← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/17/25: Europe Freaks Over Trump Sidelining Them In Ukraine Talks, Trump Calls For Military Budget Cuts, Trump Says He Can't Break The Law
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
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- [00:30]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [01:02]
Krystal Ball
Easy.
- [01:02]
Sagar Enjeti
They're from DSW. Because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer.
- [01:20]
Krystal Ball
To multitasker and everything in between.
- [01:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Because you do it all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you at.
- [01:27]
Krystal Ball
Your DSW store or dsw.com hey guys.
- [01:31]
Ryan Grim
Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:32]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [01:39]
Ryan Grim
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:45]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [01:56]
Ryan Grim
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing. Ryan Bro show people live for the pound.
- [02:12]
Luke Beasley
Not only the Bro Show. I was just realizing we're gonna get to talk about Napoleon and World War II. Wow. What could be more Bro show than that?
- [02:18]
Ryan Grim
That is very, very Bro Show. That's right.
- [02:20]
Luke Beasley
Little Roman Empire thing.
- [02:21]
Ryan Grim
Can we talk about I am not a Roman Empire guy. Sorry everybody. I guess we could talk about Napoleon. Can we talk about the Napoleon movie and how awful it was? Maybe we can dunk on Ridley Scott.
- [02:31]
Luke Beasley
We can.
- [02:32]
Ryan Grim
That's when we'll make it a real bro show. All right, what are we covering today? This is the most difficult part of Crystal's job, and I always find it so trying. All right, all right, all right, good. I've got my rundown there in front of me. We're gonna start off with JD Vance's speech at the Munich security conference. A major international fallout as a result of that. Europeans running scared. You've got Zelensky and others making declarations. Some movements on the Ukraine peace talks. We're gonna talk about Donald Trump. And a Napol style tweet about he who saves the country cannot break a law. We're gonna talk about Israel, Gaza and Iran. Some guarantees from Bibi saying that he has been given the green light to attack Iran and then Trump will back him up. Some other, however, indications about phase two of the ceasefire hostage deal. It's a complete mess. Ryan's gonna break a lot of that down for us. We're gonna talk about the Democrats. Jen Psaki absolutely stunned at Jon Stewart's declaration that the Democratic Party is not, in fact, Democratic. And Lu, he's resurfaced. He's got his first new public statement along with a website, appears to answer a lot of fan questions. So even though he hasn't been in the news for a while, the Luigi fan club is alive and well. And then, Ryan, you've got a segment called Woke or Based. Are you gonna give us a preview of what it is? I've been ordered not to take a look at any of these elements. I have no idea what's going on here.
- [03:51]
Luke Beasley
We want Saga going in fresh to our game show at the end here.
- [03:55]
Ryan Grim
That we're calling it both Woke and Or Bass.
- [03:56]
Luke Beasley
Woke or Bass.
- [03:57]
Ryan Grim
So I guess just for the people who aren't terminally online, I think they probably. What Woke is at this point. Based is often what. It's a moniker that people in right wing circles will use to say this is based.
- [04:09]
Luke Beasley
Based is in like, based, action based, and it's like hard.
- [04:13]
Ryan Grim
For example, we're gonna show people a video of a German diplomat crying. That's I would call based, you know, in terms of being able to. Being able to elicit that type of reaction from one of the most pathetic societies in the world. Ooh, oops. I forgot that Germany is one of our most viewed countries. Sorry, Germany. Anything before we get to that, Ryan, you wanna pl.
- [04:34]
Luke Beasley
No, I think you nailed that.
- [04:35]
Ryan Grim
All right, thank you.
- [04:36]
Luke Beasley
You proved that. It's a tough part of the job, man. No it is.
- [04:39]
Ryan Grim
Usually I just sit here and drink my coffee. I'm off camera.
- [04:42]
Luke Beasley
It's nice when I do it, I go halfway through it and then I forget.
- [04:46]
Ryan Grim
It's hard. It's hard. All right. Okay. Okay. Let's get to Europe. As we said. J.D. vance at the Munich Security Conference. Returning. He originally went to the Munich Security Conference, I recall, I think it was back in 2022, where he's one of the only people to speak against U.S. assistance for Ukraine. This time around, however, returning as vice president, arguably one of the most important speeches given at the Munich security conference since 2007, when Vladimir Putin spoke there. Let's take a listen to the speech and we'll break it down in Washington.
- [05:15]
Donald Trump
There is a new sheriff in town and under Donald Trump's leadership. We may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square. Agree or disagree? We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense. The threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too. Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.
- [07:18]
Ryan Grim
So, Ryan, that has elicited a full fledged freakout in Germany. And at the Munich Security Conference, our friend of the show, I can never pronounce his name properly. I really Apologize. Arnaud Bertrand actually put out a very thoughtful. Obviously Arnaud is very, I don't know if you would call him from the left. I'm not really even sure which way you would say that he is. He's somebody who I guess is very critical of the US and European bipartisan establishment. Shall we put it that way? Well, he actually put it really well said. It's really hard not to make a parallel between JD Vance's speech right now at the Munich Security conference and Putin's 2007 speech at the very same podium. Both were watershed moments that fundamentally transformed the existing consensus. Putin at the time delivered the speech that marks the beginning of the end of the unipolar moment. JD's speech will be probably remembered as the speech that marked the beginning of the end of the post World War II Western alliance. And so he goes on. It's quite lengthy. I highly recommend people go and read it. But basically in the speech it was both a declaration of quote, unquote, universal Western values and then a criticism of the European architecture for both taking advantage and free riding off of the US nuclear umbrella, actively using, quote, unquote, anti democratic censorship policies and others to suppress nationalist movements and of course literally overthrow a government. Your Romania reporting, by the way, has probably got to be one of the most influential things Dropsite has ever done. I mean, considering how much it's been picked up by Elon by now, being cited here by name by the Vice President of the United. It's genuinely remarkable because it does show us that there is both kind of a horseshoe element to a lot of this, but really at a very, very high level. This is not about Ukraine. It's much, much bigger than that. It gets to the point of that there is a fissure between the United States and between Europe, both economically, but culturally. There's criticism here of kind of the European EU led establishment there. What they view as their most important single conflict. Ukraine is frankly more of a footnote to the United States. And then I think that they are grappling with is at the very same time that this Munich Security Conference speech and other happens. Secretary of State Marco Rubio today is in Saudi Arabia for brokered peace talks with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. And that demonstrates what I think is a true return to great power conflict and to multipolarity. We are no longer working within the fakery of the United nations or the European Union or some OSCE guidelines. It is the two great powers involved in the conflict sitting down across the table and saying what are we doing here? Because at its heart, that's what it's always been about. All the trussings of the European Union, the Munich Security Conference and more. So I'm curious from your perspective, what you make of all of this before we get to some of the German reaction.
- [10:12]
Luke Beasley
It was interesting to me that J.D. vance didn't kind of point out the Biden administration's role, because it's one thing he wouldn't have to necessarily say, okay, and the US Is guilty on all of these things. Could have just blamed it on Biden if he wanted to, but he didn't do that. He suggested that these European censorship and big tech policies kind of came out of nowhere, and that the Romanian election that was overturned was driven by this former EU commissioner or other elements within Europe. And certainly there were those elements that were fine to see that that election annulled. The first major power to call into question the validity of the Romanian election was the United States.
