
Loading summary
Adam
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.
Eve
Wanna pull off the season's freshest trends?
Adam
You just need the right shoes. That's where designer shoe warehouse comes in. Loving wide leg jeans. Pair them with sleek low profile sneakers.
Eve
Obsessed with the sheer trend. Try it with mesh flats, peeling boho.
Adam
Comfy sandals nail the whole free spirited.
Eve
Find on trend shoes from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more. At dsw.
Adam
It'S Wednesday night after a long day and the last thing you want to do is cook dinner from scratch. But you still want a satisfying, tasty meal without the guilt. Enter your freezer's sidekick, Caulipower. From thin and crispy cauliflower crust pizzas to all natural white meat chicken tenders and more, Caulifow is gluten free, always satisfies every craving and is ready in minutes. Caulipwer is available in freezer aisles nationwide. Visit eatcolipower.com where to buy to find a store near you.
Krystal
Hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
Adam
Independent media just played a truly massive.
Krystal
Role in this election and we are.
Adam
So excited about what that means for.
Krystal
The future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left.
Eve
And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
Krystal
So if that is something that's important.
Adam
To you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become.
Krystal
A member today and you'll access to our full shows unedited ad free and.
Adam
All put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Eve
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we.
Krystal
Hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning. Welcome to Counterpoints. Emily, you broke.
Eve
Liberated is the word. How liberated are you today?
Krystal
I'm not retiring for a while. Ever. So not even. I'm not even going to look.
Eve
So on a scale of 1 to 10, you're very liberated.
Krystal
Quite liberated.
Eve
Like full French Revolution, L Day.
Krystal
I really celebrated L Day for sure. Going to be another L Day today probably because now, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, China just announced that it is retaliating against the American tariffs. Donald Trump's plan was he was going to put tariffs on the entire world and then warn them not to retaliate.
Eve
Yes.
Krystal
He does not. I don't know if he had a plan B. I hope he does because plan A did not work. The world is retaliating. We'll talk a little bit about that. There's full blown warfare inside the Trump administration. Although it's funny because it's like, do David Sacks and Elon Musk, do they count as the administration? In the old days, you knew who the senior government officials were and if they were out on cable attacking each other, then you had, you know, staffer on staffer violence. David Sachs is the crypto czar for the White House. Elon Musk is the, was the co president and sort of running Doge, but not running Doge, a special government employee. But is he a government employee or has Trump kicked him out or is he actually still running things? And he's going to fire hundreds of thousands of people over the next several months. It's not totally clear. So does that count as an administration official criticizing another one? I don't even know. Technically, yes, because the membrane between what is the administration and what is the oligarch class is just so thin that they just move right in and out of it. Whatever. In any event, Musk thinks Navarro's a moron. We're going to talk more about that. The Supreme Court, a little bit of a victory sort of so far for the Trump administration's effort to keep these probationary employees that they fired from being hired back. Except for the ones they need to hire back because they accidentally fired them.
Eve
Yep. And these people's jobs just keep ping ponging through the court system.
Krystal
Utterly absurd, not efficient.
Eve
And so then, Ryan, you've. Well, on Capitol Hill right now, Republicans are actually raging against Donald Trump's budget, his big one, big beautiful bill. He met with some of them last night and they are still not super pleased.
Krystal
But he can only lose three, right?
Eve
He can only lose three. And Freedom Caucus, at least as of yesterday, was saying he might lose up towards a dozen.
Krystal
They always say that. But we'll get into it.
Eve
Yeah, we'll get into that. And then Ryan, you have a guest for us.
Krystal
Yes, Congressman D'Aluisio from Pittsburgh, Rust belt Democrat. He has really Been making a lot of Democrats angry by not just completely toeing the party line that Trump bad, therefore tariffs bad. And Trump's tariff plan obviously dumb, therefore all tariffs are dumb.
Eve
Right.
Krystal
He's trying to find a middle ground where he's saying no, like actually we do need some industrial policy and it's got a lot of people mad at him. So this is a refuge for those kinds of people.
Eve
Well said. We will talk to him all about that drop site scoop as of this morning also.
Krystal
Yes. So Hamas filed with a lawyer in the UK a hundred plus page brief to demand that the UK delist it from its terror designation. And so we're going to go through the, we're going to go through some of the pleading because it's an absolutely fascinating document no matter where you stand on the question. Because they talk about, they talk about anti Semitism, they talk about the role of Zionism in Israel, they talk about what their position is when it comes to a future settlement in the region. And they make a straightforward argument that we do not belong on this terror list. And here's why.
Eve
Yeah, that'll be pretty interesting to go through.
Krystal
Yeah, it's an interesting indication of the way that Hamas is increasingly relating to Western institutions in a way that it where it used to be more standoffish and consider all of them to be considered, all of them to be just enemies.
Eve
Ryan, you had a really interesting conversation with Naomi Klein. I'm excited for everyone to see and we'll talk about it a little bit as well. But Ryan sat down with Naomi Klein yesterday actually to get, I mean, it's interesting because I think her work was really formative for you back in late 90s, early 2000s for many, many, many people.
Krystal
Yeah, Naomi Klein was the man back then. And you know, 90s we still had a bit of a monoculture and so, and she was, I mean she still is a very big name obviously in left spaces and in journalism in general. But in the 90s she was almost hegemonic when it came to representing the anti globalization side of the debate over the post Soviet Union world order. And so it was your idea, and I thought it was a really good one to get her take on this wild arc from Seattle to Trump because you've got people on the right being like, ha, you guys got what you wanted. Now look. And there was this line that said one of the chants in Seattle was another world is possible. Well, hey, here's another world. But look, we didn't mean all other worlds are better. We always acknowledged things could get worse and it does appear that that was always going to be the better bet. Things getting worse is always the most likely outcome.
Eve
I had a chance to watch.
Krystal
It's not own that that's what's happening.
Eve
People should. Yeah, I had a chance to watch the interview and it's really, really interesting from through that lens. So exciting segment. Stay tuned for that. Let's jump into this one.
Krystal
She lives in Canada on the west coast. So.
Eve
Right.
Krystal
It's like 6am for her.
Eve
That would be absurd. That would be unkind. But globalization, zoom prerecorded. Let's jump into the A block. China is now retaliating. Retaliatory tariffs is a zero. We can put it up on the screen. This was announced last night, early this morning. It's been developing. They've slapped retaliatory tariffs of 84% on US goods in response to Trump. Some takeaways just from the CNBC breakdown here. They said this is a rise from 84% to 34%. It is starting on April 10th and we export about $144 billion worth of good to China. That's as of 2024. So obviously this is very significant. This is a statement from Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on Wednesday after this announcement. He said, I think it's unfortunate that the Chinese actually don't want to come and negotiate because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system. They have the most imbalanced economy in the history of the modern world. And I can tell you this escalation is a loser for them. Ryan, you made an interesting point as we were opening up here, that this is what Trump said everyone can't do. This is America has the upper hand. And you see a little bit of that in Besant's statement that the United States has the upper hand. And so if you want to retaliate, you're going to get something so much worse that it's probably worth you coming to the table. I think that's probably an argument he's going to find to be a winner with the eu, with Australia, with Japan. I don't know that he probably had high hopes for China, but he probably had some hopes for China, I guess.
Krystal
I don't know. I've kind of given up trying to get into this guy's head at this point. It's a good approach. China has spent the last 20 years building up its manufacturing capacity, its capital markets as well its supply chains, its ability to operate distinct from the United States. Like we can't live without them currently, they can live without us. We start a trade war with them. At that point, it's like, all right, what are we. Like, what's the point of even analyzing any of this? They're just going to whoop us. And they have all the things that we need for our manufacturing capacity. There's an article in one of these cleantech trade publications that talked about how just a few days ago, they added export license requirements to a bunch of things I've never even heard of. Dysprosium, terbium, tungsten. That one I've heard of. Indium, yttrium, a bunch of others. These are the rare earth minerals that they produce, that they export to us for us to use to complete the assembly of automobiles, Electric vehicles, solar panels, all the things of the modern economy. Like, they have the productive capacity to produce it.
Eve
Hippies like you prevent us from mining here.
Krystal
Mine it all you want. Go ahead, Go for it. Any.
Eve
Well, no, I mean, it's.
Krystal
We don't have it yet. From Ukraine.
Eve
It's an important distinction with China, and Ukraine lied.
Krystal
They don't even have a bunch of that stuff.
Eve
The distinction with China, I think that is important. Like, the reason that they just go completely pedal to the metal on a lot of this stuff, including labor costs. I mean, it's one of the most important contrasts is that it's been the way that they have built up their industrial capacity is, you know, the way we built up our industrial capacity wasn't all sunsets and roses, was not great. What they've done is also really, really, really not great and is still happening under our noses to some extent right now.
Krystal
They've done it. Like, they're ready for this, and we're not. They're smart. We're not. They have the world with them.
Eve
Smart.
Krystal
We've lost the entire world.
Eve
Smart.
Krystal
Smart as in like the smart. As in like, they have a meritocracy. Like, the people who are the most talented at economic policy rise up in the ranks. In China, we have Peter Navarro, like Elon Musk, and you're not listening to Elon Musk and Wharton graduate Donald Trump.
Eve
Yes.
Krystal
We're not sending our best into this battle.
Eve
Speaking of Wharton's finest, Donald Trump last night was at the National Republican Congressional Committee's dinner here in Washington, D.C. and he talked about some of this. Again, this is just from the last, like, 12 hours. So let's take a listen to President Trump.
Donald Trump
If we follow through on this agenda, we will be rewarded with a phenomenal economy and a Massive victory at the ballot box in 2026 because we will have a record of triumph like no president has ever had, like no Congress has ever had. They will not be able to even touch your seat. Your seat is secure. And we'll pick up 40, 50, or even 60 seats. And we'll have something that's going to be smooth sailing for years to come. If we don't get it done because of stupidity or couple of people that want to show how great they are, you just have to laugh at them or smile at them or cry right in their face. And this is the largest transaction in the history of our country. And don't let some of these politicians go around saying, you know, because I'm telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal. Please, please make a deal. I'll do anything. I'll do anything, sir. Being criticized because the globalists will go after you. For seven decades, American ships have patrolled the seas. American troops have kept the pace and peace and American wealth has enriched the globe. But despite all we have given to them, you will not find an American car in Berlin, in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Shanghai. Not a car. Beautiful guys. I didn't want to have any arm wrestling contests with any of them, I can tell you that. They're good, strong guys. That's what they want to do. They love to dig hole. That's what they want to do. They don't want to do gidgets and widgets and wadges. They don't want to build cell phones with their hands. Their big, strong hands are doing a little thing. Remember when Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and she had decimated them three weeks before in, like, some state where they make little tiny circuit boards.
Eve
The gidgets and wadges and their big, strong hands.
Krystal
This guy's mentally ill.
Eve
Even for Trump, that was a hell of a riff guy.
Krystal
The guy is just.
Eve
He's talking about the big, strong hands, like, hours before the tariffs actually went into effect. And obviously that's the reality that we've woken up to this morning. We're filming this before markets have opened.
Krystal
It makes me think of all of these when you read through history and there are periods of time where people had a mad king and you're like, God, that must have sucked. Like, literally a mad king. Not like a king where, like, he's.
Eve
Like riddled with syphilis.
Krystal
You disagree with him on this issue, but this is, this is the king's prerogative at this moment. Like, an absolute mad king where he's just nuts. I think this guy's lost it. This guy's nuts.
Eve
Well, you say lost it.
Krystal
He's gonna win 50 seats. Are you, like. Are you insane?
Eve
Yes.
Ryan
Yes.
Krystal
Like, you are on the cusp of a financial crisis that you have sparked for no reason. You're going to go down as, like, the worst president in American history. If you continue with this and he's. You're not gonna touch us. We're gonna win 50 seats.
Eve
Well, so that's the. I mean, if you continue with. This is the. I was gonna say million dollar question, but multi trillion dollar question.
Krystal
She shows no signs of backing down.
Eve
So I wanna get into all of that through some of what else happened yesterday because Jameson Greer was testifying in front of the Senate and Andrew Ross Sorkin. We'll start with. This is going to be a 2. Made quite an interesting point on CNBC yesterday that I think we'll probably. Probably learn more about like, a year or two from now. So let's roll. Andrew Ossarkin.
Krystal
Given what the government's been doing and this administration's been doing, it would not shock me, and I hate to speculate if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders, one way or the other, ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market.
Eve
Okay. So, Ryan, they don't have to disclose this. What is it, 30 days? They're supposed to disclose their trades.
Krystal
Washington. Yeah. What's. I think something like that for the executive. Yeah, right.
Eve
Yeah, they're supposed to. This came out of the stock act of 2012 after there were revelations about Nancy Pelosi. They passed this saying that they would disclose their trades within.
Krystal
And John Boehner.
Eve
And John Boehner within 30 days. And so we have no idea.
Krystal
Oh, and what's his name? Max. Not Spencer. Spencer Baucus. Baucus.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
Was the financial services chairman or ranking member on the Financial Services Committee. Came out of the meeting with Bernanke and Hank Paulson in 2007. When they told him, like, hey, this thing is about to go down, he walked out of the meeting and sold his stocks. And that one in particular rattled the public to a point where they're like, all right, you need to do something about it. And Congress was like, sure, we'll let you know what we're doing after we do it, but we're not gonna stop doing it.
Eve
Yeah. And by the way, if we don't disclose it, it's no big deal. It's not that big of a deal.
Krystal
It's fine.
Eve
Get over it.
Krystal
Tell you later.
Eve
Right. Okay. So that's just something to keep in mind. Obviously, people could be shorting the market. They could be doing all kinds of things. A lot of times the way that members do this is they say that their wife was trading or their husband was trading, or, you know, they have a really flimsy excuse and say, my broker does all of this. It's not a blind trust.
