Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing
Speaker 1: show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 2: Indeed, we do many big stories as per usual. So
Speaker 2: recession fears continue to mount. After some comments from the
Speaker 2: Fed Shair Jerome Pal yesterday, a significant Tesla investor is
Speaker 2: now calling for Elon to step down as CEO. So
Speaker 2: a lot that's interesting going on there with Tesla ground
Speaker 2: invasion officially begins in Gaza. We'll take a look at
Speaker 2: what is going on there and the US response. We've
Speaker 2: got a bunch of updates on the various court battles
Speaker 2: that are playing out, including how Elon is now giving
Speaker 2: money to Republicans who back his calls to impeach Judges.
Speaker 2: Some new data is revealing the details of how exactly
Speaker 2: Democrats lost, and some really stunning information there to parse through.
Speaker 2: I'm taking a look at how Trump is punishing the
Speaker 2: state of Maine and what it could mean for you
Speaker 2: specifically in this new era. And we are officially entering
Speaker 2: abundance discourse. Derek Thompson is going to join us for
Speaker 2: an interview about his new book and the political theory
Speaker 2: that he is.
Speaker 3: Sharing here with Ezra Klin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to him. This book taking
Speaker 1: there's a lot of discourse around it. If you're not
Speaker 1: aware of that discourse, God bless you, you know you're
Speaker 1: actually you're doing the right thing staying out.
Speaker 3: That's for you to be aware of.
Speaker 1: That's for the nerds like us. You can enter in
Speaker 1: just a little bit and that can be your own introduction.
Speaker 1: But like Crystal said, let's go ahead and get to
Speaker 1: the recession watch. So there have been some very interesting
Speaker 1: comments here from the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about
Speaker 1: the possibility of recessions some worrying data. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: There's always an unconditional probability possibility of a recession. It
Speaker 4: might be broadly in the range of one in four
Speaker 4: at any time. If you look back through the years,
Speaker 4: it could be within twelve months one and four chance
Speaker 4: of a recession. So the question is whether that whether
Speaker 4: this current situation, those possibilities are elevated. I will say this, don't.
Speaker 4: We don't make such a forecast. If you look at
Speaker 4: outside forecasts, forecasters have generally raised. Number of them have
Speaker 4: raised their possibility of a recession somewhat, but still at
Speaker 4: relatively moderate levels, you know, still in the region of
Speaker 4: the traditional because they were extremely low. If you go
Speaker 4: back two months, people were saying that the likelihood of
Speaker 4: a recession was extremely low. So has moved up, but
Speaker 4: it's not high. So let me say that it is
Speaker 4: going to be very difficult to have a precise assessment
Speaker 4: of how much of inflation is coming from tariffs and
Speaker 4: from other and that's already the case. You may have
Speaker 4: seen that goods inflation moved up pretty significantly in the
Speaker 4: first two months of the year. Trying to track that
Speaker 4: back to actual tariff increases given what was tariff and
Speaker 4: what was not very very challenging, so some of it,
Speaker 4: the answer is clearly some of it A good part
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: So that was Federal Reserve Chairman. He's trying to tamp
Speaker 1: down any talk of recession, but he is saying that
Speaker 1: it is going up higher. Also talking there about inflation, key,
Speaker 1: because of course Federal Reserve policy is deeply tied to inflation.
Speaker 1: This comes on the heels of major announcement from the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, the ready ing of the biggest tariff regime.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Yet let's put it up there on the screen from
Speaker 1: Jeff Stein. Trump aids are prepping new tariffs on imports
Speaker 1: worth trillions for quote Liberation Day. So you'll all recall
Speaker 1: this was Donald Trump's promise from the State of the
Speaker 1: Union he will be doing reciprocal tariffs quote, but just
Speaker 1: quote from him was that it will be Liberation Day.
Speaker 1: He's doing it April second and not April first, because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want anyone to think that it's in April. Ruld's joke.
Speaker 1: The question is what exactly this is going to look like,
Speaker 1: and it's in implementation. It's genuinely all matters. So the
Speaker 1: idea behind it it actually, I think is when I
Speaker 1: could get behind. The idea behind it is we will
Speaker 1: charge anyone a tariff that they charge for us. But
Speaker 1: the question is about, like with the USMCA and the automakers,
Speaker 1: is how much of a tariff and how many times?
Speaker 1: Because part of the problem is we live in a
Speaker 1: hyper globalized economy where parts will often move across our
Speaker 1: border some fifteen to twenty times before it will end
Speaker 1: up in a finished vehicle. Is it like the whole
Speaker 1: assembly will be subject to the tariff or will it
Speaker 1: be one that is applied every single time. There's also,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's bigger questions here where even if in
Speaker 1: principle you could support reciprocal tariff, there are some tariffs
Speaker 1: where reciprocity is eaten on the back end, so like
Speaker 1: for a car, for example, but we'll still have a
Speaker 1: trade start plus in another good. The idea is to
Speaker 1: try and equalize everything. He but the implementation of it
Speaker 1: is just almost certainly going to lead to a lot
Speaker 1: of tariffs. And that's just one where it comes on
Speaker 1: the heels of a story from the Trump administration so far,
Speaker 1: which has been chaotic. This one I do think they
Speaker 1: have a better narrative on their side. Instead of like
Speaker 1: we're bullying Canada to be the fifty first state, We're like, listen,
Speaker 1: we're going to charge everybody what they charge us. But
Speaker 1: as I always say, it has to be charged with
Speaker 1: the paired with the story. It cannot be one where
Speaker 1: people think that it's just going to lead to higher prices.
Speaker 1: We need to see some serious movement. There's been some,
Speaker 1: I mean Nvidia announced yesterday they're going to onshore some stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about you know, talk, You actually
Speaker 1: have to see some action. You really need to have
Speaker 1: a lot of faith in a lot of trust, and
Speaker 1: considering how things have gone now for the first sixty
Speaker 1: seventy days the Trump administration, by the time those go in,
Speaker 1: they are losing a lot of trust with the American
Speaker 1: public right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they've already kind of given tariffs a
Speaker 2: bad name. And so if they had started with like
Speaker 2: we're doing, you know, tip for tat, they have tariffs
Speaker 2: on us, we're going to do the same thing recip
Speaker 2: I do think that that probably narrative would have landed
Speaker 2: better with the American public. But at this point, and
Speaker 2: I find this to be unfortunate because I'm actually worried
Speaker 2: about this, just like killing the good name of tariffs
Speaker 2: for all time, because they are an important tool in
Speaker 2: order to build up, you know, your industrial capacity or
Speaker 2: you know, emphasize key industries, et cetera. So an important
Speaker 2: tool to have in the arsenal, and they've sort of
Speaker 2: poisoned the very word tariffs already in my opinion in
Speaker 2: these early days of the administration. Either way, how we
Speaker 2: feel about them, it is Tosager's point going to be
Speaker 2: a if he follows through etcetera, etcetera, a significant increase
Speaker 2: in the tariff regime. I'm really not sure that Wall
Speaker 2: Street has entirely grappled with this, because I think they've
Speaker 2: always had this sense of, ah, he doesn't really mean it,
Speaker 2: He's going to back off, and they have some reason
Speaker 2: to believe that at this point, since he has gone
Speaker 2: in and backed off partially, et cetera multiple times at
Speaker 2: this point. So there could be you know, a huge
Speaker 2: reaction if he goes forward with quote unquote Liberation Day.
Speaker 2: I'm calling it l day on April second. Another thing
Speaker 2: I was reading about this morning is just in terms
Speaker 2: of the bigger picture, of where we are economically. You know,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration is betting that there is a decent
Speaker 2: amount of sort of economic buffer because some of those
Speaker 2: macroeconomic numbers you know, coming out of the Biden administration
Speaker 2: were in fact good. You know, unemployment was really low,
Speaker 2: for example, and consumer sentiment was coming back up. But
Speaker 2: we know because we've been we're covering this the whole time.
Speaker 2: There were significant warning signs in the housing market, like
Speaker 2: the housing market has not been normal in a really
Speaker 2: long time. Things have been just kind of like frozen
Speaker 2: in place for years. At this point, you also had
Speaker 2: a situation where consumers, yes, they were maintaining their spending level,
Speaker 2: but they were increasingly having to rely on credit cards
Speaker 2: in order to be able to do that. So that
Speaker 2: indicates that they aren't really in a position to absorb
Speaker 2: much of a shock at all if there is an
Speaker 2: economic downturn, if hiring does begin to freeze, if you know,
Speaker 2: if layoffs do start, if the stock market does continue
Speaker 2: its downward trajectory, so they may not have as much
Speaker 2: of a buffer zone as you might think if you
Speaker 2: were just looking at those top line macroeconomic numbers. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, you know, consumer sentiment was pretty low
Speaker 2: during most of the Biden administration, and it didn't actually
Speaker 2: represent it did not actually lead to a decrease.
Speaker 3: In consumer spending.
Speaker 2: So last time Tiger and I were talking about, Oh,
Speaker 2: this consumer sentiment index that's really important.
Speaker 3: It's falling off a cliff.
Speaker 2: People are really nervous, their inflation expectations are high, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Sometimes oftentimes that can.
Speaker 2: Lead to a sort of like self fulfilling prophecy, or
Speaker 2: because consumers are nervous, they pull back, and retailers are
Speaker 2: looking at that consumer sentiment and they're pulling back as well.
Speaker 2: But that is not always always the case. So you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of mixed signals here. But I don't
Speaker 2: think there's any doubt that if they move forward to
Speaker 2: the full extent on April second, there is going to
Speaker 2: be a significant blow. And I mean Jerome pal said
Speaker 2: as much. You know, in his very like Federal Reserve chairs,
Speaker 2: their whole thing is to be is sort of like
Speaker 2: neutral and non inflammatory as possible because they know how
Speaker 2: closely everybody parses every single word. But basically it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: terroriff's lead to more inflation and lower growth. That's what
Speaker 2: we are increasingly expecting is growth to be lower than
Speaker 2: what was previously projected and for us to have to
Speaker 2: worry more about inflation. I just saw soccer this morning.
Speaker 2: Trump is out, of course, he's very upset. He wants
Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve to cut rates, et cetera, to help
Speaker 2: him with his tariff policy, and right now the Fed
Speaker 2: is not going along with that.
Speaker 1: That's still in a quote wait and see policy. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I am worried to just about all these
Speaker 1: crazy shocks to the market, because what you'll have is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, stocks were up yesterday on the SPED chairman's
Speaker 1: talk about not lack of recession and about possibility of
Speaker 1: cutting rates, but then you could have a major terif regime,
Speaker 1: and then the Federal Reserve would try and come in
Speaker 1: maybe save the economy and cut rates low. We just
Speaker 1: have this just chaos. That's what people don't want to see.
Speaker 1: And you're starting to see some pushback. I mean, mainly
Speaker 1: it's not just Wall Street, I would say, it's really
Speaker 1: the financial press itself is just having a lot of
Speaker 1: difficulty dealing with all of this. So here's Maria Bartriomo
Speaker 1: from Fox Business. By no means somebody who is adversarial
Speaker 1: usually to the Trump administration. But you know, you got
Speaker 1: to watch this versus her the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besstt.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: And they have substantial tariffs and as important as the
Speaker 6: tariff or some of these non tariff barriers where they
Speaker 6: have domestic content production, where they do testing on our
Speaker 6: whether it's our food, our products that bear no resemblance
Speaker 6: to safety or anything that we do to their products.
Speaker 7: See, these are the things that people are really worried
Speaker 7: about because they first thought it was just about trade,
Speaker 7: then they thought it was just about Fenton All. Then
Speaker 7: after that we talked about, well, maybe it's currency manipulation,
Speaker 7: and maybe it's now you're talking about food testing.
Speaker 3: And when I bring up the issue of clarity.
Speaker 7: That's that's what I'm talking about, and that's what I'm
Speaker 7: hearing from Corporate America that we're not sure where this
Speaker 7: is going, but of course we will get resolution on August.
Speaker 3: On a April second, rather.
Speaker 1: So you could stay there. You know, that's about his
Speaker 1: light pushback. I think, as you're going to get but
Speaker 1: it's still important. And keeping with this, you have the
Speaker 1: chief economist here of Moody's, who has recently been giving
Speaker 1: an interview. Now, why does it matter. Remember everybody Moody's,
Speaker 1: everybody on Wall Street. It looks to them downgrading of debt,
Speaker 1: their forecast. Those forecasts get incorporated by the analysts. The
Speaker 1: analysts then put that into their overall projections, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes projections can be fulfilling because it will cost people
Speaker 1: either to sell off or to pair back, or to
Speaker 1: hoard cash allah war and buffet style. So here he
Speaker 1: is the chief economist of Moody's talking about recession. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of talk about reciprocal terriffs, that's broad
Speaker 8: based tariffs coming into effect in a couple of weeks
Speaker 8: I think early up April that actually happens in those
Speaker 8: turiffs stay in place, bringing length to time couple three
Speaker 8: four five minths. I think that's enough to push the
Speaker 8: economy into recession given everything else that's going on. So
Speaker 8: you know, this would be this is a this would
Speaker 8: be a really weird recession, right, I mean, it's recession
Speaker 8: by design. You know, the economy came into the year
Speaker 8: rip raw and exceptionally strong, and we're pushing it in
Speaker 8: because of policy it just doesn't feel like, you know,
Speaker 8: that's the direction we need to go.
Speaker 1: Look, that's Wall Street. It could be wrong, and we
Speaker 1: also could have the old Trump like, yeah, we're doing this,
Speaker 1: we're doing this, we're doing this, and then we're not
Speaker 1: doing this, so we have no idea. They could pull back.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's part of what I always think is
Speaker 1: that the danger always is that if you have a
Speaker 1: tariff regime and you go to the bat for tariffs,
Speaker 1: but then you pull back, you don't you both get
Speaker 1: like the market reaction to tariffs, and then you don't
Speaker 1: get any benefit of tariffs. That's the problem. So I
Speaker 1: am worried about this just in the sense of this
Speaker 1: has to be implemented properly and needs to have a plan,
Speaker 1: and needs to be paired with something real, Like it's
Speaker 1: not just in video and open AI giving talks. Look,
Speaker 1: I think it's great that Nvidia is gonna onshore hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars, but like, let's look at reality
Speaker 1: from the Chips Act and all that. Yes, it definitely helped,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that money he did not go
Speaker 1: to a lot of the declining states. It states that
Speaker 1: were already open for business and that we're kind of
Speaker 1: booming places like Arizona. Right. Yeah, look, I had nothing
Speaker 1: against Arizona. I'm glad. But you know, part of the
Speaker 1: whole idea behind tariffs, why the UAW and others support them,
Speaker 1: is also to revitalize areas that are economically declining, and
Speaker 1: we have not seen that as of yet from the
Speaker 1: states of Ohio, you know, Pennsylvania, of Michigan. A lot
Speaker 1: of the economic growth if you look like in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is healthcare, which that's a problem.
Speaker 1: I think that's not really a tariff thing that you
Speaker 1: can necessarily solve without some direct government intervention. So look,
Speaker 1: they're playing with shaky ground. Yeah, if you screw people's money,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get mad. And it's one of those where
Speaker 1: you can do damage to yourself in the future and
Speaker 1: you may both go to the bat for something and
Speaker 1: then end up losing, which in my opinion puts you
Speaker 1: in all the worst world.
Speaker 2: I mean, in the terms of the politics of this,
Speaker 2: we are in very unusual territory with regard to Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: where his number on the economy right now are some
Speaker 2: of his lowest numbers. Yes, and it comes at a
Speaker 2: time when the economy cost of living inflation, the importance
Speaker 2: of that to Americans is only going up right now.
Speaker 2: So the fact that he is, you know, being seen
Speaker 2: right now increasingly is failing to deliver on what was
Speaker 2: one of the core promises of his campaign and what
Speaker 2: has always been one of the core promises of him
Speaker 2: as a leader and as a political candidate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a you know, it's a big issue for him.
Speaker 2: And you couple that with talking about, you know, the
Speaker 2: reconciliation coming down, big tax cuts for the rich, cuts
Speaker 2: probably to medicaid, a tax on social security that people
Speaker 2: are very concerned about, very concerned about about. In fact,
Speaker 2: the data segment that will probably get to today, assuming
Speaker 2: that we don't talk too long in these other blocks.
