5/19/25: Trump Backs Israel Assault, Biden Cancer Diagnosis, US Credit Downgrade, Trump Vs Walmart

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily,
good morning, good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Also, if people didn't watch the Friday show, they should
go check out Sager's.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
Baby little bit of news.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, congratulations to Sager proud father of a baby girl.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
And there are pictures, so if you go to Sager's
Instagram you can see the picture.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, which I tried to pull up and failed on Friday,
but in any case, you can go check those out
for yourself. Pria June, which I think is a really
beautiful name.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
So cute too, adorable, adorable, lots of hair, lots of hair.

Speaker 5 (01:03):
So we're just so happy for them.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yes, indeed, meanwhile, you were suffering through our air traffic
nightmarish landscape here over the weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
So my grandparents' seventieth anniversary was this weekend in Wisconsin. Wow,
seventieth anniversary.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 5 (01:19):
So that nineteen fifty five, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Wow, connect that's God bless amazing.

Speaker 6 (01:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, so we were really excited to go. But the
Reagan Airport was a complete mess on Friday. There was
a storm that rolled through the entire terminal basically had
cancelations and delay so we were at the airport for
seven hours until like three am early early Saturday.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
So the reason I.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Say that is if you have Memorial Day travel, oh,
I just be be aware that our air traffic system.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
I mean everyone is already kind of aware of this.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
But I think, honestly, the problems at Newark are still
that's a problem that creates tangles throughout the entire country.
It's such a big hub, So things are things are.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Rough well in Newark has gotten a lot of the
attention because they had those catastrophic failures where they actively
lost radar and were just completely blind. But the shortage
in air traffic controllers is that's nationwide.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
It's a massive issue.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yes, and they blamed actually one of the American air
gate agents when she was making announcements that was she
was like, we just haven't had enough air traffic controllers.
So and that was at Reade National, So I'm sure
that's happening in other parts of the country too. Wow,
be careful if you have a Memorial Day travel it's it's.

Speaker 5 (02:33):
Rough out there.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, plan to be in for the long haul seriously
as well. Yeah, lots to get to you in the
show this morning. So there are some major developments out
of Gaza amidst a completely apocalyptic ground invasion from Israel.
They have agreed to let in some minimal amount of aid,
so we'll break all of that. There's a lot of
moving pieces going on in the region right there. And
we also wanted to highlight for you THEO Vaugh came

(02:55):
out and you know said he made some comments, you know,
Mary heartfelt about how he felt that he hadn't said
enough about the what he's describing as a genocide and Gazo,
which I think is to me undeniable at this point,
so wanted to take a look at that and the
way that public opinion in the US overall has shifted
with regard to Israel and Palestine. President Biden formed. President

(03:19):
Biden diagnosed with a very aggressive form of prostate cancer.
We actually have a Biden insider who had already been
booked to be on the show, Michael Lorosa.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
We've had him on before.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
He was doctor Jill Biden's press secretary, and so he's
been talking about, you know, what he saw inside of
that world and trying to be candid about that. So,
you know, interested to hear his reaction to this cancer
diagnosis and look, just to be frank, the timing of
it raises a lot of eyebrows, especially the fact that
it is so advanced, and this would be someone who

(03:51):
would be seen medically, you know, would have been in
the White House seeing the White House doctors, and certainly
would be subsequent to that as well.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, absolutely, we actually have some a lot of doctors
were weighing in after the diagnosis and some you know,
we yeah, I think we have some information from a
Yale professor who's a doctor. Like we're not talking cranks
who were weighing in on the diagnosis of Biden, in
the timing of the diagnosis, or at least the announcement
of the diagnosis.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
So there's a lot to get to.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
With that, Crystal Friday, Moody's agreed with the other analysts
and finally downgraded the rating of the United States.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, and I think the markets are down this morning
because of it, So there's a lot there. There's some
new comments from Trump and Secretary Bessant with regard to Walmart,
saying they're going to raise prices. Trump says Walmart should
eat the tariffs, so we'll see if they oblige. We
also have our eyes on a horrific system of tornadoes
that hit the midwest, Kentucky, Missouri in particular. I think

(04:48):
twenty six people dead after that, and questions about whether
or not DOGE may have impacted their ability to alert
people in the area rapidly enough. So we'll dig into
all of that. And we're also going to have our
Jun Singh of lever News join us to talk about
the history of the anti tax movement, which is always relevant,
but it's particularly relevant right now as Republicans are trying

(05:10):
to get this Reconciliation bill pass They just passed it
down a committee actually late last night, and obviously includes
a giant tax cut for the rich. Again, even though
public opinion has really turned on the concept of this
sort of like overall trickle down concept, they're huge majorities
in both parties and certainly with Independence as well at
this point for raising taxes on the rich. So in

(05:31):
any case, he's going to dig into the backstory of
how we got to this moment.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, We've got some fun clips in history to go through.
It'll be a really interesting segment, So stay tuned for that, Crystal.
We'll be doing an AMA that's right as well. Yes,
Breakingpoints dot com by the way, to get that subscription.
If you can't get the subscription, we totally understand. Just
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Speaker 2 (05:52):
It helps us, Yeah, helps us a lot. So thank
you guys for all your support that you've shown. And
if you want to be part of that AMA Live,
which we try to do every Monday or Tuesday, depending
on how long the Monday.

Speaker 5 (06:01):
Show us go.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
But we got on the schedule this week for Monday,
I'll make sure you do that. And one one more
announcement before we jump into what is going on in Gaza.
Dave Smith is going to join me tomorrow as so
that should be fun. I already got a bunch of topics.
You know, we'll dig into the latest on you know, Ukraine.
There's movement that I want to hear from him on
I actually want to get his take on this Epstein
thing with both Bongino and cash matel being like, yeah,

(06:25):
he killed himself, there's really nothing to.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
See here, Banino said yesterday, like I've seen the file.
He kills the whole file. I noticed suicide looks like
the other.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
One he said, is that there's no there there in
terms of many like Trump assassination conspiracies as well.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Which is also absurd to fit. I mean, the stuff
going on with that assassination secret Service, it's really something
if that's where they're landing to see here less than
a year after nothing to see here.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, in any case, it should be fun. So I'm
looking forward to that. All right, Let's get into some
news that is quite grim, quite dire at this point.
Let's go ahead and put a eight up on the
screen here, guys. Israel has agreed to introduce what they're
describing as a basic amount of food into Gaza in
order to prevent famine, framing it as necessary to sustain

(07:09):
the expansion of intense fighting to defeat Hamas. They have
the full statement here from bb Netnya, who's office is
from drop Site. They say, on the recommendation of the
IDF and out of the operational need to enable the
expansion of the intense fighting to defeat Hamas, Israel will
introduce a basic amount of food to the population in
order to ensure that famine crisis does not develop in
the Gaza strip. Such a crisis would jeopardize the continuation

(07:32):
of the Gideon Chariots operation to defeat Hamas, that is
the new apocalyptic ground invasion that they are conducting. Israel
will work to deny Hamas's ability to take control of
the distribution of humanitarian aid to ensure that the aid
does not reach Hamas terrorists. I also have Jeremy Scahill
of drop Site News, of course, tweeted Netnia who said
Israel will allow some aid into Gaza because controversy over

(07:54):
a starvation campaign is hindering implementation of his final solution quote.
We're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,
and to do this, we need to do it in
a way that they won't stop us. Smotrich endorsed nat
Nyahu's temporary aid gimmick, saying it will allow the US
and other israel allies to continue to provide us with
an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and
the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight

(08:16):
until victory. So emily, it sounds like they realized that
the world was not maybe gonna just stand by and
let them before all of our eyes start. Somewhere around
two million people left in the Gaza Strip. They also
will show you some of these images later. They are
starting to face some significant internal domestic pushback as well.

(08:36):
There was a march to the border fence there with
Gaza and attempts actually to cross that were you know,
of course rebuffed by the Israeli police, but they were
under enough pressure to feel like, okay, we at least
need to allow some token amount of food in. It's
been over two months since any food, water, medicine has
entered the strip, and we know that there have been

(08:57):
children who are I mean children who are severe malnourished
and some who have died as a result of the
starvation policy.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Well, and just to I mean make this visual for everyone,
we can go ahead and start rolling A two.

Speaker 5 (09:09):
This is a mashup of some.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Footage of what we're seeing from the strip.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
So this was kids who were playing in the street
in Gaza and an Israeli drone struck them. You can
see here obviously wounded being carried. These are you know,
fires amidst the bombing and just just chaos that you
can see unfolding here.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Tents that caught fire.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Here they're attempting to rescue someone from out underneath the rubble.
They haven't been allowed to have any heavy equipment in
so it's just all done by hand. Here is the
destruction of an entire neighborhood. I believe this is in
or near Rafa. A severely injured child that you see
here with head and other wounds. People who are once

(09:54):
again trying to looks like carry their belongings, being forcibly,
forcibly displaced once again. And here's an overall view that
you can see of the rubble and the destruction. As
people go ahead and you know.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Try to flee to wherever may be safe, you know, Crystal,
last week we were covering the internal conversation. We talked
to Jeremy Skhle about this, but in Israel about whether
or not USAID and this is from the far right
in Israel, whether or not USAID hampers them ultimately, if
it's ultimately something that holds back.

Speaker 5 (10:27):
Their efforts to prosecute the war and the way that
they would want to.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
And that's an interesting context that as the famine was worsening,
and as you know, they wanted to continue to go
back in, we saw them, you know, saying, well, maybe
without the US, without the money from the United States,
without the resources from the United States, we wouldn't even
have to have these conversations.

Speaker 5 (10:50):
We could just do whatever we wanted.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
And you know what we saw just in the last
twenty four hours at least on the AID side, is
that the pressure was successful for now.

Speaker 5 (11:01):
But this is Steve Whitcough right now.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
He's saying that he's not forcing Israel to end the
war according to officials. Crystal, That's where I'm most curious
about what's happened over the weekend. In particular, we still
don't have a ton of information. The Barack reviewed report
on AID and Axios suggests that US pressure was instrumental

(11:26):
in getting the humanitarian aid back into Gaza. But we
just we don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but
we have indications, like from Steve Whitcough, that they're not
being as let's say privately intense as they at one
point suggested that they would be.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Well, and we should be clear about what this aid
really entails. You know, Israel had gone to a number
of humanitarian aid organizations with this plan of how they
wanted to distribute aid, and they all effectively said, no,
this would be unconscionable, it would violate our principles, your
civilians at risk. You're using food as a weapon of war.

(12:03):
You know, even in the language that BB uses here,
he describes it as a basic amount of food. So basically,
you know, we'll give you enough so that hopefully we
don't have full blown famine and people starving to death,
because we don't think the world would just sit by
and watch that. Potentially, and maybe our own population even
would not, you know, some portion of it would not
sit back and watch that. But you know, aid organizations

(12:26):
rejected this as an outrageous way of going about things.
There's also some scheme that's been cooked up with US
non governmental organizations involving effectively US mercenaries who are already
arriving in Israel to be involved in this aid distribution,
this basic amount of aid distribution. They did not take

(12:46):
a vote in the Security Cabinet because the expectation is
that vote to allow in even this bare minimum of
food would have failed. Smochrich and Ben Gevie have been
opposed to it. But again and their justification is, if
we want to finish the job in Gaza, then apparently

(13:06):
we're going to have to allow in some amount of food.
So that is the context in which this is happening.
We have some comments recent comments from Trump as well
about whether or not he's frustrated with Netan Yahoo and
also once again reiterating his commitment to a full ethnic
cleansing plan. This was in an interview with Brett Barrett.

(13:28):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to those comments.

Speaker 7 (13:30):
Obviously, the Israel Hamas and what's happening in Gaza is
driving a lot.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
How do you see that?

Speaker 5 (13:36):
Are you frustrated at all with Prime Minster?

Speaker 4 (13:38):
Net Yahoo?

Speaker 8 (13:39):
No, Look, he's got a tough situation. You have to
remember there was an October seventh that everyone forgets. It
was one of the most violent days in the history
of the world, not the Middle East, the world. When
you look at the tapes, and the tapes are there
for everyone to see. So he has that problem. That
problem should have never happen. And now if I were president,

(14:01):
that problem wouldn't have happened because Iran had no money.
They were stone cold broke and they weren't giving money
to Hamas. The situation in Gaza is going to come
to an end soon. The gazzas of nasty place. It's
been that way for years. I think it should become
a free zone, you know freedom. I call it a
freedom zone. It should become a freedom zone. It doesn't work.

(14:22):
Every ten years they go back, they have Hamas. Everybody's
being killed all over the place. I mean, you ever
see you talk about crime sets. It's it's a nasty place.
Are these people, these countries that you were just visiting,
are they going to have to be a part of
the solution. Well, they would be. They would be. I
spoke to all three of them. They would absolutely be.
I mean they're really rich and really really really even

(14:45):
more than rich. They're good people and they would help,
and so money's not even the problem. You got to
get countries to say, yes, we'll take them. Look, these
are people that want to be in the Middle East.
They really want to be in the Middle East. They
the Middle East. I see that there's a spirit for
the Middle East. They didn't have to go to Sweden, Germany,

(15:06):
these different countries. They could have been home in the
Middle East if somebody had the brains to build beautiful communities.
You know, one point nine million is a lot of people,
but it's not a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (15:17):
He says.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
They could be home in the Middle East. I'm sure
Palestinians will tell you their home is in Palestine. In
any case, there were reports as well about a plan
to potentially ethnically cleanse Palestinians to Libya. We can put
a four up on the screen. After the report was published.
Then they put out a denial saying this is untrue.

(15:38):
But NBC News had given them a chance to comment,
they didn't say anything. The Trump administration, NBC News says,
is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to
one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya. Five
people with knowledge told NBC News the plans under serious
enough consideration. The administration is discussed it with Libya's leadership.
Don't say which factions of Libya's leadership, because Libya is
basically you know, torn as under thanks to our own

(15:59):
foreign policy. In any case, they say, in exchange for
the resettling of Palestinian's administration would potentially release to Libya
billions of dollars in funds that the US froze more
than a decade ago. Those three people said, so, you know,
apparently there have been some conversations there. In addition, Trump
you know, has consistently reiterated that this is his ultimate goal.