Krystal
I don't even know if members of Congress are the issue here. It's more the White House and people.
Eve
In the White House potentially. Right. Let's put a three up on the screen. This is from David Sachs. I think we have this here. Black Monday hoax is over. This is a post from crypto czar David Sachs. And then there was a community note. And I say was because if you go to this tweet, there is no longer this note. Readers added context. They thought people might want to know. As of 345 Eastern, the same day this was tweet, this tweet was written, the S and p is down 2.6% for the day, racing overnight gains and down about 6.
Krystal
So he posted this in the morning.
Eve
6% from when the tweet was written. Yeah. And so now if you go to the spike post, actually, he added. He added an additional tweet to the thread. He said, after wrongly predicting a crash yesterday, some people are gloating this around 6pm yesterday because the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.84% today on the real Black Monday, the DJIA plunged by 2.22.6. People use these terms without having a clue what they mean. He's right about that.
Krystal
And what he's talking about is that throughout the day there was. There was a. A bounce like that. And the markets were actually up for a while and there was some hope that maybe the countries wouldn't retaliate very quickly and that Trump might revisit this. And it was the same false hope that led them to kind of, you know, run up the market in January and February. And then when it became clear that, no, no, no, this guy's dug in on this thing and China is going to retaliate, then the market crashed again.
Adam
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 IHEARTRADIO for 50% off almost any one item plus free discreet shipping. That's AdamandEve.com, code IHEART for 50% off.
Naomi Klein
Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy. I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right? Next time use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And no, those were not raisins. Amazon Pharmacy healthcare just got less painful.
Adam
You're a hustler. You get things done, but you don't always do things for yourself. With JLO Beauty, it takes just a.
Emily
Few minutes a day to look like.
Adam
Facials are a regular part of your routine.
Emily
JLO Beauty's fresh and flawless Skincare kit.
Adam
Includes six skincare products that work as hard as you do.
Emily
They'll hustle to brighten, firm and hydrate.
Adam
Your complexion morning and night. This skincare kit is a one and done solution that is clinically proven to visibly tighten and lift for instant and long lasting results. Cleanse, treat, moisturize, protect. The fresh and flawless skincare kit does it all. See why the kit's a Bestseller today? Visit jlobeauty.com Deluxe and get an extra 25% off your first shipment plus free gifts with code Deluxe. If you're not satisfied, return the bottles within 60 days for your money back. See the website for details.
Emily
That's JLo Beauty.com Deluxe to get that JLO glow.
Eve
So we still don't know how it's going to open today, of course, but Jameson Greer was testifying before the Senate yesterday and got some really some genuinely very tough questions from Democrats. No surprise there. But Ryan, some interesting question from Democrats that we wanted to roll through as well. So let's go. This is questions from Mark Warner, a question from Thom Tillis, obviously a sort of establishment Republican, and then we'll have other clips to get through with Jameson Greer as well. He is the US Trade Representative. So he's basically the guy in the office who's tasked with managing the U.S. s trade relationships across the world. So a hell of a time to be Jamison Greer. He is very much of this kind of new right, very much on board with this agenda. He's not being like forced to be in this situation. He's a kind of true believer in restructuring these global trade relationships. So let's go ahead and roll a four here.
Donald Trump
We already have a free trade agreement. We have a trade surplus. So getting the least bad. Why did they get whacked in the first place?
Krystal
We're addressing the $1.2 trillion deficit, the largest in human history that President Biden left us with. We should be running up the score in Australia. And I answer the question. They ban.
Donald Trump
We have a trade surplus with Australia. We have a free trade agreement.
Eve
Why?
Donald Trump
They are incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?
Krystal
Senator, despite the agreement, they ban our beef. They ban our pork.
Chris D'Aluisio
They're getting ready to impose measures on our.
Donald Trump
With your Greek letter formula, the fact that we have a trade surplus, we.
Krystal
Have a global tariff on every. We're trying to address the $1.2 trillion, I think that Biden left us with.
Donald Trump
I think that answer.
Krystal
Sir, you're a much smarter person than that answer. I'm assuming this all got gamed out because it's a novel approach.
Donald Trump
It needed to be thought out.
Krystal
Whose throat do I get to choke.
Donald Trump
If this proves to be wrong?
Krystal
Well, Senator, you can certainly always talk to me, but I will.
Donald Trump
But are you at the tip of the spear?
Krystal
Well, I'm at the tip of the spear.
Eve
Some interesting insight into how Republicans are thinking about all of this, which is who do I get to blame if it all blows up in our face? And that if is huge.
Krystal
And Mark Warner is asking a reasonable question, but he's asking it into a completely unreasonable environment. Like, he. And I don't normally defend Mark Warner, but he's an insane person in an insane asylum. He's like. And so I get why he's yelling. He's like, guys, you said that if we have a trade deficit with a country, then ipso facto they have trade barriers against us and then we're gonna screw them. Australia, we have a trade surplus with them. So what is your problem? And it's just talking points.
Eve
Well, I think that's interesting because, yeah, soccer. If soccer were here, he would be going through the roof because the beef. Is the beef one of the things.
Krystal
That they bothered by the beef?
Eve
It's insane. We are pushing the beef exports, our, like, hormone laden beef exports on other countries and expecting them to just take it. But I think there's. So we have another clip here, actually, that'll be helpful, too. This is Senate Finance Committee, so same committee that you've been Hearing how do.
Krystal
We ship a cow all the way to Australia, by the way, what kind of global system is that? Nobody around here needs to eat beef.
Eve
Our food system is so insane. I mean, we don't have to open up that Pandora's box.
Krystal
But how your cow is, I don't know, really heavy.
Eve
How much could a banana cost, Michael? $10? Here is Senator Bennett talking to Jameson Greer. We can roll this next club.
Krystal
I understand your position is that the long term gain is worth the short term pain, but what is that short term pain going to look like? So, Senator, I think we can look at, I think we should look at history and data for this. You know, it's hard to project what's.
Chris D'Aluisio
Going to happen with prices, but we.
Krystal
Know in the first term, first Trump term, the President imposed historic tariffs on China on an enormous amount of goods coming from China. And during that time, inflation went down. I know you're smart enough to know that the likelihood is that prices are going to go up for the American people as a result of the tariffs that you put in place. Do you disagree with that? I mean, when you say that the American, in your testimony that you expect the American people will bear the burden or that. And I'm sure they will bear any burden on some level. But what do you think the, what do you think that burden is actually going to look like? Well, I think the challenges, frankly, are going to be more for companies that, that are largely dependent on imports from, from China and Asia where they have.
Chris D'Aluisio
To adjust their supply chains in a.
Krystal
Quick set of time.
Eve
Ryan, you're laughing. I'm just going to toss right to you.
Krystal
Well, that's great news. So these tariffs are only going to be a problem for companies that have, you know, global entanglements in their supply chains. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Let me, let me check which. Oh, that's all of the companies. That's every company. Okay, well, I guess we're back to square one with that. On your point, by the way, on the, on Dow futures, based on this China news that we opened with Dow, NASDAQ, S&P all down about 2%. But here's the good news. As your wealth shrinks every day, as a, as a country and as a person, when you lose 2% every day, you're actually losing just a little bit less in absolute numbers. Okay, so there is really light at the end of the tunnel.
Eve
Well, let's put this.
Krystal
And it's a big zero.
Eve
Well, so as to how long this goes on let's put this Caitlin Huey Burns post. This is the next element.
Ryan
Yeah.
Krystal
If you have nothing and the Dow crashes 2%, you didn't lose a thing.
Eve
You will own nothing and you will be happy.
Krystal
Wow. Genius.
Eve
Caitlin Huey Burns says she asked got Besson on the Hill yesterday whether the tariffs going into effect tomorrow. So they are in effect right now, are set in stone or negotiating tactic. And Bessant replied, quote, they are negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. There's a lot to get into with that.
Krystal
I kind of. I'm with Besant on this one. All the. Let me stand up for Besant here.
Eve
Stand up for Besant.
Krystal
I get what he's saying there. He's saying, look, all right, the tariff is 15% or it's 85% on Lesotho, maybe it could be 75. Like the number is negotiable. But the idea that we are putting forward that we are going to break the back of the global trading system and create something new in its place, that's not negotiable. That's what he's saying. Yeah, we don't believe him because Trump in that speech was like, they're all begging me for a deal and he's going to make some deals. And he's the. I think he's eventually gonna have to either back off this or be forced off of it because you can't break the global system as one person. Yeah. Without. Or we just have no system left.
Eve
I mean, you can break the global.
Krystal
System, but he's breaking it. What I mean is at some point, Republicans have to step in. I mean, they would need 67 votes to override his veto.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
But you keep shaving 2, 3% off every single day. So that pressure is going to build. So here's where people spent too long building up. People spent their entire lives building up what they have. And I don't think they're going to let this mentally ill guy just take it away. Maybe they will, though.
Eve
Well, so Politico, I think this was in playbook the other day, was talking about how Republican the incentive for Republicans. This is the implication, I'm paraphrasing it right now is they know their voters trust Donald Trump. Republican voters trust Donald Trump. That may chip away. That trust may chip away. But right now, Republican voters trust Donald Trump more than they trust his opponents when it comes to, I mean, he's. His numbers. Harry Anton has pointed this out. We'll get to it. His numbers on the economy are slipping, but Republican voters have confidence in Donald Trump to the extent that it means they trust him more than other people. And so if the choice is Donald Trump or, you know, someone who opposes Donald Trump's approach.
Krystal
We'll talk about this polling more in a minute, but here's a good one for it that backs up your point. YouGov asked. April 2nd will forever be remembered as the day American history was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again. Do you agree or disagree with that following statement regarding tariffs? Republicans by 70 to 14 either strongly or somewhat agree with that. Independents, 51% of independents disagree with that. 41% strongly agree, disagree. Obviously, Democrats are like spitting did a spit take to that one. And so overall, the country does not agree with that statement, but Republicans still do.
Eve
Yeah. And so I just think this is important because I think Trump's tactics, and this is a question we'll have for the, that I'll definitely have for the congressman later. I think Trump's tactics are completely like bananas. There's no disagreement on that. I think a lot of voters make the calculus that it's between these banana tactics or the status quo, which is shocking. Levels of debt and deficit raising under the Biden administration. If you look at the chart, just the skyrocketing, it wasn't just Biden, but after Covid, Trump contributed to that as well. It was just crazy levels. And people feel like that contributed to inflation and they look at the establishment and status quo and then they look at Donald Trump and they look at, for example, China's, you know, they look at China, they look at different places in the world and they say this is unfair. Trump taps into that and the response, it's just, it's not persuasive. The opponents of Donald Trump, for a lot of Republican voters, it's not persuasive. And so I think also there's a genuine question as to whether, and this speaks poorly to our politics. You have Jameson Greer, who I think was pretty, was a pretty capable defender of a weird process, a bad process that is a policy in and of itself. But when you. Did you see how the tweet, the Walter Bloomberg tweet shifted the market day before yesterday. It was the craziest thing in the world. Predictable but insane. And I think part of what may happen here, I'm not saying it will happen, but I'm saying there is still a possibility that we see a shift. Trump pulls back probably a month from now. I shouldn't say probably, but let's Just say hypothetically, a month from now, a few weeks from now, Trump pulls back. There was a shock for a long time and then markets go back up and we see companies having maybe there are significant layoffs, maybe their jobs brought back in. That's what we see right now, now is this push and pull, big Stellantis temporary layoffs and then the Honda Civic manufacturing coming back to Indiana, for example. And I just, I don't want to discount the possibility that this is better in the long run than the status quo. I'm not saying it's the possibility, I'm not saying it's the thing that's actually going to happen. But I still think that there's, we have no idea where Trump stops and I don't think he has any idea where he stops. So I mean, I think a lot of voters are probably making that calculus too. I think that's what allows him politically to keep stringing Republicans along with it. But that's not going to last forever. I mean, I think you can get away with that for another two to three weeks. Maximum. Maximum.
Krystal
Yeah. The problem with Trump's approach here, besides the approach is the sudden nature of it and the way that it has struck fear in everybody. So even if he was completely right about the fact that you need to put these blanket tariffs on everybody, including Canada and Australia, which he's not, but let's say he was doing it the way he did it without getting buy in from Wall street, from union, well, he got some buy in from some unions, from some members of the Democratic Party has meant that there's this fear among the public that we're going to have a recession. And these are self fulfilling situations in an economy like ours that is based so heavily on consumer spending and business investment. So if you are a business now, you're not hiring, you're probably laying off and trying to build up your cash reserves to the extent that you can. If you're a consumer, you're out, you might actually be out there trying to buy that dishwasher that you've needed before it doubles in price. But in general you're not spending money. And in fact, this poll said that one fifth of one out of five people were considering a quick purchase because of the looming tariffs. And so like that could give a little sugar high. It said another one in five were stopping purchases because of them. But the overall economy means people aren't going to spend. And so then now all these businesses that rely on anything going on overseas are going to start getting hit with Duties. And in order to pay this tariff, you need cash. You haven't sold your product yet. This whole thing we've got here relies on cash flow and credit. You can't really throw in a oh, like, oh, by the way, you owe an extra 20% right now and it still will. Whoa, I don't have that. I only have. I have exactly what I need to make it. Everyone's just gasping for air when these.
Eve
China tariffs we started talking about are a 50% increase, like 34 to 84% increase. And I'll skip ahead to a 10 here and put this element up on the screen. The Wall Street Journal reported on a survey the Chamber of Commerce did which was very, very interesting. Most businesses were still, or many businesses were still planning to keep their financial entanglements with China. Interestingly, this survey also saw many of those companies see China as like the biggest geopolitical risk. And that's the line that Donald Trump is telling between saying, hey, you see China as a risk, so bet on the United States. The problem with that is the tactic here has created uncertainty. Donald Trump sees the uncertainty as his leverage to get people to bet on the U.S. but that uncertainty is precisely why people are just being risk averse and not taking risks at all. So maybe this, this retaliatory tariff changes the calculus for some of those companies in the survey. This is obviously taken before, but I mean, it just, it's very, very hard. The possibility that it just laid out is just that it's a possibility. I think it's a possibility that's not being treated as serious as it should be in the media.
