8/26/25: Market Panic Amid Trump Fed Firing, India Defiant On Russian Oil, Trump Approves China Student Visas, Dem Voter Crisis

Krystal and Saagar market panic as Trump fires fed, India defiant on Russian oil, Trump approves China student visas, Dem voter registration crisis.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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We need your help to build the future of independent
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show for everybody today, We have Crystal.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Indeed, we do lots of breaking news to get to
this morning. So first and foremoths most is fed independence
over Trump has fired one of the members of the
Federal Reserve Board, so we'll take a look at all
of that and how markets are reacting. At the same time,
we also have some economic news from India. Basically they
are saying screw you to our attempt to cajole them

(00:57):
into not consuming Russian oil. So very consequential as well.
Dave Weigel is going to join us from Minneapolis to
break down the Dems DNC summer meeting and see how
they are groppling with their existential crisis.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
You don't want to miss that.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
One Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released that he was re arrested.
He's now threatened with deportation to Uganda. Ongoing court battle.
Break all of that down for you. Israel is expressing
regret after they murdered a number of journalists and also
aid workers after an attack on a double tap attack
on a hospital, and the free press very wise's free

(01:32):
press very upset with.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Us, So I have to get into that. Yeah, we'll
tell you why.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Sorry, very sometimes I have to tell the truth about
your bullshit valuation. Appreciate that. Speaking of that, by the way,
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Speaker 4 (01:54):
Today.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm told that everything technically should be working out, so
before I speak too soon, I hope that that's the case. Anyways,
as you can see, we're always on top of it.
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(02:15):
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So with all of that, as Crystal said, let's get
to the Federal Reserve. Some late breaking news last night,
late for me at least. Let's go and put this
up there on the screen. Donald Trump issuing a new
letter to doctor Lisa Cook, a member of the Board
of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. He says, quote,

(02:37):
in light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in
a financial matter, that cannot and I do not have
such confidence in your integrity. At a minimum, the conduct
of your issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence and
financial transactions that calls into question your confidence and trustworthiness
as a financial regulator. I think we can safely say
Trump is using a pretext of alleged mortgage fraud by

(03:00):
doctor Cook as to fire her from the Federal Reserve.
So I'm not even going to get into the Federal
Reserve like the mortgage stuff, because honestly, even they know
that it's not the real cause for firing. This is
about the fat Now let's explain hearing about the Board
of Governors for the Federal Reserve. Trump has had a
long standing feud with Jerome Powell over their refusal to

(03:22):
lower interest rates. Powell did say recently in his meeting
that he would consider a rate cut coming up in
the future, which sent the stock market up some two percent,
but that is not even close to the liking of
Donald Trump. Now, previously, a member of the Federal Reserve
Board had actually resigned, which allowed Trump to fill that seat.
One of the reasons why Trump in particular wants to

(03:44):
get rid of Cook is that she was one of
the more controlling votes on backing Jerome Powell's strategy, Whereas
if she is gone, that would actually give Trump not
control per se, but people who share his views of
the on the Federal Reserve Board, which would influence it
to direction of the overall interest rate cut. So there
has been a lot of market reaction to this Federal Reserve.

(04:06):
We'll talk about this in a bit, but the Federal Reserve,
amongst the markets and amongst the economists, is the sacrisanct institution.
You can't touch it, you can't even say anything about it,
and that explains some of the market movement. Now as
a result, let's going to put this up here on
the screen. For example, immediately after the announcement, you saw
this large dip in the United States a dollar. We

(04:29):
can put the Wall Street Journal story up here on
the screen. It's actually quite interesting the way they put it.
They say, quote uncharted waters. Trump's attempt to take charge
here of the FED, the intention to fire him could
give sway over the Central Bank's rate setting power. So again,
let's just hammer home that is what this entire fight
is all about. Now. Doctor Cook has actually responded to

(04:50):
this and has said that she has not been fired,
that she will be contesting this in court. This will
all come down to the Supreme Court, most likely over
Trump's ability to influence the FED. It is actually very complicated.
There was a recent Supreme Court reeling about the quasi
legal status of the Federal Reserve, where the president does
not have the unilateral authority to remove somebody just because

(05:14):
he doesn't like what they're doing, but does have the
authority to remove somebody quote for a cause, hence the
mortgage fraud or whatever. And maybe it is true, I
don't know, but my point is just that's the reason.
Now this is a more open for discussion type of
thing where I think there are a lot of actually
very interesting views that have spent all morning kind of engaging
with them about the role of the Federal Reserve itself.

(05:36):
And there, as I said on Wall Street and amongst
the conventional economists, like federal reserve independence is sacrifcanct. It's
not supposed to be democratic. I personally have a very
very different view of that. I think the current worry,
even amongst people who share my view, is that this
will just be trumpy into its most extent, which could
result in financial disaster. And I'm not writing that off

(05:58):
at all. So anyway, where.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I find myself that's the thing is like this is
a Trumpian power grab, like consistent with the taking a
stake in the Intel and with the tariffs and with
you know, the crackdown in DC. You know, this is
this is Trump consolidating even more power, And so while
even with pushing, even if he's able to push doctor

(06:20):
Cook off of the board, he still won't technically gain
like control with his people on the board.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
What is he doing?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
He's setting an example, right, everybody knows that this mortgage
fraud thing is bullshit. Whether or not it's true, it's bullshit.
It doesn't pertain to her job whatsoever. By the way,
Donald Trump, of everybody knows a little thing or two
about mortgage fraud.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Like wait, I thought, I thought he just got vacated, right,
I just got vacated in the state of New York.
He's been vindicated, right.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
I mean the guy who're like red bragged about lying
about how much various assets were worth in order to
obtain a look that he wanted.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Concern myself with the value of mar Lago personally, but
in any.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Case, in any case, as you said, I think we
can all acknowledge this as a pretext. And every other
member of the fed Bord of Governors is going to
know this is a pretext and know that they themselves
are also vulnerable if they don't just shut up and do.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
What Trump wants.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
I mean, it's the same thing when we talked to
Shahead yesterday who got fired from the State Department, and
he said the same thing. You know, this was about yes,
getting me out, but it was also about sending a
message to everyone else in the building. So I think
that through that lens of Trump's authoritarian instincts and constant
desire to accumulate more and more power for himself, that

(07:32):
is the lens through which.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
We should view these actions.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Let me talk a little bit about the court piece
that you referenced. Doctor Cook is saying I'm not going
anywhere because you didn't legally fire me, and I think
she has a pretty strong legal case to make their
even given the makeup of this Supreme Court and their
willingness to accept a lot of arguments from the Trump administration.
They had issued a previous ruling and had to do

(07:57):
with a different agescent armor for this NLRB or the CFPB,
but it had to do with another one where it
was like, okay, well, can Trump just come in and
get rid of someone just because he feels like it,
or it was a similarly structured sort of independent quasi
independent agency, or do they have to go through a process?
Does there have to be caused, does they have to
go through Congress et cetera. And they sided with the

(08:18):
Trump administration on that firing, but in their justification they
put in this sort of like Carvat like, eh, yeah,
but the FED is different for reasons. So that's why
a lot of people are looking at this and thinking
that it is possible that the Supreme Court comes in
and says you can't actually do this. And it also
you know, when they say, okay, you can fire someone