(16:21):
And one other note on his comments there, Emily that
I just think is you know, worth considering. He claims
in that clip we just played that there are one
point nine million people in Gaza. That would indicate that
you know, some hundreds of thousands of people have been
killed since you know, post October seventh. The original estimate

(16:41):
prior to October seventh was two point two to two
point three million people. So you know, drop site pointing
out that that means if his numbers are correct, and
he said similar things before too, by the way, that
this campaign's already reduced the Palestinian population in Gaza by
about fifteen percent.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Well, speaking of the Trumpman station A six, this is
a drop site report noticing as well. So we'll put
this in the context of what we were just talking
about with Steve Witcough. This is the drop site report
saying that this is from Jeremy. Steve wit Cough personally
promised to lift the Gaza blockade in exchange for Don Alexander.

(17:22):
And so it is now May nineteenth, and what we've seen,
as we mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, is
indications to the contrary from Steve wit Cough that or
that he's acting contrary to what Jeremy's reporting suggests.

Speaker 5 (17:35):
He said that he was going to.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Do and crystal with the humanitarian aid plan that you
just laid out. This is for a wit Cough, this
is looking extremely bad. I mean, Trump puts so much
of his projects and puts so much of his hopes
onto Steve wit Coough to get an into this conflict,
but to the point where you know you're telling one

(18:00):
of these negotiations, which is Hamas, that you're going to
do something, you don't do it, and they just give
up a huge piece of leverage for that probably doesn't
help your ability to continue negotiating in a way that's
helpful to securing an end to the conflict.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Right there or anywhere else. Yeah, yeah, I mean if
you're Iran and you're looking at Whitkoff just told them like, okay,
you release this American Israeli hostage and we will then
you know, will secure this aid relief. We're going to
work and press for an end to the war. We're
going to give you public credit and there series of
promises that were made and then you just don't do it.

(18:36):
How do you think that, you know, the Russians and
the Ukrainians are going to look at that. How do
you think that the Iranians are going to look at that?
How do you think that Hamas is going to look
at that going forward? You know, if you do want
to seek an end to this conflict. So it's yeah,
it's a huge deal in terms of his credibility when
as you put it, Emily, he has been put so

(18:57):
central to all of these key high stakes negotiations. Will
cover with Dave Smith tomorrow. There's supposed to be a
Trump putent phone call coming up in an attempt to
you know, to end that war. So in any case,
you know, not only did he just like get this
and the the possible trajectory here, one possible reading of

(19:23):
what the Trump administration has done here, And Michael Tracy
said the same thing on his Twitter.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
Is basically like they got the last.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
American and then they can just not really care anymore
about what BB does going forward. And you know, I
think that's I think that's a real possibility of what
we're seeing unfold, and especially when again everyone wants to go, well,
what does Trump really want?

Speaker 4 (19:45):
What's he really thinking?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Like he's told us multiple times what he really wants
someone he's really thinking he wants this freedom zone, ethnic cleansing,
beach development plan. That's what he wants. Now will he
be able to achieve that? That's kind of the only question.
But to me, it's not really an open question anymore.
What Trump wants to see. He wants to see the
removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and some sort of

(20:09):
real estate development project that he can participate in going forward.
And you know, like I said, the only really outstanding
question in terms of him is how committed he is
to that and whether that's something that he can actually effectuate.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
It just I mean, we talked about this when he
announced his first plans for Mara Gaza or whatever.

Speaker 5 (20:28):
You know, it's being dubbed that.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
It's a recipe for complete and total disaster. Like, on
top of the ethical considerations of what it would entail,
you're also just going to end up worsening the radical
rage at US imperialism, Western imperialism. For like the entire situation.

(20:52):
People have fought for decades literally for the land. And
we don't even have to get into this, but it's
so obviously just a recipe for even more and even
more explosive situation because people are not going to stop
fighting for the land and there. It doesn't just affect Palestine,
it doesn't just affect people in the area. I mean,
it's other groups spread throughout the entire region are react

(21:18):
to what happens in God's or react to what I mean,
just to the infamous Osama bin Laden letter, what is
its site, Well, it talks about Palestine. It's not some
small issue for a lot of America's adversaries. So it's
just even on its own terms, a ridiculous idea that
they seem to actually genuinely be pushing closer and closer

(21:41):
to making the goal at the end stage of negotiations.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
So increasingly inside of Israel there are protests that are
not just about retrieving the hostages securiancies fire to get
the hostages back. They're starting to actually talk about Palestinians
and the suffering of Palestinians. Now I'm under no illusion,
based on the pulling that this is anything approaching majority
coalition in Israel, but this is really the first time

(22:06):
we've seen any of that messaging at all, any concern
for you know, the lives of Palestinians being expressed in
the protest movements that have been ongoing. So we can
put these images up on the screen. You had a
group of I believe it's several hundred Israelis who marched
towards the border with Gasa. Some of them are holding

(22:27):
signs that said Palestinian lives matter, which again is just
not something that we've seen in Israel. I mean, it's
this sort of thing you could be you know, censored for,
arrested for. You can see one of those Palestinian Lives
Matter signs there, and you had even attempt to, you know,
directly approach that border fencing, which was rebuffed.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
By the Israeli police there.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
But Emily, it is significant to me that even within Israel,
and we've seen this, I mean this, you know, Schild Benefrem,
who we've had on the show as a liberal Zionist
who completely changed his mind about He says, Okay, you
know what, the left is right, this is a genocide
and this is horrific. Now he's still committed to the
state of Israel, but you know, I think he's one
example of how some liberal Israelis have woken up to

(23:11):
the horrors of the slaughter that is being committed in
their names. And so in any case, it's even though
it's a small number, I do think it's noteworthy that
there's a karen concern for Palestinians here that we at
least I haven't seen in any evident in any of
the protests up to this point.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
It's I mean, I think it's very significant, and I
think some of it also has to do with the
you know the fact that there it's more obvious now
than ever before that this idea that the war and
all of the destruction and death that it's wrought is
not going to result in the end of Hamas and right,
I think.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
That just sort of makes everything.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
It just it makes clear what all of this was
ultimately for and what it was actually going to end in.
So it's not a surprising development at all. But I
have to imagine that some of it it stems from that.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, absolutely, I think you're right. Some of these things
just have become undeniable at this point. Undeniable at this point,
one of those protest testers actually spoke out about what
his goals were and why he was there.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 9 (24:13):
While our government, the Israeli government, launches another attack on Gaza,
we are marching hundreds of people choose the Palestinians from
the rocks to the Gaza voters with that demand to
stop this assault on Gaza, to stop the horrible killing
of innocent people, hell of children. And we are demand
from the Harbor government to sign a.

Speaker 6 (24:34):
Deal to a six fire.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
And I also a we are.

Speaker 9 (24:38):
A human to say very very clearly that Israeli public
to not support this government. This sport cannot go on,
This war has nothing with our safety. It's only about
annexation and building both settlements and transferring the Palestinians, and
we would not let it happen.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
So he says what you were indicating that, like, at
this point, it's undeniable. This war is just about annexation
and settlements and transferring the Palestinians, as he says, effectively
ethnic cleansing. So that's where things stand this morning in
terms of Israel. We did want to share with you
some comments from Theo vonn He's been described as Trump's

(25:19):
favorite podcaster. It was certainly important as part of the
like bro podcast sphere that helped to get Trump elected.
And he took, you know, a good several minutes on
his show to effectively apologize for not saying more about
Gaza and to you know, express that he does believe
that this is a genocide that's unfolding before all of
our eyes. Let's go ahead and take a listen to

(25:40):
a little bit of that.

Speaker 10 (25:41):
It feels to me, fact, it just it feels to
me like it's a genocide that's happening while we're alive
here in front of our in front of our lives.
And I don't sometimes I feel like I should say something.
I'm not a geologist or geographer or anything like that,

(26:05):
you know, so I don't know a lot of the
some of it. I do know, though, like I know
the basics of the issues over there. But for me,
it's just like how I feel like you see all
these photos of people, just children, women, people body parts,

(26:25):
just people like putting their kids back together, and I
just can't believe that we're watching that and that more
isn't said about it. And so I'm not saying anyone
else needs to say anything, but I think I'm just
that more isn't said about it by me. So I
just I want to be able to speak up about

(26:46):
that that I think we're watching, probably, like you know,
one of the sickest things that's ever happened. And I'm
sorry if I kind of haven't said about it. I've
tried to talk about and learn about it, but I
don't know. Maybe I just want to. I just wanted
to say something. I don't even know what to do,

(27:09):
you know. And it's crazy because our country is also
complicit in in it, you know, it's in it and
has been for a long time, and and it's just
kind of interesting because then you just realize, oh, well,
I'm just a Yeah, I'm a member of this country,
but I'm just what we want. Sometimes doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
That last part is interesting. We'll come back to that.
And sometimes in this country what you want just it
doesn't matter. Emily, what did you make at the significance
of theovon there?

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, so he just had dinner with Ivanka and Jared
Levonka Trump.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
And Jared Kushner.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
Yeah, literally last week, last week.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
And Jared Kushner obviously the architect of the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 5 (27:47):
So I actually find this to be very significant.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Joe Rogan has reacted to the war in similar ways.
And I think you know, I was, I was reading
yesterday and I know you're going to talk to Dave
Smith about this, But the New York Times had a
big dive into the Heritage Foundation's Project esther over the weekend, and.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Which shout out to drop site reported on this like yes,
what a year ago?

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yes, yeah, yes, And you know it's it's basically like
they're the plan that they put in front of the
administration to go after students and to suppress speech. And
as I was reading this story, you know, I know
a lot of people at the Heritage Foundation kind of
on both sides of the generational divide, like some of
the people who are more from the neo conservative version

(28:33):
of the Republican Party and people who are in the
like new.

Speaker 5 (28:37):
Right Maga world.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
And as I'm listening to the Avonne, thinking, hmm, this
is going to be a real problem for the old
neo conservative Republicans going forward, because as as much as
it looks like whit Cough is, you know, pulling a
fast one and not doing what he said to put
pressure on his reel to get an into the conflict,

(29:01):
increasingly the younger, younger voters in the Republican Party, but
even younger staff is just not on board with this anymore.
And they're all listening to people like Theovonne, Joe Rogan.
They just have a completely different worldview when it comes
to this particular issue. So as I was watching it,
that's what was going through my head that like, this
is going to this does resonate, this does move young

(29:23):
people on the right, and it's that that you know,
is not going to be easily blended with the old
neoconservative approach to this for much longer.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I mean I appreciate him saying this to his audience.
I want to know if he's also saying it to
Vana Vanca when he's having dinner with them in a
very friendly way, like if you're saying this is a genocide,
and then you're I mean, he also just went we
can put this up on this green E ten. He
was in Cutter with Trump there the Ravon rips on drugs, disabilities,
and homosexuality before Trump speaks at US Space in Kutcher. So,

(29:57):
I mean, this is someone who has public power because
he's very influential with a large group of young men,
and so him using his voice on his platform matters
a lot there. But he also has private power because
Trump does attribute, you know, some of his electoral victory
to people like Theoon, and he's routinely described as Trump's
favorite podcast.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Baron probably listens to Theovonna if reports are correct.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
No, that was the reporting that Baron was instrumental in
putting them together. So he also has private power. And
I think that's the real question is Okay, if you
see this is a genocide, which I agree with and
at this point many other people do as well, not
to mention international organizations as well, like, okay, are you
using the inside track that you have to exert pressure

(30:43):
internally as well, so that that would be my question.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
But I do think we can go ahead.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Let's skip ahead to a twelve to your point about
the way that public opinion has shifted, because you know,
it's this kind of dichotomy where at the same time
that Israel is at it's almost like most powerful all
the countries that's bombing in territory that it's annexing and
you know, on the verge of effectively a final solution

(31:10):
in Gaza. The backing in the US has taken a
dramatic hit. I mean not among elite elected politicians so much, right,
but among the people. Just look at these numbers, the
way that negative views of Israel have risen in the US. So,
first of all, for maybe the first time ever, majority
of US adults majority have a negative view of the

(31:33):
state of Israel.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
So they were asked yes, so this is a question
of they were asked if they have an unfavorable view
of Israel.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Straight up. That goes from forty two percent.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
In twenty twenty two to fifty three percent in twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
That's right, that's right, And Republicans are still the group
that it has the largest, you know, favorable proportion. But
look at that generational divide that Emily was pointing to.
So now you have a majority of Republicans between eighteen
and forty nine, So not even that particle early young
fifty percent now say they have an unfavorable view. Man,
those boomer Republicans, though they love them some Israel, they

(32:07):
have barely budged.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Look at those, I mean, the number the generational divide
is more than so twenty three. Only twenty three percent
of fifty plus Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel.
And it's as Crystal said, fifty percent of ages eighteen
to forty nine. I bet if you just did eighteen
to twenty four, that number would be even higher.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
I have no doubt, no doubt about that.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
And these are all people in one party. And granted
it's not what people go to the polls and vote
based on, but it does create a permission structure for
politicians to act in various ways. So when you look
at those numbers, at some point that has to change
the way Republican politicians approach the issue.

Speaker 5 (32:45):
You would think.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
But that's what theovonn gets to at the end of
his at the end of his moment, therey right.

Speaker 5 (32:51):
So it feels like there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
It feels like what we want doesn't really matter. And
if you look at the Democratic numbers there, you know,
you see a huge shift where now you've got sixty
nine percent of Democrats and lean Dems overall with an
unfavorable view and a much smaller generational divide, So seventy
one percent of eighteen to forty nine year old, sixty
six percent of fifty plus and those fifty plus in

(33:15):
the Democratic Party, that is the group that has moved
the most, because it used to be just if you're
of an older generation like Joe Biden, you support Israel
and you really don't think too much about it, and
that has shifted dramatically. And yeah, I mean, I actually
do think that this issue is important electorally. I think

(33:36):
it's going to be quite significant in the Democratic primary
in twenty twenty eight. I think it will be a
litmus test in the Democratic primary in twenty twenty eight.
And I also think, you know, I mean, this is
it speaks to the hypocrisies of America first, when you're
claiming like, Okay, we're just going to focus on US interests,

(33:57):
and yet you're still funding this genocide with you know,
with our tax dollars, shipping all this money and weapons
and diplomatic support to Israel to do whatever the hell
Israel wants to do. So there's a there is an
electoral hypocrisy there that also, I think, you know, it's
I don't think it will be insignificant, not that it's

(34:18):
going to be everybody's number one issue, but when we
talk to those AOC Trump voters, so a lot of
them actually did bring up Ukraine and Israel, and you
know a sense of dissatisfaction with Biden Harris on those
issues in particular.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
So I don't want to downplay it either.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Well, and for a lot of working class voters, you
look at that actually as a material kitchen table concern
for yourself because it makes you angry that you're struggling
in no small part in some cases because of the
way the government has structured the economy, because of the
way the government spends its money, and you see all
of this funding going to foreign conflicts in many cases

(34:53):
no end in sight.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
And politicians who seem to care more about a foreign
country than they do this one.

