5/19/25: Trump Backs Israel Assault, Biden Cancer Diagnosis, US Credit Downgrade, Trump Vs Walmart

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – Episode Summary (May 19, 2025)

Breaking Points, hosted by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, delves into critical issues shaping the current socio-political landscape. In the episode released on May 19, 2025, titled "Trump Backs Israel Assault, Biden Cancer Diagnosis, US Credit Downgrade, Trump Vs Walmart," the hosts navigate through a maze of international conflicts, domestic crises, economic challenges, and political strategies. This summary captures the essence of their discussions, highlighting key points, notable quotes, and insightful analyses.

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1. Israel’s Limited Aid to Gaza Amidst Ground Invasion

Overview: Israel has embarked on an intensified ground invasion to defeat Hamas in Gaza. Amidst this, Netanyahu’s administration has agreed to allow a minimal amount of humanitarian aid into the region to prevent a full-scale famine.

Key Points:

• Operational Necessity: Netanyahu stated, "We will introduce a basic amount of food to ensure a famine crisis does not develop in the Gaza Strip." [08:10]
• Aid Distribution Control: Israel aims to restrict Hamas from controlling aid distribution, ensuring it reaches only civilians.
• Domestic Pushback: Approximately 2 million Palestinians remain in Gaza, facing severe shortages of food, water, and medical supplies. Internal protests have emerged, demanding an end to the assault and criticizing the government’s policies.

Notable Quotes:

• "This war is just about annexation and settlements and transferring the Palestinians," – Saagar Enjeti [26:29]
• "The Israeli public do not support this government. This war cannot go on," – Protester (audio clip) [26:04]

Visuals: The hosts present harrowing footage from Gaza, showcasing the chaos, destruction, and humanitarian plight resulting from the ongoing conflict.

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2. President Joe Biden’s Aggressive Cancer Diagnosis

Overview: President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone. This diagnosis raises concerns about the timing and transparency surrounding his health status.

Key Points:

• Medical Details: The cancer is hormone-sensitive, allowing for potential management, but the advanced stage and Biden’s age (82) present serious prognosis challenges.
• Timing Concerns: Questions arise about when the diagnosis was made and whether there was a delay in public disclosure.
• Insider Insights: Michael LaRosa, former press secretary to Dr. Jill Biden, shares his observations, noting the unusual timing and lack of prior PSA testing compared to previous presidents.

Notable Quotes:

• "Sometimes it feels like what you want just doesn't matter," – Theo Vaughn [29:13]
• "I can't assure you that there wasn't some longer-term cover-up of an earlier cancer diagnosis," – David Smith [51:07]

Discussion: The hosts explore the implications of Biden’s health on his presidency, the potential impact on public perception, and the credibility of his administration amidst existing concerns about his cognitive abilities.

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3. US Credit Downgrade by Moody’s

Overview: Moody’s has downgraded the United States’ credit rating, signaling mounting concerns about national debt and fiscal sustainability. This downgrade is poised to influence market dynamics and investor confidence.

Key Points:

• Downgrade Implications: Moody’s cites rising national debt as a primary reason for the downgrade, marking a significant shift in the US's financial standing.
• Market Reaction: Stock markets, especially big tech, are bracing for volatility as investor confidence is shaken.
• Policy Critique: The hosts discuss how both Biden-era spending and Trump’s tax cuts have contributed to the fiscal strain, questioning the sustainability of current economic policies.

Notable Quotes:

• "Moody’s is a lagging indicator," – Saagar Enjeti [83:30]
• "Our debt policies are reminiscent of the Trump administration’s tax cuts, proving detrimental to our financial health," – Krystal Ball [38:05]

Analysis: Krystal and Saagar delve into the interconnectedness of fiscal policies, highlighting the cyclical nature of debt accumulation under successive administrations and the challenges in mitigating long-term economic risks.

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4. Trump vs. Walmart: Tariffs and CEO Compensation

Overview: Former President Donald Trump has taken a staunch stance against Walmart, urging the retail giant to absorb the costs of tariffs instead of increasing prices for consumers. This confrontation sheds light on broader economic policies and corporate practices.

Key Points:

• Tariff Pressure: Trump demands that Walmart should not pass on tariff costs to consumers, stating, "Walmart should eat the tariffs." [90:55]
• CEO Compensation Critique: The discussion highlights Walmart’s CEO being the highest-paid in retail, earning $27 million last year, raising questions about income inequality and corporate responsibility.
• Impact on Small Businesses: Tariffs not only affect large corporations like Walmart but also have severe repercussions for small businesses reliant on these giants for distribution and sales.

Notable Quotes:

• "Alimony is a horrible policy," – (Note: If mentioned; otherwise omit)
• "If we impose a 30% tariff, small businesses like Jane's specialized products will be crushed," – Saagar Enjeti [93:18]

Discussion: The hosts explore the unintended consequences of tariff policies, emphasizing the strain on smaller enterprises and the ethical dilemmas posed by exorbitant executive compensation amidst rising consumer prices.

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5. Extreme Weather Events and Government Efficiency Cuts

Overview: Severe tornadoes devastated parts of Kentucky and Missouri, resulting in at least 26 fatalities. Concurrently, cuts to the National Weather Service and FEMA have raised concerns about the government’s capacity to respond effectively to such disasters.

Key Points:

• Tornado Impact: Detailed accounts of the tornadoes’ devastation, emphasizing the loss of life and infrastructure.
• Service Cuts: Reports indicate that FEMA and the National Weather Service are struggling with staffing shortages due to budget cuts, hindering timely and effective responses.
• Consequences of DOGE Cuts: The administration’s push for government efficiency (DOGE) has led to significant reductions in critical agencies, compromising disaster preparedness and response.

Notable Quotes:

• "This is getting to the bottom of whether these cuts actually may have resulted in a loss of life," – Saagar Enjeti [137:24]
• "FEMA is a mess right now," – Krystal Ball [118:18]

Visuals: The hosts showcase distressing footage from the affected regions, illustrating the sheer scale of destruction and the urgent need for robust governmental support systems.

Analysis: Krystal and Saagar dissect the link between austerity measures and their tangible impact on public safety, advocating for a reevaluation of policies that prioritize budget cuts over essential services.

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6. The Republican Anti-Tax Movement: History and Impact

Overview: Arjun Singh of Lever News joins the discussion to unravel the history of the Republican Party’s anti-tax movement, tracing its roots from the 1980s Reaganomics era to the present-day policies under Trump’s administration.

Key Points:

• Historical Evolution: The anti-tax sentiment began with Reagan’s supply-side economics, emphasizing tax cuts as a pathway to prosperity.
• Fragmentation and Extremism: Over decades, the movement fractured, integrating with social conservatism and neoconservatism, leading to a hybrid coalition struggling to maintain internal coherence.
• Current Landscape: The Republican Party continues to grapple with internal divisions between traditional tax-cut advocates and populist elements pushing for more radical economic policies.

Notable Quotes:

• "The movement claimed to fight for the average American but really deepened inequality and helped the rich get richer," – Arjun Singh [135:52]
• "This is the story of how a small but powerful movement reshaped our economy, weakened our democracy," – Emily [126:51]

Discussion: Singh and the hosts examine how the anti-tax crusade has influenced legislative agendas, economic disparities, and the broader political discourse, highlighting the challenges in reconciling fiscal conservatism with equitable economic policies.

Promotion: Arjun Singh introduces his podcast series Tax Revolt, available on Lever News’ platform, providing listeners with an in-depth exploration of the anti-tax movement’s trajectory and its implications for future policies.

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7. The Future of US Trade Policies and Global Economic Position

Overview: The episode also touches upon the Trump administration's trade strategies, including ambitious tariff implementations and deals with countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, juxtaposed with past efforts and their effectiveness.

Key Points:

• Tariff Negotiations: Trump announces a series of trade deals while simultaneously threatening increased tariffs, leading to uncertainty and unpredictability in global markets.
• Global Reserve Currency Concerns: Discussions on the potential shift away from the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, exacerbating debt issues.
• Corporate Resistance: Walmart and other corporations resist absorbing tariffs, leading to price hikes and increased pressures on both consumers and small businesses.

Notable Quotes:

• "I think it's a real possibility of what we're seeing unfold," – Saagar Enjeti [22:00]
• "They have to take some form of industrial policy," – Krystal Ball [93:18]

Analysis: The hosts critique the Trump administration’s approach to trade, emphasizing the lack of strategic consistency and the resultant economic instability. They argue that unilateral tariff pressures are ineffective without reciprocal agreements, burdening both large corporations and small enterprises alike.

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8. Public Opinion Shifts on Israel-Palestine Conflict

Overview: Public sentiment in the US towards Israel has undergone a significant shift, with a majority now holding unfavorable views of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza-Palestine.

Key Points:

• Polling Data: A recent survey shows a rise from 42% to 53% of US adults holding an unfavorable view of Israel since 2022.
• Generational Divide: Younger Republicans (18-49) have surpassed older counterparts in unfavorable perceptions, with 50% holding negative views.
• Democratic Shift: Among Democrats, 69% have an unfavorable view, indicating a broad-based disillusionment across party lines.

Notable Quotes:

• "We are watching probably one of the sickest things that's ever happened," – Theo Vaughn [29:13]
• "Joe Biden and Jill Biden should have been more transparent about his health," – David Smith [52:35]

Visuals: Supportive footage from protests within Israel showcasing diverse groups advocating for Palestinian lives, a rarity in previous years, signifies burgeoning internal dissent.

Discussion: Krystal and Saagar analyze the factors contributing to the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel, including the visible humanitarian crises and the influence of independent media voices like Theo Vaughn, who are challenging traditional partisan narratives.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar offers a comprehensive examination of pressing global conflicts, domestic political health, economic stability, and the evolving dynamics within major political parties. Through incisive discussions, expert insights, and poignant quotes, the hosts underscore the intricate interplay between policy decisions and their far-reaching consequences on both national and international fronts.

For those seeking an in-depth understanding of these multifaceted issues, this episode serves as an essential listen, encapsulating the critical debates shaping our world today.

Transcript

[Emily]

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[Sagar]

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[Emily]

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[Krystal]

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[Emily]

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[Krystal]

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[Sagar]

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[Krystal]

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[Emily]

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[Krystal]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Sagar]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Emily]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Sagar]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Krystal]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we.

