2/10/25: Trump Approval Skyrockets, Republicans Sour On Elon, Trump Nukes CFPB, Dems Desperate To Win Back Billionaires, MAGA Copies Hillary Playbook

Summary

Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode Title: Trump Approval Skyrockets, Republicans Sour On Elon, Trump Nukes CFPB, Dems Desperate To Win Back Billionaires, MAGA Copies Hillary Playbook
Hosts: Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti
Release Date: February 10, 2025
Duration: Approximately 92 minutes

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1. Introduction to Episode

In this episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti delve into the current political landscape, focusing on the soaring approval ratings of former President Donald Trump, the shifting Republican sentiment towards Elon Musk, Trump's controversial move to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Democratic Party's strategies to reclaim billionaire support, and the MAGA movement's apparent adoption of tactics reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's playbook.

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2. Trump’s Approval Ratings and Policies

a. Surging Approval Ratings

Krystal and Saagar kick off the discussion by referencing a CBS News poll that highlights a remarkable surge in Donald Trump's approval ratings early into his second term:

• Overall Job Rating: 53% approved, 47% disapprove
  “He's got a positive approval rating, something literally unheard of whenever he was the previous president of the United States.” ([02:00])

b. Trump’s Gaza Policy

A significant portion of the episode centers around Trump's aggressive stance on Gaza. Trump announced plans to “own” Gaza, transitioning from a peacemaker stance to direct US administration control. Krystal vehemently criticizes this move:

• Krystal Ball: “There is not a single thing that Donald Trump has done this presidency that has not shocked, appalled, outraged... His insane proposal to take over Gaza... is already sinking his presidency.” ([04:06])

She elaborates on the potential consequences, including ethnic cleansing and increased terrorism:

• Krystal Ball: “He's totally serious. And he's completely committed to owning it, taking it and making sure that Hamas doesn't move back... The USA actively participating is... inciting more terrorism against the United States.” ([04:44])

c. Reactions to Trump's Gaza Plans

The hosts express deep concern over Trump's administration's intentions, fearing catastrophic outcomes:

• Krystal Ball: “There is not a single thing Trump proposes that wouldn't destroy his presidency faster than any other policy.” ([08:00])

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3. Impact of Trump’s Policies

a. Dismantling the CFPB

One of Trump's boldest moves discussed is the termination of the CFPB, an agency established to protect consumers from financial fraud. The process involves:

• Russ Vaught, OMB Director: “CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not reasonably necessary to carry out its duties.” ([35:04])

Krystal highlights the devastating impact of this decision:

• Krystal Ball: “CFPB has cracked down on junk fees, predatory payday lenders, and mortgage servicers. Now, all of that is gone, leaving consumers vulnerable.” ([42:12])

b. Consequences for Consumers

The shutdown of the CFPB means the elimination of protections against various financial abuses:

• Krystal Ball: “Without the CFPB, stiff regulations are removed, allowing banks and fintech companies to scam consumers with ease.” ([49:43])

c. Industry Reactions

Elon Musk and other industry leaders have voiced support for the dismantling of the CFPB:

• Elon Musk: “RIP CFPB.”
  (Timestamp not provided)

However, Krystal and Saagar discuss pushback from consumers who benefited from CFPB protections:

• Krystal Ball: “Consumers are baffled and outraged, seeing their protections stripped away without understanding who to blame.” ([47:30])

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4. Republicans’ Shifting Sentiment Towards Elon Musk

a. Initial Support for Elon

Post-2024 elections, Republicans initially showed strong support for Elon Musk's involvement in the Trump administration:

• YouGov Poll (November 2024): 47% of Republicans supported Elon having “a lot” of influence.
  “Did you see that number there with male voters is astounding.” ([25:42])

b. Declining Approval

By February 2025, Republican support for Musk has significantly waned:

• Current YouGov Poll:
  • A lot: 26%
  • A little: 43%
  • None at all: 17%
    “There's a natural reaction against the richest man on the planet making all of these decisions.” ([26:00])

c. Implications of Declining Support

The decline in support suggests growing unease within the Republican base regarding Musk's influence:

• Saagar Enjeti: “The shift from a lot to a little indicates problems for Elon and Trump.” ([31:37])

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5. Democrats' Strategies and Challenges

a. Leadership Struggles

The Democratic Party faces internal conflicts and struggles to regain control over its donor base:

• Krystal Ball: “Hakeem Jeffries is facing criticism from his own base for not effectively countering the Trump-Musk alliance.” ([60:20])

b. Donor Influence and Policy Direction

Democrats are attempting to mend fences with billionaires while facing backlash from their grassroots:

• Saagar Enjeti: “Democrats need to make a stand against oligarchy to regain credibility with working-class voters.” ([73:31])

c. Ineffectiveness of Middle-Ground Strategies

Nate Silver's analysis supports the idea that Democrats' middle-ground approaches fail to appeal to either the elite or the working class:

• Nate Silver Insight: “Separating the world into naughty and nice billionaires is not persuading voters.” ([75:04])

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6. MAGA’s Adoption of Hillary’s Playbook

The MAGA movement appears to be mirroring strategies previously employed by Hillary Clinton, focusing on identity politics and cultural issues to maintain political dominance:

• Krystal Ball: “MAGA is using the same culture war tactics that Hillary used to smear progressive causes.” ([55:13])

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7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Krystal and Saagar wrap up the episode by emphasizing the high stakes involved in the current political maneuvers. They stress the importance of recognizing the consolidation of power by oligarchs like Elon Musk and the detrimental effects of dismantling protective agencies like the CFPB. The hosts express skepticism about the Democratic Party's ability to effectively counter these moves without fundamentally changing their approach and distancing themselves from billionaire donors.

• Krystal Ball: “Elon and Trump are consolidating power in ways that threaten democratic institutions and consumer protections.” ([84:07])

• Saagar Enjeti: “The risks for Trump are high, and the decline in his approval could lead to significant political fallout.” ([16:39])

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Krystal Ball ([02:00]): “He's got a positive approval rating, something literally unheard of whenever he was the previous president of the United States.”

• Krystal Ball ([04:06]): “There is not a single thing that Donald Trump has done this presidency that has not shocked, appalled, outraged...”

• Krystal Ball ([35:04]): “CFPB has cracked down on junk fees, predatory payday lenders, and mortgage servicers. Now, all of that is gone, leaving consumers vulnerable.”

• Saagar Enjeti ([25:42]): “Elon gets everything that he wants. And Trump. Elon's taken a lot of the heat...”

• Krystal Ball ([55:13]): “This is Jenny Garth from I do part two... Oligarch agenda under the guise of culture war.”

• Saagar Enjeti ([73:31]): “Democrats need to make a stand against oligarchy to regain credibility with working-class voters.”

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Key Takeaways

• Trump's High Approval: Contrary to previous terms, Trump holds a majority approval rating early into his second term, largely due to his aggressive policies like the proposed takeover of Gaza and efforts to dismantle consumer protections.

• Elon Musk's Waning Republican Support: Initial strong support for Elon Musk within the Republican ranks has significantly declined, indicating internal conflicts and dissatisfaction with Musk's influence in government.

• CFPB Shutdown Consequences: The termination of the CFPB threatens consumer protections against financial fraud and predatory practices, raising concerns about increased financial abuses.

• Democrats' Internal Struggles: The Democratic Party faces significant challenges in regaining support from its donor base and articulating effective strategies to counteract the Trump-Musk alliance without alienating their grassroots.

• MAGA's Cultural Strategy: The MAGA movement is adopting tactics similar to Hillary Clinton's, focusing on identity politics and cultural issues to maintain political influence and suppress progressive initiatives.

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This episode of Breaking Points offers a critical examination of the current political dynamics, highlighting the interplay between presidential approval, elite influence, consumer protections, and party strategies. Krystal and Saagar provide a thorough analysis, urging listeners to remain vigilant about the consolidation of power and its implications for democracy and everyday Americans.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Krystal Ball]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Krystal Ball]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] how do people feel about Donald Trump? Let's go and put this up there on the screen From CBS News. This is the first major indications that we have right now are feeling about the Trump administration some 20 days in so far describing Donald Trump. The top answers this is plus or minus 2.5 in terms of the margin of error. Tough 69% energetic 63% focused 60% effective 58. Let's go to the next one, please. Trump and the campaign promises. Is he doing 70%, quote, what he promised in the campaign? 30% different from what he promised. Now the coup de grace, shall we? Let's go to the final one. Trump. Overall job rating 53% approved, 47% disapprove. He's got a positive approval rating, something literally unheard of whenever he was the previous president of the United States. And if you look at some of the individual option or individual things that he has espoused and or is attempting to do, you're gonna see some similar support, although there's very important divergence which we will get to. So let's go to the next one. Trump administration's program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States. Some 59% approve, 41% disapprove. Can we go to the next one, please? And here we have interesting numbers that Andrew kosinski flagged from YouGov. Trump is some plus 10% approval with voters under 30. Almost unheard of for Republicans. It definitely underscores the vibe shift. The whole idea of, you know, male voters. You could see. Do you see that number there with male voters is astounding. Us trying to. Now this is where the divergence comes into and this is what I'm get to. Of all the things that Donald Trump I unfortunately was not able to be here on Thursday to rage against this has said that has concerned me most and what I think would destroy both this country and his presidency. Is this us trying to take over or Gaza would be 13% good idea, 47% bad idea, 40% not sure. Depends. 2 to 40%.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We really united the country on this one.

