Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal.
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Speaker 3: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 1: Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal, Indeed.
Speaker 4: We do a lot going on.
Speaker 2: We're taking a look at the markets, fed chair at
Speaker 2: Jaypal speaking yesterday and Marcus not too happy about what
Speaker 2: he had to say. President Trump not too happy about
Speaker 2: what he had to say, so we'll get into that.
Speaker 4: We also have the very latest.
Speaker 2: On China's moves and taking a look which is appropriate
Speaker 2: giving given a Sager being the expectant father over here
Speaker 2: at the way this is all going to impact New parents.
Speaker 2: Those strollers are about to become wildly more expensive than
Speaker 2: they already are.
Speaker 4: We've got Richard Hanania on the show. We're going to
Speaker 4: talk to.
Speaker 2: Him about the very latest with Kilmar Abrago Garcia, we
Speaker 2: had more movement on the judicial front. We also want
Speaker 2: to talk to him about why he has turned on Trump,
Speaker 2: voted for Trump. He has come out publicly and said
Speaker 2: he regrets that, so we want to get into the
Speaker 2: way that he is thinking about all of that. We've
Speaker 2: also got myriad of Elon updates for you, Big Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal expose into his like breeding legion cult, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call it. It's very strange, So we'll
Speaker 2: break that down for you. I might actually ask Richard
Speaker 2: about that because I'm kind of curious his take on.
Speaker 1: All of that.
Speaker 4: But in addition, we've been wanting to cover the fact.
Speaker 2: Look, DOGE has been very successful at a lot of destruction.
Speaker 2: Social Security is completely hobbled, all sorts of agencies unable
Speaker 2: to do their work. Even like the collecting of the tariffs.
Speaker 2: Guys were DOGE and so they couldn't figure out the
Speaker 2: customs duties as things were coming in. So they've been
Speaker 2: successful at destroying things in terms of the advertised supposed
Speaker 2: goal of cutting government spending, total and complete failure. It's
Speaker 2: like blatantly obvious. Now there are no real public successes
Speaker 2: they can point to, So we wanted to take a
Speaker 2: look at DOGE and what they've been up to. We
Speaker 2: also got some very significant and important breaking news yesterday
Speaker 2: New York Times exposing that the Israelis were really pushing
Speaker 2: the Trump administration to help them with a strike on
Speaker 2: Iran's nuclear facilities.
Speaker 4: And at the urging of A JD.
Speaker 2: Vance, Tulci Gabbard and few others within the administration Susie
Speaker 2: Wows in particular as well, the Trump administration decided not
Speaker 2: to help them with that in favor of, at least
Speaker 2: for the time being, negotiations. So what does that mean?
Speaker 2: What's the broader picture? This also comes on the heels
Speaker 2: of a purge of some senior staff over the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot to put together there, and I'm
Speaker 2: taking a look at how we may be entering an
Speaker 2: even more dangerous face of Trump is in two point zero,
Speaker 2: as his back is increasingly against the wall and his popularity.
Speaker 4: So I'll be looking at those pieces today.
Speaker 1: All right, We're excited for that. Thank you all to
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Speaker 3: as support the channel. So with that though, let's get
Speaker 3: to the tariffs, and as you said, the market reaction,
Speaker 3: Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell making a number
Speaker 3: of comments that he will not bail out the stock
Speaker 3: market even though he believes that inflation and tariff impact
Speaker 3: on the economy remains very precarious.
Speaker 1: Let's take a lesson.
Speaker 5: The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly
Speaker 5: larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be
Speaker 5: true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation
Speaker 5: and slower growth. Despite heightened uncertainty and downside risks, the
Speaker 5: US economy is still in a solid position. The labor
Speaker 5: market is at or near maximum employment. Inflation has come
Speaker 5: down a great deal, but is still running a bit
Speaker 5: above our two percent objective. Some people believe the Fed
Speaker 5: will intervene at the stock market plumits. These are very
Speaker 5: fundamental changes in long held in some cases policies in
Speaker 5: the United States, and there's not any real experience. I mean,
Speaker 5: the smooth Holly tariffs were actually not this large, and
Speaker 5: they were ninety five years ago, so there isn't a
Speaker 5: modern experience of how to think about.
Speaker 1: This, not a lot of experience on how to think
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 3: But the most important answer was him saying, no, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to bail out the stock market. Those comments
Speaker 3: were taken quite literally by the stock market s and
Speaker 3: P five hundred dropped about two percent yesterday. Futures as
Speaker 3: of this morning look relatively flat, so we can continue
Speaker 3: to see that. More importantly, though, is that Trump, it seems,
Speaker 3: has been betting heavily on the Federal Reserve actually cutting rates,
Speaker 3: and that is just not what the Federal Reserve chairman
Speaker 3: is saying as of this morning. As of this morning,
Speaker 3: as we also know, Donald Trump actually attacked the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 3: saying the Federal Reserve Chairman Derrone pallet quote, termination cannot
Speaker 3: come soon enough. But because of the way that terms
Speaker 3: and appointments and all of that work, there's still a
Speaker 3: significant amount of period before any movement on that is
Speaker 3: even possible, as well as almost certainly some court challenges.
Speaker 3: As they try to do there's complicated legal stuff going on,
Speaker 3: but they're trying to set the ground to be able
Speaker 3: to remove a Ftal Reserve chairman if they want by
Speaker 3: challenging some long held scrutiny on that law, which could
Speaker 3: be interesting under itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it relates to some of these you know,
Speaker 2: they fired like you know, an l RB chair, some
Speaker 2: of the in the CFPB, some of these agencies that
Speaker 2: are supposed to have independence some distance from the executive's
Speaker 2: wins that's being challenged in court. So that could relate
Speaker 2: to what is going on here as well. But you know,
Speaker 2: I mean from the perspective of the FED chair, right,
Speaker 2: you are being put in a total bind here because
Speaker 2: on the one hand, yeah, the terrafts are very likely
Speaker 2: to slow growth.
Speaker 4: In fact, I think we.
Speaker 2: Already know the terriffs have slowed growth. You can see
Speaker 2: it in real time, what's happening. So that would lend
Speaker 2: its sword itself towards Okay, well, let's cut interest rates
Speaker 2: to try to get the economy moving. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: the terrats are inflationary, so cutting the interest rates might
Speaker 2: help further fuel inflation. And so you know, this potential
Speaker 2: stagflation bind really leaves the FED in a very difficult place.
Speaker 2: And what you're our own Paul is saying is Hey,
Speaker 2: for now, we're just holding where we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And so let's go ahead and put a
Speaker 3: two up on the screen, because there's been major movement
Speaker 3: here in the United States in terms of how this
Speaker 3: trade war with China is positioning. We're going to talk
Speaker 3: next about China and about some of the consumer environment
Speaker 3: where we're all likely to experience quite a bit of
Speaker 3: price hikes. But it is becoming clear now that Nvidia
Speaker 3: is the quote biggest US China bargaining chip. I previously
Speaker 3: had flagged the story in this so I wanted to
Speaker 3: come I see.
Speaker 1: I want to come back.
Speaker 3: To this is that previously jensng Wog, the CEO of Nvidia,
Speaker 3: had paid about a million dollars to attend a mar
Speaker 3: A Lago dinner. At that dinner, he apparently convinced either
Speaker 3: Trump or somebody around Trump not to put export licenses
Speaker 3: on those H twenty chips that Nvidia had developed specifically
Speaker 3: to be liable with these export controls be able to
Speaker 3: ship to China approxim me five point five billion dollar
Speaker 3: market segment for Nvideo. Well, it came out overnight that
Speaker 3: as a result of the tariffs and despite some of
Speaker 3: the previous promises that they had made to Nvidia, the
Speaker 3: United States would be slapping export controls on those H
Speaker 3: twenty chips now immediately. I just woke up to the
Speaker 3: news this morning, Crystal that jensaying not here in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 1: He's in China.
Speaker 3: He actually has just met with the Chinese vice premiere
Speaker 3: and with the CEO of Deep Seek, trying to assure
Speaker 3: them that they all still want to do business. But
Speaker 3: it does tell us where, you know, to the extent
Speaker 3: that we have any real leverage over China. It's not
Speaker 3: really about consumer imports and stuff that they necessarily need.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk a little bit about their consumer
Speaker 3: like the injections that they're putting in in terms of
Speaker 3: their support. A lot of this high tech manufacturing and
Speaker 3: design specifically is really where things are landing for what
Speaker 3: we are trying to do with them. The question is
Speaker 3: of course about buckling, about technology transfer and more. But
Speaker 3: the reason why it's important also for the pressure here
Speaker 3: in America is that sent en VideA shares sliding with
Speaker 3: the overall pressure right now and the consumer the retail environment.
Speaker 3: So it really does show us that while we've had
Speaker 3: almost sixty percent reduction in overall US imports just in
Speaker 3: the last two weeks extraordinary, genuinely extraordinary. Who nobody has
Speaker 3: any idea how that will even show up in the
Speaker 3: price environment. With the Federal Reserve chairman, the nvidious strategy,
Speaker 3: the chaos and everything moving back and forth, you can
Speaker 3: just see that markets are very they're very uncertain right now,
Speaker 3: which is part of what you see so much of
Speaker 3: the wild volatility happening right.
Speaker 2: So, just to give a little bit of background here,
Speaker 2: you guys may know some of this. So under the
Speaker 2: Biden administration, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, she said quite
Speaker 2: directly that the point of the export controls that the
Speaker 2: Biden administration put on the sort of like top shelf
Speaker 2: chips was to slow China's development technological development, and.
Speaker 4: Perhaps it had some impact.
Speaker 2: But deep part of what the deep Seek innovation really
Speaker 2: proved is that they were in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: able to either directly circumvent or innovate around that particular
Speaker 2: export control. And again that was for sort of the
Speaker 2: top shelf like top of the line most advanced chips
Speaker 2: in Nvidia produced this H twenty chip which was meant,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, to get specifically around those export controls
Speaker 2: to be sort of like a lower grade like Okay,
Speaker 2: well this is in the top shelf stuff. We can
Speaker 2: still sell this thing. And so that's why they were
Speaker 2: doing big business in China with regard to this particular chip. Now,
Speaker 2: China does have their own chip capacity, especially when you're
Speaker 2: talking about this level, not the highest of the highest
Speaker 2: level chips are. It's largely through Huawei. And are they
Speaker 2: exactly as good as the Age twenty You know, there's
Speaker 2: some indicators that they aren't quite as advanced as at
Speaker 2: Age twenty chips, but they do have some of their
Speaker 2: own domestic chip capacity. And also what we learned under
Speaker 2: the Biden administration is that this did not hobble them
Speaker 2: nearly as much as the Biden folks were hoping that
Speaker 2: it was ultimately going to hobble them. So in any case,
Speaker 2: you know, this was a big hit to in Vidia stock.
Speaker 2: In Vidia one of those Magnificent seven, huge impact in
Speaker 2: terms of our overall stock market. So that was part
Speaker 2: in addition to the j. Powell comments, that was part
Speaker 2: of what has been going on in the markets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So let's go ahead and then put the
Speaker 3: next one up on the screen. So people can take
Speaker 3: a look. You could see the quote the US and
Speaker 3: China trade fighters quote slamming stocks, sending gold to record high.
Speaker 3: The gold market has been absolutely insane. It's like I've
Speaker 3: seeing a price target there of almost four thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: which is absolutely extraordinary. But the reason why that we're
Speaker 3: returning or starting off on this is just to show
Speaker 3: people that Nvidia, because remember it makes up so much
Speaker 3: of the S and P five hundred that if it's
Speaker 3: going to be a major bargaining chip in the Trump
Speaker 3: administration strategy, that if we're going to see stock sync
Speaker 3: there on top of the overall global strategy that they're
Speaker 3: putting into place, retail pressure. Just this morning, much of
Speaker 3: the pharmaceutical tariffs are shaking out in the markets, as
Speaker 3: well as some other regulatory action. United Healthcare stock down
Speaker 3: by like eleven percent. Yes, I know, funny, like meme wise,
Speaker 3: but it's actually a huge segment of the overall markets.
Speaker 3: We have sector bisector decline in everything, which just makes
Speaker 3: it so that there is huge pressure on the US economy.
Speaker 3: If we do start to see mass layoffs in the
Speaker 3: next ninety days or so, as Ryan Peterson predicted, that
Speaker 3: will put a tremendous amount of pressure on all of
Speaker 3: these different in terms of the regulators, on the government
Speaker 3: and more. And the Chinese are absolutely buckling up. So
Speaker 3: we just want to lay the groundwork for how things
Speaker 3: look over here in America. That's the end vidia front.
Speaker 3: There's also the dollar. This has been a major story
Speaker 3: as well. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: Quote what the weak dollar means for the global economy?
Speaker 3: We have and this was not actually expected to see
Speaker 3: such a dramatic decline in the dollar relative to every
Speaker 3: other global currency. But what they point off here is
Speaker 3: that the quote unexpected weakening of the dollar is suddenly
Speaker 3: becoming the rest of the world's problem too, because for
Speaker 3: foreign sellers all of these goods, cars, kognaks, Gottish tweed,
Speaker 3: the dollar steep slide is a double whammy. It's compounding
Speaker 3: losses caused by President Trump's import levees. So the central
Speaker 3: banks around the world they either need to stop the
Speaker 3: rapid strengthening of their currency, cut interest rates more aggressedly
Speaker 3: to try and lower their overall target versus a dollar,
Speaker 3: but that will have major macroeconomic effects in their own countries. Also,
Speaker 3: of course, the dollar decline now means that currently has
Speaker 3: slipped eight percent per year, which is the worst start
Speaker 3: to the year in the indexes four decade trading history.
Speaker 3: Just to put into a perspective how insane that is
Speaker 3: there has been. It's not just lack of faith in
Speaker 3: the dollar. It's really about US government and trade. And
Speaker 3: then when imports are also being reduced, that will of
Speaker 3: course mean that when there's a weeker dollar, it's going
Speaker 3: to drive up the price of how much we're able
Speaker 3: to buy and exchange globally. So this stuff has major
Speaker 3: ramifications for reserve currency purposes for whoever is still able
Speaker 3: to do business, you know, with importers. But then more importantly,
Speaker 3: it can cause a global shock effect on interest rates,
Speaker 3: where you could potentially see lower interest rates in other
Speaker 3: countries while our stage in the federal reserve is like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to abide my time, which also has askating
Speaker 3: effects for our comment. None of this is good, is
Speaker 3: really what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's emblematic of a broader trend.
Speaker 1: Just the ECB just cut rates. There you go. It's
Speaker 1: from the European Central Bank area literally.
Speaker 2: Part of a broader shift away from the US. I
Speaker 2: mean that's what when you see this, when you see
Speaker 2: the unusual market in terms of US treasuries. You know,
Speaker 2: the US and the dollar and treasuries have always been
Speaker 2: the safe haven no longer, and so now these sorts
Speaker 2: of market responses with regard to you know, our currency
Speaker 2: in particular, this is more like what you would expect
Speaker 2: from an emerging market, like these sorts of dynamics playing out,
Speaker 2: So you know, you don't want.
Speaker 4: To oversell it. Right. The US is still, you.
Speaker 2: Know, a global power, maybe not the global power, but
Speaker 2: a global power. And you know, the dollar is going
Speaker 2: to continue to be central. We're not dedollarizing like today.
Speaker 2: But this shift away is probably the most significant thing
Speaker 2: that we have seen to happen. And that also plays
Speaker 2: into your mentioning the price of gold skyrocketing. So the
Speaker 2: implication is instead of the flight to safety being like
Speaker 2: US treasury bonds as it has traditionally been, instead maybe
Speaker 2: it's things like gold.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: All of this is important, and let's get to the
Speaker 3: next part here. This is a five please just to
Speaker 3: show people about some things that are happening right now. Quote,
Speaker 3: nearly nine hundred thousand fewer people went to the United
Speaker 3: States in March, as the cross border travel continues to
Speaker 3: go down, one of the worst year over year drops
Speaker 3: recorded outside of the COVID nineteen crisis. A lot of
Speaker 3: this is basically fear from a lot of incoming US visitors,
Speaker 3: but a lot of it is Canada actually and specifically
Speaker 3: over the trade war as retaliation for the initial trade
Speaker 3: comments by the Trump administration. The irony, of course is
Speaker 3: that you know, the vast majority of goods remain at
Speaker 3: the overall zero terriff rate under the USMCA, but the
Speaker 3: initial like shaking from the Trump administration and the fifty
Speaker 3: first state language has made it so there's been a
Speaker 3: precipitous decline. We are entering into summer territory, traditionally a
Speaker 3: time where there's a lot of Canadian snowbirds who apparently
Speaker 3: like to come down to America, and yeah, not good
Speaker 3: if you if you run a business in northern New
Speaker 3: York or Orlando, any of these other places. I remember
Speaker 3: looking at some of the top Canadian destinations in America.
