← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/18/24: Trump Taps RFK For HHS, Matt Gaetz Senate Showdown, Elon At War With Trump Transition, UFO Hearing Highlights, NYC Voters Sound Off On Kamala
01:52:46
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- [00:02]
Crystal Ball
Now.
- [00:02]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [00:29]
Anna Paulina Luna
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- [01:27]
Kamala Harris
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Sagar Enjeti
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- [01:47]
Jeff Stein
Guys, ready or not, 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
- [01:54]
Sagar Enjeti
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
- [02:14]
Jeff Stein
Indeed we do. Glad to have you back sir.
- [02:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Very glad to be back.
- [02:17]
Jeff Stein
We missed you on Thursday.
- [02:18]
Sagar Enjeti
I had a great time down in Austin. Lex Rubin Podcast will come out soon. I believe the Matt and Shane secret podcast will come out as well, so you guys can enjoy that.
- [02:25]
Jeff Stein
Can we reveal how long the Lex.
- [02:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Friedman it clocks in around five hours, so something like that. There are multiple bathroom break that we had to take for the Matt and Shane 1. There are some great rants against marijuana and gambling. So I think people will enjoy it.
- [02:39]
Jeff Stein
I genuinely like, I think I would lose my voice after that at five hours.
- [02:42]
Sagar Enjeti
I did actually lose my voice.
- [02:43]
Jeff Stein
I don't think I can.
- [02:43]
Sagar Enjeti
And it's funny, I had to like recharge it for the next day. But we made it through and it was good. It was a great discussion.
- [02:49]
Jeff Stein
All right. Well, there are a bunch of things that I'm interested to hear your take on in the show since we haven't gotten you to weigh in on all of the different Trump cabinet picks. We've got some updates for you there. RFK Jr. In as nominated for HHS Secretary. We also have some updates on the Gates and Hegseth nominations as well. So we'll get into that. We've got some Elon Musk news as we do pretty much every day at this point where he is now going on Twitter to bash tariffs. Interesting, since his guy is really in tariffs and also trying to put out there his choice for Treasury Secretary. Jeff Stein from the Washington Post has been doing fantastic reporting on all of these things. So he's going to break down for us what is going on there. Obviously there's also a lot of battles going on within the Democratic Party. Rahm Emanuel blast from the past, who's of course never really in the past, is being floated as a potential future DNC chair. So I've got a lot to say about that and a lot of interesting sort of battles that are unfolding there. Meanwhile, we don't want to lose sight of what's going on in terms of foreign policy. The Biden administration now authorizing the use of long range US Missiles inside of Russia by Ukraine. Obviously an extraordinary development. So huge implications there. We'll talk about that. Sager's got a UFO update for me and everyone else.
- [04:01]
Sagar Enjeti
I missed the hearing. I was so sad not to be there. So many good friends that were in town. But some interesting stuff happened so I'll recap it.
- [04:07]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, and I'm taking a look at why working class New Yorkers voted for Trump in their own words. Actually, I was kind of surprised by some of the analysis that they offered for why they voted the way they did. So we'll break all of that down for you as well.
- [04:21]
Sagar Enjeti
That's awesome. All right, so go ahead and sign up for BreakingPoints.com, premium subscribers. Obviously, we had all this incredible election coverage, but now we're really ramping up for the coverage of the administration. And I think you're gonna really find both a shift in the way that we're able to look at and go deeper on what all is happening here in Washington. It's a very unique moment for the show for podcasting, which of course has come out as a big winner in the election. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening behind the scenes. So if you can support us, breakingpoints.com we'll be able to give you the best coverage of the incoming Trump administration. And I think you guys will be very surprised and interested to see how it all goes.
- [04:55]
Jeff Stein
Yep. And if you do not want to be Cummercrow premium subscriber or you already are a premium subscriber, also help us out on YouTube by liking and sharing the videos there. That really helps us in terms of the algorithm. So thank you so much to all of you for your support throughout this entire season. All right, let's get to the very latest. RFK Jr being tapped for HHS secretary. Let's put this up on the screen. This is the official Truth Social truth from Donald Trump on Truth Social whatever. I'm thrilled to announce RFK Jr. As the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health. The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any administration. HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country. Mr. Kennedy will restore these agencies their traditions of gold standard scient research and beacons of transparency to end the chronic disease epidemic and to make America great and healthy again. So, you know, obviously it's been a quite a journey for RFK Jr. Once, you know, solidly liberal environmental activist was actually floated as a potential Obama administration cabinet.
- [06:15]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [06:16]
Jeff Stein
But that got spiked and then has sort of been part of this realignment to the right. So initially he runs as a Democrat in the Democratic primary. They shut him out as they shut down everybody. During that time, he'd already been kind of. He'd go on with Steve Bann and the right really liked him because at that point he was a useful weapon for them to use against Joe Biden. Then he decides to drop out of the Democratic primary and starts running as an independent. And the right does a complete 180 switch in terms of their tune. There's all these great clips now of Sean Hannity just lambasting him for all of his quote unquote, liberal positions and Trump saying he's a radical and he wants the Green New Deal, blah, blah, blah. And then again, once Trump and him strike a deal and he drops out and is then in the Trump camp, then the tune changes once again and he's the greatest thing ever again. So here we are with Trump basically baking good on what was probably pledged to RFK when he dropped down in the race and tapping him for Secretary of HHU.
- [07:13]
Sagar Enjeti
We can't minimize RFK's endorsement and his role. Donald Trump only won the presidency by 254,000 votes in the blue wall states.
- [07:21]
Jeff Stein
I think it was determinative, to be honest with you, because if he stays in the race, you know, when he dropped down, it was quite clear that he was taking more from Trump. He was much more of a problem for Trump than he was for Biden and then ultimately for Kamala Harris. When you look at those three blue wall states and you see how narrow the margin is, I think if he stays in the race, I think Trump loses.
- [07:41]
Sagar Enjeti
I agree with you. And especially if we look at Michigan, where we saw a lot of Muslim voters go to Donald Trump and they voted as a protest vote, RFK Jr. I mean, look, it's not like Trump and RFK Jr. Have particularly different stances on Israel. But if we're thinking of the Trump proxy vote as protest from any of these Muslim voters, and RFK Jr. Almost certainly would have gotten some percentage of that same. If you look at the margin of victory in Michigan and Pennsylvania, remember that outside of Pennsylvania, the Democrats were able to win those Senate seats in those two states, so they had some margin of strength. So I do think RFK Jr was incredibly determinative in the race in Nevada as well. Actually, when we're starting to look at the final margins, one of the things that always happens after a presidential election is we actually minimize how narrow the gap was. We try to talk about a lot here on the show about, what is it, 30 something thousand votes that made Joe Biden the presidency here, we're talking about 254,000 votes in those states may sound like a lot. It's actually not in terms of the overall tens of millions that were cast in the entire country. So it does something. It is something we should remember. And in that way, he did need to make an actual overture to RFK Jr. The question is about how much of this is going to come into contention with the Trump coalition. And I've been thinking about this a lot. Let's go ahead and put, for example, how Donald Trump is normally able to twist people into his own. Let's put the image, please, up on the screen. This is released yesterday and this was RFK Jr forced to basically sit for a hostage photo. Look at his face aboard Trump Force One. This is Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. And Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. The four of them, other than Mike Johnson, who are sitting down and eating McDonald's. You can actually see RFK Jr there seated with McDonald's, a burger in his hand and a full sugar, high fructose corn syrup Coke sitting there next to him.
- [09:31]
Jeff Stein
Not even a Mexican Coke.
- [09:33]
Sagar Enjeti
This comes 24 hours, really, after a clip went viral of recently of RFK junior Talking about how the food onboard Trump Force One is, quote, disgusting and how it is full of McDonald's. So you may speculate, I personally think that Trump was punishing him and forcing him to eat the food. And he was like, put the burger in your mouth, Robert. He's like, you have to do it if you want to serve as my HHS secretary. The other big question is RFK Jr despite endorsing Donald Trump, he is a liberal on many, many issues. Issues that may come into major contention with the Republican coalition. So let's think about a couple of them. Number one is abortion. We're gonna spend a lot of time on that later. But I actually really think that the big tension will be in make America healthy again. So there are really two parts of maha, so called maha, as I can understand it. One is libertarian. I think this actually aligns quite well with the MAGA coalition. This is a barstool coalition of people who delivered the White House for Donald Trump. So these are people who are distrustful of institutions. So they wanna bur down the fda. Great. They want to burn down NIH and get transparency about the COVID lab leak, about the COVID vaccine, release the data, all of the trials, fantastic. All that stuff, that's totally fine. But where I could see major tensions is really in like a Bloomberg nanny state style liberalism that comes from the European tradition of banning certain chemicals. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying I don't even advocate for this, but I'm saying if you look at the way that the American public has traditionally viewed efforts by Michelle Obama or Mike Bloomberg to ban, what was it, large sodas in the city of New York. I mean, there is like a deep nanny state element to this. This actually happened under the Biden administration. The Biden administration, under the guise of, like, black health, wanted to ban menthol cigarettes. And black groups were like, hey, you know, don't tell us what we can and can't smoke. They're like, we like menthol cigarettes. Leave us the hell alone. And eventually they were able to win that. Now, there's no. It's obvious that quote, unquote, banning menthol cigarettes would be definitely beneficial, like public health wise. But we do live in a country where very much value their freedoms. So that's one of those where I could really see some elements, like, for example, on Coca Cola, like banning high fructose corn syrup in favor of cane sugar or reducing food dyes and all these other things. I mean, the truth is that while, yes, it would definitely be, quote, unquote, healthier, I guess in somewhat of a balance, is that it still would probably drive up the price. And so that's a big question of whether Americans, a, want to be told what and what is not in their food. And then two, whether they would actually accept whatever the consequences are. And like, look, my own person, my biases there on the table. I'm pro tariff and I'm pro mass deportation. I am gonna fully acknowledge to you that that's gonna increase a price, but I think it has an overall benefit. Now, you can make that argument, but for a lot of the Libertarian coalition, and specifically, I mean, if we think about it, households under $100,000 who majority voted for Donald Trump, these are the people who do eat McDonald's, and they eat McDonald's a lot. I mean, if you look at the statistics about the tens of millions of people in this country eat fast food on an almost daily to weekly basis, you have to consider, like, what fundamentally changing their menu, their food additives and all of that would look like the attendant price increase. You can make an argument for why it's good. I do think it would probably be good, but I could see some major pushback on that. So I think there's like a big libertarian. There's like a big libertarian kind of construct that will come up against maga and that really, if it starts to. If you really think about it, you know, one of the reasons that Biden sunk was inflation. And every time somebody goes to order fat, I was at Taco Bell yesterday.
- [13:08]
Kamala Harris
And I go, when did a burrito cost seven doll?
- [13:11]
Sagar Enjeti
I was like, what? I remember 99 cents. Well, imagine if it goes from seven to 10 because of the changes in food regulations. Do I think that's good? Yes. I can afford it, though. A lot of people, you know, that increase from, what is it, 99 cents to $7, that's burned a lot. It's made it so it's basically impossible to go to eat out and be affordable.