(08:40):
on the FED Board of Governors for cause, that cause
is supposed to be relevant to their job, not some
like paperwork error a mortgage application. So that's the sort
of like that's the legal piece. But yeah, the reason
why people are freaking out is because a lot of
a lot of analysts look at this as basically, this
is the end of FED independence because of the coercion

(09:04):
that you're using in this regard. Jerome Pal's term is
going to be up in another year, so he's going
to have his FED chair, He's going to have a
board of governors that is going to be more amenable
to him. He's going to have used his power to
discipline them, and so he will effectively be able to
do whatever he wants, whether that's in the country's interest,
the world's interest, capital's interest, his interest, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, I'll tell you. I mean, look, I understand your concerns.
I still think degrading the principle is a good thing.
For example, if anyone hasn't never read it, I highly
recommend Jonathan Alter. He's a very neoliberal guy, but he
wrote a book about Jimmy Carter. It's probably the best
Carter biography I've ever written, what I've ever read. What
I was struck by is that Alter worships Jimmy Carter

(09:50):
for having the wherewithal to appoint Vulgar as his Federal
Reserve chair, who basically destroyed the economy and it caused
a recession in nineteen eighty. Look, I don't think the
economy is the only reason Carter lost, Like, I think
it's a big, you know, reason why. And reading that,
I'm like, wait, Carter was an idiot. I'm like, this
is a disastrous idea. By the way, I don't even
think the whole vocar thing that everyone looks at it

(10:12):
as a good idea. I don't even think that's basically
even true.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Are you can put that all basically crushed old labor permanent.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
That's what I'm saying. Like, if you go back and
you look at it, you're like, wait, this was a disaster.
So my point is that this is all in the
context of the quote independent Fed. Is the independent FED
doing a good job? I would say no, And I
think there are a lot of people who think that.
I mean, even if you look at the way that
we've done and had inflation over the last four years,

(10:38):
We've had supply side inflation and the only response we've
had is crushed the demand side, which has been in
my opinion, devastating for a lot of households, on top
of the overall housing SKU which is happening right now
for a mortgage rates. So yeah, I'm like, oh, we're
going to go after the FED. Great, I mean, I
think the FED should have a lot more democratic control.
Now I'm gonna say that is definitely going to cause

(10:59):
some little blips, all right, I'll admit that. And this
is my point where I want the liberals who are
anti Trump to grapple with. Is the smart set of
the people I'm reading people like Adam Too's and others
are like, yes, we are now entering the realm of
democratic control of the FED. And that doctor Cook and
Jerome Powell and all these oose they come from that

(11:22):
vulgar style school with their theories about how the FED
should operate. I think that has been genuinely disastrous for
the American people. Has been so disastrous for Wall Street
or for American industry, but the people themselves have suffered
as a result of this policy. So I'd like to
think of it here where I think there's great risk

(11:42):
with Trump trying to take control. I will fully acknowledge that,
and we'll talk about Aradowan and all of that in
the future. And I already know the economists listening that's
ripping their hair out. But I mean, you have to
acknowledge that, at a very basic level, monetorism and debates
over monetary policy were fundamental to the American Republic for
almost a century, and we lost that after the independent

(12:07):
FED was established. We need to go back. I mean,
remember the William Jennings Bryan speech. I used to have
a post s of im back here at mankind shall
not be crucified upon a cross of gold silver. This
was central farmers at an individual level, understood the medium
of exchange. The greenback itself was deeply controversial. People argued
about this because they understood that the exchange and the

(12:28):
value of money was directly impacting them in their goods.
And now we have moved that off to this you
know temple here in Washington. So I say, let's go
back to it so we can actually debate. People should
be more well versed, not only just in the policy,
gold stand or whatever. We can all argue about it,
but the point has to be more fundamental as to
not let it in the hands of the quote experts.

(12:50):
Because you know, people say there's a lot of risk
with Trump. I agree, I'm totally being real, but there's
also a risk to the current strategy. The risk is
every single day these interest rates stay at six seven percent,
somebody's not buying a house, putting off family formation, destroying
I mean the home builders. The interest rates right now
are crushing the economy. And yeah, you can look at
GDP and everything else, it's all fake, especially when we

(13:12):
consider that the vast majority of the only reason that
we even have decent enough GDP numbers is because these
AI companies are spending you know, all gobloads of money
trying to create all these data centers. So that's that's
like my big picture view out of all of this.
You can always acknowledge that Trump can screw it all up,
and if anything, he might negatively polarize the idea of

(13:33):
democratic control. Very very possible, very bossible. But I'm willing
to have the fight. I think it's important. I can't
stand these experts on CNBC and other like, oh my god,
free market and all this is bullshit.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Part of the reason why the FED is taking the
course that it is is because Trump's economic policy has
put them in a complete and total bind where we
are now heading towards stagflation, which is basically impossible for
the FED to be able to deal with because it goes, okay,
you lift interest rates, then you know, to get inflation
under control. Then you you know, screw the economy in
the labor market. You lower interest rates to juice GDP

(14:09):
juice the labor market, and you end up with potential hyperinflation.
So you know, I don't want to, like, I don't
want to let Trump off the hook for the disastrous
economic policyape that changing, Yeah, the disaster's economic policy that
he's pursued that has led to an impossible policy landscape
for the FED in order to you know, so I

(14:30):
don't think it's crazy that Jerome Powell has said, you know,
I'm just kind of hold steady for now given the
uncertainty in the economic landscape. The other thing is we
also have to acknowledge we put up the you know,
the dollar falling off a cliff. This there is going
to be very likely significant short term pain if analysts

(14:50):
continue to assess that this is going to be like
the end of FED independence. The dollar dropping means that
it is more expensive for you to pay for imports,
That's what it means, and we import a whole lot
of stuff. At the same time, we don't have a
chart for this. At the same time, the interest rate,
the yield on Treasury bonds is going up. What does
that mean? That means things like your mortgage are going

(15:12):
to be even more expensive than they already are. So
the short term fallout of this move is going to
be devastating in a time when Americans already have lost
confidence in Trump's business acumen. And I think that this
is one of the most significant blows to Trump's brand
and his image is that people have lost faith in

(15:33):
his economic stewardship.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
So I don't think that, you know, I don't know how.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Much people are going to vote based on like this
sort of technical was the FED independent and who got
fired and whatever. But if you were looking for a
moment when people have confidence in saying, oh it just
handed to Trump, put it in Trump's hands. We elected
him because we trust him, because he's a good businessman,
this is certainly not that moment.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Look, I again, I accept that I would disagree a
little bit on the tariff part, just because a lot
of the inflation is not yet shown up. That's mostly
because some of the tariffs, supiit to be fake in
terms of the way that they're being set up. I
mean even on the dollar. So yeah, it's point zero
it's fell by point zero three percent. It's not like devastating,
it's not like full blown. Probably because she said that

(16:15):
she's going to fight it. It could be. I wouldn't
dispute the bond market part. That's definitely possible. We're not
yet sure how that's all going to work. And yes,
you know the institutional investors, markets, to Bank of Japan,
all these other people, they absolutely could force Trump's hand.
I'm not going to put any of that out, but
you know, I just have to come back to looking
at the way that they talk about both the FED

(16:37):
and worship at its altar without ever acknowledging all of
the downside. Yes, Trump, I think is a very imperfect
messenger in all of this, and everyone's comparing it to Erdowan.
I mean, that's fine, we can we can do that.
Let's put a five please up on the screen. For example,
this was about inflation in Turkey.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
And you know, the.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Person who put this chart together is like, what happens
when a strong man with idiosyncre preference for interest rates
undermines a central bank and appointsil Justilvers.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Who's a liberal economy?

