Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 4: Good morning, everybody. We've been mixing and matching all the
Speaker 4: show hosts. Looks week. Great to have Ryan Grim with
Speaker 4: me today.
Speaker 1: Good to be back here again. This has been a
Speaker 1: fun week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my name. My kids were off school, so
Speaker 2: I stayed home with them. Of course they've just been
Speaker 2: like all school a week now. With the snow that
Speaker 2: we had, Sager' sound sick today, so Ryan has been
Speaker 2: doing overtime for us.
Speaker 1: Better next week. The flu this season has been insane,
Speaker 1: but Jeremy had it. He was like, oh really, he
Speaker 1: was laid out for like two week.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It has been decimating my kids' schools for sure. The
Speaker 2: one like I can manage a flu, the one I
Speaker 2: cannot manage is the neurovirus.
Speaker 4: That's the one I live in terror of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's been going through my daughter's school as well.
Speaker 2: So we're open, we're praying to avoid them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: In any case, we got a lot to get to
Speaker 2: in the show today. It was actually very difficult to
Speaker 2: choose the stories because there were so much we wanted
Speaker 2: to cover. We've got a bunch of updates for you
Speaker 2: with regard to Doge, the latest cuts where they're hitting,
Speaker 2: also a little bit of Republican pushback on some of
Speaker 2: the specific spending cuts, including some commons from Jesse Waters,
Speaker 2: which was a bit of a surprise. They've also been
Speaker 2: caught in more lives and screw ups with regard to
Speaker 2: what they claim they have cut, So we'll take a
Speaker 2: look at all of that and do a little debunking there.
Speaker 2: We have huge developments with regard to Ukraine. So Zelenski
Speaker 2: rejected Trump's offer to like, you know, basically give up
Speaker 2: half his country, all his rare earth minerals and the
Speaker 2: ports and the whatever, and now Trump is out calling
Speaker 2: him a dictator and blaming him directly for the war.
Speaker 2: So huge, sort of one to eighty there in terms
Speaker 2: of the US dance and even in terms of Trump's
Speaker 2: rhetoric and Trump's dance. So break that down for you.
Speaker 2: We also have a new significant development in terms of
Speaker 2: the courts, Trump refusing to abide by one particular court order.
Speaker 2: That is a significant escalation in what I considered to
Speaker 2: be a constitutional crisis. He is also declaring himself king
Speaker 2: literally and blocking the New York City congestion pricing. So
Speaker 2: that's an interesting story just in terms of the local
Speaker 2: politics and then also in terms of Trump inserting himself
Speaker 2: in that city's politics and policy. Specifically, We've got a
Speaker 2: guest on who's been directly impacted by the spending freeze.
Speaker 2: He's going to talk about how that has been impactful
Speaker 2: to his company and the people that he's trying to
Speaker 2: help and serve. And I'm also taking a look at
Speaker 2: how Trump and Elon are basically doing like.
Speaker 4: A rug pull on the whole country.
Speaker 2: So putting a few pieces together here is something I've
Speaker 2: been thinking.
Speaker 4: About for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the turn with Silenski is extraordinary because everybody saw
Speaker 1: where this was going, but I don't think anybody saw
Speaker 1: that it was going to go this dark as fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's bleak ye if you're if you're a Ukraine,
Speaker 1: if you're a Lensky, you went from being feted across
Speaker 1: the United States and the West to being called a.
Speaker 2: Dictator, right, And this is when your adversary here is
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin, who is much more accurately characterized.
Speaker 4: As a dictator. So there's obviously if.
Speaker 1: Trump Trump should be a little more cautious about throwing
Speaker 1: that word around at this on the same day that
Speaker 1: he's putting up a picture of himself with a crown, right.
Speaker 1: Literally he hates when people call him that anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean truly, actually Elon is the true
Speaker 2: dictator here, So maybe he's just trying to reclaim some
Speaker 2: of this power.
Speaker 1: Right, Hey, if ruling without an election means you're a
Speaker 1: dictator according to Elon, what is Elon? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Very I think we know the answer to that, and
Speaker 2: that is a good transition into the first blog. So,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned before, we have had a little bit
Speaker 2: of Republican pushback, and part of this is coming from
Speaker 2: you know, all these different Republican senators and congressmen. They're
Speaker 2: realizing like, oh, this and that project in my district
Speaker 2: are directly affected, or as in the case with the
Speaker 2: USAID funding freeze, like oh, the farmers in my state
Speaker 2: are going to be completely screwed by this. But one
Speaker 2: thing that many of these people didn't seem to realize
Speaker 2: is that there are a lot of veterans in the
Speaker 2: federal government and also actually DEI programs also include, oftentimes
Speaker 2: opportunities specifically for veterans. So one of the people who
Speaker 2: is apparently finding this out is Fox News host Jesse Waters,
Speaker 2: who took those airwaves with a plea for a specific
Speaker 2: friend of his.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you a story about Chris. Chris was
Speaker 5: a guy I met at a shooting event in New
Speaker 5: Jersey last year.
Speaker 4: Is Chris and the interview?
Speaker 1: This is another guy? This is Chris.
Speaker 4: Is it a male or female? Oh?
Speaker 5: He was a twenty year veteran of the US military.
Speaker 5: He was one of these guys in one of these
Speaker 5: elite units, killed a lot of bad guys, put his
Speaker 5: life on the line, and now he punched out after
Speaker 5: twenty years and working for the Pentagon, and he's only
Speaker 5: been there a few months, so he's probationary and he
Speaker 5: just found out he's probably going to get laid off.
Speaker 1: He's going to get doged.
Speaker 5: And he texted me and he said, Jesse, see, you
Speaker 5: know this isn't good. I'm upset.
Speaker 1: This is really sad.
Speaker 5: And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not
Speaker 5: a climate consultant.
Speaker 4: You know, this guy is a veteran.
Speaker 5: So when you're talking about doging people, veterans should get priority,
Speaker 5: because if you're going to go out there and kill
Speaker 5: enemies and put your life on the line for this country,
Speaker 5: you shouldn't be in the same category as people that
Speaker 5: are doing DEI. Now, Harold and his ILK like to
Speaker 5: talk about the slash and burn corporate ethos. We just
Speaker 5: need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold,
Speaker 5: we talk about doging people. Okay, I just want to
Speaker 5: I want that to sink in your argument.
Speaker 1: Good I'm not killing.
Speaker 5: I finally found one person I knew that got doge,
Speaker 5: and it hit me in the heart.
Speaker 2: There is so much about that that is fascinating. First
Speaker 2: of all, I like the terminal terminology getting doged right,
Speaker 2: going to adopt that. But in addition, so first he
Speaker 2: says that this individual who you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know as circumstances, isn't a DEI consultant. He
Speaker 2: may well have been part of a DEI hiring program
Speaker 2: since they do oftentimes benefit veterans. But also what he's
Speaker 2: specifically advocating here for Ryan is a DEI program to
Speaker 2: make sure that veterans, because he finds them to be
Speaker 2: a sympathetic group that he believes is you know, worthy
Speaker 2: of humanity and keeping their jobs, that they should be
Speaker 2: enabled to stay there.
Speaker 1: And for some reason, over the years, veterans have not
Speaker 1: done a very good job of establishing the federal role
Speaker 1: workers as a as related to the Veterans program. But
Speaker 1: it is like over the decades what the United States
Speaker 1: did is used the federal government as a way to
Speaker 1: give a leg up to people who were finishing their service. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was talking to a couple of veterans last
Speaker 1: night who because I was tweeting about this Jesse Waters
Speaker 1: thing and they were reaching out and one of the
Speaker 1: one of the points they made is that when you
Speaker 1: leave the service, whether you did your four years or
Speaker 1: twenty It can be difficult to get private sector work
Speaker 1: immediately because they will say you need, you know, three
Speaker 1: to five years of industry experience. And like a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine, for instance, did you know telecommunications work
Speaker 1: for the army? But that's for the army. So he
Speaker 1: had all the skills, but it was difficult to immediately
Speaker 1: get into the private sector. Like eventually he got some
Speaker 1: entry level stuff because he had so many skills, he
Speaker 1: moved up quickly. But some companies recognize that experience, others don't.
Speaker 1: The federal government does. So the federal governments, we know
Speaker 1: that you're well trained and you're good, like you come
Speaker 1: on in and he's you know, people said that you
Speaker 1: also have to consider that in the first couple of years,
Speaker 1: while you're in the probationary period, a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are still in the guard or reserve. And so
Speaker 1: if you're going after probationary people who you know, the
Speaker 1: first couple of years, like a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who are getting fired, not just the Pentagon, but all
Speaker 1: across the federal government are active duties military because they're
Speaker 1: overlapping with that.
Speaker 4: Interesting, so.
