The Pope Passed, The Market Crashed, And A Free Press Is Somehow Still Intact with Catherine Rampell + Stephanie Ruhle

Summary

American Fever Dream: Episode Summary Title: The Pope Passed, The Market Crashed, And A Free Press Is Somehow Still Intact with Catherine Rampell + Stephanie Rule
Host/Author: Betches Media
Release Date: April 22, 2025

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Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of American Fever Dream, hosts V. Spehar and Sammy Sage delve into the tumultuous intersections of politics, economics, and media. Joined by esteemed guests Catherine Rampell, Washington Post columnist and new anchor of MSNBC's The Weekend Show, and Stephanie Rule, another insightful commentator from MSNBC, the conversation navigates through recent pivotal events, including the passing of the Pope, economic uncertainties, and the state of free press in America.

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The Passing of the Pope and Its Implications [19:13 - 24:50]

The episode opens with a somber discussion about the recent passing of the Pope. V. Spehar expresses concerns over the succession process within the Vatican, highlighting the potential shift from a liberal to a more conservative leadership.

V. Spehar: "The four front runners, none of them are nearly as liberal or kind as Francis was. This is going to be certainly a change for the church."

Catherine Rampell provides insights into the potential candidates, expressing particular worry over Cardinal Burke's influence:

Catherine Rampell: "Cardinal Burke, who is, if you watch the movie Conclave, you know, the bad guy in the movie... he is president on the board of advisors to Steve Bannon's little religious institute."

The hosts discuss the broader impact of the Pope's passing on global headlines and the Vatican's stability, pondering whether U.S.-based Cardinals could influence the selection process significantly.

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Journalism Under Pressure: Protecting the Free Press [06:10 - 09:37]

Shifting focus, Rampell addresses the precarious state of journalism in today's charged political climate. She emphasizes the challenges journalists face, including threats to their safety and the importance of institutional support.

Catherine Rampell: "You just have to do the job... trust that the institutions that employ you, including MSNBC and the Washington Post, will have the firepower... to ensure that your rights will be protected."

V. Spehar raises critical questions about the Vatican's support for journalists, drawing parallels to other institutions like Harvard and the law firms' responses to political pressures.

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Catherine Rampell's On-Air Experience [25:01 - 31:16]

A personal anecdote is shared by Rampell about a heated live TV segment where her frustration with Elon Musk's comments on Nazi sympathies led her to lose composure. This moment sparked widespread attention and highlighted the emotional toll of modern journalism.

Catherine Rampell: "I was very angry... I lost my cool."

The hosts reflect on the challenges journalists face when balancing professionalism with personal convictions, especially in high-stakes environments.

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Economic Turmoil and the Rule of Law with Stephanie Rule [35:18 - 75:26]

In the latter half of the episode, Stephanie Rule joins the conversation to discuss the ramifications of recent political decisions on the U.S. economy. Central to the discussion is the Kilmarber Garcia case, a legal scenario raising alarms among business leaders about the erosion of the rule of law.

Stephanie Rule: "If suddenly we're in a situation where the Supreme Court is making a 9-0 decision and the White House in broad daylight says goodbye and good luck, that's super concerning to them."

The conversation delves deep into the impact of tariffs, the unpredictability of President Trump's economic policies, and the resulting instability in the markets. Rule critiques the administration's approach, highlighting how inconsistent policies have led to business uncertainty and potential economic downturns.

Stephanie Rule: "Donald Trump has been laying this out for years and years... Now, we're in a game of survival."

Furthermore, the hosts explore the broader implications of defunding education and medical research, emphasizing the long-term consequences on American exceptionalism and global standing.

Stephanie Rule: "The United States has been light years ahead of every other country in terms of medical research. Until now, based on where we're going."

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Operation Warp Speed and Medical Research [63:18 - 64:44]

Stephanie Rule lauds the achievements of Operation Warp Speed, the government initiative that accelerated COVID-19 vaccine development. She contrasts its success with current disinvestment in medical research, arguing that undermining such critical institutions threatens future advancements and public health.

Stephanie Rule: "Operation Warp Speed was extraordinary... How we cannot separate the two is it baffles me."

The discussion underscores the importance of sustained investment in science and research, cautioning against the shortsightedness of current policy directions.

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The Intersection of Business and Politics [73:03 - 75:26]

The episode concludes with an examination of how major businesses and their leaders are grappling with the administration's policies. Rule criticizes the lack of unified opposition from business elites against detrimental economic measures, suggesting a systemic failure to protect the nation's economic interests.

Stephanie Rule: "Why don't the CEOs of the 10 biggest companies in the United States, why don't they get together and call a few Republicans... to stand up to the president?"

Sage and Rule discuss the broader implications of these economic policies, including potential shifts towards oligarchic structures and the destabilization of America's economic foundation.

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Conclusion

In this comprehensive episode, American Fever Dream masterfully intertwines discussions on religious leadership transitions, the fragile state of journalism, and the precariousness of the U.S. economy under current political maneuvers. Through incisive dialogue and expert insights from Catherine Rampell and Stephanie Rule, listeners are offered a nuanced understanding of the complex forces shaping America today.

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Notable Quotes

• Catherine Rampell [06:10]: "You just have to do the job and trust that the institutions... will have the firepower... to ensure that your rights will be protected."

• V. Spehar [19:35]: "Maybe it'll be Trump."

• Stephanie Rule [35:18]: "If suddenly we're in a situation where the Supreme Court is making a 9-0 decision and the White House in broad daylight says goodbye and good luck, that's super concerning to them."

• Stephanie Rule [58:25]: "They have companies that can't even give forward guidance of what they think their earnings are going to be because they don't know the road ahead."

• Stephanie Rule [63:21]: "Or on it for private industry or uninteresting for private industry... That's what we see happen and where I think it's so interesting."

• Stephanie Rule [69:23]: "If you think about what Donald Trump is doing... it's how you get business confidence to plummet."

• Stephanie Rule [73:09]: "What I don't get is I think there's a backdoor for businesses. If you don't want to come out and speak against the president because you fear his wrath, why don't the 10 biggest companies stand up to him."

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Stay Connected

For more insightful discussions and updates, subscribe to the Sup email newsletter at betches.com/newsletters and follow Betches Media on Instagram at @betches_news. Watch American Fever Dream on YouTube at @thebetchesnews.

Transcript

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[V. Spear]

Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V. Spear.

[Sammy Sage]

And I'm Sammy Sage.

[V. Spear]

And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Batches News, the show that unlike.

[Sammy Sage]

The White House Easter egg Roll is not sponsored by Amazon, Meta or YouTube. Happy belated Easter. Be.

[V. Spear]

Thank you. It was a wonderful holiday full of chocolate eggs and white chocolate bunnies. And my wife made all this beautiful Slovak Easter food. It was a joy. How was your Passover? Wasn't it the same time?

[Sammy Sage]

Pretty much. You know, it was, it passed over.

[V. Spear]

Me watch Jesus Christ Superstar and Easter Parade like twice each, you know, for good measure.

[Sammy Sage]

Good. Did you watch the Ten Commandments?

[V. Spear]

No, I don't watch this.

[Sammy Sage]

No.

[V. Spear]

But I love Moses. You know that.

[Sammy Sage]

I gotta watch the Ten Commandments. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get into all of this because as people know, the Pope. But I do want, just want to intro today for the first half of our episode, we are going to be joined by Catherine Rampel, Washington Post columnist and new anchor of MSNBC the weekend. Look, we love our MSNBC gals here. And then later in the episode, and this kind of happened a little bit by accident, I had a whole conversation with Stephanie Rule about the tariffs and everything that's going on with, you know, our Interest rates and bonds and everything. It's really a very fascinating conversation bringing together the rule of law and our economy. So that will be the back half of the episode. But to get started, welcome, Katherine.

[Catherine Rampell]

Thank you for having me.

[Sammy Sage]

Thanks for being on. And one more thing. I forgot to let everyone know we are on YouTube. We are on YouTube now, full episodes. So watch us there if you want to see our beautiful faces. Katherine, you are starting at msnbc. Quite an interesting time to be working in media. And you know, your job at Washington Post has been during quite a transition as well. Can you tell us, like, what is it like working in at those outlets now or just really in general as a journalist at, like, such a precarious time?

