May 23, 2025 • 56 mins
Ryan and Emily discuss Trump's secret crypto dinner, Harvard foreign students banned, Trump 'big beautiful bill' passes and more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 3 (00:30):
All right, good Friday and morning, welcome to a Counterpoints
takeover of this Friday show. Just some programming notes stick
around for the very end if you're a premium subscriber.
If you're not a premiumbscriber. Premium subscriber, it'll cut off
about halfway through. You're going to miss a lot of
good stuff. You know, we give so much of this
show away, We give so much milk away. We got
(00:52):
to figure out ways to make you buy this cow.
And so we're going to have Matt Stoller and James
Lee in the back end of it, Matt Stoller talking
about the definition of oligarchy, James Lee doing an interview
with a former layman trader about the private equity bubble,
which I actually think is one of the maybe the
biggest issue facing the economy right now, is the potential
(01:13):
collapse of private equity, which could just rip through everything
and give us another you know, two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine. We're also going to talk in
the back half of the show about the latest developments
in Israel and wanted to talk about one piece of
that before we moved to domestic news, and then we'll
pick more of that up. Actually, a producer, Mac who
(01:36):
has the YouTube channel Good Politic Guy, picked up on
this earlier this week. I only noticed it recently, but
Besilol Smotrich, the Finance Minister, Israel's finance minister, gave a
speech this week where he said that he had where
he basically says he won an internal battle and Israel
(01:57):
is now because he has won this batattle deliberately targeting
civilians and the civilian infrastructure of hamas in Gaza, no
longer just focusing on the military, but going after civilians.
That is a crime against humanity. It's against international law.
You cannot target civilians, even if they work in the government.
If anybody told you that it was legal to kill
(02:19):
two Israeli members of the embassy here in Washington, d C.
Because there's a war going on, they are they're lying
to you that that is a crime against humanity. You
cannot kill civilian members of the government. Uh, the IDF
is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of
Hamas and not just focusing on the military infrastructure we
(02:40):
are eliminating. We are eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and
elements of the economic and governmental system. So we'll talk
more about that, what that, what that means about this
next phase of the Israeli attack on on Gaza In
the back half of the show, Emily any any quick
(03:00):
reaction to that.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
As well, at least have a lot to discuss when
we get to that portion of the show, which again
is for premium subscribers. You can head over to Breaking
Points dot com to get access to the back half
of these Friday shows. Usually it's more of a party
Who've got Crystal, sometimes Saga, but now it's like today,
it's rising Fridays like circa four years ago.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, you're definitely not
going to Ryan.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Also, we have in the front of the show We're
going to be talking about Trump's crypto dinner, which happened
last night, and the reports are trickling in about exactly
how that went.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
The claim is now that the big beautiful bill cuts
the deficit, which is incredible.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
So we will break all of that down too.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, not true. We'll have some updates on immigration policy.
Trump telling a four hundred year old university, the top
university in the world, that it can no longer accept
foreign students. They cited no rationale, no legal rationale for that.
So that's gonna that's gonna head to court. But you know,
(04:10):
the fight with Harvard is kicking up, and I desperately,
you know, hate Trump for making me defend Harvard, you know,
one of the worst institutions in the world. But uh,
come on, what are you doing? What on earth are
you doing? The the though, the white immigrant, the Denmark guy,
and Mississippi's kind of making waves on on the on
(04:34):
the right, and and you know, across the spectrum. This guy.
We'll talk about this guy who's been in the country
since twenty thirteen, was doing everything right. Went to a
immigration hearing. Uh, father of four married to an American citizen. Uh,
you know on on his you know do did nothing
wrong except I think they missed one one filing or something.
Arrested down in Mississippi by Ice Agency's in detention. Now. Trump,
(04:59):
now that the talk market has recovered, he's doing his
best to smash it again. He's threatening a twenty five
percent tariff on Apple, fifty percent tariff on the EU
and also the old tariffs are still in place. He's
going after media matters. Democrats are proposing a whole bunch
of a whole bunch of different changes that we can
(05:26):
that we'll talk about going forward. This interesting, interesting story
in the Bulwark.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Even everything you just said, the fact that it's happening
all at once, it gave me a.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Little bit of whiplash.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
I was like, Wow, you told me ten years ago
that that would just be the casual rundown of a
Friday show.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Wow, Okay, there we are.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
But it is all happening at once, and everyone give
me a little patience.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
This morning.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I moved yesterday and had all kinds of tech fun
this morning. So if there's weirdness in the audio and
if I'm at an odd angle, just we're working on it.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, your computer's buses, So is it hard for you
to put up elements.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Crying and it looks like because you're on an i boomer,
I'm on an iPad, so we will.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Well, you're a computer broke and you still made it on.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Here, that's right, the one thing that broke.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes, at least that's not boomer at all. Okay, so
let's uh let's start here, uh with Caroline Levitt talking
about the talking about this crypto dinner last night, which
is you know, it's hard, it's hard to remain shocked anymore.
But this is truly a a a shocking level, brazed
(06:42):
and braised, brazen level of corruption. So let me let
me share this, uh this, Caroline Levitt.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Here on the dinner tonight, you mentioned this is not
a White House dinner, but the president is and the
Trump family is making money off of this. So can
you just explain how is this not the president using
the office to enrich themselvel.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
All of the president's assets are in a blind trust
which is managed by his children, And I would argue
one of the many reasons that the American people re
elected this president back to this office is because he
was a very successful businessman before giving it up to
publicly serve our country.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Did she say a blind trust managed by his j ok.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
That was comical? That was comical. A blind trust managed
by his children? That is? That is indeed what h
what she said?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Does that mean? That could mean a lot of different things,
by the way, it could mean.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
That they are the people who are the like actual
they're they're making the trades and stuff. Or it could
mean that they're managing the people who are handling the investments.
But it sounds like they're the ones that are handling
the investments from that quote, Yeah, not not so blind?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, yes, yes, I'm sure his yes, because we're like,
give us the money, give us your money, we'll manage
it for you. And they're doing all and they're doing
all their deals around the world, Like how does that?
How does that? How does that not make it worse?
Like that feels a little bit. I guess it's worse
than like one of those answers where you're like, oh, wow,
this was really bad. When I heard the questions, it's
(08:12):
worse now that I've heard the answer. So for folks
not following this, this crypto dinner, if you what, in
order to get into this dinner, you had to buy
Trump's mean coin, and the top two hundred holders of
Trump's mean coin would then get access to Trump, and
I think the top fifteen or thirty would get this
(08:33):
like VIP access. Now, the way that crypto works is
it's there's some transparency in being able to follow the coin.
And more than fifty percent of the of the of
the people who bought into the top two hundred, and
more than fifty percent bought in the top thirty did
so through exchanges that only allow foreigners to participate in them.
(08:56):
So we knew for a fact going in that this
was a bunch of peace people from outside of the
country who were going, we're giving money directly to Donald
Trump to enrich him for access to him. Now, the
question then, is they just want it like they just
want a selfie, or they are they actually trying to
move policy, because then you're at the level of bribery,
(09:18):
and so the New York Times has, Uh.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It's incredible, it's exactly respect but incredible nonetheless.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah yeah. Several of the dinner guests and interviews with
The New York Times said that they attended the event
with the explicit intent of influencing mister Trump and US
financial regulations. Sang Rock Oh, a Korean crypto executive, arrived
at the dinner with a collection of red baseball caps
and blazoned with the words make Crypto great Again that
(09:47):
he planned to hand out at the event. He said
he had flown all the way from Soul to attend
a dinner. Quote. It's kind of a fundraiser for mister Trump,
mister O said in an interview at his hotel in Virginia,
and he'll always be good to his sponsors. The dinner
was designed to fuel more sales. The organizers framed it
as a contest. The top two hundred and twenty buyers
would dine with mister Trump at his golf club, while
(10:08):
the top twenty five would attend a more intimate gathering
with the president before dinner and go on a tour
of the White House. So you can't believe anything I say.
I said two hundred and thirty just open bribery, and anyway,
that's not The New York Times that's mister Hannah and
Aniya there. So yeah, so they paid money to Trump
(10:28):
a fundraiser for Trump, not Trump's campaign, which is the
way that we've legalized bribery in the United States, but
directly to Trump, which is the old school illegal kind
of bribery. Is there has anybody attempted a steel man
of why this is not just flagrant?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I think Carolin speaking of Caroline Lovitt, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Oh, because it's a blind His money's in a blind.
Hrowsn't he doesn't know if all this money that's being
given by him actually benefits him or not, because his
kids might lose it.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
On well, of when she was talking last week about
the cutter jet and she said, the notion that Donald
Trump would be influenced by anything like that is insane.
And I actually really think that's the only steel man
that you could possibly come up with.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Well meaning that well, even with.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
The tariffs, at least for a couple of weeks, he
was willing to give a middle finger to all the
Wall Street guys that were messing with him like that's
I don't think it's a good argument, but I think
it's the best version of the argument that it's all
on the up and up, because Trump is just someone
who's uniquely resistant to the influence of money and politics,
which is how a lot of people see him. On
(11:39):
the other hand, that's not how the people who were
dishing out millions of dollars to who have dished out
millions of dollars to Trump, see him. And that's in
this I mean you see that in this rundown itself.
I think the estimate is about forty percent of Trump's
net worth is now tied up and the coin in crypto,
(12:02):
which is astounding because that's only happened over the course
of the last five months. This a man who spent
how many.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Years toiling away in the Trench's New York real estate.
So it is just to see ryan two things.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
On the one hand, the people who are activists in
crypto world do fundamentally want to change the global economy,
bottom line. That's why they're active activists in crypto world.
And on the other hand, what they're doing here is
so nakedly corrupt that you just it's head spinning. And
(12:39):
so you have activists and corruption combined in one beautiful dinner,
one big, beautiful dinner.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, and this is a good example of it. This
is a piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined a
crypto billionaire who feared to rest in the US returns
for dinner with Trump. It's about this guy, Justin's son,
who run a crypto network that is very popular with
what they what the Wall Street Journal calls the criminal underbelly.