Speaker 3: I think Seattle is also up there. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of jobs and economic activity that generally rely on this,
Speaker 3: and this just gets to my overall problem with the
Speaker 3: Trump administration is that they both force people to experience
Speaker 3: the consequences with none of the upside. So if you're
Speaker 3: going to have a terrace on the Canadians and say
Speaker 3: that ripping us off, then we should of course see
Speaker 3: a major stimulus to the businesses which are supposedly getting
Speaker 3: ripped off, as well as to make sure that there's
Speaker 3: no pain for the people who do rely on it
Speaker 3: and the after effects.
Speaker 1: None of that is happening now.
Speaker 3: Of course it's happening in China, which I'll get to
Speaker 3: in a little bit, but we haven't seen that almost
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to talk about strollers, We're going
Speaker 3: to talk about groceries and all of these other things.
Speaker 3: There's no like relief or PPP program that's currently being
Speaker 3: even floated by the administration and or by the Republican Congress,
Speaker 3: which in six months will soon pass a bill. At
Speaker 3: that point, you could have mass layoffs and bankruptcies at
Speaker 3: that point. You know, if we're thinking about a September passage,
Speaker 3: good luck to a lot of summer tour operators or others. Sure,
Speaker 3: are they the most critical part of the economy. No,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people pour their whole livelihood and
Speaker 3: all their business money into this. And so that's my
Speaker 3: major problem is even though we have the same tariff
Speaker 3: rate as we did the day that Donald Trump basically
Speaker 3: went into office effectively for most of the goods that
Speaker 3: move across the Canadian border, he still has just invited
Speaker 3: this thing with Canada and now all of these businesses
Speaker 3: are going to stuffer the consequences and not get any
Speaker 3: bailout or anything.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, And I mean tourism is a significant
Speaker 4: part of the economy, especially if you're talking about Center
Speaker 4: gd Florida, you know, California.
Speaker 2: These are areas that rely heavily on tourism as a
Speaker 2: really important industry for their economies. And that nine hundred
Speaker 2: thousand number, that's just with regard to Canadian border crossings.
Speaker 2: If you look at the number of flight bookings coming
Speaker 2: out of Europe, I mean across the border, it's all dropped.
Speaker 2: And it certainly has to do significantly with the terrorists
Speaker 2: in the trade war. It also has to do with
Speaker 2: immigration policy because you have stories like there was a
Speaker 2: Canadian actress, Jasmine Mooney, who was held by Ice for
Speaker 2: twelve days while she was just trying to like renew
Speaker 2: her work visa, and there are other stories like that
Speaker 2: of people who were trying to come and just like
Speaker 2: visit as tourists or go speak at a lecture coming
Speaker 2: over from Europe who are being searched and detained. And
Speaker 2: people see those stories and like, I think I'll go
Speaker 2: somewhere else on my vacation.
Speaker 4: I'm good. I don't really want to risk.
Speaker 1: All of that.
Speaker 2: The EU has told their diplomats, you know, to bring
Speaker 2: a burner phone instead of their normal smartphone. These are
Speaker 2: the sorts of things that are going on, and so
Speaker 2: it's also not good for the tourism industry, and that's
Speaker 2: going to have another negative effect on the economy and
Speaker 2: impact businesses certainly significantly. And we talked yesterday Emily and
Speaker 2: I I think it was United Airlines that's already they've
Speaker 2: put on two separate guidance, like you know, earnings guidance
Speaker 2: based on like we don't really know what's going to
Speaker 2: go on, and they are already cutting back flights for
Speaker 2: the summer. Yeah, they're already cutting back flights for the
Speaker 2: summer based on what we already know about the economic
Speaker 2: acountlook so not good.
Speaker 3: That is not good. It also softening economic demand. He
Speaker 3: actually went back and was reading a little bit about
Speaker 3: the airline industry.
Speaker 1: Oh nine was brutal.
Speaker 3: Nine in twenty ten were horrible years the airline industry
Speaker 3: because of the overall fallout. They were thrown as many
Speaker 3: incentives as they possibly could, and especially if there's a
Speaker 3: major pullback the top ten percent of Americans, so the
Speaker 3: people who spend the fifteen fifty percent on consumer spending.
Speaker 3: So even if they reduced their amount of spend there,
Speaker 3: the airlines are going to take a massive haircut because
Speaker 3: they were making all their money. They're not making money
Speaker 3: on economy. They were mostly making their money on this
Speaker 3: premium economy and business class seas, which we're selling out.
Speaker 3: So if those people stop booking or even if they
Speaker 3: fly economy, oh my god, they're going to be devastated
Speaker 3: in terms of their their earnings. Last thing on this
Speaker 3: rount before we moved to China. Let's go to A
Speaker 3: six please. This is on Albertson's. This is very very
Speaker 3: interesting from our friend David Dan. Albertsons sent a letter
Speaker 3: to all of its suppliers saying, quote, it is not
Speaker 3: accepting cost increases due to teriffs, which means that the
Speaker 3: suppliers are going to have to raise prices on Albertson's
Speaker 3: competitors that have less market power of David Dan says, quote,
Speaker 3: this is one way that Trump's tariffs and trench monopolizations.
Speaker 1: Interesting point. Actually, I hadn't thought about it that way.
Speaker 3: But what it does show you, again is if you
Speaker 3: have a general policy, let's say here about alleviating cost
Speaker 3: increases due to tariffs and making sure that there are
Speaker 3: government incentive programs and others to make sure that grocery
Speaker 3: prices across the board don't get propped up and that
Speaker 3: these suppliers don't necessarily have to go out of business,
Speaker 3: then you don't have to have Albertsons and all these
Speaker 3: other people gaming the system. It's actually a good example too,
Speaker 3: what we've talked about Walmart and all these peop Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're going to survive, Okay, those Unfrankly, those are the
Speaker 3: people who are most responsible for pushing for a lot
Speaker 3: of this free trade nonsense with China, PNTR with China,
Speaker 3: and a lot of these cheap consumer goods. But their
Speaker 3: market power is such that they'll make it. It's really,
Speaker 3: you know, as they're pointing out here, the suppliers will well,
Speaker 3: they have the leverage over let's say smaller grocery chains
Speaker 3: or other places, and that's probably rural, you know, other
Speaker 3: areas which are not able to bargain, and so then
Speaker 3: you'll see a cost increase overall.
Speaker 1: And then what happens. They're going to go bankrupt and
Speaker 1: Alberts is going to buy them.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And the overall structure, especially with it being just directed
Speaker 2: by the singular person of Donald Trump, of course, makes
Speaker 2: it so the big guys are in a position to
Speaker 2: get their benefits, get their car bounce, pay a million
Speaker 2: dollars to go to their marra a lago dinner or whatever,
Speaker 2: so that they can ride out the storm. You know,
Speaker 2: I talked the other day about this woman who has
Speaker 2: her baby, her busy baby mats, and so she just
Speaker 2: Walmart just picked up her product for a retail for
Speaker 2: someone who's you know, a producer making something to get
Speaker 2: it into Walmart, Like that's like the holy Grail. But
Speaker 2: Walmart accepts, Okay, we will take them at this price,
Speaker 2: and that's it. She can't negotiate with them any for
Speaker 2: that's done. So when you talk about now the tariff
Speaker 2: is I don't know, it's like two hundred percent, and
Speaker 2: he just keeps increasing it. But at a certain point,
Speaker 2: at this point, it's like it doesn't matter what the
Speaker 2: tariff is. It's high enough that for someone like the
Speaker 2: busy baby lady, it's it's over. She can't bring in
Speaker 2: her products. But let's say that she was able to
Speaker 2: figure out the cash to get the tarraff and you know,
Speaker 2: to pay the tariff and get her product over here.
Speaker 2: She's the one one hundred percent eating the cost, so
Speaker 2: earning a huge loss on this product that you know,
Speaker 2: Walmart has agreed to buy it, I don't know, twenty
Speaker 2: five dollars or something like that, and now she's having
Speaker 2: to pay let's say, fifty dollars just to get this
Speaker 2: thing over here. Like it's she is the one who's
Speaker 2: going to get screwed. Walmart has all the power in
Speaker 2: the relationship, and they don't care whether they have this
Speaker 2: matt in their store or not. They don't care if
Speaker 2: she goes under her. And that's so the small business,
Speaker 2: the media business sized businesses, they are going to be
Speaker 2: totally and completely screwed if this is not lifted, like immediately,
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking they have months to be able
Speaker 2: to runway, to be able to make it through and
Speaker 2: ride out this storm, and not much longer than that,
Speaker 2: just by the nature of these businesses.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, that's very true. Okay, let's move on to China.
Speaker 3: We're gonna break some of this down. Have some fascinating
Speaker 3: stuff happening geopolitically.
Speaker 1: We'll start with Jijingping.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned in our last show, visiting Hanoi and Vietnam.
Speaker 3: We have some video showing this, keep in mind, is
Speaker 3: released by Chinese state propaganda, but.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still important. It's still a real video.
Speaker 3: So let's take a look and we can put it
Speaker 3: up there on the screen. You could see Ji being
Speaker 3: you know, all the communist flags waving as he is
Speaker 3: visiting the streets of Hanoi. This is important because Vietnam
Speaker 3: is our number eight trading partner. A key part of
Speaker 3: the pivot to Asia of the Obama administration and actually
Speaker 3: subsequent even with the Trump tariffs, was a basically finger
Speaker 3: wagging at Nike and numerous other retailers saying listen, no
Speaker 3: China anymore, you have to manufacture elsewhere. They said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll go to Vietnam. We gave him a lot of
Speaker 3: money to go to Vietnam. They built upply chains. Now,
Speaker 3: I will be the first to admit that China absolutely
Speaker 3: took advantage of transshipping via Vietnam, and they of course,
Speaker 3: you know, we're trying to gain the advantage, etc. But
Speaker 3: Vietnam was a critical US trading partner. Like I said,
Speaker 3: number eight, very very little behind Taiwan. That's how much
Speaker 3: I'm talking about their overall effect on the US economy.
Speaker 3: On top of that, Vietnam, despite the fact that we
Speaker 3: destroyed half of their country, has very favorable attitudes to
Speaker 3: the United States. They have remembered they have beef with
Speaker 3: China over the South China Sea and a few of
Speaker 3: the island chains. These are not necessarily countries with super
Speaker 3: close relations in the last twelve years or so, so
Speaker 3: to see that it's a bit of a problem. And
Speaker 3: actually even Trump has paid attention to this. Put the
Speaker 3: next one, please up on the screen. Quote Trump grumbles
Speaker 3: about China's lovely meeting with Vietnam, saying they are discussing
Speaker 3: how to screw the United States of America. That's true,
Speaker 3: That's actually true, because there's a reason that Jee went
Speaker 3: to Vietnam and Cambodia and is going to Malaysia next.
Speaker 3: These are all areas and you know, with critical US
Speaker 3: trade relationships, a lot of US textiles moved through that area.
Speaker 3: We are not seeing. You know, it's not even just
Speaker 3: about good relations, don't you know. Forget crystal Vietnam was
Speaker 3: one of the first countries to say okay, fine, no
Speaker 3: tariffs zero and then they got nothing. They still got
Speaker 3: to take Yeah, post they're good. Obviously that's been a
Speaker 3: ninety day off, but you know.
Speaker 1: They're not stupid. They need to make money.
Speaker 3: And so in the interim period they're like, are we
Speaker 3: really going to have a ninety day agreement?
Speaker 1: I mean, look at Japan.
Speaker 3: Japan, they're Economic minister flew here yesterday, they met with
Speaker 3: Scott Besen, they met with the Donald Trump and Trump
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, there's been a great, great movement.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that's been you know announced. That's Japan.
Speaker 3: By the way, we have a very well architecture trade
Speaker 3: deal with Japan negotiated in twenty nineteen with Shinzo Abe.
Speaker 3: If you want to update that, it's really not difficult.
Speaker 3: So it's going to take this long just to do Japan.
Speaker 3: We have seventy other countries that were supposed to do
Speaker 3: way more complex trading relationships than we do with anybody else.
Speaker 3: This is a g SEP nations very easy actually to
Speaker 3: hammer that out. They have good statistics, etc. Rules we
Speaker 3: can trust currency. These are all simple actually to hammer
Speaker 3: out in an agreement. What are you going to do
Speaker 3: with all these other countries which you slapped all these
Speaker 3: huge tariffs on the the interim ninety days, where do
Speaker 3: you think they're going to go?
Speaker 1: They're going to China, same as the European Union.
Speaker 3: They've just negotiated all that tariff exclusion with some of
Speaker 3: the cars pumping away for BYD and Showman to have
Speaker 3: more market entrants over there.
Speaker 1: So there's big problems that we have right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: And I even saw Fox News grumbling about like, hey,
Speaker 2: we thought we were going to get ninety deals in
Speaker 2: ninety days.
Speaker 4: We don't have one.
Speaker 2: We don't have one obvious, right, But I mean that
Speaker 2: Fox News is even saying that is incredible. And with
Speaker 2: regard to this it she didn't come away empty handed
Speaker 2: from this trip to Vietnam. They apparently signed forty five
Speaker 2: different agreements on issues like supply chains and railways, and
Speaker 2: it just underscores like for them, they have one big
Speaker 2: problem our like trade war with US and the loss
Speaker 2: of our very large and wealthy market. Right, our consumers
Speaker 2: are very powerful. We spend a lot of money, There's
Speaker 2: no doubt about that. That's a significant problem. They have
Speaker 2: the entire world that they can go to, They can
Speaker 2: use their own, you know, government programs to help subsidize
Speaker 2: and support their own industry. They of course have their
Speaker 2: own massive and burgeoning market. In fact, their exports as
Speaker 2: a percent of their GDP has been going down as
Speaker 2: their own domestic market has been increasingly powerful and they've
Speaker 2: been turning towards that, and our percent of you know,
Speaker 2: the of their exports has also been going down. So yes,
Speaker 2: of course, we are incredibly important to China's economy. China
Speaker 2: is incredibly important to our economy. Decoupling this relationship is
Speaker 2: going to involve severe pain on both sides. But their
Speaker 2: problems are number one, I think more straightforward. They have
Speaker 2: fewer problems to solve because they didn't launch a trade
Speaker 2: war against the entire world like we did, and they
Speaker 2: are smarter, like they have been more strategic over long
Speaker 2: periods of time than we have, and so I think
Speaker 2: our you know, even the Financial times are saying they're
Speaker 2: set up to in a much better position than we
Speaker 2: are at this point.
Speaker 3: This is I mean, what did I just talk about
Speaker 3: in our a block about oh we got to wait
Speaker 3: on Jerome Powell. There's no Jerome Powell in China. The
Speaker 3: CCPs like drop rates like, okay, got it? You know,
Speaker 3: same with the raising rates done. Now I'll show you
Speaker 3: guys for example, already you know we're seeing major price
Speaker 3: increases hit here in the US. Go to B three please,
Speaker 3: this is this is actually rocketing around new parent group
Speaker 3: chats just like somebody.
Speaker 1: Like me new upp a baby price.
Speaker 3: Now keep in mind, look, this is an expensive stroller,
Speaker 3: so let's let's keep that in mind. That said, the
Speaker 3: price increase from expensive to ultra expensive is still not great.
Speaker 3: And this company has been done millions and millions of
Speaker 3: dollars in sales. Well, their flagship strollers are all increasing
Speaker 3: by hundreds of dollars as a result of these tariffs.
Speaker 3: And these are actually the first I would say, like
Speaker 3: beloved product that I have seen on social media where
Speaker 3: organic consumers are sharing it and are really complaining. So
Speaker 3: you can see they're multip one hundred dollar increases that
Speaker 3: were there. They also sent out up a baby an
Speaker 3: email to all of their users saying, listen, we are
Speaker 3: absorbing as much of this tariff price as we possibly can,
Speaker 3: but there is just no way for us to be
Speaker 3: able to do business without raising a lot of these prices,
Speaker 3: and they're going to go into effect very very soon.
Speaker 3: Our own friend Derek Thompson flagged this as well, about
Speaker 3: how much of the child accessories are manufactured in China.
Speaker 3: It's like something like ninety cents.
Speaker 4: I go, hold up, yeah, so he says.