- [13:27]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, I mean, how much did like the price of the value menu at McDonald's figure into the political menu? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was a huge part. The greatest sensitivity, and this is if you ask voters, if you look at the polls, if you look at the Dominan political conversation, like the biggest economic sensitivity they have right now is to prices. So if you're talking about, you know, tariffs, as you're talking about stripping away agricultural supports that are the reason why corn is so cheap, which is the reason why you have high fructose corn syrup in all of these things. And if you go through like the middle aisles in the grocery store, everything is just basically like different ways of packaging corn. If you get rid of those supports. Yeah, in a lot of ways, prices, prices are going to go up. I'm not sure that there is as much tension though, because my sense from talking to RFK and we interviewed him a number of times here, and we talked to him about health and we talked to him about healthcare and what his vision would be, et cetera, is that he basically is more on the libertarian front. So, for example, on the left, like I support Medicare for all, I think that would be an incredibly important development in terms of health and combating chronic disease. Because then you're taking some of the profit motive out of the healthcare system. You're taking the health insurers out of of the middle between you and getting the care that you need. It would help incentivize preventive care. So it's not just people who only go to the doctor when they are absolutely desperate because they can't afford to before that. And so I asked him about that and he wasn't in support of it. He's more of a tradition that I've actually been reading about, which is it's this back to the land movement of the 1970s where after the 60s are over and RFK, his father has been killed and MLK has been killed and Nixon is ascendant and there's this retrenchment among the like left Countercultural movement. And you had a lot of people who, rather than continuing to engage in, like, mass protests and trying to change the national conversation, they sort of retreated into these, like, communes and these different alternative lifestyles. And the ethos there was very libertarian. And it was also very. Just rejectionist of anything that was mainstream, good, bad or indifferent. If it was mainstream, they didn't want it. Whether it was the nuclear family or modern medicine or using modern farming technology, they'd rather get on a horse than buggy and try to figure it out. Because it was just anything that's associated with modern life, I'm just gonna reject it. And that movement would have been in full effect when RFK Jr was a young man. And I think a lot of his ethos seems to come out of the instincts of that era. Now, part of what happened to, obviously the. This movement didn't last all that long. Part of what happened is that when you have this purely libertarian, like, everybody do what everybody wants to do, next thing you know, you have people who aren't carrying their own weight. You have conflict between what are the values and the structure, and the whole thing kind of crumbles. You also have outbreaks of preventable diseases like hepatitis, and you have staph infections and all those sorts of things. So all just a long way of saying, like, as best as I can understand RFK's ideology based on what he's said publicly and what he said in our discussions with him when we've pushed him on these things, I think he's much more of the direction of just burn down the fda. Not, in my opinion, what really needs to happen is you actually need to strengthen the fda. You do need to break the corruption in terms of the revolving door and the way that's been incredibly destructive. You need to take the profit motive out of healthcare for sure, so that the primary impetus is people getting healthy and people being well. We have terrible. We do have a terrible chronic disease epidemic in this country country. We have lifespan that is shortening. All these things are very real. But just a strictly libertarian approach to that is not going to get the job done. And so, yeah, I think people will be like, they'll probably push to like, okay, now you can drink raw milk. Sure, fine. That's all well and good. Is that going to really solve the problems that we have, though? Ultimately, no. So I think you're right that there is an instinct on the right just to burn all of these institutions down, when actually all that burning the government institutions down does is empower the corporate for profit institutions which are not really being attacked on the other side. And that's the danger of the libertarianism. Not to mention, of course, like, you know, vaccines have been an incredibly important modern health development and you know, the research that has been funded by the federal government. Actually one thing we've talked about a bunch is that the drug companies by and large are not developing new drugs. In fact, all of the new drug molecules that have been developed have been developed over the past 20 some years with federal government funding. Like that piece is actually really important. So I think it would be quite disastrous if there's a rollback of that type of funding, if there's a rollback of that type of research, if there's an actual dismantling and destruction of those government agencies, not just stripping out the corruption and putting people's health first and foremost.
- [18:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Before we play what he said, it's interest. And I actually talked with some people who were in line to be FDA people under Donald Trump last time and there are multiple schools of thought. So there is what you just said, which is basically like, ramp up the fda, push out the corruption. I think there's also like a quasi libertarian, almost capitalist element to this too.
- [18:47]
Jeff Stein
Yes.
- [18:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Where the problem with the FDA is that it genuinely has been corporate captured. So one of the things that fda, that RFK wants to do is to ban the pay for play model where the drug companies have to basically pay the bureaucrats to analyze their drugs. This actually keeps out new drug entrants and it keeps the big companies very, very large, which are able to basically push out and stifle all competition. So if you look at Silicon Valley biotech startups, the FDA is the number one basically reason that many new drugs have not been able to be pushed from that way. Now you could say that there is corruption and all that and you would basically allow a new big pharma to arise. But the truth is we don't have competition in the pharma sector really at all. It's completely rolled up and it's actually weirdly controlled by these European conglomerates. So that's one. And I actually do think that'd be correct. One of the things we want to do is to change the drug development process and allow for more of less corporate capture. That basically allows these big pharma companies to do the pay for play FDA revolving door. And I think I do support that in terms of what he's looking at because I've been hearing it from people who are like biotech founders now for Quite some time. The interesting part also on the vaccine now and we're going to play some of his comments here. As I understand it, and this is as reality, despite what RFK has said many times in the past, including no vaccine is quote unquote, safe and effective. He believes that you should have transparency on the safety and the efficacy of childhood vaccinations of which they currently are not allowed to release, that not even to run the trials, and that they are immune from. What is it they are immune from prosecution under the. I forget the exact piece of legislation. The change in the guidance would basically allow both the safety and the efficacy data to be released. Now, after a while, and looking at all this, I think I have come down to his position simply because here's the truth. Covid Vax broke all institutional trust in the entire public health infrastructure, not just Covid Vax masking everything. The rise in vaccination and voluntary exemption has skyrocketed since COVID People have legitimate questions because they genuinely don't trust the public health data and the infrastructure at this point. And this is something that Emily Oster, who is a professor at the. I forget exactly which school, but she's written a couple of very interesting books about parenthood, et cetera. She's considered like the godmother of parenting. One of the things that she really did well is she's a health economist. And when you read her books, what you see inside of them is everything is based on big longitudinal studies. Some of these do exist for the vaccine, however, or vaccines, MMR and many of these other that are included. But a lot of the safety and the efficacy data has not been actually released in terms of the trials. And actually many of them are not even allowed to be run. So what he. I think in practice what it would look like is effectively allowing that and giving quote, unquote choice to parents. Now obviously I, I understand that that is controversial because each state has to grapple with religious exemption, personal exemption, health exemption, the idea of herd immunity, et cetera. But the thing is that it's already happening. The vast majority of people do not trust the public health establishment after what happened under Covid, I personally include myself in them. I remember reading the approval process for the booster vaccine and I said, this is bullshit. I can't believe that you're allowed to be able to do this. And the justification was, well, we do it every year for the flu vaccine. And I was like, okay, well then I got some questions about the flu vaccine and I never thought about the flu Vaccine. I was just like, yeah, it's fine. But I never considered the actual backstory and all that that went into it. And it's one of those where the questions around it are now so mainstream. I actually don't really think we have a choice to basically pursue his own agenda. So again, I think that his libertarian minded elements of wanting to break up the FDA cartel. How NIH works. Dr. J. Bhattacharya apparently is in line to lead the NIH. I think he'd be a fantast. He was a good contrarian voice under Covid. Basically vaccine transparency, safety and efficacy data, a lot of that stuff that could be released. I think it would be really good. But I again think that the big tension will come with any sort of European style liberalism where this is again a big part of banning food dyes and these things would increase the price. Or everyone's like, the McDonald's tastes better in Europe, which by the way is not true. But what they say is if you go and you look at Europe, they explicitly cap the amount of sodium they are allowed to put into meat. They have very different standards about the way things are now. Again, I think that's great, but are we going to deny that grass fed, Grass fed beef and all that is not exorbitantly more expensive? I buy it. I think it's definitely way healthier.
- [23:21]
Jeff Stein
But that's why this is.
- [23:22]
Sagar Enjeti
You really need to think about what that would impact the consumer on.
- [23:24]
Jeff Stein
That's why historically this has been a movement of wealthy white liberals.
- [23:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes. Yeah. In California, these are erewhon California shoppers.
- [23:32]
Jeff Stein
Which is why you've also had, it's been in like Hollywood where you've had people, you know, oh, vaccines are natural, so I'm not going to get my kids vaccinated. And then lo and behold, you've got a measles outbreak. I mean that's the thing is like, you know, RFK is not. I know he likes to use, oh, I'm not anti vax, blah blah blah, he's anti Vax. Like if you're going to go out and say there is no vaccine that is safe and effective, I think definitionally you are anti vax. Now the, the COVID piece that you're talking about, I think that the way that public health officials didn't think that the American people could be trusted with the actual like nuances of what this vaccine could and couldn't do and what it was and all of that, I think you're absolutely correct that that broke a lot of Public trust, there's no doubt about it. But you know, when we look at where RFK and his organization, the children, what's the name of it, Children's Health Defense have been involved, like they have left disasters in their wake, the most prominent of which is they played into these fears around the measles vaccine in Samoa and went in and basically misled people and fomented a whole panic that dropped measles vaccination rates down to something like 30%. You had a big outbreak and 80 people died, 80 plus people died, most of them children under the age of five. So this stuff has real life or death consequences. And when he's been, when people have trusted him in these critical arenas, it's been a disaster. So you know, RFK is like endlessly skeptical of anything that is like mainstream settled science. And you know what, you should be skeptical of those things. You should ask questions. You should definitely look at like the monetary incentives and all. Absolutely. But then he's endlessly credulous about any sort of natural seeming crackpot theory, conspiracy, et cetera. And you should be even more skeptical of that end of the spectrum. And so that's where I have a lot. I think that the things that he did to stoke anti vax sentiment and other health lies using his organization, I think they were devastated. And that example in Samoa is just one. So no, I don't feel comfortable putting him in charge of this massive federal bureaucracy where you have lots of power and this libertarian instinct, because libertarianism is all well and good until you've got a massive measles outbreak and your kid is in the hospital with a easily preventable disease that we eradicated long ago. It's very likely, it's very possible that we have, there's already some kind of avian flu that's spreading right now, monkeypox, whatever. It's very possible that we have some sort of significant outbreak. And RFK is, does not really accept modern medical science, which has been a miracle in many ways. And then the other piece of this is like, you know, the, to me, the corruption is really the core part of the problem. But if you actually wanted to get like end the chronic disease epidemic, first of all, it would take way more than the, you know, just making health food more natural and having fewer ingredients, blah, blah, blah, like the availability of high dense caloric foods, the total sedentary lifestyle of Americans, like that plays all into it. But also the other thing you would probably do is a lot more people would take Ozempic and he's Anti ozempic. So I genuinely would love to see someone who has his instincts when it comes to being skeptical of the corruption of these companies and the impact they have throughout our healthcare system. But what I actually think he's likely to do is only to empower those forces more war by undercutting the government agencies that are meant to regulate and serve as a check, a very imperfect check, admittedly, right now on those massive forces of corporate power.
- [27:31]
Sagar Enjeti
I can understand that. I mean, the Samoa thing was bad. Like, there's no getting around it.
- [27:35]
Crystal Ball
Horrible.
- [27:36]
Sagar Enjeti
But. And this is again, though, where I have to like, put a little bit more trust in institutions and even just look at basically what in practice, what he would say it's like, okay, safety and efficacy of MMR vaccine and then allowing parents to. I mean, I don't see the issue broadly if you're not banning the vaccine, if you're not underwriting it, people have a choice on what they can and can't do. I think the most liberating thing of the RFK quote unquote philosophy or even the whole like just asking questions thing is you do genuinely go, okay, so why do you give a child like four vaccines on the exact same day when they're two months old, when the Europeans do it differently, which is better? Should we compare them this versus this? Why is the hepatitis. What is it? B vaccine delivered on birth to.
- [28:20]
Jeff Stein
That's not what he does.
- [28:22]
Sagar Enjeti
No, but.
- [28:22]
Jeff Stein
No, but he raises those things to then just be like, that's why vaccines are bad and cause autism. Which is a bunch of. Which is like lies and bullshit. And it's not just on that. Like, our friend Zed Jelani reported on a great piece about how his group also has backed this completely discredited mode of trying to communicate with people who are nonverbal autistic. That involves using like, you know, a moderator who' supposedly helping them to be able to stabilize their hand so they can type out messages. And like I said, it's been like, thoroughly debunked and discredited. His group pushed this as an actual model. And in some severe cases there was an instance where a nonverbal autistic person was sexually assaulted because their facilitator claimed that they were in some romantic relationship. There are so many examples where whatever it is he believed leaves insane crackpot things. And so it puts me in a difficult position trying to defend this because I have my own problems with these institutions. And I think part of why Democrats lost is because they were seen as being the Defenders of the institutions. When people are like fuck these institutions basically. And RFK is also like fuck these institutions. But the specifics of how you do it matter. And so if you're just taking a sledgehammer to regulatory agencies, that just means that there are going to be more snake oil salesmen. That just means there are going to be more people hawking like supplements that claim to do X and Y and Z for you that are just completely fake and bogus. That just means you're going to have less regulation. That just means you're going to have actually less investment in the type of research that generally has developed life saving new drug molecules and treatments, which is what the federal government has done amazingly well actually. I mean again, the drug companies are basically just like buy up the research that our taxpayers dollars fund and our distribution mechanism. And you know, to me what you would want is go in the exact opposite direction and have more of this actually owned by the government. Having more government like options and competition like they are doing in California with their own like government produced insulin, reducing those costs. But I just, you know, so I'm, yeah, I'm very like skeptical that RFK Jr. Is going to do anything good that's actually going improve public health.
