7/10/25: Twitter CEO Resigns, Tucker Roasts Elon America Party, Trump Hits Brazil With 50% Tariff, Trump Threatens To Bomb Moscow

Krystal and Saagar discuss Twitter CEO resigns after Grok meltdown, Saagar and Tucker roast Elon America Party, Trump hits Brazil with 50% tariff, Trump threatened to bomb Moscow.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing
show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal did?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
We do? Many things unfolding in the world, So we
have Linda Yakarino out at Twitter amid many things going
on with Elon, so.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
We'll get into that.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Also, you get a clip from you on with Tucker
talking about the America Party, so we'll get into well,
it's thoughts, all of that stuff. Grock is doing, groc things,
et cetera. We also have some significant move moves with
regard to the tariffs, Trump levying a fifty percent of
tariff on versil ill because he does not like their
trials of JayR. Bolsonaro other wild moves going on there

(01:07):
as well. Additional terrorists put on a bunch of different countries.
We have Hakeem Jefferies panicking over Zorn's victory and what
could mean for him and his political future. John Stewart
with a good take on that. We've also got the
I've had it ladies who have had it with APEX
putting them on blasts. Pretty interesting watching these sort of
like normy liberal wine moms.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
Get radicalized on Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
So good thing.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
I'm enjoying that very much.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Speaking of Israel, we have Netanyahu in town and sat
down with the milk boys.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
We don't yet have clips from that, but.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
That is what are they doing? Steiny, all you other guys,
what are we doing? You guys want to play in
the news game. You release that ship immediately, but whatever, Oh,
that's it, that's the what's That's one of my gripes.
And you're gonna sit with a guy. You gotta gotta
go to release it. It's going to be dated at
this point. What are you guys doing? Yeah, playing around
with Zin or whatever, you know, making him what's a
stupid drink?

Speaker 1 (01:54):
They have happy something.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
I have no idea casual sit down with an indicted
war criminal.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
So that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Then we also have an interesting story with regard to
Amazon and online sales, potential indication of some.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Underlying trouble in the economy.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Prime day sales were down forty one percent on the
first day. Now there may be some other things going on.
They've apparently extended the prime period this time exactly applesabbles,
but there's some other indications that online shopping has dropped
as well, so we're going to take a look at
that too.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
That's right, and thank you very much too. There have
been a lot of people who've been joining the show recently,
between the Iran war, Tucker Carlson, all these other things
that are happening, especially trying to take a minute to
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(02:42):
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Speaker 1 (02:56):
We do know premium subscribers that there had been some.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Issues with ads on that unlisted YouTube link that we've
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Thank you very much to YouTube. But actually it's really
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(03:19):
enables all the work that we are able to do
here if you can help us out Breakingpoints dot com.
But with that, let's get to Elon Musk and the
resignation of Linda Yakarino, the two year long CEO previously
worked at NBC News known as the ad Guru, has
now stepping down. Let's go and put it up there
on the screen. What have we got from Linda after

(03:40):
two years, I have decided to step down as a
CEO of X. When Elon and I first spoke on
his vision, I knew it would be the opportunity of
lifetime to carry out this extraordinary mission. I'm immensely grateful
for him for trying and trusting me with the responsibility
of protecting free speech, turning the company around and transforming
it into the everything app Incredibly proud of the team
this store business turnaround we've accomplished together. It's been nothing

(04:03):
short of remarkable. And let's go to the next one.
Lyn A very terse response there from Elon Musk that
just simply says thank you for your contributions. So perhaps
it was an icy exit. Of course, we would be
remiss if we didn't say. It literally came the very
day after the meltdown that happened with Grock and the

(04:25):
removal of some of their woke filters. It led to
full on Nazism in the span of what four days.
I believe is that how long it took to devolve
into that. But it is a sign also of where
things may be going, you know, Crystal business wise for
Twitter and look, I mean, why does any of this
stuff matter? First of all, this is the elite conversation platform.

(04:45):
That's just kind of how it goes, especially for the
news business. A lot was made of it for the
Trump election. Of course, now we have the Elon and
the Trump break in their relationship. He says he's going
to start America Party. We're going to get to that
in a little bit. But more broadly, it actually is
still a technology store because you'll remember that x currently,
the way that they're juicing their valuation is by this

(05:05):
merger with Xai and actually GROC four, which is their
latest LLM model, is supposed to day.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
It's either today or tomorrow very soon.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
That's really the future that Elon is betting any potential
valuation and any modest possibility of him getting any money
out of the company ever. Again, so that's part of
the reason why the groc melt down just days before
the new release and the resignation of the CEO kind
of tells us the direction which Elon is trying to
take his company in that way, it's actually an interesting

(05:37):
business story as well, because it's kind of the bet
that he's making across both of his businesses, Tesla as well.
Tesla's sales right now are disaster, largely because of Elon,
but also because.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
They're not really releasing a lot of new models.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Elon is betting the house on future on self driving robotaxis.
That's actually all the future value expected of the company.
So if you look at those two things, he's basically
making a bet to try and transform these industries. But Twitter,
I mean, has always kind of been a business disaster.
I do want people to understand that part of the
reason they were the board of directors was so eagle

(06:10):
eager to sell to Elon is I mean, the company
just did not make that much money compared to Facebook
and or a Google. It punched them up its weight
in terms of the discourse. But obviously that didn't mean
a lot. So there's actually a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, well, and let's think about the things that Linda
Yakarino did put up with and was so you know,
I know, the timing with Grock going full Nazi Mecha
hitler as he was calling himself and apparently we'll show
you this later. Apparently was like actively sexually harassing.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, bury it.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
In addition to the will stancel rape fantasies that you
read for us on Arizager.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
I didn't read it all. You stopped at a credible yes,
I mean some music.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
But so I mean you look at that and you're like, Okay,
well maybe this was the final store.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Maybe it was.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
I have no particular insight into the inside of Twitter,
but you would think if the like Twitter devolvement into
like outright Nazism was a problem for her, then she
might have left earlier, because certainly there is just so
much overt.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Nazism on the timeline.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
These days that Groc just sort of fit in at
this point.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
So there's that.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
In addition, you recall when she I think this was
like in the early days after she was made CEO
of Twitter, Elon went and did that interview with Andrew
ross Orkin where he told advertisers to go fuck themselves.
And she had been explicitly brought in to like, you know,
she had all these relationships and she was going to
be the serious face and she was going to get
the business online and whatever, and that was apparently not

(07:34):
an issue for her. So to me, I think the
Okham's raiser of what's going on here is, you know,
she came in really the beginning of the Elon Trump
relationship and probably saw that as being something that would
be beneficial to her. Hey, being close to you know,
the president of the United States, that seems like something
that will benefit someone who is obviously a very ambitious,