- [10:58]
Ryan Grim
Yes.
- [10:59]
Luke Beasley
And the United States basically green lit the annulling of the election by coming out and saying that. And as we reported in our story, it was USAID funded entities that were involved in the concoction of this conspiracy scheme, conspiracy claim that said Russia actually came in and, like, used a fake TikTok operation. Operation.
- [11:22]
Ryan Grim
This is basically Arno's point where he's like, this obfuscates much of the United States.
- [11:27]
Luke Beasley
So why would he do that? Like, that's an interesting question.
- [11:31]
Ryan Grim
You know, I honestly don't know, because I think you're totally right. That's one of the things that I actually most agreed with with Arnaud's threat is, listen, I mean, I'm very critical of European migration policy and all that. But he is correct where he's like, hey, look, you guys are the people who destroyed Afghanistan.
- [11:46]
Luke Beasley
Like, you're the ones who are Syria for the most part.
- [11:47]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is it's not like there weren't a whole bunch of NATO troops there as well, and they weren't all. Some of the biggest drivers of the permanent occupation of Afghanistan was built on much of these, like, European institutional liberal values. As in, like, oh, we need to stay there so girls can go to school, or, you know, beyond any sort of national interest. That's largely what I think European policy has become. It's about genuflecting. It's about, you know, really, it's about even the censorship. The censorship regime on Romania, the Ukraine, literal worship. Like, so much of it comes down to defending, like, capital L liberal values across the continent. It's part of the reason why they hate their own nationalist movements so much, when in my opinion, they're more responsible for their rise than anyone. You know, Merkel's ideology leads to Brexit, it leads to the rise of the AfD in Germany, leads to the National Front winning unbelievable margins in the French election. It's actually the destruction of the French establishment. So when you think about all of that, the roots of it come down to migration. But I think a lot of the roots of it also come down to the subservience to this non national identity, which is the European Union. And so much of the current European population, and especially the European diplomatic and elite class, view themselves as Europeans first and not French and, or German first, which is just not really compatible with putting your own citizens forward, which is why their own citizens are really revolting against a lot of these things.
- [13:21]
Luke Beasley
It is. And the other point I agreed with Arnaud there though, is that one of the shared European values that exists over the last hundreds of or thousands of years is war.
- [13:33]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, that's true.
- [13:34]
Luke Beasley
Like, they love to do war.
- [13:35]
Ryan Grim
They are war like people.
- [13:36]
Luke Beasley
No, I'm joking. They are war like people. And so for the Trump administration to be pushing a combination of we need more nationalism in Europe and the European nations need to individually spend more money on their military budgets. It's like, have we completely forgotten what happened, you know, in the 1930s and 1940s and the 1910s and the 1870s and the 1830s?
- [14:02]
Ryan Grim
The alternative right to that is that the United States should be the ones that's the guarantor of all of their security while they free ride off of that with their free health care institutions.
- [14:12]
Luke Beasley
Mass borders, maybe we, China and Russia together, like, just keep. Well, we're going to get to them, babysit them. Yet at the same time, you've got China, like sending its diplomats over to Europe being like, you know what, we already told you that the US Is a nasty landlord. I think it was Singapore Prime Minister said the US has gone from being this kind of hegemon to now this low rent landlord coming around hitting us up for the rent.
- [14:39]
Ryan Grim
Well, yeah, they've also been delinquent on that rent for quite a long time. This is part of the difficulty, which is for all of our money and all of that, when the push comes to shove, what do they do? They're the ones who are major importers of Chinese cars, of Huawei, all their infrastructure. They openly buck any US attempts to try and tell them to try and implement the same sort of export control. So in a lot of ways, you know, they are the people who have created their own disaster. They've decided to both. They've basically tried to ensnare our country through worship of the transatlantic alliance. And I'm not kidding as is in actual worship. The one last thing they got over there.
- [15:17]
Luke Beasley
So you know.
- [15:17]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, that Biden's dementia addled brain was able to cling to was what I expanded NATO. Literally like Sweden NATO. When he's on his deathbed, he'll be saying Aukus and NATO. Like that's what he views his legacy as. He'll literally probably forget his own grandchildren's name before he forgets NATO and the fact that he brought Finland into the alliance. So that just demonstrates what we're dealing with in terms of America's elite. Part of the reason why a lot of this stuff is getting amplified during tax season.
- [15:48]
Elon Musk
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- [16:46]
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- [17:44]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [18:17]
Ryan Grim
We have the German Chancellor, Olaf Schultz, who immediately criticized J.D. vance. You had the, I think it was the vice chancellor who took the podium immediately after Vance where he was like, I was going to give his prepared speech, but I have to just sit here and say how outrageous it is there. So, I mean, at a basic level, number one, they're not used to being talked to this way. But two is like Arnaz said, they are dealing with the ship, they are dealing with a shakeup in the way that things usually go. Usually the way that this Ukraine peace talk stuff would go is like, oh, well, we would gather the G6, not the G7, right? We would gather the G6, Assans, Russia, we would all create prepared statements and there would be the European Union would sign on and NATO, et cetera. And then as a quote, united front, we would go and we would negotiate. Now, it would never work because the Europeans, the UK and others are fanatically obsessed with defending Ukraine. And instead Trump is like, no, I'm the guarantor of the NATO. I'm guarantor of NATO security. I'm guarantor of the EU's security. I'm gonna go and hash this out with Putin and you guys are gonna swallow it and deal with it. And I mean, to be honest, I think that is basically true in terms of how it will all shake out. Now, I'm not saying that they will go quietly. And Zelensky himself has now made some declarations in a new interview with Meet the Press. Let's take a listen to that.
- [19:37]
Krystal Ball
That President Trump said this week. He did not say yes when he was asked if he sees as an equal member in the peace process. He did say later that Ukraine would have a seat at the table. Have you been given any assurances that Ukraine will have an equal seat at the negotiating table?
- [20:01]
Volodymyr Zelensky
So I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never. And our people, never. And our adults and children and everybody. It can't be so. This is the war in Ukraine against us and is our human law losses. We are thankful for all the support. Unity between USA in USA around Ukraine. Support bipartisan unity, bipartisan support. We are thankful for all of this. But there is no any leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us, about us. The risk that Russia will occupy Europe is 100%.
- [20:42]
Krystal Ball
If the United States pulls out of NATO, Russia will occupy Europe.
- [20:46]
Volodymyr Zelensky
Yes. Not all the Europe. They will begin from those countries, as I said, who are big, our friends, but small countries who have been in the USSR and the Soviet Union. They will begin and we'll see what will be the answer. But Europe will not answer because they don't have. They will begin to defend itself. Each country defend itself. And at this moment. So Russia will get all the successes with all the territories. They will want, I don't know. They will want 30% of Europe. 50. I don't know. Nobody knows.
