Speaker 1: Happy Friday, everybody. I hope you guys had a great week.
Speaker 1: I missed you, guys. What did I miss on the show?
Speaker 1: What's been going on in the world?
Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of Signal?
Speaker 1: I'm learning I'm hearing about it more and more, actually
Speaker 1: hearing about it more and more.
Speaker 2: Ran and Sucker argued a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually, to be totally honest with you, I watched
Speaker 1: every show because I was I mean, so this is
Speaker 1: where I realized actually the value of our show because
Speaker 1: there was nowhere else that I would have been able
Speaker 1: to go to like get a rundown of all the
Speaker 1: stories that we cover and like the particular perspective and whatever.
Speaker 3: So I was I valued it as a consumer this week.
Speaker 4: It is true. It's like, yeah, that's nobody else is
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, after the first say, you know,
Speaker 4: five minutes, sometimes you can move on to the next
Speaker 4: one kind of get where we're going. But yeah, there's
Speaker 4: nowhere else that really is going to and also give
Speaker 4: you that level of depth that Jefferson Morley one went
Speaker 4: really great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know he was. I saw him tweeting this morning.
Speaker 5: Ryan.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw that or maybe it
Speaker 1: was from yesterday, but I saw it this morning. He
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I did a bunch of interviews
Speaker 1: with various right wing outlets, but the one that really
Speaker 1: tells the story best is the one that I did
Speaker 1: with He specifically shouted out you and breaking points.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which was really cool.
Speaker 4: Sports called it a must read or a must watch,
Speaker 4: and oh really that gave it a boost.
Speaker 3: Oh that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: No, I thought you guys coverage the whole signal thing
Speaker 1: was like the most you know, insightful that I could
Speaker 1: find anywhere. And of course we've got a bunch more
Speaker 1: updates on that one. There's a bunch of kind of
Speaker 1: really interesting election updates. At least Stephonic is that how
Speaker 1: you say.
Speaker 3: Your last name? I always so discoured us.
Speaker 1: She had her nomination for you an ambassador pulled because
Speaker 1: it seems like they're nervous about losing that seat, which
Speaker 1: is like a very should be easy to hold for
Speaker 1: Republican but apparently it's not. And then, uh, we've got
Speaker 1: some moves with regard to RFK Junior and cutting ten
Speaker 1: ten thousand jobs over at AJS, which I want to
Speaker 1: talk about as well. But Ryan, Let's start with this
Speaker 1: because you kind of called this so apparently so when
Speaker 1: you guys were doing coverage, you were like, you know,
Speaker 1: with this whole signal Gate thing, very possible that in
Speaker 1: these messages they burned some human intel source on the ground.
Speaker 1: And now we're finding out that that appears to not
Speaker 1: only be true, but it was actually at least one
Speaker 1: Israeli source that they may have that they may have burned. Here,
Speaker 1: go ahead and talk a little bit about this, and
Speaker 1: I'll pull it up.
Speaker 3: You're talking.
Speaker 4: It's the exchange where Mike Waltz says something completely inscrutable.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: Jd Vance says what and Mike Waltz says, sorry, typing fast.
Speaker 4: We have you know, positive ID that this terrorist or
Speaker 4: the senior hoothy figure turned away some you know, some
Speaker 4: senior figure in the missile program for the houthies was
Speaker 4: in the apartment building that we just collapsed, like, so
Speaker 4: they had a positive idea of that. And yeah, what
Speaker 4: I had said yesterday morning on the show is that
Speaker 4: the most likely way you get a positive ID on
Speaker 4: something like that is from a person who is there
Speaker 4: and who told you, hey, dude is in the building,
Speaker 4: because just flying a drone over top of the building
Speaker 4: is very unlikely to be able to give you that
Speaker 4: level of intelligence like you need gate analysis and like
Speaker 4: like they just can't pull that off, and they wouldn't
Speaker 4: and they're like.
Speaker 3: You don't think paleers figure that out.
Speaker 5: They have not.
Speaker 4: And also there'd be like a seven there'd be like
Speaker 4: a seven second window where the guy's going from like
Speaker 4: his car into the building where the drone would have
Speaker 4: to be perfectly positioned, and even then like capturing it
Speaker 4: in anything other than a kind of grainy like this
Speaker 4: this idea that we all have from Mission Impossible where
Speaker 4: we're like computer enhance, like that doesn't boom all of
Speaker 4: a sudden match with everyone in the world boom and
Speaker 4: you got it like that that's not actually a real thing.
Speaker 4: So the way they actually do this is you have
Speaker 4: a guy who you're paying and he is like narking
Speaker 4: out to somebody. In this case, it was to Israel,
Speaker 4: and then Israel's relaying back to the United States. And
Speaker 4: so that was from reading the signal chat that was
Speaker 4: the most obvious like explanation that there was a human
Speaker 4: source that they had there, which means now the who
Speaker 4: these and everybody else you know, Iranians whoever else are
Speaker 4: trying to figure out, Okay, who do we know who?
Speaker 4: Like is in that area that would have had access
Speaker 4: to this information? You know, there may be people getting tortured,
Speaker 4: like as we speak, trying trying to divine the identity
Speaker 4: of this person. And so I'm a moron, I have
Speaker 4: no security clearance, I've never worked in national security and
Speaker 4: just looking at the signal chat, I could we know
Speaker 4: of Well, that's right, that's right. I would say that now,
Speaker 4: I would say that so if I can figure that out, like,
Speaker 4: how can our national security advisor not think, oh, that
Speaker 4: that's actually not something we should expose. Jeffrey Goldberg had
Speaker 4: already done them a huge favor by not publishing the
Speaker 4: chat where they all celebrated the collapsing of a building,
Speaker 4: right by not posting the chat where they talked about
Speaker 4: having a basically a human source on the ground, and
Speaker 4: they baited him into posting it by calling him a liar,
Speaker 4: like they basically forced him.
Speaker 3: So he was trying to do them every favor he
Speaker 3: possibly could.
Speaker 5: He really was.
Speaker 4: And if you're guilty, and you know you're guilty, you
Speaker 4: could just go back and read your chats one of
Speaker 4: those people. It's four week disappearing messages, they still had
Speaker 4: the chats. You just go back and look at them,
Speaker 4: be like, oh, this would actually be really bad for
Speaker 4: us and for our source if this gets out. So
Speaker 4: we're gonna apologize for this, say it was a huge mistake,
Speaker 4: and we're going to move on. Instead, they're like, this
Speaker 4: guy's a hoax liar who hacked his way onto our
Speaker 4: signal chat and there was nothing classified.
Speaker 1: There as contact sucked into Mike Waltson's and so they forced, Hey,
Speaker 1: when that happens, he did not want.
Speaker 4: To post that stuff because he is in line. We
Speaker 4: will talk about this in a second. Was the objective,
Speaker 4: which is to bomb the Hoothies? Yeah, which is why
Speaker 4: it works. Just bomb them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why he's in Mike Waltz's phone, because
Speaker 1: they are simpatico on a bunch of like their neocon
Speaker 1: war aims, and so you know, as even though one
Speaker 1: is technically a Republican, one is technically liberal in this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, they are very much aligned, which is
Speaker 1: likely how his contact got sucked into Mike Wilson's phone.
Speaker 1: I mean it also, Emily, it just makes it not
Speaker 1: that it wasn't already utterly preposterous, but like, obviously this
Speaker 1: information was classified, and it's just insulting to all of
Speaker 1: our intelligence to pretend that it wasn't, given that how
Speaker 1: much they classify and overclassify absolutely everything, and you think
Speaker 1: that the you know, location of this is rarely human
Speaker 1: intelligence source is not going to be classified information like
Speaker 1: this would be some of the most highly sensitive and
Speaker 1: protected information. And it also to me, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the you guys covered this ably, I mean fantastically
Speaker 1: this week, and I don't have any points to make
Speaker 1: that weren't already made quite adequately by you know, you
Speaker 1: guys and Shagara on the show this week.
Speaker 2: But like even the.
Speaker 1: Inclusion of someone like Scott Besson on this show, like
Speaker 1: why does the Treasury Secretary need to know about this?
Speaker 1: And to me, the whole thing just gives like children
Speaker 1: playing war games basically, you know, the whole tenor of it.
Speaker 1: The lack of any sort of consideration that this is
Speaker 1: a civilian building and you know, civilians who you've just
Speaker 1: killed in service of this, The lack of any This
Speaker 1: was the part that's making me crazy is like they're
Speaker 1: they're all high fiving and like you know, sending their
Speaker 1: little emoji celebrations over because the bomb went boom without
Speaker 1: a single word of consideration whether this policy is actually
Speaker 1: going to accomplish a single thing, the reason being that
Speaker 1: they know what's not going to so it's like, what
Speaker 1: are we even doing here? What are we doing here?
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Goldberg also, I think, ends up looking foolish for
Speaker 2: trying to have like kept this information quiet and then
Speaker 2: being because in his original story he says something's the
Speaker 2: extent where he's like, it was too it's too sensitive
Speaker 2: to release, so I won't, and then after being goaded,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, okay, actually I guess I can do it. So,
Speaker 2: you know, it's at the same time, like that's actually
Speaker 2: what gave the Trump administration the permission. They feel like
Speaker 2: they got the permission to like not pressure Mike Waltz
Speaker 2: to leave. Is like they all were sending press releases
Speaker 2: about Goldberg then releasing the information and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we can now spend this as fake news, as an
Speaker 2: attack from Jeffrey Bill.
Speaker 4: They all had, they all had the chat like they
Speaker 4: knew they were.
Speaker 2: It's stupid. Yeah, I mean, it's stupid, but it's like
Speaker 2: from a political perspective, they were like, oh, we can
Speaker 2: now jump on this. And that's what's kept Mike Waltz
Speaker 2: in the role because he's that unique figure that is
Speaker 2: like trusted by the national security establishment but also has
Speaker 2: friends in MAGA world, and there aren't many people like that.
Speaker 2: So he's one of those that's like, protect him at
Speaker 2: all costs if you're in the national security world, because
Speaker 2: they don't. They don't really trust a lot of the
Speaker 2: other people in those circles.
Speaker 1: But you know, I do think if Goldberg had immediately
Speaker 1: released everything, which you know, as a journalist, I think
Speaker 1: he should have, then they would have made the story
Speaker 1: about like, how could you compromise this, you know, intelligence.
Speaker 3: Story, how to you on the hook?
Speaker 1: And he would be on the hook. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that was so. I think they could have
Speaker 1: more successfully actually made the story about him if he
Speaker 1: had gone ahead and released what truly is sensitive national
Speaker 1: you know, security intelligence information speak of Goldberg though, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is so this, this is so on the nose,
Speaker 1: So he gets asked about the actual contents, not the
Speaker 1: like process of using signal, which I don't want to
Speaker 1: downplay because obviously and this is this is part that
Speaker 1: I don't think has gotten maybe enough attention, not that
Speaker 1: no one said it, but I do think it's important,
Speaker 1: Like this is not the only time they're using signal.
Speaker 1: Even Pam BONDI just got asked, why are you going
Speaker 1: to keep using signal and she's like, yes, basically we are.