Speaker 2: The business PRES's been good at reporting on China's global
Speaker 2: leader in smartphone and electronics manufacturing. Consider also, as a
Speaker 2: share of all US imports, China accounts for ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of child safety seats, ninety six percent of toys
Speaker 2: for pets, ninety five percent of cooking appliances, ninety three
Speaker 2: percent of coloring books for children, eighty eight percent of
Speaker 2: microwave ovens, seventy plus percent of toys intended for children
Speaker 2: under twelve. Yes, American AI, electronic, smartphone and clean energy
Speaker 2: companies are not set up to thrive in a protected,
Speaker 2: protracted trade war.
Speaker 4: Mary.
Speaker 2: Parents of young kids will be among the hardest hit.
Speaker 2: So many of the things that new parents buy for
Speaker 2: their kids and have to buy, you know, your crib,
Speaker 2: your stroller, like the car seat, all of these things.
Speaker 2: These are you know, must haves because they're not like luxuries.
Speaker 2: So much of that, not to mention the you know,
Speaker 2: toys and things you get for their Easter baskets and
Speaker 2: things that go under the Christmas tree. So much of
Speaker 2: that comes from China. And it's already extremely expensive to
Speaker 2: be a new parent and all that that entails. So
Speaker 2: new parents with young families are going to be very
Speaker 2: hard hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually, by the way, did do some research and
Speaker 3: there's really no made in America stroller, Like there's like
Speaker 3: one off ones. But you know, stuff breaks, crystal. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you can tell us about that, and you need
Speaker 3: new parts. It's like, so where are going to come from? Well, oh,
Speaker 3: choker over ninety three percent same with it. Luckily I
Speaker 3: bought all this stuff before these tariffs come into place.
Speaker 1: But if you're not so lucky, what are you going
Speaker 1: to do?
Speaker 3: The other thing is, as I have discovered, is there's
Speaker 3: a thriving secondhand market for a lot of these things
Speaker 3: like that strollers, car seats, et cetera. Well, this is
Speaker 3: just going to do the same thing that it's done
Speaker 3: to the cars. Is that while yes, you could still
Speaker 3: buy used you know, pre tariffed goods. Well, what do
Speaker 3: you think supply and demand is going to show. You're
Speaker 3: going to see an increase in the US stuff, So
Speaker 3: you're actually gonna have to pay more, no matter if
Speaker 3: you're buying new and or if you're buying used, And
Speaker 3: it'll probably restrict the supply because of the overall number
Speaker 3: of imports, which will only further skyrocket the amount of
Speaker 3: the prices here. And you know, all of this is allegedly,
Speaker 3: you know, for the benefit of the country.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, my own bias.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, you probably want to make it easier for parents
Speaker 3: to be able to have children.
Speaker 1: The law, you know, I don't know if people know this.
Speaker 3: There's literally a law you have to have a car
Speaker 3: seat to be able to leave the hospital.
Speaker 1: That's right, it has to be installed. And do you
Speaker 1: you don't have.
Speaker 4: A choice like and don't get a used car seat?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, that's an obi Yes.
Speaker 4: Getting a stroller?
Speaker 2: Do you all don't get used car seat? You need
Speaker 2: to get a new car seat. Ninety seven percent of
Speaker 2: baby strollers, by the way, I just looked it up,
Speaker 2: come from China.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. I actually tried to
Speaker 3: find one. I was like, hey, let's see if there's
Speaker 3: anything made in America. Stroll, made in America, car seat.
Speaker 3: I mean, the best you can get are some of
Speaker 3: these that are designed in America. But that's not the
Speaker 3: same thing, you know, like up a baby douna or
Speaker 3: any of these other ones. But there's there's some Swedish
Speaker 3: Swedish companies as well as some German companies. But guess what,
Speaker 3: we also had tariffs on those countries, right, so, and
Speaker 3: a lot of them are already more expensive. So you
Speaker 3: know that, you know what it's like, don't screw with moms.
Speaker 3: That's that's one of those where there's a lot of
Speaker 3: moms out there, a lot of Facebook groups, Instagram and more,
Speaker 3: where I actually guarantee that that will probably reach more
Speaker 3: and have more political impact than a lot of.
Speaker 1: The other stuff that is happening. Yeah, it's important for
Speaker 1: people to understand.
Speaker 2: Back in the George W. Bush era, they called them
Speaker 2: like security moms. Now they're going to be like tariff moms,
Speaker 2: anti tariff moms, free trade moms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean think about Facebook, Marketplace or any a
Speaker 3: lot of these other places people are already skating by,
Speaker 3: and now there's going to cost even more money. One
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, three four hundred dollars, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3: That's a significant portion of the average Americans paycheck. And
Speaker 3: you know, then we have the rise of this buy now,
Speaker 3: pay later debt, which we're already seeing. Credit card minimum
Speaker 3: payments actually have skyrocketed just in the last two months,
Speaker 3: so we can see that there's significant pressure on consumer households,
Speaker 3: all right. And then last thing I wanted to flag
Speaker 3: here is from the Chinese market and how they are
Speaker 3: helping out their own customers. Show up this on please
Speaker 3: on the screen. So visitors to Tauboo, which is one
Speaker 3: of the largest online shopping platforms in China, are now
Speaker 3: being offered steep discounts on products which are normally exported
Speaker 3: to the United States. For example, rice cooker from forty
Speaker 3: two dollars to twenty five eighty five inch TV from
Speaker 3: five to twelve to six thirty five hundred dollars instead
Speaker 3: of six hundred and thirty nine dollars. Offers are popping
Speaker 3: up all across online apps.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: The first thing buyers are seeing is a section of
Speaker 3: goods that's quote subsidized by the nation, basically the Chinese
Speaker 3: government bailing out their own domestic online sellers to protect
Speaker 3: their manufacturers, move goods, move into poory, and keep all
Speaker 3: of the supply chains and everybody else still employed. Make
Speaker 3: sure that we don't see the freeze that's happening here
Speaker 3: in America. So that's what a functioning state actually looks like.
Speaker 3: They have a bailout. They have the ability to put
Speaker 3: pressure on all of their companies. They can drop their
Speaker 3: interest rates, they can manipulate their currency, they can do
Speaker 3: all of these different things. They're prepared for hundreds of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars in domestic capital injection into their economy,
Speaker 3: and meanwhile, over here, we've got basically none of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it looks like they're painting it as like
Speaker 2: a patriotic project to like upgrade your washing machine or you're.
Speaker 3: Like, no, they are, and guess what people probably will
Speaker 3: do that. You know, they of course they will. They're
Speaker 3: under like they feel as if they're under attack. We
Speaker 3: are just we're literally the people who instigate it, right,
Speaker 3: So of course they're going to be able to suffer
Speaker 3: if they want to. Also, let's compare the uh, you
Speaker 3: know the history of both of those nations. Who has
Speaker 3: more and longer and capacity of suffering. I wouldn't put
Speaker 3: my money on the most consumer obsessed country in the
Speaker 3: also world.
Speaker 4: What are we suffering for?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm shy.
Speaker 2: We're not nobody, Like people don't want this. It's not popular.
Speaker 2: It's not like we're behind this project. So there's no
Speaker 2: unified like Americans are ready to you know, pay double
Speaker 2: at Walmart or whatever.
Speaker 4: No, we're like, why are you doing this? To a
Speaker 4: stop it?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, they're also in a in a much stronger
Speaker 2: position viz a VI their population and their support of
Speaker 2: the Chinese government's direction.
Speaker 3: Here go, all right, let's get to Richard Hanania standing by.
Speaker 2: So we had a fairly significant court development yesterday in
Speaker 2: the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He is that immigrant
Speaker 2: who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, and specifically to
Speaker 2: Bukelli's torture dungeon in El Salvador. There of course, was
Speaker 2: a question very early on with regard to how all
Speaker 2: of this went down in the Alien Enemies Act where
Speaker 2: the planes were in the air in a judge Judge
Speaker 2: Bosburg said you have to turn them around. You cannot
Speaker 2: do this, and the administration went ahead and flew those
Speaker 2: planes anyway. So yesterday, let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: Judge Bosburg found probable cause to hold the administration in
Speaker 2: contempt of court for defying his order to turn around
Speaker 2: those planes. One of those planes had a Brigo Garcia
Speaker 2: on it. Some I think two hundred and eighty three
Speaker 2: is the number of migrants that were on those three
Speaker 2: planes total. And he is demanding new details in order
Speaker 2: for officials to purge their contempt, meaning basically to rectify
Speaker 2: the situation. So this is different. They haven't been found
Speaker 2: in contempt yet, but this appears to be building in
Speaker 2: this direction if the administration continues to fail to comply.
Speaker 2: So joining us to talk about this development and this
Speaker 2: entire situation with Il Salvador and the Kelly and the
Speaker 2: Trump administration denying these migrants any.
Speaker 4: Sort of due process, We've got.
Speaker 2: Richard Hannania He is a political commentator. He is the
Speaker 2: author of a number of books, including the Origins of Woke.
Speaker 4: And also has his own substack. Good to see Richard.
Speaker 1: Good to see Richard.
Speaker 6: Glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So just give us your top line,
Speaker 2: like what you have thought about this whole situation, and
Speaker 2: especially the way the administration is insisting that even after
Speaker 2: they admitted that they made an error with regard to
Speaker 2: kill mar Abrego Garcia, now they are absolutely refusing to
Speaker 2: do anything to correct that error, and Stephen has gone
Speaker 2: so far to even deny that it was an error
Speaker 2: at all in the first place.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So there are these two cases proceeding on parallel tracks.
Speaker 7: There's the Abrago Garcia case, which is getting a lot
Speaker 7: of attention. There's also don't forget the Venezuelan case where
Speaker 7: they shipped off those hundreds of venezuelanstal Salvador, the country
Speaker 7: that they weren't from, and that's where that's the case
Speaker 7: where they are there's probable cost to find them in contempt.
Speaker 7: So we're going to have a couple of weeks here
Speaker 7: where the administration is going to come back.
Speaker 6: Either they're going to be able.
Speaker 7: To say we've answered your question satisfactory, satisfactorily, or there
Speaker 7: could be a kind of going forward with a criminal
Speaker 7: contempt charge. Yeah, the Abrego Garcia case, this one is
Speaker 7: even more frightening. I mean, both of them involved disobeying
Speaker 7: a court order. But this was the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 7: they went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said,
Speaker 7: you have to facilitate his return. Now, the lower court
Speaker 7: had said you have to effectuate his return, and the
Speaker 7: Trump administration has gone and tried to read that very
Speaker 7: very narrowly. Now the so facilitate maybe is not as
Speaker 7: extreme as effectuate. There's a reason the Supreme Court preferred
Speaker 7: one phrasing in that nine oh decision over the other.
Speaker 7: But I think everyone agrees that they have to do something.
Speaker 7: They can't just sit there and do nothing. And the
Speaker 7: and the administration argues that they've tried to argue at
Speaker 7: the lower court level that basically, if he shows up
Speaker 7: at a port of entry by himself, they'll let him in. Now,
Speaker 7: what's ridiculous about all this is they are kind of
Speaker 7: teasing the court system. I mean, somebody, uh uh, there's
Speaker 7: a there's a tweet that this, uh, the plane of
Speaker 7: Venezuelan's left after the judge's order, and then uh Bukele
Speaker 7: tweets oopsie. And I think Rubio retweets it, and then
Speaker 7: after the right as this is going on, Bukele comes
Speaker 7: to the White House and they're sitting there and you
Speaker 7: know whatever our facilitate means. He's sitting next to you,
Speaker 7: you can ask him in a serious way, you can
Speaker 7: try to do something. And they don't decided to sit there.
Speaker 7: They giggle about it. Buke says, what am I supposed
Speaker 7: to do? Smuggle him into? The UN say it's like, no,
Speaker 7: this is part of an agreement the US paid you.
Speaker 7: And now Senator Van Holland from Maryland goes down to
Speaker 7: Al Salvador and he says that the Vice president of
Speaker 7: the country tells him that basically, you know, what are
Speaker 7: we supposed to do?
Speaker 6: Smuggle him in? And he says no.
Speaker 7: Pam Bondi said that if you guys released him, you
Speaker 7: can go back. So they're playing this game. They're trying
Speaker 7: to interpret it very very narrowly. What's frightening about this
Speaker 7: is they go back and now they just deny what
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court says. Now Stephen Miller and Donald Trump,
Speaker 7: when they're talking to the press, we'll say we won
Speaker 7: nine to oh. I mean, it's just there's kind of
Speaker 7: not a connection to reality. So a lot of things
Speaker 7: are at stake here. There's the principle that the president
Speaker 7: cannot just take someone off the streets and send them
Speaker 7: to a third world labor camp. They're floating the idea
Speaker 7: now that they do it to US citizens. We've seen
Speaker 7: people who are long term permanent residents being picked off
Speaker 7: those streets because they've runten the wrong op ed or
Speaker 7: had the wrong ideas about US policy towards Israel.
Speaker 6: And so you know what's kind of what's next.
Speaker 7: We have an administration that doesn't tell the truth, that
Speaker 7: will lie about basic things. They'll say a guy he's
Speaker 7: a convicted MS thirteen member, when he's not. They'll say
Speaker 7: they want at the Supreme Court while they lost. They
Speaker 7: don't see citizenship as a bride line. They don't see
Speaker 7: any free speech respect for permanent residents. And so yeah,
Speaker 7: I think this is probably the most important thing going
Speaker 7: on in politics right now because the question is what
Speaker 7: are the limits here and what is going to be
Speaker 7: the pushback that stops them?
Speaker 3: Richard, How does this fit? So let's put let's say
Speaker 3: C two up there on the screen. This was a
Speaker 3: tweet from jd Vance that I saw you reacting to
Speaker 3: this was somebody who was criticizing his initial defense of
Speaker 3: the Abrego Garcia deportation. Who was Jesse Single saying, I'd
Speaker 3: hate the smug, self asshirted bullshit. I know I'm right,
Speaker 3: and people must be dumb or immoral to disagree with me.
Speaker 3: It's easy to go through life because when you think
Speaker 3: you've never had to seriously about why your worldview is
Speaker 3: justification for the mass invasion of the country my ancestors
Speaker 3: built with their bare hands. Now, I know you've criticized
Speaker 3: some of this type of rhetoric in the past, but
Speaker 3: break down some of the your analytical frameworks about the
Speaker 3: Trump administration low human capital and how this all fits
Speaker 3: into that.
Speaker 7: So JD is obviously not low human capital. He wrote
Speaker 7: a very well regarded book on his life. He went
Speaker 7: to a law school, a very selective institution. He's kind
Speaker 7: of a tragic figure at this point. He's obviously very smart,
Speaker 7: but he's part of a movement and he has ambitions,
Speaker 7: and he became vice president because he's part of a
Speaker 7: movement that has the characteristics of a cult of personality.
Speaker 7: At this point, and so JD, it's kind of fascinating
Speaker 7: to watch him. He usually doesn't just straight up lie,
Speaker 7: but he always begins his statements with a criticism of
Speaker 7: the media, somebody like Jesse Single or the Biden administration,
Speaker 7: and a praise of Trump and then kind of goes
Speaker 7: off in this direction where he's not directly answering the point.
Speaker 7: And I think that that's what makes him a tragic figure.
Speaker 7: I think he's a smart person who wants to be
Speaker 7: respected by kind of the intelligency of people like us,
Speaker 7: but he's working for a man who I mean, we've
Speaker 7: all seen it. We've seen kind of what Trump is
Speaker 7: at this point. It's been reported, and I've heard this
Speaker 7: from people firsthand that when you go in to apply
Speaker 7: for a job of the administration, one of the first
Speaker 7: things they ask you is do you think Trump won
Speaker 7: the twenty twenty election. And I've heard that's been reported
Speaker 7: in the media, but I've heard it's actually worse than that,
Speaker 7: because they go and they say how big do you
Speaker 7: think the victory? And there's really no answer you give
Speaker 7: other that can give other than all fifty states. Because
Speaker 7: Trump is now saying he would have won all fifty
Speaker 7: states if it wasn't for vote fraud.
Speaker 6: And I've always been encouraging the media.
Speaker 7: When you have these people on these Sunday programs, Bestn't
Speaker 7: and these people like this, ask them if Trump won California.
Speaker 7: They will not contradict him. There is no way they'll
Speaker 7: contradict him. Stephen Miller might say he won California. Jd
Speaker 7: Vance might deflect and start blaming the media for asking
Speaker 7: a gotcha question. But these are the dynamics that we're
Speaker 7: dealing with, and it touches on everything. So this morning,
Speaker 7: Trump says Powell can't be fired quickly enough. And the
Speaker 7: people who know anything about the economy say, you think
Speaker 7: tariffs are bad for the stock market, wait until we
Speaker 7: go after fed independence.
Speaker 6: And from everything.