[Krystal Ball]

To the 40% I beg, I plead, get with the program, get with the bad idea. There is not a single thing that Donald Trump has done this presidency that has not shocked, appalled, outraged, like incited me to rage and potential violence if this were to happen than his insane proposal to take over Gaza, which he seems completely committed to. Let's go ahead and take into listen to that which he said yesterday on his way to the Super Bowl. I'm committed to buying and owning Gaza.

[Sagar Enjeti]

As far as US rebuilding it, we.

[Krystal Ball]

May give it to other states in the Middle east to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices, but we're committed to owning it, taking it and making sure that Hamas doesn't move back. There's nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site. It'll be. The remainder will be demolished. Everything's demolished. I mean, you can't live in those buildings right now. They're very unstable. So we went from Trump the peacemaker ceasefire to we're not. It's so crazy. I thought that the worst thing that would happen is be like, all right, Israel can hand it over. I did not for 1 million years think, oh, we're actually going to be the ones who administer it now. Trump says, we're not gonna have a single troop on the ground. Okay, good luck trying to work a piece of property without administering it. Something potentially, like, even worse and more outrageous is removing all. Is the United States actually expelling all of these people instead of the Israelis? I mean, it's one thing, these two people where they're gonna ethnically cleanse them. It's like, all right, well, that's on them. But this is, like, us not only complicit in shipping arms to facilitate it, but, like, actively participating. There's that. I saw a tweet going around immediately after Trump said that. And this is not an endorsement, but it's like, that is going to incite more terrorism against the United States. And like any potential thing an American president has done since the invasion of Iraq, I'm like, okay, I'm not getting into a damn skyscraper anytime soon after. I am beside myself over this. And I'm beside myself over it, because he's totally serious. And this is where the Trump administrator. There is not a single thing that you could do that would not sink your presidency faster than the political administration of Gaza, than United States soldiers, service members putting their lives at risk, worse getting killed because of the Israeli military's operation. I mean, there's not a single thing. Solution to this crisis or whatever that could be worse than what is being proposed here. Turning the Arab world against us. I mean, you know, inciting terrorism. But at its absolute worst is for some reason Israel gets to destroy Gaza, and then we are the ones who have to pay for it, facilitate the ethnic. That they want to get rid of all of these. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would be where we are today. I am just. Thank God, you know, hopefully the American people can speak out against it. I'll tell you this. If a single American soldier's foot in Gaza, I'm gonna be out there like some Vietnam War hippie in the street. Like, I'm not kidding. That is a complete. And I think it should be for everybody. What, did we not learn our lesson? And, you know, with Trump, this is where his arrogance. One of the things I predicted here on the show is like, every president who wins a popular vote, especially in their second term, they always overreach in some way and it ends up back from. I would never predict it that it would be this, but this is the. If you want a ticket to not only losing for a generation, destroying your legacy, Doge now, this would be a footnote to a disastrous middle war in the Middle East. So I just. I have nothing else to say about it. It's insane. I could go on forever.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Absolutely ins.

[Krystal Ball]

It makes me wanna lose my mind. Where is the anti war coalition? I'm seeing people who I've known for 20 years who have spoken against neocons and saying, oh, we can happily administer. God, am I losing my mind? I mean, what happened? I knew that the right and many others were craven whenever it came to Afghanistan, and they never really believed what they said. I didn't really believe that it was this bad that we were actually gonna be on board. You know, imperialism through bullying. Like Greenland, I'm like, fine with. But this is like, this is one of those where, I mean, we've learned no lessons. It seems Trump is totally. He's serious. Like, it's one of those where something I have learned here with his second term, like, no, no, no, let's take him totally seriously.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I appreciate you saying that because that's a lot of the co bias is like, well, it's just a negotiating position and he's not serious. I'm like, no, I don't know why you. First of all, if he says. And he said it now repeatedly.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You should take it seriously. And number two is, to your point, like, if we've learned anything in this second administration, it's like, no. Even the wildest things, even things that he frankly never talked about on the campaign trail are completely on the table. So, yeah, not a very popular move there, but one that he's in. And it seems like it comes from Kushner, who floated originally, like, waterfront property, blah, blah, blah. And this is Trump's deranged real estate brain. I think it's worse. Sees, like, dollar signs and certainly doesn't care about the people there or what it would entail. But, I mean, it's disgusting, it's immoral, it's a catastrophe. It's just. It is even worse than what I could have imagined.

[Krystal Ball]

I never could have cooked something up like this.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Trump would have done. And I think I had a pretty dire expectation of what his policy vis a vis Israel would be. This is actually Worse.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. I mean, and look, even though even granting Israel aid and all of that, I mean, it wouldn't be super popular, but people wouldn't particularly care that much. It's not gonna be a deciding factor in the election or in the future. And it would definitely be something that people would pay attention to, foreign policy. But this is one of those, again, nothing will sink you like an unpopular foreign war. And the craziest thing is even the most hardened neoconservatives who in Washington, not even they could have cooked up US administration and takeover of Gaza, not even they could have imagined such an audacious scheme. And I mean, did you. I'm sure you guys Ryan and covered it. Did you see Bibi's face whenever Trump suggested even he appears to be taking it. He's like, wait, what? He's like, wait, I thought it was ours. I didn't think it was gonna be yours.

[Sagar Enjeti]

See, I don't buy it. Yours. BB Looked totally happy to me. Oh no, he looked totally happy.

[Krystal Ball]

You know why I think he's happy? Because now not only the two stage solution, lip service is literally just dead. It's dead because now it doesn't even matter. Right? It's off the. It's a different universe of now we're talking about, oh, if America doesn't own it, then Israel will own it. But the idea of some Palestinian Authority like this is fake, it's gone. The question now is like all of this open talk of hitting Egypt and Jordan and all of these people with tariffs and this is one of those where, look, this is serious shit. Like they were talking about two something million people.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Jordan, according to Trump, it's 1.7 or 1.8, which is also an admission that they've probably killed more like half a million Palestinians.

[Krystal Ball]

I did not even think about that. That's Craz. Okay, so one fine, 1.7 million, that would fundamentally change the ethnic makeup of Jordan and of Egypt. Why would they tolerate that? What have the Egyptians and the Jordanians told US from day one? 3.1 billion in aid to Egypt every year is not gonna buy you their political subservience on this question on something, maybe Suez or whatever, it's a little bit different, but we're not talking about Canada trade war, Mexico trade war. This is a like political legitimacy question of the Jordanian and the Egyptian regimes that are in power. They can never accept this status. Qu. Same with the Saudis, the uae. I mean, this is the perfect recipe for a complete alignment against the United States and the region. For Inciting terrorism. But I mean, again, worse, if we were just to think of it from our perspective, why should an American soldier die for the political administration of Gaza? Why should we first also pay for it? So we facilitate the destruction and so we pay for the destruction and then we pay for the rebuilding. That's like some disaster capitalism meme that's out there. You can't even make, you know, that's like out of a book of Noam Chomsky's fantasy novel to create this entire situation. I've got to say I'm very disappointed too in Steve Witkoff, who I genuinely had confidence in, of bringing about this ceasefire and all of that. But now even he appears to be backing this up.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, he used his trip to Gaza to justify this talk. And by the way, these are things that we've been predicting honestly from the beginning, not that the US would own Gaza, but that they would destroy it so much much that then they say, gosh, no one could live there. It's a humanitarian thing to do.

[Krystal Ball]

It's like, well, who paid for it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

To score people out of there, right? And that's what Witkoff used his trip to Gaza to do.

[Krystal Ball]

I saw that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

To say, it's so destroyed, there's no people are going to the north and they're coming back, cuz there's nothing there, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, it's true, we did, you know, we did help the Israelis thoroughly destroy and demolish it. And I think the end goal always in the Israelis mind was so that they could have this moment of saying, and gosh, that's, you know, we just, we gotta deal with moving these people out of this territory. It's a shame. You remember the Biden administration floated something. Not us taking it over, but also floated, hey, why don't we set up some tent cities?

[Krystal Ball]

I was gonna say they did it in a more neolib way where they're like, well, us and the European Union will eventually coalition, coalition of people will pay for the admin. It's like, well, okay, the net effect is the same. And I mean, I guess that's one of those where this was probably an end result in some administrative form. But to just say we're gonna buy it and own it. I mean, the MAGA high IQ cope on this one is like, oh, he's negotiating. But I'm like, but negotiating to what? When? I mean, no matter what, this is gonna be bad for us, right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

We don't need to negotiate because like, we own these people. Like The Israelis. Don't get me started, you know. So, anyway, there's that. In addition, listen, I do wanna just to go back quickly to the overall approval rating. I do think there' Elon Musk is a bit of a heat shield for Trump right now.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, yeah, that's an interesting theory.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And this is part of why I have always thought that it is unlikely that there's going to be a severing in the near term of this relationship, because they both get a lot. I mean, Elon gets everything that he wants. And Trump. Elon's taken a lot of the heat. Trump can kind of go. He's golfed like a million times already since he's been golfed with Tiger. The other day, I think that was just yesterday, he was golfing with Tiger and Charlie woods talking about the live PGA merger deal, blah, blah, blah.

[Krystal Ball]

Who's Charlie Woods? Is he a.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's Tiger's son.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, okay.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Is he good?

[Sagar Enjeti]

He is very good.

