Krystal Ball (3:18)

I could get behind. He's against weed, you know, that's all. That's all I need.

Sagar Enjeti (3:21)

Well, what I would say is he lacks one thing that the like 99.9% of the doll Democratic Party. He has one thing that most of the Democratic Party lacks, which is actual charisma. That's true.

Krystal Ball (3:32)

That's a good point.

Sagar Enjeti (3:33)

Understands attention, not afraid of controversy. Has charisma. He's not. His politics are kind of like whatever. They're kind of like centristy enlightened.

Krystal Ball (3:43)

Centristy enlightened, centrist, rich guy, Democrat. But, you know, that's the vibe.

Sagar Enjeti (3:48)

That's the general vibe.

Krystal Ball (3:48)

Yeah, you gotta take the worse. You gotta take the pulse of the country.

Sagar Enjeti (3:51)

You can do worse for sure. So anyway, we'll play you the clips from him and some of the past things he said about politics that we can take a look at as well. And I have a monologue today. I'm taking a look at the way that culture war is being used to usher in a pro oligarch agenda. CFPB being one example of that.

Krystal Ball (4:07)

I'm excited to watch it. Gotta give an obligatory go Birds for my in laws.

Sagar Enjeti (4:10)

Oh, that's right.

Krystal Ball (4:11)

It's one of the greatest days of their lives. I can guarantee you that.

Sagar Enjeti (4:13)

That game looks crazy.

Krystal Ball (4:14)

Look, I don't watch a lot of football. Yeah, I don't watch a lot of football. I actually watched the entire thing, which is shocking for me. And I was just like, wow. I just have. I could not believe the collapse of that.

Sagar Enjeti (4:25)

I genuinely.

Krystal Ball (4:26)

Of the Chiefs, I don't understand it either. I've been listening for years. You know, again, I don't even watch football all year. And you absorb through the zeitgeist Patrick Mahomes 3 dynasty greatest football. And then you're like, this is like high school football, you know, like what's going on out here. Six sacks, strips sacks, all fumbles, all the time.

Sagar Enjeti (4:42)

They had one first down, one first down and the entire first half and like 30 yards. I mean it was insanely.

Krystal Ball (4:48)

It was an outrageous, outrageous, insane blowout.

Sagar Enjeti (4:51)

There were a lot of funny jokes online. Like oh, I had no idea they were so reliant on usa.

Krystal Ball (4:56)

It's like maybe this is a deit. I don't know. Anyway, so I got a green tie on for my in laws in Philadelphia for the city. Philadelphia have come to grow and love it after marrying into it. And I am very happy for them. They are a very passionate fan base. You have to give them their culture. I think it's amusing.

Sagar Enjeti (5:12)

It is definitely a passionate fan base. In fact, I was shocked at how lopsided even the like fandom.

Krystal Ball (5:19)

Yeah. We were talking about. It was just when the Chiefs came.

Sagar Enjeti (5:21)

Out, they got booed.

Krystal Ball (5:22)

Yeah, Taylor Swift got booed.

Sagar Enjeti (5:24)

I thought it would be roughly even, but it was overwhelmingly apparent. Philly crowd. The thing that I liked about it is it made the commanders in retrospect look better because even though that was also a romp by the Eagles, at least they put up somewhat of a fight. Yeah, that's right. This was just unreal. So, yeah. So congratulations to the Eagles and all the Eagles fans out there. Congratulations to you and your family.

Krystal Ball (5:45)

Yes, thank you very much. Do not, don't burn down the city. You know, let's just stay off the polls and all that. I know that last night it was supposed to be the crazy one, but even during the parade they've been known for their shenanigans. But you can't hold them back. It is a crazy. I encourage people if you have the chance to try and go to one of those Eagles game because it's an experience. That's what I had at least at the NFC championship. Anyways, let's get to the news.

Sagar Enjeti (6:09)

Indeed. Okay, so we had a few preliminary court orders go against Doge in particular with regard to their access. They're trying to shut down USAID and the one that is catching a lot of attention with regard to their access at Treasury. President Trump yesterday was asked in the pre super bowl interview about this court decision and whether it was going to quote slow him down or slow Elon down in terms of what they're trying to do. Let's take a listen to how he responded.

Krystal Ball (6:37)

Irreparable harm. What do you make of that? And does that slow you down on what you want to do?

Sagar Enjeti (6:42)

No, I disagree with it 100%.

Krystal Ball (6:43)

I think it's crazy.

Sagar Enjeti (6:44)

And we have to solve the efficiency problem. We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone.

Krystal Ball (6:51)

In in the government.

Sagar Enjeti (6:52)

You take a look at the usaid.

Krystal Ball (6:55)

The kind of fraud in there, and you found significant things.

Sagar Enjeti (6:58)

Well, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that's going to.

Krystal Ball (7:01)

Places where it shouldn't be going, where if I read a list, you'd say this is ridiculous.

Sagar Enjeti (7:05)

And you've read the same lists and.

Krystal Ball (7:07)

There are many that you haven't even seen. It's crazy.

Sagar Enjeti (7:09)

So let's go ahead and put the details up on the screen of this temporary restraining order that was issued by one federal judge. Now my understanding is there's supposed to be a more complete hearing on this this Friday. Also update this morning that the that Trump and his team have also filed to block even this temporary restraining order. So we can get to some more of the details on that in a moment. But this was the initial temporary restraining order. A federal judge on Saturday issued a sweeping block on most Trump administration officials, including Elon Musk and his allies, from accessing sensitive treasury records for at least a week while legal proceedings play out in New York. Manhattan based U.S. district Judge Paul Engelmeier issued the middle of the night order after an Emergency request by 19 Democratic attorneys general warning that the efforts by Musk's so called Department of Government efficiency allies to take control of treasury sensitive payment system which have access to personal information millions of Americans and the government's financial transactions were putting their residents at risk. Engelmeier said he agreed with the state's assessment that the abrupt changes in policy implemented by the Trump administration had created a risk sensitive data would be disclosed or that the system could be hacked. He also said the states were very likely to show the new arrangement was legally improper. Though Engelmeier issued the emergency order, the case will ultimately handled by a US District Judge, Jeanette Vargas, a Joe Biden appointee who was confirmed to the bench last year. So that is the state of play. This order not only blocked the DOGE people from access to this very sensitive treasury payment system that controls all six plus trillion dollars of federal spending by and large also said that any data that had been pulled from that needed to be deleted. So you know, pretty sweeping order Here temporarily issued. And as I just mentioned, Sagar, the Trump administration trying to fight back even against this temporary order while this is further litigated.

