6/2/25: Jamie Dimon Dire Warning, Israel Aid Massacre, Ukraine Drone Attack & MORE!

Episode Transcript
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It's a pleasure to be here and especially today Crystal,
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go ahead and throw up the show bar. We can
go through quickly.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
What is in the show.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
We've got a bunch of big economic news that will
go through. Jeff Stein is actually going to join us
Wall Street concerned about the bond market. We've got new tariffs,
we've got new escalation with China, so a lot to
get into there. We also are going to have Jeremy
Skahill to join us with the latest with regards to
those ceasefire talks and also a horrific massacre of Palestinians

(02:45):
who were seeking aid in that new mercenary lead scheme.
So Skalhill will break all of that down for us.
Also want to get his reaction to some Jake Tapper
comments about the college student protests that I think will
be interesting.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, which means that we have to watch the video again.
We've already watched it once this morning, and I don't
know that I can do it again.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
Are you sure? It's a pleasure to be here this morning?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
And look, no, it changed my mind.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Also got to get to news with regard to Ukraine
and Russia. They were able to effectuate this quite dramatic
attack on Russian warplanes deep inside of Russia. This happens
as peace talks are ongoing there, so that is incredibly significant.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
We've got more Elon news for you.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Bunch of news articles coming out about some inside details
about his drug use and Trump sort of losing confidence
in him, asking at one point, wait at the second
where the cuts, was this all bullshit?

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Which is kind of surprising.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
That he didn't know that it was all bullshit in
But anyway, so we've got a lot going on there.
Joni Ernst, Senator, Republican senator defending the proposed Medicaid cuts
by saying, hey, we're all going to die at some point.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Incredible, she's fact checked that, Crystal, I dare.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
You Nolah's detection.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
I guess she wrong.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Noah's detected. I've been we do have.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
The well I was gonna say. She put an even
better apology video out, so stay tuned for that. It's
a graveyard, it's something else, so make sure you stay
tuned for that one.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, before we get to any of that, though, we
are tracking developments out of Boulder, Colorado. We can put
this tear sheet up on the screen. There was an
attack that's being described as a terror attack. Eight people injured,
set on fire actually in Boulder, Colorado, and they say
after man allegedly targets rally for Israeli hostages.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
So this is a group of protesters who's.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Been gathering, my understanding is on a weekly basis calling
for the release and the return of Israeli hostages. And
they have a suspect in custody already, forty five year
old man identified as Mohammed Sabrey Solomon. A LEDG shift
thrown device into a group of people who had assembled
in this pedestrianized zone for a peaceful protest for Israeli hostages.

(04:53):
And like I said, eight people injured. I believe two
had to be airlifted to a special burn unit, so
that was kind of the nature of their injuries. And
there's a video coming out from the scene. Emily, obviously
it's just absolutely horrific, and he was, you know, he
seemed frankly quite unwell, but was sort of ranting and
rape saying free Palestine. And of course this comes on

(05:16):
the heels of that horrific attack here in DC as well,
in which the two Israeli embassy staffers were murdered by
someone else who also said free Palestine. So this is
certainly going to heighten interest in what is going on here.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, and local news is reporting that one of the
victims actually was a Holocaust survivor.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
Mostly elderly, elderly women, right.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, elderly woman, I think almost everybody who was being burned.
So you can see in the videos of the suspect,
he's walking around with maltov cocktails and his shirt off.
So reportedly according to local news, I think it's Channel
nine out there. I'm boulder. At least one of the
victims was, and they all are suffering from burns. If

(05:58):
you look up the videos, you know, big be careful
looking up the videos, they're pretty rough. But if you
look up the videos, people were burning, it's a really
awful scene. I want to add Crystal Bill Malugin as
reporting that three senior DHS sources have told Fox that
the Boulder terrorist suspect is an Egyptian national in the
US illegally as a visa overstay who entered the US

(06:20):
during the Biden administration. Bill says I'm told he arrived
at LAX in August of twenty twenty two on a
B one B two non immigrant visa with an authorized
day through twenty twenty three, but he overstayed and never left.
He found some sort of claim with USCIS, potentially an
asylum claim, back in twenty twenty two, but in twenty
twenty three under the bidenman, USCIS gave him work authorization

(06:42):
that though expired in March, so this is coming. It
expired March twenty eight, so it's coming in the last
couple of months after his work authorization expired.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, So it looks like a visa overstay Egyptian national.
So yeah, I mean, you have a horrific attack here,
and you have you know, Free of Palestine being yelled protests.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
For Israeli hostages.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
You have someone who's an immigrant Egyptian national visa overstays.
So there are a lot of obviously in sundiary political
issues that are swirling inside of this, and you know,
I would just say that, similar to the attack that
we covered here, you know, this is obviously not going
to benefit in any way if you care about the

(07:24):
cause of freedom, humanity, peace, peace and civilization. This is
directly at odds with you know, any movement to free
Palestine and or free any human beings around the world. So,
you know, and one other thing that I'll say, and
this is a point that shile Benefreim was making on Twitter,
you know, rather controversially. Obviously, the attackers in both of

(07:47):
these attacks are responsible for their horrific actions. As I
said before, this man seems sort of unwell, But in
any case, they're responsible for their actions. But it is
also true that if you're concerned about anti Semitism and
hate and violence around the world, you know, Israel intentionally
conflating all Jewish people with their own atrocities that they're

(08:09):
committing is going to lead to an increase in anti Semitism.
And so if you care about the safety of Jewish people,
as you certainly should, the actions that are being taken,
the genocide that is being committed in Gaza is making
Jewish people unsafe everywhere. It is contributing to that horrific climate, especially,
as I said, when there is such an overt effort
to conflate all Jewish people with the actions of this

(08:33):
at this point completely rogue state. So you know, that's
I guess my perspective on some of what is unfolding here.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Just want to underscore the point you made about peace
and this not helping anyone anywhere towards the cause of peace.
Should add Cash Hotel has said they are investigating this
as a targeted terror attack, so much more details to
come from that vantage point. What they turn up in
the investigation, we will obviously continue to fin that's story.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Indeed, all right, let's turn to the latest with regard
to economic news, and we have jeffs Stein joining us.
We are lucky to be joined this morning by the
chief economics reporter for the Washington Post, the one and
only Jeff Steined. Great Caesar, Hey, thanks for having me back. Yeah,
of course, anytime. Let's go and put your latest reporting
up here on the screen about Wall Street's concerns with

(09:23):
regard to Trump's.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Big beautiful bill.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Your headline is wall Street warns Trump aids the GOP
tax bill could jolt bond markets and if there's one
thing we've seen in this Trump administration, it is the
significance and importance and power that the bond markets wheeled.
So tell us what you're hearing here.

Speaker 5 (09:42):
So the core of the problem here is that, you know,
US interest rates are already very high, and the tax
bill could add between estimates very two to five trillion
dollars to the deficit. And what that means is the
US Treasury Department will have to go out and auction
more bonds, auction or debt to cover up the gap

(10:04):
between what the US government spends and what it brings
in in revenue. The problem is that we've already seen
that there's a question about the demand among investors worldwide
for these US assets. And the big problem potentially, and
you know, it's really hard to know exactly what could happen,

(10:24):
but what Wall Street is concerned about, what they're telling
us and what they're telling the Trump administration is that
if demand for new Treasury debt, these new bond issuance
is insufficient, you could see basically the US government have
to increase the premium, the yield it's called on what
investors recoup and return. So if there's an insufficient demand,

(10:45):
the price goes up. Basically what the US government has
to pay to get people to buy this debt goes up,
and then you can get a really dangerous spike or
spiral where borrowing costs rise because the premium that the
government has to offer continues to increase. And so that's
the core concern here, And just to I know, it

(11:06):
sounds probably not that relevant for people's day to day lives,
but mortgages, auto loans, things throughout the economy are tied
very fundamentally to the price of the bond. And as
the yield prices of the new bond goes up, the
prices of old bonds collapses. So that means if you
are someone who has put a lot of money in

(11:28):
your portfolio into bonds, that part of your portfolio could
significantly lose its value. That's traditionally considered a very safe investment,
right like equity stocks. That's the risky thing crypto, the
riskiest bonds is supposed to be what's safe, and that's
the reason that that bonds are sort of the core
pillar of the global financial system. Thirty trillion dollars in

(11:51):
US debt is used to borrow against trade against this
to have you know, millions of people retirees safeguard there
there hirements in their assets, and so Wall Street is
very worried about a potential destabilization in that market, in
that sector.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
And Jeff, I want to get your reaction to this
clip of Jamie Diamond. We can go ahead and roll
the second element and we'll get Jeff's reaction on the
back side of it.

Speaker 6 (12:16):
I guess one underlying both that is the enemy within.
I'm not as worried about China isn't is a potential adversary.
They're doing a lot of things well, they have a
lot of problems. What I really worry about is us.
Can we get our own act together, our own values,
our own capability or own management. What you heard today
on stage was the amount of mismanagement is extraordinary by state,

(12:38):
by city, for pensions, for and that stuff is going
to kill us. And you know, I always get asked
this question, what are we going to be the reserve currency?
And no, you know, if we are not the pre
eminent military and the premitent economy in forty years, we
will not.

Speaker 7 (12:52):
Be the reserve currency.

Speaker 8 (12:54):
That's a fact.

Speaker 6 (12:55):
Just read history, you know, now I think we will
be you know, Warren Buffett here we tell you one
must be resilient.

Speaker 7 (13:00):
I agree with that.

Speaker 6 (13:01):
I think this time is different, this time where you know,
we have to get to act together and we have
to do it very quickly.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
And so, Jeff, I want to actually that last sentence
he just made, that last statement he just made where
he says, this time I think is different. That's really
interesting with your reporting. So that was Diamond on Friday
at the Reagan National Economic Forum. And Jeff, why is
it that people like Jamie Diamond still, even after weeks
of the Taco conversation, feel like this time truly is different?

(13:30):
Is it because they see people like Scott Bessett and
Donald Trump is wanting continuing to want to remove the
dollar as the world currency. Is that what's really going
on behind all of this?

Speaker 5 (13:43):
Yes, just I'll get back to that question one second.
I couldn't go without pausing for a second to comment
on Jamie Diamond and someone from Wall Street saying, you know,
criticizing this management of state and local governments when it's
been wide you know, a little less than two decades
since Wall Street literally crashed the global economy and the
worst crisis and the Great Depression. I mean, the guy,

(14:06):
the guys on Wall Street having you know, their their
their willingness to say what they think and be heedless
of their own reputations is kind of not.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Waking of speaking of enemies from within.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, yeah, he takes one to know one. He was
worried about pensions.

Speaker 5 (14:22):
Yeah, to go back to your question, there has been
I think a very interesting shift from the core locus
of concern on Wall Street being the tariffs, which are
still down here. The effective tariff rate is still eight
times what it was before Trump took office. We've seen
a huge spike in trade tensions, but he has backed

(14:45):
off due to the taco trade. This is the Trump
always chickens out joke. That's that's spread on Wall Street.
But but you know, despite how big that disruption is,
people are now more conc learned about the tax bill
and what it could mean, especially when coupled with the
trade bill. You know, one thing I think is very

(15:07):
clear in that clip, or as clear to me at least,
there's a lot of people on Wall Street who want
to tell reporters and tell others that they're very worried
about the impact of the tax bill on the bond market.
What they don't want to do is go out in
public and say, hey, Trump administration, we have concerns with
who are top economic policy priority because they don't want

(15:28):
to be in the Trump administration's crosshairs. So you're seeing
Diamond and others go around saying, we got to be
really careful about the bond market. Also, you know, the
tax bill has some good stuff, has some bad stuff.
We'd need to be careful with bonds. But that's that's
kind of how they're trying to square the circle here.
They're issuing increasingly vocal warnings about the bond market. As

(15:50):
you know, Senate is taking up this bill, but they're
not they're not out in front of criticizing the Trump
administration and the Republican Party about it because you know,
for obvious political reasons.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, well, in the bond market is what got Trump
to move off of his most maximus tariff position. So
I think they've also identified like a potential weakness an
area where you know, if they just come out and
bash Donald Trump, yeah, I'm not like defending these people
in their cowardice, but they're thinking, okay, strategically, if we
just go out and bash Donald Trump. That's probably not
going to get us where we want to go. But

(16:21):
he clearly has an interest in what happens with the
bond market. So maybe if we can make him nervous
about that, maybe that will change the landscape. But I mean,
the other irony here, Jeff, is like the four trillion
dollars that's being added to the deficit is by and
large tax cuts four guys like Damie Diamond. So when
they're even like, I don't know, I don't know, this

(16:41):
may go a little too far, that also, to me
is quite is quite stunning. Now, my suspicion is that
they would like to still get their tax cut, but
just have much more aggressive cuts in the social safety
net in order to pay for them.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
But what do you make of that particular dynamic.