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Is? This is the conventional view. And again I think
that's fair because it's Trump. But I do think that
the actual question should still remain there. And you know,
to your point, nobody in the world is going to
vote on Okay, not nobody, They'll all be the economy.
That's what I was going to say.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
I don't know the fat That's my thing about Vulgar.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
People didn't necessarily vote about Carter appointing Vulgar, but when
the interest rate was not I think what was it,
nineteen to twenty percent. At one point they were like, yeah,
fuck this, I mean, I'm not dealing with this. And
like you said, whenever organized labor and all those people
literally got destroyed and we had a full blown recession
from nineteen eighty to what is until nineteen eighty two.

(17:47):
I want to say, yeah, they were not very happy
about it, And that's kind of my point. More broadly is,
you know, people who kind of follow and look at
all this stuff for a living are deeply familiar with
the inner workings of the Board of Governors. But every
single one of us deals with this every single day.
I mean, every person who doesn't get a raise because
the borrowing costs is too high from their company, every

(18:08):
company that decides and not to invest more in infrastructure
or whatever because you know, again the interest rates are high,
every person who doesn't buy a house, every person who
wants to move but is locked into a low interest rate.
All of us are experiencing the Federal Reserve for what
it is, and so at a basic level, I do
think making it quote democratic and impacted by overall democratic

(18:28):
politics is important. Otherwise we'll get vulgared Again, that's basically
what Powell and then wanted to do. You know, they
didn't go they didn't go as extreme, but they close enough,
I mean, went from zero to seven. Like it was
a genuine shock for a generation that lived with ten
years of zero. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
I don't know that this were about to your argument,
but I mean, Vulgar himself was a democratic expression since
it was that was Jimmy Carter getting the policy that
he wanted, I guess.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
I mean, but part of the problem kind of. So
my point though, is that if you read the book,
when Carter interviews him, Vulker's like, I'm gonna have to
do some things which are going to make you very unpopular.
They're going to, you know, do this is this, And
Carter's like, well, is it the right thing to do?
And he's like, yes, sir, it's the right thing to do.
And he's like, let's do it. Then I don't think
it's the right thing to do, first of all, but
second is politically incredibly foolish. But if you would ask

(19:13):
the American people, is that how you want to deal
with inflation, I think most of them would have said no.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
So, like my point, yeah, I mean, it's not like
we're putting the FED chair to a democratic mass vote.
We're putting it in the hands of whoever the president. Yes, absolutely,
and I mean that. And that is what happened with Carter.
He decided, I'm democratically elected, I believe this isn't the
best interest of the country, even though it's going to
cause all sorts of pain, even though it's likely to

(19:39):
screw over labor and farmers and all these different groups.
So I mean you, that was probably the sort of
most directly democratic influence on the FED chair that we've had,
and in my opinion, it was a disaster.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
I I don't I kind of see how you're getting there.
I would actually kind of flip it, because what he
decided was that even though he knew literally that it
was going to be democratically unpopular, he decided to do
it because he trusted the economic establishment. I'm saying, let's
do the opposite. We actually shouldn't do it that right.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I mean in a similar way that I don't have
confidence in Jimmy Carner to, you know, make those decisions.
I also don't have confidence in Donald Trump to be
like looking out for the best interests of the American public,
or handling this in any sort of a fashion that
you know, reflects what people would actually want or what
would be beneficial, et cetera. I mean, I fully admit

(20:31):
that for me this is complicated because I agree with
the points you make about the FED being subjected to
the democratic will. You know, I think that's sort of
like a fundamental populist principle frankly, and the idea that
it has to be Oh, you guys just don't understand
it has to be handled by this contrey.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
It's like, no, we do want I.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Really reject that.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
In the same respect, I see the way that this
is just like another Trumpian power grab with the president,
who I think is you know, an authoritarian fascist that
I have zero trust for.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
So that's perfect, that's fine. Then you can continue to
but you express yourself in the election. So did I,
so did many others, and we got h what we got,
the one percent, you know, popular vote. You can vote
again if you want to, and then we'll see how
that works out. The problem that I've been seeing for
a lot of these Democrats is they're like, no, we
must stand with the sacrisanct FED and I'm like, yeah,
that's why you guys are much of losers, okay, because
you're going to come into office and you're going to

(21:18):
pull a carter again and you're going to be like, oh, well,
the experts told us this is what we're going to do,
and then Trump or somebody else is going to beat
your ass again in the election.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
I think more like why, I mean, we'll see what
the economic fall on is. That's what the vulnerability is
for Trump. Not the you know, mechanics of fed independence,
but do people feel like things are getting better or
do people feel like things are getting worse? And I
think there is a decent chance that in the short
term this sets individual Americans back economically and makes the

(21:49):
landscape even tougher for.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Fastball by in six months. If the interest rate gets
dropped ahead of the elect which you know, if I
were a politician, was the first thing I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna slash that interest rate by by half leading
up to the midterms. Boom it be boom times all
over Wall Street, in the housing market and everywhere. Pretty
much everyone I think would be happy. So you know,
it could people have short memories as well, especially if
you do it right before the election, which again I

(22:12):
still can't believe Carter was dumb enough to do this
in August of seventy nine before the November nineteen eighty election.
It boggles the mind.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
But again, you're assuming that an interest rate cut would
not come with corresponding inflation. And we know the way
that inflation, I mean inflation destroyed not just the Biden administration,
but destroyed incumbent administrations around.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
The world definitely. I mean again, the reason I don't
think it would is because I still think a lot
of it is supply side. Even the inflation today, the
vast majority of his supply side what's the coffee cup
I'm drinking is roughly up by like fifty percent? Why
is that? Is it because of because of the stary bingo?
Because this is because of tariff policy, and because of
a devastating storm in Brazil. That's it. So it's a
supply side factor and or a government policy factor. The

(22:54):
Trumpet government can you know, can do that. But there's
not a fundamental like reason, at least in my opinion.
Why you know there is a quote so much inflation
or if you look at all the categories which have
experienced the vast majority of inflation. Most of it is
policy and supply side driven. Anyway, we'll keep that in mind.
Let's go to India, shall We've been wanting to cover

(23:15):
this story for a while and just give everybody an update,
you know. So Trump officially has written into the federal
record that tariffs on India will go into effect tomorrow,
fifty percent import duties on all goods from India because
they continue to buy oil from Russia. So of course,
the conventional view was, oh my god, India, they can't

(23:36):
stand this. They're gonna buckle immediately. Yeah, not happening. Let's
go and put this up here on the screen. Here's
the latest from New Delhi.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
India will buy oil from wherever it gets the best deal.
According to their envoy from Russia. They say they will
go continue to protect the interests of their one point
four billion people. According to their ambassador for Russia, they've
disregarded the economic leverage from the United States. New Delhi
media has turned dramatically against the Trump administration. They're literally

(24:06):
burning Trump in effigy, which will show you perhaps in
a little bit, but more broadly, Peter Navarro, the entire
administration has decided that India, who is the second largest
purchaser of Russian oil, not China, is apparently the villain
here for reasons that remain completely mystifying. They at the

(24:27):
same time want to end the war in Ukraine, but
on the other side of their mouth are pursuing the
neo conservative fever dream of punishing other countries, strategically important countries,
for buying Russian oil. So, okay, I guess that makes
a lot of sense. Here's Peter Navarro, the trade guru,
going off on India, which, by the way, this interview
has gone massively viral in India from what I have seen.

