← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
4/2/25: Elon Faceplants In Wisconsin, Liberation Day, Luigi Death Penalty, JFK Hearings & MORE!
02:12:56
Loading summary
Transcript298 lines
- [00:00]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com, code IHEART for 50% OFF.
- [00:37]
Unknown Host 2
At Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two door coupe that was there for your first drive, the hatchback that took you cross country and back, and the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool for the cars you couldn't live without. Trust Ameca Auto Insurance. Amiga empathy is our best policy.
- [01:07]
Unknown Host 3
This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest. With your guardrails in place, with Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk free@greenlight.com iHeart.
- [01:37]
Ryan Grim
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are.
- [01:43]
Unknown Host 1
So excited about what that means for.
- [01:45]
Ryan Grim
The future of this show.
- [01:46]
Emily Jashinsky
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.
- [01:53]
Unknown Host 1
To you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become.
- [01:56]
Ryan Grim
A member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free.
- [02:00]
Emily Jashinsky
And all put together for you every.
- [02:02]
Ryan Grim
Morning in your inbox.
- [02:03]
Sagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the.
- [02:04]
Emily Jashinsky
Future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com.
- [02:11]
Ryan Grim
All right, good Wednesday morning and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily is joining us from Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where Elon Musk told us the fate of Western civilization was going to be decided on Tuesday night. We're now in a post Western civilization moment. I, for one, am looking forward to it. Emily, how's, how's the, how's the mood in the post west environment.
- [02:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Welcome to the future. Ryan There are, there's a lot to talk about from the election results last night just here in Wisconsin, interestingly enough, where, you know, precinct yesterday turnout was really high. We'll get into why that didn't make up the difference for Elon Musk and the right here in Wisconsin, but also election results that are worth talking about in Florida, in Louisiana. So we have all kinds of good stuff to get through at the top of today's show. Ryan.
- [03:01]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, at 4:00 today, I guess the west is going to try to make a comeback. Donald Trump is going to announce massive tariffs. This is going to be Liberation Day. I see a lot of people joking that it's Liberation from your 401k day. We're going to talk to Bharat Ramoni, who was the number two basically economic official of the Biden administration. He's going to talk, he's going to give us his take on Trump's tariffs and also his critique of, of this abundance agenda that friend of the show Ezra Klein has introduced to the United States, along with instantly like seven different think tanks organized around this idea of an abundance agenda. Luigi Mangione, alleged to have done something wrong, is going to get death penalty if Pam Bondi gets her way. We'll talk about that. The deportation scandal has broken through. Now to Joe Rogan. We're gonna play a clip of him asking, wait a minute, why are we, are we sure we're supposed to be sending like gay barbers who have nothing to do with MS.13 to dungeons in El Salvador? Is that really what we signed up for here? And I think it's interesting that this has kind of moved beyond just the kind of inside the Beltway conversation. Cory Booker wrapped up his 25 hour record breaking talkathon on the Senate floor. And Jefferson Morley and Oliver St Testified yesterday in front of a House panel that's looking into the new releases as it relates to the JFK assassination. And the Democrats embarrassed themselves to a level that I did not think was even previously achievable. And we'll play some of those clips. Emily, any quick thoughts?
- [04:53]
Sagar Enjeti
Wasn't exactly a shining example of Republican government from the right either at that hearing because of course, there was that moment. If you haven't seen it yet, go ahead and Google it. Of Lauren Boebert confusing Oliver Stone and Roger Stone, which is truly beautiful.
- [05:10]
Ryan Grim
Anything you know that's a mistake that can happen, we'll let that one slide. So a bunch of elections last night, two critical ones in Florida, where Republicans were defending, you know, seats that Trump had carried by 30 plus points. This is Matt Gaetz and also Mike Waltz, though both went into the administration. Matt Gaetz never made it all the way in, but decided he didn't want to keep his panhandle seat. So both of those held special elections. But let's start in Wisconsin. This is Susan Crawford. Liberal judge wins in just a complete landslide. Only, just, only a few months after Donald Trump carried the state of Wisconsin. Democrats look poised, or liberals or whatever you want to call them in this nonpartisan judicial race to win by something like 11 points. Here's Susan Crawford, the winner last night. Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy. That's right, our fair elections and our Supreme Court. And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly.
- [06:23]
Sagar Enjeti
That justice does not have a price.
- [06:25]
Ryan Grim
Our courts are not for sale. So Wisconsin voters are getting used to these pivotal Supreme Court elections. With that victory, the liberals, the Democrats, whatever you want to call them, will control the Supreme Court going forward. We had significant lines at the polls. Emily, we can roll this a1vo here. But Emily, what did you see when it came to turnout and enthusiasm in the state for this off year election?
- [06:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, I was out here in Waukesha county yesterday and turnout was, the poll workers were talking about how high turnout was and you could see it. I mean, it didn't really look like a spring Supreme Court election level turnout. It wasn't quite presidential, but turnout turned out to be very high as the information started coming in. Now there was a state suprem Court race which in Wisconsin, by the way, isn't Republican versus Democrat. It's conservative versus liberal. And people sort of know that the parties are respectively involved, but it's not technically partisan. So there was a race back in 2023 where it was also at the time breaking spending records. Last night's election turned out to be the actual most expensive judicial race in, in US history. About $100 million poured into this. The conservative candidate had a bit of a cash advantage. They both were around. I think the Susan Crawford who ended up winning was around $45 million. And Brad Schimmel was somewhere north of $50 million. On the Crawford side, you had Soros Pritzker and I think Reid Hoffman getting involved and then Musk Dickey line, some others were involved on the conservative side to run his Pennsylvania playbook because it worked when Trump's name was at the top of the ballot and he gave out a couple million dollars to different voters, paid people 100 bucks for signing A petition against activist judges. They put a lot into this race where the margin now is about 10 points for Susan Crawford. She wins. And that's similar to what the margin was for the liberal candidate back in 2023, which is all very interesting because it tests a couple of things. One, what happens in states like Wiscon, Wisconsin, swing state in a presidential election, but historically a blue state, what happens? Can Elon Musk sort of flip a switch, run the playbook back every time they want to win a crucial election? And it's worth X amount of dollars at least as of last night, the answer to that question is no. If Trump's name is not on the ballot, what does that do? My source, one of my sources had a really interesting reaction last night, said that Republicans slipped or conservatives slipped in rural areas and, quote, only Trump himself truly brings out the working class. So I think that's going to prove to be a really significant challenge for Republican and Republicans, conservatives in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania particular, going forward.
- [09:33]
Unknown Host 2
Yeah.
- [09:34]
Ryan Grim
And it was reported Musk had spent $17 million, and that was several days, with several days still left to go in the election. So the final total certainly is going to be a lot more than that. And then there were the famous, you know, 100 bucks if you sign this petition and get other people to sign it, which is sometimes he was careful to not break election bribery laws. Other times he was not at all careful. And now the attorney general is kind of looking into whether or not he was. He's breaking the law there. He also did a lottery where he gave out, you know, I think 2 million, you know, million dollar checks to two different people who participated in this thing. And you're right, it wasn't. It wasn't enough. And so there's a theory on the left which I want to get your take on, because I wonder if this is going to become something that gets talked about in Trump circles. The theory is a little bit crazy, but it's just a theory. And it's not about an election being stolen, but it's about what Trump thinks about 2024. So there's a theory among some liberals who saw the anecdotes about Musk and Trump spending election night together and Trump being just utterly mystified by Musk's uncanny ability to know ahead of time exactly how the numbers were going to come out in, like, Pennsylvania and Michigan. And Musk very early in the night was like, this is done. Here's why it's done. Here are the numbers that are going to come in now, he can easily, from my perspective, have a program that analyzes turnout in different key precincts, Compare it to 2020, and then run a projection and just analyze it basically the same way that the New York Times does, but a little bit more sophisticated. I don't think it requires him to have any inside information or to be inside the vote counting machines. The theory on the left is that Trump doesn't understand that and thinks that Musk had something going in Pennsylvania and that that has something to do with the deference that he has been giving to Musk, which requires some extraordinary explanation. Like just because it's so kind of obviously not great for him necessarily to be co presidenting with this deeply unpopular guy. So they think it has something to do with that. They're like that Musk knew something, did something. That doesn't mean he did. It just means that Trump might wonder if he did. Now, watching Elon Musk face plan, if it was true that Trump thought Musk had some magic up his sleeve. Well, there was no rabbit in the hat in Wisconsin. So I wonder if this is going to cool things between Musk and Trump and between Musk and the Republican Party.
- [12:25]
Sagar Enjeti
It's a really interesting question because I think one of the reasons Elon Musk started pouring millions into this race, not that, you know, 15 million is that much to him, but roughly 50 million is that much to him. But I think one of the reasons he started pouring money into it is in order to prove a point that he could be a net. Like he's an asset to the Trump administration and to the MAGA movement. Even as Doge starts slipping in the polls, Musk himself has approval or favorability rating that starts slipping in the polls. Then you're able to go into Wisconsin, flip the switch with the money, with the pac, with the rallies, with the get out the vote operation that maybe looks like Pennsylvania 2024. And all of a sudden you give Trump more and more incentive to never ditch you. I think there's probably part of that. I mean, there's the Tesla case, but I don't think Elon Musk really that's pending or could be pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I don't think that matters too much to Elon Musk, to be honest. I don't think that's the business that they would get out of opening Tesla dealerships in Wisconsin. I don't think is going to dramatically change Elon Musk's net worth. But I think it would be a.
- [13:36]
Ryan Grim
Hilarious move to try to take over the country just to open up more Tesla dealerships in Wisconsin. That'd be amazing.
- [13:42]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah, that would be something. But, yeah, I mean, here in the. This is where it was also really interesting. So, like, here in conservative, relatively suburban counties, they were feeling, Republicans, conservatives were feeling really good yesterday because of the high turnout. They had this sense that maybe Elon Musk had actually done something very, very impressive with the petitions against, quote, unquote, activist judges. And, you know, that, that actually high turnout had conservatives feeling good. But as David Shore recently posited, when you look at the 2024 election results, if those low propensity voters had turned out in higher numbers, if there had been higher turnout in the presidential election, Trump would have won by more. And here in Wisconsin, if there had been higher turnout that was on the level of a presidential, which you're never going to get for a Supreme Court race, you could end up with Republicans narrowing the gap, conservatives narrowing the gap. Right now it's 10 points. You know, it's not to say Wisconsin is, you know, the same thing as Massachusetts, for example, voter ID passed by 62% and actually about 63%. That's a higher margin than Susan Crawford, interestingly enough. So, you know, it just. I think your point is a really interesting one, that there was this idea Elon Musk himself could be a singular force, almost like Trump, who can go into these states and flip the switch. And if Trump thinks that's the case, or if Elon Musk believed that was essential to Trump's view of him, then they're going to need to put a whole lot more work into it because it did not go their way here in Wisconsin by, again, they didn't change the margin from 2023. Maybe narrowed it a little bit when all is said and done, but 10 points, so not much changed. Even though there was higher turnout, it just, it wasn't enough.
- [15:36]
Ryan Grim
And for many decades, Democrats have been the party of working class voters. And working class voters are less likely to have their IDs, just as a percentage. And small percentages can change. If you're a college educated mom in the suburbs, you've got your ducks in a row. If you're not, you're less likely to. And so for many years, Democrats defended the ability of anybody, hey, here's your address, show, utility, bill, whatever, just sign your name. If you're registered, you can vote now. It's taken Republicans so long to start winning on voter id, it's gonna end up perhaps hurting their voters more, as you said. With the David Shore analysis that if you have voter suppression of any degree across the board, you're more likely to suppress working class voters. And so anyway, that's just an interesting kind of irony there. And I think it's also why you're finally seeing Democrats kind of roll over on voter id. They're like, okay, you know what, our voters all have ID now, so fine, we'll go ahead and do it. And that's the thing you have to remember. Parties are amoral vehicles for power. Like, they don't have any principles on anything. The only principle is they want to win. And so they don't have a principle on what the actual identification you need. Trump said the way that he wrote his executive order recently around election reform, if there was a way to read it that would say you could only vote if you had a passport, I think that was poorly written and I don't think that's going to hold up. But if that were the law put into place, Democrats would win in a landslide. Probably like Democrats are more likely probably to have valid passports than Republicans at this point, which is a shocking testament to the realignment of the parties that Democrats have more upper class, upper middle class voters than in the past. Speaking of working class districts, there are two in Florida. So let's move there. You put up a four. Randy Fine, deeply unpopular, apparently local election official. Seems like even Republicans don't really like the guy. He ended up winning by 10 points against Josh Wheel in a race that went 30 plus for Trump. So this ended up, it ended up being close. Ish. But it's not like. And Democrats spent what, tens of millions of dollars on this. Enormous amounts of money were raised and spent to try to make this a competitive race. And it's much closer than Republicans would like to see. And I know that there were some Republicans in Washington who were actually hoping for a close race so that it would be like a brushback pitch to Musk. They wanted a close race, but not. But they didn't want to lose it. I don't think we have an element for this, but in the panhandle in Matt Gaetz's seat, Democrats actually overperformed. The other Florida special election still lost because it was such a massively Republican district. And one of the theories I saw kicking around last night, curious for your take on this, is that Democrats should just not even do any like, advertising during these special elections. Because if you're a Democrat in an off year, like you're locked in, like you're googling and finding when the races are who's running and making sure you're ready to vote and you're going out and you're going from the Tesla protest right to the ballot and making sure you cast it. And the more salience you increase, the more likely it is Republicans are going to learn about it and come out and vote. Now, this doesn't bode well for four years from now, but it does bode well for Democrats for a midterm. So what do you make of this massive Democratic over performance in Florida, which is lining up with their over performance in special elections, not just in Wisconsin, but around the country. And while you're talking, you can put up a five over the weekend in Louisiana, the right put up four constitutional amendments and all four of them were beaten back.
