← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/14/25: Trump BLACKMAILS Corrupt NYC Mayor, DOGE Hits IRS, Ukraine Boots On The Ground?
01:06:57
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Unknown Speaker 1
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Kyle
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Kyle
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Ryan
Hello everybody and happy Valentine's Day. We just couldn't stay away. There was far too much to discuss to wait for Monday. Ryan and Emily, great to see you guys. Happy Valentine's Day.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Happy one to you.
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Ryan
Yes.
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Unknown Speaker 3
I like you guys are both wearing red and pink. That's beautiful.
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Ryan
I mean, I gotta be. I gotta be on the theme. It's also. It's actually my daughter Ida's birthday. Happy birthday to her. She's turning. So I gotta be in full Valentine's Day spirit in honor of her as well. So that's how we roll over here.
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Unknown Speaker 3
And I love that we can we get the ambient noise of Ryan's children too.
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Ryan
Yes, indeed.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Because it's at Valentine's Day, so they're gonna keep the kids home for no reason.
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Ryan
See, my kids are also home and have been home all but like one day this week because of snow. And they're off Monday for, I guess, his President's Day. I'm like, and we're supposed to get snow next week. I'm just like, I should just homeschool them at this point. This is getting utterly preposterous. Kyle should homeschool them now that. That'd be a reality show, right?
- [02:26]
Unknown Speaker 3
There American history with Kyle Kalinsky.
- [02:29]
Ryan
Oh, it'd be good. They learned some things. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. Okay, so we had three different big topics that we wanted to jump into today. So first of all, there's a lot of news with regard to Eric Adams. They dropped the charges against him. The Trump administration pushed for that. And then there was a series of mass resignations sort of in protest of the way all of that went down. So that's a big deal. We've also got a lot of comments coming out about Ukraine and potential negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and some conflicting comments from Hegseth and Trump and J.D. vance. So break all of that down for also some very interesting comments from Trump about wanting to denuclearize and also about wanting to cut the military budget by 50%. So we'll give some initial reacts to that. I said to you guys, Sagar and I probably also cover that on Monday. So we'll, we'll save some of the analysis on that one for then as well. And then of course, want to give you all the updates that we have with regard to Doge. One of the biggest ones is they have sent out a memo now to fire all probationary employees throughout the federal government. That's people who have been there less than one or two years depend agency, depending. It's about 200,000 people. You add that to the people who took the deferred resignation offer, you're talking about 10% of the federal workforce, roughly, that is going to be gone. So obviously that's going to have some major impacts. Go ahead, Ryan, you say yeah, and.
- [03:46]
Unknown Speaker 2
There'S one actually detail I can add to that. I was talking to a federal worker at one of these departments and he said that people were refusing promotions because it's not just new people who get on probation. If you go from, you know, this career level and you, you've done a really good job, you get promoted to a new job with more responsibilities and more of a pay raise. You're actually in a brief probationary window even if you've been a federal worker for 12 years. And so what a lot of people who were seeing the writing on the wall were doing was like, I'll take the responsibility and I'll take the new title, but I don't want any more money because if I take the raise, that's what triggers the probationary piece in the system. So it's not just new people. Like this could also be hitting people who've been working there for 12 years and just by coincidence, got a promotion in November.
- [04:42]
Ryan
Yeah, Well, I mean, and that, that goes to a point I've been making, is this is actually kind of the polar opposite of the merit based or meritocracy thinking that they claim to support. Because the people who are more likely to take the buyouts, I think there's two types. There's people who are close to retirement and then there's people who have a lot of other options. So that's going to be like kind of your best and brightest who can go to the private sector command a higher salary, you're not getting those people back. And so when you add to that that, you know, some chunk of the probationary employees also are people who were up for promotions, which seems to indicate that they were probably doing a good job, that also, you know, cuts into the bone of some of the most important individuals who would be within the federal government. But we'll get to all of that. I do want to start with this story coming out of New York. I'm curious for both of you guys, thoughts on this. So you guys may know that Eric Adams, who is under fire for corruption in the in New York, his whole administration has been like, gutted by corruption charges, et cetera. There was a lot of he started cozying up to Trump and making a lot of noises, basically sounding like he is effectively mad. And lo and behold, the order comes down to drop the Adams case. Now, significantly, he wasn't pardoned, meaning they can still bring back the charges if he doesn't do the things that the Trump administration wants him to do. In protest of this, you have had a sort of mass resignation among, you know, you have a U.S. attorney who resigned, a bunch of other folks who were involved with this. Let me just read you a little bit of this New York Times piece. They say order to drop Adams case prompts resignations in New York and Washington. Manhattan's U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop that corruption case against New York City's Mayor Eric Adams. Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case, the Public Integrity Section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned. That's according to five people with knowledge. Several hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned. The serial resignations, and I think this is correct, represent the most high profile public opposition so far to President Trump's tightening control over the Justice Department. Stunning repudiation of the administration's attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams. And let me just pull up one of the things that was alleged here is that Adams pretty explicitly offered a quid pro quo in exactly the way that you would expect. So this is the letter from the US Attorney who resigned, who said in that scathing letter explaining the rationale for resigning over this, you know, this push to drop Adams charges. I attended a meeting on January 31 with Mr. Bove, Adams counsel, and members of my office. Adams attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities with regards to immigration and other things Only if the indictment were dismissed, Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. So, you know, pretty significant development and some of the first really significant coordinated public pushback. Ryan, about some of the things that the Trump administration has been up to.
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Unknown Speaker 2
It reminds me of that iconic scene from the Wire where Stringer Bell says, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? Rips the notes up and throws them away. It's like, who's over here taking notes on this cover up of a corruption scheme? Of course, the whole thing is funny because Adams has already shown himself to be, based on the indictment, you know, thoroughly willing to do quid pro quo. Like, what do I need to do for the. What do I need to do for the upgrade, for the money, for whatever. I'll do that thing. So they come in and they're like, all right, we will drop these corruption charges if you will corruptly agree to do our thing in exchange for this personal benefit that we're going to give you. I'm sure you saw that, you know, Holman and Adams were on one of these morning shows. Was that this morning?
- [08:50]
Ryan
Yeah, I think so.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Where Holman says to him, like, if he doesn't abide by our agreement, I'm going to be up his butt in his office reminding him that we have this deal.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Graphic.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Wow. Okay. All right, well, you know what?
- [09:08]
Unknown Speaker 3
Said it in front of him on live tv, like he was sitting right on live tv.
- [09:11]
Unknown Speaker 2
And Adams kind of laughed and said, look, I'm just doing what's best for the city of New York.
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Ryan
And sure you are, buddy.
- [09:18]
Unknown Speaker 2
To make these. Make these streets as safe as they can possibly be. In some ways, they are, this era is making us useless. Because the media's purpose often is to decode the code that politicians are speaking in and explain it in a way that people can understand. They don't speak in code anymore. Like, they just tell you exactly what's going on. So here we are just repeating what they're saying. You don't need us to do that. Really?