(24:48):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (24:50):
There's a general perception that somehow India needs Russian oil
find to basically power its domestic economy. But that's wrong.
What's going on is the Russian refiners got in bed
with the Indian refiners. Russia offers these refiners a steep

(25:11):
discount on the crude and they partner with the Indian
refiners and then they sell the refined products at premium
prices to Afro Asia and Europe, and that funds the
war machine. What that means is that we wind up
having to pay more. Europe has to pay more for defense,

(25:36):
the US have to send Ukraine more. And it's because
of the Indian profittereian And think about what India is
doing to the United States, right, It steals our jobs,
it slows down our growth with their unfair trade practices. Okay,
so we take a hit there. And then when it

(25:56):
gets into this profitterian scheme Withrussia to send oil to
basically the Kremlin laundromat for the for their crude oil.
Basically it forces US taxpayers to pay more to help
Ukraine in the warst India needs to. It needs to
stand up here for the for the world, for democracy.

(26:17):
It's the biggest democracy in the world by the amount
of people, and it's basically in bed with the Russians,
and that's not conducive to peace. If India tomorrow stop
buying Russian oil, that would go a long way towards
getting putin to the ultimate yes that we need. They

(26:38):
don't create a lot of jobs, They just profiteers. So
that's that's wrong, as is the high tariffs and non
tarif fairers and in charges. I mean, look, they can
keep doing what they're doing, but Donald Trump is going
to keep doing what he's doing, and that's going to
mean the high tariffs, uh to stop them from selling
Russian oil, buying Russian oil, and high tariffs they get

(26:59):
their trade down.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, might as well have voted for Joe Biden, you know,
I mean, Indiana's got to stand. Why who gives a
shit if the oil comes from a democracy? You're not you? Yeah,
all of our oils coming from a democracy, Crystal? Did you?
Were you aware of that? I had no idea that
we only bought oil from democracies.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Okay, there's there's another question she asked, and like, okay,
but India said they're not going to do this, and
he gives.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
I mean, he just sort of like changes the subject.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
But it reminds very much of It recalls very much
when Biden was asked this question about the policy visa e.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
The who thies and he was like, is it going
to work?

Speaker 6 (27:35):
No?

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Is it going to continue?

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (27:37):
And this is basically what Navara was like.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
I was like, well, India's going to do what they're
going to do, but here's what we want them to do.
It's like, okay, but they they're not going to do that.
So now you're just putting tariffs on this country, damaging
your relationship, like trashing your relationship with them, turning in
country that was previously pretty like pro American against America altogether.
And by the way, I mean those territs that you're
loving on India are going to have impacts again on

(28:02):
American consumers.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
All to do what accomplish literally nothing?

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, exactly, it's the point. Oh and how is that?
How is the maximum pressure going? By the way, are
we closer to peace? Yeah? No, can we go in
and put B four up here on the screen? Shocker?
Lavrov says no plan for a Putin Zelenski meeting. In fact,
he basically was like, Zelensky is illegitimate. We're not even
sure if we really need to meet with him. So yeah,

(28:26):
we're actually a lot closer after the Putin summit. And
this is all because you know, Trump is basically embraced
this neo kon framing on India specifically, not China. Just
so we're all aware, the actual geopolitical adversary, the one
that buys most of the Russian oil, nope, completely is
actually getting a free pass. They're Chinese negotiators on the
way over here. Sure the tariffs and the trade duties remain,

(28:48):
but there's so many exclusions. He's talking nothing but nicely
about China. It's like the opposite of how you would
want to conduct this. And by the way, again, this
is presumes that the war in Ukraine is such a
fundamental interest that the United States should tear if one
of its top ten trading partners fifty percent higher than
any of the duty than any other country to make

(29:10):
it to try and bring about peace in Ukraine. Oh
and by the way, that's not even working. Like you know,
in every single step of the logic chain, it all
falls apart. This is the same problem with the entire
administration strategy right now. They go tough on Japan, on Korea,
and India, soft on China. You should flip it. Those

(29:31):
three are the ones that you want on your side
if you want to quote isolate China and or pivot
to Asia. You want great trading relationships all around the
Asia Pacific, making sure that these are rock solid, happy
US allies or strategic partners, and then you use your
leverage on the Chinese government to try and extract some benefit. Instead,

(29:52):
we're quite literally doing the opposite. I mean, Trump just yesterday.
I'm loving this too. You know, the immigration restriction crowd
is and wild because Trump said yesterday that part of
his deal with the Chinese is he's going to allow
six hundred thousand Chinese students to come and study in
the United States. Let's take a listen to that.

Speaker 6 (30:12):
President, She would like me to come to China. It's
a very important relationship. As you know, we're taking a
lot of money in from China because of the tariffs
and different things, and it's a very important relationship. We're
going to get along good with China. Are hearsed so
many stories about we're not going to allow their students,
So we're going to.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
Allow their students to come in.

Speaker 6 (30:32):
We're going to allow It's very important. Six hundred thousand students,
it's very important. But we're going to get along with China.
But it's a different relationship that we have now with China.
It's a much better relationship economically than it was before.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
With Biden.

Speaker 6 (30:46):
What he allowed that, I mean, they just took him
to the cleaners.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
So yeah, okay, six started the administration, which is America
First once and as attacking universities for not being pro
Israel enough is now going to be overrun by Chinese.
I support it, I'm sure you do, but that's not
what people look it up.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Right now, there's roughly three hundred thousand Chinese students in
the country, so this would be a doubling of the
number that are here.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
And it's it comes on the heels up. He says.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
This thing in that clip, which is funny to me,
is like somebody said we're not going to let him in.
It's like that was Marco Rubio, your Secretary State, who said,
we're going to be you know, screening all the visas.
We're not going to let you know, anyone who has
any ties the Communists, the Chinese Communist.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Party, blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
And so Trump's like, now we're gonna let We're going
to double the number that come in. The defense that
was given of this to buy Hasid, I want to
say it was nik I can't remember anyway. One of
them was basically like, well, if you don't let the
Chinese students in, then the like bottom tier schools and
the country is basically gonna fail. God was there was

(31:51):
their analysis, But in any case, I mean, my own
personal view is that in addition to the extraordinary exorbitant
privilege that we get from the dollar being the global
reserve currency, the other major advantage that the US has
long had is that the top students from the around
the world want to come here, and oftentimes after they
study here and get their degree, oftentimes they stay. And

(32:12):
so we benefit from this, you know, global ability to
attract some of the top students in top minds from
around the world. And President Trump apparently feels the same
and embracing that soccer.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Here's the thing. You got to square that with what
you just said, which is that if the ten to
fifteen percent of the bottom tier universities are going to
fall out because they can't get Chinese students and those
are not the best and the brightest because they're going
to the bottom tier.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
No, no, but that's not what you actually argue.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
The Chinese students are going to the top students, and
it's the Americans who.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Will fill out but get pushed down.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
This is an important thing because it's actually true because
the Chinese graduate students and others are the ones who
pay full freight and actually make it so that it
is disadvantage for most of the people who are American
citizens to.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Go No, No, no, quite the opposite. I mean, because they're
paying full freight. That's what helps to subsidize tuition.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
That a lot of America.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
That is the cope what it actually is true. No,
it's not true, because what has happened is that tuition
has act. If that were true, then tuition would go
down instead, the tuition has gone sky high, quadrupleg.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
But that's because no, But it's.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Because what happens is that they know the Chinese will
pay everything, and they also know the US government will
backstop their student loans. And on top of that, more broadly,
this is this is a more of a question of
competition and who these slots should go to. Over fifty
percent of the graduate students in most of these places
are foreign. Why they don't want to give them to
Americans because they might have to give them scholarship financially
and everything. Much easier to admit somebody from China, India,