Speaker 1: And I think this was actually part of Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. The reason to use signal is because you
Speaker 1: evade FOYA requirements. So the journalists like Ryan and Ken
Speaker 1: Clippenstein or whoever else wants to get their hands on,
Speaker 1: like what the hell is actually going on here will
Speaker 1: never be able to because the messages disappear and they're lost,
Speaker 1: and that's it. So it's an attempt, a systematic attempt
Speaker 1: to evade scrutiny and the FOYA legal requirements, which I
Speaker 1: know is very like Pollyanna at this point to expecting
Speaker 1: these people to like care about what the law is.
Speaker 1: But that part is not, you know, it's not insignificant.
Speaker 1: But Goldberg is much less comfortable when he's outside of
Speaker 1: talking about like the failures of the process here and
Speaker 1: is asked about the actual substance. So you can see
Speaker 1: here he gets asked by NPR about the fifty three
Speaker 1: people that the US killed in Yemen, and they say,
Speaker 1: there's little talk of the fact that this attack killed
Speaker 1: fifty three people, as we mentioned, including women and children,
Speaker 1: the civilian toll of these American strikes. Are we bearing
Speaker 1: the lead here? Goldberg says, well, those unfortunately, those aren't
Speaker 1: confirmed numbers. Those are provided by the Huthis and the
Speaker 1: Hoofi Health Ministry. I guess, so we don't know that
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, I mean, obviously we're well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're bearing the lead because obviously huge breaches
Speaker 1: and national security and safety of information. That's a very
Speaker 1: very important story, obviously, and one of the reasons, you
Speaker 1: know it's a very important story is that the Republicans
Speaker 1: themselves consider that to be an important story when it's
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton joined the deed, right, So that's obviously hugely important.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that covering what's going on in Yemen,
Speaker 1: the Arab and Iran back ter rist organization, the Hohothis
Speaker 1: that are that are firing missiles at Israel and disrupting
Speaker 1: global shipping and occupy half of Yemen and all kinds
Speaker 1: of other things. In the US, you know, and the
Speaker 1: Trump administration criticizing the Biden's response, and Europe wants Trump
Speaker 1: to do more. I mean, yeah, there's there's a huge
Speaker 1: story in Yemen, but Yemen is, as you know, is
Speaker 1: one of the more inaccessible places for Western journalists. So
Speaker 1: maybe this becomes like a substitute for a discussion of Yemen.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Ryan, your response to that very eloquate explanation.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have a we have a journalist and
Speaker 4: Sunnah Shoib almost mil MASSI it's not it's not inaccessible.
Speaker 4: People can go there. What is it inaccessible? Is Gaza?
Speaker 4: I mean Western journalists completely banned from there. For Jeffrey
Speaker 4: Goldberg to call what the houthis and occupying power when
Speaker 4: he like recoils at the term occupation for Israel's occupation
Speaker 4: is also wild. But yeah, the whole thing shows like
Speaker 4: how blind the blind he is on this entire question,
Speaker 4: Like it never occurred to him that the collapse of
Speaker 4: this apartment building is a war crime, right, It never
Speaker 4: dawned on him that there actually isn't any point in
Speaker 4: this bombing that it's not going to end the blockade.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just going to blow some things up
Speaker 4: and it doesn't occur to him that all of these
Speaker 4: f eighteen's and all of these tomahawks can fly at
Speaker 4: this poor country in the middle of the night. But
Speaker 4: the claim that they might kill fifty three people is,
Speaker 4: you know, a preposterous claim made by the Hoothy run
Speaker 4: health ministry. Do you think missiles do? And what do
Speaker 4: you think bombs do when they land in the middle on.
Speaker 1: An apartment building that collapse? Because yeah, he's you know,
Speaker 1: seeing his girlfriend there or whatever. And I I mean,
Speaker 1: I also like the Hoothy led health ministry. It's the
Speaker 1: exact same language that he used to crowdit the Palestinian
Speaker 1: Civilian detl in Gaza as the Hamas led health ministry.
Speaker 1: It can never just be like here's how many people
Speaker 1: were killed Emily. Another aspect, I'm genuinely curious what you
Speaker 1: guys think of this is.
Speaker 3: Like Trump hovers over this signal chat but like.
Speaker 1: In a very bizarre way, like you know, jd Vance
Speaker 1: is trying to make this very milk toast argument about like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're doing too much for the Europeans. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: Trump realizes how this is dissonant from his messaging with
Speaker 1: regard to Europe, but it seems like they're all sort
Speaker 1: of freelancing and doing what they want without actually having Trump,
Speaker 1: you know, total buy in, or they're sort of like
Speaker 1: projecting onto Trump what they think that he should be thinking.
Speaker 1: And we've had now this series of series of questions
Speaker 1: aimed at Trump, where Hill at least claim maybe he's
Speaker 1: just pretending that he's like, oh, this is the first
Speaker 1: I've heard of. This is the first I've heard of
Speaker 1: that I don't even know what's going on there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just feels to me more more like he really
Speaker 1: is more checked out of his own presidency, except on
Speaker 1: the things like terrorists, you know, the things that he's
Speaker 1: like directly interested in, but he's outsourced so much of
Speaker 1: his presidency to Elon Musk, And then in this chat group,
Speaker 1: it also felt like he was sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: removed from what I think would be an important part
Speaker 1: of his Middle Eastern policy here.
Speaker 2: Well, that's one of the things that I think resonated,
Speaker 2: or one of the reasons I think this signal chat
Speaker 2: resonated so much is that it's the weird, very familiar
Speaker 2: I think, like rhythm. If for anybody who works in
Speaker 2: an office of people who are trying to collaborate on
Speaker 2: a job and are like in different places and don't
Speaker 2: have time for like a full meeting together. Except applied
Speaker 2: to life and death foreign policy, it's a very strange thing,
Speaker 2: and it sounds like you're reading it without having all
Speaker 2: of the context from the inside. It sounds like Hegseeth
Speaker 2: and Waltz somehow secured byan from Trump and are just
Speaker 2: executing the policy. And JD. Vance is saying, well, when
Speaker 2: the President gave the green light, I don't think we
Speaker 2: fully fleshed out the implications of this decision. And it
Speaker 2: is true that the lead has been buried this entire week.
Speaker 2: I interviewed Christian Parenti yesterday and he was talking about
Speaker 2: how this is a significant departure from the foreign policy
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump ran on. This is a war that
Speaker 2: he explicitly came out against, and here you see, very
Speaker 2: casually in a group chat, that war being perpetuated with
Speaker 2: his blessing, but not with his direct involvement. Instead with
Speaker 2: a direct involvement of Stephen Miller, Susy Wiles, and then
Speaker 2: a sort of limp thumbs up from JD. Vance, who
Speaker 2: buckles when he realizes that it's going to be a
Speaker 2: big thing if he wants to be like the stick
Speaker 2: in the mud or the like to actually like obstruct
Speaker 2: this process. So it's very very strange to try and
Speaker 2: figure out what role Trump exactly played in this debate,
Speaker 2: if there was a debate at all. It does seem
Speaker 2: like jd Vance is implying in his point that there
Speaker 2: hasn't been a significant conversation that the President doesn't fully
Speaker 2: realize his side of the argument, and that's very strange.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the debate. The debate gets ended by Steven Miller,
Speaker 4: who comes in and as Deputy chief of staff, like that,
Speaker 4: he is the guy who, on behalf of the principle
Speaker 4: in any office and including the presidency, you know, would
Speaker 4: have the authority to like ended the debate by saying, hey, guys, ever,
Speaker 4: glad to hear everybody's input. I've heard from the boss.
Speaker 4: The boss says, this is the judgment call, Like that
Speaker 4: is that's how these offices go. He didn't quite say that, though, Oops,
Speaker 4: that's a Jordan Sheridan's livestream just started, So he didn't
Speaker 4: quite say that. He said, my understanding from our conversation
Speaker 4: with him basically was that this is a green light
Speaker 4: and then everybody's like, Okay, well let's go. It reminded
Speaker 4: me of there's this and producer Griffin, who's listening in here,
Speaker 4: would would remember this story. There's this like scene early
Speaker 4: in Lenin's Tyranny where he like crosses off a few
Speaker 4: names on a list in a meeting. Okay, because they
Speaker 4: were done, you know this story, because they were done
Speaker 4: talking about them, yes, And like he moves the papers
Speaker 4: over here. I think Berea or whoever his hit man
Speaker 4: at the time was like collects these papers and he
Speaker 4: sees these like names crossed off that night, rounds them
Speaker 4: up and executes them. And the next day Lennon's like,
Speaker 4: what happened where these people? He's like, you told me
Speaker 4: to kill them? He's like, no, bro, Like I was
Speaker 4: just like doodling on the paper.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Which is why you need some processes in place when
Speaker 4: you're going to kill people. It can't be Stephen Miller
Speaker 4: divining what Trump might have been saying in a meeting,
Speaker 4: like Trump needs to like be told direct, like, hey,
Speaker 4: here are the plans, like choose one of them, press
Speaker 4: the button sign here, like do this, so it's very
Speaker 4: clear you guys all have all seen Trump speak for
Speaker 4: forty years. He's not that clear, right, people can read
Speaker 4: into what he's saying what they want to hear. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so we could then kill people based on that. Based
Speaker 4: on that is like Soviet level insane.
Speaker 1: I can imagine, like if this was a e lait
Speaker 1: chat from the Biden administration and you've got Sullivan and
Speaker 1: Blincoln and whoever else.
Speaker 3: You know, random members.
Speaker 4: I think we think John.
Speaker 1: Harris, you know, like I think he's misunderstanding this. No,
Speaker 1: I think this is what he really wants. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, that would the way that would be interpreted,
Speaker 1: and I think justly so is like this guy is
Speaker 1: not really the president, like he's you know, these are
Speaker 1: the people who are actually making the decisions.
Speaker 3: They don't even.
Speaker 1: They can't even really tell what he thinks, and don't
Speaker 1: really care what he things. Ultimately, they're like making their
Speaker 1: own calls in this very ad hoc signal chat group,
Speaker 1: which to your point, Emily, you know, Telci Gabber gets
Speaker 1: asked about, hey, where were you when this She's like,
Speaker 1: I don't really remember, which is probably just a dodge
Speaker 1: because she wants to dodge accountability.
Speaker 3: But it definitely had the vibe of.
Speaker 1: Like you're doing eight other things and washing the dishes
Speaker 1: and like just you know, respect, like let me throw
Speaker 1: an a emoji so they know that I'm like paying
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on here. And we're talking about
Speaker 1: collapsing an apartment building with fifty civilians in or however
Speaker 1: many people were ultimately killed. And so that's the part
Speaker 1: of it about it that to me is so it's
Speaker 1: just deeply disturbing. And then Ryan, you were pointing out
Speaker 1: this like the just insanity of them all being.
Speaker 3: Oh, great job. Jd.
Speaker 1: Van says, oh, excellent. That's when some like you know,
Speaker 1: fift pound emojis come in or whatever. Once they found
Speaker 1: out they collapse this apartment building, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you accomplished nothing other than death. And to show you're
Speaker 1: like patting yourselves on the back for this policy that
Speaker 1: it's the same policy as the Biden administration, which we
Speaker 1: already know doesn't work. Like we already know what does work,
Speaker 1: which is the ceasefire, which you guys just greenlit Israel
Speaker 1: to end and go back to total siege and complete bombardment.
