Bernie's more sincere than Trump, sure, but they're both criticizing
Speaker 3: their own party, which is what you're not going to
Speaker 3: pay a bunch of influencers to do. Nobody wants the
Speaker 3: dem donors to give millions of dollars to people who
Speaker 3: are then going to go trash the Dems.
Speaker 4: We got Rokana coming pretty soon, So let's roll this
Speaker 4: last clip of D two from here where he talks
Speaker 4: about our Democrats a threat to democracy as well.
Speaker 7: The problem I think a lot of voters had is
Speaker 7: like they didn't even know if it was her. We
Speaker 7: didn't even know if Biden was president. We didn't even
Speaker 7: know if these were her talking points, and we felt
Speaker 7: that over the last four elections, Democrats we felt that
Speaker 7: we didn't have a say on who could be president.
Speaker 7: We talk a lot about the Republicans being autocrats and
Speaker 7: oligarchs and taking over democracy, but from the Democrat perspective,
Speaker 7: and as I'm a lifelong Democrat. I felt like the
Speaker 7: Democratic Party completely removed the democratic process from its constituents
Speaker 7: and they I think they need to have some accountability
Speaker 7: of that.
Speaker 4: No, um, I don't for you.
Speaker 7: I mean I wanted you to. Like twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 7: was like, this is going to happen. This guy's going
Speaker 7: to do it, and it felt like they it felt
Speaker 7: like they stole it from it. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 7: it broke my heart when you when you support him.
Speaker 6: Look but you have in the world that I live in,
Speaker 6: you got a choice. And I mean a lot of people,
Speaker 6: including my wife, agree with you, but you know you're
Speaker 6: down to a choice. It's going to be Hillary Clinton
Speaker 6: or is it going to be Donald Trump? Not a
Speaker 6: great choice, but it ended up being him anyway.
Speaker 4: So why don't we burn it down?
Speaker 6: Well, because it's easy to say, burning it down means
Speaker 6: that children are not going to have you know, foodia,
Speaker 6: that the schools will deteriorate, people will not have healthcare.
Speaker 6: I got it, and I you know, I'm an elected official.
Speaker 6: I got to represent the people and I can't turn my.
Speaker 5: Back on But then could we not also say if
Speaker 5: ostensibly there hasn't been a fair primary for the Democrats
Speaker 5: since two thousand and eight, Are they not also a
Speaker 5: threat to democracy?
Speaker 7: We often hear fair.
Speaker 3: Enough that is that is Yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: argue with that point, including my wife.
Speaker 4: That was a pretty funny line. Yeah, that's why he
Speaker 4: can hang with the Yeah, and Jane is Yeah, she
Speaker 4: is more of a burn it down than Bernie is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is more than Bernie bro than Burney.
Speaker 4: Sure, Bernie actually wanted somebody to primary Obama in twenty twelve,
Speaker 4: which killed him. Then in twenty sixteen they used that
Speaker 4: against him ruthlessly. Then I think he would like at
Speaker 4: the time, he would have loved to take it back.
Speaker 4: He didn't have any idea that he was going to
Speaker 4: be a competitive presidential candidate in the next cycle. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: twenty twelve that was fair because no he ran against
Speaker 4: him Obama. Twenty sixteen, we know twenty twenty votes were fair. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but the party just consolidated around Joe Biden. Yeah, Bernie
Speaker 4: was like pulling ahead even among black voters after Nevada,
Speaker 4: But the Democratic primary voters are very lockstep. And when MSNBC,
Speaker 4: CNN people to judge Obama, Amy Klobuchar, everybody consolidated they moved.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and that's what sends just really cheating.
Speaker 4: It's like they used the power of the party to
Speaker 4: beat him, which, yes, is hypocritical if your name is
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's the reason that you end up getting
Speaker 3: the Andrew Schultz of the world looking seriously at Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And it's because they're so disillusioned by how Bernie Sanders
Speaker 3: was treated. And until Democrats acknowledge that they're not going
Speaker 3: to have success in the anti establishment podcast circuit, they
Speaker 3: can continue to you know, New York Times, the Daily
Speaker 3: and pr they'll still do really well in the podcast charts.
Speaker 3: It's something that I think them sort of take for granted.
Speaker 3: But they're not going to win back young men until
Speaker 3: these faults are acknowledged, and they're not going to pay
Speaker 3: their way to bullshitting people and to thinking that they're
Speaker 3: sincerely acknowledging those faults. So good luck to everyone. That's
Speaker 3: how we're ending every segment there.
Speaker 4: Good luck exactly all right. Up next, we got Rocan
Speaker 4: in the studio, a Democrat of congressman is taking his
Speaker 4: pitch to some red districts or at least purple districts
Speaker 4: around the country. Here let's play a little bit of
Speaker 4: a Rokanna heading to Pennsylvania. I want to ask.
Speaker 7: Are we safe?
Speaker 8: Is my family safe? And you know you asked are
Speaker 8: we safe? And you're mature enough and you're thoughtful enough
Speaker 8: that I'm going to give you an honest answer. And
Speaker 8: the honest answer is that there are people right now
Speaker 8: in power who are making it harder for folks who
Speaker 8: are lesbian. And in this country, there are people who
Speaker 8: are making it harder for folks who are on Medicaid
Speaker 8: and who need those services to live well and to
Speaker 8: have basic health care. That's true about what's going on,
Speaker 8: But you know, we also have a country where a
Speaker 8: sixth grader gets to stand up and talk about that
Speaker 8: and talk about that and talk about that in a
Speaker 8: way that is so much more powerful than anything I
Speaker 8: can say or any congress person can say.
Speaker 4: All right, joining us here is Democratic Congressman Rocanna. Thanks
Speaker 4: for joining it.
Speaker 8: Thank you the standing of issue. So it was for
Speaker 8: the sixth grade girl, not for me, But that was
Speaker 8: a powerful moment because she stood up there a lot
Speaker 8: of courage and she said, I'm afraid. I'm afraid for
Speaker 8: my family, and what can you tell me? That's going
Speaker 8: to keep me safe. And there's not much you can
Speaker 8: tell folks. And I was pretty honest with her about
Speaker 8: some of the cuts that are taking place and the
Speaker 8: climate affair that it's been created.
Speaker 4: And this is this is kind of your you know,
Speaker 4: this is your homecoming in a way. You're from Bucks County.