- [09:45]
Ryan
Yeah. No. And Emily, apparently, you know, they're already changing policy after this deal was struck. So Adams has now opened Rikers island to ICE agents. You know, this would be a seeming violation of the city's sanctuary policies. Eric Adams, as mayor of the city, is not in a position to unilaterally roll back the sanctuary city legislation policy. He has to go through the city council in order to do that. So instead he found some sort of a loophole where he could justify this change in collaboration with ICE. And, you know, however you feel about the ICE enforcement and how this should all be handled, etc. Etc. I think, you know, the people of New York elected a politician to represent them, not to be subject to coercion and the priorities of the Trump administration.
- [10:39]
Unknown Speaker 3
It's so, by the way, I think we touched on this, but the. One of the Justice Department employees who resigned. Well, first of all, one of them was just appointed several weeks ago by Donald Trump. So not like, not like when we were talking about federal workers earlier. This isn't like a purge of the self deportation, as Mitt Romney would say, of people who are disloyal to Donald Trump. This is somebody who like actually accepted.
- [11:06]
Ryan
Trump's appointment and was an Antonin Scalia clerk.
- [11:10]
Unknown Speaker 3
So this. Yes. So Danielle Sassoon clerked for Scalia. She's a member of the Federalist Society. And it's just like, it's not a self deport deportation of disloyal people. It's genuinely like a principled. It's not. What was her name? Sally Yates.
- [11:28]
Ryan
Right.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Remember the first, the first Trump administration, Sally Yates resigned and became a resistance hero. This is not that. It's not that at all. And so it's. Yeah, I mean, this is as. This is what Trump in one way ran against and then in the other way when he's saying things like, I alone can fix it because I know the system and I have been part of the system. He was also. That was in 2016, although he's never like walked that back.
- [11:55]
Unknown Speaker 2
Of course.
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Unknown Speaker 3
It's always been part of his pitch. On the one hand, people are like, yeah, this guy knows how to get shit done because he can wheel and deal. On the other hand, you end up with situations like this where you have just naked, naked corruption by a Democrat who is just proving Trump to be the cheapest date. I mean, the cheapest date.
- [12:18]
Ryan
Yeah, that's right.
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Unknown Speaker 3
They control the government. They have the power to like actually start dealing with this issue, you know, and they are on a policy level, they don't need Eric Adams. They really don't.
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Ryan
Well, and Eric Adams probably not going to be around all that much longer. But to your point, Emily, about him being a cheap date, you guys remember Rod Blagojevich from the Illinois governor was like, what was he was selling a Senate seat, wasn't it? Something Obama. Senate Obama. That's right. And what, Trump commuted his sentence or pardoned him or something of this, of the same regard. All it takes is you saying nice things about Trump. Like, that's literally all it takes. And Eric spilling on Democrats.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Yes, that's what Blagojevich started doing. And now Eric Adams is doing the same thing with Democrats. They're all, they're all corrupt. It's a racket. You are the racket.
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Ryan
Yeah, that's exactly right. Go ahead, Ryan.
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Unknown Speaker 2
No, and also just to stand up for Blagojevich, he went down because he said on audio, I'm not giving this away. I'm not giving this thing away for free. Right. And he pissed off Democrats in the way that he went about it in a fairly selfish way rather than a partisan way. He didn't actually take any money for it, though. Like, what he, what he meant is he wanted some political gain for himself.
- [13:28]
Ryan
Which is kind of how the game is, honestly.
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Unknown Speaker 2
That's what they do. Who in politics gives anything away for free? Nobody. So the Justice Department has continued to chip away at its own authority by take, by going after stupid cases at the same time as their power is being chipped away at by, you know, this, like, I don't know if it's a federal side or who's pushing it, this like, drive to basically make it so it's impossible to prosecute corruption.
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Ryan
No, that's exactly right. I mean, the Supreme Court has taken a number of decisions that have made it so that it has to be as brazen as Bob Menendez being like, I will do X for you in exchange for this gold bar.
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Unknown Speaker 2
And, and you have to get the gold bars before you take the action. Like if you do the thing and then you get the gold bars after they're like, well, that's not corruption.
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Ryan
Right.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Like they did with the Virginia governor.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Yeah, but you also, they'll also. This was the best part of the Menendez self defense is when he said this is actually just anti Cuban bigotry. I'M being targeted because I am a proud Cuban man.
- [14:33]
Ryan
Yes, because the taking a playbook, Andrew Cuomo's playbook there with his like Castro.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Cuban community is just so oppressed here in American politics.
- [14:43]
Ryan
That's right. All right.
- [14:44]
Unknown Speaker 2
No voice for them.
- [14:45]
Ryan
One thing, Ryan, I wanted to get your reaction to in particular on this is Governor Kathy Hochul. There is a provision in New York law that enables her to be able to remove Eric Adams. And she's obviously under pressure now from liberals to do that. Here is she was on Rachel Maddow show and Rachel pressed her on exactly this. Let's take a listen to that.
- [15:05]
Kathy Hochul
What we've just seen with resignation of the U.S. attorney, the Trump appointed acting U.S. attorney, the removal of line prosecutors on that case, the demand from Main justice to drop that case, the refusal from SDNY to do it, then the resignation of Main justice officials who had the case dumped on them and they wouldn't take it either. This is just an incredible drama in terms of federal law enforcement right now. But you are in a very unusual position, a singular position with regard to this case, which is that thanks to the New York State Constitution and New York City law, you are the only person who has the power to effectively fire Mayor Eric Adams and remove him from this position, which might conceivably moot this whole fight. How are you thinking about that now? You could have done it at any point until now, but now, given this crisis that's emerged in federal law enforcement around this case, are you feeling differently about that responsibility?
- [15:52]
Emily
Let me tell you from a couple of angles here. One is that this is unbelievably unprecedented for the Department of Justice in Washington to interfere in this way. My husband was a 30 year federal prosecutor. Barack Obama made him his United States attorney. You look at what happened here. This is not supposed to happen in our system of justice. The bondage administration in that Department of Justice is already showing they're corrupt. Set that aside. I did see the letter that was issued by the acting United States Attorney. The allegations are extremely concerning and serious.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Yes.
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Emily
But I cannot, as the governor of this state, have a knee jerk, politically motivated reaction. Like a lot of other people are saying right now, I have to do it smart, what's right. And I'm consulting with other leaders in government at this.
- [16:31]
Ryan
So what do you make of that, Ryan? I mean, just. I'll get your reaction then. I've got a few thoughts about this too.
- [16:38]
Unknown Speaker 2
She, she, she doesn't have much political capital to pull a move like this off, which is A product of the way that the kind of New York state Democratic Party has lost so much of its own legitimacy. You know, she was kind of, you know, she became governor after they pushed Cuomo out and then she basically didn't have a serious primary and then barely beats was Lee Zeldin.
- [17:02]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [17:03]
Unknown Speaker 2
In that 2022 election. And so and has been wildly kind of pretty unpopular. And so in a normal situation, a move like this would be a no brainer. Like the guy is flagrantly corrupt and got out of his corruption charges by being even more brazenly corrupt. And like Emily said, you or your may was yours, like agree or disagree on any of the policy. Like the voters would prefer to have somebody that's acting on behalf of New York City residents rather than is taking all of his actions because he's being blackmailed over is over a prosecution. Like that's, that's just on a clear kind of process, fairness level yet because Hochul has so little capital, who knows if she'll even be willing to, to do this.