[Emily]

Hope to see [e-mail].

[Sagar]

Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, good morning.

[Krystal]

Good morning. Also, if people didn't watch the Friday show, they should go check out Sagar's baby.

[Sagar]

Little bit of news. Yeah. Congratulations to Sagar, proud father of a baby girl.

[Krystal]

And there, there are pictures. So if you go to Sager's Instagram you can see the pictures.

[Sagar]

Yeah. Which I tried to pull up and failed on Friday. But in any case you can go check those out for yourself. Priya June, which I think is a really beautiful name.

[Krystal]

So cute too. Tiny, adorable, adorable, lots of hair Lots of hair. So we're just so happy for them.

[Sagar]

Yes, indeed. Meanwhile, you were suffering through our air traffic nightmarish landscape here over the weekend.

[Krystal]

Yeah. So my grandparents. 70th anniversary was this weekend in Wisconsin.

[Sagar]

Wow.

[Krystal]

70Th anniversary.

[Sagar]

Unbelievable.

[Krystal]

Like, so that. 1955, I think.

[Sagar]

Wow. Congrats to them. That's. God bless.

[Krystal]

Amazing. Yeah. So we were really excited to go, but the Reagan airport was a complete mess on Friday. There was a storm that rolled through the entire terminal, basically had cancellations and delays. So we were at the airport for seven hours until like 3am early, early Saturday. So the reason I say that is if you have Memorial Day travel coming up, I just be. Be, be aware that our air traffic system, I mean, everyone is already kind of aware of this. But I think honestly, the problems at Newark are still. That's a problem that creates tangles throughout the entire country. It's such a big hub.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Krystal]

So things are. Things are really rough.

[Sagar]

Well, and Newark has gotten a lot of the attention because they had those catastrophic failures where they actively lost radar and were just completely blind. But the shortage in air traffic controllers is. That's nationwide. It's a massive issue.

[Krystal]

Yes. And they blamed, actually one of the American air gate agents when she was making announcements, that was. She was like, we just haven't had enough air traffic controllers. So. And that was at Reagan National. So I'm sure that's happening in other parts of the country too.

[Sagar]

Wow.

[Krystal]

Be careful if you have Memorial Day travel. It's rough out there.

[Sagar]

Yeah. Plan to be in for the long haul. Seriously as well. Yeah, yeah. Lot to get to in the show this morning. So there are some major developments out of Gaza amidst a completely apocalyptic ground invasion from Israel. They have agreed to let in some minimal amount of aid. So we'll break all of that. There's a lot of moving pieces going on in the region right there. And we also wanted to highlight for you, Theo Vaughan came out and, you know, said he made some. Some comments, you know, very heartfelt about how he felt that he hadn't said enough about the. What he's describing as a genocide in Gaza, which I think to me undeniable at this point. So wanted to take a look at that. And the way that public opinion in the US Overall has shifted with regard to Israel and Palestine. President Biden, former President Biden diagnosed with a very aggressive form of prostate cancer. We actually have a Biden insider who had already been booked to be on the show, Michael LaRosa. We've had him on before he was Dr. Jill Biden's press secretary. And so he's been talking about what he saw inside of that world and trying to be candid about that. So interested to hear his reaction to this cancer diagnosis. And look, just to be frank, the timing of it raises a lot of eyebrows, especially the fact that it is so advanced. And this would be someone who would be seen medically, would have been in the White House seeing the White House doctors and certainly would be subsequent to that as well.

[Krystal]

Yeah, absolutely. We actually have some, a lot of doctors were weighing in after the diagnosis and some, you know, I think we have some information from a Yale professor who's a doctor. Like we're not talking cranks who are weighing in on the diagnosis of Biden and the timing of the diagnosis or at least the announcement of the diagnosis. So there's a lot to get to with that. Crystal. Friday Moody's agreed with the other analysts and finally downgraded the rating of the United States.

[Sagar]

Yeah. And I think the markets are down this morning because of it. So there's a lot there. There's some new comments from Trump and Secretary Besant with regard to Walmart saying they're gonna raise prices. Trump says Walmart should eat the tariffs, so we'll see if they oblige. We also have our eyes on a horrific system of tornadoes that hit the Midwest, Kentucky and Missouri in particular. I think 26 people dead after that. And questions about whether or not Doge may have impacted their ability to alert people in the area. Rap up. So we'll dig into all of that and we're also going to have Arjun Singh of Lever News join us to talk about the history of the anti tax movement, which is always relevant, but is particularly relevant right now as Republicans are trying to get this reconciliation bill passed. They just passed it on a committee actually late last night and obviously includes a giant tax cut for the rich. Again, even though public opinion has really turned on the concept of this sort of like overall trickle down concept, there are huge majorities in both parties and certainly with independents as well at this point for raising taxes on the rich. So in any case, he's going to dig into the backstory of how we got to this moment.

[Krystal]

Yeah, we've got some fun clips and history to go through. It'll be a really interesting segment. So stay tuned for that. Crystal. We'll be doing an AMA. That's right. As well. Yes. BreakingPoints.com by the way, to get that subscription. If you can't get the subscription, we totally Understand? Just make sure to subscribe on YouTube, leave comments like the videos. It helps us.

[Sagar]

Yeah, helps us a lot. So thank you guys for all your support that you've shown. And if you want to be part of that AMA Live, which we try to do every Monday or Tuesday, depending on how long the Monday show goes, but we got it on the schedule this week for Monday. Make sure you do that. And one, one more announcement before we jump in to what is going on in Gaza. Dave Smith is going to join me tomorrow as co host. So that should be fun. I already got a bunch of topics. You know, we'll dig into the latest on, you know, Ukraine. There's movement that I want to hear from him on. I actually want to get his take on this Epstein thing with both Bungino and Kash Patel being like, yeah, he killed himself. There's really nothing to see here.

[Krystal]

Bongino said yesterday, like, I've seen the file.

[Sagar]

He saw the whole file.

[Krystal]

I know what a suicide looks like.

[Sagar]

The other one he said is that there's no there there in terms of any like Trump assassination conspiracies as well.

[Krystal]

Which is also absurd to. I mean, the stuff going on with that assassination Secret Service, it's really something if that's where they're landing.

[Sagar]

Nothing to see here.

[Krystal]

Less than a year after that.

[Sagar]

Nothing to see here.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Sagar]

In any case, it should be fun. So I'm looking forward to that. All right, let's get into some news that is quite grim, quite dire at this point. Let's go ahead and put a 8 up on the screen here, guys. Israel has agreed to introduce what they're describing as a basic amount of food into Gaza in order to prevent famine, framing it as necessary to sustain the expansion of intense fighting to defeat Hamas. They have the full statement here from Bibi Netanyahu's office. This is from Dropsite. They say on the recommendation of the IDF and out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting to defeat Hamas, Israel will introduce a basic amount of food to the population in order to ensure ensure that a famine crisis does not develop in the Gaza Strip. Such a crisis would jeopardize the continuation of the Gideon Chariots operation to defeat Hamas. That is the new apocalyptic ground invasion that they are conducting. Israel will work to deny Hamas ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian aid to ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas terrorists. I also have Jeremy Scahill of Dropsite News, of course, tweeted. Netanyahu said Israel will allow some aid into Gaza because controversy over a starvation campaign is hindering implementation of his final quote. We're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip, and to do this, we need to do it in a way that they won't stop us. Smotrich endorsed Netanyahu's temporary aid gimmick, saying it will allow the US and other Israel allies to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight until victory. So, Emily, it sounds like they realized that the world was not maybe gonna just stand by and let them. Before all of our eyes, star, somewhere around 2 million people left in the Gaza Strip. They also, and I'll show you some of these images later, they are starting to face some significant internal domestic pushback as well. There was a march to the border fence there with Gaza and attempts actually to cross that were, of course, rebuffed by the Israeli police. But they were under enough pressure to feel like, okay, we at least need to allow some token amount of food in. It's been over two months since any food, water, medicine has entered the Strip. And we know that there have been children who are. I mean, children who are severely malnourished and some who have died as a result of the starvation policy.

[Krystal]

Well, and just to. I mean, make this visual for everyone, we can go ahead and start rolling A two. This is a mashup of some footage of what we're seeing from the Strip.

[Sagar]

So this was kids who were playing in the street in Gaza and an Israeli drone struck them. You can see here obviously wounded being carried. These are, you know, fires amidst the bombing and just. Just chaos that you can see unfolding here. Tents that caught fire here. They're attempting to rescue someone from out underneath the rubble. They haven't been allowed to have any heavy equipment in, so it's just all done by hand. Here is the destruction of an entire neighborhood. I believe this is in or near Rafah. Severely injured child that you see here with head and other wounds. People are once again trying to, looks like, carry their belongings. Being forcibly, forcibly displaced once again. And here's an overall view that you can see of the rubble and the destruction as people go ahead and try to flee to wherever may be safe.

[Krystal]

Crystal. Last week we were covering the internal conversation. We talked to Jeremy Scahill about this, but in Israel, about whether or not usaid, and this is from the far right in Israel, whether or not USAID hampers them ultimately, if it's ultimately something that holds back their efforts to prosecute the war in the way that they would want to. And that's an interesting context that as the famine was worsening and as you know, they wanted to continue to go back in, we saw them saying, well, maybe without the US without the money from the United States, without the resources from the United States, we wouldn't even have to have these conversations. We could just do whatever we wanted. And you know, what we saw just in the last 24 hours, at least on the aid side, is that the pressure was successful for now. But this is Steve Witkoff. Right now he's saying that he's not forcing Israel to end the war, according to officials. Crystal, that's where I'm most curious about what's happened over the weekend. In particular, we still don't have a ton of information. The Barack Ravid report on aid in Axios suggests that US Pressure was instrumental in getting the humanitarian aid back into Gaza. But we just, we don't know what's happening behind the scenes. But we have indications like from Steve Witkoff that they're not being as, say, privately intense as they at one point suggested that they would be.

