April 13, 2025 • 41 mins
Michael Ian Black -- humorist, political blogger, comedian, team captain of CNN's "Have I Got News for You," and generational poker talent -- brings all his skills to making sense of Trump and those who enable (or take advantage of) him. He also has something to say about the establishment and lifting of tariffs this week... actually, during the actual recording of the episode. (with guest Michael Ian Black, if that wasn't clear)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
So Michael Ian Blank is a comedian, actor, writer, and
a keen observer of the absurd and American culture, which
aimfully is these days one in the same and you're
repeat offender on mission in Plausa, Yes, Sam, on a
more serious thing, on one of your more serious works,
one of the classics you've written, A pig Parade is
(00:54):
a Terrible idea twenty ten. And in A Pig Parade
is a Terrible Idea, you claim that while people can
be convinced that a pig parade might sound like a
great idea, it just isn't in practice.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
The pigs are a metaphor for capitalists. You think it's
gonna be great, You know you're gonna you're gonna You're
gonna throw open the doors, and then what are they
gonna do. They're gonna snuffle all over everything. They're gonna
eat more food than is their share. They're gonna be destructive,
they're gonna be sloppy, and at the end of it,
who's cleaning up the mess us the proletariat.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And it fits on top of that there is going
to be a parade. We're told in just recent days
that President Trump is gonna hold a military parade like
he wanted to do in his first term, which happens
to be on his birthday.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
He's an asshole. Can we just make Has the United
States ever held an official military parade? We must have,
right at some point. I'm not saying that outside of
wartime when we're sort of, uh, we're not not bringing
back soldiers from the Gulf or something like that, But
have we ever just had, for the hell of it,
a military parade?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I think the military is usually against that type of thing.
There's been times, like when President Kennedy died and there
was a kison with some military. You know, there's ceremonial times,
but I don't think we've ever had one like he
wants that. Apparently he saw military prede in France and
said we need to have that with tanks and everything, and.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
They didn't want to do it because the tanks were
going to chew up Pennsylvania Avenue. And like the I
think they.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Also didn't want to do it because it's not who
we how we want to represent ourselves as a purely
martial power. But now that we have reduced and or
eliminated all of our soft power, why not just have
pershing missiles flying down constitution.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Pete Hagg's got doing push ups on the top of
a Bradley fighting Don.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Bongino in his personal pretoriat? Is that what a preetoriat
guaritorian guarding?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yes, go back to Roman times.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Apparently he's the first deputy of the FBI who has
to have a security detail because normally FBI agents are
trained and can carry guns, and he is not.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
He's not trained to carry a gun, or he's not
allowed to have a gun because of things in his past.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I didn't read deep enough into the article I
saw on this, so I.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Did have a question about conspiracies in the US government
and your background as a poker player, right, I never
want to play poker with you. You want you know
you're a pro, You want to want a lot of
words and competitions. And so we're involved in like the
biggest fucking poker game ever with this right now, at
least economically, with these tears. Do you think, with what's
going on now, that they have a plan, the conspiracy
(03:44):
to pull this shit off their eight dimensional chests or
is this just like general fuckery, like you've got to
rub at the table.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, in recent weeks, what we've seen is Trump deploying advance,
deploying the poker metaphor remember how many times Trump has
said of Ukraine, they just don't have the cards, they
don't have the cards. And Avance said it about Greenland.
I think that are the car I mean, they just
they keep talking about the cards. But what your question
(04:12):
presupposes is that they're actually that they have something in
mind that they're trying to achieve. And I do have
a sort of wild eyed conspiracy theory about this very topic.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Let's here.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It begins, this conspiracy theory with Trump believing in climate change.
It begins with Trump, maybe during his first administration or
some other time, being surrounded by advisors who say, you know, sir,
and these are big advisors, tears rolling down their faces.
(04:47):
You know, sir, climate change is real. Here's the data.
In the next one hundred years, the southwest and some
of the south of the United States is going to
become less and less hospitable to human life. And Trump
may have pooh poohed that poop pooh, that poo poo that.
The second part of my conspiracy is the assassination attempt,
(05:09):
which I'm saying is real. If somebody tried to kill him,
and then immediately after, if you recall, everybody was saying, oh, Trump,
he's a changed man. He's become more reflective, he's different now,
and we all thought, those of us from a distance, thought, oh,
that means he's going to become kind and compassionate. I
think the opposite happened. I think it made him more
belligerent and hostile. And so when you combine those two
(05:33):
things plus the other part of the assassination attempt that
I think it did get him thinking about was Oh.
I think it did get him thinking about his own
mortality and thinking that he's going to be dead at
some point, and what is his legacy going to be.
And I don't think he necessarily considered that before that,
because I think he thought of himself as immortal. Okay,
you put all that together, what do you get? You
(05:53):
get a guy thinking about his legacy who understands that
the southern half of the United States over the next
hundred years is going to become lad less than hospitable.
At the same time, up in Canada, all of that
land is going to warm, all those resources are going
to become more available, more accessible. Up at the Arctic Circle,
all of those resources are already in dispute and already contended.
(06:16):
At the same time, you've got Greenland where all of
this is taking place climate wise. At the same time,
you've also got demographic trends in the United States which
say that by the year twenty forty something or whatever,
white people are going to become the minority. We know
that he has surrounded himself by white supremacists and fascists
who believe that white people should be in charge of everything.
(06:38):
What does Canada have a lot of white people? What
does Greenland have a lot of land? What does Russia
our new ally have a lot of white people? And
ultra Christianity, Orthodox Christianity. So you combine all those things,
and what I think that I think, my wild eye
conspiracy is that Trump and his people are trying to
position America as a soup superpower for the next one
(07:02):
hundred and fifty years or two hundred years, which is
allied with Russia, as a bulwark against Russia and against Asia.
And so you have this massive land mass which is
North America minus Mexico, Canada, Greenland, You've got the Arctic Circle,
and then you've got our closest new ally Russia. And
(07:25):
what you've done is you've created a scenario where we
become impregnable and incredibly formidable. That's my conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
What's the fee that's as delusional as the UFO stuff
you talk to us about less.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Podcast, I said, delusional. Don't you think that makes perfect sense?
White people, Russia, Christianity, Liban Swum.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Let me ask you this, have you seen anything else
in Trump's history in the last twenty five years that
makes sense?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Like you're saying, like.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
A guy can think of a plan more than five
seconds ahead of.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
But what I guess what I'm saying is it's not
his plan. He's just sort of instituting it, and he's
being sort of led down the from Rose path by
Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and the coupal of weirdos
who's guiding this presidency.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The Heritage Foundation. I, you know, genetically just don't like
conspiracy theories. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually say that
I think there's elements in that that that actually resonate
with me. The thing about a legacy, I think, the
thing about wanting a white Christian nation, although he's hardly Christian,
but not really the white nationalist thing. I think his
(08:37):
whole thing of expansion. And when was the last time
a president's went around praising William McKinley, right, I mean
it's been a lot. I'm the only one who's read
his memoirs recently, but but yeah, I mean, will I
think there's there is something to that, although I suspect
it's less of a cunning plan than just feral instincts
(08:59):
that that come together. But I think this is an
administration riven by conspiracies and conspiracy theories. I mean, look
no further than Laura Lumer walks into the Oval office
and suddenly and a sort of Madame LaFarge's head start
to roll, and there's no understanding why the head of
(09:20):
the n essay was fired, and just people in airal
security and a sea are being fired, like why.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I think the more pregnant question, and I use that
word advisedly, is why is Trump listening to Laura Lumer?
Why is she always in and out of his orbit?
Of all people like she's such a weirdo. Everybody around
him hates her. They all try to keep them apart.
And the question is why why does she have his ear?