Speaker 3: So that's the part that too.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, these people have lost their minds
Speaker 1: actually like to live in this delusion like you deserve
Speaker 1: congratulations for this in any sort of way. Is the
Speaker 1: part that I just keep coming back to as being
Speaker 1: completely and utterly insane, not to mention just the you know,
Speaker 1: full normalizing of there's no like, oh, well, how many
Speaker 1: civilians are there nothing, It's just and I do think
Speaker 1: this is partly a Gaza effect where murdering civilians, not
Speaker 1: that we haven't murdered plenty of civilians.
Speaker 3: In the past, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to whitewash the war on terror and
Speaker 1: how everything went in Iraq, in Afghanistan, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: there's not even a thought of what is the collateral
Speaker 1: damage here? And we all know how in the Osama
Speaker 1: bin Lana raid, how they took a riskier maneuver in
Speaker 1: order to avoid civilian collateral damage because those were things
Speaker 1: that were at least considered at the time for a
Speaker 1: vastly higher level target than whoever this dude you know
Speaker 1: that they allegedly killed, was and and it's just it's
Speaker 1: grotesque to see like the value of human life has
Speaker 1: just been utterly discarded here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, today they would just drop a nuke on a badabad.
Speaker 4: That's right, and be like we think we killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's exactly right, that's exactly right. The found
Speaker 1: emoji American flag firectory.
Speaker 2: Victory is ours always yeah, always relevant. But Ryan, when
Speaker 2: you were pulling up that Intercept article you wrote about
Speaker 2: Biden and the these, it just I was thinking, the
Speaker 2: Trump administration campaigned on being sort of different from the
Speaker 2: forever wars neo conservative foreign policy establishment, and what we
Speaker 2: see in this incident is how dangerous. Yeah are they
Speaker 2: stopping these No? Are they going to to continue?
Speaker 1: Yes, which is very trumpy and honestly, you could hear
Speaker 1: Trump saying that.
Speaker 2: Right, oh yeah, oh yeah. But it's just like war
Speaker 2: by drone is we've slipped into this era of war
Speaker 2: by drone things so Obama, but uh, there's nothing different
Speaker 2: about the Trump policy. There's nothing different about the way
Speaker 2: that Pete hag Seth and Mike Waltz are approaching war
Speaker 2: by drone. It's as casual and it's it's like, if
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think that's what they campaigned against.
Speaker 2: I think that's what brought you know, this like strange
Speaker 2: coalition of people together, and it's just slipping into the
Speaker 2: same routine.
Speaker 3: Well, in the Hagstad point is an important one.
Speaker 1: Because we were sold, oh, he is a different guy
Speaker 1: than the one who was out there making his career
Speaker 1: on cheerleading for the Rock War, the guy who was
Speaker 1: cheerleading the Ukraine War, you know, the guy who came
Speaker 1: around to opposing the Iraq War. Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: five years ago, after Hillary Clinton and everybody else had
Speaker 1: already changed their minds, he was still like, go Iraq War.
Speaker 1: So we had been sold that he'd had this total
Speaker 1: ideological remake. Well, it's very easy to oppose a war
Speaker 1: after that war has become profoundly unpopular, either among the
Speaker 1: broader public or with the Ukraine War among the Republican base.
Speaker 1: It's a much different thing too in real time, when
Speaker 1: it's difficult, when it's unpopular, say no, I don't think
Speaker 1: that this serves, you know, from their perspective, like America first,
Speaker 1: I don't think this serves American interests. What are we
Speaker 1: doing here? This is not what we campaign on, etc.
Speaker 1: And to me, what comes out in this chat is that, like,
Speaker 1: the skepticism of his evolution is quite warranted. This is
Speaker 1: still the guy who is totally ready to you know,
Speaker 1: drop a bomb or go to war or whatever. Is
Speaker 1: the sort of like, you know, popular.
Speaker 3: Thing in the moment.
Speaker 1: He is not the one who's going to be planning
Speaker 1: a flag and making the difficult case because you know, again,
Speaker 1: I think Jady Vans's argument here was sort of silly
Speaker 1: and like besides the point and whatever, but he should
Speaker 1: have had an ally in that chat in Pete Hagsatt saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Jad makes some good points and here's some
Speaker 1: other things to consider, et cetera. Instead, it's the total opposite.
Speaker 1: Jady quickly realizes like, I'm the only one here who
Speaker 1: has any qualms about it, so I'm just going to
Speaker 1: immediately capitulate and stand out.
Speaker 4: And and Tulsi and Joe Kent like there should have
Speaker 4: been there should have been four, and.
Speaker 3: Maybe Wick Cough, I mean maybe.
Speaker 4: You know Wick Cough. Yeah, if he was like traveling
Speaker 4: and checked out and it was.
Speaker 2: A Moscow Ryan. I think we talked about this on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting in the chat how Pete Hagsas says
Speaker 2: his point of contact, which was originally the point of
Speaker 2: the chat that Mike Waltz put together, was Dan Caldwell
Speaker 2: and Dan Caldwell comes from the very like skeptical world
Speaker 2: of Forever Wars, and so you have this strange I
Speaker 2: guess it is just strange to see people who have
Speaker 2: talked a lot of talk then come into the administration
Speaker 2: and in a very early test, fall into old habits.
Speaker 4: It shows the power of the war machine, the momentum
Speaker 4: of the momentum of the war machine. It's like the
Speaker 4: two parties now would be the Democrats, who like you know,
Speaker 4: feel guilty about dropping the bombs and are doing it
Speaker 4: for humanitarian purposes, and then the MAGA who's dropping the
Speaker 4: bombs but is angry that they have to do it
Speaker 4: for Europe. Really, those are those your choices?
Speaker 3: Yes, choose wisely America.
Speaker 1: Yes, So let's just quickly touch on the politics of this,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, I mean, it's all of the
Speaker 1: insane things that have happened in this administration, you know,
Speaker 1: and doge and tariffs and inflation all everything, right, and
Speaker 1: this seems to be the scandal that has like really
Speaker 1: broken through for whatever reason. Harry Enton did a bit
Speaker 1: on some of the polling around this, so let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and take a listen to what he had to
Speaker 1: say about it.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of interest in this story, right. Google
Speaker 6: searches this week versus last week for these topics. For
Speaker 6: the Atlantic, how many people are searching for the Atlantic
Speaker 6: up nine hundred percent, the highest on record since Google
Speaker 6: searches began they started tracking them back in two thousand
Speaker 6: and four. How about for Signal, of course, the app
Speaker 6: on which this all occurred, up over one thousand percent,
Speaker 6: again the highest on record.
Speaker 5: It has gone up through the roof on. These were
Speaker 5: two particular topics.
Speaker 7: Whether or not people openly end up caring and it
Speaker 7: changes their minds about the administration, that's one thing. But
Speaker 7: the interest that this particular point is absolutely there.
Speaker 5: People are interested in.
Speaker 8: This story right beyond the interest their take on it.
Speaker 8: You don't read that into Google search, but there is interest,
Speaker 8: absolutely absolutely. Trump's cabinet, obviously, many of them are on
Speaker 8: this group chat. Many of them are facing a lot
Speaker 8: of scrutiny and questions right now. Trump's cabinet to this point,
Speaker 8: before this, he was already on somewhat I don't know,
Speaker 8: we call it finn Ice.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the American people, yeah, absolutely, I mean here we go,
Speaker 7: all right, disappointed with the administration appointments of these different presidents.
Speaker 7: You might notice only one of these presidents, only one
Speaker 7: of these terms that were a majority disappointed. Look at this,
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty five, fifty two percent were already disappointed
Speaker 7: with Donald Trump's picks for his administration.
Speaker 5: That is the first time you get a majority.
Speaker 7: Back in twenty seventeen, it was only forty four percent
Speaker 7: for Donald Trump. Before that, you see sixteen seventeen fourteen,
Speaker 7: Joe Biden's picks were not in fact pole but less
Speaker 7: than forty percent disapproved in separate pu poland So the
Speaker 7: bottom line is, even going into this, there was already
Speaker 7: a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet,
Speaker 7: for his appointments. There's no doubt in my mind that
Speaker 7: this number will almost certainly take a little bit upwards
Speaker 7: because we already were dealing with the public that was
Speaker 7: quite skeptical.
Speaker 5: This story can only make things.
Speaker 3: Worse, kake, So there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, the interest in this has been really high,
Speaker 1: and I do think it gets to what Emily was
Speaker 1: saying about how in a sense it's kind of a
Speaker 1: relatable scandal, but then with this like bizarrely dystopian, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just makes you realize like, oh, these
Speaker 1: people are not really They're not doing some sophisticated, like
Speaker 1: brilliant analysis. It's not really thought through. There's no like
Speaker 1: gaming this out. They're approaching this the same way that
Speaker 1: I approach like planning my kid the snacks for my
Speaker 1: kid's soccer game or whatever, like what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on here?
Speaker 4: And accidentally adding people to the chat. And Emily, I
Speaker 4: missed you on the show yesterday because I mentioned that
Speaker 4: Andy Cohen made a joke about signal Gate on Watch
Speaker 4: What Happens Live on Wednesday Night with no context because
Speaker 4: he knew no context was needed. Everybody watching Bravo is
Speaker 4: deeply familiar with what's going on. It's and that's that's
Speaker 4: how you can measure full full like absorption into the public.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Goldberg did what some of the most his housewives
Speaker 2: do at a reunion and printed out the text messages.
Speaker 2: This essentially what Jeffrey Goldberg did, receipts text line screenshots. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, he Maybe Jeffrey Goldberg watches. Maybe he that's
Speaker 2: where he took his cue from when they were trying
Speaker 2: to get to the Lucy Apple juice, the puppy and
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills, and they printed out the text messages and
Speaker 2: brought them to the reunion. We're very off track.
Speaker 3: Now, you're completely losing me at this point. But more
Speaker 3: much of the audience knows what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: Even hold on, let me let me share this there
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 2: Receipts prove.
Speaker 1: Time on.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you did that, right.
Speaker 3: That was perfect. That was perfect. Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just the other thing that the last thing I'll
Speaker 1: say about it is like they have handled it in
Speaker 1: the worst possible way. You know, if they had done
Speaker 1: if they had just been like, yeah, we fucked up,
Speaker 1: next question, you know, like then this would be over
Speaker 1: because there's nothing interesting to a reporter after you've sort
Speaker 1: of like admitted it, then everybody just moves on. There's
Speaker 1: nothing more to like get you on, Like, oh, you
Speaker 1: said you didn't know Jeffrey Goldwi, here's a picture of you.
Speaker 1: Like Jeffrey Goldberg now has like I'm sure he could
Speaker 1: come out with all sorts of other proof that they
Speaker 1: knew each other, et cetera. And so it just like
Speaker 1: it keeps them going, It keeps the story alive. And
Speaker 1: if I fully think that even though this is a
Speaker 1: totally insane thing to happen. Jeffrey Goldberg to Ryan Swoe,
Speaker 1: was trying to protect them as best he could. He
Speaker 1: did not want to release these things. If you had
Speaker 1: just been like, we screwed up. We're gonna make sure
Speaker 1: we lock it down. This will never happen again. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, I mean, I do think
Speaker 1: Mike Waltz should have should resign and be forced out,
Speaker 1: Like it's such a big fuck up that if that happened,
Speaker 1: I think it would be done over and everybody would
Speaker 1: have moved on by now. But because they keep insisting
Speaker 1: on making these ridiculous Oh that got sucked into my
Speaker 1: phone and no, actually, like somehow Goldberg hacked in and
Speaker 1: oh nothing was classified, and oh they weren't war plans,
Speaker 1: they were attack plans whatever like it.