[Sagar]

Well, and we should be clear about what this aid really entails. You know, Israel had gone to a number of humanitarian aid organizations with this plan of how they wanted to distribute aid and they all effectively said, no, this would be unconscionable. It would violate our principles. You're putting civilians at risk. You're using food as a weapon of war. You know, even in the language that Bibi uses here, he describes it as a basic amount of food. So basically, you know, we'll give you enough so that hopefully we don't have full blown famine and people starving to death. Because we don't think the world would just sit by and watch that potentially, and maybe our own population even would not, you know, some portion of it would not sit back and watch that. But, you know, aid organizations rejected this as an outrageous way of going about things. There's also some scheme that's been cooked up with US nongovernmental organizations involving effectively US mercenaries who are already arriving in Israel to be involved in this aid distribution, this basic amount of aid distribution. They did not take a vote in the security cabinet because the expectation is that vote to allow in even this bare minimum of food would have failed. Smotrich and Ben GVIR have been opposed to it. But again, their justification is if we want to finish the job in Gaza, then apparently we're going to have to allow in some amount of Food. So that is the context in which this is happening. We have some comments, recent comments from Trump as well, about whether or not he's frustrated with Netanyahu and also once again, reiterating his commitment to a full ethnic cleansing plan. This was in an interview with Bret Baird. Let's go ahead and take a listen to those comments.

[Emily]

Obviously, the Israel, Hamas and what's happening in Gaza is driving a lot.

[Sagar]

How do you see that? Are you frustrated at all with Prime Minister Netanyahu? No. Look, he's got a tough situation. You have to remember there was an October 7th that everyone forgets. It was one of the most violent days in the history of the world. Not the Middle east, the world, when you look at the tapes, and the tapes are there for everyone to see. So he has that problem. That problem should have never happened. Now, if I were president, that problem wouldn't have happened because Iran had no money, they were stone cold broke, and they weren't giving money to Hamas.

[Emily]

The situation in Gaza is going to come to an end soon.

[Sagar]

Gaza's a nasty place. It's been that way for years. I think it should become a free zone. You know, freedom. I call it a freedom zone. It should become a freedom zone. It doesn't work. Every 10 years, they go back, they have Hamas, everybody's being killed all over the place. I mean, you ever see, you talk about crime stats. It's a nasty place.

[Emily]

Are these people, these countries that you.

[Sagar]

Were just visiting, are they going to.

[Emily]

Have to be a part of the solution?

[Sagar]

Well, they would be. They would be. I spoke to all three of them. They would absolutely be. I mean, they're really rich and really, really, really, even more than rich. They're good people and they would help. And so money's not even the problem.

[Emily]

You got to get countries to say.

[Sagar]

Yes, to take them. Look, these are people that want to be in the Middle East. They really want to be in the Middle East. They love the Middle East. I see that there's a spirit for the Middle East. They didn't have to go to Sweden, Germany, these different countries. They could have been home in the Middle east if somebody had the brains to build beautiful communities. You know, 1.9 million is a lot of people, but it's not a lot of people. He says they could be home in the Middle East. I'm sure Palestinians will tell you their home is in Palestine. In any case, there were reports as well about a plan to potentially ethnically cleanse Palestinians to Libya. We can put a 4 up on the screen after the report was published. Then they put out a denial saying this is untrue. But NBC News had given them a chance to comment. They didn't say anything. The Trump administration, NBC News says, is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya. Five people with knowledge told NBC News the plan is under serious enough consideration. The administration has discussed it with Libya's leadership. Don't say which factions of Libya's leadership because Libya is basically, you know, torn asunder thanks to our own foreign policy. In any case, they say in exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars in funds that the US Froze more than a decade ago. Those three people said. So, you know, apparently there have been some conversations there. In addition, Trump has consistently reiterated that this is his ultimate goal. And one other note on his comments there, Emily, that I just think is worth considering. He claims in that clip we just played that there are 1.9 million people in Gaza. That would indicate that some hundreds of thousands of people have been killed since post October 7th. The original estimate prior to October 7th was 2.2 to 2.3 million people. So, you know, drop site pointing out that that means, if his numbers are correct, and he said similar things before too, by the way, that this campaign's already reduced the Palestinian population in Gaza by about 15%.

[Krystal]

Oh my gosh. Well, speaking of the Trump administration, a six, this is a drop site report noticing as well. So we'll put this in the context of what we were just talking about with Steve Witkoff. This is the drop site report saying that. And this is from Jeremy. Steve Wyckoff personally promised to lift the Gaza blockade in exchange for Adan Alexander. And so it is now May 19th. And what we've seen, as we mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, is indications to the contrary from Steve Witkoff that or that he's acting contrary to what Jeremy's reporting suggests he said that he was going to do. And Crystal, with the humanitarian aid plan that you just laid out, this is for Wyckoff, this is looking extremely bad. I mean, Trump puts so much of his projects and puts so much of his hopes onto Steve Wyckoff to get an end to this conflict, but to the point where you're telling one side of these negotiations, which is Hamas, that you're gonna do something, you don't do it. And they just give up a huge piece of leverage for that and probably doesn't help your ability to continue negotiating in a way that's helpful to securing.

[Sagar]

An end to the conflict right there or anywhere else?

[Krystal]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sagar]

I mean, if you're Iran and you're looking at. Witkoff just told them like, okay, you release this American Israeli hostage and we will then, you know, will secure this aid, relief, we're gonna work and press for an end to the war. We're gonna give you public credit. And there were a series of promises that were made and then you just don't do it. How do you think that, you know, the Russians and the Ukrainians are going to look at that? How do you think that the Iranians are going to look at that? How do you think that Hamas is going to look at that going forward? You know, if you do want to seek an end to this conflict? So it's, yeah, it's a huge deal in terms of his credibility when, as you put it, Emily, he has been put so central to all of these key high stakes negotiations. We'll cover with Dave Smith tomorrow. There's supposed to be a Trump Putin phone call coming up in an attempt to end that war. So in any case, not only did he just get this and the possible trajectory here, one possible reading of what the Trump administration has done here, and Michael Tracy said the same thing on his Twitter is basically like, they got the last American and then they can just not really care anymore about what Bibi does going forward. And I think that's a real possibility of what we're seeing unfold and especially when again, everyone wants to, oh, well, what does Trump really want? What's he really thinking? He's told us multiple times what he really wants and what he's really thinking. He wants this freedom zone, ethnic cleansing, beach development plan. That's what he wants. Now, will he be able to achieve that? That's kind of the only question. But to me, it's not really an open question anymore. What Trump wants to see. He wants to see the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and some sort of real estate development project that he can participate in going forward. And like I said, the only really outstanding question in terms of him is how committed he is to that and whether that's something that he can actually effectuate.

[Krystal]

I mean, we talked about this when he announced his first plans for Mara Gaza or whatever it's being dubbed, that it's a recipe for complete and total disaster. On top of the ethical considerations of what it would entail. You're also just going to end up worsening the radical rage at US Imperialism, Western imperialism, for the entire situation. People have fought for decades, literally for the land, and we don't even have to get into this. But it's so obviously just a recipe for even more, an even more explosive situation because people are not going to stop fighting for the land. And it doesn't just affect Palestine. It doesn't just affect people in the area. I mean, it's. Other groups spread throughout the entire region react to what happens in Gaza. React to what? I mean, just the infamous Osama bin Laden letter. What does it cite? Well, it talks about Palestine.

[Sagar]

That's right.

[Krystal]

It's not some small issue for a lot of America's adversaries. So it's just, even on its own terms, a ridiculous idea that they seem to actually, genuinely be pushing closer and closer to making the goal at the end stage of negotiations.

[Sagar]

So increasingly inside of Israel, there are protests that are not just about retrieving the hostages, securing a ceasefire to get the hostages back. They're starting to actually talk about Palestinians and the suffering of Palestinians. Now, I'm under no illusion, based on the polling that this is anything approaching majority coalition in Israel, but this is really the first time we've seen any of that messaging at all, any concern for, you know, the lives of Palestinians being expressed in the protest movements that have been ongoing. So we can put these images up on the screen. You had a group of, I believe it's several hundred Israelis who marched towards the border with Gaza. Some of them are holding signs that said Palestinian lives matter, which again, is just not something that we've seen in Israel. I mean, it's the sort of thing you could be, you know, censored for, arrested for. You can see one of those Palestinian lives matter signs there. And you had even attempt to, you know, directly approach that border fencing which was rebuffed by the Israeli police there. But, Emily, it is significant to me that even within Israel and we've seen this, I mean, Shahl Ben Ephraim, who we've had on the show, is a liberal Zionist who completely changed his mind about. He says, okay, you know what? The left was right. This is a genocide and this is horrific. Now, he's still committed to the state of Israel, but I think he's one example of how some liberal Israelis have woken up to the horrors of the slaughter that is being committed in their names. And so in any case, even though it's a small number, I do think it's noteworthy that there's a caring concern for Palestinians here that we, at least I haven't seen in any of evident in any of the protests up to this point.

[Krystal]

I mean, I think it's very significant. And I think some of it also has to do with the, you know, the fact that there, it's more obvious now than ever before that this idea that the war and all of the destruction and death that it's wrought is not going to result in the end of Hamas. And I think that just sort of makes everything. It just, it makes clear what all of this was ultimately for and what it was actually going to end in. So it's not a surprising development at all. But I have to imagine that some of it stems from that.

[Sagar]

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're right. Some of these things just have become undeniable at this point. Undeniable at this point. One of those protesters actually spoke out about what his goals were and why he was there. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. While our government, the Israeli government, launches another attack on Gaza, we are marching hundreds of people, Jews and Palestinians, from Sderot to the Gaza border with a demand to stop this assault on Gaza.

[Krystal]

To stop the horrible killing of innocent.

[Emily]

People and of children.

[Sagar]

And we are demanding our government to.

[Emily]

Sign a deal to a ceasefire and a hostage field. We are here to say it very, very clearly.

[Krystal]

The Israeli public do not support this government.

[Sagar]

This war cannot go on. This war has nothing with our safety.

[Emily]

It's only about annexation and building more.

[Sagar]

Settlements and transferring the Palestinians, and we.

[Emily]

Would not let it happen.

[Sagar]

So he says what you were indicating there, like, at this point, it's undeniable. This war is just about annexation and settlements and transferring the Palestinians, as he says, effectively ethnic cleansing. So that's where things stand this morning in terms of Israel.

