June 5, 2025 • 46 mins
Risk Reversal’s Dan Nathan details the business world's reaction to Trump’s insane tariffs. Alan Elrod examines their brilliant new article You’re Not Crazy. America Has Gone Mad.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Elon Musk warns that excessive spending
will plunge the US into debt slavery. Yeah, now he's
worried about it.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We have such a great chill for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Risk Reversal's own Dan Nathan stops by to tell us
about businesses reactions to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Trump's insane tariffs.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Then we'll talk to Alan Alrod about his brilliant article
You're not crazy, America has gone mad.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But first of the news, so Molly, the CBO, which
this weekend, Mike Johnson had to say, you know is
a woke institution and you should believe it. But then
they pointed out how often he cites it. He says
that the trunk tax bill will add two point four
trillion to the deficit a leave ten point nine million
more on insured. Great work, great work, really serving the
(00:57):
American people.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I want to talk about this bill because I know
that I keep talking about this bill, but I just
want all of our listeners to just take a minute
to realize how stupid this fucking thing is. Okay, first,
of all all Republicans in the House signed off on it,
everyone from Marjorie Taylor Green to Mike Lawler. So if
you're Mike Lawler and you're in a D plus one
(01:21):
or an R plus one, you know a very swingy district,
which he is. Jesse is now going to look up
what his district is, but it's a very tight district
that is not supposed to elect a Marjorie Taylor Green.
That guy also voted for this, so all of them
have voted for this. In it, nearly a thousand pages,
is a ton of pork, including crazy stuff like this
(01:44):
crazy thing that limits judicial power and oversight of this administration.
You're shocked to hear that, but I bet you're actually
not shocked to hear that.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
And in it there's also a ton of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Work requirements for parents with children over seven for Medicaid
and food stamps. That's right, if you have a child
over seven, you need to be working. You need to
be having a job, Okay, because children.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Over seven are adults. I mean, this is what this
bill does.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And what this bill does is it saves a little
bit of money clawing back Medicaid. That means rural hospitals
and nursing homes, and then it spends a lot of
money doing crazy tax stuff. And I want to have
one second to talk about the crazy tax stuff because basically,
this bill BBB, big beautiful bullshit is the purest distillation
(02:36):
of MAGA. Right, it's a lot of Trump's campaign promises,
no tax on tips.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
How will they do?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
No tax on tips? I feel like I'm going crazy, right,
what's a tip? What's not a tip? There's no way
to deliver this, And there's just a lot of more
tax bullshit. And then there's also stuff in this big
beautiful bullshit that is, you know, besides the judicial power stuff,
there's other stuff in there that's just pork. So Elon
(03:04):
Musk has said now that it's a bad bill. Now
I want to redo something from Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News,
who was a really really really sourced congressional reporter, and
he said a Republican aid on Elon Musk opposing the
Reconciliation bill, the guy was pro the package until he
realized he wasn't going to get his way on the
(03:26):
ev tax credits. Right, none of these people give a
fuck about the deficit. Elon wanted the ev tax credits
because he thinks it'll be good for TESLA. I want
people to realize, like, nobody here is acting out of
any interest but their own self interest.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, strong agree. So we're going to have a real
survey of stupidity today, and analysis finds the majority of
Trump cabinet tied to Project twenty twenty five groups. What
a shocker. It's almost like we said this a year.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Ago, since you and I did this whole twenty twenty
five thing, this YouTube series, and we kept at every point,
we kept being like, I think you and I together
would be like, oh my god, these people are just
going to do twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And yeah, the last episode we did of the thing
where like we point out Trump lying and showing all
the evidence that he's going to put exactly who he
put in, Well, we were right.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's like I definitely spend time in this election cycle
thinking about the ways I was wrong. Well here's one
where I was fucking right, And so we're you know,
this was always the play.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Project twenty twenty five was the ethos.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Now there are things happening in this administration that are actually,
I think scarier than Project twenty twenty five, and I'm
thinking about like what RFK is is doing right now
to research and science and health.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But do not.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Underestimate the damage that Ross Fought is doing at the
Office of Management and Budget. And he was on the
Sunday shows last week. He's doing that because they're trying
to push this bills through the Senate and he's trying
to get senators on board. On this show, Dana Bash asks,
is it fair to say what you're doing now is
in part enacting Project twenty twenty five, And of course Russvott.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Says absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
But this smart reporter pointed out that sixty to seventy
percent of Project twenty twenty five's executive action proposals have
been implemented or initiated, and those are things like environment education,
and then thirty to forty percent of their proposals are
being proposed as legislation, and those are Look, you and
(05:39):
I both remember the goal of Project twenty twenty five
expand presidential power, take power away from Congress. This Congress
was really happy to give it to Trump and to
sort of make the presidency an imperial presidency.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And that's what we're watching happen in real time.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yep. Well, the good news is is what we often
see is that the small elections in between the big
mid terms and the of course every four years where
we pick up president, that we're seeing a lot of
really good news in districts that could spell good things
for us pushing back against this administration. Since we had
(06:17):
just achieved a landslide election when in South Carolina for
the Democrats.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, you know this is like history rhymes right, Remember
in twenty sixteen, Democrats won every election, and there's a
reason why. It's because the Republicans are doing something wildly unpopular.
Work requirements for food stamps, for Medicaid, these are unpopular things.
(06:43):
The reason Republicans are in such a hurry to get
it past is a because they know that when people
read the bills they.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Won't like it, right like what happened with Marjorie Dale Green.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And b because ultimately they know this is super unpopular.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So I think we'll definitely see.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
More of these kind of amazing democratic landslides. You know,
there are people listening to this podcast right now. A
lot of people listen to this podcast, and you tend
to be very civic minded, smart people.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So here's my.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Question for you. We see that there's going to be
this grand swell, we see that Democrats are going to win.
Why don't you run for office? If you're listening to
this podcast you live in a red state or a
blue state, or a city or a town, like, we
cannot wait for these people to fix our problems. They
are not motivated, they are not capable. So maybe you
(07:37):
listeners are the ones that we've been waiting for.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, especially when we see incompetence like this that the
White House is being mocked after they admit that they
sent letters to remind countries about trade deal deadlines and
now we're begging for them to cut deals.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, well, you know who we haven't seen in a
long time. Tell me Peter Navarro.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Oh where is that? Follow?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Where is Peter Navarro?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Because Peter Navarro promised me ninety deals in ninety days.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Mall, you're going to be in DC soon, you're going
to put up missing signs.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, I'm going to be like Peter. I think Peter's
definitely going.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
To come to my book reading.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
He's a known reader. Yeah, so where are those ninety
deals in ninety days?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know how many deals. We have tell me one
O one, we have one deal. And it's not even
a deal, it's a framework of a deal. Dan Nathan
is a c NBC contributor and the host of the
Risk Reversal podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Dan Nathan, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Favorite podcast other than my own, Molly Dalnas. Great to
be here. I have a book to read, by the way,
I'm really excited about I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Thank you. How to was your mother out yesterday? Because
you know, we got to self promote.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I was on a television show interviewing someone who is
a very smart money guy economists, not an economist, but
someone who does does what you do, and he was expressing,
I think a lot of anxiety about the fact that
the market seemed to be behaving quite rationally at this moment.
(09:16):
Is that still true and can you explain to us why.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah, A couple things here, So it depends which market
you're talking about, right, So the stock market was the
primary focus of most people, most citizens in this country
when we were you know, post liberation day. I say
that obviously in air quotes, because we saw the S
and P koreem lower. That's the largest, you know, stock
market in the US or at least indussy. And you know,
(09:40):
but there's other markets, right. There's the US treasury market,
which you know is basically one of the most important
you know, interest rates that a lot of stuff is
kind of quoted against. Right. And then there was the
currency market, the US dollar.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I want you to stop and talk about the treasury market,
because that's been the really important indicator of this moment.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
This treasury market is bond people.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Usually when the market goes down by bonds because it's
a hedge against volatility.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
But that's not what's happening right now.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Right, So Americans have been accustomed to buying US treasury
bonds because the fact that the US Treasury is not
going to default, right, And so you have this incidence
where if you're pulling money, let's say, out of the
stock market because you think it's risky for whatever reason,
you can park money in the treasury market. Okay. But
the problem is in this last couple months or so,
(10:31):
is that some of the biggest holders of our debt
of US treasuries are China, are Japan. And when you
come at some of these countries with like really exorbitant
tariff rates and they are getting ready to go into
a protracted trade war because they don't want to be
bullied right into basically eating this kind of a whole
(10:51):
new world order as it relates to trade in such
a short period of time. They have leverage, they own
these treasuries, right, if they start selling them, that means
interest rates go higher. And you know, when you think
back to back in you know, March or so, when
Treasury Secretary Besson started to kind of prepare investors for
what might come right if they start, you know, kind
(11:13):
of putting these big tariffs on, they said, we're more
focused on the ten year treasure yield. They want that
to go lower. They have to refinance a lot of debt.
The higher the treasure yield is, the more expensive it
is to refinance that debt. And they said, we're not
worried about the stock market. Well, the stock market koreamed
in early April, and the US ten year treasure yield
(11:34):
went up. Why because there were foreign sellers of our debt.
It did the exact opposite of what the Treasury and
the White House wanted to happen. And that's why, that's
why we had that first taco experience back on April ninth,
which got the stock market going back higher. But the
real problem is that the US ten year treasure yield
is stuck at four point four or five percent, and
(11:56):
it was where you know, it basically was in early April.
