2/20/25: Jesse Watters Freaks Over DOGE Vet Firings, Twitter Debunks Elon $55 Billion Savings, Trump Calls Zelensky Dictator

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Episode: February 20, 2025
Title: Jesse Watters Freaks Over DOGE Vet Firings, Twitter Debunks Elon $55 Billion Savings, Trump Calls Zelensky Dictator

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Introduction

In this episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti delve deep into the latest political upheavals affecting the United States and its international relations. From Republican pushback against federal spending cuts to the contentious developments in Ukraine, the duo provides insightful analysis on the current state of American politics and governance.

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1. Republican Pushback on Federal Spending Cuts and DEI Programs

Overview:
The episode begins with a discussion on the increasing Republican resistance to federal spending cuts, particularly those affecting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. A notable point of tension arises from comments made by Fox News host Jesse Watters, who highlighted the adverse effects these cuts have on veterans.

Key Points:

• Impact on Veterans: Republican legislators are realizing that DEI cuts disproportionately affect veterans employed in federal government roles. This revelation is causing unease among Republicans who historically support their troops.
• Jesse Watters' Comments: Watters shared a personal story about a veteran facing layoffs due to DEI program cuts, emphasizing the human cost of these policies.

Notable Quotes:

• Ryan Grimm [07:07]: "Veterans should get priority. Because if you're gonna go out there and kill enemies for this country, you shouldn't be in the same category as people that are doing DEI."

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2. DOGE's Claims of $55 Billion in Savings Under Scrutiny

Overview:
The discussion shifts to the government's claims of significant savings through DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). However, scrutiny reveals discrepancies in the reported numbers.

Key Points:

• Spreadsheet Errors: DOGE released a spreadsheet claiming $55 billion in savings, but a detailed analysis uncovers that the actual savings amount to merely $8.6 billion due to clerical errors.
• Public Transparency Issues: The inaccuracies raise concerns about DOGE's transparency and the integrity of its reporting mechanisms.

Notable Quotes:

• Saagar Enjeti [37:58]: "They've saved about $55 billion for U.S. taxpayers. But when you go at them and add up all of the contracts... it only comes to about $8.6 billion."

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3. Federal Agency Cuts: USDA, Education Department, and NIH

Overview:
Krystal and Saagar examine the broader implications of federal agency cuts, focusing on the USDA, Education Department, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Key Points:

• USDA Layoffs ([03:18]): Accidental firings within the USDA's bird flu research division have hampered efforts to prevent the next pandemic.
• Education Department Staffing: A 10% reduction in federal student aid staff undermines the Department's ability to assess and improve public school efficacy.
• NIH and Alzheimer's Research ([25:38]): Significant cuts to the NIH's Alzheimer's research center jeopardize advancements in combating dementia, despite the rising costs and human toll of the disease.

Notable Quotes:

• Krystal Ball [10:54]: "When you're just blanket firing everyone who happens to fall in a particular category, you're most likely to be culling actually the highest level, most difficult to replace people."

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4. Ukraine Developments: Trump Labels Zelensky a Dictator

Overview:
A major focus of the episode is the shifting U.S. stance on Ukraine, marked by President Trump's derogatory remarks about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Key Points:

• Rejection of U.S. Offers ([04:59]): Zelensky rejected Trump's proposal to cede half of Ukraine's territory and resources, escalating tensions.
• Trump's New Rhetoric ([53:11]): Trump publicly labels Zelensky a dictator, undermining previous support and complicating diplomatic efforts.
• Impact on War Negotiations: These comments destabilize potential peace negotiations, with Zelensky's favorability waning both domestically and internationally.

Notable Quotes:

• Saagar Enjeti [05:09]: "Like, it's bleak if you're Ukraine, if you're Zelensky... You went from being feted across the United States to being called a dictator."
• Krystal Ball [56:12]: "And we do have some commitment to the truth here. Russia invaded Ukraine... The attack on Zelensky as this dictator... is a total inversion of reality and the truth."

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5. Trump's Constitutional Crisis and Power Consolidation

Overview:
The hosts discuss President Trump's refusal to comply with specific court orders, signaling a potential constitutional crisis and his attempts to consolidate power.

Key Points:

• Court Order Defiance ([03:18]): Trump's refusal to adhere to court mandates reflects a troubling disregard for constitutional checks and balances.
• Local Policy Interference ([03:00]): By blocking New York City's congestion pricing, Trump exemplifies his interference in local governance, further centralizing authority.

Notable Quotes:

• Ryan Grimm [14:37]: "You're making suggestions, and it's the administration that is going to pick and choose which ones will actually execute on. And that is an existential threat."
• Krystal Ball [67:45]: "Right now, I don't see that [Trump] has any philosophical or moral objection to Putin seeing Ukraine as you."

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6. Elon Musk’s Role and Influence on Government Efficiency Initiatives

Overview:
Elon Musk’s influence is critically examined in relation to government efficiency efforts, particularly through DOGE, highlighting concerns about privatization and power consolidation.

Key Points:

• Musk as “Dictator” ([43:26]): Musk's role in DOGE and his overarching influence suggest a shift towards privatized governance models.
• Spreadsheet Manipulation ([38:14]): The inaccuracies in DOGE’s financial reporting under Musk’s leadership indicate potential manipulation for personal or corporate gain.

Notable Quotes:

• Krystal Ball [43:43]: "Trump and Tuberville are proposing not brand new on the scene. Like, if you would have told LBJ or Nixon that the President is going to dole out projects and accrue power... it was after Nixon after Johnson was thoroughly abused."
• Saagar Enjeti [43:27]: "SPACE x engineers now in the FAA... that agency was investigating him. Now he's got SpaceX engineers there."

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7. Implications for U.S. Political Landscape and Future Governance

Overview:
The episode concludes with an analysis of the long-term implications of current political maneuvers, emphasizing the risks of a multipolar world and diminished federal oversight.

Key Points:

• Multipolar World Dynamics ([61:17]): The shift from American hegemony to a multipolar world could exacerbate geopolitical tensions and reduce U.S. influence in global affairs.
• Government Shutdown Risks ([12:39]): The inability to pass a necessary spending package, exacerbated by Susan Collins' opposition, threatens a government shutdown, highlighting the fragility of current political alliances.

Notable Quotes:

• Krystal Ball [73:19]: "To tell the whole world that you think Zelensky is this level of a loser does change the negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine."
• Saagar Enjeti [74:17]: "You need to make sure that we can own the Arctic as the ice melts and these shipping lanes open up as a result of the climate crisis."

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Conclusion

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti present a comprehensive critique of the current U.S. political climate, highlighting significant internal conflicts, questionable government efficiency claims, and precarious international relations. The episode underscores the urgent need for transparent governance and the potential dangers of power consolidation under influential figures like Elon Musk and President Trump. As the U.S. navigates these turbulent times, the hosts advocate for increased accountability and the protection of democratic institutions to safeguard the nation's future.

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Notable Insights:

• Impact on Veterans: DEI program cuts are disproportionately affecting veterans, challenging the GOP's traditional support base.
• Transparency Issues: DOGE’s flawed financial reporting undermines trust in government efficiency initiatives.
• International Relations: Trump's hostile rhetoric towards Zelensky complicates peace efforts and shifts global diplomatic dynamics.
• Power Consolidation: The intertwining of private influence and government roles, especially involving figures like Elon Musk, poses risks to democratic accountability.
• Future Governance: The move towards a multipolar world and potential governmental shutdowns indicate a need for strategic political realignment and reinforced oversight mechanisms.

