2/20/25: Jesse Watters Freaks Over DOGE Vet Firings, Twitter Debunks Elon $55 Billion Savings, Trump Calls Zelensky Dictator

Krystal and Ryan discuss Jesse Watters freaks over veteran DOGE firings, Twitter debunks Elon $55 billion in savings, Trump calls Zelensky dictator. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 4 (00:33):
Good morning, everybody. We've been mixing and matching all the
show hosts. Looks week. Great to have Ryan Grim with
me today.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Good to be back here again. This has been a
fun week.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, so my name. My kids were off school, so
I stayed home with them. Of course they've just been
like all school a week now. With the snow that
we had, Sager' sound sick today, so Ryan has been
doing overtime for us.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Better next week. The flu this season has been insane,
but Jeremy had it. He was like, oh really, he
was laid out for like two week.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It has been decimating my kids' schools for sure. The
one like I can manage a flu, the one I
cannot manage is the neurovirus.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
That's the one I live in terror of.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, and that's been going through my daughter's school as well.
So we're open, we're praying to avoid them.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
In any case, we got a lot to get to
in the show today. It was actually very difficult to
choose the stories because there were so much we wanted
to cover. We've got a bunch of updates for you
with regard to Doge, the latest cuts where they're hitting,
also a little bit of Republican pushback on some of
the specific spending cuts, including some commons from Jesse Waters,
which was a bit of a surprise. They've also been
caught in more lives and screw ups with regard to

(01:42):
what they claim they have cut, So we'll take a
look at all of that and do a little debunking there.
We have huge developments with regard to Ukraine. So Zelenski
rejected Trump's offer to like, you know, basically give up
half his country, all his rare earth minerals and the
ports and the whatever, and now Trump is out calling
him a dictator and blaming him directly for the war.

(02:03):
So huge, sort of one to eighty there in terms
of the US dance and even in terms of Trump's
rhetoric and Trump's dance. So break that down for you.
We also have a new significant development in terms of
the courts, Trump refusing to abide by one particular court order.
That is a significant escalation in what I considered to
be a constitutional crisis. He is also declaring himself king

(02:24):
literally and blocking the New York City congestion pricing. So
that's an interesting story just in terms of the local
politics and then also in terms of Trump inserting himself
in that city's politics and policy. Specifically, We've got a
guest on who's been directly impacted by the spending freeze.
He's going to talk about how that has been impactful

(02:45):
to his company and the people that he's trying to
help and serve. And I'm also taking a look at
how Trump and Elon are basically doing like.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
A rug pull on the whole country.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
So putting a few pieces together here is something I've
been thinking.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
About for a while.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah, the turn with Silenski is extraordinary because everybody saw
where this was going, but I don't think anybody saw
that it was going to go this dark as fast. Yeah,
like it's bleak ye if you're if you're a Ukraine,
if you're a Lensky, you went from being feted across
the United States and the West to being called a.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Dictator, right, And this is when your adversary here is
Vladimir Putin, who is much more accurately characterized.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
As a dictator. So there's obviously if.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Trump Trump should be a little more cautious about throwing
that word around at this on the same day that
he's putting up a picture of himself with a crown, right.
Literally he hates when people call him that anyway.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, well, I mean truly, actually Elon is the true
dictator here, So maybe he's just trying to reclaim some
of this power.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Right, Hey, if ruling without an election means you're a
dictator according to Elon, what is Elon? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Very I think we know the answer to that, and
that is a good transition into the first blog. So,
as I mentioned before, we have had a little bit
of Republican pushback, and part of this is coming from
you know, all these different Republican senators and congressmen. They're
realizing like, oh, this and that project in my district
are directly affected, or as in the case with the
USAID funding freeze, like oh, the farmers in my state

(04:18):
are going to be completely screwed by this. But one
thing that many of these people didn't seem to realize
is that there are a lot of veterans in the
federal government and also actually DEI programs also include, oftentimes
opportunities specifically for veterans. So one of the people who
is apparently finding this out is Fox News host Jesse Waters,

(04:39):
who took those airwaves with a plea for a specific
friend of his.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Let's take a listen to that.

Speaker 5 (04:44):
Let me tell you a story about Chris. Chris was
a guy I met at a shooting event in New
Jersey last year.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Is Chris and the interview?

Speaker 1 (04:51):
This is another guy? This is Chris.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Is it a male or female? Oh?

Speaker 5 (05:00):
He was a twenty year veteran of the US military.
He was one of these guys in one of these
elite units, killed a lot of bad guys, put his
life on the line, and now he punched out after
twenty years and working for the Pentagon, and he's only
been there a few months, so he's probationary and he
just found out he's probably going to get laid off.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
He's going to get doged.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
And he texted me and he said, Jesse, see, you
know this isn't good. I'm upset.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
This is really sad.

Speaker 5 (05:29):
And this guy's not a DEI consultant. This guy's not
a climate consultant.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
You know, this guy is a veteran.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
So when you're talking about doging people, veterans should get priority,
because if you're going to go out there and kill
enemies and put your life on the line for this country,
you shouldn't be in the same category as people that
are doing DEI. Now, Harold and his ILK like to
talk about the slash and burn corporate ethos. We just

(05:59):
need to be a little bit less callous with the way, Harold,
we talk about doging people. Okay, I just want to
I want that to sink in your argument.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Good I'm not killing.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
I finally found one person I knew that got doge,
and it hit me in the heart.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
There is so much about that that is fascinating. First
of all, I like the terminal terminology getting doged right,
going to adopt that. But in addition, so first he
says that this individual who you know, I don't know,
I don't know as circumstances, isn't a DEI consultant. He
may well have been part of a DEI hiring program
since they do oftentimes benefit veterans. But also what he's

(06:37):
specifically advocating here for Ryan is a DEI program to
make sure that veterans, because he finds them to be
a sympathetic group that he believes is you know, worthy
of humanity and keeping their jobs, that they should be
enabled to stay there.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
And for some reason, over the years, veterans have not
done a very good job of establishing the federal role
workers as a as related to the Veterans program. But
it is like over the decades what the United States
did is used the federal government as a way to

(07:15):
give a leg up to people who were finishing their service. Yeah.
And I was talking to a couple of veterans last
night who because I was tweeting about this Jesse Waters
thing and they were reaching out and one of the
one of the points they made is that when you
leave the service, whether you did your four years or
twenty It can be difficult to get private sector work

(07:38):
immediately because they will say you need, you know, three
to five years of industry experience. And like a good
friend of mine, for instance, did you know telecommunications work
for the army? But that's for the army. So he
had all the skills, but it was difficult to immediately
get into the private sector. Like eventually he got some

(07:58):
entry level stuff because he had so many skills, he
moved up quickly. But some companies recognize that experience, others don't.
The federal government does. So the federal governments, we know
that you're well trained and you're good, like you come
on in and he's you know, people said that you
also have to consider that in the first couple of years,