Speaker 3: Just of course people are going to keep.
Speaker 1: Digging and catching you in the brazen lies and insults
Speaker 1: to all of our intelligences.
Speaker 2: Here, Mike Waltz. I think what the reporting suggests is
Speaker 2: that Waltz did not offer to resign, and Trump is
Speaker 2: kind of on the fence and is frustrated about it.
Speaker 2: But Walts didn't offer to resign. And it seems like
Speaker 2: Walts does not want to take an L and that's
Speaker 2: where the disastrous response probably starts and ends, because he
Speaker 2: then goes on Laura Ingram looking pretty confident, feeling like
Speaker 2: he can handle this, and Laura Ingram grills him because
Speaker 2: what she's concerned about is what a lot of people
Speaker 2: in Maga world are concerned about, who don't trust Mike
Speaker 2: Waltz and never have t really fully trusted Mike Waltz.
Speaker 2: They trust more than they trust Mike Pompeo and those types.
Speaker 2: But they're like, well, why do you have this number
Speaker 2: in your phone? And he has no good explanation for that.
Speaker 2: There could be terrible explanations, by the way, from a
Speaker 2: Maga perspective, maybe he's trying to shut down stories, maybe
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Goldberg, Like there's all kinds of reasons that he
Speaker 2: could have Jeffrey Goldberg's umber in his phone, but he
Speaker 2: doesn't have a good answer for it, and so because
Speaker 2: of that, he couldn't be honest. And you can't get
Speaker 2: away with lying over and over again or trying to
Speaker 2: evade the truth over and over again without looking foolish,
Speaker 2: and he's ended up looking completely folish. He got caught
Speaker 2: and the administration now has this albatross of Mike Waltz,
Speaker 2: even though the neo cons are right it was Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseeth who then started throwing all of this classified information
Speaker 2: into the chats Like it wasn't just Mike Waltz, they
Speaker 2: all And yet, by the way, the other thing to
Speaker 2: the other point to make to this is nobody cared
Speaker 2: that Pete Hegseth was sharing the classified information, right, Like,
Speaker 2: if this was shocking to everybody and something they'd never
Speaker 2: seen before, a lot of people would be like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's hold But no, It's like, it's hard to actually
Speaker 2: even blame Headseth because everyone was clearly accustomed to this
Speaker 2: and normalized to it. It wasn't It didn't seem to
Speaker 2: shock anybody or surprise anybody. They probably have been doing
Speaker 2: this many other times that we just haven't seen. So yeah,
Speaker 2: no heads are going to end up rolling. But I
Speaker 2: mean maybe maybe Walts is forced to resign. His credibility
Speaker 2: internally has been damaged beyond repair. He will never be
Speaker 2: fully trusted by any like most people inside the administration. Again,
Speaker 2: he looks stupid to a lot of people who will
Speaker 2: have a hard time taking your national security advisor seriously
Speaker 2: if he can't even keep a group chat locked down.
Speaker 1: There was some DHS staffer who had accidentally included a
Speaker 1: reporter on some information about like ice raids, and you know,
Speaker 1: was immediately put on administrative leave, future in doubt at DHS,
Speaker 1: like immediate consequences for what is ultimately a much lower
Speaker 1: level fuck up than this fuck up. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is something so you know, my dad worked as
Speaker 1: a civilian scientist on a naval base for most of
Speaker 1: his career, and he has a lifelong conservative, but now
Speaker 1: he hates Donald Trump. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: really bothered him about Trump was the cavalier, the you know,
Speaker 1: the abuse of like classified material having him in his boxes.
Speaker 3: Because my dad.
Speaker 1: Had had to follow these incredibly strict process and procedure
Speaker 1: of how you handle this classified information and to see
Speaker 1: the complete disregard of that from people who are at
Speaker 1: the you know, top of the food chain there, he
Speaker 1: just that that thing really got to him. And you
Speaker 1: see that some of the reaction. New York Times had
Speaker 1: a story with some of the like airmen who would
Speaker 1: be you know, on these types of missions who have
Speaker 1: to follow like they can't even talk to each other
Speaker 1: about what they're going to do. So to see these
Speaker 1: plans being sent out across signal to this very broad list,
Speaker 1: even putting aside Jeffrey Goldberg on there, even that was like, what,
Speaker 1: like this is how you operate? This is insane, Like
Speaker 1: any of us would be complete, you know, discharged, Like
Speaker 1: it would be a major issue for us if this
Speaker 1: is the way that we operated. So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's another another facet of the story. But in
Speaker 1: any case, we could go ahead and move on to
Speaker 1: some of the political news stories that are interesting right now,
Speaker 1: including Emily, you're making a truck up to Wisconsin to
Speaker 1: cover this state Supreme Court seat. So give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of rundown of what's going on in this
Speaker 1: race of why this has become such a lightning rod.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here, let's pull up this article because interestingly, Elon
Speaker 2: Musk has been involved both on the sort of aggressive side,
Speaker 2: like on the offense and on the defense. Democrats have
Speaker 2: made this race. So the way the Wisconsin Supreme Supreme
Speaker 2: Court works is that they're not partisans. They're sort of
Speaker 2: conservative or liberal, but Democrats everybody knows, help the liberal right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so you we can't call her like the Democrat judge
Speaker 2: or the Republican judge, but basically we can. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: we basically can. So here, I'm opening up this article
Speaker 2: because just what we learned is Elon Musk is now
Speaker 2: getting even more involved than he already was in this election.
Speaker 2: Democrats have tried to actually make this a referendum. My
Speaker 2: New York Times is not loading here one second.
Speaker 1: Everyone here, I got you can bet also actually got
Speaker 1: the Elon tweet that he put out that I can
Speaker 1: pull up here with. He's going to the state and
Speaker 1: is is gonna do another of his million dollar giveaways.
Speaker 1: He says on Sunday night, I'll give a talk in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Entrance is limited to those who vote in the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court election. I'll also personally hand over to checks for
Speaker 1: a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the
Speaker 1: time to vote.
Speaker 3: This is super important.
Speaker 1: Again, as I said before, that anyone really cares that
Speaker 1: you know things are legal or not when done by
Speaker 1: the richest man on the planet.
Speaker 3: At this point, but.
Speaker 1: This is pretty brazenly election fraud like based on the
Speaker 1: code both in Wisconsin and federally. Wisconsin law prohibits offering
Speaker 1: anything of value to do someone to vote or register
Speaker 1: to vote.
Speaker 3: It's illegal to give.
Speaker 1: Lend, or promise anything of value to influence voting behavior.
Speaker 1: They cap incentives at one dollar and so you know,
Speaker 1: million dollars little bit beyond that limit. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is just again a very similar playbook to what
Speaker 1: he used, especially in the state of Pennsylvania in the
Speaker 1: presidential race. And you know, it's like goes without saying
Speaker 1: if George Soros was doing this on behalf of the Democrats,
Speaker 1: I think Republicans would probably have a little bit of
Speaker 1: an issue with it. But with Elon Musk, so you know,
Speaker 1: here we go.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and so this race is Brad Shimmel, who's
Speaker 2: a very well known kind of establishment conservative figure in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: and it comes out of those you know years where
Speaker 2: Wisconsin has this very robust conservative movement internally because of
Speaker 2: the Scott Walker momentum, and you have Franz Prebus and
Speaker 2: Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy and Ron Johnson coming out
Speaker 2: of that like really the twenty tens, and Brad Schimmel's
Speaker 2: very much of that crowd. He is up against Susan Crawford,
Speaker 2: the liberal justice. This is for control of the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court in Wisconsin. Tesla does have business in front of
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court and Wisconsin like actively has business in
Speaker 2: front of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. And so if
Speaker 2: you're wondering why twenty million dollars is pouring into this race,
Speaker 2: it's genuinely like an interesting question. You know, right now
Speaker 2: everyone wants to make it a referendum on Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: So you can understand, even from an ego perspective, why
Speaker 2: Elon Musk would say it's a bad look for no.
Speaker 2: I asked my parents and they were like, yep, these
Speaker 2: ads are Elon focused on the state Supreme court race.
Speaker 2: So that's why Elon Musk, even more than this one
Speaker 2: Tesla case, may be interested is that he could end
Speaker 2: up looking like a real albatross, like a electoral albatross
Speaker 2: for Republicans heading into the midterms, because the entire country
Speaker 2: is watching this election as like an early test case
Speaker 2: as to his brand and how it could potentially motivate
Speaker 2: Democratic Party voters. So twenty million dollars has flowed in here,
Speaker 2: and it's just like for a state Supreme court likely
Speaker 2: we're not even talking about a partisan Republican versus partisan
Speaker 2: Democrat national race. It's not even a congressional seat, it's
Speaker 2: the state Supreme Court. And so for this much attention
Speaker 2: and money to come into it is like pretty significant,
Speaker 2: and you can see why even beyond Tesla, Elon Musk
Speaker 2: is concerned and trying maybe even the lower expectations already.
Speaker 1: Well, Elon, I mean, he by putting so many millions
Speaker 1: into the race, put himself at the center of the race,
Speaker 1: especially given the fact that and made it into a
Speaker 1: sort of referendum on him. I mean, it's possible that
Speaker 1: the ads would have been about him at least tangentially,
Speaker 1: even if he hadn't weighed in. But you know, by
Speaker 1: dumping those millions, he has effectively made it a referendum
Speaker 1: around Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: Doge how you feel about the.
Speaker 1: Direction of the federal government with him, you know, running
Speaker 1: the show and the particular lawsuit that you're referring to,
Speaker 1: Emily it's about. You know, Tesla is unique because all
Speaker 1: of their dealerships, they're not individually owned, they're corporate. They're
Speaker 1: all corporate, and there's laws in certain states, including Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: that basically ban that structure, and so that's the interest,
Speaker 1: the business interest that he has. And then as Ryan,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, can you know explain and elaborate on there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of ideological partisan interest here in terms
Speaker 1: of drawing districts and then also ruling on things like
Speaker 1: you know, pro choice, pro life issues, labor law, et cetera,
Speaker 1: that just you know fits into the whole ideological Trump
Speaker 1: Elon Musk package.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those are the key things. And the money is
Speaker 4: interesting because while obviously a candidate would have rather have
Speaker 4: more money than the candidate who has less money, the
Speaker 4: Democrat is going to have a lot of money, right Emily.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're going to see plenty of ads from
Speaker 4: the Democrat. So there's there's sort of like a threshold
Speaker 4: situation where if you have no money and somebody else
Speaker 4: has a ton, the person with a ton is going
Speaker 4: to win one percent of the time. But if somebody
Speaker 4: has a ton of money and you have like a
Speaker 4: half ton, like you're you're in the ballgame. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: sometimes that that money on the ton side can backfires
Speaker 4: as people's mailboxes get completely filled with like these glossy mailers,
Speaker 4: and in rural areas you have to pay to throw
Speaker 4: those out that was that was like a huge problem
Speaker 4: in Maine, you know, where they spent like thirty million
Speaker 4: dollars each on these on like glossy mailers, and you're
Speaker 4: just forcing all these royal people to then pay extra
Speaker 4: money to take them to the dump. And so that
Speaker 4: that does not engender you know, good good feelings toward
Speaker 4: those people.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then a guy like Musk, who is not the
Speaker 4: most attractive character to some uh, can then motivate the
Speaker 4: opposition to come out and vote. So so there's a
Speaker 4: limit to what money can do well.