(07:56):
career oriented person. Now that that relationship has crumbled and
Elon is going out to do his like, you know,
whatever the America Party is going to be and get
his four percent of the vote or whatever, she's no
longer feeling like this is a particularly beneficial place for
her to be and no longer worth putting up with.
You know, the AI bought inside of Twitter sexually harassing
her and things of that.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
It's definitely possible. And it just goes to show you.
I mean, this is part of the reason why Jack
I mean, if you talk when we had him on
the show a couple of years back, and yeah, you know,
he just always talking about this content moderation nightmare, and
this part of the reason nobody ever wanted to buy Twitter.
At one point in twenty seventeen, I want to say,
Disney was like this close to buying Twitter, bob Iger
and they were like, oh, well we can use it

(08:38):
for yeah. Yeah, they were like, we can roll it
into the Disney Empire and yeah, I know, actually I don't.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
I'm not really sure which would be worse.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
But my point is just that at the end of
the day, Iiger pulled the plug on the deal because
he's like, you know, this content moderation stuff is just
going to become a nightmare because he watched how Jack
had to deal with it, he watched how Zuckerberg was
getting called in, and he's like, I'd rather just kind
of do what we do here with, you know, juicing
a mini series episode nine on Star Wars or something

(09:07):
like that, and just we'll just keep going down that direction.
And this is part of the issue. And then Twitter
has caused an immense amount of problems for Elon's business.
I mean, Elon himself is also caused in that, but
just think about the massive value hits to Tesla. I mean,
you've got active investors and the board of directors reportedly
not very happy with Elon, even the ones that he
is stacked. I mean, you have to look at the
stock price, and you know, it doesn't take a genius

(09:28):
to figure out how much his political activities are linked
to all of these other intersections. Now you also have Twitter,
where previously you know, you could really rely on him
being like this maga, like demigod effectively. I mean, now
Donald Trump is directly in opposition to Elon and so
that's an open question of like where things are going
to go. You'll remember that Steve Bannon initially was very

(09:50):
critical of Elon Musk. He dialed that criticism back after
Trump told him to do so, but now he is
totally weapons free. Here is Steve Bannon reacting to Linda
Yakarino's resignation on War Room yesterday. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (10:04):
Hey, Linda, you can run, baby, but you can't. You're
not going to hide from the lawsuits.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Girl.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
We know why you're stepping down. And while you're running,
Elmo's out of control. Sorry, baby, that came with the job.
You took the job, you took, the pay, you took,
the warrants, you took, the stock options, took all. You know,
the hundreds of millions of dollars you're going to make. No,
if you can't keep Elmo in the nursery and keep
him under control, you're going to pay a price. You

(10:31):
are going to pay a price. It doesn't matter that
you're resigning today, baby. The whole complete scam of Elmo
is going to be taken apart, brick by brick, all
of it. You will be stunned at what you will
find out.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
So you know, he's basically threatening Elon's business there. Of
course Trump did as well. All of this also kind
of fits with this America Party thing, which I have
a lot of thoughts on this preposterous project, but I
mean it fits with Elon's like schizophrenic political development. Now
at this point, nobody's really sure what the break was.

(11:09):
I mean, you know, I guess a lot of it
stems and like personal grievances and him not getting his
NASA head. By the way, we have an interim NASA
head as of today's Sean Duffy, the Department's Transportation. Very
qualified for the job of course, yeah, former reality TV star.
I mean, look, whatever you know, Foreign Congressman. Maybe Elon
was right in terms of putting this guy into NASA,

(11:30):
even if it was going to be beneficial to SpaceX.
But beyond that, as we look at the company again
itself and where he wants to take whatever his political
project is, he's like openly in his searching mode. And
so for that he of course consults Curtis Jarvin. We've
talked about Curtis here on the show. Let's go and
put this up there on the screen from the New

(11:51):
York Times Teddy Schlipper, Actually very good piece because it's
not just about Curtis Jarvin. It's really a bore about
Elon's seriousness. He says here that Elon quote is studying
up on how to start a political third party. Among
the people for whom he has sought advice is Curtis Jarvin. Jarvin,
as we've talked about here, one of the most influential
people so called on the tech right, expressed distaste, as

(12:13):
they put it here, for traditional American democracy. But one
of the interesting things that they have described kind of
here is not only his consultant of Curtis, but actually,
and this is kind of what I talked about with
Tucker Carlson, is his reaching out to the consultant class
and some of the other people about trying to form

(12:36):
this part of how he's done his FEC launch and others.
And I mean Elon is literally the meme to me
of the fiscally conservative, socially liberal oligarch no labels.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I mean, this is no labels. That's who he is.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Like at this point, and you know, he seems to
believe because he's even said this. He has this like
inflated view of his own popularity where he's like, Trump
used me because of my popularity. I'm like, well, you know,
take a look at the Trump is more popular than
you are right now, at the very least in terms
of his political project.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
But it is just it's hilarious.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
In many ways. But it also shows that he's like
kind of spreading out and talking to anybody who really
will take you meeting remotely seriously.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yah.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
One of the people is apparently Andrew Yang. Andrew, we
love you man, stay away all right, Yeah, we love
you too much not to tell you to stay the
hell away from this guy.

Speaker 6 (13:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, and apparently after this meeting, you put a four
up on the screen apparently unfollowed Curtis Yarvin, So apparently
the meeting didn't go that well.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
You know, I were just both seculating that.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Jarvin probably was like, you know, this is really not
a great idea, and Elon, this is the the fragile
ego of the billionaire, let alone the richest man on
the planet, and the wild ways in which these people operate.
Like any normal person launching some sort of massive undertaking,
like starting a brand new party, you might like talk

(14:00):
to these folks beforehand, you know, and you might like
reach out to a consultant and upholster. You might have
some idea about what ballot access leots know, we're just
gonna announce it and then we're gonna go and figure
out what the fuck we're doing and like very likely
totally crash into the rocks.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Have your CEO quit?