[Catherine Rampell]

It is definitely a really charged time to be a journalist. I feel like the stakes are very high and the venom is very forceful, but I feel super motivated, I think is the other side of things. I feel like I have a lot of friends who are feeling deflated and powerless and just overwhelmed by everything that's happening. And I totally understand that. But in some ways I feel fortunate to be in a field where there is work to be done, you know, and there's a lot of terrible, terrible things happening in the country. It's like everything is a distraction from everything else that's even worse, if that makes any sense. So that I cover the tariff war, but I also have been writing recently about attacks on American children by taking away their food supports and health care and discouraging the parents from getting the kids immunized. Like, tons and tons of bad stuff happening that just gets crowded out of the news. And it's like, this is why I have this job, you know, to shed light on really depressing stuff, frankly, but to get people informed, help people feel more informed and have more agency.

[Sammy Sage]

How's it been at WaPo? Only writing about personal liberties and free markets.

[Catherine Rampell]

So I will say I have not written anything different than I would have written before. So if you read my stuff, I have not pulled my punches on anything. I am still very critical of the authoritarian decision making within the White House and beyond. I have still been very critical. Hey, look, being anti tariff, which I generally am, is pretty pro free market, but I can't say that that's like a new development for me. And I've been very supportive of the safety net and critical of attempts to gut the safety net. I don't know if that counts as free markets or not free markets these days. I have other colleagues, you know, who have been, if they've Criticized our owner have been in more difficult positions, but I'm doing exactly what I was doing before, which, you know, knock on Wood continues.

[V. Spear]

It's a good thing, I guess, you weren't making fun of Katy Perry before, because it would have been really difficult for you. You know, this week would have been a tough one to have to abstain.

[Catherine Rampell]

You know, not core to my beat, but I'm sure somebody might feel like they have.

[Sammy Sage]

That's my thing. They need me to cover. Katy pair something.

[V. Spear]

I want to ask if you could be more specific there. I was at this journalism festival in Italy, right? And a lot of the chat amongst the journalists was about how afraid they are about losing funding, about the lack of safety there is for them, about the potential for journalists who live in exile in the United States to be potentially deported back to their home countries. Like, what protections is Washington Post or msnbc or have you built for yourself as a truth teller and storyteller to kind of like, you know, put a little bubble around your reporting or make sure that you don't suffer some fascist consequences for being a truth teller?

[Catherine Rampell]

I think you can't think in that way. You just have to do the job. And look, we have plenty of examples of journalists in other countries who have braved much more difficult circumstances that I hope we do not get to ourselves. Like, there's this event every year, the Committee to Protect Journalists does an event in November. I don't know if either of you have ever been, but it's incredibly inspiring where they will give these awards to people who have shown tremendous bravery in holding their own governments or other powerful figures like cartels to account and have put themselves or family members at great personal danger, and they've done it anyway. And every year I've gone and I've felt just in awe of these people, and I'm like, okay, if these people can stand up to assassination attempts, surely I can withstand people being mean to me on Twitter, you know, like. Or whatever the prior thing was causing me angst was. And now it is a greater risk. But I think you just have to not let that influence your writing and trust that the institutions that employ you, including MSNBC and the Washington Post, will have the firepower, have the legal firepower, amongst other things, to ensure that your rights will be protected. And otherwise. I just don't think. I don't think it's possible to be a journalist and to be constantly worried about how will this come back to bite me in the butt or whatever, or throw me in the prison cell. And I understand that there are in some way, I'm a US Citizen, so I have more privilege there. I, I'm white. I have more privilege there. And colleagues who are people of color, and particularly people who are not citizens may have a lot more fear. But I think a lot of news organizations have been lining up the resources that they need, at least the good news organizations, to make sure that journalists can do their jobs and outsource the rest of the legal risk, you know, legal, legal management, etc. To, to other people who specialize in that.

[V. Spear]

Hear that, Murkowski? Do it. Scared. Anyway, that goes for journalists, it goes for Congress.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yes, exactly. You know, there's this line, I don't know if it's like from a movie or from a famous philosopher or whatever, but it's about how bravery is not the absence of fear. It's. It's something.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh yeah, that's like Harry Potter or something.

[Catherine Rampell]

It could be, I don't know, could be. I don' I don't think it's original to J.K. rowling, by the way, but it's like, you know, bravery is not the absence of fear. It's like recognizing that there are things more important than fear or whatever. And I think that's how journalists should operate. That's how politicians should operate, that's how citizens should operate. You know, again, there are people who are in more vulnerable positions and who don't have the resources of MSNBC or the Washington Post or else, or other places that I do not dismiss the risk that they are putting themselves at, like grad students, for example, who are being disappeared off the streets. But one would hope that the institutions that those grad students are enrolled at are starting to wake up and realize that they do need to provide that institutional support.

[V. Spear]

We're seeing that at Harvard for sure. Is this protection of students closing of the quad, like standing up to Trump in ways that I think sort of kicked off this idea that maybe you can stand up to the emperor and band together with other like minded people to try and minimize.

[Catherine Rampell]

You have to.

[V. Spear]

Yeah, you have to.

[Catherine Rampell]

You have to.

[V. Spear]

I've been super proud of Harvard.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah. Look, Harvard is obviously, I think, the richest institution in the country or among the richest institutions in the country. If they can't do this, then who can? And they have this very wealthy alumni base that they can tap into. You know, if they, if they lose federal grants, it will be painful no matter what, but they have other sources of revenue. If they can't do it, then who can? But beyond that, you know, there's some game theory involved here. It's like if you capitulate, then they're just going to pick off everyone, everybody in your class, one by one, you know, whether it's the law firms or the universities or what have you. And so, you know, you can see a couple of steps ahead here. We've, we've seen this pattern in other authoritarian countries, and we've seen this pattern in lots of types of negotiating, like if, you know, hang together or hang separately.

[Sammy Sage]

That's actually what I want to ask you about with regards to Paul Weiss, because something that I had heard is that one of the reasons that all the other law firms started capitulating is because Paul Weiss did. And when I've been talking about this behind the scenes with friends, like, we do talk about game theory, like, why was there any effort made? From what I understand, people, other law firms went after their clients, but there's like dozens of big law firms and Paul Weiss is, you know, one of the more powerful ones. Was there any attempt to, you know, try to ban together more firms? Like, I just want to understand, was it just about the money? Was it about the fear? Why couldn't. Like, because once that happened, it felt like a domino effect after that, and they felt like, oh, my God, like, this is even bet the administration felt like this is even better than we could have imagined. And I think what people are missing is that these big organizations like Harvard, like, you know, Columbia, like the, like NBC and abc, they're the protectors. They're the shields for the small organizations. They're. That's the reason why, like, other people have protections. And Harvard isn't just losing money for its operations. It's losing money for the benefit of people that it serves. And why is there no, like, bigger symposium of conversation?

[Catherine Rampell]

From what I understand with the law law firm specifically, there was some initial attempt to band together with allies that just did not. I don't know how far it got, but obviously did not work. And instead, some of Paul Weiss's competitors went after their clients, name them, which is, I don't, I haven't done the reporting myself on this.

[Sammy Sage]

I am dying to know of what happened here. Like, this is. So I want to know every conversation.

[Catherine Rampell]

This is what makes no sense to me because how can you not see several steps down the line if you're one of these competing law firms? It's like, okay, if they go after Paul Weiss, they can go after me too, you know, and so maybe I.

[Sammy Sage]

Could take off there. They're too rich to have this shitty pattern recognition. These people are paid way too much to not know what's going to happen. I don't understand.

[Catherine Rampell]

Maybe they need more, you know, game theory, instruction and law at these elite law schools.

[Sammy Sage]

Maybe they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[Catherine Rampell]

But I'm saying even if they were only trying to operate within their own self interest, this was not in their self interest. Even if they're greedy and they want as much money as possible, this is not going to achieve that end. Because if, if, you know, firm A picks off Paul Weiss's clients, then like, what's to prevent fault firm B from picking off those like sloppy seconds clients? Firm A, you know, so it just, it didn't make any sense. I think you are now seeing some recognition of this pattern. You know, whether it's because people have grown a spine or again, they're just realizing their own self interest. I'm inclined to say it's the latter. But I think that is good. And I think that to your point, you need it to happen at the big, well resourced organizations first. You need them to stand up because if they capitulate, then that sends a message to everybody else who's weaker that they should do this. Like, oh, if Harvard couldn't fight it, if Paul Weiss couldn't fight it, how can I small directional school in, you know, Michigan or whatever, like how can I possibly fight it? Clearly they've made the calculation that it's not possible and I know that nobody else is going to come to my aid. So I think it is again a matter of self preservation as well as backbone to figure out institutions need to stand together and fight back against these authoritarian actions.

[Sammy Sage]

You went to Princeton and they're actually one of the schools that's now decided to fight back. Were you aware of any dynamics or conversations or pressure behind the scenes to get the school to stand in this direction?