- [17:51]
Ryan
See, that's funny that you look at it that way and you may be entirely right, but I sort of look at it the other way of. Like, how does she have the political capital to refuse to do this when, you know, I mean, this is a clearly corrupt clownish too figure. And the, as you said before, Ryan, like they're not even pretending like there's some legitimate reason why they dropped the charges. In fact, when they did drop the charges, one of the thing that Danielle Sassoon said is she was like, we actually were just about to file a superseding indictment with even more charges. Like that's how dead to rights we've got this guy is. We've got him on the meat of it. And we also were about to file this indictment about the COVID up too. If you look at a flowchart or an org chart of his administration, like the number of people who have been charged and had to resign under duress, et cetera, et cetera, because they were also brazenly corrupt. It's, I can't even keep track of it. So, you know, to me it's, I felt the other way of, like, how could she not at this point remove this guy? And also, you know, I was thinking about, I don't know, Emily, did you see this clip of Hakeem Jeffries, who's just like the biggest loser on the face of the planet, apparently getting asked about Eric Adams? And he just says this very mealy mouth, like, well, the people in New York have got to decide or something like, Republicans have no problem going after Democrats, going after each other, certainly going after another Republican who betrayed the party, which is what Eric Adams also is. Now that he's like, in good with Tom Homan and the Trump administration, et cetera.
- [19:21]
Unknown Speaker 3
He's on Fox and Friends with Tom Homan.
- [19:24]
Ryan
There would be no reluctance to throw this person under the bus, as they honestly really should be, because this is putting partisanship aside, like, brazenly corrupt quid pro quo admitted, already changing the policy and at the behest of the Trump administration, like, Jesus Christ, have some self respect.
- [19:42]
Unknown Speaker 3
What's actually pretty good fodder for an argument against Trumpism. Right. Like, Democrats right now are flailing for a way to talk about, first of all, like, waste, fraud and abuse. The Justice Department spent tons of resources prosecuting Eric Adams, and it just literally being lit on fire because they're getting.
- [20:02]
Unknown Speaker 2
They're getting an ally of the Trump administration out of it. So from their perspective, money well spent.
- [20:07]
Ryan
Yeah. So much for their claims to care about corruption, though.
- [20:10]
Unknown Speaker 3
Well, this is. But this is the thing like, that is such for Hakeem Jeffries, this is just like a flashing, obvious opportunity to seize and say, this is naked corruption coming from Donald Trump. I think part of the problem is that, like Kathy Hochul lacking political capital, Eric Adams lacking political capital, a lot of it comes because they actually did a terrible job, I would argue, managing the migrant surge in a way that voters were pissed about. And so now it's like you have all of these terrible options. You know, they have Democrats in New York, people I know who are like, this is insane. What have you guys been doing? And it's like, that's how Eric Adams thinks. Well, the only thing I can do is just like, jump off the boat and become a Republican. I mean, it's just like so many bad options. And so if you're Hakeem Jeffries, you should be looking at this and saying, this was a failure, like a glaring failure of Democratic leadership. Own it so that you look better. Like, you can look better. You don't have to accept this. I mean, it's just insane. I don't. I. I don't understand the Democratic Party at all.
- [21:20]
Unknown Speaker 2
And for, for our MAGA viewers, maybe the way to think about it would be imagine that the California attorney general had found, you know, three or four Republicans on the take from various foreign governments and was prosecuted, you know, was prosecuting them, or they found some guilty of some California state crime and is prosecuting them. And then goes to them and says, actually we will drop these charges if you'll vote with Democrats in the House. And now all of a sudden the House is controlled by Democrats. Like, they probably wouldn't like that. That wouldn't, that wouldn't seem fair.
- [21:54]
Ryan
Wouldn't probably sound.
- [21:55]
Unknown Speaker 2
That would sound fair. And you'd probably say those Republicans should be removed from office and replaced by good, actual loyal Republicans.
- [22:03]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [22:03]
Unknown Speaker 2
And then voters, rather than just trying to get themselves out of jail.
- [22:07]
Ryan
And then can you imagine if Mike Johnson or Trump got asked about that dynamic and they were like, well, let's.
- [22:13]
Unknown Speaker 3
See what the voter.
- [22:13]
Ryan
No, they would never act that way. You know, it's preposterous.
- [22:17]
Unknown Speaker 2
It's very telling that, like, you know, I do a lot of coverage of other countries and like this feels very like South Central American or Eastern European or like salad. Like there's like all sorts of, I can think of all sorts of different political structures around the world where prosecution and jail are just other carrots and sticks that are part of the political economy and part of the political process. And that has not been the case for us before, but it seems like now, now it's going to increasingly be a thing that, like, where we use like jail terms and jail sentences as, as part of our politics.
- [23:04]
Ryan
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's pretty clear at this point. Go ahead, Emily. And then, and then we can transition to some of these things about Ukraine which are also really interesting.
- [23:12]
Unknown Speaker 3
Super quick point. Just that MAGA world and like, they're like, let's just say that there are good faith people in intellectual circles on the right who have seen Donald Trump as a figure who can peel back all the layers of the corrupt onion at places like the FBI and the Department of Justice. And they've said that in order to do that you have to like go after legitimate targets. And you cannot go after legitimate targets and actually get us out of this banana republic death spiral while also doing this. So I bet those people on the right, they may not be saying it aloud, but sort of like the good faith intellectual people who have looked at this, there are a lot of bad faith people, but there are some people who have really thought serious about corruption at DOJ are looking at this and thinking, my God, this is not going to happen like this.
- [23:55]
Unknown Speaker 2
And one of them resigned. Yeah.
- [23:57]
Unknown Speaker 3
Yeah.
- [23:57]
Ryan
Isn't it? Yeah, true. Isn't Pam Bonnie the one who like dropped some investigation into Trump University 25 grand. Yeah. For a campaign contribution and that happened. So. Yeah, that did not exactly sending the cleanest of officials into that agency. And then over at the FBI, you get cash. But tell who's already got his, you know, enemies list drawn up of, of who they want to target for cash. Go and go after. All right, let's go ahead and transition to Ukraine. I'm really curious what you guys make of some of these different developments. So this is kind of the most recent thing is J.D. vance, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal said that the US has both economic and military tools of leverage if Russia doesn't push for peace with Ukraine. I'll just read this to you, Vice President JD With Vance warned on Thursday the US could hit Russia with economic and military tools of leverage if Putin doesn't negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine in good faith. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he said the option of sending US Troops to Ukraine was, quote, on the table as well as economic punishment if a peace deal doesn't guarantee keys long term independence. So obviously the vice President, United States. Emily, putting floating US Boots on the ground in Ukraine is quite an extraordinary comment.