- [30:38]
Sagar Enjeti
What's going on, I'll put it this way, is that basically the reason why people like RFK or the reason why people voted for Trump at a very base level is they're like things are so bad under the current system that blowing shit up is the only thing that's possible. So for me I'm excited about the possibility. I think that safety, efficacy, standards, choice and being informed consent is actually very important. I don't trust the public health establishment in terms of blowing up the FDA and seeing what the new regulatory regime. Yeah, I think honestly what else could come from it for them? And if you look at the way that he, Callie and Casey means, the way that they talk and the data that they have around autism, about childhood obesity, about cancer, the current trajectory is death. It is a dying and obese civilization where 75% of the population is currently overweight on Ozempic. One of the things that I actually like about RFK Jr. Is that he's not a prescriber first, he's not a prescription drug person first. I have deep skepticism around statins, Ozempic and all of these other things in terms of their long term overall effect and the general idea that you must rely for your entire life on a drug company to basically provide you with life because it's A very convenient economic relationship between you and said thing. We don't know what the overall impact is going to be on children who are taking Ozempic. I mean, we're talking about literally slowing down someone's gut at age 13 years old. @ the same time, we're learning a lot about the gut brain. You know, what is it? The gut brain barrier and the impact of the gut on mental health and depression and all these other things. He likes and advocates for natural, quote, unquote remedies. I mean, even the whole raw milk thing. And this is where actually, where I think he is generally correct on the public health establishment, there are some things like the public health people who are quote, unquote, banning raw milk and say it's. It's like, look, if you look at the data, is it slightly more like unsafe? Yeah, but it's at the same time, like there's so many other things that are out there which are not banned, which are 10, 15,000 times worse banned. If you want to drink raw milk.
- [32:32]
Jeff Stein
Let them drink it and get diarrhea, like be my guess.
- [32:35]
Sagar Enjeti
No, but it's not just that. It's like, look, if they believe in this, I mean, there are like you just pointed out, under FDA does not look at any of these supplements. There are things you can buy over the counter which are 10 to $15,000.
- [32:45]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, that's not. But that's kind of my point. Sagar, is that so RFK and people with his mindset and a lot of his supporters are endlessly skeptical of like, you know, actually FDA approved drugs which do have to go through a rigorous process. Is that process perfect? Is there? Of course. But there is a rigorous process in place to prove efficacy. Okay. And then they're endlessly credulous about like some bullshit supplement because it's got like a natural health whatever or some weird remedy that they read on the Internet that has absolutely no efficacy and is just being sold by a literal snake oil salesman. That's my issue. And you know, I mean, with regard to rfk, like he doesn't. He has been skeptical over whether HIV actually caused causes aids. He thinks Covid was caused created by Jewish people and Chinese people and doesn't affect them. He thinks WI fi causes cancer. He thinks different chemicals are making kids trans. He's anti vaxx. I mean, it's just like he thinks antidepressants are the reason for mass shootings. There's just nothing.
- [33:49]
Sagar Enjeti
That one. There's the most efficacy for that.
- [33:51]
Jeff Stein
No, there's not. No, probably most Mass shooters are actually probably need to be on more meds.
- [33:56]
Sagar Enjeti
The real problem, actually mostly of them are addicted to weed and antidepressants. But that's a whole other story that people aren't ready for.
- [34:01]
Jeff Stein
But this.
- [34:03]
Sagar Enjeti
But I's, I think he's absolutely.
- [34:05]
Jeff Stein
But I was critical of this when it was inside of the Democratic Party too. This complete rejection, like belief that anything that's natural, like weed, must inherently be less harmful and less bad for you. Right. Like if it, oh, if nature provided it, it must be better for you. And that's just like, that's just not true. And I think it can lead to very damaging outcomes, as we've seen. Like I said, When RFK Jr. Has had impacts on people's health, you ended up with 80 some people in Samoa dying.
- [34:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Right? But the thing is, is that when you're talking about damaging outcomes, look at the damage of the public health infrastructure and like 10, it's a million times worse.
- [34:45]
Jeff Stein
I think you have to ask yourself though, why, if your goal is to improve people's health outcomes and lower, like improve life expectancy, all of these things, why universal health care isn't a part of that at all when that is the major thing that sets us apart from the rest of the developed world who have not seen these massive declines in terms of their life expectancy. And is it the only thing?
- [35:14]
Sagar Enjeti
No.
- [35:14]
Jeff Stein
But is it a critical part? Any honest conversation has to say that is a critical part. But that would require going after the health insurance. That would require something other than libertarian, like you can drink your raw milk and whatever, whatever approach and just destroying the FDA and destroying the NIH and just burning it all down, as you said. And I do think there is a bit, I think you're right that there's a big instinct among the public that just like screw all these institutions, let's just burn them all to the ground. And RFK channels a lot of that. But if you don't, that's. I mean, this is sort of like a core problem with libertarianism is that if you don't do the work to check corporate power and to actually have a government that is stronger enough to act, that is not corrupt, to act as a check on those corporate influences, then you're gonna end up in a very bad place. And I think that's what his ideology is and certainly is what it's likely to be expressed as through a Trump administration.
- [36:06]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, look, possible in terms of corporate capture, cronyism, et cetera. He does also wanna end a lot of the pharma corruption. And look, I have my own issues with RFK Jr. Okay, in terms of his California 1970s liberalism and the way that it's applied to nuclear power and just the general way that he's, like you just said, in terms of he's very accepting of what, Three Mile island and the fact that it can't get a insurance policy. So I'm not saying he's a perfect person, but in a world where people have deep distrust of the medical establishment and of the healthcare system, RFK Jr. Is the natural extension of this. Now, whether he gets confirmed or not, I don't know. But I have been thinking about it and I think America actually deserves to see what it voted for. I've been thinking about this a lot. America voted for a black blow up the institution's option. I think Matt Gaetz should be picked. I think or should get confirmed. Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr. And all of it. America should see what it's actually like. For years we've actually wanted to blow shit up. Let's see what it looks like. If it's chaos and if it's terrible, you're welcome to vote the other ways. But there is a grotesque, weird thing happening here where in some ways the Republicans are trying to protect Trump from himself. It's like, no, he's a grown ass man and he knows exactly what it is. But I also think people know what they voted for in a certain sense and they want to everything get burned to the ground. And I honestly, I'm excited to see it too. I want to see, are my instincts correct or am I totally wrong? And even on the universal healthcare front, and this is the fundamental problem when you have lack of trust in institutions, nobody, including me, is signing up for government health care. I'm not signing up for a COVID vaccine. You can't go get your cold flu appointment because you didn't take the COVID vaccine. No, no, no. And then that's the issue is that after a world where public health and all these other people have tried to impose a regime on our lives and they failed dramatically after their system has basically created them one of the most obese countries in the entire world. So what is it? Where are we second to Qatar? If we look at our childhood obesity and all these other things, our food system, why would we trust the government to take over it? So to solve that, you really do actually need the safety, the transparency, and a lot of the change in the system that I think to arrive at that would require actually A fundamental revolution in the American people's trust in institutions right now. That's right. Rfk, Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, all these other people, they're a choice to have one thing in common.
- [38:29]
Crystal Ball
What?
- [38:29]
Sagar Enjeti
They want to burn the bureaucracy to the ground. And frankly, America voted for that. Donald Trump himself, he doesn't care about anything except for that. So we should see it. We should actually see what it's like in practice. And people can complain if you lose your. I don't know, if no drug gets developed or whatever. It's like, okay, well, that is what you voted for, let's be honest. That's actually what we voted for. If the Department of Justice gets gutted and nothing, you know, whatever works for six years, but we get the Russiagate and all that stuff out of there, frankly, I'd be fine with that. But the point is that that is what people voted for. So to a certain point, we do have to respect, quote, unquote, the will of the people and what they have been asking for under Donald Trump, but also over the last 20 years. And that is an erosion of trust to the point where these institutions don't work for them. They don't trust a word that they have to say. And whether it's good for them or not, in a certain sense, you people have their destiny in their hands. That's what they decided to do at the ballot box. Donald Trump won the popular vote. I mean, at a certain point, we just have to say, okay, you get what you want. And I really think that's where I'm at with RFK Jr. Is, look, like I said, I have my own problems with him. I have a very different vision of what the government would run. Like, not necessarily with rfk, but under what, quote, unquote, Vance administration. But I'm not the median voter. People voted for this, and that's what.
- [39:45]
Jeff Stein
They seem to want. I actually think that's fair. The only thing I would say, like, you know, to read like, a ideologically consistent mandate into any election result, I think is a fool's errand, because, I mean, if you ask people, still, people are overwhelmingly in favor of universal healthcare. So, you know, to just say, oh, as a concept, what they just voted for was to burn it down. That's certainly one element of it. But I also think that there's a lot of ideological inconsistencies among the American people to the least. But the other thing that's funny to me, to your point, Sagar, is I think a lot of people, especially the sort of like, more like billionaire or Wall street backers of Trump. I think they really convinced themselves that he didn't really mean.
- [40:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, no, they definitely did. And we're gonna talk about it with Jeff.
- [40:34]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, we'll talk about that with Jeff. I mean, you even expressed like, I don't think he's gonna do it. No, he. I think the assumption should be at this point, he, he meant the things that he said on the trail. Like, he, he meant it. And there was a clip of. What's his name, Howard Lutnick, who's one of the co chairs of the transition on CNN, who was getting asked about RFK Jr. And Caitlin Collins is like, you know, isn't it going to be a problem if he's HHS secretary? And he's like, there's no way that's going to happen. And she's like, really? Because that's what's being floated. And he's like, no, not a chance. And this is one of the co chairs of the transition. And here's RFK Jr. And I also think all the speculation on soccer. I'm curious your perspective on this of like, the Gates nomination is just like a distraction to try to really get HEG set through or whatever. Like, no, I think Trump wants these people. I think he wants all of them. And I think he plans to get them. And if, you know. And I think he probably will get almost all of them, whether it's through acting appointments or he's got a plan laid out where I don't wanna get into all the technical minutia right now, but where he can actually use the powers of the presidency to force the Senate into recess and then get whatever appointments he wants. And once. And they don't have to face any sort of vote in a Senate. So, yeah, you got a bunch of people out there who are like, RFK Jr's not pro life. And that's kind of a big problem for the pro life community because the FDA is very important, important in terms of the mifepristone regulation. Most abortions in this country at this point are medication abortions. Mifepristone, you know, this saga is the number one way abortions have actually gone up post the overturning of Roe vs Wade because of the availability of mifepristone, the FDA could roll back that authorization. So the pro life community is not gonna be happy about the fact RFK Jr at least seems to be more or less pro choice and is unlikely to use those agencies as a cudgel, which is Something that I'm happy about with regard to the choice of RFK Jr. Is not likely to use those agencies as a cudgel against abortion rights, but they may not really have their say. I think Trump wants these people and I think he's probably gonna get them.
- [42:48]
Sagar Enjeti
I think you are right. And that's another reason why I really just think they should all be confirmed. And I mean, I guess to wrap things up, I think in the big, big picture, there are institutions that will check Donald Trump, but also he is going to be the President of the United States, imbued with immense power. So the cabinet officials and the appointees and all that stuff. Yeah, they should. And just in general, for what the Republicans and all these other people are saying, like, maybe we'll vote against them. I'm like, listen, this is actually unironically, this is what America wanted. They don't want Bush 2.0. It's pretty clear. I think you're doing a whole monologue about why working class voters not to give it away. But isn't it that a lot of them hate the system and they.
- [43:27]
Jeff Stein
Well, yes, but actually a lot of it had to do with Gaza. It was like a surprising number that were like, actually Gaza was important to me, which even I was surprised by the number who have said that got it.
- [43:37]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, look, of course that's a big part of it, but I would say, like, in general, this feeling of this system is broken and we have to blow it up completely, is the major through line between Tulsi. I mean, really think about it. You asked me once, you're like, how can we put together people who are warmongers and Tulsi Gabbard or whatever who are up there on the same stage. And I was like, it's about grievance, it's about blowing, blowing shit up. At the end of the day, msg, that's what they wanted. That's what people actually voted for. So I say that's what you should give them and then see if they like the consequences or not. I'm curious too. I've always wanted to know what would it actually look like? It's exciting. And so I think in general, just looking at all of this and look, the real reason you should also want all these people to come through is if it's a total disaster, then honestly, you can finally say it's been tried and it didn't work. And I think that's another reason why people in certain sense who are trying to continue the permanent bureaucracy, you're actually undermining any counter case you could ever give to why these things won't work. You'll finally get to see what it's actually like in practice. We saw a little bit last time, but this time for real, like in the actual mechanisms of the government. So anyway, I know this is a long winded way and we do have Jeff Stein standing by, so should we get to it?
- [44:48]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, let's go ahead and jump to Jeff.
- [44:50]
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- [47:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Joining us now is friend of the show, Jeff Stein from the Washington Post. Good to see. Nice to see you, my friend.
- [47:21]
Crystal Ball
Thanks for having me back on.
- [47:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. You've been doing some incredible reporting about inside the Trump transition team and some tension between Elon Musk and some of Trump's advisors, including Trump himself. So Elon apparently has not left Mar? A Lago. Trump even name checked him in a speech and was like, I can't get him to get out of here. He won't leave me alone. You saw a clip of Trump actually smacking Elon while he was using his phone at the ufc. So there's some stuff going on behind the scenes, but for our purposes, it appears that Elon has intervened directly in a fight around tariffs and specifically the treasury secretary. So what can you tell us about what's going on inside right now?
