2/5/25: Trump Wants US To 'Own' Gaza, Elon DOGE Kids Raid Treasury, GOP Caves On Tulsi - RFK & MORE! - Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 1 (00:33):
Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
We've got quite a packed show today, And Emily, I
was just thinking that, jording to Biden era, you can
actually kind of phone in the prep for these shows
sometimes because it wasn't a whole lot emanating from that
White House, not a whole lot, and also there wasn't
a whole lot going on outside of the lines. Yeah,
you just kind of they were just doing what they
were doing, and they're doing in genocide over here. They've

(00:57):
got to keep doing their genocide with this. You have
to be like, wait a minute, is that legal everything?
Then you look it up You're like, Nope, what they're
doing here is definitely not legal.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm gonna have to gonna have to flag that in
the hall.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
It's funny you say this. I had the exact same
thought this morning that under Biden, you know, this is
the norm. This is the pre Trump norm. It was
utterly predictable, and there would be something maybe out of
the ordinary every week and you'd think, ah, what a
crazy country. But it's back to the routine of you know,
twenty seventeen through twenty twenty one here in Washington, which

(01:31):
is that all of the different agencies and a lot
of people watching this are like, yeah, this is this
is what we voted for. All the agencies are in scrambling,
they're in panic. But as a journalist, it's a different rhythm,
that is for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Elon Musk used the word a revolution to describe what
he and his is it dojay or doggy? I think
we should go with I think it's o joj. Let's
go with Dojay.

Speaker 5 (01:53):
This isn't Ryan's TikTok odyssey involves him try to pronounced
that much.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Musk described what his Doggie Committee is doing as a revolution,
and I think that's an accurate way to put it.
And that doesn't mean that we won't continue pointing out
all the different federal laws that it's in violation of,
because you know, we're reporters and that's what we do.
This is here's a law. Here's what they're doing. They
clearly are so far beyond caring about what the law

(02:21):
is around this stuff that it almost feels trite to
bring it up.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
But we're going to keep doing that because of.

Speaker 5 (02:30):
Contempt for it.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
There. Yes, yes, it's a it's a revolution.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
And you also look ridiculous as Democrats, now do you
had democrats outside of USAID. You had the guy that
beat out AOC for the Jerry Connolly saying, you know,
if Elon Musk wants to run AID, then he should
get nominated and get confirmed in the Senate.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
And then Reuben Diego is like, if if Trump wants
to octi Gaza, he should come to the Senate and
ask for authorization for the use of military for like
what he should.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, but it's this is a revolution. They don't care.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
But anyway, we're going to talk about the substance and
the legality of all this. Of course, starting with Trump's
bombshell announcement that we are just going to own Gaza. Okay,
we'll get deeper deeper into that. We're going We're going
to talk to Nathan Tankers as an independent reporter who's
been talking to people inside the Treasury Department about what

(03:32):
the Doggy Committee's lanyard kids, or maybe they don't even
have lanyards, They just roll right in there. What these do,
what these little hacker kids are doing inside the Treasury Department,
and what they're not doing, what the what the risks
of that would be? I talked to a very senior
former Treasury official who's worked in this precise area last
night that I can shed a little light on this as well.

(03:54):
Trump is also saying that he's going to get rid
of the Department of Education, which again that would require
an Act of Congress. He's going to try to make
progress toward that through through executive action.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
GOP. What is that one on that thing?

Speaker 5 (04:10):
I do remember that well, basically Republican's cave to the
Republicans and.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
The Tulsi and RFK Junior cruising.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean this is they have complied with the
demands of Mecca. Bill Cassidy was really on the line
and could have yeah he's a doctor, but got actually
some interesting concessions out of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, Tulsea Gobert,
and RFK Junior's votes will be on the Senate floor
next week. They're likely to pass. Actually there. Their hardest

(04:39):
battle may have just been getting out of committee, which
is unusual for cabinet nominees. So we're going to break
down what happened in the Senate yesterday. We're also going
to talk about housing.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
Ryan New York Times had a fascinating analysis in a
story that it did with with Pro Publica where it
looked at housing price trends all around the country and
found that there's now a stark divergence that you're seeing
in the data when it comes to home prices in
places that face catastrophic climate threats and places like say

(05:14):
the Midwest or New England that do not, and in
the mid Atlantic to some degree as well.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
So if you own homes in those areas.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
They expect that you're going to continue to see your
housing wealth and your housing prices grow. If you own
homes in the other areas you're going to see your
values crash, which they're forecasting could lead to like five
million internal migrants over the next year, fifty five million
over the next like thirty years, like going to have

(05:44):
real structural implications for the population of the United States.

Speaker 5 (05:48):
Those have a fun Jasmine Crockett clip that we're going
to play and see if maybe.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Some never disappoints.

Speaker 5 (05:53):
No, no, see if we can maybe stave off some
white tears.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
She is either four against mediocre white people. Were not
quite clear, but we'll unpack it all.

Speaker 5 (06:03):
Yeah, we'll make sure to do that. Let's turn to
the White House now, where an absolutely wild cascade of
statements from President Donald Trump came during his meeting with
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahoo, who was in town
last week meeting with Donald Trump, and Trump rolled out
an absolutely shocking announcement actually was surprising even to his

(06:26):
own White House. Just before we roll this clip front
of the show, Phil Weigmann reported in Real Claire Politics,
quote after Trump made his announcement, even some senior administration
officials were surprised and still looking for answers. Quote that
was interesting, one told Real Claire Politics after the press
conference wrapped, asked what the plan would look like in practice,
the official replied, quote, I need to get clarity myself, Ryan.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
And so Trump in his press conference said that this
is not a decision he came to lightly. This is
some This is the results of great and extraordinary deliberation,
which is undercut by the idea that it came as
a surprise to senior administration officials and even seemed to
take net Nyaho a little bit by surprise, like it's
not clear how what how much of this came up

(07:12):
in their conversation. Because we're about to play you some
clips from their their little tete tet before the meeting,
during which Netnyah who cannot wipe the smile off of
his face, you'll notice that in the clips, and then
their stand up press conference afterwards, during which nen Yahou
looks a little bit shell shocked after getting news that

(07:35):
he appeared not to have expected and doesn't quite I
think know how to internalize or make of It'simir ben Gavie,
you know, super far right guy who was abandoning nen
Yahuo overstriking a ceasefire deal, tweeted Donald We're gonna have
a wonderful relationship like this is a guy who was himself,
like what, a convicted terrorist in Israel and has always

(07:59):
wanted to, you know, ethnically cleanse Gaza, and he now
sees trumping in his reflection. So let's roll a little
bit of this and then try to unpack how serious
he is and what the implications would be.

Speaker 6 (08:10):
The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to
Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a
demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every
building is down. They're living under fallen concrete. That's very
dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of

(08:32):
a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can
live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of
having to go back and do it again. The US
will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do
a job with it too. We'll own it and be
responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and
other weapons on the site. Level the site and get

(08:54):
rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an
economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and
housing for the people of the area. The real job
do something different, just state than.

Speaker 7 (09:12):
Really demanding a path towards a Palestinian state or any
other recognition.

Speaker 8 (09:16):
Everybody demanding one thing. You know what it is peace.
We want peace. We want people to stop being killed.
But everybody's demanding and he wants.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
So.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
Reporters had a lot of questions about that announcement that
we were going to take over Gaza. Among them was
will this involve US boots on the ground? And Trump said,
if if that's what it requires, then it will require.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
They also ask because there were there were there obviously is.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
Enormous amounts of reconstruction UH and demolition work and removal
of unexploded ordinance that needs to happen there, and so
there does need to be some displacement, either internally or
externally in the course of doing that. And so Trump
was a asked, Okay, you're taking over Gaza. How many
Palestinians do you expect will be removed from Gaza? Here's

(10:09):
what he said.

Speaker 9 (10:10):
How many people? Who you're thinking about all of them?

Speaker 6 (10:13):
I mean we're talking about probably a million seven people,
a million seven, maybe a million eight, but I think
all of them.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
So all of them and notice there, and a lot
of people have picked up on this. This is not
the first time that he has flagged Gaza's current population
at about one point seven million. It was two point
three million when it started. The public figures are that
just over sixty thousand were killed in the conflict. What
we know about conflict is that there are usually four

(10:42):
to five what they call indirect deaths for every direct
killing in a conflict. And the indirect deaths you can
just just use your imagination. These are people who die
from treatable diseases, die of drive down nutrition, die of dysentery,
or something something falls on them. Then they die an
accident on death in a way that they would not

(11:04):
have if they were not living in a war zone.
So sixty thousand times four to five you can imagine that. Okay,
So now the US is starting to admit that actually
several hundreds of thousands of people were killed here. But
then the final question, and then let's analyze this for
a bit, is what would the Palestinians be able to

(11:26):
return in this let's say fantasy scenario where somehow Trump
manages to remove all one point seven million people, which
we'll talk about how fantastical that idea is, But would
they be able to return? Here's trump would Palestines have
the right to return to Gaza if they left while
the rebuilding was appening.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
It would be my hope that we could do something
really nice, really good where they wouldn't want to return.
Why would they want to return? The place has been
the hell.

Speaker 10 (11:55):
It's been one of the meanest, one of the meanest,
toughest places on Earth, And right now it's I've seen
every picture from every angle better than.

Speaker 9 (12:07):
If I were there, and nobody can live there. You
can't live there.

Speaker 6 (12:11):
It's too dangerous for people. Nobody can go there. It's
too dangerous. Nobody wants to be there. Warriors don't want
to be there, Soldiers don't want to be there.

Speaker 9 (12:19):
How can you have people go back?

Speaker 6 (12:20):
You're saying go back into Gaza now, the same thing's
going to happen, It'll only be dead.

Speaker 9 (12:25):
The best way to do it is you go out
and you get beautiful.

Speaker 6 (12:29):
Open areas with the sunlight coming through, and you build
something nice, and they are.

Speaker 9 (12:35):
Not going to want to They are not going to
want to go back to Ghaza.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
So the second half of that clip there was actually
in response to a different question, which was would you
support Jewish settlements in Gaza, which is what Ben Gavie
and Smotrich and this kind of faction of settlers are
pushing for, And he was saying it's too dangerous for
them too. He's like, I'm not saying it's only too

(12:59):
dangerous for Palestinians, it's also too dang.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
So at least he's being consistent there now.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
The other the line he said, where I want to
make it so beautiful that they don't want to return,
has been bouncing around my head because I'm like, that
just doesn't make sense, and I think I finally unlocked it.
I think he means they're going to make whatever refugee
camp they send them to so beautiful and so amazing

(13:24):
and so wonderful.

Speaker 5 (13:25):
Well, he said they're going to have beautiful houses.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
Beautiful houses that they won't want to leave that area.
So he's not saying we're going to make Gaza so
amazing they won't want to come back, which makes no sense,
because of Gods is amazing, forget the heritage and everything else.
If it's amazing, he want to come back. He's saying
that wherever they send.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Them So.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
There are layers of this going on here, and the
kind of first one that we have to confront with
Trump always is how serious is this on the complete
total nonsense bluff spectrum to deadly serious plan that he's
going to execute on Where are you on this on

(14:09):
the Trump spectrum? There?

Speaker 5 (14:10):
I mean, I think you absolutely have to take him
seriously because he's speaking as though, on the one hand,
this is a fully fleshed out plan. Right, He's saying
he had answers to all of these particular questions.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
There are things that hescept not where they're going to go.

Speaker 5 (14:26):
Well, he's so, but that hinges on what he's saying
as an agreement in the works with other Arab nations,
which is already done on arrival, because Saudi Arabia has
said no. The Sovereign Wealth Fund that was announced in
what the last forty eight hours, I suppose is potentially
aimed at something like this.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
It seems to can redevelop God's I see right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
It seems like it was something that's cobbled together in
the last forty eight hours, maybe with input from Jared Kushner.
As Tara Palmry is reporting that you know, we covered
this at the time, it didn't get a lot of
pick up, but Kushner had sent something to the extent
this was last year that Gaza could be developed, that
it was like an amazing opportunity for real estate developers. Yeah, exactly, Riviera.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
So yeah, the Jordan and Egypt points are I think
are worth pausing on for a second, because Trump seems
to be so.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Trump is saying, and he's going to meet soon with
the King of Jordan. He talks.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
You know, you can get the as he calls him,
the General in Egypt CC and get him on the
phone when ever he once.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Trump is saying that he's he compared them to Mexico
and Canada.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
He's like, Mexico and Canada said they weren't gonna do
anything about their border, and then I threatened tariffs and boom,
all of a sudden, they're doing something about their border.
Couple things there. Mexico and Canada never said they wouldn't
do anything about their border.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
It was fairly easy.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
Oh, you want to send ten thousand National Guard to
our border and you'll back off these terriff threats.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Okay, fine, we will do that.