- [25:16]
Unknown Speaker 3
Did you guys see the controversy over what Hegseth said about Ukraine joining NATO? So Roger Wicker, very powerful in the Senate foreign relations world, came out and said that Hegseth was making a rookie mistake and that he was like, glad Hegseth had walked it back. Meanwhile, the president of the United States was saying the exact same thing. And it's like in Vance's whole speech, Glenn Greenwald was posting clips from being like, I never thought I would see someone talk like I would never thought I would see like an American official talk like this, like about what the country, how it operates on a global scale. And so it's like you see Republicans trying to deal with this question of negotiation with Ukraine after spending, I don't know, a couple years now, saying that the Biden administration was being way too flippant about the leverage. And so it's like, do you actually, do you negotiate honestly from a position of like what he says we're taking Naito off of the table. Or do you now try to pretend that you've changed your mind on some of this stuff? I don't know. It's just, especially after you spent the last, I don't know, three whatever years on the podcast circuit or as a cable TV host. It's a weird position to be in.
- [26:37]
Ryan
Yeah. Well, here's what you're referring to, I think Emily and then Ryan get your reaction to it. So originally hacks have said very clear in saga and I think you Guys covered it, too, was like, no, Naito, they're going to have to give up territory. That's how it is. And then he appeared to walk back his statement. He said, these negotiations are led by Trump. Everything's on the table. In his conversations with Putin and Zelensky, what he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, President Trump. So I'm not going to stand at this podium, declare what he will or won't do, what will be in or won't or what will be out, what concessions will be made or what concessions are not made. But then after he made those comments, Trump got asked in particular about the NATO part and was like, yeah, no, he's like, he's right about that.
- [27:18]
Unknown Speaker 3
So, yeah, yeah, it's just like Roger Wicker's babysitter. And tried to. It's just ridiculous.
- [27:23]
Unknown Speaker 2
And Roger Wicker, to underline his role here, is that he's from Mississippi, which has much of its economy organized around the weapons industry, because some of these Southern Democrats, and Wicker would be a Southern Democrat if he were 70 years older, because they lasted for so long, they had the most amount of seniority. They would become the chair of these key committees and subcommittees, and they would steer all of the defense contracts down to Mississippi and Alabama. So as a result, they. They're organized around the military industrial complex. And Wicker is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. So he is the, like, number one representative in Washington for weapons makers. And so when you're hearing him speak, like, you're hearing the voice of the military industrial complex. And so, you know, he's, he is, he's on his heels right now. They are the ones that are taking this Ukraine news the hardest.
- [28:24]
Ryan
And Ryan, what do you make of some of these different pieces? So we know Treasury Secretary Scott Basin has been very involved here in striking some sort of, like, you know, rare earth.
- [28:33]
Unknown Speaker 2
Get your rare earths.
- [28:35]
Ryan
Yeah, and this goes back to your point about it used to be we'd have to explain to people, like, what they're really after is. But they're like, we're after the rare earth minerals. That's what we want out of this deal. We want our companies to come in, exploit your natural resources, so we basically own you forever. And in exchange, we might continue to support you. So you've got that. Which does not seem actually consistent with us being disentangled from Ukraine. That seems like us being more entangled with Ukraine then you have, you know, a lot. I think the expectation from the right coming into these negotiations is that a lot of the pressure would be put on Ukraine, on Zelensky basically telling him things like what Hegseth was saying, you're not going to be in NATO, you are going to have to give up territory, etc. But then you have J.D. vance threatening Putin. And you've heard Trump use some of this language in the past as well, saying, like, listen, we'll put on even more economic sanctions. We will even consider boots on the ground. We'll consider getting our military directly involved if you don't come to the negotiating table. So how are you sort of making sense of these different pieces, Ryan?
- [29:36]
Unknown Speaker 2
Yeah, and you're right again, like, what is the point of investigative journalism if we can't unearth this, like, secret arrangement where the US Is providing X and in return they're getting these rare earth minerals while actually claiming that it's all about the pursuit of democracy and the sovereignty.
- [29:54]
Unknown Speaker 3
You guys don't even have to do the, have you heard of Halliburton thing.
- [29:58]
Unknown Speaker 2
It's outrageous. They're really trying to put us out of work here. So, yeah, everything they say is what's going on here, except the things that Trump says that where he's very explicitly and purposely trying to kind of create positioning. And he, you know, he's been very open that, no, this is a very standard negotiating tactic. It's not like Trump is unique in doing this. He, he is just more flamboyant in, in how he does it. Like, you know, rat rattling the nuclear saber at North Korea or, you know, saying that Gaza is going to be completely depopulated and Palestinians aren't going to be able to come back when it's, when it's a total fantasy and there's a real, or, you know, we're going to fund Ukraine, the Ukraine war forever. There's a real tendency to kind of think that Trump's being an idiot when he says things like this. You're like, doesn't Trump know that, like, you can't actually transfer the entire population of Gaza out of Gaza? Like, that's like, just physically, like, that's not an achievable thing. What a moron he is. And you're all, there's always a risk when you are, you know, under, you know, you are chalking up your opponent's strategy to idiocy, that you're missing what, you know, what he might be trying to do. And in a lot of these cases, he's creating a lot of bluster. And smoke to then. And to end up where he wants to end up. And with Gaza, it would be with the, you know, a ceasefire that allows him to get a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel and in Ukraine, it would be creating a whole lot of smoke. We're going to do this war forever. To just get the thing that he has been very transparent that he wants, which is giving up a decent chunk of Ukrainian land in exchange for a much weakened Ukraine, reaching a peace deal with Russia and, and becoming like a very weak vassal of the United States where we can just, you know, strip out its resources.
- [31:58]
Unknown Speaker 3
Yeah, I just don't know how believable it is from like, Vance and Hexath who have, you know, been on again, like a podcast circuit or.
- [32:05]
Unknown Speaker 2
Because they've been too transparent that they don't want to do that. Yeah, but that means they have to rattle even harder in some, you know.
- [32:12]
Ryan
True. Yeah, that's true.
- [32:13]
Unknown Speaker 3
Oh, that's a good point.
- [32:14]
Ryan
You know, Zelensky is a pretty savvy operator. There was a New York Times piece about how, you know, how he immediately shifted the way he was pitching the Ukrainian project to Biden versus how, you know, with Trump, he's like, this is a transactional guy. I'm going to be like, you can have our rare earth minerals. And he's obviously, I mean, he's an ideological actor. He's also a self interested actor because once the war is over, then at some point there's going to have to be elections and he's going to, you know, have to face voters again. I think that's something he could be concerned about. But apparently, according to Axios, he is telling Trump that Russia, that Putin is just pretending to want to negotiate a peace deal because he's, quote, afraid of you. So that's been. The messaging coming from him is basically like you're getting played by Putin, which is another attempt to sort of, you know, play into Trump's ego and put him on the alert that he not get one upped by, by this guy that he's sitting at the negotiating table with.
- [33:07]
Unknown Speaker 2
Right. And maybe that, maybe that's true, but what does that really even mean? Like, if Putin, you know, reaches. Reaches a peace deal in a cynical way because he's afraid of Trump, how is that different from reaching an authentic peace deal? Because he loves Trump, like, what's the difference? A deal is a deal and people will say, well, he's not going to honor it. It's going to collapse again in the future. You know, there's never been any peace deal ever that lasted forever that, you know, that I can, I mean, or.