Speaker 5 (34:57):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
So yeah, I mean I think this is also and
this is something that I don't think those older conservative
actually I should say Republicans and Democrats have grappled with
yet is the post imperial era of America's like approach
to the Middle East.

Speaker 5 (35:14):
So for generations that grew up.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
Amidst the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, that looking at
Israel post that post October seventh, I think it's it's
actually just a.

Speaker 5 (35:25):
Very different dynamic.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
And you know, we could go back and have conversations
about historical like historical Israel and you know, the last
one hundred years of history in Israel, if not longer.
But uh, there's there's definitely this is a new chapter
in American relationship, like post October seventh is a new
chapter in a relationship with Israel. And in a sense,
I think for a lot of people it's it's come
across as much more egregious as a different version or

(35:50):
a changed version I shouldn't say different, but a changed
version of Israel that's engaging in negotiations with the US
and that is having these back and forth with US power.
So I mean, I think that's one thing that just
has not been understood very well, is this is Israel

(36:11):
is in a different position, yeah these days.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Well And one of the most going back to Theovonn's comments,
one of the most potent arguments that pro Israel people
have made in the past is well, you don't understand.
The history is too complicated, so just stay out of it.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
Just let us worry about it. You don't worry about it,
just trust us that you're on the right side. It's
all good.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
It's good versus bad, right, Like, it's always this very
maniqueen dark and light, good and bad.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
And what they don't.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Understand is is now with social media, you can see everything, right.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
And so I think that that like like that worked
really well on liberals for a long time of like, well,
the history is just.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Really complicated, you don't understand.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
And now because those images are so undeniable, it has
sort of overcome this unwillingness to engage with where it's like, Okay,
but maybe I don't need to know one hundred.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Years of history.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Maybe I can have my own world judgment about what's
being done right now today in the present with my
tax dollars and as the world watches.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Ryan and I fell into a long conversation on an
episode a few months ago about how what happened to
shrin Abu Akla was a sort of changing moment for me,
and part of that was because you could piece together
so many different social media, so much different evidence from
social media, and all these different angles of video, all
of these different movements were captured on iPhone cameras or

(37:37):
smartphone cameras, and when you're able to see so much
different pieces of the puzzle, you can put it together
in ways that gives the propaganda a lot less power.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, I think that's right, and I think also coming
at a time when trust in mainstream media has never
been lower, their ability to manufacture consent is vastly diminished,
certainly with in the Republican Party, but increasingly within the
Democratic Party as well. There was one more thing we
wanted to get to you here, which again I think
is kind of a sign of the times, which is
Bernie Sanders on the most mainstream shows you could get

(38:11):
on with Stephen Colbert Late Night and calling out directly
the influence of APAK, specifically in politics, as the reason
why Democrats are unable to break with the consensus with
regard to Israel. Let's go ahead and take a listen
to what Bernie had to say.

Speaker 11 (38:29):
But on the Democratic side, and this is what we've
got to deal with. I happen to believe that what
is going on in Gaza right now is horrific. That
we are seeing children right now as we speak, starving
to death, massive malnutrition.

Speaker 7 (38:47):
Your fellow Vermonter Ben of Ben and Jerry's was actually
at one of the hearings I believe you were at
yesterday and was dragged out when he was making that protest.

Speaker 11 (38:56):
But why do you think more Democrats are not speaking
up on the issue.

Speaker 7 (39:02):
Money?

Speaker 11 (39:03):
Yeah, of course, if you speak up on that issue,
you'll have super packs, like a pack going after you
in the same way Elon Musk goes after Republicans.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
There you go calling out APAC directly to applause.

Speaker 10 (39:16):
On.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
I still want to call it the Colbert rapport. Old
I am, but I wish.

Speaker 5 (39:21):
I mean, that would be amazing, that.

Speaker 4 (39:23):
Was the peak he was at his height of his powers.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Then, I mean absolutely it will never be anything like
the Colbert rapport again.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
But yeah, I think it's a good point.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
It's just we we see all kinds of anecdotal evidence
and then the polling numbers bears it out that just
the US public has shifted on this, and it's I
think part of it is fatigue and disillusionment with American
Empire post Iraq and Afghanistan, and a sort of a
sense of cynicism about what's possible, what the American Empire

(39:54):
can accomplish and bringing peace to the Middle East as
opposed to focusing back a And I'm not going to
open up the can of worms that is that debate
right now, but I think that is the sense that
so many people have on top of what they've seen
over the course of the last several years, and in
this case, again with seemingly no end in sight. I mean,
every time it feels like there's a light at the

(40:15):
end of the tunnel, it goes away, it fades.

Speaker 5 (40:17):
So, yeah, people are just sick of it.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
All right, let's go ahead and turn to this huge
domestic news. We can put this up on the screen. So,
Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of
prostate cancer. I'll read you this last week present. Joe
Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule.
After experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed
with prostate cancer characterized by a gleasan score of nine

(40:43):
grade group five with metastasis to the bone. While this
represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer
appears to be hormone sensitive, which allows for effective management.
The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with
his physicians. Can put the next piece up on the screen.
This is from Ken Klippenstein puld some research about the
five year survival rate for this form of metastasized prostate

(41:08):
cancer which has metastasized to the bone. He says the
study found a five year survival rate of thirty two percent.
Joe Biden also, you know, relatively elderly at this point
as well, which doesn't help for the survival rate chances.
And you know, this comes emily, of course, at a
time when there has been a lot of focus on

(41:29):
who knew what and when with regard to Joe Biden's
mental decline over the course of his presidency and even
potentially before his presidency, something we've certainly been talking about
since before his presidency. So a lot of questions raised
about the timing of this announcement given the advanced state
of the cancer. So to address all of these things

(41:52):
and tell us what he saw when he was deep
inside of Biden world, We're going to be joined by
Michael Erosa. He is the former press secretary to doctor
Jill Biden and he's been speaking out about some of
what he saw while he was on the inside. Joining
us now in studio is Michael Erosa, form press secretary
for doctor Jill Biden. Good to see Michael.

Speaker 12 (42:12):
Good to see you too, Thanks for having me here.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, of course, So before we jump into all of this,
including cancer diagnosis and you know, the mental decline and
what people knew at the time, just lay out for
our audience, like what was your role? How close were
you with the Bidens? How often did you see the
former president? Those sorts of things that we sort of
have a baseline.

Speaker 12 (42:30):
Sure, so you know I was not.

Speaker 13 (42:33):
I was actually considered more of an outsider, and the
Bidens did not take many outsiders into their at least
into their bubble, the traveling bubble on the twenty twenty campaign.
So I started with them as there as doctor Biden's
traveling press secretary starting in twenty nineteen, So I traveled
everywhere with her throughout the Democratic primary, stayed with her

(42:57):
through the general election in the same position, and then
went to the White House as her chief spokesperson, special
assistant to President Biden and also primary traveling spokesperson for
the first Lady. So we traveled to about eighteen countries,
thirty eight states, and seventy five cities in that first

(43:18):
you know, two years of the White House when I
was there, spent a lot of because our you know,
what they call the traveling bubble was very small and.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Uh and that's COVID era too, so particularly COVID area.

Speaker 12 (43:33):
Yes, it was like that.

Speaker 13 (43:34):
Prior to COVID there was his traveling bubble, our traveling bubble,
and then we all kind of and during COVID we
would end up staying close physically together, living together in
Wilmington because we tried to keep the Bidens around the
same people consistently.

Speaker 12 (43:52):
And a smaller group as well.

Speaker 13 (43:54):
But that smaller group was really the group that spent
the most time with both Bidens is whether it was
in Wilmington, Rehoboth, or Camp David.

Speaker 12 (44:04):
They left the White House most weeks.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
So what was your reaction to the news yesterday of
Joe Biden's cancer is.

Speaker 13 (44:12):
You know, human, sad, heartbreaking, trying to learn more about
how bad it is, and you know how long the
treatments can get him.

Speaker 12 (44:27):
Obviously he's eighty two.

Speaker 13 (44:29):
So things when you're diagnosed, I guess or I'm not
a doctor, but I imagine that when you get diagnosed
with a cancer like that that metastasizes to bones, that
it's not good.

Speaker 12 (44:40):
But just praying. I think I've been thinking a lot
about doctor Biden.

Speaker 13 (44:44):
And I saw the picture that they posted this morning
with Willow, their cat, who I have a special relationship
with because I watched her for the first year of
the White House.

Speaker 12 (44:54):
So it made me. It choked me up a little
bit to see the three of them.

Speaker 13 (44:57):
But yeah, I'm just thinking a lot about them today.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
So this has raised a lot of questions for people
about you know, this comes in the context of questions
about the cover up of his decline. This is unfortunately
very aggressive and advanced stage of disease apparently, and so
we can put b three up on the screen. You know,
it's a lot of people on the right who were

(45:22):
saying Is this really when they got the diagnosis or
is this actually time to come out now? But this
is someone with doctor from Yale.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
Yale Professional was.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Also raising questions. It's inconceivable that this was not being
followed before he left the presidency. Glease in grade nine
would have had an elevated PSA level. That's like something
that would show up in a blood test. I'm understanding
for some time before this diagnosis. He must have had
a PSA test numerous times before.

Speaker 4 (45:45):
This is odd.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
I wish him well and I hope he has an
opportunity for maximizing his quality of life.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
You know, given what you.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Saw of the way that the bidens operated, can you
assure people that this diagnosis was just made now, that
there wasn't some longer term cover up of an earlier
cancer diagnosis.

Speaker 13 (46:04):
No, I can't assure you that I saw Zeke Emmanuel
on Morning Joe for the first twenty minutes of Morning
Joe basically say the same exact thing. University a pen doctor.
I think I believe he's an oncologist. I have to
go back and check. I thought he was. I now again,
I'm just repeating what I what I observed and heard

(46:25):
this morning, which is that it would be very unusual
according to Zeke Emmanuel who was on this morning, that
they that Gleason level nine would not have been found
much earlier. He said that generally, you know, he may
he may have not have had these PSA tests after

(46:48):
seventy years old. However, the three other presidents, I believe
it was Obama, Bush and Trump who did have these
PSA tests when they were in the White House, according
to their medical results, but Biden did not. So look,

(47:11):
there's questions, and I understand why there's questions, and I
think it was BBC journalist Katy k who was on
today who's also said.

Speaker 12 (47:18):
On this topic.

Speaker 13 (47:19):
You know, given the conversation we are having about trust
right now, this does raise questions and they're saying that I.

Speaker 12 (47:28):
Am just observing and listening and hearing, but it's.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Given your experience with them and the way that they operated,
you're effectively saying you wouldn't put it past them to
have hit a cancer diagnosis for some amount of time.

Speaker 13 (47:42):
I've always wanted to always give them the benefit of
the doubt, and my experience when I was there was
it was hard. It was very hard. Their natural instincts.
And I'm not talking about Joe and Joe Biden, Okay,
I want to be clear. I'm talking about the people
that they listened to, the people in that in our circle,
in the insular.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
Bubble, donaldin Forshetty, not sister.

Speaker 13 (48:03):
More about the people who were safeguarding their privacy constantly,
which sometimes took the sort of north star to political.

Speaker 12 (48:13):
Uh decisions.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
So it sounds like there's there's an inner circle which
you were a part of, and then an inner circle
within that inner circle. And I think that's something that
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are reporting in Original Sin
is that? But I also wondered to what extent that's
a kind of cope And I want to get your
thoughts on that that it gives some people the ability
to sort of say, well, we were you know, there

(48:36):
was this this privacy circle that was being like they
were circling the wagons around what may have actually been happening.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
What's your take on that?

Speaker 3 (48:44):
I mean, was it is it real that maybe it
was Joe Biden, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden Valorie, like,
what is that? Who would have been keeping it so
that even people like yourself. Weren't thinking, oh my gosh,
this is out of control, unless you were thinking that.

Speaker 12 (49:03):
It's hard to say.

Speaker 13 (49:04):
It's all it's a matter of timing, Like what period
are you particularly referring to, like at the end, because
that's what the.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Book suggests that it happens after twenty twenty two printer stuff.

Speaker 12 (49:16):
I left right after twenty twenty two?

Speaker 5 (49:18):
So did you see it?

Speaker 13 (49:19):
So that I've always been consistent by the way, I
should preface this by saying, no, he never ever gave
me a moment's pause.

Speaker 12 (49:25):
I was.

Speaker 13 (49:26):
I went on Fox News Jesse Waters at the night
of the debate to say, look, he's going to run
circles around anybody on his record on policy, on the
other guy's record. My concern was the performative aspect of
debating and showmanship. Did he prepare with a studio light?
Did he prepare in a Was he prepared for the

(49:48):
unexpected against Donald Trump? That's why it's not like debating
a different or a traditional kind of Republican So was
he prepared for that kind of thing? And remember we
we were always used to him showing up on game day,
especially like we beat Trump in the last two debates, he
showed up at the State of the Union, and if

(50:09):
you think about it from that inner circle's mind, with
everything going back to nineteen eighty seven, which it was
the most and first scarring experience in politics that they
had Joe Biden to them, and the way they think
and the way they make decisions is that Joe Biden
is underestimated. Joe Biden always defies gravity in the face

(50:29):
of people who doubt them, So you have to keep
that in mind. That's how they make very big decisions.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
One of the big pieces of information we just got
is the her audio was just released, and we've had
a couple of moments here. The first one is with
regard to the central question with regard to that was
these classified documents, and he appears sort of confused about
you know exactly what they were, why there were et cetera.

(51:00):

Speaker 12 (51:02):
You were aware that you had kept it after your
Jarman vice president?

Speaker 14 (51:08):
Did you know that you had it? I don't know
that I knew, wouldn't wouldn't some something I wants started
to think about.

Speaker 12 (51:18):
The reason I asked, is it's been written it.

Speaker 15 (51:21):
Out about Woodward wrote about it.

Speaker 16 (51:22):
In one of his books, Jewels we Cover wrote about
it and his biograp.

Speaker 15 (51:29):
So that's that's the reason I asked if it was
something that he wanted to.

Speaker 12 (51:33):
Hang on to because he was going to be reporting
or his.

Speaker 14 (51:36):
Own is gonna be showing reporting. But I wanted to
hang I guess I wanted to hang on just proposterity setting.
I mean, this was my position on Afghanistan.

