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Speaker 1: How do people feel about Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: Let's ahead and put this up there on the screen
Speaker 3: from CBS News. This is the first major indications that
Speaker 3: we have right now are feeling about the Trump administration
Speaker 3: some twenty days in so far describing Donald Trump. The
Speaker 3: top answers this is plus or minus two point five
Speaker 3: percent in terms of the margin of error, tough sixty
Speaker 3: nine percent, energetic, sixty three percent, focus, sixty percent, effective
Speaker 3: fifty eight Let's go to the next one. Please Trump
Speaker 3: and the campaign promises, is he doing seventy percent? Quote
Speaker 3: what he promised in the campaign, thirty percent different from
Speaker 3: what he promised. Now the coup de gras shall wait.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the final one. Trump overhaul job rating
Speaker 3: fifty three percent approved, forty seven percent disapproved. He's got
Speaker 3: a positive approval rating, something literally unheard of whenever he
Speaker 3: was the previous president of the United States. And if
Speaker 3: you look at some of the individual option or individual
Speaker 3: things that he has espoused and or is attempting to do,
Speaker 3: you're going to see some similar support, although there's very
Speaker 3: important divergence, which we will get to.
Speaker 1: So let's go to the next one.
Speaker 3: Trump administration's program to deport immigrantcy legally in the United States.
Speaker 3: Some fifty nine percent approve, forty one percent disapproved. Can
Speaker 3: we go to the next one please? And here we
Speaker 3: have interesting numbers that Andrew Kasinski flagged from Yuga of
Speaker 3: Trump is some plus ten percent approval with voters under thirty,
Speaker 3: almost unheard of for Republicans. It definitely underscores the shift
Speaker 3: the whole idea of you know, mail voters. You could
Speaker 3: see do you see that number there with a mail
Speaker 3: voters as astounding us trying to Now this is where
Speaker 3: the diverges comes. Into and this is what I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get to. Of all the things that Donald Trump, I
Speaker 3: unfortunately was not able to be here on Thursday to
Speaker 3: rage against this has said that has concerned me most,
Speaker 3: and what I think would destroy both this country and
Speaker 3: his presidency is this, US trying to take over Gaza
Speaker 3: would be thirteen percent good idea, forty seven percent bad idea,
Speaker 3: forty percent not sure depends to the forty.
Speaker 4: Percent in side of the country on this one.
Speaker 3: To the forty percent, I beg I plead get with
Speaker 3: the program, get with the bad idea. There is not
Speaker 3: a single thing that Donald Trump has done this presidency
Speaker 3: that has not shocked, appalled, outraged, like incited me to
Speaker 3: like rage and potential violence if this were to happen.
Speaker 1: Then his insane.
Speaker 3: Proposal to take over Gaza, which he seems completely committed to,
Speaker 3: let's go ahead and take to listen to that which
Speaker 3: he said yesterday on his way to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 5: Committed to buying and owning goes as far as US
Speaker 5: rebuilding it. We may give it to other states in
Speaker 5: the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people
Speaker 5: may do it through our auspices, but we're committed to
Speaker 5: owning it, taking it and making sure that Hamas says
Speaker 5: it moved back, there's nothing to move back into the
Speaker 5: places a demolition site.
Speaker 1: It'll be.
Speaker 5: The remainder will be demolished. Everything's demolished. I mean, you
Speaker 5: can't live in those buildings right now.
Speaker 1: They're very unsad.
Speaker 3: So we went from Trump the peacemaker ceasefire too, we're not.
Speaker 1: It's so crazy.
Speaker 3: I thought that the worst thing that would happen is like,
Speaker 3: all right, Israel can hand it over. I did not
Speaker 3: for one million year's thing. Oh, we're actually going to
Speaker 3: be the ones who administer it. Now Trump says, we're
Speaker 3: not going to have a single troop on the ground. Okay,
Speaker 3: good luck trying to find that piece of property without
Speaker 3: it mating. Something potentially like even worse and more outrageous
Speaker 3: is removing all the United States actually expelling all of
Speaker 3: these people instead of the Israelis. I mean, it's one thing,
Speaker 3: you know, these two people where they're going to ethnically
Speaker 3: cleanse them.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, well that's on them. But this
Speaker 1: is like us not only complicit and shipping arms to.
Speaker 3: Facilitate it, but like actively participating. There's that I saw
Speaker 3: a tweet going around immediately after Trump has said that,
Speaker 3: and this is not an endorsement, but it's like that
Speaker 3: is going to incite more terrorism against the United States,
Speaker 3: And like any potential thing an American president has done
Speaker 3: since the invasion of Iraq, I'm like, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 3: getting into a.
Speaker 1: Damn skyscraper anytime soon after.
Speaker 3: I am beside myself over this, And I'm beside myself
Speaker 3: over it because he's totally serious.
Speaker 1: And this is where the Trump administrated.
Speaker 3: There is not a single thing that you could do
Speaker 3: that would not sink your presidency faster than the political
Speaker 3: administration of Gaza. Then United States sold service members putting
Speaker 3: their lives at risk worse getting killed in the because
Speaker 3: of the Israeli military's Operation Base. I mean, there is nothing,
Speaker 3: there's not a single thing a solution to this crisis
Speaker 3: or whatever that could be worse than what is being
Speaker 3: proposed here turning the Arab world against US, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, inciting terrorism, but at its absolute worst is
Speaker 3: for some reason Israel gets to destroy Gaza and then
Speaker 3: we are the ones who have to pay for it,
Speaker 3: facilitate the ethnical that they want to get rid of
Speaker 3: all of these I never in my wildest.
Speaker 1: Dreams did I think that we would be where we
Speaker 1: are to. I am just thank god.
Speaker 3: You know, hopefully the American people can speak out against it.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you this if they if a single American
Speaker 3: soldiers foot in Gaza, I'm going to be out there
Speaker 3: like some Vietnam War hippie in the street. Like I'm
Speaker 3: not kidding. That is a complete red line. I think
Speaker 3: it should be for everybody. What did we not learn
Speaker 3: our lesson? And you know, with Trump, this is where
Speaker 3: his arrogance. One of the things I predicted here on
Speaker 3: the show is like every president who wins a popular
Speaker 3: but especially in their second term, they always overreach in
Speaker 3: some way and it ends up back from I would
Speaker 3: never predict it that it would be this, but this
Speaker 3: is the if you want a ticket to not only
Speaker 3: losing for a generation, destroying your legacy those now this
Speaker 3: would be a footnote to a disastrous Middle war in
Speaker 3: the Middle East.
Speaker 1: So I just I have nothing else to say about it.
Speaker 1: It's insane. I could go on for it makes me
Speaker 1: want to lose my mind.
Speaker 3: Where is the anti war coalition? I'm seeing people who
Speaker 3: I've known for twenty years, who have spoken against neo
Speaker 3: cons and saying, oh, we can you know, happily administer God?
Speaker 1: Am I losing my mind? I mean what happened.
Speaker 3: I knew that the right and many others were craven
Speaker 3: whenever it came to Afghanistan, and they never really believed
Speaker 3: what they said.
Speaker 1: I didn't really believe that it was this bad that we.
Speaker 3: Were actually going to be on board, you know, imperialism
Speaker 3: through bullying like Greenland, I'm like.
Speaker 1: Fine with but this, this is too much.
Speaker 3: It was like this is this is one of those
Speaker 3: where I mean, we've learned no lessons. It seems Trump
Speaker 3: is totally serious, Like it's one of those where something
Speaker 3: I have learned here with the second term. I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 3: let's take him totally seriously.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you saying that, because that's a lot of
Speaker 2: the Copeice is like, oh, well, it's just a negotiating
Speaker 2: position and he's not serious.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, I don't know why you.
Speaker 2: First of all, if he says and he said it
Speaker 2: now repeatedly, right, you should take it seriously. And number
Speaker 2: two is to your point, like if we've learned anything
Speaker 2: in this second administration, it's like, no, even the wildest things,
Speaker 2: even things that he frankly never talked about at the
Speaker 2: Gambagne trail are completely on the table. So yeah, not
Speaker 2: a very popular move there, but one that he's in.
Speaker 2: And you know this, it seems like it comes from Kushner,
Speaker 2: who floated originally like waterfront property blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: this is Trump's like deranged real estate brain where he
Speaker 2: just sees like dollar signs and you know, certainly doesn't
Speaker 2: care about the people there or what it would entail.
Speaker 2: But it's it's I mean, it's disgusting, it's a moral
Speaker 2: it's a catastrophe. It's just it is even worse than
Speaker 2: what I could have imagined.
Speaker 1: I never could have cooked something up like Trump.
Speaker 2: Would have done, like and I think I had a
Speaker 2: pretty dire expectation of what his policy Vizavi Israel would be.
Speaker 4: This is actually worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and look, even though it's even granting
Speaker 3: Israel aid and all that, I mean, it wouldn't be
Speaker 3: super popular, but people wouldn't particularly care that much. It's
Speaker 3: not going to be a deciding factor in the election
Speaker 3: or in the future, and it would it would definitely
Speaker 3: be something that people pay attention to foreign pop But
Speaker 3: this is one of those. Again, nothing will sink you
Speaker 3: like an unpopular foreign war. And the craziest thing is
Speaker 3: even the most hardened neo conservatives who in Washington, not
Speaker 3: even they could have cooked up US administration and takeover
Speaker 3: of Gaza, Not even they could have imagined such an
Speaker 3: audacious scheme. And I mean, did you I'm sure you guys,
Speaker 3: Ryan covered it. Did you see Beebe's face whenever Trump's
Speaker 3: the even he appears to be taken up, He's like, wait,
Speaker 3: what is like?
Speaker 1: Wait? I thought it was ours. I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was gonna be.
Speaker 2: Bbe looked totally happy to make well, look I totally
Speaker 2: had why.
Speaker 3: I think he's happy because now not only the two
Speaker 3: state solution lip service is literally just it's dead because
Speaker 3: now it doesn't even matter, right, it's often it's a
Speaker 3: different universe of what now we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh, if America doesn't own it, then Israel will own it.
Speaker 3: But the idea of some Palestinian authority like this is fake,
Speaker 3: It's gone. H The question now is like all of
Speaker 3: this open uh you know, uh talk of hitting Egypt
Speaker 3: and Jordan and all of these people with tariffs, and
Speaker 3: this is one of those where Look, this is serious shit,
Speaker 3: Like they were talking about two something million people Jordan.
Speaker 2: According to Trump, it's one point seven or one point eight,
Speaker 2: which is also an omission that they've probably killed more
Speaker 2: like half a million Palestinians.
Speaker 3: I did not even think about it. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay,
Speaker 3: So one point fine, one point seven million. That would
Speaker 3: fundamentally change the ethnic makeup of Jordan and of Egypt.
Speaker 1: Why would they tolerate that?
Speaker 3: What of the Egyptians and the Jordanians told us from
Speaker 3: day one? Three point one billion in aid to Egypt
Speaker 3: every year is not going to buy you their political
Speaker 3: subservience on this question on something that maybe Suez or whatever,
Speaker 3: it's a little bit different, but we're not talking about
Speaker 3: Canada trade war, Mexico trade war. This is a like
Speaker 3: political legitimacy question of the Jordanian and the Egyptian regimes
Speaker 3: that are in power. They can never accept this status quo.
Speaker 3: Same with the Saudi's the UAE. I mean this is
Speaker 3: this is the perfect recipe for a complete alignment against
Speaker 3: the United States and the region for inciting terrorism. But
Speaker 3: I mean again, worse if we were just to think
Speaker 3: of it from our perspective Why should an American soldier
Speaker 3: die for the political administration of Gaza.