[Krystal Ball]

Okay.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, very good. In any case, Trump gets to do whatever he wants and Elon's taken a lot of the heat and, you know, so I think there's something to that. It's also worth pointing out that Biden, at this time in his presidency, had a plus 14 approval rating. So presidential honeymoons are also a real thing.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely. I mean, look, it's early. It's only 20 days. Trump is much more of a polarizing figure and was elected in different states. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think you gotta compare people to their context. So within the Trumpian context, who was literally president, to have a positive approval rating is nuts. I see danger for him in the Elon way. I see danger for him with Gaza. I think Gaza would most immediately sink him. Look at Afghanistan. You know, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A disastrous foreign conflagration can sink you like no other.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, also look at Iraq with George W. Bush.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely.

[Sagar Enjeti]

By the end of his presidency, what his approval rating was like in the 20s.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. I actually recently was talking with someone and they were like, man, the jubilance, the change. And I was like, guys, it's just too short. And this is where you, like, you just need to read a book. George W. Bush. I mean, imagine 20 days in the George W. Bush administration. The second term, I would have been like, america is a evangelical Christian country. We are neoconservative. We are nation building. And by 18 months, we've tried to privatize Social Security. We have 1,000 dead soldiers and service members in Iraq. The American people blow out the mid terms for the Democratic Party. Oh, and then to put a bow on it, we have the financial crisis and Barack Obama WINS Indiana in 2008. Right. So let's all take a step back and let's look at where the risk is and risk.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The other risk. Yeah, the other risk is with regard to inflation.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's what I was about to get to.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Which is people still are like we kind of elected you do something about this whole high price situation. You don't really seem to have your eye on the ball there. If anything with tariffs is probably going in the opposite direction. We can put up on the screen the numbers not enough focus on prices. 66%. So a super majority say you gotta refocus your priorities here. Only 31% say it is the right amount. He got asked by Brett Barrick yesterday in advance of the super bowl about when families are going to be able to feel prices going down. Let's take a listen to what Trump had to say.

[Krystal Ball]

When do you think families would be able to feel prices going down? Groceries, energy? Or are you kind of saying to them, hang on, inflation may get worse until it gets better?

[Sagar Enjeti]

No, I think we're going to become a rich. Look, we're not that rich. Right now we owe $36 trillion. That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us. Same thing like 200 billion with Canada. We owe 300. We have a deficit with Mexico of $350 billion. I'm not going to do that. So no real answer there. And then shifts to tariffs, which again is part of I think people's how we feel about the tariffs, part of people's concern about prices going up. And Wall Street Journal had a write up. Now listen, Wall Street Journal is just like blanket against any tariffs whatsoever. So I think they do have an ideological interest in writing up this piece. But the numbers that they cite here are real. We can put this up on the screen. They say the Trump bump in consumer confidence is already over. The mood of the American consumer is souring. They say that consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the university of Michigan's preliminary February survey survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July of 24. Expectations of inflation in the year ahead also jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3%. Apparently that is a very significant like to see a month over month increase of a full percentage point expectation in terms of inflation is quite significant.

[Krystal Ball]

Americans are just like they are under Biden. They'll give you a chance Right. They'll give you like eight, nine months and then if they feel like you're not anything, then they're gonna turn against you. So this is the danger for Donald Trump. This is also where I think Elon and them could be a danger as well. Because the problem with the move fast and break things approach is it's fine in the interim when people are like, oh, it's, you know, they're like, oh, it's, it's energetic, it's awesome, it's fun to watch. But, you know, right now I think there's some Doge stuff going on with fema and they're talking about that. It's like, look, you're only one. I didn't mention in my retrospective about Bush. Katrina is really what sank him. If you go back and you look, you're only one national disaster away from the entire mood of the country souring and turning against you. There's like important differences obviously for that in the future. But if you have Doge who does something or cuts a program or like the FAA crash that we had earlier, imagine if that crash was 20 months from now. Right. I mean, you could imagine the media environment that that would have looked like.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Previously at that point. They were able to be like, oh, it's Di.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, it's Di.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Now it's like, all right, well, you own this, buddy.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Krystal Ball]

So it's 20 months. I mean, look, you know, disasters don't wait for. Disasters don't just conveniently get time. They can happen literally at any moment. So I think that's where the Elon Doge approach could really come back to bite them. A disastrous foreign conflict like Gaza, that would be, I mean, that's the, you know, ticket to single digit approval rating. Just ask George H.W. bush or George H.W. bush, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, every single one of them. Who's cost their approval rating to this? So that simple. Okay, if that's the way that you wanna decide. And the other is if they feel that if there's a mismatch. So this gets to the Bush analogy of privatization of Social Security. So let's say Trump only does tariffs, but just stops carrying only does tariffs and cost cutting or what Doge stuff forgets about inflation and stops bullying the Federal Reserve, which I think is important to try. And that part of that, he needs to bring that back. No, yeah, same. I'm like, listen, privatize this. Can we at least get on board with the coup of that? Let's march into the Federal Reserve. Let's take it over and let's bring it back under civilian administration. Let's drop the rates back to zero. But if you have a march of two years, you've got all of this Doge tariff stuff going on, prices either are raised, stay flat. I think that's a problem. If income, wages and all that stuff doesn't start to go up, if gas remains relatively flat, that's where two years from now, when all you have is vibes of Doge and media chaos and all the others, that's when the people really turned against Trump in 2008. By the way, don't forget, all this is in the interim. Over the next 18 months, we're about to pass, what, a massive tax cut re extension. I mean, there might be some good things in there, but let's all be honest about what's gonna happen. You're gonna see the extension of a huge corporate tax cut, which was one of the worst days of the Trump presidency in 2017. If you go back and you look at his approval rating. So there are some serious red flags ahead for him. And it's very easy to sink yourself if you go in that direction. But the media environment has changed, so maybe things are different. I don't know.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, maybe. I mean, I still think people, you know, people are tuned into reality. So if their lives are not getting better and prices are high and we're getting entangled in more, well, if you have more war, unwanted Middle east wars, people are gonna be like, yeah, you know, I'm not really down with this. And there's also just, just there has been a swing back and forth backlash effect where people feel like the country's on the wrong track and they're not satisfied. And so I think the risks are pretty high for him.

[Krystal Ball]

Also, the average mortgage rate right now in the United States is 6.97%. So if that doesn't go down anytime soon, that's just gonna. If you have four more years of this, people who are elder millennials, they're gonna be almost, what, like, nearing 50? And they're not gonna be able to buy a house. Like what? That's too much. Right? So if you can think about, about some of the, some of the ways that can manifest itself politically still, we always covered it here over the last several years. I still think that's a huge reason why.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Oh yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Was successful in this election.

[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money. With guardrails in place, try Greenlight Risk free [e-mail] iheart let's get to the Elon part because this is important too and gets to some of the stuff we're talking about here. Let's put this poll up there on the screen. This was from the Economist in YouGov and they did a poll of Republicans where they supported. They asked them in November of 2024 how much they wanted Elon to have influence in the Trump administration. So at that time post election, they said they wanted Elon to, quote, have a lot of influence over the incoming Trump administration. 47% 29% said a little 12% said none at all. Now, let's go to where we are today. In February, you have 26% a lot, 43% a little, 17%, none at all. So a big shift from a lot to a little. It's difficult to parse. You know, it's kind of complicated in terms of all of that. But it's big questions, too, in terms of, like, what is fueling that and what even that really means. But there's some signs for some problems there for Elon and for Doge. Let's go to the next one.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Let me just start going. Before we jump to the next one, let me just also point out the numbers from there with regard to Democrats and independents. I mean, you can imagine Democrats were never super psyched about Elon having a lot of influence in the Trump administration. But in November, you had 15% of Democrats and 26% of independents saying they wanted him to have a lot of influence. Overall, 13% of surveyed Americans want Musk to have a lot of influence on the Trump administration now. So at this point in time, whereas previously it was 15% of Democrats, 26% of independents saying they wanted him to have a lot, now it's only 6% of independents who say they want him to have a lot of influence. And if you take the entire American public together, only 13% say they want him to have a lot of influence. And I think there's just a natural reaction against the richest man on the planet making all of these decisions about whether you get Social Security, whether your public school system gets funded, whether your Head Start has funding, whether your rural health clinic has funding, et cetera. There is a revulsion to that. And I think as he has aggressively asserted himself in ways that, frankly, went far beyond. I always thought Doge would have teeth. I never thought it was some blue ribbon commission make work project. This has gone way beyond what I expected. And is the piece of this. That of the Trump administration that I really didn't factor in going in, thinking about how this was all going to unfold. And so I do think there is a reaction against that usurping of power from the dude that just got elected and the Congress, et cetera, and all consolidating power in the hands of this one altar.