- [33:39]
Ryan
Where that danger wasn't yet. Where that danger wasn't present.
- [33:42]
Unknown Speaker 2
Right. Time marches on. And so then you have to, then the task becomes to keep the peace, you know, in place. You know, first you win the piece and then you hold it, you don't win it, and then just put it in the bank and it's yours forever.
- [33:58]
Ryan
This was really interesting. Some additional comments that Trump made about foreign policy where he floated quite unusual idea from an American president of striking some trilateral agreement with Russia and China for all three nations to reduce their military spending by 50%. We've certainly never heard Donald Trump talk like that before. You know, he's always obviously increased the defense budget every year he was president. Even just recently, it was floating like we need to spend even more on the military, if anything whatsoever. So this was, you know, quite unusual, quite striking comments from, from an American president. Ken Klippenstein clipped it out as he does. Let's take a listen to what he has to say.
- [34:42]
Donald Trump
One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, and I want to say let's cut our military budget in half and we can do that. And I think we'll be able to do it.
- [34:54]
Ryan
So, Emily, what, what did you think when you, when you heard those words?
- [34:58]
Unknown Speaker 3
Well, so one of the interesting things that has come out of the new rights plans for the Pentagon is that you may need more like Reagan era levels of defense spending if it can be offset by like actually getting the Pentagon to pass an audit and stripping out unnecessary parts of the Pentagon, like all of that. So to me, I don't know what to make of Donald Trump's. I think like there's a, the American public would love to hear of a trilateral agreement so long as it doesn't mean like, you know, completely bending the knee like people in this country are in favor of peace. We've seen decades of kids go to the Middle east and, you know, die in these wars. People die in Syria because we had to contain Putin. I mean, it just like people are not going to, that's not going to be dead on arrival with the American public. But the cut in military spending is just, I don't even know that it's feasible from like a perspective of American safety. I don't know how, I just don't know how you can accomplish that.
- [36:03]
Unknown Speaker 2
Well, I think we're pretty, I think we're pretty safe over Here we got these oceans and we're on Canada. Yeah. We're on a, we're on a trajectory where China looks like, you know, in some depending on the type of conflict we, we, because we've invested so heavily in like $35 million planes and like $2 billion ships that like, you know, in a war of attrition, you lose pretty quickly. If you can't, like quickly, you know, re up and make, make new cheaper stuff like, like China's able to. But one way, the first thing I thought of was that you remember the, the Princeton astrophysicist that we interviewed, Robert Goldston. Yeah. Who, who said that there's, he said, as crazy as it sounds, there are three Nobel Peace Prizes laid out in front of Trump.
- [36:50]
Unknown Speaker 3
If he wants, that's right.
- [36:52]
Unknown Speaker 2
If he wants to go out and grab them. And you know, one of them was Ukraine, Russia, another one was Middle east peace, Iran nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia, Israel ending the war in Gaza. And the other was a three that he laid out was a three part nuclear non proliferation and nuclear reduction agreement with, with Russia and China, which Trump also said, and he said, I want to call, I want to call him. And he said that he wants to talk to Putin or he already said to Putin, like, why do we need new nuclear weapons? You know, the, the US Is on the brink of a trillion dollar plus spend on modern, quote, unquote, modernizing our nuclear capacity. Trillion, more than a trillion dollars to take our old nuclear weapons and turn them into make new nuclear weapons. And I remember somebody saying if Trump ever gets briefed on this, he's going to pop a gasket. It's like a trillion dollars to take our nukes to different nukes. That's, that's an insane amount of money to spend on, on that type of move. And so Trump must have been briefed on this and he's like, wait a minute, I have a better idea. Like, how about we don't do that? Like, oh, well, then we're going to get nuked by Russia and China. Are we really going to get nuked by Russia and China? Let's talk to Russia and China and say let's, let's have a. And as Goldstein, you know, nuclear weapons is his, was, is his specialty. He was saying there, there are ways of measuring and authenticating and verifying that we are all abiding by terms that we agree to that do not also give away our nuclear secrets. So if you actually want to strike a deal between those three countries that say, look, we're Gonna, we're gonna reduce our nuclear arsenal merely to enough weapons for us each to destroy the world three times, you know, rather than 78 times. Because at some point it is pointless to destroy the world. The second, third, or maybe it's maybe, maybe it's fine to destroy the world six times, but like the seventh and eighth are a little bit.
- [39:07]
Ryan
Well. And by that time I will have, you know, used us all.
- [39:11]
Unknown Speaker 2
Nuke the air.
- [39:12]
Unknown Speaker 3
I'm actually curious. Well, I'm curious what you guys think of this, because it does seem to me it's possible that Trump is saying we can do a lot of this for less money now because it is going towards AI and it's going towards like digital warfare. So, well, you can afford a significant cut because you're not just buying tanks and all of these different, like, munitions. It's just a totally different form. And ships, whatever. It's a different form of warfare.
- [39:39]
Ryan
Yeah. So that's actually one of the directions my mind went in because this is one of the things like Elon and Peter Thiel have talked about. Thiel obviously has direct interest with Palantir, which is these, you know, AI driven death machines, the contracts with Israel, etc. Etc. And Elon has talked about, like, in the future war is going to be drones fighting drones. And actually sure is here. That is already starting to happen in Ukraine in particular. And so if that's the direction you're going in, you know, it is true that you can strip back some of that traditional hardware and some of those contracts. I mean, this is part of why Palantir's stock price has just skyrocketed, because that's the vision Elon has. Elon has obviously just taken over the government, something we're going to talk about shortly. So that was one thing that I was thinking about. I mean, because that's the only way to make sense really of what Trump is saying, given the fact in his first administration he oversaw the largest expansion, expansion of the nuclear arsenal since the Cold War ended. So it's not like he's, you know, some anti nukes kind of a guy or anti military kind of a guy. In fact, the main thrust of his foreign policy, he talks all the time about William McKinley. Well, McKinley is really the launch of the American empire. And again, to the theme of like, he just says the things out loud that we used to have to accept, explained to people what was happening behind the scenes. He's like, we want Greenland, so we're going to take it. We want Panama, so we're going to take it. We want your rare earths in Ukraine, so we're going to take it. Canada, we think you should be the 51st state. We're going to go to war against the Mexican cartels. You know, we're going to take over Gaza and own it for our own benefit, et cetera. And, you know, if you're talking about that return to that kind of just forthright, imperial, we've got the guns, so we're going to take it type of mentality. It's not really consistent with like a, you know, a massive cut in the military budget, especially given what we've seen from previous wars of, you know, how much trouble we had just handling Afghanistan with the current level of insanely high military spend as we have now. So a lot of these, you know, those comments to me are very dissonant with what the thrust of most of how Trump has portrayed his foreign policy vision for this term.