Speaker 1: Why should we first also pay for it.
Speaker 3: So we facilitate the destruction, and so we pay for
Speaker 3: the destruction, and then we pay for the rebuilding. That's
Speaker 3: like some disaster capitalism meme that's out there. You can't
Speaker 3: even make, you know, that's like out of a book
Speaker 3: of Nom Chomsky's fantasy novel to create this entire situation.
Speaker 3: I've gotta say, I'm very pointed to and Steve Whitcoff,
Speaker 3: who I genuinely had confidence in bringing about the ceasefire
Speaker 3: and all of that, but now even he appears to
Speaker 3: be you know, back saw.
Speaker 4: His trip to Gaza to justify this talk.
Speaker 2: And this, by the way, there are things that we've
Speaker 2: been predicting, honestly from the beginning, not that the US
Speaker 2: would own Gaza, but that they would destroy it so
Speaker 2: much that then they say, gosh, no one could live there.
Speaker 2: It's a humanitarian thing to do well, whose poor people.
Speaker 4: Out of there?
Speaker 2: Right, And that's what Whitcoff used his trip to Gaza
Speaker 2: to do, to say, it's so destroyed, there's no people
Speaker 2: are going to the north and they're coming back because
Speaker 2: there's nothing there, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean
Speaker 2: it's true, we did, you know, we did help the
Speaker 2: Israelis thoroughly.
Speaker 4: Destroy and demolish it.
Speaker 2: And I think the end goal always in the Israeli's mind,
Speaker 2: was so that they could have this moment of saying
Speaker 2: and gosh, that's you know, we just we got to
Speaker 2: deal with moving these people out of this territory.
Speaker 4: It's a shame.
Speaker 2: You'll remember the Biden administration floated something not us taking
Speaker 2: it over, but also floated, hey, why don't we set
Speaker 2: up some tensity.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, they in a more neolib
Speaker 1: way where they're.
Speaker 3: Like, well, us and the European Union will coalition coalition
Speaker 3: of people will pay.
Speaker 1: For the admittment. It's like, well, okay, the net effect
Speaker 1: is the same.
Speaker 3: And I mean, I guess that's one of those where
Speaker 3: this was probably an end result in some administrative form.
Speaker 1: But to just say we're going to buy it and
Speaker 1: own it.
Speaker 3: I mean, the MAGA high IQ cope on this one
Speaker 3: is like, oh, he's negotiating, but I'm like, but negotiating
Speaker 3: to what what right?
Speaker 1: I mean, no matter what, this is going to be
Speaker 1: bad for us.
Speaker 2: Right, We don't need to negotiate because like we own
Speaker 2: these people, like the Israelis, you know. So anyway, there's that.
Speaker 2: In addition, listen, I do want to just to go
Speaker 2: back quickly to the overall approval rating. I do think
Speaker 2: there's something to Elon Musk is a bit of a
Speaker 2: heat shield for Trump right now.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's an interesting theory, is.
Speaker 2: And this is part of why I have always thought
Speaker 2: that it is unlikely that there's going to be a
Speaker 2: severing in the near term of this relationship because they
Speaker 2: both get a lot. I mean, Elon gets everything that
Speaker 2: he wants and Trump, you know, Elon's taken a lot
Speaker 2: of the heat. Trump can kind of go. He's golfed
Speaker 2: like a million times already since he's been golfed with Tiger.
Speaker 2: The other day, I think that was just yesterday. I
Speaker 2: was golfing with Tiger and Charlie Woods talking about the
Speaker 2: Live PGA merger deal.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Who's Charlie Woods?
Speaker 4: Is you that's Tiger's son?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah? Is he good?
Speaker 4: He is very good?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, very good.
Speaker 2: In any case, Trump gets to do whatever he wants,
Speaker 2: and Elon's taken a lot of the heat, and you know,
Speaker 2: so I think there's something to that. It's also worth
Speaker 2: pointing out that Biden at this time in his presidency
Speaker 2: had a plus fourteen approval rating, So presidential honeymoons are
Speaker 2: also a real thing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you're I mean, look, it's early, it's only twenty days.
Speaker 3: Trump is much more of a polarizing figure and was
Speaker 3: elected in different shays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: So I mean I think, you know, you have to
Speaker 3: compare people to their contacts. So within the Trumpian contact,
Speaker 3: who was literally president, to have a positive approval rating
Speaker 3: is nuts. I see danger for him in the Elon way.
Speaker 3: I see danger for him With Goz. I think Goazza
Speaker 3: would mostly immediately sink him. Look at Afghanistan. You know,
Speaker 3: history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A disastrous foreign conflagration
Speaker 3: can sink you like no other one.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I also look at a rock with
Speaker 2: George W. Bush just by the end of his presidency,
Speaker 2: what his approval rating was like in the twenties.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: I actually recently was talking with someone and they were like, man,
Speaker 3: the jubilants, the change, and I was like, guys, it's
Speaker 3: just too short. And this is where you like you
Speaker 3: just need to read a book George W. Bush into
Speaker 3: I mean, imagine twenty days in the George W.
Speaker 1: Bush administration.
Speaker 3: The second term I would have been like, America is
Speaker 3: an evangelical Christian country, we are neo conservative, we are
Speaker 3: nation building, and by eighteen months we've tried to privatize
Speaker 3: social security. We have a thousand dead soldiers and service
Speaker 3: members in Iraq. The American people blow out the midterms
Speaker 3: for the Democratic Party. Oh and then to put a
Speaker 3: bow on it, we have the financial crisis and Barack
Speaker 3: Obama wins Indiana.
Speaker 1: So let's all take a step back and let's look
Speaker 1: at where the risk is.
Speaker 2: Well, the risk the other risk, Yeah, the other risk
Speaker 2: is with regard to.
Speaker 4: Inflation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I was about to get to yeah, which is.
Speaker 2: You know, people still are like we kind of like,
Speaker 2: did you do something about this whole price high price situation?
Speaker 4: And you don't really seem to have your eye on
Speaker 4: the ball there.
Speaker 2: If anything with tariffs is probably going in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: So we can put up on the screen the numbers
Speaker 2: not enough focus on prices sixty six percent, So a
Speaker 2: super majority say you got to refocus your priorities here
Speaker 2: only thirty one percent say it is the right amount.
Speaker 2: He got asked by Brought Barrick yesterday in advance of
Speaker 2: the Super Bowl about when families are going to be
Speaker 2: able to feel prices going down.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to what Trump have to say.
Speaker 7: When do you think families would be able to feel
Speaker 7: prices going down groceries, energy, or are you kind of
Speaker 7: saying to them hang on, inflation may get worse until
Speaker 7: it gets better. No, I think we're going to become
Speaker 7: a rich We're not that rich right now. We owe
Speaker 7: thirty six trillion dollars. That's because we let all these
Speaker 7: nations take advantage of us. Same thing, like two hundred
Speaker 7: billion with Canada, will three hundred. We have a deficit
Speaker 7: with Mexico of three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 2: So no real answer there, and then shifts to terrafts,
Speaker 2: which again is part of I think people's however we
Speaker 2: feel about the terrorists, part of people's concern about prices
Speaker 2: going up.
Speaker 4: And Wall Street Journal had a write up.
Speaker 2: Now, listen, Wall Street Journal is just like blanket against
Speaker 2: any tariffs whatsoever. So I think they do have an
Speaker 2: ideological interest in writing up this piece, but the numbers
Speaker 2: that they cite here are really can put this up
Speaker 2: on the screen. They say, the Trump bump in consumer
Speaker 2: confidence is already over.
Speaker 4: The mood of the American consumer is souring.
Speaker 2: They say that consumer sentiment fell about five percent in
Speaker 2: the University of Michigan's preliminary February survey of consumers to
Speaker 2: It's the lowest reading since July of twenty four. Expectations
Speaker 2: of inflation the year had also jumped from three point
Speaker 2: three percent in januarated four point three percent.
Speaker 4: Apparently that is a very.
Speaker 2: Significant Like to see a month over month increase of
Speaker 2: a full percentage point expectation in terms of inflation is
Speaker 2: quite significant.
Speaker 1: Americans is just like they are under Biden.
Speaker 3: They'll give you a chance, right, They'll give you like
Speaker 3: eight nine months, and then if if they feel like
Speaker 3: you're not doing anything, then they're going to turn against you.
Speaker 3: So this is the danger for Donald Trump. This is
Speaker 3: also where I think Elon in them could be a
Speaker 3: danger as well, because the problem with the move fast
Speaker 3: and break things approach is it's fine in the interim
Speaker 3: when people are like oh, it's you know, they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's it's energetic, it's awesome, it's fun to watch. But
Speaker 3: you know, right now, I think there's some dose stuff
Speaker 3: going on with FEMA and they're talking about that.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, you're only one.
Speaker 3: I didn't mention in my retrospective about Bush Katrina is
Speaker 3: really what's tank him. If you go back and you look,
Speaker 3: you're only one national disaster away from the entire mood of.
Speaker 1: The country souring and turning against you.
Speaker 3: This is like important differences obviously for that in the future.
Speaker 3: But if you have dose, who is you know, it
Speaker 3: does something or cuts a program or like the fa
Speaker 3: A crash that we had earlier. Imagine if that crash
Speaker 3: was twenty months from now, right, I mean you can
Speaker 3: imagine the media environment right that that would have looked like.
Speaker 2: Previously at that point they were able to be like
Speaker 2: uh oh dah, yeah, now it's like all right, well
Speaker 2: you own this buddy.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, So it's twenty months.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, you know, disasters don't wait for disasters
Speaker 3: don't just conveniently get time. They could happen literally at
Speaker 3: any moment. So I think that's where the Elon Doese
Speaker 3: approach could really come back to bite them a disastrous
Speaker 3: foreign conflict like Gaza. That would be I mean, that's
Speaker 3: the ticket to single digit approval rating.
Speaker 1: Just ask George H. W. Bush and or George H. W.
Speaker 1: B George W.
Speaker 3: Bush, Joe Biden, every single one of them who's costs
Speaker 3: their approval rating to this? So that simple, you know, okay,
Speaker 3: if that's the way that you want to decide. And
Speaker 3: the other is if they feel that if there's a mismatch.
Speaker 3: So this gets to the Bush analogy of privatization of
Speaker 3: Social security. So let's say Trump only does tariffs, but
Speaker 3: just stops carrying stop only does tariffs and cost cutting
Speaker 3: or what doge stuff? Forgets about inflation, and stops bullying
Speaker 3: the federal reserve, which I think is important to try, and.
Speaker 1: He needs to bring that back.
Speaker 3: No, I'm like, listen, privatize this.
Speaker 1: Can we at least get on board with the coop
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: Let's march into the federal reserve, let's take it over,
Speaker 3: and let's bring it back under civilian administration.
Speaker 1: Let's drop the rates back to zero.
Speaker 3: But if you have a march of two years, you've
Speaker 3: got all of this doze tariff stuff going on. Prices
Speaker 3: either are raised stay flat.
Speaker 1: I think that's a problem.
Speaker 3: If income, wages and all that stuff doesn't start to
Speaker 3: go up, if gas remains relatively flat. That's where two
Speaker 3: years from now, when all you have is vibes of
Speaker 3: doge and media chaos and all the others, that's when
Speaker 3: the people wally turned against Trump in two thousand and
Speaker 3: by the way, don't forget all this is in interim.