[Krystal Ball]

I think it's possible, but I'm still very skeptical of this theory. So I'll just say this. Politically, I have really had to force myself. Is the media being institutionally left wing and the narratives of a lot of this stuff that have been able to shape. Think about the biggest Psyops of the election like Brad Summer. Fake. Right. Tim Walsh, incredible candidate. Fake. Such incredible with men. All that fake Beyonce, all this other stuff. Non existent. When we think back through the election, even with the polls and other childless cat ladies gonna sink em with women. Fake. Springfield, Ohio. Oh, that's gonna nuke them. Nope, actually Springfield voted more for Trump. Puerto Rico, garbage gate. All of that. Complete psyop on all of these. I still. I'm not sure I yet grasp the lack of power the media has in shaping its narratives. So, for example, in this question, the United States is in a constitutional crisis. They say, agree. 54% disagree. 27. So people are like, see, people are turning against Elon. It's like, well, if you ask the average Joe on the street, is the United States in a constant crisis? And he says yes. Is he talking about Elon or is he Talking about Mitch McConnell being like 99 years old and collapsing and having a stroke? Is he talking about. Is he probably just Evergreen. Agree. Because he doesn't like the way that the government is going.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm still just deeply skeptical that Americans are as tuned in. I think what I really learned from the election was that the power of these media narratives around childless cat ladies, around Haitians, about. I mean, all of this, it just, it ended up being literally the opposite. I mean, so much of the institutional credibility from the Seltzer poll, all of these shibboleths that we all had in American politics were broken fundamentally. And I'm not talking about this from. From like, oh my God, this is amazing. But you're like, you really do have to look at it and be like, wow, wow. I mean, really, when you think about all the things that people said that were gonna sink Donald Trump and they ended up having, if anything, a negligible or the opposite effect in the electorate. I'm just deeply skeptical about this Elon thing hitting home unless something like what you're saying materializes. So far, Social Security has not been touched. Right. Getting access to Social Security. Okay. Even Medicare, it's like, well, if you get Medicare fraud, I think that's great. Actually, there's some estimate of $50 billion in Medicare fraud. Will they properly do it? That's not what they're doing. But I don't know. Listen, I have no idea.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The question is they would come after Rick Scott.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, actually, we should go after Rick Scott. I totally agree with that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

They're not gonna do that.

[Krystal Ball]

The question is how it materializes functionally and also how people experience these events really in Their lives. And I really took away from the election that. Cause if you turn on CNN and all of that, there's all this musk talk and all of this, and I don't think it's bad because, you know, here we're talking, we're trying to predict the impact of stuff, but really, when you think back to that effect, it just didn't exist. So I'm skeptical of some of this stuff. I deeply am, in terms of just, you know, even in the polling. And I've had to learn that on immigration, mass deportation. I'm not gonna be like, see, America's totally with this. I know how Americans are. Right? Like, the moment you see a little kid in a cage, it's like, things can change a lot, and they can change on a. So the vibe, the way that you experience and the way that you actually execute a lot of this stuff, I think that stuff matters the most. And so I'm not. Yet. I'm not ready to make a call. Like, Elon is dramatically unpopular. Elon is all this. All I can say is he's a risk. I know he has his own agenda. You know, analytically, I can see the ways that this could go wrong, but I could also see how it could be a pretty popular success.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I don't think so. But, I mean, to be honest with you, like, I. This, to me, is the least important point. What we were discussing before, the reality of what he's doing and what it means for the country, to me, is the most important point. But the trend, the decline for Elon. He used to be very popular, people. Oh, he's a genius. He's an inventor. Blah, blah, blah. He made my electric car. I think it's awesome. I mean, a lot of liberals love this guy, right? That's true. I'm seeing a lot of bumper stickers on Teslas that are like, I bought this before we knew Elon was insane and things like that. But. But he had high approval ratings kind of across the board. And ever since he really became a partisan figure, obviously his approval rating took a hit, because that's just gonna instantly.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, that's inevitable.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Instantly lead you into this very tribal, partisan mindset. And then since he's been so aggressively at the forefront of the Trump administration, it seems pretty clear his approval rating has continued to decline. I don't disagree on the constitutional crisis piece, even though I do think it's pretty. You know, we're pretty clearly into a constitutional crisis, or at the very least, if they go forward with their threats to Ignore court decisions, we will certainly be in a constitutional crisis. I think you would even agree with it at that point, if that ultimately happens. But I do think that there's probably a lot of people who, you know, just, like, they're not happy with the government. And then it's just like, yes, it's a constitutional crisis. Sort of like, you know, on election night, there was like. Like, what was your top issue? And one of them was preserving democracy. Yeah, democracy or whatever. And there were a lot of Republicans who were like, we have to elect.

[Krystal Ball]

Donald Trump to prevent, because the election was stolen.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Democracy because the election was stolen. And even with the constitutional crisis thing, even if I'm to read into it, that people really are paying attention, et cetera. I mean, now you had Elon, we showed the tweet earlier where he's calling a federal court, making a ruling of judicial couple. So they're also setting up language about how it's a constitutional crisis because the courts are overreaching and they're checking the legitimate power of the executive, et cetera, et cetera. The reason, though, why I depart from you in terms of, like, I don't. Again, I don't know that it matters that much whether it's popular or not, although we have seen some pushback work in some limited ways. But the way he's trying to consolidate power is to make, like, your democratic voice completely irrelevant. That is part of the project of installing a Monarch and a CEO dictate. But the reason why I think it's going to be dramatically unpopular is because even if you take the Silicon Valley framing the lake, move fast and break things, that means you're breaking things. And the federal government does matter for people, for planes not falling out of the sky and your local health clinic getting funded right now in Virginia, half of the rural health clinics that are particularly dependent on actually in rural red parts of the state, like southwestern Virginia, half of them are still lacking funding. Quite a number of them have had to shut down. Virginia's not the only state of Rhode Island. Other states across the country still are lacking funding. You've had farmers who were depending on deals that they had made with the federal government to finance certain investments in their farms. Those contracts have been at least paused. So they're on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars that they thought the federal government was going to participate in those costs for that upgrade, those, you know, and that's just like the small ball beginning of the situation. But the way he operates, if you just look at the way he Operates at Twitter. If you look at the way he's operated at Tesla, at SpaceX, et cetera, things literally break. Rockets literally explode. Twitter is unable to host a spaces with Ron DeSantis. And then the one with Trump has all sorts of audio issues and problems and sounds like shit as well. Well, that's one thing when you're running a company, it's another thing when you're running the government. So even by his own description of what he's doing here, it's going to require. It's going to lead to things breaking that are important to people. And I do think there will be tremendous backlash against that. Now, whether that backlash matters or not to me is more of the open question.

[Krystal Ball]

I think you might listen. I think the risk is there. It's still an open. If they're smart, what you do is you just keep it on. On cfpb, usaid, Medicare fraud. If a single check gets stopped, that's when there's gonna be problems. If old people don't get their healthcare, if old people don't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's already happening. I mean, these health.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, then actually, let's get to a bigger political point. I mean, maybe we'll talk about this with cfpb, but let's be honest here, right? A lot of the people who are being affected voted red. Are they really gonna blame Trump and Elon, or are they gonna blame Democrats? Are they actually gonna make. Make the dots? I'm skeptical personally, in terms of the way that politics has changed. And just think about the media environment that people swim in. Do we have Thomas Frank's book here? I think we used to. I mean, what's the matter with Kansas? I mean, I understand how leftists see it. It's also a diagnosis for literally how the playbook of all of this has happened. I encourage people to go out and read it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This is kind of my monologue about the way that even the changes of the sequel, the fpb, are being ushered in under, like, a culture war agenda. And it's similar to what, like, similar to what liberals did with, like, instead of lifting wages, we're gonna just have a diversity statement or have, you know, land acknowledgement. Yeah, land acknowledgements and these sorts of things. Or we're gonna pass a resolution affirming the Equal Rights Amendment, you know, the very last day, women's rights or whatever hell was that?

[Krystal Ball]

I wish we covered that more.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, I'll save this for my monologue, but that's effectively the playbook here as well. So.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

And Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion.

[Krystal Ball]

That's right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Seven to two decision. That it was in fact Constitution.

[Krystal Ball]

That was a constitutional agency. That does not stop people from saying it's unconstitutional, which we'll get to in a little bit. But this is one of those where, look, I think we can all be honest here about who is the most, who is the happiest to see CFPB gone. And it is the crypto industry. Now, you could judge for yourself as to why that is. You know, Crystal, obviously you're very skeptical of crypto. What they say is the Marc Andreessen line and others is that it effectively stifles competition by forcing these crypto and fintech companies to comply with all of these, according to them, onerous financial regulations which make it impossible for them to do business. So the CFPB and the SEC have been the two regulatory twins that have really stopped people like Meta, Twitter, all these fintech companies from being able to move into the legitimate financial system and to compete against them. They claim that they're better. You can judge again for yourself for how all of it is, but that is the main ask that they had coming into this. There were three things. Cfpb, ftc, sec, and they've gotten all of them.

[Sagar Enjeti]