Krystal Ball (9:02)

Yeah, we've got the order as of this morning that I was just taking a look at. They're basically asking for a vacate of the order and or a temporary stay. I mean it is actually a pretty extraordinary order whenever you look at it even no matter how you feel. I've been trying to wrap my head around this. We'll get to the discourse in a bit about whether to ignore federal judges in the first place. But I mean, it does seem a little bit absurd that the Cabinet Secretary who was confirmed by the United States Senate at the behest of the executive is not allowed to access Department of Treasury data. Put doge aside because Scott Besant is included in the order. Additionally, as I understand it previously it was actually government contractors according to the Trump administration's motion to vacate and or stay that was filed yesterday that traditionally has the access to the IT data and the Treasury Departments. So anyway, so I was like, well, you know, is it really more secure or whatever in the hands of Booz Allen Hamilton or whomever federal contractor is holding this? But the Besant thing is actually where I thought that the order was really off the mark. I mean, how can you block the United States Treasury Secretary confirmed by the United States Senate from access to Treasury Department data? That just makes no sense.

Sagar Enjeti (10:16)

I read the order differently. I read it to be anyone from who's not in the Treasury Treasury Department, which would not include Scott Bessant. And perhaps the language is unclear. It says political appointees, special government employees and any government employee detail deal detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, access to Treasury Department payment systems. But that is something that, you know, Republicans are really seizing on that, you know, this ambiguity means that it could even apply to Scott Bessant. Again, it's a temporary restraining order. It's meant to apply just for this week. But this is being used to really launch an all out assault on of federal judges constraining the executive at all. And so the I think really big question this morning is whether or not the Trump administration is going to comply with this court order or other court orders. And just before we get to some of the things that cause us to raise that question at this point, there was also an order that went against their attempt to shut down usaid. Can put that one up on the screen here as well just to get the details there too. Judge blocks Trump from putting thousands of USAID employees on leave. The decision comes amid the first legal challenge against the push by Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's new Department of Government Efficiency targeting US Foreign aid programs. This is going to be another really significant battle. USAID is kind of the test case for the Trump administration. Some of these cases, they want to go up to the Supreme Court to challenge the Impoundment Control act that says, you know, if Congress appropriates money for a program, you are then obligated. The executive doesn't get to pick and choose which things because Congress has the power of the purse. We know that part of Project 2025 was, you know, an intentional fight over exactly this issue. Now, one thing, you know, in talking to Emily that she raised is that Even the Project 2025 people, you know, they're very. They are very careful in their planning of how they want to execute this and which cases specifically they think are the strongest cases to ultimately litigate. This question at the Supreme Court, and what Elon has done has really sort of thrown a wrench into those carefully laid plans because he has been so aggressive and over the top with his illegality. I mean, usaid, whether you like the agency or not, authorized by Congress, pretty, you know, as an independent agency, pretty clear that this will be a violation of federal law. But in any case, this is going to be one of the big fights, because if they can win on USAID and basically say, yeah, we can get rid of any agency that we want, then it's open season on Department of Education, obviously, already. See, there's also a fight right now over the CFPB that we'll talk about in a little bit. They're taking the same approach there as well. Any agency that they don't like, whatever Congress thought of it, and whether they authorized the funding or not, they would then be able to just strip it, lay off the employees, and, you know, run rampant in destruction throughout the federal government.

Krystal Ball (13:20)

That is a very good point that Emily made. And it's actually, this is the key to kind of gets to the difference between the Silicon Valley, like, move fast and break things ideology, which is one that really goes back to, like, some of the founding lore there, as opposed to, you know, when you're dealing with government, when you're dealing with courts, especially with courts, you want very carefully planned legal challenges. It could come back to bite them. At the same time, I have to separate it out. So there's the legal case, but there's also the political. And this is one where, I mean, I said this before When I was able to speak with you about usaid, I still think it's a very smart strategy to start with USAID, because nobody cares about USAID. It's 0.7% of the federal budget. It's pretty unpopular broadly, foreign aid programs. I mean, trying to explain this to a normal person is basically like a process argument, like, well, Congress. And they're like, what? What are you talking about? And this is one of those where I'm really curious about the manifestation of quote, unquote, resistance and what it gets to. And so I was reading, while I was gone, Matt had a really good story where he was talking about a very interesting piece of polling data which said that people who are heavy news consumers overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris. And what I took away from that is that the more capital I informed you are, the more like outraged. And not only outraged, but paying attention. You might understand the gravity of process and the potential for that. But the average everyday voter is far more concerned about the super bowl commercials last night. They don't care about usaid. Not only don't even know what USAID is, don't care about process, they really just care about results. And this is gonna get to some of the polling data that we have in a little bit. And I think it accounts for why Trump's approval rating is so high. It also goes to why the Trump administration feels very comfortable. I mean, same thing with the cfpb. You may feel when the CFPB is gone, if you're getting scammed, but you have 99% of Americans have no idea what the CFPB is. So, yes, a lot is being set up here. There is potential for major flashpoints in the future that actually affects, if we're talking about Medicare, they got access to the Medicare payment system, Social Security, things like that. But as of right now, I'd say they're standing on pretty strong political ground. That's just my overall assessment from what I could see.