- [48:03]
Crystal Ball
So just outside, quickly, Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that he thinks that it's really good that Argentina massively slashed tariffs. And that was the first, like, what is going on?
- [48:17]
Sagar Enjeti
We have that actually. Can we put that on the screen? Continue to talk, Jeff, so people can see it.
- [48:20]
Crystal Ball
He's gonna be like the Trump co president. You can't go around saying actually the number one domestic policy priority of the president is stupid. Like it seemed like an incredible thing for him to be saying. And then a few hours later, he went on X again and said something that even more annoyed the people I talked to in the Trump orbit, which was that Trump should pick Howard Lutnick, one of the two candidates for treasury secretary. Up until really that point, Musk, you know, he is around Mar? A Lago all the time. He's around Trump all the time. There's a sense, you know, it's hard to tell with Trump personally, but certainly among Trump advisors that I've spoken to, they are already fed up with Musk. They think he doesn't really understand Washington. They think he doesn't really know what he's doing. Maybe from the perspective of people who want massive changes that that is maybe an asset. That's what he's bringing. Sort of fresh eyes, fresh perspective, not burdened by what has been. So two moves by Musk in one day. That said, I have Strong views that are not just falling in line with what the leader of this train is saying. And it's still early and I still think they're in the honeymoon bromance period. But how long that goes on for when Musk is famous to drop pet fascinations after a few months getting tired then it's true, will be a fascinating story.
- [49:44]
Jeff Stein
Trump, Trump, also known for dropping those fascinations, at least in the end, when they're human beings. Tell us, though, about these different potential treasury choices and how they differ ideologically and what some of the policy implications could be.
- [50:00]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, it's a little tricky because I think some of this gets a little overdetermined where it's like because a candidate is not as strong on one thing, it becomes that they're weak on this thing. And so you sort of get these like, over dramatized in the press and frankly in some of my stories, versions of what each of the candidates represents when it's much more sort of contingent and hard to tell. The two candidates, as we were discussing, I feel like most people like, go to sleep when I start talking about this, but Scott Besant is this hedge fund executive who, despite working for George Soros, which is kind of an amazing thing, has become one of Trump's most trusted economic advisor advisors, as Saga and I were discussing before the show started. He is not just quite a normal Wall street guy. He is quite strong on a lot of the trade stuff that Trump people have long wanted. But I think it's fair to say that they also worry that he's not quite as into, let's say, universal tariffs, which would create huge import duties on every US Trading partner. And Dustin's, I think it's fair to say, or fair to wonder about his commitment to that cause. And then the second candidate is this guy, Howard Lutnick. He's been chair, co chair of the Trump transition team. Lutnick is also a Wall street guy. So I think it's a little unfair to be like he is the trade hawk in the race, but he, he has been, I think it's fair to say, more willing to embrace tariffs than Basset. More and more sort of forthright in that. But I think possibly even more importantly, Lutnick doesn't really have sort of the independent power base. Like, if we're thinking of analogs to other Trump cabinet positions. I think, I think Lutnick is much more similar to Matt Gaetz in that he is kind of with Trump or he's no.
- [51:42]
Sagar Enjeti
1. Yes.
- [51:43]
Crystal Ball
Besant is a mega billionaire who has clout abroad, who has constituencies on the Hill, who has sort of people that he can turn to to back him up that aren't just Trump. And I think there's a sense that while Lutnick has the endorsement of Musk and some others, he is more of a sort of loyalist or, you know, critics would say lapdog, crony type. And so that's how this race has broken down. And Trump seems to be just getting annoyed that these people just keep sniping at each other, taking potshots, criticizing each other. I heard we reported a broker over the weekend that Besson's people went to Trump and were saying, hey, look, Lutnick hosted a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2016. Lutnik's people were coming back and saying, Besson, like works for Soros, like friends with people in the deep state. He's not that serious about your trade stuff. And Trump seems to be like, screw both of you guys. I'm going to look for a third candidate. The fundamental as crystal you were alluding to, the fundamental structural problem for Trump is that he wants massive tariffs to rebalance global trade, which I think is an expression of a genuine popular sentiment in the country. But he also wants line to go up. He loves stocks. Trump, Trump is a Wall street guy. And so those visions are fundamentally incompatible. Someone who is very strong on trade will be someone who the markets freak out about, and someone who the markets won't freak out about will be weak on trade. And so how Trump reconciles both of those, I think is going to be really hard to see.
- [53:15]
Sagar Enjeti
And getting to that, Jeff, you know, what are the tensions already in the economic team? So Larry Kudlow, it appears, is back National Economics Council. Larry could not be more anti tariff in terms of all of his personal commentary and his background. Now we have two treasury secretary candidates that are talking here about tariffs, and then Bob Lighthizer, who is probably one of the most legitimate pro tariffs former US Trade representative, is allegedly in the mix either for trade representative or possibly for trade secretary. So is it basically a repeat of last time around? How do you think it will happen this time?
- [53:50]
Crystal Ball
You know, if Trump had come out and picked Besant right away, I think you could see him have playing the same role essentially as Mnuchin, which was, you know, to kind of rein in Trump's impulses on tariffs and say, okay, let's like basically preserve the global financial order without like literally overturning the table. And the fact that Trump hasn't gone down that route, I think based on my Reporting, I mean, this, this reporting is really hard because not, you know, you talk to people who say, Trump said this, and then, you know, he likes this candidate. And then you ask them, like, you call your editors and say, I got this great intel. This guy is supporting this candidate. Trump is looking at him closely. And then you think about it more, and then you're like, wait, who do you support? And then that person will often be supporting the candidate that they're leaking is in the mix. So it's this weird, delicate dance you have to do as a reporter. But I think the evidence, the evidence I've gathered suggests that Trump does not want a repeat of his first administration when they really just kind of tinkered around the edges of the global trade system. I think he wants to go big. I think the Gates pick. I think other things he's done suggest that he, like, as you guys were discussing before I came on, he's serious about, about this new World Order, this like, very transformative moment, and wants to pursue that. And, you know, is he willing to do that at the expense of the Wall street, of the stock market? Like, that we're going to have to see. But, but he's, he's definitely thinking about it. He's definitely talking.
- [55:20]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, that was something I wanted to ask you about, Jeff, because you for a while have been saying the Wall street backers of Trump or those even, who just were sort of comfortable with another Trump term, they just didn't really take him seriously when he was like, no, guys, I'm serious, I want an across the board import tax on everything, 10%, 20%, maybe 200%, like, I want to do this. And they're like, yeah, but Trump says a lot of things. And to your point, I think we now have every indication that, like, no, the things that he said, he genuinely is inclined to do so, you know, do you think that there is, what is the sense on Wall street now that that's becoming increasingly clear? And if there is, what are some of the mechanisms he could use to not have to go through Congress to have, you know, massive implementation of some sort of tariff program? And what do you think the impacts of that would likely be?
- [56:15]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, there are people in Washington, as you guys know, who get paid two or three times when I get paid. And their job is to gather corporate intelligence for their clients. And I talk to them. And I think they are totally wrong about this because as you were alluding to, Congressional Republicans and corporate leaders and donors have been very convinced that Trump is bluffing with all this tariff stuff. They think it's a negotiating tactic to scare other foreign countries into doing what we want to do. They think that Trump is throwing red meat on the campaign trail to his voters. The way, if you listen to him, if you listen to what Trump says, again, I could be wrong. But if you listen to the words coming out of his mouth, he says tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented. He called them the best word in the dictionary. He said that there are no downsides to them. He said that they could pay off the national debt, fund a national child care program, and allow us maybe to abolish the income tax. This is not a guy who is looking at this tool in a maybe it'll have some upside, maybe it'll have some downside way. If, if the reality proves to be that way, which I think it would, maybe he'll pull back from the brink. But. But the reality is every public, every evidence that he, Every piece of evidence that he's giving us suggests that he's dead serious to me about this. And a lot of the business leaders and big donors, they see Trump as a vehicle for tax cuts and are hoping that this is just kind of overstated. And that has always seemed to me to be, like, an incredibly risky bet. I mean, I don't have millions of dollars to give away on the campaign, but, like, it does seem like, like, like he's very serious. And to your legal question, Trump has national security authority under, that is the law that governs sanctions to declare a national security emergency and impose tariffs on whatever country he wants. And that is something that the courts could adjudicate, but it could take years, by which point, all of the trade measures that Trump wants would already be in effect.
- [58:20]
Jeff Stein
Right. One more for you, Jeff, from me, and I don't know if Sagar has anything else, but another piece of analysis that I've questioned, and I think maybe you've questioned as well, is that the Doge Agency that was given to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which is kind of giving, like, blue Ribbon Commission, like, here's a thing for you to play with and go away, that it may not be as meaningless as it has been portrayed at times, and that also this administration has explored ways that they could avoid having to go through a filibuster, et cetera, to institute massive government spending cuts. That's something that most of the Republican Party would also be on board with. So what is your reading of the import of Doge?
- [59:03]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, this is another thing I spoke to Someone who works for a military defense contractor last week who was saying, like, we're going to be fine, right? Like Congress needs to approve whatever Elon and Vivek come up with. And I was like, how do you guys get paid so much to do this work? This is not necessarily true. If you look at Trump's OMB chief, this is the person who oversees the budget. His name is Russ Vogt. In the first term, it's a little unclear because he was associated with Project 2025 whether he'll get that spot back. But assuming he does, which I think he will, he has spent the last several years in the Biden administration working on legal theories related to something called impoundment. Impoundment is the president's ability to say, I don't want this spending program to continue because I think the original purpose that Congress authorized is no longer valid. And Russ Vogt and some of the lawyers close to him who are already on the Trump team have spent a lot of time thinking about how do we, how do we use this legal theory of empowerment to stop spending on federal programs we don't like? And that is a huge potential constitutional showdown here, because what it means is that the president could say, Congress approved this, but I don't want to do it. And so I'm going to stop this federal program. And that means Vivek and Elon, if that's real, if they either win in the courts or just want to try, that could change the entire complexion of a blue ribbon commission that puts up non binding recommendations to the Hill that the Hill just says f off. I already authorized these programs. And so I think people are really sleeping on the possibility that Elon and Vivek do much more than, I think, the conventional wisdom, even among well paid lobbyists in Washington.
- [60:47]
Sagar Enjeti
I think that's a really important point on both of those, which is that it's possible and it would require novel legal theories. I know, and I've heard very similar about the pursuit of this. That said, last time around, Jeff, he didn't say many things about tariffs. He did back down. He did ultimately carry through some national security tariffs on soybeans, et cetera, and a few other things. But by and large, there was a huge war with congressional Republicans day one, as you said, about trying to divert funds. He tried to do that on the border wall. It was a colossal failure, got struck down by the court. So there are several systems in place which could seriously throw a wrench into his plans here now.
- [61:23]
Crystal Ball
No, that's totally true and it's hard to know how to weight these things. I think the impoundment thing, they got a shot with the conservative Supreme Court. My understanding is from people close to this that they're looking at what is a example of an obviously wasteful program that, like, is spending money that the White House clearly has an interest in stopping. Can they get the Supreme Court to approve their theory in that case and then go and implement all these other ones that are maybe like more edge cases in terms of the tariffs, whether he does an automatic 20% tariff on every country? Again, as you're saying, like, there is a lot of resistance among congressional Republicans to going down that route. My understanding from Trump transition officials is that they are working on proposals to do that. So if they back down when the rubber hits the road, like, like maybe they will and we'll hopefully, you know, talk about it then. But I think they're going to try.
- [62:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, they certainly might. Jeff, we always appreciate your analysis, sir. Thank you for joining us.
- [62:29]
Jeff Stein
Great to see you, Jeff.
- [62:30]
Crystal Ball
Love being on. Thanks, guys.
- [62:31]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, our pleasure.
- [62:33]
Anna Paulina Luna
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- [63:49]
Kamala Harris
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- [65:01]
Jeff Stein
All right, so let's get back to some of the nominations that have already been made and curious for Saga's reaction to these as well. So we have Matt Gaetz who has been nominated to serve as Attorney General of the United States. Let's put this up on the screen. There are some questions over whether or not Mr. Gates would be confirmed as Attorney General. He has been himself investigated by the Department of Justice for alleged sex trafficking. They dropped that investigation. He's also been investigated by a Republican led House Ethics Committee into similar allegations and we can get into a little bit more of the specifics. But in any case, he's also just not really particularly well liked on Capitol Hill amongst anyone.
- [65:45]
Sagar Enjeti
I just hate him. Yeah, it has nothing to do with policy. It has almost all to do with, well, the Kevin McCarthy thing, him being a grandstander.