Speaker 3: Over the next eighteen months, we're about to pass what
Speaker 3: a massive tax cut re extension on. I mean, there
Speaker 3: might be some good things in there, but let's all
Speaker 3: be honest about what's going to happen. You're going to
Speaker 3: see the extension of a huge corporate tax cut, which
Speaker 3: is one of the worst days of the Trump presidency
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen if you go back and you look
Speaker 3: at his approval ratings. So there are some serious red
Speaker 3: flags ahead for him, and it's very easy to sink
Speaker 3: yourself if you go in that direction. But the media
Speaker 3: environment has changed, so maybe, you know, maybe things are different.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, maybe, I mean I still think people,
Speaker 2: you know, people are tuned into reality. So if their
Speaker 2: lives are not getting better and prices are high, and
Speaker 2: we're getting entangled and more.
Speaker 1: Well, if you have more.
Speaker 2: Wanted, people are gonna be like, yeah, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not really.
Speaker 4: Down with it. And there's also just there has been
Speaker 4: a swing.
Speaker 2: Back and forth backlash effect where people are feel like
Speaker 2: the country is on the wrong track and they're not satisfied.
Speaker 2: And so I think, you know, I think the rests
Speaker 2: are pretty high for him.
Speaker 3: Also, the average mortgage rate right now in the United
Speaker 3: States is six point ninety seven percent, So if that
Speaker 3: doesn't go down anytime soon, like that's just going to say,
Speaker 3: if you have four more years of this, people who
Speaker 3: are elder millennials, they're gonna be almost what like nearing
Speaker 3: fifty Yeah, and they're not gonna be able to buy
Speaker 3: a house. Like what, that's that's too much, right, So
Speaker 3: if you can think about some of the some of
Speaker 3: the ways that can manifest itself politically.
Speaker 1: Still we always covered it here over the last several years.
Speaker 3: I still think that's a huge reason why oh yeah
Speaker 3: was successful in this election.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the elon part.
Speaker 3: This is important too and gets to some of the
Speaker 3: stuff we're talking about here. Let's put this poll up
Speaker 3: there on the screen. This was from The Economist and
Speaker 3: you Gov, and they did a poll of Republicans where
Speaker 3: they supported. They asked them in November of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four how much they wanted Elon to have influence in
Speaker 3: the Trump administration. So at that time post election, they
Speaker 3: said they wanted Elon to quote have a lot of
Speaker 3: influence over the incoming Trump administration. Forty seven percent, twenty
Speaker 3: nine percent said a little, twelve percent said none at all.
Speaker 3: Now let's go to where we are today in February.
Speaker 3: You have twenty six percent a lot, forty three percent
Speaker 3: a little, seventeen percent none at all. So a big
Speaker 3: shift from a lot to a little. This is difficult
Speaker 3: to parse, you know, it's kind of complicated in terms
Speaker 3: of all of that. But this is big questions too
Speaker 3: in terms of like what is fueling then what even
Speaker 3: that really means. But there's some signs for some problems
Speaker 3: there for Elon and for Doze.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next one.
Speaker 2: Let me just before we jump to the next one,
Speaker 2: let me just also point out the numbers from there
Speaker 2: with regard to Democrats and independence. I mean, you can
Speaker 2: imagine Democrats were never super psyched about Elon having a
Speaker 2: lot of influence in the Trump administration. But in November
Speaker 2: you had fifteen percent of Democrats and twenty six percent
Speaker 2: of Independence saying they wanted him to have a lot
Speaker 2: of influence. Overall, thirteen percent of surveyed Americans want Monthks
Speaker 2: to have a lot of influence on the Trump administration. Now,
Speaker 2: So at this point in time, whereas previously it was
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of Democrats twenty six percent of Independence saying
Speaker 2: they wanted him to have a lot, now it's only
Speaker 2: six percent of Independence who say they want him to
Speaker 2: have a lot of influence. And if you take the
Speaker 2: entire American public together, only thirteen percent say they want
Speaker 2: him to have a lot of influence. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's just a natural reaction against like the
Speaker 2: richest man on the planet making all of these decisions
Speaker 2: about whether you get Social Security, whether your public school
Speaker 2: system gets funded, whether your head Start has funding, whether
Speaker 2: your rural health clinic has funding, et cetera. There's a
Speaker 2: revulsion to that. And I think, you know, as he
Speaker 2: has aggressively asserted himself in ways that frankly went far
Speaker 2: beyond I always thought Doge would have teeth. I never
Speaker 2: thought it was some blue ribbon commission make work project.
Speaker 2: This has gone way beyond what I expected, and is
Speaker 2: a piece of this that you know, of the Trump
Speaker 2: administration that I really didn't factor in, you know, going
Speaker 2: in thinking about how this was all going to unfold.
Speaker 2: And so I do think there is a reaction against
Speaker 2: that usurping of power from you know, the dude that
Speaker 2: just got elected and the Congress, et cetera, and all
Speaker 2: consolidating power in the hands of this one.
Speaker 1: All.
Speaker 3: I think it's possible, but there I'm still very skeptical
Speaker 3: of this theory I have. So I'll just say this
Speaker 3: politically I have really had to force myself. Is the
Speaker 3: media being institute utionally left wing and the narratives of
Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff that have been able to shape.
Speaker 3: Think about the biggest syops of the election like Brat Summer,
Speaker 3: fake right, Tim Wall's incredible candidate fake such incredible with
Speaker 3: the men, all that fake beyondce say, all this other
Speaker 3: stuff non existent when we think back through the election,
Speaker 3: even with the Poles and other childless cat ladies, is
Speaker 3: going to sink them with women? Fake Springfield, Ohio, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's gonna newke them. Nope, Actually Springfield voted more for Trump.
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico garbage, git, all of that complete siop on
Speaker 3: all of these.
Speaker 1: I still I'm not sure I yet.
Speaker 3: Grasp the lack of power the media has in shaping
Speaker 3: its narratives. So, for example, in this question, the United
Speaker 3: States isn't a constitucial crisis, they say, agree to fifty
Speaker 3: four percent, disagree twenty seven.
Speaker 1: So people are like, see, people are turning against Elon.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, if you ask the average Joe on
Speaker 3: the street, is the United States in a console crisis?
Speaker 1: And he says yes, Is he talking about Elon?
Speaker 3: Or is he talking about Mitch McConnell being like ninety
Speaker 3: nine years old and collapsing in every stroke? Is he
Speaker 3: talking about is he probably just evergreen agreed because he
Speaker 3: doesn't like the way that the government is going. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm still just deeply skeptical that Americans are as tuned in.
Speaker 3: I think what I really learned from the election was
Speaker 3: that the power of these media narratives around childish cat ladies,
Speaker 3: around haitians, about I mean, all of this, it just
Speaker 3: it ended up being literally the opposite. I mean, so
Speaker 3: much of the institutional credibility from the Seltzer poll, all
Speaker 3: of these shibbolets that we all had in American politics
Speaker 3: were broken fundamentally.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about this from like, oh.
Speaker 3: My god, this is amazing, but you're like, you really
Speaker 3: do have to look at it and be like wow, wow.
Speaker 3: I mean really, when you think about all the things
Speaker 3: that people said that we're going to sink Donald Trump
Speaker 3: and they ended up having, if anything, a negligible or
Speaker 3: the opposite effect in the electorate, I'm just deeply skeptical
Speaker 3: about this elon thing hitting home unless something like what
Speaker 3: you're saying materializes. So far, social security has not been
Speaker 3: touched right, getting access to socialecurity. Okay, even Medicare, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: if you get Medicare fraud, it's great. Actually some estimate
Speaker 3: of fifty billion dollars in Medicare fraud.
Speaker 1: Will they properly do it? I don't know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Listen, I have no idea.
Speaker 4: The question is time after Rick Scott, Well, actually we.
Speaker 3: Should go after Rick Scott.
Speaker 1: They're not going to do that. The question is how.
Speaker 3: It materializes functionally, and also how people experience these events
Speaker 3: really in their lives. And I really took away from
Speaker 3: the election that because if you turn on CNN and
Speaker 3: all of that is all this must talk and all
Speaker 3: of this. I don't think it's bad because you know,
Speaker 3: here we're talking, we're trying to predict the impact of stuff,
Speaker 3: but really, when you think back to that effect, it
Speaker 3: just didn't exist. So I'm skeptical of some of this stuff,
Speaker 3: deeply am in terms of just you know, even in
Speaker 3: the polling, and I've I've had to learn that on immigration,
Speaker 3: mass deportation.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to excuse the America's totally with this.
Speaker 3: I know how Americans are, right, Like the moment you
Speaker 3: see a little kid in a cage is like things
Speaker 3: can change a lot, and they can change on a dime.
Speaker 3: So the vibe, the way that you experience, and the
Speaker 3: way that you actually execute a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that stuff matters the most.
Speaker 3: And so I'm not ready to make a call like
Speaker 3: Elon is dramatically unpopular, Elon is all this All I
Speaker 3: can say is a risk.
Speaker 1: I know he has his own agenda.
Speaker 3: You know, Analytically, I can see the ways that this
Speaker 3: could go wrong, but I could also see how it
Speaker 3: could be a pretty popular success.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, but I mean to be honest
Speaker 2: with you, like I, this to me is the least
Speaker 2: important point. You know, what we were discussing before the
Speaker 2: reality of what he's doing and what it means for
Speaker 2: the country, to me is the most important point.
Speaker 4: But you know, the trend, the decline for Elon.
Speaker 2: He used to be very popular, you know, and people, oh,
Speaker 2: he's a genius, he's an inventor, blah blah blah, made
Speaker 2: my electric car.
Speaker 4: I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of liberals love this guy, right,
Speaker 2: I'm seeing a lot of bumper stickers on teslas that
Speaker 2: are like, I bought this before we knew Elon was
Speaker 2: insane and things like that.
Speaker 4: But you know, he had high.
Speaker 2: Approval ratings kind of across the board, and ever since
Speaker 2: he really, you know, became a partisan figure, obviously, his
Speaker 2: approval rating took a hit because that's just gonna instantly, instantly,
Speaker 2: you know, lead you into this very tribal, partisan mindset.
Speaker 2: And then since he's been so aggressively at the forefront
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration, it seems pretty clear his approval
Speaker 2: rating has continued to decline. I don't disagree on the
Speaker 2: constitutional crisis peace, even though I do think it's pretty
Speaker 2: you know, we're pretty clearly into a constitutional crisis, or
Speaker 2: at the very least, if they go forward with their
Speaker 2: threats to ignore court decisions, we will certainly be in
Speaker 2: a constitutional crisis. I think you would even agree with
Speaker 2: it at that point if that ultimately happens. But I
Speaker 2: do think that there's probably a lot of people who,
Speaker 2: you know, just like they're not happy with the government,
Speaker 2: and then it's just like, yes, it's a constitutional crisis,
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, on an election night, there
Speaker 2: was like what was what was.
Speaker 4: Your top issue?
Speaker 2: One of them was preserving to be boy or whatever,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of Republicans who were like,
Speaker 2: we have to elect Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: To present the election was stolen democracy.
Speaker 2: Because the election was and even you know, with the
Speaker 2: institutional crisis thing, even if I'm to read into it
Speaker 2: that people really are paying attention, et cetera.
Speaker 4: I mean, now you have you had Elon.
Speaker 2: We showed the tweet earlier where he's calling a federal
Speaker 2: court making a ruling a judicial coup.
Speaker 4: So they're also.