Speaker 2: One of the things they found is that the most
Speaker 2: effective message right now about Trump is he is cutting
Speaker 2: taxes for the rich and cutting your social security and
Speaker 2: your medicare. So a lot of or less political ground
Speaker 2: that he's on right now.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get over to Tesla. This is really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff happening with the stock now. You might even
Speaker 1: ask why does it matter with the stock, Well, if
Speaker 1: the Elon's going to be major player in our government. Actually,
Speaker 1: maybe we can edit this in later. This is maybe
Speaker 1: an ask to our producers. The Commerce Secretary late last
Speaker 1: night I literally went on television to encourage people to
Speaker 1: buy Tesla's stock. I mean, I can only assume that
Speaker 1: it's not even just about personal interest there, but like
Speaker 1: they see that as an existential threat to Elon, to
Speaker 1: Doge and their ability to be able to carry their
Speaker 1: things out. So the fate of this company does obviously matter,
Speaker 1: not only in terms.
Speaker 2: Of that, not only that, I mean Trump was hogging
Speaker 2: Tesla's in the launch. So this is like a hole
Speaker 2: of government effort to prop up a preface the stock
Speaker 2: of yes of the richest man on the entire planet.
Speaker 1: So there you go. All it makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense sticking with that. Not only prior prior to Doge Elon,
Speaker 1: we often saw Tesla the most successful American cars startup
Speaker 1: of all time, especially in modern history. So what does
Speaker 1: that matter? Well, you know, we had bet that electric
Speaker 1: vehicles are going to be part of some of our future.
Speaker 1: May not be everything, but you know, we want to
Speaker 1: have some leadership in the area. And at the very
Speaker 1: same time that we're seeing troubles in our electric vehicle
Speaker 1: market and in our companies byd is leaping bounds of
Speaker 1: what is possible. So let's start off here. This is
Speaker 1: a major investor in Tesla who took to the airwaves
Speaker 1: and basically publicly said, I think there needs to be
Speaker 1: a new CEO because he's just not spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time on this company. This is Ross Gerber. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen.
Speaker 9: I think we all make choices with our time, and
Speaker 9: Elon doesn't get more than twenty four hours a day
Speaker 9: just because he's Elon. So we make choices all of us.
Speaker 9: Do do we spend time with our family, do we
Speaker 9: go golfing?
Speaker 10: Do we work? And how we.
Speaker 9: Do this is, you know, each individual chooses, and so
Speaker 9: Elon chooses to work, you know, all the time. But
Speaker 9: you can only work so many hours a day. So
Speaker 9: it's twenty four, right, and he's sleeps so so there's
Speaker 9: no question he's been committed to his job at the government.
Speaker 9: That's where he's spending his time. He is not running Tesla.
Speaker 9: And you know that's why I'm going to say it.
Speaker 9: I think Tesla needs a new CEO. And I decided
Speaker 9: today I was going to start saying it. And so
Speaker 9: this is the first show that I'm saying it on.
Speaker 9: It's time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has
Speaker 9: been neglected for too long. There's too many important things
Speaker 9: Tesla's doing. So either Elon should come back to Tesla
Speaker 9: and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his
Speaker 9: other jobs, or he should focus on the government, keep
Speaker 9: doing what he's doing, but find a suitable CEO for Tesla.
Speaker 3: So you are saying, essentially, if he's not prepared to
Speaker 3: quit that government job, he needs to go.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it's time.
Speaker 1: So you the reason why that matters is he's a
Speaker 1: major investor in Tesla and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: Tesla investors who are upset. I'm looking at the stock
Speaker 1: right now. It's a flat basically on the last six months.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put that tear sheet please up on
Speaker 1: the screen here, because it fits with the broader pattern
Speaker 1: of people inside of the company are deciding that they're
Speaker 1: going to sell off. So put the next tearsheet up.
Speaker 1: B Two Tesla board members and executive are selling off
Speaker 1: over one hundred million dollars of stock in recent weeks.
Speaker 3: Never a good sign.
Speaker 1: Not a good sign. Yeah. Usually together the four top
Speaker 1: officers of the company have offloaded one hundred million in
Speaker 1: shares just since early February. It's likely that this is
Speaker 1: a result of the fact that it bumped so high
Speaker 1: immediately after the election. But you know, the truth is
Speaker 1: is that if it's flat on the last six months,
Speaker 1: it's erased all of its pre election gains. And broadly, like,
Speaker 1: the company does have issues. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: not only at the demand, but you've got the brand
Speaker 1: stuff which is currently happening, put B three pleas on
Speaker 1: the screen so people can see this. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at the decline overall, the year to
Speaker 1: date decline, specifically that's from January, so that was really
Speaker 1: where elections are, and we're talking about a thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent decline in the overall stock value of the company.
Speaker 1: And there are issues both with their current sales. They're
Speaker 1: branding right now. You also have to think, like, who
Speaker 1: are the people who are buying teslas. They're mostly like
Speaker 1: rich people, and like rich people are usually liberals in
Speaker 1: this country, especially the type of people who are going
Speaker 1: to be attracted to an EV. So I've been seeing
Speaker 1: people like we need to make buying the cyber truck
Speaker 1: like a major part and I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a eighty five thousand dollars vehicle. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: to say that there aren't a lot of poor people
Speaker 1: out there driving eighty five thousand dollars Ford F one
Speaker 1: fifties or whatever. They shouldn't be doing that either. But
Speaker 1: my point is just if you look at the general
Speaker 1: demographic of who their customer is, on top of the
Speaker 1: political brand hit that they're taking, and if you also
Speaker 1: see if Tesla's a global company, elon, you know, he
Speaker 1: might be popular or whatever with Republicans here that's fifty
Speaker 1: percent of our country. But you know, we have to
Speaker 1: think about Germany. We have to think about the global marketplace,
Speaker 1: and the biggest problem they face there is as well,
Speaker 1: his brand is becoming polarizing. Byd cars are only getting better,
Speaker 1: and in those countries you can buy a b Wyd car,
Speaker 1: you can buy a Jamie car. You can't buy one here.
Speaker 1: So in a way, he's actually protected a little bit
Speaker 1: in the United States. But their stock value depends very
Speaker 1: much on sales globally, in China, in Germany, in the
Speaker 1: European Union, in fact, I mean the use case for
Speaker 1: an EV in every other country. But the United States
Speaker 1: is much better just because it's small. You don't have
Speaker 1: to drive that much, and they have better infrastructure than
Speaker 1: US too, So yeah, you rarely have to think just
Speaker 1: about what that future value is. And I mean it
Speaker 1: makes sense if you're Ross Gerbert, like purely from a
Speaker 1: financial perspective, you're like, listen, I mean you're literally I
Speaker 1: mean gave you an interview to Ted Cruz and he's like,
Speaker 1: I sleep six hours a night and I wake I
Speaker 1: work every single other hour. And he's like, and this
Speaker 1: is all I'm working on. It's on does It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well you literally CEO and these companies, So how much
Speaker 1: attention can you realistically give this here? I mean people
Speaker 1: have always said that about Elon, but it's a little
Speaker 1: bit different when you're focused on government as opposed to
Speaker 1: running two or three other kind of interconnected businesses yea
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the knocks on Tesla is that
Speaker 2: the inventory right now is stale, that Elon's attention is elsewhere,
Speaker 2: and so you know, it's not his baby anymore the
Speaker 2: way that it used to be. It's not his like
Speaker 2: obsession of the moment, and this is a man who's
Speaker 2: known for glorious obsessions, and so that's part of it,
Speaker 2: I mean, but the biggest part is just how toxic
Speaker 2: he's become and how polarizing he's become, and not just
Speaker 2: in the US. But you know, we tracked before. The
Speaker 2: sales in Europe have fallen off a cliff.
Speaker 3: In Germany. I saw a stat they did a poll.
Speaker 3: It was like.
Speaker 2: Ninety four percent of German said that they would not
Speaker 2: not even consider buying a Tesla. And as Sager said,
Speaker 2: there are other options, and it's not like in Europe
Speaker 2: in particular, people are buying fewer evs overall. Quite the contrary,
Speaker 2: the percent of new vehicles that are being purchased that
Speaker 2: are EV's continues to be on the rise, and yet
Speaker 2: Tesla sales, like in Germany are down sixty percent. I
Speaker 2: mean it just at some point it becomes a real problem. Also,
Speaker 2: just to flag something, to keep an eye on something,
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep an eye on. The Financial Times
Speaker 2: has an article today calling into question some of the
Speaker 2: accounting with Tesla flagging as sort of one point four
Speaker 2: billion dollars that is questionable of what's going on and
Speaker 2: where it went, et cetera. So there may be a
Speaker 2: lot more going on there, but THETTOM line is Elon
Speaker 2: is toxic.
Speaker 3: Figure.
Speaker 2: The car has become itself very polarizing, and most people
Speaker 2: are not looking to make a political statement with the
Speaker 2: vehicle that they're driving. They just want to like have
Speaker 2: a car that's good and drive it and not get
Speaker 2: dirty looks from whoever while they're driving it. And you know,
Speaker 2: then they've got this increased competition issue as well. I
Speaker 2: do think it's like, to me, it's very funny. Republicans,
Speaker 2: the new party of the working class organizing themselves around
Speaker 2: supporting the stock value of the company of the richest
Speaker 2: man on the planet is an entertaining subplot to all
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, look, we can all do. We can
Speaker 1: do hypocrisy all we want, like.
Speaker 2: Martin del pocracy. I just think it's funny, Like.
Speaker 1: The Senator trading in is Tesla for Chevy gas powered vehicle,
Speaker 1: which is not even a hybrid. What's up with that?
Speaker 1: That's like, Look, I'm not saying it isn't dull like
Speaker 1: somewhat amusing, but I mean I care. I like electric
Speaker 1: vehicles and I think they're cool. So you know, I drove,
Speaker 1: actually drove past a sick EV nine today. I gotta
Speaker 1: give it to Kia. They are nailing their electric cars.
Speaker 1: I think they're really cool. But this sticks with what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier with BYD. Look, I mean again,
Speaker 1: any just casual observer who has no politics aside, you
Speaker 1: just have to admit BYD is sick. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. Look at what they just announced.
Speaker 1: They got a five minute charge charge time. They are
Speaker 1: saying that, according to them, the platform now has a
Speaker 1: charging power of one thousand killowatts, takes up to one
Speaker 1: thousand amps, which means it can charge batteries at a
Speaker 1: rate of two kilometers per second. It can give you
Speaker 1: four hundred kilometers in range in five minutes. The equivalent
Speaker 1: to charge time on a Tesla would be about two
Speaker 1: hundred miles in a range of fifteen minutes. That's if
Speaker 1: all the stars aligned, like your battery is low, you're
Speaker 1: att a two hundred fifty kilowat charger. There's nobody parked
Speaker 1: next to you, which means that you're you know, your
Speaker 1: wattage or whatever is going down. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of this is just about the engineering marvel of what
Speaker 1: BID has been able to accomplish, and also in terms
Speaker 1: of the regulations and design that they're allowed to build
Speaker 1: over there in China. I'm genuinely convinced if we were
Speaker 1: able to do or even regulatory allowed the types of
Speaker 1: cars that they build over there, they would be huge sellers.
Speaker 1: Like in China, the concept of a vehicle with a
Speaker 1: five hundred mile gas tank and a three hundred mile battery,
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, and actually they're interconnected. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: that's eight hundred miles of range. Who would not buy that?
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of those where it's a daily driver.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, our plug in hybrids don't
Speaker 1: even go up to like forty or fifty miles. I
Speaker 1: think forty is as good as it gets here. That's
Speaker 1: just not enough, you know, if you think about YEA,
Speaker 1: So their market not only heavily subsidized by the Chinese government,
Speaker 1: they built their infrastructure and all that over time, but
Speaker 1: they've laid such a framework that they're elon the founder
Speaker 1: of BYD who himself again is a genuine engineering genius
Speaker 1: for him to be able to create this product that
Speaker 1: is just going exponential now with everything that is available
Speaker 1: to him, and if you think about the global marketplace. Again,
Speaker 1: People in Germany or wherever, they don't care if it
Speaker 1: comes from China. We care here for the integrity of
Speaker 1: our US auto market, but in a lot of other
Speaker 1: countries they don't think that way, or they just want
Speaker 1: to buy whatever is the nicest car, or they have
Speaker 1: friendlier relations with China. And so that is a direct
Speaker 1: threat to tesla'sability in the future because their whole growth
Speaker 1: project was not just America, it was the whole world.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely the case.
Speaker 2: And I mean, the only thing that is saving our
Speaker 2: EV market right now is protection to some much like otherwise,
Speaker 2: forget it, it'd be over because this development is so significant.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the primary things that keeps people
Speaker 2: from buying an EV is Look, we're Americans. We love
Speaker 2: the long road trip, and it's a pain in the
Speaker 2: ass to have to Like, you know, first of all,
Speaker 2: you're nervous about am I going to find a charger?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be broken? Like, you know, did
Speaker 2: I have the heat on too much and now my
Speaker 2: range is too low?
Speaker 3: Whatever?
Speaker 2: Though, what do they call it? Range anxiety? That's one
Speaker 2: of the big issues. And then okay, you get to
Speaker 2: the charger and then you got to sit there for
Speaker 2: twenty minutes at best if you have a Tesla and
Speaker 2: it's a supercharger and whatever to get a significant you know,
Speaker 2: range charge, and that's a pain in the butt, Like
Speaker 2: you want to get where you're going when you got
Speaker 2: your kids, they're man annoying, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: if you can charge up three hundred miles in five minutes,
Speaker 2: I mean, now we're getting to where it's comparable too
Speaker 2: how long it takes to fill the tank of gas,
Speaker 2: not to matagine. This actually ties some into the abundance
Speaker 2: conversation we're going to have later too. You know, our
Speaker 2: charging network is not nearly sufficient. And then the thing
Speaker 2: that really jumped down at me in this article too
Speaker 2: is that they say that the key challenger to be white.
Speaker 2: It's not Tesla or any other you know, American or
Speaker 2: European car company or whatever. It's another Chinese battery companies
Speaker 2: of CATL. Last year they unveiled a new battery with
Speaker 2: a charge time equating to one kilometer of range per
Speaker 2: second or six hundred kilometers in ten minutes. So this
Speaker 2: is part of what we're seeing with the AI development
Speaker 2: as well. That Obviously we have strong competitors in the
Speaker 2: AI field, but China has strong competitors just internally domestically,
Speaker 2: So they have in a very short period of time
Speaker 2: leap frog to where now technologically with these like frontier technologies,
Speaker 2: they are not just competing with us in some in
Speaker 2: many instances, actually they have surpassed us, and they're kicking
Speaker 2: our butt. Like their model in terms of innovation is
Speaker 2: working better than our model, which is sort of sclerotic
Speaker 2: and financialized and you know, monopoly driven and et cetera.
Speaker 2: So this is you know, one instance of that that
Speaker 2: is really incredibly striking. And yeah, they're gonna like if
Speaker 2: we are unable to figure this technology out and catch
Speaker 2: up to them, every American ev maker is going.
Speaker 3: To be toast globally.
Speaker 2: They will only be able to compete within the you know,
Speaker 2: protectionist regime of the United States of America, and that
Speaker 2: will be about it. And Tesla and not Tesla, Sorry,
Speaker 2: BYD is concerned about our automaker's stealing their technology. Let's
Speaker 2: put us up on the screen. This wasn't the only concern,
Speaker 2: but this was part of it. Their delaying approval Beijing
Speaker 2: is for BYD to build a plant in Mexico because
Speaker 2: they're worried that that tech is going to leak across
Speaker 2: the border to the US in some sort of like
Speaker 2: you know, corporate espionage situation. Now they have other concerns,
Speaker 2: especially with regard to you know, there's the trade war
Speaker 2: going on, and so they're nervous about some of that
Speaker 2: and how that will impact it as well. But that
Speaker 2: was apparently a primary consideration, which is quite funny how
Speaker 2: the shoe is now on the other foot.