Speaker 2: And that's I think a really really important point because
Speaker 2: one of the things that's tested in this election, probably
Speaker 2: in the Florida election, which we're I know we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about in a second as well, David Shore's
Speaker 2: analysis that went megaviral last week about how low propensity voters,
Speaker 2: if they had turned out at even higher levels, would
Speaker 2: have given the election the victory margin for Trump a
Speaker 2: boost like he actually and that's the opposite Democrats used
Speaker 2: to always say, if we turned out that was the
Speaker 2: whole like rock of the vote philosophy is that if
Speaker 2: we can turn out as many low propensity voters as possible,
Speaker 2: we will win because low propensity voters tend to be
Speaker 2: on our side.
Speaker 4: But voters yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And so now it's interesting that in a midterm cycle,
Speaker 2: the low propensity voters are like the types of people
Speaker 2: who would come out that Elon Musk desperately needs to
Speaker 2: like draw out, and the in all likelihood this is
Speaker 2: not going to have the same level of turnout as
Speaker 2: the presidential election in Wisconsin or in Florida for Mike
Speaker 2: Waltz's sleet, And so what this is testing is kind
Speaker 2: of that theory of the case is if low propensity
Speaker 2: voters are truly like, like, are they really with Musk?
Speaker 2: If you don't get a lot of turnout, what does
Speaker 2: that mean? I think that there are open questions that
Speaker 2: we'll get some answers to in analyzing the turnout on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just add up the polymarket odds. They
Speaker 1: were at ninety percent that the liberal was going to win.
Speaker 1: Now they've fallen to eighty three percent since Musk made
Speaker 1: his announcement that he's going to the state and doing
Speaker 1: his million dollar giveaway, etc.
Speaker 3: Etc.
Speaker 1: So I guess he's managed to shift the odds a
Speaker 1: little bit in his favor. At least according to Polymarket.
Speaker 1: But you know, look, Democrats are very energized. Like you
Speaker 1: see it. You know, every town hall, you've got all
Speaker 1: these people showing up, You've got all these tesla protests
Speaker 1: across the country. You've got you know, them flooding there.
Speaker 1: Senate and congressional representatives with calls and messages, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's high, high level of energy, anger, concern, and not
Speaker 1: a lot of channels to direct at at this point.
Speaker 1: So you know, when you have these either off year
Speaker 1: or special election situations, like this is the moment not
Speaker 1: just for people in that state, but for people around
Speaker 1: the country like, oh my god, here's the thing that
Speaker 1: I can do. And especially since Elon is profoundly unpopular.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump is unpopular at this point, but Elon
Speaker 1: is way more unpopular he has.
Speaker 2: And Dems are unpopular too, which is interesting. Like that's
Speaker 2: what like, what's one of the more interesting things here
Speaker 2: is like this is Democrats opportunity to test out a
Speaker 2: new brand strategy, you know, because they're also like that's
Speaker 2: why Wisconsin is not a red state. I am still
Speaker 2: surprised that Trump won Wisconsin. Obviously I haven't lived there
Speaker 2: in a while, but it's not a red state, and
Speaker 2: right's very very very very close. So it's a test
Speaker 2: of Democrats brand when Trump is sort of out of
Speaker 2: the picture and now you're making it about must potentially
Speaker 2: the future of the right.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I just no, that's that's all a great point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Elon has really made himself central to this story
Speaker 1: a couple other political stories. I mean, this is kind
Speaker 1: of wild. So at least Dephonic had been nominated to
Speaker 1: be you an ambassador, and now Trump has decided that
Speaker 1: he is going to ask her to pull to pull
Speaker 1: out of that process. And the you know, the the
Speaker 1: reading of this, which I think is correct, as they're
Speaker 1: concerned she's a congressional representative in New York. They're concerned
Speaker 1: that they may lose this seat in the special election
Speaker 1: to replace her. So he says, as we advance our
Speaker 1: America First agendas, essentially we maintain every Republican seat in
Speaker 1: Congress must be unified accomplish our mission. Elast Dephonic has
Speaker 1: been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: I've asked Elise is one of my biggest allies to
Speaker 1: remain in Congress to help me deliver historic tax cuts,
Speaker 1: great jobs, record economic growth, secure border, et cetera, et cetera. So,
Speaker 1: I mean the TLD are here is just like they're
Speaker 1: afraid they're going to lose the seat. And obviously Republicans
Speaker 1: have this very slim margin. They've already taken Mike Waltz
Speaker 1: out as well, and apparently there's even a little bit
Speaker 1: of concern we'll get to that about lose about losing
Speaker 1: his seat, which he just won by I believe the
Speaker 1: numbers thirty eight points. So Emily talked to us about
Speaker 1: this elast Dephonics nomination being pulled because it does seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, they're hitting the panic button here a little bit,
Speaker 1: at least with regards to these special elections, which, again,
Speaker 1: when you have low turn on elections, you have a
Speaker 1: Democratic base that now consists more of high propensity voters
Speaker 1: and they're super energized. You've got a kind of recipe
Speaker 1: for disaster on the Republican side.
Speaker 2: Well, and you want to pass a fairly controversial agenda
Speaker 2: through Congress. So it's actually pretty hard to keep the
Speaker 2: coalition together. They learned that lesson with Thomas Massey and
Speaker 2: discovering that he was simply not going to Budge just
Speaker 2: because the party needed him too. He's like, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna be a team player if the team is doing
Speaker 2: something that I think is like disastrous, and have been
Speaker 2: on the record for years saying I think is disastrous.
Speaker 2: So if you're not offsetting tax cuts and if you're
Speaker 2: throwing all kinds of stuff into the reconciliation, you know,
Speaker 2: as a party, you can see we're for Republicans that
Speaker 2: make sense, and you can see if you're Republican leadership,
Speaker 2: that's their job is to keep the team on the
Speaker 2: same page. But it's going to be tough to keep
Speaker 2: everybody on the same page, and they can't lose many votes.
Speaker 2: So at least the phonic one on Hannity, which was
Speaker 2: being guest hosted by Kaylee mcaaey last night and basically
Speaker 2: confirmed your reading of this Crystal that it's exactly because
Speaker 2: they're concerned. They're dancing around that obviously, but they're saying, basically,
Speaker 2: we just can't take the risk. We can't take the risk.
Speaker 2: It's too much of a risk. But it's a seriously
Speaker 2: tight margin. There's so little room of air, the little
Speaker 2: room for error, and there's so much opportunity for error
Speaker 2: that you know, they're definitely panicking, was it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is Makowski that said, like they're just figured
Speaker 4: this out out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: She's like, you just realize is now at least defining
Speaker 1: this is According to Grok, she won with sixty to
Speaker 1: sixty two percent of the vote last time in this district,
Speaker 1: so she had like a thirty six percent margin that
Speaker 1: she won by, Like she this is not shouldn't be close,
Speaker 1: which is why they felt confident putting her in there, like, oh,
Speaker 1: surely we'll be able to win this seat back. And
Speaker 1: so to have to pull the fire alarm on a
Speaker 1: district that is this red is you know, it's a
Speaker 1: very significant indicator of where the sort of energy is, especially,
Speaker 1: like I said, in these sort of like special elections.
Speaker 3: Did you pull up the Murkowski thing?
Speaker 4: There was also some concern among Republicans that that Democrats
Speaker 4: wouldn't hold the election in time and would hold it
Speaker 4: open longer than they're supposed to, which would you leave
Speaker 4: them half of you know, it's half a vote rather
Speaker 4: than a vote lost. Basically, Ohio Mike DeWine did that
Speaker 4: to Democrats back in twenty eighteen when Marcia Fudge stepped
Speaker 4: down then became HUD secretary. Like they kept that was
Speaker 4: the Nina Turnery Chantel Brown race. They kept that seat
Speaker 4: empty for like eighteen months or something. Insane. They did
Speaker 4: that to the Detroit several years ago as well, when
Speaker 4: John Conyers died, basically left Detroit without a congressman for
Speaker 4: like two years. So I think Republicans were like, what
Speaker 4: if they do to us what we do to them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it would be some of that could be too.
Speaker 1: This also, you know, relates to this. So they've got
Speaker 1: to fill down in Florida Mike Waltz's seat, and their
Speaker 1: oxeo's got their hands on an internal poll of the
Speaker 1: race to replace him. And this again is a seat,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a red district. Walts won it
Speaker 1: by thirty plus points. I think Trump wanted by thirty points.
Speaker 1: This should be a layup. And they have a recent
Speaker 1: survey by Tony Fabrizio, who was a chief strategist for Trump,
Speaker 1: had the Republican down by three points after leading by
Speaker 1: twelve in February. According to a person familiar with the data.
Speaker 1: One thing that's kind of funny about I mean that's wild.
Speaker 1: First of all, that Democrats would even have any kind
Speaker 1: of a prayer in this race. Now, they go on
Speaker 1: to say, both Republicans and Democrats still expect Fine, who
Speaker 1: apparently I didn't really wasn't really familiar with them, is
Speaker 1: apparently like a controversial figure in Florida, kind of like
Speaker 1: bombastic and those all kinds of like wild and crazy things.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 1: Anyway, apparently both sides sort of still expect him to win,
Speaker 1: but the fact that it's close is again like huge,
Speaker 1: huge alarms going off because of this. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the people they quote says, you know, if the
Speaker 1: Democrat can even come within ten to fifteen points, that
Speaker 1: would be in a real red flag for Republicans about
Speaker 1: the energy that is going against them here.
Speaker 3: And it was funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is what happened, but in
Speaker 1: the original reporting of this, Axios had said had flipped
Speaker 1: the numbers, had said that find the Republican was only
Speaker 1: up by three. In reality, the poll actually has him
Speaker 1: down by three. But I think that result was just
Speaker 1: like so unbelievable that they were like that can that
Speaker 1: can't be Like you meant the Republicans up by three, right.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I mean, maybe maybe the poll will turn
Speaker 2: out to be inaccurate, but you can see for Republicans
Speaker 2: where they are not doing town halls anymore because people
Speaker 2: are motivated enough to come out and show up. Meaning
Speaker 2: those are the types of people who are motivated enough
Speaker 2: to canvas and to make phone banking calls and like
Speaker 2: do that sort of work. If your grassroots activists are motivated,
Speaker 2: then you know, that's significant and that makes a difference.
Speaker 2: We're not saying that it's like everyone is super angry
Speaker 2: and you know, the regular voters are just flooding to
Speaker 2: the town halls. There's some of that, but it matters
Speaker 2: even if it's just the activist grassrootspace, and that's definitely
Speaker 2: what's happening. And those are the people who make the
Speaker 2: calls and knock on the doors and send the small checks.
Speaker 2: So you can see the combination of curious polling in
Speaker 2: a close district that shouldn't really be that close, you know,
Speaker 2: or in a district that looks close that shouldn't be
Speaker 2: that close, and what they're seeing on the ground, you
Speaker 2: can see why that would be making them quite nervous.