(08:21):
while you're in the probationary period, a lot of these
people are still in the guard or reserve. And so
if you're going after probationary people who you know, the
first couple of years, like a lot of the people
who are getting fired, not just the Pentagon, but all
across the federal government are active duties military because they're

(08:41):
overlapping with that.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Interesting, so.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
You know, we went in twenty years of our covering
politics from support our troops to actively like firing our
troops in disproportionate numbers in disproportionate numbers.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Wow, that is that is incredible, and it also just
speaks to you know, the what we're being sold is
the this is all about merit, and it's all about efficiency, etc.
When you're just blanket firing everyone who happens to fall
in a particular category, or you know, with the deferred
resignation program, you're most likely to be culling actually the

(09:15):
highest level, most difficult to replace, people who have the
largest number of opportunities in the private sector. And let
me tell you, once they're out in the private sector
making those salaries, they're very unlikely to come back. It's
actually the polar opposite of you know, selecting for merit
and making sure that it's the best and the brightest
serving in government. So you've got a little bit of
an inkling of of awareness dawning on Jesse Waters and

(09:38):
some others.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
With regard to the way that the federal.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Government has benefit veterans. You also have, as I mentioned before,
some Republicans who are starting to feel some pain in
terms of priorities for their constituents in their districts and
their states. Susan Collins has come out with a statement,
Now we can put this up on the screen.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
This is from Politico.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
They're actually member of outlets that we're out with kind
of similar stories about different Republican rumblings about this or
that program.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
She says, you'll see lawsuits.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
She actually questioned, she said, I think it's pretty clear
that this violates Article one of the Constitution. She's significant
not only because she's one of the few remaining Republicans
in a pretty blue state of Maine, but she also
is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. What did
you make of her comments? Ryan, And like, do you
think that it matters because typically, you know Susan Collins,

(10:30):
Lisa Murkowski, they'll do like a little bit of oh
they need to slow down a little and I'm a
little uncomfortable or whatever, but when push comes to shove,
they just basically go along with everything.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Anyway, it matters because of her position, like the Appropriations
Committee considers itself to be in particular, the Senate Appropriations
Committee considers itself to be the wellspring of everything that
the United States government does. Yeah, like they call the
subcommittee chairs cardinals like they because they want it to

(11:00):
be clear that power is being projected from the House
Appropriations Committee in the Senate Appropriations Committee. And for her
to get to that position her entire career, she's wanted
to get on that spot because with the flick of
a wrists, she's sending billions of dollars here and there,
and all of a sudden she's being told, actually, no.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
We're not Yeah, actually you don't matter anymore.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
You're making suggestions and it's the administration that is going
to pick and choose which ones will actually execute on,
and that is an existential threat. The reason she matters
is because the government, unless Trump just completely ignores everything,
will shut down on March fourteenth without a spending package

(11:46):
being passed through Congress. A spending package really needs Susan
Collins as the Senate Appropriations here now if Republicans, because
how do you get sixty Democrats if Susan Collins is
vociferously opposed to it, I don't see how you get there.
So then the government shuts down, So you need her. Meanwhile,

(12:08):
you've got as we're going to talk about Trump supporting
the House subversion over the Senate side, which includes all
these Medicaid cuts. So I do think the fact the
fact that she's Susan Collins doesn't matter. I'm sure he
hates Susan Collins. He does he even care if she
wins reelection in twenty twenty six. I don't know they
can afford to lose her, right, But the fact that

(12:29):
she sits in this choke hold position at the top
of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I think matters at least
in this moment.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Is she up in twenty twenty six, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I think she is right because she I think you're.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Right because I think she was up in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
She was part of that. There was an expectation she
would is that right.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
She was up in twenty twenty, she was up in
oh so it would be yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right, okay, and she'll probably face Jared not working. It
probably faced Jared Golden, who's extremely popular House member there,
who was wanting in a Trump like three.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Straight times and in an environment that's just, you know,
increasingly partisan, where I think there was previously more democratic
face willingness to oh. I like this particular senator whereas
Republicans have made that like sort of more hard partisan
switch years ago. So I do think she could be
in trouble, but in I think you're right, term probably

(13:21):
doesn't really care all that much.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
And it works for her to stand up to Trump
in Maine.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
True. Yeah, so that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Also interesting, put the Washington Post version of the story
up on the screen. They covered some of the things
we've already talked about. Katie Brett down in Alabama being like,
I don't know about this NIH funding. Some of the
senators who have come from farming states, I don't know
about this UAI d USAID freeze. We need to get this,
you know, agriculture and the products.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
And the money for conservation and all these contracts that
and you've probably seen these going around TikTok, these like farmers.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
We're like, wait a minute, Like I spent all this
money on my farm because I had a contract with
federal government.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Especially, yeah, now out of pocket eight grand that I
thought was going to be half reimbursed by the federal government,
and I'm literally screwed, Like my farm is gone if
this doesn't ultimately come through. So they're hearing from those constituents.
But actually what I found most interesting in this article
was from one of the people who is supporting Doge
and Trump and Elon fully, which is Senator Tommy Tubberville,

(14:25):
who suggested that the new normal may be just Republican
senators and congress people having to go and plead their
case to Trump and Elon And you know, I'm sure
that's the way that they would like it to be,
where they can sort of, you know, dispense the favor
of the king to people who are in their good graces,
and that helps to continue to you know, enforce compliance

(14:48):
with their will and make sure everybody's on board. So
he said, and I quote, if we have to lobyfore,
hey wait a minute, what about that bridge in Birmingham
or there's a bridge and mobile or whatever. I think
that could be very possible. So he's laying out that,
you know, he's fine with that direction because he has
favored status with the King. He wants to keep that
favored status with our you know, CEO and chair of

(15:10):
the board or whatever you want to call this duo
at this point, and that that may just be the
new reality. And I think there's probably something to that,
because you know, Trump has truly claimed the power of
the purse for himself. We're going to cover some of
his additional moves, you know, issuing this Executive Order two
saying only I and Pam Bondi the Attorney General, get
to have a say on what is legal. You know,

(15:32):
he of course said this thing about there is no
breaking the law if you're saving the country. He literally
declared himself a king in the context of this New
York City congestion plan. And so Tommy Tupperville laying it
out like, yeah, that's just how things are now. You
have to go and beg your case to the people
with power if you want to get these projects in
your district.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah. And you know, there's that famous allegorical story of
you know, the hippie who's like go, you know, walking
through the West and he comes to a fence and
he's like, fences, Man, I hate this fence. Why is
this fence here? It just takes the fence apart, and
then whatever calamity ensues, like your pick your calamity, the
hogs run out and they just and they destroy the

(16:12):
forest by chewing everything up or whatever it is, without
any stepping back and saying why is this fence here
and who built this fence and why And usually that
is an allegory that's told by the right about reckless
left wingers who just they just barrel in and they
just just change every change everything, And the conservatives are