[Catherine Rampell]

I think a lot of alumni were putting pressure behind the scenes.

[V. Spear]

Was Pete Hagseth one of them? We all have a couple. We all have a couple that we wish weren't in the group.

[Sammy Sage]

Ted Cruz.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah, there are a few Princetonians who have not exactly covered Princeton's naming glory recently. I won't name some, but there are.

[Sammy Sage]

Some good ones too.

[Catherine Rampell]

Some, a few of my vintage. There are some good ones, but yeah, a few that anyway should maybe have their degrees revoked.

[V. Spear]

Oh wait, sidebar on that. When I graduated college undergrad, I went to Wagner College that year. Our speaker was Donald Trump. Did the commencement speech Okay, I know you almost spit your water out. This was the peak of the Apprentice. This is 2004, my undergrad. And we gave him an honorary degree, which he treated as actual doctor letters, even though Wagner doesn't have a PhD program, even. And they revoked it. Finally, the alumni put up such a good for them that it really. It took until January 6th for them to do it. But they did take away my college. Did take away his honorary degree in.

[Catherine Rampell]

Was there, like, a lot of internal debate?

[V. Spear]

Yeah.

[Catherine Rampell]

So they just, like, forgot that they had done it.

[V. Spear]

No, no. It was a big. It was a big deal from the day that they did it, because I went to school in Staten island. And he was like, I don't know. His father was like a slumlord on Staten Island. And, you know, Staten Island's a very strange but lovely place. So there's a lot of, like, no, we're not taking it away. We've never taken away anybody's thing. This is dumb. It was at the time. That's what we did. And then when January 6th happened, they did take it away, which was, you know, celebrated by a lot of the alumni. I didn't see a lot of pushback of people wanting him to keep it either. This is a theater school.

[Catherine Rampell]

Who's the constituency from the.

[Sammy Sage]

Did they give it back when he got elected again?

[V. Spear]

No, it's a theater school. The two major majors there are theater. Theater and nursing. Okay. This was not a place that should have had Donald Trump as the commencement speaker. And the commencement speech was insane. His whole speech was like, if you see a wall, you have to go through that wall, over the wall, around the wall. Don't let a wall stop you from.

[Catherine Rampell]

Where you need to be, but also build walls.

[V. Spear]

But also build a wall.

[Sammy Sage]

You see my wall?

[V. Spear]

He wouldn't shake anybody's hand in the little twerp that I am. Germaphobe. Oh, I got right out of line, and I shook his hand, and it was like, thanks for being here. And my dad was like, yes. So, no, Donald Trump lost his letters, at least from my school. So there's one happy story for today.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, my theory has always been that Donald Trump would dream to be a theater kid who was involved, or it doesn't necessarily have to be a theater kid, but he wanted to be involved in the New York City cultural elite. Like, in which Graydon Carter. He would look, if he could have been, like, an art columnist and it. And been revered for it, he would fucking have loved it. He would rather be like, he wanted.

[Catherine Rampell]

To go to film school.

[Sammy Sage]

Allegedly, he told another journalist, fucking let him. This is like Hitler in the painting.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yes, many people have observed that analogy.

[V. Spear]

Yes. What they what he's gonna do, that's.

[Sammy Sage]

The real masculinity crisis.

[V. Spear]

He's gonna this year at the Kennedy center, mark my words, they're gonna do a production of 1776 and he's gonna play one of the characters because that's what they always do with that stupid show. It's always like whatever community theater is doing it. The mayor plays like one of the characters. Donald Trump is going to cast himself at the Kennedy Center. Put it on your bingo card.

[Dr. Naomi Bernstein]

Hello, oversharing Listeners, it's Dr. Naomi Bernstein with some exciting news. Starting January 13th, our Oversharing Calm the fuck down subscription is getting even better. Subscribers will get oversharing episodes a day early, plus additional exclusive bonus content on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month. Here's what's new. One bonus episode with even more emails and advice, and another where we follow up with past email writers who could be you. While we won't be releasing new meditations in the new year, don't worry, all of our past meditations will stay available on the feed for you to enjoy anytime. Plus, we'll have a new Meditations playlist for our Spotify listeners. To sign up now, head to subscribe.basches.com and select Oversharing. Calm the fuck down. We're so excited about creating this new bonus content, talking to more of you, hearing your stories, sharing some of our own, and reminding us all to calm the fuck down.

[Sammy Sage]

Shall we talk about the Pope?

[V. Spear]

Yes, let's talk about the Pope. Okay, so my other greatest fear, the Catholic Church and the Pope, who got sick back in February. And we really thought perhaps that was the end. Struggled through pneumonia, got a little bit better after meeting with J.D. vance passed away just hours later.

[Catherine Rampell]

So coincidence.

[Sammy Sage]

What do we after he first snubbed J.D. vance and sent his deputy to give him a lecture on compassion, which is just so fucking insulting. If you're the vice president and you need a lecture on compassion from the Pope, your local parishioner.

[V. Spear]

I am just going to imagine that J.D. vance must have pestered the shit out of the Vatican to get the Pope to be like, I will meet. I will just stand there with him. He gave him that stank face of disgust the entire time. J.D. vance was so weird and trying to, like, suck the soul out of the Pope. Like, the way he was like, are you okay? The paparazzi, all of that had to play a part in the pressure that the Pope felt in his final hours. And for that, I will never forgive J.D. vance. It was a selfish move. It was a weird, selfish move. His wife and his kids weren't there. But now that the Pope has died, much like the movie Conclave, the Vatican's about to shut down and they're gonna choose a new Pope. Have you heard anything about.

[Catherine Rampell]

Maybe it'll be Trump.

[V. Spear]

Oh, my God.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, he's not a Catholic. Listen, like that matters.

[V. Spear]

Cardinal Burke, who is, if you watch the movie Conclave, you know, the bad guy in the movie. It's like, based on Cardinal Burke, who is the American cardinal who's in the running to be the next Pope. But what do you. What do you think about the Pope dying? How long do you think this will, like, dominate the headlines for?

[Catherine Rampell]

I don't know. I think in the United States, probably not very long.

[V. Spear]

You don't think so? Okay.

[Catherine Rampell]

Well, I just feel there's too much else going on. You know, it's things like the news cycles. If they used to be 24 hour news cycles, they're now like 12 hour news cycles. And also, Trump is probably going to do something crazy to put himself back, front, you know, front and center, because that's what he likes to do. He likes to be the center of attention. And he's probably jealous at this point of the Pope getting all of these adoring headlines from fans and worshipers around the world who admire his commitment to compassion and love and serving the poor. So wouldn't surprise me if that in and of itself motivates Trump to do something, but he doesn't even need that. I think the problem in the United States is that, like, there's so much happening at once that everything crowds out everything else. But, well, the four, I would hope that that doesn't happen. My prediction is wrong.

[V. Spear]

The four front runners, none of them are nearly as liberal or kind as Francis was. This is going to be certainly a change for the church. Very likely it will go from like a liberal to a conservative, which is kind of how it's gone. You know, we had like, that super conservative one, then we got Francis. The first one is Cardinal Serra, who is a conservative, who compared the LGBTQIA community to isis. So that's not gonna go super great. The other one is Mueller. Instead of defrocking a convicted pedophile, Mueller just moved him to a new church. That pedophile priest reoffended and was convicted again of essaying multiple children. Not a great guy. But in the running, Cardinal Burke, the American. This is the one that I'm actually really most worried about. Born in Wisconsin, he's the cardinal that said Joe Biden should not get communion because Biden supports abortion rights. He is pro death penalty, anti palliative care, anti stem cell research. Once tried to get Sheryl Crow fired from a gig for performing a charity fundraiser for abortion. He is openly pro. Trump organized a group to confront what he called the man crisis in the Catholic Church brought on by feminism and girls being allowed to be altar servers. This is where we hear a lot that in United States, like the fastest growing religion is Catholicism for young white males. This is Cardinal Burke at the heart of that, and he is president on the board of advisors to Steve Bannon's little religious institute, which is an academy that Bannon set up to train right wing Catholic activists. The last one is this lovely man known as the Asian Francis. He's probably not gonna get it. It's Cardinal Tagl. He hosts a Catholic TV show and says that it said anyone who worships idols sacrifices other people while preserving themselves and their interests. He's very, very nice. I'd love to see him be the Pope, but I don't think he will. And I don't think that Italy or the Vatican will ever give the Americans power like that because that'd be crazy.

[Sammy Sage]

Not now.

[V. Spear]

But I am very concerned about Cardinal Burke's influence rising, even in the United States, given the amount of support he has him behind himself. If he is even and he is being named as one of the potential.