Speaker 2: Setting up language about how it's a constitutional crisis because
Speaker 2: the courts are overreaching and they're checking the legitimate power
Speaker 2: of the executive, et cetera, et cetera. The reason though,
Speaker 2: why I depart from you in terms of like, I
Speaker 2: don't again, I don't know that it matters that much
Speaker 2: whether it's popular or not, although we have seen some
Speaker 2: pushback work in some limited ways. But the way he's
Speaker 2: trying to consolidate power is to make like your democratic
Speaker 2: always completely irrelevant. That is part of the project of
Speaker 2: installing a monarch and a CEO dictator. But the reason
Speaker 2: why I think it's going to be dramatically unpopular is
Speaker 2: because the you know, even if you take the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley framing, the like move fast and break things, that
Speaker 2: means you're breaking things, and the federal government does matter
Speaker 2: for people, you know, for planes not falling out of
Speaker 2: the sky, and your local health clinic getting funded. Right now,
Speaker 2: in Virginia, half of the rural health clinics that are
Speaker 2: particularly dependent on actually in rural like red parts of
Speaker 2: the state, like southwestern Virginia, half of them are still funding.
Speaker 2: Quite a number of them have had to shut down.
Speaker 2: Virginia's not the only stay of Rhode Island. Other states
Speaker 2: across the country still are lacking funding. You've had farmers
Speaker 2: who were depending on deals that they had made with
Speaker 2: the federal government to finance certain investments in their farms.
Speaker 2: Those contracts have been at least paused, so they are
Speaker 2: on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars that
Speaker 2: they thought the federal government was going to participate in
Speaker 2: those costs for that upgrade those you know. And that's
Speaker 2: just like the small ball beginning of the situation. But
Speaker 2: the way he operates, if you just look at the
Speaker 2: way he operates a Twitter, if you look at the
Speaker 2: way he's operated at Tesla, at SpaceX, etc. Things literally break,
Speaker 2: Rockets literally explode. Twitter is unable to host a spaces
Speaker 2: with Ron DeSantis, and then the one with Trump has
Speaker 2: all sorts of audio issues and problems and sounds like
Speaker 2: shit as well. That's one thing when you're running a company.
Speaker 2: It's another thing when you're running the government. So even
Speaker 2: by his own description of what he's doing here, it's
Speaker 2: going to require it's going to lead to things breaking
Speaker 2: that are important to people, and I do think there
Speaker 2: will be a tremendous backlash against that. Now, whether that
Speaker 2: backlash matters or not to me is the more of
Speaker 2: the open question.
Speaker 3: I think you might listen. I think the risk is there,
Speaker 3: it's still a hope if they're smart.
Speaker 1: What you do is you just keep.
Speaker 3: It on CFPB, Usaid Medicare fraud. If a single check
Speaker 3: gets stopped, that's when there's going to be problems if
Speaker 3: old people don't get their healthcare.
Speaker 1: If old people don't.
Speaker 4: It's already happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, these healths. Well, then actually, let's get to
Speaker 1: a bigger political point.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe we'll talk about this with CFPB, but
Speaker 3: let's be honest here, right, a lot of the people
Speaker 3: were being affected voted red.
Speaker 1: Are they really going to blame Trump and Elon? Are
Speaker 1: they going to blame democrats? Like? Are they actually going
Speaker 1: to make the dots?
Speaker 3: Skeptical personally in terms of the way that politics has changed,
Speaker 3: and just think about the media environment that people swim in.
Speaker 1: You know, this is do we have Thomas Frank's book here?
Speaker 1: I think we used to.
Speaker 3: I mean, what's the matter with Kansas? I understand how
Speaker 3: left to see it. It's also a diagnosis for literally
Speaker 3: how the playbook of all of this has happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I encourage people to go out and read it.
Speaker 2: This is kind of my monologue about the way that
Speaker 2: even like the you know, changes of the CFPB are
Speaker 2: being ushered in under like a culture war agenda, and
Speaker 2: you know it's similar to what like similar to what
Speaker 2: liberals did with like, instead of lifting wages, we're going
Speaker 2: to just you know, have a diversity statement or how
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, land acknowledgments and these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: Or we're going to pass a resolution affirming the Equal
Speaker 2: Rights Amendment.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, with the very last women's rights or whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh was that. I wish we cover that more, but yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I'll save this for my monologue. But that's effectively
Speaker 2: the playbook here is.
Speaker 3: Speaking of all of this, there has been the latest
Speaker 3: in the Trump administration's war on the administrative state. Let's
Speaker 3: go and put this up there on the screen. Russbaut,
Speaker 3: who is the OMB director, has said, quote, pursuant to
Speaker 3: the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal
Speaker 3: Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw
Speaker 3: of unappropriated funding because it is not reasonably necessary to
Speaker 3: carry out its duties. The Bureau's current balance of seven
Speaker 3: hundred and eleven million is in fact excessive in the
Speaker 3: current fiscal environment. The spigot long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability
Speaker 3: is being turned off. So Russbot is the OMB director,
Speaker 3: but he's also the acting CFPB director.
Speaker 1: And what this does.
Speaker 3: Is it's an effective way to backdoor shut down the government.
Speaker 3: CFPB has been the subject of insane amounts of litigation
Speaker 3: over the last decade or so, so this is the
Speaker 3: way that they have been able to become the acting
Speaker 3: director even though it's an independent agency. Stopping requests for
Speaker 3: funding is the only legal way to be able to
Speaker 3: get around some of this. Although we'll get to in
Speaker 3: fact how that will progress. Let's put this up there
Speaker 3: on the screen. There was the latest direction here from
Speaker 3: Russpot which said that directed the Consumer Financial Protection Beers
Speaker 3: staff to quote issue no rules, suspend the effective dates
Speaker 3: of all final rules, and cease any new investigations. So
Speaker 3: I mean, you don't appropriate any more funding, and then
Speaker 3: you also don't you don't appropriate more funding, and they
Speaker 3: also tell them not to do anything. This is kind
Speaker 3: of what the Trump administration tried to do last time,
Speaker 3: Crystal with the establishment of god Blake.
Speaker 1: His name right now, The acting chief is mc malvainey. There,
Speaker 1: it is mc malvaney.
Speaker 3: They also made him the acting CFPB director, there was
Speaker 3: huge amounts of litigation. I think it was a Supreme
Speaker 3: Court case happened CFPB as well. That gets to this
Speaker 3: whole independent agency versus an executive part of the executive.
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion that's right seven to
Speaker 2: your decision that it was in fact that it.
Speaker 1: Was a constitutional agency.
Speaker 3: That has not stop people from saying it's unconstitutional, which
Speaker 3: we'll get to in a little bit, but this is
Speaker 3: one of those where it look, I think we can
Speaker 3: all be honest here about who is the most who
Speaker 3: is the happiest to see CFPB gone, And it is
Speaker 3: the crypto industry. Now you could judge for yourself as
Speaker 3: to why that is. You know, Crystal, obviously you're very
Speaker 3: skeptical crypto. What they say is the mark end recent
Speaker 3: Line and others, is that effectively stifles competition by forcing
Speaker 3: these crypto and fintech companies to comply with all of these,
Speaker 3: according to them, onerous financial regulations which make it impossible
Speaker 3: for them to do business. So the CFBB and the
Speaker 3: SEC have been the two regulatory twins that have really
Speaker 3: stopped people like Meta Twitter, all these fintech companies from
Speaker 3: being able to move into the legitimate financial system and
Speaker 3: to compete against them, they claim that they're better. You
Speaker 3: can judge again for yourself for how all of it is, but.
Speaker 1: That is the main ass that they had coming into this.
Speaker 3: There were three things CFPB, FTC SEC, yep, and they've
Speaker 3: gotten all of them.
Speaker 4: They've gotten all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I mean, just to zoom out the
Speaker 2: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up after the financial crash too.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's in the name to try to protect consumers,
Speaker 2: and they've returned some twenty one billion dollars to consumers
Speaker 2: who've been defrauded and scanned in various ways. It actually
Speaker 2: has quite a relatively small budget and has been a
Speaker 2: fantastic return on the investment in terms of taxpayer dollars,
Speaker 2: although it's not even really technically taxpayer dollars because it's
Speaker 2: funded by the Treasury, but whatever, it's been a fantastic
Speaker 2: return on investment in terms of providing value to consumers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Let me just Stoler had a great post about the
Speaker 2: CFPB and what this means going forward, and he points
Speaker 2: out some of the things that you know may have
Speaker 2: interacted with your life in a way that is relatively
Speaker 2: meaningful he says, let's start with some of the small
Speaker 2: stuff they do. Rules against excessive overdraft fees. That's going
Speaker 2: to be gone. Rule capping credit card late fees, that's gone.
Speaker 2: Oversight of debt collectors and payday lenders no more, an
Speaker 2: honest site to compare credit card products likely gone. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, CFPB said big banks can't charge junk
Speaker 2: fees for basic customer service, things like being able to
Speaker 2: check your money in your own account. The reason isn't
Speaker 2: just that it's nice, but the big banks themselves weren't
Speaker 2: unable to offer basic information like who owned mortgages prior
Speaker 2: to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: That's gone too.
Speaker 2: Another rule put forward recently is the mortgage servicers can't
Speaker 2: garner excessive fees when they foreclose, which is an incentive
Speaker 2: to foreclosed rather than working out loans.
Speaker 4: So all of that is going to be gone.
Speaker 2: Anybody who's had an issue with their bank, or with
Speaker 2: crypto coinbase, whoever you can go to. You used to
Speaker 2: be able to file complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection
Speaker 2: Bureau and oftentimes they would handle it and you would
Speaker 2: get your money returned to you. Actually, Kyle was a
Speaker 2: victim to you know, sort of scam run by his bank,
Speaker 2: and he didn't even file a complaint or anything, and
Speaker 2: they just reached out and said, hey, you were victim
Speaker 2: of the scam. Here's some money back to repay you
Speaker 2: for what happened here. So that's what this agency is.
Speaker 2: It's no accident that Mark Andriesen and Mark Zuckerberg both
Speaker 2: go on Joe Rogan's podcast and they frame their opposite.
Speaker 2: First of all, they just lie about what CFPB does
Speaker 2: D banking. Conservatives like quite the opposite. Roju Chopra, the
Speaker 2: previous director of the CFPP, was opposed to d banking
Speaker 2: based on political reasons. He took heat from liberals for
Speaker 2: staking out that position, so it was quite the contrary.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg tried to claim that like, oh, they went after
Speaker 2: me from the CFPB because of my bucking them on
Speaker 2: COVID censorship. Also, you know, completely made up fiction. But
Speaker 2: they tried to cloak their opposition to CFPB in these
Speaker 2: conservative cultural critiques because they knew that the argument of like, well,
Speaker 2: they just don't really want to be regulated was not
Speaker 2: going to fly.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Elon has a particular interest in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
Speaker 2: which is what Soccer was alluding to. So Elon wants
Speaker 2: Twitter to be the everything app. He just struck a
Speaker 2: deal actually with Visa to incorporate payment processing, and that
Speaker 2: would have meant that the CFPB was very likely to
Speaker 2: you know, designate him as I think they call it,
Speaker 2: like a larger payment provider something like that, and he
Speaker 2: would have been subject to these regulations.
Speaker 4: So he specifically has.
Speaker 2: A personal financial interest and goal that he wants to
Speaker 2: accomplish in gutting the CFPB, and so that is what
Speaker 2: is now being accomplished.
Speaker 4: The budget has been zeroed out.
Speaker 2: Now russ Vote does point out they do have a
Speaker 2: like fairly decent reserve and the budget is not all
Speaker 2: that big to start with, so you know they have
Speaker 2: the funds to be able to operate for a time.
Speaker 2: But the staff has been told to stay home. This
Speaker 2: is subject now also to a lawsuit by the union
Speaker 2: representing the workers at the CFPB. And most importantly russ
Speaker 2: Vote has said any investigations you're doing, any enforcement, any
Speaker 2: new rule making, like basically whatever you were doing to
Speaker 2: try to check and keep financial fraud and scams and check,
Speaker 2: you need to stop doing that. So all of that
Speaker 2: activity is effectively halted. Elon himself tweeted out rip CFPB,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of interesting the response. So you
Speaker 2: can see Elon there at the top saying that, and
Speaker 2: some of his reply guys who are normally on board
Speaker 2: with what he was doing, were like, but wait a second,
Speaker 2: I actually kind of like this agency.