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Key Takeaways:

• Veterans are at risk due to federal spending cuts, highlighting a critical flaw in current DEI reduction strategies.
• DOGE’s exaggerated savings claims reveal potential manipulation and reduce credibility in government efficiency efforts.
• President Trump's labeling of Zelensky a dictator not only damages personal relations but also hampers diplomatic solutions to the Ukraine conflict.
• The consolidation of power by influential individuals like Elon Musk poses significant threats to transparent and accountable governance.
• The evolving geopolitical landscape towards a multipolar world requires careful navigation to maintain U.S. influence and uphold democratic values.

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This summary encapsulates the essential discussions and analyses presented in the February 20, 2025 episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar. For a more in-depth understanding, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode.

Transcript

[Ashley Kinetic]

This is Ashley Kinetic from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. It feels like everyone is talking about GLP1s these days.

[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

Sagar and Krystal here.

[Ashley Kinetic]

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. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. 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. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning, everybody. We've been mixing and matching all the show hosts this week. Great to have Ryan Grimm with me today.

[Ryan Grimm]

Good to be back here again. This has been a fun week.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. So Monday my kids were off school, so I stayed home with them. Of course, they've just been like off school a week now with the snow that we had. Stalker's not sick today. So Ryan has been doing overtime for.

[Ryan Grimm]

Us this week, which we appreciate better next week. The flu this season has been insane. Jeremy had it.

[Ashley Kinetic]

He was like, oh, really?

[Ryan Grimm]

He was laid out for like two weeks.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. It has been decimating my kids schools for sure. The one like I can manage a flu. The one I cannot manage is the norovirus. That's the one I live in terror of. Yeah. And that's been going through my daughter's school as well. So we're hoping. We're praying to avoid that.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's floating this way.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, exactly. In any case, we got a lot to get to in the show today. It was actually very difficult to choose the stories because there was so much we wanted wanted to cover. We've got a bunch of updates for you with regard to Doge, the latest cuts where they're hitting. Also a little bit of Republican pushback on some of the specific spending cuts, including some comments from Jesse Watters, which was a bit of a surprise. They've also been caught in more lies and screw ups with regard to what they claim they have cut. So we'll take a look at all of that and do a little debunking there. We have huge developments with regard to Ukraine. So Zelensky rejected Trump's offer to basically give up half his country, all his rare earth minerals in the ports and the whatever. And now Trump is out calling him a dictator and blaming him directly for the war. So huge, sort of 180 there in terms of the US stance and even in terms of Trump's rhetoric and Trump's stance. I'll break that down for you. We also have a new significant development in terms of the courts. Trump refusing to abide by one particular court order. That is a significant escalation in what I consider to be a constitutional crisis. He is also declaring himself king, literally, and blocking the New York City congestion pricing. So that's an interesting story. Just in terms of local politics and then also in terms of Trump inserting himself in that city's politics and policy. Specifically, we've got a guest on who's been directly impacted by the spending freeze. He's gonna talk about how that has been impactful to his company and the people that he's trying to help and serve. And I am also taking a look at how Trump and Elon are basically doing like a rug pull on the whole country. So putting a few pieces together here, something I've been thinking about for a. Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

The turn with Zelenskyy is extraordinary because everybody saw where this was going, but I don't think anybody saw that it was gonna go this dark, this fast.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like, it's bleak if you're Ukraine, if you're Zelensky.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

You went from being feted across the United States and the west to being called a dictator.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right. And this is when your adversary here is Vladimir Putin, who is much more accurately characterized as a dictator. So there's obviously Trump.

[Ryan Grimm]

Trump should be a little more cautious about throwing that word around on the same day that he's putting up a picture of himself with a crown.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Literally declaring he hates when people call him that anyway.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, Well, I mean, truly, actually, Elon is the true dictator here. So maybe he's just trying to reclaim some of his power.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. Hey, if ruling without an election means you're a dictator, according to Elon, what is Elon?

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, very. I think we know the answer to that, and that is a good transition into the first block. So, as I mentioned before, we have had a little bit of Republican pushback. And part of this is coming from all these different Republican senators and congressmen. They're realizing, like, oh, this and that project in my district are directly affected, or as in the case with the USAID funding freeze, like, oh, the farmers in my state are gonna be completely screwed by this. But one thing that many of these people didn't seem to realize is that there are a lot of veterans in the federal government. And also, actually, DEI programs also include oftentimes opportunities specifically for veterans. So one of the people who is apparently finding this out is Fox News host Jesse Watters, who took those airwaves with a plea for a specific friend of his. Let's take a listen to that.

[Ryan Grimm]

Let me tell you a story about Chris. Chris was a guy I met at a shooting event in New Jersey last year. Was Chris in the interview, or this is another guy? This is Chris. Is it a male or female? Let me finish.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Oh, 55 billion.

[Ryan Grimm]

I love you. And so he was a 20 year veteran of the U.S. military. He was one of these guys in one of these elite units, killed a lot of bad guys, put his life.

[Ashley Kinetic]

On the line, and now he punched.

[Ryan Grimm]

Out after 20 years and working for the Pentagon, and he's only been there a few months, so he's probationary. And he just found out he's probably gonna get laid off. He's gonna get dosed. And he texted me and he said, jesse, you know, this isn't good. I'm upset. This is really sad.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And this guy's not a DEI consultant.

[Ryan Grimm]

This guy's not a climate consultant.

[Ashley Kinetic]

You know, this guy is a veteran.

[Ryan Grimm]

So when you're talking about doging people.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Veterans should get priority. Because if you're gonna go out there.

[Ryan Grimm]

And kill enemies and put your life on the line for this country, you shouldn't be in the same category as people that are doing dei. Now, Harold and his ilk like to talk about the slash and burn corporate ethos.

[Ashley Kinetic]

We just need to be a little bit less callous with the way Harold.

[Ryan Grimm]

We talk about doging people.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Okay. I just wanna.

[Ryan Grimm]

I want that to sink in. You're arguing with yourself. I am not guilty of that. I finally found one person I knew that got doge. And it hit me in the heart.

[Ashley Kinetic]

There is so much about that that is fascinating. First of all, I like the terminology, getting doged. Gonna adopt that. But in addition. So first he says that this individual who, you know, I don't know. I don't know his circumstances, isn't a DEI consultant. He may well have been part of a DEI hiring program, since they do oftentimes benefit veterans. But also, what he's specifically advocating here for, Ryan, is a DEI program to make sure that veterans, because he finds them to be a sympathetic group that he believes is worthy of humanity and keeping their jobs, that they should be enabled to stay there.

[Ryan Grimm]

And for some reason, over the years, veterans have not done a very good job of establishing the federal workers as related to the veterans program. But it is like over the decades, what the United States did is used the federal government as a way to give a leg up to people who were finishing their service.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I was talking to a couple of veterans last night who, because I was tweeting about this Jesse Waters thing and they were reaching out. And one of the points they made is that when you leave the service, whether you did your four years or 20, it can be difficult to get private sector work immediately because they will say, you need three to five years of industry experience. And like a good friend of mine, for instance, did telecommunications work for the army, but that's for the Army, So he had all the skills.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

But it was difficult to immediately get into the private Sector, like eventually he got some entry level stuff and then because he had so many skills, he moved up quickly. But some companies recognize that experience, others don't. The federal government does. So the federal government's like, we know that you're well trained and you're good. Like, you come on in. And people said that you also have to consider that in the first couple years while you're in the probationary period, a lot of these people are still in the Guard or Reserve. And so if you're going after probationary people who, you know, the first couple years, a lot of the people who are getting fired, not just the Pentagon, but all across the federal government, are active duty military because they're overlapping with that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Interesting.