Speaker 1: You know, we went in twenty years of our covering
Speaker 1: politics from support our troops to actively like firing our
Speaker 1: troops in disproportionate numbers in disproportionate numbers.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is that is incredible, and it also just
Speaker 2: speaks to you know, the what we're being sold is
Speaker 2: the this is all about merit, and it's all about efficiency, etc.
Speaker 2: When you're just blanket firing everyone who happens to fall
Speaker 2: in a particular category, or you know, with the deferred
Speaker 2: resignation program, you're most likely to be culling actually the
Speaker 2: highest level, most difficult to replace, people who have the
Speaker 2: largest number of opportunities in the private sector. And let
Speaker 2: me tell you, once they're out in the private sector
Speaker 2: making those salaries, they're very unlikely to come back. It's
Speaker 2: actually the polar opposite of you know, selecting for merit
Speaker 2: and making sure that it's the best and the brightest
Speaker 2: serving in government. So you've got a little bit of
Speaker 2: an inkling of of awareness dawning on Jesse Waters and
Speaker 2: some others.
Speaker 4: With regard to the way that the federal.
Speaker 2: Government has benefit veterans. You also have, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: some Republicans who are starting to feel some pain in
Speaker 2: terms of priorities for their constituents in their districts and
Speaker 2: their states. Susan Collins has come out with a statement,
Speaker 2: Now we can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is from Politico.
Speaker 2: They're actually member of outlets that we're out with kind
Speaker 2: of similar stories about different Republican rumblings about this or
Speaker 2: that program.
Speaker 4: She says, you'll see lawsuits.
Speaker 2: She actually questioned, she said, I think it's pretty clear
Speaker 2: that this violates Article one of the Constitution. She's significant
Speaker 2: not only because she's one of the few remaining Republicans
Speaker 2: in a pretty blue state of Maine, but she also
Speaker 2: is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. What did
Speaker 2: you make of her comments? Ryan, And like, do you
Speaker 2: think that it matters because typically, you know Susan Collins,
Speaker 2: Lisa Murkowski, they'll do like a little bit of oh
Speaker 2: they need to slow down a little and I'm a
Speaker 2: little uncomfortable or whatever, but when push comes to shove,
Speaker 2: they just basically go along with everything.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it matters because of her position, like the Appropriations
Speaker 1: Committee considers itself to be in particular, the Senate Appropriations
Speaker 1: Committee considers itself to be the wellspring of everything that
Speaker 1: the United States government does. Yeah, like they call the
Speaker 1: subcommittee chairs cardinals like they because they want it to
Speaker 1: be clear that power is being projected from the House
Speaker 1: Appropriations Committee in the Senate Appropriations Committee. And for her
Speaker 1: to get to that position her entire career, she's wanted
Speaker 1: to get on that spot because with the flick of
Speaker 1: a wrists, she's sending billions of dollars here and there,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden she's being told, actually, no.
Speaker 4: We're not Yeah, actually you don't matter anymore.
Speaker 1: You're making suggestions and it's the administration that is going
Speaker 1: to pick and choose which ones will actually execute on,
Speaker 1: and that is an existential threat. The reason she matters
Speaker 1: is because the government, unless Trump just completely ignores everything,
Speaker 1: will shut down on March fourteenth without a spending package
Speaker 1: being passed through Congress. A spending package really needs Susan
Speaker 1: Collins as the Senate Appropriations here now if Republicans, because
Speaker 1: how do you get sixty Democrats if Susan Collins is
Speaker 1: vociferously opposed to it, I don't see how you get there.
Speaker 1: So then the government shuts down, So you need her. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got as we're going to talk about Trump supporting
Speaker 1: the House subversion over the Senate side, which includes all
Speaker 1: these Medicaid cuts. So I do think the fact the
Speaker 1: fact that she's Susan Collins doesn't matter. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: hates Susan Collins. He does he even care if she
Speaker 1: wins reelection in twenty twenty six. I don't know they
Speaker 1: can afford to lose her, right, But the fact that
Speaker 1: she sits in this choke hold position at the top
Speaker 1: of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I think matters at least
Speaker 1: in this moment.
Speaker 4: Is she up in twenty twenty six, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: I think she is right because she I think you're.
Speaker 2: Right because I think she was up in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: She was part of that. There was an expectation she
Speaker 4: would is that right.
Speaker 2: She was up in twenty twenty, she was up in
Speaker 2: oh so it would be yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, and she'll probably face Jared not working. It
Speaker 1: probably faced Jared Golden, who's extremely popular House member there,
Speaker 1: who was wanting in a Trump like three.
Speaker 2: Straight times and in an environment that's just, you know,
Speaker 2: increasingly partisan, where I think there was previously more democratic
Speaker 2: face willingness to oh. I like this particular senator whereas
Speaker 2: Republicans have made that like sort of more hard partisan
Speaker 2: switch years ago. So I do think she could be
Speaker 2: in trouble, but in I think you're right, term probably
Speaker 2: doesn't really care all that much.
Speaker 1: And it works for her to stand up to Trump
Speaker 1: in Maine.
Speaker 4: True. Yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Also interesting, put the Washington Post version of the story
Speaker 2: up on the screen. They covered some of the things
Speaker 2: we've already talked about. Katie Brett down in Alabama being like,
Speaker 2: I don't know about this NIH funding. Some of the
Speaker 2: senators who have come from farming states, I don't know
Speaker 2: about this UAI d USAID freeze. We need to get this,
Speaker 2: you know, agriculture and the products.
Speaker 1: And the money for conservation and all these contracts that
Speaker 1: and you've probably seen these going around TikTok, these like farmers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: We're like, wait a minute, Like I spent all this
Speaker 1: money on my farm because I had a contract with
Speaker 1: federal government.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Especially, yeah, now out of pocket eight grand that I
Speaker 2: thought was going to be half reimbursed by the federal government,
Speaker 2: and I'm literally screwed, Like my farm is gone if
Speaker 2: this doesn't ultimately come through. So they're hearing from those constituents.
Speaker 2: But actually what I found most interesting in this article
Speaker 2: was from one of the people who is supporting Doge
Speaker 2: and Trump and Elon fully, which is Senator Tommy Tubberville,
Speaker 2: who suggested that the new normal may be just Republican
Speaker 2: senators and congress people having to go and plead their
Speaker 2: case to Trump and Elon And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 2: that's the way that they would like it to be,
Speaker 2: where they can sort of, you know, dispense the favor
Speaker 2: of the king to people who are in their good graces,
Speaker 2: and that helps to continue to you know, enforce compliance
Speaker 2: with their will and make sure everybody's on board. So
Speaker 2: he said, and I quote, if we have to lobyfore,
Speaker 2: hey wait a minute, what about that bridge in Birmingham
Speaker 2: or there's a bridge and mobile or whatever. I think
Speaker 2: that could be very possible. So he's laying out that,
Speaker 2: you know, he's fine with that direction because he has
Speaker 2: favored status with the King. He wants to keep that
Speaker 2: favored status with our you know, CEO and chair of
Speaker 2: the board or whatever you want to call this duo
Speaker 2: at this point, and that that may just be the
Speaker 2: new reality. And I think there's probably something to that,
Speaker 2: because you know, Trump has truly claimed the power of
Speaker 2: the purse for himself. We're going to cover some of
Speaker 2: his additional moves, you know, issuing this Executive Order two
Speaker 2: saying only I and Pam Bondi the Attorney General, get
Speaker 2: to have a say on what is legal. You know,
Speaker 2: he of course said this thing about there is no
Speaker 2: breaking the law if you're saving the country. He literally
Speaker 2: declared himself a king in the context of this New
Speaker 2: York City congestion plan. And so Tommy Tupperville laying it
Speaker 2: out like, yeah, that's just how things are now. You
Speaker 2: have to go and beg your case to the people
Speaker 2: with power if you want to get these projects in
Speaker 2: your district.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, there's that famous allegorical story of
Speaker 1: you know, the hippie who's like go, you know, walking
Speaker 1: through the West and he comes to a fence and
Speaker 1: he's like, fences, Man, I hate this fence. Why is
Speaker 1: this fence here? It just takes the fence apart, and
Speaker 1: then whatever calamity ensues, like your pick your calamity, the
Speaker 1: hogs run out and they just and they destroy the
Speaker 1: forest by chewing everything up or whatever it is, without
Speaker 1: any stepping back and saying why is this fence here
Speaker 1: and who built this fence and why And usually that
Speaker 1: is an allegory that's told by the right about reckless
Speaker 1: left wingers who just they just barrel in and they
Speaker 1: just just change every change everything, And the conservatives are
Speaker 1: the ones that understand fence is there for a reason.
Speaker 1: The you know what Trump is and Tuberville here are
Speaker 1: kind of proposing is not brand new on the scene.