Speaker 3: So shout out to Nuance bro. He loves the show,
Speaker 3: by the way, he watches every episod.
Speaker 4: So he says, what's wrong with the CFPB?
Speaker 2: They actually got consumers wins, and he tweeted a linked
Speaker 2: or not a link, but a screenshot because links are
Speaker 2: highly discouraged on Twitter. CFB announces a return of one
Speaker 2: point eight billion dollars in illegal junk fees to four
Speaker 2: point three million Americans harmed in a massive credit repair scheme.
Speaker 2: Another person and I saw this one shared a lot,
Speaker 2: says what is the deal with the CCFPB. I'm genuinely curious, Elon,
Speaker 2: as a normal guy, can you please respond and tell me?
Speaker 4: I assumed it was creative for our protection.
Speaker 2: I've used the CFPB after my bank was giving me
Speaker 2: the run around. I had a bunch of fraud charges
Speaker 2: they wouldn't refund me after telling me they found them
Speaker 2: as fraudulent. Within a week, I had my money back.
Speaker 2: So explain to me how this doesn't benefit us as
Speaker 2: American citizens. This one just really baffles me, and I'd
Speaker 2: love an actual explanation. So the you know, people were
Speaker 2: not fully on board with this. Another person said, yeat,
Speaker 2: not on board with this one unless you bring some
Speaker 2: pretty damning evidence as to why. So there you go
Speaker 2: some of the pushback there. Do consumers not need to
Speaker 2: be protected? Question mark?
Speaker 3: Yes, so, I mean, look for those who are shocked
Speaker 3: by this, sorry, like you're an idiot. I don't want
Speaker 3: to be to voter shaming and all this, but there
Speaker 3: is an element where some people pretend to be surprised
Speaker 3: by some of the moves of the.
Speaker 1: Trumpetman, like were you not paying attention? Dude? Like were
Speaker 1: you just not like did you not have your eyes open?
Speaker 1: It gets I get annoyed. I mean pretty clear what
Speaker 1: was going to happen?
Speaker 2: I would say, yes, yeah, but I mean there were
Speaker 2: there are a lot of things happening, like, for example, taking.
Speaker 1: Over Gaza that were not enough crazy about.
Speaker 2: It, taking over Canada Panela, like none of these things
Speaker 2: were actually run on. So I have shared the same
Speaker 2: sentiment in some regards of like, well, what did you
Speaker 2: think was going to happen? That this is literally what
Speaker 2: he ran on. But you know, it's not like Trump
Speaker 2: was going around at rallies like and we're gonna get
Speaker 2: rid of the protections for consumers and allow banks to
Speaker 2: scam you. So people put a lot of trust anyone,
Speaker 2: Like a lot of these guys think this guy is
Speaker 2: really great and brilliant, you know, have deluded themselves into
Speaker 2: thinking that the richest man on the planet is really
Speaker 2: looking out for their interests rather than his own interests.
Speaker 4: And he's not. He's looking out for his own interests.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I meant as a certain point too, with these
Speaker 3: tech guys, it's like they were pretty naked about what
Speaker 3: they wanted the whole time. I could have told you
Speaker 3: literally eight months ago exactly what all three of these agencies.
Speaker 3: All you have to do is read the news for
Speaker 3: any of this. And as I said previously, but Crypto
Speaker 3: in particular, being very happy about this, put this up
Speaker 3: there on the screen. Brian Armstrong, CEO of coinbased, as
Speaker 3: one hundred percent the right call CFPB is unconstitutional on
Speaker 3: the face of it. Even if it wasn't, it should
Speaker 3: be deleted as we already have a DJDJ to prosecute
Speaker 3: fraud and many other fine answer services regulators. It's an
Speaker 3: activist organization that has done enormous harm to the country.
Speaker 1: He got community noted there.
Speaker 3: You can decide for yourself whether it's would decide for
Speaker 3: yourself if that indicates a vibe on the platform.
Speaker 1: The community note was what you said, Justice.
Speaker 3: Thomas righty for the majority that it is constitutional. I
Speaker 3: this is the type of thing from Trump and others
Speaker 3: that makes me sad because it relates to what we
Speaker 3: were just talking about, yeah, with virgin and you were like, oh,
Speaker 3: but these Virginas. I'm like, look, I see no evidence
Speaker 3: that you know, scamming people, taking away their money, cutting
Speaker 3: programs or any of that when you're inside of the
Speaker 3: bubble has any effect on voter behavior. I wish it
Speaker 3: were otherwise, but I don't see any political evidence for it.
Speaker 1: Well until I think people want to be scammed. I'm
Speaker 1: being serious.
Speaker 3: Like this Dave Portnoy thing you sent that video remember
Speaker 3: of him talking about the pump and Dump shitcoin and
Speaker 3: how enamored he's obviously is with the Trump meme coin
Speaker 3: and all that, and how there's zero outrage from most
Speaker 3: people on the right who talk about corruption and all that,
Speaker 3: But look at the voters, the voters, and then the
Speaker 3: people who support Trump they like it. I'm mystified by
Speaker 3: the way that people can twist themselves into knots to
Speaker 3: just say like, oh, this is total or just have
Speaker 3: like blind amnesia around these because it's not just partisanship,
Speaker 3: it's not about elites, it's about the actual voters themselves.
Speaker 3: If you ask them about any of these Trump things,
Speaker 3: they feel, no, they're not angry. They'll find an excuse,
Speaker 3: they don't care, or they'll say that you're.
Speaker 1: Lying to them. And I just don't know what to say.
Speaker 3: At a certain point, like the CPPB thing, I predict
Speaker 3: not one iota of pushback, not one iota from Republican voters.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what's the point?
Speaker 4: Agree?
Speaker 2: Agree, but yeah, but the point is the substance of
Speaker 2: what it actually the fact that getting rid of this
Speaker 2: agency makes people's lives worse, makes them more open to fraud.
Speaker 2: And Stiller makes this point, it's not like so previously,
Speaker 2: It's not like there weren't laws against before the financial crash,
Speaker 2: but the prioritization of that was very low, with these
Speaker 2: various agencies that were tasked with enforcing it, and so
Speaker 2: the idea behind this agency is that, okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to put it under one agency where it's really like
Speaker 2: their number one priority is going to be looking out
Speaker 2: for the little guy, making sure that if they are scammed,
Speaker 2: that they are repaid, that there's some fines levied like that.
Speaker 2: This is our top priority and our focus. So it's
Speaker 2: going to be important. So now all of that function
Speaker 2: is consolidated here, so when you get rid of that
Speaker 2: enforcement from this agency, it no longer exists in these
Speaker 2: other places.
Speaker 4: So it's just gone.
Speaker 2: So you're actually in a worse place than you were
Speaker 2: before the financial crash with regard to you know, enforcement
Speaker 2: of these particular things.
Speaker 4: So you're going to see, you know, a.
Speaker 2: Flourishing of scams and fraud perpetrated on people because there
Speaker 2: is no one why, Like it's not even the fox
Speaker 2: guard in the head now there's just no one guarding
Speaker 2: the hen house.
Speaker 4: Now there's there's nothing there.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that he points out, which is
Speaker 2: relevant to your point is like, you know, when Glass Eeagle,
Speaker 2: which separated out, you know, kept the investing in financial
Speaker 2: speculation part of banking separate from like the main like
Speaker 2: customer focused. Okay, we make a deposit type of banking.
Speaker 2: When Glass Eagle was ended, No, there wasn't a huge
Speaker 2: like public.
Speaker 4: Backlash to that.
Speaker 2: But that action directly, along with other things, leads to
Speaker 2: a massive financial catastrophe. So it has a huge impact
Speaker 2: outside of what the you know, initial public response was,
Speaker 2: and of course ultimately there was a huge I mean,
Speaker 2: this was one of the seminal events in terms of
Speaker 2: our lifetimes that helped to shape these you know, this
Speaker 2: populist right and populist left movements and all of the
Speaker 2: anger in the country. I mean, this is still reverberating
Speaker 2: to this day. So I think there is very likely
Speaker 2: to be significant fallout. And you know, I'll just one
Speaker 2: more quote from Stoler, because he really, you know, he
Speaker 2: focuses on this, and I think he put it quite well.
Speaker 2: He says he sees destroying the bureau as a strategic
Speaker 2: error for the banking sector in big tech. He says,
Speaker 2: the banks were already losing to Silicon Valley. Now they're
Speaker 2: at a regulatory disadvantage to boot. More fundamentally, the shutdown
Speaker 2: breaks a basic deal. He says he worked in the
Speaker 2: House during the Great Financial Crisis. The arrangement was the
Speaker 2: banks would accept some mild oversight via the CFPB, and
Speaker 2: in return they'd get a multi trillion dollar ballon and
Speaker 2: make excessive profits. I didn't like that deal, encourage the
Speaker 2: member I worked for a to vote against it, but
Speaker 2: it was forced on liberals by Barack Obama. It was
Speaker 2: an egregiously terrible choice, one that liberals couldn't acknowledge because
Speaker 2: then they'd have to admit a whole lot of uncomfortable truths,
Speaker 2: notably that Wall Street is a malevolent force. But he's
Speaker 2: effectively saying like, now that deal is broken, like the
Speaker 2: minimal oversight that they accepted has been stripped away, and
Speaker 2: so now they can just run rampant with their you know,
Speaker 2: fraud of variety of kinds, including crypto fraud, et cetera.
Speaker 2: If you're running one of these payment processors on Twitter
Speaker 2: or elsewhere, now you can take people's funds that they
Speaker 2: deposit with you. You can do what sam bekmun Freed
Speaker 2: was doing and investment invest it in all kinds of
Speaker 2: like high risk crypto schemes. There's no cop on the
Speaker 2: beat to really stop you from doing any of that,
Speaker 2: and the potential fallout from that is truly catastrophic. It
Speaker 2: may not show up, you know, some small ball things
Speaker 2: that are really important to like the credit card late
Speaker 2: fees and the junk fees and those sorts of things,
Speaker 2: not having medical debt I'll appear on your credit reports.
Speaker 2: That was something the Biden administration is putting in place
Speaker 2: that's going to be gone now. Like there's an immediate impact,
Speaker 2: but the deeper, the deeper fear is what this kind
Speaker 2: of bubble and crash this could ultimately contribute to. And
Speaker 2: then you know, also with regard to Doge and Elon
Speaker 2: and whatever like. It's also example number one of the
Speaker 2: way this is not about some like populists. We're going
Speaker 2: to root out waste, fraud and abuse, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: The CFPB is proof positive that this is about them
Speaker 2: can sellleating power and organizing the government in a way
Speaker 2: that is going to be friendly to them their fronts
Speaker 2: and their interests and not necessarily you.