Speaker 3: Sager.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, except they're smart enough to actually think
Speaker 1: about that beforehand and not figure it out twenty years later.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Actually, when you have smart people who are
Speaker 1: in your country, you can do amazing things. Personally, I'm
Speaker 1: a Yang Wang guy. That's the BYD luxury suv. The
Speaker 1: thing is incredible. You can float on water, according to them. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those that you should look into it.
Speaker 1: I've seen some videos of people driving around and they're
Speaker 1: just they're awesome.
Speaker 2: So Israel has quickly moved from a bombing campaign in
Speaker 2: Gaza to now a new ground invasion. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and put this up on the screen. This is their defence.
Speaker 2: Min is warning the residents of Gaza with total devastation.
Speaker 2: He says, this is your final warning. The first Sinoar
Speaker 2: destroyed Gaza. The second Sinoar will bring upon it total ruin.
Speaker 2: The Israeli air forces attack against Hamas Terras was only
Speaker 2: the first step. What follows will be far harsher, and
Speaker 2: you will bear the full cost. Evacuation of the population
Speaker 2: from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages
Speaker 2: are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza,
Speaker 2: Israel will act with force you have not known before.
Speaker 2: Take the advice of the US President. Return the hostages,
Speaker 2: kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you,
Speaker 2: including relocation to other parts of the world. For those
Speaker 2: who choose the alternative is destruction and total devastations. So
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously there's no real choice being offered here.
Speaker 2: They are headed towards that total devastation, and we already
Speaker 2: know that they've been preparing for this ground invasion and
Speaker 2: it has in fact begun. We can take a look
Speaker 2: at this map up on the screen. This will be
Speaker 2: famili year to some of you that you've got them
Speaker 2: bisecting Gaza in two. Once again, he warned, there. You
Speaker 2: know that people are going to have to be forced
Speaker 2: to flee from the rubble that's left of their homes,
Speaker 2: once again displaced. There has been a siege in place
Speaker 2: now for I believe over two weeks, so no food,
Speaker 2: no fuel, no medicine is coming in. Yesterday I saw
Speaker 2: an eyewitness report on the ground about seven children at
Speaker 2: a single hospital having to have amputations with no anesthesia whatsoever.
Speaker 2: That's what we're talking about here. So Sagar returned to
Speaker 2: absolute full force. There are some domestic political ramifications in
Speaker 2: terms of Israeli. You have amber good number of the
Speaker 2: population that want the Israeli government to focus on return
Speaker 2: of the hostages. Obviously, when you have this sort of
Speaker 2: all on assault and ground invasion with massive death tolls,
Speaker 2: death tolls like what we saw at the beginning of
Speaker 2: this war, that is not only putting Palestinians at risk,
Speaker 2: it is also putting the remaining hostages at risk as well.
Speaker 2: So yesterday there were protests in the streets. We could
Speaker 2: put this up on the screen from the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Thousands of Israelis gathered on Wednesday outside the Parliament building
Speaker 2: to renew a ceasefire deal in Gaza. To protest political
Speaker 2: moves by Prime Minister benchmin Netnaho, including firing the head
Speaker 2: of the Shinbett Intelligence Agency. The convergence of popular anger
Speaker 2: over both domestic and national security issues came a day
Speaker 2: after Israel carried out deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza
Speaker 2: Strip in what Nannah who said was only the beginning.
Speaker 2: The strikes ended a temporary truce with mas that began
Speaker 2: in January and added to uncertainty over the fate of
Speaker 2: hostages still held there. Bibe has his own, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously his own domestic political concerns, but he
Speaker 2: is this long pushed off corruption trial that was about
Speaker 2: to be was about to have to give testimony and again,
Speaker 2: oh whoops, now we're at war again, so I won't
Speaker 2: have to do that. So it's very naked to a
Speaker 2: lot of Israelis. How much of the war plan is
Speaker 2: about BB's own personal interests versus you know, like I said.
Speaker 3: A lot of them.
Speaker 2: It's not that they're worried about the brutality versus these
Speaker 2: of the Palestinians predominantly not, but they are worried about
Speaker 2: being able to get their own hostages.
Speaker 3: Back in one piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also a scandal in Israel right now where
Speaker 1: Bbe fired the head of the Shinbet, like their domestic agency,
Speaker 1: and that was it's actually it's causing some like similar
Speaker 1: court battles between the Israeli courts saying that they was
Speaker 1: done illegally, which has now led to some deep state
Speaker 1: convo which is predominantly hilarious. Let's put C three pleas
Speaker 1: up on the screen from Benjamin Nett and yaho. He says,
Speaker 1: in America and in Israel, when a strong wire right
Speaker 1: wing leader wins an election, the leftist deep state weaponizes
Speaker 1: the justice system to thwart the people's will. They won't
Speaker 1: win in either place. We stand strong together, right, So
Speaker 1: tying himself directly to our own domestic political situation, I
Speaker 1: guess fairly considering how much influence they have over here.
Speaker 1: But people should always remember, you know.
Speaker 2: Look, I think Israel and replied to that too, Oh
Speaker 2: Diddy's right cool something. Yeah, that's one of the like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, dude, you are in the keep staying like,
Speaker 2: how much of the new like revealed redactions in the
Speaker 2: JFK files are like about Israel?
Speaker 1: And well, yeah, we're going to have Jefferson morleyon he's
Speaker 1: a great journalist about the JFK files, But overall it's
Speaker 1: kind of disappointing, and it is something I always tell
Speaker 1: people because they're like, oh, the files are and then
Speaker 1: I'm like, guys, with nine to eleven, with JFK, with
Speaker 1: the UFOs and all that, we almost kind of like
Speaker 1: UFOs maybe aside there's a lot more we could learn.
Speaker 1: But no, there's no government document that's like there are
Speaker 1: visiting aliens. There's no government document that says we shot JFK.
Speaker 1: A lot of the circumstantial evidence and all that, it's
Speaker 1: all out there just but in terms of the fact
Speaker 1: that the official narrative is completely BS and for the
Speaker 1: CIA elements and all of that, the story has been
Speaker 1: effectively known since nineteen nineties, I would say, And you know,
Speaker 1: it's obviously popularized and a lot of people really paid
Speaker 1: attention after Oliver Stone's movie, but even before that, the
Speaker 1: whole Jim Garrison investigation, Americans by and large didn't believe
Speaker 1: the story. I thought it was a conspiracy very very
Speaker 1: early on. So I know, it is kind of disappointing
Speaker 1: on that's the way that it's all shaken out.
Speaker 3: On the BB deep state thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, why wouldn't he say this because it's worked
Speaker 2: so well, even like you know SBF going on, yeah,
Speaker 2: on Tucker's show, and you know, certainly the Tates portraying
Speaker 2: themselves some victims of some deep state, which Hunt Russell
Speaker 2: Brand comes to mind as well. Eric Adams in New
Speaker 2: York comes to mind as well. So try and true strategy.
Speaker 2: So why wouldn't be be who certainly understands domestic political
Speaker 2: strategies here within the US context, why wouldn't he also
Speaker 2: go ahead and make himself a victim of the deep states?
Speaker 1: You know what he's doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: What's C four up there on the screen as well?
Speaker 1: This is from Ken Klippenstein. This was actually really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's basically about the quote Iran War Plan, and what
Speaker 1: can can report, according to some of his sources and others,
Speaker 1: is that inside of the Pentagon some war game plans
Speaker 1: are now beginning to take shape. Now, obviously that's not
Speaker 1: something that means it's going to happen, and of course
Speaker 1: there's war plans for everything, but quote the new war
Speaker 1: plan construct is itself new in that multilateral components including Israel,
Speaker 1: working in unison with the golf partners, either indirectly or directly,
Speaker 1: are now part of it. And the plan also includes
Speaker 1: many different contingencies and levels of war, from crisis action
Speaker 1: meaning response to events to quote deliberate planning which will
Speaker 1: set scenarios to flow from the crises out of control,
Speaker 1: including it up to obviously like invasion, full concept plan,
Speaker 1: full operations. Look obviously, somebody ordered those plans to be
Speaker 1: renewed for what purpose we don't know. Does bring to mind, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm blanking on the guy's name, Wesley something. He was
Speaker 1: the general. He was the general during the after the
Speaker 1: war on Tario came out and talked about war plans
Speaker 1: that were for Iraq and for all the rest of
Speaker 1: the Middle East. People often point back to that one
Speaker 1: as evidence of like fore, planning for multiple invasions y
Speaker 1: going forward. But anytime you see something like this, you
Speaker 1: should of course take interest, why has this been ordered
Speaker 1: for what purpose? Because the alternative could be to order
Speaker 1: some revolutionary diplomacy. At the very same time, we do
Speaker 1: know that Trump has apparently sent a letter to the
Speaker 1: IATOLA being like, we need want to deal within the
Speaker 1: next two months or something, But we haven't seen any
Speaker 1: movement on that A.
Speaker 3: No, quite the contrary.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think because they're also re implementing the
Speaker 2: maximum pressure strategy, and so I think that has I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know that Iran was going to be that
Speaker 2: amenable to making a deal at this point anyway, given
Speaker 2: that they already made a deal. And it backfired because
Speaker 2: we pulled on you know, Trump one point, I oo
Speaker 2: pulled out of the deal. Biden failed to get back
Speaker 2: in or really show that much interest in getting back in,
Speaker 2: and now you've got even more sanctions being applied to
Speaker 2: them and threats coming from the White House. So it's
Speaker 2: not looking great, but you listen, you never know. The
Speaker 2: other thing that was really troubling that Ken was able
Speaker 2: to report we can put this up on the screen
Speaker 2: is as part of those war plans include a nuclear option,
Speaker 2: and he points specifically to this comment that Trump made,
Speaker 2: and Trump said this thing, he said, we can't let
Speaker 2: Iran have a nuclear weapon. I would rather have a
Speaker 2: piece deal than the other option. But the other option
Speaker 2: will solve the problem. And Ken thinks this may be
Speaker 2: an allusion to like a sort of vague allusion towards
Speaker 2: this nuclear war plan which has been developed as part
Speaker 2: of this larger menu of options with regard to an
Speaker 2: all out war on Iran. So obviously all of this
Speaker 2: is deeply troubling, and just to give you the latest
Speaker 2: few updates from on the ground in Israel as well,
Speaker 2: just to be as current as possible here, you did
Speaker 2: have some Hamas was able to fire some rockets at
Speaker 2: Tel Aviv, which obviously it's wild that at this point,
Speaker 2: given how much destruction across the entire Gaza Strip, that
Speaker 2: they still have that kind of capability. And per Haratz,
Speaker 2: you also have updated death toll massive numbers of Palestinians
Speaker 2: being killed this week by Israel. Over seven hundred and
Speaker 2: ten Palestinians killed, nine hundred wounded in Israeli strikes in
Speaker 2: the Gaza Strip just in the last forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: Some of the patients died to a lack of medical equipment,
Speaker 2: says the spokesperson for one hospital, and thousands of Israelis
Speaker 2: continuing to march and protest in the street as this
Speaker 2: ground invasion has officially begun in northern Gaza. The bombing
Speaker 2: campaign obviously is all out and kind of no end
Speaker 2: in sight here. I mean, at this point, there isn't
Speaker 2: even you know, a pretense of looking to negotiate a
Speaker 2: new ceasfire deal or looking to get back to Phase two,
Speaker 2: et cetera. As we said when we covered this earlier
Speaker 2: in the week, Bbe always made it clear heat and
Speaker 2: really intend to go to phase two. The question mark
Speaker 2: was whether the Trump administration was going to actually apply
Speaker 2: pressure to force them to go to phase two. And
Speaker 2: at this point it's pretty clear we have our answer there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. All right, let's move on to the courts.
Speaker 2: A bunch of updates for you warning about what is
Speaker 2: going on in the court system. But let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and start with this. Elon Musk continuing his attacks on judges.
Speaker 2: This in a rather ill informed tweet, he says, quote,
Speaker 2: this is a judicial coup. We need sixty senators to
Speaker 2: impeach the judges and restore rule of the people. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is where his South African roots are really coming out,
Speaker 2: because first of all, impeachment happens in the House. Second
Speaker 2: of all, to convict in the Senate, it takes sixty
Speaker 2: seven senators. So nice try on that one, obviously community
Speaker 2: noted on his own platform, But more significant than that,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is part of a broader push towards
Speaker 2: impeaching the judges, towards putting pressure on the judges.
Speaker 3: On the President of.
Speaker 2: The United States has echoed some of this language as well,
Speaker 2: put D seven up on.
Speaker 3: The screen here.
Speaker 2: Elon has also donated to Republican members of Congress who
Speaker 2: have directly supported impeaching judges. He's given the maximum allowable
Speaker 2: direct contribution. It's something like sixty six hundred dollars. So
Speaker 2: we're not talking about millions, y or soccer. It's more
Speaker 2: about the message he's trying to send. And this has
Speaker 2: been you know, one of the core things again that
Speaker 2: has been different about Trump two point zero is Elon
Speaker 2: from the very first fight made it clear he is
Speaker 2: perfectly willing to use his billions in order to enforce
Speaker 2: conformity from the Republican Party. And lo and behold, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, you combine that and with the fact that
Speaker 2: Trump has just completely subsumed this party at this point,
Speaker 2: but you have so much less actual dissent this time
Speaker 2: when it comes to vote taking than you did in
Speaker 2: Trump one point zero. And Elon again here signaling the
Speaker 2: direction he wants Republican Republicans to go in with this
Speaker 2: increasingly hostile view towards the federal judicial system.
Speaker 1: Well, I am glad you agree with me, Crystal that
Speaker 1: many foreigners don't have a civic understanding of America and
Speaker 1: should perhaps keep their mouths shut a little bit. But
Speaker 1: whenever they come here, just an idea, maybe if you're
Speaker 1: a campus protester or something like, listen, I would you know,
Speaker 1: maybe keep your bullshit a.
Speaker 3: Lot in immigration if we're going to deport Elon Musky.
Speaker 1: All right, well, he actually is a good example about
Speaker 1: interlopers and all of that. But anyway, coming back to
Speaker 1: the Musk point, it is important for people to understand
Speaker 1: here that it is not like he's giving them a
Speaker 1: ton of money. It's sixty six hundred dollars. It's really
Speaker 1: about sending a message. And I would say that the
Speaker 1: most important thing is generating the headlines for all of
Speaker 1: the other Republicans who are in the House and in
Speaker 1: the Senate to know that you're not just getting a
Speaker 1: donation from Elon And obviously that will help in the
Speaker 1: future with respect to America Pack and his other super
Speaker 1: Pac organizations, But it's really about the boost that you're
Speaker 1: getting within the Republican base and on their media, which
Speaker 1: is predominantly at least the thought leaders and others getting
Speaker 1: them from Twitter. People like us are covering the story,
Speaker 1: and if you're a Republican legislator, the message is clear,
Speaker 1: go along with this, and I'm going to get a
Speaker 1: tongue bath from Elon on Twitter, which is very useful
Speaker 1: to them whenever they go back to their district. It
Speaker 1: helps them get on Box News, get some some media
Speaker 1: publicity at elsewhere. So it's really just about moving the
Speaker 1: incentives more towards like Elon's particular approval of you and
Speaker 1: your ability and then thrive in the Republican Party in
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 3: It's that, and it's also.
Speaker 2: If you you you know, get rewarded if you do
Speaker 2: what I want you to do, and the threat is
Speaker 2: also hanging over that of if you don't, then there's
Speaker 2: going to be infinite money basically put towards a primary
Speaker 2: challenger if you get crosswise, so you know, it is
Speaker 2: is definitely intended to send a signal to all and
Speaker 2: so far it's really worked. Actually, Lisa Murkowski was giving
Speaker 2: some speech back in Alaska where she was talking about like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he could fund a primary challenger. I could be done
Speaker 2: tomorrow if he liked, you know, just drops however much
Speaker 2: he wants to drop.
Speaker 1: So they're definitely she thinks that's true because she survived.
Speaker 3: She might be one of the rare ones that could
Speaker 3: survive because.
Speaker 1: Is so unique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean that is there. They're definitely thinking
Speaker 2: about it. Given how central money and politics is, and
Speaker 2: and it's not just the money said, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: got the President, he's got Twitter. They have so much
Speaker 2: power and control over this party at this point that
Speaker 2: even someone like Lisa Murkowski has to at least be
Speaker 2: worried that it would be a problem for her. Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and put now D one up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So very latest with regard to the Alien Enemies Act deportations.