(13:08):
And this this is a top use of crypto as
being trying to trying to move money outside of the
banking system if you are involved in things that the
banking system is going to flag as as potentially illegal, uh,
drug trafficking, human trafficking, uh, money money laundering, you know,
the you know, the the under underworld stuff. And so
(13:31):
this guy was, uh, you know, persona non grata until recently,
and now he has you know, used this money to
buy and if if you are Sam Bankman freed, uh,
you have to be feeling like the biggest moron on
the planet. Like you you put all of your money
into Democrats and then Democrats went and tried to regulate
(13:53):
crypto and then locked you up. Like your move, moron
was to put your money into on the Republican side.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
He was what he did fairly, Yeah, it was it
was like sixty forty.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, he was spread he was spreading it around. He
gave a bunch of McConnell, right, Yeah, he was definitely
spreading it around. Yeah, but he was a little more.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
No, he was, and he was he was sort of
culturally aligning himself the left, which is again very interesting too,
Like he was because at the time how quickly culture changes.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
Now, at the time, the idea of.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
You know, the the what do they call it, it's
like so out of vogue now, the effect of altruism
that was really that's right and sort of left wing
progressive business circles to the extent that makes sense, sort
of like the center left circles. And so he thought
he could pitch crypto as effective altruism instead. You're right,
(14:47):
it should have just been you know, piracy and take
it to the libertarian right.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Just leave it at that.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And while we're while we're on the topic of corruption,
pro Public has this news story that what is a
dozen top congressional aids and executive brank branch officials sold
huge amounts of stock just before Liberation Day. Now in
their defense, uh, Donald Trump went to Congress with his
(15:17):
in his State of the Union and announced that he
was going to do his Liberation Day. And as Jeff
Stein kept complaining about Wall Street guys like we've been
saying he's going to do this, he has said it
out loud. He has said it out loud repeatedly. So
what I think it It goes to a fundamental corruption
(15:41):
in the system that these officials hold. That's those shares
at all. Like, if you're a public official, you should,
to me, you should not have public any kind of
public servant, any stocks. Yeah, public servant, yes, exactly, yes, yes,
serving serving the public. Put you know, your money should
(16:02):
be in an actual blind trust, not run by It's insane.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I mean, but the thing is it doesn't matter, and
I don't even know I mean it it matters. It
doesn't matter for Trump because I guess what's the best
explanation of this. It's always been baked into Trump and
there's no other politician like it.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
I mean, this is the.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Man who actually based a not insignificant portion of his
twenty twenty campaign on Biden family corruption. The twenty sixteen
campaigns was not insignificantly based on Clinton corruption, and.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
That was also about insecure use of messaging. Like there
the personal emails were said to be the greatest, like
national security castrophe. Let's get an update on that.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
How's and foreign influence?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
How's that going? How's how's the Trump administration handled.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
When it was really particulars about foreign and pebbling, both
with the Clinton Foundation and with the Biden operation. And
I think Hanani described I think he described one of
the pictures from the Times articles like a United Nations
of corruption because it was people from so many different
countries who were racing to be involved in the dinner.
(17:18):
While again Trump is this is the sitting president of
the United States. So Trump is not like yeah, it's
the only difference between Trump and Hunter Biden whatever is
Trump has Caroline Levitt go out there and just say
to everyone, well, yeah, people can give him money.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
It doesn't mean it's going to change his mind.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Like he's he's taking all of this, you know, he's
he's doing all these events. Doesn't mean it's going to
change his mind. Whereas with the Bidens, it would be well,
everything is legal, you know everything that nothing is. It's
nothing to see here. Everything is perfectly in compliance. They're
just like screw it, you know, like it doesn't don't
even worry about that. The question fundamentally is whether it's
(17:58):
changing Trump's mind. It's not so look somewhere else. Did
you see Tucker By the way, Tucker, sorry, maybe Sean
Ryan was on Tucker Carlson Show this week and brought
it up. Brought up I think they were in the
context of last week's trip to the Middle East, and
Tucker was like, sure, looks corrupt. And if you're a
consistent sort of supporter of Donald Trump's, because he is
(18:22):
a very effective critic of the swamp in Washington, d C.
There's only one way to be consistent.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
It would be to see that as outrage.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yes, yeah, it's corrupt. The only defense of it is
that people who like Trump like Trump and that is cool.
They don't care.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Well, yeah, the argument is that doing outweighs the personal enrichment.
But of course, again, it makes it look like the
United States is for sale, and the United States has
been for sale in many different ways over many, many years.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
But there's something about.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Right, all they have is what about.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
And there's something also about the sort of pretense of.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
It's not even just a pretense, it's an ambition that
as you sort of respect the will of voters, that
they respect our laws that they say, hey, we don't
have a spoils system. It's something we're very opposed to
as like average Americans, we don't like it when the
people who are elected abuse their office for the sake
(19:31):
of personal enrichment.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
But the I mean it just.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
That's out the window and who knows what happens afterwards
because of that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And maybe we disagree on this Harvard, this Harvard issue,
let's move on to that one. So let me let
me put this up. So Trump administration sent a letter
to Harvard saying that in the headline in the Times
as Trump administration says it is halting Harvard's ability to
enroll international students. That's that's what they did. They sent
(20:08):
a letter to Harvard saying, you are no longer eligible
to enroll foreign students. They're what twenty twenty seven percent
like some Yes, twenty seven percent of the student body
six thousand, eight hundred international students attended Harvard in the
in the last school year. It had been it had
(20:31):
been nineteen point seven percent in twenty ten to twenty eleven,
so it's slightly increasing number. And so they're telling Harvard
forget it, like you can't do this anymore now as
people have who've you know, looked closely at the letters
that it doesn't have don't cite any law, doesn't cite
any authority under which they're going to single out Harvard.
(20:55):
She's BONDI said out Now, this tended to send a
message to the rest of No song Nome said, is
intended to send a message to the rest of the
universities that they better not fight the administration. So, you know,
presumably who knows, presumably the Supreme Court or whoever rules
on this will knock this down. We could talk about
(21:19):
that that whether or not that's the case, but also
the merits of it. I guess the argument on behalf
of it is that, hey, it's an American university. It
should be a it should be there for Americans. The
argument for it is that the United States doesn't make
much anymore, but we are still the innovation center of
(21:42):
the world. China is challenging us, but we're we are
We're still at minimum competitive with them, if not, if
not better. And the reason for that is that other
countries aren't just competing against the top graduates of American
high schools, but of the best and brightest from all
(22:02):
around the world who come to the United States to
go to the best university system in the world. Many
of those students then become permanent residents and become citizens
and stay here. They found companies like Google here that
you know, put us in the in the forefront of
this kind of innovation economy. The ones who then reached,
(22:26):
who don't stay here and return to their capitals or
to their big metropols, develop an affinity for the United
States and give us another advantage when it comes to
kind of soft power around the world, because they had
a good time while they were here, and they have
a lot of friends here, and they understand our country
in a way that Americans don't, for instance, understand China.
(22:51):
I was talking to a Pakistani guy who was here
in the United States a week or two ago, and
he was talking and he travels to China lot. He's uh,
he's in He's in London a lot. And he was
saying that this the advantage to him that the United
States has is that he doesn't feel like he is
(23:13):
a foreigner here. But he doesn't feel like a foreigner
like he he comes to the United States, he feels
at home. He's welcomed despite all of this Trump rhetoric
and the attacks on immigrants and such. You look around
and we're a genuinely diverse, pluralistic, multicultural countries that you
go to China, he so you immediately feel like a
foreigner and and that's not that's not the sing a
(23:36):
lot of China. That's that's the case for so many
other countries. You just feel out of place. And that
gives us this this advantage without which we're then competing
in you know, textile mills and like just just manufacturing.
And we don't have that capacity right now. So if
(23:57):
we get so, if we cut off our head, like
the body is going to die too, would be my argument.
What's your take on the value of well, these elite
colleges and foreign studiyah.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
I mean, so they're a couple of the couple different
parts of that. The first part is the question you
just were discussing, which is the value of foreign attendance
at elite colleges and universities, and then the others the
value of this policy if we break it down that way,
I think probably if you look through some of the
(24:34):
highest achieving Americans in the last you know, fifty plus years.
A lot of them probably came to the United States
because they were exceptional students and you know, got to
Harvard or wherever and the sake of their merit and
made incredible companies and careers in the United States because
they love the United States. And as we talk about,
(24:56):
often immigrants to the United States are often the best
Americans because they love.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
The US so much.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Yeah, they necessarily take it for granted in the way
because they come from places where you.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
Don't have as much freedom, you don't have as much prosperity.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
So I don't think it's wise to shut that off
completely because some of the most brilliant people from around
the world. In fact, it's a real benefit to the
United States that still today. If you are high achieving
in any other part of the world, you're not going
to Chinese universities. You're trying to go to Harvard and
(25:32):
Yale in Princeton wherever else, and actually even some of
our big.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Flagship state schools. So I think that's actually.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Creates a The United States becomes a magnet for the
best talent in the entire world. How we then integrate
that talent into the United States is another question. That
number twenty seven percent enrollment of foreign students at Harvard,
which is the pride of America's higher education system, seems
exorbitantly high. That seems like it is actually you know,
(26:03):
this is a publicly funded university funded by US taxpayers.
That seems like it probably is closing the door to
too many American students. So I think it makes sense
to have a conversation about that. On the other hand,
policy wise, this is another sort of creative attempt or
an attempt to create a new novel avenue to the
(26:27):
They're like bushwhacking their way to like screwing with elite institutions.
And I'm I have the letter in front of me
just to get what Christynoam is saying out there.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
They are saying.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
They sent a letter in April to Harvard where they quote,
requested records pertaining a non immigrant students enrolled at Harvard University,
including information regarding misconduct and other offenses that would render
foreign students inadmissible or removable. They said twice they got
insufficient response. They say, as a courtesy that Harvard was
not legally entitled to, DHS afforded them another opportunity to comply.
(27:06):
Harvard again provided an insufficient response, so.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Right, and they're asking for like five years.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yeah, within seventy two hours, they have like six demands
yeah that include that. And they also are saying that
this is under the auspices of a revocation of the
Student and Exchange Visitor program, which DHS apparently I didn't
know this, right, but DHS apparently administers. So that's why
(27:33):
it's coming from CHRISTINOAM and DHS, and it is part
of this administration wide effort to again like bush whack
their way through uncharted territory, to screw with elite institutions
via all kinds of different mechanisms, creative mechanisms. And so
as much as I want to screw with elite institutions,
(27:54):
it's just sounds completely silly. It doesn't seem entirely lawless.
They do admit the program, but it seems like, I mean,
it seems maybe silly is the best word. It seems
like kind of a joke, yea.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And yeah, in the sense that they are the law.
It's not lawless, but they're not citing any particular authority
that they have as the administers administrators of this program
to just kind of arbitrarily target them because they're not
turning over footage of protesters. It's like, what it's like,
get out of here, Like who are you? DHS? Like,
(28:32):
and I want I missed the the free speech right.