Speaker 4: I was actually just up that way from my cousin's
Speaker 4: high school graduation from Boyertown High I was born. I
Speaker 4: was born in Allentown, which you also visited.
Speaker 8: That's why we were having such a hard time getting
Speaker 8: a venue. I said, how's it so hard? They said
Speaker 8: the graduation graduation?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So how is Allentown? Where'd you go in Allentown?
Speaker 8: We were in Allentown and it was right next to
Speaker 8: the Mack Truck facility. A lot of the folks in
Speaker 8: Mack Truck, unfortunately, are losing their jobs in July. Two reasons. One,
Speaker 8: those jobs are going to Mexico. So I'm in Donald
Speaker 8: Trump here's talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back. How about
Speaker 8: we just start not losing them. And the second thing
Speaker 8: is these blanket tariffs have caused Mack Trucks to raise
Speaker 8: their prices by twenty five percent, and they've lost twenty
Speaker 8: five percent of orders. And so these folks from UAW
Speaker 8: were there saying, you know, three hundred and fifty four
Speaker 8: guys are going to get laid off if you guys
Speaker 8: don't do something, and appealing to Ryan mackenzie, the congress
Speaker 8: person there in Donald Trump to save their jobs.
Speaker 4: So what would an industrial policy look like? That didn't
Speaker 4: lead to that, because Trump, when he talks about bringing
Speaker 4: manufacturing back, is not talking about mack Truck laying people
Speaker 4: off in Allentown. He's talking about the opposite of that.
Speaker 4: And mack Truck laying people off has been going on
Speaker 4: for forty years and it had a bit of a revival,
Speaker 4: but there was a formative experience with my child. Remember,
Speaker 4: like everybody talking in Allentown, mack Truck is moving to
Speaker 4: South Carolina. Like one of the first things that a
Speaker 4: lot of these companies do is they move from the
Speaker 4: Union states down to the non union states, and then
Speaker 4: when there's a little bit of union activity there, then
Speaker 4: they had to Mexico or China or Vietnam or wherever
Speaker 4: they go. So what would you do, because obviously it
Speaker 4: makes no sense for US policy to be hurting mac
Speaker 4: in Allentown.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, first, you wouldn't have blanket tariffs that are
Speaker 8: making it harder for manufacturers to import things that they
Speaker 8: need for their trucks before you actually phased in the
Speaker 8: production in the United States. So if you wanted to say, Okay,
Speaker 8: here are the component parts, we're going to produce that
Speaker 8: in the United States and phase in tariff's fine. But
Speaker 8: you can't just have these blanket tarfs. Second, I would
Speaker 8: have an offshoring tax. I mean, if you're going to
Speaker 8: offshore a plan, you're causing a lot of disruption, You're
Speaker 8: causing a lot of harm to a community. There should
Speaker 8: be a tax right now. Actually, the tax overseas is
Speaker 8: less than the corporate tax in the United States. It's
Speaker 8: twenty one percent here, but to repatriot profits it's only
Speaker 8: ten percent. So we need to have an offshoring tax.
Speaker 8: And third, i'd have an economic Marshall plan and development
Speaker 8: policy of what are we going to invest in these
Speaker 8: communities to build new factories and where are we going
Speaker 8: to commit to buying things where the government can buy things.
Speaker 8: Some of it may be mac trucks, some of them
Speaker 8: may be other kinds of manufacturing. Some of it may
Speaker 8: be healthcare, education, it's not all going to be manufacturing,
Speaker 8: but you need to have a concerted investment economic development strategy,
Speaker 8: none of which down from as he wants to just
Speaker 8: wave a magic wand with blanket tariffs. And it's in
Speaker 8: some cases like mack Truck, unintentionally. I don't think Trump
Speaker 8: wants to hurt them, but unintentionally hurting them.
Speaker 3: So I have a two prong question on that point.
Speaker 3: Because the Big Beautiful Bill, if it gets past, is
Speaker 3: promising tax ri offs for investment in the United States, building, manufacturing, building,
Speaker 3: factory building in the United States, and retroactive to January twentieth,
Speaker 3: like one hundred percent write offs on all of that.
Speaker 3: Corporate tax would go down from twenty one percent to
Speaker 3: fifteen percent. The Trump administration sees that as a sort
Speaker 3: of compliment to the tariff policy, as kind of an
Speaker 3: industrial policy in a tax structure way. What do you
Speaker 3: make of that? Do you think substantively that's helpful? And
Speaker 3: having been talking to people in counties that went Obama, Trump, Biden,
Speaker 3: Trump in many cases people who have voted for Democrats
Speaker 3: and Republicans in the presidential ticket in recent decades, do
Speaker 3: you think those types of policies could be sold by
Speaker 3: the Trump administration, like, do you think the Trump administration
Speaker 3: will have an easy time saying, listen, we are bringing
Speaker 3: manufacturing back if that bill passes in substance and in style.
Speaker 3: I guess is the question.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, on this substance, they're also repealing
Speaker 8: some of the Inflation Reduction Act production tax credit. So
Speaker 8: it's not a clean build that says, if you're making
Speaker 8: things in America, we're going to give you tax credits.
Speaker 8: I guess if you're making things that happen to be
Speaker 8: low carbon, they want to take those tax credits away.
Speaker 8: They have some of the accelerated depreciation, but it's also
Speaker 8: a very trickle down approach. Their view, I mean, a
Speaker 8: genuine view is we're going to create these global deals.
Speaker 8: We're going to provide these tax breaks, and somehow it's
Speaker 8: going to lead to more job creation in the United
Speaker 8: States and every community, and may lead to more job
Speaker 8: creation in Silicon Valley. It may lead to more job
Speaker 8: creation and capital centers. But I don't think these companies
Speaker 8: are going to say, Okay, now we're going to go
Speaker 8: in Johnstown, We're going to go in Lorraine. We're going
Speaker 8: to build the types of manufacturing that those communities want.
Speaker 5: To do that.