(16:34):
the ones that understand fence is there for a reason.
The you know what Trump is and Tuberville here are
kind of proposing is not brand new on the scene.
Like if you would have told LBJ or Richard Nixon
that hey, that the president is going to dole out
projects and that's how he's going to crew power over

(16:55):
these members of Congress, they be like, yeah, that that
is that is how I roll. It was after Nixon
so thoroughly abused and Johnson abused it too, that they
that Congress reassorted itself and passed the Empowerment Control Act
and these other laws. It said, no, that's not constitutional,
we do this, not you, because you get too much

(17:15):
power if you do that. And so now they're trying
to roll that back. So it's always like, well, there's
a reason there's a fence here. Maybe you don't like
the fence, but you know, be careful what you wish for.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
There's also the context of you know, in those prior
eras in LBJ and FDR era, there was a lot
more cross party collaboration because the parties had not ideologically
sorted themselves in the way that they.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Have regional politics.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
And yeah, there were a lot more regional politics. And
so now you have this set of very clear blue states,
very clear red states, and a few states that are
on the margin that are like the only ones that
matter in terms of presidential politics and the only ones
where you could see, you know, shift back and forth
tween who represents them, which party represents them in the Senate.
So you know, it's a recipe for Okay, when Republicans

(18:06):
are power in power, then red states get some of
their projects and blue states get actively screwed. And guess
what when Democrats are in power, if that is such
a thing that's ever allowed or possible again in the future,
they're going to reciprocate. They're going to do the exact
same thing. Like once you have started in this direction,
you think the next president is going to be like,
I'm going to handpower back to Congress. Very unlikely, very unlikely.

(18:29):
So let's get into some of the things you know,
just I'll do a sort of speed run through some
of the most recent cutch which will help to help
to help to explain why some of these Republicans are
getting a little leery. Even if they're not saying a
whole lot publicly and in no order, I expect them really
to say a whole lot publicly, because ultimately the bottom
line is they all have come to understand they have

(18:52):
to pay fealty to Trump and to his movement and
elon at this point, or else they will get screwed
and he is not afraid to do it, or they'll
have primary challenges against them, etc.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
So A three, We've got the.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
USDA accidentally firing officials who were working on bird flu
and now trying to rehire them, but apparently having trouble
with that because they are struggling to find them. They
didn't bother to get their new contact information. So this
speaks to the just sort of blanket like, oh, we're
just going to blanket fire this group of people. Turns
out in this instance and also in the instance of

(19:26):
some of the people who were like guarding some of
our nuclear sites, some of these individuals are really important
and you don't want to fire them, especially when bird
flu is looming out there as a possible next pandemic.
In addition, we can but the next one up on
the screen. So they have decimated this Education Department arm
that is really devoted to studying the efficacy of public

(19:49):
schools across the country. So seeing which schools are doing well,
which schools are performing poorly, that seems like something you
would kind of want to know. Let's put the next
one up on the screen. Also, in their zeal to
cut at the Department of Education, in particular, they've let
go of ten percent of federal student aid staff, so
they sit in prem Thacker says this comes after young

(20:10):
DOGE staffers obtained a ministry of access at the Department
of Education, so that was one of the first casualties there.
Put the next one up on the screen. And Trump
has also cut numerous top researchers at NIH's Center for
combating Alzheimer's huge setback potentially in the fight against various

(20:30):
forms of dementia. Anyone, of course, who's had a relative
who has gone through this parent, loved one, etc. Knows
how absolutely devastating it was. And the irony here too
is that this was a cause, Greg Sargent points out
once championed by Republicans. In fact, he specifically points out
that the nih Is Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementia's

(20:52):
or CARD its full name is the Roy Blunt Senator
Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias in honor of former
Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was very influential.
What did you make of these cuts in particular, Ryan,
What stood down to you here?

Speaker 1 (21:09):
The counter argument to Alzheimer's in particular, and more broadly
to a lot of these NIH cuts is that, well,
they're not They're doing a really bad job. We still
have Alzheimer's. Like that, Like, that's the argument that you hear.
And there's a more sophisticated argument that says that the
particular approach that the researchers who were getting all of

(21:34):
the NIH funding to Alzheimer's has been a dead end
and has there and has set us back by ten
or fifteen years, and so you actually need to break
up this kind of intellectual cabal that has gotten in
the way of progress. My counter counter argument would be
that's not what they're doing here, though, Like, first of all,
there was a new director coming in who was not associated.

(21:57):
You know, obviously everybody is somewhat of those get it
with that, but that's but that was not her main
line of interest. This like dead end research, and they
fired her. Uh, And they're likely to continue doing these
reductions in force going forward. So it's not as if
they came in and they said, we have evaluated the
Alzheimer's unit. We feel like you haven't made progress. We

(22:21):
feel like it's because you focus too much over here.
And so the people that were doing that, there's going
to be accountability. You guys are gone. We're going to
invest broadly across the board and lots of different approaches,
and we're going to see and if this is a
scientific approach, we're going to go in with hypotheses and
we're gonna see which one works. We're gonna stop putting
our thumb on the scale one way or the other,

(22:42):
because obviously you have a hypothesis and you pursue that,
and then at some point if the hypothitis is turning
on not to be true, you have alternative ones. I
have alternative ones. They're not doing that. It's not as
if these people that were fired are going to be
they're going to backfill, they're gonna retrench, and then they're
gonna fire more people, and then they're going to fire
more people, and then they're going to cut more funding,

(23:04):
calling it you know, they're funding to universities and other
projects are gonna cut. They're going to cut that further back.
So you know, if if you really were doing a
Maha approach, saying this didn't work, let's look around, we're
not a healthy country. This is what we're gonna do. Okay,
that's one thing, but there's no the indication is that

(23:25):
they're just cutting and they're gonna it's gonna stay cut.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
And this is actually the topic of my monologue is
that a lot of the ethos of Trump two point
zero is basically like things are bad, so we're going
to make them worse.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
And you know, I'm like, yeah, they are bad, Yeah
they are bad.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
But you know going because because what happens when you
cut public research funding is that then you become more
reliant on private industry funding. That's the polar opposite of
the direction that you want to go in. And you know,
I thought your story about the developments with regard to
breast cancer that are impacting your family directly right now

(24:04):
is really important and poignant because one of the things
that I really object to as well is scientific research
is not necessarily efficient, right because number one, if you
want to find cures for diseases that are potentially rare, like,
those things aren't going to be profitable, and so there

(24:25):
isn't going to be private research. Not to mention that
every single new drug molecule that's been invented in the
past I don't know how many years, has come out
of public funding. So the drug companies are not really
doing this type of life saving research. Most of what
they do is researching some way that they can like
dupe our patent system and extend their patent on like

(24:45):
viagra or whatever their top selling drug is. So you
know that's there's that, and then there's also the case that,
as you're pointing out, Ryan, like some of scientific research
is kind of serendipity, and that's what you spoke to
is like, oh, these people happen to be together at
a conference which would be classified as quote unquote overhead,
and because you had this serendipity mixing of these minds