That would be like, wait a minute, you want the government.
The DHS wants a private institution to turn over five
years of video footage of speech, the.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Heavily funded private institution, a heavily tax payer funded private institution.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
That's fine. Still, it's still we're all tax payer fund
on some level.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
That's thing Obama.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You didn't build that, even if it's public, even if
it's public, even if they went to the University of
Michigan as for five years of footage of protests, like
it is First Amendment. The right to peaceably assemble right
there in the First Amendment, not just speech. Peaceful assembly
is right there in the Constitution. It's one of the
(29:24):
key things that we're so proud of that makes us
a free country. DHS demanding that and if they don't
turn it over, they're gonna basically try to destroy them
is just a fundamental threat to civil liberties in this country. Now,
everything I have said is an argument as an American
(29:47):
for the United States of America. I think for a
person in the world, you could argue, go ahead, good,
it's actually it will be better for the world. If
the United States commits suicide, it will be better for
these other countries. If the United States is not creating
a gravitational pull that creates this brain drain out of
(30:09):
all of these other countries. If the United States is
weaker and is interfering less in the democratic governance of
other countries, that's probably a good thing. Now for people
in the United States, their quality of life will go
way down. This country itself will spiral, but the rest
of the world may actually do better. So in that sense,
(30:33):
you know, I guess go ahead, Christine.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
No, yeah, I mean, look that twenties again, twenty seven
percent just seems it's probably.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
What although it's probably low, Like if you think about it,
if this is you know, there's three hundred million people
in the United States. There's eight nine billion around the world,
maybe ten all competing for spots in the best college,
and you American students are getting them. Somebody's putting yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Mean the public learning of the institution is one hundred
percent of American but.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
The yeah, right, but the private the far, and that's
what I was just going to say.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Yeah, that's what I was just it's it's I wonder
how much of that is actually merit and versus you know,
the rich chikhs, you know, buying their kids into Harvard
or wherever else. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me
to have a conversation about that. Also, these schools do
have legitimate problems with espionage that they kind of opened
(31:36):
in or welcomed in for a long time. They seem
like they're all kind of cracking down on it now,
but whether it's Cutter or China, there's been all kinds
of stuff happening at it's these igue institutions. It's hard
to tell whether this letter is specifically.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, and the federal CHUDG has already blocked it.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Well that's why I think so when you said it's
a serious threat to higher education, it's like in I
look at that on paper and I'm like, yes, that's true.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
But then I look in practice and I'm.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Like, yeah, I know some of these people. Spend time
with some of these people, and they're just trolling with
a lot of this stuff. And it's not funny if
you're Harvard but the only point that I would make
is just and again, this is it. It's controversial and
not entirely fair. But the only thing I would say is,
(32:28):
I don't know how serious they are about going through
with a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
It doesn't it doesn't make it right. I just think
that they're they're throwing, like.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Jackson pollocking the whole administration, like they're throwing everything at
the wall and trying to make a beautiful portrait out
of their mess.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
And yeah, it's it's It doesn't Again, it doesn't make
it right.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
It doesn't mean that it's not gonna have implications, But
just to like explain it from their perspective and explain
why it doesn't feel like a grave threat to me
is partially just because I'm like, I don't think they're
going to go through with it. I think they're just
doing this to scare the universities and appliance with other
things that they are more serious about, and some of
those will be I mean, the endowment tax that's in
the big beautiful bill is significant. That actually is a
(33:08):
huge deal if you're Harvard or any of these schools.
So some of the stuff is completely serious. Some of
it feels like, Okay, we're you know, just creating these
funny like legal ideas that somebody came up with at
a happy hour and was like, hah, and this will
f with Harvard.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, So let's let's talk briefly about this this father
in Mississippi. And I guess you can let me know
if the right is angry that I would that I
call him a Mississippi father, just like they're angry about
calling Braio Garcia Maryland.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
Maryland that this is That was the Atlantic headline.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
No, they hated, they hated Maryland father in particular. How
dare you humanize him? So I'll just read from this
this report. His father went to his This father went
to his citizenship hearing, expecting a handshake. Instead, Ice shackled him,
threw him into a van, and tore him away from
his pregnant wife and four children without even letting him
say goodbye. Casper Erickson arrived in Mississippi from Denmark in
(34:13):
twenty thirteen, fully documented and determined to build a life here.
He started a family, became part of his community, and
followed every rule. He was never accused, let alone convicted
of any crime, But as best we understand, he's now
in prison because of a single clerical mistake made years ago.
In twenty fifteen, Casper and his wife Savannah missed filing
one form among the hundreds acquired on the complicated path
(34:34):
to citizenship. Savannah had just suffered a still birth, losing
their first child. In the painful days that followed, paperwork
deadlines understandably slipped past unnoticed. Now over a month after
his arrest, Casper remains locked in a detention facility notorious
for cruelty, neglect, and abuse. Savannah, eight months pregnant, at
high risk, and terrified, is desperately pleading for her husband's return.
(34:56):
She and their children have no idea when or if
they'll ever see him again, and she doesn't know if
he'll be present for her child's birth. Every day brings
another nightmare. Under the Trump administration, actions of our government
are evil or simply no other way to describe it.
May God have mercy on all of us for allowing
this to happen. Here's the family, you know. This comes
at the same time that Ice is also denying Makmood
(35:17):
Khalil a contact visit with his want with his one
month old baby for for no reason, Like there's contact
visits are a thing that you can allow people who
are in detention. Khalil was arrested or blocked up a
month before his child was born, as he has not
seen his child since then. This one, you know, struck me.
(35:40):
You know, we also suffered a still born with our
with our first daughter and also now have four children.
And I can I can only imagine that. Of course,
you're missing paperwork amidst amidst the deepest grief that that
(36:02):
a human being can imagine losing a child, like there's
there's nothing deeper than that. Ah. And two to use
that to have a system that says you missed that deadline,
there's nothing we can do. We must put you in
this private prison for months on end as we work
(36:23):
to deport you to Denmark is like this. This guy
here described it as evil, and like, I'm hard pressed
to find a different.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Yeah, I mean, there's the legal question in the ethical question,
and on the ethical question. One of the things that
bothers me about the.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
Way, particularly.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
We looked at like Venezuelan asylum seekers who ended up
in Seacott and we're legitimate asylum seekers like the barber
that we discussed by me about that is I feel
like the United States made a promise, and I feel
that about many of the asylum seekers who came under Biden.
(37:10):
It's one of the things that bothered me about the
Biden policy because I knew that at some point we
were going to break the promise, because it was unsustainable
to make those promises to so many different people that
you will have a fair asylum hearing and that if
you are and I know I'm just talking narrowly about
asylum here, but the point is that we do promise
(37:32):
rule of law and legal processes, and we you know,
people come here with the expectation that the United States
will do it fairly and will you know, treat people humanely.
And so whether something is legal in a narrow sense
is different than whether it's ethical, and it just it
(37:55):
does you know, looking at some of the particularly some
of the asylum cases Cubans, it just eats me up
when I think about just having that sort of removed
after people because the United States extended a hand and
said make an appointment on CBP one, come here.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
You know, you can just tell us like go through
the legal process.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Tell us why you want to asylum, tell us why
you're a refugee. And it's I think sort of been
that it feels like we've let ourselves down in some
of those cases. And again that's coming from somebody who
actually is pretty supportive of a lot of what Donald
Trump has done on the border, Like the crossings are
(38:38):
down so significantly, the border basically is closed to the
point where it doesn't justify.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
Any policies based on a quote quote invasion. But you
know that.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
It's not Trump's fault that Biden did what Biden did,
that the Biden administration did what the Biden administration did.
It's not the Republican parties, well, Republican party is different.
It's not the Trump administration's fault. But they do have
then a moral obligation to deal with the people who
came here humanly.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Yeah, right, Because we can choose what kind of country
we want to we want to be. If if we
want to be vicious and cruel like that is that
is a thing we can do like that is within
our power and our ability, or we can be or
we can try to be a civilized country. That's that's
the true We.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Are refugees we should be. That's the other thing. That's
another the United States. We were just talking about this
when we're talking about academia. We have been a place
a talent magnet for generations. Uh, and there aren't and
there have been excesses of that. We have been a
magnet for desperate people seeking freedom for decades, and there
(39:52):
have been some excesses of that. But in the concept
in of itself, is part of what makes us a
great country. Is because we are comprised of this amazing
collection of people who are really talented, love freedom, and
that's an addition to our native born population, and it's additive,
and people integrate and love the United States. And again
(40:15):
we have to fix those processes too. There's nothing to
say that I think there's more. There are plenty of
questions to be raised about that. But on the other hand,
it also is part. It's always been additive. It's part
of what makes us a good country and a place
that a lot of us are proud to live.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
There's also news last night we're out of the Supreme Court,
and I can put this up that the Trump administration
one in the Supreme Court and is being allowed temporarily.
It's a temporary victory, but it's a significant one being
allowed to temporarily remove gwyn Willcox from the National Labor
Relations Board and also Kathy Harris, who's on the Merit
(40:54):
Systems Protection Board. People understand the NLRB, that's this, This
is board that oversees labor rights. Uh. The the kind
of I think failure of the bipartisan populist movement or
or transpartisan populist move whatever you would call it, has
been that despite the kind of working class shift in
(41:15):
the Republican Party, the NLRB has remained a you know,
public enemy number one because of the kind of corporate
control and it's the ond a medium business control as
well of inside the Republican coalition. We can talk about
that in a second. I just want to say a
word about the Merit Systems Protection Board. But basically what
(41:37):
this is is there are all of these rules around,
you know, how you can hire and fire people in
the federal government, and so if if you are wrongfully fired,
you can then appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
And what Trump, what Trump is doing here is trying
to destroy the the merit the Merit Board, which then
(42:01):
would allow him to get rid of all of the protections,
because the protect if the protections are there on paper
but there's no avenue for you to challenge them, then
they don't really exist. And so this is a huge
win in his kind of assault on the federal on
this federal.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yeah, and Kagan and so to Major agree with that.
I'm reading from their descent here. She says, the current
president believes that Humphreys, so that's the Humphrey's executor case,
should be either overruled or confined, and he has chosen
to act on that belief, really to take the law
into his own hands. Not since the nineteen fifties or
even before, has a president without a legitimate reason tried
to remove an officer from a classic independent agency. And
(42:46):
they write, our Humphrey's decision remains good law, and it
forecloses both the president's firings and the court's decision to
award emergency relief. So it's a very long descent, but
basically they feel that Humphreys is threatened here, and Humphreys
is My preference would be that Humphrey's executor is is overturned.