They've gotten all of them. And so, I mean, I mean, just to zoom out, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up after the financial crash to, I mean, it's in the name to try to protect consumers. And they've returned some $21 billion to consumers who have been defrauded and scammed in various ways. It actually has quite a relatively small budget and has been a fantastic return on investment in terms of taxpayer dollars, although it's not even really technically taxpayer dollars because it's funded by the Treasury. But whatever, it's been a fantastic return on investment in terms of providing value to consumers. Stoller had a great post about the CFPB and what this means going forward. And he points out some of the things that may have interacted with your life in a way that is relatively meaningful. He says, let's start with some of the small stuff they do. Rules against excessive overdraft. Fees that's going to be gone. Rule cap and credit card late fees, fees that's gone. Oversight of debt collectors and payday lenders. No more. An honest site to compare credit card products. Likely gone in 2023. CFPB said big banks can't charge junk fees for basic customer service. Things like being able to check your money in your own account. The reason isn't just that it's nice, but the big banks themselves were unable to offer basic information like who owned mortgages prior to 2008. That's gone too. Another rule put forward recently is the mortgage servicers can't garner excessive fees when they foreclose, which is an incentive to foreclose rather than working out loans. So all of that is going to be gone. Anybody who's had an issue with their bank or with crypto, Coinbase, whoever you can go to, you used to be able to file complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and oftentimes they would handle it and you would get your money returned to you. Actually, Kyle was victim to sort of scam run by his bank. He didn't even file a complaint or anything. And they just reached out and said, hey, you were a victim of this scam. Here's some money back to repay you for what happened here. That's what this agency is. It's no accident that Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg both go on Joe Rogan's podcast and they frame their first of all, they just lie about what CFPB does. Debanking conservatives, quite the opposite. Rohit Chopra, the previous director of the cfpb, was opposed to debanking based on political reasons. He took heat from liberals for staking out that position. So it was quite the contrary. Zuckerberg tried to claim that, like, oh, they went after me from the CFPB because of my bucking them on Covid censorship also completely made up fiction. But they tried to cloak their opposition to CFPB in these conservative cultural critiques because they knew that the argument of like, we just don't really want to be regulated was not going to fly. Now, Elon has a particular interest in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is what Sager was alluding to. So Elon wants Twitter to be the Everything app. He just struck a deal actually with Visa to incorporate payment processing, and that would have meant that the CFPB was very likely to designate him, as I think they call it, a larger payment provider, something like that, and he would have been subject to these regulations. So he specifically has a personal financial interest and goal that he wants to accomplish in gutting the cfpb. And so that is what is now being accomplished. The budget has been zeroed out. Russ Vote does point out they do have like fairly decent reserve and the budget is not all that big to start with. So, you know, they have the funds to be able to operate for a time, but the staff has been told to stay home. This is subject now also to a lawsuit by the union representing the workers at the cfpb. And most importantly, Rus Vota said, any investigations you're doing, any enforcement, any new rulemaking, like, basically whatever you were doing to try to check and keep financial fraud and scams in check, check, you need to stop doing that. So all of that activity is effectively halted. Elon himself tweeted out, RIP cfpb. And it was kind of interesting, the response. So you can see Elon there at the top saying that. And some of his reply. Guys who are normally on board with what he was doing were like, but wait a second, I actually kind of.

[Krystal Ball]

Like this agency, shout out to Nuance, bro. He loves the show, by the way.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Does he?

[Krystal Ball]

He watches every episode.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So he says, what's wrong with the cfpb? They actually got consumers. And he tweeted a link, or not a link, but a screenshot, because links are highly discouraged on Twitter. CFPB announces a return of $1.8 billion in illegal junk fees to 4.3 million Americans harmed in a massive credit repair scheme. Another person I saw this one shared a lot, says, what is the deal with the cfpb? I'm genuinely curious, Elon, as a normal guy, can you please respond and tell me. I assumed it was created for our protection. I used the CFPB after my bank was giving me the runaround. I had a bunch of fraud charges. They wouldn't refund me after telling me they found them as fraudulent. Within a week, I had my money back. So explain to me how this doesn't benefit us as American citizens. This one just really baffles me and I'd love an actual explanation. So the, you know, people were not fully on board with this. Another person said, yeah, not on board with this one, unless you bring some pretty damning evidence as to why. So there you go, some of the pushback there. Do consumers not need to be protected? Question mark.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. So, I mean, look, look, for those who are shocked by this, Sorry, like, you're an idiot. I don't wanna be too voter shaming and all this, but there is an element where some people pretend to be surprised by some of the moves of the Trump administration. Like, were you not paying attention, dude? Like, were you just not? Like, did you not have your eyes open? I get annoyed. It's pretty clear what was gonna happen.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This one, I would say yes. But, I mean, there are a lot of things happening. Like, for example, taking over Gaza. Okay, that's fair. Even Greenland, crazy about taking over Canada, Panama. Like, none of these things were actually run on. So I share the same sentiment in some regards of, like, well, what did you think was gonna happen? This is literally what he ran on. But it's not like Trump was going around at rallies, like, and we're gonna get rid of the protections for consumers and allow banks to scam you. So people put a lot of trust in Elon. Like, a lot of these guys think this guy is really great and brilliant and, you know, have deluded themselves into thinking that the richest man on the planet is really looking out for their interests rather than his own interests. And he's not. He's looking out for his own interests.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, I mean, certain. I mean, at a certain point, too, with these tech guys, it's like they were pretty naked about what they wanted the whole time. I could have told you literally eight months ago exactly what all three of these agencies. All you have to do is read the news for any of this. And as I said previously, but crypto in particular, being very happy about this, put this up there on the screen. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, says 100% the right call CFPB is unconstitutional on the face of it. Even if it wasn't, it should be deleted, as we already have the DOJ to prosecute fraud and many other financial services regulators. It's an activist organization that has done enormous harm to the country. He got community noted there. You can decide for yourself whether it's. Or decide for yourself if that indicates a vibe on the platform. The community note was what you said, Justice Thomas, riding for the majority, that it is constitutional. I. This is the type of thing from Trump and others that makes me sad because it relates to what we were just talking about.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

With Virginia. And you were like, oh, but these. Virginia. I'm like, look, I see no evidence that, you know, scamming people, taking away their money, cutting programs, or any of that when you're inside of the bubble has any effect on voter behavior. I wish it were otherwise, but I don't see any political evidence for it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, until I think people want to.

[Krystal Ball]

Be scammed, I'm being serious. Like this Dave Portnoy thing. You sent that video, remember, of him talking about the pump and dump shitcoin and how enamored he obviously is with the Trump meme coin and all that, and how there's zero outrage from most people on the right who talk about corruption and all that. But look at the voters. The voters and then the people who support Trump, they like it. I'm mystified by the way that people can twist themselves into knots to just say, like, oh, this is total. Or just have like, blind amnesia around these. Cause it's not just partisanship. It's not about elites. It's about the actual voters themselves. If you ask them about any of these Trump things, they feel they're not angry, they'll find an excuse, they don't care. Or they'll say that you're lying to them. And I just don't know what to say at a certain point. Like the CFPB thing, I predict not one iota of pushback, not one iota. Minotauta from Republican voters. So, I mean, what's the point?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Agree, but yeah, I mean, but the point is the substance of what it actually, of the fact that getting rid of this agency makes people's lives worse, makes them more open to fraud. And Stoller makes this point. It's not like. So previously, it's not like there weren't laws against fraud before the financial crash, but the prioritization of that was very low at these various agencies that were tasked with enforcing it. And so the idea behind this agency is, okay, we're going to put it under one agency where it's really like their number one priority is going to be looking out for the little guy, making sure that if they are scammed, that they are repaid, that there's some fines levied, like that. This is our top priority and our focus. So it's going to be important. So now all of that function is consolidated here. So when you get rid of that enforcement from this agency, it no longer exists in these other places. It's just gone. So you're actually in a worse place than you were before the financial crash with regard to enforcement of these particular things. So you're going to see a flourishing of scams and fraud perpetrated on people because there is no one. It's not even the fox guarding the hen. There's just no one guarding the henhouse now. There's nothing there. And the other thing that he points out, which is relevant to your point, is when Glass Steagall, which separated out, kept the investing and financial speculation part of banking separate from the main customer focused, okay, we make a deposit type of banking. When Glass Steagall was ended, no, there wasn't a huge public backlash to that. But that action directly along with other things leads to a massive financial catastrophe. So it has a huge impact outside of what the initial public response was. And of course, ultimately there was a huge. I mean, this was one of the seminal events in terms of our lifetimes that helped to shape these, this populist right and populist left movements and all of the anger in the country. I mean, this is still reverberating to this day. So. So I think there is very likely to be significant fallout here. And just one more quote from Stoller because he really, he focuses on this and I think he put it quite well. He says he sees destroying the Bureau as a strategic error for the banking sector. In big tech, he says the banks were already losing to Silicon Valley. Now they're at a regulatory disadvantage to boot. More fundamentally, the shutdown breaks a basic deal. He says he worked in the House during the great financial crisis. The arrangement was the banks would accept some mild oversight via the CFPB and in return they'd get a multi trillion dollar bailout and make excessive profits. I didn't like that deal, encouraged the member I worked for to vote against it, but it was forced on liberals by Barack Obama. It was an egregiously terrible choice, one that liberals couldn't acknowledge because then they'd have to admit a whole lot of uncomfortable truths, notably that Wall street is a malevolent force. But he's effectively saying like now that deal is broken, like the minimal oversight that they accepted has been stripped away. And so now they can just run rampant with their fraud of variety of kinds, including crypto fraud, et cetera. If you're running one of these payment processors on Twitter or elsewhere now, you can take people's funds that they deposit with you. You can do what Sam Bankman Fried was doing and invest it in all kinds of high risk crypto schemes. Claims there's no cop on the beat to really stop you from doing any of that. And the potential fallout from that is truly catastrophic. It may not show up some small ball things that are really important too, like the credit card late fees and the junk fees and those sorts of things. Not having medical debt appear on your credit reports. That was something the Biden administration was putting in place. That's going to be gone now. There's an immediate impact, but the deeper fear is what this kind of bubble and crash this could ultimately contribute to. And then also with regard to Doge and Elon and whatever, it's also example number one of the way this is not about some like populists, we're going to root out waste, fraud and abuse, blah blah, blah. The CFPB is proof positive that this is about them consolidating power and organizing the government in a way that is going to be friendly to them, their friends and their interests and not necessarily you.