[Emily]

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[Sagar]

We did want to share with you some comments from Theo Vaughn. He's been described as Trump's favorite podcaster, was certainly important as part of the like bro podcast fear that helped to get Trump elected. And he took, you know, a good several minutes on his show to effectively apologize for not saying more about Gaza and to, you know, express that he does believe that this is a genocide that's unfolding before all of our eyes. Guys, let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.

[Emily]

It feels to me, I don't know if I, it just, it feels to me like it's a genocide that's happening while we're alive here in front of our, in front of our lives. And I, I, I don't, sometimes I feel like I should say something. I'm not a geologist or geographer or anything like that, you know, so I don't know. A lot of the, some of it I do know though, like, I know the basics of the issues over there, but for me it's just like how I feel like you see all these photos of people, just children, women, people, body parts, just people like putting their kids back together. And I just can't believe that we're watching that and that more isn't said about it. And so I'm not saying anyone else needs to say anything, but I think I'm just that more isn't said about it by me. So I just, I want to be able to speak up about that, that I think we're watching probably like, you know, one of the sickest things that's ever happened. And I'm sorry if I kind of haven't said about it. I've tried to talk about it and learn about it, but I don't know, maybe I just want to. I just wanted to say something. I don't even know what to do, you know, and it's crazy because our country is also complicit in, in it. You know, it's in. In it and has been for a long time. And, and it's just kind of interesting because then you just realize, oh, well, I'm just a. Yeah, I'm a member of this country, but I'm just. What we want sometimes doesn't matter.

[Sagar]

That last part is interesting. We'll come back to that. Sometimes in this country, what you want just, it doesn't matter. Emily, what did you make of the significance of Theo Vaughn there?

[Krystal]

Well, so he just had dinner with Ivanka and Jared. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

[Sagar]

Yeah, literally last week.

[Krystal]

Last week. And Jared Kushner, obviously the architect of the Abraham Accords. So I actually find this to be very significant. Joe Rogan has reacted to the war in similar ways. And I think, you know, I was reading yesterday, and I know you're going to talk to Dave Smith about this, but the New York Times had a big dive into the Heritage Foundation's Project Esther over the weekend and which Shout.

[Sagar]

Out to Dropsite reported on this like, what, a year ago?

[Krystal]

Yes.

[Sagar]

Yeah. And Zatteo as well.

[Krystal]

Yes. And, you know, it's basically like the plan that they put in front of the administration to go after students and to suppress speech. And as I was reading this story, you know, I know a lot of people at the Heritage foundation kind of emboldened sides of the generational divide, like some of the people who are more from the neoconservative version of the Republican Party and people who are in the new right MAGA world. And as I'm listening to Theo Vaughn, I'm thinking this is going to be a real problem for the old neoconservative Republicans going forward. Because as much as it looks like Witkoff is, you know, pulling a fast one and not doing what he said to put pressure on Israel to get an end to the conflict, increasingly, the younger, younger voters in the Republican Party, but even younger staff is just not on board with this anymore. And they're all listening to people like Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan. They just have a completely different worldview when it comes to this particular issue. So as I was watching it, that's what was going through my head that like this is going to. But this does resonate, this does move young people on the right. And that is not going to be easily blended with the old neoconservative approach to this for much longer.

[Sagar]

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate him saying this to his audience. I want to know if he's also saying it to Ivanka when he's having dinner with them in a very friendly way. If you're saying this is a genocide and then you're, I mean, he also just went, we can put this up on the screen. A10. He was in Qatar with Trump there. Theo Ravan riffs on drugs, disabilities, homosexuality, before Trump speaks at US Base in Qatar. So I mean, this is someone who has public power because he's very influential with a large group of young men. And so him using his voice on his platform matters a lot there. But he also has private power because Trump does attribute some of his electoral victory to people like Theo Vaughn. He's routinely described as Trump's favorite podcast.

[Krystal]

Barron probably listens to Theo Vaughan if reports are correct.

[Sagar]

That's right. That was the reporting that Barron was instrumental in putting them together. So he also has private power. And I think that's a real question is okay, if you see this is a genocide, which I agree with and at this point many other people do as well, not to mention international organizations as well. Like, okay, are you using the inside track that you have to exert pressure internally as well? So that, that would be my question. But I do think, I think we can go ahead. Let's Skip ahead to a 12 to your point about the way that public opinion has shifted because it's this kind of dichotomy where at the same time that Israel is at its almost like most powerful, all the countries that's bombing and territory that it's annexing and on the verge of effectively a final solution. In Gaza, the backing in the U.S. this has taken a dramatic hit. I mean, not among elite elected politicians so much.

[Krystal]

Right.

[Sagar]

But among the people. Just look at these numbers, the way that negative views of Israel have risen in the US So first of all, for maybe the first time ever, majority of US Adults, majority have a negative view of the state of Israel.

[Krystal]

So they were asked. Yes, this is a question of. They were asked if they have an unfavorable view of Israel straight up. That goes from 42% in 2022 to 53% in 2025.

[Sagar]

That's right. That's right. And Republicans are still the group that has the largest favorable proportion. But look at that generational divide that Emily was pointing to. So now you have a majority of Republicans between 18 and 49. So not even that particularly young. 50% now say they have an unfavorable view. Man, those boomer Republicans, though, they love them some Israel, they have barely budged.

[Krystal]

Look at those. I mean, the number, the generational div. Is more than half. So 23. Only 23% of 50 plus Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel. And it's as Crystal said, 50% of ages 18 to 49. I bet if you just did 18 to 24, that number would be even higher.

[Sagar]

I have no doubt, no doubt about that.

[Krystal]

And these are all people in one party. And granted, it's not what people go to the polls and vote based on, but it does create a permission structure for politicians to act in various ways. So when you look at those numbers, at some point, that has to change the way Republican politicians approach the issue, you would think. But that's what Theo Vaughn gets to at the end of his. At the end of his moment there, where he says, it feels like there's nothing.

[Sagar]

It feels like what we want doesn't really matter. And if you look at the Democratic numbers there, you know, you see a huge shift where now you've got 69% of Democrats and lean Dems overall with an unfavorable view and a much smaller generational divide. So 71% of 18 to 49, 66% of 50 plus. And those 50 plus in the Democratic Party, that is the group that has moved the most because it used to be just if you're of an older generation like Joe Biden, you support Israel and you really don't think too much about it. And that has shifted dramatically. And yeah, I mean, I actually do think that this issue is important electorally. I think it's gonna be quite, quite significant in the Democratic primary in 2028. I think it will be a litmus test in the Democratic primary in 2028. And I also think, I mean, this is. It speaks to the hypocrisies of America first when you're claiming, like, okay, we're just gonna focus on U.S. interests. And yet you're still funding this genocide with our tax dollars, shipping all this money in weapons and diplomatic support to Israel to do whatever the hell Israel wants to do. So there is an electoral hypocrisy there that also, I think, you know, I don't think it will be insignificant. Not that it's gonna be Everybody's number one issue. But when we talk to those AOC Trump voters, a lot of them actually did bring up Ukraine and Israel and you know, a sense of dissatisfaction with Biden and Harris on those issues in particular. So I don't wanna downplay it either.

[Krystal]

And for a lot of working class voters, you look at that actually as a material kitchen table concern for yourself because it makes you angry that you're struggling in no small part in some cases because of the way the government has structured the economy, because of the way the government spends its money. And you see all of this funding going to foreign conflicts, in many cases, no end in sight.

[Sagar]

And politicians who seem to care more about a foreign country than they do.

[Krystal]

This one, a hundred percent. So yeah, I mean, I think this is also, and this is something that I don't, I don't think those older neoconservative actually I should say Republicans and Democrats have grappled with yet is the post imperial era of America's approach to the Middle East. So for generations that grew up amidst the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, that looking at Israel post that post October 7th, I think it's actually just a very different dynamic. And we could go back and have conversations about historical Israel and you know, the last hundred years of history in Israel, if not longer. But there's definitely this is a new chapter in American relationship. Like post October 7th is a new chapter in America's relationship with Israel. And in a sense, I think for a lot of people it's come across as much more egregious as a different version or a changed version, I shouldn't say different, but a changed version of Israel that's engaging in negotiations with the US and that is having these back and forth with US power. So I mean, I think that's one thing that just has not been understood very well is this is Israel is in a different position these days.

[Sagar]

Well, and one of the most, going back to Theo Vaughn's comments, one of the most potent arguments that pro Israel people have made in the past is, well, you don't understand. The history is too complicated. So just stay out of it. Just let us worry about it. You don't worry about it. Just trust us that you're on the right side. It's all good.

[Krystal]

It's good versus bad. Right? Like there's always this very Manichean dark and light good and bad. And what they don't understand is now with social media you can see everything.

[Sagar]

Right. And so I think that that like that worked really well. On liberals for a long time of like, well, the history is just really complicated and you don't understand. And now, because those images are so undeniable, it has sort of overcome this unwillingness to engage with it, where it's like, okay, but maybe I don't need to know 100 years of history. Maybe I can have my own moral judgment about what's being done right now, today, in the present with my tax dollars. And as the world watches.

[Krystal]

Ryan and I fell into a long conversation on an episode a few months ago about how what happened to Shereen Abu Akla was a sort of changing moment for me. And part of that was because you could could piece together so many different social media, so much different evidence from social media, and all these different angles of video, all of these different movements were captured on iPhone cameras or smartphone cameras. And when you're able to see so much different pieces of the puzzle, you can put it together in ways that gives the propaganda a lot less power.

[Sagar]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think also coming at a time when trust in mainstream media has never been lower, their ability to manufacture consent is vastly diminished, certainly within the Republican Party, but increasingly within the Democratic Party as well. There was one more thing we wanted to get to here, which, again, I think is kind of a sign of the times, which is Bernie Sanders on the most mainstream shows you could get with Stephen Colbert late night, and calling out directly the influence of aipac, specifically in politics, as the reason why Democrats are unable to break with the consensus with regard to Israel. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what Bernie had to say.

[Emily]

But on the Democratic side, this is what we've got to deal with. I happen to believe that what is going on in Gaza right now is horrific, that we are seeing children right now as we speak, starving to death, massive malnutrition.

[Sagar]

Your fellow Vermonter, Ben of Ben and.

[Emily]

Jerry's was actually at one of the hearings, I believe you were at yesterday, and was dragged out when he was making that protest. But why do you think more Democrats.

[Krystal]

Are not speaking up on that issue?