Speaker 7: We've seen, there is just nobody in the room who
Speaker 7: will say anything other than yes, sir, yes, or yester.
Speaker 7: The movement has been purging everyone who has a spine
Speaker 7: or has a kind of personal integrity, or who will
Speaker 7: stand up to this man. And so this is why
Speaker 7: kind of the possibility space of the things that could happen.
Speaker 7: Sorry to be so dark, but I think the last
Speaker 7: month or two have really been clarifying about what's at stake.
Speaker 4: I agree, I agree, you know you tweeted something this.
Speaker 2: So you wrote a great piece that I thought was
Speaker 2: really insightful called The Based Ritual, about the social dynamics
Speaker 2: within this movement. And these are not like random fringe
Speaker 2: people on the internet anymore. These are people that, as
Speaker 2: you point out, are staffing jd Vance, They're staffing Josh Holly.
Speaker 2: They're increasingly in important, significant positions throughout the administration. And
Speaker 2: you know about that based ritual direction and the way
Speaker 2: that everybody's just sort of competing to be increasingly counter
Speaker 2: signaling how how bad they are and how racist they
Speaker 2: are and how sexist they are, and no one wants
Speaker 2: to outdo or be outdone by the other people in
Speaker 2: the group. You tweeted, it's funny that Trump isn't doing
Speaker 2: mass deportations, but he's got all of the magas passionately
Speaker 2: defending the idea of having a few hundred people in
Speaker 2: a labor camp. It's all about vice signaling for them.
Speaker 2: Give them one or two random guys to torture and
Speaker 2: MAGA is happy. Now, I would say I fully expect
Speaker 2: them to move on to mass deportations. The acting ICE
Speaker 2: director is talking about setting up Amazon Prime for human beings,
Speaker 2: and the New Republican budget would make ICE the I
Speaker 2: think best funded law enforcement agency in the history of
Speaker 2: the country, maybe of the world. So I'm not putting
Speaker 2: off the table that they're going in that direction next,
Speaker 2: but help us understand what are these internal dynamics that
Speaker 2: lead to a situation where these people are cheering random
Speaker 2: we don't even know who these guys are, but random
Speaker 2: people with no criminal record being locked up in a
Speaker 2: prison that is worse than what we reserve for serial
Speaker 2: killers here in the US.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean, we thought that virtue signaling was bad when
Speaker 7: everyone tried to show how anti racist and unseexist and
Speaker 7: nice they I don't think we really adequately considered kind
Speaker 7: of you can go in the opposite direction. And so
Speaker 7: there's this kind of thing where you talk to young
Speaker 7: conservatives or you're you're around them, and there is this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I call it the based ritual.
Speaker 7: So basically they're trying to show that they are not
Speaker 7: politically correct, and this goes in the direction of kind
Speaker 7: of performative cruelty towards outsiders. I think we have our
Speaker 7: regime that kind of operates on that principle. It's loyalty
Speaker 7: to Trump, it's kind of performative cruelty. They you know,
Speaker 7: they would spit it as try to look out for
Speaker 7: the American worker, or look back, look out for the
Speaker 7: forgotten men and women and so forth. You know, they
Speaker 7: have these justifications in their heads. But you know there's
Speaker 7: a there's a kind of disturbing and clear uh tendency
Speaker 7: to downplay the rottenness of the Hitler regime or kind
Speaker 7: of fascist states, or to defend literally anything Trump does,
Speaker 7: or be completely indifferent to whether we're sending, like you said,
Speaker 7: people who are innocent, not convicted of anything to these
Speaker 7: labor camps potentially indefinitely. We talk about Abrigo Garcia. The
Speaker 7: administration has been trying to find, you know, dig up stuff.
Speaker 7: He had some kind of a domestic violence dispute, But
Speaker 7: we forgot about the Venezuelans, including the gay makeup artist,
Speaker 7: who I have not seen anyone say anything, as far
Speaker 7: as he's ever heard anybody he has any gang ties,
Speaker 7: he has any criminal work, nothing, just not even a
Speaker 7: single allegation. And I think that the understanding of why
Speaker 7: this happens, I think the movement it rots from the head.
Speaker 7: It really is Donald Trump. If you have somebody who
Speaker 7: lies this much, if you have somebody who just demands
Speaker 7: loyalty above all else, who's not civil in public life,
Speaker 7: who kind of delights it in cruelty to I think
Speaker 7: that that attracts a certain kind of person, it repulses
Speaker 7: a different kind of person. And I think that these
Speaker 7: two dynamics, the base rituals so to speak, and the
Speaker 7: loyalty to Trump, I think together their freighting combination.
Speaker 3: One of the things, Richard, that you were initially optimistic
Speaker 3: about was the quote tech right right and some of
Speaker 3: the more moderating influences. Let's say that you were praiseworthy
Speaker 3: of and the first administration you did write an interesting piece.
Speaker 3: Can we put d one please up there on the screen,
Speaker 3: which I actually quite enjoyed, and it's called the cat
Speaker 3: turd to Silicon Valley billionaire pipeline must be broken. Can
Speaker 3: you break down kind of this phenomenon where you observe
Speaker 3: that in your framework, elite human capital and or people
Speaker 3: with skill sets and others who know better enter the
Speaker 3: Trump orbit and find themselves actually being brought down to
Speaker 3: the center of the gravity of the movement as opposed
Speaker 3: to raising the collective capacity of the entire movement.
Speaker 7: So a few years ago, I wrote an article called
Speaker 7: Understanding the Tech Right, and I was the first person
Speaker 7: that I've seen use the phrase tech right. And this
Speaker 7: was at the beginning when people like Mark Andresid and
Speaker 7: Elon Musk were really starting to take a public role
Speaker 7: as kind of more Republican leaning figures. And I was
Speaker 7: optimistic at the time because, look, these were obviously smart,
Speaker 7: accomplished people. They've done a lot of things in their lives.
Speaker 7: I thought there was a human capital.
Speaker 6: On the right.
Speaker 7: There's been a fleeing from the Republican Party in the
Speaker 7: Trump era of people who are college educated and people
Speaker 7: who are informed and connected to reality, frankly, and I
Speaker 7: thought that would they would make things better. It was
Speaker 7: kind of the infusion of human capital that the right needed. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: it hasn't really worked out that way. And just from
Speaker 7: watching these people and how they use Twitter, Musk particularly,
Speaker 7: but a lot of the other ones, you realize that
Speaker 7: as intelligent as they might be and as accomplished they
Speaker 7: might as they might be in the business world, they
Speaker 7: really have absorbed what's kind of swimming They've they've they've
Speaker 7: imbued whatever is in the air in the conservative movement,
Speaker 7: and talking to these people, they often you know, they're
Speaker 7: so radicalized. I think by what happened with COVID and
Speaker 7: what happened with wokeness and some of the personal coverage
Speaker 7: they received from people like Kara Swisher and the mainstream
Speaker 7: press that they they took a reaction that's understandable but
Speaker 7: was not the right way to go, which is that
Speaker 7: they shut out credible sources of information and they started
Speaker 7: just listening to Twitter and ons and so Elon Musk
Speaker 7: is sitting there all day, and I think he believes
Speaker 7: the stuff.
Speaker 6: I think he believes the stuff about.
Speaker 7: Massive voter fraud, putting the election, about voter without voter.
Speaker 7: I d our civilization is destroyed, and they're shipping it
Speaker 7: legalsh to win elections because this is what everyone arounds them,
Speaker 7: and everyone who they trust at this point believes. The
Speaker 7: problem is the right as a whole. As smart as
Speaker 7: any individual is, none of us are that smart as
Speaker 7: an individual were. We only have intelligence because we're part
Speaker 7: of a community, because we know what sources of trust,
Speaker 7: because we have conversations like this, because we read newspapers
Speaker 7: and talk to scientists and people in politics and people
Speaker 7: with sensible views on these things.
Speaker 6: So once you shut yourself out.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter how high your IQ is going to
Speaker 7: you can follow into social media radicalization and you could
Speaker 7: have the worldview that.
Speaker 6: Just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 7: And I think we see that most clearly in what's
Speaker 7: happened with goage. Look, there's sympathetic to the idea of
Speaker 7: smaller government, sympathetic to the idea that government can.
Speaker 6: Be more efficient.
Speaker 7: There's people at places like AI and Cato Institute, and
Speaker 7: if those are your goals, there are smart people you
Speaker 7: could find who will put you on the right path.
Speaker 7: And they've been thinking about this for a really long time.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk has not done this at all. He basically
Speaker 7: came in and said it's going to be me and
Speaker 7: a few of my engineering buddies and basically what the
Speaker 7: priorities and government should be. I'm just going to listen
Speaker 7: to kind of whatever is going viral on Twitter. And
Speaker 7: in the end, he didn't save He's not going to
Speaker 7: save a fraction of the money that he saved. A
Speaker 7: lot of the stuff that they cut was ended up
Speaker 7: being very valuable, things like basic scientific research, things like.
Speaker 6: Statistics, getting statistics to make.
Speaker 7: Sure government does run more efficiently, stuff that doesn't cost
Speaker 7: that much and probably is some of the most cost
Speaker 7: effective stuff in government you could do.
Speaker 6: But because the fact that he just has a.
Speaker 7: Simple idea, I'm going to cut government and not think
Speaker 7: about how or why or I don't need to think
Speaker 7: about that, it's kind of been it's been a debacle,
Speaker 7: and I think we see that across the board with
Speaker 7: these guys when they're when they're they're being part of politics,
Speaker 7: but also like they're swimming in the waters of the
Speaker 7: Trump movement.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, on the one hand, yes, in terms of
Speaker 2: their stated goals, it's been a disaster. Like he's he
Speaker 2: was a result, well I'm going to cut two trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: Now he's like meekly in the cabinet meeting, like I'm
Speaker 2: going to cut one hundred and fifty billion, and even.
Speaker 4: That's a freaking lie.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, you know, he hates government, and
Speaker 2: government function doesn't function now, like social Security. Try to
Speaker 2: go to the Social Security Office and see how that goes.
Speaker 2: The agencies that were regulating his businesses, they've been defenestrated,
Speaker 2: Like they will not be able to regulate his business,
Speaker 2: nor would they because of you know, the corruption, conflicts
Speaker 2: of interest that are involved so I think from his perspective,
Speaker 2: in certain ways it was also a success. But which
Speaker 2: I do want to ask you a little bit about
Speaker 2: your views. Is the first time having you on since
Speaker 2: you were you know, revealed your anonymous writings back in
Speaker 2: the day, which were you know, white nationalists, which you've disavowed.
Speaker 2: But I still do have some questions about your ideology
Speaker 2: that I wanted to, you know, to hear from you on.
Speaker 2: Especially when I hear you making the distinction between low
Speaker 2: human capital and elite human capital. It raises the question
Speaker 2: for me whether this is just some sort of eugenics
Speaker 2: ideology in another form, like you're no longer drawing the
Speaker 2: lines around.
Speaker 4: Like strictly IQ.
Speaker 2: You'd previously supported for sterilization for people with low IQs.
Speaker 2: You know, previously you had an idea of different racial
Speaker 2: hierarchies in your head. Perhaps that's in the past, but
Speaker 2: is this just a new way to separate down which
Speaker 2: humans are worthy and which humans are unworthy?
Speaker 7: So I will say that I did write some things
Speaker 7: that were very bad and straightforwardly advocating sterilizing people with LOIQ.
Speaker 6: I said, here's an argument for it.
Speaker 7: Now at what I won't litigate it because it was
Speaker 7: all that and I just want to forget that stuff
Speaker 7: ever happened.
Speaker 2: Okay, sterilization of the unfit is the only way to
Speaker 2: stop the decline of the word.
Speaker 7: No, but it was a longer thing, like if you
Speaker 7: believe X, Y Z. Anyways, whatever, it was terrible stuff.
Speaker 7: Everything I believed in twenty eleven is bad regardless. But yeah,
Speaker 7: as far as the human capital stuff, look, there is
Speaker 7: you know what I write about these things like the
Speaker 7: base Ritual, and I write about where the right has gone.
Speaker 6: I see myself.
Speaker 7: From twelve years ago, when I was an anonymous basement
Speaker 7: dweller writing these racist creeds. I've seen that person become
Speaker 7: the Republican Party, and I've kind of if I had
Speaker 7: stayed that person, maybe I would be in the administration
Speaker 7: at this point. But I changed, and I think it's horrifying,
Speaker 7: and I think I have some kind of insights into
Speaker 7: kind of what's going on here. And so the idea
Speaker 7: that human capital is kind of a variation of that.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to say that there's I'm not going
Speaker 7: to go in the other direction to say there's no
Speaker 7: such thing as intelligence.
Speaker 2: There is no such thing, or just to clarify sure,
Speaker 2: there are human beings to have differences, right, It's fine
Speaker 2: to note those differences, like, I have no problem with that.
Speaker 2: Where I have a problem is when you interpret those
Speaker 2: differences as meaning that different human beings get different rights.
Speaker 2: And that's really my question to you, and to me,
Speaker 2: that's sort of the foundation of like eugenesis type ideology
Speaker 2: is like, well, we're going to decide these people are
Speaker 2: better than those people, and that means that those people
Speaker 2: that we decided are not as good. They're not going
Speaker 2: to get the same rights, They're not going to get
Speaker 2: to have the same to say, they're not going to
Speaker 2: get to have children or whatever it is. The program
Speaker 2: is that we decide for them. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think that type of ideology is very much how you
Speaker 2: end up, for example, cheering the you know, deportation to
Speaker 2: a slave labor camp of people that you've decided are
Speaker 2: unworthy of basic human rights.
Speaker 4: So that's my question for.
Speaker 2: You, is do you still have that view that some
Speaker 2: people are less worthy of the same rights as other people.
Speaker 7: I'm glad you asked the question in that way, Crystal,
Speaker 7: because yeah, I think you're right. I think that's the
Speaker 7: right thing to be concerned about. Do you go to
Speaker 7: a place where, look, there's one thing to analyze things
Speaker 7: and say, why does the right accept anti VAX's arguments
Speaker 7: while the left does? And human capital is I think
Speaker 7: a way to understand that the right is now less educated.
Speaker 7: They have all kinds of crazy ideas and all kinds
Speaker 7: of things, and you kind of need that analysis. You
Speaker 7: don't understand how anti vax goes from a left wing
Speaker 7: cause to something that's embraced by Republicans without understanding this
Speaker 7: and RFK and his general crankery. Now, the question is
Speaker 7: does that mean that low human capital?
Speaker 6: As we say, it's.
Speaker 7: Kind of it's kind of a harsh term, and it's
Speaker 7: something that was built on Twitter. But let's say people
Speaker 7: with less cognitive capabilities or less education, do they deserve
Speaker 7: less rights?
Speaker 6: And no, I've stood against that.
Speaker 7: I mean, when I talk about Abrego Garcia, I know
Speaker 7: nothing about him personally.
Speaker 6: He may be a gang member for all I know.
Speaker 7: He's not a noble prize winning physicist or whatever. But
Speaker 7: his rights matter, and the rule of law matters, and
Speaker 7: the idea that we're all citizens equal before the government.
Speaker 7: I mean, he's not a citizen, but still there are
Speaker 7: some rules in how you treat people. Those are important
Speaker 7: principles to me. So I think that we have to
Speaker 7: create a space. I saw people on the Blue Sky
Speaker 7: trying to cancel Mattic Galacias the other day because he
Speaker 7: said some things where, oh, I don't like to look
Speaker 7: into the origins of group differences, but you know, I
Speaker 7: want to treat everyone equal, and we still should be
Speaker 7: concerned about racism and we should have to have booze
Speaker 7: against racism.
Speaker 6: All that stuff I agree with now.
Speaker 7: But they still wanted to cancel him because he kind
Speaker 7: of cryptically according to Will Stancil, and these people on
Speaker 7: Blue Sky expressed a belief in group differences, according to them,
Speaker 7: And I think what we have to do is, yes,
Speaker 7: hold on to this idea that everyone has value, hold
Speaker 7: on to the idea of fair treatment and individual rights.
Speaker 7: And that's the important thing. That's how we don't go
Speaker 7: down the path of kind of where Maga is going.
Speaker 3: Got it, so, Richard, to push you a little bit here,
Speaker 3: then I would say, it was pretty evident if you're
Speaker 3: run in many of the same circles I do. I
Speaker 3: knew a lot of these folks, and I knew that
Speaker 3: they were going to get into power. You were pretty
Speaker 3: well informed as well, and you still voted for Trump.
Speaker 3: So what's with the about face in this expectation, you know,
Speaker 3: despite the education, your own analysis and all this, in
Speaker 3: what way was this not all that expected.