Speaker 2 (14:18):
I mean, it's just and this is the this is
not just how he operates. I was telling Emily, I
watched the Titan submersible Netflix dock all about stopped and brush,
you know, and the personality traits to me are so similar,
except Elon has at least the sense to not send
himself into his rocket ships that blow up, right. But
it's the same thing. It's like the rules don't apply

(14:40):
to me. It's this disconnect from reality where you think
that just like the laws of physics and the universe
don't even apply to you. You can just do things
however you want. You surround yourself with yes men and women.
So anyone who tells you like Curti Yarvin apparently did
something you don't want to hear. That's it there. You
unfollow them, you push them out of your life. And

(15:00):
because you're a multi multi multi billionaire, you know you
are surrounded by there are plenty of people who want
to be that sick a fant and to exist in
your circle and tell you whatever it is that you.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
Want to hear.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
I mean, this is why I think billionaire should not exist.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
I think they are inconsistent with democracy.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I think we have had like a huge lesson in
that if there were ever any doubt before, because these
people are not like us the way they operate in
the world. They're complete disconnect from reality. It is not
like us, and they do not have the same interest remotely.
So you know, the launch of this haphazard launch of
this America Party is just another example of that. And

(15:41):
you know, I think it's going to be a mess.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Obviously.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
I don't think it's going to like supplant the Republican
Party or whatever. But that doesn't mean that it can't
be also be impactful in a couple of Senate races
or a couple of House races here and there, where
maybe you're pulling a few percentage points and that's enough
to ship. I mean, it could serve as a spoiler
in a few races, and that could be significant given

(16:03):
how tight the margins are in both.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
The House and the Senate.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
It's possible if it even gets to that point, we
should all say, yeah, yeah, it's a huge if let's
put a six please up on the screen. This is
from Karris Wisher, who is controversial figure I guess in
the technical community, but you know she has a lot
of relationships so anywhere.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Here's what she says.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
This is the first time we've put a thread.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, that's right. This is the first time history up here.
The Mecca Hitler controversy was not it by the way,
I guess she sided with Trump over Musk. Also, without
the Trump card, it was likely going too hard to
shake down advertisers with the threat of loss. And finally,
Threads is close to being as big as X along
with competitors like Blue Sky. I'm not so sure about
that latter one or not there. And you know, you know,

(16:46):
I should say it could be possible because you and
I we use Twitter very differently, probably than the vast
majority news gathering and its political conversation, and that is,
you know, a big punch above the weight of where
Twitter has. But there's a lot of other people use
Twitter for sports, you know, pop culture memes, whatever, you know.
Apparently people who really like to watch reality TV like

(17:08):
to go on Twitter and like you know, live tweet
and talk about stuff like that. So I could see
how maybe it could be supplanted in that way. But
as of right now in politics, like it doesn't exist
to the extent that there is a so called competitor.
It is Blue Sky, even that I'm pretty skeptical of
seems a bit more of like an echo chamber than anything.
Maybe it's an important intro left, but that's not the
same thing as being like, you know, broadly able to

(17:29):
reach everybody. Anyway, put all this stuff together, that's where
Elon is with a step doun of the business.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
This is a big technology development.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
It is one which tells us a little bit about
both him, where his so called movement or whatever and
all of that is going. And we should keep an
eye on it because could you know, he played a
huge role in the election. You can't deny that he
spent two hundred million dollars and if he does use Twitter,
you know. I actually I'm curious for your take on
the whole Rock thing, because outside of, you know, the

(17:57):
whole filter manipulation thing, I mean, that is a pretty
naked view into how easy it is for them to
put their you know, thumb on the scale. You can
put it in whatever direction you want. It's terrifying. It
is terrify because it's like you just remove this filter
or whatever, you change the algorithm, and then immediately I mean,
I'm sure you see this. There are a lot of
people who you should not do this, but who use

(18:19):
Rock or any other LMS as just like a verifier.
They'll be like, hey, is this true something like that,
and it will go and I'll be like, oh, okay,
thank you. But they don't really go and check this
stuff for themselves. And it's like, well, if it's that
easy to get it to turn itself into Mecca Hitler
after four days, I mean, you can just imagine like
what sort of like information crisis that would lead to.
Now I'm not saying, you know, I'm not calling for

(18:39):
laws or whatever about misinformation. I'm just showing people here,
like this is a very naked example of how easy
it is to go down this path. If you do
own this massive social media platform, which is highly impactful
at very least for elites and especially intra right wing discourse,
you could at the very least have some impact, right
if it tells what if it doesn't tell you where
your polling place is when you ad you know, I mean,

(19:00):
what if that's one of the only places that people
go to. I can come up with a variety of examples.
You know, they did a study on Facebook years ago
that they if they wanted to, they could increase both
share by like one or two percent, which is literally
Trump's margin of victory in the popular vote. So there
you go.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
American people are very uncomfortable with the development of AI.
I think it's another area that there is a profound
disconnect between the elites of both parties, but especially with
the Trump administration at this point with regard to hey,
let's just make it the wild Wild West and let's
race to AGI and we got to beat China and
no holds barred, very large disconnects. It's something like I

(19:35):
had the polling it's like seventy plus percent of Americans
and quite bipartisan, who are like, we need some more
regulation here, Like we're concerned about where this is going,
and who could blame them because they should. You know,
you've got you've got the labor, the work concerns, you've
got the we're just like shutting off parts of our
brain now concerns.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
In the same way we outsourced our navigational skills to GPS,
now we're outsourcing like our entire thinking and research, Yeah,
to this technology. What is that going to mean for humanity?
And then you have the more terrifying dystopian scenarios, which
is like they changed a couple prompts in you know,
for Groc's instructions, and suddenly Groc is like, we should

(20:14):
gas all the juice.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
I mean, that's what happened.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
And they're connecting the shit to killer robots, you know,
via Palteer in these other defense tech companies. Yeah, I
think we need to think about what the hell we're
doing here, because it is terrifying.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
I mean, on the one hand, of.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Course, it's like it's a funny and ridiculous development that
they tried to make an anti like a non woke
AI and it instantly turns into mecha Hitler. But it's
also deadly serious when you're talking about technology that the
people who are developing it they want it to be
so transformative that all of human labor will become unneeded.
That this is the technology that is so transformative that

(20:47):
people like Peter Teel who believe in transhumanism want us
to merge with this stuff and for the human race
to effectively be no longer or be evolved into some
new like hybrid human and tech conglomerate.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
So yeah, I think it's totally agree. I find it
very concerning.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
I totally agree.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
I was actually so.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
I mean, I wish I hadn't been out for the
whole build back Better thing, but or not build back
better bill. If you've been around long enough, you remember
different bbbs here in Washington. But yeah, that was actually
a good controversy over that ten year ban on. AI mean,
I can't believe they tried to slip that in there. Unbelievable.
But it does show all of this, So just keep

(21:26):
it in mind we're using chat, GPT, any of these alms.
Do not outsource your thinking, because you can just see
how easy it is for them to manipulate you. There's
already all those stories about people like you know, interacting
with chat GPT or lonely and they think it's like
a spirit god and it convinces them to like lose
their mind. I mean, look, I know this stuff sounds crazy,
but at scale, a lot of humans are crazy. And

(21:46):
if you use it in nefarious directions, if even two
to three percent of people get swayed or into believing
this is like a religious biggers, that's a lot. I mean,
that's what millions of the entire US population. So anyways,
keep that in mind. Now onto the America Party, which
is again one of the most cringe worthy efforts I've

(22:07):
literally ever seen. It is hashtag no Labels incarnate and
Tucker asked me about it whenever I was on his show,
so we thought we'd play a clip. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 7 (22:17):
We need an America Party and I'm running it. Where
does this is he serious? Where does this go?