Sagar Enjeti (15:29)

I mean, maybe, I guess for me, I don't really particularly care that much about the approval rating. I just think that this is unconstitutional attack by one billionaire who happens to be the richest man on the planet, who has conflicts with all of these agencies. You know, if you look at the things that he's doing, it's also really clear the way so many of these actions are just blatant self dealing, right with usaid. Is this the reason he went after them first? I don't know. But they were investigating the use of Starlink satellites in Ukraine. CFPB we're gonna talk about later. You know, he didn't want them regulating X as X just signed a deal with Visa that didn't want them regulating him. And they were about to start that all of these fintech companies, payment apps, all of this sort of stuff fell under the CFPB purview. And so they want that gone. So that's gone. Trump signed an executive order to take out a specific commission, a specific office within the Department of Labor that lo and behold happened to also be investigating. Elon Musk over employment, alleged employment discrimination. The National Labor Relations Board, which has now been gutted and literally can't do its job and is no longer defending itself in court. Elon despises unions like long time, very open about that. He's a union buster, he's a strike buster and he is actually suing in court to render that whole body unconstitutional. And they are no longer even defending themselves in court. This is Ashley Kinetic from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast.

Krystal Ball (17:04)

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Sagar Enjeti (18:28)

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Sagar Enjeti (19:02)

Think this transitions into the next piece of this, which is there is also something we've talked about here before, an ideological plan outside of Project 2025 that is more revolutionary, let's say. And Elon describes this as a revolution, the ideological blueprint really laid out by Curtis Yarvin. And part of the idea there is you fire all the government employees and when the courts try to stop you. And this is words that came out almost verbatim from J.D. vance's when he was doing the podcast circuit before he was elected vice president. When the courts try to stop you, you just keep going. You just ignore them. You say, enforce it with your army. Good luck. And there seems to be a lot of buildup right now in that direction of making the case for why they should just ignore every court ruling that goes against them. So JD Vance himself, we can put this up on the screen. This is probably the most significant of the Twitter discourse about whether or not these rulings should just be ignored. He says if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Okay, the whole point of checks and balances is that the court system is supposed to be a check on when the executive tries to seize power for itself that is not, in fact, legitimate. So in J.D. vance's conception here, the executive gets to decide for itself what power grabs are legal, constitutional, and what are not. That is pretty obviously the polar opposite of the way that the system has been set up and has been used in the past. Even his examples here are kind of off because obviously if a general commits war crimes, there can be a role for a judge there. Prosecutorial misconduct can also be litigated through the court system. But this seems to be making the case a case that he made previously, as I mentioned before, that if the judges and the courts strike against, you know, issue orders that go against what they want to do here, they should just ignore them and keep going.

Krystal Ball (21:19)

Yeah, but right now, look, as far as we are right now, they filed a temporary or filed an injunction or whatever vacation for that. So that's not the ground that we're standing on. I think what they're, I mean, look, I don't love the tone of the tweet. Can I say that? I think what they're getting to is really about what I mentioned earlier about the Scott Besant genuine, legitimate authority here over the purview of the government. And that is like kind of the big brain question about how much of this is legitimate. So for how all of us, however much we may hate Doge or any of this special government employees, czars and others do get access to federal government data, like they have the ability to compel action. Now, now the question here for the courts, for Congress and all of that is how much of this falls into the purview, even in the legal authority of the executive. I think it's a genuinely legitimate question. But I mean, it also is one where if you have to big brain. And I've been trying to think about how did we get here? How exactly what it is and I think what has happened within MAGA and really why they have arrived at this position is if you consider the last four years, and I'm speaking purely from an analytical perspective of the way they see it, they're like, look, the court system, the legal system was used to convict Donald Trump, to come after him for the FBI. They threw everything that they could at him. Clearly the Democrats are the ones who broke the judicial filibuster. They're the ones who pushed the bounds. And I mean, look, there is also genuine examples many times over the Biden administration where Democrats flogged, hated the federal judges and attacked legitimacy of the court. So it is a bipartisan problem. No, like when the Supreme Court strikes down the, what was it, student debt and prior to that, you know, they freaked out. Or how about the eviction moratorium?

Sagar Enjeti (23:03)

But they complied.

Krystal Ball (23:04)

Well, sure, but I mean, so far they've complied. But they've complied here as well. Right? They've filed an injunction. You're talking big. That's exactly what people have done in the past.

Sagar Enjeti (23:12)

Do you feel confident that they're going to comply?

Krystal Ball (23:14)

I feel relatively confident they will comply. Just because that will be such a quote unquote norm breaker that it's one of those where you don't really come back from that. Now, when I say relatively confident, I'M giving you like 60, 65%. Also, what do we have? We have novel legal authorities that people use all the time for how they govern themselves within the executive. It is a genuine question of how the Supreme Court will even rule on this. So would you really wanna just not comply and rather just take it to the court? If I had to get. I bet SCOTUS would rule inside of the Trump administration here. Especially with respect to doge. I don't know about USAID or others. There's also the same thing. I mean, USAID has not, quote, unquote, been shut down. Right. It's just that the agents or the building doesn't function, the agency doesn't come to work anymore. There's genuinely different authorities. I was going back and reading about the way that Bill Clinton similarly went through the process of shedding a bunch of government employees transferring to contractors. There are same big questions here that were happening in the 1990s after the budget reform, which led to the explosion of federal contractors. So they have more legal ground than I think people think whether they would come all the way to scotus. The question I think really comes down to this. Would they defy a ruling from the Supreme Court? I just don't think so. Because it would very much open the grounds to a lot of the previous left talking points, right, about stacking the Supreme Court. Cause if you're just gonna do that, then that means that this thing has no legitimate authority, which is something that J.D. trump and others have staked so much of their legacy in terms of the federal judiciary. So overall, do I think they're not gonna comply? No. I could be totally wrong. I'm very open to it. But I think the big talk that comes from maga, from around all of this is a feeling of total and complete political vindication over the legal system. Over. I mean, just think about the amount that has happened to Donald Trump over the last four years. How many times not only counted out, but being told like, oh, this is it for him, 90, what was it, 90 something felony charges, et cetera, and still not only be able to win the election, but to pray, to triumph in the courts, to be able to push these things off and still take power with the popular vote. So that's just broadly how I think we got to where we are. And JD Also, you have to understand his role, right, is probably the attack dog of the administration. Now. Trump himself was more circumspect, I would say, in that clip. What did he say? He was just like, yeah, I don't agree with it, but that's not. I'm not going to say I'm going to openly defy it.