Speaker 1: Like if you would have told LBJ or Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: that hey, that the president is going to dole out
Speaker 1: projects and that's how he's going to crew power over
Speaker 1: these members of Congress, they be like, yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is that is how I roll. It was after Nixon
Speaker 1: so thoroughly abused and Johnson abused it too, that they
Speaker 1: that Congress reassorted itself and passed the Empowerment Control Act
Speaker 1: and these other laws. It said, no, that's not constitutional,
Speaker 1: we do this, not you, because you get too much
Speaker 1: power if you do that. And so now they're trying
Speaker 1: to roll that back. So it's always like, well, there's
Speaker 1: a reason there's a fence here. Maybe you don't like
Speaker 1: the fence, but you know, be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 2: There's also the context of you know, in those prior
Speaker 2: eras in LBJ and FDR era, there was a lot
Speaker 2: more cross party collaboration because the parties had not ideologically
Speaker 2: sorted themselves in the way that they.
Speaker 1: Have regional politics.
Speaker 2: And yeah, there were a lot more regional politics. And
Speaker 2: so now you have this set of very clear blue states,
Speaker 2: very clear red states, and a few states that are
Speaker 2: on the margin that are like the only ones that
Speaker 2: matter in terms of presidential politics and the only ones
Speaker 2: where you could see, you know, shift back and forth
Speaker 2: tween who represents them, which party represents them in the Senate.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's a recipe for Okay, when Republicans
Speaker 2: are power in power, then red states get some of
Speaker 2: their projects and blue states get actively screwed. And guess
Speaker 2: what when Democrats are in power, if that is such
Speaker 2: a thing that's ever allowed or possible again in the future,
Speaker 2: they're going to reciprocate. They're going to do the exact
Speaker 2: same thing. Like once you have started in this direction,
Speaker 2: you think the next president is going to be like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to handpower back to Congress. Very unlikely, very unlikely.
Speaker 2: So let's get into some of the things you know,
Speaker 2: just I'll do a sort of speed run through some
Speaker 2: of the most recent cutch which will help to help
Speaker 2: to help to explain why some of these Republicans are
Speaker 2: getting a little leery. Even if they're not saying a
Speaker 2: whole lot publicly and in no order, I expect them really
Speaker 2: to say a whole lot publicly, because ultimately the bottom
Speaker 2: line is they all have come to understand they have
Speaker 2: to pay fealty to Trump and to his movement and
Speaker 2: elon at this point, or else they will get screwed
Speaker 2: and he is not afraid to do it, or they'll
Speaker 2: have primary challenges against them, etc.
Speaker 4: So A three, We've got the.
Speaker 2: USDA accidentally firing officials who were working on bird flu
Speaker 2: and now trying to rehire them, but apparently having trouble
Speaker 2: with that because they are struggling to find them. They
Speaker 2: didn't bother to get their new contact information. So this
Speaker 2: speaks to the just sort of blanket like, oh, we're
Speaker 2: just going to blanket fire this group of people. Turns
Speaker 2: out in this instance and also in the instance of
Speaker 2: some of the people who were like guarding some of
Speaker 2: our nuclear sites, some of these individuals are really important
Speaker 2: and you don't want to fire them, especially when bird
Speaker 2: flu is looming out there as a possible next pandemic.
Speaker 2: In addition, we can but the next one up on
Speaker 2: the screen. So they have decimated this Education Department arm
Speaker 2: that is really devoted to studying the efficacy of public
Speaker 2: schools across the country. So seeing which schools are doing well,
Speaker 2: which schools are performing poorly, that seems like something you
Speaker 2: would kind of want to know. Let's put the next
Speaker 2: one up on the screen. Also, in their zeal to
Speaker 2: cut at the Department of Education, in particular, they've let
Speaker 2: go of ten percent of federal student aid staff, so
Speaker 2: they sit in prem Thacker says this comes after young
Speaker 2: DOGE staffers obtained a ministry of access at the Department
Speaker 2: of Education, so that was one of the first casualties there.
Speaker 2: Put the next one up on the screen. And Trump
Speaker 2: has also cut numerous top researchers at NIH's Center for
Speaker 2: combating Alzheimer's huge setback potentially in the fight against various
Speaker 2: forms of dementia. Anyone, of course, who's had a relative
Speaker 2: who has gone through this parent, loved one, etc. Knows
Speaker 2: how absolutely devastating it was. And the irony here too
Speaker 2: is that this was a cause, Greg Sargent points out
Speaker 2: once championed by Republicans. In fact, he specifically points out
Speaker 2: that the nih Is Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementia's
Speaker 2: or CARD its full name is the Roy Blunt Senator
Speaker 2: Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias in honor of former
Speaker 2: Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was very influential.
Speaker 2: What did you make of these cuts in particular, Ryan,
Speaker 2: What stood down to you here?
Speaker 1: The counter argument to Alzheimer's in particular, and more broadly
Speaker 1: to a lot of these NIH cuts is that, well,
Speaker 1: they're not They're doing a really bad job. We still
Speaker 1: have Alzheimer's. Like that, Like, that's the argument that you hear.
Speaker 1: And there's a more sophisticated argument that says that the
Speaker 1: particular approach that the researchers who were getting all of
Speaker 1: the NIH funding to Alzheimer's has been a dead end
Speaker 1: and has there and has set us back by ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years, and so you actually need to break
Speaker 1: up this kind of intellectual cabal that has gotten in
Speaker 1: the way of progress. My counter counter argument would be
Speaker 1: that's not what they're doing here, though, Like, first of all,
Speaker 1: there was a new director coming in who was not associated.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously everybody is somewhat of those get it
Speaker 1: with that, but that's but that was not her main
Speaker 1: line of interest. This like dead end research, and they
Speaker 1: fired her. Uh, And they're likely to continue doing these
Speaker 1: reductions in force going forward. So it's not as if
Speaker 1: they came in and they said, we have evaluated the
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's unit. We feel like you haven't made progress. We
Speaker 1: feel like it's because you focus too much over here.
Speaker 1: And so the people that were doing that, there's going
Speaker 1: to be accountability. You guys are gone. We're going to
Speaker 1: invest broadly across the board and lots of different approaches,
Speaker 1: and we're going to see and if this is a
Speaker 1: scientific approach, we're going to go in with hypotheses and
Speaker 1: we're gonna see which one works. We're gonna stop putting
Speaker 1: our thumb on the scale one way or the other,
Speaker 1: because obviously you have a hypothesis and you pursue that,
Speaker 1: and then at some point if the hypothitis is turning
Speaker 1: on not to be true, you have alternative ones. I
Speaker 1: have alternative ones. They're not doing that. It's not as
Speaker 1: if these people that were fired are going to be
Speaker 1: they're going to backfill, they're gonna retrench, and then they're
Speaker 1: gonna fire more people, and then they're going to fire
Speaker 1: more people, and then they're going to cut more funding,
Speaker 1: calling it you know, they're funding to universities and other
Speaker 1: projects are gonna cut. They're going to cut that further back.
Speaker 1: So you know, if if you really were doing a
Speaker 1: Maha approach, saying this didn't work, let's look around, we're
Speaker 1: not a healthy country. This is what we're gonna do. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, but there's no the indication is that
Speaker 1: they're just cutting and they're gonna it's gonna stay cut.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And this is actually the topic of my monologue is
Speaker 2: that a lot of the ethos of Trump two point
Speaker 2: zero is basically like things are bad, so we're going
Speaker 2: to make them worse.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm like, yeah, they are bad, Yeah
Speaker 4: they are bad.
Speaker 2: But you know going because because what happens when you
Speaker 2: cut public research funding is that then you become more
Speaker 2: reliant on private industry funding. That's the polar opposite of
Speaker 2: the direction that you want to go in. And you know,
Speaker 2: I thought your story about the developments with regard to
Speaker 2: breast cancer that are impacting your family directly right now
Speaker 2: is really important and poignant because one of the things
Speaker 2: that I really object to as well is scientific research
Speaker 2: is not necessarily efficient, right because number one, if you
Speaker 2: want to find cures for diseases that are potentially rare, like,
Speaker 2: those things aren't going to be profitable, and so there
Speaker 2: isn't going to be private research. Not to mention that
Speaker 2: every single new drug molecule that's been invented in the
Speaker 2: past I don't know how many years, has come out
Speaker 2: of public funding. So the drug companies are not really
Speaker 2: doing this type of life saving research. Most of what
Speaker 2: they do is researching some way that they can like
Speaker 2: dupe our patent system and extend their patent on like
Speaker 2: viagra or whatever their top selling drug is. So you
Speaker 2: know that's there's that, and then there's also the case that,
Speaker 2: as you're pointing out, Ryan, like some of scientific research
Speaker 2: is kind of serendipity, and that's what you spoke to
Speaker 2: is like, oh, these people happen to be together at
Speaker 2: a conference which would be classified as quote unquote overhead,
Speaker 2: and because you had this serendipity mixing of these minds
Speaker 2: from different disciplines in different corners of the scientific research community.