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Filed it with the FEC. I would give some caution
to elon Tucker. You and I've seen a lot of
rich people come and go in Washington as the consultancy.
You coming from a mile away, mister fiscally conservative socially liberal.
I'm just going to put that out there, the Bipartisan
Policy Center and all these other people. They've rolled up
that entire market. They have plenty to sell you. I
mean the irony is if Elon's politics were more reversed

(22:46):
in this sense, I actually think it would be onto something.
So if you were to marry those three issues about
immigration restriction, about focus on quality of life, cost of living, healthcare,
and also just broadly about restructuring our economy for pretty
deductive purposes that distributes not through socialism but through a
well ordered and a well regulated capitalism that distributes the

(23:08):
benefit across all sectors of our society. Now that's an
America party I could get on board with totally. But
there's no funding for that, right, so's some of that up.

Speaker 7 (23:15):
And said, I'd like an economy where you don't have
to hire an illegal alien to raise your kids. Your
wife can stay home and raise your kids if she
wants to, And most women do want to for the
period when they're little, I mean want to. Most women
want that, and every survey shows that. So if you
were to say that, in other words, if you were
to respond to the desire of the majority, probably be
shot to death.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
So anyway that Krik Crystal, we were welcomed to weigh
in since you weren't there to participate. But that was
my take on the America Party.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think the this is so important
to understand the polling on this. Lots of Americans. You
asked them, are you satisfied with the two party system?
They're like, absolutely? Do you want a party left by
the richest man on the planet that is based around
fiscal conservative I don't. People keep saying socially liberal. Is

(24:07):
evel On socially liberal? At this point, it doesn't seem
like that to me.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
It depends on the definition.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
But and here's the.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Thing, is like he just wants it to be another
cult of personality for him. So I don't even think
there's real ideological content here because even on the fiscal
conservative thing, he doesn't have any fiscal conservatism when it
comes to his own subsidies. He wants the government to
serve him and his interests and those of his oligarch
buddies and to revolve around him. I mean, that's really

(24:32):
what it is is a let's have a different cult
of personality than the one of Trump. Let's have one
that revolves around me and whatever my particular interests are
that serve my business, you know, my business.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
I want to bring in all the South African Boer migrants.
I want h one vices, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
I want low taxes for me, and I want all
these subsidies, and I want to crush my competitors.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
I mean, that's what this party is.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
So even to give him the credit of some sort
of like consist it's an ideological project here. I don't
even think that that is like that is like too kind.
That's a good one he's actually launched.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
The only thing he seems really committed to is this
like debt doomerism, which is common. It's like a very common,
like billionaire thing. And I understand where it comes from,
which is that they have to run businesses and so
that you actually just can't conceive of like a of
a government that doesn't have a balance sheet. And that's,
in my opinion, one of the most destructive ways to
think about a government, because governments are not businesses, nor

(25:28):
should they be. We're a global empire, you know, the
idea that the global reserve currency and all of that
has to abide by the balance sheet rules of a
publicly traded corporation is preposterous, has been preposterous for two
hundred years now. At this point, literally nobody you know,
runs there any major country that way. But I even
put that aside, it's like this idea from Elon basically

(25:49):
comes down to, you know, absidies whenever I want them.
This whole idea of like this radical centrism which we
saw from people like Joe Manchin, you know, and others,
And I've just seen this no labels bipartisan policy center
type project just exist for probably my entire life and
especially all my time here in Washington. And if we
all think about it, like what are the things that

(26:10):
the party when the parties agree, it's usually like the
worst thing ever, right, it's like support for Israel or
I don't know, like a coup in Venezuela or more
funding for Ukraine. On economics, I'm trying to think they'd
be like, oh, yeah, let's I mean the snap program
or something.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
I know there's some you know, beef that.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Or cut reforming social security. They're be like, well, we
don't want to kick people off, we just want to
raise retirement age. Or if we go back to twenty
fifteen and the original talks between Barack, the Obama administration
and the Republicans.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Like that's where real bipartisanship was.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Whereas again, if you look at an actual breakdown of
like so called you know what an America Party or
all of that would be at least for where it
is right now. I think we have some polling we're
going to talk about on Friday, or at least Emily's.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I saw sent this.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's like people, I think it's fifty seven percent or
something of Americans describe themselves as quote economically liberal, something
like sixty percent describe themselves as like some sort of
immigration restriction are agreeing with that? And then I mean
the healthcare polling doesn't take a genius to go in
to look at that. That's kind of where the real
American middle is. But each one of those is kind
of radical in its own way. And so if you

(27:15):
were to call yourself like a quote radical centrist, that's
where things would be with Elon. You know, you not
only have the cult of personality aspect in terms of
the actual things that he believes. It's like a hoavier
Malay like libertarian. It's like this is not popular, right,
you know in America. Like, by the way, look, you know,
there was a lot of talk initially about Argentine. Argentina
right now is a disaster if people want to go
and check it out. By the way, their birth rate

(27:35):
is plummeting. Oh thanks to uh all right, there's a
variety of reasons of that, but you can go and
look just broadly at how people there societally are reacting
that this whatever disaster capitalism or whatever you want to
call it, does not seem to be working nearly as
well as even whatever disaster was coming before it. But
that's kind of Elon's solution to whatever the you know,

(27:57):
whatever is wrong. What he thinks with the publican party
is like he's so concerned about the debt limit or whatever.
But as you point out, I mean, this is a
person who has gotten billions of dollars in government stops.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Somebody did the math.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
I forget exactly what percentage or how the company would
have even existed in the previously Yeah, without being able
to say it almost certainly would have died. Yeah, without
significant government assistance.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
That's so specifically.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Obama really helped to rescue out a time that was
very perilous for that company.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
I mean, look, he's like, he's pissed off that he
didn't get his NASA guy so he could get his goodies.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
From the government.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
I mean, that was part of the breakup with Trump, right,
So in terms of you know, these hardcore fiscal conservative principles,
even that is a bit lacking when it comes to
his own companies. But you know, on economics, they polled
zoron Mamdani platform. Every single thing that he campaigned on,
like his core promis is wildly popular, not just in

(28:51):
New York City where it's even more popular, but with
the entire public. You know, I think the least popular
one was like the free buses, and that was still
polling at fifty nine percent or something like that.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
So that those sorts of.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Policies when you're talking about economics are the actual center
of American people. I just saw polling on Medicare for All.
It's at like fifty nine percent support and something like
thirty percent it's still skeptical on something like thirty percent
of pose. So I mean that's you know, that's very
different from what Elon is. And again, what Elon is
proposing is just a culture personality of whatever it is

(29:24):
that he's into that particular day, Harry Anton did a
breakdown of some of the polling and why it can
be misleading, just to you know, take for granted, Oh,
there's so many Americans that are dissatisfied with the two
party system. But if you dig a level deeper, it
gets much more complicated.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Very quickly, let's listen to that.