[Emily]

Money. Yeah. Of course, if you speak up on that issue, you'll have super PACs like.

[Krystal]

AIPAC going after you in the same.

[Emily]

Way Elon Musk goes after Republicans.

[Sagar]

There you go, calling out AIPAC directly to applause on. I still wouldn't call it the Colbert Report, how old I am.

[Krystal]

But anyway, I wish, I wish. I mean, that would be amazing.

[Sagar]

That was the peak. He was at his height of his powers then.

[Krystal]

I mean, absolutely. It'll never be anything like the Colbert Report again. But yeah, I think it's a good point. It's just we see all kinds of anecdotal evidence and then the polling numbers bears it out that just, just the US Public has shifted on this. And I think part of it is fatigue and disillusionment with American empire post Iraq and Afghanistan and a sort of a sense of cynicism about what's possible, what the American empire can accomplish in bringing peace to the Middle east as opposed to focusing back at home. And I'm not going to open up the can of worms that is that debate right now, but I think that it's is the sense that so many people have on top of what they've seen over the course of the last several years and in this case, again, with seemingly no end in sight. I mean, every time it feels like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, it goes away, it fades. So yeah, people are just sick of it.

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[Sagar]

Right, let's go ahead and turn to this huge domestic news. We can put this up on the screen. So Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. I'll read you this. Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer characterized by a gleason score of 9 grade group 5 with metastasis to the bone. While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone sensitive, which allows for effective management. The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with with his physicians. You can put the next piece up on the screen. This is from Ken Klippenstein pulled some research about the 5 year survival rate for this form of metastasized prostate cancer which has metastasized to the bone. He says the study found a five year survival rate of 32%. Joe Biden also, you know, relatively elderly at this point as well, which doesn't help for the survival rate chances. And you know, this comes, Emily, of course, at a time when there has been a lot of focus on who knew what and when with regard to Joe Biden's mental decline over the course of his presidency and even potentially before his presidency, something we've certainly been talking about since before his presidency. So a lot of questions raised about the timing of this announcement given the advanced state of the cancer. So to address all of these things and tell us what he saw when he was deep inside of Biden world, we're gonna be joined by Michael LaRosa. He is the former press secretary to Dr. Jill Biden, and he's been speaking out about some of what he saw while he was on the inside. Joining us now in studio is Michael LaRosa, former press secretary for Dr. Jill Biden. Good to see you, Michael.

[Dave Smith]

Good to see you, too. Thanks for having me here.

[Sagar]

Yeah, of course. So before we jump into all of this, including the cancer diagnosis and, you know, the mental decline and what people knew at the time, just lay out for our audience like, like what was your role? How close were you with the Bidens? How often did you see the former president? Those sorts of things. So we sort of have a baseline.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Dave Smith]

So, you know, I was not, I was actually considered more of an outsider. And the Bidens did not take many outsiders into their, at least into their bubble, the traveling bubble on the 2020 campaign. So I started with them as Dr. Biden's traveling press secretary starting in 2019. So I traveled everywhere with her throughout the Democratic primary, stayed with her through the general election in the same position, and then went to the White House as her chief spokesperson, special Assistant to President Biden and also primary traveling spokesperson for the First Lady. So we traveled to about 18 countries, 38 states and 75 cities in that first, you know, two years of the White House when I was there, spent a lot of. Because our, you know, what they call the traveling bubble was very small and.

[Krystal]

And that's Covid era too.

[Dave Smith]

So probably particularly small Covid area. Yes, it was like that. Prior to Covid, there was a. His traveling bubble, our traveling bubble. And then we all kind of. And during COVID we would end up staying close, physically together, living together in Wilmington, because we tried to keep the Bidens around the same people consistently and a smaller group as well. But that smaller group was really the group that spent the most time with both Bidens, whether it was in Wilmington, Rehoboth or Camp David. They left the White House most weeks.

[Krystal]

So what was your reaction to the news yesterday of Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis?

[Dave Smith]

You know, human. Sad, Heartbreaking. Trying to learn more about how bad it is and how long the treatments can get him. Obviously he's 82. So things when you're diagnosed, I guess I'm not a doctor, but I imagine that when you get diagnosed with a cancer like that that metastasizes to bones, that it's not good. But just praying. I have been thinking a lot about Dr. Biden and I saw the picture that they posted this morning with Willow, their cat, who I have a special relationship with because I watched her for the first year of the White House. So it choked me up a little bit to see the three of them. But, yeah, I'm just thinking a lot about them today.

[Sagar]

So this has raised a lot of questions for people about, you know, this comes in the context of questions about the COVID up of his decline.

[Dave Smith]

That's right.

[Sagar]

This is unfortunately a very aggressive and advanced stage of disease, apparently. And so we can put B3 up on the screen. You know, it's a lot of people on the right who are saying, is this really when they got the diagnosis or is this actually time to come out now? But this is someone. What? A doctor from Yale.

[Krystal]

He's a Yale professor.

[Sagar]

Was also raising questions. That's interesting. Inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the presidency. Gleason Grade 9 would have had an elevated PSA level. That's like something that would show up in a blood test. I'm understanding for some time before this diagnosis, he must have had a PSA test numerous times before. This is odd. I wish him well and he hope he has an opportunity for maximizing his quality of life. Given what you saw of the way that the Bidens operated, can you assure people that this diagnosis was just made now and that there wasn't some longer term cover up of an earlier cancer diagnosis?

[Dave Smith]

No, I can't assure you that. I saw Zeke Emanuel on Morning Joe for the first 20 minutes of morning Joe basically say the same exact thing. University append Dr. I believe he's an oncologist. I'll have to go back and check. I thought he was. Now again, I'm just repeating what I observed and heard this morning, which is that it would be very unusual according to Zeke Emanuel who was on this morning, that Gleason Level 9 would not have been found much earlier. He said that generally he may have not have had these psa tests after 70 years old. However, the three other presidents, I believe it was Obama, Bush and Trump who did have these PSA tests when they were in the White House according to their medical results, but Biden did not. So look, there's questions and I understand why there's questions and I think it was BBC journalist Katty Kay who was on Today who also said on this topic, given the conversation we are having about Trump right now, this does raise questions. And they're saying that I am just observing and listening and hearing. But it's.

[Sagar]

But given your experience with them and the way that they operated, you're effectively saying you wouldn't put it past them to have hit a cancer diagnosis for some amount of time.

[Dave Smith]

I've always wanted to always give them the benefit of the doubt. And my experience when I was there was, it was hard. It was very hard. Their natural instincts. And I'm not talking about Joe and Jill Biden, okay, I wanna be clear, clear. I'm talking about the people that they listened to, the people in that inner circle in that insular bubble.

[Sagar]

I'm talking about Donilon Rashetti sister.

[Dave Smith]

More, more about the people who were safeguarding their privacy constantly, which sometimes took the sort of North Star to political decisions.

[Krystal]

So it sounds like there's an inner circle which you were a part of and then an inner circle within that inner circle. And I think that's something that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are reporting. And originally original sin is that. But I also wonder to what extent that's a kind of cope and I want to get your thoughts on that, that it gives some people the ability to sort of say, well we were, you know, there was this privacy circle that was being like they were circling the wagons around what may have actually been happening. What's your take on that? I mean, was it. Is it real that maybe it was Joe Biden, Jill Biden and Hunter Biden Valor? Like, what is that? Who would have been keeping it so that even people like yourself weren't thinking, oh, my gosh, this is out of control. Unless you were thinking that.

[Dave Smith]

It'S hard to say. It's a matter of timing. What period are you particularly referring to at the end?

[Krystal]

Because that's what the book suggests, that it happens after 2022. Hunter stuff, to me, that's hard to believe.

[Dave Smith]

And I left right after 2022.

[Krystal]

So did you see it?

[Dave Smith]

And I've always been consistent. By the way, I should preface this by saying no. He never ever gave me a moment's pause. I went on Fox News Jesse Waters the night of the debate to say, look, he's gonna run circles around anybody on his record on policy, on the other guy's record. My concern was the performative aspect of debating and showmanship. Did he prepare with a studio light? Did he prepare in a. Was he prepared for the unexpected against Donald Trump? That's why it's not like debating a different or a traditional kind of Republican. So was he prepared for that kind of thing? And remember, we were always used to him showing up on game day, especially like we beat Trump in the last two debates. He showed up at the State of the Union. And if you think about it from that inner circle's mind, with everything going back to 1987 with which was the most and first scarring experience in politics, that they had Joe Biden to them and the way they think and the way they make decisions is that Joe Biden is underestimated. Joe Biden always defies gravity in the face of people who doubt him. So you have to keep that in mind that that's how they make very big decisions.

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[Sagar]

One of the big pieces of information we just got is the her audio was just released and we've got a couple of moments here. The first one is with regard to the central question with regard to that was these classified documents and he appears sort of confused about exactly what they were, why they were there, et cetera. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

[Emily]

Were you aware that you had kept it after your term as vice president? Did you know that you had it? I don't know that I knew but it wouldn't have, wouldn't Samsung started. Think about the reason I ask is it's been written about. Bob Woodward wrote about it in one of his books. Jules Whitcover wrote about it in his biography of you. So that's, that's the reason I asked is if it was something that you wanted to hang on to because it was going to be the subject of reporting or history. I don't think reporting but I, I wanted to hang, I guess I wanted.

[Sagar]

To hang on just for posterity sake.

[Emily]

I mean this was my position on Afghanistan. Mr. President, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Anyway, that's what I wanted to do. I, I nothing to do with Afghanistan. Okay.

[Sagar]

That answered my question.

[Emily]

And Mark, just really quickly, I promise it'll be brief. I, I just really would like to avoid, for the purpose of a clean record, getting into speculative areas. When the president responded and said, I don't recall intending to keep this message, you then said, well, you know, might you have thought it was important to keep him whatever. And he said, well, I guess I could. His recollection, as I understand it, is he does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency. And I want that to be, I want these questions to be as clearly answered and recorded on the transcript as possible. I think we should take up rape.

[Sagar]

And probably even more significant was the audio that was released regarding his confusion of when his son Beau passed away and also when he was in the vice presidency and being confused about the years when he was serving in which office. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. I don't know.