(09:50):
And I think that's I think that's an interesting question.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Does she have just his ear?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Almost every one of those things you brought up to
talking about they they they And one of the things
I see with that Trump and this time it was
a little different last time, is there's a they is
not a cohesive thing. I think he has overlapping and
very different people who work for him. So he's got
Musk who has a completely different view of what where
(10:15):
the world should go and should go to Mars and
we should destroy the democracy. And then you've got the
economic tariff people, and then you've got the true crazies
and the lower Lumer people. You've got a group of
real pro China people and then a separate group of
real anti China people. Even just yesterday they were asking
about the tariffs and are they going to stay, are
they not going to stay, or they just to do
(10:35):
Different people in the administration, senior people who conceivably were
in the same meetings together, say absolutely the opposite things
because there's no coordination. So, Michael, with that lead up
and the fact that I think these people do have
different agendas and I think you agree to that, what
do you think Elon Musk's agenda is?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
And with his fighting with Peter Navarro, can there be
only one who must be out? Or Navarro be out
two months from now?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, Musk has already said he's leaving. Musk is saying
that he's going to leave by early May. Ockham's razor
would suggest that Musk is primarily interested in Musk. So
how does all this random nonsense benefit Elon Musk? And
(11:21):
obviously like he's destroying all the agencies that would regulate
his particular industries, But then why go after Social Security?
Why go after USAID? Like I don't understand, I don't
understand it at all. I don't understand how the nation
as a whole just accepted the premise of waste, fraud,
(11:42):
and abuse. We just were like, oh, yeah, well, the
government spends too much money, and there's too many people
in the government, and it's doing too many things and
it's but why did we just accept that premise? I
never accepted that premise. It seemed to me that the
government in general's probably doing a pretty good job. Like,
I know people who work in the government, they work hard.
You guys worked in the government, you work hard, you
(12:05):
did good work. I'm friends with people who work in
the UN World Food Program. All they do is try
to feed people. That's their whole thing. Trump just destroyed
their program. All the scientists, the meteorologists, the firefighters, Like,
why did we just accept that premise? I find it infuriating.
I also find the premise and narrative around immigration infuriating
(12:27):
that we just accepted that illegal immigris Is.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
That because is it an education thing? Do you think
the American public just don't understand their government because I
don't accept any of those things.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I think we've been propagandized so effectively by the right
wing media and pireennial what you want to call it.
I think Historically, I think we all know that Americans
have a kind of fundamental, inbred distrust of government that
stems from our origins as a nation. But over the
(12:59):
last few centuries, we've asked the government to do more
because we needed as we became more complex economically, militarily, industrially, technologically,
we needed people to regulate this stuff, to look at it,
because when we don't, we end up with things like
the Great Depression or all the depressions that preceded the
Great Depression, or we end up with a sort of
(13:20):
hodgepodge of like laws around who gets educated and who doesn't,
and who's allowed to buy real estate and who doesn't,
and who can get married and who doesn't like all
of these things. We've asked the government to provide some
oversight and regulation because it was necessary and for the
American people that just turn around and go, oh, yeah,
we didn't mean any of that. You didn't think. You
hadn't thought it through. That's the issue. And so now
(13:42):
we're seeing what happens when you think it through and
you start asking people left and right, and suddenly the
Social Security Administration you can't get through on the phone.
Why because we're getting rid of the phones. It's just insanity.
And I don't understand what Musk's role is in all
of this. To answer your question, I don't know. It
doesn't make any sense to me other than if your
(14:04):
goal is to actually rip apart the government, which it
seems like that is their goal. But to what end?
That's getting back to your original question about the poker.
To what end? What are they trying to accomplish? And
I don't know that they've articulated it in any way
other than to say we're going to make it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I've come to think that this is chaos, that there
is no conspiracy here. There is no three dimensional eight
dimensional chess here. The American society, and I know people
are going to like balk at this. We have it.
We currently have it so good. We don't even think
we need these things anymore. We haven't had people die
of measles or measles outbreaks in twenty thirty years. Polio
(14:46):
is gone. The Great Recessions was the nineteen thirties. We
haven't had a land war in Europe in eighty years? Right,
Why do we still need vaccines? Why do we still
need NATO? People don't think they need them because like
we have work because they've worked exactly right. Yeah, we
haven't an award because we've had a we have an alliance,
and we also and this is much more difficult. Globalization
(15:10):
is a fact. It just friggin' is. And there are
winners and losers, just like there was when we moved
from horses to the internal combustion engine. Right, if you
were in the horse tending business, you were fucked, you know.
Henry Ford was the Elon Muskiv's day, and you know,
(15:31):
when we're moving towards green energy, and I think a
lot of people are scared, and I think that has
been pushed, but there's no plan other and this is
one conspiracy that I do buy into Project twenty twenty
five with the Heritage Foundation. I think they do have
a plan.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Just hold on for a short break.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
We'll be right back. All right, we're back from the break.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Let's get back into it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think because people are scared, perhaps one thing is
that people around Trump are thinking is, yeah, it's like authoritarianism.
Let's just give them a simple solution. And that is
something we see in history over and over and over again,
going back to ancient Greece when you get the Athenians
afraid they're going to look for a tyrant, or the Romans,
(16:26):
or let's go to nineteen thirty three with the Germans.
If you can make people afraid and offer simple solutions,
you can have power. And I think that's the pot
at the center of the table at this poker game
is power. What they want to do with it, I'm
not really sure because I don't think there's a day.
I think there's different days. Peter Navarro where he wants
to go, and where Milan Musk wants to go, and
(16:48):
where the Koch brothers want to go. But it's a conspiracy.
Everybody's looking to control this tired, confused old man at
the nasty old man at the sitting and sitting behind
the Resist desk with Elon Musk's kids booger on it.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But I think Musk is different from Project twenty twenty five.
I think they am different, and I need to dig
into it more. But I think the Musk people, there's
some books and things that Peter Teel and Musk and
sort of these South African tech guys have this view
that the US government is just a giant and giant
insurance company with an army, and the problem with the
(17:24):
government is it spends all its money to support the
Week in society, and the Week are holding us down.
And if we're going to move to a new world
that's in Mars and Ai driven, we have to actually
destroy that and get rid of the Week and have
a group of white people who could do things. And
so I think his view is different probably than a
lot of these other people around Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, I think you're exactly like Peter Teel and Elon
Musk and like David Sachs, the other South African member
of this troika. They're part of this techno utopian slash
feudal vision for how they see the next phase of
(18:07):
human development playing out. And they've utilized the bizarre writings
of Curtis Jarvin, this sort of weird philosopher of the right,
as a kind of intellectual undergirding for their project, which
basically just amounts to a new feudalism where you're going
to have these tech overlords controlling literal land masses as
(18:30):
private essentially countries that you can then move to and
become a citizen of. But it will be but they
will be ruled over by these monarchs, the Peterteels, the
Elon Musks, the David Sachses of the world, and you
will abide by their rules, and presumably you will have
freedom of movement. I guess if you decide you don't
(18:51):
like their rules, and then you can go to some
other tech oligarch's country. But then what happens when the
tech oligarchs start fighting, as they inevitably will. Are they
going to maintain their private tech oligarch armies and there?
I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
What?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And how do they even envision the role of the
United States in all of this? And I don't really know,
other than maybe it's what you said. They'll be a
kind of insurance company with an army, and they'll be
there to sort of mediate these disputes so that David
Sachs and Elon Musk aren't sending armies of in cells
to fight with each other. I don't know. None of
it makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
On Social Security. My grandmother had a an Irish immigrant.
She had a third grade education. She had four kids
and was pregnant three months pregnant with my father when
her husband died of par toniis she would have starved
a death without Social Security. But it's like Roosevelt friggin
saved her. But dismantling that Muscus called it a Ponzi scheme?
(19:50):
Is there money to be made here by first of
all making Social Security inoperable, cut its funding, cut its
it budget so it doesn't function anymore, Then blame it
for being poorly run after you've made it poorly run.
And then, of course the next step is to privatize
it or just not pay it out, so that the
vast majority of people are then dependent on sure on
(20:13):
what on the government and or on people like Elon Musko.
What's your sense why would tech brows and Musk in particular,
why would they be setting their sights on Social Security?
Because they must understand something has to come after it.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
I can only assume what you just said is accurate,
that they want to privatize it, and that they know
that there's tremendous amounts of fees to be made in
financial transactions and management and all of this billions and
billions of dollars that they can then line their pockets
with to pursue their dreams of going to Mars or
whatever the hell they're trying to do. And I think
you you could make the good faith argument, although I
(20:51):
don't think it's necessarily very good faith argument, that social
Security could be made more profitable if you invested it in.