Speaker 15 (51:47):
His president.

Speaker 17 (51:47):
I'm sorry, I mean that's that's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 14 (51:51):
I don't know what didn't do with Afghanistan.

Speaker 17 (51:53):
Okay, that way, and Mark just really quickly, I promise
will be believe. I just really would like to avoid
the purpose of the clean record getting into specultive areas.
When the President responded and said, I don't recall intending
to keep this memo, you then said, well, you know,
might two have thought it was important to keeping whatever,
And he said, well, I guess I could have his recollection.

Speaker 18 (52:15):
As I understand it is, he does not recall specifically
intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency,
and I want that to be I want these questions
to be as clearly answered and recorded on the transfert
as possible.

Speaker 12 (52:27):
I bet we should take a bradiance.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
And probably even more significant was the audio that was
released regarding his confusion of when his son bo passed
away and also when he was in the vice presidency
and being confused about the years when he was serving
in which office.

Speaker 4 (52:45):

Speaker 14 (52:47):
I don't know. This is what twenty seventeen eighteen. Men,
here is Remember in this time frame, my son is
either been deployed or is dying. When boone dye got
a mazed twenty eighteen, when twenty fifteen and died fifteen

(53:14):
he was twenty fifteen or eat that much of the months.

Speaker 5 (53:17):
Or what he goes.

Speaker 7 (53:17):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 14 (53:21):
And what's happened in the meantime is that.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Has and.

Speaker 14 (53:33):
SHOUMP gets elected in November of twenty seventeen.

Speaker 8 (53:37):
By sixty sixteen, twenty sixteen, all right, so.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
Why have twenty seventeen that's when you left office, and so.

Speaker 14 (53:53):
No, I let me just keep going to get it done.

Speaker 4 (53:56):
Was this year experience of president by at this time and.

Speaker 5 (53:59):
That's twenty twenty three.

Speaker 13 (54:00):
Yeah, and I was not I wasn't there then. But
part of that a couple of things, just observing and listening,
hearing how he's responding to answers that are put to
him or questions that are put to him in a
context that is in private. Slowly, Yes, oftentimes that that

(54:22):
could be representative that was accurate of of what I saw,
that it was slowly processing, or that he was You
could ask him a question, he'd think about it for
a little bit and then answer. But I don't know
what if that is a reflective of decline or not,
because I only knew him as an older man, right.

(54:42):
I met him in nineteen and so that was consistent
for from what I knew. So it's hard for me
to say that was a like was he messing updates? Sure,
yeah he was. But I don't know how much that
is met mental decline an age.

Speaker 12 (55:00):
I just don't know.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
What's interesting from the Tapper Thompson book excerpts is that
it seems from maybe the donor perspective and the insider perspective,
it became sort of the scuttle butt that people were
a bit concerned after what twenty twenty two is roughly
were they draw on is that was that your experience
that people started to privately talk about it.

Speaker 13 (55:20):
Oh yes, yes, that was in June of twenty twenty two.
We started to do some fundraising prospecting, start to sort
of build out what would be the sort of mechanism
or operation for a potential superpack for the reelect. And

(55:41):
when we were going around and meeting with donors around
the country, I mean there were donors who came up
to the First Lady and thanked her for all of
the saving democracy restoring institutions. But part of his legacy
can also be passing the torch and turning it over
to an open democratic process. That can be part of

(56:02):
his democracy legacy. So no, they were hearing from people
who were and that particular donor, the one that I recall,
specifically asked her not to do this, that her family
has sacrificed enough, please don't do this.

Speaker 16 (56:17):
Wow.

Speaker 13 (56:18):
And it was in a very large room with a
lot of people. It was not open to the press,
but there was a senior age at the First Lady
who then went back and said, would that answer be
different if you knew he was running against Trump? Because
I think the mindset in Biden world was that Biden
can do this if it's going to be Trump, He's

(56:39):
the only one that beats Trump. That was the argument
that he was the only one who had beaten Trump,
and so that Donor immediately said, of course not. I
don't want either of them to be seventy eight or
older and running for president. He said, I don't want
my doctor, my surgeon, or my pilot to be eighty
two either. So no, they were hearing this, But all

(57:00):
of that, if you understand the bidens and their mindset again,
if you go back to like and understand what happened
in eighty seven when they were pushed out very publicly
and in a humiliating way, it was not that they
were only going to double down. Ever, if they read
op eds or if they saw people on the news
or people like that who who were recommending that he

(57:22):
shouldn't encant because in our in their experience and what
we experienced during the primary and the first couple of
years of the White House, it was basically, Joe has
defied gravity, Joe always beats expectations, and there's always the
doubting class.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
How do you reconcile that the public was able to
have a better understanding of where he was in his
decline than someone who was on the inside lights such
as yourself.

Speaker 13 (57:49):
Well, I mean even when I on the outside was
always you know, I always knew they were running for reelection.
That was always he's the plan since the transition.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
So the talk about like building a bridge to the
next generation, I mean he did sort of, I mean
he did all but say it was going to be
one term.

Speaker 13 (58:12):
Yeah, well yeah, and that, and he implied that, you know,
there he was a bridge to the next generation, right right.

Speaker 12 (58:18):
He didn't say when that bridge would be.

Speaker 13 (58:20):
It was when when he was finished. And no, there
I was never under it was.

Speaker 12 (58:26):
Let's just put this way.

Speaker 13 (58:28):
It was made very clear to me when I raised
the issue behind close doors, you know, something like I think,
I said, oh, well, we're not actually running for reelection,
so what does it matter, and somebody you know, immediately,
you know, you know, drop the hammer on me and said,
why wouldn't he be running? Of course, we're running for reelection.
This is a after this is a second term thing

(58:51):
we're going to do. This isn't after the re elect.
The culture and the tone was always so he was
running for reelection, and our response publicly was nobody runs
for four terms or for for four years. It's always
run for president for eight years.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
And there's a lot of speculation, and especially people on
the right look at doctor Joe Biden, and I'm sure
you've heard this and say it's cruel. But she was,
she was propping up her husband, and well there was
a briefing late in his term that I think she
took the helm of and people were saying that it
was some type of you know, big power grab.

Speaker 12 (59:28):
We have to separate like reality from from rhetoric. What
was she propping him up?

Speaker 13 (59:32):
No, but was she certainly undeterred and driven like more
like as driven to defy the doubters. Of course she
was because she believed in him. But she had her
own life, like she had her own career. If she
continued her own career, she can't stand politics. If if
he did not want to be president again or to

(59:54):
continue being president, she'd be the first person in her
convertible headed to the beach and would never have a
reason to come back to Washington because she didn't really
use her platform. And you know, we used to fight
about this all the time, but like she wasn't she
didn't have her own agenda there. She didn't use her
office to sort of pursue a policy agenda or whip

(01:00:16):
votes the way many First Ladies have done for for
their initiatives.

Speaker 12 (01:00:20):
She did not do that. She didn't want to do that.

Speaker 13 (01:00:22):
Our office was essentially a continued version of the campaign.
It was a permanent campaign surrogate operation, which means that
we were integrated with the West Wing. As for better
or for worse, we were very integrated into the West Wing,
and she always had a seat at the table because
our representatives were there, but because we considered ourselves and

(01:00:43):
they considered us a partner in going out and selling
to the American people his vision, his goals, his agenda,
the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure, the.

Speaker 12 (01:00:57):
Sorry the chip sack.

Speaker 13 (01:01:00):
Well, but we made We were kind of leading the
effort for vaccinations all over the country at that time
and for the first year generally. So I considered it
what you would call sort of an event driven operation
that was very coordinated and very integrated into the West Wing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Let me get your response to Vader Rourke had some
very strong comments with the pod save guys recently that
I want to get your reaction to. Let's go ahead
and take a listen as be seven guys let's go
ahead and take a listen.

Speaker 7 (01:01:30):
Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again,
And to be even more clear, he failed this country
in the most important job that he had. In fact,
the entire rationale for his presidency the first time, and
the rationale he tried to sell us on for his
attempt to run for reelection. Only I can stop Donald Trump,

(01:01:51):
and he failed to do that. And it's not just
you and me, but our kids and grandkids and the
generations that follow that might have to pay the price
for this. We might very well lose the greatest country
that this world has ever known, and it might be
in part because of the decision that Biden and those
around him made to run for re election instead of

(01:02:14):
having an open primary where the greatest talent that the
Democratic Party can muster could be on that stage, to
have a competition of ideas and track record and vision.
I think that credibility problem is going to persist up
until when Democrats say we fucked up and we made
a terrible mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
So he says he failed this country. I think the
current president is a fascist. I think you'll leave Emily
out of this, but I suspect that you agree with
that assessment.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
I mean, do you think that don't like ahead? Do
you think Beto's right?

Speaker 13 (01:02:45):
Yeah, I don't disagree with anything Beto said that. And look,
I said to the New York Times Peter Baker in
an article in February twenty twenty four when Biden was
still in that this is a gamble that they are
taking because they that only they can do this, and
that his legacy and this was more of an article
about I think his legacy or was you know the

(01:03:07):
pressures that they were facing. And yeah, damn right, there's
pressure because his legacy. And I hope I assumed they
knew this in February of twenty twenty four when I
gave this quote, but that his legacy was going to
be defined on whether he wins or loses to Donald Trump,
and that running was taking a gamble on that entire
legacy of fifty years in public life was going to

(01:03:31):
be overshadowed. And I think you're seeing that we're not
talking about Joe Biden and the Chips Act, or or
the American Rescue Plan, or bringing this country back from
the brank, or the Violence Against Women Act. That he
was way ahead of his time on we're not talking
about those things. And so for the short term, it's
going to be very unpleasant for the family to sort

(01:03:55):
of reconcile the legacy that historians and the news media
or and Democrats are going to be writing in the
short term because of the decisions that they made.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Do you have any personal regrets about how you handled
or you know he didn't speak up?

Speaker 13 (01:04:12):
No, because I was speaking up in after I left,
at least throughout twenty twenty three year, I wrote, and
the way I spoke up, and the way I spoke
up was he needs to be his own advocate. When
I saw the disengagement, when I saw that they were
giving up opportunities like Kristen Welker's for Sunday Show Meet

(01:04:34):
the Press, I tweeted, all right, we can't if we're.

Speaker 12 (01:04:38):
Going to lose the news cycle.

Speaker 13 (01:04:39):
We can't complain that they cover Trump for the entire
weekend and all the news he makes because we are
turning it down or the Super Bowl interview, or not
doing press conferences and press avails.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
But did you think that was because he couldn't do it,
because he wasn't up to it. I didn't know, and
I thought it was just about.

Speaker 13 (01:04:55):
Actually, I thought it was a bad strategy. I didn't know,
and I didn't care, because I knew for three years
by that point we were running no matter what.

Speaker 12 (01:05:03):
And in history, as.

Speaker 13 (01:05:04):
A student of history, I know, like okay, I even
said out loud that it was a mistake to mess
around with the primary calendar because it looks like we're scared.
It looks like we have something to hind and we
don't need to mess with the primary calendar. It does
him a disservice, all of these things.

Speaker 12 (01:05:20):
I was saying.

Speaker 13 (01:05:21):
I'm from ground zero of the swing district in a
swing state in Pennsylvania seven that we lost, and it
was the one of two counties that flipped from Obama
to Trump to Biden to Trump. Reaganomics is what killed
bethlum Steel. At least that's what the people of Allentown
and Bethlehem believe. So to wrap your economy in Bidenomics

(01:05:44):
and take credit, wrap your name around inflation in an
unsettled economy. I wrote this in an OpEd and they
hated it. They were furious that I was trying to
at least say you have to show.

Speaker 12 (01:05:54):
Not tell.

Speaker 13 (01:05:55):
You can't be a candidate and run for president and
try to run out the clock.

Speaker 12 (01:05:59):
It's just not going to work.

Speaker 13 (01:06:01):
It's not going to work, especially against a candidate like
Donald Trump, who embraces the media, who is confident enough
to go and say, go anywhere and talk to anyone.
And they attacked me, They smeared me, they planted stories
about me, They were terrible to me. It paid a
personal price for speaking out. Did I speak out about
his age.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
No.

Speaker 13 (01:06:21):
I did not speak about his age, because again, my
experience was that I never had that issue with him.
My issue was what they clearly decided. It was a
choice not to engage with voters, not to engage with
the media and the public in the way that you
do when you run for reelection. And I was seeing
the same polls you're talking about. None of those polls changed.

(01:06:43):
The polls in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three
were saying at least three fourths of our voters did
not want him to run again. People and Democrats were
speaking through the polls.

Speaker 12 (01:06:55):
I saw that.

Speaker 13 (01:06:56):
I said that, and I would say things that would
make them very angry, Like we loved polls four years ago,
because when we were running for an entire year, about
two hundred, I went and looked it up. Two hundred
and fifty one out of two hundred and fifty six
public polls had us ahead, and we.

Speaker 12 (01:07:13):
Loved Poles then.

Speaker 13 (01:07:14):
So I really hate it that my old teammates were
denying polls, denying data, denying the journalism out there, denying
the the inflation numbers. It made me angry because you're
supposed to at least try to see your flaws and
your vulnerabilities in real life for what they are and
then tried to confront them and change them.

Speaker 12 (01:07:37):
And they wouldn't do any of that.

Speaker 13 (01:07:39):
It was undermining the media, trashing the media, trashing the Times,
trashing the journal and I didn't get it.

Speaker 12 (01:07:47):
They ran scared.

Speaker 13 (01:07:49):
Well, these were the things I had a problem with,
and these were the things that ultimately cost me a
lot of close friendships and probably my relationship with them.
But the other thing that they didn't like, that I'll
go ahead and say to you guys, is they didn't
like I was joining the effort to help their son.

Speaker 12 (01:08:04):
The Bidens loved it.

Speaker 13 (01:08:05):
I was the only public advocate for their son because
I hated the idea of children being weaponized or families
of politicians being weaponized, and I saw what it did
to the Bidens in a real life nineteen and twenty
and through the White House, and the people in that
White House who called me disloyal were throwing their son

(01:08:26):
under the bus constantly. Nobody was using the bully pulpit
to fight back against Comer and Jim Jordan. They weren't
doing anything. They weren't fighting back to help Hunter. I
was out there, but the White House did not want
a They wanted distance from Hunter, which is why you know,

(01:08:47):
Hunter fired Anita Dunn's husband and brought in his own
knife fighter, Abby Lowell.