- [20:05]
Sagar Enjeti
And there was a Pennsylvania race that was what now two weeks ago?
- [20:09]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, two weeks ago in Amish country in Lancaster. The Democrat actually won in a, in an area that is definitely not Democratic country.
- [20:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. You know, I'm looking at this post by Matthew Klein right now, Political Report, and he suggested last night one reason that Florida's first district might end up relatively better for Democrats than Florida 6. Despite getting no money and attention, he says education. Florida 1 has a bachelor's degree attainment of 33.3%. In Florida 6, it's 27.1% more college education equals more politically engaged and also more Democratic. So I think what we're seeing in some of these early results is just that new reality be underscored and actually makes the point that you were just making about voter ID as well. But that's like a very, very interesting shift for Republicans to start dealing with in some of these different places. And it looks like, I mean, some of this really does look like 2017. Some of those races we were watching back then early to see what would happen in the 2018 midterms that went for Democrats. So I'm hesitant to read too much into this being like a specific rebuke of Doge and Elon Musk. But it was a failure, at least in Wisconsin. It was absolutely a failure for Elon Musk, particularly because he was like a personality that almost injected himself onto the palate. So I think it's a referendum on Trump. I think it shows that you're similarly Democratic voters are very energized. The Democratic base is very energized. I just, I guess I just don't think that's totally different than where things were also in 2017 right now. So, you know, I think Musk has a lot to prove for Trump. And I'm not saying that he's like a super popular figure, just that some of this is there's still a lot of hostility to Trump in America. There's still a lot of hostility to maga, Republicanism and to the agenda. And I'm sure the, the tariff and market volatility aren't helping with that, but I think it's more like culture, the sort of culture war, quote, unquote resistance that a lot of Democrats were mustering back in 2017 around the Russia investigation. Now, I think Doge and Musk are the mobilizing. Maybe bait is the right way to put it. Like that's what's getting people onto the streets.
- [22:36]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And so let's, let's move on to the tariffs. Donald Trump. At 4pm today, we'll announce Liberation Day. So we're going to have Bharat Ramamurti to talk about that.
- [22:50]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 5050 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamandEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamandEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF.
- [23:27]
Unknown Host 2
At Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two door coupe that was there for your first drive. The hatchback that took you crossing country and back, and the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool for the cars you couldn't live without. Trust Amica Auto Insurance Ameca Empathy is our best policy.
- [23:57]
Unknown Host 3
Let's be honest. Most of us have a love hate relationship with wired bras. We love the lift, but hate the digging. We love the support, but hate feeling trapped. Well, Nyx just changed everything with Freeflex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Free Flex features a revolutionary flexible wire that moves when you move, bends when you bend, and keeps everything exactly where you want it. No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses. And because it's from Nyx. It's available in sizes for every body. Experience the first wired bra you'll actually want to wear all day. Visit knix.com for 15% off your order with Free Flex 15. That's knix.com code freeflex15 for 15% off.
- [24:55]
Ryan Grim
Nyx.Com today is L Day, Liberation day here in the United States. Liberation from what remains slightly unclear. This FOX News clip suggests that you might need to liberate yourself from your attachment to your 401k. Let's roll this. And those 401k people who are depending, those retirees, all of that just talking plain speak with them. Look, when this nation used to go to war, people in this country would support the war effort with their materials.
- [25:26]
Sagar Enjeti
At home and making things for weaponry and all that.
- [25:30]
Ryan Grim
We got to do 100% buy in over this bumpy period. Just communicate in put up B2. Donald Trump will be speaking precisely at 4pm from the Rose Garden, which is the moment that the bell will be ringing the New York Stock Exchange. He knows that. He chose that for a reason. He's going to sit back and watch the chaos all day. And even if you don't have money in there, it's kind of going to be, it's going to be a ride, that's for sure. So to talk about this, we're joined by Bharat Rahmurti, who was the deputy director of the NEC at the Biden administration. And I think from the left, as good a person as we could get to be sympathetic to the broad idea behind tariffs and behind rebuilding America's manufacturing class. There was a strong faction, there's a strong faction in the Democratic Party and within the Biden administration that aligns with that broad idea like that, yes, neoliberalism was awful. It hollowed out our country. We need to be able to build things again. So from a sympathetic perspective, wanted to get your take on where you see this going. And so the question, the genuine question I have, like, because I don't know the answer to it, is on the one hand, you've got what Robert Lighthizer, who is pretty well respected kind of trade policymaker who was the USTR rep for Trump in the first term and is still his, seems to be his senior adviser on this question. Democrats have always said to me, Lighthizer, this guy knows what he's doing and he has the best interests of American workers in manufacturing at heart. On the other hand, you have Trump, who seems to think that tariffs are just a way to rake in A whole lot of money for the treasury at no cost to anybody. And it seems unclear where this is going. So from people in this policy world, where do you see this going? What's going on here? Who's in control? Is it Lighthizer or is it Trump's kind of imagination of what. But it is. Yeah, go ahead.
- [27:43]
Sagar Enjeti
Emily Ryan, can I just jump in to say it's actually a big deal that Trump did not bring Bob Lighthizer back into this administration. He has Navarro around him, but reportedly.
- [27:53]
Ryan Grim
A lot of sort of advising or.
- [27:54]
Sagar Enjeti
No, he's not, he's not formally in the administration. And it's kind of a sore spot for the like tariff the protectionists on the quote, unquote, new right because he was seen as somebody who could potentially be even in a Commerce or treasury secretary role and who wasn't. But speaking of Commerce Secretary, reportedly Howard Lutnick is driving a lot of Trump's very particular strategy here, which is interesting. So anyway, sorry.
- [28:19]
Ryan Grim
No, thank you. That's very helpful. I still see Lighthizer a lot commenting on this and. But that's a very good amendment that he's not in the room. Yeah.
- [28:31]
Emily Jashinsky
Well, first of all, Happy Liberation Day.
- [28:33]
Ryan Grim
Happy Liberation Day to all who celebrate.
- [28:35]
Emily Jashinsky
So look, you're right, I think that there is a strategic case, both a national security and economic security case for tariffs, but you have to use them in a certain kind of way for them to make sense. So the entire theory of how tariffs work is that it's a tax on imports is the way to think about it. And so by driving up the cost of importing goods into the United States, it encourages investors and other businesses in the United States to look for domestic options instead. That's the basic theory, because those will be relatively cheaper to what's coming in. But if the goal of all of this is to revive certain domestic industries, which is a goal that I support, let's say you want to build more washing machines in the United States and the problem is that you can import really cheap washing machines from abroad right now and nobody's going to build them here because of that. Think about this from the perspective of an investor who's saying, you know what, I have a bunch of money. Should I put it into making it washing machine manufacturing or should I put it into this other goal? Or this other goal? Well, washing machine manufacturing, maybe there's an opportunity now because the tariff means that the imported goods be more expensive. That has to be in place for years and years with certainty for that investor to make a decision that this is a good use of my money. And the problem with the Trump tariffs is that that they're completely unstrategic and there's no plan for how long they're going to be in place and what the triggers are for having them go up or go down or anything like that. So it doesn't provide any certainty to any investor in the United States about what to do. I mean, there have been instances where Trump says on one day I'm imposing a 20% tariff on everything from Canada and then two days later saying, actually the Canada tariffs are off because I had a good conversation with the prime minister or because they decided to do something on fentanyl completely unrelated to the goal of economic revitalization in the United States. So it's not going to have the intended impact because there's no discipline, there's no certainty, and there's none of the other supports that you would need to actually revive domestic industry in the United States.
- [30:42]
Sagar Enjeti
I want to ask about efforts in the Senate. We can go through some of these next elements. We can start with B3. This is Donald Trump going after Tim Kaine, who has sought to perhaps put, put legislation together that would undermine the Canada tariffs. And obviously, if people are familiar with the history of tariffs, that is very much an Article one power. So kind of sympathetic to this myself, but Lisa Murkowski we could put before up on the screen has said, indicated that she is sympathetic to this. She says, quote, I'm looking at my state's interests and it seems to me that his resolution makes sense about the Kane resolution. And then final, if we put B5 up on the screen, Donald Trump has been unloading on Republicans like Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski on Truth Social as well, who have indicated they are not on board with the particular, the particulars of the Canada tariff agenda. I'm sure Rand Paul is somebody who very much believes that this is a congressional responsibility and is opposed to tariffs, period. So what do you, what do you make of the pushback here on the Canada tariffs in particular? Because it seems it's easy to push back on the tactic as you just kind of laid out why the unpredictability may be undermining it. But if you were looking at Canada tariffs, would you suggest any sort of walls that should be built around industry with Canada at all? Because mostly on the left are saying, now Canada is an ally, leave Canada alone. I think from a sort of Warnesque position, there's a decent argument for some targeted tariffs here.
- [32:23]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah. Again, Two interesting things. Number one, they're talking about an across the board tariff, right? On every single thing. And, you know, if there's a case to be made on dairy, you know, Canada imposes a tariff on U.S. dairy that's exported to Canada. Maybe we need to put something on our imports from Canada to try to level the playing field there.
- [32:45]
Sagar Enjeti
There's always Wisconsin right now.
- [32:47]
Emily Jashinsky
That's a big issue. Right. You know, is there something about autos and auto parts? Those are sector by sector. And you would want to figure out what is a nuanced tariff that makes sense given what the tariff is that the other country is imposing and the relative cost of the goods. And across the board, 20% tariff, by definition is unstrategic. It's not based on protecting specific sectors. It's not about evening out the playing field on specific products that are subject to a higher tariff. The other important thing in that is that the entire basis for the tariffs that Trump is laying out is fentanyl. It's not about protecting domestic industry, growing dairy production in the United States, making sure that domestically sourced auto parts are being used instead of auto parts from Canada. It's about apparently, fentanyl coming across the border. So again, if you're a domestic producer and saying, should I put more money into dairy or into domestic auto parts, if the basis for the tariff is fentanyl coming across the border and a week later Trump says, guess what, they've reached an agreement with me on fentanyl because they put more Mounties at the border, then what are you going to do? You haven't achieved the economic goal of doing that. So that's the thing. Hour by hour, and I'm not exaggerating, literally, hour by hour, the size of the tariff changes, the rationale for the tariff changes, the explanation for what it would take to remove the tariff changes, and there's just no way that any economic actor can respond to those tariffs by trying to make the investments that are necessary to actually revitalize American manufacturing and production.
- [34:22]
Ryan Grim
And now the Biden administration left some of Trump's China tariffs in place. Why was that? And why were those tariffs worth leaving?
- [34:33]
Emily Jashinsky
I mean, look, there are. One of the key purposes of tariffs is to correct a trade imbalance. And if you look at what China is doing, obviously they have much, much lower labor and environmental standards in China. They can manufacture things much more cheaply because they pay people $2 a day and they don't care how much pollution they put into the water, into the air. The other thing is that they have enormous state subsidies, in many cases state run companies, but other ones that are getting huge amounts of money from the government, which again makes it much easier for them to produce things at lower cost, and then what's called dump them into foreign countries at very low cost to start dominating those markets. Markets. In the case of the China tariffs, we want to say there are certain things that we think are important to have in the United States. Steel production, aluminum production. If we have a tariff on China that says imports of those particular products are going to be a little bit more expensive so that we can protect domestic production, that makes both economic sense and national security sense from my perspective. So, yeah, it made sense to keep those in place though. We did an intensive review of every single tariff in 2021, 2022, when inflation was quite high and said, do all of these make sense or not? And we decided that a lot of them made sense and protected important interests. But remember, that was on something like 0.8% of imports from China. Those tariffs, Trump is talking about 100% of imports from China, from the EU, from Canada, from Mexico. Those are our largest trading partners. And so basically it's just a guarantee that costs are going to go up. I mean, one way to think about it is that it's basically a sales tax on every single good that is imported into the United States.
- [36:11]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years. Years. With thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamandEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamandEve.com code IHEART for 50 percent off.
- [36:49]
Unknown Host 2
At Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two door coupe that was there for your first drive. The hatchback that took you cross country and back, and the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool for the cars you couldn't live without. Trust amica Auto insurance Amica Empathy is our best policy.
- [37:19]
Unknown Host 3
Let's be honest. Most of us have a love hate relationship with wired bras. We love the lift, but hate the digging. We love the support, but hate feeling trapped. Well, Nyx just changed everything with Freeflex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Free Flex features a revolutionary flexible wire that moves when you move, bends when you bend, and keeps everything exactly where you want it. No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses. And because it's from Nyx, it's available in sizes for every body. Experience the first wired bra you'll actually want to wear all day. Visit knix.com for 15% off your order with Free Flex 15. That's knix.com code freeflex15 for 15% off.
- [38:17]
Sagar Enjeti
Nix.Com leaving those tariffs in place means that they have now been in place for almost. I mean, we're coming up on a decade. Not quite a decade, but we're coming up on a decade. The China tariffs. And I'm curious because I've seen some libertarian, or I should maybe just say like anti protectionist economists, which is just saying economists, basically. Yeah. Push back and say, well, the China tariffs haven't worked. There's your case study. China tariffs have been in place for a long time. There hasn't been significant protection of American industry, it hasn't revitalized American manufacturing, etc. What's your response to that? Are the China tariffs proof of concept or proof of concept in the other direction against the, I guess, efforts or the ambitions of the tariffs?