Those funds into the market are sort of risk your investments.
But all of that is blied by the events of
the last week. If you're relying on the market for
your retirement and then you see it crashing fifteen percent,
(21:11):
maybe twenty percent by the time this podcast airs, well,
aren't you shooting yourself in the foot. So security was
never designed to be an investment vehicle. It was designed
to be a safety net so that when you reach retirement,
or you have a disabled child, or you are a
young widow, you don't have to worry about that money
(21:36):
coming in. It was never meant to be a get
rich quick scheme. It was meant to supplement whatever retirement
savings or pension or later on for a one K
that you might have. And if you don't have those things,
then it will keep you, at the very least hopefully
right out of poverty. And that's enough. That's all it
was meant to do. That's all it ought to be doing.
(21:58):
And it drives me crazy, having a mother who worked
in source security for many years, it drives me crazy
to see them trying to dismantle literally the most successful
social program in our nation's history for no reason.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of these things that
work against each other. At the same time, we are
using up a lot of our One of the reasons
that the administrations that they didn't want to give more
weapons to Ukraine is we don't want to use up
our weapons that we may need to fight the Chinese.
And then now we're using all of these weapons to
bomb the Yemenis and the Hootis. And the reason supposedly
(22:34):
we're doing that, and we know that because we've listened.
We watched the signal chat between the main players who
are looking to bomb yemen Is because we're worried about
global traffic through this Suez Canal and the fact that
it's disrupting global supply chains. But at the same time,
all of the policies of the government in tariffs are
(22:56):
destroying the supply chains of the world. So like, on
one hand, we're doing more damage to the supply chage
and business ability to think forward, and then we're bombing
the hell out of a country because we're claiming that's
what we're trying to protect.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I think that's right. And if that doesn't make sense
to you, then you just don't get it. Bro, they
just don't get it. Let me ask you how as CIA,
that's how bad from an intelligence perspective was the signal
gate thing.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's bad on a number of levels. And the first
thing I think of, having been like Jerry, a senior
officer at CIA, is just on the leadership place. If
anyone could understand if you work for an organization and
your boss says one thing and does the other. Thing
that you're saying to everybody in your organization, the tens
of thousands of people, is you cannot do this. If
you do these things, you will be fired, prosecuted. It's dangerous,
(23:50):
it's against national security. You're helping our enemies. And then
they do it. And then not only do they do it,
but they then lie about it and obfuscate and then
pretend like it's normal. You've just sent a message to
your workforce that you're not serious, you don't care about
the things that you tell them to do. So on
the leadership side, it's bad. On the national security side
(24:11):
the fact that these people have been using private devices.
It was a window that opened up to show us
that's happening and let us all think about it. But
I think that's been happening for a long time. I
think foreign intelligence services have been living off of President
Trump's telephone and listening to everything and all the crazy
things he's doing talking to people. Once you can get
into someone's telephone, it doesn't matter that you're then using signal,
(24:35):
which is an encrypted thing, because signal, if you try
to break in between the two encrypted pieces, which is
the hard part, it's encrypted and it would take a
sophisticated organization to be able to do that. Can we
do it sometimes? So it's bad. I think it's bad
on the nest security front. It's bad on the security front,
it's bad on the leadership front. And then of course
the lying is the biggest problem, because leadership should be
(24:58):
about character, and our nationalecurity officials show that they have
no character and they can't be trusted. That sends another
message to our enemies.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And once you're in a device, you're in it. Yeah,
So maybe they're talking about Yemen, talking about Iran, talking
about the Ukraine, negotiations the Russian that for us would
be like that was our quest, if we can figure
out plans and intentions of the leadership. We've done everything,
We've done our job. And the fact that you've got
(25:27):
somebody with the phone in Moscow talking about this, you
just simply got to assume that not only did they
get his phone, they got everything on it. You got
to assume that. And let's be clear about this. People
are gonna get killed if the Russians got this, and
I think you got to be you have to just
assume they did. If they told the houtis in advance,
(25:48):
just hey, get your air defenses ready, just one phone call.
And the Russians do work with the hoodies, right, they
don't hit our ships. They do talk back and forth,
they trade. They certainly work with the Iranians. I'm going
to get in your jet and you're gonna lie in
and they're waiting for you. It's like the Battle of Midway.
We knew the Japanese were there. That's why that's why
we won the Battle of Midway and then won the
war in the Pacific. It was because of good intelligence.
(26:11):
So this is there's been so much other shit going
on that we've swept that under the carpet. But this
is horrific. Now I just want to quick come back
on the poker thing I've just seen right now as
we're talking, Trump apparently has paused all terrors and except
for China for ninety days. Right.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It's good because now we have all these new factories
that have been built in the last.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Line, all these new factories. Right. So I'm saying this
is this is a blink thing. So you're playing poker
and he's just you know, warinated on the tailor. He's
playing park. He's bluffing. Don't fuck with me, man, I
got four aces. And now he's he's funny.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
He's folding because the rest of the world and the
nation called his bluff. They're like, you want to do this, Okay,
we're gonna we're gonna crash of markets. We're going to
create a new Asian Pact between China and Japan and
South Korea. We're gonna get Europe to retaliate. Like he folded.
He folded because it's stupid. I assume it's a declare
(27:14):
of victory and say, everybody's kissing my ass and everybody
wants to negotiate, so we can hold the we can
hold the tariffs for ninety days. But the problem, and look,
what do I know. I'm a jerk on I'm a
college shop out who believes in uf folks, So what
do I know? But it seems like it seems like
as an economic matter, how as a business person do
(27:34):
you project out for the next three months, six months,
year if you don't know every ninety days if Trump
is going to be slapping tariffs on all the nations
that you're trying to import your goods from, or are
you going to say, maybe I need to start investing
in the US and I'm gonna spend two billion dollars
creating new factories and infrastructure. And then four years from now,
(27:56):
some other dude gets in and it's listen and it's
just like, yeah, these tariffs make no sense, so we're
going back to free trade. Like, how do you plan
anything if you're a business person right now? I have
no idea. Thankfully, I'm an idiot about business and money,
so I don't have to worry about it too.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
But let's talk politics for just for a second. Given
that we're going to actually have fair elections in twenty
twenty six D, which is not a given. But let's
run with that. Where do Republicans if they don't want
to lose the House in the Senate like your fo okay,
your Fox News. Let's pretend Rupert Murdoch is going to
live this long. And how do you spend this as
a as immediate personality yourself? How do you spin this
(28:35):
as a win?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It's a huge win? Are you kidding me? This is
this has been an incredible win for the American people
over the What have we seen over the last few days.
We've seen every single nation on earth, including the ones
that are only populated by penguins, picking up the phone
and calling the greatest president who has ever lived and said,
let's make a deal, mister president. All of them, even
(29:00):
the Pelicans, had tears in their eyes, just rolling down
their eyes as they say, you're absolutely right, mister President.
Not only were you right, we have been unfair and
we want to do whatever we can to ensure moving
forward that America is our biggest booster and friend and ally,
and we're just gonna write We're just going to write
(29:21):
checks to you, and the American people are getting rich,
richer than you can possibly imagine richer than they've ever
been because of this president's foresight and bold leadership.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Mister Fox News reporter, you just said yesterday that these
terrorists were going to stay in place for years so
that we would fundamentally change our system so that manufacturing
comes back to the United States. How do you say
that today's something completely different.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You in the fake media are so obst with this
president's comand of the American economy that you can't wrap
your heads around all the good things that he's doing.
The American people. Look at what the stock market is
doing right now, right now, and you will see the
bold leadership that this man has performed. And yes, we
(30:08):
need to bring back manufacturing to these shores, and all
of our conversations with our partner nations will ensure that
they invest right here in America.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And more importantly, it is wrong that trans athletes are
like fencing with real women. Let's talk about the really
important things about which bathroom you get to use? That's right,
That's all this economic stuff. Don't worry about it. Don't
worry your pretty little head, baby.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I have to say, John, just acting as a White
House spokesperson slash Fox News analyst, it's very easy.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I think you'd be good at it. Yeah, to
try that, because if you're on CNN, no one's watching it.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You got to get over on Fox News.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, it's easy to lie if you just don't care.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That's the thing is if you have one talking point
and it's just do whatever, say whatever it is to
make the present look good. Right, whether it's consistent with
yesterday or five minutes ago, does.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Consistency's irrelevant And when you're cornered attacked the questioner.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
So let's take a break and be back in a moment.