Speaker 12 (01:08:54):
And they didn't like that.

Speaker 13 (01:08:55):
They didn't like that we were being aggressive and defending
their son, in defending and trying to set up a
legal defense fund for him, which by the way, George
Bush forty one's donors did for his son, who costs
the American people a lot more money than Hunter Biden.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
My last question is on family. It's you know, I
look at you Biden. I wonder if he was in
a place where he could be trusted to make the
decision about whether he can run again, if he was
like sort of had his faculties about him in order
to say I'm running for reelection.

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):
Who was telling him or was it him?

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
From your understanding is that he wanted to run again,
and so as you said, Jill, Biden was all in
as long as but he was he in a position
to competently say I want to run again and then
have the people.

Speaker 5 (01:09:37):
Who love him say, oh, yes, this is a good idea.
Or should people have stepped in and said.

Speaker 12 (01:09:42):
Well, you're not well.

Speaker 13 (01:09:44):
I don't want to adopt your questions, but but you're
correct that he did think that I have Again, I
do not know whether again, there's a difference between covering
up age and mental decline. And I have no idea
behind the scenes, whether he was there's a cognitive issue.

Speaker 12 (01:10:00):
What I will say, we.

Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
Did see it in front of the scene in the debate.

Speaker 12 (01:10:03):
We ended up seeing what we saw.

Speaker 13 (01:10:05):
We don't know because none of us are medical doctors, right,
so we can't say. What we can say is something
was wrong, something was not right. Going back to the
point where if you can't perform as a candidate, you
can't be running because you can be president. But there's
a difference between a running for president and running the country.
So who do you've land So here's the thing. There
were one of the smartest strategist in democratic politics. I'm

(01:10:28):
talking about a pollster who has a lot of Democratic
candidates as clients, governors, senators. John Anslong was our chief
polster in twenty twenty and twenty nineteen. A Biden guy
since nineteen eighty seven. He was iced out after twenty
twenty two because he the team. Who's the team, Anita Dunn,

(01:10:50):
Mike Donalalan. I don't know about the others, Doctor Buden,
I don't know. She would not make a decision like that.
But the other one would be the ones to say,
all right, he cannot be showing the president this data
because John was actually sending us monthly data and polling

(01:11:13):
updates in the first year on you know, where the
party was, where the country was, the mood of the country,
on inflation, things like that before the Virginia gubernatorial and
in twenty twenty two, they just ice. John was never
even told he was going to be not with us
in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
The other person, they didn't like the numbers.

Speaker 12 (01:11:32):
They didn't like the numbers.

Speaker 13 (01:11:33):
And Steve Shale another one who ran President Obama's state
operation in Florida, not once, but twice. Ran the Draft
Biden movement in twenty fifteen, was going to be the
lead strategist for the twenty sixteen campaign had he run.
Steve Shale ran our super pac in twenty twenty or
twenty nineteen. Twenty twenty raised US millions of dollars. He

(01:11:56):
was doing analysis, and he was doing surveys and polling.
In June of twenty twenty two, he also provided the
Boss data that wasn't looking good about twenty twenty four
and what we needed to do to fix that, and
at that point he was iced out, never even invited

(01:12:18):
to the White House in four years.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming by sharing
your experience.

Speaker 12 (01:12:22):
Sorry for the over talking.

Speaker 13 (01:12:27):
There's a lot to talk about in this and there's
a lot of different facets. I love them, I love
Joe and Jill Biden, and I love the family, but
I do think they were done a disservice by the
people around them, and I hope they can start making
adjustments to some of the advice that they've been getting.

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
Michael Rossa, thank you.

Speaker 12 (01:12:45):
You're welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Some more bad economic indicators here in the United States.
We can put this first element up on the screen
from Bloomberg. The headline is market set for bumpy ride
after Moody's downgrades US, so Crystal WIRECORDI this before the
bell opens on Monday morning.

Speaker 5 (01:13:02):
Futures are down, I believe.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
But the Moody's US credit downgrade, as Bloomberg says, quote
sets the stage for a jolt to the trading week.
Big tech stocks go from a safe bet to a
question mark.

Speaker 11 (01:13:14):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
They also say quote traders are bracing for a rocky
starts the week after the US was stripped of its
last top credit rating. Now just zooming in on that
last top credit rating. Moodies was the last to formally
make this decision, and they cided quote mounting concern about
debt as it knocked the country score down a notch.
Scott Bessant called the move a quote lagging indicator. So

(01:13:37):
they're once again kind of trying to point the finger
back at Joy Biden, and he was on Meet the Press.
We have some clips of that. So just yesterday Scott
Bessant was asked by Kristen Welker to comment on it.

Speaker 5 (01:13:48):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to C two.

Speaker 19 (01:13:51):
Does the President's tax bill need to do more to
address the nation's debt and deficit.

Speaker 15 (01:13:56):
Well, Kristen, first of all, I think that mood is
a lagging indicator. I think that's what everyone thinks of
credit agencies. Larry Summers and I don't agree on everything,
but he said that when they downgraded the US in
two thousand and eleven. So it's a lagging indicator. And
just like Sean Duffy said with our air traffic control system,

(01:14:19):
we didn't get here in the past hundred days. It's
the Biden administration and this spending that we have seen
over the past four years. We inherited six point seven
percent deficit to GDP, the highest when we weren't in recession,
not in the war, and we are determined to bring
the spending down and grow the economy fair enough.

Speaker 19 (01:14:41):
Why is it appropriate for the president to accept a
four hundred million dollar jet from Kutchup, Well.

Speaker 5 (01:14:46):
It's not.

Speaker 15 (01:14:47):
The president accepted to be the United States government and
Senator Mullens said this weekend that the talks had actually
begun under the Biden administration. The President Trump has brought
back trillions of investment in the United States. Every stop
we made that the enthusiasm in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar,

(01:15:08):
in the United Arab Emirates to invest in the United States,
that they want to push more and more. They have
funds here. And if we go back to your initial
question on the Moody's downgrades, who cares? Kut doesn't, Saudi doesn't,
Uee doesn't. They're all pushing money in.

Speaker 5 (01:15:27):
They want to.

Speaker 15 (01:15:28):
They've made tenure, they've made tenure investment plans.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
All right, So we can go ahead and put the
next element up on the screen as well. Consumer sentiments
from CNBC slides to second lowest on record as inflation
expectations jump after tariffs. So Bessett, on the one hand,
is correct. Biden era spending was really, really high. And
it's possible that Moodies, if they're citing concerns about debt,

(01:15:53):
is still is still reacting to those heightened levels of spending.
But if that is the case, they should We're going
to talk about this later in the show. Be fairly
concerned about the Reconciliation bill that is about to explode
the debt as it makes its way through the Republican
controlled Congress, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, the Republican
controlled Senate, their own party is, you know, waiving kind

(01:16:17):
of the red flag about that problem, and it's not
going well.

Speaker 5 (01:16:22):
So it's also.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
Possible that Moody's is looking at that and saying, holy smokes,
tariffs needed, even by the Trump administration's own admission, some
form of industrial policy that is now hinging on the
Republican's ability to lose no more than two votes if
everyone is there and voting, they can only lose two
votes to get this bill passed. And if it's a

(01:16:45):
deficit exploding bill, if it has industrial policy, We're still
not completely sure about that, but I think to some
extent bestment, it's probably correct that it's a lagging indicator.

Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
The US economy has been in rough shape.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
For a long time, but also the the forecast is
incredibly uncertain because of Trump administration policies. Again, by their
own admission, they're in the middle of a sort of
laboratory style experiment at the moment, and there are a
lot of uncertainties in the months ahead. Crystal, what did
you make of this and do you agree that it's

(01:17:17):
to some extent a lagging indicator.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
I mean, somewhat these things build on each other. But
to me, it's like an indictment. It's the final indictment
of DOGE too, because you know Doge was supposed to solve.
We're going to find all this, We're going to cut
two trillion dollars to be all good.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
You know, I'm not a deficit hawk.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
However, I will say if we do have the world
move away from the US and the dollar as the
world reserve currency, then we are going to have a
problem with debt. I mean this is you know, the
flight to safety of treasury bonds, like the fact that
the whole world looks to us to buy our debt,
and you know, to use dollars as the global reserve currency,

(01:18:01):
you know, the base of basically every international transaction. Yeah,
if the world moves away from that, we are going
to have to reckon with some of these things. So
number one, like DOJE obviously total incomplete failure. Number two,
you know the House Budget resolution that just passed through.
You're talking about some four to five trillion dollars in

(01:18:24):
deficit increase because of these massive tax cuts for the rich.
So if this is something you really have a concern about,
then they're running a million miles in the wrong direction
and did in the first Trump administration as well, So
it's just as much a lacking indicator of his first administration,
where they also gave massive, expensive tax cuts as it

(01:18:45):
is the you know, the COVID era spending, which was
absolutely essential to keeping Americans afloat during a very rough
time through no fault of their own. So, you know,
I think it's in a lot of ways, it is
a real indictment of the direction and what has already
been done in this Trump administration, just judging by their
own goals and standards of what they claimed they wanted

(01:19:07):
to set out to accomplish. And then I do think
it also, you know, in terms of the world moving
away from the US as like the central essential nation
and this incredible privilege that we've had being at the
center of the global financial system, you know, this is
another sort of this is another knock on US as

(01:19:27):
being the place, the center of everything, the center of
the world, and this just puts us a little bit
more in the direction of a post US world.

Speaker 5 (01:19:39):
Order into the question of the lagging indicator.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
When we put that CNBC Tear Street up on the screen,
one of the quotes from it is then the index
of consumer sentiment drop from fifty point eight down from
fifty two point two in April. In the preliminary reading
for May, that is the second lowest reading on record
behind June twenty twenty two. That gets to particularly the
last five months and the Trump and really it's post
Liberation Day, post April second. Yeah, but that gets to,

(01:20:04):
you know, the fact that Moody's aside, it gets to
the fact that the uncertainty in the Trump era economy,
which again even by their own emission, is part of
their plan, is affecting the economy in and of itself.

Speaker 5 (01:20:16):
Like this kind of meta.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
But if you're going to create an uncertainty, that will actually,
if you're going to create in certainty as leverage, it's
it's going to have an immediate effect on the economy.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
Also, I mean, the terrorsts are supposed to make us rich.
What happened to that?

Speaker 5 (01:20:29):
I'm feeling liberated.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
I guess you're not feeling liberated, but some of us
are feeling liberated.

Speaker 4 (01:20:37):
Yeah, well, congratulations to you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
M There was one other piece of this that I
actually want to hear your thoughts on that part where Bus'
is like, well, why should we care. Kusher doesn't care,
the UA doesn't care, Saudi Arabia doesn't care.

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
It's like wow, And.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
It reminded me of something actually, Rocana has been really
going after them for which again is the distance between
the America First rhetoric and the reality of this administration
setting up this massive AI data center in UAE.

Speaker 4 (01:21:04):
Versus we were told, oh, well, this is all these jobs.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Of the future, We're going to be here in the
US and you know, as a core part of the
America First project, and yet here we are instead they're
going to be in the UA.

Speaker 4 (01:21:15):
Apparently.

Speaker 5 (01:21:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:16):
I thought that was a great point from Rowe. He
was making it over the weekend. I mean, them saying
hedging their bets with these golf countries. It's actually like
kind of frightening for I mean, who knows what happens
the next president and Trump administration can do whatever the
Trump administration does for three years potentially, and then things
can change. But it's quite a way to go about it.

(01:21:38):
And Chris, so I really want to move on to
this post from Donald Trump, and I also just kind
of want to inject it straight into my veins.

Speaker 5 (01:21:46):
This is C four.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
This is a true social post from Trump where he
said Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the
reason for raising prices.

Speaker 5 (01:21:54):
Throughout the chain.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
Walmart made billions of dollars last year, far more than
expected between Walmart and China, that they should, as A said, quote,
eat the tariff as one says, as A said the
popular phrase popular TIFFs, and not charge valued customers anything
all caps. I'll be watching, and so will your customers.
The reason I say I wanted to inject this into

(01:22:15):
my vein crystal is this is how I generally feel
about most things that get passed down to consumers from
these corporations.

Speaker 5 (01:22:24):
It drives me completely insane.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
They never pass it down to their workers, and they're
doing all kinds of stupid stuff like buybacks and whatever else.
But uh, it's it's actually, I think, a really fantastic point.
But the problem for Trump obviously is he's not really
doing anything to force them.

Speaker 5 (01:22:42):
To pass the to not pass the costs down.

Speaker 3 (01:22:45):
And you know, there are all kinds of carrots and
six that can be used as part of an industrial policy,
so that aside, I do want to say, I mean,
according to Business Insider, I'm sorry. According to the a
FL CIO, which tracks CEO pay. Walmart's CEO is the
high paid CEO in all of retail, which is not
surprising at all, but took home a cool twenty seven
million dollars last year. And again, if you're looking at

(01:23:08):
Target CEO, by the way, that was down to nineteen
million Costco sixteen million. I mean, this is an incredibly
high level of CEO pay. The ratio to worker pay
is not great obviously either. And that stuff actually does
drive me absolutely insane that we just say, you know,
instead of maybe reshoring, eating some costs whatever, they insist

(01:23:30):
on paying their executives at completely unpatriotic, unethical levels, and
it is absolutely bananas. So on the one hand, uh yeah,
I think Donald Trump is absolutely one thousand percent correct
on this question. On the other hand, there have to
be a series of carrots and sticks.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
Well, and listen, corporations are going to corporation, they're gonna business.

Speaker 4 (01:23:51):
Oh, they're gonna you know, they're going to do.

Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
Their care marketab yeah and.