Speaker 2: There was a really incredible and important development that was made.
Speaker 2: In addition, sometimes you're going to pursue something like with
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's that doesn't turn out to be the thing, and
Speaker 2: so it's not.
Speaker 4: Quote unquote efficient.
Speaker 2: But if you didn't go down that path, you wouldn't know,
Speaker 2: and there was a possibility that it did work out,
Speaker 2: and it did end up, you know, saving lives and
Speaker 2: being incredibly impactful for people. So when you apply this
Speaker 2: capitalist business logic to something like public research in the
Speaker 2: benefit of the people, like, you're going to end up
Speaker 2: with far worse results and far fewer breakthroughs that are
Speaker 2: important for all of our lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the entire budget for NIH last year was
Speaker 1: forty seven billion dollars. The cost of treating people with
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's as people can look that up huge from Medicare
Speaker 1: and Medicaid. You and you personally and like you watching this,
Speaker 1: like you personally, or your parents or your cousins or
Speaker 1: somebody might might have to bankrupt yourself so that you
Speaker 1: can get so that Medicaid will then cover either you
Speaker 1: or your parents getting the coverage that they need. When
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's hits. And that's aside from the absolute terror that
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's is, plus the heartbreak it is for families who
Speaker 1: are going through it to be in a room physically
Speaker 1: with their loved one, but spiritually they don't even know
Speaker 1: you're there. They don't recognize who you are. To save
Speaker 1: a couple bucks a week is the most is shortsighted
Speaker 1: spiritually and morally, but also fiscally, it costs more money
Speaker 1: down to not try to prevent this, and also, like
Speaker 1: you said, commercially speaking, preventing Alzheimer's, if we can prevent
Speaker 1: it is not the kind of thing that you can
Speaker 1: then market and sell because you can make more money
Speaker 1: treating it with like a blockbuster drug than taking preventing place.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. What did you say? The NIH budget is.
Speaker 1: I think forty seven.
Speaker 2: Acording to chat GPT, as of twenty twenty four, the
Speaker 2: US projected to spend approximately three hundred and sixty billion
Speaker 2: on health and long term care for individuals living with Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: That's projected to be up to a trillion by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: So the entire NIH budget, entire NIH budget that includes
Speaker 1: the weaponized militarized stuff that they're sneaking into Africa for
Speaker 1: labs and whatever, right like that includes even includes that
Speaker 1: is a fraction of what we spend treating Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this assumption, this is a longer convo, that
Speaker 2: capitalism leads to cost savings and efficiency.
Speaker 1: That feels side way chat GPT might be off on.
Speaker 2: Okay, well you can, you can take a look. They
Speaker 2: it does hallucinate, so you never know. But when you
Speaker 2: look at our healthcare system, which we of course put
Speaker 2: profit at the center of our healthcare system, and that
Speaker 2: directly leads to us paying the highest cost and having
Speaker 2: the worst outcomes in the developed world. And so if
Speaker 2: you actually want to improve people's health, what you do
Speaker 2: is you shift that dynamic away from centering profit and
Speaker 2: towards actually valuing people's health and cutting back on public
Speaker 2: research spending dollars is again the polar opposite of the
Speaker 2: direction that you ultimately want to go on.
Speaker 4: Did you find any uh, all right, well we'll take it.
Speaker 4: We'll take a look and verify.
Speaker 2: Those numbers and post a note in the segment. But yeah,
Speaker 2: blame the blame AI if blame sam Oltman, if the
Speaker 2: numbers aren't.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, girl, it's expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of money, and it's worth researching
Speaker 2: to see how we could prevent Alzheimer's ultimately in the
Speaker 2: long term.
Speaker 1: Thirty one billion for them, this is Alzheimer's impact movement. Wow,
Speaker 1: so it's a lot of money.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and get to some of
Speaker 2: the spin and the latest spin and lies coming out
Speaker 2: of door. So the whole time, Elon has been like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to be so transparent, so transparent, which of
Speaker 2: course is the polar opposite.
Speaker 4: Of the way that they've operated.
Speaker 2: And specifically, they were claiming for weeks that they were
Speaker 2: going to post this list of all the incredible savings
Speaker 2: that they've been able to glean from, you know, these
Speaker 2: these wasteful federal government expenditures.
Speaker 1: This is not chat cheepy too.
Speaker 4: Numbers are correct, all right, Well, the twenty.
Speaker 1: Fifty medicare spending on people with Alzheimer's will totally projected
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty three billion with a B.
Speaker 2: And that's just medicare, that's just matter, that's not private spending. Wow, unbelievable,
Speaker 2: hundred thirty seven billion. So thanks for saving us all
Speaker 2: that money.
Speaker 6: Dough.
Speaker 4: You're doing a great.
Speaker 1: Job by firing like eight people working in the Alzheimer's Center,
Speaker 1: eight people. We could do a go like we would
Speaker 1: be smart as a country to do a GoFundMe to
Speaker 1: rehire those those people just just put putting a couple
Speaker 1: of chips onto the table in hopes that they have
Speaker 1: a breakthrough. It would be worth it to all of
Speaker 1: us to just do that. Go fund me out. I'll
Speaker 1: put in five dollars a week on that. Absolutely such
Speaker 1: a great I mean, Alzheimer's just you know, it's personally
Speaker 1: I got to be frightening to everybody. Just if you
Speaker 1: personally are your loved one gets It's just it's almost
Speaker 1: I'd rather get hit by a bus.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I have very close friend who has been, you know,
Speaker 2: watching this unfold. Yeah, and it's it's one of the
Speaker 2: most difficult things you can go through.
Speaker 1: And you're gonna save a couple bucks a week and
Speaker 1: fire these eight researchers like it's it's cruel and stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crol and stupid, that is a good way to
Speaker 2: put it. So they've been promising all this transparency about
Speaker 2: all these grapes cuts and savings, et cetera, that they're
Speaker 2: making all these fraudulent supposedly programs that they've been you know,
Speaker 2: they've been rooting out, et cetera, except for the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, all of them that they've suggested this
Speaker 2: far like, well, it's not really fraud It might just
Speaker 2: be something you don't like, but it's not actually fraudulent.
Speaker 2: In any case, they finally put out a sproadsheet, and
Speaker 2: lo and behold, even the sproadsheet they put out was
Speaker 2: blatantly wrong on any number of levels. Here's a little
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News report breaking some of the numbers down.
Speaker 4: What is the number that.
Speaker 7: We have calculated, and we'll put this into the context
Speaker 7: of the fifty five billion that Elon is, you know,
Speaker 7: taking credit for. Yeah, so the DOGE on its website
Speaker 7: says that they've saved about fifty five billion dollars for
Speaker 7: US taxpayers. But when you go at them and add
Speaker 7: up all of the contracts that they list online that
Speaker 7: they that they say they've canceled, it only comes to
Speaker 7: about eight point six billion dollars, So, you know, just
Speaker 7: a small fraction of that overall fifty five billion. Also,
Speaker 7: in going through all these contracts. It's clear that there
Speaker 7: were It was at least one major clerical era. There
Speaker 7: was one contract that was listed for eight billion that
Speaker 7: was actually only an eight million dollar contract, So they
Speaker 7: had listed about sixteen billion.
Speaker 4: But when you take that away, it's a much smaller figure.
Speaker 7: This is, you know, sort of really been a key
Speaker 7: tension point as Joje has has gone into federal agencies
Speaker 7: and started slashing spending and firing staff of that they said, look,
Speaker 7: this is the most transparent effort that's out there. You
Speaker 7: can go and read all this information. But when it's
Speaker 7: both riddled with errors and there is an oversight that
Speaker 7: normally you know, is layered above federal agency things like
Speaker 7: watchdogs in the Office of Government Ethics, DOOSE really operates
Speaker 7: independently of that, and that has raised a lot of concerns,
Speaker 7: both from members of Congress as well as other federal
Speaker 7: government watchers.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of insulting to all of our intelligence
Speaker 2: that they put out this broadsheet. They're like, oh, we
Speaker 2: save fifty five billion dollars. Okay, Then you literally just
Speaker 2: add up the column and it doesn't add up to
Speaker 2: fifty five billion, It adds up to sixteen point six billion.
Speaker 2: Then you sort by which you know many people online
Speaker 2: and also reporters in New York Times and whatever. Then
Speaker 2: you sort by like, okay, well, what's the biggest program
Speaker 2: that you cut here, and the one that rises to
Speaker 2: the top is this eight billion dollar program. But then
Speaker 2: you dig into that and it turns out that is
Speaker 2: the compleet error. It's actually not eight billion, it's eight million.