And the US dollar has not rallied because those same
sellers of treasuries have also been selling dollars and dollar
denominated assets.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the dollar is down, the debt is more expensive, right.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
I would think about it this way. So the dollar
is where it was in early April, and US treasury
yields are basically in the ten year about the same spot.
So to the point you were making about that market
participant who says that the markets are not acting rationally,
well that's the stock markets not acting rationally. Basically, investors
are saying that the taco thing is going to happen.
(12:34):
It's going to happen again. He's going to chick it
out again because pretty soon we're going to get to
that ninety day period where he pushed out reciprocal tariffs
right on the Chinese. He tweeted out last night that
g is going to be a hard guy to do
a deal with. I think he's already lowering expectations there.
So then the question is do they ratchet it back
up right, because we know that Chinese are going to
(12:56):
ratchet it back up. And it brings me back to
the first Trump administration. They put tariffs on China in
March of twenty eighteen. They did not have a framework
for a Phase one deal until January of twenty twenty.
If you think trade wars are easy to prosecute, well
good luck with that. We've already seen that they're very difficult.
(13:16):
And we also know that our major adversary is going
to call our bluff. And it's also interesting to know
that the first two countries that we came after, Mexico
and Canada to where our biggest trading partners, have yet
to come to the table. And I think that emboldens
the Chinese. Also.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I want to talk about Mexico and Canada because what
happened there was such a self inflicted wound, right Mexico
and Canada. You have to work really hard to make
these people furious, and he did right, especially Canada, like
they're run by a banker.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
At this point. He's a liberal.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
All he wants is to not have drama tried as
hard as possible to keep Brexit from blowing up the
UK economy. Now, Brexit fucking disaster. But Mark Carney is
really like the leader you would want, Like, I mean,
isn't he kind of your and mind too a little
bit our dream president?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I mean, you know, here's a guy who actually has
a strong fundamental knowledge of how markets work.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
He understands the inner complexities of what we just went through. Right,
what does the treasury market mean? What are interest rates mean?
What is FED policy, which is meant to be independent
of politics? What does that mean? What does the stock
market tell you at certain times? The stock market, you
hear this expression all the time, is a discounting mechanism, right,
It looks at all the available news, and then investors
(14:33):
kind of put their money to work. And so you
could say, right now, maybe that is what the stock
market is telling you, that the worst case scenarios are
off the table and maybe some like cooler heads like
Mark Carney might prevail. If you think about Mexico, shine,
they haven't really been engaging in a way that's particularly antagonistic.
The EU has suggested that they will come to the table,
(14:56):
but they don't know who they're negotiating with or what
we want that sort of thing. The UK that deal
was a bit of a fugazy They just said, let's
just get this out.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
One works of a deal, right.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So to your point, I think that there's like some
definitely level headed folks. But then let's go to a
topic us. Let's go to a topic that I know
is near and dear to your heart. Somebody who's kind
of off kilter a little bit. That would be Elon Musk,
who just left the administration and now all of a
sudden he's got some real big issues with the tax policy,
the tax plan. And don't think for a second that
(15:29):
these things are not kind of related, because they really
are important if you think about it. If we're trying
to reorient global trade, if we're trying to work on
bringing down our national debt, I.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Mean, to re orient global trade.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
In tariffs are that it's like taking a chainsaw, I mean,
much better to give incentives to use a carrot rather
than a step. I also wonder how much of Elon
Musk's newfound frugality is his irritation that EV credits are
no longer the I mean, this is a guy who
(16:02):
democratic legislation created him, right, he became the richest man
in the world, EV tax credits, all of this sort
of you know, the help that his company's got.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I just say about
Elon and you know, I think he's a much more
effective chaos agent than Donald Trump.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
But the one thing that's consistent between the two of
them is they always say the quiet part out loud, right,
And so Elon coming out this tax bill, he has
not really mentioned, you know, these EV tax credits. He's
gone back and forth on that. By the way, over
the last few years, he's gone back and forth over
you know, some sort of trade barriers as it relates
to China and evs. We don't really know where he
(16:45):
stands on this. I think one of the positions as
it relates to Tesla in particular, has been that they're
in a much better spot than not say GM and
Ford to kind of have these credits go away. But
that's actually not the case anymore. The fundamentals of their
business could not be worse. Right now, the auto gross margins,
the profit that they make on their evs is now
in line with that of GM and Ford. GM and
(17:06):
Ford are pulling back from the ev market and they're
going more for these plug in hybrids. So when I
think about the way that he has gone about kind of,
you know, dealing with a price war, the Chinese are
eating their lunch. He's expected to have the second consecutive
decline in deliveries this year at a time where the
price war is eating into their margin. So he needs
(17:29):
these credits. It's very important. But they haven't said it yet,
and Trump hasn't come out and said it yet, and
this thing is going to be a bit worse. And
I just think that the lobbing of the grenade at
the tax bill is something that basically he's trying to
maybe reorient the kind of what's going on with tax
and the expectations about cuts to lower the taxes versus
(17:49):
what's going on with trade and the fact that our
government appears to be mired in problems with both of
them at the same time. It goes back to the
first administration. They went for tats Gary Khan came in.
He wanted to get tax cuts through. They got them through.
It was a tailwind for the economy, it was a
tailwind for the stock market, and then they focused on
(18:09):
terrafts and trade. And I'm not saying that was effective,
but it was a much more effective way about it.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh much more right.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I mean, you choice the economy with the tax cuts
and then you go in there with the tariffs and
it ends up being actually quite good because it tamps
down some of the inflationary you know.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I mean that with Gary Cohen is not the same.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
As you know, the people who are in charge right now,
which is Donald Trump's lizard brain. I want to talk
about China for another minute, because there's so much anxiety
about China right what the next step is here? What's
happening with Taiwan? We are really vulnerable to them. Also,
the other thing I want to ask you about selling
the bonds. I didn't realize that this was actually China
(18:55):
Japan selling bonds. So that is now that's indisputable. It's
not like technical traders.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
No, I mean, like there's definitely market participants here and
around the globe who basically have a trade on they
called the carry trade. They kind of sell over there
and they use the proceeds and they buy higher yielding
assets over here. And one of the reasons why you
saw that market volatility in most markets. You know, this
is back in April, but we also saw it in
late July in early August. When you see an unwind
(19:25):
of that, that's when you see markets go haywire. And
so when you think about who has the leverage right
in a situation like this, the largest holders of your
debt have the leverage right. We also had a situation
a few weeks ago where moody is one of the
big rating agencies, came out and lowered the rating on
our debt, which also makes us vulnerable. Treasury Secretary Bessett
(19:46):
said the other day that we will not default on
our debt, but we almost did, you know, about twelve
years ago. And so there's a lot of unknowns here.
And so when you think about I'll just kind of
bring it back to China, which you wanted to kind
of talk about. You know, Okay, let's take the over
on what they might do with Taiwan. You know, some
of the easiest things they might do, or some sorts
of blockades or some sort of trade sort of situations
(20:09):
and that sort of thing. That is important because when
you think about generative AI chips and this is the
new world order that we live in. This is going
to be the most important commodity going forward, especially as
we deal with our adversaries going forward. They are made
in Taiwan, Okay, so if the Chinese try to disrupt
anything as it relates to Taiwanese production of those chips,
(20:31):
that could be a real problem for the entire globe. Right,
So I think about, you know, how this kind of
new world order is going to be set, Well, we
can't afford to have any disruption there. So when we
think about China, you know, the national security as it
relates to supply chains is really important. So how do
the Chinese have leverage on our manufacturing? Okay? They are
thirty percent of the global manufacturing, right, so we went
(20:54):
through this with COVID that was a bit of a problem.
They also own a lot of the rare earth materials
that into EV batteries and magnets in this sort, and
they also own the purchasing power of let's say Boeing planes, right.
So a headline that hit today is that they're considering
by hundreds of planes from Airbus, which is obviously you know,
a European company, it's French, and that would be in
(21:17):
place of Boeing planes. Boeing has been mired in problems
for the last six or seven years. They had those
plane crashes, these issues with the seven forty seven Max,
and they've been missed you executing for a while. That
could be a real big hit to our economy, not
just from a manufacturing standpoint, but really from our stature,
you know around the globe for American exceptionalism.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
American exceptionalism. Ha haha.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
It's so funny that you just said this thing about Boeing,
because I really do think part of what happened with Boeing,
right is a question of regulation, right. I mean, things
got at a hand because the regulatory environment wasn't what
it needed to be to make sure these planes were safe.
And remember Trump was in fact president from twenty sixteen
(22:02):
to twenty twenty. I just wonder how much like one
of the things Trump loves to do is dismantle regulation,
and we never ever see why that's bad, right, We
only ever see him dismantling regulation and then a catastrophe
like that trained derailment in Ohio. I feel like there
(22:23):
is a straight line between deregulation and environmental fallout but
also economic fallout.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yeah, I mean that's the story of the two thousands, right,
and a lead up to the financial crisis. You know,
we had some significant regulations as it really to our
financial institutions, and you know it was the Clinton administration
that actually rolled a puncture those back, right. And you know,
as you think about folks who have incentives right to
kind of take financial instruments and kind of repackage them
(22:51):
and do them in a way where they can make
a lot of money on them and they can get
around regulations. I mean, that's really what happened in the
financial crisis, and you have thought on the way out
of that where so many individuals were really burned. They
were the bag holders in that, and you had you know,
Elizabeth Warren put in the CFPB and all that sort
of stuff. And I think this is the point you're
getting to, is that the administration comes in in this
(23:11):
new administration, it's one of the first things they do
they get rid of the Consumer Protection Organization that was
meant to shield everyday citizens from that sort of you know,
predatory behavior.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And so here's because of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Because of the financial crisis, and then you can look
to twenty and eighteen. So the Trump administration rolled back
some regulation about capital levels for smaller banks. Okay, so
do you remember in March of twenty twenty three, Silicon
Valley Bank went down. There was a handful of other
banks that went down. You can draw a line back
to these capital requirements that were rolled back in the
(23:48):
twenty eighteen deregulation. And we lost some really important banks,
and we also had some threats to the financial system
at the time, different than two thousand and eight, but
in some ways they could have had big not gun effects.