Speaker 1: In your vote and for the administration?
Speaker 7: So I over indexed, I think on the first term.
Speaker 7: The first term was basically a normy Republican administration.
Speaker 6: I liked a lot of the policies.
Speaker 7: I thought they were going to do the things I
Speaker 7: advocated for on de dei issues. And then they appointed
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court justices that Trump appointed. That's really some
Speaker 7: of the only pushback that he's getting in a second administration.
Speaker 6: And the and so I was expecting something of a repeat.
Speaker 7: I knew that MAGA had changed, I knew that the
Speaker 7: Trump movement had become something different, but basically I thought
Speaker 7: that we would get that. And then on the night
Speaker 7: of the election, I was on Destiny's live stream and
Speaker 7: he was we had we share a negative view of
Speaker 7: RFK for his vaccine stance and basically everything else that
Speaker 7: he believes. And he said something along the line of
Speaker 7: RFK will be HHS Secretary, and I said, no, RFK
Speaker 7: will not be HHS secretary.
Speaker 6: I actually put some money on it.
Speaker 7: I put my money where my mouth was, and I said,
Speaker 7: if he does, I might have said something as explicit
Speaker 7: as I will have made a mistake. And RFK does
Speaker 7: get appointed as HHS secretary. People around me are telling
Speaker 7: me these things, and we talk about some kind of
Speaker 7: social circles, and everyone I talked to it's kind of.
Speaker 6: Things like I do. And so they're telling me, don't
Speaker 6: worry about RFK.
Speaker 7: They're going to put people around him, Peter Teal, you know,
Speaker 7: these bioaccelerationists. They're going to be his deputies, and they're
Speaker 7: going to box him in. Now he's he's going after vaccines.
Speaker 7: He's doing everything that we thought. And I eventually stopped
Speaker 7: listening to these people, and you know, and then you
Speaker 7: had the tariff thing. Now, look, I'm in good company
Speaker 7: as far as the market goes. I mean, I believe
Speaker 7: in the wisdom of the of the market. All else equal,
Speaker 7: it's a good way to go. And people did not
Speaker 7: think the tariffs would be this bad. Trump was promising
Speaker 7: ten percent across the board. People say, WHOA, Okay, that's
Speaker 7: the that's the extreme end of what he might do. Instead,
Speaker 7: he comes out with this chart, with this, with this
Speaker 7: formula that makes no sense and has like thirty forty
Speaker 7: percent on different countries and one hundred something percent on China.
Speaker 7: And so, you know, I was expecting Republicans to push
Speaker 7: back a little. There was a little talk that they
Speaker 7: might not confirm RFK. There was talk that Bill Cassidy
Speaker 7: would vote against him, but they all kind of folded
Speaker 7: in line.
Speaker 6: And so, look, I misjudged this.
Speaker 7: I underestimated just kind of how much of a cult
Speaker 7: of personality it had become, and how kind of unrestrained
Speaker 7: he is to indulge in his instincts. And you know,
Speaker 7: a lot of these mistakes were understandable at the time,
Speaker 7: but they were mistakes.
Speaker 6: I saw this wrong.
Speaker 2: What about the authoritarianism, because I mean, we all lived
Speaker 2: through January sixth. You were talking earlier about how now
Speaker 2: it's a litmus test to get in the administration, you
Speaker 2: have to say not a lead to Trump win in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, all fifty states this time around, all
Speaker 2: of those sorts of things, like, it's just hard for
Speaker 2: me to imagine how that could be a surprise. Like
Speaker 2: we've known this man even before or the president. We've
Speaker 2: known him for years. He lies about everything. This you know,
Speaker 2: deep like racial and IQ view of the world has
Speaker 2: always been embedded in him when he was up, you know,
Speaker 2: when he was backed into a corner after he did
Speaker 2: lose in twenty twenty, then his most authoritarian instincts come out.
Speaker 4: We knew in the interim, and.
Speaker 2: You were a contributor to Project twenty twenty five, so
Speaker 2: you were directly involved in some of the planning that
Speaker 2: was done.
Speaker 4: To make sure that all of the guardrails.
Speaker 2: That were in place last time were completely stripped away.
Speaker 2: We knew the Supreme Court had also given him this
Speaker 2: sort of like blanket immunity.
Speaker 4: So what about on that piece, like, did.
Speaker 2: You have any concerns going in about the likely suppression
Speaker 2: of free speech and authoritarian tactics and authoritarian tendencies that
Speaker 2: you know, even I have to admit have gone even
Speaker 2: beyond what I expected, and I was pretty alarmist. I
Speaker 2: think the record will show going into this administration.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've always taken January sixth seriously, and I've always
Speaker 7: taken the idea seriously that Trump did try to over
Speaker 7: turned the election in twenty twenty And I said, I said,
Speaker 7: he should have been in jail for it. I mean,
Speaker 7: I basically was the only person who probably endorsed Trump
Speaker 7: and thought he should have been and thought he should
Speaker 7: have been in jail. At the same time, I can
Speaker 7: look back and say, well, it was a one time thing.
Speaker 6: He can't run again. I was actually afraid he loses.
Speaker 7: He's going to be the Republican nominee every year for
Speaker 7: the rest of our rest of our lives. And well
Speaker 7: he's still you know, Steve Bannon is going out there
Speaker 7: saying he's got to run for a third term. So
Speaker 7: maybe that maybe that didn't even take care of it.
Speaker 7: But yeah, you're absolutely you know, you're absolutely right. I
Speaker 7: mean I think that, Look, there's a lot of things
Speaker 7: that were totalitarian about the left, a lot of the
Speaker 7: speech restrictions, a lot of the COVID stuff. I think
Speaker 7: we still haven't had a full reckoning for what they
Speaker 7: were doing at the state level, and here in California
Speaker 7: they were masking students, high school students outside for three
Speaker 7: years into twenty twenty two. I mean, it was really
Speaker 7: kind of there was a kind of leftist authoritarianism too,
Speaker 7: that's worth worrying about.
Speaker 6: But I agree with.
Speaker 7: You that Trump is kind of just in his personal
Speaker 7: just his personal sort of disregard for any kind of
Speaker 7: concern with truth or constitutional horms.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 7: And so yeah, it's something that's concerning. Look, like you said,
Speaker 7: we didn't think it was this bad. I don't think
Speaker 7: anyone said before the election that they're gonna they're going
Speaker 7: to kick out forward students for writing op bets criticizing Israel.
Speaker 6: Uh. You know, it's.
Speaker 4: It's like he said, he's just saying.
Speaker 1: That they were going to foreign students he did.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where I like that piece Actually doesn't
Speaker 2: surprise me at all, because he did advertise that he
Speaker 2: was ultimately going to do that.
Speaker 4: And I agree. You know, I was a critic from the.
Speaker 2: Left of like the excesses of wokeism and authoritarian tendencies
Speaker 2: with regard to that. And you know, I think mistakes
Speaker 2: were made in COVID as well, even though I think
Speaker 2: especially the beginning, many of those mistakes.
Speaker 4: Were well meaning and we didn't know what the.
Speaker 2: Deal was going to be with kids in schools and whatever,
Speaker 2: and the school closures were probably the biggest.
Speaker 4: Mistake that were made.
Speaker 2: People are being kidnapped off the street by masked officers
Speaker 2: of the state for writing op bets like there's just
Speaker 2: no equivalent under a Democrat administration, in my opinion, to
Speaker 2: what we're seeing unfold under Trump is in two point zero.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I don't disagree with you at all.
Speaker 7: I think that you know, my thinking, I'm trying to
Speaker 7: get back into my.
Speaker 4: Mind before the election. I appreciate that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, But at this point, I think you're right. I
Speaker 7: think I can say that I'm not on the fence anymore.
Speaker 7: Like that stuff we complained about the left the other
Speaker 7: you know, last year or two years ago, that happened,
Speaker 7: it was bad, we can criticize them for it. But
Speaker 7: this is completely on a different level. And I think
Speaker 7: the thing we learned here is like character matters a lot.
Speaker 7: Like what I talked about the Trump movement and it
Speaker 7: becoming a cult and the base ritual and kind of
Speaker 7: what I saw personally with these people who were in
Speaker 7: kind of Trump's orbit and who are going to probably
Speaker 7: be taking over the government. I should have taken that
Speaker 7: more seriously. I was just thinking kind of at a
Speaker 7: level of Okay, there's the Republican Coalition, there's voters, there's
Speaker 7: the market checking him, there is you know, there is
Speaker 7: kind of the Republican establishment.
Speaker 6: There are courts and so forth.
Speaker 7: I should have been thinking, like what kind of people
Speaker 7: are going to be staffing the government.
Speaker 6: And it's not just Trump. It's the fact that.
Speaker 7: They're all trump Ists and true believing Trump is at
Speaker 7: this point. And that was the mistake. I think these
Speaker 7: ideas that like, it's funny because conservatives they have this
Speaker 7: thing about you know, virtue and leaders and how we've
Speaker 7: had a decline in morality. And it's not just Chris
Speaker 7: Ruffo was treating this the other day and I got
Speaker 7: in exchange with him. It's not just about IQ. You
Speaker 7: might say there's lead human capital, but there's wisdom and there's.
Speaker 6: All the like.
Speaker 7: But Donald Trump. It's just like, but Donald Trump. That's
Speaker 7: like the only thing you could say to that, And
Speaker 7: it's kind of insane. There are arguments about character and
Speaker 7: like you know, civility and the need to pay attention
Speaker 7: to our inheritance and norms. All that stuff was right,
Speaker 7: they just became part of a cult of like the
Speaker 7: man who is the antithesis of all of that. So
Speaker 7: it's it's a kind of remarkable dynamic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's return to Elon. We're both very curious
Speaker 3: about your take on this, Richard. Let's put D three
Speaker 3: up there on the screen. This is some revelations about
Speaker 3: Elon and the way that he manages kind of his
Speaker 3: harem of a young women, some of them when he's
Speaker 3: met on Twitter, often buying them off and encouraging them
Speaker 3: to have his children. Apparently there's a non number of
Speaker 3: what is it fourteen children, but could be as high
Speaker 3: as fifty. We were just curious, how does this fit
Speaker 3: into your elite human capital model here? Is is this
Speaker 3: an example of elite human capital over? Well, yeah, you're
Speaker 3: a pro natalist and this is a high IQ individual
Speaker 3: and he's very really spreading his seed, just like Jenghis
Speaker 3: Khan or any other person with absolute power.
Speaker 1: So what do you make this look?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're right on the surface.
Speaker 7: You might say, well, if you're a natalist and you
Speaker 7: leave at IQ God, and you know, I don't judge
Speaker 7: these things. If people want to have a lot of children,
Speaker 7: I generally think that's a great thing. I think that
Speaker 7: what we've seen is the kind of person who thinks
Speaker 7: like this, I'm just going to set spread my seed
Speaker 7: to the greatest extent possible. There there's somebody like Genghis
Speaker 7: Khan proNT to violence, or there's someone like Elon Muss
Speaker 7: who just kind of doesn't really have a moral sense.
Speaker 7: So I think this is the problem with you know,
Speaker 7: a lot of ideas might sound good in theory, but
Speaker 7: in practice you have to kind of look at the
Speaker 7: kinds of people who are attracted to them and look
Speaker 7: at how these things work out in practice. And I
Speaker 7: think it's probably not a coincidence that the West had
Speaker 7: a Christianity and a norm of monogamy and didn't think
Speaker 7: like this and ended up creating the modern world.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think it's a lesson here about taking starting with
Speaker 7: IQ natalism and not kind of thinking about character and
Speaker 7: what happens when you try to apply these ideas in
Speaker 7: a person's life.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and it's not only that.
Speaker 2: I mean he explicitly, according to the article, has told
Speaker 2: people that he's worried about the high birth rates in
Speaker 2: developing countries and so he wants to combat that with
Speaker 2: his legion of you know, his high IQ whatever.
Speaker 4: Before the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: So I mean there's also these like directly, I would
Speaker 2: again say, like eugenics inspired ideas that come out here.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that it's he doesn't have an
Speaker 2: eye ideology or I think you said moral compass or
Speaker 2: moral I'm not sure the language that you use. But no,
Speaker 2: I think he does have an ideology, and it's a
Speaker 2: really evil one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think he does have an ideology. I think
Speaker 7: he has kind of instincts and ideas about the world. Now,
Speaker 7: to be fair to him, I've never seen him say
Speaker 7: we've got to limit the birth rate in developing countries
Speaker 7: or anything like that. But yeah, I think that his
Speaker 7: entire idea of you know, it's weird because like you
Speaker 7: would think, well, somebody who's kind of an IQ snob,
Speaker 7: you might be like me, you might look down on
Speaker 7: kind of the conservative influencer space. But no, I mean
Speaker 7: he will denounce the entire class of educated people and
Speaker 7: people who know anything about the world, but then love
Speaker 7: these people who are less intelligent, less honest because they
Speaker 7: all worship him. Right, So there's this ideology, but at
Speaker 7: the same time, it's just kind of a classic kind
Speaker 7: of selfishness, big man behavior, and that's not socially conducive.
Speaker 6: To anything good.
Speaker 2: So how would you describe your political ideology now, Richard? Like,
Speaker 2: where do you kind of fit? How can people make
Speaker 2: sense of you.
Speaker 7: I you know, the funny thing is, for you know,
Speaker 7: for all the things I've written and all the little
Speaker 7: bit of trolling I do online, I'm a pretty pretty
Speaker 7: normy guy. I mean, the people I talk to these
Speaker 7: days are like, you know, scholars at AI or you know, Cato,
Speaker 7: just like normal kind of libertarians who are concerned about
Speaker 7: norms and think the American experiment has been a good
Speaker 7: thing and we should try to preserve it, and caring
Speaker 7: about the well functioning institutions.
Speaker 6: So I'm a libertarianish classical liberal.
Speaker 7: For all the kind of you know, kind of eccentricities
Speaker 7: that you see and the things I've written and the
Speaker 7: things I still write today, my politics underneath it all
Speaker 7: are actually sort of normal.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I will I will say just you know,
Speaker 2: I also have changed my mind on certain things because
Speaker 2: of this Trump administration. And one of them is something
Speaker 2: that you touched on, which is just how much character
Speaker 2: does matter? And you know, I think the liberals were
Speaker 2: right on certain aspects of that. I previously would have
Speaker 2: been like, ah, who cares about the norms and they're
Speaker 2: so obsessed with like these different things about his personality
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 4: No, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think those things mattered a lot more than I
Speaker 2: gave them credit for mattering. And now that his personality
Speaker 2: traits have not only taken over the government, but I mean,
Speaker 2: these are it's the fish does rot from the head down,
Speaker 2: and that has to do not just with this administration,
Speaker 2: but with the whole country. And when you see the
Speaker 2: most powerful person in the country, in the world who
Speaker 2: is narcissistic, utterly.
Speaker 4: Shameless, lies, is cruel, etc.
Speaker 2: Of course you're going to have people think that that's
Speaker 2: the way to succeed, that those are traits that are
Speaker 2: worthy of emulation. And so I also, you know, just
Speaker 2: you know, since you're talking about your evolution and your thought,
Speaker 2: I also have evolved in the way that I think
Speaker 2: about these things and have changed my mind about how
Speaker 2: important those things. In certain way, It's like it's made
Speaker 2: me sort of more conservative in that way of like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, actually the character of our leaders, like
Speaker 2: these squishy traits and these norms, they actually did kind
Speaker 2: of matter and I want them back.
Speaker 1: See it's interesting. I would almost do a reverse.
Speaker 3: I think, Richard, what you've convinced me most of all
Speaker 3: is that competence and elite human capital matters more than anything,
Speaker 3: and that, as you pointed out, let's say with the
Speaker 3: JD Van's tweet, right, you and I both know that
Speaker 3: that is a straw man argument about deportation. That's not
Speaker 3: about Abrago, Garcia and El Salvador in prison and defying
Speaker 3: a social Supreme Court order. But that is one where
Speaker 3: somebody who has been through this process cannot debase themselves
Speaker 3: to actually argue at the level of drump for lack
Speaker 3: of a better word, to be like, no, this is
Speaker 3: good and we're also sending American citizens. And so I mean, Richard,
Speaker 3: you've been through many things. But I'll say this, man,
Speaker 3: I've been reading you for probably five straight years. When's
Speaker 3: the first time we talked twenty twenty, I want to say,
Speaker 3: when you put out your CSPI study.
Speaker 6: Yeah, probably the report on the right.
Speaker 3: You were one of the first people who ever truly
Speaker 3: caused me to change my mind, and you have caused
Speaker 3: me to change my mind many of the time since.