Speaker 4 (15:49):
That's a different concession than something that both CC and.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
The Royal family and Jordan believe would lead to their toppling.
Think about this.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
They're much smaller countries than we are, and you're asking
them to take a million people each. And these million
people are more affiliated politically with Muslim brotherhood factions, which
the hash of Mites in Jordan and the military and
Egypt have done everything they can to suppress. So now

(16:21):
you're just you're empowering them and destabilizing your country. So
you're asking these rulers with threats of whatever economic threats
that Trump is going to make on the one hand,
and carrots on the other, we'll pay this, we'll do this,
We'll give you all this money from the World Bank
im and we'll build this. What does that mean to

(16:43):
a ruler who thinks that the end result of accepting
the deal is that within some period of time they
will be overthrown, They will be out of power. Rulers
are willing to take deals that are harmful to their
populations if they think it's going to extend their power.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Like that's just basic kind of power politics.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
So Trump is in a Trump thinks they're just being
stubborn and that he can conjole them, but it is
existential for.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
Them, and they actually also know. And this is worth
pausing on maybe one of the most obvious points here.
The reason that Trump is asking the question, why would
you want to go back? It's a place of death
and destruction? Well, they know that, they have known that
for decades and they have not left. The whole point
is the land. The entire fight is over the specific

(17:36):
piece of land. So to say that why would they
want to go back? I mean, this is the question
that they have been answering definitively for decades. So in
terms of in the pragmatic terms of what Donald Trump
thinks will actually happen here, when you have Tony Blincoln
saying just a month ago, less than a month ago,

(17:59):
that three quarters of the Hamas fighters have already been replaced.
They've already replaced three quarters of the people that Hamas
has lost. You have a population that is clinging to
the land and has been for years, for generations, over
and over again, and a militant government that's US troops

(18:19):
on the ground. There's no other way to put it.
The other Arab countries wouldn't be able to just peel
the population of Gaza away from Gaza without violence. There's
absolutely no way that this happens without incredible violence. And
likely if Donald Trump says we quote own the Gaza strip,
if he says the US is just going to come

(18:40):
in and take ownership and he thinks he can make
a deal, this will be US troops. This would be
kids from the Midwest, from everywhere, boots on the ground
in Gaza, peeling people away from the land that they
have spilled generations of blood to stay on.

Speaker 4 (18:59):
If they wanted to rebuild Gaza, Like, there are hundreds
of thousands of residences that are still habitable, Like the
entire thing is not on ahabitals. But let's say you
do need a million people to go somewhere else. You
could find some housing internally within Gaza for some portion
of those. But there is another country that is right

(19:22):
there that could take people for the time period.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
And that country's name is Israel.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
And that country also happens to be the one that
made it uninhabitable. So if they're serious here about that, like,
they could do that, and there's a step toward peace
and coexistence. But I think it's worth underscoring a valid
point that Trump makes and that is the absolute level
of destruction. And Witkoff talked about this as well outside

(19:53):
of the White House. So let's and you can see
the real estate developer in him as he's talking about
So let's roll eight A two here, and then I
want to skip ahead on something go ahead.

Speaker 11 (20:04):
When the President talks about cleaning it out, he talks
about making it habitable. And this is a long range plan.
They've dug tunnels underneath there that have basically degraded the
stone that you make that would form foundations. We have
to examine that. You do it with borings, you do
it with subterranean surveys, and this guy knows real it's

(20:29):
years on top of years. The disposal effort in Gaza
is we estimate three to five years just to dispose
of all the things before you can look down but
believe beneath the surface of the soil, and then before
you get a master plan done. And the President is
intent on getting it all done correctly. So to me,

(20:50):
it is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they
might be back in five years. That's just preposterous and
he's just taking common sense.

Speaker 4 (21:01):
So a few months ago I spoke to a un
official whose job it was to do ordinance removal after
the twenty fourteen war in Gaza, and what he described. First,
first of all, there are not a whole lot of
people able to do this in the world, like there's you.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Know, small teams that specialized work.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Second of all, he described it as painstakingly laborious stuff.
So in general, as he was describing it to me,
and I've since been able to confirm this with others.
The munitions that Israel uses, oftentimes five to ten percent
of those under the best of circumstances, do not explode
upon impact.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
They are not operating in the best of circumstances.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
They're operating in this dense urban environment, which means you're
going to have a much higher failure rate, which means
you're going to have unexploded ordinance everywhere around around Gaza.
Because if you know, the numbers are absolutely breathtaking when
it comes to the amount of metric tons that have
been dropped on gays. And so if you take ten

(22:08):
to twenty percent of that and assume that that is unexploded,
like that's that's the task. And he said that these
are actually much more stable than you would think that
doesn't probably wouldn't give me a whole lot more comfort,
Coli comfort if it was in my own courtyard or
in my bedroom. He said, For instance, they pulled one
out of a kitchen, like it came to the roof,

(22:28):
second floor, through the kitchen floor, and just getting that
one single unexploded bomb out of that kitchen took them
weeks because you got to first, you got to clear
the door out, and you have to do all this
gently because while they are stable, they become destabilized if
if a bulldozer hits them or something else significant. And
so our one of our correspondents in Gaza, Abubaker a

(22:51):
bet who's been on this program a bunch of times.
So yesterday he tried to get to Gaza City, couldn't
get a ride, ended up in these a bunch on
his Twitter agencies, ended up walking and took him like
three and a half hours to walk to Gaza City.
And we can roll a four here just to get
a sense of the destruction. And at the end of
this clip he stumbles on an unexploded mine. Just to

(23:14):
just to underline that Trump's point that this is an
extraordinarily dangerous situations let's play a four.

Speaker 5 (23:20):
Here.

Speaker 12 (23:21):
Here we are, it's just seven in the morning. Came
Gaza City where all you can see is just total destruction.
There are some buildings that have been destroyed during the genocide.

Speaker 9 (23:39):
So I think I found a line.

Speaker 12 (23:42):
Yeah, so I'm gonna walk away fixed. Oh my god,
what this sound is?

Speaker 4 (23:52):
And we often get questions, by the way, about Aba
Baker's British accent. He was a before the October seventh.
His passion was doing journalism around football, European football, and
so he picked up his British accent. He's never left
gods in his life, picked up a British accent watching

(24:12):
British footballers. But so you see there he's just stumbling
along and oh, there's a mind like that that does
have to be that does have to be dealt with.
And I had the sense throughout this that Israel knew
that that part of the carpet bombing of the entire

(24:33):
thing of goz It was to make it uninhabitable, was
to produce a reality that left you only bad options
for the Palestinians, and one of them being all right,
what a shame, love to have you stay. But now
it's completely uninhabitable, You're going to have to leave. But
like I said, if he was serious, there is a

(24:55):
there is a plan where five hundred thousand, two million
people can stay. Another one hundred get relocated inside Gaza.
Those are the workers who are involved in this reconstruction.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
What's Trump's idea is going to kick all the Palestinians
out and then bring like Indian or Thai construction workers
in Like that doesn't make any sense. You've got people
who could do the work, and then you could have
the others internally displaced in the Negev desert or elsewhere
in like in settlement camps, and with a promise that

(25:32):
they're going to return when it's done. And that promise
backed up by the prospect of a path towards statehood
and normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
So all of that is pushing in the same direction.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
Instead, instead of Trump getting a Saudi Israel peace deal,
in this path, he's more likely to see the Egyptian
and Jordanian ones unravel, like they will stop recognizing Israel
if they keep pushing this.

Speaker 5 (26:02):
That's a great point because this plan is I think,
on the one hand hyper pragmatic and not pragmatic at all,
Like that's the tension between this. On the one hand,
he's saying he's making this very obvious point that everyone
dances around, which is, okay, if this is a ceasefire,
we're about to repeat a traffic cycle. He's making that point,
everyone dances around it. But on the one hand, that's

(26:24):
absolutely true, and it's from the sort of pragmatic lens
of a non idea logue, and so he made that point.
On the other hand, the idea of peeling people off
the land that they fought generations to keep, there's nothing
pragmatic about it unless you're willing to actually do a
significant A Rock style nation building operation in the Gaza strip,

(26:45):
which is what about the size of Las Vegas. If
you want to go and do that and then have
the US own a strip of land in the Middle
East that is sacred to many many people, you're asking
for again, generational nation building. And so it's exploded all
of these typical I guess fault lines of what MAGA

(27:07):
means to the Republican Party, but beyond that, what MAGA
actually means, like to the American people, to the people
who voted for Donald Trump. Is it about the sort
of expansionism imperialism, or is it about actually, like quote
unquote America First, Josh Holly right away told The New
York Times, I don't think it's the best use of
US resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza.

(27:28):
I'd prefer that to be spent in the United States. First.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
That's the logic of MAGA.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
So maybe which rows out of the ashes of the
Iraq occupation exactly exactly.

Speaker 5 (27:37):
I mean, what about all of the tunnels. Just let's
just take the point that you hear from Yahoo and yeah,
all like, what does it look like if Hamas says
you are not taking us.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
And if you tell them they're not right, If if
you tell them right out front, okay, we're kicking you
out and you're never coming back, then of course they're
going to fight you.

Speaker 5 (28:00):
Yeah. But this brings us to your original point, which
is how serious is what Donald Trump laid out yesterday
And my impression is that this is something he's thought
about for a while. With Kushner, they've kicked around this
sort of like.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Galaxy brain, real estate brain.

Speaker 5 (28:14):
Right, Yeah, it's sort of been kicked around and then
just in the last few days they decided, oh, who's coming,
we can like actually really do this. Let's see what
we can actually put together. Because again, like actual people
in the White House, senior officials were caught off guard
by this. That much is very clear. So whether this
is a starting point tariff style, twenty five percent tariff

(28:35):
style or teriff style starting point is unclear. But Ryan,
it's the same thing with the tariffs. I think he
should be taken seriously because he's not He has not
an ideal log. He's not ideologically committed to one outcome
or the other. So when he does these negotiations, he

(28:56):
could kind of land wherever he thinks it works for him.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
And confusing the situation further.

Speaker 4 (29:02):
He's now talking, as of this morning, his most explicitly
about reaching a deal that he will celebrate with Iran,
which obviously cannot happen if he engages in full on
ethnic cleansing in Gaza. So let's put up a three
here where he's talking about the role that Iran negotiations play.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Here, Iran and their proxys who threaten to retaliate.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Against you and your team by killing you guys or
taking out solo.

Speaker 6 (29:34):
Well, they haven't done that, and that would be a
terrible thing for them to do, not because of me.
If they did that, they would be obliterated. It would
be the end I've left instructions. If they do it,
they get obliterated, there won't be anything left and they
shouldn't be able to do it.

Speaker 9 (29:53):
And Biden should have said that, but he never did.
I don't know what. Lack of intelligence perhaps, but he
never said it.

Speaker 6 (30:01):
If that happens to a leader or close to a leader, frankly,
if you had other people involved, also, you would call
for total obliteration of a state that did it.

Speaker 9 (30:12):
That would include Iran.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
So that's the shot. So here's the chaser, and we
can maybe add this. In posts on.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Truth social this morning, Trump says this quote, I want
Iran to be a great and successful country, but one
that cannot have a nuclear weapon. Reports that the United States,
working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran
into smithereens all caps are greatly exaggerated.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
In other words, he's referring to his own comments the
entire bluff.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yes, I would much prefer a verified nuclear peace agreement,
and this is all caps. So that's VNPA, which will
let Iran peacefully grow and prosper. We should start working
on it immediately and have a big Middle East celebration,
celebrations capitalized when it is signed and completed.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
God bless the Middle East.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
And so here you have Trump, who has been who
has hired an enormous number of people who want to
reach a piece deal with Iran and get back into
the nuclear deal that Obama struck, that Trump ripped up
in his first term. Here you have him the most
explicitly stating it outright that that is a goal of his.

(31:25):
And it comes after he threatened to obliterate them basically
if they kill him, which fair right, you say, Look,
you kill me, I've left instructions that.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
You're dead too.

Speaker 5 (31:37):
Yeah, it's a again, it's a hell of a bluff.
But it all came on the heels of this New
York Times report on Monday that because of all of
the insanity going on sort of ended up being buried
in the news cycle. The Times reported quote new intelligence
about Iran's nuclear program has convinced American officials that a
secret team of the country scientist is exploring a faster,

(31:58):
if cruder approach to developing a toom weapon if Tehran's
leadership decides to race for a bomb, according to current
and former American officials. Now, if you are like many people,
vague New York Times reporting about nuclear program sends a
chill up your spine because you just don't know if
you can trust it. But they are saying, essentially the
timeline could be severely minimized or significantly minimized based on

(32:23):
these new efforts, down to something like a month if
Iron wanted to enrich uranium and have a crude nuclear weapon.
So Trump is then asked, in this context, that was
the broader thing that was happening when he gets these
questions from Peter Doocy.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
And scientifically or practically, whether that's true, we don't know,
but strategically we can see the internal logic. The deterrent
that Iran had up until recently was it's massive sprawl
of proxies throughout the region that could threaten Israel and
threaten you know, US forces in Iraq or Syria if

(33:00):
if Iran was attacked. Plus it's what they believe to
be sophisticated air defenses. Israel apparently massively degraded their air defenses.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
With that counter strike.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Leaving them significantly exposed to future strikes and their their
own proxies.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Are significantly degraded.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Has has been in particular as well as as well
as maas the who the these are still you know,
very much capable of firing missiles out of their mountains,
and that will be the case for the foreseeable future,
no matter what Trump wants to do about it.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
So with those uh, with with those kind of.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
Thereo's protections so to speak, kind of beaten down strategically,
you can understand why they say, okay, well all we
have left then is a race towards a nuclear weapon,
because they look around and they're like, who's not around? Like, oh, Gaddafi?
Gaddafi struck a nuclear deal not long after that he
was ousted.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Who is around?