Speaker 6 (29:43):
What is the size of Elon musk space. Well, I
calculate it to be about four percent, just four percent,
one two three, four percent of all voters. What is
that base made up of, Well, it's those who view
Elon Must favorably and the GOP unfavorably. We're talking just
about four percent of all voters out there. Because it
turns out most of the people who like Elon mus
already liked the GOP already. That is, they already have

(30:06):
a party for him. And we will note Americans with
an unfavorable view i e. Essentially that Must starts off
with far more against him than Ross pro Ever did
Americans with an unfavorable view of Ross Paro was only
fourteen percent back in nineteen hundred and nine.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Two.

Speaker 6 (30:20):
Now, the vast majority of Americans are already against elonmus
fifty eight percent. So what we're essentially saying here is
that Elon mus is going to go into electorate that
already dislikes him, is already against him, while there were
far more people who are open to the idea of
a ross paro third party or independent candidacy as compared
to an Elon Musk third party in which the vast

(30:42):
majority of Americans have already cided against the man. Since
nineteen hundred and seventy, just zero point two percent of
all winners of all winners were either third party, independent
or righted. We're only talking about twenty four out of
over thirteen thousand WI. The bottom line is third party independence,

(31:03):
they just don't succeed.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, And I mean there's a there's a like Obviously,
we've talked about third parties and how possible it is
in I mean American The American political system is rigged
against third parties. That is the way that it is
set up, and so it is very difficult to succeed
outside of these you know, edge cases. You're a Bernie
Sanders in Vermont, you are you know.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
You caucuses with the Democrat with the Democratic rising and
random right and random.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
The Democratic primary. Yeah, And I mean, the the other
thing that's actually interesting right now is if you were
to go in the political landscape of where there's the
most opportunity, Republicans are very happy with the Republican Party. Yes,
that's right, Trump is. They love Trump, They're with him.
They're happy with Trump as the leader of the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
They feel great.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
And now, so Elon obviously has aligned himself with the
more conservative part of the political spectrum. Democrats, on the
other hand, are disgusted with Democratic Party leadership, which is
kind of a house of cards at this point. So
even in terms of where you would locate yourself on
the political spectrum, the whole thing is ft. And you know,
just to take it back to his business interests, I
think in a sense he's in real trouble because if
you think about SpaceX now you got Sean Duffy in there.

(32:12):
You'll remember that cabinet meeting where Elon was in there
and got into.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
It a little bit with oh yeah, that's right, Yeah,
it was Sean Duffy.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
He publicly was like feuding with and they clearly so.
Putting Sean Duffy in at NASA is like a direct
kind of fu to Elon. So SpaceX is very dependent
on federal government contracts, so that's an issue for SpaceX.
Twitter has never been an economically sound investment. It was

(32:39):
more about power and projection and propaganda. I think it's
been effective with regards to that. But now you've got
Linda Yakarina out Yakarina out the analysis from car Switcher
that like, hey, you're not going to have the threat
of lawsuits through your alliance with Trump against advertisers something.
I think that's an accurate point. So Twitter is a
business prospect is just totally host and Tesla is screwed.

(33:01):
Like Elon was such an important part of the Tesla brand,
and now you have alternatives. In most of the world,
there are many other and most you know, Chinese electric
vehicles that are superior to Tesla that you.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Have access to.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Now Here we don't have those, but the major car
companies are turning out EV's and there are alternatives that
are you know, at least close to approximate to what
Tesla is. You're losing the EV subsidies you know from
the One Big Beautiful Bill, which I think those should
stay in place. But those are gone now, and your
brand is now completely toxic with like the affluent liberals

(33:36):
who were buying your car, and then the potential new
market of like you know, right wing conservatives who love
Trump and loved you. You've now tanked yourself with them
with your war with Trump, Like where is this going
to go? And your product line is stale and you
haven't been focused on actually delivering for consumers and creating
a product that's like irresistible people. The cyber truck is
one of the biggest vehicular buffs in history.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Mostly because of Elon. By the way, that's I genuinely
think it's fault because it had a lot of hype
whenever it initially.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, apparently a bunch of like rental car agencies are
buying them because they're all really hey, so it's got
decent range.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Honestly, it wouldn't be a bad thing to rent you
on vacation.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
My daughter is Sally. She must have heard this on
like YouTube short and something. She was like, don't be
mad at everyone who's who's driving a cyber truck, mommy,
because they may have just rented it, like been stuck
with it from the rental car company.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Very smart, and hey, it's got some luggage storage. I
might be checking that out the next time after we are,
especially if they'll give me a discount. But I'll just
put it. I'll put it like this, which is with
elon the America Party, et cetera. And I know, you know,
I've broadly found people can get upset when we talk
about the third parties in a denigrating way. But look

(34:46):
at Zorn, the guy won the Democratic primary, Look at Trump.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
You know the.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Model is there is you have to come in and
kind of blow up an existing political party for your
own purposes. The Democrats are in there too, ty fourteen moment.
They are ready to be destroyed, all right. Hakeen Jeffreys
is John Bayner Schumer is, Yeah, Schumer is like the
perfect example of a leader who can easily be kno

(35:13):
ritint or something. There's not like a direct comparison, but
you know, these guys are running scared and they're a joke,
and the Democratic base is upset. You could never been
more rife for a Trump moment than right now in
the party. And if you look at the history of
new political parties, it really takes like a singular issue
to blow everything up, and a lot of people really
forget that. I mean, you need like a slavery type

(35:35):
issue to actually destroy a party. We don't have that
right now. Then there's not like one single defining axis
of American crisis at this moment. There are intra party
wise as in, like in the Democratic Party, it's about
exuding some fight and wanting to win. On the Republican side,
it was a big one. I'm not sure if it's
there quite yet, but immigration was how the right turn

(35:56):
on the axis of immigration. That's where everything really turned around.
And there was a lot of other stuff that came
with it. But you know, on the Democratic side, Israel
is a big one. There's a lot of like vibe
elements to it as well. But I h that's fine,
there's something wrong with that. My point is just that
we don't have something that crosses those two in which
they're both theyreconcilable on those two issues, like breaking apart,

(36:17):
which would allow people to converge on a single party
like the original Republican Party under Lincoln, which remember was
a new party at their own time. That's really what
broke up Wiggery. And you know, you just have to
look at that history and say we don't have that
right now. Pero came close, and he did try, and
he's the goat for that reason. Is he kind of
centered it around global trade and the reordering of our

(36:38):
economic system with NAFTA.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
But unfortunately people were.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Basking too much in the glow of the nineteen nineties
and they weren't willing to listen. If he ran today,
I actually think you'd be a wildly popular Republican. But yeah,
it's unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Nick conten analysis that was basically like, you know, if
the two if the Republicans and the Democrats really fully realigned,
where the Republicans are truly like the national populace, which
they're not, and the Democrats are truly like a sort
of democratic socialist, which they're definitely not, then you might
have space for this like return to liberalism.