Let's pick up where we left off.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
I do like your theory about how no reason we're
so willing to get rid of things is because they
work so well, and so you don't understand that these
things are happening in the background. That's my theory about
how Trump got elected in the first place, because Obama
did a good job, and so the America was like, well,
if this guy who came out of nowhere and he's
(31:43):
just a black dude, if he can do the job,
then why wouldn't Why why wouldn't we elect this genius
billionaire business man. He'll do it ten times better. I
do think a good president makes it look easy, and
so you think anybody can do it, and then you
and up with a clown like this.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
For years, it'll be like the government needs to be
run more efficiently like a business businessman. America is about business.
And I don't think previous presidents, even ones that we
thought did well, communicated effectively with the American people that
the government is different than a business and it's different
because it's in support of the American people. Like the
US government is set up for fairness, not efficiency necessarily,
(32:23):
So if the Defense Front wants to buy a new thing,
it has to put out bids and give everybody an
opportunity to bid. Everybody could do you can. They can't
just say Michael, I like you, your company is good,
I'm going to buy your thing, and I'm not going
to look at so I can move fast, and the
same thing with Elon Musk. Yes he can blow up rockets.
I can move fast and destroy things. But if you're
in the US government and nasty, you can't just blow
(32:46):
up rockets. In other words, there are fundamental different things,
and it's not just efficiency and speed, it's other things.
So the business thing has never really been the proper
way to look at it. Yes, we want our government
to be a active and more efficient, but it is
going to be slower than potentially businesses. But businesses go
(33:06):
out of business all the time, and the United States
can't go out of business.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And the other thing that short of drives me crazy
about that analogy is the subtext of it, which is
that if the American government will run as a business,
it would then be in a sense profitable. We hear
this kind of talk when they talk about the post
Office or Amtrak or any number of services that the
(33:30):
government provides for the common good, that if we just
privatized it, the government or whomever could be making money
hand over fist with this stuff. But that is not
the purpose of government. The purpose of the post Office
is not to make money. It is to provide postal
service for the American people at an affordable price. And
(33:52):
that's just a common good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
If you wanted to make money with the post office,
you wouldn't send things to these talents with three people
and I'm way out in the middle of nowhere. Effective
thing to do is go to bigger places and cut
off these smaller places. But the postal services said, we're
going to make sure that every American, no matter where
they live, can get mail.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You can extrapolate that to the whole of government, because
in a sense, when you're saying you want the government
to be more efficient, in a way, what you're saying
is we want it to it's a rough analogy, but
we want it to make more money. We want it
to do more with the money that we provide it.
That is a natural and justifiable feeling to have. But
(34:30):
if you don't understand what the government actually does or
how it does it, you're not in a position to
say we just need to cut everything. You're just not
in that position. And the Democrats, I agree with you,
have never made the case, or at least in my lifetime,
for government why we have these things, why they're important,
How your life will be materially worse without these things.
(34:53):
Like the fact that so many people think or thought
that the American government spends something like twenty percent of
its annual budget on foreign aid is maddening to me.
We pay a penny less than a penny on the
dollar for all of that foreign aid, all of that
stuff that we were doing, feeding people, saving lives, preventing aids, education,
(35:17):
helping women get out from under the thumbs of the
men in their lives and the patriarchal cultures that were
controlling them. Like all of that cost, relatively speaking, so
little and provided us so much in return, and we
don't Nobody was making that argument, And I don't understand why.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Michael Lewis was making the argument better than the US
government was. He's the best person I listened to on this.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Generationally, are at least my parents trusted the government because
their experience with the government was helped us out of
the Great Depression, right social security. We won World War Two,
we won the Cold War, And I really think it
all changed when Ronald came in, although he didn't mean
it this way, but he said, I'm from the government.
(36:04):
I'm here to help, and everybody laughed. If you're from FEMA,
you are from the government and you are there to help, right,
Or if you're making sure that people aren't driving in
unsafe vehicles, or the food you eat isn't poison, or
there's no insider trading the court's work. The police aren't
like bribeable like they are in the Third World. They
are from the government. They are here to help. But
(36:25):
I think this is something inside of the American psyche
to be distrustful of government. And I think that in
its measure is good. But like anything else, when you
take it to the NTS degree, you get to nihilism.
But before we go, I did want you to comment
on a conspiracy theory that I do buy into, but
I find very difficult to articulate. So all the countries
(36:48):
in the world, to include country, you know, places with
just penguins or poor little Lisutu or Bhutan, they all
got schwat with tariffs, but not at all. Russia didn't
get hit with a tear And then he's true that
off his order negotiating. We're also negotiating with Ukraine and
other places. So what do you think the deal is
(37:09):
with Russia and Trump? What is it? There's something everybody knows.
There's something. Everybody's senses it. John has written articles on it.
You know, in the intelligence community, we'll sit around Congressmen
have speculated on it. There is friggin' something.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I guess I know. I don't know if that I
ever was, but I guess I'm no longer of the
opinion that there's any sort of compromot or anything like that,
because Trump is so shameless, Like, what difference would it
make at this point, What possible information could they have
on him that would in any way damage him. I
don't think there's anything.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
But it suggests that he needed help to win these elections.
It wasn't just himself, and he can't live with that.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So I'm at a loss. None of it. Is it
as simple as he looks at the way Putin runs
his nation. He understands that Putin is getting a kick
back on every dollar that these oligarchs earn. He understands
that Putin is arguably the richest man in the world,
or one of the richest men in the world, and
(38:11):
he just wants that. He said it over and over again.
I want generals who will salute me, and I want
Hitler's generals, and want when I want people to stand
up when I like he said all this stuff. It
might just be the sort of theatrics of power and
the image of it. And I think he's enraptured with
this idea of the strong man. And if he could
be the strong man of the strongest country that the
(38:34):
world has ever known, I could see that holding some
appeal for him.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
You've written a little bit about Trump and a third term.
What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
If And I know you guys know this, but your
viewers or your listeners and they probably know this too.
But clearly the playbook for this regime is to maintain
power at all costs. And the question is why. And
we've talked on that a little bit, but I think
(39:06):
Trump understands and the Trump people understand that whatever that
goal is, whatever they're aiming for, cannot be accomplished in
this term. Fully, you can put the pieces in motion,
you can make it a lot more likely that this
project will succeed in four years, but it may not
be possible to execute everything they want to do in
(39:29):
that time. And they know, and Trump certainly believes, and
it's probably correctly that the movement falls apart without him.
That's probably true. And so if that's the case, then
you've got to figure out a way to keep this
guy in power. And that obviously feeds into his own
narcissism and ego. And so they're going to try any
(39:49):
novel theory that they can think of to get around
the constitution. And I'm not convinced they won't be successful.
I'm not convinced that John Roberts and whoever else is
going to somehow find some sort of narrow legal ruling
like they did with Gore v. Bush or Bush vers
or whatever that was, to sort of allow some weird
precedent that will allow him to serve or he'll do
(40:10):
like a Putin Medyedev thing where they where he gets
Vance to be the president and he's the vice president
and then Vance resigns. I don't know, but I don't
think he's going to go quietly. And he said that
he's been talking about this since his first administration, and
I don't see any indication that he's at all joking,
and he said in recent days he's not joking.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I think the one thing I would add to that, though,
is I think he doesn't want to go to jail.