Speaker 5 (16:58):
I think that's the right question, Chris. So, you know,
this bill does not have the large sort of I
mean it has some it has, you know, hundreds of
billions of dollars, but in a four trillion or five
million dollars bill, Unlike the first tax bill in twenty seventeen,
which really was centered on massively reducing the corporate rate

(17:18):
from thirty five to twenty one percent, which the first
bill did. This bill really showers cash on households primarily
or disproportionately. I would argue households with you know, the
highest incomes we have. We did a story recently about
thirty percent of the tax cuts go to those with

(17:38):
over I think it was three or four hundred thousand
dollars per year in income. It is slightly a different
constituency than you know, the Jamie Diamond. You know, it's
it's not necessarily for those businesses on Wall Street themselves,
so I'm not sure that this tax cut is as
attractive of a package to them. I mean, they do

(18:00):
have the rate cuts in there. There are cuts for
you know, pass through businesses, which you know, these are
people who often have over a million dollars a year
in income. There are there's a massive reduction in the
estate tax. So there are things for very rich people.
But it's a little less I think of a of
a grab bag for Wall Street businesses and people like
Dimond than the first round of tax cuts was. I

(18:24):
think you really hit the nail on the head that
they want more spending cuts. So obviously, right if we're
talking about the debt, being too big from the tax bill.
There's a few options they can spare. They can reduce
the amount of tax cuts, but that would require them
to either you know, pair back the amount that people
at the top are getting, or really like try to
do you know, even less of the Trump campaign promises

(18:47):
on you know, no tip, taxes on tips, no tax
on Social Security. I don't think, given how much of
this is already for upper income people, I think it's
very unlikely that they move to pair back what is
in there for lower and middle income households.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
And that would also be an admission that their tax
cuts aren't going to get the growth that they're now saying.
The CBO is under estimating the growth.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
That's right, that's a very good point. They now have
been saying, like this bill will cut the deficit because
it will lead to so much growth in sort of
a Laffarian curve way. I think. On the spending cuts,
they do have cuts in there on Medicaid and food stamps,
but they're already pretty large. And my sense from talking

(19:27):
to Republicans on the Hill is that they they they
fear the politics of an even bigger cut to healthcare,
then they do the politics of the bond market, which
could be dicey, but you know, the US has added
trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars to stet over
and over and over again, and there haven't we haven't

(19:47):
seen the bond market freak out that you know, people
like you know, the deficit of hawks have been warning
about for a long time. So you know, maybe there's
still more that they can do without without triggering this
sort of So you know, the other thing that we've
written about is that they've entertained I mean, Steve Bannon
has talked to the president directly. We've reported about raising

(20:11):
taxes on millionaires, or at least raising is a bit
of an overstatement about basically letting the tax cit that
they originally approved for the top income rocket to expire
in twenty twenty five. That would basically really get them
out of a lot of this bond market chaos they're
dealing with. But they don't want to go there because
they don't want to raise taxes on the ridge and

(20:32):
because Republicans hate that so right, it is a kind
of fascinating thing to look at how they're trying to
get out of this box.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
All right, let's talk a little bit about China, because
this is the other big thing that's happening. Put guys first,
a five up on the screen. This was Trump's truth
social about China, in which he said two weeks ago
China was in grave economic danger. The very high terroris
I set made it virtually impossible for China to trade
into the US marketplace, which is by far number one
in the world. We went in effect Cold Turkey with China,

(21:00):
and it was devastating for them. Many factories, clothes. There was,
to put it, mildly, civil unrest. I saw what was
happening and didn't like it for them, not for us.
I made a fast deal with China in order to
save them from what I thought was going to be
a very bad situation.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
I didn't want to see that happen.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized, China got back
to business as usual.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
Everybody was happy. That was the good news.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some,
has totally violated disagreement with us. So much for being
mister nice guy. Can you break down for us, Jeff,
what is going on here with Trump and China?

Speaker 4 (21:32):
What the reality is?

Speaker 5 (21:35):
Yeah, so I had a story about a week ago
about what really led Trump to back down on China,
and people inside the White House were explaining that basically
what happened was it was increasingly clear that the one
hundred and forty five percent tariffs on China were not
just hitting guys on Wall Street. We're not just hitting
sort of people who work at the ports and sort

(21:55):
of coastal types, but that they were really affecting trump'space.
Truckers and you know, sort of like shippers and people
who Trump considers his people were getting sort of clobbed
by these tariffs. And that fact we reported created the
space for White House officials who didn't like these tariffs

(22:19):
to go to Trump and say, hey, your own people,
your own base is getting hit by this, so you
need to figure out a way to get these things lowered.
And that was what led to the talks in Geneva
that led to the accord agree to buy Trader Tecerty.
To Harry Scott Besson, the thing that Trump is complaining
about is that even beyond the tariffs themselves, trying to

(22:39):
retaliated by restricting what it were called rare earth metals,
which are confusingly not actually that rare, but they are essential.
And basically eighty percent of production or facilitation synthesis of
these rare earth metals is in China. So basically most
of the vastngery of the world's production is there, and they
control that supply chain. That's critical for the US defense industry,

(23:03):
for US healthcare sector, for all kinds of really critical
economic functions. And I don't know enough personally to weigh
in on this, but the Trump administration feels that China
has not really removed those restrictions that they agreed to
in the Switzerland Acords, and that they're still continuing to
restrict those essential medals, and that that you know, might

(23:24):
not show open the macroeconomic data, but could severely sort
of weaken the US defense industrial capacity for a long time.
And you know, the President thinks that thought that he
had an agreement to get that off the books and
doesn't feel like that that has been violated.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, and Jeff, this also gets to this tension that
you started by mentioning at the beginning. On the one hand,
there's this Trump boys chickens out narrative. On the other hand,
as you said, you wrote down the level of tariff,
but like the increase of tariffs that we're actually at
from the baseline before Donald Trump took over, and you know,
maybe he's he's checking out on some of those points

(24:02):
or him sure, he would just say it was negotiation.
But on the other hand, it actually still has a
pretty high level of tariffs relative to everything that came
before him.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
And that's actually another really big part of the tax
bond market discussion, because if spending cuts of a huge
magnitude are politically unpalatable and they feel like they can't
really reduce the size of the tax cut itself anymore. Tariffs,
I mean, it's been ridiculed, but it is true that
the US government has quadrupled or more the amount of

(24:35):
revenue it's bringing in through tariffs, and that can offset
the fears in the bond market. So, you know, we've
seen kind of a stalling of the deals that Trump
said he was going to make with the Europeans and
the Japanese and the Indians, that all that talk has
really slowed down, and I think there's a legitimate question
about whether part of that is due to the desire

(24:56):
to bring in revenue via these high import duties, which help,
you know, it's kind of an obvious point, but those
fall quite heavily on lower income Americans who rely, you know,
a disproportion to share their spending is on imports of
food and you know, other sort of critical necessities, whereas
you know, the tax bill disproportionately hurts them with the

(25:19):
spending cuts. So it's it's they're really potentially getting pinged
on both sides here.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Jeff, last question for you.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
We had a court last week say, okay, these Liberation
Day tariffs, they vastly exceed the authority.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
That you're invoking.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Here, we had another court say, okay, the Peelsport Court
said okay, well, while we're figuring this out, you can
still keep the tariffs in place. The Trump administration has
been very aggressive in going out and saying that regardless
of first of all, they're really mad about the court's decision,
but also second of all, they're saying, it doesn't change anything.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
We have other powers we can use.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
So what is your expectation of where we are with
regard to Trump and his desire and ability to you know,
to levy massive tariffs in whatever way he chooses to.

Speaker 5 (26:03):
So I don't want to bore your listeners anymore than
I already have, and especially with like along winded explanation
of like the different laws or right here, but to
try to give you a quick summary, Trump imposed tariffs
immediately under law called AIPO, which is a sort of
national security emergency, and that's the one that the courts
have targeted as being, you know, beyond the ability of

(26:24):
the president. That said, there are other tariff authorities. They're
called Section three h one and Section two thirty two
tariffs that basically require at first an administrative a you know, investigation.
The administration has to go out do a bunch of
work and then say, because of that work, now we
can do these tariffs. And that work is currently ongoing.

(26:45):
It just it just takes a little bit of time.
But there's really, I think, very very little doubt that
those tariffs can be slowed down by the courts. So
even if the courts take off the emergency powers tariffs
which they have you know, slowed down, but then we're
put back in. Even if that happens, there's still these

(27:06):
other terriff authorities that I don't think really anyone questioned
their ability to do, and I think those are going
to stay, and actually could be even bigger in some
ways than the National security teist because those are tariffs
on sector, so like every car, every bit of steal,
every you know, part of computer. So that's kind of
where this is heading. It could circumscribe to some of

(27:28):
the flexibility he has, but it doesn't change sort of
like the economic fundamentals of what he wants to do.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Gotcha all right, jefs Sin, thank you so much, and
you are never boring, sir.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
We always appreciate your ancise, my pleasure.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
Thanks having great to see you.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
We are very fortunate to be rejoined this morning with
Jeremy ska Hill, who of course is co founder of
drop site News alongside our very owned Ryan Graham.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Great to see Jeremy.

Speaker 7 (27:52):
Great to be back.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
So there's a lot of developments to go through with you.
Let's first of all, put these horrific images up on
the screen of I hate even calling it AID distribution,
but whatever you want to call this. What you see
here first is the dynamic they've set up where Palestinians
are just running in Survival of the Fittest Hunger game

(28:15):
style to grab.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
Whatever quote unquote AID is available.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
But it turns even more horrific as Israelis began firing
on this crowd, killing dozens of people, and you can
see them fleeing, you can see.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
Them taking cover here.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Jeremy, what do we know about what exactly unfolded here?
Because I know the Israelis are completely denying that any
of this actually occurred.

Speaker 9 (28:40):
I mean, I think it's important to remember what Netnyahu
and other members of his work cabinets said at the
beginning when we started to learn about this so called
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and that is that it was never
meant to be an actual aid distribution program, that this
was meant to offer the veneer of giving humanitarian aid
to Palestinians to sort of quiet down some of the

(29:00):
critics from within the pro Israel camp internationally, nettnah who
specifically said that he had been approached by Republican senators
saying that they didn't want the appearance of starvation of
the Palestinians of Gaza to affect the ability of the
United States to continue funding and arming this war of annihilation.
And so we just have to put that out there

(29:20):
front and center. From the moment that this launched early
last week, there have been dozens of Palestinians killed because
Israelis have fired on them, either on their way to
get AID or after they've retrieved AID. I personally know
a Palestinian family four members were killed last week after
they had gone to retrieve one of these small boxes

(29:41):
that barely has enough food for their family. They were
killed by tank ordinance. According to survivors of the hit
against them and what we saw unfold over the weekend,
many Palestinians are calling it the Whitcof massacre, named after
Steve Whitcoff, the Special Envoy, because anger is mounting inside
of Gaza toward Trump and his administration, because they feel

(30:04):
like they are just completely taking Israel's side and trying
to set the Palestinians up with a so called truce
or ceasefire deal that would enable Netanyahu to resume the
intensity of the full genocide after either seven days or
sixty days. So what we witnessed here was the Israelis
unleash gunfire and other attacks on this crowd. And as

(30:27):
videos it reports start coming out of Gaza depicting this,
and we start hearing international doctors that are on the
ground there describing the injuries that they're treating Israel then
puts out a video that it says actually shows Hamas
was firing on people retrieving aid. Well, that video that
the Israelis put out has now been geolocated, and it

(30:47):
wasn't near Rafa where this witcough massacre as the Palestinians
are calling it occurred, but actually had occurred at a
different time, And it wasn't Hamas that was actually firing
on Palestinians. It was a private gang that there's significant
evidence to suggest is being bankrolled or backed by the
Israelis to operate as kind of an armed thug force

(31:09):
that is selling aid to Palestinians.

Speaker 7 (31:11):
So, you know, the final thing I'll say on.

Speaker 9 (31:13):
This crystal is that David Saderfield, who was President Biden's
top humanitarian aid official and a very very militantly pro
Israel guy, recently said on a national interview on CNN
that there's no evidence whatsoever that he saw during his
entire time when he was a senior Biden administration official

(31:35):
that Hamas is hoarding any significant quantities of aid or
is engaged in any of the kinds of activities that
the Israelis are accusing them of.

Speaker 7 (31:42):
So clearly here.

Speaker 9 (31:43):
What we've seen is a massacre of Palestinians who were
lured into this so called aid trap, where the actual
point of it ultimately was set out in the open
by Netanyahu. Forced Palestinians into an ever small, shrinking killing cage,
and then for them to depend on the food inside
of that killing cage so that you can either kill

(32:04):
more of them or ultimately implement what they keep calling
Trump's plan, which is to forcibly deport Palestinians from Gaza.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
And Jeremy, can I get your reaction? Help us parse
be too. This is Ryan's tweet. He actually said the
statement from the IDEF about last night's massacre was distributed
to journalists, and because Ryan didn't agree to be off
the record and this wasn't sent directly to him from
the IDF, he actually just posted what was supposed to
what the IDEAF wanted to remain quote unquote off the record,

(32:34):
and their statement says, approximately one kilometer away from the
humanitary aid distribution site and outside the operating hours of
the humanitary aid distribution site, IDF troops acted to prevent
several suspects from approaching the troops. During the activity, warning
shots were fired towards several suspects who advanced toward the troops.
There's no connection between this incident and the false claims
made against the IDF, So Jeremy, on the one hand,

(32:56):
what we're seeing there is an admission of military action
from the IDF. Right, that's part of the statement. So
can you help us understand how Israel is explaining what happened?

Speaker 9 (33:10):
Well, I'm really glad that Ryan posted this because it
sort of opens this window into what happens behind the
scenes that most of the public in the world has
never allowed access to, and that is that Israel will
send out official statements that make a certain claim in
a very clear way, and then they'll sort of brief
journalists off the record, not on background, off the record,
as a way of trying to ensure that this narrative,

(33:33):
as false as it may be, penetrates into the coverage.
And you see these repeated, these claims repeated all the
time by journalists. I mean, the track record now is
a nineteen month track record where Palestinians videotape witness and
then tell the world what has happened.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
They're smeared as being hamas fake or.

Speaker 9 (33:52):
Fabricated videos or out out of context videos or mistranslated
documents are then presented to the public, and then it
sort of seems like it's a well Hamas says this,
and the good guys say that, and you even see
Israeli officials saying, who do you want to believe? Hamas
or an American run aid organization and the Israeli military.
So you know, what Ryan did was sort of allow

(34:15):
people to see, just for a moment, the way that
the propaganda is manufactured and the reality is emily that
all throughout this genocide, we've seen this repeated over and
over and over about massive tunnels under hospitals, Hamas using
protective facilities as military bases. Israel has never been able

(34:37):
to produce evidence for the most incendiary claims that it's made,
and they're relying on the fact that many media outlets
will take the testimony of Palestinians and accept that that's
Hamas's narrative. You know, many people in Palestine are from
different political factions. Hamas did not win one hundred percent
of the vote the last time that they had a

(34:57):
democratic election.