Speaker 4 (37:07):
Kind of a party.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
But he yeah, I mean I share your skepticism, and certainly,
given where we are right now, where the neoliberals still
have plenty of purchase within both political parties, it's, you know,
the time is not we don't need a neoliberal resurgent
party because they still have plenty of power within both
of the two major parties.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Let's get to Trump.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Let's do it, shall We had lots of news here
with Donald Trump, some major moves in particular on tariffs
and on Ukraine a few other things. So Trump has
given us some great insight into his thinking on his
terror formula.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
You recall previously.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
There was basically chat GPT type formula, which, by the way,
not even a good chat GPT formula. It was the
easiest chat GPT formula that you were able to do.
I got a much more sophisticated one and I only
took only five minutes. But here is Trump revealing for
the first time how the formula is being used. Let's
sick a list.

Speaker 8 (38:09):
The formula was a formula based on common sense, based
on deficits, based on how we've been treated over the years,
and based on raw numbers. But they're based on very
very substantial facts and also past history.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
The formula is based on the formula.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
It just has common sense going.

Speaker 4 (38:31):
That is, I'm gonna tell you what those fact based.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
On very substantial facts. Now, in particular, what the formula
it really is is whatever Trump kind of wants it
to be. So let's go and put this one up
there on the screen is probably the most significant one
that dropped us yesterday. Trump has now hit Brazil with
a fifty percent tariff, it says in part due to
the trial of higher Bolscenaro.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
So for those who don't.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Know, you know, Trump has been tweeting more recently about Bolsonnaro,
who obviously is on trial inside of Brazil. He also
kind of cited digital censorship and free elections here. So
for example, he says, Trump and the letter do in
parts two Brazils and citious attacks on free elections and
the fundamental free speech rights of Americans as illustrated by
the Brazilian Supreme Court and its secret and unlawful censorship

(39:15):
orders with US platforms. We will charge Brazil a tariff
of fifty percent. Please understand, the fifty percent number is
far less than what is needed to have a level
playing field and we must have with your country. It
is necessary to have this directify the grave injustices of.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
The current regime.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
And he additionally cites the prosecution there of Bolsonaro. Now,
this is obviously a beef kind of longcoming, but the
question is about whether it's actually going to be effective
and what this will mean inside of Brazil. Keep in
mind Bolscenaro. I mean, yes, he lost, but it wasn't
like a terrible loss. And I remember we had glenn

(39:50):
On at the time where even though Lula did win,
the Bolsonaro I forget exact name for it, but the
Bolsonnaro party itself actually did quite well throughout Brazil. So
it's not like they actually don't have their own vibrant
political system. The real question is about how this will
be met by Brazilians, and I think that is obvious
from a lot of the tariff blowback that.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
We saw in the early days of the administration.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Canada, for example, becoming overwhelmingly like nationally popular, Trump basically
nuking the Conservative Party inside of Canada, Mexico, Claudia Scheinbaum
very popular when standing up to the United States. Japan,
by the way, I just saw a statement from a
senior Japanese official inside of the government for the LDP
party who was like Trump is a bad person or

(40:34):
something like that is crazy, Like they don't talk that
way internal Japanese politics. Is a very high ranking person
allied with the government. This is after we just hit
them with their twenty five percent tire of Korea is
also having similar kind of nationalists upright, they're upset obviously
about the way that they're being treated. So I think
that the potential the irony is that well, yeah, I

(40:54):
mean I remember that social media case. It was outrageous.
I don't know all the specifics around the bulls. I'm
not an expert on the Brazilian legal system and whatever
they want to do, like go forwar, it's not particularly
my business. But I think that the question about if
we actually wanted to achieve these goals and what they
would look like are open right now. At a time
where it wasn't that long ago, we were very concerned

(41:15):
that Brazil and Lula, because he is not you know,
is much more of an internationalist figure, willing to speak
out against you know, the consensus on Gaza, and also
willing to do a lot of trade with China. This
would seem like the perfect example of something it might
actually put them in a different direction because China doesn't care.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
At all about what they do with all on Ukraine
as well. Of course, Yeah, that's right, I remember that
this is insane. It's insane, it's actually outrageous. Okay, First
of all, this is a president who tells you he's
America first, and the impact of putting fifty percent tariffs
on Brazil is going to be higher prices on you.
So effectively, he's putting a tax on you in order

(41:52):
to help out his buddy in Brazil. Okay, number two,
you don't have to know all the ins and the
outs to know, as Zagricha said, like they can do
in their country what they want to do.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
Recall this as also the man.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Who went and gave a speech about how we weren't
going to lecture other countries, we weren't going to enforce
our own views on other countries, and might relate that
I mean, and immediately he turns around and, you know,
does the complete opposite of that fifty percent terrorists because
he's mad that I mean, Bolsonaro tried to do a
coup and overthrow the election, and that is one of

(42:26):
the things that he is being prosecuted for right now,
and that is the reason that he has been banned
from running in the next presidential election.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
Now, again, I am not an.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Expert on exactly what went down and the status of
these court cases whatever, but it seems like within the
realm of reasonable that if you have someone who engineers
a coup and tries to overthrow election, an election that
maybe they should be barred from running for that office
again in the future. From the political perspective, it's also

(42:55):
completely insane in terms of like the goals you want
to effectuate.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
So first of all, you're very likely.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
To have a rallying around Lula, who actually has been
sliding in the polls and was in a bit of
political trouble.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
So this could easily very possible.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
I was talking to want to Bead Rojas about this
very possible that this rescues Lula and bolsters his polls
as he heads into his next election. It's not clear
if he's running out whatever, put that aside, but could
very much bolster Lula politically. In addition, you have Trump
picking this fight with the bricks nation of which Brazil
is the bee in bricks there, over their movement towards potential,

(43:32):
you know, an alternative currency system, potential dedollarization. What do
you think the impact of this is going to be.
It is going to be to further push these countries
into the arms of China.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
So you can't rely on these people. These people are insane.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
You're just now levy of fifty percent tariff on us
because you don't like what our court system is doing,
Like get out of town?