Speaker 2 (01:23:55):
Yeah, and you're not doing anything to your point to
make that not be the case. But also, watch me
here defend Walmart when you're talking about a thirty percent
tariff their profit margins are not thirty percent, Like you
can't just eat that. There is inevitably going to be
some amount of that even if they eat some of it,

(01:24:16):
and they can't eat some of it. This is a
very profitable corporation, don't get me wrong. And they pay
their CEO an insane amount. All of those things are
absolutely true. They don't have a thirty percent profit margin.
So if many of their goods are coming from China
or you know, parts coming from China and being assembled here, etc.
Then what you're going to end up with is, yes,

(01:24:36):
some cost getting passed on to consumers, or the other
alternative is some cost getting passed onto the small businesses
that are selling those goods to Walmart. And that's actually
where a lot of the squeeze is going to come.
Remember we talked about this lady who has her like
busy baby Matt thing that you finally got into Walmart,
small business you know, based here in America. She wanted

(01:24:59):
to make a product America was literally impossible, so she
made it in China, and you know it is the
only place where she could really go and get what
she needed for this very specialized product. She gets her
product picked up by Walmart. Well that's at a set
contracted price. So and Walmart, I think, weren't they the
ones that put out the thing that we're like, we're
not accepting price increases sorry with regard to tariffs. So

(01:25:22):
it's going to be people like her who get completely screwed,
who are locked into this contract at this price that
is now completely unattainable. Now, thirty percent tariff is better
than the one hundred and forty five percent tariff that
it was, but that is still a dramatic increase in costs.
And you know, I don't know the specifics for her business,
but for many small medium business owners, that will completely

(01:25:43):
put them under. So that's the real, the actual reality
that you're talking about here in terms of who is
going to quote unquote eat the tariffs.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Yeah, and again like it's Donald Trump knows who how
Walmart is going to handle this, Like, yeah, he knows
exactly that they can't. The CEO pay thing is an
interesting glimpse into all of this, Like it's it's not
just one company like Walmart couldn't just stop paying this guy.
It's like twenty million of this is tied up in
stock awards annually so.

Speaker 5 (01:26:11):
Like they can't do that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
He could choose to be a decent human being and
pass some of those some of his salary on to
workers and not you know, high prices, Like he could
choose to do that. But the entire system is not
going to fix itself because the Walmart, because first of all,
Walmart in and of itself reacts as Donald Trump wants them,
and singling out Walmart, by the way, means that he's
taking away or he's trying to take away some of

(01:26:34):
the market advantage for them, and that their competitors can
do differently. So it's it's an incredibly fragile ecosystem that
he's working with here, and you can't just expect, you know,
one person or one retail chain, even as massive as
it is, to do those sorts of things. But CEO pay,
I mean, these guys, if you if you want to
find a CEO, they're all making stupid, stupid money, and

(01:26:57):
so you have to pay them competitively. The thing to
do is just to create a culture of shame around
that level of intake, and especially when it's the ratio
like that should be so incredibly shameful. The idea that
you would be taking home this type of money and
then hiking prices on consumers because there's an attempt to

(01:27:19):
actually reshore some manufacturing and those like that's that should
be shameful, and so I think Trump is trying to
do some version of that, but it's it's pretty hard
for it, especially when they're doing their tax cut bill. Yeah,
they're about to cut corporate taxes best in s goals
to take it from twenty one to fifteen percent. It's

(01:27:41):
a really mixed messaging situation for the administration.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
That's about the most positive thing you possibly say about it.
But yes, I'm in favor of creating culture shame, growing
a culture shame around this and many other things besides,
because I think shamelessness is one of the sort of
like key values of the NAGA world.

Speaker 3 (01:28:01):
And Trump we're actually going to talk about this in
the tax block. So stick around, and we're going to
talk about how it was created and how it sort
of was grown on the right and then's where it
took off. So that's actually a good tie in to
that segment.

Speaker 5 (01:28:16):
Let's listen to C six.

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):
This is Donald Trump talking about the return of those
arbitrary tariffs.

Speaker 5 (01:28:22):
Go ahead, roull it.

Speaker 8 (01:28:22):
We just reached a fantastic trade deal, as you know
with the United Kingdom, which was wonderful, And do we
have another big one that we just reached with China.
China deal is a very big deal. It's in the
process of continuing.

Speaker 12 (01:28:38):
To be formed. But they wanted to make that deal
very badly. And we have at the.

Speaker 8 (01:28:43):
Same time one hundred and fifty countries that want to
make a deal. But you're not able to see that
many countries. So a certain point over the next two
to three weeks, I think Scott and Howard, we'll be
sending letters out essentially telling people it would be very fair,
but we'll be telling people what they'll be paying to

(01:29:04):
do business in the United States, so essentially be paying
to be doing business in the United States. I guess
you could say they could appeal it, but for the
most part, I think we're going to be very fair.
But it's not possible to meet the number of people
that want to see us. And but this was coming
to UAE was very important. Coming to Saudi Arabian Qatar

(01:29:27):
was very important to me because of personal relationships that
I had, maybe more than anything else.

Speaker 5 (01:29:32):
So yeah, that was Trump and the UAE now this is.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
The personal relationships part was interesting too there at the
end of like, yeah, it probably went there because I
just I like these guys.

Speaker 4 (01:29:42):
They we're going to give me some business deals.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
So yeah, and he also I'm also saying we aren't.
We don't have the ability to meet with all the
people that want to meet with us. That's something we
were told that they did have the ability.

Speaker 5 (01:29:52):
To do during Liberation Day.

Speaker 4 (01:29:54):
Remember, it wasn't that the goal.

Speaker 5 (01:29:56):
It's no problem whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Is the greatest deal maker of all time, and he's
going to put on a masterclass for all of us.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
They're teasing what like eighteen deals that they say they
have something like that over the course of this week
that they're planning to get to the bottom of. Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like what they're doing right there
is lowering expectations for that not coming to fruition. And
maybe they'll get a few key deals UK, India, maybe Japan,
Like maybe they will get a few things that they
can point to and say, listen, this is we put

(01:30:23):
the screws to everyone. But it sounds like they're actually
not getting the response that they want from other countries.

Speaker 15 (01:30:29):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Lowering expectations and other countries looked at what China did,
which is basically nothing, and whin, Yeah, that's true, and
they're like, well, why should we come on bended me
when we've got a model here in what the Chinese
were able to pull off. Now, not every country has,
No other country really has as much sort of power
in these negotiations as the Chinese do, but I do

(01:30:50):
think that that was a learning and a model and
a lesson for other countries that make it less likely
that you're going to be able to strike all of
these deals that we were promised going in. And Scott
Bessant was pressed on, okay, well, so if you're going
to just sort of like figure out whatever the teriff
rate is without going through these negotiations, what level are
we looking at? And he said, effectively, well, I guess

(01:31:12):
we'll go back to the liberation day rates. So the chart,
you know, with the penguins and all of that, and
fifty percent on littho and all of that, apparently that's
coming back.

Speaker 4 (01:31:21):
So let's take a listen to Charger Secretary Scot Besson.

Speaker 19 (01:31:24):
Mister secretary, does that effectively mean that these negotiations with other.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
Countries are over?

Speaker 19 (01:31:29):
And how high should they expect tariffs to go above
ten percent?

Speaker 15 (01:31:33):
This means that they're not negotiating in good faith. They
are going to get a letter they saying here is
the rate. So I would expect that everyone would come
and negotiate in good faiths you expect.

Speaker 19 (01:31:47):
That rate though, that you would slap on any country
that you think is not negotiating in good faith to
be above ten percent.

Speaker 15 (01:31:52):
Well, I think that it would be the April second level.
Some countries were at ten percent somewhere substantially higher.

Speaker 4 (01:32:00):
So back to Liberation Day, Emily.

Speaker 5 (01:32:02):
Well, that's why.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
So what was this? Yeah, it was last week. I
think it was last Monday. I just like was not
willing to call Trump's China tariff move capitulation quite yet
because I'm like, I think they still don't know what's happening.

Speaker 5 (01:32:16):
Like there's still they don't really have a strategy here.

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):
Their strategy is still just like let people come to
us and do ad hoc, have a kind of ad
hoc approach to putting the screws to other countries and
getting like, they don't have levels that they want to
see other countries get to. They just want to sort
of negotiate some of these non trade barriers and like
the all non tariff trade barriers and all this stuff.
And I think that's what we're seeing from that Trump

(01:32:41):
clip and this Besting clip is just that they're they're
feeling like they're not getting good enough deals and so
they're going back to threatening April second levels. I mean,
it's just completely unpredictable, which is not what they need
right now at all. They need some type of certainty
at this point. They need to have a lot of
deals inked that look good, that look you know, pretty

(01:33:01):
that people can be confident that that's where the level
is going to be going forward, that people can be
even if they think it's too high and it's it's
not going to be great for the United States, at
the end of the day, they can say this is
what it's going to look like, and we can make investments. Accordingly,
the bill is a disaster for them right now in
the in the House, and well it's not even over

(01:33:21):
at the Senate side yet, but like that's already choppy.
So if they're even able to pass that is an
open question. And despite or on top of that, they
now don't have like they're they're going away from clarity
on these questions, and they might need to to get.

Speaker 4 (01:33:36):
Good tax credits even in this bill.

Speaker 3 (01:33:38):
Do we know, Yes, yeah, they're in the bill, but
I don't know, like that could change. I mean that
could change when it gets the Senate. The whole reconciliation
process is right, so so so uncertain. You're throwing things
in and taking them out at the last minute to
make these deals. So who knows that they stick around?

Speaker 4 (01:33:56):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:33:56):
The other the reason why I felt comfortable calling it
a capitulation still do is in the context of China,
the initial rhetoric for Trump was so maximalist about like
we I don't even know why we have overseas supply chains,
and they were talking about a total decoupling from China
and backing off of that unilaterally without getting anything really

(01:34:17):
in exchange, I mean really truly nothing in exchange from
China other than oh, they'll talk to us about ventanel.
That I think is fair to call a capitulation. They
realized they could not take this immediate maximalist approach to
China specifically and be able to survive what the stock
in the bond markets and the domestic political situation, all

(01:34:37):
of that was going to throw at them. Now, I
think it's fair to say, and I felt this as well,
that doesn't mean that Trump is done.

Speaker 4 (01:34:44):
With tariff's say, I think because it's still changed.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):
Well, and first of all, I mean thirty percent, Like
I just we got a level set here. If we
had gotten thirty percent, if there'd never been the one
hundred and forty five percent and just out of the
gates what was announced was thirty percent, we would all
be like, holy shit, forget that is a gigantic yeah, right,
that's like smooth Holly level style tariff. It's a massive
tax increase on working class people, like it is an

(01:35:07):
extraordinary economic political event. And as I've also been saying,
Trump loves tariffs because they give him all of this
unilateral power, and we've learned more about that since the
Liberation Day and what they've been using some of the
things that he's been using that leverage in order to accomplish.
And actually one of the key things is apparently to

(01:35:28):
help out his buddy Elon Musk with starlink. You know,
they've been using the State Department, as you've been using
the tariffs as sort of a you know, mob boss
tactic to get countries that were reluctant to take up
starlink to go ahead and you know, accept to have
licenses for this product. So, you know, I don't think
that he's done with tariffs, because if there's one thing

(01:35:49):
we've seen in Trump two point zero, it is all
about him consolidating as much power as he can in
his own hands and in the hands of the executive and.

Speaker 4 (01:35:58):
Tariffs are a key part of that story.

Speaker 2 (01:36:01):
That allows him to you know, all the businesses have
to come to him, all the countries have to come
to him something that he can use as a carrot,
as a stick et, cetera. And that's why I think
we're far from finished with the tariff conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:36:12):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:36:13):
And your point about the thirty percent level, I mean
when orange Cast in American Compass proposed that ten percent
global tariff, there was a massive freakout. And now that
looks like sweet relief to the markets and to the
corporate class.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
Well, what was inflation at its peak in under Biden
with COVID It was it never hit ten percent, And
so if you're talking if you are talking about ten
percent around the world, you know it may not be
exactly ten percent inflation that you're going to experience, but
it's going to be a significant amount. I mean, that
is a dramatic economic event. Just ten percent across the board,

(01:36:48):
let alone thirty percent here and fifty percent there. And
you know what they're what they contemplated on April second,
and apparently are still contemplating going back to and.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
As possible, we look back at this moment and you know,
the the last two plus months, I mean, it's been
so crazy. You never know how this stuff ages because
they're so at hoc about this. And again I think
they see that as part of the leverage that it's
creating uncertainty and other countries, to your point, have to
kind of come on bend and d And that's sort
of what they're saying. Here is Trump and the UAE

(01:37:19):
and that clip we rolled saying, we don't even have
time to meet with all of you. You want to
do trade with us, but we don't even have time
to talk to you, Like that's.

Speaker 5 (01:37:25):
How powerful we are.

Speaker 3 (01:37:27):
And of course I think we could look back on
this and be like, this was just a moment where
they were, you know, feeling uncertain about the deals. They
felt like they weren't getting enough deals and because they
flexed like this, everyone ended up coming back and you know,
making better deals whatever. But that's just really not the

(01:37:47):
trajectory again of the last like six weeks. We're just
how many weeks into six seven weeks into post liberation
day world, and there aren't a lot of deals coming
to fruition, and there's scattershot ones, and I think some
of them are like actually good changes. The way that
it's looking with the UK, it looks like a decent step,

(01:38:08):
that looks like a step in the right direction roughly,
but this was worldwide essentially.

Speaker 4 (01:38:14):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:38:14):
Also, it's not like, I mean, whether you think that
the UK deal is marginally better than the status quote
or not, it's not like this was a game changer.

Speaker 3 (01:38:22):
No, no, no, no, no, it's just all of this,
you know, no, not at all. And that's the thing.
It's like, you just need to see. I mean, you
would need to see a lot more than what's been
seen so far.

Speaker 2 (01:38:35):
Let's go ahead and turn to this extreme weather that
we saw with horrific deadly consequences in the middle of
the country, Kentucky and Missouri in particular, really hard hit
by this strong line of tornadoes and storms. You can
put some images up on the screen here. Twenty six
people are dead after these tornadoes hit in those two states.

Speaker 4 (01:38:56):
Here's some footage from USA today.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
They say deadly tornadoes leave a trail of destruction Kentucky.
There you actually see the tornado itself. They say this
is Scott County, Missouri. Here this is terrifying, as part
of an apartment building just blows apart like it's made
of absolutely nothing. We've got some of the aftermath here.
I'm not sure if this is Kentucky or Misseri. I
think this is in Kentucky, but I'm not one hundred

(01:39:17):
percent sure. But you can see just the level of devastation.
And this is in London, Kentucky. Looks like it was
a small airport there. You can see the debris and
wreckage of some of those small planes that were just
absolutely torn apart. And this obviously is really significant in
and of itself, just given the loss of lives at
least twenty six people dead that we know of at

(01:39:39):
this point, but it also has raised some real questions
about the impacts of DOGE cuts and whether there was
sufficient warning given or whether more lives could have been
saved if the relevant weather office there, which had experienced
these cuts, had been fully staffed. Ryan Hall, who's a
fantastic whether YouTuber Kyle's a big weather guy who watches

(01:40:01):
him all the time on YouTube, was astonished that there
hadn't been sufficient warnings put out at the time as
he was covering this live. Let's go ahead and take
a listen to a little of what he had to say.