- [39:03]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, the thing about tariffs, and honestly with all policymaking, is that you have to compare it against a world in which they didn't exist and it's hard to know exactly what that world looks like. So for those who say, oh, things haven't gotten, haven't improved as much as you would have liked, my question to them is what would things look like if we hadn't had them in place? How bad would things have gotten without those in place? And so the folks at the White House and the U.S. trade Representative and others who were most involved in all of this, they did a very careful review and determined that it was worth it overall to keep them in place because again, they were on a relatively small portion of goods and they're directly related to Chinese activities that they felt like were basically unfair trade practices. So I think that there's a strong case for keeping them. I think that there are more opportunities. Again, if Trump had come out and said, I want to really focus this on China, which is engaged in all sorts of unfair trade practices that's hurting US Manufacturing. And there's one really good example of that, by the way. There's something called the de minimis exception, which is basically something that allows China to bring goods to export goods into the United States that are below a certain dollar value. And those things are not subject to any tariff and they're not subject to any customs inspection. And all the TEMU and all that stuff that comes into the United States, the cheap goods, comes in through that exception. And it's a way that a lot of fentanyl comes into the United States.
- [40:32]
Ryan Grim
Because there's no mail it right in.
- [40:33]
Emily Jashinsky
Right. Trump initially said, I'm going to do something about this. I'm going to close the debate for.
- [40:38]
Ryan Grim
A day or two or something.
- [40:39]
Emily Jashinsky
And then he pulled it back. One thing that actually would have made a lot of sense, if you cared about fentanyl, if you care about US Domestic production, if you care about protecting US Consumers, all of that would have made sense. But it's the one thing that he hasn't done when it comes to tariffs.
- [40:52]
Ryan Grim
Do you know why?
- [40:53]
Emily Jashinsky
I have no idea.
- [40:53]
Ryan Grim
Like, was it, I mean, I know that right after he did it, you started having people complain that like, oh, the thing that they had ordered wasn't showing up fast enough. Yeah. Was it really that quickly that he felt the pressure, you think?
- [41:08]
Emily Jashinsky
I don't know.
- [41:10]
Sagar Enjeti
Bezos?
- [41:10]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah.
- [41:11]
Ryan Grim
The thing about Trump, Well, Bezos would have loved it. It's because it's protectionism for Amazon. Well, they bring a lot of crap in too.
- [41:19]
Emily Jashinsky
The thing is with Trump, and again, there is a case for tariffs if it is done in a thoughtful, disciplined, long term perspective kind of way. And all of those things are the opposite of Trump. Right. In terms of he'll have a good conversation with a world leader and totally change his policy towards that person. Some event will happen and they'll capture some pencil coming across the border and say, this is an example of what I'm talking about. The tariffs are going to go. There's no predictability. I know that sounds boring, but that's really important if you're trying to make business decisions and make investment decisions over a long term horizon.
- [41:54]
Ryan Grim
The counterargument on China would be that it was true for many years that they were the source of all cheap labor, et cetera, but now they're so automated and their factories are so efficient that if you want cheap labor, you're going maybe to Vietnam or somewhere else, whereas China now is competing because they've invested so much with our trade imbalance. Into their manufacturing capacity. There was this crazy video going around of US production of 155 millimeter shells and Chinese production of 155 millimeter shells. The Chinese one just whipping through with these robots. And in the US it's dudes with the goggles and the spray paint and the gloves and it's like, whoa, if these countries ever go to war, I don't have much of a doubt which one is gonna be able to produce more shells long term. So how true is it still of China that it's really a labor question?
- [42:57]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, you're right. A lot of the sort of quote unquote, low skill manufacturing has migrated to Southeast Asia in particular. But it gets to a point about.
- [43:09]
Ryan Grim
There's Chinese companies often though, right? Yes.
- [43:12]
Emily Jashinsky
What kind of manufacturing do we want in the United States? Is it important that we literally make every kind of product here for either strategic, economic or national security purposes? Or is it the case that we both, because they're good jobs and because they're important, we want to really focus on high end, sophisticated manufacturing. And I think our argument would be we really got to make sure that we're doing that stuff or we have the capacity to do that stuff in the United States. And if you look at one of the big things that we did in the Biden administration was the CHIPS act, we invested a lot of money and having domestic production of chips, microprocessors that go into almost everything these days, cars, appliances, a lot of electronic process. And we saw during the pandemic that the lack of access to those, because a lot of the foreign factories shut down, meant that our domestic car manufacturers couldn't make new cars because these cars have dozens and dozens of these ships in them. And what happened to the price of cars? They went up because supply had gone down. We all remember how expensive both new cars and used cars were in 2021 and 2022. So we made a decision. It's important to have that production in the United States. We put a lot of money into it. And now we have tsmc, the world's biggest chip maker, opening a fab in Arizona. Micron's doing a big thing in Idaho. So we've seen that those kinds of efforts can result in improved manufacturing in the United States. But it has to be a dedicated long term effort. It's not just doing the tariffs, it's also supporting it with public funds.
- [44:50]
Ryan Grim
Any response to that, Emily? I know the right kind of it now hates the CHIPS Act. Is that right? I mean, it has critics on the left, too, but.
- [44:58]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, yeah, I think a lot of people on the right see the CHIPS act as something that has ultimately been vindicated because they're China hawks and know how important it is to ensure some of that. But I know we're going to get into this in the abundance discussion, but my response to that would be there were some examples of hurdles that Democrats added to the CHIPS act that companies push back on that were sort of at the time, DEI related and added cost costs and steps that were making the process inefficient for them on shoring some of that tech. I don't know if you have a response to that, but I think.
- [45:33]
Ryan Grim
And I would add to that a bunch of buybacks that the companies did. Like, the companies would get the subsidies and then quickly, like just basically funnel the money directly to shareholders. How do you balance those two criticisms?
- [45:47]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, well, I would say there were a lot of criticisms when the rules for this CHIPS program were announced because it said, for example, you gotta pay workers a certain amount of money and provide certain types of labor protections. The big one that attracted a lot of attention was, if you're gonna get this money, you have to provide some kind of affordable childcare for the people who work there. And actually, Ezra Klein wrote a whole piece in the New York Times called the Problem with Everything Bagel Liberalism. Right. You try to put everything on the bagel and it slows things down. And this was his example at the federal level. Well, all of that, I think, has been proven to be misplaced because all of the money in that program has gone out the door. All of the major companies that we wanted to be building in the United States met the requirements and have started building. As I mentioned, TSMC and Micron and intel are all taking money and building stuff in Columbus and in Arizona and in upstate New York and so on. And they met the requirements. It didn't turn out to be that hard for them to say, oh, you know what, we'll have a daycare center at our factory so that we can actually have a diverse workforce. So I actually think that that's a good example of how this abundance critique has been off the mark. Because when push came to shove, the attraction of the federal dollars was enough that they were able to meet the requirements. And look, I wish that we had put stronger buyback protections in there. That was a big negotiation during bill drafting.
- [47:13]
Ryan Grim
Who fought?
- [47:13]
Emily Jashinsky
The Republicans? You know, we don't want to tell corporations.
- [47:17]
Ryan Grim
I would assume our friends Manchin and Sinema were friendly on that. The Republican side.
- [47:22]
Emily Jashinsky
To her credit, I think Secretary of Commerce Raimondo, who was responsible for administering the program, tried to get some of that into the rules. You know, not the actual statute, but the rules for the program. It probably wasn't as effective as getting a law that said if you take this money, no buybacks for five years, period.
- [47:38]
Ryan Grim
Right. But then they won't take the money.
- [47:40]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, but you know, that's the thing.
- [47:42]
Ryan Grim
We're not here to build things. We are here to just take money and hand it to our shareholders. But look, you misunderstand the nature of our project.
- [47:48]
Emily Jashinsky
I think that that is to go to mush this together with the abundance debate. I get frustrated a lot about the various inefficiencies in these types of projects. Right. And what one person will call providing support for an important domestic industry is another person's corporate welfare. Right. And I hate the fact that basically some percentage of these public dollars are going to be wasted in the form of going into buybacks or higher executive compensation. We should be doing. I think it is up to us to do our very, very best to make sure that every single dollar is spent as efficiently as possible. And I think that means fighting against some of the process, completely extraneous requirements that come in. It also means fighting against corporate interests who want to use this money in ways that aren't compatible with the public interest. It requires doing both. And this whole debate that has emerged about abundance, it seems to me kind of like a false choice. Yes, we should try to pare down these steps and these requirements to really do the things that we want to focus on. But yes, we should also make sure that we have an understanding of corporate power and how they seek to distort these processes and how they seek to take public dollars and not do public interested things and figure out ways of stopping that too.
- [49:08]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, if there are two complaints to choose from and one of them is a corporation just taking the money and handing it to its shareholders without building anything. And the other complaint is that you're asking them to build a subsidized daycare center. Or not even necessarily subsidized, but just a daycare center convenient to the factory to get angry at. The childcare part just feels like reactionary right wing populism, or not even populism reactionary, just right wing stuff. And it's weird to see kind of Ezra on that side, like Emily. Right. If those are the two things to complain about, wouldn't the populists complain about the corporate executives who were like walking away with the money. Like, I wish that was the thing that landed easier, more easily with the public.
- [50:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. I mean, also, I think that's why some on the right look back at chips and say, because there were Republicans at the last minute who had been supportive of the legislation and ultimately voted against it, and populist Republicans, I should say. And they're probably very happy. They may not say this publicly, but they're probably very happy to have the, the manufacturing, the chips manufacturing come to the United States and probably say in the aggregate it was the cost benefit analysis works out on the side where benefits outweighed the costs.
- [50:30]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And we're not China. We can't just do good things. We have to buy off our corporate class to ask them to give us permission.
- [50:37]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah. And I would say one last thing, which is that again, I'm not defending every single government program as perfectly efficient, but it's not like the private sector does everything perfectly efficiently either. Right. And so whenever people will complain to me about, oh, I had to wait in line at the DMV or my IRS refund is to taking a week to come to me, it's like, have you ever dealt with Comcast? Have you ever dealt with any of these companies that had a complaint with them? Are they perfect at dealing with your issues? The point is it's hard to do some of these things. These are complicated things. There's going to be some inefficiency in the process. There's going to be some slippage. It's up to us to minimize that as much as we can. But we should hold ourselves to a reasonable standard that's at least roughly equivalent to what the private sector does. And we should be clear eyed about the fact that there's a lot of inefficiency there too.
- [51:26]
Ryan Grim
Well, let's talk more about this in the next segment where we're going to go deeper into the debate over this abundance agenda.
- [51:36]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF.
- [52:13]
Unknown Host 2
At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than just a car or a house. It's the four wheels that get you where you're going and the four walls that welcome you home. When you combine auto and home insurance with Amica, we'll help protect it all. And the more you cover, the more you can save. AM Empathy is our best policy.
- [52:43]
Unknown Host 3
For period protection. You can put on and forget about nothing. Beats Nyx Leak Proof Underwear North America's number one leak proof underwear brand. Let's face it, life can be unpredictable, but your leak proof underwear shouldn't be. That's why millions of people choose NYX for periods, for light leaks, for everyday freshness. Nyx undies are super comfy, super absorbent, and made to handle whatever your day throws at you. Day two of your period covered your daily run. No problem. That big sneeze? You know the one? Yup. We've got you. And with styles like bikinis, boy shorts, thongs and high rise plus sizes from extra small to 4 XL NYX makes it easy to find your perfect fit. Say goodbye to stress and leaks and say hello to undies that work just as hard as you do, no matter the leak. Find the style and level of protection you want@nyx.com and use code flow15 for 15% off. That's K-N-I x.com code flow15 for 15% off. Nix for your leaks for your life.
- [53:45]
Ryan Grim
Ezra Klein has been making the media rounds for his new book on abundance and is getting very little pushback. So we're going to give him a little bit of the that here today. The tiniest little poke that he got came from the pod save bros who characterized some of the criticism that's coming his way from the left. But if you'll notice in this answer, he doesn't really address it, but let's roll this clip here. You mentioned some of the critique from the left. I'm sure you've read all of it or read most of it. I'm sure you've talked about the Zephyr teachout review of Abundance. I wanted to get your reaction to one part of that because I think it summarizes a lot of the criticism on the left. I mean, you mentioned the Bernie side. There's also a Warren esque critique as well, and she writes, I still can't tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small, bore and correct. We need zoning reform or non trivial and deeply regressive. We need deregulation or whether there is room within abundance for anti monopoly politics and a more full throated unleashing of American potential. Matt Brunig has a similar critique. He says it would be a huge mistake to sideline whatever focus there is on welfare state expansion and economic egalitarianism in favor of a focus on administrative burdens in construction. It's not a book about like monopolistic power practices and corporate concentration. So I get that, I guess to the question that teachout asks, is there room in abundance for a critique of concentrated economic power and anti monopoly politics and all that?
- [55:14]
Cory Booker
Trying to think about the nicest way to say this, my friends in the whole problem is oligarchy part of the party. And I believe a good part of our problems are oligarchy. But there are certain kinds of problems they're then willing to see and certain kinds they're not as willing to see. So in housing, I find a lot of them get obsessed with this idea that private investors are buying up a bunch of rental housing. And this is an extremely small part of the market right now. And it's just not the main problem in housing. But because it is the villain they are comfortable having, it is where they want to put their focus. Kamala Harris, I was very excited when she brought out her big plan to build 3 million units of housing, but her plan never would have achieved anything like it. It did have a big thing about trying to do something about this private investor buying up housing issue though. So you can really get, I think, taken off the track. A thing I found like really interesting in Zephyr's review was that is it something good and small like zoning reform? And like try doing zoning reform if you think it's small.