[Catherine Rampell]

Well, I was joking before when I said it could be Trump, but Burke, from your short description of him, sounds like a very, very Trumpy figure.

[V. Spear]

He is. And so I worry about, you know, the right wing really amplifying the profile of Cardinal Burke and normalizing a lot of his, like, really hateful, hateful, hateful things like to be anti palliative care. How very sort of Mother Teresa of you, I suppose. But yeah, super, super, super old school. Kind of like hateful.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, maybe a newly appointed intersex cardinal will show up and win over everyone's votes from Afghanistan. I think, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be choice one or two. That's my prediction. Catherine, which one do you think?

[Catherine Rampell]

I, I, I have a heathen Jew who knows.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, me too. From the shuttle. Great.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yes, exactly.

[Sammy Sage]

Okay, so we don't, we know. Not of this.

[Catherine Rampell]

I don't know. I don't, I don't feel confident, confidence to make a prediction.

[V. Spear]

Okay, next time we have you back, we'll talk about Moses, who is my favorite Catholic figure that is Jewish. We.

[Catherine Rampell]

And watch Jesus saves Moses invests.

[V. Spear]

That's right. That's right. Oh, my God.

[Sammy Sage]

Speaking of religion, we're going to close out with a moment of Zen. Catherine, you're our moment of Zen today. Actually. We're gonna play a clip.

[Catherine Rampell]

Germany thought it was a Sig Heil.

[Stephanie Rule]

This, this, this salute.

[Catherine Rampell]

Truth is outrageous.

[Sammy Sage]

This is the most. This is the biggest conspiracy.

[Catherine Rampell]

If you think this is a normal way to greet people, do it right now on tv. Why won't you?

[V. Spear]

I. I want to.

[Sammy Sage]

Such a good one.

[V. Spear]

I leapt from my couch watching that. This was in my like, Abby Phillips watching week for whatever reason. And I remember seeing it and I was like screaming. It was. It was you really. It was a slay. It was good.

[Catherine Rampell]

I can say that was not planned.

[V. Spear]

It didn't look planned.

[Catherine Rampell]

It looked like I was just so angry. The whole segment was. Was supposed to be about how Elon Musk was like playing footsie with Nazis. He had just done this speech before Germany's right wing party that thinks that there should be less emphasis, like we should. Half of them are. Not half of them, but like a large portion of members of AFD this party are Holocaust denialists. A lot of them think that the Holocaust was not that big of a deal. And Elon Musk had just given a speech to them saying, basically saying that was the right approach, that they should stop feeling so guilty about Germany's past. And it was very clear what he was referring to. And so I just kind of rattled off a list in that segment. I rattled off a list of like, you know, maybe Elon Musk has lost the ability to have benefit of the doubt. And he's accused of saying things that are either pro Nazi or at least the Nazis take as pro Nazi. Given that he made these comments in Germany recently, he has retweeted people who amplified the great replacement theory, which basically says Jews are trying to populate America with brown people to, to hurt white people. And, and I said, you know, and by this. Yes, yeah, you can look at this up, he said. And you know, he's, he's retweeted comments about like, I forgot the exact phrasing, but it's something along the lines of, you know, Jews or what was it? I'm trying to remember. But anyway, it's something like, you know, like Jews are trying to hurt white people and. Oh yeah, yeah, there's a Whole debate.

[Sammy Sage]

About whether we print money and we replace white people. Sorry, don't clip that. I didn't say that.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah, yeah, I didn't make that. I won't tell you. That's our secret.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah.

[V. Spear]

You guys are the space lasers. You never include me in anything.

[Catherine Rampell]

I know.

[Sammy Sage]

Sorry. Anyway, it goes in the matrilineal line. I don't know what to tell you.

[Catherine Rampell]

And I said something. And I said something kind of offhand, but, like, you know, like, by the second, see, Kyle, I think he loses benefit of the doubt and that. And Scott was like, you better lawyer up. You know, he's gonna sue you for saying this was a C, Kyle. And then I lost it. And I was like, if you think it's so innocuous, do it right now on T. And actually, after that segment, I was kind of embarrassed about how angry I got on tv because I don't like losing my composure in general, but especially on live tv. And I remember coming back and because it was late at night, come back and I see my husband, he's like, how does it. How did it go? And I was like, oh, God, it was terrible. You know, I got so angry, I lost my cool. And I was not expecting the thing to blow up, and it did.

[Sammy Sage]

I thought you were, like, pretty composed for an angry person. If that's you losing control.

[Catherine Rampell]

Like, oh, man. I. Well, look, you know, I think on the one hand, for me, it felt very uncomfortable to lose my composure, but on the other hand, I think that maybe other people identified with it because it's like, stop gaslighting us. Like, stop pretending this stuff is not pro Nazi and. Or at least empowering the far right, whether they call themselves. Themselves Nazis or not. And I don't know. The whole. The whole exchange was very upsetting. Actually. One thing that didn't go. That isn't included in. In the viral version of that clip that you just played was at one point, Scott referred to himself as something like the biggest defender of the Jews, not a.

[Sammy Sage]

Not an anti bone in his body.

[Catherine Rampell]

And. And I just. I was like. I didn't even know how to reply to that because I was like, I think we can use better friends than you. I think we deserve better friends than you as. As the only Jew in this room right now. I'm pretty sure you do not make the cut as the greatest offender of the Jews. But, yeah, I was very angry after that.

[V. Spear]

Is he like that for real? Or is this, like, something he does? Because that's the seat he has on the show. Because it is just unusual to me how like blindly dedicated he is to constantly towing the right wing line. It's just how it is.

[Catherine Rampell]

I could not tell you, you know, I can't see inside his soul or his head, so I can't tell you how much he believes of what he's saying versus how much of it is playing a role. I wonder this about a lot of people who are on TV as like professional Trump surrogates because you have to defend the indefensible. So I don't know. I will say that if you look at things that he said a year earlier or even six months earlier, they were much more critical of Trump. He was clearly in the Nikki Haley camp during the primary. So I don't know if he actually, you know, genuinely he was played the.

[Sammy Sage]

Trump supporter on tv.

[Catherine Rampell]

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he's a true, I mean people change their minds about things. So I could not tell you. I can just tell you that whether he believes it or not, I think the effect is very poisonous.

[V. Spear]

Sure.

[Catherine Rampell]

And it would be anyway. Other people who are up. Yeah, I, I hope that other people who are on with him now, I'm no longer at CNN obviously, but I hope other people who are on with him now will push back against similarly poisonous and often dumb rhetoric.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, as everyone knows, I'm an MSNBC watcher, so now I'll be watching you regularly. Although honestly, like I remember watching you on Bill maher like maybe 8 years ago back in the day and being like, oh, she's smart ass bitch. That's.

[Catherine Rampell]

Oh, thank you, thank you. Business card.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, put it on your stationary. Smart ass, smart ass. Smartest batch. Maybe just for that. Depending on who you.

[Catherine Rampell]

For accuracy.

[Sammy Sage]

Yes, exactly.

[V. Spear]

I'm not a super cable TV watcher, but I have.

[Sammy Sage]

Oh, you're missing out on all the fun.

[V. Spear]

No, I've been watching lately, especially since it's on 24 hours a day in your house. So if I'm ever at Sammy's, it's, it's definitely on. But I've been enjoying the Eamon show as well and I think he's getting some new.

[Catherine Rampell]

I think, yeah, he'll be on the show.

[Sammy Sage]

He'll be down with you.

[Catherine Rampell]

He'll be a co host with me. Yeah, it's a great, I think he.

[V. Spear]

Does a great job of like, it feels different msnbc if you haven't watched in a while. I guess I would say maybe give it a chance because I didn't watch for a long time and everybody thinks I must watch all the time. I'm just not like a. Because, honestly, I find myself imitating people. If I watch it too much, I'm, like, too influenced, so I can't, like, visually watch somebody. But I've. I've liked the way they've. They're going lately. It doesn't feel like a bunch of people sitting around bitching about something. It's not the same people all the time. There's a lot of, like, new talent coming up that I think they're given a good chance to. It doesn't feel scripted. Like, it. It maybe. It felt a little still, you know, like maybe last year or so.