And what did the government have to do And this
was under obviously the biderministration. They had to go bail
them out, right, And so we see this again and again.
If you give these financiers, if you give these folks
(24:10):
enough room or enough rope, they will ultimately hang themselves
because the incentives are too great in the near term,
and they know that they can socialize the losses if
things go bad.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, I was just going to say, privatize the gain,
socialize the losses. Speaking of socializing the losses, the BBB,
big beautiful bullshit bell will in fact cut a lot
of things right. It'll cut snap benefits, food for hungry children,
it will cut Medicaid, which will cut rural hospitals, nursing homes,
but it will also provide these insane tax cut no
(24:43):
tax on tips. I mean, what is that even? Like,
no tax on tips? How would that even be implemented?
What does that look like? And what would the financial
sort of fall out be? Right? I mean, clearly it'll
juice the public markets, but what do you think it'll
look like in six months?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Well, it's funny that sun tips thing is obviously a
populous sort of move. When he would go to Nevada
during the campaign, he would talk about that and you know,
and again this goes back to maybe some of his
political genius, but his lack of acumen when it comes
to policy and the likes. So to me, that is
probably a bit of a rounding era if you think
about all the folks that will benefit from that, however
(25:19):
they implement it, versus the expected maybe ten thirteen million
people in America. We're going to lose access to healthcare
or to your point about snap or you know, free
lunches and breakfast for you know, students of you know,
lower income sort of families in the like, and I mean,
those are the big things and ultimately, I think those
are the things that are going to get felt right
(25:40):
out of the gate. Do you feel them? How do
these things get implemented? You know, who knows. But at
the end of the day, I mean this sort of
cuts in a lot of red states. And that's the
other thing. If you think about some of these policies
that were put in place during the Biden administration, you
could say, well, the IRA and the Chips Acts and
all this sort of stuff, they deliberately put them in
some of these red states, so the folks would actually
(26:01):
have all the benefits of this government spend if you
think about it, right, and it goes back to really
a social safety net. If Republicans want to push through
a four and a half trillion dollar tax cut over
the next ten years and throw three or four trillion
dollars onto the national debt, which is the thing that
they're supposed to care about, then they better be prepared
(26:22):
for the repercussions because they lose the soul of the party. Right.
If this is what and this is why Ran Paul
and some of these folks, and even Elon Musk, we
don't know Elon Mus's intention. I never knew him to
be a fiscal hawk by any means, and you think
of the beneficiaries he's been able to enjoy from government spending.
But this is one where I don't think it gets
fixed too quickly. I don't think President Trump, as his
(26:46):
approval rating goes down over these economic issues, especially as
the trade thing gets pushed out, is going to have
this sort of leverage over the Senate as he did
over the House in the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's the twenty four tillion dollar question. Danny. Then, thank you,
thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Thanks Bally. Great to be here.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Allan L.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Rod is the President and CEO of the Pulaski Institute
and a contributor to Liberal Currents.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Alan L. Rod.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
You write a bunch of stuff, very smart. You write
for Liberal Currents, which I think of as a very
very smart literary magazine in the tradition of the New Republic,
a little more lefty. And I want to talk about
this essay, which is why I knew we had to
have you on, because I was like, Holy moly, this
is how I feel this. Why didn't I write this piece?
(27:39):
And the title is You're not crazy America has gone mad.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So talk to me about sort of how you got here.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
I've only been doing the sort of writing commentary pieces
for a few years, and really it kind of came
out of I head also trying to get this policy
type organization off the ground here in Arkansas called the
Plaski Institution that I started in twenty twenty one, and
it is focused on a lot of the problems I
think I described in this piece and some other pieces,
(28:09):
which is challenges that are happening with democracy and with popularism,
not just in the US, but in really a lot
of Western countries where there's a lot of breakdown in
not just the electoral politics, but also just sort of
broad cultural commitments to the important things that make a
liberal democracy work. But I've tried to think about that
(28:29):
in sort of heartland places, So that was sort of
the idea I started writing to sort of try to
get these ideas out there and bring attention to what
I'm trying to do. And I've been really lucky. I
think that that's turned into its own sort of separate
and really rewarding journey. In terms of I started writing
an arc digital back in twenty twenty two, and really
(28:49):
clicked with Brady Belvite or there and Nicholas Grossman, and
luckily got to do some pieces for other places. And
Liberal Currents was a place I got connected with thanks
to anac Manus, who's actually a fellow at the plast Constitution.
He said, you know, reach out to Adam Gurry if
you're just sting in pitching them, and I did, and
it was one of those kind of we all just
sort of clicked. I got in the little discord with
(29:12):
the other editors and writers at Liberal Currents and there
was a I think a very happy marriage of thought
and opinion, and so lip O Currens became you know,
I'm a contributing enditor.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Now, yeah, that's so great. But let's talk about what
this idea is. So you start with a passage from
Hannah Rand's origins of totalitarianism. Never has our future been
more unpredictable. Never have we depended so much on political
forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules. And
(29:42):
I think this is the most important point here, of
common sense and self interest forces that look like sheer
insanity if judged by the standard of other centuries. So
much of Trump administration at this moment. You know, from
RFK Junior to Elon Musk, there's so many things that
(30:04):
they are doing in this administration that strike me as
just completely I mean, obviously there's often profit motives behind it,
but I wonder if you could just talk us through
some of these things that you see.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Yeah, So, I think I'm really trying to do at
this piece is to capture something that I think is
happening that's observable at a few different levels. Right, So
when I think about you know, I'm not being sort
of literal, right and kind of madness. I understand mental
illness and that language can sometimes be touchy for people.
But what I am trying to capture is there are
(30:39):
a lot of ways in which we are not behaving
in ways that really makes sense. Right. You know, you
mentioned profit motives, So there's clearly some self interest in
the Trump administration, but there's a lot of things where
the kind of even just rational principles of self preservation
self interest don't feel like they're functioning. I mean, you know,
what we're doing to our health system right now is crazy,
(31:00):
and even since I wrote the piece, it's gotten crazier. Right.
He said he wants to basically withdraw vaccines for most
age groups. Right, there's all kinds of further downsizing of
the FDA. They want to take fluoride, not just not
you know, earlier they were talking about discouraging fluoride. Now
there's talks about banning it in multiple states. It's really,
I mean, this is just in the wealthiest country in
(31:22):
the world, crazy, right, And he talks about fixing chronic disease,
even and even if you wanted to take him at
face value in that that's not being done right because
they're defunding all of these research initiatives that have run
for a year, some of them decades on the sorts
of disease as he says are important. So I think
the Health Science Fund is a good place to look
(31:42):
at that because you have individual kind of madness, you
have influencers or are sort of peddling this stuff, and
you can see how it got into the groundwater over
time in the US. But you also have the institutional
problem of like, our institutions are not behaving the way
they should behave they are fully at this point captured
by this, I think completely. I kind of feel dystopian
(32:05):
to me world view of yes, it's grift. But I
always think that grift is a bad way to think
about it sometimes because that implies it's just as simple
as oh, they're just telling you a lie so they
can get money. And I think that it's just far
more irrational and sort of dysfunctional and chaotic than that.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Oh yeah, I wonder what you think about MAHA Make
America Healthy Again. I wonder how much of MAHA is
an It seems to me there's a straight line between
the pandemic, MAHA sort of the corruption of multi level
marketing and MAGA.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Do you think that's right? And how?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (32:44):
I mean, I do think that that's correct. I think
what you saw on the pandemic was something that was
already starting, which was a lot of these sort of
health influencers who have just deeply on scientific beliefs about
a lot of different things. That was really the I
think the convergence point with them in MAGA, because there
was a huge amount of objection to just the various
health precautions that were being sure. I think in the
(33:06):
pandemic you saw I think a convergence. It had been
building for a bit, but you saw this convergence between
a lot of health influencers and people who were more
I think you're sort of typical RFK type person, voter
or just kind of interested in his stuff. That kind
of person really get into the sort of maga world.
(33:28):
And that's kind of what Maha is right. It is
this convergence of those two things. And some of that
was about vaccine hesititency, but I think a lot of
it was just more broadly about you know, the sort
of existential dread of the pandemic and a lot of
very unscientific and emotional reactions right to the pandemic. And
so I think what is troubling to me about like Maha,
(33:49):
is some of it is absolutely grift, but some of
it is belief, right, and I think we have to
reckon with that.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Right.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
If I thought it was all just opportunism and grift,
I don't think I would have written an essay called,
you know, We've all Gone mad, because then it would
just be sort of we're all cynical and we're all opportunists.
But really, you know, for people to just kind of
at once in large numbers reject these advancements we saw,
(34:16):
I think the pandemic was just rocket fuel for this stuff.