[Krystal Ball]

But there's some good lessons there for the left there in terms of technocratic neoliberalism and that, you know that devil's bargain that was made in 2008 that led to the fallout, the breakup of the Democratic coalition and of the rise of the Trump movement and obviously his now popular vote election, which is trying to put. I'm also honestly skeptical of Stoller's analysis. I'm not so sure that it leads to the Democrats being like, we're never gonna give you CFPB again CUZ we're about to talk with Hakeem Jeffries and all that. Or about Hakeem Jeffries about how their theory of government and all that looks in the future. You might be right, but it's been almost 20 years since the financial crisis. Sixteen years or so. Seventeen. Right. Since the crash. And has really anything changed with respect to too big to fail? Most people either don't remember or they don't really understand the legacy impact of that. So I don't disagree. But how long did it take between the repeal of Glass Steagall and the financial crisis? Glass Steagall happened under the Clinton administration. I wanna say maybe it was 98. I think it might not be. So it took about a decade for something like that to materialize.

[Sagar Enjeti]

99. I'm an idiot.

[Krystal Ball]

I apologize. So yeah, but it was about nine years or so for the global financial crisis to get kicked off in 2008. And if there's a similar lag time, what does politics look like in that moment? I genuinely have have no idea. But I'm not so confident in the Stoller analysis that some Bernie style revolution will happen in terms of oh the banks, you guys are never gonna get your bailout again. In terms of the way that the Democratic Party is currently trending now, I'm not saying the Republicans are gonna be better, I'm not saying that at all. But I'm just not so confident that there's this elite recognition of what has really happened here in terms of the failure of the Obama project. There's something Irami and Zed Ted Jelani have both been talking about a lot lately and I think it's very interesting from their perspective. This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. Everyone's talking about GLP1s like Ozempic Semaglutide.

[Sagar Enjeti]

With FutureHealth you can find out if they're right for you too.

[Krystal Ball]

Just go to tryfh.com that's trifh.com and find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes.

[Sagar Enjeti]

TryFH.comFutureHealth is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at providers discretion. Results may vary.

[Krystal Ball]

Sponsored by FutureHealth. February is the month of love and we all deserve a little something special. Dime Beauty is having their annual Val and Dime sale right now where you can get 25% off everything with code valendigm. It's the perfect excuse to refresh your beauty routine or pick out a thoughtful gift at Dime Clean is more than a standard. It's their promise. Dedicated to skin conscious ingredients, they focus on creating beauty, skin care, body care and fragrances that are safe, gentle and free from harsh chemicals. With daim, you can trust what you're putting on your skin every single day. If you're looking for the perfect nighttime anti aging cream, their TBT cream is a must try. It's packed with clean, age defying ingredients that nourish and hydrate your skin while you sleep. But don't just take my word for it. Over 30005 star reviews speak for themselves.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Whether it's skin care, fragrance or a.

[Krystal Ball]

Little bit of both, Dime has something for everyone. Visit dimebeautyco.com and use code VALENDIGM for 25% off right now during their Valendyne Day sale. Grab your favorites before it's over. Dime beautyco.com have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from nyx. That's K N I X Period Panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak proof underwear.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Brand in North America.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

That's nyx.com, promo code.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

All right, well, let's talk about those Democrats, shall we? Hakeem Jeffries of course is. I mean they're leaderless effectively at this point. Even if you ask them like who's the leader of the Democratic Party? They're all be like, I don't know. But Hakeem Jeffries is the top Democrat in the House and he was asked, you know, their phones are ringing off the hook with Democratic base voters who are like, what are you doing? Where is the resistance? Like there was a video that came out last week of all of these Democratic members of Congress going to the Department of Education and wanting entry. There's one dude standing in their way and they're just like, oh, I guess we can't go in that. I mean, so what are they going.

[Krystal Ball]

To do if they go in?

[Sagar Enjeti]

There's such frustration that they seem to be asleep at the switch. And so in any case, Hakeem Jeffries gets asked about this dynamic, in effect, which is like, well, what could we really do? Let's take a listen what he has to say.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have.

[Sagar Enjeti]

What leverage do we have?

[Krystal Ball]

They control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It's their government. What leverage do we have?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So there you go. What leverage do we have? I mean, I love. I do love. And I think it was Ken that pointed this out on Twitter, how when Democrats have control of the House, Senate, and the presidency, it's like the Republicans are this immovable obstacle that they can't possibly get anything done. And when Republicans are in that situation, suddenly, like, oh, they can just run roughshod and do whatever they.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I mean, I think that they'll learn. I don't know. I really am still really skeptical of this Democratic resistance because it just feels like a very elite media project right now. Like, it feels like the neurotic liberals who read the New York Times are very outraged. The bureaucrats, Washington. But that's a question too, of like, what is the Democratic base? What do they actually want here? I mean, what would a bunch of silly Maxwell Frost charging into the Democrat of education do?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, for create a media spectacle? I mean, that's the thing is, like, your only tool in lever is attention. That is your only tool in leverage, really. And that is the failure of the Democratic Party is they do not understand outside of, like, literally AOC and Bernie. They do not understand.

[Krystal Ball]

Does AOC really understand it, though?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, the economy.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Is her style of politics really gonna be like her, you know, going on Instagram live calling Elon a Nazi? Like, do we really believe that that's a effective political strategy? I don't. I think he just looks silly. He looked like a college liberal.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, let me say at least she is doing something. But in terms of understanding the attention economy, yes. I think she and Bernie are kind of the only two that truly do. And Bernie is impressed. The hell? I mean, his man is really old and he's still out there with, I think, some of the best messaging coming from the Democratic Party. But, yeah, that's your only real lever. And protests. And I would just say, like, I had all kinds of problems with the flavor of the Democratic resistance back in 2016. You know, I rush a gate. I was a critic of, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, in some ways it did work. We were talking about Trump's approval rating. They were able to keep his approval rating suppressed and under a majority the entire time. Yep, they did very well in the midterms. He lost in 2020. So there's been this among elite elected Democrats. There's this assumption of like, oh, well, we tried that this all in Trump resistance and it didn't work. And it's like, well, but at least it did do something. Clearly just sitting back and letting it all unfold. And I think one of them said letting him punch himself out is not gonna do anything and I think is foolish. So I think that there's two problems. One of them is they don't understand the attention economy and how that is your major lever for pushback and generating, doing what you can to contribute to a genuine grassroots revolt, which again, there is something happening here because the level of calls that they're getting at the Senate, 1600aminute, is off the charts, Normie. Democratic, like the local Democratic voters, are disgusted with the party and the fact. And that is very different. These people were like heroes to them previously msnbc, it was heroic to them, et cetera. That is all broken and gone. So in any case, that is the best thing that they have available to them. But the other problem, which gets to the Politico tear sheet that we can put up on the screen, is that really what they need to do is make an argument against oligarchy, make an argument against an Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies running the government. And that is gonna require a choosing a true which side are you on kind of emotion moment. And you have leaders in the Democratic Party like Hakeem Jeffries, who instead is trying to go to Silicon Valley and mend fences with the billionaires who happen to be and not 100 million, the mere hundred millionaires that happen to be on the Democratic side of the ledger. So he met quietly, they say, with more than 150 Silicon Valley based donors last week in California. Early step in Democrats efforts to repair relationships with a once deep blue constituency. The meet and greet in Tony Los Altos Hills comes at a precarious moment for Democrats in the tech world, which is lurched rightward in the second Trump era. World's wealthiest tech mogul is upending Washington. Democratic leaders are facing criticism from their own base for their halting response. Jefferies, meanwhile, was on the west coast, seemingly trying to avoid the next Elon Musk. Let's put this Next quote up on the screen. This is kind of like the money quote, so to speak. Speak. So he says there's significant fear that these tech folks who've been with us for a long time will say, effort. We're going with the other guys that a major Democratic donor advisor. These donors are also pissed watching former and current colleagues have unlimited unchecked power and getting richer off of this. And they're not. Democrats are trying to mend fences and they're also trying to keep them in the tent, according to this individual. So, you know, let's go ahead actually to the Nate Silver piece, because I thought he brought this. This is a D4. He actually broke this down pretty well. It's like they need a billionaire strategy. You could be pro capitalism or anti oligarch, but the middle ground won't persuade voters. And the middle ground is kind of where the Biden administration was because they did things that were genuinely adversarial that this class of people hated and the Wall street people hated and were pissed off of. The antitrust stuff was really adversarial. It was very unpopular among wealthy people. The aggressive enforcement at the cfpb, aggressive enforcement at the National Labor Relations Board, all of these things were deeply unpopular with billionaires. But rather than doing the FDR and I welcome their hatred and embracing that as your identity as like, we're going after these guys. They tried to do, like, what Hakeem Jeffries is doing here, like, wow, we really, we still like you. We still want you in the tent. We're gonna do these very various cultural things that maybe you like, et cetera, et cetera, and that approach is not going to work. So Nate Silver is 100% right that this middle ground of what he describes separating the world into naughty and nice billionaires, which is what the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, what he floated as the appropriate approach here, that is not going to cut it. And if you're actually going to push back against this movement and the Elon takeover and Trumpism in general, you are going to have to make a choice. You are going to have to either basically capitulate to that, or you're going to have to burn some bridges with the donor class. And they do not seem ready to make that choice.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I don't think it's structurally possible. The Democratic Party is the party of elite white educated liberals and elderly black people. Like, that's basically it. So, okay, so if we look at the elite, elite white educated liberals, these are NIMBY style process elite institution worshiping neurotic master's degree holders who make approximately 2 to $300,000 per year. They love, like Reid Hoffman and all these other people. To the extent they hate Elon, it's because of. I don't even. It's not because of cfpb, shall we put it that way? They hate him for being like a traitor to their class or culturally. Right. Her, whatever. Even a lot of these Silicon Valley donors, I mean, if you look at the things that they care the most about, it's gonna be literally DEI and like transgender issues. That's part of the reason the party has become the way it is. So how can you turn against oligarchy? I mean, if you don't have the voter base to sustain it? Those people don't culturally trust you. Can you roll back 20 years of cultural left direction? I don't think so, but that's what.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So the thing is, first of all, I don't think you're right about what the normie Democratic base wants. Like, they are.