Speaker 4 (43:51):
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (43:53):
So it's so counterproductive, idiotic, illogical, outrageous on every single
level that you can hardly wrap your head around the
type of mind that would come up with this.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Well, I mean, in particular for me, it's just look,
I don't know. I mean, I remember there were a
lot of concern about censorship and all that via Brazil.
I don't disagree with any of the other thing. That's fine,
you know, if we want, and I believe I believe
we at least got some resolution or something on that.
But for me, the Bolscenaro thing, again, I don't know
about the case. I know that there was some brujha
or whatever and they're banning him from all of that,

(44:27):
but I don't really care what they do. You know,
in their own country, you do what you want to do.
If you guys are upset about it, then you can
overthrow your own government. You don't go for it. But
as Rojas actually points out, you know, with the Brazil's
export partners, the fifty percent tariff, it'll hurt, but it
won't be devastating, in particular because Brazil already was at
least pursuing somewhat the so called brick strategy. And in fact,

(44:49):
actually just yesterday, you know, the Chinese government announced trade
agreements with ten different countries in the Asia Pacific, many
of whom were actually hit by a tariff by the
United States almost in the same week. Now, those are
the things that actually concerned me the most. I'll also
show you another example. Let's put B four up on

(45:09):
the screen.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Please.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
On copper. Trump says, quote, I am announcing a fifty
percent tariff on copper effective August first, twenty twenty five,
citing the national security reasons for semiconductors and all of
these other industries that are reliant on copper.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Now, okay, listen, I think I said this yesterday.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
That's fine as long as we have a vibrant copper
industry here in the US and we're able to I
don't know, spin up production and we've given a bunch
of tax credits to the copper industry. We didn't do
any of that with the latest bill. That's the problem.
And so you know, copper Ryan said yesterday that this
is a boon to all of the people who rip

(45:48):
copper out of abandoned houses was aka drug addicts, by
the way, So congratulations all the fentanyl addicts out there
who are stealing copper off of job sites and other things.
But if you pair that with where we are right now,
it's probably just going to lead to a higher price,
you know, by the way, for home construction and all
of that good luck you know, for renovators and other things,
is going to massively increase their overall supply.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
What's also, can we put.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
The next one up here because this fits with what
I was talking about, the haphazard nature in which this
is all going into effect. You can see here all
of the different tariffs that were just announced by the
President in the last two days. The Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Japan,
South Korea, Malaysia. I mean, a number of those countries
I just listed just signed a trade agreement there with China.

(46:31):
You've got Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, who even rules
Libya by the way, you know what we what business
do we do? Bosnia, South Africa, Indonesia, Bungladesh, Serbia, Tehraan, Cambodia.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
Iraq reparations not start terrafs.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, Thailand, Cambodia, Me and mar Laos.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
I mean the thing is, again, let's just return if
we thought to the original strategy. Because I've been here
around for the pivot to Asia for my entire time
here in Washington. The idea was is to take many
of the countries I just listed Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines,
South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and turn them into places where
the United States can continue to do business in the

(47:10):
Asia Pacific and move production out of China. This is
specifically why Vietnam is such an important trading partner, and
at the very least we did sign some sort of
trade agreement with them.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
There's a lot of problems which passed.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Through shipping et cetera and circumventing tariffs, which I totally understand,
but that was the basic proposal. That's why it's just
ridiculous to be's hitting a twenty percent tariff on the
Philippines or on Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, highly developed nations
which are traditionally very good friends here, you know, with
the United States, important production houses in their own right,

(47:44):
and it's just contrary to any sort of like moving
away and outsourcing from China. It's just haphazard, and it's
one that basically just fits with the whims of Trump himself.
And the more that it's like that, the more likely,
of course America is likely to turn against tariffs because
they can see that it has no real purpose, and
the more the likelihood is to actually just vindicate all
these neoliberals because the prices are just going to go up.

(48:06):
We're going to talk about Amazon here in a little bit,
but we're are you seeing some precarious signs? It's funny too,
I've seen people will be like, see, you should have
trusted Trump's plan on tariff's all along.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
I'm like, guys, he backed down on the tariffs. That's
the only reason why the economy is fine. If they
go back into effect, then all the original doom scenarios
will come true. Like what are we doing here?

Speaker 4 (48:23):
Now?

Speaker 2 (48:24):
You know it's insane and I just just to go
back to pursue for one more moment, like who are
we to be lecturing anyone about censorship at this point?

Speaker 3 (48:31):
As well? Discretion?

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Like who are we we're kid dapping students off the street?
For a freaking on ed you and you think you
have any moral high ground to stand on when it
comes to censorship, like get out of here. So and
also again, by the way, if they want to have
different laws regarding that, then we do. That is their
right and they get to work it out in their
own democratic system, which seems to be actually functioning more

(48:52):
effectively than our stusts at this point.

Speaker 6 (48:54):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
It's total and complete insanity. The whole thing it is
is so devastating to any sort of you know, any
ideology which you and I both share of desiring, like
industrial policy and thoughtful protectionism, like you know, like the
copper thing on its own, if you had some strategic Okay,
here's what we're gonna do, and here's the policy by
and here's the you know, the subsidies that are going

(49:16):
to help build this American industry with Okay, I'm open
to that. But this is just this is just insanity
and chaos. And while to Trump's face, a bunch of
these countries will kowtow and almost a president and can
we get a Nobel piece price for you or whatever,
behind the scenes they are all talking and collaborating and
figuring out how they can move on from being like

(49:37):
in this abusive relationship, which is exactly what this is
at this point.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
It's a big problem and it also just shows you know,
Trump can flip around on a dime all the time.
I mean, more recently, let's move We're going to move
on to the Ukraine part. Ryan and I talked about
this yesterday, but you can actually watch in real time
how the Ukraine policy of Donald Trump has gone from
I want to stop the dying. We need to stop

(50:02):
sending all this money to Ukraine because it's depleting US
stockpiles to I'm just going to have it solved all
in one day before I even take office, to talks
with Putin and the Russian government to basically just recreating
the Biden policy, where Trump is thinking about signing the
Lindsey Graham Sanctions.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Bill more sanctions out to do it.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
It's definitely not the most sanctioned country by the United
States ever, right, and more weapons to Ukraine. Oh, I'm
sure that'll be a solution for the Ukrainians that definitely
is going to be able to beat back the Russians.
As the Ukrainians continue to lose territory.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Oh that's right.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Actually, remember that nice minerals deal that we signed.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Well, the Russian just took a.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Massive lithium field yesterday, so oh okay, oops, forget It
might have been better to sign some peace deal or
something earlier, even if you're just looking out for American interests.
But that's where Trump is now. And perhaps the reason
is that Putin sees Trump as a massive bluffer. He
believes he doesn't really have to play ball with the
US real if he needs to, because he knows that