Speaker 1: I wanted to play uh one on Josh Wiel that's
Speaker 1: a Democrat in the race, one of his ads. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think mostly this is just reflective of like national dynamics,
Speaker 1: but I also thought it was interesting to see how
Speaker 1: he's making the pitch here in this ride district and
Speaker 1: what he thinks, you know, is landing with voters and
Speaker 1: causing them to move to his side.
Speaker 3: Sell themon go ahead and pull this up, this message.
Speaker 9: Randy Fine a violent, corrupt politician, so radical and dangerous.
Speaker 9: He supports the effort to cut eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 9: billion for Medicaid, devastating disabled children and those in nursing homes.
Speaker 9: Fine is so unhinged and anti American. He supports the
Speaker 9: idea that social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of
Speaker 9: all time. He wants to cut seven hundred billion, stealing
Speaker 9: from your retirement. Randy Fine, unhinged, Unamerican.
Speaker 1: So the unhinged reference to some of his antics, but
Speaker 1: then really drilling down Ryan on the Medicaid and then
Speaker 1: backing this idea that Elon Musk has been promoting that
Speaker 1: social Security is a Ponzi scheme and.
Speaker 4: With communists like iconography behind it.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know that, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Like, Yeah, that's what it looked like.
Speaker 2: Friends like, hell, yah.
Speaker 3: Right away?
Speaker 4: How dare you smear him with that?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is the one who called it the biggest
Speaker 4: Ponzi scheme of all time. Elon Musk is going after
Speaker 4: Social Security as we speak, shutting down offices, calling it
Speaker 4: rife with fraudy. Like the other day yesterday he said,
Speaker 4: you know, shock, like forty of the halls that come
Speaker 4: into Solid Security offices or scams Like I don't. I
Speaker 4: guess Elon Musk doesn't have a phone, because if he did,
Speaker 4: he would realize that more than forty percent of all
Speaker 4: calls that come into your phone are scams. Like, if
Speaker 4: you're getting a call, it's probably a scam. Why would
Speaker 4: the Solid Security office be different? So okay, therefore we
Speaker 4: should like cut the spending on our on the administration
Speaker 4: of Sold Security because we're getting so many fraud calls.
Speaker 4: So yes, I think you're going to see Democrats running
Speaker 4: against Elon Musk and against what he's doing to Medicaid
Speaker 4: and to Solid security. Republicans think we're gonna cut medicaid.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just poor people. The reference to nursing
Speaker 4: homes was brilliant. That's how basically everybody pays for nursing homes.
Speaker 4: And that matters not just to the people in the
Speaker 4: nursing homes, but it matters almost even more to the children,
Speaker 4: the adult children, adult kids of the people in nursing homes.
Speaker 4: On American you love to see.
Speaker 3: It, Emily.
Speaker 1: I think this also comes before they have even passed
Speaker 1: these Medicaid cuts, right, and you referenced a you know
Speaker 1: how this is agenda's very controversial, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: the Medicaid cuts part of is not particularly controversial really
Speaker 1: among Republicans, but certainly controversial. It's not even controversial among
Speaker 1: the public. Its just like a blanket opposed by and
Speaker 1: largage by the public. But you know they're running the
Speaker 1: sad before that even occurs. Imagine the sort of grist
Speaker 1: for the mill. After those cuts are actually codified and
Speaker 1: the impacts become real rather than theoretical.
Speaker 2: Well, and it could become controversial just with the influence
Speaker 2: of Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon is like extremely opposed politically,
Speaker 2: and I think it's for him become ideological too, because
Speaker 2: I think he's so deeply upset with what's happened with
Speaker 2: the tech takeover, So that could I mean genuinely put
Speaker 2: a lot of pressure on some of the guys who
Speaker 2: are having to take a vote for what is going
Speaker 2: to be billed as quote reform and not a cut.
Speaker 2: Many such, many such cases, as they say. But that's
Speaker 2: another test here, is whether Republicans can They're very very
Speaker 2: and it's actually interesting, they're very high on selling cuts
Speaker 2: right now. Right they think now is the time that
Speaker 2: Republicans can actually sell cuts. They've never really been able
Speaker 2: to do that before. So it feels like they have
Speaker 2: generational momentum to talk about slashing and burning, because nobody
Speaker 2: has the political will other than Donald Trump and Elon
Speaker 2: Musk to actually like say this is what we're doing.
Speaker 2: So does that I mean, do they overplay their hand
Speaker 2: to the point where the benefits start getting touched and
Speaker 2: you're not able to sell it as reform which is
Speaker 2: what Republicans always try to sell it as medicare and whatever.
Speaker 2: They try to say. This is just we're reforming the system,
Speaker 2: we're cutting out. But if everyone sees like, well, that's
Speaker 2: interesting because as we're about to talk about in a second,
Speaker 2: you just fired ten thousand people from HHS, You just
Speaker 2: cut these DEI grants you cut X, Y, and Z.
Speaker 2: It seems like you're actually just cutting. So you're telling
Speaker 2: me that this is just plain reform. That's a hard
Speaker 2: thing to.
Speaker 1: Do, right, I mean with the Social Security it's like
Speaker 1: becoming really clear, right, cutting Social Security administration, it's not
Speaker 1: making things better, it's making things worse. It's making so
Speaker 1: that fewer people are able to access the benefits that
Speaker 1: they're entitled to with that program. And I will we
Speaker 1: can go ahead, like you said, emilis does dovetail well
Speaker 1: with the next story, which is RK Junior just announced
Speaker 1: that he's planning ten thousand cuts over at HHS. So
Speaker 1: this is Wall Street Journal, they say. And he announced
Speaker 1: this in a video on x changes would reshape the
Speaker 1: nation's health agencies, closed regional offices. He said he would
Speaker 1: act ten thousand full time employees spread across agencies, tasks
Speaker 1: with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance
Speaker 1: for the poorest Americans, and more. The cuts are in
Speaker 1: addition to roughly ten thousand employees who already chose to
Speaker 1: leave the department through voluntary separation officers offers since Trump
Speaker 1: took office. Cour to the department. Together, the cuts would
Speaker 1: eliminate about one quarter of a workforce that would shrink
Speaker 1: to sixty two thousand. And they have a quote here
Speaker 1: from RFK Junior says, we're going to eliminate an entire
Speaker 1: alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core function.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's the part that is highly questionable.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll say to say the least, because you know,
Speaker 1: if you're slashing these are agencies, like the FDA is
Speaker 1: already truly understaffed, like in terms of being able to
Speaker 1: get regulatory approvals through, to be able to make sure
Speaker 1: that our food supply is safe, you know, something that
Speaker 1: MAHA should be really interested in. There are already too
Speaker 1: few inspectors to be able to really adequately do the job.
Speaker 1: And so now you're talking about slashing that fun and
Speaker 1: you know, any sort of new drug approvals, medical device approvals,
Speaker 1: any sort of you know, access issues you have with
Speaker 1: regard to medicaid. This is all being slashing is on
Speaker 1: the chopping block, and you know, ryan to to believe
Speaker 1: that it's not going to have the same impact that
Speaker 1: it's having a social security where already wait times are
Speaker 1: astronomical and field offices have lines on the door, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to cut telephone service and all these sorts
Speaker 1: of things. Like we've seen the way they operate. It's
Speaker 1: just very difficult to buy at this point, right.
Speaker 4: And for for for what advantage. You're not going to
Speaker 4: see a reduction in the deficit as a result of this.
Speaker 4: You're not going to see interest rates come down. Like
Speaker 4: the way you would actually reduce the deficit is you
Speaker 4: know through uh you know, congressional action, where you increase
Speaker 4: revenues and reduce spending. Instead, they're probably going to have
Speaker 4: the lowest revenues in a very very long time because
Speaker 4: they're slashing away at the I R S and they're
Speaker 4: gonna they're gonna hit the debt ceiling a lot faster. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a yeah, that's a tax cut that hits that
Speaker 4: you know for corporations, you know, particularly for corporations and
Speaker 4: the very rich who can afford the best accountants, Like
Speaker 4: they're going to push the envelope on on the legality
Speaker 4: of what they have tax breaks, assuming that they can
Speaker 4: fend off or not get audited. The working people are
Speaker 4: going to you know, pay the same or actually more
Speaker 4: because the I R S. It's much easier for the
Speaker 4: I R S to come after regular people than it
Speaker 4: is for them to come after rich people because of
Speaker 4: enforcement is designed.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So firing ten thousand, firing ten thousand HHS people,
Speaker 4: it makes up for like one billionaire that is going
Speaker 4: to rip off the I R S as a result
Speaker 4: of these cuts.
Speaker 2: Cost fighting an audit is like twelve hundred dollars. It's
Speaker 2: really high.
Speaker 4: And they don't let they don't you to use a
Speaker 4: credit card statement like you have to have the actual
Speaker 4: physical receipts since like you're a regular person up against
Speaker 4: the IRS.
Speaker 1: Is ft.
Speaker 2: I mean, I actually think there's probably an argument that
Speaker 2: there's blow that can be cut from places like HHS
Speaker 2: and responsibly and in a way that actually makes the
Speaker 2: organization way way more efficient. I guess it's just a
Speaker 2: matter of trusting that the trusting the process, as they say,
Speaker 2: and I don't think a lot of people have trust
Speaker 2: in the process right now.
Speaker 1: Well, not to mention, I pulled this article like there's
Speaker 1: already there's already problems because they've already ten thousand people
Speaker 1: have already been sort of like pushed toward the exit
Speaker 1: and decided to take the fork in.
Speaker 3: The road or whatever offer.
Speaker 1: And already they are struggling to meet these, you know,
Speaker 1: mandated deadlines for how fast product reviews are supposed to
Speaker 1: go through with regard to medical devices and some new
Speaker 1: tobacco products, apparently, and some of the new people that
Speaker 1: they had brought in, according to this article, had sort
Speaker 1: of these technical skills with regard to evaluating some new
Speaker 1: e cigarettes are doing age verification, and so some of
Speaker 1: the people who were kind of at the leading edge
Speaker 1: of regulating these things, they were in the probationary period,
Speaker 1: so they are out. But this also includes reviews on
Speaker 1: medical devices, etc. And so you know, this is before
Speaker 1: we get the mass cuts that Kennedy is planning. Here
Speaker 1: the additional ten thousand mass cuts that he's planning. And
Speaker 1: we also know that they had to scramble and rehire
Speaker 1: a bunch of people that they had fired over medical
Speaker 1: devices was one piece.
Speaker 3: Another piece was we have.
Speaker 1: This massive bird flu epidemic that has been spreading like wildfire,
Speaker 1: and some of the people that were tracking that were fired,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, oh my god, maybe we need
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 3: Let's bring them back.
Speaker 1: So you know, how many more instances of that are
Speaker 1: there going to be, and how many instances where they
Speaker 1: don't realize these people were important, they don't get rehired,
Speaker 1: and they're effectively playing with fire here Ryan that you
Speaker 1: could have some completely disastrous situation that falls directly into
Speaker 1: their lap.