Speaker 3: So a judge warned of.
Speaker 2: Possible consequences after DOJ pushback on questions about the deportation flight.
Speaker 2: Let me read you a little bit of this here
Speaker 2: so I can make sure to get the legalies correct.
Speaker 2: So it says a federal judge Wednesday, warned of the
Speaker 2: possibility of consequences.
Speaker 3: After they pushed back.
Speaker 2: US District Judge James Bosborg had ordered the Trump administration
Speaker 2: to submit answers to his questions about the timing of
Speaker 2: the deportation flights and custody handover of deporte deportees, giving
Speaker 2: the government until noon Wednesday to respond. The government submitted
Speaker 2: a filing Wednesday morning asked asking for a pause of
Speaker 2: that order to answer his questions. It contended that the
Speaker 2: answers could expose negotiations with foreign countries to Syria, risk
Speaker 2: of micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions, and potential public disclosure.
Speaker 2: The judge was not impressed with this. The government basically
Speaker 2: threatened that they may invoked state secrets doctrine to keep
Speaker 2: this all private, even though you know, we talked the
Speaker 2: other day about we actually all know now because of
Speaker 2: public flight tracking information, where the flights were, when they
Speaker 2: took off, when they landed, all that stuff. Not to
Speaker 2: mention that they themselves released and amplified these videos of
Speaker 2: the you know, detainees and having their head shaved and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. So, in any case, the
Speaker 2: judge said, the government's motion is the first time it
Speaker 2: suggested that disclosing the information requested by the court could
Speaker 2: amount the release of state secrets. To date, in fact,
Speaker 2: the government has made no claim that information is even classified.
Speaker 2: He continued, for example, the Secretary of State has revealed
Speaker 2: many operational details of the flights, including the number of
Speaker 2: people involved, many of their identities, the facility to which
Speaker 2: they were brought, the manner of treatment, time window during
Speaker 2: which these events occurred. Courts therefore unsure at this time
Speaker 2: how compliance with its minute order would jeopardize state secrets.
Speaker 3: He gave the Justice Department until noon.
Speaker 2: Thursday, that's today, possibly after this even gets posted to
Speaker 2: either answer his questions about the flights or invoke the
Speaker 2: State Secrets doctor and explain the basis for such invocation.
Speaker 2: So TLDR is they're still trying to stonewall and the
Speaker 2: judges getting increasingly impatient.
Speaker 1: Yes, and they may get held in contempt. Even if
Speaker 1: they do, it's going to go on a rocket to
Speaker 1: the Appellate Court, and then from the Appellate Court it's
Speaker 1: going to go to the Supreme Court. So there's still
Speaker 1: quite a bit to happen here. Bringing back to the
Speaker 1: judge conversation, it is just becoming clear that there are
Speaker 1: so many of these things. I have spoke to one
Speaker 1: friend who said that this might actually be packaged with
Speaker 1: the multitude of the other judges orders, so that Scotus
Speaker 1: tries to get ahead of like being I mean, you
Speaker 1: know what, in the last forty eight hours, we've had
Speaker 1: the USAID Court decision, the transgender decision, there was USIP
Speaker 1: and there's also this one. So it is one that no,
Speaker 1: I actually am missing one. I'm forgetting exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: But that's five literally just in the last like seventy
Speaker 1: two hours, that these questions of temporary restraining order in
Speaker 1: the role of district depellate and timely process and all
Speaker 1: of that could be picked up by SCOTUS asap in
Speaker 1: order to head off future like showdowns like the one
Speaker 1: that we're seeing right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you reference the USIP one. Let's see, this is
Speaker 2: D four we can put up on the screen. Is
Speaker 2: just the latest info here. A judge has denied a
Speaker 2: restraining order to block DOGE from its takeover of the
Speaker 2: US Institute of Peace, saying that despite being offended by
Speaker 2: DOJ's hostile ands writing treatment of American citizens, there are
Speaker 2: issues with the merits of the lawsuit.
Speaker 3: So that one, you.
Speaker 2: Know, no final ruling here, but a temporary restraining order
Speaker 2: in this instance was denied, and then I believe they'll
Speaker 2: begin to weigh in on the merits next week Monday,
Speaker 2: if memory serves so that's basically the latest.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean the campaign around pressuring.
Speaker 2: The judges is a central part of their strategy at
Speaker 2: this point, and you know, floating impeachment for judges, Elon
Speaker 2: floating like putting his money behind it. Trump was asked
Speaker 2: Ryan and Emily played this was asked about like, oh,
Speaker 2: would you ever just defy their court orders? And he
Speaker 2: said no, But you need to look at some of
Speaker 2: these judges. You need to look into some of these
Speaker 2: judges seem to be sort of like tacitly backing this
Speaker 2: direction to put pressure on them. You know, do I
Speaker 2: think that any of them could actually get impeached? Given that,
Speaker 2: as Elon apparently doesn't know, it takes sixty seven votes
Speaker 2: in the Senate in order to impeach, I think that
Speaker 2: is not going to happen. But you know, they again
Speaker 2: are trying to send a message and make it uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I think in some of these instances it could backfire.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are human beings.
Speaker 2: If you're aggressively threatening them, et cetera, sometimes people get
Speaker 2: their backup and it makes them even more determined. But
Speaker 2: you know the other thing with regard to this particular judge,
Speaker 2: Bosberg is like, if you look at his case record,
Speaker 2: he's definitely not like a lip. He was actually put
Speaker 2: in place first by George W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 2: He's had a bunch of decisions that actually went in
Speaker 2: favor of Trump, and so you know, the caricature of
Speaker 2: him is certainly not accurate in terms of the way
Speaker 2: he's being portrayed as some quote unquote radical left judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is annoying to see them try
Speaker 1: and paint that as both were pointing out his wife
Speaker 1: or his daughter or whatever. I do just I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our debate. I think it's
Speaker 1: crazy the idea that a judge could take a US
Speaker 1: military aircraft and to turn around.
Speaker 2: Or it actually wasn't a military aircraft, it was an
Speaker 2: ice chartered flight. But you know, the there's many instances
Speaker 2: of judge rulings having an impact on things that happen
Speaker 2: overseas because you're ruling applies to the agency. The agency
Speaker 2: is giving the direction, and so this is not it's
Speaker 2: not crazy, it's not unprecedented.
Speaker 3: It's happened many times.
Speaker 1: I was about to zoom out a little bit and
Speaker 1: not just talk about the flight. But like, for example,
Speaker 1: the transgender order. You know, it's like this, this was
Speaker 1: a policy implemented by executive review by the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: then flipped by the Trump administration, and now the judge
Speaker 1: ruling that actually this violates the law is literally citing
Speaker 1: Hamilton in their footnotes. So like, let's all also be
Speaker 1: like a little bit honest here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's fine, but that's why you have an
Speaker 3: appeals No.
Speaker 1: I'm not I mean disputing that, but I'm just I
Speaker 1: get very annoyed at this idea that like there's this
Speaker 1: worship of fullness of the judges and the courts. When
Speaker 1: anytime some crackpot judge in Texas rules on myth of pristone,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, the courts are legitimate. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: When the Supreme Court rolls on Scotus, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got to pack the court. It's like, let's be
Speaker 1: honest here about like reverence and annoyance for judges, both
Speaker 1: on sides of the political spectrum and for where that
Speaker 1: appeals process comes in. I mean, I genuinely do think
Speaker 1: many of these judges' orders are patently insane. Like the
Speaker 1: transgender one in particular, I'm like, what, like, under what
Speaker 1: rule are you allowed to say that this is some
Speaker 1: like civil rights violation when it was an executive policy
Speaker 1: from the very beginning that was put into place by Obama,
Speaker 1: flipped by Trump and now basically put back into place
Speaker 1: by Biden and then flipped by Trump again. It is
Speaker 1: just so obviously within the Article two powers of the
Speaker 1: Commander in Chief under the US Constitution. Now this is
Speaker 1: going to take forever in terms of pushing things to
Speaker 1: the court. Like That's why, if anything, I'm cheering for
Speaker 1: like a fulsome decision, because this is not the way
Speaker 1: that a government should be run, like literally constantly being
Speaker 1: changed by some district court. We saw the same thing
Speaker 1: at the first Trump The reason, but I mean some
Speaker 1: Hawaii judge, the reason is this is not this is
Speaker 1: not legitimate.
Speaker 2: And I haven't I haven't acquainted myself really with the
Speaker 2: transgender to say, I haven't Dog Hamilton, I haven't dug
Speaker 2: into the you know, legal merits of the case, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to apply it on that one.
Speaker 2: But I mean, the reason that there's so many court
Speaker 2: decisions is because they're violating the law so.
Speaker 3: Frequently, like that's the reason why.
Speaker 2: And I mean you've had judges that Trump pointed rule
Speaker 2: against Trump, You've had George W. Bush appointees, You've had
Speaker 2: you know, across the spectrum. Because what they're doing is
Speaker 2: so extreme. Now much of this will I mean, we'll
Speaker 2: go through the Pels process and we'll go up to
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. That's the way that this is supposed
Speaker 2: to go. But you know, I mean to discuss that
Speaker 2: this is a concertative strategy for them to try to
Speaker 2: intimidate the judges, put pressure on them, and they also
Speaker 2: you know, they're playing this game where they are in
Speaker 2: defiance of court orders. I mean with the with the
Speaker 2: planes is probably the most brazen example, but also with
Speaker 2: USAID and a bunch of these other decisions. The judge
Speaker 2: will issue a very cool, clear ruling and they'll just
Speaker 2: be like no, and they'll come up with some right, oh,
Speaker 2: well we didn't understand or we thought you meant this,
Speaker 2: or actually we're doing it under this other power whatever.
Speaker 3: But it does stack up to.
Speaker 2: Persistent defiance of the courts in a way that is extraordinary,
Speaker 2: in a way that we have not seen before. And
Speaker 2: you know that does represent a sort of new era
Speaker 2: and new approach where he's trying to consolidate and very effectively,
Speaker 2: so all of this power in the executive so that
Speaker 2: he and Elon can basically do whatever they want. They've
Speaker 2: already destroyed that, like the Congress has given up their power.
Speaker 2: They don't even want to have power anymore, so that
Speaker 2: one's dead and gone, and the only thing that's left
Speaker 2: is the judiciary to serve as any sort of check
Speaker 2: on an executive. And that means you know, not just
Speaker 2: Trump who you feel more comfortable with, but if there
Speaker 2: is another you know, election with a Democratic elected, then
Speaker 2: it would they could easily take up that same approach
Speaker 2: for ends that you would not be.
Speaker 3: Excited about, it would not approve of.
Speaker 2: But so yeah, so, I mean that's why these battles
Speaker 2: are significant and important, and why they're approach to them
Speaker 2: truly is different. I mean, we haven't had set for
Speaker 2: two hundred plus years, we've had a consensus that you
Speaker 2: don't try to impeach a judge over a ruling you
Speaker 2: don't like, and that's something they're seeking to change. That's
Speaker 2: really noteworthy and it's really different.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I wouldn't take it. It's not like
Speaker 1: there weren't calls FDR Era and all end to impeach
Speaker 1: during Lincoln as well to impeach judges for people who
Speaker 1: they disagreed with. It's just that usually they don't rise
Speaker 1: to that level because you need sixty seven people to
Speaker 1: do it, and it's not going to happen. So I
Speaker 1: think I agree with you that it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: I just am saying at a philosophical level in a
Speaker 1: certain sense, like what is happening here is kind of
Speaker 1: like a left fever dream that was under the Biden
Speaker 1: administration where they just desperately wanted Biden to defy the
Speaker 1: courts on student loans or I've talked previously about like
Speaker 1: maximum stretch executive power. This is basically an idea of
Speaker 1: like seizing government as opposed to or seizing government in
Speaker 1: this case for the sake of dismantling government. And probably
Speaker 1: the left case is seizing government in the case of
Speaker 1: actually trying to exercise the power of the government. But
Speaker 1: in both they're trying to invest more in the executive
Speaker 1: authority under that present and as always in this district
Speaker 1: judge thing, I think we also have to take a
Speaker 1: step back I saw somebody make a good point is
Speaker 1: that a single district judge, and there's seven hundred district judges,
Speaker 1: actually has more power than a single Supreme Court justice
Speaker 1: in the sense that a single district judge can inch
Speaker 1: issue a temporary restraining order that applies to the entire
Speaker 1: United States federal government, whereas it takes five out of
Speaker 1: the nine justices to actually implement a policy that basically
Speaker 1: is the ultimate ruling of the Supreme Court of the
Speaker 1: United States. And process by death by process is a
Speaker 1: Washington thing as old as time throwing the wrenches. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't disagree that the Trump administration, all of them,
Speaker 1: have taken extraordinary action on USAID and all this other
Speaker 1: many of which I disagree with and I actually think
Speaker 1: is quite stupid. But the district judge point about governance
Speaker 1: by judiciary, where it's just this constant judge shopping both
Speaker 1: left and right for where they're looking at that system
Speaker 1: is genuinely kind of insane. Now, is it better to
Speaker 1: have some dictator in Elon and Trump? No, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I do think that people should look at this
Speaker 1: and say this is not really the correct way, or
Speaker 1: at least I think how judicial review was supposed to
Speaker 1: be put into place where there's this constant back and
Speaker 1: forth and then this district judge is invested with all
Speaker 1: this power and then sometimes we have to wait months
Speaker 1: for an appellate process or whatever to go through the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court on a timely basis. You know, there is uh,
Speaker 1: there is genuinely like a criticism I think to be
Speaker 1: had of the way that this is playing out on
Speaker 1: a practical level.
Speaker 2: The time benefits trump the fact that it's oh a
Speaker 2: hundred percent because think about I mean, this is their strategy.
Speaker 2: This is what Ban and Another's talk about is flood
Speaker 2: the zone and overwhelm these institutions. And while it's having
Speaker 2: to slowly work its way through this process and appeals
Speaker 2: court and eventually maybe go to the Supreme Court, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Usaada is destroyed, CFPB is destroyed, like there is.
Speaker 3: That is what.
Speaker 2: They're counting on is for it to take a long time.
Speaker 2: And in the meantime, you know, as we've said before,
Speaker 2: federal government agents like it's not a switch you can
Speaker 2: flip on.
Speaker 3: And off in a meantime.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, incredible damage is being done that no
Speaker 2: court will be adequate to undo. Now, can they forestall
Speaker 2: some of the worst damage potentially, But you know, we've
Speaker 2: already seen the way that this unfolds, so I view
Speaker 2: it quite the polar opposite. Number one, the time that
Speaker 2: it takes only benefits Trump. You know, even if we
Speaker 2: just look at this discrete example of the planes that
Speaker 2: we're able to take off while a judge is having
Speaker 2: to like just give the most basics of deliberation, you
Speaker 2: know that's already it's done and dusted and those people
Speaker 2: are gone, and like that's that. So you know, even
Speaker 2: in that discrete example, you can see the way that
Speaker 2: they're able to accomplish some of their objectives just by
Speaker 2: taking advantage of the fact that it takes time with
Speaker 2: the courts. But I also think that what they're doing
Speaker 2: by violating so many laws and constitutional and you know,
Speaker 2: the constitution at once, is they are overwhelming the court
Speaker 2: system and seizing so much more power from it and
Speaker 2: betting that it's going to be effectively inadequate ultimately to
Speaker 2: be able to you know, forestall them achieving their objective.
Speaker 2: So quite to the contrary of like the court system
Speaker 2: being so powerful, I think the court system looks pretty
Speaker 2: weak right now. In terms of being able to, you know,
Speaker 2: stop what many lawyers across the political spectrum, like I said,
Speaker 2: Trump appointees, Obama appointees, George W.
Speaker 3: Bush appointees, all across.
Speaker 2: The board have said looks to be illegal, unconstitutional violations
Speaker 2: of the law. So, you know, I guess I see
Speaker 2: it com like polar opposite rather than they think of
Speaker 2: these individual district court judges are like so powerful. I
Speaker 2: think the whole judiciary put together is really it's the
Speaker 2: only institutional check on this administration. But I'm under no
Speaker 2: illusions that it's like sufficient.