Speaker 7 (34:59):
You know, many of the people.

Speaker 9 (35:00):
That Israel is killing in its war aren't even members
of Hamas not not to mention like military members. Palestine
is a diverse society and I think it really speaks
to the effect of the dehumanization campaign that the Israeli
military can put out a video that has nothing to
do with a massacre that it committed, and so many
news outlets and just people on social media accept Israel's

(35:23):
word for it, when nineteen months of context and history
indicate that you should never believe the first draft ever
of what Israel says unless they provide indisputable evidence, which
they never do.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, and the hope is just to push off to
make the conversation and the telling of facts contested, and
by the time there's any conclusive investigation, everybody's moved on.
I mean, that's really the goal here, is that I
don't think that they believe that if there was actually
an investigation here by the New York Times or whoever,
with the limited ability they had to penetrate into Gaza,

(35:58):
that they would come to the conclusion that, oh, yeah,
Israel was correct. I don't think they believe that. They
just want to push that reckoning off into the future
and then it's contested and by the time you know,
any sort of actual like definitive conclusion is reached by
the sanctioned official outlets. Everyone's moved on to the next thing.
I want to go ahead and get you to walk
us through what's going on with the ceasefire negotiations and

(36:22):
put the tear sheet up on the screen here, guys
of Jeremy's report. Your headline here is how Israel and
Witkof are trying to strong arm Hamas into a deal
that does not end the genocide. And you go point
by point through what it was that Witkoff or Hamas
and the administration had agreed to, and then what the

(36:42):
Israeli are pushing for in this quote unquote deal. And
seems like there's a number of things here that are
meant to be poison pills. So just walk us through
the dynamics and some of the critical differences between these
two drafts.

Speaker 9 (36:55):
Well, you know, first of all, starting a month or
so ago, you had direct talk between Hamas and an
unusual envoy for the Trump administration, a Palestinian American academic
named Bashara Baba, who was a lifelong Democrat that broke
with the Democratic Party even before Kamala Harris became the
nominee and had denounced Joe Biden as genocide Joe and

(37:17):
said that he felt that Palestinians would have a better
chance of ending the war under Donald Trump. And he's
actually been very critical of Trump publicly, which is unusual
in the.

Speaker 7 (37:26):
Sort of Trump world.

Speaker 9 (37:28):
But he started an open channel with Hamas to try
to work on the Eadon Alexander deal. The American citizen
who had been in the Israeli military was taken on
October seventh, and they successfully did make a deal to
release him, and there was supposed to be a lifting
of israel siege as a result of that, Trump publicly
calling for a ceasefire. That didn't happen, but the discussions continued,

(37:50):
and basically what happened is that the Americans worked with
Hamas and they said, why don't you lay out for
us what your terms would be for a ceasefire, but
it has to fit within this category, and Witkoff and
Baba made clear to Hamas what the kind of bottom
lines were. Hamas then delivers a thirteen point proposal that
fit in line with what the American said. This was

(38:11):
last Sunday on May twenty fifth. Hamas then announced that
it has made an agreement with the United States for
a framework for negotiating a ceasefire. Now, in a mediation
process or a negotiation process, this is very common. One
side drafts something, the mediators look at it, they say, Okay,
we're going to go down back to the other side.
So they were told, yes, this is acceptable, this fits

(38:31):
within the American requirements.

Speaker 7 (38:33):
Now we're going to go to Israel.

Speaker 9 (38:34):
And my sources within Hamas have said that the Americans said,
we're going to try to push Israel on these terms.
So then Hamas waits. Two days later, Donald Trump is
in the Oval office. He summons Steve Whitcoff to come
up in front of the press, and Witkof had denounced Hamas,
saying that what they had given as a proposal was unacceptable,

(38:55):
which from Hamas's perspective, was crazy because this wasn't meant
to be an ultimatum. It was sort of a start
point from where what Hamas's position would be. So Witkoff
then says, oh, we're on the precipice of sending out.

Speaker 7 (39:06):
A new term sheet.

Speaker 9 (39:07):
He called it to use like a business term instead
of a framework for a ceasefire. And what then happens
two days later, is they they then come up with
what was a draft that was primarily written by Ron Dermer,
Netanyahu's top advisor and lead official doing these negotiations, and
what they basically did was return to all of Israel's ultimatums.
The bottom line on this is that Hamas has made

(39:30):
many concessions in this back and forth, but they've identified
as as minimal red lines that they want a clear
path to an end to the genocide. They've said in
their own proposal that the moment a ceasefire agreement is signed,
Hamas will totally relinquish governing authority.

Speaker 7 (39:49):
And all power in Gaza.

Speaker 9 (39:51):
This is this is extraordinary to see this in the document,
because it's Hamas on the record saying we will relinquish
power in favor of an independent Palestinian committee of technocrats.
When we then obtained all three versions of these proposals
that we published in full last week, and what's extraordinary
is that the Israeli proposal.

Speaker 7 (40:10):
Took that out. It took out of.

Speaker 9 (40:13):
The ceasefire framework Hamas agreeing to immediately relinquish governing authority
of Gaza the moment a ceasefire is signed and you know,
there's some theories that you know that that have been
floating around for some time that Netnya who wants Hamas
to remain in power because he can easily demonize them
as a terrorist organization.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
I mean, has it He effectively said exactly that in.

Speaker 7 (40:37):
The past it's complicated.

Speaker 9 (40:40):
Netnya, who has for certain strategic reasons, said that the
you know, the only way to thwart a unified Palestinian
state is to keep Hamas in power in Gaza. But
there are many other layers to the context of what
happened at the at the time that we could go
into if you want. But yes, there are there's certainly
are benefits to having a party in power that you
have effectively dehumanized, demonized that is listed on the State

(41:03):
Department list of terrorist organizations, the British designation as a
terrorist organization.

Speaker 7 (41:08):
But I think it's much deeper.

Speaker 9 (41:09):
They even are saying it's unacceptable for Mahmudabas, the head
of the Palestinian authority, to be in charge in Gaza,
and he has basically acted as an agent of the occupation.
That's how he's widely seen among Palestinians. So it's not
just about Hamas, it's that Israel doesn't want Palestinians in
control of Palestine at all. And you know, that's really

(41:29):
what I think the game is here. It's not just
about Hamas. It's that we don't want a Palestinian committee.
They want probably a puppet sort of coalition of certain
Arab nations that have normalized relations with Israel to be
the ones that come in as an outside force. They
don't want Palestinians in charge of their own political destiny
or to continue forward with a path of a national

(41:50):
liberation struggle.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
And from the US, the perspective of US interests the
deal that you just laid out, Jeremy, you know, if
you're the Trump administration, if you're Eve Whitkough and you're
continuing to get pushed by Israel as they remove the
provision that you just mentioned, it seems like US interests
are actually being thwarted. And that's separate from what all

(42:12):
the disagreements that the three of us have with the
Trump administration's position throughout this entire process. But it just
seems like US interests are sort of obviously being sidelined
or harmed here in this negotiation process.

Speaker 9 (42:25):
Yeah, I mean there were indications going back to Trump's
first term and the way he interacted with Mahmudabas from
the Palestinian authority, things that Trump has said also to
Arab Americans. There are indications that Trump understands that the
Palestinians struggle for liberation or statehood has very clearly not
identified the United States as a party it wants to

(42:46):
be at war with. It's why Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad are not conducting any attacks outside of the boundaries
of historic Palestine. And I think objectively speaking, it would
be in the US interest to have a stable, independent
Palestinian state that has good relations with the United States.
As you know, Emily, as well as any journalist covering this,

(43:08):
there are multiple camps in Trump world, and I think
what we're seeing here is that the most militant, hardline
kind of Zionist camp within Trump's political network, his administration,
and his financiers of his campaign, they don't want any
Palestinian state. You know, people like Mariam Adelson and Mike
Hackabee don't believe there's a such thing as Palestinians. But

(43:28):
you know, Ryan Grim and I have also heard from
sources within the administration that are in a different camp,
that are in an anti interventionist camp, that believe that
the United States should not be entangled in foreign wars,
that are growing increasingly concerned about Witkoff's conduct.

Speaker 7 (43:43):
You know, that the idea that he's.

Speaker 9 (43:45):
Morphing into an Antony Blinken type figure, when at the
beginning he seemed to have some spine, He seemed to
be willing to summon Net Yahoo and make him understand
America has limits with you. Now there is still some
hope I think, not just among you know, the Palestinians
that are negotiating this, but more broadly that eventually Trump
is going to understand that allowing Net and Yahoo to

(44:07):
be in control of agreements that clearly the United States
can have the final word on is counter to American interest.
It is not actually in the US interests to have
someone setting fires all over the Middle East. I mean,
really fascinating. When Trump was asked about Iran at that
press conference in the Oval Office last week where he
had summoned whitcof to make the Gaza comments, he was

(44:29):
asked by reporters, you know about what did you say
to Net Yahoo and Trump basically set it out loud.
I told him to back off, you know, so again,
you know, people often attack me and they say, oh,
why are you believing what Trump says, or why are
you believing what Witcoff says.

Speaker 7 (44:43):
I'm not believing anything. I'm reporting accurately on it.

Speaker 9 (44:45):
And I'm sorry that you think that reporting factually on
Donald Trump and an issue of massive consequence somehow means
that I'm like getting tricked by the Trump administration. This
is called basic journalism, and we're going to continue doing it.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Speaking of basicjournalism, I think that's a good transition to
Jake Tapper and his appearance on Bill Maher's show over
the weekend, and he asked he got asked about the
student protests, the pro Palestine student protests that have been
happening on college campuses since the outbreak of this genocide,
and he gave an answer that has elicited a lot

(45:20):
of interest. So let's go ahead and take a listen
to what he had to say.

Speaker 10 (45:23):
It has to do with an academic theology of oppressor
and oppressed. If you only look at the world as
oppressor versus oppressed, you then have to choose in a
conflict this group is the oppressor. This group is the oppressed.
It's also why, for example, there have been conflicts on
other college campuses. We're gay students have protested things that

(45:47):
are going on in Muslim countries having to do with
the LGBT community community in those countries, and the gay
students are made to be the oppressor because a lot
of them are white. And that's also what's going on
when it comes to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The Israelis
are made to be the oppressor of the Palestinians, the oppressed, and.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
On and on and on.

Speaker 10 (46:05):
And that's part of what's going on at Harvard, that
theology that we have looking at the world.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
What do you make of that explanation for the motivation
behind these protests.

Speaker 9 (46:14):
Yeah, I mean, look, part of the reason why we're
seeing such fribrant activism on college campuses, such uncompromising principal positions,
is that young people's brains are not contaminated by the
likes of people like Jake Tapper, who have just been
conveyor belts for propaganda from the very moment that this

(46:36):
genocidal war began. Their brains are not poisoned by this
dogmatic adherence to the conventions of imperial foreign policy, which,
unfortunately Jake Tapper has totally morphed in to a spokesperson
for the greatest excesses of imperialism during the past nineteen months.
And also sometimes the truth is just true. No one

(46:58):
with a brain in their head can look objectively at
what has happened over the past nineteen months and come
to any conclusion but that Israel is the oppressor in
this case. They are burning children alive. They are tricking
people to come to aid, to get aid, and then
drone striking them, hitting them with tanks, firing bullets upon them.
They're bombing hospitals, They're shredding children. This morning, I saw

(47:21):
a girl who looked like she was about six or
seven years old. Her body was completely severed in half.
Every single day we are watching Palestinian children burned alive
with American weapons, and Jake Tapper has the audacity to
use the phrase academic theology. The theology that Jake Tapper
and people like him subscribe to is this deference to

(47:42):
the lie filled agenda of the most powerful and violent
forces on earth.

Speaker 7 (47:46):
It's shameful, but their day is over. Their day is over.

Speaker 9 (47:49):
Because shows like this are spreading because independent news outlets
refuse to be conveyor belts for the lives of the powerful.
Jake Tapper is grasping at straws because his era is done.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
It's just galling, especially as somebody on the right to
listen to Jake Tapper make that argument at this point
after years of just horrible, horrible coverage that I mean,
the point of the oppressed oppressor dichotomy, Jeremy, and this
is interesting is the problem is that you have these
blanket applications of it, and Tapper there he doesn't quite
understand what he's saying because he brings in this idea

(48:20):
that the gay students are being condemned as oppressors because
they're white, and then says that's the same lens that's
being applied in Israel Palestine, and it's like, dude, you
don't even understand this idea that you are now condemning
as the source of the poison, the source of the
all bad things happening here. The point is, sometimes people

(48:42):
actually are oppressors, and sometimes people actually are oppressed, not
all of the time, but sometimes, and yes, some people
take it too far and apply it universally, but sometimes
it's actually true, and he seems to just be unable
to understand that a lot of young people aren't like
this is a great point that you made, Jeremy. A
lot of young people aren't even pay attention to see
in it, and they have no idea what he's saying.

Speaker 9 (49:03):
Yeah, and I think, you know, we're in a moment
where political alignments have shifted, and I think that there's
you know, also the issues around cancel culture and around speech.
I think that anyone that genuinely believes in this doesn't
believe in censoring the speech of people who are on
the far right that they disagree with. I think that

(49:24):
people who genuinely believe in free speech aren't against censoring
those on the far left.

Speaker 7 (49:29):
And I think that genuinely.