(43:06):
I do think that these outside agencies need to be
accountable to the executive But at the same time.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Although the FED in here, they also say that the
FED is cool, right, which is just they're just making
it up as they go along, Like, yeah, just there's
no principle here, by the way, just this independent agency.
You can destroy this independent agency, which we're very nervous
(43:33):
about what Trump would do with that one constitutionally is protected.
It's like what they all are none of.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
No argument with me on that one. But that's what's
I mean.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Like when they when they handed the White House to
uh Bush, there's this famous line in the in Bush v. Gore.
Uh this sets no precedent and can never be referenced again.
Oh all right, I would.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Add that as my email signature.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yes, delete this email.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
But that is the reason that's a fault And actually,
to your point, the reason that the NLRB is particularly
a fault line, even amidst the transpartisan like FTC populism,
all of that is because it brings into the question
the size of the executive branch, period and most people
on the right still believe that the executive branch is
(44:26):
bloated and unaccountable to the president, and I include myself
in that category. So Humphreys to the point that Kagan
and so do my rr making is sort of a
foundational like that is a load bearing decision for the
entire executive branch.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Let's talk about this comical clip with Caroline Levitt being asked, Hey, man,
you guys said you're going to cut the devasit coms
bill explodes it. She had a very she had a
very clever response to that challenge. Let's let's play this.
Speaker 7 (45:06):
The One Big Beautiful Bill also to get our fiscal
in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in
nearly thirty years with one point six trillion dollars mandatory savings.
Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives who voted
against all of these common sense and massively popular policies.
The Democrat Party has never been more radical and out
(45:28):
of touch with the needs of the American people. The
One Big Beautiful Bill is the final missing piece toward
ushering the Golden Age of America. The Senate should pass
this as quickly as possible and send it to President
Trump's desk for a Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
So we want to hear that again just for fun.
It's just it's just amazing.
Speaker 7 (45:48):
Well, also helps get our fiscal house in order by
carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly thirty years.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's amazing the fiscal I didn't know you could do that.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
So in order you are going to be sick of
the fiscal house being in order.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
It's a really clever governing strategy. So instead of actually
creating a bill that that cuts the deficit, as you
said you would do, you you create you create a
bill and pass into the House that blows up the deficit,
but it cuts it off.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
It's you're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
That's exactly what this is. It works, That's the American.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Way, except the the problem apparently is that the American
people don't don't quite buy it. H So this is
the COBC. We were trying to figure out yesterday how
you say this the COBC letter. Americans have never been
so pessimistic about future finances. US consumers expectations about their
(46:51):
financial situation over the next year drop to an all
time low in May. So this is how do you
feel like you will be doing one year from now?
And you can see that. So that chart there, if
you're listening to this, it's just a just a cliff
like that. The numbers you know, you know, fluctuating over
the years and over the last couple of weeks, two months,
(47:17):
it's just a it's just a straight line. It looked
like the chart looks like you're going to have to
quickly hit that minus button and start like zooming out
to give it, to give it more room, to be
able to encompass the depth of the pessimism that is
engulfing the American public right now.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
If I had to, I wouldn't have bet this week
on whether the big beautiful bill passed the House or not,
because it was just such a close call.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
But the fact that it did.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Pass, I think bodes well. Actually going into the Senate,
it's going.
Speaker 5 (47:48):
To be very very, very very difficult.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
But what the passage in the House suggests is the
Republican Party is sufficiently desperate to have some type of
augmentation for the tariff policy. Uh and they're they're freaked
out about the chart, for example, that you just showed
and other charts liked it, like it, because that's the
(48:12):
only way you really get people on board with blowing
up the deficit is when they are deficit hawks is saying, well,
if nothing passes, then you are even like you're you're
tanking the economy because you're not.
Speaker 5 (48:25):
Having you have no reshoring legislative policy.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
You have no one tax right off you know, retroactor
to January for building all of that stuff. And so
if you if you don't pass this bill, you know,
cut the corporate taxes, you don't have the reshoring incentives,
then you have a much worse situation. So it's a
it's a wonderful way we make laws.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
By the way, I got some details from that Trump
meeting that you had with the Republican Conference from a
source that hadn't made it into the press yet. You
think some of this up back to your sources. Uh,
they'll they'll they'll enjoy this. Uh, you know, they're the
thing that the Freedom Caucus put out leaked out. He said,
I love the Freedom Caucus. You know, these are my guys.
(49:11):
The fuller quote was, I love the Freedom Caucus. These
are my guys. You know, give me liberty or give
me death, and then he added, vote for this bill
or it's gonna be death for you. They and when
the Freedom Caucus members leaked that out, to the press.
They conveniently said the washing.
Speaker 5 (49:29):
So that's funny.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah, they love that he loves us. He loves us
so much. They left out that he's threatened to kill
them metaphorically kill them, I assume.
Speaker 5 (49:39):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
He also, at one point, I forget the exact context,
said he was the first gay president because he was
complementing somebody, and uh, it will be Buchanan. Come on,
this is Buchanan erasure.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
Yeah, okay, it's fair.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
He was married Joe Senator from like Mississippi or whatever, like, well,
it's an interesting one.
Speaker 7 (50:01):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
And then he got into a back and forth with Massy.
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Source told me where he said, like Massy, very smart guy. Uh,
he went to mi T But look it up. Wharton
much better school, much harder to get into.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
I want to see Trump than running his on Tesla batteries,
you know, making that that's mass.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
Is absolute genius. He's like literally self sustaining farming.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Yeah, Wharton, harder to get into.
Speaker 5 (50:29):
Incredible.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I'm smarter than Massy. So let's here, Let's roll Massy's
Uh he did vote against He's one of the few
that did vote against it. Let's play his his speech
reserves gentleman from Massa Chiefs is recognized as a speaker.
I yield one and one half minutes to the gentleman
from Kentucky, a man who is not afraid to speak
his mind about fiscal responsibility. Mister Massey, gentleman from Kentucky's
(50:53):
recognized for ninety seconds.
Speaker 8 (50:56):
Well, I'd love to stand here and tell the American
people we can cut your taxes and we can increase
spending and everything's going to be just fine. But I
can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose
of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term,
but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years
from now. Where have we heard that before? How do
(51:19):
you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill
is a debt bomb ticking. Congress can do funny math,
fantasy math if it wants, but bond investors don't. And
this week they sent us a message. Moodies downgraded our
credit rating, and the bond investors who buy our debt
and finance our debt demanded higher interest rates on the
(51:41):
ten year note, the twenty year note, and the thirty
year note. What does this mean? Very soon the government
will be paying sixteen thousand dollars of interest interest a
loan per us family. And what are we telling them?
Instead of taking care of that problem, We're going to
give you a sixteen hundred dollars break under the taxing
(52:03):
and spending levels. In this bill, we're going to rack
up the author say, twenty trillion dollars of new debt
over the next ten years. I'm telling you it's closer
to thirty trillion dollars of new debt in the next
ten years, mister speaker. We're not rearranging deck chairs on
the Titanic tonight. We're putting coal in the boiler and
setting a course for the iceberg. If something is if
(52:28):
something is beautiful, If something is beautiful, you don't do
it after midnight.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
I that's a quote. It's not true.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
It's a good one, so messy, not always true. Real
real quickly, let's uh, and we got to get to
this back half the show. But I did want to
talk about this, this bulwark piece real quick, where Democrats
are planning a whole uh, claiming that they're going to
(53:01):
do a bunch of changes. The funniest one that I thought, UH,
from this one is that they're saying that Joe Joe
Biden operatives, they're going to attempt to blacklist them. We'll see.
That would be like the first blacklisting of any like
kind of mainstream operatives for anything ever in in democratic
politics in the in the past, it's only been a
(53:23):
blacklist for people who challenge the democratic establishment. Uh there.
And they're also going after uh South Carolina like they're
Carolin well making no, making South Carolina the first in
the nation state like that was done for Cliburn and
for but for really for Biden, who you know, credits
(53:47):
South Carolina for for that win. And so now they're
they're looking at that again. It's we'll see. If I
don't I don't. I don't think they'll actually do it, uh,
but we'll see.
Speaker 4 (53:59):
I think that's a that's actually very interesting because you
have both of your books behind you, the posters for them.
But we see some of the starting to happen on
the right, like if you have worked in Coke Universe,
you were supposed to be kind of booted from Trump circles,
that you were supposed to be off the list of
the administration.
Speaker 5 (54:17):
That didn't totally happen but it's still kind of.
Speaker 4 (54:19):
A it's still not great on a resume if you're
trying to move into the mainstream conservative movement now and
you have recently like a Coke group on your resume.
But you know, the idea that someone who worked for
a mainstream Democratic politician campaign presidential campaign for an establishment
(54:40):
Democrat like Joe Biden, that that would be a problem
for you. I just genuinely don't believe that that's durable.
It seems to me like something that is being discussed
right now, but then everyone will just pretend never happened
in six months or something like that. But maybe it
applies to the tippy tippy top, like maybe your general
Malley Dylan. Maybe you're like other people that are up
(55:03):
that were up really high in that world. Maybe that's why,
maybe that's why people like l Rosa are, you know,
talking to breaking points for example, to sort of say, well,
we were in here and we were the sane voices,
or we tried to be the sane voices.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I would think Jenno Mali Dylan is done anyway. Like
she you know, she ran the twenty Obama twenty twelve
campaign and then Biden in twenty twenty and then this one.
And she's a corporate consultant, like that's her Her main
gig is her firm does corporate consulting. So I don't
expect her to run another presidential campaign. And once you've
run them, you don't you don't go into you know
(55:45):
you maybe maybe she'll still do some like socide consulting
work for a future presidential campaign, but that's peanuts compared
to the amount of corporate money that's available to her
and other Democratic operatives. But let's move. Let's move to
the back half of this show. This is for premium
subscribe uh breaking go to breakingpoints dot com this because
it supports all the journalism that that we do here.
(56:07):
And you'll also get a Matt Stoller clip that we're
going to play towards the end, and also a James
Lee interview that he did with this and we should
uh Layman Trader, Jared.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
We should also mention we're doing an A M A
in the second half of the show, so we're taking some.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Premium describers questions.
Speaker 4 (56:22):
So if you want to see the rest of the
show Breakingpoints dot Com, you can do that. You can
send questions for future ames, and you can hear all
the fun stuff we discuss today.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
And so so let's talk about some of the political
fallout from the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers and
killing in here in Washington, d c UH the other
night
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:30):
All right, good Friday and morning, welcome to a Counterpoints
takeover of this Friday show. Just some programming notes stick
around for the very end if you're a premium subscriber.