Speaker 1: I take your point, but I think it's because you see,
Speaker 1: you know, what they want to do, like let's say
Speaker 1: the Department of Education. They want to eradicate the Department
Speaker 1: of Education. It's right, Okay, well you can't literally do that,
Speaker 1: so they're try do fifty percent. Let's or USAID even
Speaker 1: better example, Yes, you can stop the funding, but if
Speaker 1: they order you to get it back and it's back
Speaker 1: in a year, sure you've caused some chaos in the interim,
Speaker 1: but you have made no substance of real change the
Speaker 1: overall arc of the US government. You might have knocked
Speaker 1: it off like a little bit in terms of all
Speaker 1: of this funding, but you know it'll heal and it'll
Speaker 1: go right back to funding the same NGOs let's say
Speaker 1: five years from now under a democratic president. And in
Speaker 1: the district judge case, like for example, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the planes, it's like, well you could see it in
Speaker 1: that sense, it's like, yeah, all those people have been deported,
Speaker 1: but if you wanted to continue to make this like
Speaker 1: a long standing policy, it's literally not happening. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably a good outcome if you're some liberal ACLU
Speaker 1: immigration lawyer. So the point is is that you may
Speaker 1: are not getting everything that you want, but like on balance,
Speaker 1: you are actually putting a stop to a lot of
Speaker 1: the policy or even the implementation of long standing ones.
Speaker 1: So I do want to see a resolution like to
Speaker 1: this because in a sense too, the chaos becoming the story.
Speaker 1: It's like what we were talking about with tariffs. With
Speaker 1: the chaos becoming the story, you get all the political
Speaker 1: backlash of something and not even any of the so
Speaker 1: called intended benefit that was supposed to come as a
Speaker 1: result of this. So you may get all the political
Speaker 1: backlash of deportation something like that, and not actually even
Speaker 1: have any deportation. So in a sense, you don't even
Speaker 1: really get what you voted for and the policy, while
Speaker 1: at the same time you're inviting all of this court
Speaker 1: and district battle after over every single executive action. And
Speaker 1: I will grant you that there are many I think
Speaker 1: are wrong and or unconstitutional whatever, But the point is
Speaker 1: is that by this district judge process of all this happening,
Speaker 1: there is no confidence I think on either side here
Speaker 1: because in the way that I'm taking your view of
Speaker 1: the situation, that actually any coherence is happening in the
Speaker 1: government at all. And I don't think that chaos works
Speaker 1: at like a big, small d democratic level, especially increasing
Speaker 1: confidence in both the judiciar where people think judiciary is
Speaker 1: failing and the people who think the judiciary is overreaching.
Speaker 1: If any of that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It does, and I think you're right, Like, obviously it's
Speaker 2: not popular, it's not going well from them from a
Speaker 2: political standpoint, but I'm not that's not the only goal.
Speaker 2: Like maybe they care about that, maybe some of them
Speaker 2: care about that, But the ideological goal is to break government,
Speaker 2: and they're doing that pretty effectively.
Speaker 3: The ideological goal is.
Speaker 2: To, you know, for them to push the limits of
Speaker 2: the amount of power that Trump can claim and you know,
Speaker 2: they're doing that and Elon can claim and they're doing
Speaker 2: that very effectively. The ideological goal for Elon is, you know,
Speaker 2: I think a number of different things, but he's certainly
Speaker 2: been able to use his power to get rid of
Speaker 2: investigations that are targeting his companies. He's in position to
Speaker 2: hurt competitors, he's in position to you know, take contracts
Speaker 2: and funnel them towards his companies, et cetera. So from
Speaker 2: that perspective, yeah, I think, you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: working to serve some of the ideological goals that they
Speaker 2: have that like the rest of votes of the world have,
Speaker 2: where you know, they they hate government. They don't want
Speaker 2: government to work because if government doesn't work, that gives
Speaker 2: you more of a cudgel to further cut and destroy government.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I mean, he's what was his quote,
Speaker 2: he wants to make the bureaucracy miserable or make them
Speaker 2: suffer or something like that. You know, he wants them
Speaker 2: to self deport. Yeah, hey, they're doing you know, that's.
Speaker 1: But they're not self deporting. They're not quitting enough.
Speaker 2: They're digging in, they are digging in their heels in
Speaker 2: a certain sense. But I am quite from speaking with
Speaker 2: you know, plenty of government workers. They are definitely being
Speaker 2: made miserable, uncomfortable, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So that part is succeeding.
Speaker 1: One of my buddies has to go in at five
Speaker 1: thirty am to an office that they hadn't been two
Speaker 1: for years. There's not even enough desks for everybody, but
Speaker 1: they all have to be there and they have to
Speaker 1: stagger their time. And he's like, look, this is not
Speaker 1: more efficient. It's actually obviously stupid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not about efficient.
Speaker 1: I'll really the goal, you know, Curtis Again, Curtis Jarvin
Speaker 1: actually made a pretty good point where he's like, look,
Speaker 1: if you don't do this properly, the bureaucracy will become
Speaker 1: roaring back and will actually become ten times more both
Speaker 1: entrenched in our institutions. I think he's actually right.
Speaker 2: Did you see the Did you see that Tim Walls
Speaker 2: quote on this? Finish your point and I'll look it
Speaker 2: up Curtis's point.
Speaker 1: Curtis's point was basically, if you don't do it effectively,
Speaker 1: then you're actually just ensuring like a not only like
Speaker 1: a restoration of the regime, but the regime on steroids.
Speaker 1: I think he's right in the sense that right now
Speaker 1: Doge has successfully what cut a few programs if you like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's cute, that's nice. The Pentagon still exists, Medicaids still exists,
Speaker 1: social Security still exists. All of the genuine, like capital
Speaker 1: b power of the bureaucracy is effectively untouched. The Department
Speaker 1: of Education. Look, we can argue all day long. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's a joke. Like it's just not even powerful, absolutely
Speaker 1: at all, especially considering the vast majority of school funding
Speaker 1: does not even come from the federal government, and the
Speaker 1: policies at the state level are the people who actually are.
Speaker 3: There people without funding from the federal government matter.
Speaker 1: Yes, especially that money's not going anywhere or at least
Speaker 1: according to them for right now. But the policies at
Speaker 1: an individual school district level are in the school district
Speaker 1: and the state. Those are the people who mostly rule
Speaker 1: what actually happens inside of that building. So my point
Speaker 1: is that if you keep doing this slapshot approach and
Speaker 1: you have the vibe of cutting the government, but by
Speaker 1: doing that, you're actually making government institutions and all that
Speaker 1: more popular. You could in effect see a rise of
Speaker 1: a much more powerful and dangerous deep state in the future.
Speaker 1: What's the Tim Watson, I.
Speaker 3: Can't find it.
Speaker 2: But basically he got asked about, you know, this question
Speaker 2: of how do Democrats think about rebuilding the federal government,
Speaker 2: and you know, his response is like, we need to
Speaker 2: think about He said it could almost have a silver
Speaker 2: lining because.
Speaker 3: It could allow them to build back better.
Speaker 2: That's not what he said, right, That's the idea is like, basically,
Speaker 2: you know we can Okay, they No one says the
Speaker 2: federal government's like perfect and not sclerotic and doesn't have
Speaker 2: these issues. It does, so Okay, you've like devastated this
Speaker 2: we get to rebuild potentially from the ashes and make
Speaker 2: it better, strong, or et cetera. So there is some
Speaker 2: of that thinking going on in the Democratic Party. But
Speaker 2: you know, I was looking at the numbers of just
Speaker 2: in terms of the immediate term impact of the corporate
Speaker 2: enforcement actions that were previously occurring under the Biden.
Speaker 3: Administration, a quarter of them have been dropped.
Speaker 2: So like it's just open season for you know, all
Speaker 2: these corporations, whether they were you know, under investigation from
Speaker 2: the CFPB or the SEC or the National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 2: et cetera. It's huge numbers of those enforcement actions have
Speaker 2: been dropped. You know, in terms of talent you have had,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the numbers at this point, but you've
Speaker 2: had significant numbers of federal employees who have either taken
Speaker 2: the fork in the road or they've been fired, pushed down,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 3: And some of those.
Speaker 2: People, a lot of those people are the types that
Speaker 2: they had another opportunity in the private sector. They were
Speaker 2: the more valuable federal gard and employees. Getting that talent
Speaker 2: back is very difficult because it's you know, it's a
Speaker 2: hard sell. You're going to make less money working for
Speaker 2: the federal government. Public servants have just been like completely vilified,
Speaker 2: and the idea of even being a quote unquote public
Speaker 2: servant is sort of like under attack. So that expertise
Speaker 2: isn't something that's easy to return. So in any case,
Speaker 2: in my estimation, they're doing a lot of significant damage
Speaker 2: that's going to cause a lot of long term problems.
Speaker 3: And you know, I.
Speaker 2: Don't Democrats are may have aspirations to be able, like
Speaker 2: Tim Wall said, to be able to build it back
Speaker 2: more effective, stronger, better expertise, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But you know that's a big ask. So we'll see.
Speaker 2: A little while back, and extraordinary scene played out in
Speaker 2: the White House. During a gathering of governors, Trump singled
Speaker 2: out the governor of Maine, Janet Mills, to chide her
Speaker 2: for that state's policy with regard to trans athletes.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 5: The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way, that's good,
Speaker 5: But I understand Maine is the Maine here, the governor
Speaker 5: of may are you not going to comply with it? Well,
Speaker 5: we are the federal law. Well you better do it.
Speaker 5: You better do it because you're not going to get
Speaker 5: any federal funding at all if you don't. And by
Speaker 5: the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, orthough
Speaker 5: I did very well there. Your population doesn't want men
Speaker 5: playing in women's sports. So you better comply because otherwise
Speaker 5: you're not getting any federal funding. Every state.
Speaker 11: Good.
Speaker 5: I'll see you, and could I look forward to that.
Speaker 5: That should be a really easy one. And enjoy your
Speaker 5: life after, governor, because I don't think you'll be in
Speaker 5: elected politics.
Speaker 2: So what happened next is probably not going to be
Speaker 2: a big surprise to you. In short order, the state
Speaker 2: of Maine found itself under assault by Trump's federal government bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: So first, the Department of Education announced it was investigating
Speaker 2: the state in a specific school district where a trans
Speaker 2: athlete had been allowed to compete. That investigation threatens the
Speaker 2: four point eight billion dollars that main public schools received
Speaker 2: from the federal government. Now maybe you think, look, it's
Speaker 2: an education related issue, agree or disagree, not out of
Speaker 2: bounds for the Department of Education to investigate. But the
Speaker 2: retaliation did not stop there, not even close. Next, the
Speaker 2: Department of Health and Human Services began investigating the main
Speaker 2: education system to include the main university system. Four days later,
Speaker 2: that quote unquote investigation was completed, finding they violated Title nine,
Speaker 2: placing their funding in doubt. They even took the extraordinary
Speaker 2: step of referring the matter to the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2: And as part of this investigation, not a single witness
Speaker 2: was interviewed, not a single data set requested. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: Attorney General Pambondi did threaten the state with a lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Then came a Department of Agriculture or investigation threatening the
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars main land grant universities that amount
Speaker 2: that they received from the Agricultural Research Service and National
Speaker 2: Institute of Food and Agriculture. Next, the National Oceanic and
Speaker 2: Atmospheric Administration pulled the Main Sea Grant, which supported thousands
Speaker 2: of jobs over decades and coastal communities focused specifically.
Speaker 3: On the fishing industry. And finally, in maybe.
Speaker 2: The most bizarre move of all, the Social Security Administration
Speaker 2: terminated the Enumeration at birth process now that allows new
Speaker 2: parents to get a Social Security number for their babies
Speaker 2: simply by checking a box on a form while they're
Speaker 2: still in the hospital. Instead, exhausted new parents would have
Speaker 2: to tote their newborn to one of the now beleaguered
Speaker 2: Social Security field offices, where they would likely have to
Speaker 2: wait hours to accomplish something that previously took seconds. They
Speaker 2: also ended the auto processing for funeral homes for people
Speaker 2: who had died, cruelly forcing grooving loved ones to spend
Speaker 2: hours working to inform the government that their spouse or
Speaker 2: dad or mom or whoever, had in fact died.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: When first confronted over this particular attack, Leland Dudik, who's
Speaker 2: the stooge but in charge of Social Security Administration, as
Speaker 2: a reward for helping out the DOCH hackers. He originally
Speaker 2: claimed this was all just an innocent mistake. This was,
Speaker 2: of course, always pretty hard to believe given the overall
Speaker 2: targeting of Maine, and now Dudek has just out and
Speaker 2: out admitted that he was lying and did in fact
Speaker 2: do it all out of spite. As Tuesday, why he
Speaker 2: singled out Maine, whose Democratic governor, the Washington Post notes,
Speaker 2: Janet Mills, has fought the White House ban on transgender
Speaker 2: athletes participating in girls' sports. Dudak acknowledged, quote, I was
Speaker 2: upset with the governor's treatment of the President. Now, in
Speaker 2: some ways, the fact that Dudek may not have been
Speaker 2: instructed directly is to take that action makes it even
Speaker 2: more extraordinary. This is why lackeys like him are put
Speaker 2: in charge. They follow the lead of the King, punishing
Speaker 2: his enemies without even needing to be told exactly how.
Speaker 2: That is the entire reason they're there, after all, he
Speaker 2: understands the assignment. Now, the punishing of Maine is a
Speaker 2: case study in their broader strategy to crush political opponents
Speaker 2: and scare people into compliance. That's why California's wildfire relief
Speaker 2: funding was threatened why judges are being threatened with impeachment,
Speaker 2: why media organizations are being sued, investigated, and branded illegal.
Speaker 2: It's also likely the reason why Trump is attempting to
Speaker 2: fight the two Democratic members of the FTC board.
Speaker 3: The FDC has a lot of power.
Speaker 2: It can give favored companies the go ahead for their
Speaker 2: mergers and deals, or it can make life health for them,
Speaker 2: causing them financial issues. He was likely fearful that the
Speaker 2: Democratic board members would be interested in fairly applying antitrust law,
Speaker 2: not using those powers as a cudgel to punish or
Speaker 2: reward on his behalf. Now, this abandonment of even the
Speaker 2: appearance of an independent bureaucracy means we are entering a
Speaker 2: new era in American politics. It used to be a
Speaker 2: great scandal when bureaucrats were suspected of using their powers
Speaker 2: to punish the political enemies of the president. Does the
Speaker 2: name Lois Learner ring a bell here? Sager remembers he
Speaker 2: was at the center of a giant Obama era scandal
Speaker 2: that centered on whether or not TEA party groups had
Speaker 2: been targeted by the IRS.
Speaker 3: This was huge news at the time.
Speaker 2: Under Trump two point zero, it's just kind of taken
Speaker 2: for granted that friends of Trump and Elon they're going
Speaker 2: to be helped, and political and ideological enemies they're going
Speaker 2: to be screwed across them, and you can kiss your
Speaker 2: disaster relief goodbye.
Speaker 3: I for your loyal service.
Speaker 2: Though maybe he'll tweet about your favored shit goin, or
Speaker 2: even pump it up through the new.
Speaker 3: Crypto Reserve, who knows.
Speaker 2: Now, some of you might believe that aspects of the
Speaker 2: federal government were weaponized against Trump under Biden, most specifically
Speaker 2: a Department of Justice. Now you know, I don't agree
Speaker 2: with that assessment, but let's say you feel that way,
Speaker 2: it should actually give you an even greater appreciation for
Speaker 2: why it is so important to try to keep the
Speaker 2: functions of our government as neutral as possible. Because while
Speaker 2: the government has never held to this ideal perfectly, let's
Speaker 2: be clear, what we're seeing now with Trump is something else,
Speaker 2: entirely in typical Trumpian fashion. His weaponization of the government.