Speaker 4: And while they're trying to root out waste forrau an abuse,
Speaker 4: they're probably engaged in one of the most wasteful government
Speaker 4: practices in the history of the government. Like they are,
Speaker 4: they've taken tens of thousands of people and put them
Speaker 4: on administrative leave first for a very long time before
Speaker 4: firing them. So that means that the time but doing nothing, yeah,
Speaker 4: bitting them, not working. The rest of the people are
Speaker 4: then scrambling to develop these new plans to lay off,
Speaker 4: you know, more people going forward. They're spending a non
Speaker 4: trivial amount of their time doing their five bullets, which
Speaker 4: adds extra bureaucratic paperwork. If you work for the federal government,
Speaker 4: you do too much bureaucracy already, too much filling in
Speaker 4: five buckets whatever, right like that, that's the problem with
Speaker 4: the federal government. Layering another one on top of that,
Speaker 4: you know, just creates more and then and then they're
Speaker 4: meeting about these reorganization plans, and then like you said,
Speaker 4: they're going back and then rehiring people who they who
Speaker 4: they fired hastily. And that's before we get to the
Speaker 4: I R S, which, of course is you know, every
Speaker 4: dollar you cut, there is many dollars that you're that
Speaker 4: you're not getting getting in. So you know, dog is
Speaker 4: really you know, producing an enormous amount of waste, fraud,
Speaker 4: and abuse.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, this is one of the tough things.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys saw the clip that's
Speaker 2: going around of Ezra Cline explaining like a very bureaucratic
Speaker 2: process for I think this is for broadband to John
Speaker 2: Stewart and John Stuar is just losing his mind. It's
Speaker 2: like a fourteen step process and it is laughable and infuriating.
Speaker 2: And that's like, genuinely, one of the tough things about
Speaker 2: all of this is that there is there's a desperate
Speaker 2: to actually reform the American bureaucracy. And on the right
Speaker 2: it's like who else is going to do this? I mean,
Speaker 2: they like nobody else ever wants to do this because
Speaker 2: there are a lot of special interests that protect every
Speaker 2: layer of the American bureaucracy and influence every layer of
Speaker 2: the American bureaucracy. It's lobbyists, it's you know, unions, and
Speaker 2: like this this does happen. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: special interests that have made our process the way that
Speaker 2: it is. And it sucks. And it's like, is this
Speaker 2: really the guy because it doesn't have to be him.
Speaker 4: If they were trying to do that, great, but there's
Speaker 4: no there's no there's no sense that that's the direction
Speaker 4: they're going. And I agree, like right in my neighborhood,
Speaker 4: we moved here in twenty twelve, and this giant grocery
Speaker 4: store closed then, and they said they were going to
Speaker 4: replace it with like condos at the top and then
Speaker 4: you know, grow another grocery store and shops underneath. It
Speaker 4: going to be a big development. They just started construction today.
Speaker 4: It's twenty twenty five. It took thirteen years. China built
Speaker 4: probably twenty five cities between that time and now, and
Speaker 4: my neighborhood couldn't build you know, one hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: two condos or whatever whatever the number is. So it
Speaker 4: is a problem. But just going in and like firing
Speaker 4: half of the Noah scientists is not the solution.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you want to deal with that problem,
Speaker 1: you need to both cut some of the you know,
Speaker 1: regulations that are unnecessary and timely and build government capacity.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, that's the FDA example is a perfect one.
Speaker 1: Like they didn't get rid of any of the regulations.
Speaker 1: You just now have fewer regulators to actually go through
Speaker 1: that process. And so now your medical device approval process
Speaker 1: is going to take longer, which is why, like I
Speaker 1: don't even want to, you know, tolerate these this discussion
Speaker 1: of oh, this is about efficiency.
Speaker 3: It's not about efficiency. There is zero evidence that they
Speaker 3: care about quote unquote efficiency.
Speaker 1: In fact, they fired the people or forced out the
Speaker 1: people who were at the digital service thing that they
Speaker 1: took over, who were actually working on efficiency. Ask the
Speaker 1: Social Security recipients who now cannot get someone on the phone,
Speaker 1: or have to wait hours and hours, or have to
Speaker 1: go into a field office that is being closed, whether
Speaker 1: their process is now more efficient, right, it's not.
Speaker 3: What's there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, social Security has wildly way less fraud than any
Speaker 4: private payment platform. There's nothing comparable to Social Security but
Speaker 4: multi billion dollar payment platforms or or other you know,
Speaker 4: social security like organizations around the world. Our social security
Speaker 4: is way better than that. And part of that is
Speaker 4: because we have this Social Security Inspector General's office that
Speaker 4: is well staffed and takes takes it deeply seriously because
Speaker 4: they know if anybody ever misses a check like this
Speaker 4: country will burn. And so they are deeply dedicated to
Speaker 4: making sure checks go out at the right time and
Speaker 4: they go to the right people. In fact, one of
Speaker 4: the things they gotten criticized for is being too aggressive.
Speaker 4: If somebody dies and they get like two months worth
Speaker 4: of checks after that, social Security will pretty relentlessly go
Speaker 4: after the estate to get the like five thousand dollars back,
Speaker 4: and the family is like, come on, man, like what
Speaker 4: are you doing right? Relax And Congress even was like, guys,
Speaker 4: relax a little bit, give a thirty day grace after
Speaker 4: they die. Soal Security, He's like, no, zero, we want
Speaker 4: absolutely zero fraud. What is Musk done. He's tried to
Speaker 4: fire twenty percent of the IG's office, aimed that has
Speaker 4: so successfully made this a pretty fraud free program and
Speaker 4: instead pretended that it's rife with fraud. He said that
Speaker 4: there were millions of people you know, getting you know,
Speaker 4: checks who are two hundred years old. They looked into
Speaker 4: it and they found that there were I think were
Speaker 4: two hundred and one people who were dead who were
Speaker 4: still getting checks out of hundreds, like what hundreds of
Speaker 4: millions of people who've gotten solid security over the last
Speaker 4: almost one hundred years. And so like to cut when
Speaker 4: you're cutting the igs whose job it is to cut
Speaker 4: out fraud and who have successfully done it done so
Speaker 4: you're not serious about cutting it out fraud.
Speaker 3: It's not the goal, Like that is not the goal.
Speaker 3: There are a number of different goals.
Speaker 1: One of them is to destroy government capacity to regulate
Speaker 1: big business. They've dropped a quarter of all enforcement cases,
Speaker 1: gutt to the CFPB, you know, totally defenestray the SEC,
Speaker 1: gutted the IRS so they can't you know, collect taxes
Speaker 1: of billionaires, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Like that's one goal.
Speaker 1: Another goal is just like an ideological anti government project.
Speaker 1: So if government doesn't work, then that justifies more cuts
Speaker 1: to government. Another goal is being able to make available
Speaker 1: more cash for you know, tax cuts and subsidies for
Speaker 1: people like Elon Musk. Another is for him to be
Speaker 1: able to have direct control over agencies that have tried
Speaker 1: to regulate his businesses or investigated his businesses, or to
Speaker 1: be able to gobble up any sort of contracts of subsidies,
Speaker 1: screw over his competitors, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Those are the goals. Like efficiency is not a goal.
Speaker 1: Efficiency is the packaging, but it is has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the project that they are actually engaged at.
Speaker 1: If you look at not what they say, but what
Speaker 1: they are actually doing in the impact that it's having
Speaker 1: on got rhy. I mean, you know, to to just
Speaker 1: take it back real quick to the abundance discourse. Here,
Speaker 1: they killed this project that was ready to go or
Speaker 1: had already run. You know the details of this, these
Speaker 1: EV chargers that were already like being installed, like this
Speaker 1: was you know, building out they were abundant style away
Speaker 1: and they're.
Speaker 4: Like they took the Trump administration took EV chargers that
Speaker 4: were in on federal land and in federal buildings that
Speaker 4: were already installed and rip them out, took just took
Speaker 4: them out, spent money to destroy infrastructure that was already created. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So if they don't like evs.
Speaker 1: Or whatever, if the idea is like I mean, the
Speaker 1: abundance idea, which I have issues with putting this at
Speaker 1: the center democratic discourse, whatever, But to be fair to them,
Speaker 1: their idea is like we need to make it easier
Speaker 1: to build. That is not what's going on here. They're
Speaker 1: making it easier for robber barons to steal from the
Speaker 1: public purse and get away with crimes that they're making
Speaker 1: it easier to do, but to actually like build out
Speaker 1: infrastructure or some sort of like capacity or government ability
Speaker 1: to respond to challenge and No, that is the polar
Speaker 1: opposite of what is going on here.
Speaker 2: I gets.
Speaker 4: Somebody shared China is like by twenty thirty they're going
Speaker 4: to have some fusion fission nuclear reactor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or no was writing about that. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be like you know, I mean that China is just
Speaker 1: like we like to pretend that like, oh, we still
Speaker 1: got the edge, but they're like nipping at our heels.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just kicking our ass at this point, right,
Speaker 1: it's not close. The real AI arms race is probably
Speaker 1: going to be between different companies in China. The real
Speaker 1: EB arms race is between companies different companies in China.
Speaker 2: I do think it's like it's one of the things
Speaker 2: that it's frustrating, and I don't like when people on
Speaker 2: the right just completely enjoy the left wandering through the wilderness,
Speaker 2: because if we had a healthy political climate, your options
Speaker 2: wouldn't be the Biden administration's insane fourteen step process to
Speaker 2: put in broadband and Elon Musk like, we have the
Speaker 2: worst of both worlds right now, and so people are
Speaker 2: being asked to choose between a Democratic party that defends
Speaker 2: this process and Elon Musk, who doesn't give a damn
Speaker 2: about whether the ends go to the right means. So it's, yeah,
Speaker 2: everything sucks.
Speaker 1: I got one last last one to put up here
Speaker 1: that just, you know, I think demonstrates the kind of
Speaker 1: short like penny wise pound foolish approach here and maybe
Speaker 1: have a different view, Emily, But US is ending money
Speaker 1: for this vaccine fund to help get kids inoculated around
Speaker 1: the world, and you know, in the grand scheme of
Speaker 1: the federal budget, this is like literally pennies but has
Speaker 1: massive impact on millions and millions of people. It says
Speaker 1: the Trump administration tends to terminate the US financial support
Speaker 1: for Gaviy, the organization that's helped purchase critical vaccines for
Speaker 1: kids in developing countries, saving millions of lives of the
Speaker 1: past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for
Speaker 1: efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally.
Speaker 1: And it's just like, I don't know. I look at
Speaker 1: this ry and I'm like, do we think we don't
Speaker 1: also live in this world? Like do we think that
Speaker 1: none of this has any Like did we not just
Speaker 1: live through a pandemic and see very clearly how the
Speaker 1: things that happen on the other side of the world
Speaker 1: lo and behold can have an impact on us too.
Speaker 3: And so it seems to me both just like cruel
Speaker 3: and foolish.
Speaker 1: And we'll have zero wrote impact whatsoever on our debt
Speaker 1: and our deficit if that was indeed any sort of
Speaker 1: real priority for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the compromise here has always been that the
Speaker 4: world will allow us to continue with this draconian patent
Speaker 4: system that takes very easily producible medicines and vaccines and
Speaker 4: makes them unaffordable for half or more of the world,
Speaker 4: and in exchange, we will provide very affordable access for
Speaker 4: not half the world, but the poorest of the poor.