Speaker 4: A little bit of a difference there.
Speaker 2: And now your spreadsheet which you claimed indicated savings a
Speaker 2: fifty five billion, which only actually added up to sixteen
Speaker 2: point six billion, now only totals to eight point six billion.
Speaker 2: So one of the sloths online who was digging into this,
Speaker 2: let's put this up on the screen, indicates that with
Speaker 2: that eight billion to eight million thing, apparently there was
Speaker 2: originally some type on the contract, so the contract value
Speaker 2: was listed at eight billion round than eight million. Then
Speaker 2: it was corrected. The real TCV, I don't know what
Speaker 2: that stands for was eight million. Corrected in January three
Speaker 2: years only three point five million was awarded. So it
Speaker 2: was very easy to discern when like as someone even
Speaker 2: here on the outside was doing that this was not
Speaker 2: the correct amount of money. And then in addition, Ryan,
Speaker 2: if even with the eight million dollar amount, if they've
Speaker 2: already spent three and a half million, right, then you're
Speaker 2: not saving even the entire eight million. And that rationale
Speaker 2: actually applies to all of the other things that were
Speaker 2: in this spreadsheet. So basically it's a complete you know, exaggeration.
Speaker 2: Parts of her just completely wrong. And many of these
Speaker 2: things too, as I said before, they frame them as
Speaker 2: like fraud, but in reality it's just stuff that Elon
Speaker 2: doesn't particularly like.
Speaker 1: And it was customs in Border Protection. I think that
Speaker 1: they Yes, that's right, So people also need to use
Speaker 1: their common sense. And when we think through these numbers,
Speaker 1: Customs and Border Protections entire budget is not that high,
Speaker 1: Like it's I don't know offhand exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: You can google that and find it. Eight billion would
Speaker 1: be a huge portion of their entire budget budget. And
Speaker 1: this was like some DII thing or something di I
Speaker 1: training or whatever.
Speaker 4: It was something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so then you have to ask yourself, what are
Speaker 1: the chances is that like few thirds of the Border
Speaker 1: Protection's budget is this DEI training. You don't even have
Speaker 1: to then, like google and follow the charts and the
Speaker 1: contracts all the way back to the source, you can
Speaker 1: just like that's probably not true. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are frustrated that Musk isn't getting
Speaker 1: all the flowers that he deserves for this. I think
Speaker 1: what they need to think about is that he is
Speaker 1: a government worker. And if you think about it from
Speaker 1: the perspective of people who don't necessarily trust all government
Speaker 1: workers without having their work be verified and checked, and
Speaker 1: don't necessarily trust the motivations that they have because they
Speaker 1: have their own interests at play. Any government agency that
Speaker 1: made the types of errors that Doge is making at
Speaker 1: this point would be considered waste, fraud, and abuse of
Speaker 1: the most obvious scale. Yes, and you would say, will
Speaker 1: cut this one. They don't have people who can fact
Speaker 1: check their work before putting it up to the public
Speaker 1: to look.
Speaker 2: At, or who can use basic common sense, and.
Speaker 1: Who are and who appear to be lying, like actively
Speaker 1: lying yeah, about what they have found now. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I don't want to do much taunting of
Speaker 1: their inability to find saving because I don't want them
Speaker 1: to get more serious, like to then go crazy and
Speaker 1: be like, all right, fine, an entire department of education gone,
Speaker 1: which is not legal, like you want to do that,
Speaker 1: you got to go through Congress. But anyway, so think
Speaker 1: about the DOJE people. And if you if you're on
Speaker 1: this side that thinks all government is like corrupt and wasteful,
Speaker 1: think about DOJE as what it is. It is a
Speaker 1: government agency that is in competition with these other departments
Speaker 1: for money because it is run by a government contractor
Speaker 1: who wants to go to Mars and needs federal resources
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, and so that agency has every
Speaker 1: incentive to tell you that all this other spending is
Speaker 1: wasteful and we need to suppress it so that we
Speaker 1: can and this is what you'll eventually hear, so that
Speaker 1: we can invest trillions in this project to go to Mars.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And I do think that that I'm reading his biography
Speaker 2: right now, the Walter Isaacson one, and you know, have
Speaker 2: been trying to research this creature who is now in
Speaker 2: charge of all of us. And I do think that
Speaker 2: that is like his primary driving goal, which sounds, I mean,
Speaker 2: it sounds sort of insane, because it's a goal. He
Speaker 2: has a point in himself, the savior of humanity. He
Speaker 2: believes the thing that we should be driving. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Savior of human consciousness. He believes the thing we should
Speaker 2: be driving towards is being an interplanetary species.
Speaker 4: He talks about this all the time.
Speaker 2: And you know, when he started SpaceX, it really was
Speaker 2: a sort of preposterous boondoggle. But he does it anyway.
Speaker 2: He's able to persist. He's able to get gas billions
Speaker 2: of dollars already in federal government content. And you know,
Speaker 2: you should take note of the fact that you've got
Speaker 2: SpaceX engineers now in at the FAA. Well, the FAA
Speaker 2: had been investigating Elon and SpaceX for one of their
Speaker 2: launches that came apart mid air, which caused huge damage.
Speaker 2: I mean, they had to scramble, they had to re
Speaker 2: route some twelve commercial flights like it was actually very dangerous,
Speaker 2: and so that agency was investigating him. Now he's got
Speaker 2: SpaceX engineers who are there inside. I have a feeling
Speaker 2: that investigation isn't going to go very far. And they're
Speaker 2: making cuts at NASA. Well guess what again, if you
Speaker 2: strip down the capacity of the government, suddenly you need SpaceX.
Speaker 4: Even more than they already do.
Speaker 2: And I do think a big part of his rationale
Speaker 2: motivation here is basically like he realized he needed the
Speaker 2: nearly limitless resources of the federal government treasury to pursue
Speaker 2: his goal for humanity of putting us all on Mars,
Speaker 2: and that is a lot of what is this and
Speaker 2: he sort of lashed onto this, you know, dark enlightenment
Speaker 2: like Curtis Jarvin. Oh, we need a CEO dictator thing
Speaker 2: because it helps him, it enables him in that goal.
Speaker 2: So it's a convenient ideology for him to get what
Speaker 2: he wants. And so all of these little piddling cuts
Speaker 2: and things that are going on like that is not
Speaker 2: the ballgame. I don't even think you should really consider
Speaker 2: what's happening right now as any attempt at cutting government
Speaker 2: or efficiency. It's about consolidating power on behalf of Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and his goals. And one of the ways we
Speaker 2: know that is because listen, they put out their SPREADSHEE
Speaker 2: which claimed fifty five billion, which only actually showed eight
Speaker 2: billion in you know cuts. The Government Accountability Office on
Speaker 2: an annual basis finds some one hundred and fifty billion
Speaker 2: dollars in improper in actual fraud, not just things that
Speaker 2: somebody there didn't like, but in actual fraudulent payments so
Speaker 2: we have a government agency that does this stuff. Now,
Speaker 2: if you want to beef that up and make more effective, fine,
Speaker 2: go to it. But you also know Ryan that they're
Speaker 2: not actually interested in like effective and accountable government, because
Speaker 2: one of Trump's very first moves was to fire almost
Speaker 2: all of the inspectors general. They're supposed to oversee these
Speaker 2: agencies and make sure that they are being run effectively
Speaker 2: and without corruption and graft, and which have been you know,
Speaker 2: have actually done some important investigations for journals like yourself
Speaker 2: into presidents on both the democratic and Republican side, right.
Speaker 1: And cutting a tiny amount of subscriptions to like Thompson,
Speaker 1: Reuter's and Bloomberg like bond markets for regulators, so like
Speaker 1: sec CFTC, CFPB, these people are now they don't have
Speaker 1: access to like these little subscription services while they're trying
Speaker 1: to regulate the markets. And for people who are like, okay,
Speaker 1: well AlSi as a vision, I'd like to remind you
Speaker 1: that Musk is not the first person to have these
Speaker 1: generational megal maniacal views of present humanity versus future humanity.
Speaker 1: I think it was Kim jong Ill, Kim Jones's grandfather,
Speaker 1: but it might have been Chairman Mao who said when
Speaker 1: it was confronted with the vast amount of casualties that
Speaker 1: were involved in the creation of the communist project, either
Speaker 1: in China or North Korea, forget which one, he said, basically,
Speaker 1: you know what is is You can find his quote
Speaker 1: out there. Somebody He's like, what is fifty million deaths
Speaker 1: when we are fighting for untold billions of people in
Speaker 1: the future, Like that Mao or Kim Jong Il, whichever
Speaker 1: one was, was arguing, we are fighting for almost infinite
Speaker 1: number of future people who will live in the communist
Speaker 1: paradise that we produce through this revolution. So how can
Speaker 1: you tell me that it's a problem that fifty million people,
Speaker 1: innocent people died fifty million against billions, so all the
Speaker 1: people of the Earth against the infinite expansion of consciousness interplanetary.