Sagar Enjeti (25:43)

Right. He was not clear. Brad Barra said, will this slow you down? And he said, no. So was not clear.

Krystal Ball (25:50)

Well, it's not clear.

Sagar Enjeti (25:51)

Let me ask you, Sagar, because, I mean, I'm looking at this and zooming out. It seems pretty clear they're following the Curtis Yarvin playbook, aspects of it. Yeah, Butterfly Revolution is what it's called. I know this stuff sounds crazy, but that playbook. JD's very influenced by him. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, all these people very influenced by him. And this is from. It's a newsletter called the Nerd Reich. And here's the play. Number one, install a CEO dictator. Okay, That's Elon Musk, very clear. His claimed control of the federal government is running rampant through it, cutting agencies that he doesn't like. Destroying the cfpb, destroying the Department of Education, destroying. Going after the Department of Labor that's been blocked at this point, destroying the usaid. Okay, so we see the parallel there. Number two, purge the bureaucracy. Yarvin's plan called for retire all government employees.

Krystal Ball (26:47)

Rage.

Sagar Enjeti (26:48)

Rage.

Krystal Ball (26:49)

Yeah.

Sagar Enjeti (26:50)

That's what Doge is doing. That's what they are systematically doing. Trying to push people out through this probably also illegal buyout offer gutting teams, furloughing them, laying them off, et cetera. Build a loyalist army. So Yarvin says, recruit an ideologically trained army to replace experts and enforce the new regime. We see that through Project 2020. We also see it through the Doge apparatchiks that are running through these various agencies. Not to mention, then you also have the ideological sort of followers that Musk has himself cultivated and his own power base that he's cultivated through X. Number four, dismantle democratic institutions. Yarvin's blueprint, strip power from federal agencies. We already see that courts and Congress, the Congress part, is seizing control of the treasury payments, saying, we get to decide Congress. We don't really care what you have to say. We get to decide what spending goes out and what doesn't. You no longer have control. I mean, they really are making. Trying to make Congress thoroughly irrelevant. And obviously Musk has undermined the credibility of the federal government, downplayed legal oversight, defied regulatory authorities. And this is where part of the question comes in. Yarvin's blueprint specifically calls for defying the courts, something J.D. vance has said they should do. Something that he and Elon Musk And a bunch of others are now floating on Twitter. Do they go through with that? Plan number five sees media and information control to maintain power. Yarvin says, take over government, journalism, academia, social media to control public narratives. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Obviously, the FCC has been going after various news agencies, so has Trump in terms of filing lawsuits and sort of demanding these bribes for him to leave them alone and go away. And so that. That seems like they're very much following the blueprint. And part of that blueprint is when the courts try to block you, you say, I don't care. It's also, even if you don't buy that this is what they're following, which I think at this point, it's, to me pretty undeniable, given how closely it matches all of the steps. We also know how Elon operates in the private sector. He brazenly flouts the law, and so does basically every other CEO in the country, by the way, whenever it suits him. Because he knows that if you are an elite, you can basically get away with it. And Trump knows this, too. I mean, Trump committed all sorts of crimes, and he's President of the United States. So he also knows that you can basically get away with it. Elon also knows he has impunity because if he does run afoul of law, Trump can just pardon him. So no big deal. So they don't really care what the courts say. Some of these things, you know, maybe whether Scott Besant can be denied charge or action or whatever, are borderline. Some of them are really not. Like, even if we just take the example of firing all of the inspectors, not all, but the vast majority of the inspectors general, there is a law that says you have to give 30 days notice and there has to be cause they just didn't do it. It just, you know, usaid, again, separate, independently established agency by Congress. It has to take an act of Congress to get rid of this agency. And they're like, no, we're just gonna get rid of it. We'll take some pieces of it, maybe put it under marker review at the State Department, but we're just done with it. Department of Education, same thing. Cfpb, same thing. And so, you know, I don't know what gives you confidence that they're going to be like, but we'll follow the letter of whatever the court ultimately.

Krystal Ball (30:18)

I didn't say. I didn't say that. But what I do. I think the problem with Curtis explaining is, look, I've and read Curtis Yarvin for many, many years. And I think that his influence is both obvious but also vastly overstated. And by his own admission, he did not predict many of the results that happened here. He actually ridiculed at certain points people like Christopher Ruffo and others who thought it was legitimate and operable to change the system as it is happening right now. He's admitted his defeat after Trump's first two weeks and he said that he was wrong. But taking back that playbook, if you think about what that playbook is, it is an attempt to establish one party rules. That's what FDR and the New Deal did.

Sagar Enjeti (30:57)

He wants, I mean again, he wants a monarchy. He wants Elon Musk as a CEO dictator and Trump as chair of the board. I actually think that's the playbook that is the plan.

Krystal Ball (31:08)

This is the important thing to understand. That is every single thing you just laid out is effectively what FDR did in the early 1930s.

Sagar Enjeti (31:14)

That's so not true.

Krystal Ball (31:14)

No, it is. There was a guy named.

Sagar Enjeti (31:16)

That is remotely true.