- [42:10]
Unknown Speaker 3
I also just think it's so uncomfortable as a. It's just crazy to watch Elon Musk meet with Modi. It's crazy to watch Elon Musk have so much influence over Trump in general. It's crazy to look at the meme coin crystal you, you floated this on. TikTok held Trump and Melania's mean coins. Meme coins are held predominantly by a few whales. And Elon Musk has so much business in China. And in some ways, that can be a good thing. Like, there's a potential aspect of that where it's like, they're so close to China that they will just end up stumbling into a great peace deal because they want to make China happy and they stop listening to the neocons. Like there's an argument for that. On the other hand, it is really uncomfortable to. Or unsettling is a better word to just have all of these externalities, like, floating above any negotiations that Trump and Musk have. And we've been talking about this and making this point over and over again. Previously, it wasn't as sort of naked. There has never been anybody as powerful in world history as Elon Musk, so he's exceptional. But like, all of this was always a problem lurking in the background, like people's big business interests and their, you know, politicians big business interests, and the way that it's affecting their foreign policies. Now, it's just some of it is so out in the open, but troubling nonetheless.
- [43:28]
Ryan
Yeah, well, and speaking of out in the open, I mean, this image was extraordinary. Elon sitting there like he's the head of state meeting with Modi and putting out photos. You know, very important. Elon and Trump are both branding experts. That is what both of their greatest, like, strength and superpower is. So just as intentional as Trump is about his branding and his slogans, the way he portrays himself and all of those things. Elon is a different flavor of that, but he also. That is really where his focus is. So, you know, it's no accident for him to put out these kind of images. And Trump got asked about it. I'll give me a second to pull that up, but while I do. Ryan, what was, you know, what was your reaction when you saw these with. I think you're the one that pointed out, like. It's also kind of funny because Modi's got all his, like, you know, foreign policy, like his advisors and aides and whatever. And Elon's got a bunch of children sitting on his side, which has also been part of his branding strategy. Right. Is to bring his. In particular his son Lil X around with him wherever he goes.
- [44:34]
Unknown Speaker 2
Yeah. And Modi himself posted this photo. So, you know, if Musk. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. The imagery is incredible. Like Musk under the American flag representing the United States of America there. You probably remember we reported a while ago that when the BBC did this documentary very critical of Modi's role in a massacre of Muslims in India, that he. That India asked Elon Musk to make sure that it couldn't be broadcast on X. And Musk obliged and also, you know, suspended a bunch of accounts that were trying to share it. He.
- [45:21]
Unknown Speaker 3
Which is what he's currently going after USAID for doing here, Right?
- [45:25]
Unknown Speaker 2
Yes. And outside of that, Musk was, you know, suspending the accounts of members of, like, the Congress, members of the legislature there in India who were critical of Modi, like, in just an incredible, like, draconian crackdown on speech, you through X at the request of Modi. Modi also, let's have it right here. He had a very good discussion, very good meeting with Elon Musk in Washington, D.C. we discussed various issues, including those he is passionate about, such as space mobility, technology and innovation. Mobility, of course, is a euphemism for immigration and H1B visas. I talked about India's efforts towards reform and furthering minimum government, maximum governance. So maximum governance. So he talked to him about space technology, innovation and labor, like, all of these things that are central to Musk's business empire. And he did it in a government building, as a government employee with government Power. I mean, congratulations to Elon Musk and congratulations to us if this is the kind of system we want, but it's not certainly the kind that we intended to design.
- [46:37]
Ryan
Yeah. I just asked Chat GPT about Elon Musk's business interest in India. So if these are hallucinations, apologies in advance because I didn't take the time to double check them. But apparently he's very interested in bringing Tesla to India. Very interested to bring in bringing Starlink to India. And you can see how that would, I mean, India's largest population wise country on the planet. So it's an almost endless market in terms of, you know.
- [47:01]
Unknown Speaker 2
Right. And right now Indian tariffs are making it difficult for Tesla to break into the market. And he's, and he has been pushing Modi very hard to, to let him.
- [47:10]
Ryan
In, to lower those tariffs and let him in. And then Ryan also raises the, you know, the H1B piece, which has been very important to Elon and which was another thing that he got from Trump who totally, you know, change his position on H1B and was like, yes, I am in favor of this. In fact, I use, he, I think he was confused about H1B and H2B. But, you know, we need those, what do you say high skilled Somalia is? We need high skilled waiters to come into the country. But Trump gets asked about, hey, what do you think about this whole Elon meeting with Modi thing? What was that all about? And here's what he had to say.
- [47:47]
Unknown Speaker 2
With Prime Minister Modi earlier today. Did he do so as an American CEO or did he do so as.
- [47:51]
Donald Trump
A representative of the U.S. are you talking about me? I don't know. They met and I assume he wants to do business in India, but India is a very hard place to do business in because of the tariffs. They have the highest tariffs just about in the world and it's a hard place to do business. No, I would imagine he met possibly because, you know, he's running a company. He's, he's doing this as a, as something that he's felt strongly about for a long time.
- [48:16]
Ryan
So Trump gets asked like, so was he a representative of the government? Was he representative of business? He's like, oh, I guess.
- [48:23]
Unknown Speaker 3
I mean, I read that as, yes, he's, he's met, he used his government position to talk about his business interests. And Trump is going to argue that Elon Musk's business interests are good for America. Elon made that argument in front of him in the Oval Office this week when he said If Space X is getting contracts, it's because it's the best. It's because that it earned and deserved those contracts. The way companies like SpaceX stop deserving those, contact those contracts and stop becoming competitive is when you just give them contracts and you let the head of it be a special government employee meeting with Modi because they don't have to bust their ass anymore. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but that's the principle that everyone should be deeply opposed to or deeply, like, suspicious of what's happening based on that principle.
- [49:08]
Ryan
Yeah. I mean, this is the part that I did call early on when there was all the speculate, oh, Trump and Elon are going to fall out and it's going to happen anytime. Like, he can't handle another Alpha. I was like, I don't know, this seems pretty. This seems durable because they both get a lot out of it. But the more that I've watched, to your point, Emily, the stranger it's become. I mean, just this week you had the specter of that incredible Oval Office press conference where Trump is seated. You know, again, visually, these are guys who think about the visuals, think about the branding. Trump is seated looking up at Elon. Elon is in a T shirt and a ball cap, right? Totally against the typical Trumpian obsession with dress code. He's letting his kid, like, talk all kinds of shit to Trump. He's there in the room, including saying, like, go away, you're not the real president. Like, oh, where. I wonder where he heard that from? Because, Ryan, you and I both know kids repeat a lot of the things that we say whether we want them to or not. So that was kind of extraordinary. And then we know, like, Trump has flipped his positions on crypto. He flipped them on H1B. Not that this is ideological Tick tock, TikTok. Not that this is ideological problem from Trump, but he wasn't fixated on white South Africans in his first administration. Now we get an executive order about the plight of the Boers in South Africa and like, oh, well, we don't want any other refugees but white South Africans, because Elon wants that. You can definitely come over here, no problem. It really is quite extraordinary. And then, you know, this situation too, where he gets asked, like, Elon is there as if he's the head of state meeting with Modi, and it's like, what the hell is going on here? Not to mention this is a whole longer conversation. But Trump's priorities, predominantly tariffs and mass deportation, are not actually. I mean, the tariff piece he's been floating and then going back on some tariffs are going to affect whatever the mass deportations he's been doing a lot of things that I think are pretty clearly illegal. The use of Guantanamo Bay for, to hold migrants who've been deported from the United States, you know, increasing sort of the level of fear and cruelty and potential cruelty by removing restrictions on deportations from schools and from churches, et cetera. The numbers are actually lower in terms of just total numbers of immigrants being removed than they were under the Biden administration. So the Trump priorities have not been front and center. The Elon anarcho capitalist priorities, on the other hand, they're off to the races. So to me, that has been one of the wildest dynamics to watch is just how subservient Trump truly has made himself to, to Elon Ryan.