Speaker 3: So we'll have a link down the description to yourself
Speaker 3: stack and I will always read you.
Speaker 1: You're a fascinating man.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate that, appreciate the discussion Richard, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. So guys, in terms of Doge's supposed aspirations
Speaker 2: as a cost cutting exercise, we can officially now.
Speaker 4: Say it has failed.
Speaker 2: Elon has gone from claiming he was going to cut
Speaker 2: two trillion dollars out of the federal debt budget to
Speaker 2: now meekly at a cabinet meeting massively downgrading that estimate.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to Elon himself.
Speaker 8: How much do you think we can rip out of
Speaker 8: this wasted six point five trillion dollar harvest Biden budget?
Speaker 9: Well, I think we can do at least two trillion.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Well, thanks to your fantastic leadership, this amazing cabinet, and
Speaker 9: the very talented dog team, I'm excited to announce that
Speaker 9: we anticipate savings in FY twenty six from reduction of
Speaker 9: waste and brought by one hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 9: And I mean, and some of it is just absurd,
Speaker 9: like people getting unemployment insurance.
Speaker 6: You haven't been born yet.
Speaker 9: I mean, I think anyone can appreciate whether, I mean,
Speaker 9: come on, that's just crazy.
Speaker 2: So from two trillion to one hundred and fifty billion,
Speaker 2: and even that is just not even true. To put
Speaker 2: this up on the screen from the New York Times,
Speaker 2: they dug in to what they're even actually claiming.
Speaker 4: The headline is DOGE.
Speaker 2: Is far short of its goal and still overstating its progress.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk now says this group will produce only fifteen
Speaker 2: percent of the savings it promised, but even that estimate
Speaker 2: is inflated with errors. And in particular, they went and
Speaker 2: looked at some of the top cost savings here that
Speaker 2: they had claimed and it still was inaccurate, or they
Speaker 2: were double counting, or it's just you know, it's just preposterous.
Speaker 2: And not to mention that some of the things that
Speaker 2: they're cutting are actually going to make the government more expensive. So,
Speaker 2: for example, the massive cuts at the IRS are going
Speaker 2: to make the IRS less able to do his job
Speaker 2: of collecting tax revenue, which means that the budget deficit
Speaker 2: is going to get even larger. So layer on top
Speaker 2: of that saga the political failure in Wisconsin. He seems
Speaker 2: to have diminished power and sway within the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, you know.
Speaker 2: I while those aspects have failed, DOG has been very
Speaker 2: successful at making the federal government, destroying certain key elements
Speaker 2: of the federal government.
Speaker 4: And I've always said that that.
Speaker 2: Was really more of the actual goal than any sort
Speaker 2: of budget deficit, fiscal hawk type of stuff, and that's
Speaker 2: pretty clear from the beginning of what they were actually
Speaker 2: trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure I think that it was.
Speaker 3: The initial goal was to actually do allegedly what they
Speaker 3: wanted to do, and then it became eventually convenient and
Speaker 3: acknowledged internally that that was impossible, and the longer that
Speaker 3: the chaos and all of that began to happen, then yes,
Speaker 3: it became like destruction in and of the end for itself,
Speaker 3: as in I wouldn't underestimate like genuine stupidity. This comes
Speaker 3: off of our discussion with Richard, and one of the
Speaker 3: things that I as well, you know, talking about Richard,
Speaker 3: is what the hypocrisy on all of this is what
Speaker 3: actually drives me the craziest, because look, even if you
Speaker 3: believe as you do, it was a cynical effort from
Speaker 3: the beginning, there are many people who actually do believe
Speaker 3: in reducing government.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: As I said initially before the election, one of the
Speaker 3: most popular bro elements that I would often hear about
Speaker 3: from Trump was does. It was one of the things
Speaker 3: people were most excited about. Do not underestimate this. People
Speaker 3: hate the government. Yes, you know, they may like Noah
Speaker 3: or whatever, but like broadly people's interaction. I mean, who
Speaker 3: all just paid their taxes right, it's a pain in
Speaker 3: the ass or the E file service or whatever, which
Speaker 3: by the way, does took away to talk about them
Speaker 3: in a second. My point broadly is that the animus
Speaker 3: and behind that was popular. I still think it's actually
Speaker 3: quite popular, although maybe less so now that it's happened
Speaker 3: with Doge. But the problem is is that for you
Speaker 3: exploit that in then not only reduction non permanence stupidly chaotically,
Speaker 3: and then even if you take their initial numbers now
Speaker 3: at face value, put the next one please up on
Speaker 3: the screen, is that Trump and Hegseth are promising a
Speaker 3: one trillion dollar Pentagon budget, which would mean that you
Speaker 3: would actually take all of your new alleged savings and
Speaker 3: you would then just give it to the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: And so what have we actually accomplished?
Speaker 3: Noah has reduced capacity, social security phone lines are there.
Speaker 3: The entire team responsible for green lighting nuclear energy permits
Speaker 3: have been fired or are trying to be brought back
Speaker 3: right now, My friends in the nuclear regulatory space are
Speaker 3: freaking out about dos.
Speaker 1: Can we all didn't we all vote for that?
Speaker 3: I think so about abundant energy. And then so meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we're also doing a trillion dollar Pentagon budget. And then
Speaker 3: let's zoom out to the Congress. The US Congress, Republican
Speaker 3: led Congress, wants to cut a trillion dollars in spending
Speaker 3: and they want to increase the budget for the Pentagon.
Speaker 3: That's not possible, not possible without cutting massive social services.
Speaker 3: You could even do discretionary what you could wipe out
Speaker 3: the entire thing. You couldn't wipe out a trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Its basic math.
Speaker 3: If you don't believe me, go play with chet, GPT
Speaker 3: or any of these AI thinks. Say cut one trillion
Speaker 3: dollars from the budget, don't touch any social services or
Speaker 3: the Pentagon. See how easy it is to get there.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 3: Look this is simple balance sheet arithmetic. And so when
Speaker 3: you look at all of that, the Republican Congress has
Speaker 3: decided not to increase taxes.
Speaker 1: On anyone making over one million dollars per year.
Speaker 3: They've decided to extend the vast majority of the TCGAA
Speaker 3: tax cuts, they want to attack manufacturing tax credits. Not
Speaker 3: a single thing is in line with each other. And
Speaker 3: I think that is what is that is what is
Speaker 3: now being coming clear to the American people over time.
Speaker 3: I think they genuinely did give Doze and all that
Speaker 3: a lot of runway. Like I said, do not underestimate
Speaker 3: how much.
Speaker 1: People hate the government. You really cannot underestimate that.
Speaker 3: But it has been what is it now, how many
Speaker 3: days of the Trump administration? Eighty something. We're coming up
Speaker 3: on the end of the one hundred days, the story
Speaker 3: of the worst hundred this is going to be a
Speaker 3: crazy book. And then Oxford History from one hundred years
Speaker 3: from now, the story of the first hundred days from
Speaker 3: the Trump administration will be Doge, tariffs and El.
Speaker 1: Salvador, which is nuts.
Speaker 3: That is not what you would want if you want
Speaker 3: a successful administration, you are effectively hanging yourself for the
Speaker 3: duration of your presidency. You had a left which has
Speaker 3: never been more moralized in modern history or unpopular, and
Speaker 3: then you reinvigorated it for no reason or discernible impact
Speaker 3: in the future.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I am famously wrong and could be.
Speaker 1: He could be massively popular.
Speaker 3: And JD could be cruising to twenty twenty eight, but
Speaker 3: a lot of shit would have happened in the interim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's look, let's be honest too. Three years is
Speaker 1: a long time, all right, Nobody would have predicted that
Speaker 1: we're here today, right.
Speaker 3: Vive shifted to quote unquote a lot more than people
Speaker 3: would have thought, so it can shift back, it easily, could.
Speaker 1: I don't particularly see it. But I didn't see this either.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's the thing with Doge and with the tariffs,
Speaker 2: the real negative impacts of those things have not yet
Speaker 2: even hit.
Speaker 1: Well, they will, they have not.
Speaker 4: Yet even hit.
Speaker 2: And so I mean, this is why I I just
Speaker 2: don't believe Doge was ever really about cost cutting because
Speaker 2: it is just basically, I mean, we were saying from
Speaker 2: the very beginning, right, even if you cut every single
Speaker 2: federal government worker, you're not saving a significant percent of
Speaker 2: the federal budget. And a lot of not all of,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the playbook from Doge has also
Speaker 2: followed from Project twenty twenty five. So it's not like
Speaker 2: there wasn't some level of a concerted plan here. And
Speaker 2: with Elon himself, like obviously he's this huge federal government contractor,
Speaker 2: and he hates that these government agencies were daring to
Speaker 2: regulate his businesses. They're not going to be doing that
Speaker 2: anytime soon. The level the amount that they have cut
Speaker 2: enforcement of what white collar crime is truly insane. And
Speaker 2: that comes from the you know, the National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 2: which governs obviously labor relations, so that's gutted and cannot function.
Speaker 2: You had the cpp B, which is like the anti
Speaker 2: scam Bureau that helps consumers who've been scammed by you know,
Speaker 2: big business or small business or any business that's been
Speaker 2: completely gutted, and they were the ones who were set
Speaker 2: up to regulate x if X moves into as they're
Speaker 2: planning they have to deal with visa into payment processing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He went after the particular board within the National Transportation
Speaker 2: Agency that was regulating automated vehicles, something that he was
Speaker 2: hating and you know, was bothering him with regard to
Speaker 2: his tesla's. So in those ways he got what he wanted. Now,
Speaker 2: I do think that the probably more maximalist original goals
Speaker 2: of effectively and this actually this came out in the
Speaker 2: article about him and his Harem too. He said, well,
Speaker 2: I can't be president but I can make Trump be precedent,
Speaker 2: with the implication being like, oh, but I'll basically be
Speaker 2: the one running the show.
Speaker 4: Like the more maximust goals of I'm just.
Speaker 2: Going to be able to effectively take all of the
Speaker 2: government's money for my SpaceX Mars boondoggle dream project. I
Speaker 2: think that is not going to come to fruition. And
Speaker 2: I do think that the fact that he has now
Speaker 2: been politically hobbled by going so hard in Wisconsin, going
Speaker 2: all in in Wisconsin and then getting you know, smacked
Speaker 2: down with a double digit loss, I think that has
Speaker 2: probably significantly diminished his political power within Trump's fear. As
Speaker 2: you know, all of the these guys are optics, branding people.
Speaker 4: So even that image I showed you of.
Speaker 2: Him like seated at the table at the cabinet meeting
Speaker 2: he wasn't even invited to, He just like showed up
Speaker 2: for as one of many around the table, is so
Speaker 2: different compared that image to the image of him standing
Speaker 2: hovering over Trump, who was at the resolute desk with
Speaker 2: his kid running around and web these bars on the desk.
Speaker 1: And what askrit is still there?
Speaker 3: By the way, I'll never understand that kid well, So
Speaker 3: you've got fourteen kids.
Speaker 1: Why that one?
Speaker 3: I mean, not to be mean, but like's not kind
Speaker 3: of favoritism for real though, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure, But putting the kid the dynamics with the
Speaker 2: kids aside, there's a whole other conversation like that. The
Speaker 2: imagery of him sort of standing lording over Trump and
Speaker 2: doing things and then asking permission later and Trump giving
Speaker 2: him all sorts of runway is a is a massive
Speaker 2: contrast from him sitting one of many around the cabinet,
Speaker 2: around that table and you know, having to meekly submit
Speaker 2: his You know, oh, mister King, you're amazing and thanks
Speaker 2: to your wonderful leadership, dear, we were able to cut
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty billion dollars from the federal budget deficits, So.
Speaker 4: You know, I think we are.
Speaker 2: I do think DOSE is sort of like petering out
Speaker 2: as a project. But again that doesn't mean they haven't
Speaker 2: done tremendous damage that will take many, many years to
Speaker 2: recover from and that services won't be damaged. Social Security IRS.
Speaker 2: We actually have the chart we can show you here.
Speaker 2: This is E five. Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: In terms of the IRS staffing levels just fell off
Speaker 2: a Cliff.
Speaker 4: Now, in fairness, they were.
Speaker 2: The number of staffers of the IRS were significantly increased
Speaker 2: under the Biden administration with the idea of like, we
Speaker 2: need more people to be able to go after rich
Speaker 2: tax cheats in particular, and not just be going after
Speaker 2: like waitresses for their tips. Well, but now it has
Speaker 2: plummeted down to fifty thousand. We haven't seen this level
Speaker 2: in years, I don't know when was the last time.
Speaker 2: So that's going to have a huge impact, Like which
Speaker 2: people are going to be able to get away with
Speaker 2: not paying their taxes. It's going to be much easier
Speaker 2: for them if you can hire lawyers and you've got
Speaker 2: the money to be able to fight and have set
Speaker 2: up tax shelters and all this sort of stuff. The
Speaker 2: IRS is going to be very hard pressed to be
Speaker 2: able to go after those people. So while DOGE as
Speaker 2: a project has in some ways failed, it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that it hasn't done long term damage.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure on the IRS front. I'll just say this to
Speaker 3: blue in the face. They made themselves unpopular. They're the
Speaker 3: ones who got their new money and then did their
Speaker 3: little Venmo rules and turn the entire small business in
Speaker 3: poor community against them. From years of automated like those
Speaker 3: what is it, automated automated investigations into people making less
Speaker 3: than twenty two thousand dollars per year. They blame resource allocation, etc.
Speaker 3: But you know their own practice is not exactly one
Speaker 3: where people are going to be shedding a lot of
Speaker 3: tears maybe a decade from now if there's less in
Speaker 3: our deficit. But I would say broadly on the Doze project,
Speaker 3: you could view it two ways. Yes, there is quote
Speaker 3: like damage done. I also am like I've been saying,
Speaker 3: I really think that the legacy of the stupidity currently
Speaker 3: of much of the Trump administration will be to negatively
Speaker 3: polarize the American public in the same way that people were.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you think back to the nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: and the chaos of the nineteen seventies, people were negatively
Speaker 3: polarized on trusting government.
Speaker 1: That's why they'd like to Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 3: They were negatively polarized on inflation, part of the reason
Speaker 3: that they were so broadly accepting of the Reagan administration.
Speaker 3: They were negatively polarized around what they saw as a
Speaker 3: failure of the prolonged New Deal period. Same thing why
Speaker 3: neoliberalism was really ushered in. So in a similar way,
Speaker 3: we are seeing failures in DOGE. We're seeing failures on tariffs,
Speaker 3: we're seeing failures on immigration, and in all three of
Speaker 3: those you will find then that the sea saw nature
Speaker 3: of politics will swing back in a much more different direction.
Speaker 3: So if look, I mean Trump was elected, I would say,
Speaker 3: with a broad enough mandate on all three of those issues,
Speaker 3: if you actually wanted to stop him, this is a
Speaker 3: pretty good outcome for you, because you're going to win
Speaker 3: a east An argument. They're in the future and be
Speaker 3: on pretty strong ground. Especially I think whenever it comes
Speaker 3: to government capacity, prices and tariffs and those other things.
Speaker 1: I do not want this to happen.
Speaker 3: And as part of why I think it's really bad
Speaker 3: the way that this is all basically shaken out in
Speaker 3: the first hundred days. And I know enough looking in
Speaker 3: the past to say it's pretty hard to crawl out
Speaker 3: of a hole like this once you've actually done it.
Speaker 3: That's what I was saying about the first one hundred days.
Speaker 3: While it's certainly possible vibes etc. Could swing back, I
Speaker 3: don't see that path right now. I think they have
Speaker 3: dug themselves deep, deep, into a hole that.
Speaker 1: Crawling out of.
Speaker 3: You know, even politically, for them not to mention policy
Speaker 3: wise is just going to be I just don't see
Speaker 3: the way there's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're crippling the economy, potentially sending it into a recession.
Speaker 4: You're cutting taxes for the rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah soon, you're cutting social services for everybody else. You know,
Speaker 2: you've made it so that the some of the things
Speaker 2: that people actually appreciate and about the federal government being
Speaker 2: able to get their Social Security checks has been completely broken.
Speaker 2: So yeah, of course there's going to be reaction against that.