It pushed something that had been there for a long time,
existing in a kind of particular corner of Instagram and YouTube,
and it just propelled it into a collision with the
maga stuff that had been coming really since since Trump
came down the escalator, and that combination I think has
been really quite powerful and dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And I do think like part of it is there
is real anxiety in modern life about what all of
the things around us do and what they cause and
what the possible. You know, we have younger people getting
cancer things like that, that is real.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I mean, I don't know my own person.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Pecadillo is why is RFK Junior, you know, not focusing
on the stuff that he you know, there's some of
this stuff is not as crazy, right, this stuff about
organic food or whatever, But that's not what he's focused on, right,
He's focused on the stuff that's really vaccines, the stuff
that the stuff that we were really scared he was
(35:21):
going to do he is in fact doing.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Yeah, there is a kind of I think fundamental disorder.
And this is kind of what I do mean is
like to his thinking and to a lot of this
thinking where he'll talk about and I think what it
means is that we misunderstand him when we just let
him say, oh, chronic disease is a real problem. We
take that at face value when we say, that's not
so crazy. But that's not actually the sort of most
(35:45):
front facing part of his belief system, Right, that's actually
kind of a that's really a vestige of all this
other stuff, right, and so, and I think that's made
obvious in the fact that, like, when he actually says
we're going to fix chronic disease, they're not doing that.
And the things he seems to think count as chronic
disease is also a bit strange. Right, So you already
(36:06):
are in a weird place. Once you probe that language
even a little bit, I think what I am kind
of You're right, there's there's this anxiety. There's this huge
amount of anxiety. And I find that really interesting in
the way anxiety has the capacity to disrupt and disorder
our thinking and get us to cling to sometimes very
sometimes emotionally comforting or persuasive ideas that are also quite
(36:28):
erratic and actually not very good for us. Right. I Mean,
there's a sense in which a lot of this stuff
I think got popular because people turn to things that
made them feel better.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
They needed answer, so yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yeah, and provide answers they kind of I mean, there's
a religious aspect to this right where it kind of
is it's basically sort of like it's providing a kind
of you know, compass or map for how the world
works and where you stand in it, and a certain
set of truths that can make you feel I guess comforted.
But it's all I mean, it's very it's I think
(37:00):
disaggregated from reality.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
And I do think.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
That that that mixture of anxiety and disorder or what's
so troubling because it doesn't feel like people are following tradition,
the idea that the American electorate would say somebody who
wants to put this guy in power is trustworthy. I mean,
I just you know, we talk all the time like
Richard Nixon was a crook and a criminal and an opportunist,
(37:27):
but Richard Nixon also helped, you know, enshrining the EPA
and the Clean Air Act, because Richard Dixon wasn't actually
a crazy person, right, And that's the distinction I think
I'm kind of getting at is like Grift just to
me does not feel like an explanation for what's happening here.
Oh yeah, a disintegration of ordered thinking feels like a
(37:49):
better explanation. And it's happening at a cultural level, and
it's also happening at an institutional level. Institutions that are
supposed to mediate our thinking and our actions in rational
ways are not doing that. If we think of them
as communicative communicative sites, they're not functioning the way rational
communication works anymore.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
And I think I think that's a I think that
irrationality is, you know, And I mean there's so many
different hallmarks of it, from things like the tariffs, to
things like the anti vax stuff, to the scientific stuff.
(38:33):
Can we talk about something that I am a little
bit obsessed with, which is this idea that Elon Musk
is the richest man in the world, has made almost
all of his money on technology, right, stuff that has
been created from science done in labs like at Harvard, Right,
(38:56):
the kind of stuff that's made possible by.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Things like Ana.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So why do you think, I mean that irrationality is
so striking to me? What do you think the operating
principle there is or do you think this is all
just kind of like post printing press madness that America
is engaging in.
Speaker 5 (39:17):
I'm glad you said the printing press, because I do
think that, like a the the printing press challenge of
our era, right, which is social media, it is invalant. Like, yeah,
I mean, I think with Elon, it's this is a
guy who you know, I can't speak to like how
smart or insightful Elon might have been a decade ago,
but I think it's pretty obvious that for the last
few years he's spent his time. You know, he admits
(39:40):
to taking inordinate amounts of ketamine.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Right, and the New York Times just had a big
piece on that.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Yeah, go on, he spends like twenty hours a day
just absolutely soaking in social media, and I mean, I
think that is a place that just you know, it
obliterates your sense of up and down. So you know,
I mean, if he's just taking drugs and he's the
richest man in the world, which itself can be kind
of a narcotic, and he's spending more hours a day
(40:05):
than many people are awake on his own social media platform, right,
to me, that's just you're just swimming in a kind
of sea of irrational and sort of disordered behavior. I mean,
social media doesn't bring out our best in most of us.
And then you also have places like what he's turned
to accent to, which is just a full on cess pool.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Let's go another minute on the printing press here, because
I do really want to talk about that. I once
was on a panel interviewing a very famous tech bro,
you know, and he said everything.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Very you know, a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Of that kind of stuff, the tech bro stuff. And
then I said to you, do you think we're better off?
And he said, well, we will eventually be better off,
but it's like the printing press, we may have one
hundred years of fuckeray.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Do you think that it's a one to one there?
Speaker 5 (40:58):
No, because I think this is true of a lot
of people who are in kind of the liberally you know.
I came of age under the Obama years camp I
was at one point fairly optimistic about this stuff, right.
I was like, oh, Twitter in the Arab spring, and
like look at Facebook and like this is pretty great.
I say that as someone who did not start as
a as a kind of lttite.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
But no, because I think what we've seen is that
one we know for a fact that the effect of
screens is different. And I don't mean that in a
kind of screen addiction way, which is its own thing.
I mean we know psychologically that our capacity to recognize
the humanity of a person we're interacting with on a
phone screen is reduced, Like our brain just doesn't process
it the way we process in person interaction. And when
(41:41):
you read a text that someone wrote, that person is
not there for you to scream at. Actually, right, you
go and find other paper and write about them. Social
media is combining these things, so it's taking like the
text you know, if you're on Twitter, the text based
aspects right of the printing past, and it's fusing them
with a bunch of other stuff that we're not evolutionary
(42:01):
equipped for at all, like just interacting with millions of
anonymous people. And I think we've seen very clearly that
the stuff we're willing to say and do there is
just absolutely unhinged. And there's no you know, because of
the whole debate over you know, we're not a publishing platform,
et cetera. There's no editorial process right too. I stud
wanted to try to write a book about how Molly
(42:23):
is a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Right now, you can write it.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
I could self publish sure today, but like you know,
at one point there'd be like a process somebody would
have to be like agreed to run that and print
that and like actually do it. And now I could
just go onto these websites and say really anything I want.
And so I just think the printing press analogy is
it's seductive because what it says is don't worry. Look
(42:48):
how great things are. Thinks to those advancements. That's how
they'll be because of this. But I think it really
obscures all the way is that they're just not the
same at all.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Oh so interesting, thank you saying you, saying you, saying
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Now, Dan Nathan, Yes, Molly jonathast.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
You are a special moment of fuckery guest.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
So I'm going to set you up for a doozy Okay,
are you ready?
Speaker 4 (43:17):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
So it involves America's most I want to say something generous,
but I'm not going to worst congress Woman Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
So in the big.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Beautiful whatever the fuck that thing is, there is an
insane little bit of whatever that says.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
And I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
It basically says that states cannot regulate AI. So it
is the opposite of everything that Republicans have been saying
for so long. And but you know, AI companies want
it full transparency. I didn't know about this section on
page two seventy eight to seventy nine of the obb
B that strip states for the rights to make laws
(44:00):
or regulate AI for a decade. I'm adamantly opposed all
caps to this, and it is a violation of state laws.
And I would have voted no had I known what
was in there or AKA read the bill, thought Stan Nathan.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Yeah, well, let's read the bills here, people, and maybe
you make these big, beautiful bills something that are digestible
of all people opining on. This is probably not one
that I'm going to take to the bank and listen
to what she has to say here. But at the
end of the day, I think you nailed it. It's like, okay,
if Republican politics, okay, for the last call it, one
hundred and fifty years have centered around whatever the party was,
(44:37):
you know, prior to that have centered around you know
what I mean, the states being able to kind of
make their own laws. And put the power back in
the people's hands as it relates to whatever the demographics
or geographic issues specific to them. It just doesn't make
a whole heck of a lot of sense. You want
to turn this thing upside down, you know. And some
of the folks that are these aisars or cryptosars that
(44:57):
have come into the administration, you know, you would think
that these people have a code, right, like they've kind
of built things over amazing things and so it gote valid,
you know, over the last thirty forty years, that sort
of thing that have actually advanced the quality of life
for so many you know, millions of not billions of
people here, and that's some sort of conformity about this.
(45:19):
They recognize what the stakes are with AI. That would
make a whole heck of a lot of sense. So
in some ways, you know, taking the power from the
States and taking the power from folks like Marjorie Taylor
Green who don't understand any of it makes some sense
to me. But these people better get their act together
because this technology is advancing at a pace that we've
never seen right now, and it's really at the center
(45:41):
of a lot of the sort of battles that are
going to be fought over the next hundred years for
like global supremacy. I know that sounds really dramatic. Backtion
one hundred years and let's see how important this is
right now that we get it right, because you know what,
you know, who doesn't kind of mess around with this?