[Ryan Grimm]

So, you know, we went in 20 years of our covering politics from support our troops to actively like firing our.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Troops in disproportionate numbers.

[Ryan Grimm]

In disproportionate numbers.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Wow, that is, that is incredible. And it also just speaks to, you know, the, what we're being sold is, oh, this is all about merit and it's all about efficiency, et cetera. When you're just blanket firing everyone who happens to fall in a particular category or with the deferred resignation program, you're most likely to be culling actually the highest level, most difficult to replace people who have the largest number of opportunities in the private sector. And let me tell you, once they're out in the private sector making those salaries, they're very unlikely to come back. It's actually the polar opposite of selecting for merit and making sure that it's the best and the brightest serving in government. Got a little bit of an inkling of awareness dawning on Jesse Waters and some others with regard to the way that the federal government has benefit veterans. You also have, as I mentioned before, some Republicans who are starting to feel some pain in terms of priorities for their constituents in their districts and their states. Susan Collins has come out with a statement. Now we can put this up on the screen. This is from Politico. There were actually a number of outlets that were out with kind of similar stories about different Republican rumblings about this or that program. Says you'll see lawsuits she actually questioned. She said, I think it's pretty clear that this violates Article 1 of the Constitution. She's significant not only because she's one of the few remaining Republicans in a pretty blue state of Maine, but she also is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. What did you make of her comments, Ryan? And do you think that it matters? Because typically Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, they'll do a little bit of, oh, they need to slow down a little, and I'm a little uncomfortable or whatever, but when push comes to shove, they just basically go along with it. Everything anyway.

[Ryan Grimm]

It matters because of her position. Like the Appropriations Committee considers itself to be. In particular, the Senate Appropriations Committee considers itself to be the wellspring of everything that the United States government does.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like they call the subcommittee chairs cardinals. Like they. Because they want it to be clear that power is being projected from the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee. And for her to get to that position. Her entire career, she's wanted to get on that spot because with the flick of a wrist, she's sending billions of dollars here and there. And all of a sudden, she's being told, actually, no, we're not.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, actually, you don't matter anymore.

[Ryan Grimm]

You're making suggestions, and it's the administration that is going to pick and choose which ones will actually execute on. And that is an existential threat. The reason she matters is because the government, unless Trump just completely ignores everything, will shut down on March 14 without a spending package being passed through Congress. A spending package really needs Susan Collins as the Senate Appropriations Chair. Now, if Republicans. Because how do you get 60 Democrats if Susan Collins is vociferously opposed to it? I don't see how you get there. So then the government shuts down. So you need her. Meanwhile, you've got, as we're gonna talk about, Trump supporting the House version over the Senate side, which includes all these Medicaid cuts. So I do think the fact that she's Susan Collins, it doesn't matter. I'm sure you hate Susan Collins. He doesn't. Does he even care if she WINS Reelection in 2026? I don't know. They can afford to lose her.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

But the fact that she sits in this chokehold position at the top of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I think matters, at least in this moment.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Is she up in 2026? I didn't realize that.

[Ryan Grimm]

I think she is right because she.

[Ashley Kinetic]

I think you're right because I think she was up in 2018. She was part of that. There was an expectation she would. Is that right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Well, she was up in 2020.

[Ashley Kinetic]

She was up in. Oh, so it'd be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.

[Ryan Grimm]

And she'll probably face Jared not working yet. Probably face Jared golden, who's extremely popular House member there, who was. Won in a Trump district, like, three straight times.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And in an environment that's just, you know, increasingly partisan.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Where I think there was previously more Democratic based willingness to, oh, I like this particular Senator. Whereas Republicans have made that like sort of more hard partisan switch years ago. So I do think she could be in trouble. But, and I think you're right, Trump probably doesn't really care all that much.

[Ryan Grimm]

And it works for her to stand up to Trump in Maine.

[Ashley Kinetic]

True. Yeah. So that's interesting. Also interesting. Put the Washington Post version of the story up on the screen. They covered some of the things we've already talked about. Katie Britt down in Alabama being like, I don't know about this NIH funding some of the senators who have come from farming states. I don't know about this uaid, usaid freeze. We need to get this, you know.

[Ryan Grimm]

Agricultural products and the money for conservation and all these contracts that. And you've probably seen these going around on TikTok. These like farmers.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, that's right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Who are like, wait a minute, like, I spent all this money on my farm because I had a contract with the federal government.

[Ashley Kinetic]

That's right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Expecting a particular thing.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. Now I'm out of pocket 80 grand that I thought was going to be half reimbursed by the federal government and I'm literally screwed. Like, my farm is gone if this, this doesn't ultimately come through. So they're hearing from those constituents. But actually what I found most interesting in this article was from one of the people who is supporting Doge and Trump and Elon fully, which is Senator Tommy Tuberville, who suggested that the new normal may be just Republican senators and congresspeople having to go and plead their case to Trump and to Elon. And I'm sure that's the way that they would like it to be, where they can sort of dispense the favor of the King to people who are in their good graces. And that helps to continue to enforce compliance with their will and make sure everybody's on board. So he said, and I quote, if we have to lobby for, hey, wait a minute, what about that bridge in Birmingham or there's a bridge in Mobile or whatever. I think that could be very possible. So he's laying out that he's fine with that direction because he has favored status with the King. He wants to keep that favored status with our CEO and chair of the board or whatever you want to call this duo at this point. And that that may just be the new reality. And I think there's probably something to that because Trump has truly claimed the power of the purse for himself. We're going to cover some of his additional moves, issuing this executive order too, saying only I and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, get to have a say on what is legal. You know, he of course, said this thing about there is no breaking the law if you're saving the country. He literally declared himself a king in the context of this New York City congestion plan. And so Tommy Tuberville laying it out like, yeah, that's just how things are now. You have to go and beg your case to the people with power if you want to get these projects in your district.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. You know, there's that famous allegorical story of the hippie who's, like, walking through the west and he comes to a fence and he's like, fences suck, man. I hate this fence. Why is this fence here? Just takes the fence apart and then whatever calamity ensues, like, pick your calamity, the hogs run out and they destroy the forest by chewing everything up or whatever it is without any stepping back and saying, why is this fence here?

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

And who built this fence and why? And usually that is an allegory that's told by the right about reckless left wingers who just. They just barrel in and they just change everything. Change everything. And the conservatives are the ones that understand fence is there for a reason. What Trump and Tuberville here are kind of proposing is not brand new on the scene. Like, if you would have told LBJ or Richard Nixon that, hey, that the President is going to dole out projects and that's how he's going to accrue power over these members of Congress, they'd be like, yeah, that is how I roll. It was after Nixon so thoroughly abused and Johnson abused it too, that Congress reasserted itself and passed the Empowerment Control act and these other laws, they said, no, that's not constitutional. We do this, not you, because you get too much power if you do that. And so now they're trying to roll that back. So it's always like, well, there's a reason there's a fence here. Maybe you don't like the fence, but, you know, be careful what you wish for.

[Ashley Kinetic]

This is Ashley Kineti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. It feels like everyone is talking about GLP1s these days.

[Ryan Grimm]

Those are Ozempic and Semaglutide.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And with Future Health, you can find.

[Ryan Grimm]

Out if they're right for you, too.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Maybe you feel like you've been struggling with your weight for years, and no matter how much you diet and exercise.

[Ryan Grimm]

You just don't feel healthy. Just go to try fh.com to find.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Out if weight loss meds are right for you. Future Health is not a health care services provider. Meds are prescribed at provider's discretion. Results may vary.