I think he knows he's guilty of a lot of shit.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Okay, so he knows that, and he knows they all
know that twenty twenty six, at least the elections were
held today, would be a blood bath for them. So
you got to figure they're already anticipating that. So what
are they going to do? Where are they going to
do that?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I think there's a conspiracy there. I don't know what
it is yet.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Act cheap.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's a hell of a pig parade.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Michael. Awesome to talk to you. As always, I do
follow your substec I think it's really fascinating and we
hope we can have you on it anytime.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I'm mostly unemployed. Even though I'm on TV and I
write the sun Stack, I'm mostly unemployed.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable mention and Abominable
pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
So Michael Ian Blank is a comedian, actor, writer, and
a keen observer of the absurd and American culture, which
aimfully is these days one in the same and you're
repeat offender on mission in Plausa, Yes, Sam, on a
more serious thing, on one of your more serious works,
one of the classics you've written, A pig Parade is
(00:54):
a Terrible idea twenty ten. And in A Pig Parade
is a Terrible Idea, you claim that while people can
be convinced that a pig parade might sound like a
great idea, it just isn't in practice.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
The pigs are a metaphor for capitalists. You think it's
gonna be great, You know you're gonna you're gonna You're
gonna throw open the doors, and then what are they
gonna do. They're gonna snuffle all over everything. They're gonna
eat more food than is their share. They're gonna be destructive,
they're gonna be sloppy, and at the end of it,
who's cleaning up the mess us the proletariat.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And it fits on top of that there is going
to be a parade. We're told in just recent days
that President Trump is gonna hold a military parade like
he wanted to do in his first term, which happens
to be on his birthday.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
He's an asshole. Can we just make Has the United
States ever held an official military parade? We must have,
right at some point. I'm not saying that outside of
wartime when we're sort of, uh, we're not not bringing
back soldiers from the Gulf or something like that, But
have we ever just had, for the hell of it,
a military parade?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I think the military is usually against that type of thing.
There's been times, like when President Kennedy died and there
was a kison with some military. You know, there's ceremonial times,
but I don't think we've ever had one like he
wants that. Apparently he saw military prede in France and
said we need to have that with tanks and everything, and.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
They didn't want to do it because the tanks were
going to chew up Pennsylvania Avenue. And like the I
think they.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Also didn't want to do it because it's not who
we how we want to represent ourselves as a purely
martial power. But now that we have reduced and or
eliminated all of our soft power, why not just have
pershing missiles flying down constitution.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Pete Hagg's got doing push ups on the top of
a Bradley fighting Don.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Bongino in his personal pretoriat? Is that what a preetoriat
guaritorian guarding?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yes, go back to Roman times.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Apparently he's the first deputy of the FBI who has
to have a security detail because normally FBI agents are
trained and can carry guns, and he is not.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
He's not trained to carry a gun, or he's not
allowed to have a gun because of things in his past.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I didn't read deep enough into the article I
saw on this, so I.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Did have a question about conspiracies in the US government
and your background as a poker player, right, I never
want to play poker with you. You want you know
you're a pro, You want to want a lot of
words and competitions. And so we're involved in like the
biggest fucking poker game ever with this right now, at
least economically, with these tears. Do you think, with what's
going on now, that they have a plan, the conspiracy
(03:44):
to pull this shit off their eight dimensional chests or
is this just like general fuckery, like you've got to
rub at the table.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, in recent weeks, what we've seen is Trump deploying advance,
deploying the poker metaphor remember how many times Trump has
said of Ukraine, they just don't have the cards, they
don't have the cards. And Avance said it about Greenland.
I think that are the car I mean, they just
they keep talking about the cards. But what your question
(04:12):
presupposes is that they're actually that they have something in
mind that they're trying to achieve. And I do have
a sort of wild eyed conspiracy theory about this very topic.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Let's here.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It begins, this conspiracy theory with Trump believing in climate change.
It begins with Trump, maybe during his first administration or
some other time, being surrounded by advisors who say, you know, sir,
and these are big advisors, tears rolling down their faces.
(04:47):
You know, sir, climate change is real. Here's the data.
In the next one hundred years, the southwest and some
of the south of the United States is going to
become less and less hospitable to human life. And Trump
may have pooh poohed that poop pooh, that poo poo that.
The second part of my conspiracy is the assassination attempt,
(05:09):
which I'm saying is real. If somebody tried to kill him,
and then immediately after, if you recall, everybody was saying, oh, Trump,
he's a changed man. He's become more reflective, he's different now,
and we all thought, those of us from a distance, thought, oh,
that means he's going to become kind and compassionate. I
think the opposite happened. I think it made him more
belligerent and hostile. And so when you combine those two
(05:33):
things plus the other part of the assassination attempt that
I think it did get him thinking about was Oh.
I think it did get him thinking about his own
mortality and thinking that he's going to be dead at
some point, and what is his legacy going to be.
And I don't think he necessarily considered that before that,
because I think he thought of himself as immortal. Okay,
you put all that together, what do you get? You
(05:53):
get a guy thinking about his legacy who understands that
the southern half of the United States over the next
hundred years is going to become lad less than hospitable.
At the same time, up in Canada, all of that
land is going to warm, all those resources are going
to become more available, more accessible. Up at the Arctic Circle,
all of those resources are already in dispute and already contended.
(06:16):
At the same time, you've got Greenland where all of
this is taking place climate wise. At the same time,
you've also got demographic trends in the United States which
say that by the year twenty forty something or whatever,
white people are going to become the minority. We know
that he has surrounded himself by white supremacists and fascists
who believe that white people should be in charge of everything.
(06:38):
What does Canada have a lot of white people? What
does Greenland have a lot of land? What does Russia
our new ally have a lot of white people? And
ultra Christianity, Orthodox Christianity. So you combine all those things,
and what I think that I think, my wild eye
conspiracy is that Trump and his people are trying to
position America as a soup superpower for the next one
(07:02):
hundred and fifty years or two hundred years, which is
allied with Russia, as a bulwark against Russia and against Asia.
And so you have this massive land mass which is
North America minus Mexico, Canada, Greenland, You've got the Arctic Circle,
and then you've got our closest new ally Russia. And
(07:25):
what you've done is you've created a scenario where we
become impregnable and incredibly formidable. That's my conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
What's the fee that's as delusional as the UFO stuff
you talk to us about less.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Podcast, I said, delusional. Don't you think that makes perfect sense?
White people, Russia, Christianity, Liban Swum.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Let me ask you this, have you seen anything else
in Trump's history in the last twenty five years that
makes sense?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Like you're saying, like.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
A guy can think of a plan more than five
seconds ahead of.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
But what I guess what I'm saying is it's not
his plan. He's just sort of instituting it, and he's
being sort of led down the from Rose path by
Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and the coupal of weirdos
who's guiding this presidency.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The Heritage Foundation. I, you know, genetically just don't like
conspiracy theories. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually say that
I think there's elements in that that that actually resonate
with me. The thing about a legacy, I think, the
thing about wanting a white Christian nation, although he's hardly Christian,
but not really the white nationalist thing. I think his
(08:37):
whole thing of expansion. And when was the last time
a president's went around praising William McKinley, right, I mean
it's been a lot. I'm the only one who's read
his memoirs recently, but but yeah, I mean, will I
think there's there is something to that, although I suspect
it's less of a cunning plan than just feral instincts
(08:59):
that that come together. But I think this is an
administration riven by conspiracies and conspiracy theories. I mean, look
no further than Laura Lumer walks into the Oval office
and suddenly and a sort of Madame LaFarge's head start
to roll, and there's no understanding why the head of
(09:20):
the n essay was fired, and just people in airal
security and a sea are being fired, like why.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I think the more pregnant question, and I use that
word advisedly, is why is Trump listening to Laura Lumer?
Why is she always in and out of his orbit?
Of all people like she's such a weirdo. Everybody around
him hates her. They all try to keep them apart.
And the question is why why does she have his ear?