- [65:52]
Jeff Stein
He is a hard person to get along with. In my personal experience, my personal experience, he is a difficult person to like as a human being. So anyway, according to NBC's report, and I've seen some other reporting to this effect as well, more than half of Senate Republicans, including some and senior leadership, privately say they do not see a path for Matt Gaetz to be confirmed as Attorney General would not support him to lead the Department of Justice. While Gates ability to be confirmed, that right appears on the rocks among Senate Republicans. President Elect Trump's team remains confident he will eventually be confirmed, even if it's after an ugly battle. NBC News spoke to more than 15 additional Republican sources who agreed there are not enough votes in the Senate to confirm Gaetz and some estimated that closer to 30 Republicans consider him unqualified. Your thoughts?
- [66:38]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean this relates to the RFK Jr discussion. I think this is what America voted for. I think Donald Trump was serious whenever he said sketch schedule F fire everybody. The Department of Justice is going to. What did J.D. say? He's gonna be the most important part of it. Yeah, that's what Gaetz is. Gaetz is a loyalist on policy. I mean, he's actually an interesting guy. Right? I mean, he's. I don't like that he's very pro weed, but he is very consistently pro weed. He's a lot more libertarian. What is. He wants to pardon Julian Assange, to pardon Edward Snowden? He is genuinely anti war. Has been worked with O'Connor previously in the past. So, I mean, if you were to ask me relative to some of the other picks, I actually don't think he's bad. Will he get through that is an open question. But this is actually one too, where we were talking about this on the phone, and I still. It really remains to be seen if Trump wants somebody through. I do feel like he's going to get it. Same. And the question around Gates is, was this all some jujitsu maneuver to avoid the House Ethics Committee? I mean, that's certainly. Kevin McCarthy has been insinuating from the very beginning that this entire McCarthy coup was revenge against Kevin McCarthy. Because he's like, I've seen the text messages, I've seen the ethics report. Whether any of that's gonna come to fruition. I mean, the charges against Gaetz, the image of it is not great. I mean, I will say in his defense, the charges genuinely were dropped by the doj and all the allegations and stuff were leaked against him. That said, even if what he was doing was legal, honestly, let's be honest, like, it's Stevie and it's gross, Right? And in terms of even the legality of, like, what he was up to at that time, will it be enough to sink him? Come on. You know, in the age where, first of all, you know, what did RFK tell me about skeletons in his closet? Like, in the age where these people are knowingly put up and especially in a backlash against MeToo and in the post Kavanaugh era, I don't see some sexual harassment allegation or whatever against somebody sinking anyone.
- [68:41]
Jeff Stein
I mean, I really don't. Well, there's a few things to say about that. First, first of all, the allegations. We could put. Let's put a 7 up on the screen, which has some of the details here of the allegations. A woman told the House Ethics Committee that she saw Matt Gaetz have sex with a minor. That minor alleged to be 17 years old. You have both the minor herself and the client who allegedly witnessed this testifying to these events. You know, it is something that the Republican Party has been running around for years now, talking endlessly about the Democratic Party being filled with pedophiles and the whole QAnon conspiracy theory and obsessed with Epstein, et cetera, et cetera. And then your literal candidate for attorney General, chief law enforcement officer of the United States, is credibly accused of sleeping with a minor. So there's that.
- [69:31]
Kamala Harris
Okay.
- [69:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay. But on this front, though, and I'm not diminishing the accusation, the DOJ investigated it, right? They dropped the allegations. They dropped the charges. Like, if it was true, wouldn't they have prosecuted. Look, nobody hates Matt Gates permanent bureaucracy.
- [69:44]
Jeff Stein
I mean, it's very difficult to. It's very difficult to acquire enough evidence to say with beyond a reasonable doubt. But you can. I don't think that you would deny that if you had a similar factor pattern about a Democrat. Yeah, sure, Republicans will be running wild with it. But the other point to be made here is, you know, all of these men we're talking about, Trump, RFK Jr. RFK Jr doesn't even really deny the sexual assault allegations against him in the interview with. With you. He did not. Did not really deny them. It was a wild answer. So anyway, RFK Jr. Trump, himself, Gates and Hegseth, all of them at least somewhat credibly accused of sexual assault. And part of it is what you said, like the post MeToo era, like, that is part of what makes this not an accident, that these men would all be put up. But it's also, you know, with Trump, a lot of his picks are about loyalty and his ability to dominate and control them and guarantee that no matter what he wants them to do or what bridge he wants them to cross, that they're not going to, you know, they're going to maintain their loyalty and they're going to do whatever he ultimately wants them to do, no matter what what that is. And having a lot of dirt on someone or having someone who is compromised so much that the rest of the mainstream world wouldn't accept them or who's burned their bridges, as RFK Jr. And Tulsi did with the other political party, where they're never going to be accepted back across that bridge. Those are all insurance policies that those people are going to, even if you ask them to do something illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, what, whatever, that they're going to stay the course and stand by you. So in that way, I don't think it's an accident that you have all of these individuals who have, you know, who are kind of deeply compromised in different ways.
- [71:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Maybe that's part of it. Honestly, I think that. Look, their own personal stuff and all that aside. And by the way, on the Gates case, we did a lot of our stuff on the Gates stuff, but something Glenn Greenwell genuinely did convince me of is like, you know, when we are just talking about allegations or whatever that were leaked from the dm and then they end up dropping the case. That is kind of a miscarriage, at least of the way that the public has to look at this stuff. He was accused of sex trafficking minors. I mean, these are heinous, horrible charges that will lock you up for a long time. And they dropped it because of lack of evidence. And people do deserve due process. And I think we should actually preserve that for a lot of people. And this is actually a big part of the backlash to the whole MeToo era and what really constitutes sexual harassment, cancer, isolation, and all of that. So I'll just put that out there specifically on Gates. Whether this woman is lying or not, I have no idea. But, you know, in general, when politicians are involved, like, I'm skeptical. And if the Department of Justice, there.
- [72:22]
Jeff Stein
Will be multiple women that are lying, okay.
- [72:24]
Sagar Enjeti
But if the Justice Department says, we don't have the evidence to prosecute you, I mean, I'm inclined to go with it and just say, well, clearly there's not enough to back that up.
- [72:32]
Jeff Stein
So if somebody said something, so be it. The House Ethics Committee report.
- [72:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes. I actually do. And, see, this will put me on the other side of MAGA and all these people. Let's see it. Look, I mean, is it gonna be good for Gates? Probably not. And that's what I meant by that.
- [72:45]
Jeff Stein
I mean, that's what's very noteworthy, is you did not. He did not have to resign his seat. He resigned two days before this report was set to be released because he.
- [72:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Prevented the report from coming out.
- [72:53]
Jeff Stein
And so that. The fact that he resigned, then they canceled the meeting where they were supposed to deliberate whether or not to release this report. So, okay, if there's a lack of evidence and there's no there there, then people should be able to see the report.
- [73:06]
Sagar Enjeti
I agree with releasing the report. The reason they don't want the report released is because, like, I just. Even if what he was doing, this is like, when we were talking about Dave Portnoy, it was like, dave Portnoy Was, you know, he had the MeToo allegation or whatever against him. And it's like, in his defense was that he was sleeping with girls who were 20 years younger than him who were DMing him on Instagram. Legal. Yeah. Creepy, weird, you know. Yeah. And so that's the defense of Matt Gaetz, is that he was knowingly engaged in, like, sex parties on boats with rich people while doing drugs and getting drunk, like, straight up degen behavior. And it's like, that's not something that a public official wants out of them with very young girls, with young women, people who are like 18, 19 years old. So, yeah, I mean, that's sketchy and gross.
- [73:55]
Jeff Stein
But this one allegedly legal.
- [73:57]
Sagar Enjeti
So it's one of those in the ethics report. I get why he doesn't want it out there. You know, he's married now and all of it no politician would want. He probably shouldn't be engaging in that behavior. But I agree with you, actually, I think the report should be released if you want to be the top enforcement officer. First of all, I mean, you gotta think about this in terms of blackmail and compromise. Compromise, you know, what people used to talk about a lot during the Trump era. You kind of do want all of your skeletons out at this point. And to be honest, again, in the Trump era, this stuff is not going to sink you. Will it be bad? But for Trump himself, will it really lead to him withdrawing his nomination?
- [74:32]
Jeff Stein
No. At all. I do think, like, I do think if he wants Gates, he's gonna get Gates.
- [74:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [74:39]
Jeff Stein
And, you know, I mean, you made the point about, like, he genuinely, on economics is like, had said something, likes Lina Khan and whatever. But I also don't think we should fool ourselves that that's why he got picked. He got picked because he's a loyalist. He got picked because whoever Trump wants Gates to go after, Gates is gonna go after. And, you know, so that's why he's put in the position. And that is what Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail. I disagree that that's really what people voted for. Voted more for, like, hey, the economy was kind of good with him. More so than like, I want Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General of the United States. But you're right, it's not like he didn't. It's not like his statements on the campaign trail are inconsistent with this type of a choice for Attorney General of the United States. I do think his statements on the campaign trail are inconsistent with, like, Marco Rubio and other neocons being selected for key Foreign policy, put positions, but no one should have been surprised about that either. If you look at, you know, how inconsistent Trump himself has been, what his first term was like, et cetera, et cetera. So the other person we referenced here is Pete Hegseth, who has his own allegations that have just emerged against him. Let's go and put this up on the screen. He's, of course, pick for Secretary of Defense. Again, very important to know these things in terms of potential blackmail. And so the allegations here are that. So we know that he did pay an accuser who said that he had sexually assaulted her. The story goes that he was at some conference in California, and there was a woman who was. She's a, you know, conservative Republican who was staying at the hotel there with her small children and her husband, who was tasked with the unenviable task of trying to get Pete, a drunken Pete Hegseth back to his hotel room. Apparently, a couple of other women that he was at the bar with were becoming kind of uncomfortable with him and his overtures that they were making to him. So this one was tasked with, okay, let's get drunken Pete Hegseth back up to his room because he's got to make his flight tomorrow. And then, according to her, at some point in the evening, she received these texts from the bar. She says that she sensed Hegseth was irritated. What happened next is in dispute, they write, according to the memo, Jane Doe did not remember anything until she was in his hotel room and stumbling to find her hotel room. Her memory of six to nine hours was very hazy. Her husband was searching for her and was relieved when she finally showed up. The following day. The woman returned home, had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, had a panic attack, went to the emergency room, received a rape kit examination that was positive for semen. The woman gave county authorities a statement about what happened. According to the memo sent to the transition team. He says this is all a lie that she concocted to try to save her marriage and that the encounter was consensual. Obviously, you know, her version of events is very different from that. We do know that he paid her some undisclosed settlement amount to keep this whole thing quiet. And then the other thing that we know we can put a 9 up on the screen is that apparently the Trump team was caught off guard by this. They didn't know about this particular allegation. There is a police record of the, you know, the. That was recorded at the time of the alleged incident. And so they were kind of Caught off guard and had some meetings about this and how serious it was, blah, blah, blah. But, like, they seem to be standing by him. And that doesn't surprise me.
- [77:59]
Sagar Enjeti
No, look, I mean, again, with Pete Hexath, it's in his own personal life. It's not exactly like he was an angel.
- [78:05]
Kamala Harris
Yeah.
- [78:06]
Jeff Stein
And this is the guy that runs around with all kind of, you know, ultra Christian tattoos and whatever.
- [78:10]
Sagar Enjeti
But see, even on that, it's like, you know, everyone. What is it? Douse vault that everyone's making. It's like guys in the 2000 and tens. That was huge in military culture. It has nothing to do with.
- [78:19]
Jeff Stein
He's got like a crusader's cross on his chest.
- [78:21]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Which he got in Israel. That's actually a little weird if you ask me. But that's a separate conversation. The same thing about Pete Hegseth that I think about RFK and Tulsi and all these people. These people want to blow shit up. Pete Hegseth is an anti DEI warrior. People should go and listen to him. On the Sean Ryan podcast, which he gave. It was a couple of weeks ago, where he talked about his book. He's made it pretty clear what he wants to do, and that's why Trump picked him. I would also say there's a huge part of revenge. And I was texting you guys whenever I was on the plane, whenever he got picked. Cause I was like, people forget they tried to pick him for VA Secretary last time in 2018. The Pentagon and the bureaucracy hate Pete Hegseth. Pete specifically the Pentagon hates him because he circumvented the UCMJ or whatever and got Eddie Gallagher and those people out of prison and to get Trump to pardon them while he was in the military. So the brass despises him more than anything.
- [79:18]
Jeff Stein
Those are the war criminals that he got pardoned.
- [79:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Allegedly. Well, he pardoned them. So. Look, actually, the case is complicated. There's a book called Alphabetical.