- [21:23]
Ryan Grim
So there we go from Zelensky in terms of his declaration. I mean, I don't know about this last part. If the U.S. pulls out of NATO, I don't see anybody saying the U.S. is going to pull out of NATO. Really what he's upset about, Ryan, is that Trump said, no, you're not going to be in NATO, which is most obvious declaration. But what's really crazy is you're watching the European Union trying to figure all this out and the Europeans. So let's put the next one, please, up on the screen. This is what I alluded to. Quote, left out of the Ukraine talks, Europe races to organize a response. Just yesterday, the prime Minister of the uk, Keir Starmer, said that the UK Would provide peacekeeping troops inside of Ukraine if the United States were to not do so. Now, already the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has said, number one, no US Peacekeeping role will ever happen on the ground. Now that, two, that NATO membership for Ukraine is basically off the table, and three, that the return to 2014 borders is unrealistic. I don't know. I literally don't know how anyone could argue against those three proposals. People are saying, oh, it's a concession to say reality. I don't think that's a concession. I mean, A concession would be, Honestly, a concession would be putting our own forces on the ground for a place that has absolutely zero national interest to the United States. But overall, you're watching this all get shaken up. So I'm curious to hear your reaction here.
- [22:46]
Luke Beasley
Yeah, we threw all the weapons that we had stored outside the D.C. suburbs and shipped them over to Ukraine and threw them at Russia. Ukraine threw hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives at the line there.
- [23:02]
Ryan Grim
Possibly more.
- [23:02]
Luke Beasley
Nobody, possibly even more. And these are where the lines are. So if somebody didn't want that to be the case, what is the option for them? It's not as if we have more weapons that we could really throw at them. Like, Ukraine was allowed to strike Russia inside Russia with some of those long range missiles. But even if we gave them every long range missile we had and let them shoot them as far as they want into Russia, Russia has an industrial base and a population that is many times larger than Ukraine's. And that's simply the case. There was some hope that Russia's economy would completely collapse as a result of sanctions. And the war economy, the economy is struggling in Russia for sure, but it did not collapse. And so, so the reality is that Ukraine is not playing with much of a deck at this point. Much of a deck at this point. And Ukraine also knew that if Trump won this election, they were screwed.
- [24:11]
Ryan Grim
Oh, absolutely. They even kind of said that.
- [24:13]
Luke Beasley
They said that out loud because they knew it, we knew it, everybody knew it. Now it's happened and now they're screwed. And then you have to ask, what was all of this for?
- [24:22]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [24:24]
Luke Beasley
What did so many people sacrifice their lives for?
- [24:27]
Ryan Grim
Well, you know what it was for. Cause unfortunately, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and other kind of said it all out loud. It's about killing as many Russians as possible. I guess we just forgot.
- [24:36]
Luke Beasley
It's just psychotic because, yeah, it was about weakening Russia, but it's like Russia's not necessarily weaker. No, might be stronger.
- [24:43]
Ryan Grim
Honestly. I mean, I predict it would be much more difficult for them to get where they are. I'm stunned by how quickly they were able to bounce. And by bounce back, I mean, yeah, they ate like a 20% haircut or something on their initial GDP, but after that, they've just turned their country into a war economy. They've sanction proofed all their financial institutions ten times more than ever before. The Chinese have stepped in to supply all their consumer electronics. North Korea's got plenty of ammo. They're willing to send. They're willing to send their Own troops to fight and die for Russia. This is the best thing that's ever happened.
- [25:14]
Luke Beasley
Do we believe that yet?
- [25:16]
Ryan Grim
Well, yeah, good point. You know, you're right. I probably shouldn't fall victim to some of these styles.
- [25:20]
Luke Beasley
I don't know.
- [25:21]
Ryan Grim
You know, I'm pretty active on telegram in terms of these channels viewing videos. I've not yet seen any videos of actual North Koreans dying who are on the front line. If you see any, I guess send it to me.
- [25:30]
Luke Beasley
They keep showing us Russians that look Korean. It's like, bro, half of them.
- [25:33]
Ryan Grim
That's true. There are a lot of Russian citizens who, you know, who have Asiatic, quite literally Asiatic, like from the steppe or from Kyrgyzstan or whatever. You know, any of these places that are still inside of the current Russian Federation. So great point on that one, Ryan. So the Ukraine last ditch appears to be selling, like, mineral rights. And this is something that Lindsey Graham has been pushing hard for many years. He certainly has found a way to Trump's heart, talking about how many awesome rare earth minerals they have and why that's the reason that we should support Ukraine. Let's take a listen.
- [26:10]
Lindsey Graham
I think the main thing for me is that that Ukraine has value. Literally has value.
- [26:18]
Elon Musk
Right.
- [26:19]
Lindsey Graham
So you can talk about democracy, and people love talking about democracy here, which is great to talk about democracy, but where were you in 2014 when they actually needed you? So Trump now sees Ukraine differently because the rarer stuff. Oh, my God. I said playing golf. These people are sitting on, literally, a gold mine.
- [26:43]
Luke Beasley
What did he say?
- [26:44]
Lindsey Graham
What do you mean? I showed him a map. Yeah, look, you know, everybody says Putin wants to reconstruct the Soviet Union and the Russian empire.
- [26:53]
Luke Beasley
You showed up a map of the rare earth on the golf course.
- [26:56]
Lindsey Graham
Not on the golf course.
- [26:57]
Ryan Grim
Okay.
- [26:57]
Luke Beasley
But later.
- [26:57]
Lindsey Graham
Later. Yeah, he's seen this. Look, this stuff is. That's one of the reasons the guys wanting to go into Ukraine is take their stuff. I mean, there's trillions of dollars of very valuable rare earth minerals that he's trying to take by force. And I told President Trump that's not a good way to do business.
- [27:19]
Elon Musk
So you made Donald Trump a Ukraine.
- [27:21]
Ryan Grim
Hawk by showing him that map, huh?
- [27:22]
Lindsey Graham
Well, I don't know if he's the Ukraine hawk, but I made him understand that if you let Putin get away with this grabbing stuff that not his. By force, other people start doing so that's the.
- [27:35]
Ryan Grim
I guess that's all they have. Now, in terms of what it looks like, there's some reporting here. Let's put this up there. On the screen from Josh Rogan. He's very tapped in to the foreign policy elite. He says multiple lawmakers here in Munich told me that the US Congressional delegation presented Zelenskyy with a piece of paper they wanted him to sign which would grant the US rights to 50% of Ukraine's future mineral reserves. Zelenskyy, quote, politely declined to sign it. He continued, after a lot more reporting, I have more detail. This plan was presented to zelenskyy by the U.S. ambassador in advance of the Secretary Besant's trip to Kiev. Zelenskyy told those lawmakers about it today. In today's meeting, Zelenskyy was telling them about the paper, which many of them didn't even know about, not the other way around. He said he couldn't sign it because it didn't contain any security guarantees for Ukraine. So that's the current status.
- [28:27]
Luke Beasley
Yeah. So Josh had it a little bit it backwards the first time around, but still a nice little scoop. But basically, yeah. What happened? So Secretary of the treasury comes to Ukraine, and ahead of his trip, the US Ambassador presents Zelensky with this deal. Like, we will take 50% of your rare earths, and there's not even a quo on it. There's not even a promise that. And as a result, you will get these security guarantees. It's just like, by the way, we're gonna take 50% of what you have. Zelenskyy declines to sign that and then kind of tattles to the lawmakers who come a couple days later. One question I'm starting to have, though, is how rare these rare earths are.
- [29:06]
Ryan Grim
Yes.
- [29:07]
Luke Beasley
Everywhere in the world.
- [29:08]
Ryan Grim
That is such a good.