Speaker 3: But there's some good lessons there for the left there
Speaker 3: in terms of technocratic neoliberalism and that you know that
Speaker 3: Devil's Bargain that was made in two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: that led to the fallout the breakup of the Democratic
Speaker 3: Coalition and of the rise of the Trump movement, and
Speaker 3: obviously is now popular vote election, which is trying to
Speaker 3: put I'm also honestly skeptical of Stolar's analysis. I'm not
Speaker 3: so sure that it leads to the Democrats being like,
Speaker 3: we're never going to give you CFPB again because we're
Speaker 3: about to talk with Hakim Jeffries and all that are
Speaker 3: about Hakim Jeffries, about how their theory of government and
Speaker 3: all that looks in the future. You might be right,
Speaker 3: but you know, it's been twelve almost twenty years since
Speaker 3: the financial crisis. It's been sixteen years or so seventeen
Speaker 3: right since the crash, and has really anything changed with
Speaker 3: respect to too Big to Fail? Most people either don't
Speaker 3: remember or you know, they don't really understand the legacy
Speaker 3: impact of that. So I don't just but how long
Speaker 3: did it take between the repeal of Glass Steagle and
Speaker 3: the financial crisis Glasstegle happened under the Clinton administration. I
Speaker 3: want to say maybe it was ninety eight. I think
Speaker 3: it might not be, so it took about a decade
Speaker 3: for something like that to materialize. Nine I apologize, So yeah,
Speaker 3: but it was about nine years or so for the
Speaker 3: global financial crisis to get kicked off in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, and if it's a similar lag.
Speaker 1: Time, what does politics look like in that moment.
Speaker 3: I genuinely have no idea, but I'm not so confident
Speaker 3: in the stolar analysis that some Bernie style revolution will
Speaker 3: happen in terms of oh, the banks, like you guys
Speaker 3: are never going to get your bail out again, right,
Speaker 3: In terms of the way that the Democratic Party is
Speaker 3: currently trending now. I'm not saying the Republicans are gonna better,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that at all. But I'm just not
Speaker 3: so confident that there's this elite recognition of what has
Speaker 3: really happened here in terms of the failure of the
Speaker 3: Obama project. This is something Irami and z Jelani have
Speaker 3: both been talking about a lot lately. I think it's
Speaker 3: very interesting from their perspective.
Speaker 2: All Right, well, let's talk about those Democrats, shall we
Speaker 2: hakeem Jefferies?
Speaker 4: Of course is.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're leader lists effectively at this point. Even
Speaker 2: if you ask them like who's the leader of the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, They'll all be like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but hikeem Jefferies is the top Democrat in the House,
Speaker 2: and he was asked, you know, their phones are ringing
Speaker 2: off the hook with Democratic base.
Speaker 4: Voters who are like, what are you doing? Where is
Speaker 4: the resistance?
Speaker 2: Like there was a video that came out last week
Speaker 2: of all of these Democratic members of Congress going to
Speaker 2: the Department of Education and wanting entry. There's one dude
Speaker 2: standing in their way, and they're just like, oh, I
Speaker 2: guess we can't go in that, I mean, and so.
Speaker 1: What are they going to do with it?
Speaker 2: There's such frustration that they seem to be asleep at
Speaker 2: the switch. And so in any case, Hakiem Jefferies gets
Speaker 2: asked about this dynamic and effect was like, whoa, what
Speaker 2: could we really do? Let's take a listen to what
Speaker 2: he has to say.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have.
Speaker 8: What leverage do we have the control the House to
Speaker 8: send it and the presidency it's their government.
Speaker 4: What leverage do we have?
Speaker 2: So there you go, what levers do we have? I mean,
Speaker 2: I love, I do love And I think it was
Speaker 2: Ken that pointed this out on Twitter. How when Democrats
Speaker 2: have control of the House, Senate and the presidency, it's
Speaker 2: like the Republicans are this immovable obstacle that they can't
Speaker 2: possibly get anything done. And when Republicans are in that situation,
Speaker 2: suddenly like oh they can just you know, run rough
Speaker 2: shot and do whatever they whatever they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that they'll learn. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I really am still really skeptical of this Democratic resistance
Speaker 3: because it just feels like a very elite media project
Speaker 3: right now. Like it feels like the neurotic liberals who
Speaker 3: read the New York Times are very outraged the bureaucrats Washington.
Speaker 3: But they mean that's a question two of like what
Speaker 3: is the Democratic base? What do they actually want here?
Speaker 3: I mean, what would a bunch of silly Maxwell Frosts
Speaker 3: charging into the democratic of education do?
Speaker 2: I mean for great media spectacle? I mean that's the
Speaker 2: thing is like what only tool in lever is attention?
Speaker 2: That is your only tool and lever really and that
Speaker 2: is the failure of the Democratic Party is they do
Speaker 2: not understand outside of like literally AOC and Bernie, they do.
Speaker 4: Not understand you understand it though your style of economy.
Speaker 3: Oh first, is her style of politics really going to
Speaker 3: be like her flat? You know, going on Instagram live
Speaker 3: calling Elon a Nazi, Like, do we really believe that
Speaker 3: that's an effective political strategy.
Speaker 1: I don't. I think he just looks silly. Well, you
Speaker 1: look like a college liberal.
Speaker 2: Well, let me say at least she is doing something.
Speaker 2: But yeah, in terms of in terms of understanding the
Speaker 2: attention economy, yes, I think she and Bernie are kind
Speaker 2: of the only two that truly do. And Bernie is
Speaker 2: impressed the hell. I mean, his man is really old
Speaker 2: and he's still out there. Like with I think some
Speaker 2: of the best messaging coming from the Democratic Party. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's your only real lever and protests. And I would
Speaker 2: just say, like I had all kinds of problems with
Speaker 2: the flavor of the Democratic resistance back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: You know, I Russia Gate, I was a critic of
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, in some ways it
Speaker 2: did work. They we were talking about Trump's approval rating.
Speaker 2: They were able to keep his approval ratings suppressed and
Speaker 2: under a majority of the entire time, they did very
Speaker 2: well in the midterms. He lost in twenty twenty. So
Speaker 2: there's been this among elite elected Democrats. There's this assumption
Speaker 2: of like, oh, well, we you know, we try this
Speaker 2: like all all in Trump resistance, and it didn't work,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, but doing at least it did
Speaker 2: do something like clearly just sitting back and letting it
Speaker 2: all unfold. And I think one of them said, like
Speaker 2: letting him punch himself out is not going to do anything,
Speaker 2: and I think is foolish.
Speaker 4: So I think that there's two problems.
Speaker 2: One of them is they don't understand the attention economy
Speaker 2: and how that is your major lever for pushback and
Speaker 2: generating doing what you can to contribute to a genuine
Speaker 2: grossroots revolt, which again there is there is something happening
Speaker 2: here because because the level of calls that they're getting
Speaker 2: at the Senate sixteen hundred a minute is off the
Speaker 2: charts normally democratic like the you know, local Democratic voters
Speaker 2: are disgusted with the party and the fact and that
Speaker 2: is very different. You know, these people were like heroes
Speaker 2: to them previously am mis NBC was heroic to them,
Speaker 2: et cetera. That is all broken and gone. So in
Speaker 2: any case, that is the best thing that they have
Speaker 2: available to them. But the other problem, which gets to
Speaker 2: the political chair sheet that we can put up on
Speaker 2: the screen is that, you know, really, what they need
Speaker 2: to do is make an argument against oligarchy, make an
Speaker 2: argument against an Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies running
Speaker 2: the government. And that is going to require a choosing
Speaker 2: a true like which side are you on kind of
Speaker 2: a moment. And you have leaders in the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: like Haheen Jeffries, who instead is trying to go to
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley and mend fences with the billionaires who happen
Speaker 2: to be and not the one hundred million, the mere hundred
Speaker 2: millionionaires that happened to be on the Democratic side of
Speaker 2: the ledger. So he met quietly, they say, with more
Speaker 2: than one hundred and fifty Silicon Valley based donors. Last
Speaker 2: week in California early step in Democrats' efforts to repair
Speaker 2: relationships with a once deep blue constituency.
Speaker 4: The meet and greet in.
Speaker 2: Tony Los Aalto's Hills comes at a precarious moment for
Speaker 2: Democrats in the tech world, which is lurch right word
Speaker 2: in the second Trump era, world's wealthiest tech mogul is
Speaker 2: upending Washington. Democratic leaders are facing criticism from their own
Speaker 2: base for their halting response. Jeffreys, meanwhile, was on the
Speaker 2: West coast, seemingly trying to avoid the next Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Let's put this next quote up on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is kind of like the money quote, so to speak.
Speaker 2: So he says, there's significant fear that these tech folks
Speaker 2: who've been with us for a long time will say, effort,
Speaker 2: we're going with the other guys that a major Democratic
Speaker 2: donor advisor. These donors are also pissed watching former and
Speaker 2: current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power and getting richer off
Speaker 2: of this, and they're not Democrats are trying to mend senses,
Speaker 2: and they're also trying to keep them in the tent.
Speaker 2: According to this individual, so you know, let's go ahead.
Speaker 2: Actually to the Nate Silver piece, because I thought he
Speaker 2: broke this as a D four. He actually broke this
Speaker 2: down pretty well. It's like, you they need a billionaire strategy.
Speaker 2: You could be pro capitalism or anti oligarch, but middle
Speaker 2: ground won't persuade voters. And the middle ground is kind
Speaker 2: of where the Biden administration was because they did things
Speaker 2: that were genuinely adversarial that this class of people hated,
Speaker 2: and the Wall Street people hated and were pissed off
Speaker 2: of the anti trust stuff was really adversarial. It was
Speaker 2: very unpopular among wealthy people. The aggressive enforcement at the CFPB,
Speaker 2: aggressive enforcement at the National Labor Relations Board, all of
Speaker 2: these things were deeply unpopular with billionaires. But rather than
Speaker 2: doing the FDR like and I welcome their hatred and
Speaker 2: embracing that as your identity is, like we're going after
Speaker 2: these guys, they tried to do like what Hakeem Jeffreys
Speaker 2: is doing here, like wow, we really we still like you,
Speaker 2: still want you in the tent. We're going to do
Speaker 2: these various cultural things that maybe you like, et.
Speaker 4: Cetera, et cetera. And that approach is not going to work.
Speaker 2: So Nate Silver is one hundred percent right that this
Speaker 2: middle ground of what he described separating the world into
Speaker 2: naughty and nice billionaires, which is what the new chair
Speaker 2: of the Democratic National Committee, which he floated as the
Speaker 2: appropriate approach here.
Speaker 4: That is not going to cut it.
Speaker 2: And if you're actually going to push back against this
Speaker 2: movement and the elon takeover and trump Ism in general,
Speaker 2: you are going to.
Speaker 4: Have to make a choice.
Speaker 2: You are going to have to either basically capitulate to
Speaker 2: that or you're going to have to burn some bridges.
Speaker 2: With the donor class, and they do not seem ready
Speaker 2: to make that choice.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think it's structurally possible.
Speaker 3: The Democratic Party is the party of elite, white educated
Speaker 3: liberals and elderly black people.
Speaker 1: Like that's basically it.
Speaker 3: So okay, So if we look at the elite white
Speaker 3: educated liberals, these are Nimbi style process elite institution worshiping,
Speaker 3: neurotic master's degree holders who make approximately two to three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars per year. They love like Reid Hoffman
Speaker 3: and all these other people. They to the extent they
Speaker 3: hate Elon it's because of I don't even know it's
Speaker 3: not because of CFPP, should we put it that way.
Speaker 3: They hate him for being like a trader to their
Speaker 3: class or culturally right or whatever. Even a lot of
Speaker 3: these Stilicon Valley donors. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 3: the it's the things that they care with the most about.
Speaker 3: It's going to be literally DEI and like transgender issues.
Speaker 3: That's part of the reason the party is become the
Speaker 3: way it is. So how can you turn against oligarchy?
Speaker 3: I mean, if you don't have the voter base to
Speaker 3: sustain it, those people don't culturally trust you. Can you
Speaker 3: roll back twenty years of cultural left direction?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But that's what.
Speaker 2: But so the thing is, first of all, I don't
Speaker 2: think you're right about what the normy Democratic base wants, Like.
Speaker 1: They are a what do they want?