Speaker 9 (49:31):
People who are in support of free speech should be
on the front lines right now of this vicious attack
on speech related to Palestine. You know, one of the
things that I always have held on to I have
many criticisms of the United States. We have what I
believe is the best speech laws on the books of
any country in the world, and they are worth fighting for. Yes,

(49:51):
the idea that the notion of free speech was not
only enshrined in the Constitution, but has been upheld by
conservative and liberal justices throughout history. That's worth protecting with
everything that we have. And so you know, people like
Jake Tapper are actually much more in alignment in many
ways with people on the far right or in the

(50:13):
Trump administration that are trying to demonize or criminalize the
speech of people that are speaking out against Israel's genocidal war.
I think people from all factions should realize that the
time when your principle is shown is not when speech
is being curbed against people you agree with. That it's
being curbed or attacked against people with whom you have
vehement disagreements. That's what actually shows what your principles are.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
The other irony here is that, Okay, not only if
you're applying the oppressor oppressed lens here like and you
are pro palestime, you were applying it correctly, but it's
also ironic to me because people like Tapper and you
know Israelis and defenders of Israel, they are the most
abusive of the oppressor oppressed narrative because basically the paradigm

(50:59):
that they use to try, especially with like you know,
to keep liberals on side is to say, remember what
happened to Jews in the Holocaust, which of course was
absolutely atrocious and nobody wants to see or feel like
never again should be real. But then they just keep
this one group of people in the perpetual victim category,

(51:21):
no matter how circumstances change, no matter what the reality is,
no matter what that group of people is doing. So,
you know, and the other piece of this, of course,
is that people like Tapper conflate all Jewish people, yes
with Israel, and all Jewish people with being you know,
supportive of Israeli actions, which we also know is completely

(51:42):
false and untrue, and also place into actually the very
simplistic like victim narrative that he perpetuates and propagates with
his propaganda.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
And Jeremy before we toss that too, I just want
to add the oppressor oppressed ecotomy, which you know he's
ten years late to saying, oh, maybe this is the
thing that's happening among young people in college, like it's
more of a millennial thing than it is a zoomer thing.
But anyway, all this to say, it's about power, the
sort of Marxist I don't even want to use his
term theology behind it, but it's about power dynamics, and
that's where he also is completely clueless as to how

(52:15):
this is or is not being applied in that case
as well.

Speaker 9 (52:20):
Yeah, I mean to go back also to what, you know,
what Crystal just said earlier. You know, you look at
the recent protest organized by Jewish anti war activists to
occupy Trump Tower. Fox News reported that as an anti
Semitic protest in Germany, You've had numerous Jews arrested in
Germany on anti Semitic hate speech charges, including Jewish people

(52:45):
living in Germany who are Israeli citizens. I mean, this
has become such a kind of lethal parody of the
notion of what free speech is. And let us never
forget that the you know, the United States, all of
us who grew up in the United States, at every event,
it's we're reminded of the greatest generation. We're reminded of
the sacrifices of World War Two. This is the origin

(53:06):
of what we're witnessing now. When the United States and
European countries decided to impose a European settler colonial state
on Palestinian land. That's historical context that matters. And at
the end of the day, the position that the supporters
of Israel's genocidal war take is that nothing can justify

(53:26):
October seventh, but October seventh justifies everything. And this is
a massive historical lie that necessitates people believing that history
began on October seventh. It's a huge mistake for us
not to take into account the seventy seven years of
history that led up to this. Whatever anyone's political position
is on this, let's debate based on facts and historical

(53:47):
accuracy and not just invent our own paradigm where Israel
equals Judaism. Masses of Jews around the world have been
at the forefront of opposing this genocide and it's a
total insult to the Jewish faith for net and Yahoo
to pretend that his war of annihilation is somehow being
done in the name of a religion.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Yeah, that is all so well said Jeremy Skahill. Always
great to have you, sir, Thank.

Speaker 7 (54:11):
You, Thank you both for all your work.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Ukraine was able to pull off quite a stunning surprise
drone attack within Russia, deep inside of Russia, on Russian
air bases. We can put some of these images up
on the screen that have come out. So a swarm
of drones that had been smuggled into the country, and
I'll give you some more details of the operation just
a moment. We're able to attack a bunch of Russian warplanes.

(54:40):
Now the Ukrainians are claiming that over forty of these
Russian warplanes were hit in an operation that is being
called Spiderweb.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
And this is some of the video that.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
They released where you can see these fighter jets that
are on fire and had been targeted. This happened at
not just one base, but another of them, even as
far away as Siberia, so they were able to penetrate
deep inside of Russian territory and you know, strike a
significant blow against Russia's offensive air capabilities, including some of

(55:15):
these warplanes, are you know, critical in terms of the
nuclear triad.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
Here you have.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
This gets to some of the details of the operations.
You can see these drones flying out of these semi
trucks that had been positioned in strategic places.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
The expectation is that.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
The drivers of these trucks may not have even known
what they were transporting. These drones were sealed and they're
tiny things.

Speaker 4 (55:40):
You could see there. They look like I mean, they
look like children's toys.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
They were sealed inside of the top of these crates,
so you had like the crate and then right there
was like a false lid on the crate where the
drones were inside of there. And then there was an
ability for the Ukrainians to remote control open the lid
of these crates and release these drones. Again you can
see one of them and how small they are into

(56:05):
the air to go and hit their targets. The Ukrainians
are saying that this operation was more than eighteen months
in the making, and you know, obviously context here is
you have some negotiations that are ongoing.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
You also have Russians.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
The Russians have been able to take a significant amount
of territory in recent days and putin seems you know,
pretty intransigent in terms of bending at all in the
context of peace negotiations. So you know, this could be
an attempt to demonstrate, hey, we still have a lot
of capability and we can still cause you pain even
deep within your own territory.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
Can put these this tear sheet up on the screen.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
I'll just read a little bit of this and make
sure I have all the details right. Ukraine claims massive
drone strike on Russian bombers in Spiderweb operation audacious attack
targeted forty one strategic Russian aircraft. Again, this is according
to the Ukrainians. The Russians are downplaying the damage. We
don't know exactly what the number is, but clearly they
were able to commit some damage here to the Russian fleet.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah, Ukraine cleaning two billion dollars. Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, Ukraine security service that it struck more than forty
Russian bombers deep inside Russian territory and what would be
one of the largest and most audacious attacks on Russian
territory in the years long conflict. A source within the
security service of Ukraine told NBC News the country targeted
forty one strategic Russian aircraft. The source also released dramatic
video purportedly showing a drone attack at an airbase located

(57:34):
in Siberia, nearly three thousand miles from Ukraine. The video
captures bombers under attack, with explosions visible and smoke rising.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
From the scene.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
I think that's one of the videos that we just
showed you. And as Emily just said, they are claiming
two billion dollars in damage. So obviously a very dramatic
and sophisticated attack, also one that has potentially troubling implications
when you're talking about a nuclear armed superpower being made

(58:04):
to feel very insecure within its own territory. And I
know that it's sort of obnoxious to talk this way
when Russia is bombing and bombarding Ukraine for years at
this point, but we also have to acknowledge the reality
of the situation and how dangerous and fraught it Ultimately
is something that people like us have been warning about
for a long time.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Yeah, I mean, to your point, people have been making
obvious comparisons between the Beeper attack and this one. Yes,
the crimea bridge also that was people may remember that
was a truck. It was an explosion from a truck
that was years ago at this point. But the infiltration
of civilian infrastructure, this was more than three thousand miles

(58:47):
away I think you already mentioned this, but more than
three thousand miles away, as far as Siberia from Kiev.
So incredible from a military perspective, and military experts have
looked at that and said, this not only is just
remarkable technologically, but this changes literally changes the game. This
changes the future of warfare because again, you can remotely

(59:09):
detonate things with three thousand plus miles of distance between
you and in this case of truck, and completely change
a war that's been going on for years and years.
And Russia had been crystal noted this bombarding Ukraine hard
in the days before this, a lot of Ukrainian service
members had died. So there's peace negotiations happening today, actually

(59:34):
right now in Istanbul. I want to put this next
element on the screen. This is c three conflicting reports
about whether the United States knew. So this is Jennifer
Jacobs of CBS saying administration sources told her that the
White House was not aware that today's large scale drone
attack by Ukraine on the Russian military aircraft was coming.

(59:58):
That's also quite an interesting aspect of this happening right
before major peace negotiating negotiations at the same time. And
we can put the next element, this is our no
Bertrand saying essentially, it's the same type of action as
Israel's pager attack, turning civilian supply chains into potential weapon
delivery systems and making them inherently suspect our not goes

(01:00:20):
on to say it should be deeply troubling to anyone
thinking through the sheer irresponsibility of the precedent set and
Christally you put this really well that it's it's not
an easy point to make when we're talking about Ukraine
defending itself and responding to days of bombardment that killed
its service members. But the precedent being set in the

(01:00:42):
midst of war is troubling because it's in that sort
of fog of war. It's in the fog of uncertainty
of war and desperation and going forward it is really frightening.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Well, here's the thing is I mean, I think in
a lot of ways the genie is out of the
bottle with I mean these the drones we showed you
what they look like, small, inexpensive off the shelf. You know,
this isn't just some you know, a superpower that would
be able to procure and deploy these killing machines. You

(01:01:16):
have you know, parallels not only to the Pager attack,
but I also was thinking back to the tech that
was used on October seventh by hamas they also used
low budget off the shelf drones to to destroy and
debilitate this multi million dollar, elaborate high tech security fence

(01:01:38):
that Israel had put into place, complete with automatic machine guns,
and so they were able to disable the sensors and
the cameras.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
And that was the start of October seventh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
So, you know, like I said, in some ways, I
don't I don't think there's any putting this genie back
in the bottle. But when you think about you know,
nonstate actors, when you think about terror and what they
could do with this sort of you know, relatively low tech,
relatively inexpensive tech. And then the other piece of this
that our NO is really pointing to there, and this

(01:02:10):
this part is you know a little bit different than
the like, you know, the the terror networks, et cetera,
because of the extensive coordination that would be involved. Not
to say it's impossible, but the infiltration of civilian supply lines.
I mean, this has long been considered completely out of
bounds in terms of war fighting, and you know, it

(01:02:31):
appears like that was involved here in this Ukrainian attack
with Russia. And so you have not only the you know,
troubling context of going after Russia's nuclear triad and Russia
being a nuclear power, and you know, at a particularly
fraught moment in terms of this this ongoing horrific war.

(01:02:51):
But then you also have what this spells in terms
of the future of warfare. And if you are the
global superpower as we are, with a one trillion dollar
defense budget, as we are about to be, you have
to grapple with the fact that you know, nearly any
actor around the world could acquire this technology and deploy

(01:03:12):
it for horror, teror killing and death anywhere in the world. Right, So,
you know, I think that should be really I think
that should be unsettling for everyone here and abroad and
in Russia and Ukraine and everywhere else because of what
it means in terms of the ability of even small
ragtag groups to inflict death and suffering on anyone they want.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
And again, so, Jennifer Jacobs of CBS also reported that
administration sources told her that there was no intelligence sharing
that the US and charity intel and it's with Zelenski
and Ukraine for Operation Spider's Web. According to Admin sources
talking to Jennifer Jacobs, Ukraine gathered its own information.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
So this is I'm a little skeptical, but yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
I'm wondering so, and I wonder if that's she's citing
Trump administration sources. Curious also if there are Ukrainian sources
that are making this sound like it was completely companion
or on the other hand, is this the US saying
that this is Ukraine so that it can continue the
negotiations with sort of the I mean neutrality is not

(01:04:20):
the right word, but that sense of diplomacy that's being
brought to the negotiations. So no idea about that, but
it does raise the question, similarly to what's happened in Israel,
about you know, actors who could not be prosecuting these
wars without massive funding and resources from the United States
acting independently in ways that if you're Ukraine and you

(01:04:44):
have different goals for how this war should end from
the person who's funding the war or the country, I
should say, is funding the war to the tune of
billions and billions of dollars, and you're not on the
same page about it, Maybe you're going to do things
and keep them private that can escalate during peace negotiations.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yeah, I think that start. I think it's a possibility.
I wouldn't take it face value. The Administration's claims that
they had no idea in advance, because to your point,
both the Trump administration and the Ukrainians have an incentive
to make it look like we had no involvement, because
for the Ukrainians it's a projection of strength, like, look,
we don't even need the US.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Look what we're able to do on our own.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
This you know, highly complex, and it certainly was required
long term planning, you know, did require some you know,
tech in terms of being able to deploy these things
from the trucks where they were stored potentially for months
and months, we don't exactly know. So the Ukrainians want
to be able to say, like, look what we can do,
and we don't even need our big brother and our
greatest ally, the US. The US wants to keep their

(01:05:42):
hands clean, so they both have an incentive even if
there was US involvement, to say that there wasn't. However,
it is also possible that, you know, the Ukrainians are
acting independently in a sort of I mean actually rogue way,
which is also a disturbing possibility in and of itself.
I didn't give it as much attention, but there were

(01:06:03):
also two Ukrainian attacks recently within Russia that targeted bridges
and caused actually some civilian deaths within Russia as well,
and that hasn't been I think the reason it hasn't
been reported as much is because the Ukrainians haven't, I believe,
claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
So it's still somewhat disputed.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
But the understanding, you know, if you read the global
press and if you read the Russian press, is they
believe that these were both targeted by Ukraine, which does
follow and does make sense based on other operations from
the Ukrainian security services within the State of Russia. I
mentioned this before, but I do think that this is
important just to underscore put C five up on the screen.