[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

Off terms apply this President's Day. Upgrade the look of your home without breaking your budget. Save up to 40% site wide on brand new window treatments [e-mail] blinds.com the number one online retailer of custom window treatments is the better way to give your home the price presidential treatment. Blinds.com makes it easy with free virtual consultations on your schedule and samples delivered directly to your door. Fast and free. Choose from trending woven wood shades or upgrade to motorized. Blinds.com has everything and more, all with upfront pricing and no hidden fees. Need help with installation? Blinds.com can handle it for you or DIY with expert guidance from our design pros. With over 25 million windows covered and our 100% satisfaction guarantee, you can count on blinds.com to deliver results you'll love. Shop blinds.com's Presidents Day mega Sale last chance right now and save up to 40% sitewide plus a free professional measure up to 40% off site [e-mail] rules and restrictions may apply. There's also the context of you know, in those prior eras in the LBJ and FDR era, there was a lot more cross party collaboration because the parties had not ideologically sorted themselves in the way that they have regional politics. Yeah, there were a lot more regional politics and so now you have this set of very clear blue states, very clear red states, and a few states that are on the margin that are like, the only ones that matter in terms of presidential politics, and the only ones where you could see a shift back and forth between who represents them, which party represents them in the Senate. So, you know, it's a recipe for, okay, when Republicans are power in power, then red states get some of their projects and blue states get actively screwed. And guess what? When Democrats are in power, if that is such a thing that's ever allowed or possible again in the future, they're gonna reciprocate. They're gonna do the exact same thing. Like, once you have started in this direction, you think the next president is gonna be like, I'm gonna hand power back to Congress. Very unlikely. Very unlikely. So let's get into some of the things. Just I'll do a sort of speedrun through some of the most recent will help to explain why some of these Republicans are getting a little leery, even if they're not saying a whole lot publicly. And nor do I expect them really to say a whole lot publicly, because ultimately, the bottom line is they all have come to understand they have to pay fealty to Trump and to his movement and Elon at this point, or else they will get screwed and he is not afraid to do it, or they'll have primary challenges against them, et cetera. So a 3 we've got the USDA accidentally firing officials who are working on bird flu and now trying to rehire them, but apparently having trouble with that because they are struggling to find them. They didn't bother to get their new contact information. So this speaks to the just sort of blanket, like, oh, we're just going to blanket fire this group of people. Turns out in this instance and also in the instance of some of the people who were, like, guarding some of our nuclear sites, some of these individuals are really important, and you don't want to fire them, especially when bird flu is looming out there as a possible next pandemic. In addition, we could put the next one up on the screen. So they have decimated this Education Department arm that is really devoted to studying the efficacy of public schools across the country. So saying which schools are doing well, which schools are performing poorly, that seems like something you would kind of want to know. Let's put the next one up on the screen. Also, in their zeal to cut at the Department of Education, Education in particular, they've let go of 10% of federal student aid staff. So they say prem thakar says this comes after young Doge staffers obtain administrative access at the Department of Education. So that was one of the first casualties there. Put the next one up on the screen. And Trump has also cut numerous top researchers at NIH's center for Combating Alzheimer's. Huge setback potentially in the fight against various forms of dementia. Anyone, of course, who's had a relative who has gone through this parent, loved one, et cetera, knows how absolutely devastating it was. And the irony here, too, is that this was a cause Greg Sargent points out, once championed by Republicans. In fact, he specifically points out that the NIH's center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias, or CARD, its full name is the Roy Blunt center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias in honor of former Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was very influential. What did you make of these cuts in particular, Ryan? What stood out to you here?

[Ryan Grimm]

The counterargument to the Alzheimer's in particular and more broadly to a lot of these NIH cuts is that, well, they're doing a really bad job. We still have Alzheimer's. Like, that's the argument that you hear. And there's a more sophisticated argument that says that the particular approach that the researchers who were getting all of the NIH funding to Alzheimer's has been a dead end and has set us back by 10 or 15 years. And so you actually need to break up this kind of intellectual cabal that has gotten in the way of progress. My counter, counter argument would be that's not what they're doing here, though. Like, first of all, there was a new director coming in who was not associated, you know, obviously everybody is somewhat associated with that, but that was not her main line of interest, this like dead end research. And they fired her. And they're likely to continue doing these reductions in force going forward. So it's not as if they came in and they said, we have evaluated the Alzheimer's unit. We feel like you haven't made progress. We feel like it's because you focused too much over here. And so the people that were doing that, there's going to be accountability. You guys are gone. We're going to invest broadly across the board in lots of different approaches. And we're going to see, and this is a scientific approach, we're going to go in with hypotheses and we're going to see which one works. And we're stopping putting our thumb on the scale one way or the other, because obviously you have a hypothesis and you pursue that and then at some point, if the hypothesis turning out not to be true, you have alternative ones. Don't have alternative ones. They're not doing that. It's not as if these people that were fired are going to be, they're going to backfill, they're going to retrench and then they're going to fire more people and then they're going to fire more people and then they're going to cut more funding, calling it, you know, funding to universities and other projects, they're going to cut that further back. So, you know, if you really were doing a maha approach, saying this didn't work, let's look around, we're not a healthy country, this is what we're going to do. Okay, that's one thing, but the indication is that they're just cutting and it's going to stay cut.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yes, that's exactly right. And this is actually the topic of my monologue is that. But a lot of the ethos of Trump 2.0 is basically like, things are bad so we're gonna make them worse. And you know, I'm like, yeah, they are bad, yeah, they are bad. But you know, going, cause what happens when you cut public research funding is that then you become more reliant on private industry funding. That's the polar opposite of the direction that you wanna go in. And you know, I thought your story about the developments with regard to breast cancer that are impacting your family directly right now was poignant. Because one of the things that I really object to as well is scientific research is not necessarily efficient. Right. Because number one, if you want to find cures for diseases that are potentially rare, like those things aren't going to be profitable. And so there isn't going to be private research. Not to mention that every single new drug molecule that's been invented in the past, I don't know how many years has come out of public funding. So the drug companies are not really doing this type of life saving research. Most of what they do is researching some way that they can like dupe our patent system and extend their patent on like Viagra or whatever their top selling drug is. So, you know, there's that and then there's also the case that as you're pointing out, Ryan, like some of scientific research is kind of serendipity. And that's what you spoke to was like, oh, these people happen to be together at a conference which would be classified as quote, unquote, overhead. And because you had this serendipity mixing of these minds from different disciplines in different corners of the scientific research community. There was a really incredible and important development that was made. In addition, sometimes you're going to pursue something like with Alzheimer's, that doesn't turn out to be the thing. And so it's not quote unquote efficient. But if you didn't go down that path, you wouldn't know. And there was a possibility that it did work out and it did end up saving lives and being incredibly impactful for people. So when you apply this capitalist business logic to something like public research in the benefit of the people, you're going to end up with far worse results and far fewer breakthroughs that are important for all of our lives.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And the Entire budget for NIH last year was $47 billion. The cost of treating people with Alzheimer's as people can look that up. Huge.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like from Medicare and Medicaid. And you personally, and like you watching this, like you personally or your parents or your cousins or somebody might have to bankrupt yourself so that you can get, so that Medicaid will then cover either you or your parents getting, getting the coverage that they need when Alzheimer's hits. And that's aside from the absolute terror that Alzheimer's is, plus the heartbreak it is for families who are going through it to be in a room physically with their loved one, but spiritually they don't even know you're there. They don't recognize who you are. To save a couple bucks a week is shortsighted spiritually and morally, but also fiscally. Yeah, it costs more money to not try to prevent this. And also like you said, commercially speaking, preventing Alzheimer's, if we can prevent it, is not the kind of thing that you can then market and sell because you get make more money treating it with like a blockbuster drug than preventing place.