- [56:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Right.
- [56:09]
Cory Booker
Or something bad like deregulation. Okay, interesting. Right?
- [56:12]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [56:12]
Cory Booker
Deregulation is a word that I think shuts liberals down a bit and it shouldn't. A lot of what we're pointing out in the book is that the player that is often most regulated is not the market, it's the government itself. If you want to understand why the government can't build public housing effectively. I mean, in many ways the federal government building public housing is now functionally illegal. It's been regulated out of possibility. If you want to know why we didn't build California high speed Rail, if you want to know why it's so expensive to build affordable housing in a lot of liberal jurisdictions, when you trigger public money, it is because of the regulations we put on government.
- [56:46]
Ryan Grim
Now, one of the key arguments in Ezra's book is that liberals have kind of wrapped the government, tied the government up with too much regulation, and that's keeping it from allowing the abundance to flow. And one of the tent pole case studies that he uses in the book is the billions that were appropriated by Congress to lay out rural broadband and the lack of any rural broadband resulting from that. There was a viral Jon Stewart club that where he kind of lays out this byzantine and ridiculous process. When we come out of this clip, we're gonna talk to the Biden administration official who was probably the most intimately involved in this project to get kind of the other side of the story of what happened here. But first, let's roll some of this clip from the Jon Stewart interview. And if you haven't seen this, the whole thing's kind of funny and worth watching, even though there's a glaring hole in it. Go ahead.
- [57:39]
Cory Booker
So for rural broadband, for instance, what you end up having is a 14 stage process. Like there's a period where the Commerce Department needs to draw up a map of which parts of the country don't have the right amount of broadband. And then there's a challenge period on the map. And da, da, da, da, and da, da, Da. And 56 states and jurisdictions try to apply for this money. And again, this passes. At the end of 2021, they have time. By the end of 2024, three have gotten to the end of the process. They were trying.
- [58:12]
Ryan Grim
Three?
- [58:12]
Oliver Stone
Three of these 56.
- [58:15]
Cory Booker
Yes.
- [58:16]
Ryan Grim
End of the process, meaning they've actioned it, they've built it, or they've now they've got.
- [58:20]
Cory Booker
Oh, no, of course.
- [58:21]
Ryan Grim
I didn't mean they built it. John.
- [58:23]
Cory Booker
Sorry, I was so.
- [58:24]
Ryan Grim
I confused you.
- [58:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, dear.
- [58:25]
Cory Booker
They just got to the point where, in theory, they could get the money to build.
- [58:29]
Ryan Grim
They had been approved for the money.
- [58:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, yes, basically.
- [58:34]
Ryan Grim
Okay, so we have a running kind of series on this program where we try to treat our viewers like adults. And so we're gonna do that today. And so we're joined by Bharat Ramamurti, who was a top Biden administration economic policy official, deputy director of ned. Is that nec? Nec, Yep, nec. And to contextualize you in the spectrum, kind of a war night, like former Elizabeth Warren person and one of the people that Wall street would be angry at Biden for saying, you're ruining what should be a glorious administration by bringing in all these people who are so skeptical of corporate power and being so rude to us. And so Ezra goes on at length in that interview and in his book, laying out really what is an outrageous and absurd process. Like people who want Royal Broadband would like Congress to appropriate money and would like broadband to be built so that they can plug their laptop in, work from home in a nice wooded area, or they can, you know, or if you live there, you can stream. People want the damn broadband and they didn't get it. So what is being left out of this? This question? Why did they do something so dumb?
- [59:56]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, well, I would say a couple of things. Number one, if you look at both the answer that Ezra gave on Pod Save and his answer there, the clear implication is silly. Liberals, they Design this complicated 14 step process all by themselves because they're obsessed with making sure that every single group in the United States has an opportunity to weigh in and they don't prioritize actually building things. As somebody who was directly involved in both negotiating this and then ultimately trying to implement it, a lot of those steps, almost all of them, came from Republicans. Now, remember, this came out of the bipartisan infrastructure law. You needed 60 votes in the Senate to get that through. So you needed to work with Republicans in order to get the bill passed.
- [60:39]
Ryan Grim
And because Manchin and Sinema insisted on pulling it out of reconciliation, for those.
- [60:43]
Emily Jashinsky
Who remember that whole process, they pulled the information.
- [60:45]
Ryan Grim
Reconciliation would have meant 50 votes. Democrats do it on their own. Manchin and Sinema insist on pulling it out. Now you need Republicans. Okay, go ahead.
- [60:53]
Emily Jashinsky
So we're stuck in the situation where we need to get at least 10 Republican votes. Okay, and where did those specific steps come from? For example, Ezra pointed out, you needed to complete this map. Not actually the Commerce Department. The FCC had to complete a map which says, here's where broadband is and is in the entire United States of America. We told them, look, it's going to take at least 18 months for the FCC to complete this map. It's a complicated process to literally figure out whether every location in the United States states has broadband or not. But Republicans insisted that that map be completed before we even allocated a single dollar to a state to build this stuff. And the challenge process, you brought that up too. Who pushed for the challenge process? The big incumbent Internet providers. Why did they push for that? Because the thing that they are most afraid of is the federal government spending money to build new broadband that would directly challenge and compete with the broadband that they're already offering in certain places. So they said, we got to make absolutely sure that not a dollar of federal money is spent to build infrastructure where we already provide some broadband service. And so we need a lengthy challenge process to make sure that we can say this household, you say doesn't have Internet access. Actually, we provide it with Internet access.
- [62:05]
Ryan Grim
So of course we plan to, or.
- [62:07]
Emily Jashinsky
We even plan to.
- [62:08]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [62:08]
Emily Jashinsky
We have an expansion plan such that in the next year we will be providing service to it. So a lot of these steps came from the industry working through this set of negotiating Republicans to put these hurdles into place. And now, so the next question, not to anticipate what you're saying, but the next question is probably why did we agree to do it if we thought this was such a slave process? Two reasons. Number one, we already had $10 billion through an earlier bill that we passed that was moving much more quickly because it was a Democratic only bill operating through the Treasury Department that was providing Internet service. And that bill has already provided connections to hundreds of thousands of households that really needed it. So we said we have this bridge, basically a program that's providing Internet in the short term. We can afford to do a longer term process. And if you look, we weren't out there saying this is a shovels in the ground tomorrow type program from the very beginning. We said this is about connecting households by 2030 and doing it in a thoughtful, step by step way. If it were up to me, we would have done it faster. But the point is, number one, Republicans were the ones who put those barriers into place. And number two, it's still, this isn't an example of government waste. It's not like we've spent $40 billion and nothing has happened. The money's just sitting there in the treasury waiting to be deployed until we have completed these steps.
- [63:27]
Ryan Grim
Go ahead. Yeah, Emily, jump.
- [63:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Right. I was going to jump in because I could maybe channel Ezra and Derek Thompson here and say, you know, they look at the red states with the blue states. The book focuses on what's the difference between California and Texas. And my question based on that would just be to what extent did Democrats or did the, I guess lefts push for more regulation, which I think is being defended by some people as abundance comes out for totally reasonable justifications. Meaning, you know, okay, so which regulations do you want to get rid of in, you know, this process? You want to get rid of some of these good regulations. So what from your point perspective, did the left, like, what culpability does the left have in the broadband case more specifically for extending the process, if anything? Or was it really, I mean, many such cases of industry getting these carve outs that make us wildly less inefficient on a bipartisan basis? But what did the left do that may have extended the process here?
- [64:28]
Emily Jashinsky
I would say that in terms of that 14 step process that Ezra highlighted, those steps came from Republicans. And the reason I feel confident saying that is because the Democrats went into those negotiations with a bill, a bill that was broadly supported in the Democratic caucus by Senator Klobuchar and Representative Clyburn, that was a much faster acting bill and didn't have any of these 14 steps included in it. And those steps came in in their negotiations with Republicans. I will admit there were things that we in the Biden administration and the left more generally were pushing for in that process. And let me give you a couple examples. Number one, we wanted to make sure that if we were going to build this broadband, that it was actually going to deliver affordable service to middle class families at the end of it. So we put in a regulatory requirement that when states applied for this money, they had to show how this process was going to produce broadband that was affordable to middle class people. Why did we do that? Because we had stories from across the country, especially at the state level, where there were states had spent a lot of money trying to build out broadband to rural areas and the broadband got built and then what ended up happening? These are by definition areas where there's only a single provider. So they were charging 150, $200. $250 a month for service. How useful is it to people?
- [65:45]
Ryan Grim
Either pay it or you don't get it? Yeah.
- [65:46]
Emily Jashinsky
And how useful is that to people if you spent a bunch of taxpayer dollars to build out broadband and then people can't really afford it? So this was actually pushed for by Jon Tester, not exactly a hero of the left because he had had this experience in Montana trying to serve a lot of rural households. So that requirement came in and of course that's going to take a little bit of extra time and it's going to take a little bit of extra process for states and for working with their private sector partners to say here's our actual plan for making sure that a family that makes $45,000 a year can afford this service. But to me, there's no point in building out infrastructure if people can't afford it at the end of the day and actually use it. So I'm not going to say that there's nothing that we put into it, but in terms of the actual length of time that it took to get from step one to the end, almost all of those steps came from the Republican negotiators.
- [66:37]
Ryan Grim
And when we say Republican negotiators we're really talking about the Cable and the ISPs, the Internet providers.
- [66:44]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to. Yes. A lot of it, especially the stuff about the challenge process, was because of corporate interests wanting to make sure that we didn't been, quote, unquote, overbuilt. That's the term that they use a.
- [66:55]
Ryan Grim
Lot of that because they're very concerned about waste of taxpayer dollars.
- [66:59]
Emily Jashinsky
Right, exactly.
- [67:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Which, by the way, is interesting as Republicans become dominant in rural America. Right. Like that's a fairly interesting political dynamic as well, that they're still Republican politicians are still overly responsive to that industry.
- [67:13]
Emily Jashinsky
Completely. Yeah. But the other thing is that, look, as I said, there's a lot of examples in West Virginia, in Montana, in Maine, of states trying to build out broadband, and it didn't actually produce usable broadband for people. And the thing is, once you put a little bit of money into it and you start building it out and then let's say they don't complete the project, they really have you over a barrel because they're going to say, don't you want to give us another $10 million to actually complete this thing at this point?
- [67:37]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [67:38]
Emily Jashinsky
And so a lot of these folks were burned by efforts at the state level. So I want to give them some credit and say they were actually focused in some cases on done. Let's make sure that we think about this and do it efficiently at the end of the day. And I think that that sort of gets into the broader abundance debate. Right. Because sometimes efficiency means fast. I agree with that. But the same folks who will say, let's do this as quickly as possible will come back a year later and say, why did you waste so much money because you went so fast.
- [68:07]
Ryan Grim
So the abundance argument from Ezra and Derek Thompson zeroes in a lot on housing, because I think that's the place where you can really kind of nail some of these NIMBYs who are just throwing up obstacles because they legitimately don't want something built right near where they live. But then he extends that to the whole country and to other policies without explaining how those are similar situations and never talking about. About the role of corporate power and what is effectively corruption. Like, it's not. Democrats and when they're drawing this bill were not stupid, they were corrupt, and Republicans were not dumb. They didn't not know what was gonna happen here. They were taking money from corporations who had a vested interest in having this play out in a certain way. Have you seen other instances of the way that corporate power and corporate concentration contort and distort policymaking and make it look like and produce regulations that the public is like God, stupid liberals. But they're actually designed by corporations to protect their own monopolies.
- [69:26]
Emily Jashinsky
Absolutely.
- [69:26]
Ryan Grim
And look, any other examples?
- [69:28]
Emily Jashinsky
I'm more familiar with the federal level because that's where I've spent my life, life in policymaking. And I don't want to deny the idea that especially at the state level, there's lots of barriers that are imposed and maybe a lot of them come from sort of lower interests. But look, on housing in particular, let me just make a point. If the issue is in that pod save clip, you want to do zoning reform. As you said, I worked for Senator Warren. We wrote a big comprehensive housing bill and introduced it in 2018 a long time ago. And a key part of that was federal money for new housing, but a big pot of money for zoning reform. Basically a race to the top process. That said any state or any locality that changes zoning requirements gets access to this big pot of money and they can use it to build new parks and roads and whatever. So that's been on our radar and something we've been pushing for for a long time. I think the question is, are they talking about more than that? And let's think about what those barriers are. Are we talking about labor laws? Laws that. Prevailing wage laws, Davis Bacon, child labor laws? We could build a lot faster if we allowed 14 year olds to work. Is that something that we should be in favor of? Environmental protections? Are we going to be more willing to accept dirty water or polluted air because we want to build faster? I think those are the actually hard questions and it's not clear to me what their answer is on those types of questions. Do you to your point, at the federal level, in almost every instance, the actor that is slowing down the government from acting is a corporate interest. There's this thing called the Administrative Procedures Act. It basically governs how the federal government can issue new guidelines and rules. And the way it works is that you have to issue. If you're trying to do something, you have to issue a proposed rule. You give the public an opportunity to comment on it. The agency has to come back and respond to those comments and make sure they incorporate those comments into whatever their final rule is. And if you don't, you can get sued. Who are the people who are submitting comments saying this goes too far, this is too quick, this is inefficient. Almost always corporate interests and their lobbyists, regular People like you and me aren't sitting there looking at the Federal Register and submitting a 25 page comment on a potential rule. And who is it who's suing the government saying, you didn't quite follow our comments and therefore you should stop doing this rule. It's corporate interests, time after time. So I agree with a broader project of abundance here. I would love for the government to move more quickly. I would love to build more housing, more energy, everything. But we should be clear eyed about what it is that stops that from happening, at least at the federal level. And more often than not, it's incumbent corporate interests who like things the way that they are right now.