If you're not a premiumbscriber. Premium subscriber, it'll cut off
about halfway through. You're going to miss a lot of
good stuff. You know, we give so much of this
show away, We give so much milk away. We got
(00:52):
to figure out ways to make you buy this cow.
And so we're going to have Matt Stoller and James
Lee in the back end of it, Matt Stoller talking
about the definition of oligarchy, James Lee doing an interview
with a former layman trader about the private equity bubble,
which I actually think is one of the maybe the
biggest issue facing the economy right now, is the potential
(01:13):
collapse of private equity, which could just rip through everything
and give us another you know, two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine. We're also going to talk in
the back half of the show about the latest developments
in Israel and wanted to talk about one piece of
that before we moved to domestic news, and then we'll
pick more of that up. Actually, a producer, Mac who
(01:36):
has the YouTube channel Good Politic Guy, picked up on
this earlier this week. I only noticed it recently, but
Besilol Smotrich, the Finance Minister, Israel's finance minister, gave a
speech this week where he said that he had where
he basically says he won an internal battle and Israel
(01:57):
is now because he has won this batattle deliberately targeting
civilians and the civilian infrastructure of hamas in Gaza, no
longer just focusing on the military, but going after civilians.
That is a crime against humanity. It's against international law.
You cannot target civilians, even if they work in the government.
If anybody told you that it was legal to kill
(02:19):
two Israeli members of the embassy here in Washington, d C.
Because there's a war going on, they are they're lying
to you that that is a crime against humanity. You
cannot kill civilian members of the government. Uh, the IDF
is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of
Hamas and not just focusing on the military infrastructure we
(02:40):
are eliminating. We are eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and
elements of the economic and governmental system. So we'll talk
more about that, what that, what that means about this
next phase of the Israeli attack on on Gaza In
the back half of the show, Emily any any quick
(03:00):
reaction to that.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
As well, at least have a lot to discuss when
we get to that portion of the show, which again
is for premium subscribers. You can head over to Breaking
Points dot com to get access to the back half
of these Friday shows. Usually it's more of a party
Who've got Crystal, sometimes Saga, but now it's like today,
it's rising Fridays like circa four years ago.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, you're definitely not
going to Ryan.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Also, we have in the front of the show We're
going to be talking about Trump's crypto dinner, which happened
last night, and the reports are trickling in about exactly
how that went.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
The claim is now that the big beautiful bill cuts
the deficit, which is incredible.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
So we will break all of that down too.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, not true. We'll have some updates on immigration policy.
Trump telling a four hundred year old university, the top
university in the world, that it can no longer accept
foreign students. They cited no rationale, no legal rationale for that.
So that's gonna that's gonna head to court. But you know,
(04:10):
the fight with Harvard is kicking up, and I desperately,
you know, hate Trump for making me defend Harvard, you know,
one of the worst institutions in the world. But uh,
come on, what are you doing? What on earth are
you doing? The the though, the white immigrant, the Denmark guy,
and Mississippi's kind of making waves on on the on
(04:34):
the right, and and you know, across the spectrum. This guy.
We'll talk about this guy who's been in the country
since twenty thirteen, was doing everything right. Went to a
immigration hearing. Uh, father of four married to an American citizen. Uh,
you know on on his you know do did nothing
wrong except I think they missed one one filing or something.
Arrested down in Mississippi by Ice Agency's in detention. Now. Trump,
(04:59):
now that the talk market has recovered, he's doing his
best to smash it again. He's threatening a twenty five
percent tariff on Apple, fifty percent tariff on the EU
and also the old tariffs are still in place. He's
going after media matters. Democrats are proposing a whole bunch
of a whole bunch of different changes that we can
(05:26):
that we'll talk about going forward. This interesting, interesting story
in the Bulwark.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Even everything you just said, the fact that it's happening
all at once, it gave me a.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Little bit of whiplash.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
I was like, Wow, you told me ten years ago
that that would just be the casual rundown of a
Friday show.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Wow, Okay, there we are.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
But it is all happening at once, and everyone give
me a little patience.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
This morning.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I moved yesterday and had all kinds of tech fun
this morning. So if there's weirdness in the audio and
if I'm at an odd angle, just we're working on it.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, your computer's buses, So is it hard for you
to put up elements.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Crying and it looks like because you're on an i boomer,
I'm on an iPad, so we will.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Well, you're a computer broke and you still made it on.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Here, that's right, the one thing that broke.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yes, at least that's not boomer at all. Okay, so
let's uh let's start here, uh with Caroline Levitt talking
about the talking about this crypto dinner last night, which
is you know, it's hard, it's hard to remain shocked anymore.
But this is truly a a a shocking level, brazed
(06:42):
and braised, brazen level of corruption. So let me let
me share this, uh this, Caroline Levitt.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Here on the dinner tonight, you mentioned this is not
a White House dinner, but the president is and the
Trump family is making money off of this. So can
you just explain how is this not the president using
the office to enrich themselvel.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
All of the president's assets are in a blind trust
which is managed by his children, And I would argue
one of the many reasons that the American people re
elected this president back to this office is because he
was a very successful businessman before giving it up to
publicly serve our country.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Did she say a blind trust managed by his j ok.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
That was comical? That was comical. A blind trust managed
by his children? That is? That is indeed what h
what she said?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Does that mean? That could mean a lot of different things,
by the way, it could mean.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
That they are the people who are the like actual
they're they're making the trades and stuff. Or it could
mean that they're managing the people who are handling the investments.
But it sounds like they're the ones that are handling
the investments from that quote, Yeah, not not so blind?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, yes, yes, I'm sure his yes, because we're like,
give us the money, give us your money, we'll manage
it for you. And they're doing all and they're doing
all their deals around the world, Like how does that?
How does that? How does that not make it worse?
Like that feels a little bit. I guess it's worse
than like one of those answers where you're like, oh, wow,
this was really bad. When I heard the questions, it's
(08:12):
worse now that I've heard the answer. So for folks
not following this, this crypto dinner, if you what, in
order to get into this dinner, you had to buy
Trump's mean coin, and the top two hundred holders of
Trump's mean coin would then get access to Trump, and
I think the top fifteen or thirty would get this
(08:33):
like VIP access. Now, the way that crypto works is
it's there's some transparency in being able to follow the coin.
And more than fifty percent of the of the of
the people who bought into the top two hundred, and
more than fifty percent bought in the top thirty did
so through exchanges that only allow foreigners to participate in them.
(08:56):
So we knew for a fact going in that this
was a bunch of peace people from outside of the
country who were going, we're giving money directly to Donald
Trump to enrich him for access to him. Now, the
question then, is they just want it like they just
want a selfie, or they are they actually trying to
move policy, because then you're at the level of bribery,
(09:18):
and so the New York Times has, Uh.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
It's incredible, it's exactly respect but incredible nonetheless.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah yeah. Several of the dinner guests and interviews with
The New York Times said that they attended the event
with the explicit intent of influencing mister Trump and US
financial regulations. Sang Rock Oh, a Korean crypto executive, arrived
at the dinner with a collection of red baseball caps
and blazoned with the words make Crypto great Again that
(09:47):
he planned to hand out at the event. He said
he had flown all the way from Soul to attend
a dinner. Quote. It's kind of a fundraiser for mister Trump,
mister O said in an interview at his hotel in Virginia,
and he'll always be good to his sponsors. The dinner
was designed to fuel more sales. The organizers framed it
as a contest. The top two hundred and twenty buyers
would dine with mister Trump at his golf club, while
(10:08):
the top twenty five would attend a more intimate gathering
with the president before dinner and go on a tour
of the White House. So you can't believe anything I say.
I said two hundred and thirty just open bribery, and anyway,
that's not The New York Times that's mister Hannah and
Aniya there. So yeah, so they paid money to Trump
(10:28):
a fundraiser for Trump, not Trump's campaign, which is the
way that we've legalized bribery in the United States, but
directly to Trump, which is the old school illegal kind
of bribery. Is there has anybody attempted a steel man
of why this is not just flagrant?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I think Carolin speaking of Caroline Lovitt, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Oh, because it's a blind His money's in a blind.
Hrowsn't he doesn't know if all this money that's being
given by him actually benefits him or not, because his
kids might lose it.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
On well, of when she was talking last week about
the cutter jet and she said, the notion that Donald
Trump would be influenced by anything like that is insane.
And I actually really think that's the only steel man
that you could possibly come up with.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Well meaning that well, even with.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
The tariffs, at least for a couple of weeks, he
was willing to give a middle finger to all the
Wall Street guys that were messing with him like that's
I don't think it's a good argument, but I think
it's the best version of the argument that it's all
on the up and up, because Trump is just someone
who's uniquely resistant to the influence of money and politics,
which is how a lot of people see him. On
(11:39):
the other hand, that's not how the people who were
dishing out millions of dollars to who have dished out
millions of dollars to Trump, see him. And that's in
this I mean you see that in this rundown itself.
I think the estimate is about forty percent of Trump's
net worth is now tied up and the coin in crypto,
(12:02):
which is astounding because that's only happened over the course
of the last five months. This a man who spent
how many.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Years toiling away in the Trench's New York real estate.
So it is just to see ryan two things.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
On the one hand, the people who are activists in
crypto world do fundamentally want to change the global economy,
bottom line. That's why they're active activists in crypto world.
And on the other hand, what they're doing here is
so nakedly corrupt that you just it's head spinning. And
(12:39):
so you have activists and corruption combined in one beautiful dinner,
one big, beautiful dinner.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, and this is a good example of it. This
is a piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined a
crypto billionaire who feared to rest in the US returns
for dinner with Trump. It's about this guy, Justin's son,
who run a crypto network that is very popular with
what they what the Wall Street Journal calls the criminal underbelly.