[Ashley Kinetic]

That's exactly right. What did you say the NIH budget is?

[Ryan Grimm]

I think 47 billion. Would it be 47 billion?

[Ashley Kinetic]

According to ChatGPT, as of 2024, the US projected to spend approximately 360 billion on health and long term care for individuals living with Alzheimer's. That's projected to be up to a trillion by 2050.

[Ryan Grimm]

So the entire NIH budget, entire NIH budget, that includes the weaponized militarized stuff that they're sneaking into Africa for labs and whatever.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like that even includes. That is a fraction of what we spend treating Alzheimer's.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. There's this assumption, this is a longer convo that capitalism leads to cost savings and efficiency.

[Ryan Grimm]

It feels high, by the way. ChatGPT might be off on that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Okay, well, you can take a look. It does hallucinate, so you never know. But. But when you look at our health care system, which we, of course, put profit at the center of our health care system, and that directly leads to us paying the highest cost and having the worst outcomes in the developed world. And so if you actually want to improve people's health, what you do is you shift that dynamic away from centering profit and towards actually valuing people's health and cutting back on public research. Spending dollars is, again, the polar opposite of the direction that you ultimately want to go on. Did you find any?

[Ryan Grimm]

No.

[Ashley Kinetic]

All right, well, we'll take a look and verify those numbers and post a note in the segment. But, yeah, blame AI. Blame Sam Altman. If the numbers aren't ultimately correct, it's expensive. Yeah. It's a lot of money, and it's worth researching to see how we could prevent Alzheimer's ultimately in the long term.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. 231 billion from this is Alzheimer's impact movement.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Wow.

[Ryan Grimm]

So it's a lot of money.

[Ashley Kinetic]

It's a lot of money. All right, let's go ahead and get to some of the spin and the latest spin and lies coming out of Doge. So the whole time, Elon has been like, oh, we're gonna be so transparent. So transparent. Which, of course, is the polar opposite of the way that they've operated. And specifically, they were claiming for weeks that they were gonna post this list of all the incredible savings that they've been able to glean from these. These wasteful federal government expenditures.

[Ryan Grimm]

This is not chatgpt.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Numbers are correct. All right, well, there you go.

[Ryan Grimm]

2050 Medicare spending on people with Alzheimer's will total A projected $453 billion with a B.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And that's just Medicare.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's just Medicare.

[Ashley Kinetic]

That's not private spending. Wow. Unbelievable.

[Ryan Grimm]

637 billion.

[Ashley Kinetic]

So thanks for saving us all that money, Doge. You're doing a great job.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. By firing, like, eight people working in the Alzheimer's Center. Eight people. We could do a go. Like, we would be smart as a country to do a GoFundMe to rehire those people. Just putting a couple chips onto the table in hopes that they have a breakthrough. It would be worth it to all of us to just do that. GoFundMe. I'll put in $5 a week on that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Absolutely. Such a great program.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, Alzheimer's is personally gotta be frightening to everybody. Just if you personally or your loved one gets it, it's almost I'd rather get hit by a bus.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. No, I have very close friend who has been, you know, watching this unfold.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And it's one of the most difficult things you can go through.

[Ryan Grimm]

And you're gonna save a couple bucks a week and fire these eight researchers like it's cruel and stupid.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah, cruel and stupid. That is a good way to put it. This is Ashley Kineti from the Ben and Ashley I almost same as podcast.

[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

So Doge on its website, says that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

They'Ve saved about $55 billion for U.S. taxpayers.

[Ryan Grimm]

But when you go at them and.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Add up all of the contracts that they list online that they, that they say they've canceled, it only comes to about $8.6 billion. So, you know, just a small fraction of that overall, 55 billion.

[Ryan Grimm]

Also, in going through all these contracts.

[Ashley Kinetic]

It'S clear that there was at least one major clerical error. There was one contract that was listed for 8 billion that was actually only an $8 million contract. So they had listed so about 16 billion. But when you take that away, it's a much smaller figure. This is, you know, sort of really been a key tension point as JOJ has, has gone into federal agencies and started slashing spending and firing staff. Of that, they said, look, this is the most transparent effort that's out there.

[Ryan Grimm]

You can go and read all this information. But when it's both riddled with errors.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And there isn't oversight, that normally, you know, is layered above federal agencies, things like watchdogs and the Office of Government Ethics. DOGE really operates independently of that, and that has raised a lot of concerns, both from members of Congress as well as other federal government watchers. So it's kind of insulting to all of our intelligence that they put out this spreadsheet. They're like, we saved $55 billion. Okay? Then you literally just add up the column, and it doesn't add up to 55 billion. It adds up to 16.6 billion. Then you sort by which many people online and also reporters in New York Times and whatever, then you sort by like, okay, well, what's the biggest program that you cut here? And the one that rises to the top is this $8 billion program. But then you dig into that, and it turns out that is the complete error. It's actually not 8 billion. It's 8 million. A little bit of a difference there. And now your spreadsheet, which you claimed indicated savings of 55 billion, which only actually added up to 16.6 billion, now only totals to 8.6 billion. So one of the sleuths online who was digging into this. Let's put this up on the screen. Indicates that with that 8 billion to 8 million thing, apparently there was originally some typo on the contract. So the contract value was listed at 8 billion rather than 8 million. Then it was corrected. The real TCV, I don't know what that stands for, was 8 million corrected in January, three years. Only 3.5 million was awarded. So it was very easy to discern when, like, as someone even here on the outside was doing that, this was not the correct amount of money. And then in addition, Ryan, if even with the $8 million amount, if they've already spent three and a half million, then you're not saving even an entire 8 million. And that rationale actually applies to all of the other things that were in this spreadsheet. So basically, it's a complete exaggeration. Parts of her just completely wrong. And many of these things, too, as I said before, they frame them as fraud, but in reality, it's just stuff that Elon doesn't particularly like.

[Ryan Grimm]

It was Customs and Border Protection, I think that they.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yes, that's right.

[Ryan Grimm]

So people also need to use their common sense. And when we think through these numbers, Customs and Border Protection's entire budget is not that high. Like, it's. I don't know offhand exactly what it is. You can Google that and find it. 8 billion would be a huge portion of their, like, entire budget.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Budget. Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

And this was like some DEI thing or something, or some DEI training or whatever.

[Ashley Kinetic]

It was something like that, yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

So then you have to ask yourself, what are the chances that, like, two thirds of the Border Protection's budget is this DEI training? You don't even have to then, like, Google and, like, follow the charts and the contracts all the way back to the source. You can just be like, that's probably not true. And there are a lot of people that are frustrated that Musk isn't getting all the flowers that he deserves for this. I think what they need to think about is that he is a government worker. And if you think about it from the perspective of people who don't necessarily trust all government workers without having their work be verified and checked, and don't necessarily trust the motivations that they have because they have their own interests at play. Any government agency that made the types of errors that DOGE is making at this point would be considered waste, fraud, and abuse of the most obvious scale. Yes, and you would say, well, cut this one. They don't have people who can fact check their work before putting it up to the public to look at or.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Who can use basic common sense and.

[Ryan Grimm]

Who appear to be lying, like actively lying about what they have found. Now, at the same time, I don't want to do much taunting of their inability to find saving because I don't.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Want them, like to get more serious.