I know is the moment fuckery, so I could say,
is the Chinese. They're taking a fifty year view about
(46:05):
this and we are taking an every two year view
as it relates to our midterms.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
All Right, Mollie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Elon Musk warns that excessive spending
will plunge the US into debt slavery. Yeah, now he's
worried about it.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We have such a great chill for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Risk Reversal's own Dan Nathan stops by to tell us
about businesses reactions to.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Trump's insane tariffs.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Then we'll talk to Alan Alrod about his brilliant article
You're not crazy, America has gone mad.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But first of the news, so Molly, the CBO, which
this weekend, Mike Johnson had to say, you know is
a woke institution and you should believe it. But then
they pointed out how often he cites it. He says
that the trunk tax bill will add two point four
trillion to the deficit a leave ten point nine million
more on insured. Great work, great work, really serving the
(00:57):
American people.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I want to talk about this bill because I know
that I keep talking about this bill, but I just
want all of our listeners to just take a minute
to realize how stupid this fucking thing is. Okay, first,
of all all Republicans in the House signed off on it,
everyone from Marjorie Taylor Green to Mike Lawler. So if
you're Mike Lawler and you're in a D plus one
(01:21):
or an R plus one, you know a very swingy district,
which he is. Jesse is now going to look up
what his district is, but it's a very tight district
that is not supposed to elect a Marjorie Taylor Green.
That guy also voted for this, so all of them
have voted for this. In it, nearly a thousand pages,
is a ton of pork, including crazy stuff like this
(01:44):
crazy thing that limits judicial power and oversight of this administration.
You're shocked to hear that, but I bet you're actually
not shocked to hear that.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
And in it there's also a ton of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Work requirements for parents with children over seven for Medicaid
and food stamps. That's right, if you have a child
over seven, you need to be working. You need to
be having a job, Okay, because children.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Over seven are adults. I mean, this is what this
bill does.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And what this bill does is it saves a little
bit of money clawing back Medicaid. That means rural hospitals
and nursing homes, and then it spends a lot of
money doing crazy tax stuff. And I want to have
one second to talk about the crazy tax stuff because basically,
this bill BBB, big beautiful bullshit is the purest distillation
(02:36):
of MAGA. Right, it's a lot of Trump's campaign promises,
no tax on tips.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
How will they do?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
No tax on tips? I feel like I'm going crazy, right,
what's a tip? What's not a tip? There's no way
to deliver this, And there's just a lot of more
tax bullshit. And then there's also stuff in this big
beautiful bullshit that is, you know, besides the judicial power stuff,
there's other stuff in there that's just pork. So Elon
(03:04):
Musk has said now that it's a bad bill. Now
I want to redo something from Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News,
who was a really really really sourced congressional reporter, and
he said a Republican aid on Elon Musk opposing the
Reconciliation bill, the guy was pro the package until he
realized he wasn't going to get his way on the
(03:26):
ev tax credits. Right, none of these people give a
fuck about the deficit. Elon wanted the ev tax credits
because he thinks it'll be good for TESLA. I want
people to realize, like, nobody here is acting out of
any interest but their own self interest.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, strong agree. So we're going to have a real
survey of stupidity today, and analysis finds the majority of
Trump cabinet tied to Project twenty twenty five groups. What
a shocker. It's almost like we said this a year.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Ago, since you and I did this whole twenty twenty
five thing, this YouTube series, and we kept at every point,
we kept being like, I think you and I together
would be like, oh my god, these people are just
going to do twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And yeah, the last episode we did of the thing
where like we point out Trump lying and showing all
the evidence that he's going to put exactly who he
put in, Well, we were right.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It's like I definitely spend time in this election cycle
thinking about the ways I was wrong. Well here's one
where I was fucking right, And so we're you know,
this was always the play.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Project twenty twenty five was the ethos.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Now there are things happening in this administration that are actually,
I think scarier than Project twenty twenty five, and I'm
thinking about like what RFK is is doing right now
to research and science and health.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But do not.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Underestimate the damage that Ross Fought is doing at the
Office of Management and Budget. And he was on the
Sunday shows last week. He's doing that because they're trying
to push this bills through the Senate and he's trying
to get senators on board. On this show, Dana Bash asks,
is it fair to say what you're doing now is
in part enacting Project twenty twenty five, And of course Russvott.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Says absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
But this smart reporter pointed out that sixty to seventy
percent of Project twenty twenty five's executive action proposals have
been implemented or initiated, and those are things like environment education,
and then thirty to forty percent of their proposals are
being proposed as legislation, and those are Look, you and
(05:39):
I both remember the goal of Project twenty twenty five
expand presidential power, take power away from Congress. This Congress
was really happy to give it to Trump and to
sort of make the presidency an imperial presidency.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And that's what we're watching happen in real time.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yep. Well, the good news is is what we often
see is that the small elections in between the big
mid terms and the of course every four years where
we pick up president, that we're seeing a lot of
really good news in districts that could spell good things
for us pushing back against this administration. Since we had
(06:17):
just achieved a landslide election when in South Carolina for
the Democrats.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, you know this is like history rhymes right, Remember
in twenty sixteen, Democrats won every election, and there's a
reason why. It's because the Republicans are doing something wildly unpopular.
Work requirements for food stamps, for Medicaid, these are unpopular things.
(06:43):
The reason Republicans are in such a hurry to get
it past is a because they know that when people
read the bills they.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Won't like it, right like what happened with Marjorie Dale Green.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And b because ultimately they know this is super unpopular.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So I think we'll definitely see.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
More of these kind of amazing democratic landslides. You know,
there are people listening to this podcast right now. A
lot of people listen to this podcast, and you tend
to be very civic minded, smart people.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
So here's my.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Question for you. We see that there's going to be
this grand swell, we see that Democrats are going to win.
Why don't you run for office? If you're listening to
this podcast you live in a red state or a
blue state, or a city or a town, like, we
cannot wait for these people to fix our problems. They
are not motivated, they are not capable. So maybe you
(07:37):
listeners are the ones that we've been waiting for.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, especially when we see incompetence like this that the
White House is being mocked after they admit that they
sent letters to remind countries about trade deal deadlines and
now we're begging for them to cut deals.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, well, you know who we haven't seen in a
long time. Tell me Peter Navarro.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Oh where is that? Follow?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Where is Peter Navarro?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Because Peter Navarro promised me ninety deals in ninety days.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Mall, you're going to be in DC soon, you're going
to put up missing signs.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, I'm going to be like Peter. I think Peter's
definitely going.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
To come to my book reading.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
He's a known reader. Yeah, so where are those ninety
deals in ninety days?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know how many deals. We have tell me one
O one, we have one deal. And it's not even
a deal, it's a framework of a deal. Dan Nathan
is a c NBC contributor and the host of the
Risk Reversal podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Dan Nathan, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Favorite podcast other than my own, Molly Dalnas. Great to
be here. I have a book to read, by the way,
I'm really excited about I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Thank you. How to was your mother out yesterday? Because
you know, we got to self promote.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I was on a television show interviewing someone who is
a very smart money guy economists, not an economist, but
someone who does does what you do, and he was expressing,
I think a lot of anxiety about the fact that
the market seemed to be behaving quite rationally at this moment.
(09:16):
Is that still true and can you explain to us why.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah, A couple things here, So it depends which market
you're talking about, right, So the stock market was the
primary focus of most people, most citizens in this country
when we were you know, post liberation day. I say
that obviously in air quotes, because we saw the S
and P koreem lower. That's the largest, you know, stock
market in the US or at least indussy. And you know,
(09:40):
but there's other markets, right. There's the US treasury market,
which you know is basically one of the most important
you know, interest rates that a lot of stuff is
kind of quoted against. Right. And then there was the
currency market, the US dollar.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I want you to stop and talk about the treasury market,
because that's been the really important indicator of this moment.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
This treasury market is bond people.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Usually when the market goes down by bonds because it's
a hedge against volatility.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
But that's not what's happening right now.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Right, So Americans have been accustomed to buying US treasury
bonds because the fact that the US Treasury is not
going to default, right, And so you have this incidence
where if you're pulling money, let's say, out of the
stock market because you think it's risky for whatever reason,
you can park money in the treasury market. Okay. But
the problem is in this last couple months or so,
(10:31):
is that some of the biggest holders of our debt
of US treasuries are China, are Japan. And when you
come at some of these countries with like really exorbitant
tariff rates and they are getting ready to go into
a protracted trade war because they don't want to be
bullied right into basically eating this kind of a whole
(10:51):
new world order as it relates to trade in such
a short period of time. They have leverage, they own
these treasuries, right, if they start selling them, that means
interest rates go higher. And you know, when you think
back to back in you know, March or so, when
Treasury Secretary Besson started to kind of prepare investors for
what might come right if they start, you know, kind
(11:13):
of putting these big tariffs on, they said, we're more
focused on the ten year treasure yield. They want that
to go lower. They have to refinance a lot of debt.
The higher the treasure yield is, the more expensive it
is to refinance that debt. And they said, we're not
worried about the stock market. Well, the stock market koreamed
in early April, and the US ten year treasure yield
(11:34):
went up. Why because there were foreign sellers of our debt.
It did the exact opposite of what the Treasury and
the White House wanted to happen. And that's why, that's
why we had that first taco experience back on April ninth,
which got the stock market going back higher. But the
real problem is that the US ten year treasure yield
is stuck at four point four or five percent, and
(11:56):
it was where you know, it basically was in early April.