Speaker 8: You need federal directed investment, you need a workforce, you
Speaker 8: need to ask these communities what to do. In terms
Speaker 8: of the politics of it, I think he's going to
Speaker 8: try to sell that, but ultimately reality is reality. At
Speaker 8: some point people are going to say, Okay, am I
Speaker 8: getting laid off? Am I getting new jobs. It's why
Speaker 8: Donald Trump is so much more effective as an outsider
Speaker 8: than as president in my view. As an outsider, you know,
Speaker 8: David Brooks said, he asked all the right questions, he
Speaker 8: just said some of the wrong answers. As an outsider,
Speaker 8: he can say all these problems, but when he's as
Speaker 8: a president, he's going to be judged on the actual record.
Speaker 4: Great, and so you had you were saying you had
Speaker 4: some Trump protesters. We did, who showed up? How what
Speaker 4: was their deal?
Speaker 8: But first of all, it's an argument for every Democrat
Speaker 8: going on Fox News because they said, you know, first
Speaker 8: they started approaching me. I said, oh no, I'm going
Speaker 8: to get yelled at. And they said, we have a request.
Speaker 8: Can we get a selfie? I said, you want a
Speaker 8: selfie with me? So we see you all the time
Speaker 8: on Fox News. So that's the That's what started the conversation.
Speaker 8: And then I said, well, why don't you just listen,
Speaker 8: because I just introduce a bill to codify Donald Trump's
Speaker 8: executive order. I'm the first the pharmaceut on the pharmaceutical
Speaker 8: bill to say that Americans shouldn't pay more than people
Speaker 8: in every other part of the world. And Bernie and
Speaker 8: I had done something simil or years ago where we
Speaker 8: said that if you're paying more in America than places
Speaker 8: in Japan or Germany, we should take away the patents
Speaker 8: from those pharma companies. Trump says, let's import the cheap drugs,
Speaker 8: and we got to bipartisan. It's with bigs, it's with Luna,
Speaker 8: and so this got the Trump voters paying attention. I said,
Speaker 8: I'm not for medicaid cuts. They said, well, we don't
Speaker 8: want Medicaid cuts. I said, I'm for keeping this mac
Speaker 8: truck jobs here. They said, we're for that.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: I said, you know, the bill actually has these cuts.
Speaker 8: And I think that the politics the debate is going
Speaker 8: to be whether Trump can sell them that is not
Speaker 8: cutting medicaid, when in my view it actually is. He's
Speaker 8: calling it waste, fraud, and abuse.
Speaker 4: It's not though, right.
Speaker 3: So on that point, even actually on the drug bill,
Speaker 3: Have you heard anything from the White House? Have your
Speaker 3: Republicans heard anything, Republican colleagues heard anything from the White
Speaker 3: House that there might be movement on that or is
Speaker 3: Republican leadership going to do everything they can not to
Speaker 3: let that come to the floor or get into any
Speaker 3: other packages.
Speaker 8: It's an uphill battle get it onto the floor. There's
Speaker 8: so much lobbying money off big pharma. And you know,
Speaker 8: Donald Trump's out there saying he's already lowered drug prices
Speaker 8: by eighty five percent, so accomplished. He's got the talking points.
Speaker 8: But again, he's president and maybe right now people think, okay,
Speaker 8: this is going to happen, But a year from now
Speaker 8: they're going to wonder, have drug price has actually gone down?
Speaker 8: And I would think this would be such a home
Speaker 8: run for him if he would actually we would pass
Speaker 8: this law and codify it, and he'd be the president
Speaker 8: to take on big pharma, he would it would be
Speaker 8: a huge deal. But I just don't think that the
Speaker 8: Republicans in Congress are going to do it or the
Speaker 8: Senate are going to do it.
Speaker 4: He just got a kind of surprise win in the
Speaker 4: Senate on a similar vein where they passed Last night,
Speaker 4: they passed it alt the No tax On Act got
Speaker 4: one hundred votes in the Senate, just went through by
Speaker 4: unanim's consent. Democrats like, all right, fine, we'll do this.
Speaker 4: Do you think is that going to pass the House?
Speaker 8: It's going to be part of the Reckon Soation Bill.
Speaker 8: I do think it'll pass. You know, as you know,
Speaker 8: they've given the no tax for tips for four years.
Speaker 8: They're giving the tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires
Speaker 8: for ten years.
Speaker 4: Well that's why it was only one hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: five or and that's the.
Speaker 8: Gimmick that they had. But look, Donald Trump obviously has
Speaker 8: incredible political instincts. You don't become president twice. I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't agree with his leadership, but his no tax
Speaker 8: on tips was a stroke of brilliance in Nevada and
Speaker 8: other places. My view is, we got to raise the
Speaker 8: living wage, but in the meantime, yeah, why are we
Speaker 8: taxing tips on working families? And so you're going to
Speaker 8: get support for it, and I think the argument from
Speaker 8: Democrats is why are you making this four years and
Speaker 8: not ten years and having the millionaire billionaire tax cut
Speaker 8: for ten years? By the way, eighty thousand dollars plus
Speaker 8: that every millionaire is going to get based on this
Speaker 8: tax plan, and it's about seven hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 8: for people under one hundred thousand dollars just on the
Speaker 8: tax breaks. And then there was this CBO study which
Speaker 8: is just astounding of distributional analysis saying that the bottom
Speaker 8: ten percent are going to be hurt because of the
Speaker 8: Medicaid cuts and the cuts and food stamps, in the
Speaker 8: top ten percent are going to benefit. And it's a
Speaker 8: pretty straightforward analysis.
Speaker 4: Could you see the So what about the pharmaceutical measure?
Speaker 4: It feels like from a political perspective, You've got Trump
Speaker 4: has already said it, he's for it, he's claimed he's
Speaker 4: doing it. You've got the bill. What's the mechanism to
Speaker 4: expose the big pharm a lobby as the ones in
Speaker 4: the way of it, because once they're exposed, it's much
Speaker 4: more difficult for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, call up the Health and Human Services secretary, see
Speaker 3: if he wants to do some message.
Speaker 8: That's not a bad idea. Actually we can reach out
Speaker 8: to him. I'm hoping we get as many Republicans and
Speaker 8: Democrats to sign on to it. Look, it's not perfect
Speaker 8: in terms of what I prefer Lloyd Doggett or Bernie's approach. Yes,
Speaker 8: but the argument I'm making to my Democratic colleagues is
Speaker 8: I'm not changing the language because I don't want to
Speaker 8: then say to Republicans, here's an excuse to oppose it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 8: For Republicans, I'm saying, look, we're literally codifying Trump's executive order,
Speaker 8: and then how are you not for this? And I
Speaker 8: think we can get to a large number of House
Speaker 8: members on this bill, we start to get momentum because
Speaker 8: the reality is that both parties have taken money from
Speaker 8: big pharma or buy into those talking points always going
Speaker 8: to hurt innovation and hurt drug discovery. Not true. I mean,
Speaker 8: most of that is happening with your and my tax dollars.