- [51:55]
Unknown Speaker 2
Yeah. And I've heard from plenty of viewers who are like, look, all the, all the Musk derangement syndrome was killing me. And I was like, okay, man, but look, you guys elected Trump and Trump and Musk have some overlap and but they're often in conflict. As Sora Bohmani said in our show on Wednesday, like you are really risking undermining this, this thing that y'all fought for.
- [52:23]
Ryan
Yes.
- [52:23]
Unknown Speaker 2
For eight years. You finally got in power and instead of trying to pursue the aims of that movement, this guy who came in in the fall is now dictating what the things that are the priorities to the exclusion of wages, inflation, America First. The stuff that you said, corporate power.
- [52:49]
Ryan
You were into going in the polar opposite direction there. I mean, to the extent that you.
- [52:54]
Unknown Speaker 2
Ever really shouldn't be the only ones with Musk Derangement Syndrome, there should be a lot more MAGA people who are like, wait a minute, what on earth.
- [53:01]
Unknown Speaker 3
Is like friend of the show Steve Bannon.
- [53:04]
Ryan
Exactly. Bannon went with another quote that I would co sign talking about Republicans are floating big cuts to Medicaid. And Elon, of course, has been floating big cuts to everything just based on the numbers of what he claims he wants to short from the government and his just like ideological opposition to any sort of social safety net program. And Bannon comes out and is like, you know, a lot of maga, they're on Medicaid, so you cannot take a hatchet to this thing or you are going to draw a lot of blood. Just a couple more things to get to here to get you guys. Quick reaction to this is what I mentioned at the top. So we now have the Trump administration has directed agency heads to fire most probationary staff. These are people it says termination should happen within two days. So something like 200,000 federal government workers. This comes on top of the some somewhere around 75,000 who took the deferred resignation offer. There may be some overlap too between the 200k and the 75k, but when you put those two numbers together, we're talking about 10% of the federal government workforce. And it's also not evenly spread, so certain agencies will be harder hit than others. And it's also not done in any sort of way where you're trying to evaluate like, okay, let's separate the wheat from the chaff. It's just like if you're in these categories, you're out. And I was saying earlier, actually the way these are designed, it is more likely that you're going to be culling the best and the brightest, the most effective, you know, and highest value government employees just from the design of these, of these programs. Emily.
- [54:39]
Unknown Speaker 3
I mean, so they definitely don't care. Like it's, you know, they, they just want everyone gone. And it kind of reminds me of the logic of the mass deportations, is that in order to do it efficient, efficiently, at the level that they've promised, which is basically just like getting rid ultimately of some departments, you just have to slash. And that's why we haven't seen the level of, quote, mass deportations that some people expected because they actually don't want the optics of like rounding up, you know, pregnant women or whatever else. So there's, there's that and it's in this case, I think they just on the other hand don't really like, they're not trying to salvage most of these departments. And one thing that is could get tricky for them. Like we saw this with Katie Britt earlier in the week and a couple of other Republicans who have sort of been dipping their toes in this water is that if you don't do this with off ramps like they're between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the only way to efficiently slash the government is to do it with deep cuts that aren't exactly like calculated and strategic. I mean, there's some strategy involved, but they aren't super careful. On the other hand, if you don't do that with careful off ramps, which is one of the things we talked to the Project 2025 author about the Education Department about this week, if you don't do it that way, then you get this fanned out around the country and Republicans in places that are Affected, you know, like a Katie Britt in Alabama by particular cuts, end up having to answer for them. And that complicates the politics of it. So I mean, good luck to them on that.
- [56:20]
Unknown Speaker 2
Yeah, it seems like they're trying to destroy the government.
- [56:23]
Ryan
They are. I mean that's, that's the thing.
- [56:25]
Unknown Speaker 2
Destroy its ability to function and then just step, step back and say, look at, look at this terrible government that can't function. We need to further outside outsource our gov, our governing to these private institutions. And it's just, just such a shame. But you know, this is such a broken government.
- [56:45]
Ryan
Yeah. And I mean that's been a trend that's been going on under neoliberalism for years. Bill Clinton was big on privatizing parts of government and actually if you look at the headcount as a percent of the population, we're near historic lows. Parts of these agencies really need to be funded, need more people, you know, on, on food safety, apparently air traffic controllers were in desperate need of across the country. And I think Ryan, you're exactly right. Like this certainly isn't about merit. That much is really clear from the direction they've gone in here. But Elon has both an ideological and a personal self interest goal here, which is he doesn't want to compete for power with a federal government. You know, these agencies, you look at the conflicts of interest, the number of them that were investigating him, the number of them that he gets contracts from. You know, the Department of Labor was investigating him for harassment claims at Tesla, National Labor Relations Board. He's had run ins with numerous times, the securities Exchange Commission, like you go down the list. And then of course the CFPB was about to start regulating him over at Twitter because he just signed this deal with Visa. So he doesn't want any sort of competition for his power. He wants, and the US federal government is one of the only entities powerful enough on the planet to check his full ambitions. And then the ideological goal is just what Ryan said, which has been a long time conservative goal, which is basically like make the government fail so that we can say the government is failing so we need to cut the government even further. And it's, you know, it's worked, it's, it's worked very successfully. The last piece that I wanted to share with you guys is, you know, the latest agency that the, the Doge, as Ryan likes to say, staffers.
- [58:31]
Unknown Speaker 3
I like when he says doggy, doggy.
- [58:33]
Ryan
Like doggy have infiltrated here. But these, you know, these basically musk hacker apparatchiks are now in the irs, it says, the latest agency under review by Elon Musk's cost cutting group. So that's, you know, I mean, obviously IRS has data, literally all of us.
- [58:52]
Unknown Speaker 2
First of all, somebody told me that Heather Cox Richardson has stolen Doggy Committee from me.
- [58:57]
Ryan
Oh, really? Well, whatever. I mean, imitation is true.
- [59:02]
Unknown Speaker 2
Like, let's let it. Let a thousand doggies bloom. But this. Right.
- [59:06]
Unknown Speaker 3
New York Times, by the way, going.