- [29:09]
Luke Beasley
They're everywhere.
- [29:10]
Ryan Grim
I hear about it all. Yeah, you're right. The Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela. People said Afghanistan was Mexico. Trillion dollars. I think Mexico does have a large lithium deposit.
- [29:19]
Luke Beasley
They do.
- [29:19]
Ryan Grim
Chile. Right. But isn't that rare? Good point. I guess it's not. I hadn't thought about that. So we should get into Trump's ear and be like, they're not that rare.
- [29:28]
Luke Beasley
They're just Earth.
- [29:29]
Ryan Grim
They're actually in Wyoming. They're sitting right here. We could go tap it right now. They're even in Canada. We don't even have to annex Canada. We could just buy it from them. You don't need to sign a bunch of people to die for all of this. So I will say I think that remains the biggest obstacle to any sort of future Ukraine peace deal is this convincing Donald Trump that in 50 years from now we'll be able to have access to all of these mineral rights or whatever. Apparently this is an active thing that Zelenskyy and them are pushing, but at a big level. Again, just to prepare everyone, the Munich speech is paired with the Saudi Arabia peace talks, which are ongoing right now in Riyadh. We will, you know, stay tuned for what that looks like, but it is the first real bilateral talks between the United States and Russia in years since the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict. Trump literally said he spoke to Putin. They mutually agreed to visit each other's countries and we'll keep continue to keep everybody updated.
- [30:23]
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- [31:51]
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- [32:24]
Ryan Grim
Of that, this is definitely something very close to Ryan and I's heart was an off the cuff remark by Donald Trump where neither of us really believe it's true, but we would like for this to be true. Let's take a listen.
- [32:36]
J
We have the greatest military equipment in the world. We're building it. At some point when things settle down, I'm going to meet with China and I'm going to meet with Russia in particular those two. And I'm going to say there's no reason for us to be spending almost a trillion dollars on military. There's no reason for you to be spending $400 billion. China is going to be at $400 billion, we're at a trillion, we're going to be at close to a trillion. And I'm going to say we can settle this on, we can spend this on other things. We don't have to spend this on military because. And I'm going to be meeting with China. You know, we were trying to de escalate nuclear and, and I was in a position where Russia had agreed and China had agreed we were going to start. And then we had a rigged election, so that never took place. But this one was too big to rig. We won by so much that it was too big to rig that. President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear and I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow and China would have come along too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear and the destructive capability is something that we don't even want to talk about today. Cuz you don't want to hear it, it's too depressing. So we want to see if we can denuclearize and I think that's very possible.
- [33:54]
Ryan Grim
So Ryan, is this the most radical proposal since what, since Richard Nixon or prior to that? I'm trying to think maybe the Kennedy administration, the START treaties, the nuclear treaties, this is definitely in that vein. Now obviously there's not a single, is there maybe one lawmaker in Washington, maybe two or three who might go along with this, but all 532 other members definitely gonna be against this.
- [34:22]
Luke Beasley
So again, Bernie, as long as you don't go after whatever they're making in Vermont. That's right.
- [34:26]
Ryan Grim
As long as you're not touching whatever is made in Vermont, he says, well, you know, we don't have to spend this on other things. We can lower our defense spending. All around. And then we won't have to spend on the military. It's a nice idea. It's certainly a nice idea.
- [34:39]
Luke Beasley
You have to go back to JFK's American University Peace speech.
- [34:43]
Ryan Grim
Oh, yeah, the one that got him killed.
- [34:45]
Luke Beasley
The one that probably got him killed. And also people should go back and check out the conspiracy analysis around that where he may have been influenced by LSD toward the end of his life.
- [34:58]
Ryan Grim
Is that true?
- [34:59]
Luke Beasley
I didn't know that from Mary Pinchot Meyer. Who? He was having an affair. Who was she? Is it Terry? Cord Meyer's ex wife? Cord Meyer, one of the kind of top original goons in the CIA. She was also very close friends with Timothy Leary. Oh, and she definitely dosed David Bradley and a bunch of other like, luminaries in the 1960s.
- [35:23]
Ryan Grim
Fascinating.
- [35:24]
Luke Beasley
And so there's some blowing my mind right now. No question. She smoked weed with jfk.
- [35:30]
Ryan Grim
All right, well, it's the older.
- [35:31]
Luke Beasley
There is some question.
- [35:32]
Ryan Grim
We'll make an acceptance.
- [35:32]
Luke Beasley
Did they trip? Okay, it's possible.
- [35:34]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [35:35]
Luke Beasley
She was then murdered on the towpath. So go have fun down there.
- [35:39]
Ryan Grim
I'm unfamiliar with all of this.
- [35:40]
Luke Beasley
This is a good one. Yeah, this is a good one.
- [35:42]
Ryan Grim
I need to talk to Oliver about it. We gotta give him a call.
- [35:44]
Luke Beasley
So Trump's. So Trump is creeping into dangerous territory here.
- [35:49]
Ryan Grim
You're right, this is very dangerous territory.
- [35:50]
Luke Beasley
He's obviously correct. If you can sit down with China and Russia and be like, look, we're dropping a trillion, you're dropping 400 billion. Russia, you're dropping insane percentage of your GDP on military spending and nuclear spending. You can't afford that. We're getting bankrupted. China, don't you want to do more belt and road stuff instead of nuclear weapons? And if they can come to an actual agreement on that, that's Nobel Peace Prize worthy.
- [36:19]
Ryan Grim
That's again why I'm so supportive of ditching all of these fake institutions, which I think either propagate conflict or do everything to truss up great power competition in the language of international values. We were talking a lot about this last time with Crystal, about the idea of propping up and sending a million or so Ukrainians to their death or to being maimed for democracy. And it's like, this is obviously not about democracy. It's about realpolitik. A bad reading, in my opinion, about trying to get all these Russians killed. But it especially falls apart with realpolitik policy in Israel. So you're like, oh, well, actually we're okay with it over here, but we're definitely not okay with it over here. It's just. It's ridiculous, right? And it falls apart on its own face. To any neutral observer out there, her point was, well, maybe it was a good thing to at least still truss it up with democracy. But this gets to my point that there is no true balance of power in the language of human rights, democracy, institutions, great powers are the people who run the world. It has just been through these institutions that have been their vehicle at its heart. The future of the world will be basically decided by the nuclear powers and especially by the United States and China, to a lesser extent, Russia here with respect to Europeans. So just sit down with them and be like, okay, what are we doing here? This is something that we did so much in the past. I mean, one of the things I respect so much about our leaders like Eisenhower And Truman and FDR is, I mean, outside of FDR's case, Truman and Eisenhower were deeply skeptical of Khrushchev or of Stalin. They still met with them all the time because they even mutually distrusted each other at those alliance tables. But they had obviously a common enemy under Nazi Germany. But even beyond that, trying to figure out what can we do about making sure that there is not such another devastating war. And I think if anything, the removal of consequence of war, what you were talking about earlier with Europe, has turned all of this into an intellectual exercise that belies how important it is to actually have true balance of power, to have honesty in international relations where. Where hypocrisy, in my opinion, just breeds too many gaps for people like Russia and others to view. What is U.S. national policy with respect to Ukraine? When we don't speak in the language of national interest, we both cannot understand one another. But it leads to so much ambiguity, hypocrisy and others that it leads to things like Iraq, Libya, the North Koreans being unable to trust us for giving up their new. Imagine if we had never taken down the Libyan regime and destroyed Gaddafi. I think there's a chance, not as big chance, but there's somewhat of a chance that the North Koreans would listen. But that's what they always say. I'm not listening to you. I will never trust you. Look at Gaddafi. I don't blame them. If I were them, there's no way I would give it up either.