[Krystal Ball]

What do they want?

[Sagar Enjeti]

They are appalled by. They want process going on here. They want to preserve the country. They want some, you know, they want.

[Krystal Ball]

To preserve their institutions, which they're in charge of.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I think you, I think you underestimate too, how much the economic precarity has creeped up to middle class, upper middle class people where it's not just the sort of traditional working class that feels that level of precarity. I also would say you very much overestimate where we are in terms of the realignment. Trump narrowly won, you know, voters under, what was it, $100,000. He didn't even win a majority of the vote. He won the popular vote, but he did not even get to 50%. So you still have plenty of working class voters within the Democratic base coalition. So there's no doubt that the Democratic base is appalled at what they see unfolding under Trumpism. Like, that piece is not a question to me whatsoever. And the Democrats have to, to your point, they have to regain some of those working class voters who voted for Trump this time around. They have to bring them back into the coalition. And if you're actually going to do that, I think you have to make a stand against Elon and oligarch control, and you have to have credibility with regard to burning the bridges with your own donor class. Now, where I see the more structural problem is that people like Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries is not in this position because he's such a brilliant visionary or whatever politician he's there because he can raise a lot of money. Nancy Pelosi, who does have some skills at least, but her main hold on power was because she was an absolutely prolific fundraiser. The vast majority of Democratic candidates are not there because there was like a grassroots well of support for them. There's a few of them that, that you know, could genuinely be said are the case. But by and large the game that you had to play to get to power in the Democratic Party is all about sucking up to the type of people that Hakeem Jeffries is sucking up to. So as a party that has self selected for that group of people who has these connections and whose primary skill set at is raising money, are they going to cut off their own individual like politician or politician, are they going to cut off their own sorts of power? And that's where I think the real structural problem ultimately comes in. Because if this was how you got into whatever position of power you have, you're not going to be really particularly amenable to completely changing course and orienting the party in a direction.

[Krystal Ball]

I think you're completely correct. I think it's a bi directional problem though, because it does get point taken, et cetera. But who is the center of gravity of elite Democratic thought? Ezra Klein? Right. Nate Silver? People who work in NGOs. The New York Times op ed page. If you look at that center of gravity, it's not one that's ultimately going to be consistent with an anti oligarchy strategy. That's one that's really uncomfortable. I actually think your point about economic precarity at the middle class and upper middle class is important because part of the black pilling of the upper middle class has been very interesting to watch. And it's actually also part of how you have this more elite turn against the Democratic Party. Cuz they're also bleeding some voters in that category, which leads to people like Bill Ackman and all these. I'm not saying they're in that category, but I'm saying that that creates a permission structure for like white people who make 200 grand, who are like grill dads or whatever to say, okay, screw the Democrats, even though traditionally they have. Whoever is left are people who are like really into cultural liberalism on top of the Democratic Party coalition, which raises a lot of money from these same people. And I don't think that they have that credibility yet because to do so you'd have to burn down everything that you've ever stood for. You'd have to both shove this cultural BS to the side, pretend that you have never said any of the things that you have. And you would have to like, how could you revamp your entire fundraising structure? I mean, you talked about this with the Bernie guys, but Bernie Bros are just Trump voters now. So can you win them back? I'm genuinely skeptical. I feel like once you have lost credibility with people on the Cuz, it's a long burned period that the way that this happened that they would so quickly be able to turn. I think that the way that the Democrats can win again is to drive up their suburban margins and then convince younger Hispanic black voter, Hispanic and black voters to come back into the fold and vote for them. And that's really the coalition, at least in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, that remains where their deficit was on top, obviously of white working class voters. But I'm not sure that those people are ever coming back. So I just think it's a very, very tough structural problem for them. I don't know how you could get out of this Gordian knot when you've elected the DNC person, person that you have, the good billionaire person.

[Sagar Enjeti]

What's interesting is, even though that dude did say that thing, the reason he got picked instead of Ben Wickler, they're both state party chairs, both from.

[Krystal Ball]

He's Minnesota.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. One is Minnesota and the other one was Wisconsin. So Ken Martin, the one that got elected is Minnesota. Actually, what tanked Wickler's campaign is that he was seen as being too close to billionaires. So he was backed by Reid Hoffman and he really had all the energy behind. You know, when Emily and Ryan interviewed him here, it was very much thought, oh, this is going to be the guy. And because he was perceived as being too close to the donor class, that's why he lost. And actually Nate talks about this here, but I also talked to Marianne about this as well, who also was involved in the DNC chair race. So she really saw it from the inside and that was what really caused people to turn on him. So even at the dnc, these are insiders. They're not all wealthy people, but they're just local Democratic Party chairs and whatever. They saw that as a real liability and a real problem for him, which was very interesting to me.

[Krystal Ball]

That is really interesting.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I didn't know that. Yeah. But back to the point of people who are not learning lesson whatever, we can put D3 up on the screen. So Senator Ruben Gallego, apparently he benefited to the tune of $10 million in his Senate campaign from crypto campaign contributions and Lo and behold, he's now the top Democrat on the Senate banking subcommittee overseeing digital assets that is crypto. And is now hosting a luxury retreat with Marc Andreessen, who obviously one of crypto industry's biggest investors and cheerleaders. And guess one of the featured speakers at this event, too, was Matt Iglesias, which was kind of.

[Krystal Ball]

No way.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hilarious. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Matt, what are you doing, bro? You got plenty of money in that substack. Please tell me you're not taking speaking fees. Oh, God.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He claims he wasn't paid to speak.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, really? Okay. All right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Or just old buddies, whatever. But, you know, the crypto industry is an important force. They really made an example of Katie Porter, who had been adversarial towards them and one of them regulated under the SEC and whatever, whatever. And they dropped millions of dollars on her in her race, and she lost. And that was meant to. And it did send a signal to anyone else who had thoughts of being adversarial and looking seriously at enforcement and regulation of the crypto industry that you better sit down and shut up. And so even though some of the thought was that there would be a crackdown after SBF was exposed and all of that nonsense, actually they just got smarter. They put more money into policy. Crypto industry is now one of the biggest contributors.

[Krystal Ball]

It got richer, too.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Political campaigns. Well, that's true, too.

[Krystal Ball]

Bitcoin is literally went from like 30k to 100k in that time period.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And so now at this point, you've got Democrats and Republic Gallego very much in their pocket, all kinds of other bipartisan officials very much in their pocket. Them getting their way at cfpb, et cetera. And so it's quite noteworthy to have Gallego at this luxury retreat with Marc Andreessen.

[Krystal Ball]

Amusing. But also remember, Gallego is a star, right? People have already floated him as, you know, he won in Arizona. Didn't he have the biggest point spread of any senator for a Democrat who won?

[Sagar Enjeti]

You might be right. No. Oh, for one who won, I think Tester probably did of like, point spread overall, Sherrod Brown, I think was second. But in terms of those who won, it might have been Gallego.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, that's actually crazy, because what did Trump win Arizona by? Four or five points? And then I think Gallego also won it by a few points as well. So it's almost an 8, 10 points off the top of my head.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You know what Kirsten Sinema's up to now?

[Krystal Ball]

What?

[Sagar Enjeti]

On the board of some crypto Bullshit.

[Krystal Ball]

No way. It's too good. Too good. See, I would have thought she would have joined. What was it? What, did she nuke the carried interest loophole? Yes. Yeah, so I would have thought she would have become a venture capitalist.

[Sagar Enjeti]

She might be doing that too. I don't know. But I do know one of the things she's doing is she sits on some crypto board now.

[Krystal Ball]

Too good. Too good.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Congratulations.

[Krystal Ball]

Just as we predicted here on the show. This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. Everyone's talking about GLP1s like Ozempic semaglutide.

[Sagar Enjeti]

With Future Health you can find out if they're right for you too.

[Krystal Ball]

Just go to tryfh.com that's trifh.com and find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Try fh.com future health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed provider's discretion. Results may vary.

[Krystal Ball]

Sponsored by Future Health February is the month of love and we all deserve a little something special. Dime Beauty is having their annual Valendigm sale right now where you can get 25% off everything with code VALENDIGM. It's the perfect excuse to refresh your beauty routine or pick out a thoughtful gift. At Dime, Clean is more than a standard, it's their promise. Dedicated to skin conscious ingredients, they focus on creating beauty, skin care, body care and fragrances that are safe, gentle and free from harsh chemicals. With Dime, you can trust what you're putting on your skin every single day. If you're looking for the perfect nighttime anti aging cream, their TBT cream is a must try. It's packed with clean, age defying ingredients that nourish and hydrate your skin while you sleep. But don't just take my word for it. Over 30005 star reviews speak for themselves.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Whether it's skincare, fragrance or a little.

[Krystal Ball]

Bit of both, Dime has something for everyone. Visit dimebeautyco.com and use code VALENDYME for 25% off right now during their Valen Die Day sale. Grab your favorites before it's over. Have you made the switch to nyx? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from Nix, that's K N I X Period panties from Nyx are like no other, making them the number one leak proof underwear.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Brand in North America.