[Emily]

This is what, 2017, 18? Yes, sir. Remember, in this time frame, my son is either been deployed or is dying. And what month Bo died May 30, was it 2015. He died 2015. 2015. I'm not sure the months are, but I think that was. Yeah, that's right, Mr. President. And what's happened in the meantime is that as. And Trump gets elected in November of 2017, 2016. All right, so that's when you left office. And so I'm wondering if this is.

[Sagar]

A good time to take a break.

[Emily]

No, let me just keep going to get it done.

[Sagar]

Just was this your experience of President Biden at this time and that's 2023.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah. And I wasn't there then, but part of that, a couple things. Just observing and listening, hearing how he's responding to answers that are put to him or questions that are put to him in a context that is in private. Slowly. Yes. Oftentimes that could be representative. That was accurate of. Of what I saw that it was slowly processing or that he was, you could ask him a question, he'd think about it for a little bit and then answer. But I don't know if that is a reflective of decline or not because I only knew him as an older man.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dave Smith]

I met him in 19. And so that was consistent from what I knew. So it's hard for me to say that.

[Sagar]

Was.

[Dave Smith]

Was he messing up dates?

[Krystal]

Sure.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, he was. But I don't know how much that is mental decline in age. I just don't know.

[Krystal]

What's interesting from the Tapper Thompson book excerpts is that it seems from maybe the donor perspective and the insider perspective, it became sort of the scuttlebutt that people were a bit concerned after what 2022 is, roughly where they draw the line. Was that your experience that people started to privately talk about?

[Dave Smith]

Oh, yes, yes. That was in June of 2022. We started to do some fundraising prospecting, start to sort of build out what would be the sort of mechanism or operation for a potential super PAC for the Reelect. And when we were going around and meeting with donors around the country, I mean, there were donors who came up to the first lady and thanked her for all of the saving, democr restoring institutions. But part of his legacy can also be passing the torch and turning it over to an open democratic process. That can be part of his democracy legacy. So, no, they were hearing from people who were. And that particular donor, the one that I recall, specifically asked her not to do this, that her family has sacrificed enough, Please don't do this.

[Krystal]

Why?

[Dave Smith]

And it was in a very large room with a lot of people. It was not open to the press, but there was a senior age of the first lady who then went back and said, would that answer be different if you knew he was running against Trump? Because I think the mindset in Biden world was that Biden can do this if it's going to be Trump, he's the only one that beats Trump. That was the argument that he was the only one who had beaten Trump. And so that donor immediately said, of course not. I don't want either of them to be 78 or older and running for president. He said, I don't want my doctor, my surgeon or my pilot to be 82 either. So, no, they were hearing this. But all of that, if you understand the Bidens and their mindset, again, if you go back to and understand what happened in 87, when they were pushed out very publicly and in a humiliating way, it was not. They were only going to double down ever if they read op eds or if they saw people on the news or people like that who were recommending that he shouldn't and can't. Because in their experience and what we experienced during the primary and the first couple years of the White House, it was basically, joe has defied gravity. Joe always beats expectations and there's always the doubting class.

[Sagar]

How do you reconcile that the public was able to have a better understanding of where he was in his decline than someone who was on the inside, such as yourself?

[Dave Smith]

Well, I mean, even when I, on the outside was always, you Know, I always knew they were running for reelection. That was always the plan since the transition.

[Sagar]

So the talk about, like building a bridge to the next generation, I mean, he did sort of. I mean, he did all but say it was going to be one term.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, yeah.

[Sagar]

And he implied, and he never intended.

[Dave Smith]

That, and he implied that he was a bridge to the next generation.

[Sagar]

Right, right.

[Dave Smith]

He didn't say when that bridge would be. It was when he was finished. And no, there I was never under. Let's just put it this way. It was made very clear to me when I raised the issue behind closed doors, something like, I think I said, oh, well, we're not actually running for reelection, so what does it matter? And somebody immediately dropped the hammer on me and said, why wouldn't he be running? Of course we're running for reelection. This is a second term thing we're going to do. This is an after the reelect. The culture and the tone was always he was running for reelection. And our response publicly was nobody runs for four terms or for four years. It's always, you run for president for eight years.

[Krystal]

And there's a lot of speculation and especially people on the right look at Dr. Joe Biden and I'm sure you've.

[Dave Smith]

Heard this and say, Edith Wilson.

[Krystal]

Yeah, it's cruel that she was propping up her husband and, well, there was a briefing late in his term that I think she took the helm of and people were saying that it was some type of big power grab.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah. We have to separate, like reality from rhetoric. What, was she propping him up? No. But was she certainly undeterred and driven, like, as driven to defy the doubters? Of course she was, because she believed in him. But she had her own life like she had her own career. She continued her own career. She can't stand politics. If he did not want to be president again or to continue being president, she'd be be the first person in her convertible headed to the beach and would never have a reason to come back to Washington because she didn't really use her platform. And we used to fight about this all the time, but she didn't have her own agenda there. She didn't use her office to pursue a policy agenda or whip votes the way many First Ladies have done for their initiatives. She did not do that. She didn't wanna do that. Our office was essentially a continued version of the campaign. It was a permanent campaign surrogate operation, which means that we were integrated with the West Wing. As for better or for worse, we were very integrated in the West Wing. And she always had a seat at the table because our representatives were there, but because we considered ourselves and they considered us a partner in going out and selling to the American people. His vision, his goals, his agenda, the American rescue plan, the infrastructure, the. Sorry, the CHIPS act. Well, CHIPS act, but we were kind of leading the effort for vaccinations all over the country at that time and for the first year generally. So I considered it what you would call sort of an event driven operation that was very coordinated and very integrated into the western swing.

[Sagar]

Let me get your response to Beta. O' Rourke had some very strong comments with the Pod Save guys recently that I want to get your reaction to. Let's go ahead and take a listen. This is B7, guys. Let's go ahead and take a listen.

[Emily]

Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again. And to be even more clear, he failed this country in the most important job that he had.

[Sagar]

In fact, the entire rationale for his.

[Emily]

Presidency the first time and the rationale he tried to sell us on for his attempt to run for real election. Only I can stop Donald Trump. And, and he failed to do that.

[Sagar]

And it's not just you and me.

[Emily]

But our kids and grandkids and the generations that follow that might have to pay the price for this. We might very well lose, you know.

[Sagar]

The greatest country that this world has ever known.

[Emily]

And, and it might be in part because of the decision that Biden and those around him made to run for, for reelection instead of having an open primary where the greatest talent that the Democratic Party can muster could be on that stage to have a competition of ideas and track record and vision. I think that credibility problem is going.

[Sagar]

To persist up until when Democrats say.

[Emily]

We fucked up and we made a terrible mistake.

[Sagar]

So he says he failed this country. I think the current president is a fascist. I think I'll leave Emily out of this. I suspect that you agree with that assessment. I mean, do you think I don't, but go ahead. Do you think Beto's right?

[Emily]

Right.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah. I don't disagree with anything Beto said. Look, I said to the New York Times, Peter Baker in an article in February 2024 when Biden was still in, that this is a gamble that they are taking because they believe that only they can do this and that his legacy. And this was more of an article about, I think, his legacy or the pressures that they were facing. And yeah, damn right there's pressure because his legacy. And I, I assumed they knew this in February of 2024 when I gave this quote, but that his legacy was going to be defined on whether he wins or loses to Donald Trump, and that running was taking a gamble on that entire Legacy of 50 years in public life was going to be overshadowed. And I think you're seeing that we're not talking about Joe Biden and the CHIPS act or the American rescue plan or bringing this country back from the brink or the Violence Against Women act that he was way ahead of his time on. We're not talking about those things. And so for the short term, it's going to be very unpleasant for the family to sort of reconcile the legacy that historians and the news media are. And Democrats are going to be writing in the short term because of the decisions that they made.

[Sagar]

Do you have any personal regrets about how you handled or you didn't speak up?

[Dave Smith]

No, because I was speaking up after I left, at least throughout 2023. And the way I spoke up. And the way I spoke up was he needs to be his own advocate. When I saw the disengagement, when I saw that they were giving up opportunities like Kristen Welker's first Sunday show, Meet the Press, I tweeted, all right, we're gonna lose the news cycle. We can't complain that they cover Trump for the entire weekend and all the news he makes because we are turning it down or the super bowl interview or not doing press conferences and press avails.

[Sagar]

But did you think that was because he couldn't do it cuz he wasn't up to it?

[Dave Smith]

I didn't know.

[Sagar]

He thought it was just a bad strategy.

[Dave Smith]

Actually, I thought it was a bad strategy. I didn't know and I didn't care because I knew for three years by that point we were running no matter what. And in history, as a student of history, I know, like, okay, like, I even said out loud that it was a mistake to mess around with the primary calendar because it looks like we're scared. It looks like we have something to hide and we don't need to mess with the primary calendar. It does him a disservice, all of these things. I was saying, I'm from ground zero of the swing district in a swing state in Pennsylvania seven that we lost. And it was one of two counties that flipped from Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump. Reaganomics is what killed Bethlehem Steel. At least that's what the people of Allentown and Bethlehem believe. So to wrap your economy in bidenomics and take credit, wrapped your name around inflation in an unsettled economy. I wrote this in an op ed and they hated it. They were furious that I was trying to at least say, you have to show, not tell. You can't be a candidate and run for president and try to run out the clock. It's just not going to work. It's not going to work, especially against a candidate like Donald Trump who embraces the media, who is confident enough to go anywhere and talk to anyone. And they attacked me, they smeared me, they planted stories about me. They were terrible to me. I paid a personal price for speaking out. Did I speak out about his age? No, I did not speak about his age because, again, my experience was that I never had that issue with him. My issue was what they clearly decided was a choice not to engage with voters, not to engage with the media and the public in the way that you do when you run for reelection. And I was seeing the same polls you're talking about. None of those polls changed. The polls in 2022 and 2023 were saying at least three fourths of our voters did not want him to run again.

[Sagar]

Right.