[Catherine Rampell]

Well, I think it feels our show, you know, it's still in the works. It hasn't launched yet, but I think it's going to be very conversational. The four co hosts. So you mentioned. Amen. It's also Elise Jordan and Antonia Hilton. And we all have very different backgrounds, you know, journalistically or otherwise. We have different kind of areas of expertise, and I think there's some disagreement among us on a lot of different issues, but it'll be civil disagreement. Like, it's not. I think it's not that much fun to watch four people sit around a table and agree with each other on everything. But you also don't want, like, the combat, you know, So I think it'll be, like, thoughtful conversations, and we each bring something very different ideologically and in terms of, you know, actual substance, expertise. So I think it'll be a great conversation. And I. Honestly, I hadn't known most of these people before learning that they were gonna be my co hosts. And they're all amazing.

[V. Spear]

Yeah.

[Catherine Rampell]

Like Rebecca Cutler and Greg Kordick, who are the ones who cast this ensemble. They know what they're doing. Cause, like, I think we all really like each other. We instantly like each other, even if not all of us know each other. And I think there'll be a lot of mutual respect and. And just great dialogue.

[V. Spear]

Yeah, I'll be watching. I like it.

[Sammy Sage]

Me, too.

[Stephanie Rule]

When does it start?

[Sammy Sage]

Give us a date.

[Catherine Rampell]

Early May.

[Sammy Sage]

Early May. Okay. First weekend in May.

[V. Spear]

Just like, time for Mother's Day.

[Stephanie Rule]

Yeah.

[V. Spear]

Watch with your mom.

[Sammy Sage]

Thank you so much, Katherine. This has been amazing. Everyone, tune into the weekend on msnbc.

[Catherine Rampell]

Thank you so much for having me.

[V. Spear]

That was so fun. I love chatting with her. This was a great time. But you. The chat's not done. We have yet another friend for this week's episode. Sammy, who did you get to talk to?

[Sammy Sage]

Stephanie Rule. Another msnbc, another smart ass batch of msnbc. They just, you know, look, whatever people want to say about the, the lamestream media, these ladies have the rigor.

[V. Spear]

Yeah.

[Sammy Sage]

And I just have a lot of respect for their reporting. So Stephanie and I talked about how business leaders are actually now becoming quite concerned with the rule of law after they're observing the Kilmarber Garcia case. Because they're like, you know, it seems like the rule of law going in another direction brings you to a situation much like Russia. So yeah, we're gonna, we talk about that and how those things play in together and really what the business community is thinking because they have a quite a bit of influence on the administration, I would say more than really any other ideological faction. So talked about that. So you mentioned last night on your show that business leaders are following the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case with quite a bit of interest. What's the reason that this has caught their attention in particular?

[Stephanie Rule]

It's really interesting because, you know, when I talk to my sources, this is sort of not something I would have thought was on any of their radar screens. Like it's safe to say that there's no big Wall street investor I speak to that's super focused on immigration reform. Or they may be in terms of labor, but not this. But the reason this one matters so much has nothing to do with this man as an individual, has nothing to do with his history. It has to do with the president following the rule of law and violating a Supreme Court ruling. If you think about businesses, the places where they're willing to operate, the reason the United States is the most popular country for global businesses to want to expand into is because we have three equal branches of government and we follow the rule of law. Nobody wants to do business in a place, no one wants to invest billions of dollars somewhere that on any given Sunday the government could come in and say we outlaw this. Now we're in charge. Now we own your business. Which is the case in lots of other places I'm looking at you, Russia. And if suddenly we're in a situation where the Supreme Court is making a 9, 0 decision and the White House in broad daylight says goodbye and good luck, that's super concerning to them. And now no one I speak to is saying Garcia is a stand up citizen. Garcia is a good guy and he should stay in the United States forever and we should give him a good rate on their mortgage. Not one person I speak to is even talking about him as a law abiding citizen. What they're talking about is due process and following the rule of law and the fact that this conservative leaning Supreme Court made it really clear, yeah, he was sent there unlawfully. Let's bring him home and let's figure it out. That's what has caught so many people's attention. Because us being one of the reasons we talk about American exceptionalism is the foundation in which everything is built upon here. And if suddenly we're intentionally putting cracks in that, that's more than a cause for concern.

[Sammy Sage]

Are any of them telling you or elaborating on sort of the worst case scenario that they see coming or potentially coming?

[Stephanie Rule]

Well, I mean, you're seeing hints of it in the dollar being devalued. And I don't want to get too dorky for you here, but, but let's get torchy. Let's get basic. Normally when we see the stock market tank, where do investors go? They rush to the bond market. What's the bond market? That's U.S. treasuries. So I want you to think of U.S. treasuries as the cleanest, best, safest place. But suddenly you're not seeing that happen for a multitude of reasons. One of them being people don't trust the United States. Because even if you like the general idea of what Donald Trump is trying to achieve in terms of policies, even if you say, Sammy, you know what, globalization may have made the world prosper and businesses on a big level prosp, but it hurt this country. It hollowed out portions of our economy and portions of our population. We want to right size, right. We want to even out some of these trade agreements that we have. Even if you believe that, well, right now Donald Trump isn't following any of it. And the execution that we've seen over the last two weeks with the tariffs has been nothing short of a complete disaster. If you're a big business, if you're a small business, you don't even know which end is up. So you can't do any business planning. And so suddenly the United States Treasuries, where people push their money when everything else feels risky, suddenly feels too risky to investors. And they're going for the gold, right? They're investing in gold, saying physical gold is the safest thing out there. And that's a huge problem. Because the strong dollar is why you and I have the lives we live, is why the United is part of the foundation of why the United States is the prosperous country that it is. It's because everyone trusts it. But if suddenly our own allies Whether it's they don't trust what the government's doing, or they're wildly offended by way the White House is treating and speaking about them, that's a concern. And the biggest, last concern is if we're really in a trade war and if China really wants to punish us, something we have allowed to happen over decades is we allow foreign governments to buy our Treasuries. China is one of the biggest holders out there of U.S. treasuries. And so they start to dump them, or the next time we have a Treasury auction, China doesn't show up. That spells disaster for us. And that is what leads us to a really bad place.

[Sammy Sage]

When is our next treasury auction? How frequently are they?

[Stephanie Rule]

Maybe it's in a few months. But the other thing that people are worried about is when, remember, when people are selling Treasuries, that means the price of Treasuries go down because nobody wants it. And that means the yield go up. And it's those yields. That's where rates are set. So in June, $6 trillion of our debt is coming due. Remember, we're a deeply indebted country, and that has to get refinanced. And now we're going to have to refinance that at a higher rate. Just like right now, getting a mortgage is more expensive. Right now, paying down your credit card is more expensive. So we're dealing with a perfect storm that because of tariffs, businesses are warning us things are going to cost more money. Yikes. So everything's going to cost more. And now what it costs to borrow, well, that's going to go up, too. So that's a bit of a perfect storm.

[Sammy Sage]

Do you think or do your. Do the people in the business community that you speak to see his actions on the tariff situation? And does the fact that that came before this defiance of the Supreme Court order to those sort of reinforce each other? Like, what if he had done sort of a stable tariff policy that, you know, people were forecasting that was a little bit more reasonable and that he didn't pull back? Like, do you think that all of these things are playing into each other and that there are certain economic issues and now you're seeing they might be hit in the wallet, they're willing to say this.

[Stephanie Rule]

One of the reasons that you've seen so much volatility in the market is because underneath what the President has done, we have a strong, stable economy. Right? Inflation has lowered, the jobs number is lower, the economy is growing. And one of the reasons the business community was so excited about Donald Trump is because think about that foundation that Joe Biden gave him. Then Donald Trump was promising tax cuts and he's promising deregulation. So businesses are like, we're going to let it rip. But instead of leading with the tax cuts, which you and I might not feel great about, but the business community certainly would, instead of leading with tax cuts and then following that with deregulation, so for them, meaning no rules, instead he led with tariffs, which is basically the equivalent of an enormous amount of regulation and rules, rules that they can't even figure out. So if you can't figure out what the rules of the game are, even if you have the money to spend, then you're just going to sit on the sidelines, right? Even companies that are sitting on cash, if they don't know what lies ahead, they're like, I better sit back and have my powder dry and then think about all other businesses, big and small. You know what made me so sad this week? Five years ago to the date, two days ago, I hosted a TV special for NBC News Now, Small business in crisis. Because we were a couple months into the pandemic, and small businesses in this country, many of which we lost, were on the brink of disaster. They then dug themselves out with a lot of government support and a lot of ingenuity and fortitude. And here we are, they're surviving five years later. And what's happening, they're getting hit between the eyes in a way that they can't even see straight. Just before I was on this, this call with you, I was talking to a toy store in New York City that I did a story with five years ago. And five years ago, they were on the brink of disaster because what the government said five years ago was individual small businesses all had to be shut down because of COVID But they allowed big box stores to be open because big box stores were considered essential, even though that at a big box store, you weren't just buying essential items. You could buy a beach chair, a toy, a puzzle, makeup, and that was strangling small business. Now here, those small businesses are right back where we are. Do you think that toy store would love to buy toys that are made in America? Sure they would. But with the exception of, I don't know, Melissa and Doug and a couple other brands, most toys are manufactured overseas. Okay. I've spoken to clothing companies in the last few weeks who have said that they would love to manufacture in the United States. We don't have a garment district in New York City anymore, and we have small pockets of apparel manufacturing in the United States, but not scale. And it's not that we don't have manufacturing here anymore, Sammy. We do. We remain one of the biggest manufacturers in the world, but we've optimized and we've improved manufacturing, manufacturing. So we manufacture things that make sense for us to do it here. And I want you to take a look at what Trump is doing in total, and I'm going to ask you, what is his plan? Because the manufacturing that they're talking about bringing back, we're going to be screwing in the screws into iPhones. We're going to be bringing clothing, clothing manufacturers back. What, those are sweatshops? Is that what we want our children to be doing? We're mass deporting immigrants who do our toughest low skilled labor jobs. I'm talking about Florida having, you know, removing immigrants who are picking the oranges and the grapefruits. And at the same time they're deregulating. And that deregulating means they're lowering work standards. So great our teenagers can now work until 9 o'clock at night picking oranges. Couple that with bringing back big coal and the fact that we're defunding education and research. And my question to you is, if we defund education and research, right, while saying we're going to bring back low skilled manufacturing, what exactly are we looking to do? What, what, what future is Donald Trump designing for us? You. What do you think?