Krystal Ball (31:17)

Look, give me the attempt to explain here. We had people like Tommy Cochran and Tommy the Cork and Harry Hopkins and others who were very similar. No non elected special appointed bureaucrats who created all sorts of throw it at the wall programs, who moved earth and mountains or whatever passed through Congress. No, but not many of them actually weren't. And actually they would separately appropriate and move bureaucrats around. They had a strike team very similar to Doge. But step back and further think about the things that you're talking about there, about institutions, about taking over media and others. A friend of mine, Julius Krine, has said before that America always has one party rul. It's just that the opposition party becomes one that is effectively subservient. So for example, in the New Deal era, there was an attempt by people like Robert Taft, Robert Taft and others, isolationist Republicans who are anti New Deal and others that fought against FDR and Harry S. Truman for 20 years. And they eventually lost. They lost when Dwight. Dwight Eisenhower became the President of the United States. And when he did, he effectively codified the New Deal, Social Security, the expansion of government and accepted this new role. What Curtis has always looked back on fondly, I guess, is the establishment of FDR as a quasi monarch of the United States. And he was by all accounts, and not only in terms of his terms, his total in command of the government. He attempted to pack the Supreme Court. He very often, many presidents, Lincoln and others, right, have ignored the Supreme Court, have decided, you know, in extraordinary moments to say that we're going to move in a different direction. And even if you look back on Lincoln, right, it's not exactly like the habeas corpus thing is so tarnishing his legacy. What Curtis understands here was effectively saying if you want regime change, you have to change the whole regime. Now, the regime of the United States has been neoliberal and effectively culturally left wing now for basically 20 years especially. Yeah, I would say over 20 years, especially PEPFAR and onwards from the establishment of the Obama dynasty, et cetera, neoliberal worshipment with the worshiping of technocratic neoliberalism on top of the explosion, basically, and move of the cultural left inside and marching through all institutions. Right. And so what Curtis is advocating for is to say, no, this is the only attempt to roll back the institutional takeover of cultural liberalism of all aspects of American life. Now, even he has said he thinks that's a nearly impossible project. And also, once something has been affected, it's very difficult to roll it back because the Democrats could just win and they could bring this forward. My point only is that if you look at it through this lens of an attack, not necessarily on executive power, but as trying to roll back all of this complete step change in American culture and life, all of the Trump orders will make a lot more sense here.

Sagar Enjeti (34:07)

Sager is quote from Curtis Yarfish. If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia.

Krystal Ball (34:15)

Yeah, I.

Sagar Enjeti (34:16)

He wants monarchy.

Krystal Ball (34:18)

I know what he thinks.

Sagar Enjeti (34:18)

He wants a CEO dictator. I'm not. But hold on, Sagar, I'm arguing against Curtis. Okay, no, but my question for you is, are you good with that?

Krystal Ball (34:29)

Well, it depends what he means by that.

Sagar Enjeti (34:32)

Are you good?

Krystal Ball (34:33)

Am I fine with fdr? Yes.

Sagar Enjeti (34:34)

A dictator.

Krystal Ball (34:35)

Yeah.

Sagar Enjeti (34:36)

FDR passed his programs through Congress. Let me read you the list.

Krystal Ball (34:40)

Yes, I know what they are. I know about the 100 days. I'm very aware.

Sagar Enjeti (34:43)

Emergency Banking Act, Glass Steagall Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, Civil Civilian Conservation Corps. And by the way, some of these things were struck down by the Supreme Court. And guess what he abided by that. Social Security Act, Wagner Act, Works Progress Administration, Fair Labor Standards Act. These were passed through Congress, not from some dictator king who just seized control of the federal government. He had a super majority, so he had a. Because through elected representatives, through this thing we call democracy. So yes, he had a lot of power because he had a much larger mandate, massively larger than what Donald Trump has. But I mean, I guess that's just my question for you. Is like, are you, as you're trying to explain, like the thinking and the. Well, they're mad at the Democrats for this and they don't like the cultural institutions for that. Are you comfortable with the remedy being a CEO dictator king, usurping the power of Congress and the court? Am I comfortable and remaking the country however they want to remake it under Elon?

Krystal Ball (35:45)

Absolutely not. But if you, if you're asking me in an FDR context of like, am I cool with FDR? Yeah, absolutely. If it was, if it's, is it 19, if it's 1936. Yes, no question.

Sagar Enjeti (35:55)

I'm asking you about this, this situation right now. Well, 2025. Are you comfortable with Elon Musk as the CEO dictator of the country with Donald Trump as chairman of the board?

Krystal Ball (36:07)

No, I'm not.

Sagar Enjeti (36:08)

And do you think that that is, in fact, the plan that they're trying to effectively. Whether they're going to, whether they are successful or not is an open question. Do you think that is the plan?

Krystal Ball (36:20)

No, I don't. I think that's Elon's plan. I do not think that's Trump's plan. I definitely don't think that's JD's plan. And I think this is the fundamental tension of the Trump administration. And this actually gets to the bigger problem, which is the fact that Elon himself is not aligned totally with, and I think you're doing your own monologue about this specifically, which is Elon has very, very different interests and at the end of the day is actually a separate power force in a way that the people I mentioned, Harry Hopkins and Tommy Lecourt, were employees and were basically subservient to fdr. So I think that the fundamental tension here is that you really have the, quote, unquote, CEO person who's trying to enact rage and all of this, who has a very different ideological agenda than many of the voters in the Trump administration. I think that's actually why I'm not, quote, unquote, comfortable with it. I think that the prop and what I'm trying.

Sagar Enjeti (37:09)

But if there was a different CEO dictator, you would be comfortable with it?

Krystal Ball (37:12)

Yes. Yes. Because, listen, there are many things you're.

Sagar Enjeti (37:14)

In favor of, like a monarchy in the United States.

Krystal Ball (37:16)

I am in favor. If you were to call FDR a monarch, then, yes, I'm in favor.

Sagar Enjeti (37:19)

No, this is not what FTR did. I'm talking about today in the here and now, what they are trying to accomplish. If you had instead of Elon Musk in the role, JD Vance in the role as CEO, dictator of the country with Donald Trump, the chairman of the board, you'd be cool with that of saying, like, we're done with democracy, we're having a king. That's where we are.