- [72:05]
Ryan Grim
Go ahead, Emily.
- [72:06]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, yeah, I mean, I was just going to say I think sometimes, like this is something that is missing on the right a lot, which is this obvious reality that corporations sometimes will push for regulations. Like there's there was a point where Facebook came out totally in favor of Section 230 because they knew they could handle the regulatory burden of Section 230 in ways that any other potential competitors, not really that they have potential competitors, but hypothetically could not handle. And so I think that's, that's true. I just wonder if you think that the left is sometimes overly responsive to those pushes from corporations because there's this, there's a habitual, I guess, reflex to say, well, yes, it's appropriate for the government to step in and then they just kind of stack up on top of each other in ways that are inefficient. I don't know, I'm just curious genuinely what you think about that.
- [72:56]
Emily Jashinsky
Look, I don't want to make it seem like I'm trying to absolve the left from culpability here. There is, I can think of a handful of instances in my personal experience where there is a bit of an obsession over doing the process right. I think people think of themselves on the left, think of themselves as the good government people, people who want government to work. And they sometimes conflate that with the idea that that means that we should take into account every single piece of feedback that we get and make sure that we're accounting for every single possible argument that anybody could have with something and then trying to come up with something. And that is a deterrent to speed and in many cases, efficiency. Look, I'm from the side of the party that wants the government to do more stuff. And so I think that it's really important that we show that government can move quickly, can move efficiently. And I agree with all of those end goals. I think the diagnosis of what is stopping us from doing that is lacking a little bit in the abundance books, because there are. They're putting it all on liberal interest groups and again, at the federal level. That has not been my experience. It has been in many cases, both the right and the left being very attentive to corporate interests and to incumbent large corporations in particular and what they're pushing for.
- [74:10]
Ryan Grim
Kind of a separate but related question. Isn't this all mooted by Starlink? Can't they just do. It feels like that product is getting quite good. And it's like, you know what? Maybe actually give up on the whole laying broadband everywhere, or am I wrong about it?
- [74:29]
Emily Jashinsky
I'm not a. I think that we did an extensive amount of analysis about the right way of serving these households. And if you look at both a technical analysis and sort of a basic cost benefit analysis, trying to lay fiber optic cable to as many of these households as possible possible is the right way to go. It saves money in the long term. It's basically a future proof product. You do it now, you don't have to come back in five or 10 or 15 years and dig it up and do it all over again. Whatever developments happen in the world of delivering Internet to people, having fiber optic cable going to these houses can do that. Now, Starlink, sure, it is a pretty effective product, but number one, it hasn't been shown to be able to consistently deliver the kinds of speeds that you need to do what you talked about, stream video, do telemedicine, all the stuff that we actually want to do to make sure that rural communities are fully linked into the economy. Second of all, I don't know about you, but I would have real concerns about putting Internet access for 10, 15, 20 million households completely in the hands of one guy who's already shown that he's willing to take the network on and offline, depending on his own personal witness. And so I think that that's a concern too.
- [75:44]
Ryan Grim
And also there's a limit to how much junk you can have flying up there completely. There's that too.
- [75:49]
Emily Jashinsky
There is.
- [75:51]
Ryan Grim
So fascinating conversation, I guess, last question here. In responding to some of the pushback that they've been getting, they've said, all right, we're gonna come out with a little bit more substantial of analysis that takes into account some of these critiques of corporate power, which is like, okay, maybe that could have been in the book, but we'll take it. We'll take it. Now. One of the things they Said, well, okay, the vibes from the administration were such that they weren't really pushing that hard and they were throwing up obstacles that they weren't necessarily required to throw up by the statute. I'm sure you saw that, that argument, as somebody who watched it happen. Is that true? Why didn't you guys push harder despite the law that was in place?
- [76:42]
Emily Jashinsky
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm trying not to take offense at that, as somebody who, after the statute was passed in the broadband case, with all these steps, we would have regular meetings with the FCC and the Commerce Department and others. And the entire purpose of those meetings was, how do we speed this up? Okay, so FCC, you're saying you need 18 months to finish this map. Can you do it in 12 months? If we, for example, go out there and encourage all of the states and all of the big interfaiders, they had to submit data about where they have coverage. They had 90 days to do it. Let's push them, if they can, voluntarily, to do it in 30 days so you can start reviewing the stuff more quickly. We did that, and we got the incumbent ISPs to actually submit data more quickly than they otherwise would. So. And we did cut that timeline down. So, look, I think there is. I'm not going to defend every step of this process. We were stuck with a statute that was less efficient than it could have been. But the idea that the administration didn't care about moving quickly, I think is false. And I think that from Secretary Raimondo on to the chair of the FCC on down, there was a real commitment to trying to get this done as quickly as possible.
- [77:51]
Ryan Grim
Well, thanks so much for. For joining us. Up next, we're going to talk about Luigi. They're trying to kill the man.
- [77:57]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right.
- [77:59]
Ryan Grim
An utter outrage. How could they do this? All right, stick around.
- [78:03]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness. Every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people, people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF.
- [78:41]
Unknown Host 2
Every day, our world gets a little more connected But a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.
- [78:54]
Unknown Host 1
Thank you for calling Ameca Insurance.
- [78:56]
Ryan Grim
Hey, I was just in an accident.
- [78:58]
Unknown Host 1
Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.
- [79:00]
Unknown Host 2
At Ameca, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Amica. Empathy is our best policy for period protection.
- [79:11]
Unknown Host 3
You can put on and forget about nothing. Beats NYX Leak proof underwear. North America's number one leak proof underwear brand. Let's face it, life can be unpredictable. But your leak proof underwear shouldn't be. That's why millions of people choose NYX for periods, for light leaks, for everyday freshness. NYX undies are super comfy, super absorbent, and made to handle whatever your day throws at you. Day two of your period covered your daily run. No problem. That big sneeze? You know the one? Yup. We've got you. And with styles like bikinis, boy shorts, thongs, and high rise plus sizes from extra small to 4XL, NYX makes it easy to find your perfect fit. Say goodbye to stress and leaks. And say hello to undies that work just as hard as you do, no matter the leak. Find the style and level of protection you want@nyx.com and use code flow. 15 for 15% off. That's K nix.com code flo 15 for 15% off. Nyx for your leaks for your life.
- [80:12]
Sagar Enjeti
Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday announced that she was instructing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione in the murder trial over Brian Thompson. We can put the first element up on the screen. Pam Bondi did this with a statement yesterday that said Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson, an innocent man and father of two young children, was a premeditated, cold blooded assassination that shocked America. After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and make America safe again. Now, now, Olivia Rheingold over at the Free Press has some feelers out in Mangioni world, in the world of Luigi fandom. And she checked in on some of the most intense Luigi followers we could put the next element up on the screen who were, you know, pretty, pretty disappointed by Pam Bondi's announcement, although that's not entirely surprising. One thing that I wanted to ask you about, Ryan, is if your sense is that the Mangioni heads are more left or right, I think it's pretty obvious that like broadly a lot of the outpouring of support for alleged murderer Luigi Mangione on videotape. Obviously in this case, shooting Brian Thompson in cold blood. A lot of the sport is, I mean, I think it's broadly coming from the left. At the same time, I wonder how much of this also was coming from like anti establishment maga online maga world. It's kind of interesting.
- [81:50]
Ryan Grim
Was it cold blood? I think there's some hot bloodedness going on there too.
- [81:54]
Sagar Enjeti
We keep definitely hot bloodedness, cold blood in the circumstance, the physical circumstance where Brian Thompson was just walking on the sidewalk. They weren't like fighting or anything.
- [82:05]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, fair enough. No, he himself is from the like, what do you call it? Like the Kaczynski Libertarian. Right?
- [82:15]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, roughly.
- [82:17]
Ryan Grim
And there's a lot of that, there's a lot of anti establishment. Right. And yeah, young people today, you guys watching this show, you know, you have curious cross spectrum politics, but a lot of it is organized around knowing that there's something barbaric about the system and also knowing that the levers of democratic control have been broken, that in many ways they're an illusion that you can flip a switch, but if you actually could look behind the wall, that switch is unplugged from the wires. There's nothing's going on back there there. And the switch is just there for you to mess around with and keep the kind of rats busy in the cage. So I think whether that's a left wing anti establishment or right wing anti system message, I don't know. And it depends on kind of where it's channeled and what energy exists at the time to kind of channel it in a particular direction. And it shifts over time, as we've talked about, with the kind of the Bernie the Trail Trump pipeline or the Hippie to Q pipeline or whatever you have. When you don't present people with coherent mechanisms to have their grievances heard, you're going to wind up with pretty psychedelic politics.
- [83:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. So Playbook yesterday put an item out that said, quote, how Trump loses Gen Z. And that was their little blurb about Pam Bondi's announcement that she was instructing prosecutors to take the death penalty for Mangioni. And I saw some people on the right pushing back on that. And you know, I also think there's some truth that seeking the death penalty in this case juxtaposed with, you know, you had Bill Cassidy, what was he on Newsmax the other day talking about cuts to Medicare and then corrected himself and said reforms. Was it Medicare or Medicaid?
- [84:26]
Ryan Grim
Probably Medicaid About.
- [84:29]
Sagar Enjeti
And so he caught himself referring to, quote, unquote, cuts, and then sort of smiled at the camera and said, I'm sorry, I mean, reforms. I think when you juxtapose the death penalty in the super high profile case of someone who's become a meme, and I think some of the love for Luigi is genuine, a lot of it is like kind of pop culture meme energy. But when that's powerful in and of itself, and when you juxtapose that with a Republican Party that still has no answer on healthcare care other than quote, unquote, reform of things like Medicaid, it's actually not a good combination politically like that. Luigi is such a high profile meme is something that's absolutely on the pop cultural radar, that looking to use the death penalty in this case and also at the same time not having like a humane solution to the health care crisis in this country is genuinely a politically difficult, difficult message to carry out. And it's such a high profile case that I think it does matter.
- [85:36]
Ryan Grim
And they also are just stripping their own moral authority. Their previous argument was, okay, you have a legitimate grievance that these for profit corporations are making life and death decisions so that they can, you know, so that they can talk a bigger game at their next, you know, quarterly conference call. But, but you shouldn't kill somebody over that. However, we're going to kill this guy over that. And maybe I'm just so divorced from regular American politics and the values that drive it that that won't even be a problem for the people making the argument. But I think for regular people, it's like, wait a minute, you just said that he has legitimate grievances, but you shouldn't kill the person. So you have legitimate grievances against him. He allegedly killed somebody, but you're going to kill him. So now if we're all back on the same moral plane, he allegedly killed one people. The insurance companies are killing countless people. So if you're going to give up the moral authority of killing, you are not fighting then from a very strong ground.
- [86:46]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't think, you know, I'm not obviously a death penalty person. A lot of the country is, though, and I think there's still, you know, they would say, go ahead and put Brian Thompson on trial, don't shoot him in Midtown. And so I think that's.
- [87:03]
Ryan Grim
But then would he get the death penalty after you tried him?
- [87:08]
Sagar Enjeti
And your point makes sense to me that it's like if you look at the way a Brian Thompson is treated versus the way Mangione is treated or other people who are convicted of murder are treated. There's this just glaring disparity in the way that white collar criminals are either never brought to trial and never treated like criminals. I think that's absolutely true. And again, that's one of those things that the Trump era Republican Party was supposed to kind of have an answer to this like high level of elite corruption. And, and it just never, I mean, now you have billionaires running around doing liberation and doge and it's not the same, I think MAGA that it was in 2015, 2016. So anyway, I think there's something to that.
- [88:04]
Ryan Grim
And meanwhile, some of his supporters aren't taking it well. We can put up the second element here. This article goes through the kind of misery being felt by those who, you know, see in Luigi some type of at least vengeance being exacted on their behalf. I wonder at the same time if this could backfire. The number one hope of people who support Luigi is that there would be some sort of jury nullification where this case would be prominent enough that everybody going in would know the contours. Jury nullification usually can't work because juries are barred from hearing from a defendant why they did a certain thing. If they did it for reasons of conscience, like in general, the judge will prevent a jury from hearing that and just require the jury to adjudicate the case just based on the facts. Facts being guy was on the street, here's the video, here's what happened. But so many people have become familiar with this story that the jurors are going to know what's going on here. If the jurors also, and this is the hope I'm talking about on behalf of his supporters, if the jurors know that a guilty verdict is going to mean a death sentence, I wonder if that actually increases the likelihood from slim to just a little bit less slim of jury nullification. What do you think?