Speaker 2: It is brazen, it is heavy handed, it is out
Speaker 2: in the open, and it is so much worse than
Speaker 2: anything we've seen in modern history, so much so that
Speaker 2: in a few short months he has demolished even the
Speaker 2: expectation of an even handed bureaucracy and replaced it with
Speaker 2: an expectation that it will be wielded to crush anyone
Speaker 2: who intentionally or accidentally stumbles into his disfavor. Now the oligarchs,
Speaker 2: of course, they instantly understood this new order. That's why
Speaker 2: they all were lined up behind Trump at the inauguration,
Speaker 2: showering him with cash and with flattery. If you think
Speaker 2: through that, this whole of government retribution system will only
Speaker 2: be applied to large organizations, states, media organizations, law firms,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Though, Mackmoud Khalil's case should prove
Speaker 2: to you that any individual who gets crossbys with this
Speaker 2: administration can find themselves destroyed. In fact, a French scientist
Speaker 2: was just blocked from entering the country because he had
Speaker 2: some critical comments about Trump on his phone. When it
Speaker 2: was searched by DHS, they said his private messages were
Speaker 2: hateful and conspiratorial and could be deemed terrorism. He was
Speaker 2: deported the following day. Just think of all the ways
Speaker 2: you rely on the government to not screw you. Maybe
Speaker 2: you need your Social Security check or your passport renewed,
Speaker 2: or would prefer not to get audited every single year.
Speaker 2: They can make you miserable without even breaking a sweat. Now,
Speaker 2: weaponized bureaucracies like this they're pretty common around the world,
Speaker 2: though they're typically associated with some developing world strongman type.
Speaker 2: It's a good way to get order people to just
Speaker 2: keep their heads down, try to avoid earning the ire
Speaker 2: of the king. But there's also reason to believe that
Speaker 2: in this age of DOGE and AI, it could actually
Speaker 2: get so much worse. There's reporting to suggest one goal
Speaker 2: of DOGE is to consolidate all of the disparate data
Speaker 2: sets that various government databases hold into one place business
Speaker 2: loan applications, mortgage applications, student loan data, child support payments,
Speaker 2: tax famous income, every bit of it. There is also
Speaker 2: reporting that this administration is already using AI to crawl
Speaker 2: through social media profiles to identify people who have engaged
Speaker 2: in wrong thinks, specifically on the issue of Israel. Put
Speaker 2: all of this together, and the possibilities for abuse are endless.
Speaker 2: In the same way that Israel's use of AI accelerated
Speaker 2: its genocidal attacks by generating massless of targets that they
Speaker 2: could then assault, AI unleashed on the entire data set
Speaker 2: of the federal government could vastly accelerate the ability to
Speaker 2: punish anyone who expressed a negative opinion about Trump or
Speaker 2: Elan or Doze or Tesla or Israel, or indicated any
Speaker 2: sort of liberal inclination whatsoever. It could actually be done automatically,
Speaker 2: no cumbersome bureaucracy required. We have seen the way that
Speaker 2: this government has already approached mass removal of documents, grants,
Speaker 2: historical records, programs, etc. That happened to include some word
Speaker 2: from a list of banned words that they think code liberal,
Speaker 2: Like how they deleted all of the information about the
Speaker 2: Onola Gay, the bomber that dropped an atom bomb on Japan,
Speaker 2: simply because it contained the word gay.
Speaker 3: Now imagine that.
Speaker 2: Approach applied to the entire population. You better not chat
Speaker 2: about diversifying your portfolio or trading equities. Better not be
Speaker 2: helping your kid with their inequality's math homework. Say Gulf
Speaker 2: of Mexico once, and those doge boys will mark you
Speaker 2: dead in Social Security before you could say LATINX. It's
Speaker 2: kind of funny. I guess it's completely crazy, But the
Speaker 2: possibility for crushing speech is way too real, and for
Speaker 2: punishing dissidents. Governor of Maine sounded exactly this alarm after
Speaker 2: seeing the way the government launched an assault on her
Speaker 2: entire state over her audacity to challenge the president, she wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: you must ask yourself who and what will he target next?
Speaker 3: And what will he do?
Speaker 2: Mills continued, Will it be you? Will it be because
Speaker 2: of your race or your religion? Will it be because
Speaker 2: you look different or think differently? Where does it end?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 2: Man got lucky in a certain respect. They happen to
Speaker 2: have a Republican senator. She was able to plead the
Speaker 2: state's case to the King. Some of the retaliation was
Speaker 2: rolled back, like, for example, that main c Grant thing
Speaker 2: over at Social Security. Dudeck says he came to regret
Speaker 2: his actions there. But I bet Governor Mills she's gonna
Speaker 2: think twice before she displeases Trump again, isn't she. I
Speaker 2: bet every governor in the country knows the set of
Speaker 2: acts I just laid out. It's gonna think twice before
Speaker 2: they speak out on any issue and earn the ire
Speaker 2: of this president. I bet there are plenty of would
Speaker 2: be protesters who see Israel returning to its genocide in
Speaker 2: Gaza greenlit by the Trump administration, or gonna think twice
Speaker 2: about protesting because of how Machmoud Khalil was targeted. And
Speaker 2: this is just the beginning the whims of a dictator
Speaker 2: combined with a fully compliant bureaucracy backed by the world's
Speaker 2: richest man, and finally turbocharge with the extraordinary power of AI,
Speaker 2: the tech enabled strongman, possibilities are limitless and the main example,
Speaker 2: like how do you feel about the issue is not
Speaker 2: really important. She pissed him off, and there are a
Speaker 2: million reasons that you could end up pissing off to
Speaker 2: up Trump, and he has already demonstrated how he will
Speaker 2: use the USDA, the National Oceanic Administration, the Department of Education,
Speaker 2: the HHS, Social Security, every tool in the toolkit to
Speaker 2: make you.
Speaker 1: Pay Trump's What Trump has done is is unsubtle. I
Speaker 1: guess like you were talking about the lowest learner thing.
Speaker 1: I mean it is complicated because at the same time,
Speaker 1: federal funding is genuinely too at the discretionary of the
Speaker 1: unitary executive and the bureaucracy. Like estates are not owed money.
Speaker 1: For example, the University of Pennsylvania just got itself cut
Speaker 1: off over transgender sports policy, and people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is horrible. It's like, well, you don't have a
Speaker 1: right to federal money. You know, the federal government has
Speaker 1: very often used its money as a cudgel to force
Speaker 1: laws on the books. Speed limits is the most famous example.
Speaker 1: Same with seat belts.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But but the point is is that it's this has always
Speaker 1: kind of been there, and it is. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that no executive has used this before in a
Speaker 1: less subtle, in a less unsubtle way. No executive has
Speaker 1: done this before out of a norm's respect. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually stop you ever from having been able to
Speaker 1: do this from a legal perspective, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And this has long been a conservative argument, is that
Speaker 1: the left uses the government as a tool of its
Speaker 1: own social engineering policy DEI and all that other stuff,
Speaker 1: perfect example, why would we not do the same. And
Speaker 1: in a sense, I'm like, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument.
Speaker 2: Right, I hear what you're saying, But you have to acknowledge, like,
Speaker 2: this is not even so much about policy. It's about
Speaker 2: punishing people, institutions, groups that are political opponents to you,
Speaker 2: and political alternative political power centers.
Speaker 3: It's the same.
Speaker 2: You know, this is part and parcel with using quote
Speaker 2: unquote anti semitism to to defenestrate the university system. You know,
Speaker 2: he doesn't care about anti semitism, but he sees this
Speaker 2: is a thing out there that he can use to
Speaker 2: hurt universities. And he doesn't like universities, you know, California,
Speaker 2: Like they didn't come to the White House and say
Speaker 2: a thing about trans kids that he didn't like. They
Speaker 2: vote the wrong way, and so now maybe it's going
Speaker 2: to do their wild fire funding. Maybe he's not their
Speaker 2: disaster relief. I mean that one in particular you have
Speaker 2: to admit is it's such a break from we've always
Speaker 2: had the view of doesn't matter if your state is
Speaker 2: red or blue or purple or whatever, like, when you
Speaker 2: need help, the federal goverment is going to be totally
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now it's like yeah maybe.
Speaker 2: And so I'm not saying that the federal government has
Speaker 2: never been webinized against anyone and they've been perfect. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that, But what I am saying is that
Speaker 2: that was the baseline expectation.
Speaker 3: There was an expectation that if you.
Speaker 2: Are an individual going in to you know, get your
Speaker 2: security check issue resolved, they're not going to be looking
Speaker 2: up in some database to see if you said something
Speaker 2: mean about Donald Trump or about Tesla or whatever to
Speaker 2: decide whether they're going to.
Speaker 3: Help you or not.
Speaker 2: And I think those sorts of possibilities are very much
Speaker 2: on the table now, especially when you look at like
Speaker 2: that case of the French scientists who they looked at
Speaker 2: his phone and were like, oh, you were mean to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. You can't come in the country. Like that's
Speaker 2: new and different. You have another case, similar to Mackmoud Khalil,
Speaker 2: of a professor here in Georgetown whose wife is an
Speaker 2: American citizen and he is now being detained because of
Speaker 2: her the MA con citizens suspected beliefs with regard to
Speaker 2: Israel after he was targeted on a list from these
Speaker 2: prozionist groups. Totally, so all of these things together it
Speaker 2: has created already, I think, a totally different understanding and
Speaker 2: framework for the federal government bureaucracy that truly is a
Speaker 2: break from the expectation of the past that it would
Speaker 2: be more or less neutral in terms of day to
Speaker 2: day interactions, how they handle things like disaster relief, et cetera.
Speaker 1: No, I mean disaster relief is the one where you're
Speaker 1: one hundred percent correct. I mean same on the I
Speaker 1: mean the Israel one is just that to me is
Speaker 1: always again the most ridiculous, because we're literally talking about
Speaker 1: criticism of a foreign government. I also think it's a
Speaker 1: big free First Amendment, a lot of justification there because
Speaker 1: beyond even as you and I and we disagree on
Speaker 1: deportation et cetera, especially like my thing with mak mukhalil Is,
Speaker 1: I don't think he should be deported for what he said,
Speaker 1: but I still think he's going to get deported. The
Speaker 1: bigger problem for me it is actually these Columbia students
Speaker 1: who are getting expelled because of pressure from the federal
Speaker 1: government because of their own speech. That is one where
Speaker 1: you are a United States citizen and the federal government
Speaker 1: itself is actually using it a cudgel to infringe upon
Speaker 1: your ability for the education that you were accepted and
Speaker 1: that you have been enrolled in this institution, and they're
Speaker 1: effectively depriving you of that ability through the cudgel of
Speaker 1: their government. Same with Social Security right, the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, you are a United States citizen, you've paid
Speaker 1: within the system, You literally have earned your right that
Speaker 1: is not subject to your political wins. I would say
Speaker 1: the same with California, and California's paid way more into
Speaker 1: the federal government than anything they've ever taken out of it,
Speaker 1: which they'll never forget in reminding you. But they're not wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can be all your house burns down, yeah,
Speaker 1: you better help us out. So yeah, that's where I think,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the real danger.
Speaker 2: I think that there's Yeah, I mean the social Security
Speaker 2: thing in Maine was crazy and that he just admitted, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I did it because I was not at the governor. Well, like,
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, we shouldn't be thinking in
Speaker 2: terms of like punishing the entire citizens of any state
Speaker 2: because you don't like that action, you don't like what
Speaker 2: their leader said to the president is crazy. But I
Speaker 2: mean to Trump's point, I looked it up, forty five
Speaker 2: percent and main did vote for him, and you're punishing
Speaker 2: you're punishing all those people.
Speaker 1: It's like a Redish state. It's genuine. I mean usually
Speaker 1: goes blue in the presidential but like they've got you know, Susan.
Speaker 2: They had that crazy Republican governor. I'm forgetting his name, Paige, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was that guy was wild so yeah, main man
Speaker 2: can go all kinds of ways, like politically.
Speaker 1: I consider myself a manor in spirit out you're interesting.
Speaker 2: People anyway, we have are looking forward to this conversation
Speaker 2: with Derek Thompson. If you've been anywhere online, you may
Speaker 2: have seen this abundance discourse that we wanted to dig
Speaker 2: in the book that he just published alongside as Reclined.
Speaker 3: So let's go ahead and get to that.
Speaker 1: Joining is now great friend of the show, Jerrick Thompson,
Speaker 1: and he is out with the new book which is
Speaker 1: just seemingly everywhere Abundance that he co authored with Ezra Clined.
Speaker 1: So the theme of the book is quote to trace
Speaker 1: the history of the twenty first century, so far to
Speaker 1: trace the history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of
Speaker 1: refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis.
Speaker 1: He goes on that Abundance explains our problems today are
Speaker 1: not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation solutions
Speaker 1: have become the next generation's problems. The book actually seeks
Speaker 1: to put forward some solutions. So Derek just at the
Speaker 1: top here for people who aren't familiar with abundance discourse,
Speaker 1: there's been quite a bit here that is online. First,
Speaker 1: just tell us, like why you guys felt compelled to
Speaker 1: write the book, and then how you feel that the book,
Speaker 1: How the book is intended to be received. Is it
Speaker 1: a project twenty twenty five? Is it a political answer?
Speaker 1: Is it all of the above? What is your guys's
Speaker 1: conception of it?
Speaker 10: It's a great question. I love this great a beginning.
Speaker 11: So we started writing this book two and a half
Speaker 11: years ago when we were motivated by and scandalized by
Speaker 11: exactly what you said, the crises of manufactured scarcity in
Speaker 11: the twenty first century. Why aren't there enough homes? Why
Speaker 11: isn't there enough clean energy? Why is governance often in
Speaker 11: blue cities and blue states so bad that it seems
Speaker 11: to be driving many people away? Why doesn't the Democratic
Speaker 11: Party have an invention agenda, given how central science and
Speaker 11: technology are to human progress. These are the questions that
Speaker 11: really animated the project. But I think it's really important
Speaker 11: to ground the fact that the book came out in
Speaker 11: March twenty twenty five, because you look back over the
Speaker 11: last six months of news.
Speaker 10: Why did Donald Trump just win the election?
Speaker 11: If you ask PW, if you ask Gallop, if you
Speaker 11: asked David Shore, and the twenty eight million people that
Speaker 11: he surveyed, the answer is all the same.
Speaker 10: It's affordability, affordability, affordability.
Speaker 11: People feel like there's an affordability crisis in this country,
Speaker 11: and the biggest part of anybody's budget is housing. So
Speaker 11: at this center of an affordability crisis is a housing
Speaker 11: affordability crisis. Donald Trump won because of an affordability crisis,
Speaker 11: and my feeling is he came into office and could
Speaker 11: have said, like I'm going to govern as a text
Speaker 11: in Republican, I'm going to make it as easy as
Speaker 11: possible for us to build homes. I'm going to do
Speaker 11: everything I can to drive down the cost of housing.
Speaker 11: But instead, one of the first things he does is
Speaker 11: to raise terror rifts on Mexico and Canada. That's a
Speaker 11: twenty five percent bump on the cost of lumber and
Speaker 11: drywall gypsum, which we get from Mexico.
Speaker 10: The lumber comes from Canada.
Speaker 11: This is a plan to treat scarcity of housing with
Speaker 11: yet more scarcity.
Speaker 10: So I really want to emphasize it.
Speaker 11: Agree to which we strongly believe that there is a
Speaker 11: totally different way to think about growing the supply of
Speaker 11: the most important things.
Speaker 10: In this country.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: So you have a lot of critics on the left.
Speaker 2: You also have some fans on the left, but you
Speaker 2: have a lot of critics on the left. I'm not
Speaker 2: a hater of abundance, but my own assessment is that
Speaker 2: it misses some things and maybe it's not meant to
Speaker 2: be a complete ideology, which is part of what I
Speaker 2: want you to respond to, because you know, the with
Speaker 2: housing in particular, I'm in favor of a more yimbi
Speaker 2: mindset of reducing these zoning regulations, et cetera. But we
Speaker 2: can put put this tear sheet up on the screen, guys,
Speaker 2: effort teach out and had I think a good response
Speaker 2: to the Abundance to your book and some of the
Speaker 2: ideas offered therein. And she says basically like, look, some
Speaker 2: of these things have been tried and it hasn't really
Speaker 2: solved the problem. She points to a study from the
Speaker 2: Urban Institute of Land Use reforms across eleven hundred plus
Speaker 2: cities from two thousand and twenty nineteen found they that
Speaker 2: those sorts of reforms increase the housing supply by only
Speaker 2: zero point eight percent within three to nine years of passage.
Speaker 3: So when I look at that.
Speaker 2: I think, Okay, well, what is missing from this picture.