Speaker 2: And you know, we've been tracking, especially this week, the
Speaker 2: approval rating for Trump really across the board has fallen
Speaker 2: off significantly, not just with regard to his overall approval,
Speaker 2: but specifically is handling of the economy completely reversed. He
Speaker 2: has the worst numbers with independence of any president, including
Speaker 2: himself ever at this point in their presidency, and the
Speaker 2: pain of tariffs has not yet hit. Whatever dos just
Speaker 2: been doing in the government, which we have very little
Speaker 2: transparency into. By the way, whatever they've been doing in
Speaker 2: the government is going to hobble these agencies and incapacitate
Speaker 2: them for years and potentially cause the kind of crises
Speaker 2: that we've been concerned about over time. Those things haven't
Speaker 2: even hit yet, so it's hard to imagine how they
Speaker 2: on this current path. You know, Trump's not going to
Speaker 2: do a one ed that's not who he is. Right Instead,
Speaker 2: and this is just a quick preview of my monologue, like, instead,
Speaker 2: he's going to lean more into the authoritarian, like let
Speaker 2: me suppress the descent. As there's more of a sort
Speaker 2: of like grassroots and institutional backlash to him and resistance
Speaker 2: to him, You're going to see more authoritarian tactics in
Speaker 2: the same way that after he lost the election in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, you know, a referendum on his popularity and
Speaker 2: you know, the threat to obviously the greatest threat to
Speaker 2: his power, that was when he was at his most
Speaker 2: unhinged and most authoritarian in the first term. And I
Speaker 2: fully expect us to be heading into that.
Speaker 3: Yeah maybe, well, you know the other possibility of that
Speaker 3: is that when you lose your grip on the government
Speaker 3: and you began explicitly challenging the court. I mean I
Speaker 3: saw a Supreme Court watcher be like, if you're Justice Roberts, Now,
Speaker 3: that whole what we remember, we talked about the facilitate language.
Speaker 3: You're just not going to do that in the future.
Speaker 3: You're going to be like, no, I think that's what
Speaker 3: it's not happening.
Speaker 2: I think that's right because they have to be watching
Speaker 2: the way that the admitted station is just lying about
Speaker 2: their order and be like, oh, we cannot give them
Speaker 2: an inch at You know.
Speaker 3: You can crack down all you want if you're Trump,
Speaker 3: but any Republican, good luck to you who is in
Speaker 3: power right now, because when the Dems take the House,
Speaker 3: you are Elon alone. It will probably have to spend
Speaker 3: one hundred million in legal fees just in terms of
Speaker 3: what the House committees are going to investigate on SpaceX
Speaker 3: and on Twitter and Tesla alone. So that's just Elon
Speaker 3: for everybody else in the administration.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I hope you people have lawyers upon lawyers on retainer
Speaker 3: because it's going to be not going to be fun
Speaker 3: for all those you know, the contempt challenges. Remember Bannon
Speaker 3: went to prison for contempt, so did Peter Lamarro.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean these people they can literally lock your ass up.
Speaker 3: And then in the future, let's say, you know, if
Speaker 3: this continues and you have a Democratic president, who's in charge.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I wouldn't want to be a Christian
Speaker 3: charity right now when we're talking about Harvard University and
Speaker 3: tax exempt status and all that. So still I still
Speaker 3: see a major backfire. That's I'm in there for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Last thing, I do want to put this last alum
Speaker 2: eight e four guys up on the screen just so
Speaker 2: you know what we're not like cooking the books here
Speaker 2: or lying. This is cumulative federal spending by day, and
Speaker 2: where we are in twenty twenty five is.
Speaker 4: Above where we were in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: So you know, all of those purported savings not showing
Speaker 2: up here whatsoever. And as I mentioned before, you know,
Speaker 2: even their one hundred and fifty billion dollar claim is
Speaker 2: total bullshit. That New York Times report they found that
Speaker 2: one of their largest claims involves canceling a contract that
Speaker 2: did not even exist.
Speaker 4: So those are the sorts of things that we're talking
Speaker 4: about here.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: But there is one good thing sort of maybe maybe
Speaker 2: I'll get to that caveats, but maybe encouraging news coming
Speaker 2: out of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Let's get to that.
Speaker 3: Let's get to that, Onie Ron, Let's put this up
Speaker 3: there on the screen. There's so many things that I
Speaker 3: want to say about this. First of all, it's the
Speaker 3: headline Trump waved off Israeli strike after divisions emerged in
Speaker 3: his administration. Let's break down this extraordinary report clearly leaked
Speaker 3: from the administration kind of has a screw you to
Speaker 3: Israel and showing their plans for what they presented in
Speaker 3: the Oval Office.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: Israeli officials recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites
Speaker 3: in May next month. They were preparing to carry them
Speaker 3: out and at the time were optimistic the United States
Speaker 3: would sign off. The goal of the proposal was to
Speaker 3: set back Tehran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon by
Speaker 3: a year or more.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: Almost all plans would have required United States help, not
Speaker 3: just to defend Israel, but also to ensure that the
Speaker 3: Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central
Speaker 3: part of the attack itself. For now, Trump has chosen
Speaker 3: diplomacy over military action. However, in his second term he
Speaker 3: is eager to avoid being sucked into another war in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, and his open negotiations with Tehran, giving
Speaker 3: it a deadline of just a few months to negotiate
Speaker 3: a deal over its program.
Speaker 1: Earlier this month.
Speaker 3: Trump informed Israel of his decision the United States would
Speaker 3: not support an attack, discussed it with Netan Yahoo when
Speaker 3: he visited Washington just last week, and told him in
Speaker 3: the Oval Office that that was not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: Israel has long planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rehearsing
Speaker 3: bombing runs and calculating how much damage you could do,
Speaker 3: but support within the government has grown after Iran suffered
Speaker 3: a string of setbacks just last year. They think that
Speaker 3: they're weak and that they can strike now now. According
Speaker 3: to them, there were plans on the table not just
Speaker 3: to facilitate the bombing, but then to require and push
Speaker 3: the United States to bring more military assets to the region.
Speaker 3: Remember how we were covering here on the show about
Speaker 3: all new military assets that are headed that way. It
Speaker 3: was specifically after a push by the Israeli government on
Speaker 3: this now, thank god for now.
Speaker 1: Exactly Ye, we're exactly right.
Speaker 3: And so looking inside, it's very interesting. There were quote
Speaker 3: a range of officials who spoke out against any of
Speaker 3: these attacks. Tulsea Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, said
Speaker 3: that the build up of American weaponry would potentially spark
Speaker 3: wider conflict with Iran. The United States does not want
Speaker 3: jd Vance, Pete Hegseth, and apparently also Susie.
Speaker 1: Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff.
Speaker 3: However, the idiot dunce Mike Waltz was also in the
Speaker 3: room quote frequently one of the most hawkish voices on Iran,
Speaker 3: and while he was skeptical about our Israel's plan to
Speaker 3: succeed without US assistance, back to the plan anyway, And
Speaker 3: there are several people who are inside the administration who
Speaker 3: are openly supporting this, people like Marco Rubio, many other
Speaker 3: outside voices that are in the admin. So I do
Speaker 3: not want to downplay this is good news and it's bad.
Speaker 3: So the good news is that they have opted for
Speaker 3: a deal quote on a timeline of a few months
Speaker 3: for now before any sort of strike is on the table.
Speaker 3: The bad news is, I happen to remember the Iran deal,
Speaker 3: it took years to get the JCPOA to be negotiated.
Speaker 3: Second to that, as you guys cover yesterday on Counterpoints,
Speaker 3: there is a full scale purge happening right now in
Speaker 3: the Pentagon. There have been three top officials who have
Speaker 3: been kicked out of the building in some sort of
Speaker 3: crazy power struggle. I haven't fully gotten all the detail.
Speaker 3: Nobody really seems to know. All I happen to know
Speaker 3: is that the people who are most on Pete Hegsett's
Speaker 3: side and are the most America first just happened to
Speaker 3: be frog marched out of the building. Okay, that's not good, right.
Speaker 3: These are the very people who I would want right
Speaker 3: around Pete Hegsett, who would be quashing some of the
Speaker 3: stuff that's happening. Mike Walltz meanwhile, even though he literally
Speaker 3: put Jeffrey Goldberg on a signal chain, Oh, he gets
Speaker 3: to stay right. But these people who they're accusing of leaking,
Speaker 3: they're getting frog marched.
Speaker 1: Interesting, got it.
Speaker 3: The point is that personnel around Trump is pure chaos.
Speaker 3: In some days, Marco Rubio's in charge. Mike Wallace is
Speaker 3: still around there. Some days he's listening to JD and
Speaker 3: he's listening to Tulca Gabbard, but there is no guarantee
Speaker 3: that he doesn't just turn his head and listen to
Speaker 3: the other guy. We have Steve Wikoff, all those guys.
Speaker 3: They're in control for right now, but as we saw
Speaker 3: with the ceasefire deal, they can be out of power momentarily.
Speaker 3: Nothing is guaranteed and or certain right now. I don't
Speaker 3: think the stakes could literally be higher because Israel, you
Speaker 3: have to admire their hutzpa. They don't even develop war
Speaker 3: plans without US backing. They they don't even pretend to
Speaker 3: have operation. That doesn't mean, hey, big daddy, you have
Speaker 3: to come in here and actually do something about it.
Speaker 3: So let's all be very clear about what this strike
Speaker 3: and all that means. It's also the thing about BB
Speaker 3: is he's not even creative. This is the exact same
Speaker 3: plan that he came up with in nine that Jeffrey Goldberg,
Speaker 3: by the way, is the one who revealed about and
Speaker 3: tried to push President Obama to support Bebe to do.
Speaker 1: This is fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: It's the exact same plan, almost to the letter, about
Speaker 3: what the US is going to do and how Israel
Speaker 3: is going to be the tip of the spear, but
Speaker 3: the US would be the overall security umbrella there. So
Speaker 3: that's where we're at right now. The deal is currently
Speaker 3: being negotiated. The timeline is not good. Trump could change
Speaker 3: his mind at any time, and the fate of the
Speaker 3: world is hanging in the balance.
Speaker 2: And what Emily was saying is that the people who
Speaker 2: want him to go with BB bomb Iran plan. They're saying, like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're just negotiating a deal just like Obama.
Speaker 4: You know, they are get under his skin.
Speaker 2: And I mean, unfortunately, there is some truth to the
Speaker 2: fact that any deal that he would get would probably
Speaker 2: bear some similarities to what Obama did. But that is
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, I think the original deal
Speaker 2: was actually a good deal. It was one of the
Speaker 2: signature achievements of the Obama administration. It's really unfortunate Trump
Speaker 2: back down. It's also unfortunate Biden didn't get back in
Speaker 2: something covered extensively at the time.
Speaker 4: But I have.
Speaker 2: Doctor Tree DEPARSI you evaluated and analyzed this New York
Speaker 2: Times article. I just wanted to share his insights because
Speaker 2: he's such an expert.
Speaker 4: Here, he says.
Speaker 2: Number One, last week, Trump told Israel that the US
Speaker 2: would not support an Israeli attack in Iran while talks
Speaker 2: were being conducted. That's the headline from the PC saying,
Speaker 2: these are the key pieces to take away from it.
Speaker 2: Number Two, in the Israeli plan of attack, the US
Speaker 2: would have to play a central role. Israel itself has
Speaker 2: no military option. So that's what Zager was saying keep
Speaker 2: that in mind. Number three. Still, the Israeli plan would
Speaker 2: only push back the Iranian program one year. More attacks
Speaker 2: would be needed after that. That means Israel wants to
Speaker 2: bring the US into a forever war with Iran.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Number four, he says, More importantly, the twenty fifteen nuclear
Speaker 2: deal pushed back the program much more than a year,
Speaker 2: so that was way more successful. And then he says
Speaker 2: Trump appears to understand negotiated solution better.
Speaker 4: Achieves his goal. Well, we'll see. We'll see on that front.
Speaker 2: I hope so, I hope he can be persuaded of that,
Speaker 2: and I hope they're able to negotiate a deal, because
Speaker 2: this is This would be insanity, This would be utter insanity.
Speaker 1: Not good.
Speaker 3: I did want to put some positive news. Let's go
Speaker 3: to the next one.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 3: Trump has reappointed Adam Bowhler. He'll all remember Adam. I
Speaker 3: remain a Bowler.
Speaker 1: Stand.
Speaker 3: He's the guy who said that we're not a client
Speaker 3: state of Israel, and who was relentlessly attacked by the
Speaker 3: Israel lobby for daring to want to negotiate with Hamas directly,
Speaker 3: and who said we're not a client State of Israel,
Speaker 3: and who knows, maybe they're good guys. Remember this guy
Speaker 3: is friends with Jared Kushner and they still were able
Speaker 3: to sideline him. Seems to be back is appointed to
Speaker 3: quote expanded hostage envoy roll. We're not yet sure how
Speaker 3: that is all going to work out. I'm told the
Speaker 3: Israeli ambassad directly intervened to try and to screw over
Speaker 3: Adam Bowler.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next one here again, just more
Speaker 3: a little bit insight. This is from Barack Revid. He's
Speaker 3: mostly getting leased, it seems, from the Israeli side. But
Speaker 3: what he's saying is basically that the President kind of
Speaker 3: needled bb Net and Yahu in the Oval office when
Speaker 3: saying he would not green light the Iranian attack and
Speaker 3: kind of tried to force him to accept the fact
Speaker 3: that the US was going to pursue a deal. But
Speaker 3: they have several senators and others Mike Wallace, Marco Rubio,
Speaker 3: Tom Cotton, Lindsea Gram people who have their ear of
Speaker 3: the president, and then the Israel lobby specifically behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: is whipping harder than they have ever done since I
Speaker 3: have seen since two thousand and fifteen. They have the
Speaker 3: entire infrastructure in place. They're the beats are being sent,
Speaker 3: the calls are being made. I mean, these people never
Speaker 3: underestimate their abilities. As I said, as I watch people
Speaker 3: who I know, America first year is getting frog marched
Speaker 3: out of the Pentagon. So I don't remember Mike Walt's
Speaker 3: getting frog bars out of the White House even though
Speaker 3: it obviously deserved to and they went to bat for him.
Speaker 1: So don't forget that.
Speaker 4: Well, Laura Lummer did claim some scoffs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some low level guys. Okay, I don't care about
Speaker 3: some guy who's staffing Mike Walts. Mike Walts is in
Speaker 3: the Oval pushing war. That's what matters more than anything,
Speaker 3: you know, that is actually the only thing that matters
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, because this is all
Speaker 3: up to Donald Trump in the situation room. Right now,
Speaker 3: we have relative parody with between Tulsea Gabbard, Pete and JD.
Speaker 3: Versus Rubio and Mike Walls and a few of the
Speaker 3: other neo cons that would be on the National Security Council.
Speaker 3: But I mean, you can see how quickly like things
Speaker 3: can turn just like that with Donald Trump's so I
Speaker 3: have no idea, and I do not underestimate the Israel lobby.
Speaker 3: Their ability to get on Fox News is to pump
Speaker 3: all this bullshit straightened into Trump's brain, and so things
Speaker 3: could be he had it in a bad direction.
Speaker 1: All right, Christal, what are you taking a little at that?
Speaker 2: Senator Chuck Grassley was recently confronted by angry Iowa constituents
Speaker 2: who are demanding the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Speaker 4: Take a listen, you gotta bring that ship from El Salvador.
Speaker 8: Why not, Well, because that's not that's how power of Congress.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Comdia.
Speaker 8: Trump don't care a freeform order taking for twelve hundred dollars.
Speaker 6: And I just say no, Does that stand up?
Speaker 2: Because he's gotten order from the Supreme Court and he
Speaker 2: just said no.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the president of that country is not subject for
Speaker 8: US Supreme.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: The reason that this administration has decided to fight so
Speaker 2: hard on this one particular case to keep this one
Speaker 2: man locked in the dungeon for life is pretty simple
Speaker 2: and obvious, because if they can stonewall even in a
Speaker 2: case where they admit that they screwed up, then there
Speaker 2: is nothing to stop them from sending whoever they want
Speaker 2: to the torture dungeon for a life. All they have
Speaker 2: to do is get the planes in the air before
Speaker 2: a court can weigh in. As one reaganarppointed judge wrote
Speaker 2: of Trump's plot, quote, it takes no small amount of
Speaker 2: imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness.
Speaker 2: What I want you to understand, though, is that this
Speaker 2: is only the beginning of Trump's authoritarian crackdown. And in fact,
Speaker 2: if history of other authoritarians and Trump himself are any guide,
Speaker 2: as Trump's popularity falls, he will only become more dangerous
Speaker 2: as he reaches for more and more tools of suppression
Speaker 2: and control. This is in fact the exact spiral that
Speaker 2: led to the January sixth riots and Trump's attempted election subversion.
Speaker 2: But if there's one thing we know about Trump two
Speaker 2: point zero, the man himself is more unhinged, and any
Speaker 2: prior guardrails have either been demolished or are being bulldozed
Speaker 2: right through now. In many ways, the early days of
Speaker 2: Trump's administration have been a complete failure. We're just discussing dosee.