- [89:48]
Sagar Enjeti
No, that's a really interesting point because it's going to be, and that's, I think it's the political calculation of this too, is this trial is going to be so high profile, it is going to be like massive media coverage. Gen Z is going to be paying attention to it. Every time Luigi's face, people get a glimpse of Luigi's face, it becomes another, like, iconic meme in the saga of Luigi Mangione. So it's also going to like remind people over and over again that the Trump administration is seeking the death penalty. As Pam Bondi Put it there. Part of their, part of Trump's agenda. They see this as like an agenda item to seek the death penalty in the case of Mangione. And they still don't have an actual answer in health care. If anything, they're making cuts. So, I mean, I think, yeah, when you're looking at this teenage. Well, not teenager, this 20 something, or maybe he's in his early 30s now who suffered immensely, there's some part of the reason Luigi story pops is that there's some genuine sympathy for him based on his story doesn't justify anything. But it, it resonates with a lot of people who have also been pushed to the brink of sanity by the misery of the American healthcare system. And I think when you have a resonant story like that and you elevate it to a death penalty case, there's something to what you're saying now, politically speaking.
- [91:15]
Ryan Grim
And I'm not saying this is what the Bondi or the Trump administration are doing. If I were them, and I were deeply cynical and just playing this for politics, I might throw the case. Trump actually might benefit from an acquittal and from the shock that that would create among his supporters. Because if you look at the polling, young people by a plurality are supportive of Luigi, but the overall electorate is not. And a lot of the overall electorate is appalled at the people who are supportive of him. And so if you got an equivalent and you had all these celebrations in the street and they would find blue haired kids with like eight earrings out there celebrating and they would run those on Fox News. And so they would elevate that and say, look, this is the country that the libs want. And so just trying to further feed a backlash. So, yeah, if you were a deeply cynical political actor in the Trump administration, you might actually figure out a way to kind of. Yeah. To throw this one.
- [92:23]
Sagar Enjeti
Heighten those contradictions.
- [92:24]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, like what do you care if you can gain political advantage? What do they care if they actually execute Luigi or keep him in prison or let him walk free? And then if he's free, every time he's out speaking, he's angering all of the people that are likely to support some type of reactionary backlash against that. So he then becomes a gift to the right that keeps on giving. I mean, you're playing with fire, obviously, but that's what cynical actors do.
- [92:59]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, Ryan, you know this better than I do, but we'd have to be talking about probably like a Trump fifth term for Luigi to actually be executed.
- [93:09]
Ryan Grim
You know, under Trump Watch chance that he outlives Trump is high.
- [93:13]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, yeah, there's, because this, I mean, the court battle is going to play out and it's going to be very high profile, like in the near future. But then there's appeals and all of that in a death penalty case that could drag on for years and years. So we'll see what happens.
- [93:31]
Ryan Grim
All right, let's, let's move on to you see Rogan up here on the screen, the deportation scandal involving, and I know some people don't like when I call it a scandal. They just, what do they want to call it? The deportation celebration. But the story of the Venezuelans getting rounded up along with some MS.13 members and sent down to Naya Bukele's dungeons down in El Salvador broke through to the Joe Rogan podcast, partly thanks to friend of the show Glenn Greenwald. Let's roll this. And then and talk about what the, the resonance here.
- [94:09]
Unknown Host 2
You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons.
- [94:20]
Ryan Grim
Like that. Kind of.
- [94:21]
Unknown Host 2
Because I'm, I read some story. It was a Glenn Greenwald.
- [94:25]
Oliver Stone
Yeah, yeah. The gay barber guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's scary.
- [94:28]
Unknown Host 2
Is that true? Is that story accurate?
- [94:30]
Oliver Stone
I don't think we know.
- [94:31]
Unknown Host 2
Explain the story for people that don't know.
- [94:33]
Oliver Stone
Well, from what I read, I think it was in Time magazine. Jamie, if you can pull it up and maybe we can get it accurate. But basically with a bunch of these trend guys, allegedly, they got one guy who, at least one guy who wasn't a criminal, who was just a gay barber who I think according to the story, came here legally. He was here legally. That's what they said. Don't know if it's.
- [94:55]
Unknown Host 2
He have a green card?
- [94:56]
Oliver Stone
I don't know what the details are. Maybe Jamie can find it. No criminal from what it said in that story. Now, this is the problem, right? Because the mainstream media has been putting out so much shit that I don't know what to believe anymore.
- [95:06]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [95:06]
Sagar Enjeti
I feel the same way.
- [95:07]
Oliver Stone
And so it's difficult, but it's something that we actually brought up in one of our conversations. We interviewed the guy from the Heritage Foundation. We brought this up because I think we talked about this with Doge as well. When you do things quickly and you do things aggressively, that's how you get shit done. But that's also when mistakes get made. And I think think a human being being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he's never been in. In a maximum security prison with gang members. Seems like a bad thing to happen to me.
- [95:35]
Unknown Host 2
It's horrific. It's horrific.
- [95:36]
Oliver Stone
I don't think that should be controversial.
- [95:38]
Unknown Host 2
No, that's not controversial at all. And this is the thing, you know, measured twice, cut once. This is the, like, this is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That's horrific. And that's again, that's bad for the cause. Like, the cause is let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees, but. But what's not, innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs and then like, how long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get him out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake and correct it?
- [96:08]
Oliver Stone
Well, if you think about it from a government perspective, and this is where I think it gets quite sinister, is once you've done that, the incentive structure is never going to be to admit that and deal with it. The incentive structure is to say nothing, to cover it up, to pretend it didn't happen.
- [96:22]
Ryan Grim
So if you somehow missed this particular story, this is about a man named Andre Jose Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan man who came to the United States in August. He said he was fleeing political persecution. He made an asylum appointment, came to that appointment. When he got there, they noticed on his arm that he had a tattoo of a cross. And this is from the court documents related to his asylum appointment. It says detainee Hernandez ports. This is. It's sick. It's an error. Don't know what ports like these ICE agents are. Not necessarily best writers Detainee Hernandez has. I guess they mean tattoos, crowns that are consistent with those of a Tren de Aragua member. That's somebody at the Ote Mesa detention center put that into his documents. That sealed his fate. Now, we also know that apparently no Venezuelan gangs use tattoos. Whether that's true or not, somebody can maybe fact check me and find some small gang gang that does. Trenton de Aragua does not use tattoos as identifying marks for its members. Like that is just a basic fact that is acknowledged across the spectrum about Tornado. Other gangs do. Somehow some people in DHS got the idea in their head that there were crown tattoos associated with this gang. And so anybody from Venezuela who had a crown tattoo wound up getting classified as a member of this gang. We reported earlier about the man who was a professional soccer player from Venezuela who had a crown over a soccer ball which was a reference to Real Madrid's logo. Real Madrid being his favorite team. He's a professional goalkeeper. Venezuelan authorities, he got all of his paperwork, showed he had absolutely no gang connections whatsoever. He also was scooped up and said to be this gang member. And so I think Rogan makes a very easily understandable point. And a lot of people agree that this is a case. Measure twice, cut once, once. That's the perfect cliche to drop on this situation. Because once you cut, and this is why you measure twice, once you cut, that's it, you've cut once. You have sent this guy to this El Salvadoran dungeon, you've done that. Even if they sent him there for one hour and he was beaten up and then returned, that is a situation so traumatizing it would define the rest of your. Your life. One hour there, he's still there. And that, to me, is what's so startling about this situation. So not only did you, you know, you measure twice, you cut once. Sometimes you cut. If you cut too far this direction, you can actually recut it. Like, there's. So the cliche can be overused. But they're not even trying to recut here. They're not even trying to fix this. So does this matter? Like, is there any enough of a kernel of sense of justice and humanity left that it can penetrate the kind of Stephen Miller bubble here? Or is he so locked in on kind of revolutionary mode that he's just plowing ahead?
- [100:13]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, I thought that was a very incisive exchange between Rogan and Constantine Kissing, partially because of what Constantine said at the end where he said the incentive structure is not to correct the errors. That's really important here because, you know, you have support for mass deportations when it's polled, quote, unquote, mass deportations, sort of in theory. So the abstract idea of mass deportations polls extremely well in this country as majority of people want that. And so Stephen Miller, Trump and others in the administration have, Christine Ohm have looked at that and said, this is our mandate to do mass deportations. And the only way for us to do mass deportations. This is a logical leap that I think is insane, but is to screen for these tattoos and to take these kind of bubble cases and just everyone goes to El Salvador if Venezuela won't take them. And the public is so opposed to the Democrats policies, to the Biden administration's policies, that we can get away with these extreme measures because the alternative is so much worse. And so to Konstantin Kissing's point, that's part of the background of why the incentive structure is not to say, all right, we made a mistake. The incentive structure is to double, triple, quadruple down. And yet what we've seen is the administration failed to supply additional evidence that. Let's talk about the barber in this case. He's like significantly linked to Trend Aragua and was a case that, you know, demanded deportation to El Salvador. There's still a chunk of the public that has absolutely no sympathy for this guy. You know, they just say, say it's, of course, I mean, if you're, if you're not a citizen, the administration can take you and move you and get you out. You don't have the same level of due process and etc. That's not going to fly with the majority of Americans. It may still be powerful with a group of the American people. But where you. What we're seeing here in the Rogan clip is that you will start to lose people. It's going to start to look insane and un American. And so the thing on that we have this next thought of Caroline Levitt getting questioned. This is going to be E2. It's also happening with the student deportations. It's a very similar dynamic playing out, I think, in both cases. And the administration has to start ponying up the evidence. The problem for them is they don't seem to have it in some of these really high profile cases. Let's take a listen to Caroline Levitt here. This is easy.
- [102:55]
Emily Jashinsky
Just changing subjects for one second. The administration has expressed a complete confidence in how all the deportation flights to El Salvador were conducted. But now that the administration has conceded that there was an error of one Salvadoran national, will there be any reviews conducted? And does the President express any thoughts on the one error that was disclosed in court last night?
- [103:20]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, first of all, the error that you are referring to was a clerical error.
- [103:24]
Ryan Grim
It was an administrative error.
- [103:25]
Sagar Enjeti
The administration maintains the position that this individual, who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS.13 gang. That is fact number one. Fact number two, we also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking. In fact, number three, this individual was.
- [103:47]
Unknown Host 1
A member, actually a leader of the.
- [103:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Brutal MS.13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. So, Ryan, I think the best that, you know, the furthest you'll see Stephen Miller and his sort of fellow travelers go in this administration is to slow down and start being more judicious in the deportations and maybe just hope it fades into the background of the News cycle. But this, this case that they're referring to is really interesting. We can put E3 up on the screen. This is a thread from Wilt Chamberlain, who people have seen on the show a couple of times, very staunch conservative, pro Trump attorney who dug into the story of this Maryland dad, as the Atlantic called him, who ended up being accused of being in MS.13 and deported by the Trump administration. The Trump administration admitted he was deported due to a clerical error. And this gets Francis it will goes through the case and I think found legitimately a lot of things in the case of this man that the Atlantic just from a journalistic perspective, left out of the story. Its audience would have been better served knowing the full saga of this guy's pinging through the American court system, non citizens pinging through the American court citizen system. Why he claimed he suddenly needed asylum after being here for close to the better part of a decade. So this is a it's case, but it's one that gets us back to the Constantine Kiston point where it's like the media has not done a good job of covering these things up until now. And so the Trump administration knows it can get away with more because there's so little trust in the media that could turn around though.
- [105:33]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And so that case and Will's threat is interesting because Will kind of allies throughout the whole point or kind of sidesteps as an important issue the fact that this guy was sent to this El Salvadoran torture chamber. And Will in his thread acknowledges that he should not have been, that that was wrong, that legally he should not have been sent there yet. He says, well, that's kind of a. That's kind of like a minor point here. And I feel like they're kind of Will's kind of missing the. Losing the thread here. So basically what happened here? I think so the guy came. It appears clear that he came illegally sometime around 2011, 2012, something like that, from El Salvador to the United States in 2019. He was picked up at a Home Depot. And Home Depot is where day labor gather and subcontractors go by every day. You gotta have your own tools. I need people on a site. Come on. So he gets picked up there. He was wearing a Bulls jersey. And so they said the bulls jersey was MS.13, which is kind of ridiculous. But then they also said they had a confidential informant who had knowledge of Ms.13 who said this is so. And so this is his name in the gang, this is his rank, and this is where, where he operated as a gang. Member. Turns out he'd never been there. Confidential informants are literally paid to lie. Like, the confidential informants are not remotely trustworthy. But this didn't get adjudicated. It just goes into a hearing, went into a bail hearing. And the police said, look, this CI says that this guy was in Ms. 13. And so the judge is like, all right, well, you can't rebut this. And so therefore, I'm not going to give you bail. He spent a year, year and a half in locked up. Eventually they concluded that this guy was lying. He was not an MS.13 member. He got out on and he has various court dates, and then he goes into that very long immigration process, which I think everybody across the spectrum would agree is far too long. And he reapplies at that point for Assad asylum, saying that his. And this is what Will gets into that. His family's pupusa business had run afoul of 18th street gang down in El Salvador. They were extorted, he was threatened. It does appear that his brother, that definitely happened to his brother, and his brother fled. So there is some real truth to these claims. The question of whether 10 years later, later, the threats are still live, that's an open one. And that's the kind of thing that you then kind of adjudicate in an immigration hearing. Instead, it seems like what they did is they were just looking for anybody with any gang affiliations. And I guess he popped up in the computer because of his old 2019 confidential informant claim that he was in the gang, which had since been basically rejected. And because he. He was moving forward with his asylum claim, effectively there was an order that he not be deported to El Salvador, and they ignored that order. And so that's what they're saying was the clerical error. What they're saying is they should have been able to deport him somewhere, just not to El Salvador. And they're saying, well, that's. That's, you know, mistakes happen. It's like, okay, but that's a pretty huge mistake. And also secondly, like, you sent this guy to a dungeon from which he may never emerge. Like, for what? Like for what crime? Let's say you don't like that he entered the country illegally. Okay? Then you deport him. You don't like that, you're barred from deporting him to El Salvador. Overturn that. Say, look, the gang, 18th street gang, Bukele, white them out. We can now deport him. So fix that paperwork and deport him into El Salvador, where he then continues his life as A free person in El Salvador to put him in chains and fly him down to this dungeon. That's the part that, like you're saying is that's that should be un American.