Speaker 4 (34:03):
Kim Jong un is around, and he for no other
reason than he has a nuclear weapon. So you can
understand the logic at least, even if we don't necessarily
have to believe the precise contours of the reporting.

Speaker 5 (34:14):
Yeah, I'm trying to imagine Gadafi with a nuclear weapon,
what you'd.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
Be imaginings as a man who's going to die of
natural causes.

Speaker 5 (34:23):
Yeah, that's right. So before we wrap this up, it's
also absolutely important to note that Trump was asked about quote.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
And by the way, Libya would be so much better
off than it is now.

Speaker 5 (34:36):
The real Middle Eastern riviera is Trump is now saying
Goza will.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Be Libya completely destroyed by the US and NATO, like
absolutely ravaged.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
Well on that point, though, I have to mention that
Trump was asked about quote, Judea and Samaria, about his
ideological disposition what he believes. If he believes that you
in Samaria, that Israel has a biblical right to them,
And we can put this vo up on the screen here.
This is from the West Bank Trump essentially, this is

(35:11):
a five. Trump essentially was saying, well, you know, we're
going to make a big announcement about that in the
weeks ahead. So Ryan as the.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
West four weeks or something three or four weeks.

Speaker 5 (35:23):
Yeah, yeah, so as the West Bank is now these
are startling images. If you're listening to it, you're seeing
you know, the like familiar this is Gaza, but before
you're seeing the familiar skyline of the West Bank with
all kinds of explosions. That is huge and gets another
one of those things that is keeps getting buried in

(35:43):
these news cycles. But in a matter of weeks we
could have some announcement that Trump also wants to do
something significant, major with the West Bank.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Yeah, he's saying he'll decide whether or not he's going
to allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Which, again,
you're not getting a piece deal. You're not getting a
normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, you're not getting a deal
with Iran. You might lose your deals that you already
have with Egypt and Jordan if if you do that.
But Jal Madison's widow, Miriam, had a hundred plus million

(36:16):
dollars and asked him in return to allow for the
annexation of the West Bank. Like that's as shocking as
it is to say that that's the.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Thing that happened.

Speaker 4 (36:26):
In twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five, and so
he may give it to them. And as an update,
my colleague get Drops Site News Jeremy Skhill has an
official statement from Bassam Naim, a spokesperson for Hamas, in
response to Trump's claim. He says the US plan to
seize God's and remove the Palestinians quote is a crime
against humanity and a reinforcement of the law of the

(36:49):
jungle at the international level.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
He goes on to say, the problem.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
Of reconstruction is not in the presence of the Palestinian
people on their land, but rather in the continuation of
the Zion occupation and the stifling siege of the Gaza
Strip for more than seventeen years with American support unquote,
the name called for quote urgent regional and international action
to put an end to these malicious plans. Scayhell Wright

(37:13):
says reports emerge at Nantahau intends to sabotage future phases
of the ceasefire deal. NAIM reiterated Hamasa's position that it
intends to abide by the terms.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
We demand that the mediators, especially the United States, oblige
the occupation to implement the ceasefire agreement in its three
stages without procrastination or manipulation. We are committed to implementing
the agreement as long as the occupation commits to it
in any manipulation and implementing the agreement may cause it
to collapse. So interesting statement from Hamas because there are

(37:46):
some people who think that Trump's bluffing here. To just
make sure that the agreement actually does continue to be implemented,
we'll see.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Turning now back to.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
Why in which I was I was saying a moment ago,
Chris Murphy said, oh god, the thing is just a
distraction for what we're going to talk about in the
next couple of blocks.

Speaker 5 (38:07):
We can do both at the same time.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
We can we can walk and we can shoot gum.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
So here is President Donald Trump being asked whether Elon
Musk is a total rogue agent or not as he's
as he's going about this doggie revolution and Kilan Musk.

Speaker 9 (38:23):
How often are you talking to him? And how there
have been ideas.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
That he's brought to you that he said, oh no,
this is going a little too far.

Speaker 9 (38:30):
Well, many ideas, but look he's done a great job.

Speaker 6 (38:33):
Look at all the fraud that he's found in this
US aid it's a disaster. What the people radical left lunatics.
They have things that nobody would have believed.

Speaker 9 (38:46):
The whole thing with.

Speaker 6 (38:47):
One hundred million spent on you know what, with money
going to all sorts of groups that shouldn't deserve to
get any money with the money, I'd like to see
what the kickbacks are. How much money has been kicked back.
Who would spend that kind of money to some of
the things that you read about and I read about,
and I see every night of the news and every
morning when I read the papers.

Speaker 9 (39:06):
Who would spend money for them?

Speaker 6 (39:08):
I would say this, the people that get all that money,
are they kicking it back to the people that gave
it from government?

Speaker 9 (39:16):
No, that's to me, very very corrupt.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
They're really those engineers that Elon Musk has helping him
brsy young as nineteen years old.

Speaker 13 (39:24):
Good.

Speaker 9 (39:24):
They're very smart, though, Peter. They're like you, they're very
smart people.

Speaker 13 (39:27):
Thank you.

Speaker 10 (39:29):
Has he Have you met any of these guys?

Speaker 12 (39:31):
No?

Speaker 9 (39:32):
I haven't seen them. They work actually out of the
White House. They're smart people.

Speaker 14 (39:36):
Unlike what they do in the control towers, where we
need smart people. We should use some of them in
the control towers where we were putting people that were
actually intellectually deficient.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Democrats, of course, are reacting quite angrily to this. Let's
roll some of them.

Speaker 15 (39:52):
So today Leader Jeffries and I are joining together to
push legislation to prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Departments
payment systems and protect Americans across the country. Our bill
aims to do a few simple things. One to deny

(40:14):
access to special government employees, employees that don't have to
disclose their conflicts of interest or any other ethic agreements.
Two to deny access to anyone with conflicts of interest
or lack of appropriate clearance. And three include personal tax
information into existing privacy protections. We call our legislation stop

(40:38):
the steal.

Speaker 7 (40:39):
They are raiding the government, attempting to steal taxpayer money.

Speaker 16 (40:47):
We don't pledge allegiance to the billionaires. We don't pledge
allegiance to Elon Musk. We don't pledge allegiance to the
creepy twenty two year olds working for Elon Musk. Repluge
allegiance to the United States of America.

Speaker 17 (41:05):
Goddamn is shut down the citate. We are war anytime,
anytime a person can pay two hundred and fifty million
dollars into a campaign and they've be given access for
access to the Department of Treasury of the United States
of America, we are and war. Hi, thank you, We

(41:30):
will see you in the courts, in Congress, in the streets.
Elon Musk is a Nazi lopall baby.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
The thing that has Democrats most alarmed is what's going
on at the Treasury Department, and we can put up
this next element. Wired has been doing some really good
reporting on who is actually involved in this. This DOJ
committee is a group of kids that range in age
from nineteen to twenty five. If we can get an
Nathan Tankas on the line, we're going to talk to him.

Speaker 5 (42:01):
Unfortunately, he just had to cancel the he's gotting a
problem with this internet connection.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
All right, No, no, no, Nathan Tankas, he's been hacking him.

Speaker 5 (42:09):
Yeah, he's been working triple over time basically in the
last several days.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
Yes, so Nathan, Thankas, and we could send people over
to his his newsletter, which is called Notes on the
Crisis or crisisnes dot com. He what he has been reporting,
based on Treasury sources and which the Treasury so far
has been denying, is that the DOJ team has what's

(42:37):
called quote, read and write access inside the bowels of
the Treasury Department. So very quickly Elon Musk's team went
directly for the pipes, said, okay, who is pressing the buttons,
Who's who's cutting the checks? Like, who's who's after After

(42:58):
everything gets so, Congress approves the spending directs it. The
agencies then confirm that this is how Congress intended to
direct it, and then they tell somebody to send the checks.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Musk is like, how is that? Where's the system that
that is happening.

Speaker 4 (43:17):
They went to this system and the bureaucrat who is
in charge of that, David Leick is that his name.
He'd been a Treasury official since nineteen eighty nine, and
he said, no, you cannot have direct access to this system.
They insisted, and he resigned in protests, which really sent

(43:41):
a shock through the Treasury department. Spoke with a former
very senior Treasury official yesterday who worked directly with this guy,
and he said he's the most like small c conservative bureaucrat.
The absolute definition of a civil servant could be frustrating
at times, because he's going to tell you, chapter and

(44:02):
verse what the statute is that you need to comply
with for him to do the thing that you're asking
him to do. And you can imagine Elon Musk does
not want to hear anything about statutes and laws.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
He just wants he just wants access.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
This is the guy who whose job it has been
over the last decade to do what are called the
extraordinary measures when we pierce the debt limit, which we
already have, like it was in January we went we
went through the debt limit. We're now in the period
of what's called extraordinary measures, which means there isn't enough

(44:41):
money in.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
The treasury to basically pay everything.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
So you and anybody who lives on the margins knows
exactly how this works.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
You move, you move things around. You got this money
coming in.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
Here's what's the latest I can pay this bill? What
are the what are the late fees on this one?
So I can move of this. So you're just trying
to keep your head above water. And so right now
they call it extraordinary measures. It's the treasury is just
trying to keep its head above water and make sure
that the must pay bills get paid.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
And the must pay bills.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
Are the treasury bonds and treasury like instruments because those
are the collateral for the entire global financial system.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
So if you are due.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Cash for your Treasury note and it doesn't come, then
now your counterparty is screwed. That counterparty was counting on
this thing that has never broken in the system. So
this guy, as we've gone through debt ceiling crises under Obama,

(45:51):
an under Trump, and now a new one and then Biden,
then a new one under Trump. This guy has been
the one that's made sure that all the payments have
kept flowing, and people say it's like a magician. Like
the his ability to do this is it leaves people
utterly amazed. He's the one that has always briefed Treasury
and also briefed Congress about how this is going, and

(46:14):
everyone has always said, like God does just absolutely incredible
job of it. The X date they're estimating is about
six months from now, like we can move money around
until then. In April obviously, when you guys saw send
your checks in to the I R s, we're going
to see a big plus up in the bank accounts
and so that, and then June there's more money that

(46:35):
comes in with the extensions and stuff like that and
corporate corporate taxes, and so they think that maybe we've
got till July ish, but we're not sure. That's when
it's run meticulously. So now this guy's gone, and let's
hope there's deputies and whoever's left know how to move
this around.

Speaker 5 (46:54):
That's whoever's left whoever's left.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
That's kind of an aside.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
The other point that this that this your official made
to me is that and it's one that you have
probably already figured out the code and the hardware and.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
The software for this.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
These pipes that are the most important pipes in the
global financial system are many decades old. Congress just does
not has not appropriated money to redesign the pipes using
modern technology. So my late great aunt Mimi, she started

(47:34):
coding in the fifties and sixties and was doing some
of it for the BA and for the government. Like
it's the code that she was touching in the sixties
is still there today, like sixty years later.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
Incredible.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
And so these nineteen year olds who have probably you know,
they were taught about this stuff, they don't have I
guess it's cobal they don't and they're I'm sure they're brilliant.
Like these these kids, like one of them was the
one who won the contest being able to figure out
Julius Caesar's father in laws like Roman texts that were burned,

(48:14):
Like he figured out using AI to like read some
of these things. Like you know, some of the smartest
people on the planet. I'm sure, being that smart doesn't
mean you won't make mistakes. So according to Tankas and others,
these kids now have the ability to push new code into.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
The system here, which.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Is utterly alarming to any everybody who's familiar with the system,
because if you do it wrong and not even necessarily wrong,
like you could do it right, but like the system
is such that it is that it can't handle this
code that you've just pushed in there, and it breaks,
like you don't know how it breaks it, where it
breaks it, how to fix it. And then now you

(49:06):
don't know who didn't get paid. Now, in your effort
to clean up fraud, waste and abuse, you might end
up costing the government so much extra money getting sued
and then also trying to figure out which payments didn't
go out and then being liable for all of the
downstream consequences for the payments.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
That didn't go out.