(01:06:43):
This also did not get a lot of attention in
the Western press. But Russia has just seized somewhere around
two hundred kilometers, made significant advances in Ukrainian territory in
recent days and looks like they're setting up for what
they're describing as a fresh ground offensive. So you know,
there's been a massive Russian bombardment throughout Ukraine and there

(01:07:07):
has been evacuations. The reason they think it looks like
it's you know, setting up for a new Russian ground invasion.
There have been evacuations of some of these villages near
the front lines in preparation for you know, potential escalation
in terms of the ground invasion. So again place into
the context here, you've got Zelenski going into these peace
negotiations does not have a particularly strong hand because of

(01:07:31):
wariness among the American public and among the Republican Party
and potentially among in the Trump administration, although it kind
of depends on the day of continuing to fund and
arm them to the hilt as has been done. Although
so far the Trump administration has basically continued the Biden
era policy, but you know that is not certain in

(01:07:53):
the way that it was under Joe Biden whatsoever. So
you have that, then you have the fact that the
Russians just have so much war state, industrial capacity and
just so many more bodies to throw at this conflict.
You have some will within the Ukrainian people waning just
because of the brutal toll that this war has taken on,

(01:08:14):
you know, Ukrainian men in particular, and their difficulty being
able to get new recruits and actually like unconscionable tactics
that have been used to round up Ukrainian men and
send them to the front lines here. So you have
Zelenski going to these negotiations with a relatively weak hand,
and I think you know it's pretty obvious this is
an attempt to try to demonstrate listen, we can still

(01:08:35):
cause you pain even if you think that time is
on your side and capacity is on your side.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Yeah, playbook. Actually there's a direct line from the playbook
author this morning, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. It seems holds
more cards than Trump gave him credit for their headline
and playbook this morning.

Speaker 4 (01:08:52):
But that was the point of the rush and Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
That's the headline and playbook this morning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
I mean that seems a little I mean, the Ukrainian's
beIN really far well. And I also saw people pointing
out like, okay, so if you're the Japanese in this scenario, yeah,
doing the Pearl Harbor, right, But what happens great working
that happens next is not really that great for you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
So I don't know, great work, team, No, I mean,
it's like, what's happening right now, it's it's actually directly
related to the negotiations. Everyone trying to get the cards
on the table in order to make it look like
they have cards and to not look like they're hiding
any cards as the negotiations. Negotiations are ongoing. So it's
really awful to see escalation right now. But if you're Ukraine,

(01:09:38):
and I don't mean that about this particular Ukrainian attack
a though the president I do find very frightening. But
they've been getting bombarded over the last several days, so
you understand the timing of it. Absolutely, we will see
if the toothpaste can ever be put back in the tube,
but I'm deeply skeptical of that. Crystal.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Yeah, it's a very difficult situation at this point to
try to imagine how this is going to be resolved.
I mean, however, it's possible we just continue in this
kind of like endless back and forth with Russia continuing
to gains slowly over time, and you end up with
basically it failed Ukrainian state. I mean, that's kind of
what it looks like it's heading towards right now, unless

(01:10:18):
there is some sort of a dramatic development. But you know,
I also have to say a lot of war analysts,
military analysts have been quite right wrong about this conflict.

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
At every turn. And while you know, if you look at.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
The industrial might of Russia versus Ukraine, if you look
at just the manpower of Russia versus Ukraine, you come
to a pretty clear conclusion about who has the upper hand.
But I mean, with this type ability to commit this
type of attack, and with the modern warfare dynamics that
Emily and I were just talking about, where you can

(01:10:53):
use low budget, off the shelf tech, you know, those
things can help to level the playing field, especially when
you're talking about a group of people who are fighting
for where's it's truly existential, and where you are fighting
for your homeland. I mean, the US has learned this
lesson many times before. Come in with all the military

(01:11:13):
might in the world, but it's no simple thing to
dislodge people's sense of pride and nationalism and commitment to
the homeland. So, you know, I think it's I just
I think everyone should be very cautious about making any
sort of predictions about what the military future of this

(01:11:33):
conflict ultimately looks like, because there are more variables here
than just the okay you add of the Russian industrial might,
the manpower X plus y equal z. There are more
complex factors going in here, and in some ways that's
precisely what this Ukrainian attack really demonstrates.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
Yes, so we'll see what happens over the course of
today with negotiations set to continue in assemble another you know,
thing to feel less than optimistic about.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately. So all right, let's get to the
latest with Elon.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
On his way out the door, Elon Musk stop by
CBS Sunday morning. This is just a couple of days.
The interview aired just a couple of days after Elon
Musk did a joint press conference I guess if you
could call it that in the Oval Office with Donald Trump.
We have clips from that as well. But just yesterday
he sat down with CBS News and want to play
some clips from that interview, and then we'll get to

(01:12:29):
some clips from the Oval Office as well. This is
D one.

Speaker 10 (01:12:32):
I noticed that all of your businesses involved a lot
of components, a lot of parts.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
Do the tariffs and the trade wars affect any of this?
You know, tariffs affect things a little bit.

Speaker 11 (01:12:43):
Wondering what your thought is on the ban on foreign students,
the proposal.

Speaker 5 (01:12:48):
I mean, you were one of those kids, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 12 (01:12:52):
Mean, I think we want to stick to, you know,
the subject of the day, which is like spaceships as
opposed to know, presidential policy.

Speaker 5 (01:13:02):
Oh okay, I was sold anything's good.

Speaker 12 (01:13:06):
But no, Well, now you know, it's not like I
agree with everything uh the administration is. So it's like
there's I mean, I agree with much of what the
administration does, but we have differences of opinion. You know,
there's things that I I don't entirely agree with, but

(01:13:28):
it's difficult for me to bring that up in an
interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So
then I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, well,
I don't want to, you know, speak up against the administration,
but I don't want to because I also don't want
to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
So really interesting actually set of questions to Elon Musk
their crystal and in the defense of the reporter, the
CBS reporter, which is not a sentence I thought I
would ever say, but in defense of the CPS the reporter.
There basically, even if you want to talk about spaceships
with Elon Musk, you're still going to be talking about terras,
of course, and the combination of Elon's even and people

(01:14:07):
talk about Tesla a lot, but even I mean the combination,
particularly of a space business, it is so coupled, it
is so intertwined with the United States government that it's
you wouldn't be able to do that interview. I mean
what Elon Musk ended up saying there, and that's what
I'm curious to get your thought on, is essentially that
he just shouldn't have sat down for the interview because
he's saying, there's no way for me to talk about

(01:14:27):
any of this without looking like I'm weighing in on
the politics of it. And I wonder, Crystal, if this
is something that he's realizing increasingly is a problem after
getting involved with politics six plus months ago, seeing his
businesses take a hit, and then realizing, hey, I should
probably go focus back over here. It's interesting to see
that happening as he's stepping back from DC completely.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
And the funny thing about the second part of that,
So the first part of that is just so awkward,
Like how could you sit for an interview with any
one and think you're not going to get questions about
the Trump administration?

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Is wild? But even if they say they're just going
to talk about space, you still have to talk about
the administration.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
But d seven up on the screen, Like Trump just
yanked this NASA nominee who was a close Elon ally
and I mean basically was installed by Elon in this position,
and now that Elon's on his way out, Trump is
using this excusively. Oh I found out he gave to Democrats.
I'm sure like that information was widely available before. He's

(01:15:25):
using it as an excuse to now that Elon's gone, like, okay,
you don't get your dude in at NASA. But like,
obviously that is deeply political. The SpaceX mission is going
does require and already depends in substantial part on government money.
So there is no way to disentangle Elon Musk, his company's,

(01:15:47):
his spaceships, and what is going on in the Trump administration.
But you know, even putting that piece aside, the second
part of that clip where he starts talking about, well,
you know, I don't agree with everything they do, and
so I'm in this place, and you know, I don't
want it to look like I'm co signing everything. But
then again, I don't want to look like I'm a critic,
which is fair by the way he actually brings that
up himself, right, That wasn't even at the prodding of

(01:16:10):
the reporter. So even without you know, the reporter then
explicitly asking questions about the Trump administration, Elon himself can't
disentangle who he is, what he's doing, his businesses, and
what's going on in terms of politics.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
It makes me wonder, genuinely how much he thought that
he was going to steer the ship of the Trump administration.
Because Trump, if you were listening to if you if
you listen to a single Trump rally, if you listened
ten seconds of any Trump rally, you had realized the
man was completely deadly serious about tariffs the entire time.
It always has been. And so it genuinely makes me
wonder if Elon Musk thought that, by putting so much

(01:16:46):
money into the election and coming into DC and being
coronated as the King of Doge, that Trump would maybe
give some deference to Elon Musk on a lot of
these priorities that are just totally out of line with
the crypto libertarian and ethos that Musk and I should
say ideology that Musk wants the Republican Party to look

(01:17:06):
more like. And now that he's sort of on his
way out, there's this very obvious conflict in what he's saying.
Like it's actually fair that when you start to talk
about these things, first of all, you move markets, you
look like you have inside information, because you do, you
look like maybe you're trying to put your thumb on
the scale. Like all of those frustrations are perfectly accurate.
But that's the obvious reason that people don't get too

(01:17:26):
involved in politics to the point where they've become a special,
special government employee, because those problem those those problems, like
even from a business perspective, are so obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
I mean, he put in two hundred and fifty plus
million dollars into Trump's campaign and you know, was critical
potentially in Trump winning that election, and focused a lot
of his efforts in Pennsylvania, which was the critical swing state.
And so I think he believed that he could basically
do what he wanted, and for a while he could,

(01:17:55):
you know, for a while he did come in And
this is also you know, someone who sees himself as
the only main character and this sort of like great
civilizational figure, I mean, is truly how he views himself
and he views his project of getting to Mars and
you know, through via SpaceX and the need to marshal
vast government resources in order to do that, I think

(01:18:17):
as a central driving desire. I think also something he
did accomplished during his time in Washington. A central driving
desire is to get all of these various regulatory agencies
off of his back and make it so that he's
not facing labor violation complaints and Tesla doesn't have to
be regulated.

Speaker 4 (01:18:33):
And if he goes.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Forward with VISA over at X, that the CFPP isn't
going to be sniffing around what they're up to, et cetera.
And that part he is able to ultimately accomplish. But
you know, now there is a So it's one of
those weird things where Elon is not in DC anymore.
The work of DOGE does continue. It's not over. Wired
is out with the report saying, like, you know, don't

(01:18:55):
believe the hype that Elon is done. He just is
saying he needs to take some pressure off of his
b businesses, so he wants to be less visible. However,
I think two things do indicate that he is genuinely
on the ounce with this administration. One of them is
what I just showed you them pulling his guy at NASA.
That's a big blow to Elon because he wants to
be able to get whatever you know, this government can

(01:19:16):
offer to SpaceX. So I think that is a blow.
And the other thing is that there are there is
just a flood of leaks going to the Wall Street
Journal and the New York Times and all kinds of
other outlets about how much everybody in the administration hated
him and about how he was doing all sorts of
drugs all the time while he was here. And I

(01:19:37):
believe during that Oval Office meeting, we can put this
image up on the screen. You can see some evidence
of that cocktails.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
While of drug use towards no end it gets especially while.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
Yeah, I mean here he is just like totally tweaking
out and by the way, with a black eye, which, brother,
if you want to cover that up, I can give
you some makeup tips.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
Oh look at that though.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
It's not that hard.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
So he looks like shit, he's like totally disconnected from
reality here and you know, proving right the various articles,
but he denies that he's using these drugs. Blah, blah
blah lawyers, that's what he says. He denies that he's
using them, but totally validating the reporting from the New
York Times.

Speaker 4 (01:20:20):
Well yet so about what's going on behind the scenes
the New York.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
Times, And this is skipping ahead a little bit. So
this is D four. The New York Times dropped this
really splashy deep dive with like a Maggie Haberman, Oh,
I'm sorry, it was Megan Twohe bylined Kirsen grind and
Meghan Tweh On Friday before that Oval Offense press press conference,
and so speculation ensues throughout the day on Friday. You know,
DC is having fun with the story that Elon Musk

(01:20:42):
has been abusing drugs like katamine. And this is a
story sourced from people who were spending time with Elon
Musk on the campaign trail in particular, which is when
they say it was quote more intense than previously known,
his drug use was more intense than previously known. Just
several hours later, after all denials are happening, he's literally
standing next to the President in the Oval Office, And

(01:21:05):
I mean, I would assume that what we just watched
on screen was drugs. I think anybody would assume that
that's drugs. If it's not drugs, it's a problem that
was completely abnormal. Now, Trump in the press conference also
said that Elon's not really leaving. This is what the
Wired story focused on, and that doses his baby. He's
going to be back and forth. But at the same time,

(01:21:28):
it was like an exit. So let's also get part
of that Oval office conversation where a reporter asked Elon
Musk about his black eye. This comes amidst speculation that
he had a physical altercation with Scott Bessett, which we
will get to in just a moment as well. So
this is D three Aspectly, mister Musk, what is your eye?

Speaker 5 (01:21:49):
Okay, what happened to you?

Speaker 12 (01:21:50):
That your eye?

Speaker 7 (01:21:50):
I know this was a rust thing.

Speaker 5 (01:21:51):
Well it wasn't wasn't anyone near friends, so.

Speaker 13 (01:21:56):
But I didn't know.

Speaker 7 (01:22:04):
I didn't know.

Speaker 13 (01:22:06):
So yeah, I was just watched around with the lex
and I said, go ahead, punch me in the face,
and he did. It turns out even a five year
old punching you in the in the face actually does.

Speaker 8 (01:22:18):
If you knew X right now.

Speaker 14 (01:22:20):
But I didn't.

Speaker 13 (01:22:22):
I didn't really feel much at the time, and then
I guess it brings this up. But I just watched
around of the act.

Speaker 3 (01:22:28):
I love Trump bragging about knowing like a toddler. If
you know X, you know you can do it. But anyway,
because that's Trump humble bragging that he does, he does
no X. There are there.

Speaker 4 (01:22:39):
Their buddies, some of them may still be on that text.

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
So let's put now It's God being ahead again D
six on the screen because this became a really sort
of ugly meme. But Bannon said that there was a
physical altercation between Scott Bessant and Elon Musk that he
quote literally got physical with them. Basically that Musk shoved

(01:23:03):
Scott Bessont.

Speaker 4 (01:23:04):
These are the messiest people on them Well, no.