(13:08):
And this this is a top use of crypto as
being trying to trying to move money outside of the
banking system if you are involved in things that the
banking system is going to flag as as potentially illegal, uh,
drug trafficking, human trafficking, uh, money money laundering, you know,
the you know, the the under underworld stuff. And so
(13:31):
this guy was, uh, you know, persona non grata until recently,
and now he has you know, used this money to
buy and if if you are Sam Bankman freed, uh,
you have to be feeling like the biggest moron on
the planet. Like you you put all of your money
into Democrats and then Democrats went and tried to regulate
(13:53):
crypto and then locked you up. Like your move, moron
was to put your money into on the Republican side.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
He was what he did fairly, Yeah, it was it
was like sixty forty.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, he was spread he was spreading it around. He
gave a bunch of McConnell, right, Yeah, he was definitely
spreading it around. Yeah, but he was a little more.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
No, he was, and he was he was sort of
culturally aligning himself the left, which is again very interesting too,
Like he was because at the time how quickly culture changes.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
Now, at the time, the idea of.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
You know, the the what do they call it, it's
like so out of vogue now, the effect of altruism
that was really that's right and sort of left wing
progressive business circles to the extent that makes sense, sort
of like the center left circles. And so he thought
he could pitch crypto as effective altruism instead. You're right,
(14:47):
it should have just been you know, piracy and take
it to the libertarian right.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Just leave it at that.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And while we're while we're on the topic of corruption,
pro Public has this news story that what is a
dozen top congressional aids and executive brank branch officials sold
huge amounts of stock just before Liberation Day. Now in
their defense, uh, Donald Trump went to Congress with his
(15:17):
in his State of the Union and announced that he
was going to do his Liberation Day. And as Jeff
Stein kept complaining about Wall Street guys like we've been
saying he's going to do this, he has said it
out loud. He has said it out loud repeatedly. So
what I think it It goes to a fundamental corruption
(15:41):
in the system that these officials hold. That's those shares
at all. Like, if you're a public official, you should,
to me, you should not have public any kind of
public servant, any stocks. Yeah, public servant, yes, exactly, yes, yes,
serving serving the public. Put you know, your money should
(16:02):
be in an actual blind trust, not run by It's insane.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
I mean, but the thing is it doesn't matter, and
I don't even know I mean it it matters. It
doesn't matter for Trump because I guess what's the best
explanation of this. It's always been baked into Trump and
there's no other politician like it.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
I mean, this is the.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Man who actually based a not insignificant portion of his
twenty twenty campaign on Biden family corruption. The twenty sixteen
campaigns was not insignificantly based on Clinton corruption, and.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
That was also about insecure use of messaging. Like there
the personal emails were said to be the greatest, like
national security castrophe. Let's get an update on that.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
How's and foreign influence?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
How's that going? How's how's the Trump administration handled.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
When it was really particulars about foreign and pebbling, both
with the Clinton Foundation and with the Biden operation. And
I think Hanani described I think he described one of
the pictures from the Times articles like a United Nations
of corruption because it was people from so many different
countries who were racing to be involved in the dinner.
(17:18):
While again Trump is this is the sitting president of
the United States. So Trump is not like yeah, it's
the only difference between Trump and Hunter Biden whatever is
Trump has Caroline Levitt go out there and just say
to everyone, well, yeah, people can give him money.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
It doesn't mean it's going to change his mind.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Like he's he's taking all of this, you know, he's
he's doing all these events. Doesn't mean it's going to
change his mind. Whereas with the Bidens, it would be well,
everything is legal, you know everything that nothing is. It's
nothing to see here. Everything is perfectly in compliance. They're
just like screw it, you know, like it doesn't don't
even worry about that. The question fundamentally is whether it's
(17:58):
changing Trump's mind. It's not so look somewhere else. Did
you see Tucker By the way, Tucker, sorry, maybe Sean
Ryan was on Tucker Carlson Show this week and brought
it up. Brought up I think they were in the
context of last week's trip to the Middle East, and
Tucker was like, sure, looks corrupt. And if you're a
consistent sort of supporter of Donald Trump's, because he is
(18:22):
a very effective critic of the swamp in Washington, d C.
There's only one way to be consistent.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
It would be to see that as outrage.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yes, yeah, it's corrupt. The only defense of it is
that people who like Trump like Trump and that is cool.
They don't care.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Well, yeah, the argument is that doing outweighs the personal enrichment.
But of course, again, it makes it look like the
United States is for sale, and the United States has
been for sale in many different ways over many, many years.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
But there's something about.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Right, all they have is what about.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
And there's something also about the sort of pretense of.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
It's not even just a pretense, it's an ambition that
as you sort of respect the will of voters, that
they respect our laws that they say, hey, we don't
have a spoils system. It's something we're very opposed to
as like average Americans, we don't like it when the
people who are elected abuse their office for the sake
(19:31):
of personal enrichment.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
But the I mean it just.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
That's out the window and who knows what happens afterwards
because of that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And maybe we disagree on this Harvard, this Harvard issue,
let's move on to that one. So let me let
me put this up. So Trump administration sent a letter
to Harvard saying that in the headline in the Times
as Trump administration says it is halting Harvard's ability to
enroll international students. That's that's what they did. They sent
(20:08):
a letter to Harvard saying, you are no longer eligible
to enroll foreign students. They're what twenty twenty seven percent
like some Yes, twenty seven percent of the student body
six thousand, eight hundred international students attended Harvard in the
in the last school year. It had been it had
(20:31):
been nineteen point seven percent in twenty ten to twenty eleven,
so it's slightly increasing number. And so they're telling Harvard
forget it, like you can't do this anymore now as
people have who've you know, looked closely at the letters
that it doesn't have don't cite any law, doesn't cite
any authority under which they're going to single out Harvard.
(20:55):
She's BONDI said out Now, this tended to send a
message to the rest of No song Nome said, is
intended to send a message to the rest of the
universities that they better not fight the administration. So, you know,
presumably who knows, presumably the Supreme Court or whoever rules
on this will knock this down. We could talk about
(21:19):
that that whether or not that's the case, but also
the merits of it. I guess the argument on behalf
of it is that, hey, it's an American university. It
should be a it should be there for Americans. The
argument for it is that the United States doesn't make
much anymore, but we are still the innovation center of
(21:42):
the world. China is challenging us, but we're we are
We're still at minimum competitive with them, if not, if
not better. And the reason for that is that other
countries aren't just competing against the top graduates of American
high schools, but of the best and brightest from all
(22:02):
around the world who come to the United States to
go to the best university system in the world. Many
of those students then become permanent residents and become citizens
and stay here. They found companies like Google here that
you know, put us in the in the forefront of
this kind of innovation economy. The ones who then reached,
(22:26):
who don't stay here and return to their capitals or
to their big metropols, develop an affinity for the United
States and give us another advantage when it comes to
kind of soft power around the world, because they had
a good time while they were here, and they have
a lot of friends here, and they understand our country
in a way that Americans don't, for instance, understand China.
(22:51):
I was talking to a Pakistani guy who was here
in the United States a week or two ago, and
he was talking and he travels to China lot. He's uh,
he's in He's in London a lot. And he was
saying that this the advantage to him that the United
States has is that he doesn't feel like he is
(23:13):
a foreigner here. But he doesn't feel like a foreigner
like he he comes to the United States, he feels
at home. He's welcomed despite all of this Trump rhetoric
and the attacks on immigrants and such. You look around
and we're a genuinely diverse, pluralistic, multicultural countries that you
go to China, he so you immediately feel like a
foreigner and and that's not that's not the sing a
(23:36):
lot of China. That's that's the case for so many
other countries. You just feel out of place. And that
gives us this this advantage without which we're then competing
in you know, textile mills and like just just manufacturing.
And we don't have that capacity right now. So if
(23:57):
we get so, if we cut off our head, like
the body is going to die too, would be my argument.
What's your take on the value of well, these elite
colleges and foreign studiyah.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
I mean, so they're a couple of the couple different
parts of that. The first part is the question you
just were discussing, which is the value of foreign attendance
at elite colleges and universities, and then the others the
value of this policy if we break it down that way,
I think probably if you look through some of the
(24:34):
highest achieving Americans in the last you know, fifty plus years.
A lot of them probably came to the United States
because they were exceptional students and you know, got to
Harvard or wherever and the sake of their merit and
made incredible companies and careers in the United States because
they love the United States. And as we talk about,
(24:56):
often immigrants to the United States are often the best
Americans because they love.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
The US so much.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Yeah, they necessarily take it for granted in the way
because they come from places where you.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
Don't have as much freedom, you don't have as much prosperity.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
So I don't think it's wise to shut that off
completely because some of the most brilliant people from around
the world. In fact, it's a real benefit to the
United States that still today. If you are high achieving
in any other part of the world, you're not going
to Chinese universities. You're trying to go to Harvard and
(25:32):
Yale in Princeton wherever else, and actually even some of
our big.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Flagship state schools. So I think that's actually.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Creates a The United States becomes a magnet for the
best talent in the entire world. How we then integrate
that talent into the United States is another question. That
number twenty seven percent enrollment of foreign students at Harvard,
which is the pride of America's higher education system, seems
exorbitantly high. That seems like it is actually you know,
(26:03):
this is a publicly funded university funded by US taxpayers.
That seems like it probably is closing the door to
too many American students. So I think it makes sense
to have a conversation about that. On the other hand,
policy wise, this is another sort of creative attempt or
an attempt to create a new novel avenue to the
(26:27):
They're like bushwhacking their way to like screwing with elite institutions.
And I'm I have the letter in front of me
just to get what Christynoam is saying out there.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
They are saying.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
They sent a letter in April to Harvard where they quote,
requested records pertaining a non immigrant students enrolled at Harvard University,
including information regarding misconduct and other offenses that would render
foreign students inadmissible or removable. They said twice they got
insufficient response. They say, as a courtesy that Harvard was
not legally entitled to, DHS afforded them another opportunity to comply.
(27:06):
Harvard again provided an insufficient response, so.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Right, and they're asking for like five years.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yeah, within seventy two hours, they have like six demands
yeah that include that. And they also are saying that
this is under the auspices of a revocation of the
Student and Exchange Visitor program, which DHS apparently I didn't
know this, right, but DHS apparently administers. So that's why
(27:33):
it's coming from CHRISTINOAM and DHS, and it is part
of this administration wide effort to again like bush whack
their way through uncharted territory, to screw with elite institutions
via all kinds of different mechanisms, creative mechanisms. And so
as much as I want to screw with elite institutions,
(27:54):
it's just sounds completely silly. It doesn't seem entirely lawless.
They do admit the program, but it seems like, I mean,
it seems maybe silly is the best word. It seems
like kind of a joke, yea.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And yeah, in the sense that they are the law.
It's not lawless, but they're not citing any particular authority
that they have as the administers administrators of this program
to just kind of arbitrarily target them because they're not
turning over footage of protesters. It's like, what it's like,
get out of here, Like who are you? DHS? Like,
(28:32):
and I want I missed the the free speech right.
That would be like, wait a minute, you want the government.