Speaker 4 (49:28):
And there's also reporting that some of what the coders
are trying to put in reduces visibility of what Musk's
Doggie team is doing here.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
So in other words, this is.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
They're trying to pick a fight around the Empowerment Control Act,
like they've been very clear about that Empowerment Control Act
was brought in in the nineteen seventies by Congress to
try to put a check on Richard Nixon, who was
claiming that he, as the executive, had the power to
just stop a payment. Congress says, we're going to fund

(50:08):
this bridge building project over here. He signs that into law,
and then he turns around and says, actually, we're not
going to do that. And Congress is like, no, that's
clearly not constitutional. You're the executive, you would execute our laws.
And just to be clear, here's the Empowerment Control Act.
Here are the circumstances under which you can do this.
They're very carved out. Otherwise you just have to spend

(50:31):
the money.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Russ vote.

Speaker 5 (50:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
The Republicans believe that the Empowerment Control Act is unconstitutional
and they want a court fight. But in the meantime,
Elon Musk is saying, Okay, well, if we're going to
stop payments and these bureaucrats aren't going to let us
because it's illegal, we just need to take the keys
from them and start pressing the buttons ourselves and let
it play out in court.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, somewhat, let it play out in court, but also.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Prevent it from getting to court in some cases if
there's no visibility into who blocked the payment, who the
payment was intended for. So a scenario that people have
laid out. So let's say a member of Congress says,
all right, this I want in my district this homeless
shelter to be built and to get you know, fifty

(51:19):
million dollars from the federal government, and then I'll vote
for your spending package that passes into law, the President
signs it.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
It's right there in the law. Treasury Department then says.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Okay, here's the project that they're talking about. Here's the
EI in of this of this organization we checked out.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
They're legit.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
All this tracks fifty million dollars, payment goes out. They
send it to this system which is supposed to be.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Separate from politics.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
Like half of it's in West Virginia, half of it's
in Maryland, like some of some of it is in DC,
but most of it is out in West Virginia, Maryland.
And then they just they're like, okay, e I, and
here it is. You know, payment goes What must team
is trying to do is go in there and say, actually,
I don't think we want to fund that.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Homeless shelter and just stop it.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
So you either then get a court challenge when the
homeless shelter realizes didn't get his money, or they're like,
we just never got paid and they don't know why.
And when you ask why, then there might not be
an answer because it might be like, well, we don't
know it's been approved. We don't get there eventually, and
so the court might be like, well, come back to
us when you've got some evidence that you're not going

(52:31):
to get this.

Speaker 5 (52:32):
It'll definitely make it to court though in the first place.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Eventually something's going to get to court. Something has to.

Speaker 5 (52:39):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think probably sooner rather later. Let's
put the next element up on the screen, because it
gets to the point that you were making Ryan about
who is in charge here. This is a meme that says,
who are these little boys and why are they in
charge of our money? And it's running down the guys
who are behind all of this, and they are young,

(53:00):
but clearly to Ryan's point, brilliant it says, the US
Treasury is usually run by grown up grown ups. Mama's
come get your babies out of our government, you know, Ryan,
I Actually I get that impulse. I think there have
been people of similar age groups that have been behind

(53:20):
some of the most important and like actually well respected
political movements.

Speaker 13 (53:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (53:28):
Uh, and in throughout history all the founding fathers are
actually kind of young. Not all of them, of course, very.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Young.

Speaker 5 (53:37):
But to that point, you also flagged this next element.
We could put this Andrew Tate post up. This is
something that one of them retweeted from Andrew Tate where he's.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
I missed this. I didn't flag this. Somebody else said
it's interesting.

Speaker 5 (53:55):
Okay. So, yeah, the majority Filipino areas of the UK,
it must look and feel British. This is, by the way,
from January of twenty twenty five, the majority Indian areas
of the UK must like can feel British. He's basically saying, immigrate,
expect to adapt to British culture, no matter how small
the norm. We like quiet Sunday mornings, problem leave. And
what's interesting about that?

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Ryan, So Gavin Klegger is one of these kids.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
Yes, tweet What's interesting about that, I think is Ryan
the even just like openly retweeting Andrew Tait totally common
among young men. By the way, like horrifying to people
in Washington. Not uncommon among young men who are trending

(54:40):
further and further right. But yeah, not one of these
young men is like holding the keys to like a
significant portion of government and potentially outside the boundaries of
the law.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah right, Yeah, this is.

Speaker 4 (54:59):
So like, you know, we just talked about the Framers,
some of the Framers being very young when they built
the Constitution. I've spent my entire life being lectured by
the right about how brilliant the design of our constitution
is and our checks and balances. And to now be
told you, all.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Right, get the Hall monitors out of here.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
Musk has good ideas and smart kids, so he's just
going to clean this mess up. And this is what
I voted for. Is kind of, you know, preposterously disorienting.
It's like either you believe in representative democracy or you don't.
And Musk very obviously does not. Like he's been He

(55:44):
very much seems to be in one of those Curtis
Jarvin camps. I know, Curtis yarm is all over the map,
but in general, there's this like techno feudalist idea that
we know better it should.

Speaker 5 (55:57):
Be run as this is directly from Curtis Yarvin, who
was here for inaugural festivities, by the way, who believes
in I think techno feudalism is a good word. I
think he would say, almost like a corporate monarchy, that
the United States should be controlled by a single monarch
and run like a corporation CEO style. And it's something
that gets kicked on, kicked around a lot in online

(56:20):
right circles, the same places that Elon Musk seems to
dwell when he's spending time on the internet. So it's
not impossible that there's an actual sort of ideological strain
being pulled from that into Musk's mind and the mind
of some of these kids that seem to be pretty
I shouldn't even call them kids. I mean they're adults,

(56:41):
but they're young and they haven't been in DC long
at all. One funny thing I saw being passed around
like Capitol Hill circles is like people have said about
the twenty five year olds running the government, wait until
they find out about Capitol Hill. That's very funny because
twenty five year olds have been running the government for
a while and.

Speaker 4 (56:58):
For all those Although one of the one of the
versions that I saw of that going around was they
were saying, wait, wait, un till they find out about
the rest of the government.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
And that's actually not accurate.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
It is one hundred percent true that if you go
around Capitol Hill, it's there, you know, people are twenty
five and under and hello to everybody on Capitol Hill.
We have like I don't know how often you go
to the House office buildings anymore. I practically have to
stay out of there's so many like breaking points as viewers.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
To everybody there is twenty five and under.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
But in the actual government, you know, the Department's Education, Treasury,
et cetera. Those those career people, they some of them
are very young, but they stick around for twenty thirty years,
which is what's so frustrating.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
The Musk too.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
It's like the only twenty thousand people have taken this
fake buyout offer, so far out of the millions that
they sent it out to, right.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
Right, Okay, well, let's take it this next. This is
B six. There are sleep pods going around. They're not
I think they're poorly described as pods because I looked
into it and essentially what this is a wrap for
a mattress that does seem pretty technologically impressive. It's it's
sort of like a sheet you put over your mattress

(58:11):
that can monitor your your they can track your sleep basically,
and it can.

Speaker 4 (58:16):
Well there's no mattress. You have to put it over
a mattress, So where's the mattress. Don't need a mattress to.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
Yeah, presumably they have mattresses in there, which is some
of the reporting is that yes, they have been bringing
basically like bedroom stuff into some of these buildings so
that they can sleep and do this like Silicon Valley style,
this hostile takeover Silicon Valley style, which I actually think
is interesting Ryan because well, I mean for a lot
of reasons, but from the perspective of like movement conservatives,

(58:45):
they wanted a lot of this to be like done
by conservative movement lawyers. Like first of all, this was
always a fantasy that you would actually have this generational
opportunity to start slashing and burning, and to do it
without regard or even with content for the sacred norms
that the political establishment revers. Like it's a literal fantasy

(59:07):
of the conservative movement, just like overturning Row, Like, nobody
ever thought they would actually have the opportunity to do that,
or most people didn't really think they would have the
opportunity to do that. Now Donald Trump has it. It's
in the hands of an industry that just a couple
of years ago Conservatives were at war with. But because
of the vibe shift, you're able to take the pluck

(59:28):
the you know, maga people out of Silicon Valley world,
import them into DC and they have the support of
the conservative movement, at least for now. So it's like
this hostile takeover that was always planned to be ideologues
from the conservative movement now being done by an industry
or members of an industry denisms of an industry that
was decried by the conservative movement that was at war

(59:50):
with the conservative movement. So it's it's really an odd tension.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
And it's because it's really what it is is a
dual personality movement. It's whatever whatever Musk says is good
and whatever Trump says is good, and when the twain
don't meet, we'll find out, you know, who can win.
But as of now, Trump seems to be Musk seems
to be taking the lead. Like over the weekend he's

(01:00:15):
like I put us a I d in the wood chipper,
and then on Monday, Trump's like, yeah, it's okay, you
can do that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
So it's like Musk is very much.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
Asking you know, moving first, and then you know he's
asking for forgiveness rather than permission what seems to be clear.
And then you know how much does Trump need him,
care about him, like fear him because of his money,
be amused by him. I don't know, we're gonna find
out what and what happens if they do break the system,

(01:00:51):
treasury system and the payments start.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
I'm not going out what happens if now.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
I don't think we're gonna have a debt ceialing situation
six months.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
From now, because I think Trump will just ignore it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
He'll say there is no such thing as a dead ceiling,
like if you know he's not inclined to follow laws,
it seems so Yeah, at that point Basin will be like, okay,
I agree, which you know, when Obama was president, I
argued that the fourteenth Amendment means that there is actually

(01:01:25):
no death ceiling because the fourteenth Amendment says very specifically,
the debts of the federal government shall not be questioned.

Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
So it's similar. No, I mean seriously, some of these
are legitimate constitutional questions that need to be worked out
in the courts. Like if russ Bote were here and
he was arguing with us over impoundment, he would make
a case that is substantial, and we may disagree with it.
I'm honestly fairly persuaded by it, but either way, it's
raises a legitimate constitutional question about separation of powers and

(01:01:55):
how we have just by norms allowed the government to
sort of be in a state of inertia in the
executive branch because a lot of the just didn't get
challenged and Congress increasingly relies on the executive branch to
go through its power. But speaking of separation of powers,
the US eternity, the US Attorney this is b seven
initially this this is a weird subplot that we can

(01:02:16):
get into maybe more next week, but said that our
initial review of the evidence presented to US indicates that
certain individuals and or groups have committed acts that appear
to violate the law and targeting DOGE employees. So he's
kind of agreeing with Musk there, But then at the
same time, it's just unclear of where this is really

(01:02:38):
where this is really going this is the US Attorney
for the District of Columbia region. Because there were conflicting
I would say, there's conflicting information about what he's actually
talking about there.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
It could be straight up death threats, and I've seen yeah,
I think on Blue Sky there was some circulating that looked.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Like pretty patent threats and that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
Those are you can't do that, yeah, obviously, and if
there's a if there's a clear directed death threat, the
FBI should get involved.

Speaker 13 (01:03:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
Must kind of took that and tried to suggest that,
you know, any kind of aggressive criticism of of the
Doejay boys is going to be illegal.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
We'll see.

Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
So finally, Kim Kelly reported that sources have told her
that DOGE is going after the Department of Labor next.
This is the final element for this block, and labor
workers have been ordered to give Dose access to anything
they want or risk termination, similar to what we heard
about Treasury and USA I D We're supposed to have
everything we're doing and do whatever the Dose kids ask.

(01:03:46):
It feels dirty and illegal, that source told Kelly. So
this is developing literally by the hour, so we'll obviously
keep following it. Crystal Sager will be back here following
it more tomorrow because we'll likely have there's more information
on what's going on over at Labor.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Kelly says there's a rally scheduled for three pm outside
the Department of Labor, which is right near where we are.
It's two hundred Constitution Avenue, So that's three pm, three
pm the day, saying, you know, keep the DOJ kids
out of the Department of Labor because they're having a
kickoff meeting apparently at four pm between the Department of
Labor officials and the DOJ folks.

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Well, so we've covered Treasury, USAID, now Labor and Ryan
at this point we can turn to DOGE and Trump's
plans for the Department of Education. Well, earlier in the show,
Ryan made the point that Elon Musk is very intentionally
using the word revolution for what is happening here in Washington,
d C. Just in the early weeks of the second

(01:04:47):
Donald Trump administration, and indeed one of the goals of
the Reagan Revolution may be realized by the Trump Revolution.
We can put c one on the screen. This is
a post from Jeff Mason of the Associated Press, who
reported a White House official says Trump will take steps
later this month to fulfill a campaign promise to defund
the Department of Education. Now, Trump was asked a bit

(01:05:10):
about whether the Department of Education will shut her in
the Oval office yesterday. Let's take a listen here, and.

Speaker 9 (01:05:17):
I'm the Education Department.

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
Why nominate Linda McMahon to be the Education Department secretary
if you're gonna cover to the.

Speaker 6 (01:05:25):
Education Because I told Linda, Linda, I hope you do
a great job and put yourself out of a job.