Speaker 20 (01:40:12):
We're talking about here is a big deal.

Speaker 5 (01:40:16):
I am so.

Speaker 20 (01:40:18):
Surprised that we don't have an upgraded warning from the
National Weather Service. One of the things that I do
want to mention is, I'm pretty sure this is the
National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky, my local National Weather
Service here. This is one of the places that's understaffed
right now. I don't know if you guys have been
following the news big layoffs across National Weather Service and
stuff like that, that might be a result of a

(01:40:42):
problem that we're having there. If so, that's crazy. That's crazy.
We're about to have a large tornado go through a
very populated area with much less warning than what there
should be as a result of that, guys, all I
can tell you right now is if you know anybody
in Somerset, call them, call them right now and let

(01:41:05):
them know what's going on. I'm not kidding like this
is a big deal. This is a huge deal. We've
got a massive tornado about to slam through o'kill, Bourbon
and Ferguson here.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
And he was absolutely right in the dire nature of
those warnings. That Kentucky Weather Office, they say scrambles for
staffing is severe storms bear down. New York Times right
up here, Washington posts how to write up as well.
National Weather Service office in eastern Kentucky was scrambling to
cover the overnight forecast on Friday as these tornadoes were
moving through much of the eastern US, According to the
union that represents the department's meteorologist, Tom Fahey, the legislative

(01:41:39):
director for that union, was one of four that no
longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people
left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by
the Department of Government Efficiency. Mister Fahey said on Friday
that because of the threat for flooding, hail, and tornadoes
facing eastern Kentucky, the West Weather Service had to find
forecasting help for that office spoke women for the Weather

(01:42:01):
Service said the Jackson's office would be relying on nearby
offices for support throughout the weekend. So Emily, that's you know,
the lay of the land here. Now, I will say
that the government is claiming, no, this did not impact.
They were able to fully staff, They were able to
have the coverage that they need. But you know, it
certainly raises questions whether lives could have been saved if

(01:42:22):
this office had been fully staffed and not subject to
those DOGE cuts.

Speaker 5 (01:42:26):
It does.

Speaker 3 (01:42:27):
I mean, there should be an investigation. And I think
it's crazy, Crystal. I mean, this always happens with tornadoes.
You lived in Kentucky briefly, I did. Yeah, yeah, so
you know this. It's whenever there's a snowstorm in New York.
I actually, like when we I used to teach students,
I would use this as an example, and never there's
a snowstorm in New York, it's national news for days.

(01:42:50):
A tornado can rip through the Heartland, killed twenty eight
people and it's a blip on the national news radar
because most of the newsrooms are in New York, they're
in DC, they're in LA and the gutting of local
media means that there are just a few newsrooms that
are kind of concentrated in big cities Saint Louis, for example,

(01:43:11):
throughout the Midwest, but the main producers and editors and
everything aren't there. And so I mean, this is getting
to the bottom of whether or not these cuts actually
may have actually like resulted.

Speaker 5 (01:43:26):
In a loss of life.

Speaker 3 (01:43:27):
I really hope that national media is sending people, is
paying attention to the local media, sending people out to
get to the bottom of this, because it's a hugely
significant story. And it's one of those things that when
you look at Elon Musk in the way he's been
parading around with the chainsaw at Seapack, for example, that
Melee gifted him, it's never been funny. It's just it's

(01:43:54):
not funny. It's eighty percent of federal workers are outside
of DC. And I say that as somebody who loves
the idea like in theory of doge, but like you're
actually playing with people's lives. And it'd be one thing
if the Trump administration had tapped someone like Russ Vote,
like a type of like policy person to do it,

(01:44:15):
but they went with Elon as the figurehead of it,
and it just gave the whole project this sense of
what's the right word for it, Like, I don't know
if casualness is the right word, but that bazard Yeah, yeah,
this sense that like, and he has openly said that
his strategy involves mass firings and then if you realize
you need to bring people back, then you bring people back.

Speaker 5 (01:44:35):
Like that's he said, that's the way to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
Basically is that, like you learn who's essential after you
fire them on a nationwide scale. And me, we're talking
about one of the biggest countries in the world, one
of the biggest countries that has ever existed, massive piece
of land with a huge population. That's a really really
really really really dangerous game, and that is obvious to everyone.

Speaker 5 (01:44:55):
So I'm really curious.

Speaker 3 (01:44:56):
I mean, maybe it turns out that you know, they
were they came in overnight and they staffed up because
they realized these storms were going to be bad and
this would have happened no matter what. Maybe that turns
out to be the case. But when you juxtapose it
with National Weather Service cuts and Elon Musk parading around
with the chainsaw, it's a pretty bad look.

Speaker 12 (01:45:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Well, and Here's what I would say too, is I
do think some of the cuts were just completely haphazard.
But there even with RUSS vote like Project twenty twenty
five took direct aim at Noah, and there is an
ideological project on the right that would like to see
some of this weather tracking privatized so that we don't all,

(01:45:39):
you know, Ryan Hall and everybody else who wants access
to the data doesn't get access to the data. You
have to pay for it. There is an ideological agenda
behind it as well. So it's not just random that
these offices get hit with cuts. In the National Weather
Service gets hit with cuts, and you know, Noah overall
gets hit with cuts. There is also an ideological project

(01:45:59):
behind it, and this is the fallout from that project,
or demonstrates what the potential for the fallout could be
from that project. There are a lot of things the
government does that you know, actually are effective that we
just don't think about, you know, like.

Speaker 4 (01:46:12):
They do track the weather very effectively.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
It takes a lot of resources, it takes a lot
of people, it takes you know, these weather balloons going up,
which also have been cut significantly, but actually they do
have done a pretty good job at that and that
is now being put at risk. We see it also,
you know with the air traffic controllers and the horrific
situation you know with the FAA. Again, this is something
that is a life or death issue that we really

(01:46:36):
depend on the federal government for and when it doesn't function.

Speaker 4 (01:46:40):
When it does function, you don't think about it too much.

Speaker 2 (01:46:42):
When it doesn't function, suddenly it becomes really front of mind.
If you want to, you know, go somewhere from Royal
Day weekend and be able to actually, you know, get
where you're going and not be terrified that what's going
to happen when you're trying to land and there's another
Let's go ahead and put this FEMA piece up on
the screen because this is you know connected. Obviously, you
have a newly appointed head of FEMA, and Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:47:04):
Has been FEMA is a mess, like a mess.

Speaker 4 (01:47:07):
I think everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Yeah, And like I think anyone who's been associated with
FEMA would have said going into this administration there were
things that needed to be resolved. Trump has an ideological
agenda against FEMA at all. He thinks this should be
basically dismantled and it should all be sent to the States.
Now if you have a minor weather disaster, states may
have sufficient funds and resources to handle it. When you're

(01:47:30):
talking about increasing extreme weather events year after year after year,
you need the federal government just for you know, resource's
sake to be able to assist, and states do not
have the capability to be able to respond. So this
is coming, you know this. There was some leaked information

(01:47:50):
coming out of FEMA that the newly appointed head says
the agency does not yet have a fully formed disaster
response plan going into hurricane season.

Speaker 4 (01:47:59):
A little bit of this.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
David Richardson, who previously served as a senior official at
DHS does not have a background in emergency management, told
staff he would share a hurricane plan with CHRISTINOAM after
he completes it late next week. He said Thursday, he's
eighty to eighty five percent done with the plan. Agency
is already months behind schedule in its preparations for the
hurricane season, which starts June one and is expected to
have above normal activity. Richardson said in a recent meeting

(01:48:24):
the FEMA staff that clarifying the intent of the president,
who has called for terminating the agency, was a challenge
in preparing a strategy for hurricane season. According to a
video recording of the media of the meeting that was
viewed by the Wall Street Journal, and there was another
wild quote in here, Emily he was apparently asked during
this town hall meeting if the will of the president

(01:48:44):
or the will that well being of Americans was more important,
and he responded, I think those two things are essentially
the same. So this is a you know, this is
a Trump loyalist, yes man whatever, And FEMA is dramatically
behind in preparing for the impending hurricane season.

Speaker 3 (01:49:02):
Yeah. The Reuters headline three days ago, staff losses and
low morale are derailing FEMA hurricane preparations. Internal documents says,
And then there's another headline this is two days.

Speaker 5 (01:49:11):
Ago as well.

Speaker 3 (01:49:12):
Trump's firing a FEMA director unsettles GOP. Senators and the
Republicans made a big deal, rightfully so of the FEMA
response after.

Speaker 5 (01:49:23):
The hurricanes Helene.

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):
Yeah, after Helene, North Carolina, last South Carolina last fall,
that was I mean reasonable, Everyone was right to be
outraged about the FEMA response there. So if the FEMA
response to these tornadoes, which have now killed what twenty
eight people, is lacking, Trump is going to hear from

(01:49:45):
the senators in those states, Republican senators in those states.

Speaker 5 (01:49:48):
He's going to hear.

Speaker 3 (01:49:48):
From the governors in those states, Republican governors in those states.
And what's interesting, Crystal is that's the type of thing
that will start to change the prem mission structure for
DOGE and for massive cuts. If Republicans are saying the
way you were going about, these cuts are worse than
just continuing to spend at the same level, Yeah, which

(01:50:10):
is not impossible.

Speaker 5 (01:50:11):
By the way. That's the thing, like you can again,
like I.

Speaker 3 (01:50:13):
Support the idea of DOGE in theory, and I would
say like in some cases these cuts are like if
they you can still end up when you're making cuts
that are necessary or that I think are necessary from
a perspective of like just a more limited government perspective,
you look at them and you say, the cuts themselves
can be worse than the alternative status quo because they're.

Speaker 5 (01:50:36):
Done in a way that is cruel.

Speaker 3 (01:50:37):
And one thing I wanted to mention is if you
are in DC, you don't understand how important the emergency
warning systems are for tornadoes and saving lives because people
rely on them to make a judgment about where to go,
what to do? Do they get out of the soccer
car pool and go home right away? Is it that

(01:50:58):
serious or are they up ending, you know, everyone's routine
for something that's not serious at all. The warnings are
important to that if you live in the Midwest or
in the South, or in an area with tornadoes, and
if you don't understand that, and you're just saying we
will fire people, then we will learn and hire anybody
who's necessary. People get caught and fall through the cracks,

(01:51:19):
and tragedy happens.

Speaker 2 (01:51:20):
And some of his strongest supporters, like in terms of states,
have already been impacted by the denial of FEMA assistants,
so flooding in West Virginia. FEMA denied assistance for windstorm
damage in Washington, not a Trump's state, but FEMA staff
said there's no longer a clear process for assessing assistance
requests from states. Their concerned disaster victims aren't get the

(01:51:43):
help they need. In Arkansas, they were initially denied funds,
but Sarah Huckevee Sanders is now the governor of Arkansas,
so she was able to go to Trump and say, please,
we need these funds and eventually they were able to
they relented. But if you don't happen to have a
personal relationship with a apparently are our sovereign monarch now,
then you you know, then your residents are going to

(01:52:05):
get screwed, including you know, in a state like West Virginia,
which I covered here, that flooding was apocalypt It's the
worst they've ever seen the level of disaster, and it
hit the poorest part of an already poor state which
has been screwed over and left behind, you know, many
times over and so denied assistance for flooding. There is

(01:52:25):
you know it honestly, to me, it shocks the conscience.
But this is the direction that they have gone in,
and they put in just you know, a Trump scaphan
and the head of this agency who was apparently unprepared
for the hurricane season. So you know, it's it's very
it's unsettling. It's very unsettling to see things that were
previously taken for granted. And again not to say FEMA

(01:52:47):
was great or perfect. We've all seen, you know, what
happened with Katrina. We saw the inadequacy of a response
in Helene et cetera. But once again you're taking something
that needed work and you are eliminated and eliminating it.

Speaker 4 (01:52:59):
Entirely or making vastly worse.

Speaker 2 (01:53:01):
And I think, you know, this is an indication of
potential things to come.

Speaker 3 (01:53:04):
Yeah, with a tone of flippancy and you know, job reality,
like it's just all a chainsaw game, Which is probably
why Ela Musk has stepped into the background, because they realized.

Speaker 5 (01:53:15):
Quiet lately it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
He's devoting its time to reprogramming GROC to talk about
white genocide and deny the Holocaust apparently is what he's
spending his time doing.

Speaker 5 (01:53:24):
Now, let's get all kinds of stuff to do.

Speaker 3 (01:53:26):
Yeah, as a man, Crystal, let's move on to the system.

Speaker 5 (01:53:31):
Is so interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:53:32):
I'm really excited about Argent Singh, who joins us to
talk about the history of how Republicans became an anti
tax party, fundamentalist anti tax party, and what that means
for today.

Speaker 2 (01:53:43):
So, guys, Trump's big beautiful bill passed a clear, cleared
and important hurdle in the House.

Speaker 4 (01:53:48):
I can put us up on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:53:50):
The Tax and Immigration Bill clears hurdle after late night vote.
It had previously failed in committee, and a late night
vote was able to pass after some Republican dissenters just
voted present, so it can make it out of committee.
All of that is a long way of saying this
bill still has a long way to go before it
actually is efectuated into law. But at the center of
the bill is a big old tax cut for the rich,

(01:54:13):
doubling down on Trump's key priority accomplishment from his first administration.

Speaker 4 (01:54:18):
So joining us now to discuss.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):
How the Republican Party became this anti tax juggernaut is
Argent saying with lever News, and you guys have a
new podcast series out called Tax Revolt, which tracks the
history of.

Speaker 4 (01:54:31):
The anti tax movement. So great to see, Argente.

Speaker 6 (01:54:33):
Yes, thank you for having me.

Speaker 4 (01:54:34):
Yeah, of course, so we can put you two up
on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:54:37):
That's just the logo, so you guys can see here's
Tax Revolts. We've got four part series. And let's go
ahead and take a listen to a little bit of
the trailer to set this up for everybody.

Speaker 12 (01:54:47):
All taxes are bad. The power to tax is the
power to destroy.

Speaker 17 (01:54:53):
Some are worse than others.

Speaker 16 (01:54:54):
We have a new revolution against the tax, tax, tax
spends and spend.

Speaker 6 (01:55:01):
The mindset of diehard tax cutters has dominated politics since the.

Speaker 3 (01:55:05):
Nineteen eighties, and today cutting taxes is practically a religious
mandate in conservative politics.