And the US dollar has not rallied because those same
sellers of treasuries have also been selling dollars and dollar
denominated assets.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the dollar is down, the debt is more expensive, right.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
I would think about it this way. So the dollar
is where it was in early April, and US treasury
yields are basically in the ten year about the same spot.
So to the point you were making about that market
participant who says that the markets are not acting rationally,
well that's the stock markets not acting rationally. Basically, investors
are saying that the taco thing is going to happen.
(12:34):
It's going to happen again. He's going to chick it
out again because pretty soon we're going to get to
that ninety day period where he pushed out reciprocal tariffs
right on the Chinese. He tweeted out last night that
g is going to be a hard guy to do
a deal with. I think he's already lowering expectations there.
So then the question is do they ratchet it back
up right, because we know that Chinese are going to
(12:56):
ratchet it back up. And it brings me back to
the first Trump administration. They put tariffs on China in
March of twenty eighteen. They did not have a framework
for a Phase one deal until January of twenty twenty.
If you think trade wars are easy to prosecute, well
good luck with that. We've already seen that they're very difficult.
(13:16):
And we also know that our major adversary is going
to call our bluff. And it's also interesting to know
that the first two countries that we came after, Mexico
and Canada to where our biggest trading partners, have yet
to come to the table. And I think that emboldens
the Chinese. Also.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I want to talk about Mexico and Canada because what
happened there was such a self inflicted wound, right Mexico
and Canada. You have to work really hard to make
these people furious, and he did right, especially Canada, like
they're run by a banker.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
At this point. He's a liberal.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
All he wants is to not have drama tried as
hard as possible to keep Brexit from blowing up the
UK economy. Now, Brexit fucking disaster. But Mark Carney is
really like the leader you would want, Like, I mean,
isn't he kind of your and mind too a little
bit our dream president?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I mean, you know, here's a guy who actually has
a strong fundamental knowledge of how markets work.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
He understands the inner complexities of what we just went through. Right,
what does the treasury market mean? What are interest rates mean?
What is FED policy, which is meant to be independent
of politics? What does that mean? What does the stock
market tell you at certain times? The stock market, you
hear this expression all the time, is a discounting mechanism, right,
It looks at all the available news, and then investors
(14:33):
kind of put their money to work. And so you
could say, right now, maybe that is what the stock
market is telling you, that the worst case scenarios are
off the table and maybe some like cooler heads like
Mark Carney might prevail. If you think about Mexico, shine,
they haven't really been engaging in a way that's particularly antagonistic.
The EU has suggested that they will come to the table,
(14:56):
but they don't know who they're negotiating with or what
we want that sort of thing. The UK that deal
was a bit of a fugazy They just said, let's
just get this out.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
One works of a deal, right.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So to your point, I think that there's like some
definitely level headed folks. But then let's go to a
topic us. Let's go to a topic that I know
is near and dear to your heart. Somebody who's kind
of off kilter a little bit. That would be Elon Musk,
who just left the administration and now all of a
sudden he's got some real big issues with the tax policy,
the tax plan. And don't think for a second that
(15:29):
these things are not kind of related, because they really
are important if you think about it. If we're trying
to reorient global trade, if we're trying to work on
bringing down our national debt, I.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Mean, to re orient global trade.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
In tariffs are that it's like taking a chainsaw, I mean,
much better to give incentives to use a carrot rather
than a step. I also wonder how much of Elon
Musk's newfound frugality is his irritation that EV credits are
no longer the I mean, this is a guy who
(16:02):
democratic legislation created him, right, he became the richest man
in the world, EV tax credits, all of this sort
of you know, the help that his company's got.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I just say about
Elon and you know, I think he's a much more
effective chaos agent than Donald Trump.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
But the one thing that's consistent between the two of
them is they always say the quiet part out loud, right,
And so Elon coming out this tax bill, he has
not really mentioned, you know, these EV tax credits. He's
gone back and forth on that. By the way, over
the last few years, he's gone back and forth over
you know, some sort of trade barriers as it relates
to China and evs. We don't really know where he
(16:45):
stands on this. I think one of the positions as
it relates to Tesla in particular, has been that they're
in a much better spot than not say GM and
Ford to kind of have these credits go away. But
that's actually not the case anymore. The fundamentals of their
business could not be worse. Right now, the auto gross margins,
the profit that they make on their evs is now
in line with that of GM and Ford. GM and
(17:06):
Ford are pulling back from the ev market and they're
going more for these plug in hybrids. So when I
think about the way that he has gone about kind of,
you know, dealing with a price war, the Chinese are
eating their lunch. He's expected to have the second consecutive
decline in deliveries this year at a time where the
price war is eating into their margin. So he needs
(17:29):
these credits. It's very important. But they haven't said it yet,
and Trump hasn't come out and said it yet, and
this thing is going to be a bit worse. And
I just think that the lobbing of the grenade at
the tax bill is something that basically he's trying to
maybe reorient the kind of what's going on with tax
and the expectations about cuts to lower the taxes versus
(17:49):
what's going on with trade and the fact that our
government appears to be mired in problems with both of
them at the same time. It goes back to the
first administration. They went for tats Gary Khan came in.
He wanted to get tax cuts through. They got them through.
It was a tailwind for the economy, it was a
tailwind for the stock market, and then they focused on
(18:09):
terrafts and trade. And I'm not saying that was effective,
but it was a much more effective way about it.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh much more right.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I mean, you choice the economy with the tax cuts
and then you go in there with the tariffs and
it ends up being actually quite good because it tamps
down some of the inflationary you know.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I mean that with Gary Cohen is not the same.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
As you know, the people who are in charge right now,
which is Donald Trump's lizard brain. I want to talk
about China for another minute, because there's so much anxiety
about China right what the next step is here? What's
happening with Taiwan? We are really vulnerable to them. Also,
the other thing I want to ask you about selling
the bonds. I didn't realize that this was actually China
(18:55):
Japan selling bonds. So that is now that's indisputable. It's
not like technical traders.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
No, I mean, like there's definitely market participants here and
around the globe who basically have a trade on they
called the carry trade. They kind of sell over there
and they use the proceeds and they buy higher yielding
assets over here. And one of the reasons why you
saw that market volatility in most markets. You know, this
is back in April, but we also saw it in
late July in early August. When you see an unwind
(19:25):
of that, that's when you see markets go haywire. And
so when you think about who has the leverage right
in a situation like this, the largest holders of your
debt have the leverage right. We also had a situation
a few weeks ago where moody is one of the
big rating agencies, came out and lowered the rating on
our debt, which also makes us vulnerable. Treasury Secretary Bessett
(19:46):
said the other day that we will not default on
our debt, but we almost did, you know, about twelve
years ago. And so there's a lot of unknowns here.
And so when you think about I'll just kind of
bring it back to China, which you wanted to kind
of talk about. You know, Okay, let's take the over
on what they might do with Taiwan. You know, some
of the easiest things they might do, or some sorts
of blockades or some sort of trade sort of situations
(20:09):
and that sort of thing. That is important because when
you think about generative AI chips and this is the
new world order that we live in. This is going
to be the most important commodity going forward, especially as
we deal with our adversaries going forward. They are made
in Taiwan, Okay, so if the Chinese try to disrupt
anything as it relates to Taiwanese production of those chips,
(20:31):
that could be a real problem for the entire globe. Right,
So I think about, you know, how this kind of
new world order is going to be set, Well, we
can't afford to have any disruption there. So when we
think about China, you know, the national security as it
relates to supply chains is really important. So how do
the Chinese have leverage on our manufacturing? Okay? They are
thirty percent of the global manufacturing, right, so we went
(20:54):
through this with COVID that was a bit of a problem.
They also own a lot of the rare earth materials
that into EV batteries and magnets in this sort, and
they also own the purchasing power of let's say Boeing planes, right.
So a headline that hit today is that they're considering
by hundreds of planes from Airbus, which is obviously you know,
a European company, it's French, and that would be in
(21:17):
place of Boeing planes. Boeing has been mired in problems
for the last six or seven years. They had those
plane crashes, these issues with the seven forty seven Max,
and they've been missed you executing for a while. That
could be a real big hit to our economy, not
just from a manufacturing standpoint, but really from our stature,
you know around the globe for American exceptionalism.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
American exceptionalism. Ha haha.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
It's so funny that you just said this thing about Boeing,
because I really do think part of what happened with Boeing,
right is a question of regulation, right. I mean, things
got at a hand because the regulatory environment wasn't what
it needed to be to make sure these planes were safe.
And remember Trump was in fact president from twenty sixteen
(22:02):
to twenty twenty. I just wonder how much like one
of the things Trump loves to do is dismantle regulation,
and we never ever see why that's bad, right, We
only ever see him dismantling regulation and then a catastrophe
like that trained derailment in Ohio. I feel like there
(22:23):
is a straight line between deregulation and environmental fallout but
also economic fallout.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Yeah, I mean that's the story of the two thousands, right,
and a lead up to the financial crisis. You know,
we had some significant regulations as it really to our
financial institutions, and you know it was the Clinton administration
that actually rolled a puncture those back, right. And you know,
as you think about folks who have incentives right to
kind of take financial instruments and kind of repackage them
(22:51):
and do them in a way where they can make
a lot of money on them and they can get
around regulations. I mean, that's really what happened in the
financial crisis, and you have thought on the way out
of that where so many individuals were really burned. They
were the bag holders in that, and you had you know,
Elizabeth Warren put in the CFPB and all that sort
of stuff. And I think this is the point you're
getting to, is that the administration comes in in this
(23:11):
new administration, it's one of the first things they do
they get rid of the Consumer Protection Organization that was
meant to shield everyday citizens from that sort of you know,
predatory behavior.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And so here's because of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Because of the financial crisis, and then you can look
to twenty and eighteen. So the Trump administration rolled back
some regulation about capital levels for smaller banks. Okay, so
do you remember in March of twenty twenty three, Silicon
Valley Bank went down. There was a handful of other
banks that went down. You can draw a line back
to these capital requirements that were rolled back in the
(23:48):
twenty eighteen deregulation. And we lost some really important banks,
and we also had some threats to the financial system
at the time, different than two thousand and eight, but
in some ways they could have had big not gun effects.