Speaker 9 (01:05:31):
I want her to put herself out of a job.
Education Department.

Speaker 13 (01:05:35):
So we're ranked number forty out of forty schools. Right
we're ranked number one in costs for pupil, so we
spend more for pupil than any other country in the world,
and we're ranked at the bottom of the list.

Speaker 6 (01:05:45):
We're ranked very badly. And what I want to do
is let the States run schools. I believe strongly in
school choice, but in addition to that, I want the
states to run schools, and I want Linda to put
herself out of a job.

Speaker 7 (01:06:00):
With an executive order any longer they would like to
be able to look if I could give the schools
back to Iowa and Idaho, and Indiana and all these
places that run properly.

Speaker 9 (01:06:11):
There's many of them.

Speaker 5 (01:06:12):
No Christmin Ronald Reagan took office, the Department of Education
was not even really a decade old. It was something
that was brought into existence by Jimmy Carter, and Reagan
said the exact same thing about his first Secretary of
Education that he wanted the Secretary Bell to put himself
out of a job. So this is c three more perfect.
Union noted a picked up on a Musk comment that

(01:06:33):
looked back to Reagan, said, actually, that Musk is now
saying Reagan campaigned on ending the department and Trump will
succeed where Reagan failed. That was a criticism that was
floated of Ronald Reagan during his administration from some people
on the right that he didn't end up shutting down
the Department of Education. He couldn't really get Congresses buy in.
And Donald Trump might be in a position now where

(01:06:54):
you look at what happened with USAID or what is
happening right now with USAID. One of the ways that
maybe skirting Congress is just by quote restructuring it and
pairing it back to something very small under the auspices
of the state department, so it's not shut down in
a case like that, it's just been restructured to the
point where it's tiny. Let's take a listen to how

(01:07:17):
Ronald Reagan talked about this early in his presidency. We
can roll this clip.

Speaker 18 (01:07:23):
We propose to dismantle two cabinet departments, Energy and Education.
Both secretaries are wholly in accord with this. Some of
the activities in both of these departments will of course
be continued, either independently or in other areas of government.
There's only one way to shrink the size and cost
of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that

(01:07:44):
are not needed and are getting in the way of
a solution. Now, we don't need an energy department to
solve our basic energy problem. As long as we let
the forces of the marketplace work without undue interference, the
ingenuity of consumers, business producers, and inventors will do that
for us. Similarly, education is the principal responsibility of local schools, systems, teachers, parents,

(01:08:09):
citizen boards, and state governments. By eliminating the Department of
Education less than two years after it was created, we
can not only reduce the budget, but ensure that local
needs and preferences rather than the wishes of Washington determine
the education of our children.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Ye.

Speaker 5 (01:08:25):
So you note there he was mentioning the Department of
Education is like two years old because of something that
Jimmy Carter brought into existence and at the time was new. Obviously,
now it has been around for decades. So it's quite
a different task to sort of wind down the Department
of Education. In disclosure, I will say that's something that
I'm generally supportive of, with one caveat, which is you

(01:08:49):
need a significant off ramp. So if you have this
idea about sending education back to the States, I mean,
Trump is absolutely right about the disconnect between the amount
of money we spend on students and outcomes. It is
shameful and pathetic that it's this is what it looks like.
This is how much money we spend and these are
the outcomes that we get per student. It's awful. But

(01:09:12):
if there is no off ramp to kind of helping
the states re take control of education and make up ground,
whether it's money or resources that the federal government had
previously provided, and it's just kind of a quick severing
of the ties, that is not great either. So you know,

(01:09:34):
this is a significant question about everything that Elon Musk
is doing, is whether you know it's worth it to
just from even like an ideological conservative perspective, toss a
hand grenade into everything, let it fall, let the chips
fall where they may, and say it's okay, we'll pick
up the pieces later. Probably not probably.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
Yeah, And Trump and Musk are both not well known
for their kind of well thought out and smooth transition
policies like these are.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Much more hand grenade people.

Speaker 4 (01:10:03):
I think it's worth contextualizing this as quickly as we can,
and you could probably do this better than me. But
you know, the fight over public education has been central
to our politics over the last one hundred and fifty years.
Like when as the as the progressive era you know boomed,
you know, that was really the advent of the idea
of public education and the idea that every student had

(01:10:28):
a right to a free public education you know, in
their in their community. Uh free as in funded both
though of course by taxpayers. That ran headlong into the
you know, the religious institutions, which you know, Christian churches
had been the ones that had you know, had run.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Most of the kind of private schools up until that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
Time, and and the the Betsy de vas Dominius types
you know, very much argued that the public school had,
unfortunately in there from their perspective, replaced the church as
the central social organizing tool in communities that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:12):
The family as well.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
And and and to some degree of the family that
because that you, from their perspective, you need the church
to support the family. And so where it used to be,
you know, people would go to church on Sundays and
it'd be pot lucks and like, and everybody's kind of
ethics and social lives would like flow through the local churches.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Now pot lucks.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Would be organized, you know, they'd be fundraisers for the school,
or there would be being a night at the school,
or everybody would go on Friday night to watch the
teams play and so and certainly what with I've seen
it in my own life with kids in elementary and middle school.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
You're you're the social fabric of.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):
The community does actually, you know, organize itself around the
public schools.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
But so that's the higher level than the mid level
one is of.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
Course, it's it's it's integration with desegregation and the civil
rights movement that inherent in this idea that you'd have
private schools was the idea that you could have racial segregation.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
And after you know, Brown v.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
Board of Education, you have all these different efforts to
like keep schools segregated despite despite the laws, fights that
are still going on during the Carter years. Carter, you know,
sec stickt the i R S in the on Christian
private schools right during the during his term. And my

(01:12:41):
understanding is that like it was that and then and
there was and there was some desegregation element to that fight,
uh that like those so not only are you not
not only are you guys furthering segregation, you're getting involved
in politics, you're and you're no longer really tax exempt organizations.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
And so he so he sends.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
The irs after these schools, and that, in my understand
I'm curious if you're taking this really was the gasoline
that kicked off the kind of right wing evangelical movement
that like once once Carter came after the private schools
like that that sent them wild. And it helps to

(01:13:22):
explain Reagan coming in. He's and he you know, he's
he's coming at both things at once. And the segregation,
you know, brownbe Board of Education, and also this like
what what they see is this attack on the Christian
society and replacing it with this godless public education.

Speaker 5 (01:13:45):
I would say there is also, though, a more charitable interpretation,
which is this was in the midst of a pretty
rapid federalization of a lot of things that hadn't been
federalized for many years, and that includes absolutely civil rights
we didn't have prior to the Civil Rights Act in
the early to mid nineteen sixties, this sort of federal

(01:14:07):
hand in local private businesses. And you know, there are
a lot of conservatives who will still argue brand Paul
among them against like ideologically, against the Civil Rights Act
of nineteen sixty four and the subsequent civil rights legislation
in the same way that Barry Goldwater did. And Reagan
really comes out of the Barry Goldwater movement, and most

(01:14:28):
of the sort of people that staffed the Reagan administration
and the campaign came out of that movement. And there
was tension, There's no question about it. There was always
a lot of tension about it. But this was this
sort of ideological, i don't know, like shock to the
conservative mind that suddenly for an extraordinarily just and important cause,

(01:14:50):
which was civil rights. It's kind of what happens with
the Southern strategy, Like it's sort of how things end
up flipping and George Wallace comes along and all of that.
You have conservatives some reacting by saying, this is going
to put us in trouble down the road. This like
Civil rights administration, it's rapidly being federalized from the Department

(01:15:11):
of Education. Was one of the focal points for conservatives
by saying, now you have the federal government with sort
of its hands in every local school district, and that
sounds great on paper, and it will backfire immensely eventually.
And a lot of conservative looked at like the last
five ten years in education and said, this is kind

(01:15:31):
of whatever had always been talking about. Christopher Caldwell wrote
a book called The Age of Entitlements back in I
think that came out like in twenty sixteen, saying it's
kind of making it like Goldwater is right argument all along.
But no, I mean, I think that's the tension was
between the conservative ideologues who, from a charitable perspective, just

(01:15:53):
had this very deep revulsion to the idea of the
federal government. Within a you know, period of twenty years,
suddenly taking over so much from local control, and then
people who actually were segregationists and racists, and that was
significant tension. The Department of Education was very much the
center of that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:13):
And so the reason Reagan failed is that you need
Congress to get rid of the Department of Education because
the Education Department is congressionally authorized and appropriated by Congress,
so there are rules.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
This is not Vietnam, and so Trump.

Speaker 4 (01:16:32):
The reporting is that Trump's executive order is going to
move elements of the Education Department that are not legally
required to be under it elsewhere. And then, and as
we talked about in the last block, he's using he's
going to push the Impoundment Control Act powers as far
as he can and perhaps just defund different programs which

(01:16:57):
according to the current law would be illegal. Whether the
courts let him get away with it is a different question.
And if Elon Musk's hackers can like hide that you're
even doing it, then then who knows. Now, there are
also significant laws on the books that people will notice
if he's breaking them. So I think there are roughly

(01:17:21):
One of them is called the idea like Individuals with
Disabilities and Education Act, and a lot of viewers are
probably familiar with it because they interact with it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
It is the.

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
Federal law that says that public schools are required to
teach and to basically cater to children who have disabilities,
special education, or different types of contingencies that they would be.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Offered within mainstream classrooms.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
Something like fifteen million students currently have protections under this law.
And this can be a spectrum. This can can go
from you can have extra time to take a test
because you have ADHD all the way to you know,
significant interventions in a special education classroom, or even funding

(01:18:14):
to go to a school if the public school it's
a private school, if the public school is not equipped
to handle it. So you're running headlong. If you go
after that, you're running headlong into many millions of people
who are currently you know, fifteen million kids. You know,
that's thirty million parents, that's fifty million aunts and uncles.

(01:18:38):
You're running headlong into that. Then, of course there is
tel grants, other financial aid for college that is required
by law. Now can you move that under somewhere else?
Then you have student loan repayments. Biden you may not

(01:19:00):
have noticed, was not allowed, you know, people did notice
that he was not allowed by the Supreme Court to
kind of restructure and forgive some significant number of student
loan debts. But what he did do is set up
this repayment schedule that makes it actually genuinely affordable for

(01:19:22):
people who are in enormous amounts of debt and caps
what you owe the amount of income you have, like
they're trying to make it a fair system. You know,
if if you have a huge amount of debt, you
have a small amount of income, then you owe this smaller,
much smaller amount of money until when and when your
ship comes in, then you owe us more.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
Like that's how a decent society kind of ought to
be organized.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
If you get rid of the education Department, then who's
collecting these loans, Who's who is implementing these programs?

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
Do people just stop paying their loans?

Speaker 4 (01:19:55):
No, I doubt you know, that's that's highly unlikely. That
would be incredibly ironic if the Supreme Court is like, no,
you can't do this student loan payment policy, but yeah,
you can actually go ahead and just get rid of
the entire education Department. I mean wouldn't necessarily put it
past them, but it would be it would be certainly

(01:20:17):
the height of irony. Somebody joked on Twitter, like, let
me get this right. So to do progressive legislation, you
need sixty votes. To do national conservatism, you don't need
any votes at all, Like that's the just so we're
clear on the different rules that apply here.

Speaker 5 (01:20:33):
Well, you know, it is kind of what's funny in
all of this. The extent we can find humor is
that conservatives were saying, part of the problem with federalizing
all of this is that at one point someone can
just come in and flip a switch because it's so central.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Elon Musk's boys have found the switches.

Speaker 5 (01:20:51):
Hey, they're looking for them. The maga the quote Maga
chuds as Lomas said on Twitter. So there is a
I should say, just as we were talking, I pulled
up the Project twenty twenty five Education Department.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Which, by the way, they assured us had nothing to
do with Trump and would definitely not be implemented in
any way, which, to be which we reported was a
total lie.

Speaker 5 (01:21:13):
Yes, we covered that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Watch this show. You're not surprised by any of this, No.

Speaker 5 (01:21:16):
Not at all. We cover that extensively, and in fact,
that was a huge part of my conversation with Ezra Clins,
like they're of course going to be using Project twenty
twenty five. Hello. Now that is to say Trump still
had nothing to do with Project twenty twenty five. He wouldn't,
like really care. I would spend like ten seconds reading
what I'm looking at right now, and you'd be like Reenipedia.