[Krystal Ball]

They're comfy, stylish and absorbent, perfect for period protection from your lightest to your heaviest days. They look feel and machine wash just like regular underwear, but feature incognito protection that has you covered. You can shop sizes from extra small to 4xL. Choose from all kinds of colors, prints and different styles. From bikinis to boy shorts, thongs to high rise. You've got to try Nyx. See why millions are ditching disposable wasteful period products and have switched to nyx. Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code. Try 15, that's nyx.com, promo code. Try 15 for 15% off life changing period underwear. That's kn ix.com hey guys, we're gonna cover Stephen A. Smith tomorrow. Want to make sure that the show goes out on time. So Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, if we broke up the big.

[Krystal Ball]

Banks tomorrow, and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will, would that end races? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight? Would that solve our problem with voting rights and Republicans who are trying to strip them away from people of color, the elderly and the young? Would that give us a real shot at making sure that our political system works better because we get rid of gerrymandering and reducing redistricting and all of the gimmicks that states use to give these Republicans safe seats so they can continue to tear down the progress we've made in America? I'm the only candidate who will take on every barrier to progress. I'm the only candidate who has a record of taking on those barriers. I'm the only candidate who will stand with you in every single fight, nobody matter how hard it is or how long it takes.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That was Hillary Clinton in February of 2016, desperately trying to block the class based juggernaut of the Bernie Sanders movement from ascending to power. That little riff was essentially the playbook use identity politics and culture war to posture as being the real progressive while smearing Bernie and his supporters as secret sexists and bigots, all in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of protecting corporate power. Sad to say, it worked. Hillary beat Bernie. An agenda of woke virtue signaling took over the Democratic party, accelerating its decline with workers. And the one movement that actually cared about fighting oligarchs on behalf of the 99% was by and large vanquished. Perhaps the most perfect distillation of this use of wokeism to protect corporate power was when a union buster for REI opened up their anti worker meeting with a land acknowledgement and pronouns. Progressive cultural posturing would be offered as a substitute for and distraction from actually Checking the billionaire class now. This playbook is not unique to corporate Democrats and has never been. In fact, it is being deployed with overwhelming success right now against the right, some elements of which had flirted with a break from Reagan conservatism. Some factions had flirted with union rights, antitrust enforcement, lifting wages, protecting safety net programs. The TLDR is this though to my populist right for friends, y'all are being played in the same way liberals traded away a minimum wage hike for Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth. You are trading away an antitrust agenda for an executive order taking pronouns off of passports. Elites are ushering in an oligarch agenda under the guise of culture war. And this is the playbook. They will feed you culture war scraps while they eat the whole universe. And it's happening now at a pace we have literally never seen before. Oligarchs are lying to your face, telling you that the agencies that police their scams and fraud are actually woke and so deserving of dismantling that ending DEI requires stripping your local public school of funds and privatizing weather data collection that the few politicians like Bernie and Warren who have actually taken a principled stand against the corrupting influence of big money in politics are really bought and paid for. So their stances which challenge corporate power could be disregarded. The real fraud in the federal budget can be found in imaginary Gaza condoms instead of juicy billion dollar contracts and tax havens where the billionaires hide their cash. Now let me ask you a simple math question. Which do you think is more important to the federal budget deficit? Politico Pro subscriptions at usaid or the fact that Tesla pays a grand total of $0 in federal taxes in spite of billions of dollars in profit? Profit. They're tricking you. It's a scam. And sad to say, it's working. Now one of the most brazen examples of this scam was perpetrated by successive oligarchs on the Joe Rogan Show. First, Marc Andreessen came by to lie to Joe's audience that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was actually an evil plot by Elizabeth Warren to debank conservatives. Let's take a listen to a little of that. So for example, we have this thing.

[Krystal Ball]

Called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau cfpb, which was the. It's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That she gets to control.

[Krystal Ball]

And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Krystal Ball]

And if you read the Constitution like there is no such thing as an independent agency. And yet there it is. What does her agency do? Whatever she wants. What does it do, though? Basically, terrorize financial institutions. Prevent new competition. New startups that want to compete with the big banks. Really? Oh, yeah, 100%. How so?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Just by terrorizing anybody who tries to.

[Krystal Ball]

Do anything new in financial services. Can you give me an example? You know, debanking, this is where a lot of the debanking comes from, is these agencies. So debanking is when you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system. System. Like they did to Kanye. Exactly like they did to Kanye. My partner Ben's father has been debanked. Really?

[Sagar Enjeti]

We had an employee. For what?

[Krystal Ball]

For having the wrong politics. For saying unacceptable things under current banking regulations. Under.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Okay, here's a great thing.

[Krystal Ball]

Under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person pep.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And if you are a pep, you.

[Krystal Ball]

Are required by financial regulators to kick them off of your. To kick them out of your bank. You're not allowed to. What if you're politically on the left? Well, that's fine. No, because. Because they're not politically exposed. So no one on the left gets debunked. I have not heard of a single instance of anybody in the left getting debunked. Can you tell me what the person that you know did what they said that got them debunked? Oh, well, I mean, David Horowitz is a right wing, you know, he's pro Trump.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, he said all kinds of things.

[Krystal Ball]

You know, he's been very anti Islamic terrorism. He's been very worried about immigrant migration, all these things.

[Sagar Enjeti]

None of that is remotely true. This agency is one of the best expenditures in the entire federal budget. As it fights against scams. It's actually returned billions of dollars to regular people who've been tricked and robbed by elites. So you can imagine why elites would like to see it eliminated. Specifically, Andreessen, Elon, Musk and co are upset that the CFPB was regulating fintech, trying to make sure that online payment processors can't take your money and gamble it on crypto or other harebrained schemes. But you can't just tell people that this agency gets in the way of your scam. So instead, what do they do? They Trojan horse an oligarch agenda through some culture war bullshit. Mark Zuckerberg was up next, also stopping by Rogan's pod to advance more lies about an agency that has served as a chat check on his power as well. He pretended like the CFPB took aim at him because he stood up to Biden. Covid censorship Again, complete and total nonsense. It's worth noting that Zuckerberg was a Democrat like five seconds ago, using all kinds of woke virtue signaling to paint himself as some sort of a progressive ally when that was the most expedient path to protecting his power. It is nothing for him to switch teams and use the same playbook of throwing out culture war red meat to cover for a pro oligarch agenda. It is literally the same playbook just tickling the right wing cultural erogenous zones instead of the liberal ones. How has this worked out for all of them? Beautifully. Chef's Kiss Elon announced a war on the CFPB with this particular tweet. Now that agency is effectively dead. The new head announced he wanted a $0 budget for the year, that all new rulemaking and investigations should cease, and the workforce was told not to show up this week. Victory for the fintech robber barons who want to to fleece you. This also means that rules such as ones promulgated under Biden which would have kept medical debt off of credit reports have been halted, unlikely to return. CFPB has cracked down on junk fees gone after predatory payday lenders, checked abusive practices by debt collectors, stopped foreclosure abuses against veterans with VA loans, and a lot more. Now all over. Do you see how this works though? In a world that made sense, the interest of the 99.9% would routinely prevail over those at the top. 0.1%. So those at the tippy top, what do they do? They rig the game. They lie to you. They confuse you about who your real allies are and who your real adversaries are. An executive order on girls in sports that applies to maybe a few dozen girls in the entire country is no substitute for your ability to organize and have a voice in your own workplace. But they are systematically destroying the National Labor Relations Board. Kristi Noem running around playing dress up like Ice Barbie is not worth giving up on breaking up tech monopolies and keeping them from automating your job out of existence. But Trump is propping up the AI overlords who openly brag about making all of humanity irrelevant. Now some of you have been genuinely convinced that the richest man on earth who is rapidly consolidating power solely in his own hands is engaged in some sort of a populist project for the people. Please do not be a fool. Here's the truth of the bar bargain that is being offered to the right right now. You will get to own the libs and Elon will get to own the country. He will make you poor while he enriches himself and his friends. He will strip away your rights to freedom of speech, privacy while he makes himself all powerful and untouchable. This man wants to put chips in all our brains for God's sake. Like, let's be serious for a second. Allow me to quote from Steve Bannon on this particular point about Elon and on the philosophy of these particular tech altogether oligarchs. He said to the New York Times, quote, now here's the point. In techno feudalism, you are just a digital serf. Your value as a human being, as someone built and made in the image and likeness of God and endowed with the life spirit of the Holy Spirit. They don't consider that everything is digital to them. They are at the end of the day, transhumanist. And what is transhumanist? Transhumanist is somebody who sees homo sapien here and homo sapien plus on the other side of what they call the singular. And that's why they're all rushing, whether it's artificial intelligence, regenerative robots, quantum computing, advanced chip design, crispr, biotech, all of it to come to this point of which the oligarchs are going to lead that revolution. This is taking us back a millennium to feudalism. Their business model is based upon that. That's Steve Bannon saying that. Now if Elon and Cole told you that their goal was to make you a digital surf and themselves CEO kings of the world, I don't think a whole lot of people are going to sign up for that project. So they cloak it in wokeness, gender, ideology, some other real or imagined liberal excess, or simply in the delight of making liberals squeal. I beg you, please keep your eye on the ball. The stakes here are too high. The best way to own the libs would be to learn from their mistakes. To not get distracted by a bunch of surface level culture war obfuscation that lets billionaires empty the vault to not give away your country for a few anti woke bubbles. Do not let yourself get played. And Sagar, I know you took a.

[Krystal Ball]

Look at and if you want to hear my reaction to Krystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber [e-mail] okay, great show for everybody tomorrow. Thank you all for watching. We love you and we'll see you then. 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.

[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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

[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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