(33:30):
anywhere else in the world. Because they'll pay full freight.
It's massively profitable to the university. None, almost none of
it goes down to the student. If it were true
that the money charge.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Then they should do some affirmative action for white people.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Saga, No, not white people, American this is an affirmative
action for white people. This is an affirmative action for
the US citizen. I mean, I don't think that's even
affirmative action. What American students are getting, you know, easy
privilege at Shanghai University.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
No, there's no evidence that foreign students are you know,
getting getting some sort of affirmative action or some sort
of benefit.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
They do benefit.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
School are foreign then because they pay full freight. But
you know that actually benefits Americans because it helps to
lower tuition overall.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
But the why is tuition as high as it is,
It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Of course it does because these are run like businesses
rather than academic institutions. So if you're concerned about the
price of tuition, then you should support, as I do,
free public.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
College for all I think, which would be because it was.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Just a great way to provide more equitable access.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Let's college checks for every bunch of DEI administrators and
so that the University of Michigan can build more lazy
rivers for everybody. That's a great idea.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
I thought that the only reason that the tuition was
going up was because the foreign students.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Now it's the administrators and the lazy rivers.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
My point is that the high tuition cost these Chinese,
Indians and all these other people are paying subsidizes yes
them as well as making sure that the tuition goes
up up none of Most of it does not go magical,
most of it doesn't go down to the student. If
you're paying fifty thousand dollars a year to go to
college and then the next year or ten years later
it goes up to seventy five thousand, then it would
square the circle that the tuition should go down if

(35:14):
more of the foreign students are coming. The opposite has happened.
Tuition has universally gone up. Free public college or whatever
at the current rate would subsidize the massive some forty
to fifty percent increase in the overall number of administry.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
That's where you have so discuss.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
That's where you have to use government policy to keep
prices reasonable. And right now it's just left to the market.
It's a laissez faire capitalist system. That's why tuition is
constantly jacked up, and that's it has really nothing to
do with foreign students coming in. It has to do
with what they can get away with, and that's where
we are, right, Okay, I mean I would just in
any case. Overall, this comes down to our very different

(35:49):
view of the benefits of immigration to the country. I
think that, you know, studies prove that immigrants tend to
be a benefit to the country. I think having foreign
students who are the top their class, who want to
be able to come here and go to our institutions
and then contribute to our society, I think that's a
positive thing, and I'm glad to see that if.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
That were broadly true. Again, okay, maybe that's true with
the three hundred thousand, although I don't even think that's true,
So doubling the amount is supposed toly make it better. Look,
this is also the presumption that our universities are like
some great place, and that is true at the highest
of the highest levels, and sometimes at the public level.
But you know, really, what Lutnik gave the game away
is that a lot of these places are just money

(36:28):
making printing machines. They're not actually giving any real benefit.
Ten to fifteen ten to fifteen percent cut would probably
be a good thing, just broadly because they're putting so
many people in debt and not actually delivering any economic benefit.
If anything, you should siphon much of that away to
a trace or something economically viable, valuable to the person
who's actually going to participate in education. But I mean

(36:50):
this gets to the whole idea of like why we
even have forty five percent the foreign student thing? Though,
I mean we should debate and look at it more,
because there is a ton of evidence it is actually
increase the cost, not only for the overall US student,
but and again this is very important, is that it
is actually making it more competitive for actual citizens also

(37:10):
because of the transfer from H one B where they
drive down the overall wage, especially in the engineering category.
This is like, look, I know the left response is like, okay, fine,
let's do some wage whatever. At a basic level, it
is broadly true right now that the current foreign student pipeline,
especially to Silicon Valley and engineering, is driving down wage
and making it less competitive for the actual citizens.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
We're also graduates different than college but.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Only because of the way that the policy is set up,
the way that H one b's are effectively like an
indentured servitude with something that you know that I oppose yes,
that's the nature of the post college landscape. That's something
different than what we're talking about with regard to university admissions.
So listen, you believe in merit if these you know,
American citizens should be able to compete with the best

(37:57):
and brightest in the world.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
No, they shouldn't, because so so our tax So we
should allow the best in the brightest of the whole
world to have to compete against our citizens. This is preposterous.
The university, the American university system is set up for
the American.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
You know how much muchly not?

Speaker 1 (38:12):
No, it actually should well and why do I, as
a taxpayer, have to subsidze the University of Virginia. But
don't take it any of my money.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
You just said.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
They come in and they pay full frate, so you're
not subsidizing them. The reality is we benefit tremendously from
attracting the best minds from around the world.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
That has been one of them.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
That's not a benefit of a thousand people that we have.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Had as a society.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
And so you know, for for President Trump to embrace that,
I think is a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay, I think that's great. Then if the universe I'll
tell you. It is if universities want to be purely
based on merit for citizens and everyone else, don't take
a die more of my tax dollars every single time
that I have to pay, or for the state of
Virginia or anywhere else where you people live. Otherwise, if
you're going to take our money, then yeah, Actually, your
education is supposed to work for us. This is kind
of like the public school thing. Most of the public
schools supposed work for everybody.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
The support that you give as a taxpayer in Virginia
that does primarily support. That's why in state tuition is
so much leser than even out of state tuition, let
alone what foreign students pay. No.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
I totally agree with you, but you're saying you were
saying that we should be open for that, we should
have to compete against the whole world. I think it's
the opposite that makes it much worse.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
And you want to talk about the reasons why tuition
has gone up. Part of why tuition has gone up
so much. Part of the story is the fact that
there is actually less tax revenue that's going to support
public educational institutions. This comes from Ronald Reagan pulled a
bunch of the support from the California system. That has
happened across the board. It certainly happened in the state
of Virginia, and so that has been part of the
trend too.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
Is pushing the burden on to students.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Rather than it being something that societally we invest in
and see as an asset for the country that we
want to see.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
It's part of it. The other part is that we
backstop student loans and that we let these universities fleece
the student and the for their you know, lazy rivers
and their nice fancy new dorms and their cafeterias with
all their bullshit in it.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
We should we should have free public college education in
my opinion, But to you know, to just end the
policy of quote unquote backstopping student loans without any sort
of reform is not going to solve anything. It's just
going to make things even more difficult for college studs.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
That I wouldn't disagree on. I yeah, I mean, look,
I think these university endowment should be taxed to help
the vast majority of that benefit should go to student
loan forgiveness, and then from there we can build from
a different story. But the current system, which I think
this would just you know, make them make these people
even more filthy rich over at these universities. I think
it's a bad idea, And you know, I'm hopeful that
actually the policy will get reversed, although not entirely helpful

(40:46):
because Trump decides to punish India instead of China and
all in Japan and South Korea and all these other people,
which again it just doesn't make any sense. Same with
the Philippines, Brazil, all of these countries were literally uniting,
you know, half of these bricks nations together, even though
they were all squabbling before.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
So yeah, that was with Jeffrey's professor, Jeffrey Sachs. You
guys shoul watch that interview week.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
It made such a good point.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
He was so I guess shocked, not really disgusting, because
he supports bricks as I do too, So we was
sort of like tacitly endorsing the Trump administration moves with
regard to India, which have just helped to coalesce bricks
into a more cohesive and aligned unit.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
So congratulations, what a joke, Thank you, mister president. Okay,
let's get to the Democrats. Dave Weigel standing by joining
us now is Dave Weigel. He's a politics reporter for Semaphore,
but for our purposes he is with the DNC at
their current meeting where they are evaluating how to deal
with Trump Eiras. We wanted to check in with Dave.