Krystal
Who's financing that? The major companies are not. They don't expect Trump's tariffs to be here four years from now.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
So they would have no reason to build a plant. He hates the CHIPS Act. He hates industrial policy from the top down.
Eve
It's a huge problem.
Krystal
So then who's financing these projects? You just had Microsoft, you saw this, announce their billion dollar three data centers in Ohio that they're pulling out of those. So the conditions aren't just the economic conditions aren't right for it. Not good timing for that. So just theoretically, who would, who's betting on who would lead this renaissance? Who's putting their chips in on the US Here?
Eve
Yeah, Greer laid out the case that he thinks that plenty of pointing to the Honda Civic. And what's the other one that they've pointed to so far? There's a, they have a couple of things that happened just in the last week. Or so, but certainly are offset by Stellantis, by Microsoft, and by some of these other like negative effects as well. So it's pretty, it's pretty hard to make the case that it's, you know, on like that there's some objective metric by which it's, it's clearly already a roaring.
Krystal
Yeah. And if you, I mean, why would a company bet on us over China? Given their education system compared to ours, their manufacturing capacity compared to ours, their supply chain access compared to ours, their stability and like leadership compared to ours.
Eve
Good old authoritarian stability.
Krystal
We're a basket case. We have authoritarianism, but instability. We're rounding people up and throwing them in gulags, but we can't even get a stable system. Is it to the point of the gulags?
Eve
Are you talking about the Salvadoran ones?
Krystal
Criticize Israel?
Eve
Which gulags are you talking about?
Krystal
There are a couple of the Salvadoran ones, but also the detention centers all around the US where students are being rounded up for op EDS and participating in protests.
Eve
Yeah.
Adam
Sent to 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.
Naomi Klein
Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy.
Krystal
Hmm.
Naomi Klein
I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right? Next time use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And no, those were not raisins. Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.
Emily
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.
Ryan
And keep an eye on what your.
Emily
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 let's watch.
Eve
This clip of Harry Anton on CNN reacting to this was going pretty viral on the right yesterday. I saw it when Charlie Kirk posted it.
Krystal
But let's a eight.
Eve
This is a eight. Let's roll Harry and Ton on CNN yesterday.
Krystal
So Trump's approach here, what are we talking about? Trump's approach to presidential power. I think the American people recognize what he's doing here is completely different. We're talking this. 86% of the American public believes that Trump's approach to presidential power is completely different from past presidents, compared to only 14% who believe it is in line with precedent. And we're talking about at least 79% of Democrats, independents and Republicans. So again, you can agree or you can disagree with Donald Trump, but what you can't disagree with is that he's doing things very differently. And this is interesting. So Trump's presidential power is too much, the right amount, too little. Well, 47% say too much, but then you get 36% who say the right amount. Then you get 17% who say too little. So you're essentially dealing with a majority of the American public, 53% who do not say that Trump has too much power.
Eve
Brian. I think it's funny that some imago world saw that as like a brief glimmer of hope. The Harry Entin thing, which is basically just voters saying, we think the guy is doing things differently. Charlie Kirk pulled out the tweet. The quote, quote, trump is not a lame duck. If anything, he's a soaring eagle. But the context of it was Harry Entin basically saying that, yeah, voters are looking at Donald Trump being like, this dude's doing all kinds of different stuff.
Krystal
I mean, I'd have been in that. Which is like, yes, I would have been in that. 87 or 90% or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely. Yeah, he is. Yeah. He's the first one to ship people to dungeons in El Salvador and then to suggest that he might do it to American citizens, too. That is.
Eve
He wants to.
Krystal
Yeah. Bush is like, wow, could do that.
Ryan
Yeah.
Eve
He's like, whoa, that was a possibility. That was on the table.
Krystal
I thought we had to use that Guantanamo thing. Did we send him anywhere?
Eve
Here's the thing.
Krystal
I thought we had to do it secretly and send them to the Egyptian dungeons where they torture them, but pretend that we didn't do it.
Eve
But here's the difference.
Krystal
Can you just do it out loud?
Eve
George W. Bush now gets lots of press. His daughter's on a Today show, and People think very warmly about George W. Bush in Manhattan and, you know, these newsrooms, whereas. And he could send people to, you know, torture sites and black sites. But Donald Trump is actually honest about what he's doing, and so he's hated.
Krystal
And again, Obama.
Eve
The answer is, why not dislike both?
Krystal
Obama not prosecuting the people responsible for the torture program continues to haunt us.
Eve
That's a good point. Let's put this on as we've said.
Krystal
It would at the time.
Eve
So let's put this poll on the screen. This is a nine. This YouGov polling results. Ryan, did you take a look at these? These are some post, quote, Liberation Day polling. 51 to 38 agreement with Republicans are crashing the American economy in real time and driving us through a recession. And then 51 to 20 agreement with the tariffs of the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. Those numbers are the combination of strongly and somewhat agree on both. So that's where you get the both 51 numbers. And so 51 to 38 and 51 to 20. So, I mean, I don't find that particularly surprising.
Krystal
Yeah, if you go through this entire poll, you see a public that, you see a public where Democrats are like, massively against all of this, Independents are hugely against all this by like 2 to 1 margins. And Republicans are pretty squeamish on it. They still like Trump, but when you dig into Republican support for what's going on here, it's not that great. I noticed one here where they said they asked why. So they asked why Trump was doing this. And one of the theories that they asked people about, they said the tariffs are a means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. That's a theory I've seen Crystal put out, that this is part and parcel of Trump's consolidation of power. That now just exactly what they said. If you're Apple or if you're a small company from Columbus, Ohio, and you're like, look, I'm gonna go under. Then you call your congressman, you call whoever you know who knows Trump, and you plead to the king for mercy, and the king grants you mercy, or else your whole town goes up in amphetamines. And the independence said by a 46 to 22. The rest are unsure. 46 to 22. So more than two to one independents are like, yeah, that's why he's doing this. He's consolidating his own power. It feels and it fits with what people understand to be his personality, that he loves to be the Guy who's like, you're fired or you're the man. And he loves to keep people in suspense and to have control over them. And I don't think people want their lives being messed with for that reason.
Eve
Yeah, nobody wants their life. I mean, it's the reason we have the system we have. You shouldn't be at the whimsical of a president. I mean, this is congressional power. He's invoking emergency authority to do this. This is Article one power. And that's part of the problem that's probably going to come back to him. This is like just final point, the strange position that people like myself and probably Sager to some extent find themselves in, which is. And on the left as well, that it's like there's something very serious here. And I don't discount the possibility at all that, you know, I'm not saying it's a huge possibility. There's a possibility that there's some good that comes out of this. He can reverse course on a whim. And that's the sort of strange situation that we find ourselves in in the United States, is that he's consolidated emergency authority to do this. And I mean, we just kind of have to wait to see if he blinks and what thatif he does blink, what it looks like and the particulars of it. And we're talking 70 countries that he says are begging to make deals. The amount of power there is just enormous. So it's just we have no idea. We have no idea what's coming down the next few weeks, which is why we will be here covering all of it, maybe. Yeah, that's true. Let's move on to the feud between Peter Navarro and Elon Musk.
Krystal
No promises.
Eve
If you haven't heard how the feud is escalating between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, you are going to want to stay tuned for this because, dare I say, Ryan, it's been a little bit entertaining. Caroline Levitt at the White House press briefing yesterday weighed in on that rift. Elon Musk is coming from a more libertarian, basically pro free trade. He said he wanted a free trade zone between the United States and the EU the other day he has been posting videos of Milton Friedman talking about the many benefits of free trade. Libertarian economist Milton Friedman. That is so. Peter Navarro, on the other hand, is one of the more vogue local protectionists who some people feel is pushing Trump in the direction that he's gone. Maybe to the chagrin of advisers like Scott Besant and Howard Letnick, who probably would prefer a policy that has pauses and all of that built into it and hasn't affected stock markets quite in the same way that it has. So let's roll. Caroline Levitt getting asked about that relationship which is spilling into the public a bit yesterday.
Adam
There's been some public sparring between Elon.
Krystal
Musk and the president's trade adviser, Peter.
Adam
Navarro on some of these tariffs.
Krystal
Musk actually referred to Navarro today as.
Eve
Being quote, dumber than a sack of bricks.
Adam
Are you at all, or is the.
Krystal
Administration, the president, at all concerned that.
Adam
This is maybe impacting the public's understanding of these tariffs?
Krystal
It might be messing with the message on it? Ms. No.
Eve
Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs. Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue. And you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history. And I think it also speaks to the president's willingness to hear from all sides that he has people at the highest levels of this government in this White House who have very diverse opinions on very diverse issues. But the president takes all opinions in mind, and then he makes the best decision based on the best interests of the American public. Ryan, I don't think that's completely crazy that it's in some ways beneficial for us in the public to see where Elon Musk actually is on trade and to see how he treats other people in the administration and to see the tension that exists within the administration not just over the question of trade, but actually over the particular tactics of this approach. I don't know. I'm curious how Elon Musk would be reacting if, say, Bob Lighthizer had been in charge of this tariff approach. I think there's a sense that maybe with Lighthizer in the administration, obviously he was with the first Trump administration, he was with the Reagan administration, seen this kind of a serious policy type guy who has Trump's ear. Would this have would this rollout have been less chaotic? I don't know. The chaos is also clearly part of the point here. But would Elon Musk be reacting this way under those circumstances? I don't know. I think maybe he just really hates Peter Navarro.
Krystal
Well, I also think it's the policy like like he is probably the world's greatest moron at this point. He invested all of his energy and many millions of dollars into electing a guy whose stated policies would destroy his companies.
Eve
That's quite interesting.
Krystal
And then he then enacted those stated policies and the guy lost his Mind now he's talking about a free trade deal with Europe after he has spent the last year savaging all of the neoliberals who would agree with him in making that kind of a free trade deal and propping up far right wing nationalists across Europe and then being shocked when those leopards eat his face. It's like, you can't be this stupid. And yes, it's nice that we're getting some transparency, but it's also, come on, it's Elon Musk. It's impossible to not know his every thought. He forces it right in front of your face.
Eve
Right. It's not an intentional page so that.
Krystal
Everybody knows his stupid thoughts.
Eve
It's not an intentional strategy of transparency. It's not like we are going to finally let the American people in. Now. The consequence of it, I think is helpful for the American people, but yes, it's not them being like we are. So we have such pure heart that we are going to let you in.
Krystal
To ask Elon to do this.
Eve
So we're gonna play a clip now of Peter Navarro talking about Elon Musk. Elon Musk responded to it. And. And man, does that spiral from there. So let's go ahead and roll this next element.
Donald Trump
When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House and the American people understand that Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler. In many cases, if you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries come from Japan and come from China, the electronics come from Taiwan. The tires come.
Eve
What.
Donald Trump
What we want, and the difference is in our thinking and Elon's on this, is that we want the tires made in Akron, we want the transmissions made in Indianapolis, we want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw, and we want the cars manufactured here. It's like this business model where BMW and Mercedes come in to Spartansburg, South Carolina and have us assemble German engines and Austrian transmissions. That doesn't work for America. It's bad for our economics. It's bad for our national security. We want them to come here and with Elon, it's fine. He's a car man. He's a car person. That's what he does. And he wants the cheap foreign parts and we understand that. But we want him home. We want him home.
Krystal
Peter, do you.
Donald Trump
For our national security, economic security, and everything's good.
Eve
That absolutely set Elon Musk off as it should have not. Yeah, there's nothing surprising about that setting Elon Musk off. So Elon Musk responded to a post of that clip and put the little asterisk in his response to someone who posted the clip and said, this is what Peter Navarro said, he put little asterisk. Peter Ritardo.
Krystal
Well, I hope Musk is happy he at least gets to say that.
Eve
He gets to say that. Golden age. And then he also replies, navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false. Tesla has the most American made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks. And then he tagged the account. I find retards. And then he tagged Peter Navarro's account in his response there. That's what set off the Caroline Levitt exchange. So, again, like, it makes sense that this is how they're responding to one another. And Peter Navarro is somebody. There are a lot of people in Trump's orbit who are quite uncomfortable with Elon Musk's aggressive libertarian economic policy, particularly because it's led him to have deep financial entanglements with China. And a lot of people actually just have. You saw this, like, you saw this spill into the surface with Steve Bannon over the H1B stuff. A lot of this is like simmering. It doesn't erupt every day, but it's simmering beneath the surface between a lot of true believers in Trump protectionist circles. Trump, like the sort of MAGA industrial policy realignment circles who have a deep distrust of Elon Musk. And I think that's where you get Peter Navarro asked publicly about Musk, just openly saying, look, Elon's fine, it's all fine. We're glad he's in the administration. But X, Y and Z, he's just shooting from the hip. And that created this public controversy.
Krystal
Yeah. And consumers of this news program would never kind of mistake me for some Elon Musk fanboy. But he does assemble a lot of the batteries here because he has a big plant in Nevada that makes batteries for Tesla. And Navarro does sound like a moron when he starts talking about the difference between an EV car assembler and an EV car manufacturer. Because. Because the problem that a lot of unions and the uaw, for instance, has with the transition from the kind of cars they've been making for 100 years to the EVs, is that they're so much easier to assemble like an EV is. It's like a battery and some wheels and then really advanced software system wrapped around it and then some panels that fall off as soon as you drive the car off the lot. But he keeps kind of reverting back to language about that fits better with the old Detroit. Like we're going to do the transmission and okay, yeah, like an ev technically, I guess it has a transmission, but it's like a one speed transmission. That's it. You press the gas and it goes. Doesn't have the multi speed transmission. You're not putting the clutch and V6 and V8 and all of these. All of the fine tuning that requires sophisticated manufacturing isn't there with the engine of an ev which is just the battery and it goes. So yeah, moron is fair. I think in this point. Musk is right there. A lot of Musk's Chinese production is for the Chinese market and for other markets like Tesla's a global brand and you know, the other American auto companies should maybe try to figure out why that is.