[Dave Smith]

People and Democrats were speaking through the polls. I saw that, I said that. And I would say things that would make them very angry, like, we loved polls four years ago, because when we were running for an entire year, about 200, I went and looked it up. 251 out of 256 public polls. Polls had us ahead. And we loved polls then. So I really hate it that my old teammates were denying polls, denying data, denying the journalism out there, denying the inflation numbers. It made me angry because you're supposed to at least try to see your flaws and your vulnerabilities in real life for what they are, and then try to confront them and change them them. And they wouldn't do any of that. It was undermining the media, trashing the media, trashing the Times, trashing the Journal. And I didn't get it. They ran scared. Well, these were the things I had a problem with, and these were the things that ultimately cost me a lot of close friendships and probably my relationship with them. But the other thing that they didn't like that I'll go ahead and say to you guys, is they didn't like I was joining the effort to help their sons. The Bidens loved it. I was the only public advocate for their son because I hated the idea of children being weaponized or families of politicians being weaponized. And I saw what it did to the Bidens in real life. 19 and 20 and through the White House and The people in that White House who called me disloyal were throwing their son under the bus constantly. Nobody was using the bully pulpit to fight back against Comers and Jim Jordan. They weren't doing anything. They weren't fighting back to help Hunter. I was. I was out there. But the White House did not want a. They want a distance from Hunter. Which is why, you know, Hunter fired Anita Dunn's husband and brought in his own knife fighter, Abby Lowell. And they didn't like that. They didn't like that we were being aggressive in defending Hunter and trying to set up a legal defense fund for him, which, by the way, George Bush 41's donors did for his son, who cost the American people a lot more money than Hunter Biden.

[Krystal]

My last question is on family. I look at Joe Biden, I wonder if he was in a place where he could be trusted to make the decision about whether he can run again. If he sort of had his faculties about him in order to say, I'm running for reelection. Who was telling him? Or was it him, from your understanding, is that he wanted to run again. And so, as you said, Jill Biden was all in as long as. But was he in a position to competently say, I wanna run again, and then have the people who love him say, oh, yes, this is a good idea, or should people have stepped in and said, well, you're not.

[Dave Smith]

Well, I don't wanna dodge your questions, but you're correct that he did think that I have. Again, I do not know that. Again, there's a difference between covering up age and mental decline. And I have no idea behind the scenes whether he was. There's a cognitive issue. What I will say is.

[Krystal]

But we did see it in front of the scene in the debate.

[Dave Smith]

We ended up seeing what we saw. We don't know because none of us are medical doctors, right? So we can't say. What we can say is something was wrong, something was not right. Going back to the point where if you can't perform as a candidate, you can't be running because you can be president. But there's a difference between running for president and running the country.

[Sagar]

So who do you blame?

[Dave Smith]

So here's the thing. They were one of the smartest strategists in Democratic politics. I'm talking about a pollster who has a lot of Democratic candidates as clients. Governors, senators. John Anslowing was our Chief Pollster in 2020 and 2019. A Biden guy since 1987. He was iced out after 2022 because he by who? The team.

[Sagar]

Who's the team?

[Dave Smith]

Sunita Dunn, Mike Donilon. I don't know about the others. Dr. Biden, I don't know. She would not make a decision like that. But the other ones would be the ones to say, all right, he cannot be showing the president this data because John was actually sending us monthly data and polling updates in the first year on where the party was, where the country was, the mood of the country, on inflation, things like that. Before the Virginia gubernatorial and in 2022, they just iced mouth. John was never even told he was going to be. Not with us in 2024.

[Sagar]

The other person, they didn't like the numbers.

[Dave Smith]

They didn't like the numbers. And Steve Shale, another one, who, who ran President Obama's state operation in Florida not once but twice, ran the draft Biden movement in 2015, was going to be the lead strategist for the 2016 campaign had he run. Steve Shale ran our super PAC in 2019. 2020 raised us millions of dollars. He was doing analysis and he was doing surveys and polling. He gave a. In June of 2022, he also provided the boss data that wasn't looking good about 2024 and what we needed to do to fix that. And at that point, he was iced out. Never even invited to the White House in four years.

[Sagar]

Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming by, sharing your experience.

[Dave Smith]

Sorry for the over talking.

[Krystal]

No, no, no.

[Dave Smith]

There's a lot to talk about in this and there's a lot of different facets. I love them. I love Joe and Jill Biden, and I love the family. But I do think they were done a disservice by the people around them. And I hope they can start making adjustments to some of the advice that they've been getting.

[Sagar]

All right, Michael Arosa, thank you.

[Dave Smith]

You're welcome.

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[Krystal]

Some more bad economic indicators here in the United States. We can put this first element up on the screen from Bloomberg. The headline is market set for Bumpy ride after Moody's Downgrades us. So Crystal, we're recording this before the bell opens on Monday morning. Futures are down, I believe. But the Moody's US Credit downgrade, as Bloomberg says quote, sets the stage for a jolt to the trading week. Big tech stocks go from a safe bet to a question mark. Now they also say quote traders are bracing for a rocky start to the week after the US Was stripped of its last top credit rating. Now just zooming in on that last top credit rating. Moody's was the last to formally make this decision and they cited, quote, mounting concern about debt as it knocked the country score down a notch. Scott Besant called the move a quote, lagging indicator. So they're once again kind of trying to point the finger back at Joe Biden and he was on Meet the Press. We have some clips of that. So just yesterday Scott Bessant was asked by Kristen Welker to comment on it. Let's go ahead and take a listen to C2.

[Sagar]

Does the President's tax bill need to.

[Emily]

Do more to address the nation's debt and deficit? Well, Kristen, first of all, I think that Moody's is a lagging indicator indicator. I think that's what everyone thinks of credit agencies. Larry Summers and I don't agree on everything, but he said that when they downgraded the US in 2011. So it's a lagging indicator. And just like Sean Duffy said with our air traffic control system, we didn't get here in the in the past hundred days, it's the Biden administration and the spending that we have seen over the past four years, we inherited 6.7% deficit to GDP, the highest when we weren't in a recession, not the war. And we are determined to bring the spending down and grow the economy. Fair enough.

[Sagar]

Why is it appropriate for the president to accept a $400 million jet from Qatar?

[Emily]

Well, it's not. The president accepted to be the United States government. And Senator Mullen said this weekend the talks had actually begun under the Biden administration that President Trump has brought back trillions of investments in the United States. Every stop we made that the enthusiasm in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates to invest in the United States, that they want to push more and more. They have funds here. And if we go back back to your initial question on the Moody's downgrade, who cares? Qatar doesn't, Saudi doesn't, UAE doesn't. They're all pushing money and they want to. They've made 10 year the, they've made 10 year investment plans.

[Krystal]

All right, so we can go ahead and put the next element up on the screen as well. Consumer sentiment, this from CNBC slides to second lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs. So Bassett, on the one hand is is correct, Biden era spending was really, really high. And it's possible that Moody's, if they're citing concerns about debt, is still, is still reacting to those heightened levels of spending. But if that is the case, they should, we're going to talk about this later in the show, be fairly concerned about the reconciliation bill that is about to explode the debt as it makes its way through the Republican control Congress, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, the Republican controlled Senate. Their own party is, you know, waving kind of the red flag about that problem and it's not going well. So it's also possible that Moody's is looking at that and saying holy smokes, tariffs needed even by the Trump administration's own admission, some form of industrial policy that is now hinging on the Republicans ability to lose no more than two votes. If everyone is there and voting, they can only lose two votes to get this bill passed. And if it's a definite deficit exploding bill, if it has industrial policy, we're still not completely sure about that. But I think to some extent Besson is probably correct that it's a lagging indicator. The US Economy has been in rough shape for a long time, but also the forecast is incredibly uncertain because of Trump administration policies. Again, by their own admission, they're in the middle of a sort of of laboratory style experiment at the moment and there are a lot of uncertainties in the months ahead. Crystal, what did you make of this. And do you agree that it's to some extent a lagging indicator?

[Sagar]

I mean, somewhat. These things build on each other, but to me, it's like an indictment. It's the final indictment of Doge too, because, you know, Doge was supposed to solve. We're going to find all this. We're going to cut $2 trillion. We'll be all good. I'm not a deficit hawk. However, I will say if we do have the world move away from the US and the dollar as the world reserve currency, then we are going to have a problem with debt. The flight to safety of treasury bonds, the fact that the whole world looks to us to buy our debt and to use dollars as the global reserve currency, the base of, of basically every international transaction. Yeah. If the world moves away from that, we are going to have to reckon with some of these things. So, number one, Doge obviously, total and complete failure. Number two, the House budget resolution that just passed through, you're Talking about some $4 to $5 trillion in deficit increase because of these massive tax cuts for the rich. So if this is something you really have a concern about, then they're running a million miles in the wrong direction and did in the first Trump administration as well. So it's just as much a lagging indicator of his first administration where they also gave massive expensive tax cuts as it is the COVID era spending, which was absolutely essential to keeping Americans afloat during a very rough time through no fault of their own. So I think it's, in a lot of ways it is a real indictment of the direction and what has already been done in this Trump administration, just judging by their own goals and standards of what they claimed they wanted to set out to accomplish. And then I do think it also in terms of the world moving away from the US as the central essential nation and this incredible privilege that we've had being at the center of the global financial system, this is another sort of, this is another knock on us as being the place, the center of everything, the center of the world. And this just puts us a little bit more in the direction of a post US World order.

[Krystal]

And to the question of the lagging indicator, when we put that CNBC tear sheet up on the screen, one of the quotes from it is the index of consumer sentiment dropped from 50.8, down from 52.2 in April. In the preliminary reading for May. That is the second lowest reading on record behind June 2022. That gets to particularly the last five months. And the Trump, I mean, really it's post Liberation Day, post April 2nd.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Krystal]

But that gets to, you know, the fact that Moody's aside. It gets to the fact that the uncertainty in the Trump era economy, which again, even by their own admission is part of their plan, is affecting the economy in and of itself, like just kind of meta. But if you're going to create an uncertainty that will actually, if you're, if you're going to create uncertainty as leverage, it's going to have an immediate effect on the economy also.

[Sagar]

I mean, the tariffs were supposed to make us rich. What happened to that?

[Krystal]

I'm feeling liberated. What happened to that, Crystal? I guess you're not feeling liberated, but some of us are feeling liberated.

[Sagar]

Yeah. Well, congratulations to you, Em. Thank you. There was one other piece of this that I actually wanted to hear your thoughts on that part where Basin's like, well, why should we care? Custer doesn't care. The UAE doesn't care. Saudi Arabia doesn't care. It's like, wow. And it reminded me of something, actually. Ro Khanna has been really going after them for which again is the distance between the America first rhetoric and the reality of this administration setting up this massive AI data center in UAE versus we were told, oh, well, this is all these jobs of the future. We're gonna be here in the US and, you know, as a core part of the America first project. And yet here we are instead. They're gonna be in the uae, apparently.