(41:47):
Good to see you, man, Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
It's good to be here. Thanks guys.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
All right, so, Dave, you've put out a number of
videos and some analysis here from the DNC chair Ken
Martin about how Democrats are trying to quote meet the moment.
Let's take a list.

Speaker 7 (42:01):
I'm sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a
pencil to a knife fight. We cannot be the only
party that plays by the rules anymore.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
We've got to stand up and fight.

Speaker 7 (42:11):
We're not going to have a hand tied behind our
back anymore. Let's grow a damn spight and get in
those fight Democrats.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Americans are hungry for leaders. They're hungry for.

Speaker 7 (42:21):
Candidates who are on the side of working people. There's
hungry for leaders who give a damn about their circumstances,
and they're hungry for a government that gives people freedom,
not fascism. To every American who is hungry for that
kind of government. I invite you to join us, Democrats, Republicans, independents,
I invite you to join us together.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
We will fight with every fiber of.

Speaker 7 (42:43):
Our being against Trump in his power hungry.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Circus talking about fighting, Dave. But what is the mood
inside of the building there. You've got that rhetorically, but
you've got some reporting from on the ground.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
That captured pretty well. It is a grim mood. It
is not as resolved to lose mood. It is not
a the party cannot come back. But that word fascism
that Martin used, every speaker used that, that was how
Keith Ellison was talking. There was and that was how
Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota, give a speech there.
That was how he was talking.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
And there was a lot a lot of cheering for
California and the Jerrymander gambit that Gavin Newsom is running.
But the overall context of that is that the party
is going to lose the country, maybe for good, if
it does not do something. What is the something that
they need to do? That is a tougher question, is
not really the DNC is always a place for it,

(43:36):
but there's not an analysis of we've gone too far
in this direction. We need to abandon this, this idea.
For example, there was a really compelling meeting of the
LGBTQ caucus at the Party and Martin came by and said,
we're not going to give an inch on this. We're
not going to give an inch on trans issues. Do
not worry that when we say we're going to do
whatever it takes to win, we're going to abandon anybody.

(43:58):
So it's it's a little I wouldn't say I wouldn't
say confused. The mood here it is a confidence that
Democrats are right in the country will come around to
them eventually, and not really reckoning with was there anything
we've done so wrong that people have bandoned us? And
Frank the part of this is nobody here and I
don't think they will live in twenty twenty eight. Wants
to talk about Joe Biden or say there was a
mistake to follow him to the hill. Nobody's talking about Gaza.

(44:19):
It's not really a self examination. It is the party
needs to make it clear that we're serious about fighting
fascism and the other details are less and important. People
can come into car our coalition when they realize how big.
The stakes are well.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
And it seems like we're not going to abandon anyone
except if you support Palestine, judging by the reception that
zoron Mom Donnie has received and also the candidate whose
name I'm blanking on for Minnesota, for Minneapolis mayor, which
is more relgi than given that that's the location of
the DNC meeting. And you know you've got Ken Martin
there talking about fighting. I know he is backing a

(44:55):
sort of watered down resolution with regard to Palestine. Do
you talk a little bit about how Gaza factors into
all all of this, because I'm not sure I've ever
seen an issue where the Democratic base and Democratic electeds
and elites are further apart.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
No, you could pick a poll and if the question
is just should the United States stop spending sending money
and weapons to Israel until the end of tending the conflict?
Were to stop the conflict, overwhelmingly popular Democrats and you
pinpointed it, that's not something that Democrats are talking about
very openly here. Uh. They had a resolutional vote on
today that Martin supports that is basically calling for it

(45:31):
into the conflict, released the hostages, but not a policy
change on Gaza. There's another resolution from a smaller group
of DNC members. I've been pulled every member. But the
expectations that will not pass, and that is, to your point,
hallucinating what Democrats want, which is a recognition of a

(45:51):
Palestinian state that's not as popular but that's mostly popular
Democrats and ending and ending arms Israel until the total
war ends. That resolution will probably get defeated. I'll be
there and I'll see what happens. But the expectations that
is the party is still not going to change direction
on Gaza. And they're not saying that we're worried about donors.
We're worried about being called anti Semites. It's very complicated.

(46:13):
Part of it is frustration that there were protesters getting
up and making life difficult for Kamala Harris when she
was trying to win the election.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Again.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
It all comes back to the Democrats self analysis that
they need to save the country from a dictatorship and
anything that's complicating for them is it needs to be
people need to get over it. Basically, I'm not trying
to explain every every single thought here in Democrats. There
is a diversity of opinion in those rooms, but you're
having people with different gossla opinions like Barbia League get
on stage and they're not talking about it. You can

(46:45):
imagine a different, different party, a different set of circumstances
and say, Okay, this seems to be a gaping vulnerability
for our party and we can't defend anymore. Let's talk
about it. They don't. They want to have one resolution
that pushes that issue off the table and then hopefully
in twenty twenty six people aren't thinking about it, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
I mean, you mentioned the age thing, and it reminds me,
you know of the Democratic autopsy story that came out
about how they want to ignore that and then all
of the things that Kamala did during the It's like,
so what are we what are you going to write
an autopsy about? I mean, that's one of the things
that seems so central to this fundamental question, Dave. And
it also gets to democratic approval. We actually have a

(47:23):
CNN segment where they've been diving more into the Democratic brand.
I want to get your reaction to that segment in
the context of what you see in the room. See
two guys, let's go ahead and play it.

Speaker 8 (47:33):
Let's look at the key four swing states that in
fact do keep tract of registration by party. Look, the
Republican Party is in their best position at this point
in the cycle since at least two thousand and five,
and all four of these key battleground states. We go
out to the southwest, Arizona, how about Nevada. Republicans haven't
done this well since two thousand and five. Oh my goodness, grace,

(47:55):
at this point of cycle, North Carolina. I couldn't find
a point at which Republicans were doing better at this
point in the cycle.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
It's at least this century.

Speaker 8 (48:02):
It probably goes way back in the last century, and
Pennsylvania very similar. Republicans doing better at this point than
at any point at any point this century, at least
as far as I could find, as the Republican Party
gains and party registration compared to this point. Back in
twenty seventeen during the Trump first administration. In Arizona, you
got a Republican gain of three points. Okay, how about Nevada.

(48:24):
Up the hill we go, even though we're sticking in
the southwest, a gain of six points. How about again
we come to the east coast North Carolina, a gain
of eight points for the Republicans, and in the Keystone State,
in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, again we're talking about a
gain of eight points. My goodness, gracious for Republicans. They
are converting old former Democrats to their side of the

(48:44):
ledger as well as picking up new voters, registering new voters,
and it absolutely paid off for them back in the
twenty twenty four election.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
What's the grappling in the building with that, Dave, This
voter registration data just seems existential for them, it.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
Does, see, there's not a lot of grappling with that.
Before I got here, there was a reception for members
on I got here Monday morning. On Sunday, there was
a reception that the AFL CEO had helped with and
my friend Brittany Shepherd ABC News tried to ask but
registration and was cut off. He just wanted to get
answered the question by the AFL CEO. They didn't want
the discussion to go into that. The couple things are happening.