- [110:03]
Sagar Enjeti
And at the same time, I look at the Atlantic as someone on the right and think, why was so much of the story left out, even in the interest of time? And I feel like that's where things to the point Constantine Kistin was making in the clip earlier end up getting locked up. Because to me, it's very important that these stories are told correctly because there are cases that are more sympathetic than these people who claimed asylum right away and do have credible fear. You know, this is more credible fear than this. Even if there's some evidence that he, he may have had fear. You know, we're 10 years as your point, as you said, 10 years beyond that point. So it's, it's a different calcul legislation than some others. And so it's hard for people on the right then not, you know, I'm happy to say it. I'm not in the administration. But for the administration, they feel like politically they can get away with doing these things because people care when the media botches it. And, you know, Biden lets a net 8 million people into the country and basically nobody talks about it except. Except for the media ignores it for a long time or relatively ignores it for a long time and doesn't tell the story. So anyway, all that is to say, I think this is what's likely to the best case scenario is that they start to slow down and be more judicious about this. And Ryan, one of the things I wanted to ask you is that it reminds me of your story, the drop site story about the guy who Bukele did not want. And maybe you can, I know you talked about it, but like, what if they accidentally do that? Accidentally? What if one of those guys gets caught up in this?
- [111:51]
Ryan Grim
Oh, so, yeah, so we did this story, Jose Olivares and I over at drop site. It's a fascinating piece. He took the lead on it going through court records relating to some of the Ms. Thirteen members that were deported down to El Salvador. And there's an absolutely fascinating story behind it, and it's not what anybody would expect from what they hear about Trump and Bukele. Bukele, when he first came to power, negotiated and denies this, but everybody knows that it's true, negotiated a secret deal with MS.13 where they would agree to reduce levels of violence in exchange for some dangerous detente with the state and some improvement in prison conditions for Ms. 13 leaders who were already in prison at some point. Eventually, this peace accord with MS.13 broke down. More violence broke out. Bukele launched his kind of more aggressive crackdown on them. But before that happened, Ms. 13, as part of its deal with him, pledged election support. And his landslide election victory was significantly a result of this secret deal that he cut with MS.13. This secret deal is talked about a lot in El Salvador, but is and is very, very unpopular. But he maintains a complete denial of it to this day. One of the people who was involved in those negotiations, his gang name is Greynas. He's here in or was here in the United States, charged with RICO and all the different things you charge a gang member with. And he was headed to federal court where he was expected as part of his trial to tell the full story of these secret negotiations that Bukele had with MS.13. Bukele has desperately been trying to get his hands on Greynas, and there has been this push and pull where. Where the US has been trying to get its hands on people that they know were involved in this deal and vice versa. One of them was in El Salvadoran prisons, which we write about in the article. The US had an extradition request out for him. Instead, Bukele just let him go. And Bukele's top official, who had negotiated this secret deal, drove the guy to the border to get him out of the country. He then gets caught in Mexico, Mexico and then El Salvador and the US Have a fight with Mexico over who can get this guy, because everybody wants these top Ms. 13 leaders who know the story of what Bukele did. And so now Trump has now sent some of them. So that was Bukele's price. He's like, ah, I'll charge a very tiny fee. He's not looking for dollars to house these Venezuelans that the US Is deporting there. His price was he's like, I want these guys at no. 2, much about my dealings with Ms. 13. I want them under my control. So Trump has sent some of them, but we've still held onto others as sort of blackmail against Bukele. So the story is always a little bit more complicated and interesting than you're being told.
- [115:07]
Sagar Enjeti
But when you're starting to use humans as pawns like this, at a rapid clip, we'll see where some of those cases end up going. It was a great story. Just before we leave this block, there's another case. We can put E4 up on the screen. Of a Minnesota student from Mankato who's now been caught up in these ICE deportations. Ryan, do you have any insight on this? I mean, it's actually kind of hard to keep track.
- [115:32]
Ryan Grim
Yes, this is another student who some very minor protest activity presumably appeared on some list that a pro Israel group sent, you know, sent to the administration, the Canary Mission. Batar and others are, you know, very proudly advertising that they are producing lists of students that they want kicked out of, that they want kicked out of the country for protesting against the war. Like that is, like they're very clear. Like they're not claiming. We have evidence that, that this is the person that was swinging the hammer that smashed the glass at Hinzhal. They're not saying that. They're saying that this person wrote this op ed, as in the case of azturk, this person came to this encampment, or this person tweeted this thing and then kicking them out of the country. And Rubio has said that he's canceled upwards of 300 student visas and is continuing to do it every single day, despite when you apply for a student visa, it doesn't say anywhere that when you get to the United States, these certain liberties that we hold dear for persons in the United States do not apply to you. If you are protesting US Funding Israel's war in Gaza. That was never said. If that's the new rule now, obviously it's quite okay if you're here on a student visa to protest for the war. It's not that you can't weigh in. It's not that you can't have an opinion on what's happening in Gaza. As long as your opinion is that it is good and the US should do more of it, that's fine. It's. If you are critical of what the United States is doing with its support of Israel, then according to Rubio, that is cause for you to be immediately deported. Well, not immediately. That would almost be more humane. First, they're sending these people to detention centers, completely harmless people, having them sit in these brutal detention centers for very long stretches of time before then deported.
- [117:57]
Sagar Enjeti
And with those 300, with that 300 number, I mean, we've seen maybe half a dozen really big cases so far. But what that means is there's going to be a drip, drip. And again, maybe this will happen with immigration, maybe it'll happen with students, and the administration will try to move it to the background and be quieter about it, be slower about it, who knows? But the drip, drip is coming no matter what. Because they've staked a lot on these efforts. So it's not going to end. We'll continue to see cases like this one.
- [118:29]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week. For happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys from both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com code IHEART for 50% OFF.
- [119:07]
Unknown Host 2
Every day our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.
- [119:19]
Unknown Host 1
Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.
- [119:25]
Unknown Host 2
At Ameca, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Ameca empathy is our best policy for period protection.
- [119:37]
Unknown Host 3
You can put on and forget about nothing. Beats NYX leakproof underwear. North America's number one leak proof underwear brand. Let's face it, life can be unpredictable. But your leak proof underwear shouldn't be. That's why millions of people choose NYX for periods, for light leaks, for everyday freshness. NYX undies are super comfy, super absorbent, and made to handle whatever your day throws at you. Day two of your period covered your daily run. No problem. That big sneeze? You know the one? Yup. We've got you. And with styles like bikinis, boy shorts, thongs and high rise plus sizes from extra small to 4 XL NYX makes it easy to find your perfect. Say goodbye to stress and leaks. And say hello to undies that work just as hard as you do, no matter the leak. Find the style and level of protection you want@nyx.com and use code flow15 for 15% off. That's kn Ix.com code flo15 for 15% off. NICs for your leaks for your life.
- [120:37]
Ryan Grim
All right. Senator Cory Booker broke Strom Thurmond's record for longest speech in the United States Senate. I think it was 25 hours, hours and five minutes. This was Booker's response to a deeply frustrated Democratic electorate. That is like, isn't there anything that you can do? Something like, nothing. You can't even negotiate a slightly better CR with these fascists that are rounding people up and destroying. Destroying the country as far as we're concerned. And so Booker came to the floor and said, okay, I'm going to show that we're at least trying to do something. Let's roll a little bit of only a few seconds of his 25 hours.
- [121:25]
Cory Booker
Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. We need that now from all Americans.
- [121:32]
Ryan Grim
This is a moral moment. It's not left or right.
- [121:35]
Cory Booker
It's right or wrong. Let's get in good trouble, my friend.
- [121:43]
Ryan Grim
Madam President, I yield the floor. Put up the next element on the screen. So this is it says, Cory Booker has officially delivered the longest tenant speech. That's Strom Thurmond in his earlier years, actually, because he died at like 101 or something like that. He was old, like, he was in Congress, like, when I was covering Congress. And he set his record filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights Act. So that's how long this guy served in the United States Senate. One of the, like most. One of the most vitriolic segregationists in the United States Senate. There's a. I forget what book it's in, but there's a scene where there are a couple of, you know, hardcore white supremacist Democrat senators In, like, the 1940s or 50s are watching a Strom Thurmond speech. And one of them, you know, says to the other, they're like, my God, this guy really believes this stuff. Like, the racists thought that this guy was too over the top. And it has always been a real craw or thorn in the side of Democrats who are now on the other side of this white supremacy question that he held this record. So it wasn't just pushing back against the Trump administration. And Booker has said as much. He very much wanted to knock this guy off the pedestal, and he successfully did it with several hours still to go, until he broke the record. He was saying, like, he was on the floor saying, I don't think I have enough gas in the tank. I don't think I'm going to be able to make it. And the galleries filled up. A ton of Senate Democrats came to the chamber, which is very unusual. The chamber is almost completely empty, and sat there to kind of give him a little bit of gas to kind of get across the finish line. And when he finally made it, gave him rousing applause. And around the country, you can put up F3. It did capture a lot of people's imaginations. The TikTok numbers were wild. The kind of live streaming numbers. He said he got enormous numbers of calls to his office. It's like in a dark time, even a tiny little bit of light is something that a lot of people are going to fly toward. Did you follow this as it was going on? And what are Republicans? Republicans, they kind of just amused by this, or do they see this as a little flickering of life from the opposition?
- [124:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I mean, the point you just made about even when you're in a period of darkness, even a tiny little bit of light can bolster your spirits. I think that the little bit of light here was very, very tiny in substance. It's unfortunate that for Democrats like Cory Booker wasn't filibustering something, I think, more substantive. This was a huge boost in the Tea Party years for Ted Cru. I think Rand Paul at one point, too.
- [125:19]
Ryan Grim
Rand Paul was on drones.
- [125:21]
Sagar Enjeti
Right, Right, right, right.
- [125:22]
Ryan Grim
And so it was really supportive government shutdown.
- [125:26]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes. And there was the green eggs and ham breeding that was much derided at the time. But that's where I want to go with Booker actually is like, I just find him rhetorically insufferable. And I don't think his tone is like, generally lands. It might land with the Democratic base, but the. That we just played of him ending the filibuster, a feat, no doubt, like, an impressive feat at that. But it just. Especially because it's not organized around a substantive, like, policy. Like, what's the right word? A goal.
- [126:05]
Emily Jashinsky
Right.
- [126:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Like there wasn't a thought. He wasn't blocking X or shutting down Y. So I just. It's a lot. But at the same time, those numbers that we just showed are really significant. You know, there's. There's an effort. 4. This is just the voicemail numbers. We put this up on the screen. The voicemail numbers, which. Which sounds silly, but Booker's team just told MSNBC they've gotten 14,000 voicemails from people for people supporting Corey's filibuster and sharing their stories. And another 280 million people have liked his speech on TikTok alone. So even when these stunts feel insufferable, they. In this case, I think this one is as tempted as I was to, like, dismiss it and laugh at it and roll my eyes he it in a way that actually from TikTok in particular, but also on other platforms, it was a real shot in the arm for Democrats who are looking to rally a very disillusioned base. The base is more disillusioned than it was in 2017 and 2018, because Trump came back and won again after all of their best efforts to stop him. So I think, you know, that's. It works with the base and that's what really matters right now. Heading into a midterm cycle.
- [127:22]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And for the parliamentary details, like, you really can't do a filibuster anymore, for the most part, because if the other side gets 60 votes, they can move to a final vote, and if they don't, they can't, whether you're talking or not. And so this was just kind of an open session where he just kind of grabbed the floor. And what you can see still do in the Senate that you can't do in the House, you wouldn't be able to do this in the House. In the House, you get a minute, you get five minutes, you get an hour. Whatever you get, you get. And when that's up, you're done. Whereas in the Senate, if you can keep going, you can keep going under certain circumstances. What he would do in order to give himself a slight break is he would say somebody would come to the floor, say a Chris Van Hollen or somebody, and say, will the senator yield? And he would say, I yield to the senator for a question, but I'm holding onto the floor. And so he would yield to another Democrat who would then ask him like a fairly long winded question, which would allow him to at least give his voice a break. But he wasn't allowed to leave, wasn't allowed to sit down. So. So he'd kind of just be shuffling from one foot to the other, leaning over. We had Manu Raju from CNN answer the question that everybody's wondering, which is how did he not go to the bathroom for 25 hours? And according to Booker, this was not some secret diaper that he brought onto the floor that he stopped eating on Friday, Friday. And he stopped drinking 12 to 24 hours before going onto the floor. So he kind of emptied his body out ahead of time. So he went on there, which is smart, for the purpose of not having to go to the bathroom. It would also make the stamina much more difficult to be able to stand there for 25 hours. How long a speech do you think you could give on the. On the Senate floor?
- [129:38]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, this is an impossible question because I would never want to be giving a speech on the Senate floor. What's your answer, Ryan?
- [129:47]
Ryan Grim
I don't. Oh, man. I think it'd be pretty hard to go 25 hours like that's I don't think I could get anywhere near that.