Eve
It's not that he, to your point, it's not that he doesn't import materials, it's that he does it last.
Krystal
Right. And he needs Chinese rare earths and other, you know, he needs other elements of the Chinese supply chain, but not necessarily the ones that Navarro's talking about here.
Eve
So this is the last element, B5.
Krystal
This is also what I mean by we're not bringing our best against the Chinese in these negotiations. These, these are morons, all of them.
Eve
These two. You can just see there's something. This is what happens internally in every presidential meeting. It's like the long running bit here in D.C. about how actually Washington is veep. It's not West Wing, it's not House of Cards. It is Veep. It's completely true. It's cliche at this point, but this is the type of stuff that happens internally all the time. Now we can put the next element up on the screen. Caroline Levitt told Eamon Javors yesterday, we are the most transparent administration expressing our, in history, expressing our disagreements in public. You know, again, this is whatever, I love it, whatever. That's basically, I mean that is the best possible response, right? Like they're not even trying to spin it and saying everyone is united here. This is a totally a White House where everybody's on the same page. We are running like a well oiled machine. And the reason I think is important, which is fundamentally this is Donald Trump's policy. I don't think Scott Besant knows or Howard Lutnick knows where Donald Trump wants to stop with any of this. I don't think they know. I don't think Jameson Greer knows what Donald Trump wants to see in negotiations with Australia and what that means, how long that means he'll continue. You know, they might know that he wants them to address non tariff barriers.
Adam
Great.
Eve
I don't think they know when he's willing to say that's enough, we have struck a deal with Australia and we will, you know, completely come to the table, finalize this thing and tariffs are off or tariffs are much lower than they were, tariff increase is much lower than it was. And I think that's what this reflects at the end of the day is like they can't be on the same page because there's one person whose opinion on all of this matters and he plays it close to the best and he's doing that because he thinks it's his leverage. But at the same time they have no idea. Like that's what that means at the end of the day is that. But it's just this is, we were talking about this earlier. It's what Donald Trump decides and he speaking of not being transparent, like we actually don't really know because he hasn't said where this stops, what's good enough.
Krystal
And in the end, this is a rare moment where it doesn't matter. Like the propaganda doesn't matter, the messaging doesn't matter, the infighting, the ex fighting, none of that really matters. What matters because the public is not going to experience this refracted through the media. They're going to experience it. And this stuff is either going to work or it's not going to work. And if it doesn't work, it does not matter what they say about it. And if it works, people will be very happy. So far, not working. And that's all that's going to matter. If we get a financial crisis, then a recession out of this, it really isn't going to matter how the White House messaged it and whether they were on the same page, whether their fights were internal and leaking or playing out on Twitter won't matter. You lost your job, you don't care.
Adam
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.
Naomi Klein
Amazon Pharmacy presents painful thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy. I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right? Next time use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And no, those were not raisins. Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.
Emily
For period protection, you can put on and forget about nothing. Beats NYX Leak proof Underwear. North America's 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 FLO15 for 15% off. That's K-N-X.com, code FLO15 for 15% OFF. Nix for your leaks for your life.
Eve
Let's move on to this big decision from the Supreme Court yesterday. We can put C1 up on the screen. The Supreme Court. This is the CNN headline Supreme Court backs Trump for now on fired probationary federal employees. We'll read a bit from CNN's reporting. They say Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep several thousand probationary federal employees it is attempting to fire off the payroll while lower courts weigh whether the downsizing efforts are legal. The latest in a series of wins for the White House at the conservative high court. And so that's referencing obviously the decision the day before that Amy Coney Barrett dissented from. But the rest of the conservative justices agreed on.
Krystal
And the argument, what they, the argument they made was that the unions don't have standing to sue here.
Eve
Oh, in yesterday's decision.
Krystal
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. So it's not that they didn't rule on the merits of the case. They said, which to me like how can a union not have standing? Like, what is the point of a union if not to be the representative of the workers in a lawsuit like this? But whatever, that's where the Republican court is. The unions don't have standing in a case that involves all the firing of all of these workers. But also one kind of funny quibble I would have with the payroll. The point about whether they're on the payroll. These firings involved first putting people on these long administrative leaves, then giving them severance, and then once that's wrapped up, then they're on unemployment benefits. So if you think you taxpayer are saving money, you're not. It's just that these people are not working. You're still paying them by the end of this, the process of firing these people could be the most costly example of waste, fraud and abuse in government, like, ever. You're going to end up paying billions of dollars to many thousands of people to not work. Which by anybody's definition is waste, fraud and abuse. Yes.
Eve
Not untrue, although, is it waste?
Krystal
Like, imagine if I came to you and I was like, I found a government agency that is actively and purposely spending billions of dollars to get people to not work on your behalf. You'd be like, wow, that's a scandal. It's called doge.
Eve
It's called doggy.
Krystal
It's called doggy.
Eve
So the question is whether it's wasted and abuse that justifies the end of, you know, it's the means of waste, crime, abuse to justify the end, eliminate.
Krystal
Waste, crime, abuse for musk and these oligarchs. That is a feature like these people not working. If they are regulating them, if they're enforcing laws on companies, that is a feature for them, not a bug. They don't want these people at the EPA telling you, oh, by the way, you can't do this thing to this river.
Eve
Yeah, well, so this is more from. So this is more from the CNN article. They say labor unions and other groups had challenged the opm so Office of Personal Management's role in the firings, which affected thousands of employees and sent shock waves through various federal agencies, some of which later rehired the workers. U.S. district Judge William Allsup, nominated by Bill Clinton, ordered the administration to immediately offer over 16,000 probationary employees their jobs back. Each agency had and still has discretion to hire and fire its own employees.
Adam
Here.
Eve
The agencies were directed by OPM to fire all probationary employees, and they executed that directive to staunch the irreparable harms to organizational plaintiffs caused by opm. Unlawfully slashing other agency staff, required immediately reinstating those employees. And so what the Supreme Court said here is that the unions didn't have standing to make that case. To the point you were making earlier, Ryan. Yeah. So what this means is thousands of probationary employees. By the way, the probationary employees have been a subject of controversy among people supportive of Doge because the probationary employees oftentimes are people that maybe recently got a raise and so are on probationary status in this new position. And so they might be some of the best and brightest. Second of all, they're new employees in many cases who are just coming in to the administrative state and haven't been molded by the decades of bureaucratic procedure and processes and ideology, just the ideology of the bureaucracy in and of itself. And so if you're Doge, you might look at probationary employees and say, these are the people to keep. These are the better people to keep. So even within Doge circles, the fate of these probationary employees is a question in and of itself. But right now, what they're trying to prove, and they're excited to keep proving through the courts, is that they can do this, because that is the unitary executive theory that Trump is and Russ Vote and others are borrowing from Richard Nixon and saying, this is the president's administration. It is under the will of the president. The president can do what he wants, and he can, you know, do it through the process that he wants. That's what they're. The point that they're trying to make through the courts right now. And what it means in practical terms for these employees is that their jobs, it's like incredible whiplash. I know a lot of people don't have sympathy for bureaucrats in Washington. Well, it's not a particularly sympathetic group of people in the aggregate. When you dive into some of these individual cases, you're like, my gosh, that's what this person is doing. That sounds very important. Like VA work, for example. Some work at the va, like, oh, maybe we should keep that person. But the aggregate, not the most sympathetic group of people, but nevertheless, their livelihoods are just pinging through the courts right now. Yeah, not ideal. Not ideal. Ryan, let's move on to Capitol Hill, where a mutiny, to quote Politico, is brewing, and that's actually the correct terminology here. There really is a mutiny brewing on Capitol Hill at the moment over Trump's one big beautiful bill. They want this passed before Easter, which gives them House Republicans, Republican leadership on Capitol Hill in the House and Senate, Senate, 48 hours to get this through the House of Representatives before the House leaves for a two week recess. Right now this is, we could put D1 up on the screen. The state of affairs is pretty bad for Trump. So this is the chairman of the Freedom Caucus yesterday before going into a meeting with Trump saying he's just not going to change my mind. And actually I correct myself. Andy Harris did not go to the meeting. Other people went to the meeting. Andy Harris said he's not going to change my mind. So I'm not even going to meet, meet with Donald Trump over this bill. And there's a new Politico article out this morning from Meredith Lee Hill about that mutiny where they, this is actually really well said in the lead of the piece. It says first they caved on the speaker election, then last month they fell in line on a budget vote and again on divisive government funding bill. But now it seems House conservatives are ready to make a stand. Dozens of House Republicans are undecided or outright opposed to rubber stamping a Senate approved budget blueprint for the GOP's domestic policy mega bill. And an all out whip effort from Johnson. Mike Johnson and his leadership team has only produced modest gains. If Johnson and Trump can't flip most of those members in the next 48 hours, lawmakers will start to board flights for a two week recess, denying the President a show of legislative progress as financial markets wobble over his tariffs. And that's exactly the question here. Trump wants this bill passed right now. He applied more pressure throughout the day yesterday at that meeting and then at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner. He is very, very intent on getting this bill passed because they think it's something that can, and I'm curious for your take on this, Ryan, steady the markets a little bit. That can be something that shows if you get the corporate tax rate permanent, helps with reshoring, et cetera. And that's why they want this right now. They want it before Easter. Two week recess within 48 hours. And what we're starting to see is both establishment pushback on Trump. We posted that clip of Thom Tillis yesterday saying whose scalp can I have to Jameson Greer, USTR so you see Republicans who are actually uncomfortable with the tariffs from a sort of libertarian perspective and now Republicans who are uncomfortable with the way Trump is handling the budget from almost a libertarian perspective, but on the populist side.
Krystal
Yeah. And so this is the, this is more of the reconciliation process. Right. This is where they're writing the underlying reconciliation bill, which is only kind of the guideline then for the next bill that they. Where they end up, where they fill in the details about what the tax rates would be and what the different policies would be, which makes it a little easier for Trump to say, look, just. Just vote yes on this. And then I promise you, when we do the final bill, I'll make sure that I take care of your demands here on tax rates and on the spending cuts and what Andy Harris is saying. I don't trust the president to be able to do that. Not that I don't trust the president, but I don't think that he has the power really to go forward and do that, especially as he's floating that he's going to raise taxes on the rich, whereas the Freedom Caucus generally wants him to either keep the taxes on the rich the same or cut them. But the Freedom Caucus. I'm curious why you think this is different. I'm just so used to the Freedom Caucus. I have a theory for why this could be different, but I'm curious for yours. I'm just so used to the Freedom Caucus talking this huge game, and then the night before the vote, they're promising that this time they're really gonna hang together against. And this is against Trump, like against Boehner. You know, they got a spine. McCarthy against McCarthy. They've got a spine against Trump. Yeah, they have always just talk to talk. And then when it comes time to walk, to walk, they get just enough no votes that it still passes. So why. I have a theory, but I'm curious for why you think this is different.
Eve
Well, my theory is that they feel like they've been taken for chumps for the last. Roughly the last time.
Krystal
You say that every time because they are chumps.
Eve
Well, I'd say that they would say that every time over the course of the last year. Whereas before, I mean, when you're in opposition, you know, it's easier, but. Whereas before, they feel like they were being. They were able to make more significant concessions, whereas because of the Trump factor, they have acquiesced and said, we trust Trump. There's this new thing where conservative media used to be like conservative media itself, not like Fox News, but, you know, the ecosystem of alternative conservative media used to be very in favor of the Freedom Caucus, and still is, for the most part. But when Trump is on the other side of the Freedom Caucus, a lot of that medieval side with Trump, right. You know, you get the Breitbarts of the world or the Bannons of the world will get on board. With Trump and say, this is Trump's plan. We're going along with Trump. This is the point that Trump is making. But at this point, that's gone on so long that the Freedom Caucus is like, hey, we cannot pass this budget resolution without spending cuts that offset what's going on. Like, you just. This is a quote to the Hill from Eric Burleson, who's a Freedom Caucus member, who called Trump's budget bill, quote, financially immoral. They're not, you know, quibbling with the bill. They see it as being, like, really significantly messed up. And that's where. So this is Lloyd Smucker, quote, we've got to. That's a hell of a name. We've got to reduce spending to put the country on a better path fiscally. Yeah. I think the disagreement is some of us really believe that the resolution is an important foundation on which to build a good bill. And so we want to ensure that some of the principles that all of us agree to are included. Man. Good luck. That's all I can say.
Krystal
Yeah. My theory for why they would. They might hold the line here is that it's not a big. The stakes aren't that high. Like, if you don't pass this reconciliation instruction now, you can still do it in two weeks. There's not gonna be a government shutdown. Like, there's no. Trump wants it. But as my kids say, or I would say to my kids, it's a want, not a need.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
So he doesn't need it. And so if he doesn't need it, it's like, what leverage does he have? And also, I think Trump is gonna find out something about the law of political capital in Washington that there's only. There's only so much you can do to your own approval rating and to the hopes and the feelings of the American public. Like, if they turn and they're like, we think we're headed for a recession, and this all sucks.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
You don't have as much power when you call up Andy Harris and are like, I really need you here.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
It's like, well, you know what? Maybe you shouldn't have, like, wrecked the country in three months.