(51:02):
even to the extent of maximum realistic Ukrainian support, he
can just continue this war on forever. The last two
days in Ukraine have actually been some of the biggest
bombardments ever, over a thousand drones that have come down
in the city. He clearly doesn't care. And also he
believes here with Trump that he's not necessarily a useful negotiator.
So we had some actually interesting audio that just leaked

(51:24):
from Trump where he told people behind the scenes, I
believe this dreaming the campaign trail that he was quote
gonna bomb the shit out of Moscow if they continued
the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Let's take a listen and Putin.

Speaker 9 (51:36):
I said, if you go in to Ukraine bomb the
shit out of Moscow, I'm telling you, I had you
choose the publics the public public. So he does like,
I don't believe you, he said, he said no, way,
and I said way, and then he got it's like,
I don't believe you, but the truth does he believe

(51:57):
me ten percent.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
So that's what told people behind the scenes. But you know,
and this is the irony of this whole, like stooge
and all of this, the reality of the situation is
that Putin has a view which has really just not changed.
He's like, I want all of Ukraine to the extent
that I'm willing to talk. It's that we freeze where
things where they are right now. And the West is like, oh, well,

(52:19):
we need a defense treaty and we need to say
and he's like, no, we're not doing any of that.
My entire economy is around the war. You can either
take it or I'm just going to continue the war period.
End of story. And we just seem to like cycle
back to the same ridiculous position that we have started in.
It's just so ridiculous, in particular after we just blew
all this money on Israel and all of these weapons

(52:41):
stock piles. I don't know if you saw yesterday we
talked about with Ryan twenty five percent right now of
the patriot batteries, miss ammunitions that we need for US
plans are currently in stock. Trump is currently talking about
sending them over to Ukraine. That would deplete us even more,
Like what are we doing, especially after we blew a
ton of them on the more recent israelative. So it
just countered to like any sort of coherent project around

(53:05):
this thing. And here's Trump being asked yesterday, because of
the chaos around the pause, which has now been restarted,
don't worry everybody, the weapons are on their way to Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Here's what he had to say.

Speaker 8 (53:17):
Well, I haven't thought about it, because we're looking at
Ukraine right now and munitions. But no, I have not
gotten into it. If a decision was made, I will know,
I'll be the first to know. In fact, most likely
i'd give the order. But I haven't done that yet.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
So what he's talking about there is that originally there
was a pause put into place to pause the weapons.
Then Trump apparently according to him, didn't know about it
and came out and was like Oh no, actually, we're
going to restart it. But this just goes to show
that part of the reason I would even defend any
idea of a pause, because Crystal, doesn't that seem consistent
with the policy set by the administration. Why would the

(53:53):
president need to approve this thing that he said he
was going to do. This was a basic framework of
the Trump campaign and promises from the very first day,
so of course that would be the policy. And because
Trump is who he is, He's just switching things around
all the time. And then this morning I see Rubio
and Lavrover meeting in Malaysia.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
So I'm like, who the hell knows?

Speaker 4 (54:13):
Yeah, well, did you see?

Speaker 2 (54:14):
I mean this kind of fits with this idea of
like different factions of the administration are just sort of
freelancing and not coordinating and not running things up the chain.
There was there were two tracks to get a deal
with Venezuela.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, we talked about it yesterday.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
Oh did you talk about that? I missed it.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
To try to secure the release of some American prisoners
are being held by the Venezuelans, and you had Marco
Rubio offering one deal and then Gurnell offering a different
deal that was.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
A better deal right to the same guy. And so
what is going on here? Right?

Speaker 2 (54:46):
And so even though I think you're right that because
Trump was so clear about like we're going to do this,
and you know, I mean maybe it's now it's obviously
much less clear, but I think there was a justified
legitimacy to you know, the State Department and Bart being like, Okay, yeah,
this is the policy, and so we're going to pause
these weapons. At the same time, you do, like people
do need to know what's going on. There needs to

(55:07):
be some sort of coordination and under Pete Hegsath the
Pentagon is it is a shit show. Like it is
a backbiting, messy, chaotic shit show. And I just don't
think that there is any denying that at this point.
And this is one instance where it sort of comes
to the surface, you know, on the substance here with
regard to Ukraine, and I think you and Ryan said
something similar yesterday, like having an ideology and a goal

(55:30):
is going to be no ideology and no goal every day.
And you see the same thing with regard to the
policy vis of Iran, like Trump is kind of all
over there and doesn't really know what he wants, and
one day he wants this, one day he wants that.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
Bib nt yahho friaking knows what he wants.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
And so because he's going to be relentless in pushing
for his objective, consistent with his ideology and his goal,
eventually he's going to get it.

Speaker 4 (55:52):
And so you know, it's the same thing you see
with Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Like the Lindsay Grahams of the world, the Vladimir Zelensky's
of the world, they know what they want and they
are going to continue to push it relentlessly until they
get it. And I think Trump came in with just
like a foolishly naive view of what it would take
to resolve a conflict that is now very difficult to resolve.
Even if you came in and you were focused on it,

(56:15):
and you were intelligent about it, and you had a
specifical in mind, if here's how we're going to resolve it,
even under those circumstances, it would be very, very difficult.
But he came in thinking he's just like, oh, I'm
the great deal maker and we'll figure it out. And
I have a great relationship with Putin and so I
trust him. We're going to be able to work it out.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
No you're not.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
No, you're not.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
And so congratulations in America. Basically you've got another forever
war here. The most likely track is we're just going
to continue shipping weapons bit by bit, and you know,
we'll continue to be this sort of like grinding intractable
conflict over years and years and years, and presidents are
going to the next president is going to inherit it
and they're just going to, like we did in Afghanistan,
just sort of stop talking about it and have it

(56:54):
be on the back burner and just persist in this
policy that's you know, ongoing and horrific and as this
terrible human toll, because that is the path of lease resistance.
That's the path of lease resistance. That's why we stayed
in Afghanistans for so long, because the moment that you
actually pull the plug on that conflict, Look what happened
to Joe Biden. His approval rating was destroyed and he
never ever recovered. Because when you end in conflict, you

(57:17):
have to reckon with the failures of that policy and
what it meant to get us to that point.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
I totally agree