[Ryan Grimm]

About life, to then go crazy and be like, all right, fine, entire Department of Education nuked, gone. Which is not legal. Like, you want to do that, you got to go through Congress. But anyway, so think about the DOGE people. If you're on this side that thinks all government is like, corrupt and, and wasteful, think about DOGE as what it is. It is a government agency that is in competition with these other departments for money because it is run by a government contractor who wants to go to Mars and needs federal resources to do that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And so that agency has every incentive to tell you that all this other spending is wasteful and we need to suppress it so that we can, and this is what you'll eventually hear, so that we can invest trillions in this project to go to Mars.

[Ashley Kinetic]

That's exactly right. And I do think that, that I'm reading his biography right now, the Walter Isaacson one, and have been trying to research this creature who is now in charge of all of us. And I do think that that is like his primary driving goal, which sounds, I mean, it sounds sort of insane.

[Ryan Grimm]

At least it's a goal.

[Ashley Kinetic]

He has appointed himself the savior of humanity. He believes the things that we should be driving. That's exactly right. Savior of human consciousness. He believes the thing we should be driving towards is being an interplanetary species. He talks about this all the time. And, you know, when he started SpaceX, it really was a sort of preposterous boondoggle, but he does it anyway. He's able to persist. He's able to get. He gets billions of dollars already in federal government contracts. And, you know, you should take note of the fact that you've got SpaceX engineers now in at the FAA. Well, the FAA had been investigating Elon and SpaceX for one of their launches that came apart midair, which caused huge damage I mean, they had to scramble, they had to reroute some 12 commercial flights, like it was actually very dangerous. And so that agency was investigating him. Now he's got SpaceX engineers who are there inside. I have a feeling that investigation isn't going to go very far. And they're making cuts at NASA. Well, guess what? Again, if you strip down the capacity of the government, Suddenly you need SpaceX even more than they already do. And I do think a big part of his rationale and motivation here is basically like, he realized he needed the nearly limitless resources of the federal government treasury to pursue his goal for humanity of putting us all on Mars. And that is a lot of what is driving this. And he sort of latched on to this dark enlightenment like Curtis Yarvin. Oh, we need a CEO dictator because it helps him, it enables him in that goal. So it's a convenient ideology for him to get what he wants. And so all of these little piddling cuts and things that are going on, that is not the ball game. I don't even think you should really consider what's happening right now as any attempt at cutting government or efficiency. It's about consolidating power on behalf of Elon Musk and his goals. And one of the ways we know that is because. Because, listen, they put out their spreadsheet which claimed 55 billion, which only actually showed 8 billion in cuts. The Government Accountability Office, on an annual basis, fined some $150 billion in improper, in actual fraud, not just things that somebody there didn't like, but in actual fraudulent payments. So we have a government agency that does this stuff. Now, if you want to beef that up and make it more effective, fine, go to it. But you also know, Ryan, that they're not actually interested in, like, effective and accountable government, because one of Trump's very first moves was to fire almost all of the inspectors general that are supposed to oversee these agencies and make sure that they are being run effectively and without corruption and graft, and which have been, you know, have actually done some important investigations for journalists like yourself into presidents on both the Democratic and Republican side.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right? And cutting a tiny amount of subscriptions to, like, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg, like bond markets for regulators. So like sec, cftc, cfpb. These people are now, they don't have access to, like, these little subscription services while they're trying to regulate the markets. And for people who are like, okay, well, at least he has a vision. I'd like to remind you that Musk is not the first person to have these generational megalomaniacal views of present humanity versus future humanity. I think it was Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un's grandfather, but it might have been Chairman Mao who said when he was confronted with the vast amount of casualties that were involved in the creation of the communist project either in China or North Korea, I forget which one. He said, basically, what is. You can find his quote out there somewhere. He's like, what is 50 million deaths when we are fighting for untold billions of people in the future, like Mao or Kim Jong Il, whichever one it was, was arguing we are fighting for an almost infinite number of future people who will live in the communist paradise that we produce through this revolution. So how can you tell me that it's a problem that 50 million people, innocent people, died?

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

50 million against billions. So all the people of the earth against the infinite expansion of consciousness. Yes, interplanetarily those things like if you believe, if that's your ethic, we are not the ones that matter.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And this is the type of ideology that has been very pervasive in Silicon Valley in recent years that like Sam bank and Bankman Fried was an adherent of this effective altruist ideology which argues exactly that. Now, I don't think Elon necessarily thinks of himself exactly as an effective altruist because they were concerned specifically about the development of AI destroying humanity, which seems to be actually a reasonable thing to be concerned about.

[Ryan Grimm]

Also they're more earthly based.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yes, but Elon has a version of that and, and does exactly the calculus that you are describing, Ryan, which you can see quickly how that leads to justifying any sort of level of death, cruelty, et cetera, in the short term. So when you look for example at like, you know, cutting USAID funding, so now you've got kids in Africa who are going to die of HIV and aids, it's like, oh well, that's small potatoes in the grand scheme of generations and generations, tens of thousands of years of human civilization. So Elon's perfectly willing to pay that price, let alone any sort of law breaking he doesn't care about. None of these CEOs care about law breaking. To them that's just the cost of doing business. That's what move fast and break things. Ultimately that's like core to that ethos is basically break whatever laws, do whatever you need to do, so it'll work out in the end. So yeah, it is the type of ideology that intellectually, like intelligent people can use to justify absolute monstrosities, like on a world historic level.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Whereas from my side, if you want to go after USAID for being a tool of like American imperialism through its soft power, okay, that's great. That's a great point. Yeah, I'm not sure that's the one they're making though.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. When you're taking it and putting it under Marco Rubio's State Department, something tells me that's not really, not really the end goal.

[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Let's start with this wild post on Truth Social that he then Trump then posted to Twitter. You can tell how much, how excited he is about his different statements, whether or not he moves them from Truth Social over to Twitter. He moved this one to Twitter. Trump is saying here. How's your Trump impression, Crystal?

[Ashley Kinetic]

But he's saying, not great.

[Ryan Grimm]

Think of it. A modestly successful comedian.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Modestly successful comedian.

[Ryan Grimm]

Successful comedian. Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky talked to the United States of America into spending $350 billion. So that's not accurate. We talk about it closer to 200 billion. The actual numbers from this German think tank that studies this is closer to like 120 billion or so. And a lot of that is what we value or overvalue our weapons stock that we just.

[Ashley Kinetic]

A lot of that money never left the beltway. Here, right here.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's a lot of money.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Either way, he's right. It's been a lot of money to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start. But a war that he, without the US and quote Trump. Why does he put Trump in quotes? Will never be able to settle. The United states has spent $200 billion more than Europe. Again, according to this German think tank. Actually, the Europeans have spent slightly more, but 60% of our money has been in grants, whereas the Europeans has been in very low interest loans. They're quibbling and fact checking. But anyway, that's, that's on that point, he says, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization? So then he goes into, okay, so here, this is the key part. Zelenskyy refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A dictator without elections. Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia. Something all admit only Trump again, in quotes. And the Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Europe has failed to bring peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the gravy train going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. So on his, on the things that he says that are correct, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have unnecessarily died. This is correct. Zelenskyy has canceled elections, which is kind of preposterous because it's the whole, you know, we're fighting for democracy here.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Give him that.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Biden did not try to achieve peace.

[Ryan Grimm]

Biden did not try to achieve peace. And the war does need to end. All those things are true. The attack on Zelenskyy as this, like, dictator and the loser or whatever has sparked a response from, I guess was Lavrov now calling him a cornered rat and is, you know, edging, you know, who knows? You know, it's one thing, I think Hegseth got unfair criticism for acknowledging outright that, look, a lot of his territory's not coming back. We need a peace agreement, and the Democrats beat him up for that. It's like, no, nobody believed that you were getting this territory back.