(49:18):
One is that older Democrats, and this is people who
were Democrats at this point. They're very old from the
New Deal Democrats from the nineteen sixties, older African American
Democrats always reach to the party, they're simply dying. If
you look at Northeast Ohio is a good example. Pared
Brown runs in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty four, more
people turn out to vote across the state in those elections,

(49:41):
but he loses votes in Northeast Ohio. And you look
at the data, that's just there are not many people
moving in and Democrats had passed away younger voters. To
the point we were just discussing, the party's brand is
associated with a number of things that are toxic to them,
including gaza and so that I have. I was talking
to some of the younger Democratic Party chairs night, and
even in places where they're gaining, when they when there's

(50:03):
an election, they can turn people out, they can win
a special election. They're having that issue that people under
thirty when they go to register, maybe they go to
the DMV for the first time to do it, or
they're on campus. Their approach the Democratic Party has a
terrible brand. They want to be an independent. They don't
want to be a mega Republican, but they want to
They don't want to associate themselves with this party, so

(50:24):
that the optimisty take for a Democrat. Is that is solvable.
The less optimistic take is how you're not infronting that
issue and they don't. They liked one thing they'll also
say a lot at this conference or meeting and elsewhere,
is well, we can't wait for some savior to come
to and make the party a competitive again. We can't
wait for another Obama because that did solve a lot

(50:46):
of problem. Obama was so appealing to younger people that
they that they fixed that for years. There isn't an alternative.
It is that we are going to be the anti
fascist party. We're going to be a fighting party of
the resistance. And that is not very enticing to younger
people who look they might they might be souring on
Trump that they actually have in a lot of polls.

(51:08):
But the offer of the Democrats is pretty lame, right Well.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
We also don't know who it's appealing to because they
haven't really done it. So you know, I mean is
you know, Newsom is starting to get in the mix
and doing his memes and all of that stuff, and
he's gaining credibility at least with the Democratic base and
certainly gaining prominence in terms of the national conversation. But
you know, I mean, Hikeem Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer have

(51:31):
been utterly pathetic in terms of their response, and at
this point they're some of them most prominent leaders of
the party. The other thing is, you know, I feel
like a broken record continuing to go back to this,
but you have this almost like manna from heaven in
Zoron Mamdani, who comes out of nowhere genuinely excites people.
You know, you had thousands of people turn out New
York City for his freaking scavenger hunt over the weekend.

(51:53):
Is very high approval rating. Look, I get it, New
York City is different than the rest of the country.
But with the very groups that DEMO have been failing
and losing ground with young men, Latinos, working class, et cetera,
Zoron is doing extraordinarily well. And rather than looking at
that and saying, oh my god, okay, what is he doing?

Speaker 3 (52:11):
How can we support him?

Speaker 2 (52:12):
How can we make him emblematic of the Democratic Party,
They've done everything they can to trash him and bash
him and like sort of low key back this scandal
ridden wildly unpopular Andrew Cuomo, even though he dramatically lost
the Democratic primary.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
Yeah, and Jeffries and Schumer are not here. I think
they probably would get a good reception from BNC members
given who makes that up, but not much of a
reckoning with that. It is more frustration that young people
don't see the threat of Trump than and we've given
them something inspiring that they should be celebrating. There was
a mention sacer Mansion the autopsy, So there is an

(52:50):
autypes that they're working on of the party, and it
might have come out at this conference, at this meeting,
it's going to be delayed to later in the year.
The thing we all of us who cover this and
talk to people who were talking to the d n C,
and sometimes he's going to conclude that just the Democratic
Party has this constellation of groups of consultants that are
outside the party that are not helpful at all, and

(53:11):
there is this desire for more of a concentration inside
a coherent Democratic Party structure. But yeah, that's less entrepreneurial.
That doesn't that suggests there might be a problem. For example,
when DSA gets very organized when they support the cantleates
around Momdani and you've got New York posts and Fox
News headlines about DSA's platform and Democrats having to answer

(53:32):
for it. There really is this. I wouldn't say Trump envy,
but Trump's command of the Republican Party answers every question
voters what Republicans stand for, and some of them are contradictory,
and some of them are things he promises and can't
pull off. But there is a Republican Party brand built
around Donald Trump. It is popular enough to win elections

(53:55):
in most of the country. What is their alternative? They're
very worried about entrepreneurial left wing politics coming up and
making it harder to reach those voters they lost, and
that's some of this is who did we lose? It
is unclear how many of those voters did we lose
were young people who bolted over Gaza, how many are
older people who think the party's to left wing? How

(54:16):
much of this is about the backlash to protest because
that's an our theme that was in our discussion yesterday
at the main meeting is how Democrats can talk about
crime in the context of Trump moving the military into
d C. It was a left wing Cronina vest reform
group that had the presentation. It was a little I
had one post about it that about there we should

(54:36):
talk less much top of crime, more about strong and safety.
It was a little there was a little more to us.
The math part of it was this worry that, look,
if crime goes down because of the military, crowded streets,
that'd be kind of hard to scale to scale across
the country. Maybe Americans wouldn't even want it. But we're
holicus w get take credit for crime doing down, and
we don't have a crime message. Everything comes back to

(54:57):
we don't have a message, and why don't they have
been message is not because consultants, again, they don't like them.
It's because they what are the first principles of the party?
The closest they've come to an argument is Martin likes
to quote Paul Wellstone, the late sager from Minnesota and say,
when we do better, we all do better, which doesn't
answer a lot of those questions. Yes, when we're doing

(55:18):
economically better, is somebody who does that include our tax
dollars going to bombs to kill people? We don't know.
There is a lot of dodging of the problems of
the party. So you're asking good questions because this meeting
is not okay, here's a ten point blame. We come
up with this fix as this this is a meeting
for a party that thinks we can win the mid terms.

(55:40):
We can fix these problems, but TBD, we're not quite
sure how to fix them.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's funny because there's a lot of
thought about the potential existential crisis that the Republicans could
face whenever Trump ultimately is on the picture because they
are so centered around him. The Democrats will face their
own existential crisis because they are also similar early just
you know, centered around Trump and sort of polarizing and
messaging against him. Rather than having those first principles. There's

(56:08):
one more you know, existential threat here on the horizon
for Democrats, on the near horizon for Democrats who can
put see one up on the screen. So you know,
it's the way the population trends are moving. With people
moving out of New York in particular, and some of
the other sort of quote unquote unquote blue Wall states

(56:28):
and into states like Florida and Texas as well as
Utah and Idaho, you are going to have a very
different likely in twenty thirty. You're going to have a
very different electoral college, which means it's no longer possible
for a Democratic presidential candidate to win with the you know,
with the blue Wall states as it is now, So

(56:49):
you know, what do you make of those potential shifts
and what it means for Democrats. I read through this
whole article and the strategists were like, maybe we can
win Arkansas.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Like really, that's okay, good luck with that.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
That seems like it's a you know, pretty far reach,
and I don't know, what do you think of this
dynamic for Democrats and how dire is that situation.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
They're not panicked about that because the party has become
more competitive in Arizona, North North Carolina, and Georgia and
the Biden map. I mean, if you won the Biden
states again in twenty thirty two with these census projections,
yes you would win the presidency. There's more worry about

(57:34):
how you are competitive and the Senat ever again because
that map, if you lose every Senate seat outside those states,
you can't get the Senate. So that's not loomed as
much of a threat as even the voter registration piece
we were talking about. The party can't imagine being competitive
in those places. I talked to the North Carolina chair
yesterday and her focus is being competitive, having good twins.