Eve
It's completely true that. You know, one of the people leading this current resistance from Trump's right flank is Chip Roy. And Chip Roy and Trump have had many differences and trade barbs and sort of it's baked into their relationship. But Chip Roy is a leader in Freedom Caucus circles. He's somebody even in, like, conservative media that people look to as kind of A weather vane, you know, to see what the conservative take is or the kind of hardcore conservative take is on a given situation on Capitol Hill. And he's being really adamant right now. And I think, I think Ryan part of the reason is while there is support for industrial policy protectionism, even from people who would have previously in the Tea Party era been very skeptical of that, there's some support for restructuring our trade relationships, there's not support for this indefinite testing of the market and of these major companies, bottom lines. Because to a certain extent, it doesn't. It gets away from populism. We've talked about this the entire show. But, like, at a certain extent, it doesn't become populist. It becomes, like, oligarchical. So I think that's right now, probably factoring in, and this is, I think the point you're making is probably factoring into why there's a sort of invigorate, reinvigorated wave of frustration among folks in Freedom Caucus circles. Like, hey, we have to codify these spending cuts. These spending cuts can't just, we're cutting all these taxes. Great. If we don't codify these spending cuts now, when are we ever going to do that?
Krystal
So, yeah, Freedom Caucus might wind up with some of the same bad luck that the Democratic populists wound up with, which is that the moment that they, like, had neoliberalism on the run, they. And they've got the American rescue plan and they've got the child tax credit and they've got all of this kind of industrial spending, the exact moment that they're notching win after win after win, the economy is coming back from a pandemic. You've got all these corporations jacking up prices. You've got supply chains collapsing and you've got these price increases. So it was the most difficult political environment to push a lot of new federal spending, even popular federal spending, into the economy and into the public. And a lot of it was rolled back as a result. And people were very angry then when it was rolled back. Now, just as the Freedom Caucus is getting the ability to really slash spending in a serious way, they might be doing it into the teeth of a fierce recession, which is the absolute last time the public wants to hear about austerity.
Eve
Yep.
Krystal
Yep. It's just unfair. Boy, the world isn't fair.
Eve
The world is not fair. Life lessons from Ryan Gryn. Ryan Gryn. I just said I was trying to say Ryan Grim on counterpoints, and it turned out to be Ryan Gryn counterpoints so either way, I think it works great. Let's move on to this interview set up with Congressman D'Alucio, who has taken some arrows in a really interesting way for his criticism of Donald Trump, while also supporting just the idea that maybe.
Krystal
Some tariffs are okay.
Eve
Maybe a little bit.
Krystal
Yeah. All right. Stick around for that.
Adam
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.
Naomi Klein
Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts do.
Krystal
They ever actually clean the ball pit at these kids play gyms? Or is my kid just swimming in.
Naomi Klein
A vat of bacteria, catching whatever cootie.
Krystal
Of the day is breeding in there? A cootie that'll probably take down our whole family.
Naomi Klein
Luckily, with Amazon One Medical 24. 7 Virtual Care, you can get checked out for whatever ball pittitis you've contracted. Amazon won. Medical healthcare just got less painful.
Emily
For period protection, 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 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 leaks. Find the style and level of protection you want@Knicks.com and use code Flow15 for 15% off. That's Knix.com code Flow15 for 15% off. Nix for your leaks for your life.
Krystal
All right. To talk more about these tariffs and the Democratic response, joined by Pittsburgh Democratic Congressman Chris D'Aluisio. Congressman, thanks for joining us.
Chris D'Aluisio
Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on.
Krystal
So you found yourself kind of at the center of this controversy as somebody who actually cares about industrial policy and manufacturing. All of a sudden the entire world is focused on this. You wrote a piece in the New York Times that got a lot of attention fairly recently and also had a post go kind of viral on on the Interwebs where you made the case that, okay, Trump's tariffs are wrong, but here's where tariff policy and industrial policy can play a role. And, man, I was stunned to see how many Democrats were furious about that. They're like, how dare you? All we should be saying is that Trump bad. So we want to get into that in a moment, but wanted to start with Caroline Levitt over in the White House talking about iPhone production in the wake of some news that if we completely reshored all of our iPhone production, an iPhone would cost something like $29,000. I don't know what kind of deal you get from your carrier that makes it a little bit cheaper. Maybe you can get that down to 25,000 with the right bargaining in the Verizon store. But let's roll. Ms. Levitt here. And I want to get some of your response to this.
Adam
Does the president endorse something that Howard.
Krystal
Lutnick said on television this weekend, which.
Adam
Was that the army of millions and.
Eve
Millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that that kind of thing is going to be moving to the U.S. is that how the president envisions manufacturing shifting, and if so, how long would that take, roughly?
Krystal
Ms.
Eve
The president wants to increase manufacturing jobs here in the United States of America, but he's also looking at advanced technologies. He's also looking at AI in emerging fields that are growing around the world that the United States needs to be a leader in as well. So there's an array of diverse jobs, more traditional manufacturing jobs, as you discussed, but also jobs in advanced technologies. The president is looking at all of those. He wants them to come back home. But iPhones specifically, is that something that.
Krystal
He thinks is the kind of technology.
Eve
That can move to the U.S. Ms. Absolutely. He believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. And as you know, Apple has invested $500 billion dollars here in the United States. So if Apple didn't think the United States could do it, they probably wouldn't have put up that big chunk of change.
Krystal
So is this talk of $3,000 or $30,000 iPhones. Is this fear mongering to push back against decent industrial policy or is this something that needs to be taken into consideration? Where do you come down on these questions of cost versus the ability to make a living?
Chris D'Aluisio
Ryan, like your question gets to the heart of this, which is why the president's across the board blanket approach has been terrible. You cannot use this one tool of tariffs, throw them on everybody and expect you're going to magically have manufacturing in this country. You got to look where there are trade sheets and be tough on enforcing them. And that's communist China around things like steel, for instance. You got to have the industrial policy. You got to incentivize manufacturing in this country. You need real policy from Washington to do it. It, especially when you've got sectors and companies here that have to compete with foreign competition that's being propped up by their governments. This is not some equal playing field. And I come back to the fundamental problem of what Trump did. Grow in tariffs on everybody, friend and foe alike, does not work. You got to be specific to the sector. You got to have industrial policy with it. And we're seeing the cost of this right now. And the way markets have responded, the way workers are responding, this isn't it. And that doesn't mean that you should ignore when a country like China breaks the rules, tough enforcement includes things like targeted tariffs. I don't think people are comfortable with, say, slave labor making goods that get imported to this country. But that is so far afield from what Donald Trump just did. And we can't turn the blind eye to getting industrial policy right in this country.
Eve
And if I were to channel a sentiment, I think some of the voters in your district who are still with Donald Trump, I don't know how many it is, but I presume some people just knowing the Republican electorate will probably say to you, congressman, well, if it's not Donald Trump, then what is it? Is it Kamala Harris? Is it, you know, is my alternative some, you know, moderate Republican? Nobody else wants to take on these problems quite like Donald Trump. And this gets to the point that Ryan was making when we were speaking earlier, that this isi mean you're almost an outlier in your own party. And it has to be sort of tough to convince other Democrats that there's a nuance that's important to talk about right now. We were talking before we went to air that. You were on the front page of Politico in an article that's headlined Democrats find Trump's Haphazard Tariffs are uniting them on trade. But there's a quote in that piece from Charlotte Clymer that says Democrats are pretty uniform, if not entirely. Or this is from you. You say Democrats are pretty uniform, if not entirely uniform. Making the case that what's happening right now is really dangerous. Charlotte Clymer says trying to offer nuance on Trump's disastrous tariffs policy in this moment is like telling someone with alcohol poisoning, you know, red wine in moderation is actually good for heart health. It's missing the point. It's bad messaging. Can I just get you to respond to that? Because I think there are probably a lot of Trump fans in your own district who say, what is my option? What's the alternative? You know, maybe this is crazy, but the alternative seems crazy to me, too.
Krystal
Well, I think you get to the.
Chris D'Aluisio
Heart of whether saying the other guy is bad is just enough. I don't think it's good policy. I don't think it's good politics. Right. We now have Donald Trump in a second term in the presidency, and Democrats have lost the House and the Senate. I don't think us saying the other guy is bad, which we should say. And I am saying, as a guy from the Rust Belt, trade policy right now is reckless and dangerous. We should say that we got to tell the American people what the heck we're going to do if they trust us to govern in two years and four years. There is never a bad time to say what you're doing to protect your people when they're getting hurt and what you will do if you're trusted to govern. And I don't shy away from that ever.
Krystal
To that point, let's put up E3, which is your New York Times article. This ran about a month ago. You know, you could see, you could see this coming at the time. I'm a Rust Belt Democrat from a swing district. Anti tariff, absolute absolutism is a mistake. And then, look, you put up E4. Let's play this SOT, which is what got the likes of Charlotte Clymer and others just absolutely limit. It's about a minute, and let's roll that here.
Chris D'Aluisio
Chris D'Aluzio here from Western Pennsylvania, proud son of the Rust Belt. Wrong. For decades, consensus in Washington on free trade's been a race to the bottom. It's hollowed out our industrial power, cost us. Good job. The president's tariff announcement, though, and his trade strategy has been chaotic. It's been inconsistent. We should not treat our economic allies like Canada the same as trade cheats. Like Communist China. I do not want to see corporations use the COVID of these tariffs to now price gouge families. Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically or they can be misused. They've got to be used in sectors that make sense. They got to be paired with real meaningful industrial policies, pro worker policies. I'm talking about tax incentives to juice American manufacturing, get those supply chains back home to go after corporate price gouging and stock buybacks and better protections for workers to have the freedom to form and join a union. We've got to get a better trade approach in this country and we've got to put workers and American families at the heart of it.
Krystal
For me from the left, it was kind of depressing to see something that seemed to me to be fairly straightforward and sensical treated as some type of capitulation to Trump. You listen to that. You're like, yeah, that all makes sense. Was that viral response, do you think? Not real life and isolated on the Internet. Does that represent a significant faction within the Democratic Party that is genuinely still dug in on pure free trade and against any industrial policy policy? How have your colleagues responded to this versus how it was received by the kind of blue sky public?
Chris D'Aluisio
Yeah, I mean, look, I'll say from where I sit in western Pennsylvania and communities like mine across, say the Rust Belt people want us to have more manufacturing jobs. They want us to have a better trade policy. And overwhelmingly they think what Donald Trump just did is not it. It is a mistake. And I think we can chew gum and walk at the same time. We got to be able to criticize the other guy and say also what we think and believe. And I don't know who the heck thinks it is smart policy or politics to tell people that we should have manufacturing jobs in America, that we should turn a blind eye to exploited workers and environmental pollution that we all pay for. That's not the answer. And we even saw President Biden, I think, correctly respond to trade cheat and breaking the rules in China around steel, for instance, to do strategic targeted tariffs there. Pair it with some incentives here at home that is so far afield from what Donald Trump just did. And yet I think you finally see some Democrats saying, okay, what he did was wrong. Here's what we think the Democratic Party ought to do to revitalize American manufacturing. And I serve on the Armed Services Committee. There's a lot of time spent over there worrying about our defense industrial base base. If you don't have an industrial base in this country, you are not ever going to be able to mobilize the way you had to and say the Second World War, God forbid we're in something like that. Again, you have to have an industrial base in this country for a lot of reasons, and national security is a big part of it.
Eve
How optimistic are you that Democrats are? Let's say there's a concern that a lot of people have that because of the way that Donald Trump has approached this tariff is now going to become a culture war word that people are going to kind of polarize in elite spaces even further than they already were against tariffs, period. And I guess, are you optimistic Joe Biden had an industrial policy. He kept Trump's first term China tariffs. But that feels almost like a relic of the past at the Democratic Party. And I'm curious if you think that's true, especially as Democrats have sort of, to paraphrase this political article, unified against the Trump tariffs, is there a risk that, that Democrats just sort of become not just anti tariffs, but disinterested in industrial policy, disinterested in balancing some of these genuinely problematic relationships?
Chris D'Aluisio
I hope not. We stop to make stuff in America and, you know, we can't just be focused on the past. We got to make stuff that we can compete and that we need in the economy of tomorrow. I think it'd be a mistake for Democrats to walk away from caring about manufacturing jobs. I don't sense that either.
Krystal
Right.
Chris D'Aluisio
I think it's fine to criticize the president. I criticize the president here. But I think there are a lot of us, most of us, many of us who want to have strong manufacturing jobs and have that industrial policy with labor alongside at the heart of putting those policies together. That's the Democratic Party coalition that I know that is rock solid in Western Pennsylvania and places like it. And it's where we go in the future to win.
Krystal
How is this going to end? Do you have any for people who are scared watching this? Do you, Are you in touch with the White House at all? Like, what does Democratic leadership think about this? Like, how do. Where do we go from here? Like, Wall street seems to think he's going to back down. I don't think so.
Chris D'Aluisio
And I don't think you say the White House. I don't think there's one view there what the heck they're doing. I mean, that's the other problem here. And our allies and our adversaries alike see that. And even you talk to business leaders, they don't know how the heck to plan investment if they want to bring manufacturing back when they've got the trade environment changing day to day. You need certainty to even make the kind of investments you want to grow American manufacturing. So this is also reckless and nuts and is divorced from any real meaningful industrial policy or strategy that you would actually need to supercharge the kind of jobs we want, this country.
Krystal
All right, well, thank you so much. And I'll say this, Ryan.
Chris D'Aluisio
I say that as a guy from the Rust Belt, from Western Pennsylvania who wants to see these jobs grow. It's just nuts.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
Yeah, that's how I feel too. It's like you're giving a bad name to the entire idea of trying to do this like the next as you're kind of finding out that the next person that comes forward with ideas about how to revitalize American manufacturing, people are going to be like, that's cool. But are you gonna make it so I can't retire again? Cause that wasn't fun. So sucks. Anyway, thanks for joining us.