Speaker 2: They are appolled by They want process going on here,
Speaker 2: They want to preserve the country, They want some you know,
Speaker 2: they want to.
Speaker 1: Charge you.
Speaker 2: I think you underestimate too how much the economic precarity
Speaker 2: has creeped up to middle class, upper middle class people,
Speaker 2: where it's not just the sort of traditional working class
Speaker 2: that feels that level of procarity. I also would say
Speaker 2: you very much overestimate where we are in terms of
Speaker 2: the realignment. Trump narrowly won you know, voters under what
Speaker 2: was it, one hundred thousand dollars. He didn't even win
Speaker 2: a majority of the vote. He won the popular vote,
Speaker 2: but he did not even get to fifty percent. So
Speaker 2: you still have, you know, plenty of working class voters
Speaker 2: within the Democratic base coalition. So there's no doubt that
Speaker 2: the Democratic base is appalled at what they see.
Speaker 4: Unfolding under trump Ism.
Speaker 2: Like that piece is not a question to be whatsoever,
Speaker 2: And the Democrats have to to your point, they have
Speaker 2: to regain some of those working class voters who who
Speaker 2: voted for Trump this time around. They have to bring
Speaker 2: them back into the coalition. And if you're actually going
Speaker 2: to do that, I think you have to make a
Speaker 2: stand against Elon and Oligart control and you have to
Speaker 2: have credibility with regard to, you know, burning the bridges
Speaker 2: with you know, your own your own donor class. Now
Speaker 2: where I see the more structural problem is that people
Speaker 2: like Haquem Jeffries, like Akaeme Jeffries, is not in this
Speaker 2: position because he's such a like brilliant visionary or whatever politician.
Speaker 2: He's there because he can raise a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi, who does have some skills at least, you know,
Speaker 2: but she her main hold on power was because she
Speaker 2: was an absolutely prolific fundraiser. The vast majority of Democratic
Speaker 2: candidates are not there because there was like a grassroots
Speaker 2: well of support for them. There's a few of them
Speaker 2: that that you know, could genuinely be said are the case.
Speaker 2: But by and large, the game that you had to
Speaker 2: play to get to power the Democratic Party is all
Speaker 2: about sucking up to the type of people that a
Speaker 2: Geme Jeffries is sucking up to so is a party
Speaker 2: that has self selected for that people who has these
Speaker 2: connections and whose primary skill set is raising money. Are
Speaker 2: they going to cut off their own individual politician or politician.
Speaker 2: Are they going to cut off their own sorts of power?
Speaker 2: And that's where I think the real structural problem ultimately
Speaker 2: comes in, because if this was how you got into
Speaker 2: whatever position of power you have, you're not going to
Speaker 2: be really particularly amenable to completely changing course and orienting
Speaker 2: the party in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's completely correct.
Speaker 3: I think it's a bidirectional problem, though, because it does
Speaker 3: get point taken, etc. But who is the center of
Speaker 3: gravity of elite democratic thought as reclined right Nate Silver,
Speaker 3: Like people who work in NGOs the New York Times
Speaker 3: op ed page. If you look at that center of gravity,
Speaker 3: it's not one that's ultimately going to be consistent with
Speaker 3: an anti aligarchic strategy.
Speaker 1: That's one that's really uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: I actually think your point about economic procarity at the
Speaker 3: middle class and upper middle class is important because part
Speaker 3: of the black pilling of the upper middle class has
Speaker 3: been very interesting to is actually also part of how
Speaker 3: you have this more elite turn against the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: because they're also bleeding some voters in that category, which
Speaker 3: leads to people like Bill Ackman and all these not
Speaker 3: saying they're in that category, but I'm saying that creates
Speaker 3: a permission structure for like white people who make two
Speaker 3: hundred grand who are like grill dads or whatever to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: screw the Democrats, even though traditionally they have been. Whoever
Speaker 3: is left are people who are like really into cultural
Speaker 3: liberalism on top of the Democratic Party coalition which raises
Speaker 3: a lot of money from these same people, and I
Speaker 3: don't think that they have that credibility yet, because to
Speaker 3: do so, you'd have to burn down everything that you've
Speaker 3: ever stood for. You'd have to both shove this like
Speaker 3: cultural bs to the side, pretend that you have never
Speaker 3: said any of the things that you have, and you
Speaker 3: would have to base like, how could you revamp your
Speaker 3: entire fundraising structure. I mean, you talked about this with
Speaker 3: the Bernie guys, but Bernie bros. Are just Trump voters now,
Speaker 3: so can you win them back? I'm genuinely skeptical. I
Speaker 3: feel like once you have lost credibility with people on
Speaker 3: because it's a long burn period, that the way that
Speaker 3: this happened that they would so quickly be able to turn.
Speaker 3: I think that the way that the Democrats can win
Speaker 3: again is to drive up their suburban margins and then
Speaker 3: convince younger Hispanic black voter, Hispanic.
Speaker 1: And black voters to come back into the fold and
Speaker 1: vote for them.
Speaker 3: And that's really the coalition at least in Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Speaker 3: Wisconsin that remains where their deficit was on top obviously
Speaker 3: of white working class voters. But I'm not sure that
Speaker 3: those people are ever coming back. So I just think
Speaker 3: it's a very very tough structural problem for them. I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't know how you could get out
Speaker 3: of this Gordian knot when you've elected the DNC person
Speaker 3: that you have the good billionaire person.
Speaker 2: So you know what's interesting is even though that did
Speaker 2: say that same the reason he got picked instead of
Speaker 2: Ben Wickler, they're both state party chairs, both from like Minnesota. Right,
Speaker 2: one is Minnesota and the other one was Wisconsin. So
Speaker 2: Ken Martin, the one that got elected is Minnesota. Actually,
Speaker 2: what tanked Wickler's campaign is that he was seen as
Speaker 2: being too close to billionaires. So he was backed by
Speaker 2: Reid Hoffman, and he really had all the energy behind.
Speaker 2: You know, when Emily and Ryan interviewed him here, it
Speaker 2: was very much thought, oh, this is going to be
Speaker 2: the guy. And because he was perceived as being too
Speaker 2: close to the donor class, that's why he lost. And
Speaker 2: actually Nate talks about this year. But I also talked
Speaker 2: to Marianne about this as well, who also was involved
Speaker 2: in the DNC chair race, so she really saw it
Speaker 2: from the inside and that was what really caused people
Speaker 2: to turn on him. So even at the you know
Speaker 2: DNC like these are these are insiders, they're not like
Speaker 2: all wealthy people, but they're just like local Democratic party
Speaker 2: chairs and whatever. They saw that as a real liability
Speaker 2: and a real problem for him, which was very.
Speaker 4: Interesting to me.
Speaker 2: But that yeah, but back to the point of like,
Speaker 2: you know, people who are not learning lesson whatever, but
Speaker 2: D three up on the screen.
Speaker 4: So center Reuben.
Speaker 2: Diego has apparently he benefited to the tune of ten
Speaker 2: million dollars in his Senate campaign from crypto campaign contributions,
Speaker 2: and lo and behold, he's now the top Democrat on
Speaker 2: the Senate Banking Subcommittee overseeing digital assets i e. Crypto
Speaker 2: and is now hosting a luxury retreat with Marc Andreesen,
Speaker 2: who obviously one of crypto industries based investors and cheerleaders.
Speaker 2: And guess one of the featured speakers at this event
Speaker 2: too was Mataglesius, which was kind of no way, Yeah, yeah, Matt.
Speaker 1: What are you doing, bro? You got plenty of money
Speaker 1: in that sub stack. Please tell me you not ticket
Speaker 1: to Beacon fees.
Speaker 2: Oh god, he claims he wasn't paid to. Oh we'll
Speaker 2: take sold buddies whatever. But but you know, the crypto
Speaker 2: industry is an important force. They really made an example
Speaker 2: of Katie Porter, who had been adversarial towards end one
Speaker 2: of them regulated under the SEC and whatever, and they
Speaker 2: dropped millions of dollars on her in her race and
Speaker 2: she lost, And that was meant to and did send
Speaker 2: a signal to anyone else who had thoughts of being
Speaker 2: adversarial and you know, looking seriously at enforcement and regulation
Speaker 2: of the crypto industry, that.
Speaker 4: You better sit down and shut up.
Speaker 2: And so even though some of the thought was that
Speaker 2: there would be a crackdown after SBF was exposed in
Speaker 2: all of that nonsense, actually they just got smarter. They
Speaker 2: put more money into politics. Crypto industries now one of
Speaker 2: the biggest contributors got rich two political campaigns. Well, that's
Speaker 2: that's true to you.
Speaker 3: Point is literally went from like thirty k to one
Speaker 3: hundred k in that time period.
Speaker 2: And so so now at this point, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got Democrats and republic Diego very much in their pocket,
Speaker 2: all kinds of other bipartisan officials very much in their pocket,
Speaker 2: them getting their way at SEEFPB, et cetera. And so
Speaker 2: you know, it's quite noteworthy to have Diego at this
Speaker 2: luxury retreat with Mark Andreeson.
Speaker 1: Amusing.
Speaker 3: But also remember Diego is a star, right, people have
Speaker 3: already floated him. As you know he won in Arizona.
Speaker 3: There's a didn't he have the biggest point spread of
Speaker 3: any senator? For the Democrat who won?
Speaker 4: You might be right, yeah, no, oh for one who won.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Tester probably did of like point spread
Speaker 2: laws overall shared, Brown I think was second, but in
Speaker 2: terms of those who won, it might have been Guya Go.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's crazy, because what did Trump win
Speaker 3: Arizona by four or five points? And then I think
Speaker 3: Diego also want it buy a few points as well,
Speaker 3: So it's almost an eight to ten point spread.
Speaker 4: You know what the top of my head.
Speaker 2: You know what cares some cinema's up to Now it's
Speaker 2: on the board of some crypto bols.
Speaker 3: No, it's too good, too good. See, I would have
Speaker 3: thought she would have joined Uh what was it? What
Speaker 3: is she nuke the carried interest loophole? Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 3: I would have thought she would have become a ven.
Speaker 4: She might be doing that too.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I do know one of the
Speaker 2: things she's doing is she sits on.
Speaker 9: Some crypto board. Just too good, too good. This is
Speaker 9: we predicted here on the show. Hey, guys, we're gonna
Speaker 9: cover Stephen A. Smith tomorrow. I want to make sure
Speaker 9: that the show goes out on time. So Crystal, what
Speaker 9: do you take it a look at?
Speaker 6: Well, if we broke up the big banks tomorrow, and
Speaker 6: I will if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic.
Speaker 1: Risk, I will. What that is racism? Would that end sexism?
Speaker 6: Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?
Speaker 1: Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?
Speaker 6: Would that solve our problem with voting rights and Republicans
Speaker 6: who are trying to strip them away from people of color,
Speaker 6: the elderly, and the young. Would that give us a
Speaker 6: real shot at making sure that our political system works
Speaker 6: better because we get rid of jerry mandering and redistricting
Speaker 6: and all.
Speaker 1: Of the gimmicks that states use to give these.
Speaker 6: Republicans safe seats so they can continue to tear down
Speaker 6: the progress we've made in America. I'm the only candidate
Speaker 6: who will take on.
Speaker 1: Every barrier to progress.
Speaker 6: I'm the only candidate who has a record of taking
Speaker 6: on those barriers. I'm the only candidate you will stand
Speaker 6: with you in every single fight, no matter how hard
Speaker 6: it is or how long it takes.
Speaker 2: That was Hillary Clinton in February twenty sixteen, desperately trying
Speaker 2: to block the class based juggernaut of the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: movement from ascending to power. That lower riff was essentially
Speaker 2: the playbook use identity politics and culture war to posture
Speaker 2: as being the real progressive whilstmearing Bernie and the supporters
Speaker 2: as secret sexists in bigots, all in order to accomplish
Speaker 2: the ultimate goal of protecting corporate power.