[Ashley Kinetic]

That's ok. So it's not like it was an important piece of leverage because anybody honest knew that that was the case.

[Ryan Grimm]

To tell the whole world that you think Zelenskyy is this level of a loser does, I think, change the negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine. I think that's a fair. I think that's a fair assessment.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. And we do have, we can put B1B up on the screen, just to reiterate the, you know, the component of this. So this is, according to that German research you were talking about, Ryan, how much the US has contributed versus how much the Europeans have contributed. You can see, I mean, it's a lot of money, don't get me wrong. But it's not. What did he say, 350 billion? He also does.

[Ryan Grimm]

You can feel how you want to feel about it, but just at least know the actual amount.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Let's be honest, right. About the amounts. I mean, listen, I want this war to end, right. I think it is disgusting and immoral that the Biden administration blocked the best chance for peace at the best terms for Ukraine, which came very early in the war when they had outperformed and caught Russia unawares. And Russia had been hit with all these sanctions, and they weren't sure how that was going to, whether they were going to be able to really survive that economically or not. Now they've kind of adjusted not to say that it's great, but they know that they can get through that. And you're in this long war of attrition, and so their hand is much stronger now than it was at that time. But we also have to have some commitment to the truth here. And to some level of morality as well. Like, Russia invaded Ukraine, whatever, just NATO provoked it, blah, blah, blah. I mean, actually, you could put it more on the US's side in terms of the blame versus Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians.

[Ryan Grimm]

Oh, 100%.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yeah. And so, you know, to then say, oh, it's Zelenskyy's fault that his own country got invaded and he's the dictator when, yeah, he should have elections. But you're talking about Vladimir Putin on the other side of this equation. Like, it's just a total inversion of reality and the truth. And I think part of it is, I mean, I think what happened in terms of the sequence of events is Trump came. The Trump administration came to Zelensky with this just like, brazen, colonialist, imperialist, this plan of like, we're going to take half of your stuff forever and maybe we'll continue to support you, but then again, maybe not. Actually, this is just basically in repayment for what we've already done. And this is B3B we can put up on the screen. They were able to get the details of this plan and they were so onerous. It was actually more onerous than the terms that were imposed on Germany after World War I, is what they proposed to Zelensky. And Zelensky very gingerly, was like, well, you know, we're gonna have to think about that. And I don't think that's gonna totally work out for us on our end. And if you put B3 up on the screen, like, it's not just my theory that that's what pissed off Trump and led to him calling Zelensky a dictator and a loser and all this stuff. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz says that his relationship. Trump's relationship with Zelensky soured over his refusal to sign that rare earths mineral deal the US has proposed. Waltz, quote, I think the frustration really stemmed just in the last week from this bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over presentation of what we see as an absolute opportunity. That's to have the US invest in Ukrainian infrastructure, to have them grow both their minerals, their natural resources, their oil and gas. We look at the type of aid the Europeans are providing. It's often in the form of loans. It's being repaid with the interest on seized Russian assets. We believe the American taxpayer deserves to recoup much of their investment. So we propose that this totally extractive, exploitative, quote, unquote deal to the Ukrainians, which again, doesn't even promise that we provide them with future military Aid, they get effectively nothing, no guarantees for the future out of it, except the sense that, ok, well, if we're there, we're probably going to protect our economic interests in the future from a Russian invasion. That's what they would theoretically get out of it. Zelensky's like, I don't think we can go down that path. And now Trump does a total 180, whereas previously he had actually been pretty friendly towards Zelensky and Zelensky had gone down to Mar a Lago and all that sort of stuff. So I mean, that's what caused this turn. But in addition, Trump has signaled he's talks all about William McKinley, which is really the sort of start of brazen American imperialism. And he has obviously talked about, I'm gonna take Greenland, I'm gonna take Canada, I'm gonna take Panama, I'm gonna take Gaza, Russia, I'm going to take half of Ukraine. He does not think that there should be any real international rules, guidelines, norms, et cetera, surrounding what great powers can do. I mean, he truly believes in this. Might makes right. If you want it and it serves your interest, you're just going to take it. And so I don't think he has any philosophical or moral objection to Putin seeing Ukraine and being like, well, I can take it and so I'm going to. And so I think that's, you know, that's part also of what plays into this dynamic that's now playing out with him and Zelenskyy and Putin.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. And so in a, you know, there's a lot of talk about the unipolar world of American hegemony evolving into a multipolar world. And the advocates of the multipolar world, of which I would say I'm actually one, yeah. Don't often talk about the side effects of it, which are each pole in the multi pole is basically told by the other multi poles. Okay, that's your area. And so that's where you get this, the Monroe doctrine and the McKinley really expanding on it to saying, okay, we're not a hegemonic world power, but we're gonna compete with Spain and Britain and France. And so we're gonna go take the Philippines and we're gonna try to take Cuba and we're gonna take Haiti is ours, you know, Latin America, like, you know, so we're. So that's our orbit. And so it's actually completely intellectually and geopolitically consistent to say that you're against this kind of kinetic World War III with Russia and China. But you're also fine with, like, smaller wars of conquest. Canada, Mexico, all the, like, bullying that you see messing around with Ukraine kind of cuts against that, because Ukraine would, in a multipolar world, would clearly be in the Russian orbit. But he's going back to his businessman thing where, like, well, we spent all this money, so therefore, we deserve all of this stuff. But what triggered that Trump post was kind of the first overt criticism that Zelenskyy had offered. So, yeah, so he gets this offer. You have to give us 50% of your country because it was reported as rare earths. But as you noted, it's more than that. It's their ports, it's their entire economy.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Pretty much everything, because you're not gonna.

[Ryan Grimm]

Get 500 billion out of the ground, out of there. So then he leaks it to the congressional delegation that went to Kyiv and says, look what they're trying to do, and I'm not gonna sign this. So then it leaks out, and then Zelenskyy calls reporters in, and we can put up. I think it's B2. Zelensky calls reporters into his palace and tells them, you know, I would like to have more truth with the Trump team, and then says that the president was living in a, quote, web of disinformation. So he's not criticizing Trump directly. He's basically doing the thing where the king is. He's saying, the king. The king is being misled by his advisors who are lying to him. Trump took it personally and then goes hard at him with that true social post that he then moves over to Twitter to make sure nobody missed it. So now we have members of Congress, Republicans, being asked to reckon with the question, is Trump a dictator? And let's put the poll up first before we have that. This is pretty funny and something that people should remember. You know, Americans have a plus 19 positive view of Zelensky, minus 2 of Trump, minus 63 of Putin of these three characters. Zelensky is by far and away more.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Popular, by the way. I mean, people are also pointing out, like, Zelensky's favorability rating in Ukraine has fallen, but he still has a higher favorable. I think he's like 57% favorability in Ukraine, So higher than Trump among his own countrymen and even more significantly above Trump in terms of our population and the way that people here feel about him. I mean, it is kind of funny. One of the things that was always noteworthy to Sager and I is that even in spite of all. And I do think that Ukraine and Trump Positioning himself as, like, quote, unquote, anti war. I think that helped him a lot in the election. But some of Biden's best ratings always came on his quote, unquote, handling of Ukraine. He was, like, still underwater, but by less than in other various areas. Because I think there is a deep, like, American instinct of wanting to stand up for the little guy and feeling like. I mean, and plus decades of Cold War ideology about Russia being the big bad guys and the villains in the Rocky movies and whatever, that goes pretty deep. And so when you see a poll like that, it is a bit of a reality check about the kind of political forces that Trump is playing with here as he overtly sides now with Putin in these negotiations.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, and I hope that out of this, Trump is able to. To get some peace deal. I worry that the viciousness of it at his own ally is gonna undermine his ability to do that. But, you know, we'll see. Like, it's. It's still alive. It's still a live question. And at least he's trying. But like we said earlier, Biden didn't even try. Yeah, Biden. In fact, the Biden administration, you know, thwarted efforts to try to get to a peace deal, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead since then. But one of my favorite things in Washington is John Thune getting asked about what Trump is up to on a daily basis. So let's see how John Thune, Senate leader, responds to the question of whether Zelenskyy's a dictator.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Would you call a Ukrainian president Zelensky.