Speaker 2: I think part of what is missing is this overall
Speaker 2: landscape of inequality, corporate consolidation, of power, money in politics.
Speaker 2: Because even when you strip away the regulations, guess what,
Speaker 2: the people who have money in this country are overwhelmingly
Speaker 2: the super rich. That's who companies want to cater to.
Speaker 2: You have massive consolidation within the industry of developers, so
Speaker 2: they're you know, giant monopolies at this point. And so
Speaker 2: even with the regulation stripped away, they're like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to build luxury mansions because that's who has
Speaker 2: the money. I'm going to build luxury condos, so that's
Speaker 2: who has the money. So, you know, do you mean
Speaker 2: for this to be a sort of like complete theory
Speaker 2: of what what's going on? Or is it like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is one piece that we're looking at seriously so
Speaker 2: that if Democrats get back in power, we have these
Speaker 2: governance pieces kind of ready to go.
Speaker 11: It's such a good question, and there's so much there.
Speaker 11: I'm going to try to touch on as much of
Speaker 11: it as I can keep in my head. Yeah, trying
Speaker 11: to usher in a paradigm shift we think that liberalism
Speaker 11: of the last fifty years has become consumed by process
Speaker 11: and not consumed by outcomes. And that's how you get
Speaker 11: a world ware in San Francisco. If you want to
Speaker 11: build a new apartment building with public money, there are
Speaker 11: so many riders attached to that public money that in
Speaker 11: fact developers have essentially pulled out and said we don't
Speaker 11: want to build social housing at all.
Speaker 10: It's a worldware.
Speaker 11: In twenty twenty one, when there is a development that
Speaker 11: was being discussed to put up a five hundred units
Speaker 11: in a Nordstrom valet parking lot, one hundred of which
Speaker 11: would have been below market rent. In fact, the Board
Speaker 11: of Supervisors of San Francisco voted it down because it didn't.
Speaker 10: Pass sufficient environmental review.
Speaker 11: It's a thicket of laws and reviews and customs that
Speaker 11: have grown up in the last fifty years. Their environmental laws,
Speaker 11: their legal norms. Sometimes they're just a sense of empowered gentry,
Speaker 11: empowered homeowners who want to stop any new development that
Speaker 11: could possibly threaten their home values. This set of rules
Speaker 11: and customs of laws has I think accumulated over the
Speaker 11: last fifty years without a sufficient CounterPunch, we become so processed,
Speaker 11: obsessed that we haven't sort of cleared the brush and thought, wait,
Speaker 11: this is about building houses for people to live. You
Speaker 11: mentioned the fact that you know, we live in a
Speaker 11: time I think of concerning income and equality, absolutely and
Speaker 11: even incipient oligarchy. But I would frame it a little
Speaker 11: bit this way. Is oligarchy worse in Utah than in California.
Speaker 11: Is oligarchy worse in Texas than California. Is oligarchy worse
Speaker 11: in say, Georgia than Massachusetts. The problems of oligarchy are national,
Speaker 11: and yet we very clearly see that different cities and
Speaker 11: states have tremendously different outcomes when it comes to the
Speaker 11: ability to add housing.
Speaker 2: So I would say, I would say, actually, to respond
Speaker 2: to that directly, I actually do think the problem of
Speaker 2: oligarchy is worse in a place like or at least
Speaker 2: inequality is worse in a city like San Francisco, New York, Miami,
Speaker 2: places that are magnets not just domestically but globally for
Speaker 2: the richest of the rich. You know, you end up
Speaker 2: with this sort of superclass of people who can spend
Speaker 2: the millions of millions of dollars that it takes and
Speaker 2: then an underclass of people who are there to serve
Speaker 2: them who can't afford rent. So I actually this which
Speaker 2: gets to another one of my questions to you, and
Speaker 2: one of the critiques that I've seen of the book
Speaker 2: and the paradigm shift contained therein is that there's a
Speaker 2: couple of assumptions that are taken here. One is that
Speaker 2: the right way to organize our society is having these
Speaker 2: giant megalopolises, the San Francisco's, the las, the New York's
Speaker 2: of the world, where you know, it wasn't always the case.
Speaker 2: We used to have thriving manufacturing and other industry throughout
Speaker 2: the country, so people were.
Speaker 3: More widely spread out.
Speaker 2: Obviously, that helps with being able to afford housing because
Speaker 2: you just have a more dispersed population. That's number one.
Speaker 2: And then number two related to that is is the
Speaker 2: focus too much on these cities. So and this gets
Speaker 2: back to the question of whether this is a governing agenda,
Speaker 2: a political like electoral political agenda, or both, because obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, Democrats have slid a little bit in the cities,
Speaker 2: but they still perform really well in these giant cities.
Speaker 2: We don't really need Democrat the Democratic Party to do
Speaker 2: better in San Francisco. So is the project also a
Speaker 2: little too focused on these giant urban city centers and
Speaker 2: taking for granted that that's where the core of you know,
Speaker 2: American innovation and prosperity and just population density should really be.
Speaker 10: I love this question. There's so much here.
Speaker 11: Let me let me let me try to consolidate it
Speaker 11: into into an answer that matches everything you put on
Speaker 11: the table. Let's say the outcome that you cared about,
Speaker 11: because we believe in an outcome based liberalism, Let's say
Speaker 11: the outcome that you really cared about was income and equality. Well,
Speaker 11: of course you would want there to be a tax
Speaker 11: and span redistribution policy, right. You might want to expand
Speaker 11: the EITC. You might want to expand child tax credits,
Speaker 11: you might want to expand welfare.
Speaker 10: All of these are important.
Speaker 11: But if you're really interested in reducing inequality, I think
Speaker 11: you should be absolutely obsessed with urban housing policy. The
Speaker 11: Harvard economist Roschetty has pointed out that upward mobility in
Speaker 11: this country, when you build a map of it and
Speaker 11: see you know, who has the best chance of being
Speaker 11: born into a lower or working class and working their
Speaker 11: way into the upper middle class, it's in these cities.
Speaker 11: It's close to these cities. If we want to give
Speaker 11: more Americans a chance to move forward in their life,
Speaker 11: we should make it easier for people to live where
Speaker 11: they want to live, especially if those are some of
Speaker 11: the highest, most productive, most highly productive cities in the country.
Speaker 11: In fact, Crystal from much of the last century, this
Speaker 11: is how American migration worked. If you were working class,
Speaker 11: you would move closer to these cities, and it would
Speaker 11: benefit you because the housing costs wouldn't overwhelm the income
Speaker 11: benefits that you would move, that you would gain from
Speaker 11: moving to a high income place. But something is unwound
Speaker 11: very very much in the last fifty years, where it's
Speaker 11: the cheapest places in the country that have the lowest
Speaker 11: upward mobility, and it's the most expensive places in the
Speaker 11: country that have the highest upper mobility. And so in
Speaker 11: a way you can say it's like the American dream
Speaker 11: has been torn apart. People have to choose between affordable
Speaker 11: living and the chance of moving forward in their life.
Speaker 11: That's a terrible, terrible thing for any country that considers
Speaker 11: itself the land of free opportunity. We want to build
Speaker 11: a place where build a country where people can move
Speaker 11: to where they want to move, and people can stay
Speaker 11: where they want to stay. That's not the world we
Speaker 11: have in San Francisco and New York and Boston and Washington,
Speaker 11: d C. And Los Angeles, in Seattle, and some people
Speaker 11: don't want to live there, and that's totally fine. And
Speaker 11: our project is like not some grand design to force
Speaker 11: everybody to live in a skyscraper. People should live or
Speaker 11: they want to live. But part of freedom is being
Speaker 11: able to live near these cities if you want to
Speaker 11: stay there or work there. And that's where it's unbelievably urgent.
Speaker 11: I think for the liberals and the Democrats who hold
Speaker 11: so much power in these places, to use that power
Speaker 11: as an advertisement for our cause, to say, look what
Speaker 11: happens when you give us the reins and you give
Speaker 11: us all of the authority, we produce outcomes like affordability
Speaker 11: and upward mobility and low crime and fantastic living arrangements
Speaker 11: for people.
Speaker 10: Instead.
Speaker 11: Right now, what's happening is that many blue cities and
Speaker 11: blue states have turned into anti advertisements for the liberal movement.
Speaker 11: As we say in the book, I think this is
Speaker 11: Ezra's line. I have to say, you know, democrats should
Speaker 11: be able to say, vote for us, and we'll make
Speaker 11: America like California. And what's happened in the last few
Speaker 11: years is that Republicans have found advantage in saying vote
Speaker 11: for Democrats and the America like California. This is not
Speaker 11: the world we.
Speaker 10: Want to live in.
Speaker 11: And frankly, if these are the results that liberals are getting,
Speaker 11: they don't deserve to win at the national level. What
Speaker 11: we want to change is we want to change the
Speaker 11: meaning of the Democratic party, the valance of the Democratic parties,
Speaker 11: starting with effective governance where we whole power the most.
Speaker 1: Do you worry, Derek that this leads to a bit
Speaker 1: of a cultural imbalance, because part of what you know,
Speaker 1: make America more like Texas, or make America more like
Speaker 1: Georgia is not, you know, like you said, living in
Speaker 1: skyscrapers or even smaller. It's really about space and abundance.
Speaker 1: There also comes along with a cultural element of like
Speaker 1: you just can kind of do whatever you want to
Speaker 1: do without monolithic like beliefs being shoved in your face.
Speaker 1: So I think those two things do go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: Let's say, for the five hundred thousand people who left
Speaker 1: the California state of California for Texas and for Florida
Speaker 1: that obviously was very important to them. How do you
Speaker 1: think about that question whenever you're thinking about making California
Speaker 1: San Francisco great again as a template for why somebody
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee, Wisconsin would want to vote for you.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's right. You know, no one's asked that question before.
Speaker 10: That's a really interesting question.
Speaker 11: So you know, you're talking about this idea of like
Speaker 11: cultural freedom, of people being able to live the way
Speaker 11: they want to live.
Speaker 10: I think that's fantastic.
Speaker 11: I consider myself essentially a social libertarian, even though those
Speaker 11: ideas aren't particularly present in the book. But when I
Speaker 11: think about like the most famous expressions of sort of
Speaker 11: laissez fair live how you want to live, sort of
Speaker 11: cultural libertarianism, I honestly think of cities interesting. I think
Speaker 11: of like New York in the nineteen sixties or San
Speaker 11: Francisco in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 10: I think of these places.
Speaker 11: Where all of these new ideas were bursting forth and
Speaker 11: colliding with each other, where people were having new concepts
Speaker 11: of poetry and music, and you know, different ideas about
Speaker 11: you know, living arrangements and romantic arrangements. You know, if
Speaker 11: what you're interested in is a world where people have
Speaker 11: this extraordinary freedom to explore their identity in a world
Speaker 11: where other people are exploring their identities. I think any
Speaker 11: honest look at American urban history from the last fifty
Speaker 11: seventy years shows it's cities that have been the cauldron
Speaker 11: of exactly this type of freedom. And of course, if
Speaker 11: people want to live in Georgia with their lawns and
Speaker 11: their single family houses, there's nothing in this book telling
Speaker 11: them that they're wrong to do. So what we're trying
Speaker 11: to say at a very basic level is there are
Speaker 11: some cities in this country, and at least in the
Speaker 11: house for the housing part, because the the book is capacious,
Speaker 11: but the housing part, there are some cities where the
Speaker 11: rules that we have created have made it impossible for
Speaker 11: market conditions to work. And while markets are not perfect,
Speaker 11: one thing they're very good at doing is matching supply
Speaker 11: and demand. And right now you have this enormous demand
Speaker 11: to live in places like Washington, D C. And New York,
Speaker 11: San Francisco, Los Angeles, but you have constraints to supply,
Speaker 11: and in macroeconomics, one on one, the only thing that
Speaker 11: happens when demand goes like this and supply stays flat,
Speaker 11: is prices go to the moon. Prices are going the moon.
Speaker 11: And it's not just a problem for Los Angeles, it's
Speaker 11: a problem for Democrats nationwide. We just lost Democrats did
Speaker 11: an election that was all about affordability, and so being
Speaker 11: obsessed about the inputs to affordability, I think is essential
Speaker 11: to any liberal movement making the public feel like we
Speaker 11: care about them again.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the three major components, in my opinion, I
Speaker 2: think in your opinion too, of the affordable crisis affordability
Speaker 2: crisis are housing, education, and healthcare. These are you know,
Speaker 2: huge ticket items that are central to sort of like
Speaker 2: middle class prosperity and have been skyrocketing over years and years.
Speaker 2: And again when I look at what is causing the
Speaker 2: massive price escalations in each of those, I agree that
Speaker 2: the story you're telling is part of that story. But
Speaker 2: when I look at you know, like to take healthcare
Speaker 2: as an example, which probably the one of these that
Speaker 2: I've thought the most about the biggest problem in healthcare,
Speaker 2: and we can see it with how much more efficient
Speaker 2: Medicare is and how much you know, compared to private insurance.
Speaker 2: It's the profit motive, and so you know where is
Speaker 2: that in the story.
Speaker 3: Because some of the some of the.
Speaker 2: Suggestions you make about how to make healthcare more affordable.
Speaker 2: It sort of reminds me of back during the Obamacare
Speaker 2: debate when Republicans were like, we've got a healthcare plan too,
Speaker 2: you can sell plans across state lines and that'll fix everything.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, that might make things a little bit better,
Speaker 2: but really, the profit motive and the fact that you've
Speaker 2: got all these middlemen who are taking their cut, and
Speaker 2: you know, we're getting screwed on drug prices, and we're
Speaker 2: getting screwed in you know, every the pharmacy benefit managers,
Speaker 2: every single step of this process. That's really the core
Speaker 2: of the story here. So you know, I was listening
Speaker 2: to Ezra in one of his interviews and he was
Speaker 2: sort of chiding the progressives and the left for looking
Speaker 2: at models overseas and sal we want to be more
Speaker 2: like them. He's like, well, you should want to be
Speaker 2: better than them. Okay, fair enough, but it's also true
Speaker 2: that if we just were doing as well on healthcare
Speaker 2: as the rest of the developed world, we would be
Speaker 2: in a much much better place. And while I'm sure
Speaker 2: that you know you want to have more doctors be
Speaker 2: able to come in the country more H one b's
Speaker 2: for this, and you have additional reforms that you offer.
Speaker 3: I'm sure those things would help.
Speaker 2: But they would help in the way that sort of
Speaker 2: like Obamacare, I've made it a little better, but the
Speaker 2: problem is still at its core unresolved.
Speaker 11: The way I think about this again, I think there's
Speaker 11: there's a lot of use to being really clear about
Speaker 11: what outcomes you're looking for. So let's say, for the
Speaker 11: purpose of this conversation, because healthcare is a big, big topic,
Speaker 11: what we care about for American health care is it
Speaker 11: healthcare be universal, that it be affordable, not only for individuals,
Speaker 11: but frankly also for the state, because you don't want
Speaker 11: our deficits to reach like five trillion dollars a year
Speaker 11: in medicare. And also high quality and high quality is
Speaker 11: very very important. Because let's say America had universal health
Speaker 11: care in nineteen forty three, that'd be wonderful from an
Speaker 11: equity standpoint.
Speaker 10: You would have absolute universal coverage.
Speaker 11: But penicillin didn't exist in nineteen forty three, gop one
Speaker 11: drugs didn't exist.
Speaker 10: Practically, no modern cancer.
Speaker 11: Therapies existed, Liquid IV plastic bags didn't exist. Oximeters didn't exist,
Speaker 11: cat scans didn't exist, MRIs didn't exist. A part of
Speaker 11: our book is about the centrality of science and technology
Speaker 11: to progressive ends, because what makes a healthcare card valuable
Speaker 11: isn't just the paper itself or the fact that you
Speaker 11: have access to a doctor. It's the services but the
Speaker 11: doctor can provide you as a patient, and enlarging the
Speaker 11: value of those services, I think is a huge part
Speaker 11: of what progressive should focus on if they care about healthcare,
Speaker 11: such as the first point, the second point is that
Speaker 11: if you ultimately care about managing prices, you're right that
Speaker 11: there is a lot that we can do outside the
Speaker 11: scope of just science and tech policy. I mean, I
Speaker 11: did a podcast on Plan English about the fact that
Speaker 11: if I was, for whatever reason, this is a DOGE,
Speaker 11: one of the first things I would do is dive
Speaker 11: directly into Medicare advantage, because it is so clear that
Speaker 11: the Medicare advantage program, which allows seniors to use private insurers,
Speaker 11: is bilking the federal government of not just a few
Speaker 11: million dollars here and there, like a lot of the
Speaker 11: DOGE savings are, but maybe tens of billions.