- [79:24]
Jeff Stein
They were found in the book.
- [79:25]
Sagar Enjeti
You should go and read about it. No, I'm saying the book itself.
- [79:27]
Jeff Stein
So it's not a legend.
- [79:28]
Sagar Enjeti
No, I'm saying the book, basically, it's questionable, at least in Eddie's case. It's a weird case. You should go and read about it. Alpha Platoon by a New York Times reporter. He, by the way, thinks Eddie is guilty, but at least he goes into the details. My point is that on Hegseth specifically, the bureaucracy hates his guts. He himself, though, is. I think he will be very popular with the rank and file. But really, what it is is if you combine this with the quote, unquote, anti woke, anti four star agenda and people who are genuinely loyal to Trump, Hegseth is the correct choice. Hexath is a former Fox News contributor. If we're being honest on I ideology, this dude is all over the damn map. He's pro Israel. He was pro Iraq war, and he was against the Iraq War. He was pro Iraq war.
- [80:14]
Jeff Stein
Well, he wasn't just pro Iraq war. He like, led an organization that was like, pushing the Iraq war.
- [80:19]
Sagar Enjeti
I'm not.
- [80:20]
Jeff Stein
He was a cheerleader.
- [80:21]
Sagar Enjeti
And defend Pete Hegset's like, pro Iraq. The best case I can give for you is Pete is a MAGA dude. And for people who know him, including some people I've spoken to, he fundamentally changed his mind when Donald Trump. Trump became the person who was in charge. He became a major Trump booster when he was on Fox and Friends on Ukraine. He has had a complete 180from an interview that I saw that he gave just a few months ago. So I can at least tell you on that front he's good to go. But really what it is is that I actually don't think he's ideological on foreign policy as much as he is just a Trump.
- [80:52]
Jeff Stein
Yes.
- [80:53]
Sagar Enjeti
And I mean, to be honest, that's frankly best case scenario whenever you're thinking about somebody like Mark or Rubio or Mike Waltz who are for real ideologues, who really do have an agenda, who have people, an entire national security generation of people who are committed neocons who they will bring in under their team. A key part that I talked about on the Lex Freeman podcast, so give away some of it here for free, is I was like, trump misunderstands bureaucracy and also his own role. So Trump on Rogan, very interesting part of it where he was like, I hired John Bolton because he makes people afraid. And people were like, see, he hires the hawks strategically. And it's like, well, first of all, what you don't understand is that when Trump is not paying attention and watching Fox and Friends in the Oval Office is that John Bolton's in the Situation Room and he's running all that shit. So Bolton, there's a million things that are all happening that Donald Trump never, ever touches. Right? His desk, the interagency process that ID that spreads through the government. Government is not one person. It's 5,000 people. And you want all 5,000 of those people to be united on an agenda. So when you intentionally pick people who don't agree with you, or even maybe they do agree with you, whatever the scary part of that is, but who have a real ideological agenda, you will have consequences for your actions that you may not even knowingly sign up for. So Marco Rubio will Trump really give a shit about South America policy? Almost certainly not, right zero in terms of its importance. You think Marco Rubio, the guy who literally wanted a push in Venezuela for Juan Guaido and wants a return to 1980s style South American revolutionary, whatever stuff under Ronald Reagan? Yeah, I think he will care under the State Department, and he will install people in his office who Donald Trump never even thinks about but could have tremendous consequence for policy. So that is by problem with a lot of Trump's big ideological picks is he does not understand government at a fundamental level because he thinks that it's all about him, which of course serves his role. But the interagency process of the people that you hire and others, when they are really ideological, it's a big problem and they can cause colossal damage on the inside.
- [83:11]
Anna Paulina Luna
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- [83:56]
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- [84:26]
Kamala Harris
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- [85:37]
Jeff Stein
I just think Trump doesn't really, isn't really making these choices for primarily ideological reasons outside of I know that they'll be loyal to me and when push comes to shove, they're gonna do what I want them to do. And I'm not talking about like you know, trade policy or whatever. I think that when he wanted to overturn the last election and he met resistance from the Department of Justice, met resistance from military, met resistance from the Senate and his own vice president, he made sure, he wanted to make sure that that would never happen again. So you put in, you know, Gates at the Department of Justice, like Gates is going to do whatever Donald Trump wants him to do. You get J.D. vance for vice President instead of Mike Pence. And part of that audition process for JD Was making sure, like you're going to back stop this deal and you're going to say you would done what Mike Pence wouldn't do. Period. End of story. Pete Hegseth at Department of Defense, like very similar vibe. Like I'm gonna make sure that these major institutions that stood in my way last time are not gonna stand in my way this time. And same thing with the Senate. Like in some ways all of these confirmations are a test of let me put up, like in Matt Gaetz specifically, let me put up the person that you all literally hate the most. Like that you find to be the most odious and I'm going to force it through. And whether it's you all voting for it or me just doing it anyway, you're going to see you will not resist me this time. And this was also important with the power play that he pulled with the advising consent process. Right. Because this is an important part of the Senate powers. They're very proud of their role in this. This is a big deal for them. Right. And you got John Thrun now in there who is gonna be the Senate Majority leader, who is not the pick of Maga, not who Donald Trump wanted. He's like a Mitch McConnell type acolyte. But even with him, when Trump was like, we're gonna do recess appointments and I'm gonna get my picks, John Thune was right away like, yes, okay, we will do that. So a lot of these moves. Yes. There are different ideologies that he likes in this way or likes this piece or whatever. The consistent through line to me is any institution that was an obstacle to my ambitions on not again, not really policy, but on like overturning the election. If you are an obstacle, then I'm going to make sure that those institutions are bent to my will this time. And that's what I see primarily in these picks. Because there isn't an ideological consistency between Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. Yes, right. That literally.
- [88:24]
Sagar Enjeti
It literally makes no sense.
- [88:25]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, that is the, you know, that is the. Even between like a Pete Hexeth and RFK Jr. There's not ideological consistency. You know, it's about who is going to be there in these institutions that were previously an obstacle to me being able to, you know, do everything I wanted to do. How am I going to make sure that that doesn't stand in my way this time around? And you've already got the Supreme Court in a lot of ways. Not fully, but in many ways it's shaped by his choices that are on the court. He's likely to get at least one more Supreme Court pick. The Supreme Court has already said that he's immune for any quote, unquote, official acts. What exactly that means is yet to be adjudicated. But wide bandwidth there for his own personal immunity. So I think there's going to be very little that stands in his way in. In terms of getting what he wants and when he wants it.
- [89:18]
Sagar Enjeti
I think yes and no. In terms of the. For example, it gets down to what are we actually talking about here? So for, let's say the dei, like woke thing. Right. That's an area where Pete Hegseth is gonna have the total backing of the President. Let's see. Also in terms of. I think it really is just gonna depend on a case by case basis, because even for what you said about recess appointments, it may be true that Jon Thune said, yeah, let's do recess appointments. Guess what Mitch McConnell said today, we're not doing Any recess appointments. And Jon Thune was like, we don't have the support in the conference to do any recess appointments. Basically, they don't want to cave to the precedent because in the future, they don't want Democrats when they have power to do recess appointments, too.
- [89:59]
Jeff Stein
Right.
- [89:59]
Sagar Enjeti
Which is funny, but it's, you know, it does show you that they still have some authority.
- [90:03]
Jeff Stein
But the Trump people have worked out this provision that they think that they could use where there's this technicality. If the House and the center are in dispute about whether or not they're adjourned and in a recess, then the president can come in and say, we're in a recess. And so that's the power that they plan to use to basically have this led from the White House, where it's like, we don't really care, John THUNE and Mitch McConnell, whether you have the votes to go into recess. We're going to. We're going to do it. And maybe ultimately through the courts and blah, blah, blah. Maybe there's some pushback. But, you know, who knows? Knows Trump's got a lot of his own judges on the bench at this point and a Supreme Court that's quite amenable to him as well. But they have plans in place to get even. Someone like a Matt Gaetz or an RFK junior Or Tulsi, whoever you think is the most difficult to confirm, to get them through, which is why I just think that there is. I think there is a concerted plan to make sure that there is no institutional obstacle to Trump doing what. Whatever Trump wants to do. What does that mean? I don't think we really know because it's not like we could have predicted stop this deal in advance. It's not like we could have predicted the Black Lives Matter protests and Trump saying, hey, let's just go and shoot the protesters in the legs. I don't know that we know what that's ultimately gonna mean in terms of how he uses the powers of the government and the military and whatever. But that, to me, getting all of those roadblocks that previously obviously irked him out of the way is the primary thrust of both the sort of policy thinking that's going into the transition and certainly into these personnel choices.
- [91:39]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't think there's any policy thinking going into the transition.
- [91:42]
Jeff Stein
No, but I'm talking about, like, for example, the thing about the. How. How we could use this policy to get into recess.
- [91:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes. Yeah.
- [91:47]
Jeff Stein
You know, those sorts of things. How Jeff talked about, you know, actually, there's you can use a national security emergency to institute all of your tariffs. Like there is thinking about how they can basically bypass any sort of thing that was a check previously and get done whatever the hell it is that they want to get done.
- [92:04]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't think that's an incorrect view of it. I think it will really come down. But first of all, Trump is a deeply capricious person who changes his mind literally constantly and depending on the last person that he spoke to. So anybody who thinks he has some concerted grand plan or any of that, I don't think any of that is true. I do think it's correct that the pics that he has gone with are based upon personal loyalty and basically nothing else. I think that could have great have a lot of pluses and minuses. In some cases, when he wants to do good things, it'll be fantastic. In some cases, whenever he wants to follow through on stop the steal or some other bullshit like that, it can be very detrimental to the American system. The question really will come down to what the institutional pushback within the permanent bureaucracy will look like, what Congress and its immense powers will be able to flex. And then of course the Supreme Court. I do think people overestimate the loyalty that the Supreme Court will give Donald Trump. Don't forget, while they did give him immunity under the last Roberts term, they shot down numerous attempts by him to bypass the interagency process from the census, the so called travel like Muslim ban and I can go on forever. I mean the Obamacare thing even before that. So there are many examples of Trump trying to use this new legal authority where this is where I think Jeff is also underestimating what the legal system and the ninth Circuit and the way our entire appellate court work and the rents that they can throw in. You can theorize all day long. Joe Biden tried to do a lot of things under executive order, like with student loan and all that other stuff. Shit gets struck down constantly. The appellate courts can come in and they can change things. So I wouldn't underestimate on the other side what the institutional checks are, although it will be a much more of a loyalist administration. But I think we knew that going in. I think we also knew that going in.
- [93:55]
Jeff Stein
I knew that going in.
- [93:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, certainly.
- [93:56]
Jeff Stein
But I think other people, I knew that going in. I don't like, I don't know if that's what like. I do think that there is a significant frustration with democracy in the public where the idea of like he's just going to be a strong man, and come in and, you know, his, like, I'm going to be a dictator on day one. Like, for some people. For some people, that was something they had to overcome to vote for him. And for some people, that was a feature, not a bug. That was an affirmative part of the pitch of, like, hey, democracy, like this doesn't seem so great. Let's just get someone in there who's going to like, you know, do whatever he wants to do. So, yeah, in that sense, I think there is a chunk of the public that basically voted for, like, authoritarian power taking. And I think that's. I mean, I think that's the plan and what we're seeing effectuated here, which, yeah, it doesn't. I mean, it's entirely consistent with what he was saying and with the way he wanted to operate in the first term. And the other thing is, and then we'll. You can respond if you want. We'll move on because we've been talking about this for a while. But you also see a number of previously, like, bastions of quote, unquote, resistance that have really, out of fear or necessity or whatever, have really capitulated to Trump. So even before the election, you saw Bezos being like, you know, Washington Post, we're not gonna do an endorsement. You saw Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Tim Apple, as Trump calls him. All of them calling Trump, hey, big guy, just calling to check in. Really excited for the next administration, trying to make night nice with him because they know that the way that he was gonna get his loyals in place and he was going to use the federal government to go after, whether it's like Amazon, which has tons of government contracts, or cracked on, on Facebook for any sort of, like, politics, political speech on there that he doesn't like, et cetera, et cetera. Like, the powers of the federal government are vast and he's not afraid to weaponize them. So there was a lot of already capitulation to that. And then one funny and annoying indicator of this as well. You had Morning Joe, Joe and Mika.
- [96:12]
Sagar Enjeti
We're going to cover it tomorrow. I think we have.
- [96:14]
Jeff Stein
But just to tease it for now, Joe and Mika making the trek down to Mar a Lago to bend the knee and kiss the ring. And Steve Bannon is out there saying, hey, Matt Gaetz. He literally said, matt Gaetz is going to prosecute. MSNBC host like Ari Melbury, he named specifically, don't get my hope. So you think Joe and Mika are thinking like, hey, you know, maybe we need to get on the other side of this, just to be sure and hedge our bets. So I also think that some of the previous bastions of resistance in 2016 we already know are not gonna be there this time around as well. And, you know, I think the courts could also be part of that.