Speaker 3 (01:23:06):
I honestly think that Elon Musk is the messiest person
on the planet. Like, do you think Scott besson is
around there shoving people?

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
Does it really seem like the type? No, he does
vice cover but you never know.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
I guess yeah, he got he was the one who
got shoved.

Speaker 15 (01:23:20):
According to Steve Bannon, who's now spilling the tea about
all of this, he said that in comments to The
Daily Mail, Scott Bessont called him out and said quote,
you promised us a trillion dollars in cuts and now
you're at like one hundred billion and nobody can find anything.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
What are you doing? And that's when Elon got physical.
Uh it's a sore subject with him. Wasn't an argument,
it was a physical confrontation. Elon basically shoved him. Now,
the White House responded to this and said, quote, it's
no secret President Trump has put together a team of
people who are incredibly passionate.

Speaker 4 (01:23:51):
It basically validation, right, They did not deny it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
Yeah, yes, I mean that's Carolin.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
And just to be clear, that altercation happened back in Aple,
so that would not be the cause of the black eye.

Speaker 4 (01:24:02):
Just so people understand.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
It just speaks to Elon's I guess, willingness to get
into physical confrontations as a middle aged man, Like what
the hell are you doing?

Speaker 4 (01:24:10):
In any case?

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
So, I mean it adds credence to the idea that
little ex punching him in the eye may not have
been what happened here. The other like Blue and on
conspiracy going on with this one.

Speaker 3 (01:24:22):
Is I wasn't going to bring it up, Crystal.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
I mean, we had to give the viewers all of
the information Emily.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
People are saying Steven Miller and his wife Katie Miller
apparently were close with Elon while he was in town,
and they socialized outside of the office.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
Katie Miller was working with Elon very closely on do
she does communications.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Okay, and she is leaving the Trump administration to work
with Elon, so leaving you know, Stephen and the Trump
administration to go work with Elon. So this also stoked
some speculation about just how closely I guess they were
working together. And there was some analysis of you know,

(01:25:03):
Stephen Miller being a lefty, in which I that likely
would have impacted if you know, in the theoretical world
where there was some sort of an altercation there over
Miller's wife.

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
But in any case, I mean, the much more likely
scenario is that Elon Musk can pay an absolute f
ton of money to the people that he sees as
trusted advisors, and now Katie Miller should be able to
make a ton of money while her husband works in
the government, making you know, by billionaire massive corporation standards,
not that much money. So I think that's probably the

(01:25:33):
likeliest case. But interesting, nonetheless to see what the drama
is behind the scenes on all of this. There there's
also a Wall Street Journal story this is D five
we can put on the screen, getting into the relationship
between Trump and Musk as well. They described it as
a quote unquote complicated relationship. And the journal story starts
with an interesting anecdote that administration official sources in the

(01:25:56):
administration gave to the journal, where Trump asks to his
advisors about Doge, was it all bullshit? And I think
the answer to that question, Crystal is pretty much yes.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
It's one of these Yeah, okay, if you're talking about
cutting costs and efficiency, if you're talking about I'm gonna
cut two trillion, no one trillion from the budget, yes,
which is what they're Yes, that was all bullshit, But
how did you not know that? Like, That's the thing
that's crazy to me, is like, if you just know
the very basics of government accounting math, you knew from

(01:26:31):
the beginning that it was all bullshit when it came
to the cost cutting, because if you want to cut
cost significant costs in the federal government, you are not
going to do it by finding some like mice study
you don't like, or even and we'll get to this
in just a moment by completely decimating USAID to the

(01:26:51):
vast detriment of you know, millions of sick children, sick
children and other innocence.

Speaker 4 (01:26:57):
Around the world.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
It is that is a draw up in the bucket
in terms of the vast federal government budget. So if
you did not know that, like I just think it's
it's astonishing to me that he would not have realized
that the project with regard to DOGE was never really
about cost cutting. Elon had other ideological goals, some of

(01:27:19):
which he did accomplish during his time.

Speaker 4 (01:27:21):
I'm going to talk more tomorrow about.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
You know, the scooping up of all this data and
giving it to Palenteer, you know, being one of Elon's
you know, allies within the tech right and possibly like
we don't know what sort of federal government data was
scooped up to use to further elons AI ambitions, you know,
because we have very little actual transparency into what DOGE

(01:27:45):
was even up to and continues to be up to
within all of these organizations. As I said before, in
terms of the goal of getting the regulators off his back,
certainly mission accomplished there. So there was a lot that
was done, and a lot that was inly destructive and
is going to continue to have huge consequences. But I
just I think it's so insane that anyone took seriously

(01:28:08):
the idea that this was going to be a real
cost cutting and efficiency effort from the beginning, and the
way that they approached it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:15):
Well, I think the two trillion dollar number to take
that seriously is I mean, without touching Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid.
That's the Pentagon or the Pentagon, right, I mean, the
Pentagon's the big one there, because you could plausibly if
you found a lot of waste and other agencies and
you you basically scuttle USAA D. I mean USAA D

(01:28:36):
is not gone. It's been absorbed in the State Department.
A lot of those costs have been eliminated. I mean,
it's completely trunk to a shell of its former self,
no question about that. I suspect Marco Rubio will still
use it as like a long arm of soft power,
but just in a very different way. So there's all
kinds of like, there's all kinds of waste that you
can find in the federal government budget, of course, but

(01:28:58):
the idea that that would without between the Pentagon or
without touching Medicaid, social Security and not just looking for
quote unute waste, broad and abuse. That that would amount
to two trillion dollars is an enormous stretch, especially when
the process by which they are going about these cuts
Crystal was so wildly inefficient, because Musk's idea was you
cut a bunch and then you learn by the cuts

(01:29:20):
what you need to bring back, which is I guess,
a much more defensible philosophy in a corporate a corporate
environment when it's not the government that taxpayers pay into
and rely on the services for who then get that
stuff cut after paying for it right and have all
the disruptions only for the government to be like, whoops,
are bad, we are bringing it back. Sarved about the

(01:29:41):
last month of your life, mister veteran who was affected
by this, So, I mean it was just the process
was a disaster. And now the line is that dose
is a lifestyle. I forget whether it was Trump or
Elon Musk has said that that doses are going anywhere.
It's a lifestyle, and to some extent though true, because
there are muscul lieutenants, people who are brought on board

(01:30:02):
who are now. They are like actually employees in managerial
positions throughout the federal government. I would be all for
things like the Rains Act, where you have to which
should be in this bill, where you have to kick
over a certain number if you're spending a certain number
of money, it has to be kicked over to Congress
and has to be signed off on by Congress. Because

(01:30:25):
you know, that way, you don't have agencies just green
lighting massive contracts and stuff like that. They haven't shown
any willingness to you, as you said, Bannon has said
this many times, many times go after these like Pentagon
contracts to seriously take on quote unquote waste frunt abuse
at the Pentagon. They never really went in that direction.
And DOJ Noel lifestyle. Okay, let's see.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
Yeah, I mean there is one agency that has never
been able to pass an audit. And you know, and
as Bannon always that you got across the river. I mean,
you know, I'm very hesitant to ascribe actual like belief
him and whatever. He has his own agenda, but he's
one hundred percent correct about that. If you actually want
to go after ways Forradden abuse. But that again is

(01:31:09):
why I never took seriously the idea that this would
be any sort of real cost cutting mission. In fact,
it's going to lead to more expense, specifically because of
the gutting, you know, the cuts to the irs, which
means you can collect less tax revenue, specifically less tax
revenue from rich people, so it's going to cost more.

(01:31:29):
You have degraded the efficiency and quality of the services.
If you're someone who's trying to resolve some issue with
your Social Security check, it is now going to take
vastly longer and be you know, effectually mission impossible with
the closed field offices and the longer wait times on
the telephones, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:31:45):
But to your point, Emily Like, it's all well and
good like.

Speaker 2 (01:31:48):
It's one thing if your Twitter dms don't work for
a little while, exactly. It's another thing when air traffic
controllers are being like pressure to reside at a time
when we have a massive crisis in terms of air
travel safety. It's another thing when you are a veteran
who's enrolled in a you know, cancer research trial that

(01:32:08):
has a chance of curing what you have, and that
funding is stripped. You are not going to eliminate the
deficit by gutting scientific research for a generation as an example,
that's just not where the bulk of federal spending is.
Even I looked up the numbers. If you look at
how much we spend on the entire federal government workforce, right,

(01:32:31):
they pushed out some two hundred and fifty thousand federal
gun wars, Like it was a massive number of people
that they cut. If you cut everybody, it is a
very small proportion of the over federal government budget. So
it's just to me to take at face value that
Trump didn't know what's going on here.

Speaker 4 (01:32:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
That raises some other questions for me about how engaged
he is in his own administration beyond like his you know,
Liberation Day chart making exercises.

Speaker 3 (01:32:59):
Well, you know, it was hard for anyone to keep
up with Doze at first because the cuts were headspinning
and they were coming fast and furious, and that was
all part of the flood the zone plan. So there
were a lot of cuts by the like relative standards
of how quickly they came, they just didn't end up
adding up to anything near what was being projected. I mean,

(01:33:21):
there are some agencies that right now are utterly unrecognizable.
The cfpb usaid those are significant cuts. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
but in the scope of the federal budget, it's amazing
how big cuts like that still don't make a dent
in things. And rains is in the reconciliation bill. We'll
see if it survives. But I mean, you had to

(01:33:41):
cross the river if you wanted to. You certainly had
across the river, and you would have had to do
a lot more than just quote unquote waste, fraud and abuse.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
And they didn't find any fraud. What fraud did they find?

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
I'm sure they did like it, but it's also hard
to know because the DOGE website is full of random
shit that you have no idea whether it's real. Sometimes
people have tried to track it down and you don't know.
But even sure they've found some bits and pieces of fraud.

Speaker 4 (01:34:06):
I know they found things they didn't like.

Speaker 3 (01:34:08):
They definitely found that.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
Yes, that's different from fraud, right, I mean, fraud is
like there is fraud in the federal garment, although to
be honest with you, after the DOGE exercise, I think
it must be less than what I was assuming you're like, yes,
they didn't find any of it. You know, you know,
we always joke like Ryan Grimm found more ashful fraud
in the federal government budget by identifying this fraudulent four

(01:34:31):
or million dollars that was set to go hunt the
door to Tesla than Doge did. So tell me what's
going on there, Tell me what's really going on there? Ultimately,
you know, the other piece of the Wall Street Journal
article about some of the internal dynamics that was interesting
to me is apparently he really got crosswise with Susie Wiles,
among others. I mean, for Alon is notoriously like he's

(01:34:53):
a raging asshole. People don't like to work with he.
I think he would say that himself, like he does
not deal well with people. He just doesn't. And that
is the history of his dynamics. Within his companies. He
usually has someone else who was working alongside with him,
who can, you know, deal with the human beings involved.
So not only did he have this physical altercation with

(01:35:13):
Scott Bessett, I think he and Rubio were significantly at odds.
Some of the tension with Sean Duffy played out in public,
but they also got upset because they were learning about,
you know, some of the chainsaw that was being taken
to various parts of the federal government. Susie Wilsen Co.
Were learning about that the same way that we were,

(01:35:34):
where he just went in and did his thing, and
so there was there were increasing efforts to try to
rein him, in coordinate with him, et cetera. But you know,
I think that was part of the underlying dynamic as
well as like just people did not like him. And
so when they were after the Wisconsin Supreme Court debacle,
when there was a real display of political weakness and

(01:35:57):
Trump apparently had talked to I can't remember what was
that guy's named Schimel or something like that, Brad Schimel
is at the name of the candidate.

Speaker 3 (01:36:03):
Oh, Brad Shimmel.

Speaker 4 (01:36:04):
Shimmel.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
Yeah, Anyway, Trump was not impressed with that guy.

Speaker 4 (01:36:07):
Thought he was going to lose.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
Thought that Elon displayed very poor political instincts by going
all in on that, And I do think that that
was a real blow to him with regard to his
standing Visa v. Trump and others. I'm sure with the
administration this part, I'm just speculating about use that loss
as a way to make the case to Trump of like, Okay,
this guy's bad for your agenda. He's making you look bad,

(01:36:29):
he's causing you all kinds of problems. Let's try to
get him out there.

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):
Because it all comes down to the central cross benefit analysis.
Does the cost of being associated with Elon Musk outweigh
the benefit of having particularly his political donations. And so
when Elon Musk noticed the timing here, this was all happening,
as Elon Musk said, by the way, he's going to
stop his political donations, then suddenly he's out at doge
Well Wisconsin showed that the cost of association with Elon

(01:36:56):
Musk actually in that case outweighed the benefits of him
pouring million of dollars into a state Supreme court election.
Even his millions of dollars couldn't buy that election because
in the micro example that we're talking about, the microcosmic
example we're talking about, it really motivated normally dem voters
to come out and vote for the liberal Supreme Court

(01:37:18):
justice in that case. So I think what that showed
is that he's less valuable than it looked like when
he came into Pennsylvania in the waiting days of a
very very very very very close presidential election, at least
in the sense of, you know, when you are within
a margin in Pennsylvania and all the electoral College votes
are on the line, he comes in, puts tons of

(01:37:40):
money into swing states, but particularly Pennsylvania. Sort of looks
like he buys Trump those states because is he the
sort of deciding factors that money? What tips it over
the edge for Donald Trump? Republicans say, Wow, we have
the deepest pockets we could ever conceive of having, and
he's just giving freely and doing it kind of for
the hell of it, and we don't have to really

(01:38:02):
do anything to beg him. He's just like having fun.
So what does that mean for us? What does that
mean for the party in the midterms? What does it
mean for the party for the next ten years? With
a massive cash infusion potentially on the table? And as
soon as that dream kind of fades for Republicans, he
becomes to them less trouble, less of a benefit than

(01:38:22):
the trouble that causes. And I think that's probably part
of what just everyone's exasperated with him. He's exasperated with
them because they have less patience for him. They have
less patience for his eccentricities and his process, which is
very anathema in Washington. So it just it fizzled. We'll
see how much he's still here. I have a hard
time believing, Crystal that he doesn't want to still be

(01:38:44):
pulling some of the puppet strings, no doubt about it,
and that he probably will still be pulling some.