(25:08):
from different disciplines in different corners of the scientific research community.
There was a really incredible and important development that was made.
In addition, sometimes you're going to pursue something like with
Alzheimer's that doesn't turn out to be the thing, and
so it's not.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Quote unquote efficient.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
But if you didn't go down that path, you wouldn't know,
and there was a possibility that it did work out,
and it did end up, you know, saving lives and
being incredibly impactful for people. So when you apply this
capitalist business logic to something like public research in the
benefit of the people, like, you're going to end up
with far worse results and far fewer breakthroughs that are

(25:48):
important for all of our lives.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, and the entire budget for NIH last year was
forty seven billion dollars. The cost of treating people with
Alzheimer's as people can look that up huge from Medicare
and Medicaid. You and you personally and like you watching this,
like you personally, or your parents or your cousins or

(26:13):
somebody might might have to bankrupt yourself so that you
can get so that Medicaid will then cover either you
or your parents getting the coverage that they need. When
Alzheimer's hits. And that's aside from the absolute terror that
Alzheimer's is, plus the heartbreak it is for families who
are going through it to be in a room physically

(26:34):
with their loved one, but spiritually they don't even know
you're there. They don't recognize who you are. To save
a couple bucks a week is the most is shortsighted
spiritually and morally, but also fiscally, it costs more money

(26:55):
down to not try to prevent this, and also, like
you said, commercially speaking, preventing Alzheimer's, if we can prevent
it is not the kind of thing that you can
then market and sell because you can make more money
treating it with like a blockbuster drug than taking preventing place.

Speaker 4 (27:15):
That's exactly right. What did you say? The NIH budget is.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
I think forty seven.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Acording to chat GPT, as of twenty twenty four, the
US projected to spend approximately three hundred and sixty billion
on health and long term care for individuals living with Alzheimer's.
That's projected to be up to a trillion by twenty fifty.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
So the entire NIH budget, entire NIH budget that includes
the weaponized militarized stuff that they're sneaking into Africa for
labs and whatever, right like that includes even includes that
is a fraction of what we spend treating Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, there's this assumption, this is a longer convo, that
capitalism leads to cost savings and efficiency.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
That feels side way chat GPT might be off on.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Okay, well you can, you can take a look. They
it does hallucinate, so you never know. But when you
look at our healthcare system, which we of course put
profit at the center of our healthcare system, and that
directly leads to us paying the highest cost and having
the worst outcomes in the developed world. And so if

(28:21):
you actually want to improve people's health, what you do
is you shift that dynamic away from centering profit and
towards actually valuing people's health and cutting back on public
research spending dollars is again the polar opposite of the
direction that you ultimately want to go on.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Did you find any uh, all right, well we'll take it.
We'll take a look and verify.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Those numbers and post a note in the segment. But yeah,
blame the blame AI if blame sam Oltman, if the
numbers aren't.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
Ultimately, girl, it's expensive.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, it's a lot of money, and it's worth researching
to see how we could prevent Alzheimer's ultimately in the
long term.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Thirty one billion for them, this is Alzheimer's impact movement. Wow,
so it's a lot of money.

Speaker 4 (29:07):
It's a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
All right, let's go ahead and get to some of
the spin and the latest spin and lies coming out
of door. So the whole time, Elon has been like, oh,
we're going to be so transparent, so transparent, which of
course is the polar opposite.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Of the way that they've operated.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
And specifically, they were claiming for weeks that they were
going to post this list of all the incredible savings
that they've been able to glean from, you know, these
these wasteful federal government expenditures.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
This is not chat cheepy too.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Numbers are correct, all right, Well, the twenty.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Fifty medicare spending on people with Alzheimer's will totally projected
four hundred and fifty three billion with a B.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
And that's just medicare, that's just matter, that's not private spending. Wow, unbelievable,
hundred thirty seven billion. So thanks for saving us all
that money.

Speaker 6 (29:51):
Dough.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
You're doing a great.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Job by firing like eight people working in the Alzheimer's Center,
eight people. We could do a go like we would
be smart as a country to do a GoFundMe to
rehire those those people just just put putting a couple
of chips onto the table in hopes that they have
a breakthrough. It would be worth it to all of
us to just do that. Go fund me out. I'll

(30:13):
put in five dollars a week on that. Absolutely such
a great I mean, Alzheimer's just you know, it's personally
I got to be frightening to everybody. Just if you
personally are your loved one gets It's just it's almost
I'd rather get hit by a bus.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
No, I have very close friend who has been, you know,
watching this unfold. Yeah, and it's it's one of the
most difficult things you can go through.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
And you're gonna save a couple bucks a week and
fire these eight researchers like it's it's cruel and stupid.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, crol and stupid, that is a good way to
put it. So they've been promising all this transparency about
all these grapes cuts and savings, et cetera, that they're
making all these fraudulent supposedly programs that they've been you know,
they've been rooting out, et cetera, except for the fact
that you know, all of them that they've suggested this

(31:01):
far like, well, it's not really fraud It might just
be something you don't like, but it's not actually fraudulent.
In any case, they finally put out a sproadsheet, and
lo and behold, even the sproadsheet they put out was
blatantly wrong on any number of levels. Here's a little
Bloomberg News report breaking some of the numbers down.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
What is the number that.

Speaker 7 (31:19):
We have calculated, and we'll put this into the context
of the fifty five billion that Elon is, you know,
taking credit for. Yeah, so the DOGE on its website
says that they've saved about fifty five billion dollars for
US taxpayers. But when you go at them and add
up all of the contracts that they list online that
they that they say they've canceled, it only comes to

(31:39):
about eight point six billion dollars, So, you know, just
a small fraction of that overall fifty five billion. Also,
in going through all these contracts. It's clear that there
were It was at least one major clerical era. There
was one contract that was listed for eight billion that
was actually only an eight million dollar contract, So they
had listed about sixteen billion.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
But when you take that away, it's a much smaller figure.