- [129:56]
Sagar Enjeti
And yet at the same time, I also.
- [129:57]
Ryan Grim
What do I have to say? I mean, I've got maybe a half an hour of stuff to say.
- [130:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah. Well, you can always read Green Eggs and Ham over and over again.
- [130:07]
Ryan Grim
Pro tip. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how many. I guess I could do a few hours. I don't know.
- [130:12]
Sagar Enjeti
Impressive. It's definitely.
- [130:14]
Ryan Grim
We should do it. We should do a show where we just. Just go.
- [130:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Actually, we could probably.
- [130:20]
Ryan Grim
First person to leave loses money off that.
- [130:22]
Sagar Enjeti
We probably make money off that. Well, Ryan, should we move on to friend of the show Jefferson Morley's testimony in at F. Kennedy assassination hearing yesterday? And just as we move into this block, I want to give a tip of the hat to Ryan and Sager who Jefferson Morley, the premier JFK researcher was very impressed with after his interview last week, which was really widely circulated and morally left that saying it was. He'd done tons of interviews in recent days and he thought that one really was the best. And I couldn't agree more. So well done.
- [130:59]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, people go back and watch that. It's like a 20 minute interview and I think it'll get you pretty up to speed on the situation. I feel like nobody on the committee watched that interview or read any of the documents or has any idea what they're talking about. Let's roll through a bunch of these clips from this super embarrassing hearing as quickly as we can. So here's Jeff Morley.
- [131:24]
Jefferson Morley
It's an honor to testify before you. It's a solemn responsibility to report on the disturbing new revolution that have emerged from the newest JFK files. And it is a grave matter to assert that CIA officers were culpable or complicit in the death of a president. So I want fact checkers to have all the evidence that I am used to support my testimony today. The new fact pattern leads to a new conclusion. We know now what they knew about Oswald walled and when they knew it. We know now that Richard Helms, James Angleton and George Joannidis were responsible for or complicit in the death of the President either by criminal negligence or covert action. My recommendations to the task force are one, secure and release the personnel file of George Joannidis and two, ask the CIA to provide a public statement answering the question why did these three men lie to JFK investigators? The answers will help fulfill the task force goal, the President's goal and the people's goal of full and complete JFK.
- [132:39]
Ryan Grim
Disclosure and what he means by criminal negligence there and he expounds on this in his interview with us is that Angleton was getting regular updates on on based on their surveillance of Oswald and still somehow let the guy kill Kennedy. Let's roll. One more clip from Morley here. You actually had written an article specifically addressing a whistleblower that had reports at the CIA potentially showing information that Oswald was in Mexico City. Can you speak more to that?
- [133:11]
Jefferson Morley
I was approached a few years ago by a man who had worked inside the CIA. Had a very high security clearance. And in 2018 he came to me and said he was concerned that there was a JFK assassination document that he had read while he was working at the CIA and he was afraid that it would never become public. The man was taking considerable legal risk by talking to me. He was talking about classified or potentially classified information. So I published his story last year without his name. Which is not something that I usually do. I don't like stories with anonymous sources. But I felt that it was important to get out and he felt it was important too. I have spoken with him and he says he is willing to come public and tell his name under his own story with assurances that he will not face legal retaliation. I hope that's something that can be arranged in the near future.
- [134:02]
Ryan Grim
That is something that we will definitely follow up on. Let's play one more Morley clip and then move to some of the. Some of the reaction. So who do you think fired the shot?
- [134:11]
Jefferson Morley
I don't know.
- [134:12]
Ryan Grim
You don't know but you don't believe.
- [134:13]
Sagar Enjeti
It was Lee Harvey Oswald?
- [134:15]
Jefferson Morley
Oswald was not the intellectual author of Kennedy's death. Even if he fired a gun that day.
- [134:20]
Sagar Enjeti
Who do you think was the intellectual.
- [134:21]
Ryan Grim
Author of Kennedy's death?
- [134:23]
Jefferson Morley
Kennedy's enemies high in his own government is as specific as I can be based on the available evidence. Probably CIA and Pentagon.
- [134:31]
Ryan Grim
And now. So here's Jasmine Crockett and Lauren Boebert embarrass themselves in a different way. I think Crockets is more embarrassing for what it says about the Democratic Party that it now feels itself to be in a genuine coalition with the CIA. Such that even when the CIA is being criticized for something that happened 60 plus years ago they feel like they need to leap to the agencies defense. It's absolutely mind boggling. But let's. And then Boebert just being dumb. Go ahead.
- [135:09]
Sagar Enjeti
I was gonna say. And vice versa. The Republicans latching onto the CIA as soon as the CIA became anti Republican.
- [135:15]
Ryan Grim
Right. Right now all of a sudden. Yeah. They're like, yes. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, so let's roll.
- [135:21]
Sagar Enjeti
These previously classified JFK assassination files are.
- [135:25]
Unknown Host 1
Now public and show no evidence of a CIA conspiracy.
- [135:29]
Sagar Enjeti
But what I find funny about this.
- [135:31]
Unknown Host 1
Hearing is that the Republicans are here.
- [135:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Relitigating whether CIA agents lied 60 years ago, but aren't doing anything about the CIA director lying to Congress.
- [135:42]
Unknown Host 1
Just six days ago, we should be.
- [135:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Having a hearing on the fact that.
- [135:46]
Unknown Host 1
The unqualified Secretary of Defense and other senior Trump officials were carelessly discussing classified military plans over an unsecure Signal Group chat. And instead of providing oversight over the administration's handling of classified information, the Republicans.
- [136:03]
Sagar Enjeti
Have spent a week trying to convince.
- [136:05]
Unknown Host 1
The American people that the military plans were not classified. So instead of giving a platform to conspiracy theories.
- [136:12]
Sagar Enjeti
And let me be clear, there are holes. I don't want y'all to think that. I don't think that there are holes.
- [136:18]
Unknown Host 1
But when we're looking back, we need to look back so that we can look forward and hopefully do better.
- [136:23]
Ryan Grim
You had something to add on that.
- [136:25]
Jefferson Morley
I think you're confusing Mr. Oliver Stone with Mr. Roger Stone.
- [136:29]
Ryan Grim
Implicated it yet?
- [136:30]
Jefferson Morley
Sorry, it's Roger Stone who implicated LBJ in the assassination of the President. It's not my friend.
- [136:36]
Ryan Grim
All the others were there. I may have misinterpreted that, and I apologize for that. But there seems to be some alluding of, like you said, incompetence.
- [136:46]
Sagar Enjeti
Quite a misinterpretation.
- [136:47]
Ryan Grim
And then she talks about incompetence right after that.
- [136:51]
Sagar Enjeti
She was asking Oliver Stone about. About his theory that LBJ had been behind the assassination. And Oliver Stone was confused because he was saying LBJ may have had knowledge of or complicity in the Warren Commission, adding Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission. But lbj, he's like, I've never said that. And Jeff put the pieces together and said, oh, I think you're confusing him with Roger Stone, which is somewhat hilarious. And if you weren't watching, if you were just listening to the clip of Jasmine Crockett, you could see Oliver Stone with his head buried in his hands. She was doing this, like, brain dead analysis of the signal chat being somehow relevant to even bring up in this. I mean, it was just pathetic.
- [137:37]
Ryan Grim
And what I want to know is who wrote that? Because staffers write these questions almost all the time. What I want to know is who wrote that question? Was this a leadership staffer? This committee staffer?
- [137:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Was.
- [137:47]
Ryan Grim
Was this. Cause I don't think it would be somebody from Crockett's office, because I think somebody from Crockett's office would have better political instincts than that. And, in fact, what's so revealing about that clip is that you can see. Tell me if I'm analyzing this wrong. You can see Crockett's own political instincts kick in as she's getting to the end of her own question where she's like, oh, my God, I just called these folks at this hearing. Conspiracy theorists talking about the Kennedy assassination, when everyone in this country believes that a conspiracy was behind. People have different theories about which conspiracy, but everyone thinks that some type of conspiracy was involved in killing Kennedy. And I just mocked that, because Democrats are just so ready to instead shoot first at any conspiracy and then ask questions later about whether or not it's true. And you can see her mind where she's like, oh, God, that was stupid. And so then she puts the question down that was written for her and says. Not that I'm saying there aren't holes. There are holes. There are definitely holes. So. And she even used the word platform, which is like a classic kind of, you know, mid 2010s democratic phrase. We're here platforming conspiracy theorists. And that's when her. Her mind was like, did I just say we're platforming conspiracy theorists? In relation to the literal one. Conspiracy that everyone in America believes should be platformed and talking to. Say what you want about Oliver Stone, he's a fascinating guy. Jefferson Morley is a very sober journalist who's covering this, and he's not gonna say more than the fact pattern will allow him to. And. And the documents and almost exclusively on the record sources will allow them to sort of. But she seemed to catch herself. But to me, the whole thing was revealing of how woven now the Democratic Party is to the CIA and to the deep state that they feel like they even need to defend. Allen Dulles.
- [139:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Right.
- [139:55]
Ryan Grim
Who.
- [139:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Democrats for Dulles.
- [139:57]
Ryan Grim
Who, like, if they exhumed him, he. He'd, like, put them in the grave if he had a chance.
- [140:03]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes. He would deport all of the students.
- [140:06]
Ryan Grim
Yes, sure he would.
- [140:08]
Sagar Enjeti
And so would his brother, and so.
- [140:11]
Ryan Grim
Would Angleton, who was, like, you know, handling the Israel file. Yeah.
- [140:15]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Well, if Jasmine Crockett's political instincts were truly legendary, she would have known that this hearing was coming up, and Democrats in general would be trying to take this issue off the table. For Republicans, I mean, it was Republicans for a very long time who were on the wrong side of this. And for Democrats, they could be out there saying, democrats have a long, proud history of trying to shed light on what happened to this Democratic president, a Democratic standard bearer. And we absolutely are just as eager as our Republican counterparts, counterparts, if not more eager, to get to the bottom of it and ask really smart, insightful, savvy questions. But they did not do that yesterday. They use it as a sort of culture war platform to go after signal, to go after gate and align themselves with the actual deep state CIA intelligence apparatus. It was really unfortunate. Although I think, Ryan, one of the reasons I was excited for this hearing is that Morley and Oliver Stone have had a couple of weeks to digest this insane volume of new information, which is, I mean, it's going to take a very long time to put all of these puzzle pieces together. But they've done the Lord's work, morally, has done the Lord's work trying to piece this puzzle together quickly. And voluminous knowledge of the case has allowed him to do that. So all of that said, to see these things being aired in the halls of Congress, I still thought was really powerful. I know, I mean, we have Twitter now and we've seen some of this play out in real time. But Oliver Stone's 1992 congressional testimony was critical. I mean, it took a long time for the country to catch up. But looking back, it proved to be a really important point because there was legislation that came out of Congress that led to declassifications. And so I thought that was really important.
- [142:13]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, so his movie on Kennedy, Oliver Stone's movie on jfk, basically produced the legislation that produced the records that we got just recently and that we've been getting over the last decades. So, yeah, that is kind of a fascinating arc to see. And the last point on this is like, Democrats may not understand why I'm harping on this. Like, people who don't follow politics closely create heuristics about who's with them and who's against them and who is right and who's wrong about particular issues. So like the proxy for a lot of people would be, are they credible? Are they open minded about the Kennedy assassination? You don't have to necessarily agree exactly with what you think on it. But like. Or are you just lying and mocking anybody who believes in a conspiracy theory? So if people who don't follow politics closely see these clips circulating online of Democrats making fun of anybody who thinks there was a conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination, they're going to just reject and dismiss anything else they hear from those Democrats because. And that's a rational approach when you have a limited amount of time to invest in analyzing the political situation. Situations like, oh, these people are liars or stupid, like one or the other. Either way, I don't want to hear anything else from them. So, yeah, not helping themselves with regular people by this performance needlessly.
- [143:45]
Sagar Enjeti
So it's just so easy for Democrats.
- [143:47]
Ryan Grim
To Don't be afraid of Allen Dulles anymore. He's gone. It's crazy gone.
- [143:51]
Sagar Enjeti
No reason. I mean, maybe it Ryan, maybe there is something substantive about their ties now to CIA world and intel world, meaning the that they don't think the sort of cost benefit makes sense for them to start going in on the CIA because the CIA still obviously does not want a lot of these pieces to be put together. It doesn't want to see the puzzle come together. So maybe this is actually not just they need to get over politics. But yeah.
- [144:22]
Ryan Grim
Anyway, hope you had a good time in Wisconsin. Thank you for joining us from all the way out there. Very much appreciated. See you back here. We'll do a Friday show again. You'll be back in here, D.C. i assume for that.
- [144:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to it. We look forward to those Friday shows a lot now and just hope you guys do, too. They're a lot of fun. Just As a reminder, BreakingPoints.com to nab a premium membership, premium subscription. Appreciate everyone tuning in. Thanks for letting me zoom in here, Ryan.
- [144:54]
Ryan Grim
All right, and we'll see you on Friday.
- [145:08]
Unknown Host 1
Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in, right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50 off. Almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com code IHEART for 50% off. Hey, all you women, Soups fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans, we've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain. As we near the end of one of the most exciting, exciting women's college basketball seasons ever, the most parody we've seen in years. With games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast.
- [146:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Called My Friend Daisy.
- [146:32]
Unknown Host 1
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer.
- [146:39]
Ryan Grim
Listen to my friend daisy on the.
- [146:40]
Unknown Host 1
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.