And what did the government have to do And this
was under obviously the biderministration. They had to go bail
them out, right, And so we see this again and again.
If you give these financiers, if you give these folks
(24:10):
enough room or enough rope, they will ultimately hang themselves
because the incentives are too great in the near term,
and they know that they can socialize the losses if
things go bad.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, I was just going to say, privatize the gain,
socialize the losses. Speaking of socializing the losses, the BBB,
big beautiful bullshit bell will in fact cut a lot
of things right. It'll cut snap benefits, food for hungry children,
it will cut Medicaid, which will cut rural hospitals, nursing homes,
but it will also provide these insane tax cut no
(24:43):
tax on tips. I mean, what is that even? Like,
no tax on tips? How would that even be implemented?
What does that look like? And what would the financial
sort of fall out be? Right? I mean, clearly it'll
juice the public markets, but what do you think it'll
look like in six months?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Well, it's funny that sun tips thing is obviously a
populous sort of move. When he would go to Nevada
during the campaign, he would talk about that and you know,
and again this goes back to maybe some of his
political genius, but his lack of acumen when it comes
to policy and the likes. So to me, that is
probably a bit of a rounding era if you think
about all the folks that will benefit from that, however
(25:19):
they implement it, versus the expected maybe ten thirteen million
people in America. We're going to lose access to healthcare
or to your point about snap or you know, free
lunches and breakfast for you know, students of you know,
lower income sort of families in the like, and I mean,
those are the big things and ultimately, I think those
are the things that are going to get felt right
(25:40):
out of the gate. Do you feel them? How do
these things get implemented? You know, who knows. But at
the end of the day, I mean this sort of
cuts in a lot of red states. And that's the
other thing. If you think about some of these policies
that were put in place during the Biden administration, you
could say, well, the IRA and the Chips Acts and
all this sort of stuff, they deliberately put them in
some of these red states, so the folks would actually
(26:01):
have all the benefits of this government spend if you
think about it, right, and it goes back to really
a social safety net. If Republicans want to push through
a four and a half trillion dollar tax cut over
the next ten years and throw three or four trillion
dollars onto the national debt, which is the thing that
they're supposed to care about, then they better be prepared
(26:22):
for the repercussions because they lose the soul of the party. Right.
If this is what and this is why Ran Paul
and some of these folks, and even Elon Musk, we
don't know Elon Mus's intention. I never knew him to
be a fiscal hawk by any means, and you think
of the beneficiaries he's been able to enjoy from government spending.
But this is one where I don't think it gets
fixed too quickly. I don't think President Trump, as his
(26:46):
approval rating goes down over these economic issues, especially as
the trade thing gets pushed out, is going to have
this sort of leverage over the Senate as he did
over the House in the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's the twenty four tillion dollar question. Danny. Then, thank you,
thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Thanks Bally. Great to be here.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Allan L.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Rod is the President and CEO of the Pulaski Institute
and a contributor to Liberal Currents.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Alan L. Rod.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
You write a bunch of stuff, very smart. You write
for Liberal Currents, which I think of as a very
very smart literary magazine in the tradition of the New Republic,
a little more lefty. And I want to talk about
this essay, which is why I knew we had to
have you on, because I was like, Holy moly, this
is how I feel this. Why didn't I write this piece?
(27:39):
And the title is You're not crazy America has gone mad.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So talk to me about sort of how you got here.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
I've only been doing the sort of writing commentary pieces
for a few years, and really it kind of came
out of I head also trying to get this policy
type organization off the ground here in Arkansas called the
Plaski Institution that I started in twenty twenty one, and
it is focused on a lot of the problems I
think I described in this piece and some other pieces,
(28:09):
which is challenges that are happening with democracy and with popularism,
not just in the US, but in really a lot
of Western countries where there's a lot of breakdown in
not just the electoral politics, but also just sort of
broad cultural commitments to the important things that make a
liberal democracy work. But I've tried to think about that
(28:29):
in sort of heartland places, So that was sort of
the idea I started writing to sort of try to
get these ideas out there and bring attention to what
I'm trying to do. And I've been really lucky. I
think that that's turned into its own sort of separate
and really rewarding journey. In terms of I started writing
an arc digital back in twenty twenty two, and really
(28:49):
clicked with Brady Belvite or there and Nicholas Grossman, and
luckily got to do some pieces for other places. And
Liberal Currents was a place I got connected with thanks
to anac Manus, who's actually a fellow at the plast Constitution.
He said, you know, reach out to Adam Gurry if
you're just sting in pitching them, and I did, and
it was one of those kind of we all just
sort of clicked. I got in the little discord with
(29:12):
the other editors and writers at Liberal Currents and there
was a I think a very happy marriage of thought
and opinion, and so lip O Currens became you know,
I'm a contributing enditor.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Now, yeah, that's so great. But let's talk about what
this idea is. So you start with a passage from
Hannah Rand's origins of totalitarianism. Never has our future been
more unpredictable. Never have we depended so much on political
forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules. And
(29:42):
I think this is the most important point here, of
common sense and self interest forces that look like sheer
insanity if judged by the standard of other centuries. So
much of Trump administration at this moment. You know, from
RFK Junior to Elon Musk, there's so many things that
(30:04):
they are doing in this administration that strike me as
just completely I mean, obviously there's often profit motives behind it,
but I wonder if you could just talk us through
some of these things that you see.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Yeah, So, I think I'm really trying to do at
this piece is to capture something that I think is
happening that's observable at a few different levels. Right, So
when I think about you know, I'm not being sort
of literal, right and kind of madness. I understand mental
illness and that language can sometimes be touchy for people.
But what I am trying to capture is there are
(30:39):
a lot of ways in which we are not behaving
in ways that really makes sense. Right. You know, you
mentioned profit motives, So there's clearly some self interest in
the Trump administration, but there's a lot of things where
the kind of even just rational principles of self preservation
self interest don't feel like they're functioning. I mean, you know,
what we're doing to our health system right now is crazy,
(31:00):
and even since I wrote the piece, it's gotten crazier. Right.
He said he wants to basically withdraw vaccines for most
age groups. Right, there's all kinds of further downsizing of
the FDA. They want to take fluoride, not just not
you know, earlier they were talking about discouraging fluoride. Now
there's talks about banning it in multiple states. It's really,
I mean, this is just in the wealthiest country in
(31:22):
the world, crazy, right, And he talks about fixing chronic disease,
even and even if you wanted to take him at
face value in that that's not being done right because
they're defunding all of these research initiatives that have run
for a year, some of them decades on the sorts
of disease as he says are important. So I think
the Health Science Fund is a good place to look
(31:42):
at that because you have individual kind of madness, you
have influencers or are sort of peddling this stuff, and
you can see how it got into the groundwater over
time in the US. But you also have the institutional
problem of like, our institutions are not behaving the way
they should behave they are fully at this point captured
by this, I think completely. I kind of feel dystopian
(32:05):
to me world view of yes, it's grift. But I
always think that grift is a bad way to think
about it sometimes because that implies it's just as simple
as oh, they're just telling you a lie so they
can get money. And I think that it's just far
more irrational and sort of dysfunctional and chaotic than that.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Oh yeah, I wonder what you think about MAHA Make
America Healthy Again. I wonder how much of MAHA is
an It seems to me there's a straight line between
the pandemic, MAHA sort of the corruption of multi level
marketing and MAGA.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Do you think that's right? And how?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (32:44):
I mean, I do think that that's correct. I think
what you saw on the pandemic was something that was
already starting, which was a lot of these sort of
health influencers who have just deeply on scientific beliefs about
a lot of different things. That was really the I
think the convergence point with them in MAGA, because there
was a huge amount of objection to just the various
health precautions that were being sure. I think in the
(33:06):
pandemic you saw I think a convergence. It had been
building for a bit, but you saw this convergence between
a lot of health influencers and people who were more
I think you're sort of typical RFK type person, voter
or just kind of interested in his stuff. That kind
of person really get into the sort of maga world.
(33:28):
And that's kind of what Maha is right. It is
this convergence of those two things. And some of that
was about vaccine hesititency, but I think a lot of
it was just more broadly about you know, the sort
of existential dread of the pandemic and a lot of
very unscientific and emotional reactions right to the pandemic. And
so I think what is troubling to me about like Maha,
(33:49):
is some of it is absolutely grift, but some of
it is belief, right, and I think we have to
reckon with that.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Right.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
If I thought it was all just opportunism and grift,
I don't think I would have written an essay called,
you know, We've all Gone mad, because then it would
just be sort of we're all cynical and we're all opportunists.
But really, you know, for people to just kind of
at once in large numbers reject these advancements we saw,
(34:16):
I think the pandemic was just rocket fuel for this stuff.