Speaker 4: Sad to say it worked.
Speaker 2: Hillary beat Bernie an agenda of woke virtue signaling, took
Speaker 2: over the Democratic Party, accelerating its decline with workers and
Speaker 2: the one movement that actually cared about fighting oligarchs on
Speaker 2: behalf of the ninety nine percent was by and large vanquished.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the most perfect distillation of this use of wochism
Speaker 2: to protect corporate powers when a union buster for ARII
Speaker 2: opened up their anti worker meeting with a land acknowledgment
Speaker 2: and pronounce progressive cultural posturing would be offered as a
Speaker 2: substitute for and distraction from actually checking the billionaire class. Now,
Speaker 2: this playbook is not unique to corporate democrats and has
Speaker 2: never been. In fact, it is being deployed with overwhelming
Speaker 2: success right now against the right, some elements of which
Speaker 2: had flirted with a break from Reagan conservatism. Some factions
Speaker 2: had flirted with union rights, anti trust enforcement, lifting wages,
Speaker 2: protecting safety net programs. The TLDR is this though, to
Speaker 2: my populous right friends, y'all are being played the same
Speaker 2: way liberals traded away a minimum wage hike for Nancy
Speaker 2: Pelosi Kneeling and Kent take loth You are trading away
Speaker 2: an anti trust agenda for an executive order taking pronouns
Speaker 2: off of passports. Elites are ushering in an oligarch agenda
Speaker 2: under the guise of culture war.
Speaker 4: And this is the playbook.
Speaker 2: They will feed you culture war scraps while they eat
Speaker 2: the whole universe. And it's happening now at a pace
Speaker 2: we have literally never seen before. Oligarchs are lying to
Speaker 2: your face telling you that the agencies that police their
Speaker 2: scams and fraud are actually woke and so deserving of dismantling.
Speaker 2: That ending DEI requires stripping your local public school of
Speaker 2: funds and privatizing weather data collection. That the few politicians
Speaker 2: like Bernie and Warren who have actually taken a principled
Speaker 2: stand against the rupting influence of big money in politics
Speaker 2: are really bought and paid for, so their stances which
Speaker 2: challenge corporate power could be disregarded. The real fraud in
Speaker 2: the federal budget can be found in imaginary gaza condoms
Speaker 2: instead of juicy billion dollar contracts and tax havens where
Speaker 2: the billionaires hide their cash. Now, let me ask you
Speaker 2: a simple math question. Which do you think is more
Speaker 2: important to the federal budget deficit Politico pro subscriptions at
Speaker 2: USAID or the fact that Tesla pays a grand total
Speaker 2: of zero dollars in federal taxes in spite of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars in profit. They're tricking you it's a scam
Speaker 2: and sad to say it's working now. One of the
Speaker 2: most brazen examples of this scam was perpetrated by successive
Speaker 2: oligarchs on the Joe Rogan Show. First Mark In Dreeson
Speaker 2: came by to lie to Joe's audience that the Consumer
Speaker 2: Financial Protection Bureau was actually an evil plot by Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Warren to dbank conservatives.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to a little of that.
Speaker 8: I'm Sully for example, with this thing called the Consumer
Speaker 8: Finance Protection Bureau CFPP, which was the sort of Elizabeth
Speaker 8: Warren's personal agency that she gets to control. And it's
Speaker 8: an independent agency that just gets to run and do
Speaker 8: whatever it wants. Right, And if you read the Constitution, like,
Speaker 8: there is no such thing as an independent agency, and
Speaker 8: yet there it is. What does her agency do, whatever
Speaker 8: she wants? What does it do though, we basically did
Speaker 8: terrorize financial terrorize financial institutions, prevent crypt fintech, prevent new competition,
Speaker 8: new startups that want to compete with the big banker.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, house, just terrorizing anybody who tries to do
Speaker 8: anything new in financial services. And can you give me
Speaker 8: an example, said, you know, de banking, this is where
Speaker 8: A lot of the d banking comes from is these agencies.
Speaker 8: So d banking is when you're you, as either a
Speaker 8: person or your company, are literally kicked.
Speaker 1: Out of the banking system like they did to Kanye.
Speaker 8: Exactly like they did to Kanye. My partner band's father
Speaker 8: has been d banked. Really, we had an employee for
Speaker 8: what for having the wrong politics, for saying unacceptable things
Speaker 8: under current banking regulations under okay, here's a great here's
Speaker 8: a great thing. Under current banking regulations. After all the
Speaker 8: reforms of the last twenty years, there's now a category called
Speaker 8: a politically exposed person PEP. And if you are a PEP,
Speaker 8: you were required by financial regulators to kick them off
Speaker 8: of your to kick them out of your bank. You're
Speaker 8: not allowed to if you're politically on the left, that's
Speaker 8: fine because they're not politically expressed.
Speaker 4: So no one on the left gets dbank.
Speaker 8: Now, I have not heard of a single instance of
Speaker 8: anybody in the left getting DOE.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me what the person that you know did,
Speaker 5: what they said that got them de bank?
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, David Herwitz is a right wing you know,
Speaker 8: he's pro Trump. I mean he said all kinds of things.
Speaker 8: You know, he's been very anti Islamic terrorism, he's been
Speaker 8: very worried about migration, all these things.
Speaker 4: None of that is remotely true.
Speaker 2: This agency is one of the best expenditures in the
Speaker 2: entire federal budget as it fights against scams. It's actually
Speaker 2: returned billions of dollars to regular people who've been tricked
Speaker 2: and robbed by elites, So you can imagine why elites
Speaker 2: would like to see it eliminated. Specifically, and recent elon
Speaker 2: Musk and Coo are upset that the CFPB was regulating fintech,
Speaker 2: trying to make sure that online payment processors can't take
Speaker 2: your money and gamble it on crypto or other hair
Speaker 2: brain schemes. But you can't just tell people that this
Speaker 2: agency gets in the way of your scams. So instead,
Speaker 2: what do they do a trojan horse and all agark
Speaker 2: agenda through some culture war bullshit. Mark Zuckerberg was up next,
Speaker 2: also stopping by Rogan's pod to advance war lies about
Speaker 2: an agency that has served as a check on his
Speaker 2: power as well. He pretended like the CFPB took aim
Speaker 2: at him because he stood up to Biden. COVID censorship again,
Speaker 2: complete and total nonsense. It's worth noting that Zuckerberg was
Speaker 2: a Democrat like five seconds ago, using all kinds of
Speaker 2: woke virtue signaling to paint himself as some sort of
Speaker 2: a progressive ally when that was the most expedient paths
Speaker 2: of protecting his power. It is nothing for him to
Speaker 2: switch teams and use the same playbook of throwing out
Speaker 2: culture war red meat to cover for a pro oligarch agenda.
Speaker 2: It is literally the same playbook, just tickling the right
Speaker 2: wing cultural orogonis zones instead of the liberal ones. How
Speaker 2: has this worked out for all of them beautifully? Chef's
Speaker 2: kiss Elon announced a war on the CFPB with this
Speaker 2: particular tweet. Now that agency is effectively dead, the new
Speaker 2: head announced he wanted a zero dollar budget for the year,
Speaker 2: that all new rulemaking and investigations should cease, and the
Speaker 2: workforce was told not to show up this week. Victory
Speaker 2: for the fintech Robert barons who want to fleece you.
Speaker 2: This also means that rules such as ones promulgated under
Speaker 2: Biden which would have kept medical debt off of credit reports,
Speaker 2: have been halted unlikely to return. See if Phoebe is
Speaker 2: cracked down on junk fees gone after predit directory, payday
Speaker 2: lenders checked, abusive practices by debt collectors, stopped foreclosure abuses
Speaker 2: against veterans with VA loans, and a lot more.
Speaker 4: Now all over, do you see how this works?
Speaker 2: Though, in a world that made sense, the interest of
Speaker 2: the ninety nine point nine percent would routinely prevail over
Speaker 2: those at the top point one percent. So those at
Speaker 2: the tippy top, what do they do? They break the game.
Speaker 2: They lie to you, They confuse you about who your
Speaker 2: real allies are and who your real adversaries are. An
Speaker 2: executive order on girls and sports that applies maybe a
Speaker 2: few dozen girls in the entire country is no substitute
Speaker 2: for your ability to organize and have a voice in
Speaker 2: your own workplace. But they are systematically destroying the National
Speaker 2: Labor Relations Board. Christy Noam running around playing dress up
Speaker 2: like Ice Barbie is not worth giving up on breaking
Speaker 2: up tech monopolies and keeping them from automating your job
Speaker 2: out of existence. But Trump is propping up the AI
Speaker 2: overlords who openly brag about making all of humanity irrelevant. Now,
Speaker 2: some of you have been genuinely convinced that the richest
Speaker 2: man on earth, who is rapidly consolidating power solely in
Speaker 2: his own hands, is engaged in some sort of a
Speaker 2: populous project for the people. Please do not be a fool.
Speaker 2: Here's the truth of the bargain that is being offered
Speaker 2: to the right right now. You will get to own
Speaker 2: the Libs, and Elon will get to own the country.
Speaker 2: He will make you poor while he and enriches himself
Speaker 2: and his friends. He will strip away were rights to
Speaker 2: freedom of speech, privacy, while he makes himself all powerful
Speaker 2: and untouchable. This man wants to put chips and all
Speaker 2: our brains for God's sake. Like, let's be serious for
Speaker 2: a second. Allow me to quote from Steve Bannon on
Speaker 2: this particular point about Elon and on the philosophy.
Speaker 4: Of these particular tech oligarchs. He said to the New.
Speaker 2: York Times, quote, now here's the point in techno feudalism,
Speaker 2: you are just a digital surf.
Speaker 4: Your value is a.
Speaker 2: Human being, as someone built and made in the image
Speaker 2: and likeness of God and endowed with the life spirit
Speaker 2: of the Holy Spirit. They don't consider that everything is
Speaker 2: digital to them. They are, at the end of the day, transhumanists.
Speaker 2: And what is transhumanist? Transhumanist is somebody who sees homo
Speaker 2: sapien here and Homo sapien plus on the other side
Speaker 2: of what they call the singularity. And that's why they're
Speaker 2: all rushing, whether it's artificial intelligence, regenerative robots, quantum computing,
Speaker 2: advanced schip to sign Chris, or biotech, all of it
Speaker 2: to come to this point of which the oligarchs are
Speaker 2: going to lead that revolution. This is taking us back
Speaker 2: a millennium to feudalism. Their business model is based upon that.
Speaker 2: That's Steve Bannon saying that, now, if Elon and cole
Speaker 2: Co told you that their goal was to make you
Speaker 2: a digital surf in themselves ceo kings of the world,
Speaker 2: I don't think a whole lot of people are going
Speaker 2: to sign up for that project. So they cloak it
Speaker 2: in wokeness, gender ideology, some other real or imagine liberal excess,
Speaker 2: or simply in the delight of making liberals squeal.
Speaker 4: I beg you please keep your eye on the ball.
Speaker 4: The stakes here are too high.
Speaker 2: The best way to own the Libs would be to
Speaker 2: learn from the mistakes, to not get distracted by a
Speaker 2: bunch of surface level culture war obfuscation that lets billionaires
Speaker 2: empty the vault to not give away your country for
Speaker 2: a few anti woke bubbles. Do not let yourself get
Speaker 2: played and Saga, I know you took a look at it.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 3: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay,
Speaker 3: great show for everybody tomorrow. Thank you all for watching.
Speaker 3: We love you and we'll see you the