Speaker 8: But we've got to expose it. It's a powerful lobbying
Speaker 8: group and that's really what's standing in the way now.
Speaker 4: The debate consuming Democrats right now is the you know,
Speaker 4: what did you know and when? About President Biden's sinility.
Speaker 4: Megan Kelly and Jake Tapper had it out a little bit.
Speaker 4: Let's to set the context. Let's play some of this
Speaker 4: Kelly Tapper clip over here.
Speaker 10: In my ecosphere. We were covering all of these. It
Speaker 10: wasn't just falling down, it was get lost. It was
Speaker 10: some of the stuff you report in your book. We
Speaker 10: knew and we were reporting on, like the multi jump
Speaker 10: cuts in the videos of him, or it was obvious
Speaker 10: he couldn't get through a one minute take. It was
Speaker 10: clear to us that he was using teleprompter, and there
Speaker 10: was some reporting on that at the time, all of
Speaker 10: which the White House was denying. Now the current White House,
Speaker 10: I have some connections with the Joe Biden white House.
Speaker 4: I had none, but you did.
Speaker 3: There was an attempted cover up.
Speaker 10: It could only ever work if you allowed it, if
Speaker 10: the press allowed it. Some of us tried not to,
Speaker 10: and some of us were complicit.
Speaker 11: The Biden white House did not like me. Okay, this
Speaker 11: is I do not have great connections with the Biden
Speaker 11: White House.
Speaker 7: Well, clearly you have a lot of sources.
Speaker 10: You say you talked to over two hundred sources for
Speaker 10: this book, so you have something you could have called
Speaker 10: and worked.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 4: That's the point is that they were not being honest.
Speaker 3: That's how the Street Journal get it.
Speaker 10: In June of twenty twenty four, and Jake Tapper and
Speaker 10: CNN couldn't find sources for this story then before he
Speaker 10: dropped out.
Speaker 11: No, it's just again going to do if we're going
Speaker 11: to if we're going to do this, let's just stick
Speaker 11: to the facts here, Okay when there is a damn, That's.
Speaker 10: What I've been doing all along. I'm talking about what
Speaker 10: you miss the biggest story of the century when it
Speaker 10: comes to presidential politics.
Speaker 4: So that's Jake Tapper taking the beating.
Speaker 8: A little bit of his own medicine.
Speaker 3: Yes, speaking of that. Actually, Joe Scarborough getting a little
Speaker 3: bit of from from Mark Halpern.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, let's let's roll some of this next clip too.
Speaker 12: I say to people, go watch the State of the
Speaker 12: Union address. Talk to people who talked to Joe Biden.
Speaker 12: He had good days and bad days. You were with
Speaker 12: him on a good day and had conversations with him
Speaker 12: on a good day, but good days on good days,
Speaker 12: good days.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Looking but looking back at that, do you say, well,
Speaker 12: it was misleading to say best by never without caveating
Speaker 12: it and say except on the days when he's not
Speaker 12: the best Biden? Well, but but I never I never
Speaker 12: saw those days.
Speaker 4: First, Well you did?
Speaker 12: You did, because he saw Hi, address the dead congress woman,
Speaker 12: and you saw him in South Carolina.
Speaker 3: And yeah, more than I can show you.
Speaker 12: So I can show you the r n C clip Reils.
Speaker 12: There were plenty of days in public when he when
Speaker 12: he was not the best Biden ever, and.
Speaker 9: Of course stumbled and he stumbled and he stumbled and
Speaker 9: bumbled around.
Speaker 8: Mark.
Speaker 9: I mean, yeah, he he certainly did. Uh, Donald Trump did,
Speaker 9: other politicians did. But but but it And it's actually
Speaker 9: the same case as a lot of times when I've
Speaker 9: gone in and talked to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: So where did you where did you come down on
Speaker 4: this storing? Like, what what was your sense of Biden's
Speaker 4: sinility and ability to be president versus privately versus publicly.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, obviously right now everyone is hoping,
Speaker 8: uh and praying for his full recovery from from prostate cancer.
Speaker 8: But what I have said is it was a mistake
Speaker 8: for President Biden to run. I had seen him a
Speaker 8: few times in the year UH and had said that
Speaker 8: based on my conversations, he should run. Now, in light
Speaker 8: of all that's come out, I think that was a
Speaker 8: wrong judgment. We also were hearing from a lot of
Speaker 8: people in the Botton White House that he's capable of
Speaker 8: doing it, he has the energy. We should have pushed back.
Speaker 8: It should have been more independent, should have asked more questions,
Speaker 8: shouldn't have had as much deference. I do think it
Speaker 8: was capable of doing the job of president. But was
Speaker 8: he up for a grueling campaign in four more years.
Speaker 8: That seems obvious that some of us, many of us
Speaker 8: in the party, got it wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm curious. I imagine you know, if you do
Speaker 3: more town halls, you'll hear sentiments that sound just like
Speaker 3: Meghan's to Jake Tapper.
Speaker 8: There.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's part of a trust deficit that
Speaker 3: voters have with Democrats now. It feels like a significant
Speaker 3: question mark that people will come to Democratic congressman with
Speaker 3: the correct me if I'm wrong, if that's not something
Speaker 3: you hear from your constituents. But I wonder how you
Speaker 3: address that, how Democrats address that. I know Jake Tapper
Speaker 3: isn't like an elected Democratic official, but as somebody.
Speaker 4: In Kansas like to the public, right, yeah, well.
Speaker 3: And he did. I mean, his coverage was mixed. He's
Speaker 3: trying to defend his record, but the point is he
Speaker 3: wasn't banging the drum every day saying this guy is
Speaker 3: he doesn't seem capable of leading the country for another
Speaker 3: four years, and there's significant questions about whether he's capable now.
Speaker 3: So how do you think Democrats can or should or
Speaker 3: shouldn't address that question?
Speaker 8: Well, I do think this created a trust deficit and
Speaker 8: was read one of the big reasons we lost, and
Speaker 8: the American people punished the Democratic Party for that trust deficit.