Speaker 21 (01:55:12):
And government agencies like the irs are partisan battlegrounds.

Speaker 12 (01:55:16):
The dream in America is not to make the rich poor.
The dream is to make the poor rich. The era
of big government is over.

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):
Don't hurt the top, and if you're gonna fight rich people,
you're gonna lose.

Speaker 21 (01:55:28):
From the landmark California tax revolt to Trump's latest push
to cut taxes for the rich, this movement claimed to
fight for the average American, but really deepened inequality and
helped the rich get richer.

Speaker 6 (01:55:40):
This is the story of how a small but powerful
movement reshaped our economy, weakened our democracy, and left the
government scrambling to serve the people it was.

Speaker 15 (01:55:49):
Meant to protect.

Speaker 12 (01:55:50):
But that's not the way the world is.

Speaker 5 (01:55:52):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (01:55:53):
Do you want to sit there and scream and holler
and hate rich people and lose every election.

Speaker 4 (01:55:56):
It is time for a wealth tax.

Speaker 15 (01:55:59):
And a mirror.

Speaker 12 (01:56:01):
You'll lose everything. If you don't lose the election, you'll
lose the country.

Speaker 2 (01:56:06):
So I like the description there of tax cutting as
an almost religious mandate, because at this point, you have
a broad national coalition, really quite bipartisan at the grassroots
level in favor of taxing the rich more, and yet
you still have the Republican Party going in the polar
opposite direction. Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:56:23):
And one of the funny things that we actually talk
about in this series is that when you get to
the nineteen eighties, when Reaganomics is becoming very popular, Democrats
vote for Reagan's bills. Tip O'Neil's Speaker of the House.
Reagan's got these Democratic legislators, and part of the reason
that Democrats are on board with it is they hear
from their own constituents how upsetting it is to see
how easy it is to gain the tax code. They're

(01:56:44):
saying that our rich friends who have fancy accountants can
do all these loopholes. The tax code is so complex, now,
why don't we get any relief just because we have
to pay our taxes like suckers. And the Democratic response was,
you're right, the tax code is too e to game,
and so we'll bring down your tax rates. And they
tried to fix some of the loopholes. But as we

(01:57:05):
know through history, the winners of all of that was
the business community and corporate interests who managed to bring
everybody's taxes down and also take their taxes down to
the point that some billionaires don't even pay taxes, they
pay negative taxes they earn from government subsidies.

Speaker 5 (01:57:19):
Believable. Well, yeah, let's keep pulling at this threat of religion.

Speaker 3 (01:57:21):
Actually, because this is one on the right, we're seeing
what on the right is the fading of what's called fusionism,
which is the three legged schools Frank Meyer a whole
thing basically as it combines limited government, social conservatism, and neoconservatism,
and that's completely falling apart at this moment. Maybe it'll reconstruct,
but at this part, at this point, it's really difficult

(01:57:42):
for the publican party to maintain that coalition. So, as
you went back through history, can you can maybe tell
us a little bit about what it was like as
the Milton Friedman wing coalesced with the social conservatives and
the neo conservatives. It's such an interesting marriage, especially between
neo conservatives and Milton Friedman types, because the Reagan eras

(01:58:03):
saw massive spending on defense and at the same time
there was this mandate.

Speaker 5 (01:58:08):
For tax cuts.

Speaker 3 (01:58:09):
It's sort of similar to what we see people talking
about right now.

Speaker 16 (01:58:12):
Absolutely, I'm so glad that you distell that like that,
because that is one of the most fascinating things that
I came out from the series is that the Republican
Coalition is kind of a Frankenstein monster of different groups
that have made alliances with each other, but when it
comes down to it, do end up being on different
ends of the issues. So when we start in the
nineteen seventies, you have the post Watergate era and you

(01:58:33):
have stagflation happening, high uninflated, high unemployment, and high on
and high inflation. You want to which I think is
what everybody which is what's happening, But no, you had stagflation,
which was the worst of the worst, and so you
had an economic crisis. You had people actually seeing real
pain paying their taxes because their money was getting cheaper

(01:58:54):
and cheaper by the day. And what you see entering
that is different groups of conservatives trying to take it
advantage of that. So you have the people from the
business community who say, listen, let's just knock down the
whole tax code. Free market capitalism, you know, this is
the way everyone's going to prosper. That would be kind
of like the art laughers who we heard in the
trailer just now, the godfathers supply side economics, you know,

(01:59:15):
will take them at kind of face value that if
this is what they believe, they believe that low taxation
will lead to so much prosperity, you don't really need
a government to play the role of an administrative state.
Those people find alliances with another group of conservatives who
are seeing integration happening, who are seeing changing social values,
and they're seeing a Democratic party in a government that

(01:59:37):
they feel is becoming too tolerant of women and minorities,
and that a lot of the white working class people
are being left behind. And in our first episode we
talked about Howard Jarvis in California in nineteen seventy eight.
He gets this ballot proposition on there that says, let's
just cap the property tax, and he messages both of
those things, isn't the government bloated? Aren't the bureaucrats overpaid?

(01:59:59):
Isn't your tax Aren't your taxes too high? And he
would also say to certain people, should your taxes pay
for school integration? Should your taxes pay for a social
educational system that is slowly moving away from you? And
he merges these two things together, and we talk about
Newt Gingrich the same year, nineteen seventy eight, that's when
he wins his selection to Congress. He sees the potency

(02:00:21):
of the practicality of telling people you don't have to
pay as much anymore. A lot of people vibe with
that message, but he sees an undercurrent of people who
are starting to view the federal government as something that
they should be opposed to, that's an enemy to them.
In the nineteen seventies, Jimmy Carter's IRS was withholding tax
exem status from schools that refuse to integrate violating court orders.

(02:00:43):
In this period nineteen seventy eight gain Rich, but also
you know people like Howard Jarvis and California that started
the ANTIIRS movement, which they said, the tax collectors are
a tool of an ideologically driven government. Your taxes going
to them is helping an ideological battle, not just funding
kind of the base social services that were pretty popular

(02:01:04):
and that a lot of Republicans agreed with too, because,
like you said, Republicans like George Herbert Walker Bush and
Ronald Reagan wanted strong military, they wanted more spending on
the on defense, So they wanted government.

Speaker 6 (02:01:16):
To do things.

Speaker 16 (02:01:17):
They just didn't like the intrusion of government on the
tax codes, certainly taking big business as profits. And so
that's kind of what the series leads up to. And
by the nineteen nineties, when Newt Gingrich gets into office,
the movement of conservatives has become so fractured that the
Pat Buchanan hard proto Trump conservatives now they have a

(02:01:39):
lot more influence over this party, and they're saying Ronald
Reagan's too moderate because he compromised with Democrats, and George
Bush is of course way too moderate because he would
even consider raising taxes. And they see new Gingrid shut
down the government and they say, this is what we're
all about, aggression, hostility, and the movement takes a hard
turn to the right right there. And it's not to

(02:02:01):
say that the entire Republican Party believes like this. I
think that the Republican Civil War is still happening right now. Yeah,
But that is how this tax issue then mores into
what we see right now, which is you have whole
anti government forces, people who saw Waco in Oklahoma City saying,
you know what, the government is taking away our rights
and it is a frightening force. And if our taxes

(02:02:23):
defund the government, more power to that. And that's by
the way, Grover Norquiz do we interview in our last episode.

Speaker 6 (02:02:29):
He's that faction of the conservative movement.

Speaker 16 (02:02:32):
Art Laugher, who we heard on the trailer is the
other side, which he says, low taxes equals prosperity. But
he'll message all these kind of pro government values.

Speaker 5 (02:02:41):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (02:02:41):
Yeah, well, no coincidence, by the way, that happened during
the fall of the Soviet Union just that time when
in the early nineties.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
Yeah, that's a fantastic point, and so sort of bring
us to today. I mean, on the one hand, again,
this four trillion dollar tax cut for the rich centerpiece
of the Trump agenda, he sort of flowed like, oh,
maybe I won't cut taxes as much on the millionaires
with an He backed off of that immediately when it
became clear that he'd actually have to exert some pressure
to get that to happen. He wasn't all that interested

(02:03:09):
in doing it to start with. On the other hand,
you know, in the time period that you're covering, they
really were on the offense. They felt very confident in
their messaging. Now you can see from Steve Bannon and
others that they realize this. If they're going to really
position themselves as this populist party, it's a little bit
of a problem for them. They're at odds with their
own voters, let alone the national conversation. So kind of

(02:03:30):
where is the anti tax movement today?

Speaker 16 (02:03:32):
I think the anti tax movement is still very powerful
because of things like Elon Musk and Doge, and that
is that they are taking the rhetoric that the government's
a hostile action and dialing it up to eleven. And
as we talked about in the series, when you message
that rhetoric in an era where people are already dissatisfied
with their government, they feel let down by it and
they're frustrated, you can get people who initially were pro

(02:03:55):
government agreeing with you that you know, the government is
doing negative things.

Speaker 6 (02:04:00):
I think the biggest contract is.

Speaker 4 (02:04:02):
A big part of that.

Speaker 12 (02:04:02):
Guy is a big.

Speaker 16 (02:04:03):
Part of that. I think the big thing that the
Steve Bannon thing is trying to do is he's trying
to make more language of the progressive left and the
left wing and hoping that left wing allies will also say, hey,
isn't this the future, we should be no taxation on
everybody else, but putting some taxes on the wealthy. And
I think that the anti tax movement is realizing. The

(02:04:25):
Republican Party was never a good vehicle if that was
the kind of politics that you wanted to espouse. The
more progressive Bernie Standers style of politics vibes a little
bit more with that. So the anti tax movement is
still clearly very strong. Because Trump himself got scared by
his own statement of putting taxes on multi millionaires, and
I think the quickness with which he kind of pulled

(02:04:47):
that back, and even his Trump his Truth social posts
where he was like, I'll put the taxes on there,
but if they don't want to, I'll still be okay
with it.

Speaker 12 (02:04:55):
It might be a good idea.

Speaker 6 (02:04:56):
You can see his hesitancy and how powerful the entrend
interest that run the party really are.

Speaker 16 (02:05:02):
And that's the struggle for the Trump administration. He's tried
to tailt his base towards the populist working class base,
which was the Democratic base for a long time, and
he's seeing why Democrats politically found favor when they would
raise taxes on the wealthy.

Speaker 6 (02:05:17):
That was their base. So that's the base he wants
to have, but the party is still dictated by the
entrenched corporate interests.

Speaker 5 (02:05:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:05:23):
Yeah, I mean that's the problem for Grover spent decades.
He spent decades on this like anti tax, you know,
hard line. Yeah you said, and he bullied everyone into
a signing. I shouldn't say bullied. I mean everyone was
doing it willingly.

Speaker 6 (02:05:35):
Sign He was quite the bully that It sounds like,
oh yeah, that'd.

Speaker 5 (02:05:39):
Be a bully.

Speaker 3 (02:05:40):
But when you know they have an opportunity to do
a big tax bill in twenty seventeen and Paul Ryan
saying we're gonna get your taxes down to a postcard,
it's going to look like something like a flat tax.
Well that never happens because the corporate interests need there
to be significant tax rates still to fund defense spending,
to fund all that other corporate fair And that's what

(02:06:01):
Grebern Norquist and the anti tax crusaders, who genuinely do
believe in limited government and extremely limited taxes, they've ended
up sort of being the vehicle for corporate interests to
continue the welfare's bigot.

Speaker 16 (02:06:13):
Yeah, the flat tax debate is really interesting to me
because you know, I will say that when I sat
down with Grover Norquist. There are people on the anti
tax side who seem to genuinely believe just a complicated.

Speaker 12 (02:06:24):
Tax code is bad. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 16 (02:06:26):
Need it will lead to people gaming the system, which
it completely has, and it's unfair to people who don't
have the means or the knowledge base to understand what
all the complicated tax code means. And I think that's
why tax cutting a flat tax became a really salient message,
which is that if you're trying to live your life,
you have your full time job, you have your family,

(02:06:47):
and if someone says to you, do you just want
to pay a simple tax code and know that the
code is fair, that you know your neighbor who's an
accountant who knows the system is paying less just because
they have that knowledge base. That's a really powerful message.
But again, the flat rate cutters, and a lot of
them like to talk about Ronald Reagan, they're like, Ronald
Reagan was our hero, he was gonna do that, but

(02:07:09):
you know, everybody else made the tax code more complicated. Well,
the story of Republican politics, and you know, arguably democratic
politics too, is that the powerful interest whenever you offer
a tax cut are going to be able to find
what they can do. They used to call the hallway
outside of the Senate Budget Writing Room in the eighties
Gucci Gulch because Bob Dole came out and he saw

(02:07:30):
all the tax lobbyists wearing Gucci shoes and suits, and
he would say, it's Gucci to Gucci in the whole way.

Speaker 5 (02:07:37):
Gucci.

Speaker 16 (02:07:38):
Yeah, and that's who wrote the nineteen eighty six tax
cut bill.

Speaker 4 (02:07:40):
There you go. That says it all right.

Speaker 3 (02:07:42):
There.

Speaker 2 (02:07:43):
Tell people where they can find the series and take
a listen so you can.

Speaker 16 (02:07:45):
Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is
levernews dot com and if you start Tax Revolt in
your podcast players and lever time, you will find our podcast.

Speaker 4 (02:07:53):
Fantastic. Good to see you, Thank you.

Speaker 12 (02:07:54):
Yeah too, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (02:07:55):
You're pleasure all right, guys. That does it for us.

Speaker 2 (02:07:58):
We are going to do an AMA live today, so
if you want to be part of future amas, make
sure to sign up at Breakingpoints dot com. I will
see you back here with Dave Smith tomorrow and then
we will go from there. Emily fun always.

Speaker 3 (02:08:09):
I'll see it too, because I'm going to be watching.

Speaker 4 (02:08:11):
Oh wait, there you go.

Speaker 5 (02:08:12):
I'll be fun.

Speaker 2 (02:08:13):
I was watching and Ryan's here, Just so you know,
you watch everything I do. I do I genuinely like
I learn and I'm.

Speaker 3 (02:08:18):
A fan, so I mean, how can you not learn
from Ryan? The man is just a font of wisdom infinite.

Speaker 4 (02:08:24):
There is a lot. There is a lot going on
in that brain, isn't there.

Speaker 5 (02:08:27):
Well, he'll be here on Wednesday. Dave is in tomorrow.
Can't wait to see it.

Speaker 4 (02:08:30):
Yep, sounds good. All right, guys, have a great day.

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