The DHS wants a private institution to turn over five
years of video footage of speech, the.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Heavily funded private institution, a heavily tax payer funded private institution.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
That's fine. Still, it's still we're all tax payer fund
on some level.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
That's thing Obama.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You didn't build that, even if it's public, even if
it's public, even if they went to the University of
Michigan as for five years of footage of protests, like
it is First Amendment. The right to peaceably assemble right
there in the First Amendment, not just speech. Peaceful assembly
is right there in the Constitution. It's one of the
(29:24):
key things that we're so proud of that makes us
a free country. DHS demanding that and if they don't
turn it over, they're gonna basically try to destroy them
is just a fundamental threat to civil liberties in this country. Now,
everything I have said is an argument as an American
(29:47):
for the United States of America. I think for a
person in the world, you could argue, go ahead, good,
it's actually it will be better for the world. If
the United States commits suicide, it will be better for
these other countries. If the United States is not creating
a gravitational pull that creates this brain drain out of
(30:09):
all of these other countries. If the United States is
weaker and is interfering less in the democratic governance of
other countries, that's probably a good thing. Now for people
in the United States, their quality of life will go
way down. This country itself will spiral, but the rest
of the world may actually do better. So in that sense,
(30:33):
you know, I guess go ahead, Christine.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
No, yeah, I mean, look that twenties again, twenty seven
percent just seems it's probably.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
What although it's probably low, Like if you think about it,
if this is you know, there's three hundred million people
in the United States. There's eight nine billion around the world,
maybe ten all competing for spots in the best college,
and you American students are getting them. Somebody's putting yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Mean the public learning of the institution is one hundred
percent of American but.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
The yeah, right, but the private the far, and that's
what I was just going to say.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Yeah, that's what I was just it's it's I wonder
how much of that is actually merit and versus you know,
the rich chikhs, you know, buying their kids into Harvard
or wherever else. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me
to have a conversation about that. Also, these schools do
have legitimate problems with espionage that they kind of opened
(31:36):
in or welcomed in for a long time. They seem
like they're all kind of cracking down on it now,
but whether it's Cutter or China, there's been all kinds
of stuff happening at it's these igue institutions. It's hard
to tell whether this letter is specifically.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, and the federal CHUDG has already blocked it.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Well that's why I think so when you said it's
a serious threat to higher education, it's like in I
look at that on paper and I'm like, yes, that's true.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
But then I look in practice and I'm.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Like, yeah, I know some of these people. Spend time
with some of these people, and they're just trolling with
a lot of this stuff. And it's not funny if
you're Harvard but the only point that I would make
is just and again, this is it. It's controversial and
not entirely fair. But the only thing I would say is,
(32:28):
I don't know how serious they are about going through
with a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
It doesn't it doesn't make it right. I just think
that they're they're throwing, like.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Jackson pollocking the whole administration, like they're throwing everything at
the wall and trying to make a beautiful portrait out
of their mess.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
And yeah, it's it's It doesn't Again, it doesn't make
it right.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
It doesn't mean that it's not gonna have implications, But
just to like explain it from their perspective and explain
why it doesn't feel like a grave threat to me
is partially just because I'm like, I don't think they're
going to go through with it. I think they're just
doing this to scare the universities and appliance with other
things that they are more serious about, and some of
those will be I mean, the endowment tax that's in
the big beautiful bill is significant. That actually is a
(33:08):
huge deal if you're Harvard or any of these schools.
So some of the stuff is completely serious. Some of
it feels like, Okay, we're you know, just creating these
funny like legal ideas that somebody came up with at
a happy hour and was like, hah, and this will
f with Harvard.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, So let's let's talk briefly about this this father
in Mississippi. And I guess you can let me know
if the right is angry that I would that I
call him a Mississippi father, just like they're angry about
calling Braio Garcia Maryland.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
Maryland that this is That was the Atlantic headline.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
No, they hated, they hated Maryland father in particular. How
dare you humanize him? So I'll just read from this
this report. His father went to his This father went
to his citizenship hearing, expecting a handshake. Instead, Ice shackled him,
threw him into a van, and tore him away from
his pregnant wife and four children without even letting him
say goodbye. Casper Erickson arrived in Mississippi from Denmark in
(34:13):
twenty thirteen, fully documented and determined to build a life here.
He started a family, became part of his community, and
followed every rule. He was never accused, let alone convicted
of any crime, But as best we understand, he's now
in prison because of a single clerical mistake made years ago.
In twenty fifteen, Casper and his wife Savannah missed filing
one form among the hundreds acquired on the complicated path
(34:34):
to citizenship. Savannah had just suffered a still birth, losing
their first child. In the painful days that followed, paperwork
deadlines understandably slipped past unnoticed. Now over a month after
his arrest, Casper remains locked in a detention facility notorious
for cruelty, neglect, and abuse. Savannah, eight months pregnant, at
high risk, and terrified, is desperately pleading for her husband's return.
(34:56):
She and their children have no idea when or if
they'll ever see him again, and she doesn't know if
he'll be present for her child's birth. Every day brings
another nightmare. Under the Trump administration, actions of our government
are evil or simply no other way to describe it.
May God have mercy on all of us for allowing
this to happen. Here's the family, you know. This comes
at the same time that Ice is also denying Makmood
(35:17):
Khalil a contact visit with his want with his one
month old baby for for no reason, Like there's contact
visits are a thing that you can allow people who
are in detention. Khalil was arrested or blocked up a
month before his child was born, as he has not
seen his child since then. This one, you know, struck me.
(35:40):
You know, we also suffered a still born with our
with our first daughter and also now have four children.
And I can I can only imagine that. Of course,
you're missing paperwork amidst amidst the deepest grief that that
(36:02):
a human being can imagine losing a child, like there's
there's nothing deeper than that. Ah. And two to use
that to have a system that says you missed that deadline,
there's nothing we can do. We must put you in
this private prison for months on end as we work
(36:23):
to deport you to Denmark is like this. This guy
here described it as evil, and like, I'm hard pressed
to find a different.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Yeah, I mean, there's the legal question in the ethical question,
and on the ethical question. One of the things that
bothers me about the.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
Way, particularly.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
We looked at like Venezuelan asylum seekers who ended up
in Seacott and we're legitimate asylum seekers like the barber
that we discussed by me about that is I feel
like the United States made a promise, and I feel
that about many of the asylum seekers who came under Biden.
(37:10):
It's one of the things that bothered me about the
Biden policy because I knew that at some point we
were going to break the promise, because it was unsustainable
to make those promises to so many different people that
you will have a fair asylum hearing and that if
you are and I know I'm just talking narrowly about
asylum here, but the point is that we do promise
(37:32):
rule of law and legal processes, and we you know,
people come here with the expectation that the United States
will do it fairly and will you know, treat people humanely.
And so whether something is legal in a narrow sense
is different than whether it's ethical, and it just it
(37:55):
does you know, looking at some of the particularly some
of the asylum cases Cubans, it just eats me up
when I think about just having that sort of removed
after people because the United States extended a hand and
said make an appointment on CBP one, come here.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
You know, you can just tell us like go through
the legal process.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
Tell us why you want to asylum, tell us why
you're a refugee. And it's I think sort of been
that it feels like we've let ourselves down in some
of those cases. And again that's coming from somebody who
actually is pretty supportive of a lot of what Donald
Trump has done on the border, Like the crossings are
(38:38):
down so significantly, the border basically is closed to the
point where it doesn't justify.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
Any policies based on a quote quote invasion. But you
know that.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
It's not Trump's fault that Biden did what Biden did,
that the Biden administration did what the Biden administration did.
It's not the Republican parties, well, Republican party is different.
It's not the Trump administration's fault. But they do have
then a moral obligation to deal with the people who
came here humanly.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Yeah, right, Because we can choose what kind of country
we want to we want to be. If if we
want to be vicious and cruel like that is that
is a thing we can do like that is within
our power and our ability, or we can be or
we can try to be a civilized country. That's that's
the true We.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Are refugees we should be. That's the other thing. That's
another the United States. We were just talking about this
when we're talking about academia. We have been a place
a talent magnet for generations. Uh, and there aren't and
there have been excesses of that. We have been a
magnet for desperate people seeking freedom for decades, and there
(39:52):
have been some excesses of that. But in the concept
in of itself, is part of what makes us a
great country. Is because we are comprised of this amazing
collection of people who are really talented, love freedom, and
that's an addition to our native born population, and it's additive,
and people integrate and love the United States. And again
(40:15):
we have to fix those processes too. There's nothing to
say that I think there's more. There are plenty of
questions to be raised about that. But on the other hand,
it also is part. It's always been additive. It's part
of what makes us a good country and a place
that a lot of us are proud to live.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
There's also news last night we're out of the Supreme Court,
and I can put this up that the Trump administration
one in the Supreme Court and is being allowed temporarily.
It's a temporary victory, but it's a significant one being
allowed to temporarily remove gwyn Willcox from the National Labor
Relations Board and also Kathy Harris, who's on the Merit
(40:54):
Systems Protection Board. People understand the NLRB, that's this, This
is board that oversees labor rights. Uh. The the kind
of I think failure of the bipartisan populist movement or
or transpartisan populist move whatever you would call it, has
been that despite the kind of working class shift in
(41:15):
the Republican Party, the NLRB has remained a you know,
public enemy number one because of the kind of corporate
control and it's the ond a medium business control as
well of inside the Republican coalition. We can talk about
that in a second. I just want to say a
word about the Merit Systems Protection Board. But basically what
(41:37):
this is is there are all of these rules around,
you know, how you can hire and fire people in
the federal government, and so if if you are wrongfully fired,
you can then appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
And what Trump, what Trump is doing here is trying
to destroy the the merit the Merit Board, which then
(42:01):
would allow him to get rid of all of the protections,
because the protect if the protections are there on paper
but there's no avenue for you to challenge them, then
they don't really exist. And so this is a huge
win in his kind of assault on the federal on
this federal.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yeah, and Kagan and so to Major agree with that.
I'm reading from their descent here. She says, the current
president believes that Humphreys, so that's the Humphrey's executor case,
should be either overruled or confined, and he has chosen
to act on that belief, really to take the law
into his own hands. Not since the nineteen fifties or
even before, has a president without a legitimate reason tried
to remove an officer from a classic independent agency. And
(42:46):
they write, our Humphrey's decision remains good law, and it
forecloses both the president's firings and the court's decision to
award emergency relief. So it's a very long descent, but
basically they feel that Humphreys is threatened here, and Humphreys
is My preference would be that Humphrey's executor is is overturned.