Speaker 8: But I think the American people are very fair and
Speaker 8: also tend to move on. And the only way that
Speaker 8: this story drags out, in my view, is if we're
Speaker 8: not honest. If we don't come out and say it
Speaker 8: was a mistake, we own it, We're going to be
Speaker 8: better in pushing back, and now we want to talk
Speaker 8: about the future and what's happening with medicaid and your
Speaker 8: jobs and tax policy. If we continue to say, well,
Speaker 8: we were right and we didn't make a wrong call,
Speaker 8: then I think it drags on. And that's why I
Speaker 8: just think I don't think it is in any way
Speaker 8: betraying Joe Biden. I'm still very proud of his record
Speaker 8: off the IRA and the Chip sack. I just think
Speaker 8: he made a wrong judgment to run, and many of
Speaker 8: us should have asked tougher questions and shown more independence,
Speaker 8: And I guess if you say that, I think the
Speaker 8: American people are pretty fair and just.
Speaker 3: In terms of like the lessons that can be taken
Speaker 3: away from it is one of do you, in your
Speaker 3: own mind, when you look back, do you think one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that maybe you didn't push for the
Speaker 3: answers to those questions hard is that there didn't seem
Speaker 3: like a good alternative in the moment because Joe Biden
Speaker 3: had pushed for some of the economic populist economic policies
Speaker 3: that people like you had pushed for. Is there something
Speaker 3: that you thought maybe it held you back from asking
Speaker 3: pushing further asking those questions. I think the.
Speaker 8: Biggest thing, in my view is the deference to seniority
Speaker 8: and party leaders that sort of the culture of the
Speaker 8: Democratic Party. I mean, we see this unfortunately today with
Speaker 8: Jerry Connolly's passing, but we saw that in the Oversight race.
Speaker 8: We've seen this time and again that the Democratic Party
Speaker 8: has a lot of culture of deference to seniority, to
Speaker 8: people who've been there, to party leaders, and we just
Speaker 8: need to be more willing to push back at least
Speaker 8: to get for me that was the main reason. I
Speaker 8: also think the fact that it went so long at
Speaker 8: the end. You know, if there was a robust open
Speaker 8: primary and someone like Bernie Sanders would have gotten in
Speaker 8: and had the time, that's one thing. But when it
Speaker 8: was one hundred days left, there was a fear that
Speaker 8: Biden had championed and was championing fairly progressive policy and
Speaker 8: that the DNC would sort of engineer something that would
Speaker 8: move the party in a much more corporate direction. And
Speaker 8: that's I think also part of the reason that you
Speaker 8: had progressives being out there for Biden because they liked
Speaker 8: a lot of Biden's policies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's the case too, And I wonder
Speaker 4: how much the coronation of Kamala Harris plays into this whole,
Speaker 4: the same sense of betrayal or rejection that the public
Speaker 4: feels towards the Democratic behavior in twenty twenty five, or
Speaker 4: do you think if when you know, even Obama we
Speaker 4: now know through reporting, and it seemed you could kind
Speaker 4: of sense it at the time, but we now know
Speaker 4: that the Obamas, both Obamas, thought that there should be
Speaker 4: an open primary and that the convention should really choose
Speaker 4: a candidate a completely radical idea like Democrats get together
Speaker 4: and democratically decide who should be the nominee, and they
Speaker 4: were front run by, eventually by Biden and then others
Speaker 4: who could very quickly just endorsed Kamla and there it
Speaker 4: was done. So do you think do you think that
Speaker 4: plays into it? Do you think that was do you
Speaker 4: think that was a mistake not to have You know,
Speaker 4: the argument was all will be six weeks of fighting
Speaker 4: on and on, But what was that a mistake to
Speaker 4: not have an open primary?
Speaker 8: It was Look, the ideal situation would have Biden does
Speaker 8: better than expected at the midterms, announces he's not doing
Speaker 8: his second term, and there's a real open primary. Because
Speaker 8: I do think it was awkward to go to a
Speaker 8: convention and to pass over the sitting vice president. I'm
Speaker 8: not saying that that wouldn't have been preferable to what
Speaker 8: we did, but there's an awkwardness to that, Whereas I
Speaker 8: don't think anyone would have said that if there was
Speaker 8: an actual open election. The second best case, though, would
Speaker 8: have been an open convention and primary. And the reason
Speaker 8: is that the American people have this sense. In my view,
Speaker 8: I mean having lost races, having lost a race and
Speaker 8: won a race two years later. I mean I lost
Speaker 8: to an incumbent and the one against the same incoment
Speaker 8: two years later, and the biggest thing I got was, well, bro,
Speaker 8: you're really working hard. You must really want this job.
Speaker 8: You've been campaigning so long. And I think with Donald Trump, unfortunately,
Speaker 8: there was a sense like he's been campaigning for this
Speaker 8: for four years what we saw as criminal charge lawsuits.
Speaker 8: People said, well, he's really fighting this and he's fighting assassinations.
Speaker 8: And so there was here's this person who's been campaigning
Speaker 8: for four years for a job and someone who's you know,
Speaker 8: one hundred days, and the American people kind of want
Speaker 8: you to earn it. They want you to beg and
Speaker 8: ask for their votes and fight for that. And that
Speaker 8: is something that Obama really benefited from, right. I mean,
Speaker 8: he was in every milk and cranny of this country
Speaker 8: fighting for his Hillary. And I think it hurt Harris
Speaker 8: in just her chances had she defeated someone, and it
Speaker 8: would have actually strengthened her.
Speaker 4: And can you imagine the hagiography that Biden would be
Speaker 4: getting right now if he had anybody watching this. Who's
Speaker 4: if you're in your eighties and you're hanging on to
Speaker 4: your Senate seat, like, think about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they love breaking points if Biden.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they do. If Biden. They watched it right
Speaker 4: after the PBS News Hour clip on YouTube bends. Yeah,
Speaker 4: if Biden had stepped down, like you said, after the
Speaker 4: mid after they overperform in the mid terms, he steps down,
Speaker 4: he says, I said I was going to be a bridge.
Speaker 4: I'm following through on it, like the glowing portrayals of
Speaker 4: his legacy that we would be kind of sloshing through
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 8: Do you think even if Trump wins that's the case.