Krystal Ball (37:37)

Is that the use of the terms? The use of the terms in the American context is the closest we ever got was fdr. So if we were FDR style. Yes, absolutely. Now, would I be comfortable with that?

Sagar Enjeti (37:48)

This is not what they're doing.

Krystal Ball (37:50)

I'm trying to explain.

Sagar Enjeti (37:51)

FDR went through Congress. They are trying to complete.

Krystal Ball (37:54)

Like you're taking this too literally and not seriously.

Sagar Enjeti (37:56)

Usurped the role of Congress.

Krystal Ball (37:58)

They're taking this too literally and not serious.

Sagar Enjeti (38:00)

At that time, that's watching what they're doing.

Krystal Ball (38:01)

Because at that time there were no government agencies that existed. And so the way to enact like crazy change was to create new agencies. Right. Whenever you are doing a revolt against institutions, what do you do? You take over those institutions and you try to dismantle them. In fact, this is probably more analogous to the Bolshevik revolution in taking over all of the institutions, burning them down from the czarist illegitimate regime. I think we would agree. Right. And basically trying to enact a new form and a new paradigm shift. Now, none of this is one to one because obviously things rhyme. What I'm saying in the context of where we are right now, if it is aligned, and part of the reason why I don't feel so alarmed, like you said, is I don't believe what you do. I don't think they're going to defy a Supreme Court order if they do. Listen, five alarm fire.

Sagar Enjeti (38:46)

You do accept that at least. Elon is trying to effectuate this butterfly revolution which calls. Which he's gone step by step and which does call for ignoring and defying the courts, something he has done in the past, by the way. I don't think something JD Vance has explicitly called for multiple times, something. They are on Twitter basically fomenting popular consent for going and just ignoring any federal court, court order that goes against them like that. That is what they're doing right now. This is Ashley Kineti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast.

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Try 15 for 15% off. Life changing period underwear. That's kn Ix.com again. Whenever they actually defy Supreme Court order, then I'll say something. But at the current time I don't think that that's happening. I think we've disputed that JD quote before as we did on our last look it up. I did. We talked about it last time.

Sagar Enjeti (42:05)

Show me because I he specifically there's.

Krystal Ball (42:07)

A whole reason article about this. No, I mean look, if we want to do it, we can. I read it last time. How has J.D. vance raised the specter of open disregard for court rulings. It's right here. I will send it to our group chat so that we can all discuss it and we can look over the transcript. We can even put it on. He said this as a torture poll as he said. So I think what you can do in the Senate is push the legal boundaries as far as the Supreme Court will let you take it to basically make it possible for democratically accountable people in the executive and the legislature to fire mid level up to high level civil fervents like that to me is the meat of the administrative state. 2021 podcast appearance, which I believe is.

Sagar Enjeti (42:42)

The same one 2021 fire every single mid level, every single servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. That's what they're doing the chief and he further suggested that if the courts intervene, Trump should respond by saying the Chief justice has made his ruling now let him enforce it. Very much implying and he's also saying the same shit on Twitter right now.

Krystal Ball (43:03)

Here's what the reason fact check said. I think if you consider the full podcast, Vance is not actually calling for the defiance of the Supreme Court. The Andrew Jackson line is almost cliche at this point. It is apocryphal anyway. Jackson almost certainly didn't say it. Now again, parsing in all of this is almost foolish because let's see what they actually do when they're in power. And let's get back to the meat of what we're talking about is if you think about the 2025 Trump administration, what is the actual goal? As I've been trying to say, it's about dismantling technocratic neoliberalism and turning back the tide of all institutions in America. That is both how they see it, I think to a certain point. That is what the American people voted for. Now when we put those two things together, it makes sense about how the whole coalition has come together. And I spent a lot of time trying to think about this through line because it can seem really inconsistent to have liberals like RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard and Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk and Trump and JD People completely across the ideological spectrum. If you put all of those people together, what unites them? It is being oppositional to the quote, unquote technocratic neolib point of view in almost every way. So with Elon, you think about him as the most unconventional CEO basically of all time, built two companies in spaces that were never supposed to work, both in SpaceX and in cars define the conventional wisdom for Crypto. It's about attacking. This is why they do the cfpb. It's about attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take on the legitimate financial system. Now you may think that's bad, but that's the impetus for RFK Jr. It's about what? It's about the establishment of healthcare, vaccines, all of that. Anything that thought for Tulsi Gabbard. This is somebody who literally whose entire career has basically been trying to be against the security state and others. Now they're all have been compromised in many, many different ways. But the through line of those things is against these institutions which are both governmental, non governmental, academic and others.

Sagar Enjeti (45:03)