(09:50):
And I think that's I think that's an interesting question.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Does she have just his ear?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Almost every one of those things you brought up to
talking about they they they And one of the things
I see with that Trump and this time it was
a little different last time, is there's a they is
not a cohesive thing. I think he has overlapping and
very different people who work for him. So he's got
Musk who has a completely different view of what where
(10:15):
the world should go and should go to Mars and
we should destroy the democracy. And then you've got the
economic tariff people, and then you've got the true crazies
and the lower Lumer people. You've got a group of
real pro China people and then a separate group of
real anti China people. Even just yesterday they were asking
about the tariffs and are they going to stay, are
they not going to stay, or they just to do
(10:35):
Different people in the administration, senior people who conceivably were
in the same meetings together, say absolutely the opposite things
because there's no coordination. So, Michael, with that lead up
and the fact that I think these people do have
different agendas and I think you agree to that, what
do you think Elon Musk's agenda is?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
And with his fighting with Peter Navarro, can there be
only one who must be out? Or Navarro be out
two months from now?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, Musk has already said he's leaving. Musk is saying
that he's going to leave by early May. Ockham's razor
would suggest that Musk is primarily interested in Musk. So
how does all this random nonsense benefit Elon Musk? And
(11:21):
obviously like he's destroying all the agencies that would regulate
his particular industries, But then why go after Social Security?
Why go after USAID? Like I don't understand, I don't
understand it at all. I don't understand how the nation
as a whole just accepted the premise of waste, fraud,
(11:42):
and abuse. We just were like, oh, yeah, well, the
government spends too much money, and there's too many people
in the government, and it's doing too many things and
it's but why did we just accept that premise? I
never accepted that premise. It seemed to me that the
government in general's probably doing a pretty good job. Like,
I know people who work in the government, they work hard.
You guys worked in the government, you work hard, you
(12:05):
did good work. I'm friends with people who work in
the UN World Food Program. All they do is try
to feed people. That's their whole thing. Trump just destroyed
their program. All the scientists, the meteorologists, the firefighters, Like,
why did we just accept that premise? I find it infuriating.
I also find the premise and narrative around immigration infuriating
(12:27):
that we just accepted that illegal immigris Is.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
That because is it an education thing? Do you think
the American public just don't understand their government because I
don't accept any of those things.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I think we've been propagandized so effectively by the right
wing media and pireennial what you want to call it.
I think Historically, I think we all know that Americans
have a kind of fundamental, inbred distrust of government that
stems from our origins as a nation. But over the
(12:59):
last few centuries, we've asked the government to do more
because we needed as we became more complex economically, militarily, industrially, technologically,
we needed people to regulate this stuff, to look at it,
because when we don't, we end up with things like
the Great Depression or all the depressions that preceded the
Great Depression, or we end up with a sort of
(13:20):
hodgepodge of like laws around who gets educated and who doesn't,
and who's allowed to buy real estate and who doesn't,
and who can get married and who doesn't like all
of these things. We've asked the government to provide some
oversight and regulation because it was necessary and for the
American people that just turn around and go, oh, yeah,
we didn't mean any of that. You didn't think. You
hadn't thought it through. That's the issue. And so now
(13:42):
we're seeing what happens when you think it through and
you start asking people left and right, and suddenly the
Social Security Administration you can't get through on the phone.
Why because we're getting rid of the phones. It's just insanity.
And I don't understand what Musk's role is in all
of this. To answer your question, I don't know. It
doesn't make any sense to me other than if your
(14:04):
goal is to actually rip apart the government, which it
seems like that is their goal. But to what end?
That's getting back to your original question about the poker.
To what end? What are they trying to accomplish? And
I don't know that they've articulated it in any way
other than to say we're going to make it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I've come to think that this is chaos, that there
is no conspiracy here. There is no three dimensional eight
dimensional chess here. The American society, and I know people
are going to like balk at this. We have it.
We currently have it so good. We don't even think
we need these things anymore. We haven't had people die
of measles or measles outbreaks in twenty thirty years. Polio
(14:46):
is gone. The Great Recessions was the nineteen thirties. We
haven't had a land war in Europe in eighty years? Right,
Why do we still need vaccines? Why do we still
need NATO? People don't think they need them because like
we have work because they've worked exactly right. Yeah, we
haven't an award because we've had a we have an alliance,
and we also and this is much more difficult. Globalization
(15:10):
is a fact. It just friggin' is. And there are
winners and losers, just like there was when we moved
from horses to the internal combustion engine. Right, if you
were in the horse tending business, you were fucked, you know.
Henry Ford was the Elon Muskiv's day, and you know,
(15:31):
when we're moving towards green energy, and I think a
lot of people are scared, and I think that has
been pushed, but there's no plan other and this is
one conspiracy that I do buy into Project twenty twenty
five with the Heritage Foundation. I think they do have
a plan.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Just hold on for a short break.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
We'll be right back. All right, we're back from the break.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Let's get back into it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think because people are scared, perhaps one thing is
that people around Trump are thinking is, yeah, it's like authoritarianism.
Let's just give them a simple solution. And that is
something we see in history over and over and over again,
going back to ancient Greece when you get the Athenians
afraid they're going to look for a tyrant, or the Romans,
(16:26):
or let's go to nineteen thirty three with the Germans.
If you can make people afraid and offer simple solutions,
you can have power. And I think that's the pot
at the center of the table at this poker game
is power. What they want to do with it, I'm
not really sure because I don't think there's a day.
I think there's different days. Peter Navarro where he wants
to go, and where Milan Musk wants to go, and
(16:48):
where the Koch brothers want to go. But it's a conspiracy.
Everybody's looking to control this tired, confused old man at
the nasty old man at the sitting and sitting behind
the Resist desk with Elon Musk's kids booger on it.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But I think Musk is different from Project twenty twenty five.
I think they am different, and I need to dig
into it more. But I think the Musk people, there's
some books and things that Peter Teel and Musk and
sort of these South African tech guys have this view
that the US government is just a giant and giant
insurance company with an army, and the problem with the
(17:24):
government is it spends all its money to support the
Week in society, and the Week are holding us down.
And if we're going to move to a new world
that's in Mars and Ai driven, we have to actually
destroy that and get rid of the Week and have
a group of white people who could do things. And
so I think his view is different probably than a
lot of these other people around Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, I think you're exactly like Peter Teel and Elon
Musk and like David Sachs, the other South African member
of this troika. They're part of this techno utopian slash
feudal vision for how they see the next phase of
(18:07):
human development playing out. And they've utilized the bizarre writings
of Curtis Jarvin, this sort of weird philosopher of the right,
as a kind of intellectual undergirding for their project, which
basically just amounts to a new feudalism where you're going
to have these tech overlords controlling literal land masses as
(18:30):
private essentially countries that you can then move to and
become a citizen of. But it will be but they
will be ruled over by these monarchs, the Peterteels, the
Elon Musks, the David Sachses of the world, and you
will abide by their rules, and presumably you will have
freedom of movement. I guess if you decide you don't
(18:51):
like their rules, and then you can go to some
other tech oligarch's country. But then what happens when the
tech oligarchs start fighting, as they inevitably will. Are they
going to maintain their private tech oligarch armies and there?
I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
What?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And how do they even envision the role of the
United States in all of this? And I don't really know,
other than maybe it's what you said. They'll be a
kind of insurance company with an army, and they'll be
there to sort of mediate these disputes so that David
Sachs and Elon Musk aren't sending armies of in cells
to fight with each other. I don't know. None of
it makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
On Social Security. My grandmother had a an Irish immigrant.
She had a third grade education. She had four kids
and was pregnant three months pregnant with my father when
her husband died of par toniis she would have starved
a death without Social Security. But it's like Roosevelt friggin
saved her. But dismantling that Muscus called it a Ponzi scheme?
(19:50):
Is there money to be made here by first of
all making Social Security inoperable, cut its funding, cut its
it budget so it doesn't function anymore, Then blame it
for being poorly run after you've made it poorly run.
And then, of course the next step is to privatize
it or just not pay it out, so that the
vast majority of people are then dependent on sure on
(20:13):
what on the government and or on people like Elon Musko.
What's your sense why would tech brows and Musk in particular,
why would they be setting their sights on Social Security?
Because they must understand something has to come after it.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
I can only assume what you just said is accurate,
that they want to privatize it, and that they know
that there's tremendous amounts of fees to be made in
financial transactions and management and all of this billions and
billions of dollars that they can then line their pockets
with to pursue their dreams of going to Mars or
whatever the hell they're trying to do. And I think
you you could make the good faith argument, although I
(20:51):
don't think it's necessarily very good faith argument, that social
Security could be made more profitable if you invested it in.
Those funds into the market are sort of risk your investments.