Speaker 4: So that's sort of the balancing act. Like we we
Speaker 4: over here in the United States will get to get
Speaker 4: we being the pharmaceutical companies, get to get very and
Speaker 4: new Jersey, we'll get to get very rich, and we'll
Speaker 4: make sure that as a product of that, we're not
Speaker 4: killing hundreds of millions of people from present preventable illnesses.
Speaker 4: And some people will die of preventable illnesses, but it
Speaker 4: won't be hundreds of millions, and just be maybe hundreds
Speaker 4: of thousands, and and we'll call that charity and foreign aid.
Speaker 4: And when what it is, of course, is propping up
Speaker 4: our unequal system that keeps us rich and keeps them poor.
Speaker 4: So we're now ripping that up. And so we're telling
Speaker 4: the world that the deal is we are going to
Speaker 4: get fabulously rich. We're going to artificially keep the price
Speaker 4: of these medicines and vaccines at such extraordinary levels and
Speaker 4: at the at the barrel of a gun that hundreds
Speaker 4: of millions of people could die, millions, tens, millions, hundreds,
Speaker 4: like enormous numbers of people could die from these very
Speaker 4: treatable illnesses, and pretend that those that that that won't
Speaker 4: come over here and hurt the United States. That's this
Speaker 4: is even a separate question. And we're daring the world
Speaker 4: to not revolt against that. And we're doing it while
Speaker 4: Russi and China are both you know, becoming more influential
Speaker 4: around the world. And so I would say that like that,
Speaker 4: we cut that bar We cut that bargain for a reason,
Speaker 4: Like our elites cut that bargain for a reason. We
Speaker 4: thought it was beneficial to keeping inequality alive and well
Speaker 4: around the world and keeping us rich. We didn't. Our
Speaker 4: elites did not cut that bargain because they're soft hearted.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, so okay.
Speaker 4: Now you're going to rip that up. See how it
Speaker 4: goes for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I do have a slightly
Speaker 2: different perspective on this. I think this will be a gap.
Speaker 2: They're already private, like Mark Cuban is already trying to
Speaker 2: make up the difference with private funding for a lot
Speaker 2: of these programs that the United States used as foreign
Speaker 2: policy tools but were actually the call is they would
Speaker 2: call charitable, but we're actually using and deploying selectively as
Speaker 2: foreign policy tools in a way that wasn't actually all
Speaker 2: that well, probably did some really wonderful things, clearly did
Speaker 2: some really wonderful things, and still does do some really
Speaker 2: wonderful things, but was being deployed in a sort of
Speaker 2: cynical and selective way for the sake of the American Empire,
Speaker 2: and so I do expect that you know, American charity
Speaker 2: will probably make up the gap. And the COVID example,
Speaker 2: to me is actually an interesting one because we framed
Speaker 2: our wonderful grant to the Wuhan Laboratory, as you know,
Speaker 2: being in the name of academic personage in research. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so I mean that this stuff doesn't bother me
Speaker 2: quite as much, assuming that they already there are already
Speaker 2: people in place who will make up the difference.
Speaker 4: But I also see, I say, more likely you know, Russia, China,
Speaker 4: India and generics will just be like, you know what,
Speaker 4: we don't respect this copyright system of yours anymore. You
Speaker 4: made these drugs, we're stealing the copyright. It's also you
Speaker 4: are pirates, you are scoundrels. F off, We're just we're
Speaker 4: stealing it. We're going to make them ourselves, and we're
Speaker 4: going to sell them for pennies around Africa, and we're
Speaker 4: going to sell them in exchange for nickel and cobalt
Speaker 4: and other rare earths. And you all can just go
Speaker 4: sit and spin, you know, since and we're also going
Speaker 4: to buy stuff from Canada because you've like pissed off
Speaker 4: Canada for god knows why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's decades of like emotional blackmail from the imperialists
Speaker 2: that have built up and people in the third world
Speaker 2: are caught in the middle, and it's like the American
Speaker 2: people are like, well, this is cynical and selective, and
Speaker 2: so much of it is done under the surface, and
Speaker 2: then the people in the third world are the ones
Speaker 2: who continue to get screwed because of the American political process.
Speaker 1: To me, it's another instance of like taking a system
Speaker 1: that's bad in the ways that you guys both lay
Speaker 1: out and just making it worse. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep our patents, we're going to keep
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to keep blackmailing you in this way,
Speaker 1: and now you're just like instead of us making this
Speaker 1: deal where now these kids will be safe, didn't have
Speaker 1: vaccines and not die from easily preventable diseases, now they're
Speaker 1: just going to die and we're going to get rich.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, it seems to me the theme
Speaker 1: of a lot of what the Trump administration has done
Speaker 1: and the way that they've sold it, because they can
Speaker 1: point to these things that are like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, they wouldn't. I don't think they'd explain it
Speaker 1: the way we're in did because they don't care about
Speaker 1: the like they're in favor of the profits and the
Speaker 1: patents and the exploitation and all of that. But they
Speaker 1: can certainly point to the way that USAID has been
Speaker 1: cynically weaponized on behalf of empire while also building their
Speaker 1: own imperial projects. Yeah, and threatening Greenland and you know,
Speaker 1: Canada and planning a war with Mexico and you know,
Speaker 1: bombing the Hoofis and all these sorts of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything else you guys are taking a look at today
Speaker 1: before we wrap here.
Speaker 2: No, I just wanted to say I spoke to two
Speaker 2: different groups of students this week, and it's insane how
Speaker 2: like it's just cool they come up to like they're
Speaker 2: the og hipsters of breaking points. So they'll be like,
Speaker 2: we've been watching since Rising. I feel like, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like everybody always says like, oh, we've
Speaker 1: been watching guys and rides. Surely not everybody has been
Speaker 1: watching us since Rising. But I do feel like they
Speaker 1: love to claim that, which is cool.
Speaker 2: No, it's cool, like the students just it's cool to
Speaker 2: be around college students who have kind of grown up
Speaker 2: with the show and just wanted to shout out all
Speaker 2: those guys because we appreciate them and appreciate them watching.
Speaker 1: Did you get any vibes from them, Emily about like
Speaker 1: the campus crackdown staff and the arrests that are happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it was interesting because I feel like
Speaker 2: the pendulum is sort of swinging, or it's like conservative
Speaker 2: students ten years ago. I graduated college ten years ago,
Speaker 2: it was like it was hard to talk on campuses
Speaker 2: and like be comfortable and all of that. And I
Speaker 2: sort of feel like the kids on the left are
Speaker 2: the ones that are really experiencing that now. They used
Speaker 2: to be sort of in control of the crackdown and
Speaker 2: now they are sort of losing that because there's so
Speaker 2: much focus on Gaza and that's one issue that they
Speaker 2: just it's hard to speak freely.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean people are literally being disappeared and arrested,
Speaker 1: kidnapped off the street by masked officers, unidentified officers of
Speaker 1: the state for you know, with no arrest ward or
Speaker 1: charges or anything. So yeah, I would say that would
Speaker 1: have a chilling effect.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 3: Anything you're looking at Ryan, before we wrap.
Speaker 4: No, just you know, the world's falling apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know if Yeah, I know a lot of
Speaker 4: people have been asking about a walker. People may have
Speaker 4: noticed he posted, you know, he posts a day like
Speaker 4: his family is now contemplating they're going to going back
Speaker 4: to pet food and he's already he's already malnourished.
Speaker 1: Was he able to get you know, the treatment that
Speaker 1: he needed for his Oh my god?
Speaker 4: Now, and you know, we've we've we've got doctors at
Speaker 4: the hospitals that were in touch with calling around all
Speaker 4: the pharmacies. There's there's nothing, there's nothing. In god, it's
Speaker 4: been since March second since anything was allowed to get in.
Speaker 4: And when you have you know, almost two million people
Speaker 4: just you know, consuming food and medicine.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 4: I think they're they're a week or two away that
Speaker 4: un said, they're a week or two away from running
Speaker 4: out of you cook cooking oil and food basically for
Speaker 4: even for their charitable kitchens. It's quite it's quite quite bleak. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's uh, And I don't don't know where the end
Speaker 4: is in sight. We Russia. Abu Jalal, one of our
Speaker 4: reporters in Gaza wrote a piece yesterday that people should read.
Speaker 4: It's not it's not that long, but it's it's it's
Speaker 4: good and it's poignant, and it really gets to the heir.
Speaker 4: Actually I have it right here, really gets really really
Speaker 4: put it really puts you there. So people just go
Speaker 4: find that piece. It's just just wild.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: As a mom, even just not just but not being
Speaker 1: able to provide your kids with enough to eat, right,
Speaker 1: like just imagining the pain of that, let alone everything
Speaker 1: else that you know, is the torture these people are
Speaker 1: being put through. Like even that to me is overwhelmingly unimaginable.
Speaker 1: So and I mean, you know, I watched your coverage
Speaker 1: of your colleague who was assassinated and his sense that
Speaker 1: his theory that you know, if the world just knew
Speaker 1: what was going on, surely they wouldn't let this happen.
Speaker 1: And how his you know, his connection to that hope
Speaker 1: was increasingly fading. And it's hard to see it any
Speaker 1: other way because we all we can all see what's happening,
Speaker 1: like we we have, you know, we've seen it every day.
Speaker 1: And now it feels like I think with the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and now that you know the Israel destroying the
Speaker 1: ceasefire and being greenlit by the Trump administration, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Like what hope is there? I don't know. I genuinely
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: Because it just feels like everybody's sort of given up
Speaker 1: on being able to do anything different. And you know,
Speaker 1: now Trump's floated this, say let's ethnic cleanse it, and
Speaker 1: the Israelis are like, cool, let's do it. That's been
Speaker 1: our fever dream for a long time. We're going to
Speaker 1: put together an agency to develop a plan, and that's
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. We're going to go back to
Speaker 1: bombing and starving, et cetera. And the world is just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a shrug, and it cheapens. I mean,
Speaker 1: the immediate is, of course, the horror that palaestinities are
Speaker 1: being put through. But it truly does cheap in human
Speaker 1: life everywhere, it really does, you know. I mean that
Speaker 1: I mentioned that in the the Yemen bombing, like civilians
Speaker 1: in an apartment building. It's not even a consideration, not
Speaker 1: even a considerate, not a mention, not a care, not
Speaker 1: a concern. And again I'm not like trying to be
Speaker 1: Pollyanna about the US war machine and the number of
Speaker 1: civilians that we've killed, et cetera. But it's just like
Speaker 1: this is just normal operating procedure now to collapse an
Speaker 1: entire apartment building in order to get one like not
Speaker 1: that special military target.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, yeah, yeah, the next week or two is going
Speaker 4: to be really critical as as supplies you know, fully
Speaker 4: dwindle like this can't go on.
Speaker 3: Something has to give, something has to give.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Ryan, thank you so much for filling in
Speaker 1: for me this week and always this is always for you. Pleasure,
Speaker 1: extraordinary reporting. Me and Saga great together. It was fun
Speaker 1: to fun to watch from the outside, and you know,
Speaker 1: thanks family. She had to run to another thing this morning,
Speaker 1: but always great catching up with her and hearing her
Speaker 1: thoughts on things.
Speaker 3: And hope you guys have a fantastic weekend.
Speaker 1: I will be back normal shows all that stuff next week,
Speaker 1: so I will see you then see soon