Speaker 7 (32:00):
This is, you know, sort of really been a key
tension point as Joje has has gone into federal agencies
and started slashing spending and firing staff of that they said, look,
this is the most transparent effort that's out there. You
can go and read all this information. But when it's
both riddled with errors and there is an oversight that
normally you know, is layered above federal agency things like
watchdogs in the Office of Government Ethics, DOOSE really operates

(32:22):
independently of that, and that has raised a lot of concerns,
both from members of Congress as well as other federal
government watchers.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
So it's kind of insulting to all of our intelligence
that they put out this broadsheet. They're like, oh, we
save fifty five billion dollars. Okay, Then you literally just
add up the column and it doesn't add up to
fifty five billion, It adds up to sixteen point six billion.
Then you sort by which you know many people online
and also reporters in New York Times and whatever. Then
you sort by like, okay, well, what's the biggest program

(32:52):
that you cut here, and the one that rises to
the top is this eight billion dollar program. But then
you dig into that and it turns out that is
the compleet error. It's actually not eight billion, it's eight million.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
A little bit of a difference there.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
And now your spreadsheet which you claimed indicated savings a
fifty five billion, which only actually added up to sixteen
point six billion, now only totals to eight point six billion.
So one of the sloths online who was digging into this,
let's put this up on the screen, indicates that with

(33:27):
that eight billion to eight million thing, apparently there was
originally some type on the contract, so the contract value
was listed at eight billion round than eight million. Then
it was corrected. The real TCV, I don't know what
that stands for was eight million. Corrected in January three
years only three point five million was awarded. So it
was very easy to discern when like as someone even

(33:48):
here on the outside was doing that this was not
the correct amount of money. And then in addition, Ryan,
if even with the eight million dollar amount, if they've
already spent three and a half million, right, then you're
not saving even the entire eight million. And that rationale
actually applies to all of the other things that were

(34:08):
in this spreadsheet. So basically it's a complete you know, exaggeration.
Parts of her just completely wrong. And many of these
things too, as I said before, they frame them as
like fraud, but in reality it's just stuff that Elon
doesn't particularly like.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
And it was customs in Border Protection. I think that
they Yes, that's right, So people also need to use
their common sense. And when we think through these numbers,
Customs and Border Protections entire budget is not that high,
Like it's I don't know offhand exactly what it is.

(34:46):
You can google that and find it. Eight billion would
be a huge portion of their entire budget budget. And
this was like some DII thing or something di I
training or whatever.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
It was something like that.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, so then you have to ask yourself, what are
the chances is that like few thirds of the Border
Protection's budget is this DEI training. You don't even have
to then, like google and follow the charts and the
contracts all the way back to the source, you can
just like that's probably not true. And there are a
lot of people that are frustrated that Musk isn't getting
all the flowers that he deserves for this. I think

(35:20):
what they need to think about is that he is
a government worker. And if you think about it from
the perspective of people who don't necessarily trust all government
workers without having their work be verified and checked, and
don't necessarily trust the motivations that they have because they

(35:42):
have their own interests at play. Any government agency that
made the types of errors that Doge is making at
this point would be considered waste, fraud, and abuse of
the most obvious scale. Yes, and you would say, will
cut this one. They don't have people who can fact

(36:04):
check their work before putting it up to the public
to look.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
At, or who can use basic common sense, and.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Who are and who appear to be lying, like actively
lying yeah, about what they have found now. At the
same time, I don't want to do much taunting of
their inability to find saving because I don't want them
to get more serious, like to then go crazy and
be like, all right, fine, an entire department of education gone,
which is not legal, like you want to do that,
you got to go through Congress. But anyway, so think

(36:32):
about the DOJE people. And if you if you're on
this side that thinks all government is like corrupt and wasteful,
think about DOJE as what it is. It is a
government agency that is in competition with these other departments
for money because it is run by a government contractor
who wants to go to Mars and needs federal resources

(36:56):
to do that. Yeah, and so that agency has every
incentive to tell you that all this other spending is
wasteful and we need to suppress it so that we
can and this is what you'll eventually hear, so that
we can invest trillions in this project to go to Mars.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
And I do think that that I'm reading his biography
right now, the Walter Isaacson one, and you know, have
been trying to research this creature who is now in
charge of all of us. And I do think that
that is like his primary driving goal, which sounds, I mean,
it sounds sort of insane, because it's a goal. He
has a point in himself, the savior of humanity. He

(37:37):
believes the thing that we should be driving. That's exactly right.
Savior of human consciousness. He believes the thing we should
be driving towards is being an interplanetary species.

Speaker 4 (37:47):
He talks about this all the time.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
And you know, when he started SpaceX, it really was
a sort of preposterous boondoggle. But he does it anyway.
He's able to persist. He's able to get gas billions
of dollars already in federal government content. And you know,
you should take note of the fact that you've got
SpaceX engineers now in at the FAA. Well, the FAA
had been investigating Elon and SpaceX for one of their

(38:12):
launches that came apart mid air, which caused huge damage.
I mean, they had to scramble, they had to re
route some twelve commercial flights like it was actually very dangerous,
and so that agency was investigating him. Now he's got
SpaceX engineers who are there inside. I have a feeling
that investigation isn't going to go very far. And they're
making cuts at NASA. Well guess what again, if you

(38:35):
strip down the capacity of the government, suddenly you need SpaceX.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
Even more than they already do.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
And I do think a big part of his rationale
motivation here is basically like he realized he needed the
nearly limitless resources of the federal government treasury to pursue
his goal for humanity of putting us all on Mars,
and that is a lot of what is this and
he sort of lashed onto this, you know, dark enlightenment

(39:03):
like Curtis Jarvin. Oh, we need a CEO dictator thing
because it helps him, it enables him in that goal.
So it's a convenient ideology for him to get what
he wants. And so all of these little piddling cuts
and things that are going on like that is not
the ballgame. I don't even think you should really consider
what's happening right now as any attempt at cutting government

(39:24):
or efficiency. It's about consolidating power on behalf of Elon
Musk and his goals. And one of the ways we
know that is because listen, they put out their SPREADSHEE
which claimed fifty five billion, which only actually showed eight
billion in you know cuts. The Government Accountability Office on
an annual basis finds some one hundred and fifty billion
dollars in improper in actual fraud, not just things that

(39:48):
somebody there didn't like, but in actual fraudulent payments so
we have a government agency that does this stuff. Now,
if you want to beef that up and make more effective, fine,
go to it. But you also know Ryan that they're
not actually interested in like effective and accountable government, because
one of Trump's very first moves was to fire almost
all of the inspectors general. They're supposed to oversee these

(40:10):
agencies and make sure that they are being run effectively
and without corruption and graft, and which have been you know,
have actually done some important investigations for journals like yourself
into presidents on both the democratic and Republican side, right.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
And cutting a tiny amount of subscriptions to like Thompson,
Reuter's and Bloomberg like bond markets for regulators, so like
sec CFTC, CFPB, these people are now they don't have
access to like these little subscription services while they're trying
to regulate the markets. And for people who are like, okay,
well AlSi as a vision, I'd like to remind you

(40:46):
that Musk is not the first person to have these
generational megal maniacal views of present humanity versus future humanity.
I think it was Kim jong Ill, Kim Jones's grandfather,
but it might have been Chairman Mao who said when
it was confronted with the vast amount of casualties that

(41:07):
were involved in the creation of the communist project, either
in China or North Korea, forget which one, he said, basically,
you know what is is You can find his quote
out there. Somebody He's like, what is fifty million deaths
when we are fighting for untold billions of people in
the future, Like that Mao or Kim Jong Il, whichever