Speaker 2: It's floundering, no public achievements, even as it destroys key
Speaker 2: government functions. Elon himself has seen his status EBB after
Speaker 2: a political dropping in Wisconsin, it seems on his way
Speaker 2: to limping out of town. The Ukraine War and Israel's
Speaker 2: genocide and Gaza they grind on with no apparent end
Speaker 2: in sight, and perhaps most devastating politically, Trump's Grand Trade
Speaker 2: War has been a catastrophic mess, which somehow managed to
Speaker 2: unite Wall.
Speaker 4: Street with Main Street in their revulsion for.
Speaker 2: The chaos and the damage that is being inflicted for
Speaker 2: no good reason. Polls increasingly reflect the public's consensus on
Speaker 2: these failures. A Liberation Day has accelerated a downward trend
Speaker 2: in Trump's overall approval rating. He's gone from plus one
Speaker 2: with independence to minus twenty two. That is the worst
Speaker 2: any president has ever fared with this group at this
Speaker 2: point in their presidency. His economic approval has fallen even
Speaker 2: more precipitously, with terrorists dominating when people are asked what
Speaker 2: negative things they've seen recently about the Trump administration. Even
Speaker 2: on the strongest issue immigration, even that is starting to
Speaker 2: slip away from him.
Speaker 4: In a Quinnipiac poll that.
Speaker 2: Was taken before the Abrego Garcia case blew up to.
Speaker 4: A full national scandal.
Speaker 2: Trump was already underwater on immigration by five points, and
Speaker 2: on deportations, he was under water by eleven points. Now,
Speaker 2: at the same time, resistance is swelling, both at the
Speaker 2: grassroots and the institutional level. Hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 2: have turned out to Bernie and AOC's Fight Oligarchy Tour,
Speaker 2: including large crowds in red states like Idaho. Millions turned
Speaker 2: out coast to coast as part of the hands off protests.
Speaker 2: Members of Congress cannot hold the town hall without being
Speaker 2: flooded by outraged constituents. Universities are beginning to fight back
Speaker 2: rather than get rolled. Law firms are starting to think
Speaker 2: twice about their capitulation bribery deals. Democrats have moved from
Speaker 2: Corey Booker's show speech to Chris Van Hollins's genuinely courageous
Speaker 2: flight to tangle with Bikelli in El Salvador. The courts
Speaker 2: are becoming increasingly assertive, and bond traders are apparently the
Speaker 2: actual deep state. Now, how will Trump respond to this
Speaker 2: rapid political shift and mounting backlash. It won't be by
Speaker 2: backing down or changing course. It will be by cracking down.
Speaker 2: Some of this project, of course, is already well in motion.
Speaker 2: He's used supposed national emergencies and national security threats already
Speaker 2: to claim extraordinary powers by his terrorist program and by
Speaker 2: invoking the Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 4: But there's more.
Speaker 2: On April twentieth, pursuit to an executive order that Trump
Speaker 2: signed on day one of his presidency, he is going
Speaker 2: to receive a report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and
Speaker 2: fascist Barbie Christinoum about whether or not he should invoke
Speaker 2: the Insurrection.
Speaker 4: Act of eighteen oh seven.
Speaker 2: Now, such an invocation would open up extraordinary powers for
Speaker 2: this president to use our military in our streets against
Speaker 2: our citizens. Of course, there are any number of ways
Speaker 2: which he might deploy that power. Perhaps he deployed the
Speaker 2: military to the border part of an expanded militarized immigration response.
Speaker 2: Acting head of ICE has mused about ramping up mass
Speaker 2: deportation on an industrial scale, even fantasizing about fleets of
Speaker 2: trucks scooping up immigrants the way that Amazon efficiently delivers
Speaker 2: packages on a mass scale. Quote, we need to get
Speaker 2: better at treating this like a business. Acting ICE director
Speaker 2: Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process.
Speaker 4: Like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.
Speaker 2: Trump and the Republicans are pushing for a much larger
Speaker 2: budget for ICE and for private prison contractors to run
Speaker 2: detention centers. But if you really want to go for
Speaker 2: industrial scale, it'd be hard to beat the military. Now,
Speaker 2: even if you are hawkish on immigration, think of the
Speaker 2: genuinely evil way this administration has already conducted itself. Do
Speaker 2: you feel comfortable handing them the tools for a militarized,
Speaker 2: industrial scale human removal and incarceration system.
Speaker 4: Do you really think the.
Speaker 2: Horror is going to be just reserved to the criminals,
Speaker 2: the gang members, when we already know that ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the men that they send to a slave labor
Speaker 2: torture dungeon were innocent, Like Amazon Prime, but for fascism,
Speaker 2: I guess a notorious Blackwater war profiteer, Eric Prince, he's
Speaker 2: been pushing his own plans for mass expansion of the
Speaker 2: Bekelly torture dungeon operation. According to Politico, he wants to
Speaker 2: send thousands of migrants to Seacott and avoid legal scrutiny
Speaker 2: by designating a portion of the prison as American territory.
Speaker 2: That way, they could hold people indefinitely in Bekelly's gulag
Speaker 2: as easily as they can scoop up and detain immigrants
Speaker 2: right here in the US. But that is just one
Speaker 2: of a myriad of disturbing authoritarian possibilities. The Trump administration
Speaker 2: has also been cracking down on protesters, specifically targeting pro
Speaker 2: Palestine activists and those involved in the anti Tesla movement.
Speaker 4: Describing both groups as terrorists.
Speaker 2: What's more, Ken Klippenstein is reporting that Trump's law enforcement
Speaker 2: apparatus is increasingly targeting all protesters against this government, including
Speaker 2: those who participated in the recent hands off protests. This
Speaker 2: effort is being spearheaded by Trump's counter terrorism Zar Sebastian Gorka,
Speaker 2: who Ken writes frequently compares all his political opponents to
Speaker 2: terrorists and is in a significant position of power in
Speaker 2: this administration.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Gorka is also looking at considering those who oppose deportations
Speaker 2: as providing material support for terrorism.
Speaker 4: That would be a felony.
Speaker 2: It is not hard to imagine Trump using the Insurrection
Speaker 2: Act against any mass protest movement, giving they are already
Speaker 2: laying the administrative and rhetorical groundwork of painting these protesters
Speaker 2: as terrorists, as criminals, and as paid operatives. Another dark
Speaker 2: possibility is that Trump moves from using wartime powers to
Speaker 2: start to starting an actual war. We've been covering and
Speaker 2: covered in this show for a while the seeming build
Speaker 2: up towards war with a run now on the hopeful
Speaker 2: Trump has enlisted Steve Whitcoff in direct talks in an
Speaker 2: attempt to achieve a deal reportedly rejected, and Israeli planned
Speaker 2: to directly strike Iranian nuclear facilities, at least for now.
Speaker 2: On the ominous side, Trump's Pentagon has already drawn up
Speaker 2: war plans for Iran, including a nuclear option. Key anti
Speaker 2: war voices, including Dan Caldwell, were just purged from the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: Signal Gate also revealed just how hawkish the internal chat
Speaker 2: really is, and Trump himself has long seemed to believe
Speaker 2: that war makes for good politics and the Obama era,
Speaker 2: Trump theorized multiple times that Obama would start a war
Speaker 2: with Iran in order.
Speaker 4: To bolster his popularity.
Speaker 8: Take a listen, Our president will start a war with
Speaker 8: Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.
Speaker 6: He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only.
Speaker 8: Way he figures that he's going to get re elected
Speaker 8: and as sure as you're sitting there is to start.
Speaker 6: A war with a Ran.
Speaker 2: Now, if he still thinks war with Iran is good politics,
Speaker 2: he is a complete and utter fool that possibility to
Speaker 2: put off the table. By the way, but he also
Speaker 2: may not really care about his approval ratings as much
Speaker 2: as he cares about the power he can grab. And
Speaker 2: everyone who lived through the post nine to eleven power
Speaker 2: grab knows that a president can grab a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot of power during times of war. Now, these
Speaker 2: are just a few possible directions Trump could take as
Speaker 2: his poll number slide, and he must resort to ever
Speaker 2: more extraordinary means to stifle dissent. Obviously, they're already trying
Speaker 2: to coerce universities, law firms, media courts, and business. I
Speaker 2: would pay, though, very close attention to what happens on
Speaker 2: April April twentieth, since the Insurrection Act seems like the
Speaker 2: easiest cheat code for this administration to expand their lawlessness
Speaker 2: on immigration to lawlessness with regard to.
Speaker 4: The entire population.
Speaker 2: After all, Trump sends out right, they want to be
Speaker 2: able to disappear Americans, just like they did kill Abrego Garcia.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that was in Why do you think there's
Speaker 8: special category of person.
Speaker 6: They're as bad as anybody that comes in.
Speaker 2: Now, the Insurrection Act to me seems like the most
Speaker 2: likely path to effectuating that outcome. Trump considered it, of course,
Speaker 2: invoking the Insurrection Act twice in his first term, once
Speaker 2: against Black Lives Matter protesters again leading up to January sixth.
Speaker 2: In both instances, he was held back by some more
Speaker 2: establishment figures within his administration. But this administration none of
Speaker 2: those types of voices remain this time around. You should
Speaker 2: take him seriously and literally and assume that whatever your
Speaker 2: worst case scenario is, the reality is likely to be worse.
Speaker 2: And Sagur, I do think you know, we both talked
Speaker 2: about after that meeting with Kelly in his office, where
Speaker 2: number one, they're completely flouting the Nino Supreme Court ruling.
Speaker 2: They are refusing to do anything to bring a Brego
Speaker 2: Garcia back, and they are completely lying about all of that,
Speaker 2: and he announces we want the homegrowns next. I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to add it into this monologue, but I saw
Speaker 2: that the Kelly has said he wants to double the
Speaker 2: size of Seacott and said specifically it will be up
Speaker 2: to the Americans to fill it. So that's the landscape
Speaker 2: that we're facing as his popularity slides, and he's going
Speaker 2: to face more and more descent and more and more resistance.
Speaker 3: I think it's possible, but it's like I said, I
Speaker 3: would not I would further not underestimate he both trying
Speaker 3: to quote save face. But even more importantly, we're already
Speaker 3: watching a we are already watching here in the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court and other era. They know in some ways that
Speaker 3: they're in a difficult position. I think there's a reason
Speaker 3: that there hasn't been another Alien Enemies Act deportation since
Speaker 3: the It's been a month right now since that has happened.
Speaker 3: I mean it presumably if they thought that they were
Speaker 3: on good standing, that's something they would continue to do.
Speaker 3: They've been blocked in right now, They've been blocked in
Speaker 3: multiple jurisdictions under Tros. I guess for now they have
Speaker 3: decided not to participate in that in some ways. Like
Speaker 3: with Dose, what we watched is they start extreme and
Speaker 3: then they pair back over time. So I don't I'm
Speaker 3: not going to dismiss that. I also would not count
Speaker 3: out the possibility that as they continue to get backed
Speaker 3: and backed and back into a corner that they are
Speaker 3: also become frankly a little bit more of what they
Speaker 3: were like in the twenty twenties, not or sorry, in
Speaker 3: the late twenty tens whenever they were first in office,
Speaker 3: where largely like Trump, did not really do anything after
Speaker 3: the TCJA outside of foreign policy.
Speaker 4: Well he's January sixth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was at the end. I mean it's a
Speaker 1: little different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that is. It is analogous though, because that's
Speaker 2: when his you know, he loses the election. Whether he
Speaker 2: believed that in his mind or not, I don't think he.
Speaker 2: I think he did know that he lost, and that's
Speaker 2: when his most extreme authoritarian instincts came out, is when
Speaker 2: he actually had suffered his most severe political blow. And
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, if you look at other authoritarian regimes,
Speaker 2: you see a similar thing. When the public rises up,
Speaker 2: then what do they do. They crack down, right, Because
Speaker 2: to your point about hi quote unquote saving face, his
Speaker 2: version of saving face is making sure there aren't mass
Speaker 2: protests in the street, making sure that he can do
Speaker 2: what he wants and not have to listen to the courts,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 4: So listen, I could be wrong, but.
Speaker 1: I'm not just missing it out of hand. I know
Speaker 1: you alleing it.
Speaker 4: I know you aren't.
Speaker 3: I think I think three months ago I would have scoffed.
Speaker 3: I would have been like, that's a joke. I'm I'm
Speaker 3: not going to say that, Okay, Like I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I do think I'm just putting the pieces
Speaker 2: together of we know this direction with them designating pro
Speaker 2: Palestine activists, hands off protesters, anti Tesla protesters, now people
Speaker 2: who oppose deportations as terrorists, right or giving material support
Speaker 2: to terrorists.
Speaker 4: So you have that in place.
Speaker 2: You have this executive orders signed on day one that
Speaker 2: says he's supposed to get this report about whether or
Speaker 2: not he should invoke the Insurrection Act. So you have
Speaker 2: that piece in place, and you have him saying we
Speaker 2: want to send the homegrowns to this El Salvador dungeon.
Speaker 2: So when I look at that landscape, I am very
Speaker 2: concerned about what's going to be happening in the next weeks.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think everybody should be paying very
Speaker 2: close attention to what happens in the comings.
Speaker 1: In particular, I don't disagree at all.
Speaker 3: I also think, you know, let's calibrate and say Insurrection
Speaker 3: Act on the border is like categorically different than insurrection
Speaker 3: Act on to whatever hands off protests. Like you said,
Speaker 3: yeah right, that is just completely different. I mean, you
Speaker 3: could be against it if you want to. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think the former is probably pretty popular. The difference, I
Speaker 3: think is that on the court cases and on the precedent,
Speaker 3: it's become clear to me that it's not even about
Speaker 3: because I'm not so sure. I know there's a lot,
Speaker 3: there's a leftist straight of thought. They believe that they
Speaker 3: intentionally grabbed up Garcia.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I think it was complete incompetence and stupidous.
Speaker 4: I agree with that. I don't think that they intentionally
Speaker 4: grabbed him up.
Speaker 2: But I do think the fact that they've leaned into
Speaker 2: this so aggressively. I mean, look at Jade Vance posting
Speaker 2: all over Twitter all day long, Pam Bondi coming out
Speaker 2: and releasing, you know again, the Field report that supposedly
Speaker 2: claim from this like dirty who got fired weeks later
Speaker 2: that he was a gang member because of the Chicago
Speaker 2: bulls at you know, Caroline Levitt lying and saying he's
Speaker 2: a human trafficker. No one has ever said that. There
Speaker 2: is no evidence that has ever been the case. So
Speaker 2: I think it was an accident, just like I think
Speaker 2: with Machmukulio, I don't think that they knew that he
Speaker 2: was a legal permanent resident.
Speaker 1: Agree.
Speaker 2: But I do think once they find those things down
Speaker 2: and they insist on saying the course and taking this
Speaker 2: maximal's position, I think that's what ultimately matters. And with
Speaker 2: Abrego Arcia, the reason they don't want him to come
Speaker 2: back is because if you open up the possibility of
Speaker 2: some sort of legal process of course to retrieve these people,
Speaker 2: these plans are done. You can't send American citizens there.
Speaker 2: You can't send these you know, ninety percent of these
Speaker 2: people had nothing, no criminal record whatsoever. And so that
Speaker 2: plan and that avenue towards the lawlessness that is over.
Speaker 2: And so that's why they're fighting so hard on this,
Speaker 2: because if they can get away with this one, they
Speaker 2: can get away with anyone with anyone right.
Speaker 1: Which is of course why they're doing it. I don't
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 3: We'll have to check back in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 3: like you said, because I think it could vary.
Speaker 1: I'm not downplaying at all.
Speaker 3: I absolutely think it could go in that direction. I
Speaker 3: also would not count out the same petering out that
Speaker 3: we've seen with Doge. I mean they've effectively surrendered. No,
Speaker 3: like we just did a whole block about that.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying the damage wasn't done, and I don't
Speaker 3: think it's good. But you know, Trump and all of that.
Speaker 3: He is in the past was relatively nimble in moving
Speaker 3: away from certain things. But you know, with the people
Speaker 3: around him and others, he may decide not to do that.
Speaker 3: But he did back away from several unpopular things in
Speaker 3: his first term. But he also views doing that and
Speaker 3: getting into media pressure as one of the great mistakes.
Speaker 1: Was closed to see, which is definitely one of the
Speaker 1: differences that we see here around.
Speaker 4: So that's a good point.
Speaker 1: We'll see, Okay, we will see you all. I guess
Speaker 1: no Friday show tomorrow.
Speaker 4: I'll forget