(01:21:37):
But they do have I mean a lot of this
is kind of off ramp type stuff. So, for example,
restore revenue responsibility for Title one funding to the States
over a ten year period. Like if you're trying to conceptualize,
as I am, what this would mean for your community,
your local school immediately if it were to happen. The
plan in Project twenty twenty five, which I'm sure is

(01:21:57):
something that's on the desks of people Linda McMahon's circles
and Elon Muss's circles because frankly was a mega friendly
conservative plan that people put a lot of time into.
It does look like it's significantly off ramping things and
not immediately cutting them. But we'll have to I actually

(01:22:18):
think we might be able to get the person who
wrote this too good back to us.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
It's good.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
Look, yeah, and I mean we know we can also
put up C five here, which is early indications from
from Patty Murray, who would be the senator who kind
of oversees this on the Democratic side. She's she's hearing
that the doggy committee people have gone in so sorry
DOJ Committee people have gone into veterans affairs now and

(01:22:46):
are are thumbing through all of the kind of information
around those payments.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:22:52):
The VA is in the desperate need of reform. Veterans
medical records are not in desperate need of DOJ Committee
people thumbing through them. So this is something people are
going to keep an eye on too, because these are.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
There's fragile and sensitive systems. And by the.

Speaker 4 (01:23:16):
Separately and actually relatedly, Musk is out here, by the way,
if you haven't noticed, accusing everyone he sees on his
website of breaking the law. He accused Milan Omar the
other day of breaking the law because she was giving
general advice to people here illegally about how to like,

(01:23:36):
you know, not incriminate yourself. Be like saying that it's
illegal to, you know, tell somebody about their Fifth Amendment rights.
It is specifically illegal to aid a specific individual person
here illegally like that that actually is a crime, but
giving general advice is a First Amendment protected act. So anyway,

(01:23:58):
and then anybody who says something mean about the Doggie Committee,
he says, you're breaking the law, he should he should check.
There are the federal the federal books are filled with
laws around privacy and record protections that he and his
DOJ boys seem to be breaking at a just absolutely

(01:24:22):
relentless clip.

Speaker 5 (01:24:23):
A lot of this is going to be tested in
the courts and already is to some extent, but we'll
see if some of it ends up getting rolled back.
But he's i mean his status as a special government employee,
which is what the White House says he's taken on.
If you go read the Justice Departments outlined restrictions for
somebody who's a special government employee. Unless Elon Musk takes

(01:24:48):
very quick and significant steps to deal with his financial
conflicts he's in flagor violation or gets some type of
special waiver for them, which as yet he doesn't have.
He may be able to get that quick order now
that Pambondi has been confirmed, but it's impossible to see
how what he's doing sort of fits within those boundaries.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Oh yeah, it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
I mean, which he you know, he called it a revolution.
And so if the revolution fails, like if you come
at the king and you miss, yeah, you actually in
this country, you get a second shot, as we showed
after January sixth, let's if you don't get.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
A third shot.

Speaker 4 (01:25:22):
Four people who are curious, buddy mine collected some of
these eighteen USC. Fifteen oh five, fifteen nineteen, twenty seventy one,
Federal Records Act, you get five USC. Five point fifty two,
the e Government Act of two thousand and two, the
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, the Digital Accountability and

(01:25:43):
Transparency Act, eighteen USC.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Two eight eighteen USC. Two five. There's there's a.

Speaker 4 (01:25:47):
Ton of them, and each of them have, you know,
the various penalties with them, and each record could be
an offense. And we're talking about hundreds of millions of records. Said,
this is not a time of home monitors. It's a
time of revolutions. So if it moves back towards the

(01:26:08):
time of home monitors, those are the crimes that we
know you're committing, and they're probably a bunch of others.
So I guess the advice would be your revolution better work.

Speaker 5 (01:26:17):
I wish we had your Lenin book behind us.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
I actually not have it back.

Speaker 5 (01:26:21):
We'll have to put it back up. But anyways, I.

Speaker 4 (01:26:24):
Feel like I feel like Kerensky being like the provisional
government authority here is dually constituted by.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
The Duma, and you're not able to just take power.
Proff is reading the book.

Speaker 4 (01:26:38):
It's an incredible book, that that biography of Lenin that
was up there.

Speaker 5 (01:26:44):
So let's move on to Republicans actually embracing with some hesitation,
fully embracing Tulsei Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Junior, and
the Senate yesterday Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Tulsi Gabbard
made it out of committees active committees that they're being
considered before the Senate yesterday. And this is significant because

(01:27:05):
there was a point about a week ago Ryan where
it was seeming like because of Bill Cassidy in particular,
who is a doctor and likes to have everyone know
that he's a doctor, and Susan Collins, fairly hawkish Republican,
it seems as though they might be so pressured out
of voting for Robert Kennaji or actually they wouldn't have

(01:27:27):
needed too much pressure in either direction. But because Susan
Collins obviously represents a state that is not super friendly
to Republicans always, she's up. So that looked like it
pretty Jared Golden, But you know what I mean, Tulsea
Gabbard I think probably plays well in Maine. This is

(01:27:48):
a type of Democrat that probably plays well former Democrats.
I should say that probably.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
Oh absolutely, this is a voting no.

Speaker 4 (01:27:56):
For Susan Collins would have cost her more with Trump's people,
I think so. Yeah, yeah, I think that's Colin's obvious
political choice was voting for Tulsi here.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
Yeah, no, I agree with that. But even Todd Young,
who's somebody that was a fairly like red state Republican,
he's from Indiana, had his famous back and forth we'll
get into this in a minute with Musk right right,
he was.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Called like a deep state call him a deep state stooge.

Speaker 5 (01:28:22):
Yeah, stooge or something like that, and then flipped me.
Musk flipped right away and said, my apologies. I talked
to Todd Young on the phone, and he's a stalwart
MAGA defender.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
Well, who flipped there? Sounds like Todd Young is the
one who flipped.

Speaker 5 (01:28:33):
Well, he seemed to be planning the seeds of like
possibly voting against gab.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
Right and then he was like no, no, no, never mind.

Speaker 5 (01:28:40):
And so I think the question here is similar to
the question between Trump and the oligarchs that were sitting
behind him on his inaugural dais is who conquered who? Right? Like,
who is the conqueror in this situation? Was Tulsi and
RFK Junior? Were they the ones who are now captured
and in the pocket of the quote unquote deep State?
And Bill Cassidy did RFK Junior Absolutely no favors in

(01:29:03):
that direction. We can put D two up on the screen.
Cassidy said he was able to get a significant number
of concessions out of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In exchange
for his vote. He said that they're going to have
monthly meetings. It was sort of like a babysitting arrangement,
kind of said CDC will not remove statements on their

(01:29:23):
website pointing out the vaccines do not cause autism. He'll
maintained that he'll maintain the Centers for Disease Control and
Preventions Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes, and
said he would not create a parallel structure for vaccine approval.
There's a lot more, but these are already just sort

(01:29:43):
of I've run through here fairly significant concessions. It's also
worth noting that Tulca Gabbard basically flipped on Section seven
oh two in order to and Snowden. In order to
kind of Snowden. She refused to call him a trader, right,
which I thought was I mean whatever. I actually thought
that was a fairly principled mood. If it would have
been pretty easy to say yes, you know, and say like,

(01:30:06):
yes he was a trader for the reasons X.

Speaker 1 (01:30:08):
Y and Z, she didn't do that because she knows
he's not.

Speaker 5 (01:30:12):
She does not believe in section seven or two or
believe that Edward Snowden is a trader.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
So we will see how she asks to be clear
on Snowden.

Speaker 4 (01:30:20):
The knock against him is that he's in Russia. Pardon
the guy, and he'll come home like he's in Russia
because the US stopped his plane on the ground in
Moscow and basically forced him off the plane.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Yes, so the US pushed him into into Russia.

Speaker 5 (01:30:39):
So and Telsea Gabbert I think also said she would
do a very important thing if she's confirmed, which is
have a direct hotline. This could go many different ways,
but she said she would have a direct hotline to
her for whistleblowers. And that is exactly how you prevent
a snowden because he tried to blow the whistle, as
many whistleblowers did, without success on what the government was doing.

(01:31:00):
And that's actually a significant component of how that entire
story unfolded. That gets completely right right.

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
And also, like telling the government what they're doing when
it is like top down, secret government policy and they're
doing it on purpose is kind of pointless. It's like, hey,
do you guys know that you are, you know, tapping
everybody's phone here through these like underground cables and reading
everybody saying well, yes, we know we're doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
We're because we do it on purpose. It wasn't.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
Whistleblowing is effective internally against a rogue project, but not
against a project that is in line with the actual
top down policy.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
And so on.

Speaker 4 (01:31:40):
On doctor Cassidy, So he's a doctor. Uh, I'm curious
for your take on the politics of what moved him.
He committed the unforgivable sin. If I recall correctly, of
voting for Trump's impeachment.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
He did, and so.

Speaker 4 (01:31:55):
He has a target on his back primary. Do you
think that Trump and Musk promised to help him out
if he would get on side for the next for
the foreseeable future, Well.

Speaker 5 (01:32:11):
They definitely promised to make his life impossible if he didn't.
So there were threats from Nicole Shanahan even like Megan McCain. Oh,
that was a tulsy gabbard one. Actually never mind, so
scratch that on Cassidy. But Nicole Shanahan and Elon Musk
were Cassidy, by the way, already has a primary challenger
who announced.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
The backlashes December. He gets ten million dollars Elon Musk
and Trump's endorsement.

Speaker 5 (01:32:35):
Right, So did Cassidy not only manage to stave off
potentially that scenario where there's a ton of cash going
be infused into his opponent's coffers, but did he also
secure significant funding from Trump and Musk and potentially stave
off a mega challenge just in terms of like endorsements

(01:32:56):
and resources. I don't know, it's entirely. He sort of
likes to march to the beat of his own drum.
He's from obviously a politically fascinating state, sort of thought
of as a deep red southern state, but definitely more
interesting than that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
The Democrats governor's mansion, right.

Speaker 5 (01:33:15):
And it's a fairly recent like flip to we don't
have to get into the history. But anyway, he feels
more comfortable marching in the beat of his own drum.
But that's what's interesting. I think about somebody like Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, or Tulsa Gabbard and Susan Collins case. If
you go out and talk to average people, some of
them really hate Robert F. Kennedy Junior. A whole lot

(01:33:36):
of them really love ROBERTIF. Kennedy Junr. And it's easy
to rage against that from Washington, but it's harder when
you're on the ground in your own state like Louisiana,
to talk to especially Republican voters. He said, you know,
you heard a lot from pediatricians that opposed Robert F.
Kennedy Junior's nomination, and so as a doctor that was

(01:33:57):
weighing on him, I may continue to weigh on him.

Speaker 4 (01:34:00):
But key concession, then, keeping the vaccine protocol as it
is is a key concession to the pediatricians there.

Speaker 5 (01:34:05):
I would think that's enormously significant from their perspective. So, yeah,
this is the question for Tulca, Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Junior,
and the entire the.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
Anti Measles coalition coming together here.

Speaker 5 (01:34:16):
Well, the entire MAHA agenda hinges on Robert F. Kennedy
Junior being doing sort of what Musk has been doing
at other agencies to his own agency, significant radical reform.
You know, when Brooke Rollins was confirmed as Secretary Department
of Agriculture, a lot of people Matthew Stoller pointed this out,

(01:34:38):
were wondering in the MAHA movement why she moved immediately
to you know, force California to sell the meat of
created pigs. Change in regulatory interpretation there. So yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
And they backed off their promise to ban forever chemicals.
Yeah yeah, it was.

Speaker 5 (01:34:55):
A Biden regulation the band forever chemicals that was rolled back. Yeah. So,
and that's obviously not Kennedy's department. But how serious is
Trump world about Maha? The voters, if you talk to voters,
they're extremely serious about Maha. The ideological conservative movement is
very serious now about Maha, partially because they know they
have to be. But how serious will the administration be?

Speaker 4 (01:35:18):
I don't know when they come up in conflict with plastics,
which is the oil industry.

Speaker 5 (01:35:25):
And whoever funds Bill Cassidy and pharma, which I should
be more precise about. I don't have it in front
of me. I assume that he gets significant money from them.
So I think your theory is probably sound.

Speaker 4 (01:35:37):
Good place for a rubber meets the road metaphor robber
meeting the road. It spits those forever chemicals right into
your bloodstream.

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
Yeah, the pfest rubbers meeting the road is meeting the
pothole riddled road. Then Bernie, yes, Bernie did not just
reluctantly say he was voting against Robert F. Kennedy Junior,
somebody who you may know more about this than I do.
I think Bernie probably for a long time. So Robert F.
Kny Junior is sort of a coup in the Kennedy

(01:36:05):
family from a leftist perspective, somebody who was an ally
in the fight against like big corporations because of his
environmental work. But Bernie Sanders put out a scathing statement,
let's put D three on the screen, said, you know,
we don't disagree on everything, but he said, I cannot
in good conscious support someone who denies and will dilute

(01:36:26):
our public health protections so distress in science and overseeing
massive cuts to healthcare programs for vulnerable Americans. Vaccines were
obviously friend of mine for Bernie Sanders, Ryan, do you have
any other context you think is useful in the Sanders
RFK jor war that's bloomed?