(43:06):
I do think that these outside agencies need to be
accountable to the executive But at the same time.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Although the FED in here, they also say that the
FED is cool, right, which is just they're just making
it up as they go along, Like, yeah, just there's
no principle here, by the way, just this independent agency.
You can destroy this independent agency, which we're very nervous
(43:33):
about what Trump would do with that one constitutionally is protected.
It's like what they all are none of.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
No argument with me on that one. But that's what's
I mean.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Like when they when they handed the White House to
uh Bush, there's this famous line in the in Bush v. Gore.
Uh this sets no precedent and can never be referenced again.
Oh all right, I would.
Speaker 5 (43:57):
Add that as my email signature.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yes, delete this email.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
But that is the reason that's a fault And actually,
to your point, the reason that the NLRB is particularly
a fault line, even amidst the transpartisan like FTC populism,
all of that is because it brings into the question
the size of the executive branch, period and most people
on the right still believe that the executive branch is
(44:26):
bloated and unaccountable to the president, and I include myself
in that category. So Humphreys to the point that Kagan
and so do my rr making is sort of a
foundational like that is a load bearing decision for the
entire executive branch.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Let's talk about this comical clip with Caroline Levitt being asked, Hey, man,
you guys said you're going to cut the devasit coms
bill explodes it. She had a very she had a
very clever response to that challenge. Let's let's play this.
Speaker 7 (45:06):
The One Big Beautiful Bill also to get our fiscal
in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in
nearly thirty years with one point six trillion dollars mandatory savings.
Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives who voted
against all of these common sense and massively popular policies.
The Democrat Party has never been more radical and out
(45:28):
of touch with the needs of the American people. The
One Big Beautiful Bill is the final missing piece toward
ushering the Golden Age of America. The Senate should pass
this as quickly as possible and send it to President
Trump's desk for a Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
So we want to hear that again just for fun.
It's just it's just amazing.
Speaker 7 (45:48):
Well, also helps get our fiscal house in order by
carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly thirty years.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
That's amazing the fiscal I didn't know you could do that.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
So in order you are going to be sick of
the fiscal house being in order.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
It's a really clever governing strategy. So instead of actually
creating a bill that that cuts the deficit, as you
said you would do, you you create you create a
bill and pass into the House that blows up the deficit,
but it cuts it off.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
It's you're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
That's exactly what this is. It works, That's the American.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Way, except the the problem apparently is that the American
people don't don't quite buy it. H So this is
the COBC. We were trying to figure out yesterday how
you say this the COBC letter. Americans have never been
so pessimistic about future finances. US consumers expectations about their
(46:51):
financial situation over the next year drop to an all
time low in May. So this is how do you
feel like you will be doing one year from now?
And you can see that. So that chart there, if
you're listening to this, it's just a just a cliff
like that. The numbers you know, you know, fluctuating over
the years and over the last couple of weeks, two months,
(47:17):
it's just a it's just a straight line. It looked
like the chart looks like you're going to have to
quickly hit that minus button and start like zooming out
to give it, to give it more room, to be
able to encompass the depth of the pessimism that is
engulfing the American public right now.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
If I had to, I wouldn't have bet this week
on whether the big beautiful bill passed the House or not,
because it was just such a close call.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
But the fact that it did.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Pass, I think bodes well. Actually going into the Senate,
it's going.
Speaker 5 (47:48):
To be very very, very very difficult.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
But what the passage in the House suggests is the
Republican Party is sufficiently desperate to have some type of
augmentation for the tariff policy. Uh and they're they're freaked
out about the chart, for example, that you just showed
and other charts liked it, like it, because that's the
(48:12):
only way you really get people on board with blowing
up the deficit is when they are deficit hawks is saying, well,
if nothing passes, then you are even like you're you're
tanking the economy because you're not.
Speaker 5 (48:25):
Having you have no reshoring legislative policy.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
You have no one tax right off you know, retroactor
to January for building all of that stuff. And so
if you if you don't pass this bill, you know,
cut the corporate taxes, you don't have the reshoring incentives,
then you have a much worse situation. So it's a
it's a wonderful way we make laws.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
By the way, I got some details from that Trump
meeting that you had with the Republican Conference from a
source that hadn't made it into the press yet. You
think some of this up back to your sources. Uh,
they'll they'll they'll enjoy this. Uh, you know, they're the
thing that the Freedom Caucus put out leaked out. He said,
I love the Freedom Caucus. You know, these are my guys.
(49:11):
The fuller quote was, I love the Freedom Caucus. These
are my guys. You know, give me liberty or give
me death, and then he added, vote for this bill
or it's gonna be death for you. They and when
the Freedom Caucus members leaked that out, to the press.
They conveniently said the washing.
Speaker 5 (49:29):
So that's funny.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah, they love that he loves us. He loves us
so much. They left out that he's threatened to kill
them metaphorically kill them, I assume.
Speaker 5 (49:39):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
He also, at one point, I forget the exact context,
said he was the first gay president because he was
complementing somebody, and uh, it will be Buchanan. Come on,
this is Buchanan erasure.
Speaker 5 (49:50):
Yeah, okay, it's fair.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
He was married Joe Senator from like Mississippi or whatever, like, well,
it's an interesting one.
Speaker 7 (50:01):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
And then he got into a back and forth with Massy.
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Source told me where he said, like Massy, very smart guy. Uh,
he went to mi T But look it up. Wharton
much better school, much harder to get into.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
I want to see Trump than running his on Tesla batteries,
you know, making that that's mass.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
Is absolute genius. He's like literally self sustaining farming.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Yeah, Wharton, harder to get into.
Speaker 5 (50:29):
Incredible.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I'm smarter than Massy. So let's here, Let's roll Massy's
Uh he did vote against He's one of the few
that did vote against it. Let's play his his speech
reserves gentleman from Massa Chiefs is recognized as a speaker.
I yield one and one half minutes to the gentleman
from Kentucky, a man who is not afraid to speak
his mind about fiscal responsibility. Mister Massey, gentleman from Kentucky's
(50:53):
recognized for ninety seconds.
Speaker 8 (50:56):
Well, I'd love to stand here and tell the American
people we can cut your taxes and we can increase
spending and everything's going to be just fine. But I
can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose
of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term,
but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years
from now. Where have we heard that before? How do
(51:19):
you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill
is a debt bomb ticking. Congress can do funny math,
fantasy math if it wants, but bond investors don't. And
this week they sent us a message. Moodies downgraded our
credit rating, and the bond investors who buy our debt
and finance our debt demanded higher interest rates on the
(51:41):
ten year note, the twenty year note, and the thirty
year note. What does this mean? Very soon the government
will be paying sixteen thousand dollars of interest interest a
loan per us family. And what are we telling them?
Instead of taking care of that problem, We're going to
give you a sixteen hundred dollars break under the taxing
(52:03):
and spending levels. In this bill, we're going to rack
up the author say, twenty trillion dollars of new debt
over the next ten years. I'm telling you it's closer
to thirty trillion dollars of new debt in the next
ten years, mister speaker. We're not rearranging deck chairs on
the Titanic tonight. We're putting coal in the boiler and
setting a course for the iceberg. If something is if
(52:28):
something is beautiful, If something is beautiful, you don't do
it after midnight.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
I that's a quote. It's not true.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
It's a good one, so messy, not always true. Real
real quickly, let's uh, and we got to get to
this back half the show. But I did want to
talk about this, this bulwark piece real quick, where Democrats
are planning a whole uh, claiming that they're going to
(53:01):
do a bunch of changes. The funniest one that I thought, UH,
from this one is that they're saying that Joe Joe
Biden operatives, they're going to attempt to blacklist them. We'll see.
That would be like the first blacklisting of any like
kind of mainstream operatives for anything ever in in democratic
politics in the in the past, it's only been a
(53:23):
blacklist for people who challenge the democratic establishment. Uh there.
And they're also going after uh South Carolina like they're
Carolin well making no, making South Carolina the first in
the nation state like that was done for Cliburn and
for but for really for Biden, who you know, credits
(53:47):
South Carolina for for that win. And so now they're
they're looking at that again. It's we'll see. If I
don't I don't. I don't think they'll actually do it, uh,
but we'll see.
Speaker 4 (53:59):
I think that's a that's actually very interesting because you
have both of your books behind you, the posters for them.
But we see some of the starting to happen on
the right, like if you have worked in Coke Universe,
you were supposed to be kind of booted from Trump circles,
that you were supposed to be off the list of
the administration.
Speaker 5 (54:17):
That didn't totally happen but it's still kind of.
Speaker 4 (54:19):
A it's still not great on a resume if you're
trying to move into the mainstream conservative movement now and
you have recently like a Coke group on your resume.
But you know, the idea that someone who worked for
a mainstream Democratic politician campaign presidential campaign for an establishment
(54:40):
Democrat like Joe Biden, that that would be a problem
for you. I just genuinely don't believe that that's durable.
It seems to me like something that is being discussed
right now, but then everyone will just pretend never happened
in six months or something like that. But maybe it
applies to the tippy tippy top, like maybe your general
Malley Dylan. Maybe you're like other people that are up
(55:03):
that were up really high in that world. Maybe that's why,
maybe that's why people like l Rosa are, you know,
talking to breaking points for example, to sort of say, well,
we were in here and we were the sane voices,
or we tried to be the sane voices.
Speaker 5 (55:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
I would think Jenno Mali Dylan is done anyway. Like
she you know, she ran the twenty Obama twenty twelve
campaign and then Biden in twenty twenty and then this one.
And she's a corporate consultant, like that's her Her main
gig is her firm does corporate consulting. So I don't
expect her to run another presidential campaign. And once you've
run them, you don't you don't go into you know
(55:45):
you maybe maybe she'll still do some like socide consulting
work for a future presidential campaign, but that's peanuts compared
to the amount of corporate money that's available to her
and other Democratic operatives. But let's move. Let's move to
the back half of this show. This is for premium
subscribe uh breaking go to breakingpoints dot com this because
it supports all the journalism that that we do here.
(56:07):
And you'll also get a Matt Stoller clip that we're
going to play towards the end, and also a James
Lee interview that he did with this and we should
uh Layman Trader, Jared.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
We should also mention we're doing an A M A
in the second half of the show, so we're taking some.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Premium describers questions.
Speaker 4 (56:22):
So if you want to see the rest of the
show Breakingpoints dot Com, you can do that. You can
send questions for future ames, and you can hear all
the fun stuff we discuss today.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
And so so let's talk about some of the political
fallout from the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers and
killing in here in Washington, d c UH the other
night
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