Speaker 1: Really those things like if you believe, if that's your ethic,
Speaker 1: we are not the ones that matter.
Speaker 2: And this is the type of ideology that has been
Speaker 2: very pervasive in Silicon Valley in recent years that like
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman, Freed was an adherent of this effective altruist ideology,
Speaker 2: which argues exactly that now, I don't think Elon necessarily
Speaker 2: thinks of himself exactly as an effective altruist because they
Speaker 2: were concerned specifically about the development of AI destroying humanity,
Speaker 2: which seems to be like actually a reasonable thing to
Speaker 2: be concerned about.
Speaker 1: Also, they're more earthly based.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Elon has a version of that and exactly
Speaker 2: does exactly the calculus that you are describing Ryan, which
Speaker 2: you can see quickly how that leads to justifying any
Speaker 2: sort of level of death, cruelty, et cetera in the
Speaker 2: short term. So when you look, for example, at like
Speaker 2: you know, cutting USAID funding, so now you've got kids
Speaker 2: in Africa who are going to die of HIV and AIDS,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, well, that's mull potatoes in the grand
Speaker 2: scheme of you know, generations and generations, tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of years of human civilization. So that's Elon's perfectly willing
Speaker 2: to pay that price, let alone any sort of like lawbrying.
Speaker 2: He doesn't care about that. None of these CEOs care
Speaker 2: about law breaking. To them, that's just the cost of
Speaker 2: doing business, and that's what moved fast and break things. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: that's like core to that ethos is basically, break whatever laws,
Speaker 2: do whatever you need to do.
Speaker 4: So it'll work out in the end.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it is the type of ideology that can
Speaker 2: that intellectually, like intelligent people can use to justify absolute monstrosities,
Speaker 2: like on a world historic level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whereas from US, So if you want to go
Speaker 1: after USAID for being a tool of like American imperialism
Speaker 1: through its soft power. Okay, that's that's great. That's a
Speaker 1: great point. Yeah, I'm not sure that's the one they're
Speaker 1: making them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when when you're taking it and putting it under
Speaker 2: Marco Rubio State Department, something tells me that's not really
Speaker 2: not really the end goal. But in any case, So
Speaker 2: that's that's the leaders with Dojan. That's actually a good
Speaker 2: segue Ryan into the very latest with regard to Ukraine
Speaker 2: and the new sort of foreign policy orientation of the
Speaker 2: Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's start with this wild post on truth
Speaker 1: Social that that he then Trump then posted to Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can tell how much how excited he is about
Speaker 1: his different statements whether or not he moves them from
Speaker 1: truth Social over to Twitter. He moved this one to Twitter.
Speaker 1: Trump is saying, here, how's your Trump impression, Crystal, But
Speaker 1: he's saying not great, think of it? A modestly successful comedian.
Speaker 1: Comedian successful comedian Voladimir Zelenski talk to the United States
Speaker 1: of American and to spending three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's not accurate. We talk about it closer to
Speaker 1: two hundred billion. Actual numbers from this German think tank
Speaker 1: that studies this, it's closer to like one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty billion or so. And a lot of that is
Speaker 1: what we value or overvalue our weapons stock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we just a lot of that money never
Speaker 2: left the Beltway here right here.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of money. Yeah, either way, there's He's right,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a lot of way to go into
Speaker 1: a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start.
Speaker 1: But a war that he without the US and quote Trump,
Speaker 1: why does he put Trump in quotes, will never be
Speaker 1: able to settle. The United States has spent two hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars more than Europe. Again the according to this
Speaker 1: German think tank, actually the Europeans have spite spent slightly more,
Speaker 1: but sixty percent of our money has been in grants,
Speaker 1: whereas the Europeans has been in very low interest loans.
Speaker 1: Through quibbling in fact checking, but anyway, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: On that point, he says, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization?
Speaker 1: So and he goes into okay, So here this is
Speaker 1: the key part. Zelensky refuses to have elections, is very
Speaker 1: low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was
Speaker 1: good at was playing Biden like a fiddle, a dictator
Speaker 1: without elections, Zelensky better moved fast or he is not
Speaker 1: going to have a country left. In the meantime, we
Speaker 1: are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia,
Speaker 1: something all admit. Only Trump again in quotes, and the
Speaker 1: Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Europe has failed
Speaker 1: to bring peace, and Zelensky probably wants to keep the
Speaker 1: gravy train going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenski has done
Speaker 1: a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have
Speaker 1: unnecessarily died. So on his on the things that he
Speaker 1: says that are correct, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps
Speaker 1: millions have unnecessarily died. This is correct. Zelensky has canceled elections,
Speaker 1: which is kind of preposterous because it's the whole you.
Speaker 2: Know, we're fighting for democracy here, right, Good than that
Speaker 2: Biden did not try to achieve Biden did.
Speaker 1: Not try to achieve peace, and the war does need
Speaker 1: to end. All those things are true. The attack on
Speaker 1: Zelensky as this like dictator and the loser or whatever
Speaker 1: has sparked a response from I guess was Lavrov now
Speaker 1: calling him a cornered rat? And is you know edging
Speaker 1: you know, it's one thing I think Hexath got unfair
Speaker 1: criticism for acknowledging outright that look, a lot of his
Speaker 1: territories not coming back, we need a peace agreement, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats beat him up for that. It's like, no
Speaker 1: nobody believed that you were getting this territory backed then.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, so it's not like it was an important
Speaker 2: piece of leverage because anybody honest knew that that was
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 1: To tell the whole world that you think Zelenski is
Speaker 1: this level of a loser, does I think change the
Speaker 1: negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair I think that's a fair assessment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we do have we can put B one
Speaker 2: B up on the screen just to reiterate the a
Speaker 2: fact check component of this. So this is according to
Speaker 2: that German research you were talking about, Ryan, how much
Speaker 2: the US has contributed versus how much the Europeans have contributed.
Speaker 2: You can see, you know, I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of money, don't get me wrong, but it's not what
Speaker 2: did you say, three hundred and fifty billion?
Speaker 1: He also does you can feel how you want them
Speaker 1: feel about it, but likes just at least know the
Speaker 1: actual let's be.
Speaker 2: Honest right about the amounts. I mean, listen, I want
Speaker 2: this war to end, right. I think it is disgusting
Speaker 2: and I moral that the Biden administration blocked the best
Speaker 2: chance for peace, which at the best terms for Ukraine,
Speaker 2: which came very early in the war when they had
Speaker 2: outperformed and caught Russia unawares, and Russia had been hit
Speaker 2: with all these sanctions and they weren't sure how that
Speaker 2: was going to whether they were going to be able
Speaker 2: to really survive that economically or not. Now they've kind
Speaker 2: of adjusted, not to say that it's great, but they
Speaker 2: know that they can get through that, and you're in
Speaker 2: this long war of attrition, and so their hand is
Speaker 2: much stronger now than it was at that time. But
Speaker 2: we also have to have some commitment to the truth
Speaker 2: here and to some level of morality as well, like
Speaker 2: Russia invaded Ukraine, that he whatever justin NATO provoked it,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. I mean, actually you could put put
Speaker 2: it more on the US side in terms of the
Speaker 2: blame versus Zelenski and the Ukraine. Yeah, and so you
Speaker 2: know to then say, oh, it's it's Zelenski's fault that
Speaker 2: his own country got invaded and he's the dictator, when yeah,
Speaker 2: he should have elections, but you're talking about Vladimir Putin
Speaker 2: on the other side of this equation, Like it's just
Speaker 2: a total inversion of reality and the truth. And I
Speaker 2: think part of it is I mean, I think what
Speaker 2: happened in terms of the sequence of events is Trump.
Speaker 4: Came to the Trump administration came.
Speaker 2: To Zelenski with this just like brazen colonialist imperialist plan,
Speaker 2: like we're going to take half of your stuff forever
Speaker 2: and maybe we'll continue to support you, but then again
Speaker 2: maybe not. Actually this is just basically in repayment for
Speaker 2: what we've already done. And this is B three B
Speaker 2: we can put up on the screen. They were able
Speaker 2: to get the details of this plan, and they were
Speaker 2: so onerous. It was actually more onerous than the terms
Speaker 2: that were imposed on Germany after World War One is
Speaker 2: what they proposed to Zelenski, and Zelensky very gingerly was like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna have to think about that, and
Speaker 2: I don't think that's going to totally you work out
Speaker 2: for us on our end, and if you put B
Speaker 2: three up on the screen, like, it's not just my
Speaker 2: theory that that's what pissed off Trump and led to
Speaker 2: him calling Zelensky a dictator and a loser and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. National Security advisor Mike Waltz says that his
Speaker 2: relationship Trump's relationship was Zelensky soured over his refusal to
Speaker 2: sign that Rare Earth's mineral.