Speaker 4 (01:36:41):
And I feel like culturally Sanders has become a fairly
normy Democrat, interesting and like culturally when it comes to
the pandemic and the way that Democrats approached the pandemic,
like you would have imagined a world in which he

(01:37:02):
went either way on that, and he went the way
that he went, And I think that and you know, also,
I don't know how much of a role it played,
but RFK Junior is like obnoxious and willfully dishonest attack
on him as being in the pocket of pharmac CEOs

(01:37:27):
and then seeing like so many morons like circulate that
video as like evidence that, oh we discovered that Bernie
Sanders is actually corrupt. And for people that didn't watch this,
RFK Junior did this thing where he's like you said,
you don't take money from you know, the pharma CEOs,
but actually it says you took.

Speaker 1 (01:37:46):
A million plus dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:37:47):
It's like, bro, those are like pharmacists, those pharmaceutical reps.
Those are people who work for in manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
Like the pharmaceutical industry is a multi billion dollar industry
which contains workers.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
If you go and look go to like uh, go
to go to Open Secrets.

Speaker 4 (01:38:07):
And look at Bernie's, like top industries and supporthim, it'll
be like Amazon, Walmart, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, the
plenty from the oil industry. Like that's because that's where
people in our economy work.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
They are workers.

Speaker 4 (01:38:24):
It'd be like something and Bernie Centers is in the
pocket of Amazon or Walmart, like because people at Walmart
are giving him twenty five dollars. It's it's so dumb
that it's like it crosses the threshold into being offensive.
And so I could imagine that at Bernie's, like you
know what f this guy, Which that's not how you

(01:38:46):
should do politics.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
And you got to put the path go past those lights.

Speaker 4 (01:38:52):
But it's also so dumb that you're like, so either
this guy is this deeply dishonest that he's going to
make this a which is does not speak to qualifications
for a secretary, or he's so dumb that he doesn't
know what it means to get twenty five thirty dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
Contributions from workers. Yeah, he knows, he.

Speaker 4 (01:39:14):
Would hope so because he himself ran for president, well
he can go to open secrets and see his own
top industry.

Speaker 5 (01:39:19):
He's a significant student, Like here's a long time student
of money in politics, and he's serious about it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
So then it'ses.

Speaker 5 (01:39:26):
He definitely knows. And I think in his case, he
feels like a lot of the attacks on him have
been dishonest, and there's just a lot of attacks on him,
so of course some of them have been dishonest. But
that seemed like an odd way to talk to Bernie Sanders,
somebody who does have a lot of common cause.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Was exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
And by the way, if you're watching this clock in
your mind, anybody that treated that as a serious attack,
and do not listen to them about anything ever again
because they think you're an idiot. If you are an idiot,
then continue to listen to them.

Speaker 5 (01:39:57):
It is sort of a funny litmus test for people
who don't like look at the FEC data a lot,
right whenever someone does that.

Speaker 4 (01:40:05):
So I'm speaking to the not idiots who like and
people who are casually following this and like like, oh wow,
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
That's really interesting to me.

Speaker 4 (01:40:13):
They are playing on you because they're playing you because
they think that you're not going to look one layer deeper.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
So don't listen to them ever again, or some of them.

Speaker 5 (01:40:22):
Just don't know and are like new to this, speaking
of which, by the way, can confirm that Bill Cassidy
is a major recipient of donations, not merely from people
who work in pharma, but from packs.

Speaker 4 (01:40:32):
So yes, there you go, right, there's packs, there's CEOs,
there's executives. Those are the people that give you the
max donations or the five thousand, six thousand dollars checks. Yeah,
that's completely different than somebody cutting you thirty dollars and
then it says employer you ever given money, It asks
you your employer, and then that puts you into an industry.

Speaker 5 (01:40:52):
Right, Yeah, So if we gave money, we would put
down journalists or media and then it would clock as
if you're reading the FEC or for it's as hepathetically,
Bernie Sanders just took money from the media media, and
so it would look similar to if like funny enough,
like the head of NBC News or the head of
NBC Universal as a media company, it would look the same. Yeah, right,

(01:41:16):
So anyway, you can find all kinds of strange stuff
in there if you go into the FEC reports. But Ryan,
you picked up on this really interesting report in the
New York Times on housing that we want to get to.

Speaker 4 (01:41:32):
New article with Pro public in the New York Times,
So you can put this E one up on the
screen here. It's a deep look at the fluctuations in
home values relative to regions in the country that are
being hit or not hit by climate implications. So what
this is doing, I think kind of for the first time,

(01:41:54):
it's relying on a lot of data from the the
Financial Street, which tries to figure out, you know, which
direction how real estate prices are heading for their own
kind of internal commercial reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
They teamed up with ProPublica New York.

Speaker 4 (01:42:11):
Times to unload a bunch of their datas they could
so they could try to clock it by climate and
so what what they find. What they found shouldn't be
surprising to anybody, but has deeply profound implications, and we
can actually put up E.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
Two. They have a couple of these maps that that.

Speaker 4 (01:42:29):
May make clear what's going on. You can see the
red there is basically a heat map of where you
are screwed if you own if you own property, and
the clearer it is, the better off you are in
terms of climate implications. And so what they're what they're
finding here is that over the next thirty years they

(01:42:51):
expect home prices to not rise very you know, substantially
on average. But when you break it out by climate implications,
if you are in a place impacted by severe weather
and flooding, you're looking at over the next thirty or
something like a six percent decline, whereas if you're not,

(01:43:13):
you're looking at something like a ten percent increase. The
American dream has been built around the idea that home
prices are going to continue to rise. That that's how
you build your wealth, and that's the wealth that you're
eventually able to pass down to your family. Something like
two thirds of adults own homes, and more as you
get as you get older, and they First Street is

(01:43:37):
estimating that five million people will move this next year
significantly as a result of these climate implications, and they're
saying that along with kind of location, seafront view of
that kind of stuff, and public schools, like the quality
of the school in the area, climate is becoming for

(01:44:01):
home buyers something that they are now actively considering.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
Anything in this surprise you.

Speaker 4 (01:44:08):
And more importantly, do you think the implications are going
to be as profound as their forecasting?

Speaker 5 (01:44:15):
Yes, but probably from a different perspective here if we
put the two back up on the screen. One of
the interesting things here, we were just talking about Senator
Bill Cassidy of Louisiana look at the dark red in
southern Louisiana. Well, we were talking about what industries he
takes money from. One of them actually is construction. And

(01:44:35):
what's funny about that is almost a decade ago, is
working on a story about flood insurance reform. That really
opened up my eyes. So a lot of the ways
that we subsidize rebuilding in areas like that, and Cassidy
was sort of opposed to this very conservative, ideologically conservative
idea about flood insurance reform. And you know in states

(01:44:56):
like Louisiana, states like Florida. I remember when we talked
about in Miami each when the condo complex collapsed several
years ago. This is why I think the implications of
it are going to be profound, because we've had these
technological advances in the last one hundred years that have
allowed us to feel like we conquered nature and to

(01:45:16):
build in these areas that are vulnerable when the climate
change is naturally or otherwise. And whether you believe in
man made anthropogenic climate change, whether you believe that or not,
the climate changes, like you don't even have to buy
into the ideology of climate change to recognize that some

(01:45:38):
of these developments, you know what's been built up in California.
I talked to James Pogue and Leighton Woodhust about this
on Undercurrents recently. This is new developments over the course
of one hundred years that sprang up really quickly because
we were able to build quickly. We were able to
build clothes, we were able to build these areas that
required conquering nature. And so that if you're somebody who

(01:45:59):
doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change, the climate is going
to change no matter what. So you have to have
a plan for people's properties because that's important to them.
It's what the American dream is, the cornerstone of the
American dream, literally, the cornerstone of the American dream. So
I totally agree that this is a significant, massively significant issue.

Speaker 4 (01:46:20):
And the phenomenon that this article zeros in on is
the way that climate denialism, fueled by governments has blocked, interestingly,
the market from producing the signals that it otherwise would
have produced that would have driven home construction and population

(01:46:44):
dispersal that would have been more in line with climate developments.

Speaker 1 (01:46:48):
In other words, in Florida is a good example.

Speaker 4 (01:46:53):
The insurance industry has been at the forefront of the
climate science. They're like, have fun over here with your
documentaries pretending that climate's not real. Like we have actual
skin in the game, we have money on the line.
We're going to study the actual implications of the changing climate.

(01:47:13):
And they looked at these studies and they came back
and they're like, Oh, this used to be one hundred
year floodplane. This is a fifty year floodplane. This was
a ten year flood this is now a two year floodplane.
You're gonna get flood every two years. Therefore, here's what
you're going to pay for your insurance. So insurance hazard
insurance used to be they estimate about six percent of

(01:47:36):
your overall kind of monthly mortgage payment, and so it
was relatively trivial. It wasn't something that people really factored in.
Now it's pushing closer to twenty and it is growing
faster than inflation, which is which is the reason then
that you have to factor it in as you're thinking
about where you're going to buy.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
Well, people don't like to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:47:56):
People then complain to their county commissioners, to their state lawmakers,
to their members of Congress, and those lawmakers say, that
is really unfair of those insurance companies to be charging that.
So we're going to subsidize it, and we're going to
make a law that they have to do it, et cetera. Yeah,
and so here I am on the left talking about

(01:48:19):
the free market and its value in setting signals, and
so then yeah, people are like, okay, great, thank you
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:48:25):
We will build here.

Speaker 5 (01:48:26):
But it's not just about signals. It's about people's physical safety.
And I remember that I was actually talking to Sean
Duffy about this at the time. This was when I
was doing a flod insurance reform story, the NFIP, the
National Flundaform, right, yeah, yeah, Well, the NFIP subsidizes rebuilding
homes and genuinely dangerous floodplains over and over again. So
in Houston, for example, people who are like low income,

(01:48:49):
middle income who own these homes keep rebuilding because it's
subsidized in these very dangerous places. And it's a not
ideal situation at all. And so there's serious problems with
the programs that you get incentivized because of crony capitalism
to keep redoing and redoing. And Duffy was trying to
lead the charge against it at the time. Now he's

(01:49:11):
Transportation Secretary. But it does create these really perverse systems
of incentives, and so the insurance system, I mean, I
think this Times report is interesting from the perspective of
like where insurance companies are coming down on this and
how they're looking to influence government policies amidst all of this. Like,

(01:49:31):
there's serious problems with both people have genuine interests here
in doing the wrong thing and genuine interested in doing
the right thing. So how do you marry them.

Speaker 1 (01:49:42):
Well, ultimately, things that can't go on don't go on.

Speaker 4 (01:49:45):
And so the numbers that they're adding up in this
article two hundred and fifty billion for the LA fires,
you can call it climbing and call it, you know,
poor fire management. Complain about Gavin Newsom nuts open up
this biggots where it doesn't matter. It's going to cost
two hundred and fifty billion with a B. On top
of that, you've got tens, maybe hundreds of billions. If

(01:50:09):
you combine western North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, these other storms
that we saw very recently, you're very quickly getting towards
half a trillion dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
And damage is there.

Speaker 4 (01:50:22):
That threatens the entire stability of and solubility of insurance
companies and reinsurance companies. And you know they say that
when the floodwaters received, it's when you really start to
see who you know, who's who's naked. And that is
that is that we may find out that there are

(01:50:43):
some budgetary gimmicks going on at the insurance and reinsurance
companies such that when homeowners with valid policies, I don't
know if it's going to be this time or next
time or down the road, but at some point they're
going to go to this insurance company and be like.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
Look, here's here's my valid policy.

Speaker 4 (01:50:59):
Here my claim I need I need to be paid out,
and they can be like, yeah, sorry, we're bankrupt. We
don't actually have that amount of money because the actuary
actuaries weren't allowed to do the math accurately, and so
we charged everybody less than we understood it would cost. Yeah,
if we hit these worst case scenarios, and now we've

(01:51:21):
hit them, and then you're then you kick it up
to what's called the reinsurers, who are kind of the
backstop for the insurance companies. And once you're in that world,
who knows what kind of counterparty risk they have and
whether or not they're completely solvent either, and then you're
back to the federal government needing a bailout.

Speaker 5 (01:51:41):
Yeah, and so this is again the the I guess
consequence of institutional trust, like having record low levels of
institutional trust, is that you can't agree on the science,
the capitalist science, whereas we call it the fauci because
it's sort of interchangeable. He is the science and vice versa.

(01:52:03):
But in all seriousness, when you can't agree on some
basic well, you can't agree in some like basic research
and it's been polarized and politicized. Then there are all
kinds of things they get affected by that, including like
insurance rates and people's decisions about where to build and invest,
like individual homeowners' decisions about these things. So we sort

(01:52:27):
of think about institutional trust as a very abstract conversation,
like this is just something that the you know, professors
talk about in with their tweed elbow patches, But it's
really like consequential people's everyday lives. And this is a
good example, by.

Speaker 4 (01:52:45):
The way, I understand why you would need elbow patches
like I need them already.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
Get a little faith.