[Ryan Grimm]

A dictator as President Trump has. Well, like I said, the president speaks for himself. What I want to see is, is a peaceful result, a peaceful outcome. And I think right now there's a negotiation going on, and let's see where that ultimately leads. Hopefully, it'll get to the outcome we.

[Ashley Kinetic]

All want to see.

[Ryan Grimm]

And then you don't have many, quote, unquote, moderate House Republicans left. And the definition of moderate has shifted as the actual moderates have kind of been run out of the party or become Democrats. A kind of conservative who works with Democrats is Don Bacon in Nebraska. Usually faces a somewhat close election. He was asked about this. Let's roll Bacon here, stick up for what's right. And so I wanted to be very strong in my words today, because this.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Republican does not agree with what the president said.

[Ryan Grimm]

Russia's on the bad side here, and.

[Ashley Kinetic]

We need a president that has moral clarity when it comes to this war.

[Ryan Grimm]

And right now, I don't see that. I had hoped the president would step up and be better than Joe Biden. I felt like Joe Biden was slow in getting weapons there. He was using rules of engagement that restricted Ukraine. It was really feeding the gridlock. Now, I had hoped that this president would step up and try to finish this war in the right way, not in a noble way.

[Ashley Kinetic]

And this is what we see today.

[Ryan Grimm]

Is not a noble course of action. I guess the only thing I'd say to that, in Trump's defense, somebody's got a. Somebody at this table's gotta do that. Has there ever been an American president that nobly ended a war? Like, we don't end wars with much nobility? And the kind of security establishment is always claiming that they are for ending wars after they've already ended and that they were for ending the war that you ended, like, let's say, Biden in Afghanistan, but not the way you did it, right. When they stood in the way of ending the war the entire time. So you can, I think, agree with the comments, like, on the surface, but I think they're obscuring a real reluctance to actually engage with a peaceful exit, which is not to defend ignobility.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Right. Well, the other thing that does just make me a little crazy about all of this is, like, I think partly because of the Russiagate hysteria in his first term, liberals will be surprised to learn that Trump pursued a very hawkish policy vis a vis Russia, and specifically with regards to Ukraine. He armed Ukraine in a way that Obama was unwilling to, because Obama feared this sort of conflict and provocation of Russia, Russia, and Trump, in spite of rhetoric that was sort of like Putin curious or Putin friendly or whatever, what his administration actually did was quite militaristic and quite hawkish. And so that's also why I find it outrageous for him to then, at this point, after you helped create the conditions that provoked this reaction from Russia and Russia, you know, Putin has his own agency and he did his thing, and it was illegal and he shouldn't have done it, but, you know, it was foreseeable, ultimately, this outcome, like, you were part of creating these conditions, and now you want to turn around and blame Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Like, it is disgusting. It is outrageous, and people should feel, like, disgusted and outraged by that. And it also, you know, it also does make it so, as you were pointing out, Ryan, that in terms of the dynamics of this negotiation, it does not make them simpler. It makes them more complex, actually. And it certainly makes it so that whatever Ukraine is going to end up with at the End of the day is going, going to be worse than what they may have ended up with if Trump had taken a different course here.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes, yes. Everyone waving the Ukrainian flag over the last two years claiming to be supporting Ukraine has left them in a worse situation than they would have been otherwise. We don't have time to get into this deeply, but just want to finish with the context of all of this. Put up B7 here. This is a New York Times piece from yesterday about the headline, trump Eyes a Bigger, better Trade deal with China. Trump really is projecting the idea strongly that he wants to reorganize the world order and wants better relations with Russia, which presumably the idea is to drive a little bit of a wedge deeper into the relationship between Russia and China and then to cut it, big deal, almost a G2 situation with China to say, look, we're willing to, like, back off the idea that we're going to be a hegemon, and let's see how cooperation works out rather than aggressive or actually like kinetic competition works out. He's, as the Times points out, he's bitter. Trump's always bitter, but he's bitter in particular about he thinks Biden didn't carry out the deal that he cut with China in 2020, where China was supposed to buy another $200 billion worth of US goods, balance out the trade deficit. And he thinks that he would have if he were still in power. So now he's going to go back and cut a broad commercial diplomatic deal that involves reducing nuclear weapons and spending and military spending, which to me, great. If he could pull us off, you know, go for it.

[Ashley Kinetic]

This could be one of the areas where Elon as CEO, dictator king is actually beneficial since he has so many business interests in China.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's one way of putting it.

[Ashley Kinetic]

You know, it may actually be that that's part of what has shifted Trump in this direction because, you know, he had a much more. Well, and it's still, I think it's still very much up in the air because there are different ways you can do multipolarity. Right. One is, and Ben Norton's been, been writing some about this. You know, the Chinese have sort of laid out their principles of they want equal treatment for all countries, respect for international law, multilateralism. They want openness and mutual benefits. So not this idea of like a new Cold war and we're in competition with you. Right. So not a return to those Soviet versus US Dynamics which led to untold number of proxy wars. It was not like we avoided the giant conflict with them, you know, the big hot war that ends the world. But it was not like it was a conflict free.

[Ryan Grimm]

Tens of millions died, violent deaths.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Yes, exactly. So there's that way of doing multipolarity which many people within the Trump administration, including Marco Rubio, he is a China hawk. He has a sort of, like, hawkish, historically aggressive posture towards China. Sees it as a competition. Has talked about the acquisition of Greenland in this sort of, like, cold war way of. This is a way to check China. And if we don't take it, then China's gonna take it. And we need to make sure that we can own the Arctic as the ice melts and these shipping lanes open up as a result of the climate crisis. So that's one way. And the other way would be to have these sort of more mutually beneficial cooperative relationships where you're not just directly competing with each other around the world in all these proxy fights and building up your military aggressively, et cetera, et cetera, etc. So I think it's still very undetermined which direction Trump is going to decide to take. I don't know that he really knows either.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And if somebody's gonna shake it up like that, it would have to be Trump, because the entire Washington blob, the national security establishment, has spent decades invested in American hegemony. That's where their careers are. That's where their lives, that's where their professional lives are based. So they're gonna, you know, they're gonna. They're gonna go down with the ship. I think the key takeaway to me from Trump's tweet about Zelensky, Trump is. Which everybody says about him, whoever talks to him last, he's very easy to be influenced. He is clearly surrounded right now by people who hate Zelensky and have a hostility towards the whole Ukrainian project. That's what's reflected in that tweet, which we're very.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Internet brain.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Ashley Kinetic]

Take honestly. Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And so that. So that, that. That is a window into who's influencing him right now, which is. Was suggestive of where this is heading.

[Ashley Kinetic]

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

[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

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[Ashley Kinetic]

If it seems like all other options.

[Ryan Grimm]

Aren'T working for them, go to try.

[Ashley Kinetic]

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[Ryan Grimm]

Meds are prescribed at providers discretion.

[Ashley Kinetic]

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