Speaker 4: Deal the US has proposed. Well, it's quote.
Speaker 2: I think the frustration really stummed just in the last
Speaker 2: week from this bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over
Speaker 2: presentation of what we see is an absolute opportunity, that's
Speaker 2: to have the US invest in Ukrainian infrastructure, to have
Speaker 2: them grow both their minerals, their natural resources, their oil
Speaker 2: and gas. We look at the type of aid the
Speaker 2: Europeans are providing. It's often in the form of loans,
Speaker 2: it's being repaid with the interest on these Russian assets.
Speaker 2: We believe the American tax pair deserves to recoape much
Speaker 2: of their investment. So we propose this totally extractive, exploitative
Speaker 2: quote unquote deal to the Ukrainians, which again doesn't even
Speaker 2: promise that we provide them with future military aid. They
Speaker 2: get effectively nothing, no guarantees for the future out of
Speaker 2: it except the sense that, okay, well, if we're there,
Speaker 2: we're probably going to protect our economic interest in the
Speaker 2: future from a Russian invasion. That's what they would theoretically
Speaker 2: get out of it. Zelensky's like, I don't think we
Speaker 2: can go down that path. And now Trump does a
Speaker 2: total one to eighty, whereas previously he had actually been
Speaker 2: pretty friendly towards Selensky, and Lensky had gone down to
Speaker 2: mar A Lago and all that sort of stuff. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's what caused this turn. But in adition,
Speaker 2: you know, Trump has signaled he talks all about William McKinley,
Speaker 2: which is really the sort of start of brazen American imperialism,
Speaker 2: and he has to obviously talked about it. I'm going
Speaker 2: to take Greenland, I'm gonna take Canada. I'm going to
Speaker 2: take Panama, I'm going to take Gaza, I'm going to
Speaker 2: take half of Ukraine. He does not think that there
Speaker 2: should be any real like international rules, guidelines, norms, et cetera,
Speaker 2: surrounding what great powers can do. I mean, he truly
Speaker 2: believes in this, like might makes right. If you want
Speaker 2: it and it serves your interest, you're just gonna take it.
Speaker 2: And so I don't think he has any philosophical or
Speaker 2: moral objection to putin seeing Ukraine and being like, well,
Speaker 2: I can take it, and so I'm going to. And
Speaker 2: so I think that's you know, that's part also of
Speaker 2: what plays into this dynamic that's now playing out with
Speaker 2: him and Zelenski and putin right and so in a you.
Speaker 1: Know, there's a lot of talk about the unipolar world,
Speaker 1: where of American agemony evolving into a multipolar world, and
Speaker 1: the advocates of the multipolar world, of which I would say,
Speaker 1: actually one don't often talk about the side effects of it,
Speaker 1: which are each each pole in the multipole is basically
Speaker 1: told by the other multipoles. Okay, that's your area, and
Speaker 1: so that's where you get this. The Monroe doctrin and
Speaker 1: the McKinley really expanding on it to saying, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: not a hegemonic world power, but we're going to compete
Speaker 1: with Spain and Britain and France, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to go take the Philippines, and we're going to try
Speaker 1: to take Cuba, and we're going to take Haitius hours
Speaker 1: you know, Latin America, like you know, so we're going
Speaker 1: so that's our orbit. And so it's actually completely intellectually
Speaker 1: and geopolitically consistent to say that you're against this kind
Speaker 1: of kinetic World War three with Russia and China, but
Speaker 1: you're but you're also fine with like smaller wars of
Speaker 1: conquest Canada, Mexican, all the all the like bullying bullying
Speaker 1: that you see, you know, messing around with Ukraine kind
Speaker 1: of cuts against that because Ukraine would in a multipolar
Speaker 1: world would clearly be in the Russian orbit. But his
Speaker 1: he's going back to his businessman thing. We're like, well,
Speaker 1: we spent all this money, so therefore, you know, we
Speaker 1: deserve all of this stuff. But it's what triggered that
Speaker 1: that Trump post was kind of the first overt criticism
Speaker 1: that Zelensky had offered. So yeah, so he he gets
Speaker 1: this offer, you have to give us fifty percent of
Speaker 1: your country because it was reported as rare Earth's But
Speaker 1: as as you noted, it's more than that. It's their reports,
Speaker 1: it's their.
Speaker 4: Our economy, pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: Because you know, you're not a five hundred billion out
Speaker 1: of the ground out of there. So then he leaks
Speaker 1: it to the congressional delegation that went to the Kiev
Speaker 1: and says, look what they're trying to do, and I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not going to sign this. So then it
Speaker 1: leaks out and then Zelenski calls reporters in and we
Speaker 1: can put up I think it's B two. Zolenski calls
Speaker 1: reporters into his palace and tells them, you know, I
Speaker 1: would like to have more truth with the Trump team,
Speaker 1: and then says that that the president was living in
Speaker 1: a quote web of disinformation. So so he's not criticizing
Speaker 1: Trump directly, he's basically doing the thing where the king is.
Speaker 1: He's saying the king, the king is being misled by
Speaker 1: his advisors. Yeah, who are who are lying to him?
Speaker 1: Trump took it personally, and then you know, goes hard
Speaker 1: at him with with that, with that true social post
Speaker 1: that He then moves over to Twitter to make sure
Speaker 1: to make sure nobody nobody missed it. And so we
Speaker 1: have now we have members of Congress and Republicans being
Speaker 1: asked to reckon with the question is Trump a dictator?
Speaker 1: And let's put the poll up first before we have that.
Speaker 1: This is pretty funny and and and something that people
Speaker 1: should remember. You know, Americans have a play nineteen positive
Speaker 1: view of Zelenski minus two of Trump, minus sixty three
Speaker 1: of Putin. So of these three characters, Zolenski is by
Speaker 1: far and away more popular by the way.
Speaker 2: I mean, people are also pointing out, like Zolenski's favorability
Speaker 2: rating in Ukraine has fallen, but he still has a
Speaker 2: higher favor I think he's like fifty seven percent favorability
Speaker 2: in Ukraine, so higher than Trump among his own countrymen,
Speaker 2: and even more significantly, you know, above Trump in terms
Speaker 2: of our population and the way you know that people
Speaker 2: here feel about him. I mean, it is kind of funny.
Speaker 2: One of the things that was always noteworthy to Soger
Speaker 2: and I is that, even in spite of all and
Speaker 2: I do think that Ukraine and Trump positioning himself as
Speaker 2: like quote unquote anti war, I think that helped him
Speaker 2: a lot in the election, But some of Biden's best
Speaker 2: ratings always came on his quote unquote handling of Ukraine.
Speaker 2: He was like still underwater, but by less than in
Speaker 2: other various areas, because I think there is a deep,
Speaker 2: like American instinct of wanting to stand up for the
Speaker 2: little guy and feeling like I mean, and plus decades
Speaker 2: of Cold War ideology about Russia being the big bad
Speaker 2: guys and you know, the villains and the Rocky movies
Speaker 2: and whatever, that.
Speaker 4: Goes pretty deep.
Speaker 2: And so you know, when you see a pull like that,
Speaker 2: it is a bit of a reality check about the
Speaker 2: kind of political forces that Trump is playing with here
Speaker 2: as he overtly sides now with Putin and these negotiations.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, I hope that out of
Speaker 1: this Trump is able to get some piece deal, Like
Speaker 1: I worry that the viciousness of it at his own
Speaker 1: ally is going to undermine his ability to do that.
Speaker 1: But you know, we'll see, like it's it's still a
Speaker 1: live it's still a live question. And at least he's trying.
Speaker 1: Like we said earlier, Biden didn't even try. Yeah, Biden,
Speaker 1: in fact, the Biden administration, you know thwarted efforts to
Speaker 1: try to get to a piece deal and hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people are dead since then. But one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things in Washington is John Thune getting asked
Speaker 1: about what Trump is up to on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: So let's see how John Thune, Senate leader responds to
Speaker 1: the question of whether Zelenski's a dictator?
Speaker 4: Would you qualify dictator as president?
Speaker 8: Well, I, like I said, the president speaks for himself.
Speaker 8: What I want to see as a is a peaceful result,
Speaker 8: a peaceful outcome. And I think right now there there's
Speaker 8: a negotiation going on, and let's see where that ultimately leads.
Speaker 8: Hopefully it'll get to get to the outcome we all
Speaker 8: want to see.