That's fine, go to Congress. You don't get to just run rampant and cut out the pieces you don't like because that's illegal. It is a crime spree. Now RFK Jr. I think is a disgusting human being who puts us in danger. And I think it's a horror that he is being confirmed to run hhs. It was done through legal, multiple channels. He was part of the. I think he is a big part of the reason Donald Trump got elected. He has now been confirmed. The Senate is majority Republican. They're gonna by and large get what they were. Same thing with Tulsi Ghost, same thing with all of these people. Right? I don't like it, but I'm not saying it's illegitimate or it's a constitutional crisis. When you just go into the treasury payment system and are like I'm gonna cut off the pieces. I don't like me one person, Elon Musk, who I mean whether it was Donald Trump, even if he was as the legitimate elected president, was the one doing the picking and choosing, that would still be brazenly illegal, unconstitutional assault on the way our entire government is set up. So these things are very distinct. And the piece of this too, that I don't know where you get your confidence from, is Trump has done everything Elon has wanted him to do. I mean Trump is out there issuing executive orders about South African like Boer resettlement, which they don't even want, apparently they don't even want cuz they claim they're indigenous, which don't even get me started down that particular rabbit hole. But this is clearly coming directly from Elon Musk. As I mentioned before, the executive order to ban to dismantle this one particular part of the Department of Labor, which just so happens to be investigating Elon Musk. And Tesla, you have the Secretary of the Air Force that Trump has now put into place Just so happens to be the guy who greased the skids for Elon Musk. SpaceX to get massive, massive contracts, effectively rigged the contracting process to make sure that SpaceX would win. Oh, no, he's got him as the Air Force Secretary. Okay. Trump has completely changed his views on crypto and is now totally pro crypto. Got his own shit coin. I got a lot of questions, too, about who the whales are that are involved there, because it's also very possible a deal was made of basically, like, we will make you wealthy on the level that we are, and you're gonna stay out of jail. Elon's gonna help you win, and we're gonna get to do what we want to do. We're gonna run the government the way we see fit. You know, all of these, like, agency hands that people are so excited. RFK and Tulsi and whatever. People I think are terrible people, but whatever. They're, like I said, legitimate. These people are irrelevant now. Like, they don't matter. What matters is what Elon decides. Whether you, you know, whether your agency is gonna stay or go, how much budget you're gonna have, how many. You know, how much enforcement you're gonna have, whether your agency happened to tick him off and try to regulate him, like, from his perspective, from Elon's perspective. And I do think Elon is running the show at this point. There is no sign that Trump has resisted him on anything. H1B is another example where Trump completely changed his orientation to be like, yes, I want you to have your indentured servant workforce to whatever extent you possibly do. The reason, Elon, I think, and I think you might agree with this part, Elon has cast himself in the role as the hero and savior of humanity. He truly believes he is the most brilliant person on the planet. That he alone can rescue us from whatever ails us, whatever ails the country, whatever ails the world. You know, he has these fantasies about colonizing Mars and whatever. And so he has almost this sort of the, like, effective altruist mindset of, like. Since I've decided these are the existential threats to humanity, me alone, I've decided it justifies anything to get to those ends. Right? It's the definition of the end. Ends justify the means. So if kids with AIDS in Africa have to die, or if the Democratic Republic of America has to come to an end and laws have to be broken, I mean, that's the least of it. He doesn't care. Anything justifies the ends that he has decided on as himself. Again, cast in this role as hero and savior of the universe. And so that to me very systematically is what he is pushing towards and what is playing out. And no, I don't see any resistance from Trump. And I see J.D. vance very much echoing and trying to bolster the arguments that Elon is making in this.

Krystal Ball (50:06)

I don't think that you're wrong on a lot of the track that you just laid out. The question is again, where it arrived in terms of genuine impact. So you could look at it the way you just did. And I think it's totally legitimate. I think that's the way a lot of people who are reading the news, who are elite Democrats and others who are feeling about this, cuz they can understand the stakes, the process, et cetera. The problem that I think is that look, if we're actually talking about payments at the Treasury Department, they didn't cut off a single payment, right?

Sagar Enjeti (50:34)

They tried to.

Krystal Ball (50:34)

Well, I mean, I think we would know at this point, wouldn't we?

Sagar Enjeti (50:37)

How do you know?

Krystal Ball (50:38)

I mean I'm fairly certain we would know.

Sagar Enjeti (50:40)

There's also reporting that they were changing codes. Code in the back end to facilitate.

Krystal Ball (50:46)

Well, to identify.

Sagar Enjeti (50:47)

Yes, to facilitate the ability to cut off payments and also reportedly to make it more difficult to track.

Krystal Ball (50:54)

But I think that's a pretty distinct difference than actual. That's a very distinct difference in my opinion, than actually cutting it off. Again. Usaid, USAID workers are not coming to work. The budget's still appropriated as far as I understand it, the payments and all of that, at least some have gone through.

Sagar Enjeti (51:12)

Payments are not going through.

Krystal Ball (51:13)

No, no, no. They haven't gone through to certain programs which they say that they don't agree with. But not all quote, payments have been shut down.

Sagar Enjeti (51:18)

Pretty much all payments, including pepfar, which was specifically supposed to be exempted. But if you only have, you know, 100, 200 workers at USAID, nothing is going on.

Krystal Ball (51:28)

Well, that's a different process. Right.

Sagar Enjeti (51:28)

Nothing's going out.

Krystal Ball (51:29)

But. And it actually still gets to the end result here, which is that is quote, unquote, is the Department of Education. If it gets shut down, but all funds continue to go to the state, is that a bad outcome that most people will feel? I don't think so. I have deep skepticism as to whether people will care at all whether some Department of Education bureaucrat has a job if their state funding still continues to come through.

Sagar Enjeti (51:51)

But how is the state funding gonna come through if there are no employees to issue? Its not the way. That's not the Ways work, no employee.

Krystal Ball (51:57)

How many do you need? I mean, and this is the genuine question that gets to kind of the way that Elon has run Twitter. I'm not even disagreeing that Elon doesn't have a completely separate, separate agenda. I don't know for sure whether. And this, whether your analysis of whether Trump has completely deferred to him is entirely correct, because he still is playing small ball in a certain way. And this is part of why, again, I wanna step back. And if you look at the way that Doge was originally sold, and actually if you look at Vivek Ramaswamy's decision not to join Doge, you can maybe give him some political credit because what's the thing he identified which was the wor. The bad way that he was taking. The bad way that he was going down this road. The way that he was going down the road, according to Vivek, is that he believed that the way that they were going down was from this technical approach as opposed to a legalistic and more Project 2025 attempt to dismantle the government, one which was like a carefully laid plan. He specifically appears to have dissented from Elon whenever it came to this approach of this. Well, I mean, you could call it that. I'm sure, I'm sure. I know that that's what many people would like to believe. I think it's a bit of a fanciful term here currently, but that's fine. We can all use the rhetoric that we decide. But my point that it comes back to is we're talking about 0.7% of the federal budget. Even we look at the Department of Education, these are rounding errors. They told us they were gonna cut, what was it, $5 trillion from the federal budget. I believe Elon has now revised his federal spending too. If we can cut 5 to 10%, which is already, by the way, a massive, massive retraction from where he originally was. Much of this is almost an attempt, like at the political level, to initiate what I think is the response that they're getting from the Democrats, but at a fundamental level is not really altering the entire United States federal government. Like nobody in the country is feeling except the people who work here in D.C. and that's where all the protests are hilariously, is because it's the bureaucrats, the employees that work for these agencies cares about usaid. Nobody cares about a mid level Department of Education person. It gets back to my point here about the dismantling of these institutions, of these make work programs of these NGOs and others. If you want to attack the center of gravity of what liberalism is. Liberalism is about the worship of elites and institutions at fundamental. At an operational level. Level. That is what the Elon, Curtis, Yarvin and Trump attack really brings its full circle.