(41:28):
one was, was arguing, we are fighting for almost infinite
number of future people who will live in the communist
paradise that we produce through this revolution. So how can
you tell me that it's a problem that fifty million people,
innocent people died fifty million against billions, so all the

(41:53):
people of the Earth against the infinite expansion of consciousness interplanetary.
Really those things like if you believe, if that's your ethic,
we are not the ones that matter.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
And this is the type of ideology that has been
very pervasive in Silicon Valley in recent years that like
Sam Bankman, Freed was an adherent of this effective altruist ideology,
which argues exactly that now, I don't think Elon necessarily
thinks of himself exactly as an effective altruist because they
were concerned specifically about the development of AI destroying humanity,

(42:30):
which seems to be like actually a reasonable thing to
be concerned about.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Also, they're more earthly based.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yeah, but Elon has a version of that and exactly
does exactly the calculus that you are describing Ryan, which
you can see quickly how that leads to justifying any
sort of level of death, cruelty, et cetera in the
short term. So when you look, for example, at like
you know, cutting USAID funding, so now you've got kids
in Africa who are going to die of HIV and AIDS,

(42:58):
it's like, oh, well, that's mull potatoes in the grand
scheme of you know, generations and generations, tens of thousands
of years of human civilization. So that's Elon's perfectly willing
to pay that price, let alone any sort of like lawbrying.
He doesn't care about that. None of these CEOs care
about law breaking. To them, that's just the cost of
doing business, and that's what moved fast and break things. Ultimately,

(43:21):
that's like core to that ethos is basically, break whatever laws,
do whatever you need to do.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
So it'll work out in the end.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
So, yeah, it is the type of ideology that can
that intellectually, like intelligent people can use to justify absolute monstrosities,
like on a world historic level.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, whereas from US, So if you want to go
after USAID for being a tool of like American imperialism
through its soft power. Okay, that's that's great. That's a
great point. Yeah, I'm not sure that's the one they're
making them.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, when when you're taking it and putting it under
Marco Rubio State Department, something tells me that's not really
not really the end goal. But in any case, So
that's that's the leaders with Dojan. That's actually a good
segue Ryan into the very latest with regard to Ukraine
and the new sort of foreign policy orientation of the

(44:16):
Trump administration.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, let's let's start with this wild post on truth
Social that that he then Trump then posted to Twitter.
You can tell how much how excited he is about
his different statements whether or not he moves them from
truth Social over to Twitter. He moved this one to Twitter.

(44:38):
Trump is saying, here, how's your Trump impression, Crystal, But
he's saying not great, think of it? A modestly successful comedian.
Comedian successful comedian Voladimir Zelenski talk to the United States
of American and to spending three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
So that's not accurate. We talk about it closer to

(44:58):
two hundred billion. Actual numbers from this German think tank
that studies this, it's closer to like one hundred and
twenty billion or so. And a lot of that is
what we value or overvalue our weapons stock.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, that we just a lot of that money never
left the Beltway here right here.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
It's a lot of money. Yeah, either way, there's He's right,
it's it's been a lot of way to go into
a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start.
But a war that he without the US and quote Trump,
why does he put Trump in quotes, will never be
able to settle. The United States has spent two hundred
billion dollars more than Europe. Again the according to this
German think tank, actually the Europeans have spite spent slightly more,

(45:37):
but sixty percent of our money has been in grants,
whereas the Europeans has been in very low interest loans.
Through quibbling in fact checking, but anyway, that's that's that's
On that point, he says, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization?
So and he goes into okay, So here this is
the key part. Zelensky refuses to have elections, is very

(45:59):
low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was
good at was playing Biden like a fiddle, a dictator
without elections, Zelensky better moved fast or he is not
going to have a country left. In the meantime, we
are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia,
something all admit. Only Trump again in quotes, and the
Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Europe has failed

(46:21):
to bring peace, and Zelensky probably wants to keep the
gravy train going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenski has done
a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have
unnecessarily died. So on his on the things that he
says that are correct, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions have unnecessarily died. This is correct. Zelensky has canceled elections,

(46:45):
which is kind of preposterous because it's the whole you.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Know, we're fighting for democracy here, right, Good than that
Biden did not try to achieve Biden did.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Not try to achieve peace, and the war does need
to end. All those things are true. The attack on
Zelensky as this like dictator and the loser or whatever
has sparked a response from I guess was Lavrov now
calling him a cornered rat? And is you know edging

(47:18):
you know, it's one thing I think Hexath got unfair
criticism for acknowledging outright that look, a lot of his
territories not coming back, we need a peace agreement, and
the Democrats beat him up for that. It's like, no
nobody believed that you were getting this territory backed then.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Right, Okay, so it's not like it was an important
piece of leverage because anybody honest knew that that was
the case.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
To tell the whole world that you think Zelenski is
this level of a loser, does I think change the
negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine.
I think that's a fair I think that's a fair assessment.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, and we do have we can put B one
B up on the screen just to reiterate the a
fact check component of this. So this is according to
that German research you were talking about, Ryan, how much
the US has contributed versus how much the Europeans have contributed.
You can see, you know, I mean, there's a lot
of money, don't get me wrong, but it's not what

(48:20):
did you say, three hundred and fifty billion?

Speaker 1 (48:21):
He also does you can feel how you want them
feel about it, but likes just at least know the
actual let's be.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Honest right about the amounts. I mean, listen, I want
this war to end, right. I think it is disgusting
and I moral that the Biden administration blocked the best
chance for peace, which at the best terms for Ukraine,
which came very early in the war when they had
outperformed and caught Russia unawares, and Russia had been hit

(48:46):
with all these sanctions and they weren't sure how that
was going to whether they were going to be able
to really survive that economically or not. Now they've kind
of adjusted, not to say that it's great, but they
know that they can get through that, and you're in
this long war of attrition, and so their hand is
much stronger now than it was at that time. But
we also have to have some commitment to the truth
here and to some level of morality as well, like

(49:10):
Russia invaded Ukraine, that he whatever justin NATO provoked it,
blah blah blah. I mean, actually you could put put
it more on the US side in terms of the
blame versus Zelenski and the Ukraine. Yeah, and so you
know to then say, oh, it's it's Zelenski's fault that
his own country got invaded and he's the dictator, when yeah,

(49:32):
he should have elections, but you're talking about Vladimir Putin
on the other side of this equation, Like it's just
a total inversion of reality and the truth. And I
think part of it is I mean, I think what
happened in terms of the sequence of events is Trump.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
Came to the Trump administration came.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
To Zelenski with this just like brazen colonialist imperialist plan,
like we're going to take half of your stuff forever
and maybe we'll continue to support you, but then again
maybe not. Actually this is just basically in repayment for
what we've already done. And this is B three B
we can put up on the screen. They were able
to get the details of this plan, and they were

(50:16):
so onerous. It was actually more onerous than the terms
that were imposed on Germany after World War One is
what they proposed to Zelenski, and Zelensky very gingerly was like, well,
you know, we're gonna have to think about that, and
I don't think that's going to totally you work out
for us on our end, and if you put B
three up on the screen, like, it's not just my