Speaker 1: And then you don't have many what quote unquote moderate
Speaker 1: House Republicans left, and the definition of moderate has has
Speaker 1: shifted as the actual moderates have kind of been run
Speaker 1: out of the party or become Democrats. A kind of
Speaker 1: conservative who works with Democrats is Don Bacon in Nebraska
Speaker 1: usually faces somewhat close election. He was he was asked
Speaker 1: about this, let's roll uh, let's roll Bacon.
Speaker 6: Here, stick up for what's right, And so I wanted
Speaker 6: to be very strong in my words today because this
Speaker 6: Republican does not agree with what the what the president said.
Speaker 6: Russia's on the bad side here, and we need a
Speaker 6: president that has moral clarity when it comes to this war,
Speaker 6: and right now, don't see. I had hoped the president
Speaker 6: would step up and be better than Joe Biden. I
Speaker 6: felt that Joe Biden was slow and getting weapons there,
Speaker 6: he was using rules of engagement that restricted Ukraine, was
Speaker 6: really feeding the gridlock. Now. I had hoped that this
Speaker 6: president would step up and try to finish this war
Speaker 6: in the right way, not in an unknoble way, And
Speaker 6: this is what we see today is not a noble
Speaker 6: course of action.
Speaker 1: I guess the only thing I'd say to that in
Speaker 1: Trump's defense, somebody's got to somebody at this table's got
Speaker 1: to do that is that there has there ever been
Speaker 1: an American president that nobly ended a war like it.
Speaker 1: We don't. We don't end wars with much nobility. And
Speaker 1: the kind of security establishment is always claiming that they
Speaker 1: are for ending wars after they've already ended, and that
Speaker 1: they were for ending the war that you ended, like
Speaker 1: let's say, Biden in Afghanistan, but not the way you
Speaker 1: did it right when they stood in the way of
Speaker 1: ending the war the entire time. So you can, I
Speaker 1: think agree with the comments like on the surface, but
Speaker 1: I think they're obscuring a real reluctance to actually engage
Speaker 1: with a peaceful exit, which is not to defend ignobility right.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: The other thing that does just make me a little
Speaker 2: crazy about all of this is, like I think, partly
Speaker 2: because of the Russia Gate hysteria, in his first term,
Speaker 2: like liberals would be surprised to learn that Trump pursued
Speaker 2: a very hawkish posy viz a VI Russia and specifically
Speaker 2: with regards to Ukraine. You know, he armed Ukraine in
Speaker 2: a way that Obama was unwilling to because Obama feared
Speaker 2: this sort of conflict and provocation of Russia and Trump,
Speaker 2: in spite of rhetoric that was sort of like Putin
Speaker 2: curious or Putin friendly or whatever, what his administration actually
Speaker 2: did was quite militaristic and quite hawkish.
Speaker 4: And so that's also.
Speaker 2: Why I find it outrageous for him to then at
Speaker 2: this point, after you helped create the conditions that provoked
Speaker 2: this reaction from Russia and Russia. You know, Putin is
Speaker 2: his zone, has his own agency, and he did his thing,
Speaker 2: and it was illegal and he shouldn't have done it,
Speaker 2: but you know it was foreseeable. Ultimately this outcome, like
Speaker 2: you were part of creating these conditions, and now you
Speaker 2: want to turn around and blame Zelensky and the Ukrainians
Speaker 2: like it is disgusting, It is outrageous, and people should
Speaker 2: feel like disgusted.
Speaker 4: And outraged by that.
Speaker 2: And it also you know, it also does make it so,
Speaker 2: as you're porting out ryin that in terms of the
Speaker 2: dynamics of this negotiation.
Speaker 4: It does not. It does not make them simpler.
Speaker 2: It makes them more complex, actually, and it certainly makes
Speaker 2: it so that whatever Ukraine is going to end up
Speaker 2: with at the end of the day is going to
Speaker 2: be worse than what they may have ended up with
Speaker 2: if Trump had taken a different course.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, everyone waving the Ukrainian flag over the last
Speaker 1: two years, claiming to be supporting Ukraine, you know, has
Speaker 1: left them in a worse situation than they would have
Speaker 1: been otherwise. We don't have time to get into this deeply,
Speaker 1: but just wanted to finish with the context of all
Speaker 1: of this. Put up B seven here. This is a
Speaker 1: New York Times piece from yesterday about the headline trump
Speaker 1: eyes a bigger, better trade deal with China. You know,
Speaker 1: Trump really is projecting the idea, the idea strongly that
Speaker 1: he wants to reorganize the world order and once better
Speaker 1: relations with Russia, which presumably the idea is to drive
Speaker 1: a little bit of a wedge deeper into the relationship
Speaker 1: between Russia and China and then to cut a big deal,
Speaker 1: almost a G two situation with China to say, look,
Speaker 1: we were willing to like back off the idea that
Speaker 1: we're going to be a hedgehm on and let's see
Speaker 1: how cooperation works out rather than aggressive you know, or
Speaker 1: actually like kinetic competition. Yeah, works out. You know, he's,
Speaker 1: as the Times points out, he's he's bitter. Trump's always better,
Speaker 1: but he's bitter in particular about he thinks Biden didn't
Speaker 1: carry out the deal that he cut with China in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, where China was supposed to you know, buy
Speaker 1: another two hundred billion dollars worth of you know, US goods,
Speaker 1: bounce out the trade deficit, anythings that he would have
Speaker 1: if he were still in powers. Now he's going to
Speaker 1: go back and you know, cut a broad commercial diplomatic
Speaker 1: deal that involves you know, reducing nuclear weapons and spending
Speaker 1: and military spending, which to me, great if he could
Speaker 1: pull us off, you know, go for it.
Speaker 2: This could be one of the areas where Elon is
Speaker 2: a CEO dictator king has actually beneficial since he has
Speaker 2: so many business.
Speaker 4: Interests in China.
Speaker 1: It's one way of putting it.
Speaker 2: You know, it may actually be that that's part of
Speaker 2: what has shifted Trump in this direction, because you know,
Speaker 2: he had a much more well and it's still I
Speaker 2: think it's still very much up in the air because
Speaker 2: there are different ways you can do multipolarity, right. One is,
Speaker 2: and Ben Norton's been writing some about this. You know,
Speaker 2: the Chinese have sort of laid out their principles of
Speaker 2: they want equal treatment for all countries, respect for international multilateralism.
Speaker 2: They want openness and mutual benefits. So not this idea
Speaker 2: of like a new Cold War and we're in competition
Speaker 2: with you, right, So not a return to those you
Speaker 2: know Soviet versus US dynamics which led to untold number
Speaker 2: of you know, proxy wars. It was not like we
Speaker 2: avoided the giant conflict with them, you know, the big
Speaker 2: hot war that ends the world, but it was not
Speaker 2: like it was a conflict free deaths.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's that way of doing multipolarity, which
Speaker 2: many people within the Trump ad ministry, including Mark or Rubio,
Speaker 2: like he is a China hawk. He has a sort
Speaker 2: of like you know, hawkish, historically aggressive posture towards China.
Speaker 2: Sees it as a competition. Has talked about the acquisition
Speaker 2: of Greenland in this sort of like Cold War way
Speaker 2: of this is a way to check China, and if
Speaker 2: we don't take it, then China is going to take it.
Speaker 2: And we need to make sure that we can own
Speaker 2: the Arctic as the ice melts and these shipping lanes
Speaker 2: open up as a result of the climate crisis. So
Speaker 2: that's one way, and the other way would be to
Speaker 2: have these sort of you know, more mutually beneficial, cooperative
Speaker 2: relationships where you're not just directly competing with each other,
Speaker 2: you know, around the world and all these proxy fights
Speaker 2: and building up your military aggressively, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I think it's still very undetermined which direction Trump
Speaker 2: is going to decide to take.
Speaker 4: I don't know that he really knows either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if somebody's going to shake it up like that.
Speaker 1: It would have to be Trump because the entire Washington blob,
Speaker 1: the national security establishment, has spent decades invested in American agemony.
Speaker 1: That's where their careers are, it's where their lives, it's
Speaker 1: where their professional lives are based. So they're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna, they're gonna go down with with the ship.
Speaker 1: I think that I think the key takeaway to me
Speaker 1: from Trump's tweet about Zelenski. You know, Trump is at
Speaker 1: which everybody says about him, whoever talks to him last,
Speaker 1: you know, he's very he's he's very easy to be influenced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is clearly surrounded right now by people who hate Zelenski, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and have a hostility towards the whole Ukrainian project. Like
Speaker 1: that's what's reflected in that tweet, which.
Speaker 4: It's very like internet brained, yeah, take honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so that so that that that is a
Speaker 1: window into who's influencing him right now, which is was
Speaker 1: suggestive of where this is heading.