Speaker 5 (01:52:49):
We're going to come in next week with their elbow patches.

Speaker 4 (01:52:52):
Up next, Jasmine Crockett, congress when from Texas, has thoughts
on mediocre white men. If you are a mediocre white
man or you who are friends with mediocre white men,
stick around for this one.

Speaker 5 (01:53:04):
Congresswoman. Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Krockett had some thoughts about quote,
mediocre white boys on CNN. Let's take a listen to
what she said the other name.

Speaker 19 (01:53:13):
I am tired of the white tears. Listen, if you
are competent, you are not concerned when I walk into
Congress every single day. You know why I don't feel
away and why you can't make me doubt who I
am is because I know that I had to work
ten times as hard as they did just to get
into the seat. When you look and you compare me
to Marjorie Taylor Green or me to Lauren Bobert, there

(01:53:35):
is no comparison. And that is the life that we
have always lived. So the only people that are crying
are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out
by people that historically have had to work so much harder.
This is why they don't want us to have education.
This is why they are trying to literally say we
won't fund the HBCUs because they know that if they've

(01:53:58):
already gone after affirmative action and they're saying, you know what,
don't allow them to come into say these pwis as
we call them, don't allow them to come into these institutions.
We know why they created the HBCUs in the first place.
It was because they wouldn't allow us into the white institutions.
And so now they're not allowing us in, and now

(01:54:20):
they're saying, you know what, we're also going to defund
the HBCUs. You know why, because they don't want any
more Kamala Harris's. They don't want any more Jasmine Crocketts.
But I got news for them. I don't care what
they do. We will fight to the end to make
sure that we get our due. Because again, if you
want to talk about the people that shouldn't be in
this country, you probably need to look in the mirror,

(01:54:40):
because the last time I checked, the Native Americans who
summer Ice have been rounding up, or the Puerto Ricans
who are absolutely Americans. Listen, the only people that came
and colonized this place are your ancestors.

Speaker 5 (01:54:52):
Trump, I don't know Ryan well.

Speaker 4 (01:54:55):
By the way, for people just tuning in, PWI BPS
of PWI stands for predominantly White institution.

Speaker 1 (01:55:02):
So so people can keep up there. Now.

Speaker 4 (01:55:05):
Not only did this spark controversy, there was a sub
controversy that we can get into in a minute where
the DNC's rapid response yes, shared this, which I think
is and and then was attacked pretty viciously by the
left saying like DNC, what are you trying to do?

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Like who are you? Who are you winning over by
pushing this content out? Like who who? Is who is
this for?

Speaker 4 (01:55:36):
And you can be you can even be smug about
it if you want, like and the smug the way
to be smug about it would be the quote that
at at least that famous, at least Stevenson line, the
guy who the Democrat of an egghead who ran for
Congress I mean, I mean for ran for president a
whole bunch of times in the mid twentieth century lost
every time. He famously, perhaps apocryphally, said on somebody yelled

(01:56:01):
at him and said, you have the votes of every
thinking man in this country, and Stevenson yelled back, yeah,
but I need a majority, which is funny and everybody
laughs at it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):
But it also.

Speaker 4 (01:56:14):
There's a through line from that all the way through
to this today's party, which runs through Barack Obama's guns
and religion and the whole which you know, you kind
of talk about this in this good, new, great new
essay that you wrote. What's it called the point of
the point about the kind of cultural elitism that that

(01:56:34):
kind of seeps out. It used to come from white eggheads,
like at least Stevenson, you're gonna say, like Obama, now
it comes well half white egg and now it's now
it's from somebody like Jasmine Crockett. But to take it
on his own terms, we all we actually should all

(01:56:57):
care about all mediocre people like this. There was this
joke where they nominated a moron to the Supreme Court.
I forget the moron's name, people can remember the comments section.
And the defense of him was, well, you know, idiots
need representation too, and the counter argument was, okay, but
not necessarily on the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 (01:57:19):
Is this maybe the one place representation doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 (01:57:22):
Let's get the smart cats on there. But mediocre is
another word for average. Average is a word for in
the middle. Like people who are in the middle, their
grievances are or entirely legitimate, period, so to say. And
so I think there are a lot of obvious things

(01:57:45):
you can say about what Crockett said. I'm trying to
say the non obvious thing, and the non obvious thing
would be, if you are an average person in this
country and you feel like you're being screwed over, then
that's probably a legitimate grievance.

Speaker 5 (01:58:01):
Well, also if you are because.

Speaker 1 (01:58:05):
The country should be fair for everybody, including the Yog people.

Speaker 5 (01:58:07):
But that was the sort of victory of the Civil
Rights movement is why there are a lot of people
who were involved. I mean, the civil Rights movement veterans
are sort of split on these questions, but there are
a lot of people who are involved are deeply uncomfortable
with where DEI has gone. And actually this was in
your great story a couple of years ago on the
Elephant in the Zoom that people have sort of seen

(01:58:29):
unintended consequences as the experiment has played out in ways
that create more rancor and are not as fair. And
it's not just mediocre white boys. It's also Asian Americans
who get short the short straw and a lot of
these situations, it's not it's it's it's not it. This
is not it. This is not the right Democratic answer

(01:58:51):
to Dee. And I get the Jasmin Crockett is a
representative of a blue area around Dallas, like I understand
that there are a lot of people in blue enclaves
that are offended by the walk away from DEI. As
an increasingly prominent spokeswoman for the Democratic Party, mocking people

(01:59:11):
who are upset about Dei is probably not the way
to go now.

Speaker 4 (01:59:15):
To try to defend the impulse that Crockett is coming from.
There is something I think interesting and insightful that she's
trying to get at, which is basically that So what
she's arguing, if you shared of a lot of the.

Speaker 1 (01:59:31):
Rhetoric, is that there are a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (01:59:36):
Who are much more talented over the last one hundred
and fifty two hundred years who have been kept out
of positions of prestige and authority because of their race
and gender. That is true, and we should absolutely acknowledge,
like that is a fact, and that racial engender, SegReg segregation,

(01:59:58):
and exclusion did in fact allow mediocre white men to
get into positions that if they had, if they had
to compete with the entire population of men and women,
black and white and brown.

Speaker 1 (02:00:14):
Would have been harder for them.

Speaker 4 (02:00:16):
That's like that, that is a that is a fact,
and we and we should all acknowledge that. And so
because that is because that is a fact, it is
the case that some people who feel like they deserve
positions are not getting those positions, and now they're angry
at the women and the black people who.

Speaker 1 (02:00:37):
Are getting those positions.

Speaker 4 (02:00:38):
So I actually think like on one level she's making
she's making a point that is that is accurate, and
it is getting it something, and it's getting it something real.
But to kind of blanket just go after like all
mediocre white men or white boys, it is not very

(02:00:59):
effective weighted it well.

Speaker 5 (02:01:00):
And to assume those are the only people who are
concerned about de I, or maybe not to assume, but
to argue those are the only people who are concerned
about DEI is just not correct. And I think Democrats
choosing to fight bitterly back in the culture war over
DEI is in normal like it actually bums me out
as somebody who's more on the right, because I think
one of the reasons that there's going to be overreached

(02:01:22):
from Donald Trump is that there's just not a potent
opposition party. And part of that is because what we
saw from the DNC election over the last couple of days,
where you have Jonathan k peart asking you, you know
what actually happened, dear, Oh, there's just a bunch of
racist and bigots that made sure Kamala Harris didn't get elected.

(02:01:44):
And I'm paraphrasing kind of you know that was age. Yeah,
it wasn't the most charitable interpretation, but it wasn't entirely disaccurate, inaccurate.
So anyway, all that is to say, I think Jasmine
Crockett's message is not the one Democrats should for moral
reasons or political reasons be landing on here.

Speaker 1 (02:02:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:02:04):
In politics, you're supposed to pander to people, not insult them. Yeah,
like less than one Yeah, And another word for like
I was saying earlier, mediocre would be like regular. Like
we're just talking about regular people, okay, And you want
to reach out to regular people, like you don't you
don't want to just like aggressively assault them. I think

(02:02:26):
that Obama's guns and religion argument, he like he was
saying and he was making a cultural connection to as
you talk about in your peace, a cultural connection to economics.
He was saying, as as people saw the economic rug
being pulled out from under them because of NAFTA and
offshoring and collapse of manufacturing and the collapse of the

(02:02:48):
American dream, that one thing they retreated to was guns
and religion. That's where the clean guns and religion, bitterly
it comes from, bitterly clinging to guns and religion because
we're upset about the direction of the world. Like there
is an analysis that's it's vulgar, but like you can
see it and it's directionally, there's there's some insight into it.

(02:03:09):
But even Obama as a politician is like, it's not
good to talk about people.

Speaker 1 (02:03:15):
In those bitter terms.

Speaker 4 (02:03:19):
It's much better to talk to them as part of
a collection of us who's going to like work together
to overcome this in the way that like a Bernie
Sanders would talk about it, like, yes, we are bitter,
but we're bitter at the one percent who has done
this to us. And work, work, and together, mediocre and

(02:03:42):
excellent people together, black, white, brown men and women. We're
going to come together and make the world better for
all of us. And there's no all of us in
the way that Crockett is talking there.

Speaker 5 (02:03:54):
Right, And I don't know that she buys into the
I guess ideological leftist argument about capitalism being the real enemy,
but this is really to the extent that she does,
or to the extent that she did, you would recognize
from that vantage point that mediocre white boys, this is
the argument you're saying, are a victim of that system,

(02:04:15):
in the same way that people you're trying to help
with DEI are a victim of that system. So it
doesn't it's not coherent, it's not helpful, and you know,
maybe Democrats should take a step back from the Jasmine
Crockett train if that's where if this is an intentional strategy,
promise she rates. I believe she probably gets fun. She
probably brings money into and we saw that throughout the resistance,

(02:04:38):
the same thing with the Lawfair people. Everyone who was
engaging in the Lawfair was raising money for Democrats. Yeah,
see how that worked out anyway.

Speaker 4 (02:04:45):
And she had that, like what would Democrats really right
want right now is somebody who's willing to just punch
Republicans right in the face, like they're hungry for rhetorically,
hungry for somebody rhetorically to just scream like and just

(02:05:05):
take them down.

Speaker 1 (02:05:07):
And she's and she's and she's delivering that in that sense.

Speaker 4 (02:05:09):
If you will go find that she had that was it,
Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bulberg, She had some like poetry
slam esque griff.

Speaker 5 (02:05:16):
Just like yeah, it was Margine Tayler Green.

Speaker 1 (02:05:19):
Just and she delivered in blonde.

Speaker 5 (02:05:21):
Beach built Butch Buddy.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
Just delivered it impeccably.

Speaker 4 (02:05:25):
And you're like, I don't know politics aside, just the
performance was just utterly impeccable.

Speaker 5 (02:05:32):
Yeah there was something else. Oh yeah, yeah, I un
ironically loved that exchange. So great place to land on
at the end of today's edition of Counterpoints.

Speaker 1 (02:05:44):
Yeah, just let it.

Speaker 5 (02:05:46):
Sometimes you just have to let them yell at each other.

Speaker 1 (02:05:49):
We would, we would play that out at a moment.

Speaker 5 (02:05:51):
Of such a thing. Does he still do that?

Speaker 1 (02:05:54):
I don't know. I don't think so. It's probably Comedy
Central's back on Comedy.

Speaker 5 (02:05:59):
Yeah, maybe he does. We'll have to check it out.
We will report back. We will figure that one out.
Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. Breaking Points
dot com is where you can go to get a
premium subscription and you get the show right in your inbox.
Early no breaks, full, full show, listen to the whole thing,
all gas, no breaks. As they say on TikTok, where
Ryan is now a.

Speaker 1 (02:06:20):
Celebrity, get over there, follow me there.

Speaker 4 (02:06:22):
On Friday, we were so Thursday, It'll come on Thursday
afternoon for premium subscribers. We're going to have Natalie Winters,
who is I told my wife this this morning, I said,
Steve Bannon's White House correspondent.

Speaker 1 (02:06:34):
She's like, I'm sorry, what like I said, it's Steve.
She's Steve Bannon's white House course.

Speaker 4 (02:06:40):
And she's like, yes, I heard you. What on earth
are you talking? How does Steve Bannon have a white
house course?

Speaker 13 (02:06:47):
Well?

Speaker 4 (02:06:47):
I was like, so, Steve Bannon has a podcast called
war Room. The podcast has a white house court. She's like, oh, okay,
interesting times we're living in. I was talking to Crystal. Yes, yes,
we were talking about how Friday Morning should we also
do like an a block because there's just so much
news that's going from like Thursday to Monday, so we'll
put out the Friday Show. If Emily is around, we'll

(02:07:09):
and I'm from around wallso we'll also do like a
you know, wrap up some news for you too, because like,
good lord, there's a lot going on

Speaker 5 (02:07:16):
So much going on, but looking forward to that for sure,
So make sure you stay tuned and if you want
it early, Breaking points dot com

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