- [59:08]
Unknown Speaker 2
Into the IRS and trying, you know, taking a, taking a, a hatchet to it really gives away the game that the, the goal here is not to reduce deficits or reduce the amount of debt because the IRS is one of the, you know, key places where if somebody with Musk's technological aptitude and the budget that has, has been allocated for the IRS decided we're going to do this more efficiently, you. It is a place where generative AI can really do an enormous amount of the work that, you know, humans have had to do at the IRS since the beginning of the irs. Like, you know, a tax return comes in, you know, the AI that we have now and that we're developing could easily, like, look at that return, look at the data that, that the government has, because it's the government. Check to see if there are any anomalies in it. If there are, you go flag it for a closer look. If not, move it through and send out the refund. And, and you, you, you really could, if you were serious about tax collection, make it much harder than it's ever been to cheat. Because you're, you know, you're putting these numbers into this system that's like, that knows, you know, because your employer has been putting things in or because your bank has been putting in transactions, to go in there and to just, you know, to start hacking away at it reveals, like, the politics at work here. Like, the goal here is to make it harder for the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthy.
- [60:40]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [60:41]
Unknown Speaker 2
And so then the cry, the crying about spending, it really falls on deaf ears if this is the agenda.
- [60:49]
Ryan
Yeah, well, not to mention the $4 trillion tax cut they have planned for, you know, upcoming shortly that would benefit people like Elon Musk to the point.
- [60:57]
Unknown Speaker 3
That you're making crystal. It's like if you can't beat them, join them mentality for, for Musk. And this is what's so frustrating is that, like, I definitely disagree with you guys about how much the federal government should be cut. Like, I think a lot of this is like, very reasonable. The project of DOGE if it weren't led by an actual oligarch, would be something I would probably be arguing for in particular cases. But you cannot come in with the oligarch and then expect the public to trust. Like, I don't think that the conservative movement needed to ruin the government in order for people to support cutting it. Like, if you look at the polling, I was just going through it this morning, like, Gallup has done summaries of polling. They did another one in November about how much of the public thinks that there's way too much waste and fraud in a government. And there is. Like, we kind of all know that, but you can't, like, there's no. Elon Musk doesn't have the moral high ground here. He doesn't have the moral high ground. And that, you know, makes it so as his team is executing these cuts. What is the justice if it's to benefit him? And it's not ultimately done in the interest of the public. And it's really, really hard to trust that. Even though, you know, I can take this great catharsis and watching usaid, with the exception of, like, pepfar, you know, go by the wayside, it's like it's Elon Musk. Like, look at all of the contracts he has, investigations he has. So anyway, there's a.
- [62:22]
Ryan
It's also just illegal what he's doing, too. I mean, I'm watching Republicans drop their, like, budget proposal. I'm like, why are you bothering? Like, you don't matter anymore. You know, and it's their position that they. It's the Republicans in Congress position that they are irrelevant and don't matter anymore and that it should just all be up to Elon Musk, basically with, you know, Trump sort of there on the sidelines. So, yeah, right. For now, and we'll see how that develops. But like I said, I've been. I have been quite interested to watch the level of deference that Trump has shown to Elon. And, you know, I mean, I think it's very possible that even without, you know, my theory is that some of these people may have been involved in the launch of the meme coin, propping the price. And basically the exchange was, Trump will get you elected. We'll put tons of money into your campaign. We're going to make you wealthy, you know, wealthier than you've ever been and could ever have dreamed of being. And you're going to let us do whatever the hell we want to do. But even if it isn't, like, explicit deal, like that, you know, that is sort of the operating deal here. And Trump is not playing golf all the time. Like, he's not in prison. He gets to go and play president and do his tariff thing or whatever things he's actually interested in. And he's just not like that, particularly interested in the rest of it, and seems to be happy to hand off the reins of his movement and his project to Elon. I noticed noted to Sager, and this is my final point. But it occurred to me again, going back to the branding piece, like the MAGA original MAGA hat is the iconic red and white make America Great again. Elon now has designed his own hat. That's the dark maga, the black and white, which is his branding colors, lots.
- [64:07]
Unknown Speaker 3
Of those at the inauguration, by the way.
- [64:08]
Ryan
And that's what he was wearing in the Oval Office as he's, you know, standing over Trump. And, you know, the signal of that is quite clear of like, well, this is my movement. I now own this, this part of it, this branding of it. And this is really the story of Trump administration 2.0, which is, you know, I've been warning about Elon's influence and how extraordinary this is and the conflicts of interest and whatever. Long before Trump was reelected, I never could have seen foreseen the level of what's going on here and the extent to which he's just completely taken over the whole government, like he's this sort of CEO dictator, which is, I think, exactly the plan.
- [64:48]
Unknown Speaker 3
This is my last point. I think Tyler Austin Harper put it really well in this post on X, where Patrick Graffini, the pollster, said, with the exception of those employed in private enterprise, Trump is hitting the professional managerial class and hitting them hard. But Tyler Austin Harper writes for the Atlantic. He's a professor at Bates Said. I think more accurately, what's going on is clearly not a populous insurgency against professional elites, but a civil war between the left and the academia, media, ngo, left and the right, tech right flanks of the professional class. And that is really interesting because to me, that's like you see the oligarchs, the tech right, using populism as a cover and giving the right a lot of what it's demanded for decades, which is this like, incredible slashing of the federal government. And then at the end of the day, it's like they're the ones picking up the pieces. They're the ones who are in charge. So it's just, it's not this, like, perfect class war. And the reason I brought that up just One final point is that when you do privatize, you hand stuff to contractors, which is something we've seen Doge talk about, fantasize about. Well, what do you want it to go to? Deloitte and McKinsey? The, the enemies of the populist. Right? I mean, it's like this plan doesn't, doesn't make sense. This, this iteration of like limited government conservatism is not what the conservative movement fought for for decades. Even though it feels like there's win after win after win, ultimately that question remains.
- [66:12]
Ryan
That's a very interesting perspective. Ryan, any final thoughts before we let all you guys go?
- [66:18]
Unknown Speaker 2
It looks like the hostage release is going to go off, you know, despite all of the bluster that was, you know, coming out of Trump and Netanyahu this week where they were saying that all hostages, at some point, they were saying that every single hostage needed to be released by noon on Saturday. Which, you know, so we're coming into the evening of Friday in Israel and Palestine now. But it. The Hamas put out a list of three hostages that they intend to release on Saturday, which they say are from the list of sick and wounded. So I think that they're preparing the public for some difficult images that the hostages will be in difficult shape. Three men that they, that they put on the list. Netanyahu responded by saying that they accepted the list. He then put out a new statement saying that accepted was a typo and that they received the list. Accepted and received have the same root in Hebrew. So now they're at a place where, well, has Israel accepted this list as sufficient and within the confines of the ceasefire agreement, or have they simply received it in their plan? So I think that Netanyahu is trying to figure out whether or not he can reject this list and restart the war. It feels like he doesn't. He's not going to. That the ceasefire is going to live to fight another day. So that's hopeful. And goes back to what we're saying that you have to really follow not just what Trump says, but what he.
- [68:07]
Ryan
Does and what actually transpires and what unfolds. Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time out on this Valentine's Day to hang out with me. It's always such a privilege to get to hear both you guys thoughts and the way you process all of these events. So you guys enjoy your weekend. All of you out there, enjoy your weekend. Happy Valentine's again and we will see you on Monday.
- [68:27]
Kyle
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Unknown Speaker 1
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Ryan
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