- [39:14]
Luke Beasley
Right? He gave up nuclear weapons and he's dead. The only place where I'd slightly disagree with you there is that I would draw some daylight between the approaches of FDR and Truman. Whereas fdr, I think if he had lived, was, was willing to. And in the whole, if he had lived, you can kind of fill in your own utopia. But there's a lot of evidence, I think, that FDR had decided that in a post World War II era, it was time to share the world with communism and with the Soviet Union. Yeah, that's definitely true. It was not gonna be a. It wasn't gonna be a Cold War. That was a zero sum contest of, you know, we must defeat them or they will defeat us. That he believed that there was enough of a world order that could, and that the pressure of communism, because it was going to blunt the ills of capitalism and create enough of a social welfare state that it would be more stable in a Keynesian kind of way, whereas Truman and the kind of national security apparatus that was behind him really saw it as a zero sum. So in some ways we're now getting. We now have another opportunity to make that bargain with another version of communism. But now instead of fdr, it's Trump, and instead, instead of Stalin, it's Xi and let's share the world.
- [40:26]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, well, XI is a lot smarter than Stalin, so I'd rather talk to him.
- [40:30]
Luke Beasley
Let's share it instead of fighting over it. It doesn't have to be a zero sum competition, right?
- [40:35]
Ryan Grim
Well, I'm not so sure about that. But at the very least, zero sum competition can actually still have a more stable outcome than whatever the hell is currently happening with Ukraine. It's not in NATO, but we're gonna treat it like NATO and we're sending a lot of troops there and it's a vital of interest in NATO. Except NATO countries are supposed to be a vital interest. It doesn't make any sense. All of it falls apart in itself. You gotta defend Ukraine so that we can defend NATO. It's like, well, the whole purpose is to defend NATO, so. And then before that, NATO knocked off Muammar Gaddafi. So what? Libya was a vital interest to NATO. That still remains one of the most insane things that ever happened. Let us, however, not say that there is. Let us, however, say that the resistance right now to reducing military spending is titanic in terms of what you're up against in Washington. We have an example here from Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw, some people have called him. I don't know why they would. Here on Face the Nation. Let's take a listen.
- [41:29]
Krystal Ball
When it comes to the military and military spending, the US spends about 3.4% of its GDP on defense. Are you on board with boosting it to 5%, which is what President Trump is saying Western countries need to do. Are Republicans going to do that?
- [41:48]
Luke Beasley
It's quite the target. Look, we've got a lot of work to do right now. We've got a budget passed from last year's budget. Government funding expires on March 14th. So we got to deal with that. We got to deal with the debt ceiling. We've got to finance disaster aid for California wildfires. We've got a reconciliation bill coming up. Look, you look at the world at the moment and where America stands and the investments we need to make, it's pretty obvious we need to increase defense spending. And the exact amount, of course, will get worked out in Congress.
- [42:20]
Ryan Grim
So there you go.
- [42:21]
Luke Beasley
And, yes, and Pentagon spending is the only thing that the media will ever talk about in its proper terms, which, to me, the proper way of talking about spending is as a percentage of gdp, obviously, because that's how you can understand something. What do you spend in rent as a percentage of what you make? That's what matters. That's right. And so 3.4% all of a sudden now, it's. Oh, that's kind of tiny. We could do a little bit more than that. They never will talk about the actual foreign aid to Africa as a percentage of gdp. That isn't the regime change.
- [42:51]
Ryan Grim
Well, you're going to hear it from me, at least. Well, that's part of why I get annoyed. Everyone's like, this is an American revolution. I'm like, guys, it's 0.7% of the federal budget. Okay.
- [42:59]
Luke Beasley
Actually, and that includes all the rest of the.
- [43:00]
Ryan Grim
Whatever this.
- [43:00]
Luke Beasley
After. Take that out.
- [43:01]
Ryan Grim
I was going to say. So if you take out the woke bullshit, it's like maybe 0.25% of the federal budget. If you want a real American revolution, you got to go for the Pentagon or you got to go for the entitlement programs. I don't think we should go for the entitlement program. So what do we have?
- [43:14]
Luke Beasley
Pentagon it is.
- [43:15]
Ryan Grim
Let's talk. Right?
- [43:15]
Luke Beasley
Yeah.
- [43:16]
Ryan Grim
If anybody ever wants to talk about that, my door is open, my phone line is ready. However, conveniently. There's just way too much. I mean, as you and I know right now, of all the talk for firing federal workers, et cetera, there has not been even a modest dent in what the economy of Washington really is. If Doge, all those other people actually go after the Pentagon, that's when you're gonna see a real fall in housing values and a destruction of the Northern Virginia economy. Until that time, we're not talking about a substantial amount of people.
- [43:50]
Luke Beasley
The closest we got was we reported last week that Elon Musk had a $400 million contract. Yes.
- [43:56]
Ryan Grim
I just had it here on the.
- [43:57]
Luke Beasley
Show and then whoop, they nixed that contract.
- [44:00]
Ryan Grim
So did they nix it? I thought they only changed the name of it.
- [44:03]
Luke Beasley
First they changed the name and then a day or two later they said, actually this whole thing's on hold. Hold.
- [44:07]
Ryan Grim
Really?
- [44:08]
Luke Beasley
Which, and frankly from a green. Let's talk about clean energy real quick from a green perspective, this was stupid anyway because if you are driving around in an armored diplomatic vehicle, then by definition you're in a difficult country. It's developing country.
- [44:25]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. So where are you going to charge your car?
- [44:26]
Luke Beasley
You're going to charge it at the embassy which is fired by a coal powered plant like any country. If you're in Norway, you don't need an armored Tesla.
- [44:35]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, good luck.
- [44:36]
Luke Beasley
You can get around in an Uber and there you can maybe find some renewable energy. But in Congo, where you do need armored vehicles to get around, those are coal plants that are firing your electric vehicle. So you've got the carbon footprint of making the thing, then you've got the carbon and of getting the rare earth.
- [44:52]
Ryan Grim
You're starting to sound like me on electric vehicles.
- [44:54]
Luke Beasley
Then you got the carbon footprint of shipping it over to Congo.
- [44:56]
Ryan Grim
That's right.
- [44:57]
Luke Beasley
And then you're plugging it into a coal fired Congo.
- [44:59]
Ryan Grim
Well, it's actually stupid because you take the cobalt out of the Congo, you ship it to China or the United States, you refine it, you put it in a country country and you ship it back to the Congress and then.
- [45:07]
Luke Beasley
You plug it into a coal fired.
- [45:08]
Ryan Grim
Plug it into a coal fired power plant.
- [45:10]
Luke Beasley
So they, so they've, they've paused that contract.
- [45:12]
Ryan Grim
Okay, good.
- [45:13]
Luke Beasley
You're welcome. That's $400 million for you.