Speaker 4: I think even if Trump wins, because he then he
Speaker 4: did the best he could. He did what he said
Speaker 4: he was going to do. He set the party up,
Speaker 4: and then the people chose Trump. But I think actually
Speaker 4: Democrats probably win.
Speaker 3: The cancer diagnosis tragically would have vindicated that decision as well, saying,
Speaker 3: you know you it was maybe.
Speaker 4: Could have been honest about the cancer diagnoses earlier. Right
Speaker 4: she's saying that he just learned that he's in the phones.
Speaker 4: It's like, I'm not a cancer doctor, but.
Speaker 8: Saying that he hasn't been tested since twenty fourteen, I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't.
Speaker 4: You know that's what the what kind of guy? His
Speaker 4: age doesn't get regular anyway alone the president, as as
Speaker 4: Biden says, anyway.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but look, I think that Democrats have to find
Speaker 8: a way to genuinely celebrate some of the policy achievements
Speaker 8: because we don't want to move back to a Democratic
Speaker 8: party that doesn't have a worker centered politics, a belief
Speaker 8: that there should be stayed intervention, that there shouldn't be
Speaker 8: blanket trade, right. I mean, just because Trump's blanket tariffs
Speaker 8: aren't working doesn't mean that the Democrats now should start
Speaker 8: celebrating NAFTA or China's ascension. It's a world trade organization.
Speaker 8: I think Biden represented a break from unfettered globalization and
Speaker 8: separating that and being proud of that, from his decision
Speaker 8: to run and owning up to that. And you know,
Speaker 8: other than maybe Dean Phillips or a few people, there
Speaker 8: are very few Democratic elected officials who weren't endorsing Biden
Speaker 8: and saying something or the other about why he would
Speaker 8: have been a good president. And we could just say
Speaker 8: we made a wrong judgment, didn't a light to what
Speaker 8: it's come out.
Speaker 4: At least Dean went for it. But connorson KNA always
Speaker 4: a pleasure to have you in the studio.
Speaker 8: I appreciate it. I always enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Elon Musk made a big announcement, actually in
Speaker 3: a pretty casual way yesterday. He was asked during a
Speaker 3: conference or Zoom whether he would well, I don't know Zoom.
Speaker 3: It could have been whatever else not skyp. Skype is gone,
Speaker 3: but it could have been Google Meet. Who knows. He
Speaker 3: was asked about his political donations, the future of his
Speaker 3: political donations, which again donated just a crazy amount of money. Yeah,
Speaker 3: almost three hundred million just in the last cycle. So
Speaker 3: Republicans he has this America Pack have been have been
Speaker 3: really building up an infrastructure around an anticipation of future
Speaker 3: donations from Elon Musk. Let's take a listen to what
Speaker 3: he said.
Speaker 8: I think.
Speaker 13: In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a
Speaker 13: lot less in the future.
Speaker 3: And why is that.
Speaker 13: I think I've done enough?
Speaker 3: Is it? Is it because of blowback?
Speaker 13: Well, if I see a reason to do political spending
Speaker 13: in the future, I will do it.
Speaker 4: I do I currently see a reason.
Speaker 3: And it's easy to read into that some awkwardness. It's
Speaker 3: always kind of baked into Elon Musk. Yes, but some
Speaker 3: awkwardness in his relationship with the Republican Party. With Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: he seems my particulars. He seems kind of bitter almost so,
Speaker 3: though it can be hard to tell with Musk because
Speaker 3: it's hard to standard.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this was at Bloomberg's Cutter Economic Forum in Doah,
Speaker 3: which is just kind of hilarious in and of itself.
Speaker 3: But that was zooming into it again. Almost three hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars in the last election cycle, a big pack
Speaker 3: that Republicans have been counting on. My check on this
Speaker 3: is it's actually kind of good for the Republican Party
Speaker 3: to not be tiptoeing around Elon Musk for the sake
Speaker 3: of getting hundreds of millions of dollars from him in
Speaker 3: an election cycle. So just from a like populist standpoint,
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. Anti corruption standpoint, maybe it is
Speaker 3: one way to put it. That's a good thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah. On CNBC, he acknowledged that he took a beating
Speaker 4: for his entry into the arena. He blamed it on
Speaker 4: propaganda from the mainstream media. Let's roll f two.
Speaker 14: You are somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now
Speaker 14: you really are. I mean, there are people who love you,
Speaker 14: but there are a lot of people who dislike you,
Speaker 14: some of whom were your customers, And I wonder was
Speaker 14: it worth the undertaking it Doge and everything.
Speaker 4: Else that you've done, and how it's spoken.
Speaker 14: You've been in terms of the things you believe in
Speaker 14: to antagonize so many potential buyers and or users of
Speaker 14: things like a ROBOTAXI.
Speaker 13: Well, I mean, unfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy
Speaker 13: media propaganda is very effective at making you believe things
Speaker 13: that aren't true.
Speaker 4: What would an example of.
Speaker 13: That be that I'm a Nazi, for example? And how
Speaker 13: many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever try to claim
Speaker 13: that I was a Nazi because of some random ham
Speaker 13: gesture at a rally where all I said was that
Speaker 13: my heart goes out to you, and I was talking
Speaker 13: about space travel. And yet the legacy media promoted that
Speaker 13: as though if that was a deliberate Nazi gesture, when
Speaker 13: in fact, every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for
Speaker 13: any length of time has made the exact same gesture.
Speaker 13: And yet there's sold people out there and I've never
Speaker 13: had I've never had.
Speaker 3: A single puss.
Speaker 4: You know what I wasn't I was I was talking
Speaker 4: about it. Yeah, and so this has had commercial damage
Speaker 4: to in particular Tesla, the most I guess consumer facing
Speaker 4: of his companies. You can put up F three. This
Speaker 4: article in The Bulwark highlights one guy who paid one
Speaker 4: hundred and ten thousand dollars a year ago for a
Speaker 4: cyber truck now being offered fifty four thousand dollars for
Speaker 4: it by Carvana. There are an enormous number of unsold
Speaker 4: cyber trucks kick kicking around, but things could be turning around,
Speaker 4: and you know, maybe thanks to his involvement in politics.