But all of that is blied by the events of
the last week. If you're relying on the market for
your retirement and then you see it crashing fifteen percent,
(21:11):
maybe twenty percent by the time this podcast airs, well,
aren't you shooting yourself in the foot. So security was
never designed to be an investment vehicle. It was designed
to be a safety net so that when you reach retirement,
or you have a disabled child, or you are a
young widow, you don't have to worry about that money
(21:36):
coming in. It was never meant to be a get
rich quick scheme. It was meant to supplement whatever retirement
savings or pension or later on for a one K
that you might have. And if you don't have those things,
then it will keep you, at the very least hopefully
right out of poverty. And that's enough. That's all it
was meant to do. That's all it ought to be doing.
(21:58):
And it drives me crazy, having a mother who worked
in source security for many years, it drives me crazy
to see them trying to dismantle literally the most successful
social program in our nation's history for no reason.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of these things that
work against each other. At the same time, we are
using up a lot of our One of the reasons
that the administrations that they didn't want to give more
weapons to Ukraine is we don't want to use up
our weapons that we may need to fight the Chinese.
And then now we're using all of these weapons to
bomb the Yemenis and the Hootis. And the reason supposedly
(22:34):
we're doing that, and we know that because we've listened.
We watched the signal chat between the main players who
are looking to bomb yemen Is because we're worried about
global traffic through this Suez Canal and the fact that
it's disrupting global supply chains. But at the same time,
all of the policies of the government in tariffs are
(22:56):
destroying the supply chains of the world. So like, on
one hand, we're doing more damage to the supply chage
and business ability to think forward, and then we're bombing
the hell out of a country because we're claiming that's
what we're trying to protect.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I think that's right. And if that doesn't make sense
to you, then you just don't get it. Bro, they
just don't get it. Let me ask you how as CIA,
that's how bad from an intelligence perspective was the signal
gate thing.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's bad on a number of levels. And the first
thing I think of, having been like Jerry, a senior
officer at CIA, is just on the leadership place. If
anyone could understand if you work for an organization and
your boss says one thing and does the other. Thing
that you're saying to everybody in your organization, the tens
of thousands of people, is you cannot do this. If
you do these things, you will be fired, prosecuted. It's dangerous,
(23:50):
it's against national security. You're helping our enemies. And then
they do it. And then not only do they do it,
but they then lie about it and obfuscate and then
pretend like it's normal. You've just sent a message to
your workforce that you're not serious, you don't care about
the things that you tell them to do. So on
the leadership side, it's bad. On the national security side
(24:11):
the fact that these people have been using private devices.
It was a window that opened up to show us
that's happening and let us all think about it. But
I think that's been happening for a long time. I
think foreign intelligence services have been living off of President
Trump's telephone and listening to everything and all the crazy
things he's doing talking to people. Once you can get
into someone's telephone, it doesn't matter that you're then using signal,
(24:35):
which is an encrypted thing, because signal, if you try
to break in between the two encrypted pieces, which is
the hard part, it's encrypted and it would take a
sophisticated organization to be able to do that. Can we
do it sometimes? So it's bad. I think it's bad
on the nest security front. It's bad on the security front,
it's bad on the leadership front. And then of course
the lying is the biggest problem, because leadership should be
(24:58):
about character, and our nationalecurity officials show that they have
no character and they can't be trusted. That sends another
message to our enemies.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And once you're in a device, you're in it. Yeah,
So maybe they're talking about Yemen, talking about Iran, talking
about the Ukraine, negotiations the Russian that for us would
be like that was our quest, if we can figure
out plans and intentions of the leadership. We've done everything,
We've done our job. And the fact that you've got
(25:27):
somebody with the phone in Moscow talking about this, you
just simply got to assume that not only did they
get his phone, they got everything on it. You got
to assume that. And let's be clear about this. People
are gonna get killed if the Russians got this, and
I think you got to be you have to just
assume they did. If they told the houtis in advance,
(25:48):
just hey, get your air defenses ready, just one phone call.
And the Russians do work with the hoodies, right, they
don't hit our ships. They do talk back and forth,
they trade. They certainly work with the Iranians. I'm going
to get in your jet and you're gonna lie in
and they're waiting for you. It's like the Battle of Midway.
We knew the Japanese were there. That's why that's why
we won the Battle of Midway and then won the
war in the Pacific. It was because of good intelligence.
(26:11):
So this is there's been so much other shit going
on that we've swept that under the carpet. But this
is horrific. Now I just want to quick come back
on the poker thing I've just seen right now as
we're talking, Trump apparently has paused all terrors and except
for China for ninety days. Right.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It's good because now we have all these new factories
that have been built in the last.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Line, all these new factories. Right. So I'm saying this
is this is a blink thing. So you're playing poker
and he's just you know, warinated on the tailor. He's
playing park. He's bluffing. Don't fuck with me, man, I
got four aces. And now he's he's funny.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
He's folding because the rest of the world and the
nation called his bluff. They're like, you want to do this, Okay,
we're gonna we're gonna crash of markets. We're going to
create a new Asian Pact between China and Japan and
South Korea. We're gonna get Europe to retaliate. Like he folded.
He folded because it's stupid. I assume it's a declare
(27:14):
of victory and say, everybody's kissing my ass and everybody
wants to negotiate, so we can hold the we can
hold the tariffs for ninety days. But the problem, and look,
what do I know. I'm a jerk on I'm a
college shop out who believes in uf folks, So what
do I know? But it seems like it seems like
as an economic matter, how as a business person do
(27:34):
you project out for the next three months, six months,
year if you don't know every ninety days if Trump
is going to be slapping tariffs on all the nations
that you're trying to import your goods from, or are
you going to say, maybe I need to start investing
in the US and I'm gonna spend two billion dollars
creating new factories and infrastructure. And then four years from now,
(27:56):
some other dude gets in and it's listen and it's
just like, yeah, these tariffs make no sense, so we're
going back to free trade. Like, how do you plan
anything if you're a business person right now? I have
no idea. Thankfully, I'm an idiot about business and money,
so I don't have to worry about it too.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
But let's talk politics for just for a second. Given
that we're going to actually have fair elections in twenty
twenty six D, which is not a given. But let's
run with that. Where do Republicans if they don't want
to lose the House in the Senate like your fo okay,
your Fox News. Let's pretend Rupert Murdoch is going to
live this long. And how do you spend this as
a as immediate personality yourself? How do you spin this
(28:35):
as a win?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It's a huge win? Are you kidding me? This is
this has been an incredible win for the American people
over the What have we seen over the last few days.
We've seen every single nation on earth, including the ones
that are only populated by penguins, picking up the phone
and calling the greatest president who has ever lived and said,
let's make a deal, mister president. All of them, even
(29:00):
the Pelicans, had tears in their eyes, just rolling down
their eyes as they say, you're absolutely right, mister President.
Not only were you right, we have been unfair and
we want to do whatever we can to ensure moving
forward that America is our biggest booster and friend and ally,
and we're just gonna write We're just going to write
(29:21):
checks to you, and the American people are getting rich,
richer than you can possibly imagine richer than they've ever
been because of this president's foresight and bold leadership.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Mister Fox News reporter, you just said yesterday that these
terrorists were going to stay in place for years so
that we would fundamentally change our system so that manufacturing
comes back to the United States. How do you say
that today's something completely different.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You in the fake media are so obst with this
president's comand of the American economy that you can't wrap
your heads around all the good things that he's doing.
The American people. Look at what the stock market is
doing right now, right now, and you will see the
bold leadership that this man has performed. And yes, we
(30:08):
need to bring back manufacturing to these shores, and all
of our conversations with our partner nations will ensure that
they invest right here in America.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And more importantly, it is wrong that trans athletes are
like fencing with real women. Let's talk about the really
important things about which bathroom you get to use? That's right,
That's all this economic stuff. Don't worry about it. Don't
worry your pretty little head, baby.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I have to say, John, just acting as a White
House spokesperson slash Fox News analyst, it's very easy.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I think you'd be good at it. Yeah, to
try that, because if you're on CNN, no one's watching it.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You got to get over on Fox News.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, it's easy to lie if you just don't care.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
That's the thing is if you have one talking point
and it's just do whatever, say whatever it is to
make the present look good. Right, whether it's consistent with
yesterday or five minutes ago, does.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Consistency's irrelevant And when you're cornered attacked the questioner.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
So let's take a break and be back in a moment.