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
Of the puppet strings some of them, Yeah, but you know,
not without as much power as he previously wielded, which
you know, at times rivaled Trump, at least especially with
Trump pre tariff Trump, where he seemed like he was
happy to just like play golf and outsource immigration and

(01:39:09):
foreign policy. Apparently Stephen Miller outsourced whatever is going on with.

Speaker 4 (01:39:13):
Doge to Elon.

Speaker 2 (01:39:15):
And you know, now, I think the part of the
Trump administration that Trump does take control over the terriffs,
which is kind of a you know, and maybe he's
involved somewhat with the top line ideological underpinnings of the
Big Beautiful Bill, but you know, other pieces he's been
happy to really just kind of hand into various corners
of his administration.

Speaker 4 (01:39:35):
I wanted to ask you, Emily, an.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Important part of the MAGA Trump two point zero coalition
is the tech right and Elon being the figurehead right
and so you had all the all in guys excited
about Trump and Emma and I actually covered last week
all of them, including David saxelthough he was like, Wow,
this is the best we could get. But all of

(01:39:59):
the all in guys very critical of the big, beautiful will.
And so, what do you think the exit of Elon
and the fraying of that relationship means for the broader
tech right alignment with the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (01:40:14):
I think the illusion is fading that there was and
you know people who are in like DC Republican circles.
I don't think anybody said it aloud, but I think
everybody looked at those guys as almost inspiringly naive that
they had these huge visions and the will, like the
political will to like Elon Musk was out there with

(01:40:36):
a chainsaw, right like this is a dream that the
let's say, anarcho libertarian world, which not all of them are,
I mean some of them are more robber barons than
anarco libertarians, but that they have had for a long time.
It's this idea that there would be the political will
to go out there and dance on stage with a
chainsaw like a good true ideological libertarian. And so what

(01:41:00):
that meant was, Wow, this is basically Elon Musk coming
in with all of these Silicon Valley nerds and waving
magic wands and just dissolving parts of the government. And
I think what we're seeing right now is that and
I say this with some judgment, but not with much judgment,
but the fading of that naivete that there was this
idea that if you came into Washington with the will

(01:41:23):
to take the arrows for cutting pepfar, to take the
arrows for cutting USAA, d CFPB in ways that no
Republican ever would have had the courage to do pre Trump,
than man like this can finally be done. And that
was again I think a lot of people in DC
identified that as naive. Maybe they didn't want to say

(01:41:44):
it because it felt hopeful. But I think that it's
finally that idea, that dream is dead. I think that's
what's really happened here.

Speaker 2 (01:41:56):
That is a good transition to talking about this Rogan appearance.
Bono talking to Rogan about USAID in particular, and I
told you I cut a longer sid of this because
there was a portion of this one exchange that the
right was sharing of like oh Rogan really showed him
whose boss and usaad the money laundering operation. And there

(01:42:18):
was another part that that Democratic Wins account which used
to be Kamala Wins account, there was another part that
that account shared. So I thought, let's let's give you
the whole context and then we can talk about this
on the other side.

Speaker 4 (01:42:31):
But interesting exchange on the less Let's take a listen.

Speaker 16 (01:42:34):
You went to Boston University and you taught it about
Boston Universe to martial arts there. So just recent report,
it's not proven, but there's surveillance enough suggests three hundred
thousand people have already died from just this cut off,
this hard cut of USAID. So this food rotting in

(01:42:59):
boats and warehouses, there is this this this will will
fuck you off, this will not you will not be happy,
no American will. But there is and he has fifty
thousand tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa,
Dubai and wait for it, Houston, Texas. And that is

(01:43:23):
a rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going
to Sudan, because the people who know the codes are
for the warehouse are fired, They're.

Speaker 3 (01:43:35):
Gone, and so this. I don't know.

Speaker 16 (01:43:39):
I just it's what do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:43:41):
What?

Speaker 7 (01:43:42):
What is?

Speaker 5 (01:43:43):
What is that?

Speaker 16 (01:43:44):
That's that's not America.

Speaker 5 (01:43:46):
Is it?

Speaker 8 (01:43:46):
Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, right right.
This is the problem. The problem is, for sure, there
have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good
all throughout the world. Also, for sure it was a
money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure,
billions of dollars are missing. In fact, trillions that are

(01:44:08):
unaccounted for, that were sent off into various they don't
even know where because there's no receipts. The way Elon
must describe that, he said, if any of this was
done by a public company, the company would be delisted
and the executives would be in prison. But in the
United States this is standard. When Biden left office, when

(01:44:31):
it was clear that Trump won, in the seventy three days,
they spent ninety three billion dollars from the Department of
Energy on just radical loans, just throwing money into places
and there's no oversight, no receipts. Like the whole thing is,
there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering.

(01:44:53):
But also we help the world and when you're talking
about making wells for people in the Congo to get
fresh water, when you're talking about food and medicine to
places that don't have access, like no way that should
have been cut out and that should have been clear
before they make these radical cuts, Like there's got to

(01:45:14):
be a way to keep aid and not have fraud,
and you can't have you can't say we're going to
kill everything so that there's no fraud, but then you're
killing all the good and you're doing it without letting
anybody know that's going to happen, So no one's It's
not like they had three years to prepare. Let's build
a new infrastructure, let's make sure they're everything set up.
They wanted change, and they want to change quickly and

(01:45:35):
do the nature of American politics, they have about two
years before the midterms.

Speaker 4 (01:45:39):
Right, what did you make of that exchange? Emily?

Speaker 3 (01:45:42):
Super interesting and Christy you were pointing out as we
were watching it, the different parts that were clipped where
they cut it left and right. Yeah, where they had
cut that clip up. And I think what Rogan just
made at the end was a really compelling point about
not creating any time period for off ramps. Because if
you're somebody like me who looks at USAID and says,

(01:46:03):
this is actually, in some sense creating this exploitive dependency
system based on where US soft power interests are, and
I think that's a critics.

Speaker 4 (01:46:13):
I share that critique.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
Yeah, and so if you think that, you're like, okay,
so it's really unfair that we are holding these people
basically hostage with our aid to our foreign policy interests,
and then you just pull the rug out from under
them after making commitments for years and years and years.
Then yes, people are going to die and people are
going to suffer. There's another way, which would involve saying

(01:46:34):
you have five years to get off of the stependency.
We're changing fundamentally the way, and then the Gates Foundation
steps in and the Rockefeller Foundation steps in and they
fill the gaps, which is just not what happened. And
I think it was really interesting to see Rogan reacting,
particularly to that, and as an ally of Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 (01:46:54):
Yeah, I mean some of the things Rogan says, like
about the quote unquote radical loans, the you know, oh,
there's so much fraud again, what was the fraud? Because
I share, you know, the like the left has a
critique of USAID, and it's the one that Emily explained
of like holding people hostage to US imperial foreign policy
interests and this administration they don't believe in soft power.

(01:47:18):
I mean, by and large, they just believe in hard power.
That's why USAID is being gutted. That's why the State
Department is being gutted. They have this throwback imperial if
we see something and we want it, we're going to
take it. That is their ideology. That's why Trump loves
the McKinley era. That's why they you know, Greenland, Panama, Gaza, Canada,

(01:47:40):
like they have this mentality of an old school we
are just going to use our might to take it,
and we're not going to wrap it in like you know,
we'll give you some HIV medication and then you're going
to help us out with our rare earth mineral supply.

Speaker 4 (01:47:57):
They don't want to wrap it in the Gazi language.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
They just want to come in with the guns and
force our will upon the world. So that's the you know,
that's the ideology that is surrounding this. But again it's
they didn't actually identify any fraud. I'm not saying there
wasn't any I'm saying there was none identified what Rogan's
referring to there in terms of the end of the
Biden administration. It is true that at the end of

(01:48:22):
the Biden administration, when there was a recognition of oh shit,
Kamala lost Trump, the Trump administration is coming in. We
have all of these funds appropriated through you know, whether
it's the IRA or the Chips Act or whatever that
is already been authorized by Congress. We need to speed
up the process to get these funds out the door.
And that's what Rogan calls quote unquote radical loans.

Speaker 4 (01:48:42):
That's the end. I'd love that great term. I do
love that term.

Speaker 2 (01:48:46):
So that's what he's referring to ultimately there. But you know,
the other thing that drives me crazy, Emily, is like
you just acknowledge people people have already died because of
the consequences of these actions of just pulling all the
funding from under many of these programs. And we have,
you know, estimates from Bono's referencing the study. You can

(01:49:06):
put some of these estimates up on the screen from
Boston University School of Public Health. This is called impact Counter.
This Twitter account was just sharing some of the top
lines here. So within one year, these are all projected out.
And again you can quibble with the you can quibble
with what the numbers are, but there is we know already,
factually speaking, that people have died as a result of

(01:49:28):
these cuts, and we know that more people will.

Speaker 4 (01:49:30):
Die as a result of these cuts.

Speaker 2 (01:49:31):
The estimates here are one point sixty five million die
without HIV prevention and treatment, five hundred thousand die without
vaccine funding, five hundred thousand die without food aid. That's
what Bono's talking about, is just rotting at the ports
right now. Three hundred and ten thousand die without tuberculosis prevention.
He's saying, it's zerodes so far, three hundred thousand is
a low estimate, is the opining of this Twitter account.

(01:49:51):
And three hundred thousand is you know, the estimate that
they give right now the number of people who have
died already. And again there is a elon and others
claim no one has died, that's impossible, etc. And it's like,
I don't know how you can. I don't know how
you can live in reality and think that there's just
no consequence for cutting this funding for critical life saving

(01:50:15):
treatments around the world without anything to replace it. And
you know, on the I'm sure there will be organizations
over time that come in and try to fill the gap.
I have no doubt about that. But so that has
not happened yet. And so there is a you know,
a critical hole that the US used to fill that
has just been the you know, rug has been pulled out,

(01:50:36):
and children, people who need this treatment and care that
they were relying on the US for they have died
and they will continue to die. And that is just
the reality of Elon's impact here. And so I think
that's the other piece, Emily. Is part of why I
wanted to highlight this clip is because there is a
sense that Doge utterly and completely failed, and it did,

(01:50:57):
but we need to pair that with the understanding that
Doge also so did tremendous, tremendous damage that is literally
costing people's lives and will continue to have generational fallout
for years and years to come.

Speaker 3 (01:51:13):
So, and this is something that people on the right
feel as well, is that Elon Musk may have done
lasting damage to the idea of like like you said,
by the Doge website having so many holes that like
when you're trying to look up the instances of fraud
that are being cited. You go to the website and
you can't track it down, and or it appears to

(01:51:34):
be a total stretch, or it appears to be you
know something. There are actually a lot of examples of
journalists trying to chase down the fraud that does had
it caught or eliminated whatever it was, and going down
rabbit trails, going down things that led them to repetition
something like that, and does that end up doing lasting

(01:51:55):
damage to the like really predicate of a lot of
conservative ideology about quote unquote limited government. And I'm someone
who's in this camp. People say limited not small government.
Small government's libertarian. Limited government is conservative limited relative to
what it's become over the last one hundred years. Does
that idea ever recover, you know, in this generation from Doge?

(01:52:20):
When you have such a I don't know if yeah,
I mean this is the right way to say it.
When you have such an unserious approach where you end up,
I mean, you pledge huge numbers, you come up with
very little. It's all done with a billionaire dancing with
a chainsaw. Does it ever recover on the other hand,
would anyone have ever done it? You sort of have

(01:52:41):
a catch twenty two other than you know, eccentric elon Musk.
Maybe not. But does it ever recover from DOGE? I
don't know. It's a question actually that might even go
to Democrats Crystal having this conversation about abundance and about Doge.
Where when Doese first started you saw a lot of
Democrats frustrate with the fact that it was Republicans who

(01:53:02):
were capitalizing on this idea of efficiency in government, saying, well,
we can certainly stand for efficiency in government because from
our perspective, the more efficient the government looks, the more
that we can actually make the case for funding, the
more that we can make the case that some of
these agencies are good if they're efficient. So, I don't know,
I mean maybe Democrats are able to co opt that idea.

Speaker 2 (01:53:22):
Well, maybe we can put this in in post guys.
And by the way, Marshal Costlof is going to co
host with me tomorrow as Abundant Abundance guy, Marshal Abundance.
So I'm trying to avoid saying grow In any case,
I'm really looking for you that has some really smart
insights into the interaction with the left, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:53:40):
But I want to talk to him more about this
poll tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:53:43):
But Sienna just did a poll that found, for the
first time in decades, basically unprecedented in the new liberal era,
a majority of Americans say government should do more to
solve problems versus the number who say governments tried to
do two many things. And I think that is directly

(01:54:04):
attributable to Dosh.

Speaker 4 (01:54:06):
Directly attributory.

Speaker 2 (01:54:07):
It's like you don't know what you got till it's gone.
Kind of a dynamic where it's like, oh, I liked
it when I had.

Speaker 4 (01:54:12):
A Social Security field office.

Speaker 2 (01:54:14):
In my town and I didn't have to wait on,
you know, a phone for four hours in order to
get someone to answer my basic question. That was a
good thing the government was doing, and I wish it
would do it again.

Speaker 3 (01:54:24):
It's a socialist op now that you say, like Elon Musk,
you couldn't come up with a better socialist op Like
sans was doing covert operations and planting a libertarian in
the federal government to make the entire project look absurd.