Chris D'Aluisio
Thanks, Jeff.
Eve
Thank you, Congressman.
Adam
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.
Naomi Klein
Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy. I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right? Next time use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And no, those were not raisins. Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.
Emily
For period protection you can put on and forget about nothing. Beats Nick's 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 FLOW15 for 15% off. That's K-N-I X.com code FLO15 for 15% off. Nix for your leaks for your life.
Krystal
Hamas, through attorneys in the United Kingdom, has filed suit to have its terror listing delisted. We can put this first element up on the screen. This is reported in Dropsite News by Jeremy Scahill this morning. It's a more than 100 page legal filing that includes several components, one of which we want to just go through here because it is kind of a historic and kind of fascinating document. One of the founders of Hamas, Musa Abu Marzouk, filed a kind of 11 or 12 page kind of accompanying letter along with it in which he makes the case for why Hamas should not actually be listed as a terror group. The basis for the case is because Hamas has never this is the argument that they make. Hamas has never engaged in any attacks outside of what they call historic Palestine. They specifically note that despite the UK's role in facilitating the ongoing genocide, they have never and will never attack Britain in any way. They said if a British citizen signs up for the IDF and comes into Gaza, then they're fair game. But otherwise they, unlike some other Palestinian factions, have never engaged in any terrorism or militant action outside of what they would call historic Palestine or the Zionist entity or whatever. They also have, and we want to go into detail of this because it's, I think it's really interesting. They also talk about free speech, the threat that Zionism poses to free speech in the West. They talk about antisemitism. And not only do they decry the scourge of anti Semitism, they argue, kind of echoing arguments that you hear on this program, that conflating anti Zionism and anti Semitism conflict. Conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel waters down the definition of antisemitism and actually makes it more likely that you're going to see more anti Semitism. Hamas specifically praises Jewish students who have participated in protests around the world and in the US and even praises Jewish Israelis who have protested against the slaughter of civilians. And I don't think any Hamas official has ever done that before ever praised an Israeli citizen who was a Jewish Israeli citizen. Like I think that, I think that's a. They think that is a first. They also talk about what they would see as quote, unquote national liberation. They do not in this document they do not recognize Israel, say they will never recognize Israel, say that the only solution long term is complete liberation, meaning no Israel. No Israel. That's their political line. The very next line and we can get into this. The very next line says however. And you know they always say ignore everything that comes before the but. So Hamas's but is. But we are willing to accept a long term truce that is basically a two state solution along 1967 lines. And the reason they call it a long term truce is that it allows them to maintain their pride of not having to say that they are willing to recognize Israel and accept a two state solution while still accepting it as an objective reality. Because they would be saying, well, this is just a long term truce. Of course, that's all anything is in this world is a long term truce. That's all you get. And then after this long term truce there would be negotiations that they could, that you do then enter into that yields an actual two state solution, an actual recognition. But they're not going to do that preemptively. And they think that Arafat doing that preemptively recognizing Israel without getting recognition of a Palestinian state was a mistake that led to the current situation. Endless occupation. I can read some parts from this, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts in general on this. The notion of even the notion of Hamas, Hamas engaging with attorneys can't pay them because they'd be under sanctions if they got paid. Not be pro bono. But engaging with the west in this way suggests kind of a shift in strategy.
Eve
I mean it seems clearly to suggest a shift in strategy and one that perhaps could be attributed to the west, especially the United States, shifting perspective on Israel. It's not to say the west is embracing Hamas, although some of the, some of the Israel backers would certainly say that's what's happening. It gets equated anti Zionism gets equated conflated intentionally with support for Hamas, but because people are increasingly skeptical of fully backing Israel. Not just on the kind of, of far left, but we see opinion polls that creeping more and more into the kind of mainstream public perspective, especially here in the United States. I actually am very curious for your perspective on this reign if that seems to be something that's juicing Hamas's. I guess approach to negotiating with the west, that they feel as though now they're in a position where Israel's narrative is slipped a bit, for better or worse, in the west, and they can now come in and operate like a state.
Krystal
Yeah.
Eve
Is that.
Krystal
Yeah. And I think they have been heartened to see the amount of support from the global public, from so many countries, joining South Africa's ICJ case, for instance.
Eve
So support not for Hamas, though, because. Is that what you just said people would say? You're saying Hamas is heartened by the.
Krystal
Support for Hamas, the support for resistance against Israel. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of them equate that to some support for Hamas, because as like Hamas argues, Hamas equates that with.
Eve
Support for Hamas, even though many of the people who are backing or who.
Krystal
Are opposing Israel support Hamas.
Eve
Hey.
Krystal
And Hamas makes Hamas actually addresses that in this legal filing or at least in this side letter. What they say is. Look, a lot of what they say is, we understand people are against the genocide, people are against what Israel is doing, and we are the ones that are fighting against that, like literally fighting against it. So therefore, you've got to give us some credit for doing that. But the discussion of anti Semitism is truly fascinating. So let's roll through some of this and we can put that first element back up on the screen for some of us. They say, he writes, we reject any allegations that we are anti Semitic or that we target Jewish people. And this is a fascinating line. He says, I appreciate that there is a level of controversy surrounding some of the wording of our founding charter. The founding charter includes explicit anti Semitism.
Eve
Yes.
Krystal
So he explains that or argues, this was drafted without consultation with the senior leadership, who were either in prison or in exile at the time. Hamas has published a series of other documents since then, culminating in our document of general principles and policies of 2017, all of which expressly distinguish between Jews and Zionists. I have incorporated parts of that policy within this witness statement as continuing to reflect the positions of the movement. So that is as close as you're going to get, I think, to an apology for the language that. The anti Semitic language that was in the original charter documents. And then they. So then he goes on to say explicitly, our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion, but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jewish people with their own colonial project and illegal entity. We acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity shown to our people and our struggle by many Jewish people around the world. Including within Israel, whose stance against Zionism exposes the dangerous lies that conflates Judaism with Zionism. And that's the line that I was saying. I was talking to Jeremy about this this morning, and he was saying he thinks that that's kind of an unprecedented statement from, From a member of Hamas, a founding member of Hamas, even, to say, we acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity shown to our people by many Jewish people, including within Israel. I mean, they put Israel in quotes because that's what they do, because they don't recognize it officially, but that is a significant step. So they go on. We are particularly appalled. And this is the part that I said, sounds like they're watching this program. We are particularly appalled by the weaponization of anti Semitism to attempt to silence those standing against apartheid, occupation and genocide. The Zionist entity and its supporters have completely undermined the struggle against genuine anti Semitism by manipulating the term to protect the Zionist entity from criticism and censure. Over the past year, Zionists have accused numerous officials and institutions of being anti Semitic, including the UN Special Rapporteur, the UN General Secretary, unrwa, the icj, the icc, the government of South Africa, the Irish Dowse, Simon Harris, and the President of Ireland, Michael Higgins. In the process, Zionists have debased and degraded the important definition of antisemitism until it means almost nothing. Zionists, many of them not Jewish, have deliberately fashioned an utterly warped definition of antisemitism, and they consciously wield it to shield Zionism and Israel from entirely legitimate criticism. At a time when actual antisemitism is on the rise, this shameless crying wolf is a staggeringly irresponsible and dangerous policy to pursue. It diminishes our ability to combat antisemitism when and where it does actually arise. Where's the lie?
Eve
I mean, there's plenty of genuine antisemitism among.
Krystal
And that is Hamas point, which is fascinating. Hamas is calling out its own the rise. No, no, no. Hamas is saying anti Semitism is on the rise. Genuine anti Semitism is on the rise. And this conflation of Zionism and anti Semitic anti Semitism is fueling it, which is true.
Eve
And their argument is going to be that they are now the bulwark.
Krystal
They are arguing the tip of the spear. They are doing more than the ADL fighting antisemitism. Antisemitism? Yes.
Eve
I mean, that's. I feel like the, you know, the galaxy brain meme, where it's like the game of 4D chess.
Krystal
But if you step back, like, why is Hamas argument Is our problem is with the Zionists.
Eve
Yeah, I think it's interesting. I'm just skeptical that it's actually representative of Hamas leadership's views. It sounds like tactically. I think tactically it's very clever. I'm just genuinely skeptical that that charter was changed, what, in 2017, 2018.
Krystal
Well, 2017 is when it was codified. Like he was saying there were many steps taken in that direction to move away from that anti Semitic language that was inserted in the beginning.
Eve
Yeah, I mean, we could talk about. There is a non insignificant portion of people who are in the Gaza Strip who aren't even in Hamas, who have, I would say, like, like deep bigotry. And it doesn'ti'm not saying it doesn't exist on the other side, but have deep bigotry towards Jews. And so I suppose, I think it's both substantively important and interesting that they're making this tactical. I think you're right, like tactical shift. I also think I'm skeptical of how genuinely that represents their position.
Krystal
And so they spell this. They go further into the history. It's really interesting, into the history here and make the point, which historically is an accurate point, that there has been far, far more anti Semitism in Europe and if you include Russia and Europe, Europe than in the Middle east over the years, like that's just been the case. So here they write, the Palestinian people have always stood against oppression, injustice and the committing of massacres against civilians, regardless of who commit them. Based on our religious and moral values, we clearly stated our rejection to what the Jews were exposed to by the Nazi Germany. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Arab and Islamic environment was an example of coexistence, cultural interaction and religious freedoms. The current conflict is caused by the Zionist aggressive behavior and its alliance with the Western colonial powers. Therefore, we reject the exploitation of the Jewish suffering in Europe to justify the oppression against our people in Palestine. Zionist movement which was able, with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settler colonialism. That form has already been defeated and eradicated from much of the world and must similarly be defeated and eradicated from Palestine. So that's an argument you hear a lot that obviously Nazi Germany was a European, that that was Europe. And you'll often hear people say, what did Palestine have to do with that? Why did Palestine pay for the Genuine sins of Europe, which flowed out of their history of anti Semitism. Yeah, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire compared to Europe, far, far better place for, indeed, Jewish people.
Eve
Jews were fleeing anti Semitism in Europe.
Krystal
To the Ottoman Empire.
Eve
Going to.
Krystal
Yeah, going to the Ottoman Empire and being recruited to go there.
Eve
Yeah. No, I mean, there's something interesting. So there's. This is to the point I was making. This was back in 2019, a Hamas official.
Krystal
Oh, and when did Spain really kick off its real anti Semitic purge? When the Muslims left.
Eve
This Hamas official Back in 2019, Fatih Hamad had said, all of you, 7 million Palestinians abroad, enough of the warming up. You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe.
Krystal
Say that again.
Eve
This is a 2019 quote from a Hamas official, Fatih Hamad, who said, all of you, 7 million Palestinians abroad, enough of the warming up. You have Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing, if God permits. Enough of the warming up.
Krystal
Up.
Eve
Well, back in 2019, so before October 7, obviously he walked that back. The point that you're making, he was clearly under pressure from Hamas's political leadership. Yeah.
Krystal
What are you doing?
Eve
Right.
Krystal
And he's not a policy.
Eve
And he said in a statement that was posted on Hamas's website, Hamas's consistent adopted policy of limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine's land and defiles its holy site rights. He said that's what he supports now, limiting its resistance to the Zionist occupation that usurps Palestine's land. And this is both the point you're making and I think the point that I'm making, which is it's not new for Hamas to start trending in this direction, but this represents a significant tactical shift. On the other hand, my point is just that I don't think you go from point A to point B if you're Fatih Hamad because you've suddenly had a change of heart and don't think Palestinians everywhere should kill Jews everywhere. I think you do that because you're under political pressure. And so all I'm saying is that I am skeptical that this represents some type of genuine. Some type of genuine dissolution of bigotry among the ranks across the board.
Krystal
Let's say there is anti Semitism and hatred in the hearts of some members of. Of Hamas, which I don't doubt for a second.
Eve
Right.
Krystal
The question is whether that as a policy is suppressed or whether it is encouraged.
Eve
Right. No, I agree. Yeah. I think that's a Good question.
Krystal
Like in the U.S. for instance, there are all kinds of ugly sentiments that some American people have. Whether the government and a political movement is celebrating those and exactly pouring gasoline on them versus whether they're telling you through education and through messaging and through modeling good behavior, are saying, no, that's not actually how we as Americans are going to treat immigrants or whoever.
Eve
Cultural norms.
Krystal
Yeah, just let's do the British part for a second. Marzouk writes, the British government's decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation ethic cleansing in Palestine for over a century. Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter's ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people. It is perhaps out of colonial guilt that Britain fears that one day those it oppresses will strike back against the sponsors of the Zionist entity. Britain should have no such fear. Unquote.
Eve
Mm.
Krystal
Like, look, guys, we're like, our beef. And they're like, look, our beef is not with you.
Eve
So, I mean, I think from like a realist perspective, there's an argument for dealing with Hamas as a state entity that makes negotiating. We saw this with actually Steve Witkoff, and Witkoff got a ton of flack for actually stepping in when the Biden administration's negotiations with if Hamas had stalled for a long time. So you can't talk to Hamas, you can't deal with Hamas, you can't negotiate with Hamas. And Wycoff came in, actually yielded results to have direct negotiations. I mean, he was going through Qatar, obviously. But to have more direct negotiations with Hamas, does that put the world on a better track to some lasting peace? I think, as you know, uncomfortable as it is for the west, it probably does.