Let's pick up where we left off.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
I do like your theory about how no reason we're
so willing to get rid of things is because they
work so well, and so you don't understand that these
things are happening in the background. That's my theory about
how Trump got elected in the first place, because Obama
did a good job, and so the America was like, well,
if this guy who came out of nowhere and he's
(31:43):
just a black dude, if he can do the job,
then why wouldn't Why why wouldn't we elect this genius
billionaire business man. He'll do it ten times better. I
do think a good president makes it look easy, and
so you think anybody can do it, and then you
and up with a clown like this.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
For years, it'll be like the government needs to be
run more efficiently like a business businessman. America is about business.
And I don't think previous presidents, even ones that we
thought did well, communicated effectively with the American people that
the government is different than a business and it's different
because it's in support of the American people. Like the
US government is set up for fairness, not efficiency necessarily,
(32:23):
So if the Defense Front wants to buy a new thing,
it has to put out bids and give everybody an
opportunity to bid. Everybody could do you can. They can't
just say Michael, I like you, your company is good,
I'm going to buy your thing, and I'm not going
to look at so I can move fast, and the
same thing with Elon Musk. Yes he can blow up rockets.
I can move fast and destroy things. But if you're
in the US government and nasty, you can't just blow
(32:46):
up rockets. In other words, there are fundamental different things,
and it's not just efficiency and speed, it's other things.
So the business thing has never really been the proper
way to look at it. Yes, we want our government
to be a active and more efficient, but it is
going to be slower than potentially businesses. But businesses go
(33:06):
out of business all the time, and the United States
can't go out of business.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And the other thing that short of drives me crazy
about that analogy is the subtext of it, which is
that if the American government will run as a business,
it would then be in a sense profitable. We hear
this kind of talk when they talk about the post
Office or Amtrak or any number of services that the
(33:30):
government provides for the common good, that if we just
privatized it, the government or whomever could be making money
hand over fist with this stuff. But that is not
the purpose of government. The purpose of the post Office
is not to make money. It is to provide postal
service for the American people at an affordable price. And
(33:52):
that's just a common good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
If you wanted to make money with the post office,
you wouldn't send things to these talents with three people
and I'm way out in the middle of nowhere. Effective
thing to do is go to bigger places and cut
off these smaller places. But the postal services said, we're
going to make sure that every American, no matter where
they live, can get mail.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You can extrapolate that to the whole of government, because
in a sense, when you're saying you want the government
to be more efficient, in a way, what you're saying
is we want it to it's a rough analogy, but
we want it to make more money. We want it
to do more with the money that we provide it.
That is a natural and justifiable feeling to have. But
(34:30):
if you don't understand what the government actually does or
how it does it, you're not in a position to
say we just need to cut everything. You're just not
in that position. And the Democrats, I agree with you,
have never made the case, or at least in my lifetime,
for government why we have these things, why they're important,
How your life will be materially worse without these things.
(34:53):
Like the fact that so many people think or thought
that the American government spends something like twenty percent of
its annual budget on foreign aid is maddening to me.
We pay a penny less than a penny on the
dollar for all of that foreign aid, all of that
stuff that we were doing, feeding people, saving lives, preventing aids, education,
(35:17):
helping women get out from under the thumbs of the
men in their lives and the patriarchal cultures that were
controlling them. Like all of that cost, relatively speaking, so
little and provided us so much in return, and we
don't Nobody was making that argument, And I don't understand why.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Michael Lewis was making the argument better than the US
government was. He's the best person I listened to on this.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Generationally, are at least my parents trusted the government because
their experience with the government was helped us out of
the Great Depression, right social security. We won World War Two,
we won the Cold War, And I really think it
all changed when Ronald came in, although he didn't mean
it this way, but he said, I'm from the government.
(36:04):
I'm here to help, and everybody laughed. If you're from FEMA,
you are from the government and you are there to help, right,
Or if you're making sure that people aren't driving in
unsafe vehicles, or the food you eat isn't poison, or
there's no insider trading the court's work. The police aren't
like bribeable like they are in the Third World. They
are from the government. They are here to help. But
(36:25):
I think this is something inside of the American psyche
to be distrustful of government. And I think that in
its measure is good. But like anything else, when you
take it to the NTS degree, you get to nihilism.
But before we go, I did want you to comment
on a conspiracy theory that I do buy into, but
I find very difficult to articulate. So all the countries
(36:48):
in the world, to include country, you know, places with
just penguins or poor little Lisutu or Bhutan, they all
got schwat with tariffs, but not at all. Russia didn't
get hit with a tear And then he's true that
off his order negotiating. We're also negotiating with Ukraine and
other places. So what do you think the deal is
(37:09):
with Russia and Trump? What is it? There's something everybody knows.
There's something. Everybody's senses it. John has written articles on it.
You know, in the intelligence community, we'll sit around Congressmen
have speculated on it. There is friggin' something.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I guess I know. I don't know if that I
ever was, but I guess I'm no longer of the
opinion that there's any sort of compromot or anything like that,
because Trump is so shameless, Like, what difference would it
make at this point, What possible information could they have
on him that would in any way damage him. I
don't think there's anything.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
But it suggests that he needed help to win these elections.
It wasn't just himself, and he can't live with that.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So I'm at a loss. None of it. Is it
as simple as he looks at the way Putin runs
his nation. He understands that Putin is getting a kick
back on every dollar that these oligarchs earn. He understands
that Putin is arguably the richest man in the world,
or one of the richest men in the world, and
(38:11):
he just wants that. He said it over and over again.
I want generals who will salute me, and I want
Hitler's generals, and want when I want people to stand
up when I like he said all this stuff. It
might just be the sort of theatrics of power and
the image of it. And I think he's enraptured with
this idea of the strong man. And if he could
be the strong man of the strongest country that the
(38:34):
world has ever known, I could see that holding some
appeal for him.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
You've written a little bit about Trump and a third term.
What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
If And I know you guys know this, but your
viewers or your listeners and they probably know this too.
But clearly the playbook for this regime is to maintain
power at all costs. And the question is why. And
we've talked on that a little bit, but I think
(39:06):
Trump understands and the Trump people understand that whatever that
goal is, whatever they're aiming for, cannot be accomplished in
this term. Fully, you can put the pieces in motion,
you can make it a lot more likely that this
project will succeed in four years, but it may not
be possible to execute everything they want to do in
(39:29):
that time. And they know, and Trump certainly believes, and
it's probably correctly that the movement falls apart without him.
That's probably true. And so if that's the case, then
you've got to figure out a way to keep this
guy in power. And that obviously feeds into his own
narcissism and ego. And so they're going to try any
(39:49):
novel theory that they can think of to get around
the constitution. And I'm not convinced they won't be successful.
I'm not convinced that John Roberts and whoever else is
going to somehow find some sort of narrow legal ruling
like they did with Gore v. Bush or Bush vers
or whatever that was, to sort of allow some weird
precedent that will allow him to serve or he'll do
(40:10):
like a Putin Medyedev thing where they where he gets
Vance to be the president and he's the vice president
and then Vance resigns. I don't know, but I don't
think he's going to go quietly. And he said that
he's been talking about this since his first administration, and
I don't see any indication that he's at all joking,
and he said in recent days he's not joking.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I think the one thing I would add to that, though,
is I think he doesn't want to go to jail.
I think he knows he's guilty of a lot of shit.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Okay, so he knows that, and he knows they all
know that twenty twenty six, at least the elections were
held today, would be a blood bath for them. So
you got to figure they're already anticipating that. So what
are they going to do? Where are they going to
do that?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I think there's a conspiracy there. I don't know what
it is yet.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Act cheap.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's a hell of a pig parade.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Michael. Awesome to talk to you. As always, I do
follow your substec I think it's really fascinating and we
hope we can have you on it anytime.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I'm mostly unemployed. Even though I'm on TV and I
write the sun Stack, I'm mostly unemployed.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable mention and Abominable
pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com