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, my speculation has been for quite a long time that this was something of an intentional or a care, you know, a, a byproduct of being okay with messing up the economy, switching sides in terms of, like, who our allies are and in terms of our governance, essentially weakening the population through lack of public health and resources and by cutting off people's Social Security and their health benefits kind of at random to reduce, you know, just the number of people who are able to survive and have resources. And I do think devaluing the dollar, which is one of like Vladimir Putin's goals. And Elon, you know, and Elon Musk is somewhat aligned with them. They have talked about how they want to devalue the dollar, create some sort of like, you know, secondary economy out of bitcoin. And I do think it is interesting that people are buying gold, not bitcoin, when that is what the administration so greatly favors, because people sort of instinctually know, like, at least gold I could like turn it into some jewelry, like sell it like it has. There's something to do with it, you know, it's, it's a physical thing versus, like, this hypothetical, you know, digital tulip craze. But I think that they don't really care because a second, because I thought originally, like, that the strategic crypto reserve and the sovereign wealth fund were basically means for once the dollar is in, you know, in dire straits, they can then run their own sort of patronage economy out of their, you know, currency that is valued at, you know, however they say it is. And then the average American people, I actually think part of, like, Howard Lutnick's comments about the sweatshops are not, like, as stupid and ignorant. Like, I actually think they want to put the population in such a place where, like, people actually do have to be sort of like indentured servants to.

[Stephanie Rule]

We actually have many of those jobs available, and it's why we have such an influx of immigrants. If you wonder, why do we have such a big Somalian immigrant community in places like Iowa? It's not that they were dying to move to the heartland. It's because that's where our meat processing plants are, and Americans weren't willing to take those jobs. And so this right here is why it's so unsettling for the markets. Where it's unsettling for me is what you've just laid out. Donald Trump has been laying out for years and years. And when it comes to Wall street, if you said to me, explain the job function of professional investors, the job function of a professional investor is to assess risk. That's what they do. They evaluate specific situations, they assess the risk, and then they make a bet based on that risk. The fact that Wall street is sitting here aghast that they can't believe this happened. Well, shame on you. Right? Donald Trump has laid this out and his feelings on tariffs for years and years. And currently I can find only two groups of people who like what he's done in the last two weeks. The first group, or who are unwilling to speak out even privately. The first group are people in his inner circle who believe that they can be the Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner, Steve Mnuchins of this administration and save Donald Trump from his worst instincts. It's why so many people are kind of banking on Scott Bessant. But I'm pretty sure Scott Besant is abroad this week. He's not even the one working on trade negotiations. So that group is sort of fooling themselves because they're the ones who are like, no, no, we're not going to let him do this. Well, he's doing it. And the second group is a scarier group. And those are the people that are business people that are getting huge carve outs or private deals or they own private prisons or they're going to benefit when things get privatized and they are cashing in so much that they're living in their giant castle in Florida and about to build a moat around it. Only those two groups, no one else. Not Wall street professionals, not business professionals, big or small, I can't find anyone.

[Sammy Sage]

So in terms of that, I mean two things. A professional investor's job is to assess risk. And you have all the indicators. And we've also seen Donald Trump, how he behaves throughout decades. The way he's handled his businesses, the way he's handled his associates, who he pays or doesn't. If, or. Yeah, exactly. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, how is it that these people are still respected investors? Like, that's where what I can't understand is like if, if, if I saw someone do something or make a decision that's like so discrediting, I would just not have any trust in their especially, like, especially they don't admit that they.

[Stephanie Rule]

Well, let's be clear, let's be clear. The majority of Fortune 500 CEOs were not backing Donald Trump before the election. Many, many people on Wall street didn't back Donald Trump before the election. And even if they like the idea of some of his policies, many of them didn't. Just because in order to run a business, you need continuity. You need your word has to be your bond. And whether you like Joe Biden's policies or not, many of them just felt like they knew what they were going to get. And the unpredictability and instability of Donald Trump was hugely off putting for them. However, then he won. And the promise of deregulation and the promise of tax cuts and truthfully, the belief that many of them had that he's a completely transactional guy and you could buy what you want out of him. They thought they could. They thought that the first time around he was unpredictable and they didn't know what they were in for. And the second time around they're like, I'm going to head on down to Mar a Lago. A private dinner is $5 million. A candlelit dinner is $1 million. A donation to his library. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I'm going to cash in. And that's what you saw when you went to the inauguration. Did Those business leaders, is Donald Trump their homeboy? No. Many of them would argue that they were making the right moves for their business. Knowing how Donald Trump operates, if you're Tim Cook right now, or if you might say, yeah, Tim Cook did the right thing in getting the carve out. Except that a day after we hear about the carve out for electronics and smartphones specifically, you got Howard Lutnick on TV saying that carve outs only for a month, and Donald Trump saying, oh, nobody's off the hook. So the one business that I could say backed Donald Trump in a big way financially, who it has worked out for, is crypto. And where I could see that is when Donald Trump was a business person, before he was a politician, he struggled in many businesses. He inherited a huge New York real estate portfolio, much of which he lost a tremendous amount of money on. And where he eventually made money was as a media personality, right? Was the Apprentice was his brand. He then really figured out the power of branding and marketing and translated that into politics in a hugely successful way. And now finally, the places where he's really successful in business, crypto and his social media business, right, which many could say are built on a house of cards, again, is just branding and marketing. And he's now using his social media platform as well as his crypto exchange as a way for someone to pay for access, to pay for what they want to get. We just learned in the last week that the crypto industry, which is a haven for. For dark money and lack of transparency, the government is now saying we're not going to prosecute or investigate or litigate anything in the crypto space unless the crypto is being used for terrorism or trafficking or really bad stuff. So the money the crypto industry invested in Donald Trump has paid off for them in a huge way, and it could end up hurting the American people. As we are seeing the government literally defund science to buy crypto.

[Sammy Sage]

So can. Can we actually talk about that? I always felt that Donald Trump and crypto were like, perfect kindred spirits because he's even said, like, my value, my net worth goes up and down with, like, how I feel about my brand day by day. Like, it really does actually track with, like, his sort of view of things.

[Stephanie Rule]

That's what a meme coin is. Are people betting on the value of his brand?

[Sammy Sage]

So one thing you were just saying earlier with about the, you know, people who appreciate what he's doing, and the second group is people who are getting rich off of it. Can you talk about how that feeds into the direction we might be going into. When you said, when you talked about, you know, how every, how in Russia in the 90s they privatized everything and it, you know, essentially went to, to.