- [45:14]
Ryan Grim
Right. But now what are they going to buy? They should just buy a Land Cruiser. That's what we all know.
- [45:18]
Luke Beasley
Look, you know, buy the old.
- [45:19]
Ryan Grim
What's that, what's that truck that all the terrorists use? Hilux.
- [45:22]
Luke Beasley
Toyota. Get the Toyota.
- [45:23]
Ryan Grim
That thing is sick. Let's be honest, you know, we haven't got a lot of proof in a.
- [45:25]
Luke Beasley
Lot of these videos. I want to see the diplomats riding in the back of the white Toyota.
- [45:29]
Ryan Grim
In the back of a Toyota Hilux. It's indestructible. When I lived in the Middle east, all the Arabs were rolling around in Toyota Land Cruisers. You got to learn from them. You got to learn from them.
- [45:39]
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- [47:11]
Ryan Grim
All right, let's go to Donald Trump and his Napoleonic declaration in addition to some updates around Doge. So Donald Trump shocked America. I guess maybe not so shocking. Let's put this up there on the screen. He who saves his country does not violate any law. So Ryan who and what came up with this saying? What is the echo historical echo here?
- [47:38]
Luke Beasley
This is an apocryphal Napoleon quote that comes from the good Napoleon movie Waterloo, which was like that 1970.
- [47:48]
Ryan Grim
I've never seen it. Maybe I should watch it.
- [47:49]
Luke Beasley
It's on YouTube. Yeah, it's cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, and famously they have like 150,000 extras, like actually do the battle.
- [48:00]
Ryan Grim
Wow.
- [48:01]
Luke Beasley
So I don't know if it was 150,000, but tens of thousands of people dressed as Prussians and French soldiers. It was the most sophisticated and gigantic battle Scene like ever filmed by Hollywood. And so, you know, not the cgi, like whip up that Ridley Scott made us suffer through. But yeah. So whether Napoleon said this or not, this. Was this how. This is how Napoleon felt.
- [48:30]
Ryan Grim
Like it's been attributed to him.
- [48:32]
Luke Beasley
He definitely did say, I am the revolution.
- [48:34]
Ryan Grim
Right. I am the state.
- [48:35]
Luke Beasley
Yeah. Didn't he say that that was the king who got.
- [48:38]
Ryan Grim
Oh, sorry, that was the king.
- [48:39]
Luke Beasley
That was the king. That's right. But what Napoleon said is his version of that exact same thing was I am the revolution. Because he was saying people were saying, hey, I thought the revolution was for all of these. Fraternity, equality. Didn't we just talk about all this stuff? And he's like, well, no, I am the revolution. So whatever I do is therefore an advancement of the revolutionary values, the French revolutionary values. And Trump saying this is really only kind of of stating a textualizing of what has always been his subtext, that there isn't really ideology behind Trumpism. It's whatever Trump says. Now he's taking it to the place that it's not even illegal if I do it. Which ended Nixon as illegally.
- [49:22]
Ryan Grim
When the president does it, it's not illegal.
- [49:24]
Luke Beasley
Yeah. That was considered to be the worst thing that a president had ever said, basically.
- [49:30]
Ryan Grim
Did he say that? I don't think he said that in office, though. I think he said that.
- [49:32]
Luke Beasley
No, he said that in the Frost interview.
- [49:33]
Ryan Grim
David Frost interview.
- [49:34]
Luke Beasley
But it was like he was trying to make his company back. And when he said that, they're like, yep, banish this man to does it as not illegal.
- [49:41]
Ryan Grim
Let's put the next screenshot up there from Elon. Lots of American flags there. I guess Elon is a Consol, a deputy of one of Napoleon's generals here.
- [49:51]
Luke Beasley
He's the Taland.
- [49:52]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Although Tal. I mean, does it fit?
- [49:56]
Luke Beasley
Well, yes, cuz talent.
- [49:58]
Ryan Grim
That's true. But you know, he was also. Talloran was. He was like a. How would you say? He's like.
- [50:04]
Luke Beasley
Opportunist.
- [50:05]
Ryan Grim
He was an opportunist. He was constantly playing people off of each other. He was a vassal to the king and then to the revolutionaries, and then eventually to Napoleon. He features very prominently in the popular book, I'm forgetting 48 laws of power. There are a ton of Tallorand quotes.
- [50:19]
Luke Beasley
Yeah. And then Talleyrand sells Napoleon out. So that's true. Careful, careful.
- [50:23]
Ryan Grim
See, I'm not nearly as well read on my French Revolution. It's just the black hole, to be honest. Cause there's so much. Right. You Start with the revolution, and then the revolution goes through all these phases, and. And then there's Napoleon. And then Napoleon leaves and the king comes back, and then Napoleon III comes in. I'm like, I can't get my head around all this shit. It's just too much. I think there is. There's that Revolutions podcast. What's that guy named? Mike Duncan. It's so long. But all my friends who have listened to it highly recommend it.
- [50:49]
Luke Beasley
I've listened. It's great.
- [50:50]
Ryan Grim
Eventually, one day I will get my head around the entire French Revolution. But let's, you know, kind of put this together with Trump and with Elon. Kind of a fusing of the two forces. They did a joint interview on Fox News. Let's take a listen.
- [51:04]
J
Tried it, then they stopped. That wasn't. They have many different things of hatred, actually. Elon called me. He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. I said, absolutely no. They said, we have breaking news. Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight at Eight O'Clock Club. And I say it's just so obvious. They're so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it. They're actually bad at it, because if they were good at it, I'd never be president. Because I think nobody in history has ever gotten more bad publicity than me. I could do the greatest things. I get 98% bad publicity. I could do outside of you, a few of your very good friends. It's like the craziest thing. But you know what I have learned, Elon? The people are smart. They get.
- [51:53]
Luke Beasley
Yeah, they do.
- [51:54]
J
They get it. They really see what's happening.
- [51:56]
Ryan Grim
All right, so joint interview there by the White House with Donald Trump. Pretty obviously a move by Trump to quell some of the Elon as president. Although I'm not so sure because I've never seen Trump do that for literally anybody else, maybe his vice president. I mean, that's it. A joint interview. I am coming around to the crystal point of view that there's something weird going on here. It's odd. I've never seen Trump like this, act so not even subservient, but accepting of obviously an equal power center. I guess all we can take away from it is I think he just agrees with Elon. I mean, is that what it is? I really have no idea what it is, because. And look, I mean, I've said this before. I do think that there is, like, a popularist aspect To Doge. People hate the government. You know, they hate the government till they need the government, but in the interim people hate the government. And they don't have any particular. I don't think that outside of a lot of liberals who are reading the news constantly and like glued to their phones, I'm just not so sure that the so called popular revolution against all this stuff will materialize maybe in the future if you can pin a natural disaster or something on them. But I'm not seeing it, at least yet outside of the Democratic faithful. All I took away from that interview is Trump is totally dedicated to him, which again, I think is crazy. I really don't understand this dynamic, how it really came to be and so close. Especially because if you're a Trump aide or others, if you're Trump yourself, you wanna be in control of your narrative, you wanna be control of your own story. Like even Vance works for Trump. He's not a separate power center in and of himself in the way that Elon is. And so Elon's main character energy, I always assumed would rub up against Trump and maybe it will eventually in the future. But even to this extent, I never would have predicted that he would have tolerated anything like this.