Speaker 10: Of dollars a year over one hundred billion dollars a year.
Speaker 11: If what you care about again is equity and affordability,
Speaker 11: we should be obsessed with Medicare advantage. The other point
Speaker 11: I would absolutely grant you is that while I don't
Speaker 11: consider an I trust anti monopoly policy to be utterly
Speaker 11: central to and pore to my vision of progress in America,
Speaker 11: there is no debating the fact that in many healthcare
Speaker 11: industries like dialysis and healthcare consolidation, we have very clear
Speaker 11: evidence that economists have made quite plain that consolidation in
Speaker 11: these industries and market concentration is driving up costs for
Speaker 11: patients and driving quality down. So this is a place where,
Speaker 11: when it comes to process, comes the tools of my disposal.
Speaker 11: I don't feel particularly jealous about any one set of
Speaker 11: tools that is more popular in the left or the
Speaker 11: center the right. What I'm focused on, and one thing
Speaker 11: I think this book is trying very hard to get
Speaker 11: people to see is outcomes. If you want healthcare that
Speaker 11: is equitable and affordable and high quality, there are different
Speaker 11: levers you can pull in different ways, and it's not
Speaker 11: as if there's going to be one policy that fixes
Speaker 11: all these things at once.
Speaker 2: Another question I had for you, Derek, we can put
Speaker 2: G three up on the screen. This was I thought
Speaker 2: an important sort of like contextual critique, given that it
Speaker 2: is coming out in March of twenty twenty five and
Speaker 2: we are watching the doge onslaught like destroying key functions
Speaker 2: of the government, etc.
Speaker 3: This was from someone who.
Speaker 2: Gave a pretty favorable review actually to the book in
Speaker 2: Democracy Journal, and he said, listen, it's too early, but
Speaker 2: Doge onslot because it is a unique challenge on both sides,
Speaker 2: saying you can do efficiency, but right concedes the thing
Speaker 2: we shouldn't that Doge is something other than billionaire and
Speaker 2: academy vendor plundering and dismantling the government. Indeed, I say
Speaker 2: in the piece, but worth emphasizing. As Doge takes place,
Speaker 2: the idea that quote unquote good governance is some democratic
Speaker 2: protection here against right wing forces feels pretty flat. The
Speaker 2: CFPB was designed very well, that didn't matter, And you
Speaker 2: know what he's gesturing towards there is the fact that okay,
Speaker 2: but then when you have the richest man on the
Speaker 2: planet come in and say, yeah, but I don't like this,
Speaker 2: all of the planning and the good governance in the
Speaker 2: fact that the CFPP.
Speaker 3: Actually delivered for people.
Speaker 2: It ends up not really mattering if you don't tackle
Speaker 2: that core problem of the way that money has captured
Speaker 2: our politics and the way that you know, billionaire and
Speaker 2: corporate interests are far more represented by our political parties
Speaker 2: than the interests of the people that you're you know
Speaker 2: that you want to serve and that you want to
Speaker 2: make life better for And I do too.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I love Mike. Mike is an absolute genius.
Speaker 11: I do not agree with the sentiment expressed in those
Speaker 11: tweets read with so much of his review. I just
Speaker 11: don't agree with the sentiment expressed in those tweets saying
Speaker 11: that government should do efficiency but right does not in
Speaker 11: any way grant elon Musk any kind of credit at all.
Speaker 11: It is very easy to put.
Speaker 10: Two things on the table.
Speaker 11: Number one that DOGE is an absolute disaster, and number
Speaker 11: two that as an entirely separate matter, government should be
Speaker 11: obsessed with efficiency. So Doge's disaster, Yes, I mean. They
Speaker 11: try to reform the Department of Energy to be more
Speaker 11: about nuclear security and accidentally gut it the only administration
Speaker 11: within DOE that has the words nuclear security in the title.
Speaker 11: They tried to reform the FDA and fired some of
Speaker 11: their most talented probationary employees. I think DOGE is a mess.
Speaker 11: Period closed the door there. Let's talk about government efficiency
Speaker 11: for a second. The Biden administration and the Bipartisan Infrastructure
Speaker 11: Bill allocated and authorized forty two billion dollars for rural broadband.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 11: Biden and Boodhajech called this bill the most important and
Speaker 11: for structure bill passed in something like forty fifty sixty years.
Speaker 11: But what happened with world broadband? They authorized forty two
Speaker 11: billion dollars to extend internet coverage for America's most underserved communities,
Speaker 11: and now four calendar years after that bill was passed,
Speaker 11: practically nobody has been hooked up to the service. And
Speaker 11: it's in part because the government created a fourteen step
Speaker 11: process for fifty six different states and localities to fill out,
Speaker 11: and it was so cumbersome and so impossible and so
Speaker 11: damn annoying that today only three of the fifty six
Speaker 11: have actually gotten all the way through the process. And
Speaker 11: now Trump's going to come in and got the entire
Speaker 11: program and just hand the whole thing to Starlink. That's
Speaker 11: not government working well, that's government associating success with how
Speaker 11: much money you can tell people you've authorized or spent with,
Speaker 11: rather than associating success with how much you actually build.
Speaker 11: Right That's the world we talk about over and over
Speaker 11: again in this book. It's a world where California authorizes
Speaker 11: thirty three billion dollars to build a high speed rail
Speaker 11: system in California that does not exist.
Speaker 10: It's a world where the Chicago.
Speaker 11: Mayor Brandon Johnson bragged on Twitter two weeks ago that
Speaker 11: he spent eleven billion dollars building ten thousand affordable housing
Speaker 11: units in Chicago. That's one point one million dollars per
Speaker 11: affordable housing unit in the Midwest. That's pathetic. That is
Speaker 11: government at its most inefficient. That's government as an ineffective disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't need right.
Speaker 2: Now, don't I don't story. Yeah, I got Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: I was just going to say what. I don't disagree
Speaker 2: with any of that. I'm just saying that, Like with
Speaker 2: the CFPB example, I think it's a really good one
Speaker 2: because Democrats, you know, Elizabeth Warren was sort of the
Speaker 2: ideological architect. Democrats built ount this new agency. Like yes,
Speaker 2: it's not a training or a railroad, but it's the
Speaker 2: real thing that had to be built from scratch and
Speaker 2: they did a great job, but it didn't matter because
Speaker 2: Elon Musk could spend a quarter of a billion dollars
Speaker 2: in a presidential election and come in and destroy it.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'm saying is just I feel like
Speaker 2: that piece is missing and it's important, and so if
Speaker 2: it's going to be a complete, you know, paradigm shift
Speaker 2: and a sort of like guidebook for how Democrats should
Speaker 2: approach both politics and governance going forward, I just feel
Speaker 2: I just personally looking at the data, that part feel
Speaker 2: so central to me that it's notable that it's that
Speaker 2: it's not there.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I want to make sure that I understand what
Speaker 11: what piece you don't think is there, because when I
Speaker 11: look at this situation, the reason that Elon Musk is
Speaker 11: destroying CFPB is not that people in the center left
Speaker 11: are giving Elon Musk too much credit. He's destroying CFPB
Speaker 11: because Donald Trump won the election and he doesn't give
Speaker 11: a damn about CFPV.
Speaker 10: That's what's happening.
Speaker 11: We're having an ideological purge to the federal government because
Speaker 11: Donald Trump has won an election and the government is
Speaker 11: now a centralized expression of his personality. And his personality
Speaker 11: is I don't want to see anybody around me who
Speaker 11: disagrees with me, and I want to destroy every semblance
Speaker 11: of my predecessor's record. So CFPB is in existential danger
Speaker 11: right now as I see it. For one overarching reason,
Speaker 11: Donald Trump won. So then you get to the next
Speaker 11: step of the analysis. Why did Donald Trump win? And
Speaker 11: if you ask voters why did Donald Trump win your vote?
Speaker 11: Why did you switch from Biden to Trump between twenty
Speaker 11: twenty and twenty twenty four, over and over again, you
Speaker 11: get the exact same answer. It's affordability. Affordability, affordability. And
Speaker 11: in many cases, I think this issue of affordability is
Speaker 11: intimately intertwined with the issue of effectiveness of liberal governance
Speaker 11: in the places that we have the most power. So
Speaker 11: when I look at saving administrations like CFPB from the
Speaker 11: wrath of Elon Musk, what I become obsessed with is
Speaker 11: how do we take a liberal movement, a Democratic party
Speaker 11: that right now is scratching and clawing for the forty
Speaker 11: eight percent and trying to broaden this movement to in
Speaker 11: not just the forty eight point one percent but a
Speaker 11: fifty two, fifty three to fifty four percent coalition in
Speaker 11: this country. It means, I think, enlargening what people think
Speaker 11: of when they think of liberalism in America. I want
Speaker 11: them to think of growth. I want them to think
Speaker 11: of affordability. I want them to think of an absolutely
Speaker 11: maniacal obsession about how to improve government to make your
Speaker 11: life better.
Speaker 10: And finally, I think.
Speaker 11: That that paradigm shift is the sort of thing that
Speaker 11: allows Democrats to hold power at the federal level so
Speaker 11: that mad men like Musk don't come in and burn
Speaker 11: the whole thing down.
Speaker 3: So I would add to that.
Speaker 2: You know, part of how Donald Trump is able to
Speaker 2: win that election is that he's able to raise a
Speaker 2: quarter of a billion dollars and once at one, you know,
Speaker 2: stop shop from the richest man on the planet. And
Speaker 2: the fact that you have both the vast inequality and
Speaker 2: the system of money and politics that we do helps
Speaker 2: to enable that. Not to mention the level of control
Speaker 2: that people like Elon have. I mean, he's you know,
Speaker 2: beyond anything we've seen before, but we certainly had billionaire
Speaker 2: influence in government before. Is port important part of why
Speaker 2: government fails to deliver, whether it's Democrats or Republicans when
Speaker 2: they're in power.
Speaker 3: But you know and related to them.
Speaker 2: This is my last question for you, Derek, and I
Speaker 2: appreciate you being a good sport as I you know,
Speaker 2: ask my questions here. But you know, when I think
Speaker 2: about the core story of why Democrats lost and why
Speaker 2: Donald Trump was able to win, I think the story
Speaker 2: you tell, I think that's absolutely part of it. But
Speaker 2: I think a central issue was that Donald Trump had
Speaker 2: a very clear story, a very clear narrative with eros
Speaker 2: and villains of what went wrong in this country. Right,
Speaker 2: Immigrants and trans people and cultural elite. They're screwing you over,
Speaker 2: They're destroying your way of life. Immigrants are the reason
Speaker 2: why things are not affordable, and I'm going to fix it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So very clear cut. It's wrong in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Zer can disagree with me and has before, but it's wrong.
Speaker 2: But you know, it made sense to people, and it
Speaker 2: was clear cut. Democrats don't have a similar sort of
Speaker 2: hero villain narrative that makes sense to people.
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders does.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think it's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why people are flocking it as town halls. Why people
Speaker 2: are going to Republican town halls and shanning at them,
Speaker 2: tax the rich, why he continues to be one of
Speaker 2: the most popular politicians in the country because he has
Speaker 2: a very clear cut narrative of what went wrong and
Speaker 2: who the villains are. So, you know, my last question
Speaker 2: for you, just to summarize your philosophy here in the
Speaker 2: paradigm shift you're trying to achieve, Like, who are the
Speaker 2: villains in your story? Are the villains the like liberal
Speaker 2: do gooders who mistakenly put.
Speaker 3: In all the regulations?
Speaker 2: Like is that who you're pointing at the finger at
Speaker 2: as the ones that we need to sort of like
Speaker 2: chide and check and get in line. And if not,
Speaker 2: how is that really that If that is the sort
Speaker 2: of you know, villain of your story, how is that
Speaker 2: that different from the Republican narrative and frame, which would
Speaker 2: also point the finger at the left and say these
Speaker 2: people are the reason that things are bad in the country.
Speaker 11: I think this might be the easiest question you've asked
Speaker 11: so far, But I'm worried that my thinking that might
Speaker 11: mean I'm on the wrong track. The villain is easy.
Speaker 11: Look at Donald Trump, look at Elon Musk. Look what
Speaker 11: these people are doing to our country and to our government.
Speaker 11: The liberal enemy is the easiest thing to define here
Speaker 11: at the national level, and it's very easy to find,
Speaker 11: specifically in the language of abundance. Donald Trump does not
Speaker 11: believe in the concept of a positive some outcome. He
Speaker 11: doesn't believe cooperation is possible at all. He thinks any
Speaker 11: cooperation that he sees oversees like the mere existence of
Speaker 11: the EU, is an insult to America. He doesn't think trade,
Speaker 11: which is the definition of a positive some outcome, can
Speaker 11: possibly lead to mutually good outcomes for both sides. Every
Speaker 11: single time Donald Trump identifies some problem with America, he
Speaker 11: identifies something he wants to take away from America. He says,
Speaker 11: America doesn't have enough housing, so we need to take
Speaker 11: away the immigrants. We don't have enough manufacturing, so we
Speaker 11: have to take away the trade, or we don't do
Speaker 11: enough good science. What we need to do is reduce
Speaker 11: the amount of scientific funding. This is a scarcely mindset
Speaker 11: across the board, and in juxtaposition to that, I think
Speaker 11: an abundance mindset and an abundance book and an abundance
Speaker 11: message rings very very clearly with this sort of hero,
Speaker 11: clear cut hero villain dynamic that you're drawing right, And
Speaker 11: the distinction could not be more crystalline. But to your point,
Speaker 11: I don't want to hide the ball here. This book
Speaker 11: and our critique absolutely forces liberals to take a look
Speaker 11: in the mirror. And it does so not because we
Speaker 11: want to give aid to Republicans or because we want
Speaker 11: to sell books by looking like we're apost states from
Speaker 11: within the liberal movement. We just fundamentally believe that it
Speaker 11: is the sins of modern liberalism and the problems of
Speaker 11: modern progressivism that got us to this point, that allowed
Speaker 11: someone like Donald Trump, who's frankly not a popular political figure,
Speaker 11: to nonetheless dominate the political scene over the last decade.
Speaker 11: Where is an opposition movement that is popular and effective,
Speaker 11: we have instead as an opposition movement the Democratic Party
Speaker 11: that is historically unpopular, pulling a twenty nine percent in
Speaker 11: the last n N rating, and ineffective in the places
Speaker 11: we hold the most power. So when we do this
Speaker 11: friendly fire critique, it's not in any way designed to
Speaker 11: allow us to cozy up to the center right or
Speaker 11: the right to get them to bring us on their
Speaker 11: podcast or something. We're trying to win and to develop
Speaker 11: winning strategies. Sometimes you just have to look very clearly
Speaker 11: in the mirror to ask Why do we keep losing
Speaker 11: not just arguments, but people. People are leaving California, They're
Speaker 11: leaving New York, they're leaving Minnesota, they're leaving Oregon, they're
Speaker 11: leaving Illinois. How are we losing people and elections at
Speaker 11: the same time. You can't answer that question, honestly unless
Speaker 11: you're willing to tell heart truths best your own side.
Speaker 11: So we are trying to tell heart shruths about our
Speaker 11: own side. But it is in service to a broader
Speaker 11: message at is stopping a political revolution on the right
Speaker 11: that we think absolutely hurts America by putting scarcity over abundance.
Speaker 1: Derek, really appreciate your analysis. As always, everybody go buy
Speaker 1: the book. We'll have a link down in the description
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to finish reading it. So thank you
Speaker 1: very much, sir. We appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Derek. It's great to see you.
Speaker 10: Thanks for both of you. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, we will see you all later, but
Speaker 1: quick programming up.
Speaker 2: Yes, my kids spring break, so I'll be on next week.
Speaker 3: Ryan will be in for me.
Speaker 2: I know you guys will be excited about the bro
Speaker 2: shows that. See you back the week after that.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, all right, we will see you all later.