(57:56):
Where we ate slipping the state Supreme Court, it's doable.
That's one of the states where where people are still
moving in into growing cities and suburbs, and they're looking
voters balanced out a little bit, so they're not I
would say another thing Democrats learned from the Obama experiences.
They looked at a map and looked at demography and thought, okay, well,
this is our destiny. We can hold and build this
maybe for forty years, and they couldn't. They dealt with

(58:18):
a Trump challenge to the party that blew up their
demographic plans, and part of that was non white voters
moving towards Trump, which they thought was impossible. And so
that's not that this is more I guess more question
for a quarter to answer every years. I've final answered
this this week is Okay, what changes in America that
they get more white voters, or they reverse their define

(58:39):
with Latino voters, or they get more black voters. They
do not know yet, but they stop thinking that there
is a inexorable chart that moves or down in these
states because the idea of an Ohio that was totally
uncompetitive for them after Barack Obama won it twice, even
after the quote unquote were on coal. They had an
idea that, okay, the rogans of Max stat with white

(59:01):
voters and as long as we get non white voters,
we can win. Totally true. They held onto non white
voters Kamala Harris, I'd say by Obama levels, Kamala would
win the election. So what do they do? And the
answer that's the thing. The answers are not very compelling.
The answers are we need to fight more, we need
to talk to more people. It's not we need to
compromise on this. It's not we need to abandon this position.
You're seeing more experimentation by candidates and the Platner in Maine,

(59:26):
Firm May and Dan Osbourne in Nebraska. What they have
in common is that they are not identity politics. It
takes candidates. They're not expecting some sort of shift of
the electorate that just gets more democratic. They're saying, look,
a lot of people hate us and they hate corporate power,
and we need to be credible on that. And credibility
means not being one of these democrats who is part

(59:47):
of the problem, not saying because that's the dialectic. It's
not so much it's Trump and anti Trump, but it's
also a party of Trump and a party of defending
the pre Trump professional professional managerial classes order from defending.
I live in a neighborhood where the people have we
love hard feder our workers, science, and I'm not impugning that.
I'm saying that the democratic version of the of the
country vision of the country is what we had a

(01:00:09):
couple of years ago, with some tweaks. So what is
an alternative that's more popular in these states that have
gone far to the right, even when the economy is
pretty good. Look at unemployment North Dakota. It's not been terrible.
People are not saying we want we have a party
to give us more jobs. What is it the party
needs to change? That's what I think at a party media.
I'm not talking myself out of being here. But the

(01:00:30):
change is going to come from this Aron i'dnni's and
from the Dan Osborne's and from the candidates who say,
I have nothing to do with these guys. I do
not want to support the system that I grew up in.
I'm going to blow it up and do something different.
So important and that might be independence. That might be
some progressive independence who are not Democrats, and the Democratic
Party will make peace with that as it's done with
Bernie Sanders has done with independence.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Absolutely. I do want you to take last thing here
on Gavin Newsome. Let's go and put five up here
on the screen. Newsom has found himself center online a
lot of here talking about the Patriot Shop he sold
some one hundred thousand dollars in like Maga Newsom style merch.
What is the feeling in the Democratic meeting around news
is there is there? Are they? Are they enjoying the

(01:01:12):
tweets like the online energy? Does it fit and square
with some of the questions you're asking. I'm just curious
how the Democratic Party elite think about this?

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
Oh? They love it? Uh Now there is a appreciation
that Newsom is trying something different and that he also
is not bound up in that we Democrats are better
than this. We we don't post like that, we don't
make these memes. We uh there. I'm probably more sympathetic
to the anti AI people who don't like making means
of politicians with buddies. They don't have writing lines and stuff. Whatever,

(01:01:45):
if they exist and people are organically making about Gavin Newsom.
That's great, and that's that gets back to the Democrats
are just kind of waiting for some energy to come
from elsewhere organically that they didn't have anything to do with.
And see why that worked. So a lot of appreciation
and knew some the biggest applause lines. And there's one
general meeting wherever it was in the room, so not

(01:02:05):
everything's getting applausea meter. But they were for Newsom in California,
and they were for defending trans rights and LGBT rights,
and they were for opposing military occupation in DC. But
the Newsome stuff especially, and that is what people might
laugh at the way Martin phrases this, but that is
the sense he So one of the other themes of

(01:02:27):
the conference is, you know, this is a couple months
after the assassination Melissa Hortman, the former former speaker of
the Minnesota House, and the way that Martin pays tribute
to her is that she when she won, they want
to trifecta and she said, quote, let's fucking go. And
they passed everything Progresses wanted to do, even some with
one Voote margin, even though Republicans didn't want to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Some of it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:47):
That's the attitude is we need to learn from these
Republicans to just be audacious people do what we want
to do, and that includes pissing people off. And Democrats
are not maybe attitudinally that good at pissing people off
because of the eight They just don't think like magie Republicans.
They don't like to be told that something was offensive.
But when they see what people are doing around Newsome,
they say, well, all right, that doesn't come naturally to

(01:03:08):
all of us. But he is fighting. People are excited.
I think if he wins into the California Supreme Court
and gets to have this measure on the ballot, it's
going to help not forget his presential prospects, but it
will help them even more in saying, we don't need
to worry about whether this idea we have is defensible
to Republicans. We just need to do it, roll over

(01:03:30):
them and be fighters, and that's the final thing we'll
say about it. Another theme that they're saying for every
Democrat in every room is that we can't look weak.
That's where the defense of LGBT rights and immigrants comes
from is, look, yes, we know the polling might be
bad from time to time. But when people see Democrats
wring their hands and look weak and appeal to some
other authority, they don't want to vote for us. What

(01:03:50):
does that mean? What does that mean for Democratic Party?

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Again?

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
That sounds more like this Aoran description. Somethody who's who's
not afraid to say things that will piss off the
media that covers him. They can see that it works
for people. It's it's not coming naturally to the party
of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, who whose
whole message, you know, for his campaign and his presidency
was getting back to normal. They're not saying sorry too.

(01:04:13):
Biden were writing about history erasing you from the photo.
But they're quietly saying that's never going to work again.
We can't be the party. We can't be the party
that appeals to tradition and appeals to norms and things.
It's gross if you put up AI nem photos.

Speaker 8 (01:04:25):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
A decade later, a decade too late. Finally you're learning
that I mean. And to your point, it's one thing
to say it and intellectually understand it. You're talking about
a group of people who were selected for very different
qualities who were got to their positions, you know, whether
it was through support from a broad donor base or whatever,

(01:04:46):
or the leadership was comfortable with them because they don't
they know how to phrase things to not piss anyone off.
A lot of the new MAGA types, you know, come
to problem because they're able to stoke controversy online and
you know, be that said, like that influencer who's constantly
in a firestorm. So it's going to be a difficult
transition for them. I think, Dave always appreciate your reporting.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:10):
Man, No, thanks, guys, great questions. I appreciate it.