- [96:52]
Sagar Enjeti
It's certainly possible. I would see, the thing is, is that this time around, the grounds for resistance are just not there. Trump is not a one off. He's the democratically elected, twice elected.
- [97:01]
Jeff Stein
Well, there's always grounds for resistance.
- [97:02]
Sagar Enjeti
No, but I'm saying like the Russians gate shock, the lack of the popular vote, all that stuff last time around, it's gone. And I mean, it should be gone. Trump has been literally elected with a popular vote, with a mandate to govern for the first time for Republicans since 2004. So you have to adjust your priors just like dramatically.
- [97:19]
Jeff Stein
And a lot of liberals have the view basically that you express Sahar of like, hey, you people voted for this. You are gonna get what you deserve is the attitude. It's not like, I think reframe it, not deserve it. I think that's outrageous. But that is, that is what, you know, there's like, okay, you know, Latinos, you voted for mass deportation. Like, okay, now you're, this is what Joy Reid said. Like, now you're responsible for your mixed status family getting deported. Like, okay, Muslim Americans, you voted for Trump. Like, enjoy as your family members are slaughtered in Gaza and the west bank is, you know, permanently annexed, et cetera, et cetera. I think that that's personally from the liberal perspective, I know you like, come at this from a different, different angle, but from the liberal perspective, I think that that is disgusting to just like, you know, okay, you deserve what you get, etc. Etc. But that there is, that's part of the capitulation to this view is like, we're not going to fight it. Like, enjoy, you know, enjoy your new Muslim ban, enjoy your mass deportation. If you all voted for this, you get, you get what you deserve.
- [98:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, mine is more of an affirmation. I'm like, look, I think they actually want it and I think they should get it. And I also think that people for so long have been wondering, what's it like to actually blow stuff up? And I was like, let's find out. Let's see what happens. It's not like the current system is working all that well. And look, here's the craziest and most dangerous thing. What if it works? What if America likes it? I mean, you were talking about our authoritarian tendencies, I wouldn't put it that way. I think people like a strong executive. People have wanted that for a long time. America does like a monarch in name, but only they liked it under fdr. They liked it under lbj, they liked it under Nixon. The crazy thing in America is we just get to change who our immensely powerful person is. And I think people genuinely do want to see a serious version of what they actually voted for in practice. The other side of this, and I could be totally wrong, too, is that there are all these swing voters out there who believe in checks, imbalances, right? I want a Democratic senator, and while I have a Republican president, I'm like, well, that's fucking stupid if you ask me. Because it's like that means that you're just gonna get nothing done and you're actually voting for the status quo, but you do what you want. So I do think, though, that there are a large percentage of people, dramatic percentages of people who did swing, especially these swing coalitions, who voted for Donald Trump, who want to light the match and put it on the fire and just see what happens. And so in this respect, like this, you may call it authoritarian. I think he's like the vehicle. I mean, what did he say in his 2016 inauguration? I'm forgetting the exact. I am your retribution, right? I am your retribution. I think that's a real reason why a lot of people voted for Trump and how it will manifest itself. I mean, that's still a big and an open question.
- [100:11]
Anna Paulina Luna
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- [100:56]
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- [101:26]
Kamala Harris
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- [102:38]
Sagar Enjeti
All right everybody, we had to skip ahead to ufo. We just talked way too much. So the DNC and the Ukraine sections will be pushed to tomorrow. So Tuesday. Don't worry, we'll have a nice full show already of stuff that we're going to discuss. But I did want to get into the show a little bit of a recap of the UFO hearing. There were some very interesting moments that happened there, so we've collated a few of them for you. The first that we want to start with is text testimony and questioning from Lou Elizondo, who was a part of the Pentagon and one of the people chiefly responsible for bringing to light the public to the public the existence of a lot of these UFO videos that existed inside of the Pentagon and for some of the transparency movement behind it. So he gave some really shocking testimony under questioning from Anna Paulina Luna. Let's take a listen.
- [103:23]
Anna Paulina Luna
Would you agree that it's likely that they are being piloted by some mind body connection?
- [103:29]
Lou Elizondo
Ma'am, I think it is safe to presume here that they are being intelligently controlled because they some cases seem to anticipate our maneuvers and in other cases they seem to. You know, I came across an email where the word stalked was used in A very secure email between Navy officers discussing their ships being pursued by.
- [103:54]
Anna Paulina Luna
In our previous panel, we had Grush.
- [103:57]
Jeff Stein
And he had testified to say that.
- [103:59]
Anna Paulina Luna
Some of these were interdimensional beings. Can you speak on that at all, Ma'am?
- [104:03]
Lou Elizondo
I'm not qualified, certainly as a scientist or otherwise, to speculate points of origin. I looked at everything from a scientific perspective. So if you look at, for example, instantaneous acceleration, which was one of the observables of the program that I belong to ATIP, the human body can withstand about 9G forces for a short period of time before you suffer negative biological consequences, blackouts and ultimately redouts and even death. Comparison. Our best technology, the F16, which is one. It's older platform, but one of our most highly maneuverable aircraft, Manned aircraft made by General Dynamics, can perform about 17 or 18 G forces before you start having structural failure, meaning that the airframe begins to disintegrate while you're flying. The vehicles we're we're talking about are performing in excess of 1000, 2000, 3000 genes.
- [104:52]
Jeff Stein
So are you, I guess.
- [104:54]
Anna Paulina Luna
Would it be safe to infer that they're living craft?
- [104:59]
Lou Elizondo
You know, I'm not prepared at this point to state for the record, is something alive or not? Because even that definition is. Sorry. There was a time in science we thought that life required oxygen, and we now know that's not true. There are anaerobic bacteria that's thrive in oxygen environments that lack oxygen. And also same with photosynthesis. When I was in college, I was told everything is derived from photosynthesis as a form of energy. In reality, that's not true. There are things that live off of chemosynthesis. So we're constantly having to reevaluate our understanding of what the definition of life is.
- [105:35]
Sagar Enjeti
3000 GS. Let that one sink in there. There's been some discussion previously, especially in regards to the Tic Tac incident. Let's also go to the next one here because this is a really critical part of it. This is specifically about the GOP oversight and about some of the previous allegations that were happening in terms of budgeting and how previous ways that the Department of Defense can get around transparency in others is by piloting and pushing them through military contractors. To avoid transparency. To avoid disclosure. It's also part of the reason the Pentagon literally cannot pass an audit. Let's take a listen to that section. To your knowledge, any communication. Communication with a non human life form.
- [106:14]
Lou Elizondo
So the term communication is a bit of a trick word because there's Verbal communication like we're having now. The problem is you also have nonverbal communication. And so I would say definitively, yes, but from a nonverbal meaning, when a Russian reconnaissance aircraft comes into US airspace, we scramble two F22s and we are certainly communicating intent and capability. I think the same goes with this. We have these things that are being observed over controlled US airspace and they're not really doing a good job hiding themselves. They're making it pretty obvious they have the ability to even interfere with our nuclear equities and our nuclear readiness.
- [106:48]
Sagar Enjeti
So two pretty interesting allegations there. So there. Look, in terms of the hearing, it was a lot about getting stuff on the record. There were some issues, as I was told, in terms of the Immaculate Constellation document, the 12 page document that was put into the Congressional Record. I won't go into all of that just yet because we're about to play a video. But overall, this was about getting Lou Elizondo in questioning, getting some of the things on the record going into the Trump administration. And that's one thing where, look, Trump and rfk, actually Gates as well have all said that they are at least in favor of UFO transparency of disclosure. There is some sort of horseshoe MAGA crossover currently with UFOs and Trump. So the question is that are we going to get some of this to be released? Considering that Tulsi Gabbard's now going up for the ODNI position, it's certainly possible in some sort of transparency laden effort to actually declassify a lot of these documents and actually just give it out to the general public. The other option is the permanent bureaucracy only burrows even further in and you're not going to get anything. But nonetheless, it was very interesting to see some this go on the record.
- [107:58]
Jeff Stein
Was there an effort during the first Trump administration to get him to release this documents? And why has he said that?
- [108:04]
Sagar Enjeti
He didn't so he said he did it at the request of Mike Pompeo, just like with the jfk. So let's first with that also. Look, Trump doesn't care about the issue and this is unfortunate. He's not somebody who has ever expressed a deep interest. The whole UFO thing has taken years to enter the public consciousness. Lou Elizondo is one of those people who is chiefly responsible for getting these videos out to the public. He was there and name checked in the 2017 New York Times article that started this whole thing. That's when people were like, Holy shit, are UFOs actually real in those videos? I can say that for Myself, the problem with the legitimization is people kind of just saw it and then just moved past. Lou Elizondo himself was out of the government. Then what happened in the interim period of years is people like David Fravor came out and gave interviews. You had people now like David Grusch who have come forward. You've had almost eight years of the public reconciling himself to both the lies and the transparency, and people like Christopher Miller and others who have come forward and have spoken about this program. So I would say it is more primed, I think, both for the public, for the military bureaucracy, and also even members of Congress. These people thought it was all a joke.
- [109:13]
Jeff Stein
Also a UFO guy.
- [109:14]
Sagar Enjeti
Rubio is a UFO guy. That's very true. Well, okay, I'll put it this way. I don't know if he's a UFO guy in terms of he's a believer, but he was the head of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, and his staff and others were always consistent that they were very concerned about the reports. They would get notice. And I think this is intentional is they always talk about readiness, because the one way angle you can always get Congress and others to care about is like, hey, we literally have things that are flying around up there and we have no idea what they are, including being able to disable, like nuclear missile silos and submarines. And people have no clue, like, what's actually happening. So I think that's what. That's how I would contextualize this hearing. I will end with this part, but again, I have to note that there were some issues with the enter of this into the record. So let's go ahead and get to Nancy Mace's questioning about the immaculate consolation program entered in the Congressional Record. Let's take a listen.
- [110:05]
Anna Paulina Luna
There is a document that will be.
- [110:08]
Kamala Harris
Entered into the congressional record today. Mr. Tim Burchat from Tennessee has this.
- [110:14]
Jeff Stein
Document, and we just distribute it to.
- [110:16]
Anna Paulina Luna
Every member up here on the dais of this document. But this is going to be the original document from the Pentagon about Immaculate Constellation that Michael Shellenberger delivered to Congress today.
- [110:30]
Jeff Stein
So thank you, Mr. Schellenberger, for this information. We are all reading it in real time now.
- [110:35]
Kamala Harris
And Mr. Burch, that will enter it into the record.
- [110:38]
Anna Paulina Luna
But 12 pages about this unacknowledged special access program that your government says does not exist.
- [110:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Like I said, in terms of that pro. Basically, it's entered into the Congressional Record. But as I understand it, like I said, there were some issues regarding the enter of that into the record. And this is part of the controversy and things that have come out of it. My point just being that on the program itself, in terms of getting things into the congressional effort, this was an effort to try and to enter Michael Shellenberger's original report in there so that people can read for itself. And because you want to get this stuff into the record, it allows for investigation, public transparency, which is the ultimate goal of the project. Overall, I would not call the hearing a tremendous success or anything like that, because nothing other than actual disclosure is. I think it was just pushing the ball forward and setting things up for the next Trump administration and what that will look like.
- [111:35]
Jeff Stein
It's gonna be interesting.
- [111:35]
Sagar Enjeti
I know it's gonna be interesting.
- [111:36]
Jeff Stein
Listen, if I'm gonna get Trump, at least I can get like, JFK files and aliens.
- [111:39]
Sagar Enjeti
JFK and aliens.
- [111:40]
Jeff Stein
That's right.
- [111:41]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, think about it. You know, if you. If you ever wanted someone to meet an alien, wouldn't it be Donald Trump, President? Who would you want? Which. Which Commander in Chief? Definitely not Biden.
- [111:51]
Jeff Stein
I'm sure. This is something that I've really thought that I'm prepared to apply. I haven't really thought.
- [111:56]
Sagar Enjeti
There is a theory that Dwight Eisenhower once had a conference with aliens, but we won't get to that today.
- [112:02]
Anna Paulina Luna
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- [112:47]
Jamaal Bowman
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- [113:17]
Kamala Harris
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- [114:30]
Jeff Stein
A socialist candidate for mayor of New York City took a unique approach to finding out why non white working class voters in the Bronx and in Queens decided to vote how they did. He actually went and asked them, did.
- [114:40]
Jamaal Bowman
You get a chance to vote on Tuesday?
- [114:42]
Sagar Enjeti
I didn't vote.
- [114:43]
Jamaal Bowman
And why did you not vote?