Krystal
And while we're talking about uncomfortable things, let's do another one. Here they have a section on prisoners, so I want people to hear this whether they agree with it or not. It is a tragic reality that almost every Palestinian household has a family member being detained in an Israeli prison. And they forgot to put the quotes around Israeli there. Guess they just recognized Israel. Look at that. Since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children, have been incarcerated by the Zionist military. The thousands of Palestinian political prisoners or hostages currently languishing in Zionist prisons where they are routinely tortured, raped and mistreated, include hundreds of women and children, many of whom are subject to administrative detention, which can be renewed indefinitely. That is true. The release of the Palestinian prisoners is a consensus position. This is where it gets uncomfortable for Western ears. The release of the Palestinian prisoners is a consensus position among Palestinians with strong support from all sectors of society, where appeals to the international community to release our prisoners have fallen on deaf ears. Our experience has demonstrated that the most effective method of liberating our prisoners. Prisoners is through the prisoner exchange process. So in case that needs translation for anybody, they are explaining to the public and to the British government here why they take hostages, that there are thousands of Palestinian prisoners rotting away in administrative detention, facing, according to human rights groups, torture, sexual assault in a systematic way. The world public has been unable to get them out. So they're going to take. And what they're saying, what they have found is the most successful way to get them out is to take hostages and then exchange the hostages. And that has. That's true. Like that, you know, that has been. And that was the real goal of October 7th was to take a lot of hostages.
Eve
Right.
Krystal
And then exchange them for the thousands of prisoners. Right. They're saying the root cause of their hostage taking is your hostage taking. Like that's the argument that they're making here. Like I said, that's not gonna be a comfort one for Western ears.
Eve
No, no, no, no.
Krystal
But it's. That's what people mean when they say history didn't start on October 7th.
Eve
Well, it's also the problem with just putting everybody into this, like a box that can't be opened or dealt with is you end up flattening people and not understanding their, like, how they see their intentions and motivations. Which, if you want to, quote, defeat Hamas or crush Hamas, you have to actually understand Hamas. You can't just dismiss how they see their intentions and motivations. It's not to say those intentions and motivations are right. It's just to say it's actually useful to understand their intentions and motivations.
Krystal
Yeah. A couple other pieces. They try to take credit for the Great March of Return. This was the 2018 Nonviolent Civil Society led demonstrations that every Friday would kind of march to the fence and picnic. And it was kind of celebratory and it was the kind of nonviolent resistance that defenders of Israel have always said, this is what the Palestinians should do. This is what we would respect. This is like Gandhi. This is like mlk, do that and we'll give you your liberation. Instead, they gave them bullets in their knees, created an entire generation of crippled people in Palestine. Hamas initially kind of resisted the Great March of Return, but because it was so popular in Gaza, eventually endorsed it the way they cover it here is they say Hamas has a history of both armed and unarmed resistance. The latter was manifested in its support and facilitation of initiatives like the Great March of Return and Hamas's involvement in parliamentary elections. Unfortunately, such initiatives were only met with further military assaults by the Zionist entity and genocidal sanctions imposed by the Western world. I think we can finish with. Let's touch on their writing of October 7th because this is also at the center of, of obviously everything, why 18 months later is still being flattened. So he writes, on the morning of October 7, Qassam Brigades executed a military maneuver targeting the Gaza division of Israel's Southern Command. So very clearly situating it as a military effort not directed at civilians. That's the point he's trying to make there. Much has been said and written about the operation, but there has been little coverage in the English speaking world about the intended nature of the operation as articulated by the movement itself in its various written statements and interviews over the past 17 months. I've prepared a separate witness statement focusing on the operation. Suffice to say here that the instructions given to our elite forces, our nukpa, were to kill and capture Zionist soldiers and not to target women, children and the elderly. To the extent that any individual crimes were allegedly committed by our soldiers, we have internal mechanisms for investigating and disciplining them. Unlike the Zionist entity, we take justice and accountability very seriously. And to that extent, we remain as always prepared to cooperate with any international investigations and inquiries into the operation, even if Israel refuses to do so. As we know, hundreds of civilians were killed, particularly those attending the festival, as well as people who were in the kibbutzim. So this is their effort to say that that was not their policy, that they regret it, and that they're open to investigations. I don't know what investigations they have now. They're sort of claiming here that they would have carried out some internal investigations and found people who committed these war crimes and brought them to justice. I haven't seen any evidence that that has happened. Doesn't mean it has, hasn't, has or hasn't. But I haven't seen the evidence. A lot of those soldiers would have been killed, like never actually made it back to Gaza to face that alleged inquiry. But anyways, how do you read that writing of October 7th?
Eve
I mean, I don't find it surprising. It's all this is, the report here overall is just, I think, indicative of something changing. And that's what it's not entirely surprising, but it does Seem new. I don't know.
Krystal
It's something new. Yeah. It's trying to meet.
Eve
Right, right, right.
Krystal
It's trying to acknowledge, actually it is what it is. They use the word alleged, but what they're doing is acknowledging that war crimes were committed.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
And that there should be an investigation into those, into those war crimes. The, the, the, the fact that the rave was happening there.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
Has changed history in such a profound way.
Eve
Yep.
Krystal
And we, we're, we've been working on an investigation that will have out soon at drop site, I hope, about why that rave was given an extra night. Like, do you know the story here? Like.
Eve
Yes.
Krystal
It was not supposed to even be there on Saturday.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
And by, by Friday there were all sorts of intel warnings that something was happening and they applied for an extra night and they're like a mile from the fence and were granted it.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
What were they doing there in the first place when there was. There's like so much area in the desert where they could be.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
Like what. And if, if they had not been there, the number of civilian casualties would have been many hundreds less. And number of hostages many, you know, significantly less. That does not forgive or excuse the decision by the militants there to terrorists there to kill innocent people who are just there celebrating. Doesn't forgive that for a second last piece just so I can. Because I went over this, but I'll just read. This is their proposed 67 solution. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures. And no matter how long the occupation lasts, Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine. From the river to the sea. So there's the peace that defenders of Israel say, See, I told you. All they want is the. The eradication of Israel. Complete, total genocide of Israel. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights. And this is where their compromise comes when they say they're not compromising. Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital along the ceasefire line of 4 June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displace to their homes from which they were expelled to be a formula of national consensus. Hamas has on numerous occasions for over two decades proposed a hudna, or long term truce on this basis. Its goodwill has been abused by the Zionists who have assassinated members of its leadership to undermine such efforts. So that's a reference to there have been internal. There are internal fights, schisms within Hamas over this question. There are people who support this basically what is a two state end game within Hamas. And then there are those who do not. And Israel has systematically assassinated all of the ones who are in the moderate camp in order to elevate the extremist camp and then to point to the extremists as the reason that you need to do do endless war. And notice what they call. They don't say, they support it, what they say. They consider it a formula of national consensus. They're really being pulled to it.
Eve
Yeah.
Krystal
Kind of being forced. They're like, we understand that Palestinian national consensus is that this would be an acceptable outcome and we're not going to get in the way of that. So anyway, that's.
Eve
Well, the rest of the Arab world matters.
Krystal
And the right of return, that's like Israelis will also say, well, they're calling for the return of hostages to their homes, which makes it impossible because you'd have to uproot people who are currently in their homes. But that's where you negotiate. What is that? What is it? What do you do with that? Right? Like you have that right, but is that right? Can that right then be assigned to a different home?
Eve
Home?
Krystal
You're not going to actually physically remove people from their homes like settlers do in the west bank on a regular basis.
Eve
More great reporting from Dropsite Ryan. Thank you.
Krystal
Yeah, interesting stuff, that's for sure.
Eve
Truly speaking of very interesting stuff. Let's move on to your interview with Naomi Klein. Maybe you can set this up because you two had a great conversation. She was name checked in a compact magazine substack article article by Jeff Schoellenberger, who's a really interesting writer and was reflecting on his own memories of what the left was like at the end of the 90s and in the early aughts when the no Logo movement that Naomi Klein obviously gave name to but was inspired by and then became a part of through the work of no Logo. He was reflecting to say this was a real push against globalization.
Krystal
And.
Eve
And I went back and watched a documentary that Naomi Klem didI think she tells you in this interview that it was back in 2000 where there's a clip of her talking about globalization's impact. Much of the documentary is focused on globalization's impact on sweatshop laborers. And that'll be very familiar to people who remember these days. But a lot of it also was focused on what had happened to American workers. And there was this slice of the interview about a minute long, where she sounded back in 2000, a lot of the same notes that people on the right are sounding now in defense of Trump's tariff policy overall, if not the particular tactics, but of the policy.
Krystal
Right? Yeah. And credit to you for suggesting this interview. We wanted to have her on the show this morning, but she lives on the west coast of Canada, so it's like way too early for that. So I interviewed her yesterday afternoon. Well, let's roll some of that.
Adam
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% OFF.
Naomi Klein
Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy. I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right? Next time use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And no, those were not raisins. Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.
Emily
For period protection you can put on and forget about nothing beats Nick's 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. Nick's 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? Yep. 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 flow15 for 15% off. That's kn Ix.com code flow15 for 15% off. Nyx for your Leaks for your life.
Krystal
All right, joining us now to talk more about this global collapse of the New World Order, or whatever we want to call it.
Ryan
I think they call it a great Reset.
Eve
Right?
Krystal
The Great Reset. This is the Great Reset is none other than Naomi Klein, who relevant to this conversation is the author of many books, but in particular no logo published in 1999, which kind of drew inspiration from and also provided inspiration to the burgeoning anti globalization movement at the time. I don't know if I told you this. I got my kind of radical political awakening, you know, from that and, and from the, from Seattle. And then I ended up going, you know, Seattle was. End of 1999. I was in college on the east coast, so I was not about to go to Seattle, but I did go to. They called it a 16. This was the.
Ryan
Yeah. Yes. It was the IMF, World bank in Washington, D.C. yeah.
Krystal
April 2020. This like two or three day protest. One day was beautiful, another day it was like 40 degrees and raining. And I remember just getting drenched the entire day and then they finish it off by pepper spraying everybody and tear gassing. Were you at the, did you go to the Washington one?
Ryan
I was at the Washington one, yeah.
Krystal
Yeah.
Ryan
I actually wasn't in Seattle. No logo was at the printer. And, you know, I was writing about it, but I couldn't convince anyone to send me because at that point you couldn't convince sort of mainstream editors that there was a possible story to be told because the movement had yet to sort of burst onto the world stage as it did.
Krystal
Right. Seattle was kind of the. Yeah. The introduction of that movement to the world. And they understood, okay, okay, there is something going on here, which. And then it. And then. And I'll put this piece up real quick because they talk about this phenomenon, this compact magazine piece that has a very funny headline. What did you all think post Neoliberalism meant? Vibes, papers, essays, the strange career of anti globalization politics. And this is a reference to, you know, obviously this famous kind of. I guess it was a Tweet on, on October 7th. What did y'all think? You know, postcolonialism or decolonialism, you know, meant. So it's a, it's a kind of satirical riff on this. But they mentioned that after September 2000, September 11 attacks, the energy around the anti globalization movement really moved into anti war politics, trying to stop the, the, the looming invasion of Iraq, unsuccessfully trying to stop that, and, you know, obviously failed to do so and didn't really bubble back until 2010. And so now here we are more than 25 years later, and the biggest wrecking ball that's brought to the system of global free trade is brought by Donald Trump. So. And brought in a way that is. I don't want to put any words in your mouth. What's been. So I'm just curious, like, what's been your reaction to seeing the. The arc from Seattle to Trump?
Ryan
I mean, I have to say that quite a few of the think pieces, I'll put that in air quotes a little bit, including the one that you just put up there, are based on a bunch of really wrong assumptions about what that movement was in the first place. Not to say that there weren't protectionist elements to it. It was always a kind of an awkward coalition of more nationalist trade unions and internationalist human rights activists, environmentalists. The slogan in Seattle was Teamsters and turtles together again, which was a reference to the fact that there was this coalition between big unions like the Teamsters that were more interested in just protecting American jobs and environmentalists who were looking at how environmental deregulation or a race to the bottom was impacting, in this case, turtles who are being caught up in fishing nets. But the point is, we spent a ton of time back in the day actively correcting the record that we were not opposed to trade. We were opposed to. The phrase we used at the time was corporate rule. And there were huge teach ins in Seattle and Washington that were all about the fact that this thing that was just calling itself, this kind of anodyne free trade was not free, that it was a wish list for multinational corporations, overwhelmingly US Corporations, to just maximize their profits. And we are very, very far into that successful revolution. What we were naming at the time was that what this particular set of trade rules that were all about deregulation and pushing privatization and economic austerity would deliver would be a race to the bottom globally, on labor, on environmental standards. And I think anybody who thinks that Trump represents an end to corporate rule, and no, he is the fulfillment of it, Musk is the fulfillment of it. And definitely there are rifts inside their stre strange and awkward coalition about exactly how to go about this. But I would say the race to the bottom has been successful. And I think the reason why there is even the prospect of reassuring some production in the United States is because unions have been so successfully weakened over these 30 years because they're counting on a huge amount of automation. So they're not planning on paying any workers for most of this onshore production. And they've been saying this openly, right? Like, oh, we're going to be bringing like the iPhone assembly jobs back, but it's not going to be humans who are going to be assembling them.
Krystal
Right.
Ryan
And the other piece of this, and it's kind of driving me mad that people aren't connecting the dots, is where Doge fits in with all of this. Right? Because here is Musk and the boys who are decimating the regulatory state. So if there is, to an extent that there will be some onshoring under this new regime, like bringing jobs back to the US it's going to be precisely under the conditions of that race to the bottom that we were trying to stop in the first place. Right. So this is not an end to neoliberalism in many ways. It's its sort of logical culmination. And yeah, we tried to stop it. So sue us. We did try, yeah.
Krystal
And so my colleague Emily, who couldn't join us for this, found this clip from many years ago. Maybe you can tell us when exactly this was wanted to get your. I'll play this for you, the much younger Naomi Klein.
Ryan
Oh, my God.
Krystal
And then get your reaction to it now, how you would say it now.