(50:37):
theory that that's what pissed off Trump and led to
him calling Zelensky a dictator and a loser and all
this stuff. National Security advisor Mike Waltz says that his
relationship Trump's relationship was Zelensky soured over his refusal to
sign that Rare Earth's mineral.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Deal the US has proposed. Well, it's quote.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
I think the frustration really stummed just in the last
week from this bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over
presentation of what we see is an absolute opportunity, that's
to have the US invest in Ukrainian infrastructure, to have
them grow both their minerals, their natural resources, their oil
and gas. We look at the type of aid the
Europeans are providing. It's often in the form of loans,
it's being repaid with the interest on these Russian assets.
We believe the American tax pair deserves to recoape much

(51:16):
of their investment. So we propose this totally extractive, exploitative
quote unquote deal to the Ukrainians, which again doesn't even
promise that we provide them with future military aid. They
get effectively nothing, no guarantees for the future out of
it except the sense that, okay, well, if we're there,
we're probably going to protect our economic interest in the

(51:38):
future from a Russian invasion. That's what they would theoretically
get out of it. Zelensky's like, I don't think we
can go down that path. And now Trump does a
total one to eighty, whereas previously he had actually been
pretty friendly towards Selensky, and Lensky had gone down to
mar A Lago and all that sort of stuff. So,
I mean, that's that's what caused this turn. But in adition,

(52:01):
you know, Trump has signaled he talks all about William McKinley,
which is really the sort of start of brazen American imperialism,
and he has to obviously talked about it. I'm going
to take Greenland, I'm gonna take Canada. I'm going to
take Panama, I'm going to take Gaza, I'm going to
take half of Ukraine. He does not think that there
should be any real like international rules, guidelines, norms, et cetera,

(52:25):
surrounding what great powers can do. I mean, he truly
believes in this, like might makes right. If you want
it and it serves your interest, you're just gonna take it.
And so I don't think he has any philosophical or
moral objection to putin seeing Ukraine and being like, well,
I can take it, and so I'm going to. And
so I think that's you know, that's part also of
what plays into this dynamic that's now playing out with

(52:46):
him and Zelenski and putin right and so in a you.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Know, there's a lot of talk about the unipolar world,
where of American agemony evolving into a multipolar world, and
the advocates of the multipolar world, of which I would say,
actually one don't often talk about the side effects of it,
which are each each pole in the multipole is basically

(53:11):
told by the other multipoles. Okay, that's your area, and
so that's where you get this. The Monroe doctrin and
the McKinley really expanding on it to saying, Okay, we're
not a hegemonic world power, but we're going to compete
with Spain and Britain and France, and so we're going
to go take the Philippines, and we're going to try
to take Cuba, and we're going to take Haitius hours

(53:33):
you know, Latin America, like you know, so we're going
so that's our orbit. And so it's actually completely intellectually
and geopolitically consistent to say that you're against this kind
of kinetic World War three with Russia and China, but
you're but you're also fine with like smaller wars of

(53:54):
conquest Canada, Mexican, all the all the like bullying bullying
that you see, you know, messing around with Ukraine kind
of cuts against that because Ukraine would in a multipolar
world would clearly be in the Russian orbit. But his
he's going back to his businessman thing. We're like, well,
we spent all this money, so therefore, you know, we

(54:14):
deserve all of this stuff. But it's what triggered that
that Trump post was kind of the first overt criticism
that Zelensky had offered. So yeah, so he he gets
this offer, you have to give us fifty percent of
your country because it was reported as rare Earth's But
as as you noted, it's more than that. It's their reports,
it's their.

Speaker 4 (54:35):
Our economy, pretty much everything.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Because you know, you're not a five hundred billion out
of the ground out of there. So then he leaks
it to the congressional delegation that went to the Kiev
and says, look what they're trying to do, and I'm
not I'm not going to sign this. So then it
leaks out and then Zelenski calls reporters in and we
can put up I think it's B two. Zolenski calls
reporters into his palace and tells them, you know, I

(54:59):
would like to have more truth with the Trump team,
and then says that that the president was living in
a quote web of disinformation. So so he's not criticizing
Trump directly, he's basically doing the thing where the king is.
He's saying the king, the king is being misled by
his advisors. Yeah, who are who are lying to him?

(55:22):
Trump took it personally, and then you know, goes hard
at him with with that, with that true social post
that He then moves over to Twitter to make sure
to make sure nobody nobody missed it. And so we
have now we have members of Congress and Republicans being

(55:45):
asked to reckon with the question is Trump a dictator?
And let's put the poll up first before we have that.
This is pretty funny and and and something that people
should remember. You know, Americans have a play nineteen positive
view of Zelenski minus two of Trump, minus sixty three
of Putin. So of these three characters, Zolenski is by

(56:09):
far and away more popular by the way.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
I mean, people are also pointing out, like Zolenski's favorability
rating in Ukraine has fallen, but he still has a
higher favor I think he's like fifty seven percent favorability
in Ukraine, so higher than Trump among his own countrymen,
and even more significantly, you know, above Trump in terms
of our population and the way you know that people
here feel about him. I mean, it is kind of funny.

(56:33):
One of the things that was always noteworthy to Soger
and I is that, even in spite of all and
I do think that Ukraine and Trump positioning himself as
like quote unquote anti war, I think that helped him
a lot in the election, But some of Biden's best
ratings always came on his quote unquote handling of Ukraine.
He was like still underwater, but by less than in
other various areas, because I think there is a deep,

(56:56):
like American instinct of wanting to stand up for the
little guy and feeling like I mean, and plus decades
of Cold War ideology about Russia being the big bad
guys and you know, the villains and the Rocky movies
and whatever, that.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
Goes pretty deep.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
And so you know, when you see a pull like that,
it is a bit of a reality check about the
kind of political forces that Trump is playing with here
as he overtly sides now with Putin and these negotiations.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
I mean, and you know, I hope that out of
this Trump is able to get some piece deal, Like
I worry that the viciousness of it at his own
ally is going to undermine his ability to do that.
But you know, we'll see, like it's it's still a
live it's still a live question. And at least he's trying.
Like we said earlier, Biden didn't even try. Yeah, Biden,

(57:45):
in fact, the Biden administration, you know thwarted efforts to
try to get to a piece deal and hundreds of
thousands of people are dead since then. But one of
my favorite things in Washington is John Thune getting asked
about what Trump is up to on a daily basis.
So let's see how John Thune, Senate leader responds to

(58:07):
the question of whether Zelenski's a dictator?

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Would you qualify dictator as president?