- [114:45]
Nancy Mace
Because I don't believe in the system anymore.
- [114:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday? Yes. And who did you vote for? Trump. Ah, the million dollar question.
- [114:53]
Lou Elizondo
Trump.
- [114:53]
Kamala Harris
Trump.
- [114:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Donald Trump. Well actually the early voted I voted for Trump. Honestly I didn't vote.
- [114:58]
Jeff Stein
She voted for Trump.
- [114:59]
Sagar Enjeti
I voted for Trump. I vote for Trump.
- [115:01]
Jeff Stein
Me too.
- [115:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Before I vote Democrat. At this moment I voted Donald Trump. Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fortune Boredom Road in the Bronx are two areas that saw the biggest shift towards Trump in last week's election. Even more residents didn't vote at all. They like Trump because they don't want.
- [115:16]
Jeff Stein
The Palestinian, the brothers to kill, the war in Ukraine, the Democrats giving all the money and the war this no good.
- [115:23]
Sagar Enjeti
The swing is because people want lower prices. They probably believe that Trump will give them that market price.
- [115:28]
Kamala Harris
Energy, gas, la comida.
- [115:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Most of these people, people are working.
- [115:34]
Jeff Stein
Families, they're working one to two, three.
- [115:36]
Crystal Ball
Jobs and rent is expensive, foods are.
- [115:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Going up, utility bills are up. And that's your hope to see a.
- [115:41]
Jamaal Bowman
Little bit more of an affordable life?
- [115:43]
Nancy Mace
Absolutely.
- [115:44]
Sagar Enjeti
What Trump did in the first four years. Fordham Road saw something where Kamala couldn't Do that.
- [115:49]
Jeff Stein
There were young voters who didn't vote.
- [115:51]
Sagar Enjeti
For her because of the genocide.
- [115:52]
Kamala Harris
And I wouldn't have voted for her if I did. But I did vote for her, obviously.
- [115:54]
Jeff Stein
Because I have common sense.
- [115:55]
Sagar Enjeti
Can you tell me a little bit more about why you didn't vote? Since you're out here, you know, Gaza, who should I vote? Either side will go ahead, send bombs.
- [116:03]
Anna Paulina Luna
From here to kill my brothers and sisters.
- [116:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Palestine issue, and then other issues like Russia and then Ukraine. He stopped that war.
- [116:11]
Jeff Stein
That's why I voted. You can't say you're a Democrat and stand for the genocide that's going on in Gaza, period.
- [116:18]
Crystal Ball
Practically.
- [116:18]
Sagar Enjeti
I like Democrat, I like Democrat, but I don't like this Gaza with the politics.
- [116:24]
Crystal Ball
People are dying.
- [116:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Have you voted for Democrats in the past? I have. And what would it take for you to vote for a Democrat in the future?
- [116:31]
Jeff Stein
Being able to pay attention to the.
- [116:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Regular Americans and their economic needs.
- [116:36]
Jeff Stein
They should make economics the forefront of their campaign.
- [116:39]
Sagar Enjeti
People were not really feeling it in their pocket.
- [116:41]
Lou Elizondo
I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
- [116:43]
Sagar Enjeti
I voted against Trump also in the 2018 midterms.
- [116:47]
Lou Elizondo
Insulting us, playing on our emotions.
- [116:49]
Sagar Enjeti
All they do is shame you and.
- [116:50]
Lou Elizondo
They just want to use like glitzy.
- [116:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Campaigns and they get celebrities and like.
- [116:55]
Jeff Stein
If you're speaking the things that people.
- [116:57]
Anna Paulina Luna
Want to hear about, I don't care what color you are, I'll vote for you.
- [117:00]
Jeff Stein
So obviously quite a number of voters there expressing concerns about prices, the economy, etc. But I was actually genuinely surprised by how many brought up the issue of Gaza. Quote, the Democrats are giving all the money in the war. Quote, either side will go ahead and send bombs from here to kill my brother and sisters. Quote, you can't say you're a Democrat and stand for the genocide that's going on in Gaza, period. This actually echoes what AOC heard from her own constituents who had backed her and Trump on the same ballot. Number of these AOC Trump voters said they felt she and Trump were both authentic or anti establishment. But again, Gaza came up a number of times in these responses, quote, voted for Trump and you, not Genocide Harris. Democrats became the party that supports war and and simply because of Gaza. None of this is scientific, of course, but there are some other indications that Gaza really was a significant part of Kamala Harris's loss. Remember, black and brown voters have always had more sympathy towards Palestine and supported a ceasefire by larger numbers than white voters. In general. It's plausible to think some of Trump's gains with these groups had to do with Disgust with war in general and Gaza in particular. The other demographic group, of course, most disgusted with the Biden Harris genocidal policy was young people. And sure enough, this election saw a turnout collapse among the youngest group of voters. A lot of the post election conversation has been understandably centered around how much Trump improved his margins among young voters. All true young men in particular. But the more significant phenomenon may actually be how many of these young voters just simply decided to stay home. As Eric Blanc points out, when you look at the Total Number of 18 to 29 years old who are eligible eligible to vote, Trump ever so slightly improved his standing from 2020. In 2020, he received 18% of the total eligible population. This time, he edged that number up by a single percentage point to about 19%. On the other side of the ledger, however, Democrats collapsed. They went from receiving about 30% of the eligible youth vote in 2020 to only about 22% this time around. So Trump held on to his young voters and marginally even improved while the Democratic share plummeted. Was this a Gaza effect? When you consider the youth activism around the issue and Kamala's absolute unwillingness to take a moral stand against genocide, you gotta think that disgust with her approach was a significant factor in this drop in turnout. Her choice of Liz Cheney over Rashida Tlaib spoke volumes about her moral commitments. Of note on that choice, by the way, the Palestinian American was blocked from speaking at the dnc actually improved her winning margin in her Georgia state House district. As she wrote on Twitter, quote, maybe, just maybe, voters appreciate when you speak out for the things you truly believe in. Perhaps disgust over Gaza really was a significant and perhaps determinative factor in this election, something even I didn't anticipate. And it wasn't just Rua who was rejected. On a podcast with Rania Khaled, Congressman Jamaal Bowman revealed that his offer to campaign for Kamala and Michigan was also rejected. Listen to what they chose to do instead.
- [120:03]
Nancy Mace
I then told them I could share text with you so you have evidence of this. I, I am ready to be dispatched to any parts of the country. Let me know. I want to go to Michigan in particular, right? I told them this, they never get back to me. Even worse, they send Richie Torres, Bill Clinton and Liz Cheney to Michigan. So again, and not only that, Bill Clinton is scolding Arab Americans. Yeah, like yo, they were there first. Pretty much they were there first. Y'all gotta just deal with it or lead like this is what their campaign decided to do. Let's not send Jamal Bowman there, who again, I have, thank God, you know, Alhamdulillah. Right. Like, so much support in Michigan, where, like, my opponent attacked me for it. Like, he literally was like, you don't represent your district. You represent California. And Dearborn, Michigan. My opponent said this in a debate.
- [121:10]
Anna Paulina Luna
Wow.
- [121:11]
Nancy Mace
Okay, so. So that is how. And he said that because he knows that's an Arab American community.
- [121:16]
Kamala Harris
Yeah, Dan, that's like rams racism.
- [121:19]
Jeff Stein
Yeah, right.
- [121:21]
Nancy Mace
Y'all, Y'all ignore me, which tells me who you have around you in your campaign. But you send Bill Clinton, Richie Torres.
- [121:29]
Jeff Stein
So that was the choice, basically. Bill Clinton, Liz Cheney, Richie Torres, and not Jamaal Bowman or anyone else who might have been able to help with the Muslim American or Arab American community. The results, of course, speak to this being an utter political catastrophe, not to mention a moral one. So what's the counterargument here? Well, if you look at exit polls, very few voters say that foreign policy actually drove their decision. Even among young voters, only 4% attributed their vote to foreign policy concerns. As with all voters, the top concern by far was the economy. But I've always suspected this was kind of the wrong way to think about the electoral consequences of the genocide in Gaza. There's a way in which Gaza undermines literally every argument that Kamala and the Democrats were attempting to make against Donald Trump. How can you posture is a clear moral alternative to Trump and Trumpism when you are backing a war in which 70% of those killed are women and children, when starvation is being deployed systematically as a weapon of war, when we saw things this year like a child having their leg amputated with no anesthetic on a kitchen table, a body crushed like a bag of tomatoes under a bulldozer, an endless, ever expanding churn of death, carnage, disease, rubble. But you want people to believe Trump's the unique evil. At the very least his evil. It's not looking so unique. How can you position yourself as the big tent party building a large unified coalition when your tent wasn't big enough for a single Palestinian American speaker at the dnc, when you couldn't do the basics of outreach to a Muslim community that was horror struck and utterly disgusted that the Big Ten has room for Liz Cheney, but not young people protesting against genocide or Arab Americans, some of whom had family members who were slaughtered in Gaza doesn't exactly send the open arms, everyone's welcome that you think that you're sending. The party is open to you so long as you agree not to breathe a word about These taxpayer funded. And how can people trust that you're going to pay attention to their economic needs here at home when you seem way more eager, way more interested in sending money abroad for wars in Ukraine, Gaza and the entire Middle East? I heard something similar to that sentiment from any number of voters this cycle. Basically, why are you focused on all these global conflicts rather than our needs right here at home? Biden really leaned into this dynamic in a bad way. In particular, with all his obsession with NATO in August and inability to talk about the actually decent things that his administration did accomplish on antitrust, labor and industrial policy. Kamala was of course, saddled with this legacy and did nothing to break it. Even Trump's infamous they them ad plays into the sentiment that Kamala and the Democrats are not really paying attention to what you care about. AOC herself made a version of this point. Take a listen.
- [124:13]
Anna Paulina Luna
All of this debate that people are talking about with this woke thing, right? My gosh, it's because we care about trans people and that's why.
- [124:22]
Kamala Harris
And by the way, only Donald Trump.
- [124:23]
Jeff Stein
Cared about trans people because he was.
- [124:24]
Kamala Harris
The one running $130 million worth of ads.
- [124:27]
Jeff Stein
The Harris campaign said nothing about this issue.
- [124:29]
Anna Paulina Luna
That's right. That's right. And listen, the ads, it's not to even deny the fact that these ads were effective in certain areas. What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad which says Kamala Harris is that said Kamala Harris is for they them. Everyone's focusing on that. They're not focusing on the second half of that ad where he said Donald Trump is for you.
- [124:55]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, yeah.
- [124:56]
Anna Paulina Luna
And Democrats very often in their messaging, they speak. And in this, in terms and in concepts and not in the second person, I care about you. And political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate. Too often it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race to convince a person about who cares about you more.
- [125:24]
Jeff Stein
In a lot of ways, Gaza is emblematic of Democratic hypocrisy, moral collapse and working class disengagement. Is it possible that Gaza alone cost the Democrats the election? I mean, if you think about it, Trump won Wisconsin by about 30,000 votes, Michigan by only about 80,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by about 120,000 votes. In the grand scheme of things, that's really, really not a lot. How many young people stayed home? How many Muslims switched to Trump in a vain hope that he'd make good on his pandering? How many working class voters could not shake the nagging sense that these wars were more important to Democrats than the price of eggs. Trump didn't deserve to win and has already nominated a bunch of neocon war hawk Israel for psychos to key foreign policy positions. But for this and many other reasons, the Democrats, they absolutely deserved to lose. And SAR I was initially and if.
- [126:16]
Sagar Enjeti
You want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today@breaking points.com all right guys, thank you so much for watching. We appreciate you. Sorry that we talked so much. We're going to talk even more tomorrow.
- [126:27]
Jeff Stein
We'll see you back.
- [126:38]
Jamaal Bowman
See Glad Gladiator 2 only in theaters November 22nd this film delivers action, an emotional and compelling story, and performances in.
- [126:46]
Kamala Harris
Spectacle on a scale unlike anything else.
- [126:48]
Jamaal Bowman
Gladiator 2 stands out with its immersive.
- [126:51]
Kamala Harris
Visuals and a gripping character driven narrative.
- [126:53]
Jamaal Bowman
The film stars an extraordinary cast including.
- [126:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Paul Mezcal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and Connie Nielsen.
- [127:00]
Jamaal Bowman
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- [127:39]
Jeff Stein
Millions of books on Amazon. There's a reading feeling for everyone.
- [127:43]
Crystal Ball
For example, Raquel's Whoa.
- [127:46]
Jeff Stein
When she first entered the kingdom by Dragon Back is different to Ari's Whoa. When he found out there was more than one crime scene. Which is also different to Ava's Whoa. The moment when the stable boy became.
- [128:01]
Anna Paulina Luna
A stable man from to Amazon Books. That reading feeling awaits.