- [53:43]
Luke Beasley
Yeah, Elon's out there doing his own thing and creating his own reality and then forcing Trump to respond to it. And it's quite incredible because I find myself in this very unusual and almost uncomfortable situation of kind of pulling for Trump.
- [53:58]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, this looks the same way. Trump's funny.
- [54:00]
Luke Beasley
Like, stand up for yourself, man, come on. And sort of pulling for the MAGA folks to be like, get some dignity and some self respect here. Guys like you fought for eight years to get back into power and you let this guy come in in September and stroke a check and he gets to just be along for the ride. Like, don't you have any dignity here?
- [54:27]
Ryan Grim
No, you don't. That's actually the actual answer. And I mean, look, maybe there's some lessons in this, is that being rich and famous is actually all that really matters in terms of the currency for Trump. Trump in a certain sense either agrees with all of this or he's fine. Maybe let's say a galaxy brain case, which is Trump is here more popular than ever. High approval rating. People are describing him as energetic. All he really cares about is tariffs and maybe Russia, Ukraine. Right. Ish. In terms of like getting on the phone, being president at a bit, at a high level. Just let Elon deal with all the unpopular stuff, which all the donors and all these other people go crazy for. So I have. All my donors are happy. The media is obsessed with a foreign target who's literally absorbing all the bad press. And I'm just sitting pretty up here at the top, like, he's like a whipping boy, I guess, for what the real agenda is. But like you said, that's not really what the real agenda was supposed to be. So I do honestly find the entire thing bizarre. I just think that at a certain level, Trump is fascinated by Elon. Maybe he buys the hype.
- [55:33]
Luke Beasley
Maybe he just, in that space is. He's like, you're an interesting character.
- [55:36]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, he's like, he's an interesting character. He talks. I mean, there's no Trump is whatever you can say about Trump, he's definitely a weird guy in his own right, but he's a very social person. He was a socialite for many years. He's met a lot of people. He has to know Elon as a total weirdo.
- [55:52]
Luke Beasley
Yeah.
- [55:52]
Ryan Grim
And yet, you know, for some reason, it doesn't seem to rob rub him the wrong way. Where anybody else who treated Trump like this would just never get away with it at a policy level. There have been some flags here around some of the latest Doge cuts. Let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen. This was kind of a hilarious plot point. So there was. What was it? There were some cuts blind across the board. One of them was apparently at a nuclear weapon facility near Amarillo, Texas, where some 30% of cuts took place. And the nuclear weapons role of those workers and the feds who oversee it is some of the most sensitive missions, apparently in the US So after discovering that many of these workers who are in something called a probationary period, legally feds hire people on a probationary period before they convert to full time. While you're probationary, you can still be fired, and when you're not, it's just much more legal, difficult to fire you. That probationary period can last up to three years. Just so people understand, it's not like they've been disciplinary place, it's just that they're more newer entrants. So, anyway, the Trump administration just fired across the board, all probationary employees, but apparently they have reversed it for these 28 employees who are in charge of the nuclear weapons facility. Also, for people who don't know, the nuclear weapons are overseen by the Energy Department, which I've always found very interesting that I forget exactly when it happened, but we decided to take away that authority, specifically from the Pentagon, and turn it into a civilian practice to make sure that civilian control, command and control over the nuclear chain of command always remained ironclad.
- [57:26]
Luke Beasley
Yes. And the real heads, when they're adding up military spending.
- [57:29]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, they add that.
- [57:29]
Luke Beasley
You're right, they add that in. Because when you're like, oh, how do we get to a trillion When a Department of Defense is this, it's like. Well, because a lot of these other departments have spending that is fundamentally military. Yes. You can also be probationary if you get a promotion. So you could be 10 years in and you get a promotion and a raise. It's only like a three month stretch, but there are definitely significant numbers of people who got a promotion in like December and then found themselves like, vulnerable to just getting whacked. And I think the politics of this can work out for Republicans if it's all spectacle, like if they're taking, if they're launching a spectacular assault on federal workers and you've got Democrats defending these federal workers.
- [58:20]
Ryan Grim
The public, that's where we're at right now.
- [58:23]
Luke Beasley
Yeah, the public probably sides with the attack on the federal workers. But if it goes beyond spectacle and as actual substance, which it seems like it Is, like firing 10% of federal workers, that's a substantial cut, you risk genuinely harming things that voters want to be taken care of. Like nuclear safety is an excellent example of it. Some of the stuff, for instance, getting rid of the people whose job it is to make sure that the last few birds of an endangered species survive. Like, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna drive decent number of like, animals into extinction. Does the public care about that?
- [59:07]
Ryan Grim
I would say no less than bald eagle, probably.
- [59:09]
Luke Beasley
They probably don't. Now, the next one, if we put this one up on the screen, huge cuts at the faa. So I think we've had nine airplane crashes since, in the last month or so, including military as well, including the, and including the deadly since like 2009. And to respond to that by cutting hundreds of FAA employees, some of whom say that they were directly involved with safety, to me is not just like offensive as to me as an American citizen who wants to fly and not, you know, crash into a military helicopter or like just die, have the plane blow up. It's also politically moronic because now if and when there is another plane crash, you can quite honestly and genuinely point to, hey, the way that Trump responded to nine plane crashes at the beginning of his term was to fire hundreds of FAA employees. And now there are more crashes. And there's also reporting that FAA is allowing SpaceX technicians to come on in and they're going to show the FAA how to do things. And so you're taking full political control and responsibility for something that could be a huge political liability. So that's where the spectacle. The spectacle can work for Republicans, but if it drifts into substance and they actually destroy the government, which it seems like they're trying to do, that could actually backfire.
- [60:45]
Ryan Grim
I totally agree. And I've always warned that about the DOGE stuff where, look, usaid, sorry, like, I just don't think anybody will care outside of the people who actually work in that or people in Africa. But faa, I mean, I always point to that. And I also tried to really highlight how quickly public opinion can change. And I don't think people really understand how quickly you can go from like a 80% approval rating to 30, like 35. It can happen on a dime. And in the span of nine months. I mean, Joe Biden, when he took office, he was like 74, 75%. Now, maybe it was fake. I don't know. You could say that. But by October, he's underwater as a result of Afghanistan inflation. So much, you know, so many different expiry programs. Nate Silver actually had a good tweet on this. He goes, keep in mind, Obama went from 69% approval race to Democrats losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts in the span of less than a year. I always try to highlight that. Remember the bush 04 to 05 period? He literally went from winning the popular vote and reaffirming all these conservative things about the country to getting absolutely blown out 18 months later.
- [61:57]
Luke Beasley
And how do you do that?
- [61:58]
Ryan Grim
With public approval?
- [61:58]
Luke Beasley
By going after Social Security.
- [62:00]
Ryan Grim
Exactly. And Iraq, obviously, those two things, you put them two together. So I'm just always pointing out with DOGE and all of this, and as triumphal and all of this can sound really good. Political movements and actors think strategically and in the long term. And these DOGE cuts through the FAA is a perfect example of why. Why would you ever allow this to. Why would you even give the Democrats the option of, if there's another plane crash, they're gonna crucify you? And that's what they did with FEMA under. So Republicans did about fema. No, I'm talking about with the response to the North Carolina floods. Remember all of the FEMA dollars going to illegal immigrants? That was a real thing. People in North Carolina were really pissed about that. This is the same thing. You don't want that on your head, no matter what. So can there Be reform? Can there be change? The counter to what I'm saying is like you people are just talking heads. You guys are idiots. You don't even know what you're talking about. Never bet against elon, right? These SpaceX guys, one of them is worth 15, maybe, I don't know. Elsewhere. We'll see, find out. I guess it's a great national exposure.