[Stephanie Rule]

Oligarchs like Sammy, this is how you create an American oligarchy. Right? So, so, so the fact that, that the president, and just this week he said, you know, my feelings on tariffs, they haven't changed. But I'm flexible, okay? Just stick with the but I'm flexible. To me, when I hear but I'm flexible, I hear Bob Barkley price is right, saying come on down. Right? And I can tell you on Saturday, when I woke up on Saturday and we were all reading about the exemptions for smartphones and other electronics, tons of other business guys I talked to in different industries are immediately thinking, who is our trade rep? Who's our group? How do we get down to Mar a Lago, who do we know to dance to get our exception? Right? And you're seeing that, you're seeing, right? As soon as the tariffs were announced, you saw Chuck Grassley from Iowa hustle his way to Donald Trump to make sure potash, which is needed by those Iowa farmers and gets imported from Canada to make sure it gets an exemption. Cuz if you can get yourself an exemption, booyah. That's like, that's like you becoming a monopoly. And the question is, let's say he gives you that exemption or gives you a temporary pause, can you trust it? How long will it last? But, but I don't know that I think there's a lot of businesses right now. This isn't even a game of, it's a game of survival for them. So in 2017, 18, when many of those CEOs are saying, do I work with this president? Think about what he said. Think about what he's done. I'm going to get pushback from my employees and my shareholders. Right now, those CEOs aren't even asking themselves that question because they're in a game of survival.

[Sammy Sage]

And survival. Is it because they're looking at other models of like a consolidating oligarchy?

[Stephanie Rule]

No, Sammy, it's because they can't run their businesses because we don't have manufacturing options here.

[Sammy Sage]

Right? And even if we did, they wouldn't know where to spend the money.

[Stephanie Rule]

If you run a big US Retailer, if you run a consumer brand, right. It's not like you can say, well, we can't go to Vietnam, let's just start making this stuff in Toledo. You can't One of the reasons we produce so much is produced in Vietnam is because the government said to these companies, we don't feel great about China. And there's good reason not to feel great about China. They are our adversary. They do steal our ip. They, there's a laundry list of bad things that they do, which is why we consider them bad actors. And it's why we sent so many companies to Vietnam to produce their goods. And now those companies are in hot water. The question is going to be when this starts to hit the consumer because there are folks out there, Sammy, who say, Donald Trump is doing the hard thing. He's going to bring these jobs back and he's going to help us. And they haven't really thought through what those jobs look like because if we are bringing those factories here and we're going to automate them and they're going to be run by robots, well, those low skilled workers don't have the skills to do those jobs. And maybe as we move into robotics or AI, which will take years if we really want to revamp world order and tear apart the global supply chain, which has taken decades to build, it's going to take us 15 to 20 years to reinvent the global supply chain and trillions of dollars. And during that time period, the majority of businesses that we know, our favorite brands, walk into a mall. They won't exist.

[Sammy Sage]

No, they were already not doing well. It's.

[Stephanie Rule]

But, but you know, Scott Bessant said getting cheap goods fast is not the American dream. He's right. But it is the American way.

[Sammy Sage]

But are they promising us the American dream instead? That's my question. It's like it's the other side. You're not saying, well, I'm going to give you the American dream in exchange for cheap goods. They're not getting, they're not promising that either.

[Stephanie Rule]

We've been talking about buy American your whole life and my whole life. Okay? Like my dad's a manufacturer. That's what my dad does. And we've been talking about it. The United States decided that buying the USA wasn't our top priority. If it was, we would have supported higher priced items in our homes. Every day. We, you know, so we talk out of both sides of our mouth. And the same people that are saying like, damn Jeff Bezos, and I'm not defending him. The same people who are, who are saying, break that up, have eight Amazon boxes outside their front door. So we need to be intellectually honest about who we are and how we live. And I think it's dangerous. I have no problem with. We have a super wealthy administration. We have the wealthiest cabinet we've ever had in modern history. That's great, right? Super. The problem is that they, when you hear them speak or the way they discuss our economy, the American people, they're so deeply disconnected from how we live our lives. Yeah. It goes right back to Howard Lutnick. Yeah. His mother in law doesn't worry if she doesn't get her Social Security check next month. Sure she doesn't because she's super rich. But millions of others we will do.

[Sammy Sage]

I mean, I would love to talk about how Howard Lutnick is one of the most deeply unserious people I think I've ever witnessed in a public office.

[Stephanie Rule]

Well, he is. And the reason Howard Lutnick is worth all the money that he is is he's a salesman. He's a salesman to the end. Right. The business that Howard Lutnick built, Cantor, he didn't found it, but he built it. It's a broker's broker. And a broker's broker means I got to convince the guy on the right and the guy on the left to do a deal. So I might be BSing people on both sides of the phone. He's the middleman. And when you're the middleman, you're not taking any risk. You're the bro in the middle. And so now you have a guy who has spent his career just as the middleman, now representing us who are the end user, the US economy, 330 million people. And we're going to be the ones held, left holding the bag. So you can be slick and cute on TV and in interviews. But, but behind that, that's where you get consumer confidence to plummet. It's where you get business confidence to plummet. You have companies that can't even give forward guidance of what they think their earnings are going to be because they don't know the road ahead.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's actually insane. And anyone who's good at, who's ever run a business could tell you that it is absolutely insane to be able to expect people to run their businesses. I actually, one of my, my oldest friend, her family is a, she's a fifth generation manufacturing company. She now runs the company. She, they moved to Cambodia and Vietnam in 2018 because of the original tariffs. And they, they manufacture like licensed stuff like you know, apparel and umbrellas and beach chairs and hampers. And she's like, you don't understand, like there are people in Cambodia Basket weaving baskets. No one here is weaving these baskets. Where are they even getting the things, the materials to eat the baskets? Like, what it takes is so complicated. And like, fortunately, they were planning for this, so they had, like, a long lead time. They knew he was going to do this. But that's not. That's older business. It's not a small business who's just getting started.

[Stephanie Rule]

I invite anybody out there who's defending what the president's doing. Go read Phil Knight's book. Right. The founder of Nike. Go read Shoe Dog. Okay. And you will learn how the global supply chain works. Right. And you can blame lots of people. And again, I'm not disagreeing that parts of this country, parts of our economy were hollowed out. And that's where we should consider what are the new jobs? What are the jobs of the future? And I just don't see how defunding education and technology and defunding our medical research. Right. When you think about a place where we soar compared to the rest of the world, it's medical research. And now we're looking to defund that. And now we're looking to hollow out universities. And let's be clear, when we talk about defunding universities like Harvard, this is not taking the money away from the humanities Department and a trip that a bunch of tenured professors were planning this summer that's funded so they can go write poetry in the countryside. No, we're talking about Harvard Medical School. The government basically pays them. Right. Enters into a contract, and what do they do?

[Sammy Sage]

Work on stuff that's too expensive for the government.

[Stephanie Rule]

Correct. Or on it for private industry or uninteresting for private industry. Right, Right. There's tons of diseases and medical conditions that small portions of our country suffer from. So there's not even charitable foundations that want to put money behind it. And that's what we see happen and where I think it's so interesting, if there's something I'm truly grateful for when it comes to Donald Trump, it's Operation Warp Speed. Operation Warp Speed. What they use, what the government deployed, working front, loading an enormous amount of money and effort with research facilities and private companies to come up with a COVID vaccine was extraordinary. It was the best of the government cutting through red tape. Right. Which they need to do in a time of actual emergency. Right. That was an actual emergency. Covid. We're not in an actual emergency now. An actual emergency. And they pulled the money and the resources together and they saved us. What does Donald Trump say about Operation Warp Speed, nothing. He doesn't talk about it. It's as though he's ashamed of it. And that to me is something that's so uniquely extraordinary and American that we did that. And the fact that Donald Trump doesn't lead with that is a mind blower for me.

[Sammy Sage]

Well, I think you, okay, it makes sense to be able, you need to degrade science because if you are trying to do this double speak and say that up is down and one plus one equals five in every other area of your governance, then you can't then have empirical science here that's showing you objective reality that doesn't square. So I think it's like, even though, like, I don't even think they care much about whether, you know, to them I saw a stat that was like childhood leukemia went from a mortality rate of like, survival chances were from like, went from like 10% to 90%. Like, that's amazing. Anyone anywhere in the world would want to come here and get their child medicine for, for leukemia. My dad actually passed away from a very rare form of cancer that only like 1500 people I think a year get. And he lives like six to eight extra years because he had a random experimental thing was able to help him. These affect people's lives. And I, I, you know, if you're the person, if you're the billionaire or the millionaire who can access these things, I think it's going to hit people that like, eventually they're not able to access, you know, maybe some people always will be.