Speaker 2 (01:54:37):
To prove the importance of what the government actually does.
It's like, oh, yeah, you know what, I actually liked
it when I could get weather data and there was
a FEMA disaster relief response that maybe it was an ideal,
but it was better than not having one. So I mean,
it's an extraordinary surge in the number of people who say, no, Actually,
I believe in government, and I want government to do more,

(01:54:58):
and I want it to do well. Now, the challenge
and on the other side, is that there's not a
lot of trust for either party to be able to
accomplish those things effectively. And so obviously that's a big,
you know, reality and political challenge. But I do think
your point about the fears that Elon has somehow managed
to destroy even the concept of like we need to

(01:55:19):
cut the fat and we need to make government more
quote unquote efficient, is it's pretty remarkable because that has
always been a winning political proposition for my entire lifetime.

Speaker 3 (01:55:29):
Yeah, that's so interesting. We'll see where it goes going forward.
But low hanging fruit here for Democrats.

Speaker 4 (01:55:35):
Yeah, should we talk about your favorite senator?

Speaker 3 (01:55:38):
Let's talk about Jonny Ernce? Why not? Why shouldn't we
be talking about Junior enestr came to under the So
Johnny Ernce got hit with a tough town hall the
other day, as many Republicans have, and in fact, at
one point Republicans just stopped doing town halls. So amazing
that johny Urns actually was out there talking to the people.
But before we get into the reaction to this, roll

(01:56:00):
this clip of johni Arenstor being heckled by people in
the audience. This is people in Iowa reacting to johni
ns talking about Medicaid cuts. So go ahead and take
a look at this clip.

Speaker 17 (01:56:14):
People are not well.

Speaker 14 (01:56:16):
We all are going to die. Hello, everyone, I would
like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a
statement that I made yesterday at my town hall. See,
I was in the process of answering a question that
had been asked by an audience member when a woman

(01:56:40):
who was extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner
of the auditorium people are going to die. And I
made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes,

(01:57:00):
we are all going to perish from this earth. So
I apologize, and I'm really really glad that I did
not have to bring up the subject of the tooth
fairy as well.

Speaker 3 (01:57:14):
Hello fellow flesh and Blood model. It's just if you're
listening to this, what you miss is it was just
her face like chin up and she actually people pointed
out is walking in front of a cemetery, like to
the point about Washington not being West wing but being veep.
This is the best illustration that I've seen in months. Actually,

(01:57:37):
there's always a good illustration every single week, but this
is one of the best ones I've ever seen. Crystal.
She's apologizing for saying quote, We're all going to die
at a town hall. It was in Butler County, Iowa
on Friday. She makes an apology video, christ Well, why
are you making the apology video? Roll with it? Secondly,
she does it in front of a cemetery. Yeah, and
then she pivoted to evangelism. By the way, towards the

(01:58:00):
end of the video, you didn't see this, but I'm
pretty sure she Yeah. She ended up saying quote, for
those that would like to see eternal and our everlasting life,
I encourage you to embrace my Laurence. I'm telling you,
as I've been talking Christians, this is the worst evangelism
I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (01:58:16):
Yeah, I mean, yes, we are all going to die.

Speaker 4 (01:58:22):
It kind of matters to me when you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:25):
Know, like I would rather I think most people, including
the millions who were set to lose health insurance coverage
because of the Medicaid cuts and the big beautiful bill,
they would like to forestall that possibility, you know, into
the future. But there, you know, the meme of Republicans
is the idea that like, oh, their healthcare plan is

(01:58:45):
like is don't get sick or or don't be poor,
like that's the and so she just goes all in
with basically like yeah, I mean I guess if you
get sick, you're going to die by that whatever, We're
all going to die anyway, and just find your salvation
in God.

Speaker 4 (01:58:58):
It's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:58:59):
I was venting about those always, like, first of all,
just from like a comms perspective. God forbid, I put
that hat on, like the idea of doing communications for
a senator. But if you're even like thinking about this,
you just all you have to do is say, yeah,
this is the Trump era. All she has to do
is say, yeah, I stood up to the liberal heckler
in the audience who is defending waste and fraud in Medicaid. Yeah,

(01:59:23):
I'm defending Medicaid. From the people who want to undermine
Medicaid with waste and fraud and abuse. But why would
you ever go out there and apologize for making like
a glib, offhanded comment. And then because she was clearly
frustrated in the clip, she was like just reaching for
straws and Jonny Arns is not the most talented politician
in the world. You would be shocked to learn, and

(01:59:44):
ends up grasping out We're all going to die. Film's
an apology video in front of a cemetery, then jokes
about the tooth fairy and pivots some evangelism. I mean
you just the every item on the Bengo card is
checked off.

Speaker 4 (01:59:57):
Well, and the funny thing too. I'm interested in your
on this is.

Speaker 2 (02:00:01):
I am normally very impressed with Republican message discipline. Usually
there's like a Okay, here's what we're saying about the
Medicaid cuts.

Speaker 4 (02:00:09):
We're saying these aren't cuts.

Speaker 2 (02:00:11):
This is we're cutting out the waste, right, And some
Republicans are on that talking point. Other Republicans are on
the like, actually, you know, they're not cuts at all.
I don't even know what you're talking about. There are
no cuts. People are going to keep their insurance. Right,
some people are just like they're in the you know,
denying of reality. And then some people, apparently Jony Urns
is in the well, we're all going to die anyway,
So whatever if eight million people are slated to lose

(02:00:32):
their health insurance coverage, which is the estimate under this bill.
So in some ways, I think it displays the the
victory of Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid, that this has become
a difficult subject for Republicans because it never was in
the past. It also is indicative of the realignment that,

(02:00:54):
as Bannon points out, you now have a lot of
magas on Medicaid, you know, and so this is going
to have an impact on your voting coalition will be
among many of the eight million who lose their health insurance,
like Trump one narrowly but one voters making under fifty
thousand dollars, and that is the first time for a
Republican I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:01:15):
Since when in the modern era.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
So in any case, I think the schizophrenic nature of
the Medicaid messaging within the Republican coalition is indicative of
the fact, like they realize this is a big political
problem for them, but they also realize they have this
ideological commitment to cutting medicaid, and also the bill blows
up the deficit, and we've got to do something, and
we've got to appeel the fiscal hawks and the Libertarians

(02:01:39):
and the Caucus and whatever. So they are kind of
a mess on this issue because it's not really it
is dramatically if you pull cut some medicaid dramatically politically unpopular, yep.
And so you know, they just don't really know what
to do with that when they're out trying to talk
to regular people.

Speaker 3 (02:01:57):
So let's actually he wasn't talking to regular people, but
the vote went on who was doing Sunday Show messaging
to Crystal's point about GOP messaging discipline, And actually a
lot of people on the right were passing around this
clip is kind of a masterclass. But people on the
left this reminds me of the Vino clip we played
in the elon of Block and Crystal. People on the
left are passing this around as examples of doge Republican cruelty. Basically,

(02:02:23):
so let's go ahead and role Office of Management Budget
Director Russ Vote, who is now basically seen as the
policy mind that's driving DOGE. The administration is saying there's
really no one person now that Elon's kind of checked out,
there's no one person that's like the leader of DOGE.
But people generally see Russ as being the intellectual policy

(02:02:46):
mind of DOGE, and he's at OMB so he's kind
of managing the purse strings. He's very supportive of the
unitary executive theory. He's an extremely consequential person in this administration.
So watch, let's watch Russ vote yesterday.

Speaker 11 (02:02:58):
It's more about the NI eight and the NIH has
been a bureaucracy that we believe has been weaponized against
the American people. We saw that in COVID, the extent
to which it doesn't even know or is willing to
grapple with, the extent to which it funded the Wuhan
Institute through the Eco Health Alliance, and the fact that
they pay far more than even Bill Gates does for
indirect costs at all of the bureaucracy. So this is

(02:03:22):
something that is vitally important to be able to get
a handle on. And we're still going to give twenty
eight billion dollars.

Speaker 5 (02:03:26):
To the NIH.

Speaker 3 (02:03:28):
So that's him. With Dana Bash on CNN State of
the Union Sunday Show Crystal interesting in the context of
the point you made about generally being impressed with Republican
messaging discipline, what did you make of Russ as the
people like Joni Ernst are struggling with town halls. At
one point there was the director from Trump on down like,

(02:03:49):
just don't do town halls. The bills on the table
right now, dose is kind of over. So how do
you think the way Russ is talking is playing with
the public.

Speaker 2 (02:03:59):
Well, I think that the way Russ is talking is
the reason why there was some general public receptivity to
the project of DOGE, because you can point at things
at USAD that people are like, I don't know that
we really need to do that. You can obviously, you know,
NIH is a good example where you can point and
the abundance guys have critiques of like, oh, we should

(02:04:20):
be doing organizing our federal research and our science funding
this way. But now that you're on cleanup crew and
people have seen, oh, you're not just targeting like the
Wuhan Lab. You are gutting scientific research across the board
in a way that you know is going to have
generational impacts. No, those are not things that the public supported.

(02:04:41):
So if there was you know, if this was before
the fact and justification of Okay, why we're going to
come in and here's how we're going to do it,
and this is what it's going to look like. Yeah,
maybe you could have gotten some public support for that.
But now, like the bloom is off of the rows,
people have already seen the chainsaw. They're not going to
unsee the chainsaw and think that you're doing some limited, targeted,

(02:05:04):
effective cutting of just the pieces of the federal government
that they may have some sort of issue with.

Speaker 3 (02:05:10):
It's gonna be tough, And I wonder, you know, when
the history of this first administration has written ten plus
years from now, not like the next couple of years,
but ten plus years from now, how people see the
cause of like actually trinking like the conservative movements almost
central animating principle of cutting government because cutting government and

(02:05:35):
this is again the conservative argument, you know, that always
brings more freedom. So like any cut to the government
is more that abstract principle of freedom, like it's you're
feeding human freedom every time you cut the government. I
just wonder how this period changes that going forward, and
if the Republican Party looks more like the Bannon Republican

(02:05:56):
Party or the Eline Republican Party ten years from now,
based on all this, because right now, what the trying
to do, people like rest Boat are trying to marry
the two right, and that is what feels like is slipping.

Speaker 2 (02:06:09):
And it isn't just the Republicans who've been bought into
the I mean, Bill Clinton is the one who said
the era of big government is over, right, right, this
is really starts with Carter, you know, dabbles in it.
Reagan is obviously the you know, real ideological like full
realization of that ideology in government. Bill Clinton consolidates it

(02:06:30):
as a bipartisan project. And you know, and this is
the central question of the political moment we're living in
right now, is like that consensus is dead.

Speaker 4 (02:06:40):
What comes next is contested.

Speaker 2 (02:06:43):
And that's where the abundance conversation fits in of what, Okay, well,
what does the post neoliberal left offering look like? That's
where the I mean, personally, I think a lot of
abundance is neoliberal. But that's their conception is like Okay,
you know you've got this, You've got the oligarchy framing,
you've got the you know, the breaking up the anti

(02:07:06):
trust and corporate power framing, and then there's this question
of what is the role of government. The priorities and
values that are embodied in the Trump Big Beautiful budget
are basically a gutting of the social safety net, a
funding of the oligarchs and the wealthy, and a massive

(02:07:27):
expansion of the police state of the military industrial complex
with a huge Pentagon budget, and then a massive expansion
of ICE and the private prison detention centers that go
along with that. So that is the as embodied by
the Trump movement that is really their conception of government
power is that it does little in terms of providing

(02:07:49):
social services and does a lot in terms of, you know,
the sort of like surveillance and projecting power and fighting
wars and those sorts of things. I think the Democrats
and the leftmore broadly are really grappling right now with
what their conception of the federal government is ultimately going
to be. But I do think your right to focus
in on that is one of the key questions that

(02:08:10):
is being grappled with right now sort of across the
board politically in terms of arriving at whatever the new
political era and consensus is going to be.

Speaker 3 (02:08:18):
I actually think it's been a great few months for
democratic socialism in all seriousness. The pitch that Bernie Sanders
and Alexandro Kazuo Kortezer making.

Speaker 2 (02:08:24):
You see the receptivity was Zorn Mumdani, who had notice
challenging Cuomo in the way that he's been able to
whether he's able to pull it off or not for
New York City there.

Speaker 3 (02:08:32):
M hm. I think he's a great point. Chris. I
was so proud of us because we were we almost
wrapped the show on a timely basis, and that we didn't.

Speaker 2 (02:08:42):
We had to wax poetic about the about neoliberalism and
the waiting era and let girls be girls.

Speaker 4 (02:08:48):
They're a big government. There you go.

Speaker 2 (02:08:50):
All right, guys, Premium subscribers are going to get that
AMA live today.

Speaker 4 (02:08:53):
If you guys want to take part in.

Speaker 2 (02:08:55):
That, avail yourself of our free trial offer month free
please subscriber offer is back, so you know we'd love
to see you guys sign up and become part of
that so we can get your questions and interactive. That
was one of the promisings of the Premium subscribers is
interact with the hosts, so you will get to do
that more.

Speaker 4 (02:09:15):
If you are a premium subscriber.

Speaker 2 (02:09:16):
The promo code for the free monthly trial is BP
freeover at Breakingpoints dot com. Let's see today is Monday, Tomorrow.
I'm in with Marshall. Hell yeah, that's going to be
super fun. I'm looking forward to that. Such a smart guy.
Always enjoy his insights, so that'll be good. He's in
person too, right, he's in person. Amazing, it's awesome. Yeah,
and you and Ryan on Wednesday, Me and Ryan on Thursday,

(02:09:38):
Friday Show.

Speaker 4 (02:09:39):
That's the plan for the week.

Speaker 3 (02:09:40):
So gang's all here.

Speaker 4 (02:09:41):
We'll see you guys tomorrow.

Speaker 17 (02:10:06):
Shot, keep sh keep

Speaker 3 (02:10:53):
Shot.

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