Speaker 4: In the end, put up F four. Elon Musk apparently
Speaker 4: reached out to Pete Hegseth, saying that you know that
Speaker 4: he'd be happy to collaborate with the construction of this
Speaker 4: new Golden Dome that we talked about earlier in the program.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is going to keep us safe from the
Speaker 4: while barrages that he apparently expects to come our way
Speaker 4: and is going to build us an iron dome times
Speaker 4: gold and Elon Musk wants a piece of this, you know,
Speaker 4: five hundred billion dollar project. Well that that's what the
Speaker 4: CBO says it was cost. Trump says it's basically going
Speaker 4: to be a tiny fraction of that. If if you're
Speaker 4: a betting man, you always take the over on any
Speaker 4: Pentagon contract. Elon Musk, a betting man, would like a
Speaker 4: piece of that action. So on the one hand, Musk
Speaker 4: saying politics has been really bad for me for the
Speaker 4: foreseeable future, I'm not going to be investing. At the
Speaker 4: same time, he's still hoping he's going to be able
Speaker 4: to continue to get government contracts, which in our pay
Speaker 4: to play system requires some involvement in politics, but it
Speaker 4: doesn't require the level that he's been involved in. This
Speaker 4: this unprecedented like I'm going to be your banker kind
Speaker 4: of thing role that he was playing. And I'm curious
Speaker 4: how you know, Democrats were nervous that Elon Musk's superpack
Speaker 4: was and I think some Republicans were nervous too privately, yeah,
Speaker 4: that it was going to turn Trump into not dictator
Speaker 4: in the old sense, but like a guy who can
Speaker 4: basically dictate anything to the Republican Party because if you
Speaker 4: step out of line, here's my man, Elon Who's going
Speaker 4: to put ten million dollars into a superpack and is
Speaker 4: going to destroy you in the next primary more than not.
Speaker 4: And they basically said that explicitly, and that would give
Speaker 4: a president an amount of power over his party that
Speaker 4: no president really has ever had before. But almost seems
Speaker 4: like Trump can do that anyway. But he doesn't even
Speaker 4: need the money, just his own, his own kind of
Speaker 4: power and influence within the party can do it well.
Speaker 3: Primaries, yeah, I think in the primaries maybe, but in
Speaker 3: general elections. I mean, I think we've talked about this
Speaker 3: in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election that Elon Musk actually
Speaker 3: went to Green Bay and Cheese.
Speaker 4: Had on good. Western civilization was at stake.
Speaker 3: Said, Western civilizations at stake. I think we're right. Our
Speaker 3: coverage has been correct to pinpoint that as the moment
Speaker 3: in which must started to slowly disentangle himself from the
Speaker 3: Trump administration. At least in public view, it does seem
Speaker 3: like that's happening. Privately, it does seem like he's gradually
Speaker 3: spending less and less time near the White House, in
Speaker 3: the White House and in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: And luckily for him, he's heavily invested in Eastern civilization too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and space civilizations.
Speaker 4: In many civilizations. Yeah, he's covered.
Speaker 3: The bases are covered, yes, so, but I think part
Speaker 3: of that is because he wanted to be able to
Speaker 3: wield so much easy power in that that Wisconsin election
Speaker 3: was a test case post twenty twenty four general election
Speaker 3: of Musk being able to come in register tons of
Speaker 3: new Republican voters by offering money, like bribing people to
Speaker 3: register to vote, and then just come in and flick
Speaker 3: your finger and flick of the risk, flick of the wrist,
Speaker 3: and you've totally changed. You've bought an election. Essentially, he
Speaker 3: was testing that he was trying that and it didn't work.
Speaker 3: And so now in retrospect, the way Democrats framed the
Speaker 3: election in Wisconsin as sort of a test case for
Speaker 3: whether or not Musk can buy his way to complete
Speaker 3: in total domination politically of the United States, that framing
Speaker 3: looks pretty good because it seems to have been a
Speaker 3: message to him that he cannot, that it will not
Speaker 3: be that easy, and that, if anything, his attempt to
Speaker 3: do that has become a sort of what's in albatross
Speaker 3: for the Republican party that wants to have a new
Speaker 3: populist messaging, wants to have a new populist brand, and
Speaker 3: you have a billionaire coming in as sort of openly
Speaker 3: bribing people to register to vote, and trying to buy
Speaker 3: elections again openly, pretty openly trying to buy elections, spend
Speaker 3: a bunch of money. If cash infusion changed the game,
Speaker 3: it didn't work, and it didn't work for a couple
Speaker 3: of reasons. Voters didn't like it. It's not great for Republicans.
Speaker 3: So that's where, at least I think on the public level,
Speaker 3: we're seeing him step back, genuinely step back. But whether
Speaker 3: or not that investment, because we can put this funny
Speaker 3: post from Tim Miller on the screen F three. This
Speaker 3: is about a guy who bought his cyber truck for
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten grand and then was offered fifty
Speaker 3: four thousand back for it by Carvana. It's a long
Speaker 3: bowlwark story about how they say in their stubheading Trump
Speaker 3: killed Tesla. And obviously it's true to that Tesla is
Speaker 3: struggling immensely. Some of these cars are struggling immensely. The
Speaker 3: Tesla's valuation. Valuation has always been about more than just
Speaker 3: the cars. It's also the technology. I mean, it's primarily
Speaker 3: probably like the FSD full stub driving technology that's in
Speaker 3: the cars. Nevertheless, yeah, the cyber truck in particular, has
Speaker 3: struggled for reasons that aren't just Trump related, but are
Speaker 3: definitely Trump related to So if you thought that that
Speaker 3: was representative of Musk taking a big hit, it actually
Speaker 3: may turn out that you know this, the Tesla hit
Speaker 3: is nothing compared to the gain for SpaceX, for Starlink,
Speaker 3: and for other Musk properties, because he's now built up
Speaker 3: tons of goodwill with the Trump administration going forward. He
Speaker 3: has great connections with Pete Hegseth. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that's why people influence pedal to get the influence when
Speaker 3: they want it, for example, when there's massive contracts.
Speaker 4: Golden Dome contract available. Yeah, and hey, look I'm rooting
Speaker 4: for Tesla. We need more, you know, we need electric
Speaker 4: vehicle companies and we need American ones. So I hope
Speaker 4: he pulls this off. And I'm also very delighted that
Speaker 4: he's tweeting much less, because God, that was not so
Speaker 4: much less. That was so obnoxious to just see him
Speaker 4: constantly in your feed. It was nothing you could do
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 3: It wasn't even obnoxious so much as it was just
Speaker 3: like watching a slow motion cyber truck crash right like.