It pushed something that had been there for a long time,
existing in a kind of particular corner of Instagram and YouTube,
and it just propelled it into a collision with the
maga stuff that had been coming really since since Trump
came down the escalator, and that combination I think has
been really quite powerful and dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And I do think like part of it is there
is real anxiety in modern life about what all of
the things around us do and what they cause and
what the possible. You know, we have younger people getting
cancer things like that, that is real.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I mean, I don't know my own person.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Pecadillo is why is RFK Junior, you know, not focusing
on the stuff that he you know, there's some of
this stuff is not as crazy, right, this stuff about
organic food or whatever, But that's not what he's focused on, right,
He's focused on the stuff that's really vaccines, the stuff
that the stuff that we were really scared he was
(35:21):
going to do he is in fact doing.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Yeah, there is a kind of I think fundamental disorder.
And this is kind of what I do mean is
like to his thinking and to a lot of this
thinking where he'll talk about and I think what it
means is that we misunderstand him when we just let
him say, oh, chronic disease is a real problem. We
take that at face value when we say, that's not
so crazy. But that's not actually the sort of most
(35:45):
front facing part of his belief system, Right, that's actually
kind of a that's really a vestige of all this
other stuff, right, and so, and I think that's made
obvious in the fact that, like, when he actually says
we're going to fix chronic disease, they're not doing that.
And the things he seems to think count as chronic
disease is also a bit strange. Right, So you already
(36:06):
are in a weird place. Once you probe that language
even a little bit, I think what I am kind
of You're right, there's there's this anxiety. There's this huge
amount of anxiety. And I find that really interesting in
the way anxiety has the capacity to disrupt and disorder
our thinking and get us to cling to sometimes very
sometimes emotionally comforting or persuasive ideas that are also quite
(36:28):
erratic and actually not very good for us. Right. I Mean,
there's a sense in which a lot of this stuff
I think got popular because people turn to things that
made them feel better.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
They needed answer, so yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yeah, and provide answers they kind of I mean, there's
a religious aspect to this right where it kind of
is it's basically sort of like it's providing a kind
of you know, compass or map for how the world
works and where you stand in it, and a certain
set of truths that can make you feel I guess comforted.
But it's all I mean, it's very it's I think
(37:00):
disaggregated from reality.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
And I do think.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
That that that mixture of anxiety and disorder or what's
so troubling because it doesn't feel like people are following tradition,
the idea that the American electorate would say somebody who
wants to put this guy in power is trustworthy. I mean,
I just you know, we talk all the time like
Richard Nixon was a crook and a criminal and an opportunist,
(37:27):
but Richard Nixon also helped, you know, enshrining the EPA
and the Clean Air Act, because Richard Dixon wasn't actually
a crazy person, right, And that's the distinction I think
I'm kind of getting at is like Grift just to
me does not feel like an explanation for what's happening here.
Oh yeah, a disintegration of ordered thinking feels like a
(37:49):
better explanation. And it's happening at a cultural level, and
it's also happening at an institutional level. Institutions that are
supposed to mediate our thinking and our actions in rational
ways are not doing that. If we think of them
as communicative communicative sites, they're not functioning the way rational
communication works anymore.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
And I think I think that's a I think that
irrationality is, you know, And I mean there's so many
different hallmarks of it, from things like the tariffs, to
things like the anti vax stuff, to the scientific stuff.
(38:33):
Can we talk about something that I am a little
bit obsessed with, which is this idea that Elon Musk
is the richest man in the world, has made almost
all of his money on technology, right, stuff that has
been created from science done in labs like at Harvard, Right,
(38:56):
the kind of stuff that's made possible by.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Things like Ana.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So why do you think, I mean that irrationality is
so striking to me? What do you think the operating
principle there is or do you think this is all
just kind of like post printing press madness that America
is engaging in.
Speaker 5 (39:17):
I'm glad you said the printing press, because I do
think that, like a the the printing press challenge of
our era, right, which is social media, it is invalant. Like, yeah,
I mean, I think with Elon, it's this is a
guy who you know, I can't speak to like how
smart or insightful Elon might have been a decade ago,
but I think it's pretty obvious that for the last
few years he's spent his time. You know, he admits
(39:40):
to taking inordinate amounts of ketamine.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Right, and the New York Times just had a big
piece on that.
Speaker 5 (39:45):
Yeah, go on, he spends like twenty hours a day
just absolutely soaking in social media, and I mean, I
think that is a place that just you know, it
obliterates your sense of up and down. So you know,
I mean, if he's just taking drugs and he's the
richest man in the world, which itself can be kind
of a narcotic, and he's spending more hours a day
(40:05):
than many people are awake on his own social media platform, right,
to me, that's just you're just swimming in a kind
of sea of irrational and sort of disordered behavior. I mean,
social media doesn't bring out our best in most of us.
And then you also have places like what he's turned
to accent to, which is just a full on cess pool.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Let's go another minute on the printing press here, because
I do really want to talk about that. I once
was on a panel interviewing a very famous tech bro,
you know, and he said everything.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Very you know, a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Of that kind of stuff, the tech bro stuff. And
then I said to you, do you think we're better off?
And he said, well, we will eventually be better off,
but it's like the printing press, we may have one
hundred years of fuckeray.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Do you think that it's a one to one there?
Speaker 5 (40:58):
No, because I think this is true of a lot
of people who are in kind of the liberally you know.
I came of age under the Obama years camp I
was at one point fairly optimistic about this stuff, right.
I was like, oh, Twitter in the Arab spring, and
like look at Facebook and like this is pretty great.
I say that as someone who did not start as
a as a kind of lttite.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (41:19):
But no, because I think what we've seen is that
one we know for a fact that the effect of
screens is different. And I don't mean that in a
kind of screen addiction way, which is its own thing.
I mean we know psychologically that our capacity to recognize
the humanity of a person we're interacting with on a
phone screen is reduced, Like our brain just doesn't process
it the way we process in person interaction. And when
(41:41):
you read a text that someone wrote, that person is
not there for you to scream at. Actually, right, you
go and find other paper and write about them. Social
media is combining these things, so it's taking like the
text you know, if you're on Twitter, the text based
aspects right of the printing past, and it's fusing them
with a bunch of other stuff that we're not evolutionary
(42:01):
equipped for at all, like just interacting with millions of
anonymous people. And I think we've seen very clearly that
the stuff we're willing to say and do there is
just absolutely unhinged. And there's no you know, because of
the whole debate over you know, we're not a publishing platform,
et cetera. There's no editorial process right too. I stud
wanted to try to write a book about how Molly
(42:23):
is a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Right now, you can write it.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
I could self publish sure today, but like you know,
at one point there'd be like a process somebody would
have to be like agreed to run that and print
that and like actually do it. And now I could
just go onto these websites and say really anything I want.
And so I just think the printing press analogy is
it's seductive because what it says is don't worry. Look
(42:48):
how great things are. Thinks to those advancements. That's how
they'll be because of this. But I think it really
obscures all the way is that they're just not the
same at all.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Oh so interesting, thank you saying you, saying you, saying
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Now, Dan Nathan, Yes, Molly jonathast.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
You are a special moment of fuckery guest.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
So I'm going to set you up for a doozy Okay,
are you ready?
Speaker 4 (43:17):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
So it involves America's most I want to say something generous,
but I'm not going to worst congress Woman Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
So in the big.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Beautiful whatever the fuck that thing is, there is an
insane little bit of whatever that says.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
And I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
It basically says that states cannot regulate AI. So it
is the opposite of everything that Republicans have been saying
for so long. And but you know, AI companies want
it full transparency. I didn't know about this section on
page two seventy eight to seventy nine of the obb
B that strip states for the rights to make laws
(44:00):
or regulate AI for a decade. I'm adamantly opposed all
caps to this, and it is a violation of state laws.
And I would have voted no had I known what
was in there or AKA read the bill, thought Stan Nathan.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Yeah, well, let's read the bills here, people, and maybe
you make these big, beautiful bills something that are digestible
of all people opining on. This is probably not one
that I'm going to take to the bank and listen
to what she has to say here. But at the
end of the day, I think you nailed it. It's like, okay,
if Republican politics, okay, for the last call it, one
hundred and fifty years have centered around whatever the party was,
(44:37):
you know, prior to that have centered around you know
what I mean, the states being able to kind of
make their own laws. And put the power back in
the people's hands as it relates to whatever the demographics
or geographic issues specific to them. It just doesn't make
a whole heck of a lot of sense. You want
to turn this thing upside down, you know. And some
of the folks that are these aisars or cryptosars that
(44:57):
have come into the administration, you know, you would think
that these people have a code, right, like they've kind
of built things over amazing things and so it gote valid,
you know, over the last thirty forty years, that sort
of thing that have actually advanced the quality of life
for so many you know, millions of not billions of
people here, and that's some sort of conformity about this.
(45:19):
They recognize what the stakes are with AI. That would
make a whole heck of a lot of sense. So
in some ways, you know, taking the power from the
States and taking the power from folks like Marjorie Taylor
Green who don't understand any of it makes some sense
to me. But these people better get their act together
because this technology is advancing at a pace that we've
never seen right now, and it's really at the center
(45:41):
of a lot of the sort of battles that are
going to be fought over the next hundred years for
like global supremacy. I know that sounds really dramatic. Backtion
one hundred years and let's see how important this is
right now that we get it right, because you know what,
you know, who doesn't kind of mess around with this?
I know is the moment fuckery, so I could say,
is the Chinese. They're taking a fifty year view about
(46:05):
this and we are taking an every two year view
as it relates to our midterms.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
All Right, Mollie, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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