Ryan
But the significance for a company like Nike is that building these kind of utopian branded worlds cost much more than just advertising a product. So you often hear companies openly saying that we have made a choice, we have decided to build our brand. But that choice has consequences. And one of the consequences is that when that decision is made, it is often accompanied by a decision to sell off factories and to embrace the Nike model, the company that owns all this intellectual property but doesn't own any factories. When a company decides to embrace this model, that obviously immediately affects their workforces. In North America and Europe, people who had steady unionized jobs were paid enough to support a family lose those jobs, cutting 6,000 jobs.
Krystal
Now unemployed lost another 42,000 jobs, cutting.
Eve
11.5 thousand jobs over their jobs.
Krystal
From factories across the south to plants overseas where labor is cheaper.
Ryan
The communities that were built around a factory that depended on these factories are often gutted. And the jobs that often come to replace these manufacturing jobs are these new economy jobs that are often service sector jobs.
Krystal
I would guess that you still agree with that analysis. When was that from, by the way? Do you think?
Ryan
Think probably 2000? Yeah, yeah, I, I think, you know, I was trying, I was describing.
Eve
A.
Ryan
Business model that, you know, a lot of, a lot of the reporting on offshoring at the time was described as companies closing Factories in one location and opening factories in another location. So what I was. What I was articulating in that clip, and it remains true in most sectors. There are some sectors that never fully embrace this model, but I'll just put an asterisk there. But this idea that really owning your own factories is kind of a loser's game, right? That if you're smart, you keep it light, you own your intellectual property, you employ designers and marketers, but. But you are going to produce through a web of global outsourcing. The exception to this are the auto companies, like the really heavy manufacturing, that tended to continue to own their assembly plants, Right? But everything that they could outsource to this web of contractors where you'd have some plausible deniability, they did, and that remains true. And this is one of the people who really represents this very, very powerfully is Donald Trump, right? I mean, he is a quintessential sort of hollow brand that, particularly after the Apprentice realized that he could make more money not opening his own hotels and buildings, but leasing out the Trump brand to whoever wanted to slap it onto their development and so on. And so when you talk about US Companies bringing the jobs home, it's completely anachronistic to how most of these companies actually function. They don't want to own the kinds of factories at the level that they used to because it's much, much more profitable to outsource all of that to a web of contractors. So some of them will come to the US but they'll still continue to use the leverage of being able to pit different contractors and subcontractors against each other for who can deliver the pieces of the assembly line at the lowest price. None of that has changed.
Krystal
So let's say that the Trump administration, you know, watched that clip and said, wow, this. This author really diagnosed the problem. Well, come on in. Like, tell us how we can fix this for. For American workers. And we can, like, what. What should they be doing if they.
Ryan
Were actually serious about assumes that. That Donald Trump and Elon Musk have any interest in actually in genuinely helping American workers if they wanted to do that, that, you know, the surest way that, that they would do that is support labor rights instead of trying to undercut them.
Krystal
Destroy the nlrb.
Ryan
Destroy the nlrb. Fight unionization in your own plants, as Elon Musk has done. So I think that this is really the COVID story for their use. And unfortunately, we have got a lot of labor leaders who are willing to play along with it, and maybe there will be some Marginal gains, but that remains to be seen. I think it's a very big gambler for big unions like the UAW to support this tariff regime. And I think the global impact of this. I'm talking to you from Canada, and the way many of us understand the impact of these terrorists is like, this is not the US Returning to protectionism, as Trump says again and again. It's about leverage. Right. If you listen to what he's actually saying, he's saying Canada is being unfair. Why are they being unfair? Because they're not letting our banks in. The US Healthcare sector desperately wants in. So there are a few protections that remained in place under the neoliberal trading regime. And I think that there's a calculation now, and there isn't agreement across the board among US Corporations that now the US has the leverage to get even more right to knock down the remaining barriers. So I don't believe he really is a protectionist in the way that he wants to market himself to US Manufacturing workers for whom he represents a kind of a. I've called it toxic nostalgia in the past. Like this idea that you're going to return to some manufacturing heyday that has passed and it isn't going to happen. And where I think you really see the lie of it is around AI because some of his, the centerpiece of the biggest investments that he has announced so far as president have been with the big tech companies around massive data centers that are unleashing technologies that will decimate American jobs. So this idea that he would bring me in to figure out how to help American workers is absurd. I reject the premise. I think he's a marketer, and part of how he's marketing himself is as a champion of American workers who he has screwed his entire life.
Krystal
Now, last question for you. One thing you've been really good at throughout your writing career has been seeing where things are going next, seeing around the corner that's that. That others couldn't quite see around. Do you still have that vision? Like, do you. And do you see, like, where do you see this going? Like, where, where is this, where is the United States headed? Where's the, where's, where's this world system headed?
Ryan
Yeah, Well, I mean, this is where I think that these articles, these, you know, these takes around, okay, this really is, this is what the left always wanted. The end of neoliberalism as opposed to understanding that this is a new stage of deregulated capitalism, you know, are really dangerous. Because where I see it going, and here, this is not like some prophetic power. This is like actually listening to Peter Thiel, to Elon Musk, to the people who are underwriting the Trump administration, who, if you listen to what they say and also where they have put their money and what they're doing. What you see is they no longer believe in the nation state at all. You know, they're excited about things like Freedom City. They're excited about places like Prospera in Honduras where they managed to create like a sort of a corporate city state. They're very excited by the possibilities of what AI can accomplish in this kind of corporate secessionist movement. And so I think this really is a fulfillment of the corporate rule dream beyond the nation state. So they still see a role for the nation state at this phase, but I think beyond it, they want to shed it. So, yeah, I think that's where we're headed. And I think acting as if this has been a wish fulfillment for the left is a really dangerous distraction.
Krystal
From no logo to no state. Next, all logo.
Ryan
But once again, you can find leftists who will make that same argument. This is not what they meant, right?
Krystal
Yes. It's not what we meant. That's not the withering that we meant. Naomi Klein, thank you so much for joining me. Very much. Appreciate it. And good luck in Canada. Sorry that we're all of a sudden enemies. I don't quite know how that happened.
Ryan
We're going to gang up on you with the rest of the world. All right, take care.
Krystal
All right, see ya.
Ryan
Bye.
Krystal
All right, Emily, what'd you think?
Eve
You know, this is what's interesting. It's sort of like you're faced with either she's completely right about Elon Musk and Trump is such an interesting point or such an interesting case study in this incredible argument she makes about the brandification of American companies that they've. Nike, for example, owns intellectual property and then has other factories that they buy from. But it's the Nike IP that Nike is based around. It's not making Nike, it's buying from people who make Nike and then it's branding it with the ip. Trump, truly. Is that who Trump stakes? I mean, just Trump University. Unbelievable how Donald Trump. But that's what's so almost Shakespearean about this, is that Trump as that man, the man who is her case in point is also now the person who is pissing off all of the multinational corporations, all of the investors. He is the one who is giving the middle finger that I think, you know, people who were lobbing Molotov cocktails at the WTO or in Seattle in 1999. Like, that is whatif it were coming from one of them or Bernie Sanders, they'd be like, I am watching this burn and it's feeling great. Now, that might not be a substantive critique of Naomi. I just. I thought it was really interesting to hear her reflect on that. And it is so Shakespearean that Donald Trump. Trump is the guy who represents everything she was arguing exists, rightfully arguing exists. But on the other hand, I think there's something to be said for, like, Trump may embody all of those bad things, but the alternative. There's no alternative. There's Bernie, but other than that, like, Bernie doesn't control the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has said no to Bernie over and over again. And Republicans did that. They said no to their populists over and over again. And they got Trump. And now it's like, if it's not him, who? And if it's not, the only way you get it with Trump is this insane process. And I just don't think the jury's fully out on whether or not what Trump does. I'm not saying it's big possibility. I've said this all show, but there is a possibility that he does actually restructure global trade in a way. Oh, he's doing it well. Restructure global trade in a way that is ultimately productive. Not saying it's a 90% chance, but there's a chance. Maybe I'm too hopeful.
Krystal
And the analogy I was thinking of, and I'm not saying that Trump is Hitler, but like, let's say in the 1920s, Rosa Luxemburg is out there, and the German communists and socialists are out there saying, like, look, another world is possible. Weimar Republic, terrible. We want to get rid of it and replace it with something different. And then the National Socialists end up winning and replacing it with something different. You wouldn't be like, oh, well, I guess you're happy then, right? You got something different. It's like, no, it's worse. Yeah, it can always be worse, is my point. And just because you were against something doesn't mean you're necessarily for the thing that replaces that thing.
Eve
And I think that was a really good point to hear from both you and Naomi. I do agree with this, and I'm probably. I don't want to ascribe this to her because I don't know if it's necessarily true, but I do think that there's sometimes just this because Trump is such a polarizing and bizarre figure, sometimes there's just this barrier. It's like a. I don't know, a cultural barrier that people on the left are still, like, really icked out about ever transgressing and ever saying we wanted radical politics. And here's the radical politics of Donald Trump. It's like when Susan Sarandon, one of my favorite moments longtime viewers of the show will know, was talking to Chris H.A. hayes and got just massive viral attention for saying that she. That maybe by not voting for Hillary, if Trump wins, he will bring the revolution sooner. And Chris Hayes was like, you mean in a Leninist way? It's just like. Yep. Sometimes it's just. To me, some of these leftist politics are so. And I think fascinatingly radical. I feel like that's the world that you were steeped in, and it's like the Schellenberger headline that you talked about. What did y'all think Post nibblism meant? Vibes, papers, essays.
Krystal
It's pretty funny. I'll give him that.
Eve
It is.
Krystal
It is. I'll give him that.
Eve
That was a great interview. I'm really, like. I thought it was fascinating. I was really appreciative that she sat down and you did such a great job.
Krystal
So, yeah, thank you, Naomi. We really appreciate it. And thank you for the idea.
Eve
Oh, yeah, anytime. I'm full of ideas.
Krystal
There you go. All right, well, so we'll be back, I assume on Friday. We'll be down another 10% by then.
Eve
We'll see.
Krystal
Headed towards zero.
Eve
Ryan's the one who's community noting David Sacks just every hour correcting him.
Krystal
Good luck out there, people.
Eve
Yeah, thanks for tuning in. And we will see you back here with Crystal. Maybe Sagar. Maybe we can pull Sager into one of our Friday sessions. He's very busy right now, but maybe we can pull him in some time.
Krystal
Conflict. But maybe we can get him this Friday. Friday.
Eve
We'll try.
Krystal
All right, see you then.
Adam
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. It's Wednesday night after a long day and the last thing you want to do is cook dinner from scratch. But you still want a satisfying, tasty meal without the guilt. Enter your freezer's sidekick caulifower. From thin and crispy cauliflower crust pizzas to all natural white meat chicken tenders and more, cauliflower is gluten free, always satisfies every craving and is ready in minutes. Cauliflower is available in freezer aisles nationwide. Visit eatcolipower.com where to buy to find a store near you do you own.
Krystal
A business that's ready to thrive? It's time to let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate so you can take things to the next level. Intuit QuickBooks is an all in one business platform that can help with those day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks your way to Money Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Title: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Episode: China Ups Tariffs, Elon Rages At Navarro, Trump Budget Chaos, Hamas Wants Off Terror List & MORE!
Release Date: April 9, 2025
Overview:
The episode opens with a deep dive into China's recent decision to escalate retaliatory tariffs against American products. Initially set at 34%, the tariffs have surged to a staggering 84%, targeting a wide array of U.S. goods.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Krystal Ball at [11:17]: “They can live without us. We start a trade war with them, and they just overpower us.”
Overview:
The discussion shifts to President Donald Trump’s ambitious budget plan, which has encountered significant resistance from within his own party, particularly the Freedom Caucus.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Eve at [04:46]: “They always say that. But we'll get into it.”
Overview:
A heated exchange between tech magnate Elon Musk and Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro has captured public attention, shedding light on internal disagreements within the administration.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Krystal at [50:57]: “Peter Navarro is someone. There are a lot of people in Trump’s orbit who are quite uncomfortable with Elon Musk's aggressive libertarian economic policy.”
Overview:
The Supreme Court has upheld the Trump administration's efforts to retain several thousand probationary federal employees, igniting debates on administrative efficiency and workers' rights.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Krystal at [16:43]: “I hate to speculate if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington... potentially worse than that, shorted the market.”
Overview:
The episode examines recent surveys and market responses to the escalating tariff battle between the U.S. and China.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Krystal at [27:17]: “If you have nothing and the Dow crashes 2%, you didn't lose a thing.”
Overview:
Congressman Chris D'Aluisio from Pittsburgh provides a nuanced perspective on tariffs, industrial policy, and the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party regarding trade strategies.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Chris D'Aluisio at 81:57: “You cannot use this one tool of tariffs, throw them on everybody and expect you're going to magically have manufacturing in this country.”
Overview:
Hamas has initiated a legal process in the UK to have itself removed from the terror list, presenting a detailed argument aimed at redefining its international standing.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Hamas Legal Brief at 96:52: “We are particularly appalled by the weaponization of anti-Semitism to attempt to silence those standing against apartheid, occupation, and genocide.”
Overview:
Krystal and Saagar wrap up the episode by reflecting on the broader implications of the discussed topics, contemplating the future trajectory of U.S. trade policy, internal political strife, and international relations.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Krystal at 60:38: “If it doesn’t work, it does not matter what they say about it.”
This episode of Breaking Points provides a comprehensive analysis of the escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China, internal conflicts within the Trump administration, the Supreme Court's controversial decision on federal employees, and Hamas’s strategic legal maneuvers. Through incisive discussions and expert interviews, Krystal and Saagar dissect the multifaceted challenges facing American economic and political landscapes, while also exploring international diplomatic strife. Notable quotes and timestamped insights offer listeners a detailed understanding of the complexities at play, making the episode an essential listen for those seeking in-depth coverage of these pivotal issues.
Note: All timestamps correspond to sections within the provided transcript and are indicative of where specific discussions occur.