Speaker 4: It was painful, and he would he just would keep
Speaker 4: lading like Kat turn and Ian Miles Chong and everybody's fees.
Speaker 4: You're not doing the world a service with that. And
Speaker 4: he was for yourself.
Speaker 3: He was openly admitting that they were half baked, right,
Speaker 3: He was like, sometimes I'll be right, sometimes I'll be wrong.
Speaker 3: And for a billionaire to be so casual about these
Speaker 3: pronouncements that, even if he wants them to have less power,
Speaker 3: even if he wants people to realize that this is
Speaker 3: just my half baked two in the morning thoughts. It's
Speaker 3: not how people interpret things that are coming out of
Speaker 3: the mouth of a billionaire.
Speaker 4: And one of the best things culturally about him is
Speaker 4: that he's always been interesting. Yes, and he stopped being interesting.
Speaker 4: He became a reply He became a reply guy. He
Speaker 4: became boring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 4: No pun intended on his company. And so maybe he'll
Speaker 4: get his interesting mojo back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't even good for like his
Speaker 3: personal brand. Terrible, many different robles. So we'll see. But
Speaker 3: if you had said in January twenty first, for example,
Speaker 3: May twenty first, so exactly five months ago that uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Elon Musker four months ago, I can't count
Speaker 3: that's keep that in mind for all of the economic segments.
Speaker 3: I know you already know many of you already do.
Speaker 3: But if you have on January twenty first, for someone
Speaker 3: coming to you and saying by May twenty first, Elon
Speaker 3: is saying he's gonna be no more political donations and
Speaker 3: basically he's done with DOGE. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people would have been like, WHOA, what happened?
Speaker 4: Well, and russ Vote is taking over Doje And russ
Speaker 4: Vote is much more dangerous probably person than Elon because
Speaker 4: he's methodical and he's like a revolutionary depends on your perspective.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you support the government becoming more limited,
Speaker 3: relatively limited, then Russ's is definitely less dangerous because Elon
Speaker 3: is more of like a crony capitalist than like rest
Speaker 3: is an opponent of crony capitalism, like ideologically. So we'll
Speaker 3: see where that.
Speaker 4: Goes, Yes we will. And we touched on this briefly
Speaker 4: while Rocana was here. But the news that broke during
Speaker 4: the show is that Representative Jerry Connolly of Virginia has
Speaker 4: has died of cancer. This will create a special election,
Speaker 4: It'll give Republicans one extra vote cushion as they're pushing
Speaker 4: through their big, beautiful bill. But on on a personal level,
Speaker 4: you know, Connolly took a lot of heats for despite
Speaker 4: facing cancer running for terminal cancer turned out to be terminal.
Speaker 4: He thought he was going to beat it the top
Speaker 4: position on the community. It was a bad it was
Speaker 4: a bad prognosis and not being up to the task.
Speaker 4: And I think he deserved, deserved, you know, criticism for that,
Speaker 4: you know, mis misreading that moment. I have a soft
Speaker 4: spot for him. He was elected in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: so he came in in this There were two big
Speaker 4: waves of Democrats that came in in two thousand and
Speaker 4: six and then again in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 4: both those classes, you know, were a big part of
Speaker 4: the two thousand and nine and ten Obama rush of
Speaker 4: legislation which created the CFPB, the Affordable Care Act, and
Speaker 4: on on and so he was he was always in
Speaker 4: the speaker's lobby. Uh and he I think to his
Speaker 4: dying days almost which means that he was out out
Speaker 4: off of the floor, just hamming it up with reporters,
Speaker 4: always willing to be transparent about where he was giving
Speaker 4: good quotes, giving and also given given good intel and
Speaker 4: you know, he just represents a it was a swing
Speaker 4: district at the time. Now it's a little bit more democratic,
Speaker 4: So it's not like he was Democratic Socialist of America champion,
Speaker 4: but he was well liked and a charming guy. Like
Speaker 4: he came up just a machine politician, like he was
Speaker 4: Fairfax board of Supervisors for you know, decade and that
Speaker 4: decade plus and then member of Congress. Like you know,
Speaker 4: he's not not not upbending politics, but as far as
Speaker 4: like a machine politician goes a good guy and it's.
Speaker 11: A you know, so.
Speaker 4: You know he'll be he'll be missed on.
Speaker 3: That level that people have friendly memories of of him,
Speaker 3: certainly that people have shared those machine politicians, many of
Speaker 3: them dudes. They're they're very nice.
Speaker 4: That's why they're successful, backslapp and they love the chicken dinners.
Speaker 3: Yeah they do. They're super extroverted people, gregarious.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So he was also Jamal Kashoggi's representative, and I was
Speaker 4: always grateful for him to him for raising the alarm
Speaker 4: before we knew that he was that Kashogi had been killed.
Speaker 4: He was because he went into the consulate and I
Speaker 4: heard immediately, like you from people close it was his
Speaker 4: fiance were like, he hasn't come out, and so there
Speaker 4: was about a week where there was still some hope
Speaker 4: that he was alive and there could be enough pressure
Speaker 4: put on Saudi Arabia that he would be released. That
Speaker 4: we didn't know at the time he'd been killed right
Speaker 4: there in the consolate, but Connolly was outspoken in real time,
Speaker 4: so that was I credit him for that.
Speaker 3: Who's back on the show tomorrow? Ryn? Are you here
Speaker 3: with Crystal? Yes? Great, something to look forward to. And
Speaker 3: I think it's just you and me on the Friday
Speaker 3: Show this week.
Speaker 4: That sounds right, all right, Well, plenty more, we'll get
Speaker 4: a special guests or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's we couldn't it's Soccer's baby, just the baby,
Speaker 3: not Soccer, just the Yeah, that's right, all right, we'll
Speaker 3: stick around for that. Breaking Points dot Com if you
Speaker 3: want to see the second half of the Friday Shows.
Speaker 3: You get the show in your inbox early every day,
Speaker 3: so make sure to subscribe there if you can. If
Speaker 3: you can't, just make sure to subscribe. We appreciate it
Speaker 3: very much, and Ryan and Crystal will see you back
Speaker 3: here tomorrow.
Speaker 4: See that