[Stephanie Rule]

Sammy, I, I, I sat last night, I had dinner and I was seated next to the president of a hospital that focuses on cancer research. And he said, in all of his years and all of his career, the United States has been light years ahead of every other country in terms of medical research. Until now, based on where we're going and we're giving away this exceptionalism and it's mystifying that the president wants to do this. And if you think about Operation Warp Speed, if the president would have actually leaned into that and openly spoke more honestly and handled Covid in a different way, his second term wouldn't be now, it would have been four years ago. And listen, it's fair to say, listen while you're in the throat, we can all criticize how the government and how the country handled Covid. It was a once in a lifetime pandemic. And you can dissect it now, but it is, it is. I can give space to people who are angry that we were. The government was shut down for too long, or that schools were shut down for too long, or there was periods of times where you and I could go to a sporting event, a bar and a party, but our kids couldn't go to public school. I hear that. I understand the anger and the upset that families feel about learning loss for their children. I can put that over here. But over here is where operation Warp Speed resides. And how we handled the vaccine and how we pulled out of COVID and while it did cause a huge spike in inflation, how our economy didn't end up in recession, how we actually pulled ourselves out of it and improved in terms of our economy better than any other developed country. Those are things that I am so, so proud of. And how we cannot separate the two is it baffles me, instead we've conflated the two. And that's how you end up with someone like RFK as the Health of Human Services. And that's so dangerous because those fringe views that he has are now in the center. Okay. This doctor that I was with last night said, you know, during COVID because of the, of these conspiracy theories that then become mainstream, they had dozens of women in their emergency rooms, pregnant women with COVID on ventilators who are forced to have emergency C sections because they were unvaccinated. Or they've got 55 year old men walking into a hospital who are clearly having a heart incident, who need to get a stent put in and they'll be fine. But instead they're saying, I don't trust the hospital system. I'm going to drink some Maalox and go home. So these people that have fringe views have now the president has welcomed in because he's made loyalty his number one priority. And all of these things put together are now putting us in danger in terms of where we are on the world stage. And that takes us directly back to Garcia and why so many people who truly don't give a hoot about, about, about what's happening to this man individually. People who could say, bring him home, let's have some due process and potentially send him out again. These aren't people who are worried about the humanity or the heart or the fact that this person's a father. None of them are even saying it's a good guy. What they're saying is if we can't respect the rule of law and honor a Supreme Court decision, then we are not the great United States of America.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah, I mean, this is really where I wanted to end up because that's, that's what Senator Chris Murphy said, I think a few weeks ago, he said he likened it to trying to get the media to submit and trying to get law firms to submit, and that he basically said that the tariffs were about trying to get private business to submit to him in a similar way.

[Stephanie Rule]

So we are submitting. Like, that's the thing, what law firms have done.

[Sammy Sage]

And I fucked up the whole thing.

[Stephanie Rule]

But I. Listen, I get it. You get it.

[Sammy Sage]

But also, yeah, I get why people.

[Stephanie Rule]

Do the last brave thing, stand together. When the government first went after Paul Weiss, if all of those other major law firms would have locked arms with Paul Weiss and said, we're in this together, then we wouldn't have ended up here. But instead, as soon as the President went after Paul Weiss, do you know what every other big law firm did? Went after Paul Weiss's clients. And Paul was like, I got to make this decision to survive. But now all those law firms are like, wait, wait, wait, what did we agree to? Because Trump is just going to take and take and take. And I can't say that the media is innocent here. Look what's happening to the wire services, getting pulled from the Oval Office. Right. The minute the White House went after the Associated Press for not calling it the Gulf of Mexico, every other media organization, especially those with TV cameras, could have said, we're going to stand with the AP and we're not going to show up to the White House for a week. And I'll tell you, it was a four. It was a Trump 1.0 administration official who said to me, if the cameras don't show up for a week, the President will fold because his number one favorite hour of the day is the press room. It is when the press comes in and he can speak to them. If suddenly the press doesn't show up, he'll fold. But instead, we all said, yikes, I feel really bad for the ap, but can I take their seat? And so we're not innocent here either.

[Sammy Sage]

Look, yes, I think collectively, the country has quite a spiritual rot to deal with that pervades everything. And I don't really think that you can escape that, no matter how hard an individual really tries in. In some respects. But have any of these business leaders expressed to you that they either regret their vote for him or that they are willing or want to stand up to him? Is there any sort of faction that is going to stand up or who is going or who? Like, now that they're concerned about the rule of law, what's the plan?

[Stephanie Rule]

Okay, so I don't Know any who are big, vocal supporters of the president who are now changing their tune. But you are seeing some, right? You are seeing some, you know, even some in the Silicon Valley set who like the idea of, like, move fast and break things, who are outwardly saying this execution of these tariffs ain't working. And there are tons. And listen, when you see the likes of Jamie Dimon is threading the needle. He's not attacking Donald Trump, but Jamie Dimon is a guy who in January in Davos was like, listen, we're gonna have to impose some tariffs. Things will get a little more expensive. Get over it. He got wildly criticized for saying it, but he said it. Now here he is saying we could be facing a recession. This is a really rocky road. Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, has said we may already be in a recession. So it's not just the Mark Cubans of the world. And I can say privately a decent amount have capitulated and said, oh, my God, we made a mistake. And it's crazy because these are the same people who are like, listen, Donald Trump is what he is. He's a showman, he's a this and that, but he knows business. She's never signed the front of a check. She doesn't know business. But here we are.

[Sammy Sage]

Business in.

[Stephanie Rule]

In some kettle of fish. And they. They certainly don't feel good.

[Sammy Sage]

Are they planning to. Is there any plan to do anything other than necessarily speaking up? Because, like, play.

[Stephanie Rule]

Play the tape out, they're trying to figure out how to survive. I can't say that. I know of many. Listen, you've got tiny businesses. You've got a stationary company in Florida run by a woman who has eight employees, and she's suing the government for the tariffs. She's saying it wasn't a national emergency. You've got the state of California saying the government can't make. That the president can't make this decision via executive order. It has to be Congress. And there are some people in Congress who are saying this isn't great. Some Republicans, but nothing in a widespread way. What I don't get is I think there's a backdoor for businesses. If you don't want to come out and speak against the president because you fear his wrath, why don't the. Why don't the 10, why don't the CEOs of the 10 biggest companies in the United States, why don't they get together and why don't they call 10 Republicans in the Senate and call a few in the House and Say you're worried about getting primaried. I'm going to give you an unlimited amount of money. I'm going to give you a blank check for your reelection. Stand up to the president here, stop him from doing this. Like that's what I would do if I was a business leader. And I'm not sure why they're not. Maybe they are in the background and it's not happening in a big enough way yet.

[Sammy Sage]

I'm with you because you play the tape out. Even the, the people who were part of Putin's wave of privatization, a lot of those people ended up in Siberia. So did they want to be those people? Like, if you haven't learned the pattern yet, I don't know when you will figure it out. And you know, I think I'm very excited to see what happens with the meta trial because this is clearly somebody who was being driven by the existence of this trial, among other things. And he, you know, went with the MAGA team and they don't even believe him now. So he kind of got the worst of both worlds. Not undeserved, right?

[Stephanie Rule]

Mark Zuckerberg paid to make all these legal issues go away. He paid because he wanted the administration not just to make his US Legal problems go away. He wanted our help with European regulators. Right?

[Sammy Sage]

Jokes on him.

[Stephanie Rule]

Now the United States ability to help out with European regulators, that is not going to happen.

[Sammy Sage]

But he, but you know what's crazy? Kamala Harris probably actually could have helped him with that to some degree, to some small degree. There could have been. She at least would have maybe wanted to help at American business with some level of negotiation and we wouldn't be like on the, on Europe's shit list where you're going to get nothing. And they might actually go after him harder because of it.

[Stephanie Rule]

Let's be clear, Joe Biden was not anti business. He just wanted. He definitely, his rhetoric was not open and loving to the CEO community like they wanted it to be. They didn't like the FTC chair, Lina Khan. But I actually think that Kamala Harris was more pro business than President Biden was. She was definitely more open to crypto. Right. She came from Northern California. Many of those Silicon Valley folks have known her for years and years. But when they looked at it, who knows, like, listen, we don't know how lots of these people actually voted, but we know how they decided to play their hand after Trump won. And many of them very publicly cozied up to him and paid to play. And now we're gonna see how it works out.

[Sammy Sage]

Yeah. If I have one message for Mark Zuckerberg, it's that you actually have some power here. You have control of quite a few algorithms, at least for the time being. So maybe consider what you want to do with that. Anyway, thank you, Stephanie.

[Stephanie Rule]

He was the one who said Facebook needs more male energy, so step up, boy, and be that man.

[Sammy Sage]

Exactly. Thank you, Steph. This was such a fun conversation about very problematic topics. But thank you so much for your time and energy and all your great reporting.

[V. Spear]

Until next time, I'm Fee Spear.

[Sammy Sage]

I'm Sammy Sage, and this is American Fever Dream.

[Stephanie Rule]

Betches.