Speaker 8 (58:14):
Well, I, like I said, the president speaks for himself.
What I want to see as a is a peaceful result,
a peaceful outcome. And I think right now there there's
a negotiation going on, and let's see where that ultimately leads.
Hopefully it'll get to get to the outcome we all
want to see.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
And then you don't have many what quote unquote moderate
House Republicans left, and the definition of moderate has has
shifted as the actual moderates have kind of been run
out of the party or become Democrats. A kind of
conservative who works with Democrats is Don Bacon in Nebraska

(58:51):
usually faces somewhat close election. He was he was asked
about this, let's roll uh, let's roll Bacon.

Speaker 6 (58:59):
Here, stick up for what's right, And so I wanted
to be very strong in my words today because this
Republican does not agree with what the what the president said.
Russia's on the bad side here, and we need a
president that has moral clarity when it comes to this war,
and right now, don't see. I had hoped the president
would step up and be better than Joe Biden. I

(59:22):
felt that Joe Biden was slow and getting weapons there,
he was using rules of engagement that restricted Ukraine, was
really feeding the gridlock. Now. I had hoped that this
president would step up and try to finish this war
in the right way, not in an unknoble way, And
this is what we see today is not a noble
course of action.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
I guess the only thing I'd say to that in
Trump's defense, somebody's got to somebody at this table's got
to do that is that there has there ever been
an American president that nobly ended a war like it.
We don't. We don't end wars with much nobility. And
the kind of security establishment is always claiming that they

(01:00:04):
are for ending wars after they've already ended, and that
they were for ending the war that you ended, like
let's say, Biden in Afghanistan, but not the way you
did it right when they stood in the way of
ending the war the entire time. So you can, I
think agree with the comments like on the surface, but
I think they're obscuring a real reluctance to actually engage

(01:00:28):
with a peaceful exit, which is not to defend ignobility right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
The other thing that does just make me a little
crazy about all of this is, like I think, partly
because of the Russia Gate hysteria, in his first term,
like liberals would be surprised to learn that Trump pursued
a very hawkish posy viz a VI Russia and specifically
with regards to Ukraine. You know, he armed Ukraine in

(01:00:54):
a way that Obama was unwilling to because Obama feared
this sort of conflict and provocation of Russia and Trump,
in spite of rhetoric that was sort of like Putin
curious or Putin friendly or whatever, what his administration actually
did was quite militaristic and quite hawkish.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
And so that's also.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Why I find it outrageous for him to then at
this point, after you helped create the conditions that provoked
this reaction from Russia and Russia. You know, Putin is
his zone, has his own agency, and he did his thing,
and it was illegal and he shouldn't have done it,
but you know it was foreseeable. Ultimately this outcome, like
you were part of creating these conditions, and now you
want to turn around and blame Zelensky and the Ukrainians

(01:01:36):
like it is disgusting, It is outrageous, and people should
feel like disgusted.

Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
And outraged by that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
And it also you know, it also does make it so,
as you're porting out ryin that in terms of the
dynamics of this negotiation.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
It does not. It does not make them simpler.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
It makes them more complex, actually, and it certainly makes
it so that whatever Ukraine is going to end up
with at the end of the day is going to
be worse than what they may have ended up with
if Trump had taken a different course.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Yes, yes, everyone waving the Ukrainian flag over the last
two years, claiming to be supporting Ukraine, you know, has
left them in a worse situation than they would have
been otherwise. We don't have time to get into this deeply,
but just wanted to finish with the context of all
of this. Put up B seven here. This is a
New York Times piece from yesterday about the headline trump

(01:02:27):
eyes a bigger, better trade deal with China. You know,
Trump really is projecting the idea, the idea strongly that
he wants to reorganize the world order and once better
relations with Russia, which presumably the idea is to drive

(01:02:48):
a little bit of a wedge deeper into the relationship
between Russia and China and then to cut a big deal,
almost a G two situation with China to say, look,
we were willing to like back off the idea that
we're going to be a hedgehm on and let's see
how cooperation works out rather than aggressive you know, or

(01:03:11):
actually like kinetic competition. Yeah, works out. You know, he's,
as the Times points out, he's he's bitter. Trump's always better,
but he's bitter in particular about he thinks Biden didn't
carry out the deal that he cut with China in
twenty twenty, where China was supposed to you know, buy
another two hundred billion dollars worth of you know, US goods,
bounce out the trade deficit, anythings that he would have

(01:03:34):
if he were still in powers. Now he's going to
go back and you know, cut a broad commercial diplomatic
deal that involves you know, reducing nuclear weapons and spending
and military spending, which to me, great if he could
pull us off, you know, go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
This could be one of the areas where Elon is
a CEO dictator king has actually beneficial since he has
so many business.

Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Interests in China.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
It's one way of putting it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
You know, it may actually be that that's part of
what has shifted Trump in this direction, because you know,
he had a much more well and it's still I
think it's still very much up in the air because
there are different ways you can do multipolarity, right. One is,
and Ben Norton's been writing some about this. You know,
the Chinese have sort of laid out their principles of

(01:04:18):
they want equal treatment for all countries, respect for international multilateralism.
They want openness and mutual benefits. So not this idea
of like a new Cold War and we're in competition
with you, right, So not a return to those you
know Soviet versus US dynamics which led to untold number
of you know, proxy wars. It was not like we

(01:04:41):
avoided the giant conflict with them, you know, the big
hot war that ends the world, but it was not
like it was a conflict free deaths.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
So you know, there's that way of doing multipolarity, which
many people within the Trump ad ministry, including Mark or Rubio,
like he is a China hawk. He has a sort
of like you know, hawkish, historically aggressive posture towards China.
Sees it as a competition. Has talked about the acquisition
of Greenland in this sort of like Cold War way
of this is a way to check China, and if

(01:05:13):
we don't take it, then China is going to take it.
And we need to make sure that we can own
the Arctic as the ice melts and these shipping lanes
open up as a result of the climate crisis. So
that's one way, and the other way would be to
have these sort of you know, more mutually beneficial, cooperative
relationships where you're not just directly competing with each other,

(01:05:35):
you know, around the world and all these proxy fights
and building up your military aggressively, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think it's still very undetermined which direction Trump
is going to decide to take.

Speaker 4 (01:05:46):
I don't know that he really knows either.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Yeah, and if somebody's going to shake it up like that.
It would have to be Trump because the entire Washington blob,
the national security establishment, has spent decades invested in American agemony.
That's where their careers are, it's where their lives, it's
where their professional lives are based. So they're gonna, you know,
they're gonna, they're gonna go down with with the ship.
I think that I think the key takeaway to me

(01:06:08):
from Trump's tweet about Zelenski. You know, Trump is at
which everybody says about him, whoever talks to him last,
you know, he's very he's he's very easy to be influenced. Yeah,
he is clearly surrounded right now by people who hate Zelenski, Yeah,
and have a hostility towards the whole Ukrainian project. Like

(01:06:29):
that's what's reflected in that tweet, which.

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
It's very like internet brained, yeah, take honestly.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Yeah. And so that so that that that is a
window into who's influencing him right now, which is was
suggestive of where this is heading.