Sagar Enjeti (54:29)

It's about having a dictator.

Krystal Ball (54:30)

You're right.

Sagar Enjeti (54:31)

I mean, that's. Yeah. It's attack on the institutions, dismantling them and installing Elon as a CEO dictator.

Krystal Ball (54:37)

Well, I think that. Again, I think that's Elon's plan. I think that is Elon's plan.

Sagar Enjeti (54:41)

And he's effectuating it.

Krystal Ball (54:42)

Yes.

Sagar Enjeti (54:42)

Like he's putting it into place. So, I mean, you're right about, you know, is he gonna. The amount of. The point is not. In spite of what Elon says. The point is not of government efficiency. The point is not shrinking the federal budget and deficit, blah, blah, blah. The point is consolidation of power in the hands of Elon Musk. That's the point. You're right. Yes.

Krystal Ball (55:07)

Yeah.

Sagar Enjeti (55:07)

And Elon has been given carte blanche. Yeah. It's still holding.

Krystal Ball (55:10)

Backed up by 20 days.

Sagar Enjeti (55:12)

The Trump administration by Trump and J.D. vance. So. And also, you know, it's not true, by the way, that just the protests are only in D.C. there have been protests elsewhere, but also senators say they're getting 1600 calls a minute right now, freaked out about what's going on. That is as opposed to the typical 40 calls per minute. So it's not, you know, to say, oh, it's only federal government employees that care about this. That's just factually not true.

Krystal Ball (55:38)

Okay. But it gets my neurotic liberal point about people who are obsessed with the. Who are the ones who are the most freaked out.

Sagar Enjeti (55:43)

Okay. But, yeah, people should be paying attention. That's not a bad thing for people to be paying attention to the news. We base our whole business on people paying attention to the news.

Krystal Ball (55:51)

Okay, I'm happy to have you all here, but as I have tried to tell you all many, many times, if you read the news every day, you are very out of step with the general public. I have deeply reconciled myself to that. I mean, think about the way that Americans experience the world. They're like, oh, they're shutting down the Usaida. Okay. Didn't even know what that was. Department of Education. I hate the Department of Education.

Sagar Enjeti (56:12)

They're going. They're going, okay, usaid, you're wrong about Department of Education, the public school system, especially in rural America.

Krystal Ball (56:19)

You're talking about funding. You're not separate from the actual Department of Education.

Sagar Enjeti (56:21)

And having a department of like if you're going to get the funding, you have to have some sort of bureaucracy in order to issue the Pell Grants and the special education funding and the Title 1 fund. All of these things have to go through some sort of bureaucracy. And it's called the Department of Education. They're in the Social Security systems, they're in the national oceanic, the like hurricane watch weather systems, they're in the Medicare systems. Elon is out there reposting Mike Lee about how Social Security is a scam and you should just have a private market based retirement account that's like all of these things are on the table. He's already moved way beyond usaid. We're going to talk in a little bit about him dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which means that you are going are much more likely to get scammed. Like this is an agency that was set up after the financial crisis to try to curb some of the excesses of banks, Wall street and other types of scammers. It has been very successful too by the way, has returned some $21 billion to consumers. That is gone now as well. The national labor relationship where your ability to organize so to be like, oh, it's just the USAID has already gone way beyond that. That's already like, you know, that's already old news booth. We're talking about way down, way down the line in terms of the things that he is targeting. I just want to get through these couple of tweets that we have and then we can move on to the polling because I do think that's the next logical place to go. And some of we've already previewed so we've got Tom Cotton who is also attacking the judge here. Outrageous. Obama Judge Paul Engelmeier didn't just bar Elon Musk and Doge from Treasury Systems barred the Secretary of the treasury himself. Again, I didn't read it that way, but I admit the language is kind of ambiguous. Without citing a single law that's a lie or even allowing the Trump admin to appear in court, the Trump administration is going to have their chance to make their case. This outlaw should be reversed immediately and Engelmeier should be forbidden by higher courts from ever hearing another case against the Trump administration. We can put the next piece up on the screen. So Mike Lee says about this court ruling, this has the feel of a couple, not a military coup but a judicial one. To which Elon replies, yes. Elon also reposted a longer post that was calling specifically for ignoring the decisions of the federal judges. And then the last piece here is there was reporting about there was a contractor from Booz Allen Hamilton who wrote a report saying that describing the doge incursion to treasury as a quote insider threat so significant threat risk based on what they understood to be happening. The Booz Allen Hamilton now have said no, no no, we didn't mean it, we fired that person, et cetera, et cetera. But people who are looking at this many of them find it to be.

Krystal Ball (59:17)

A crazy it's one guy in Booz Allen I'm not taking it all that seriously. So okay, thank you for your opinion sir. Amazon One Medical Presents Painful Thoughts I could catch anything sitting in this doctor's waiting room. Okay, just wiped his runny nose on my jacket and the guy next to me sitting in a pool of perspiration and insists on sharing my armrest. Next time make an appointment with an Amazon One medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical healthcare just got less painful you know more about the PayPal debit card than you did at the start of this podcast. You know that the PayPal debit card gives you the ability to pay everywhere. You know that you earn 5% cash back on a category of your choosing on up to $1,000 of monthly purchases. And you know that you get to pick a new category every month.

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Sagar Enjeti (60:39)

This is Ashley Kineti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast.

Krystal Ball (60:43)

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