- [63:01]
Luke Beasley
I'm curious for your take on the NIH cuts too, because I'm very pro that actually. But I feel like this is a place where you and the people who are supportive of this are Internet brained and are like, okay, you're probably right. They're connecting NIH to funding the lab in Wuhan, which they did and they should be criticized for and they should actually, I think, ban all gain and function research just like Obama did. And then they connect NIH to Covid hysteria and lockdowns. And then from there they say, well NIH sucks, let's nuke nih. And you throw in this idea that universities are hogs at the trough with the overhead that NIH is paying for and then you convince yourself that okay, this is actually a good target, this is a politically ripe target. When I think going after cancer research, going after medical research, just period is a huge mistake, just on a kind of human level because government spending on medical research is the thing that drives the advances. And then the corporations, the big pharma comes in, they swoop up the innovations, they patent them, they make all the money off of it. That system should be changed and they should not be able to make the amount of money that they're making off it. And it should be cheaper for us. But we do want this process happening where scientific advances happen because they save lives.
- [64:38]
Ryan Grim
Of course, I just think it's a little bit more reductive. So I mean the university thing, for example, again, I grew up in a university town, my parents work in academia. I think universities are genuinely hogs at the trough. Okay, let's look at it this way. Let's look at actual spending by public universities, all of which books are public. And look at the rise of what administrative cost. Administrative cost accounts for the vast majority of tuition increase. A lot of this is dei, but it's not just that, it's just general administrating bloat. So what the NIH thing did is it took it from 69 to a cap of 15%. Now I talked about this with Crystal. They're like, oh well, some of it is all this non administrative cost. But like the Base assumption within the NIH freeze in terms of what is it the administrative cost freeze comes down to? You guys are not good stewards of the taxpayer money. I think that's probably basically true. Anything, by the way, which attacks the center of gravity of university power, I'm also fine with. So I'm being very honest about where I would like to see a complete change in all university financing, which heavily relies on the government, as you said, also betting all of their alumni for money, plus the taxpayer and student loan is like the architecture on top of all of that. But on the public research and medical financing thing, I'm not saying it's all bad and obviously I think it's a case by case basis, but it's one of those where zoom out. And this is where I really just agree with like with a lot of the RFK critique. It's like, okay, we've been throwing all this money at all of this for literally decades and actually the rates of disease are increasing. And actually fundamentally we have this wrong, which is all of the money goes into creating a quote, drug, when 90% of this could probably be solved by changing lifestyle factors. That's a much bigger zoom out thing. Nothing about the NIH will solve that today. But it's about philosophy and allocation of resource. Fundamentally, political economy is the allocation of public resources to what you think is important. And so it's about thinking for me at least, if I were to create like a grand design of what I could, it would be moving dollars away from whatever, creating some drug or molecule or whatever that fixed, supposedly not even fixed as cancer because that's not really how it works. As opposed to looking at the lifestyle factors, food subsidy, whatever that leads to this explosion in cancer over the last 50 years or so.
- [67:01]
Luke Beasley
No, I'd love to see that them address the lifestyle front. I'm skeptical that they're actually going to do that. And I don't think you have to destroy the, you know, you don't have to take the NIH money away from universities in order to do that. And I think our university system gets a lot of, you know, legitimate criticism. But it is also in many ways our crown jewel. Like it is the thing that separates us from other countries. And you never know exactly how this stuff is going to work out. Because my wife's going through this now. I was actually studying how it is that the diagnosis that she has would have been basically a death sentence in the year 2000. And today is extremely treatable and will be hopefully just a bump in the Road and go through treatment. And it was in 1987, the UCLA hosted a conference where a Genentech scientist spoke and said, We've identified this HER2 protein. I'll get the language of it wrong. But he said, but we don't know what on earth to do with it. And this guy Slayman, who was at the UCLA oncologist at the time, happened to be at the conference, and he heard it. He's like, I bet that there's a potential cancer link there. So he reaches out to the guy, gets some samples, tests them against the samples he got, and he discovers that in all of the biopsies he had the HER2, the higher the positivity, the more aggressive the cancer was. And that was the one that was killing so many women. So he tells the Genentech person that the Genentech person goes back to his lab and says, who can develop an antibody for this HER2? Because if we can actually hit this ERBB2 and target it, we could actually stop this cancer from being so deadly. And then Genentech's like, yep, we're not investing in cancer research anymore because it's not commercially viable right now. Too many cancer drugs failed fda, and if we fail another one, forget it. So he goes around and this guy Slayman fights for NIH funding and other ways to make sure that this research actually gets done. And it has revolutionized the approach to breast cancer. And now women who 20 years ago were dying from these diagnoses in their 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s and up now are surviving, like, almost huge rates. And without the NIH indirect money and without the university system. And what was that conference conference where they met? That was overhead. Yeah, that's overhead.
- [69:43]
Ryan Grim
Yes. Right. Well, that's part of my point is that there's definitely, quote, unquote, justifiable expenses. I think you would probably agree with me, though, that by and large, the way that the current system is. Is deeply corrupt. Yes. It's not just about nih. It's like, how many of these are funded by the.
- [69:56]
Luke Beasley
Far too. The number of administrators that they've got now is absurd.
- [70:00]
Ryan Grim
Yes. And it hasn't stopped them hawking for money. Right. To every alumni. But I think we could do something.
- [70:05]
Luke Beasley
About, like, just go directly at the administration, like, rather than like, saying the NIH is only is going to choke it off.
- [70:13]
Ryan Grim
I think that's a totally fair point. And by the way, we'll be very politically.
- [70:17]
Luke Beasley
And they're going to start taxing endowments, so maybe you're in doubt. Maybe the tax on your endowment has.
- [70:21]
Ryan Grim
To do with I'll eat a stock here if we actually talk tax endowment, I would love to see it. There's nothing I would love to see more than how about we make that trade. We'll take the endowments, we'll tax it at 100%, we'll take all of that, we'll forgive student loans once and then we'll get rid of the the system and then fine, we can have as much NIH funding as we want. We'll even take a token amount from these from Harvard's endowment tax and we'll give it to NIH fund as long.
- [70:43]
Luke Beasley
As we make college free or affordable. Again, I don't know. It doesn't have to be free, but back to the 1960s where you can actually afford it.
- [70:50]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, absolutely. I'm totally on board. That's part of what I'm saying though, is that so much of the increase in tuition costs if you ever look go around I highly encourage this use. I use Claude, you can use ChatGPT or any of that and peg university tuition inflation to the CPI and see how it's up there with like college textbooks and a few others from one of the single biggest increases in cost. It's ludicrous and these administrators and others are getting filthy rich off of it. Hence my general skepticism where I'm like, yeah, I don't really trust a lot of what's going on on here. But excellent point, Ryan.
- [71:40]
Krystal Ball
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- [73:08]
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