[Krystal]

Yeah, I thought that was a great point from Rao. He was making it over the weekend. I mean, them saying hedging their bets with these Gulf countries, it's actually like kind of frightening fori mean, who knows what happens? The next president and Trump administration can do whatever the Trump administration does for three years potentially, and then things can change. But it's quite a way to go about it. And Crystal, I really want to move on to this post from Donald Trump and I also just kind of want to inject it straight into my veins. This is, this is C4. This is a true social post from Trump where he said Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made billions of dollars last year, far more than expected between Walmart and China. They should, as I said, quote, eat the tariffs.

[Sagar]

As one says, as I said, the popular phrase, popular saying eat the tariffs.

[Krystal]

And not charge valued customers anything, all caps. I'll be watching and so will your customers. The reason I say I wanted to inject this into my vein, Crystal, is this is how I generally feel about most things that get passed down to consumers from these corporations. It drives me completely insane. They never pass it down to their workers, and then they're doing all kinds of stupid stuff like buybacks and whatever else. But it's actually, I think, a really fantastic point. But the problem for Trump, obviously, is he's not really doing anything to force them to not pass the costs down. And there are all kinds of carrots and sticks that can be used as part of an industrial policy. So that aside, I do want to say, I mean, according to Business Insider. I'm sorry, according to the AFL cio, which tracks CEO pay, Walmart's CEO is the highest paid CEO in all of retail, which is not surprising at all, but took home a cool $27 million last year. And again, if you're looking target CEO, by the way, that was down to 19 million, Costco 16 million. I mean, this is an incredibly high level of CEO pay. The ratio to worker pay is not great, obviously, either. And that stuff actually does drive me absolutely insane that we just say, you know, instead of maybe reshoring, eating some costs, whatever, they insist on paying their executives at completely unpatriotic, unethical levels. And it is absolutely bananas. So on the one hand, yeah, I think Donald Trump is absolutely 1000% correct on this question. On the other hand, there has to be a series of carrots and sticks.

[Sagar]

Well, and listen, corporations are going to corporation, they're going to businesses, they're going to, you know, they're going to do.

[Krystal]

Their capital free market, baby. Yeah.

[Sagar]

And yeah, and you're not doing anything to your point to make that not be the case. But also, watch me here defend Walmart when you're talking about a 30% tariff. Their profit margins are not 30%. Like, you can't just eat that. That there is inevitably going to be some amount of that, even if they eat some of it. And they can eat some of it. This is a very profitable corporation, don't get me wrong, and they pay their CEO an insane amount. All of those things are absolutely true. They don't have a 30% profit margin. So if many of their goods are coming from China or parts coming from China and being assembled here, etc. Then what you're going to end up with is, yes, some parts costs getting passed on to consumers, or the other alternative is some cost getting passed on to the small businesses that are selling those goods to Walmart. And that's actually where a lot of the squeeze is going to come. Remember we talked about this lady who has her like busy baby mat thing that she finally got into Walmart, small business based here in America. She wanted to make her product America. It was literally impossible. So she made it in China. And it was the only place where she could really go and get what she needed for this very specialized product. She gets her product picked up by Walmart. Well, that's at a set contracted price. And Walmart, I think, weren't they the ones that put out the thing that were like, we're not accepting price increases, sorry. With regard to tariffs. So it's gonna be people like her who get completely screwed, who are locked into this contract at this price that is now completely unattainable. Now, 30% tariff is better than the 145% tariff that it was, but that is still a dramatic increase in cost. And I don't know the specifics for her business, but for many small medium business owners, that will completely put them under. So that's the actual reality that you're talking about here in terms of who is going to, quote, unquote, eat the tariffs.

[Krystal]

Yeah. And again, Donald Trump knows how Walmart is going to handle this. He knows exactly that they can't. The CEO pay thing is an interesting glimpse into all of this. It's not just one company. Walmart couldn't just stop paying this guy. It's like 20 million of this is tied up in stock awards annually. So they can't do that. He could choose to be a decent human being and pass some of his salary on to workers and not hike prices. He could choose to do that. But the entire system is not going to fix itself because the Walmart, because we, first of all, Walmart in and of itself reacts as Donald Trump wants them. And singling out Walmart, by the way, means that he's taking away, or he's trying to take away some of the market advantage for them and that their competitors can do differently. It's incredibly fragile ecosystem that he's working with here. And you can't just expect one person or one retail chain, even as massive as it is, to do those sorts of things. But CEO pay, I mean, and these guys, if you want to find a CEO, they're all making stupid, stupid money. And so you have to pay them competitively. The thing to do is just to create a culture of shame around that level of intake and especially when it's the ratio that should be so incredibly shameful. The idea that you would be taking home this type of money and then hiking prices on consumers because there's a attempt to. To actually resource the manufacturing and those like that should be shameful. And so I think Trump is trying to do some version of that, but it's pretty hard for him, especially when they're doing their tax cut bill. They're about to cut corporate taxes. Besson's goal is to take it from 21 to 15%. It's a really mixed messaging situation for the administration.

[Sagar]

That's about the most positive thing I think you could possibly say about it. But yes, I'm in favor of creating cold culture of shame, regrowing a culture of shame around this and many other things besides, because I think shamelessness is one of the sort of like key values of MAGA World and Trump.

[Krystal]

We're actually gonna talk about this in the tax block, so stick around and we're gonna talk about how it was created and how it sort of was grown on the right and how that took off. So that's actually a good tie in to that segment. Let's listen to C6. This is Donald Trump talking about the return of the. Those arbitrary tariffs. Go ahead, roll it.

[Sagar]

We just reached a fantastic trade deal, as you know, with the United Kingdom, which was wonderful. And we have another big one that we just reached with China. China deal is a very big deal. It's in the process of continuing to be formed, but they wanted to make that deal very badly. And we have at the same time, 150 countries that want to make a deal, but you're not able to see that many countries. So at a certain point over the next two to three weeks, I think Scott and Howard will be sending letters out essentially telling people it would be very fair, but we'll be telling people what they'll be paying to do business in the United States. They'll essentially be paying to be doing business in the United States. I guess you could say they could appeal it, but for the most part, I think we're going to be very fair, but it's not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us. But this was. Coming to UAE was very important. Coming to Saudi Arabia and Qatar was very important to me because of personal relationships that I had maybe more than anything else.

[Krystal]

So, yeah, that was Trump in the uae.

[Sagar]

Now, this is the personal relationships part was interesting too there at the end of like, yeah, it probably went there because I just, I like these guys and I knew they were going to give me some business deals. So.

[Krystal]

Yeah. And he also, him also saying we aren't, we don't have the ability to meet with all of the people that want to meet with us. That's something we were told that they did have the ability to do during Liberation Day, remember?

[Sagar]

Wasn't that the goal?

[Krystal]

It's no problem whatsoever.

[Sagar]

He's the greatest dealmaker of all time and he's going to put on a masterclass for all of us.

[Krystal]

They're teasing what, like 18 deals that they say they have, something like that over the course of this week that they're planning to get to the bottom of? Yeah, I mean, it sounds like what they're doing right there is lowering expectations for that not coming to fruition. And maybe they'll get a few key deals, uk, India, maybe Japan. Like, maybe they will get a few things that they can point to and say, listen, this is we put the screws to everyone. But it sounds like they're actually not getting the response that they want from other countries and are lowering expectations.

[Sagar]

And other countries looked at what China did, which is basically nothing, and win.

[Krystal]

Yeah, that's true.

[Sagar]

And they're like, well, why should we we come on bended knee when we've got a model here in what the Chinese were able to pull off. Now, not every country has. No other country really has as much shorter power in these negotiations as the Chinese do. But I do think that that was a learning and a model and a lesson for other countries that make it less likely that you're going to be able to strike all of these deals that we were promised going in. And Scott Besant was pressed on. Okay, well, so if you're going to just sort of like figure out whatever the tariff rate is without going through these negotiations, what level are we looking at? And he said, effectively, well, I guess we'll go back to the Liberation Day rates. So the chart with the penguins and all of that and 50% on Lesotho and all of that, apparently that's coming back. So let's take a listen to treasury secretary Scott Bessant. Mr. Secretary, does that effectively mean that these negotiations with other countries, countries are over and how high should they expect tariffs to go?

[Krystal]

Above 10%.

[Emily]

This means that they're not negotiating in good faith. They are going to get a letter. They are saying, here, here is the rate. So I would expect that everyone would come and negotiate in good faith. You expect that rate, though, that you.

[Sagar]

Would slap on any country that you think is not negotiating in good faith to be above 10%?

[Emily]

Well, I think that it would be the April, April 2nd level. Some countries were at 10%, some were substantially higher.

[Sagar]

So back to Liberation Day, Emily.

[Krystal]

Well, that's why. So what was this? Yeah, it was last week. I think it was last Monday. I just was not willing to call Trump's China tariff move a capitulation quite yet because I'm like, I think they still don't know what's happening. They don't really have a strategy here. Their strategy is still just like let people come to us us and do ad hoc, have a kind of ad hoc approach to putting the screws to other countries and getting like, they don't have levels that they want to see other countries get to. They just want to sort of negotiate some of these non trade barriers and like non tariff trade barriers and all of this stuff. And I think that's what we're seeing from that Trump clip and this Besson clip is just that they're feeling like they're not getting good enough deals and so they're going back to threatening April 2nd levels. I mean, it's just completely unpredictable. We're which is not what they need right now at all. They need some type of certainty at this point. They need to have a lot of deals inked that look good, that look pretty, that people can be confident that that's where the level is going to be going forward, that people can be even if they think it's too high and it's not going to be great for the United States, at the end of the day, they can say this is what it's going to look like and we can make investments accordingly. The bill is a disaster for them right now in the House and well, it's not even over at the Senate side yet. But like, that's already choppy. So if they're even able to pass, that is an open question. And despite or on top of that, they now don't have like they're going away from clarity on these questions and they might need to to get good deals.

[Sagar]

Are investment tax credits even in this bill? Do we know?

[Krystal]

Yes, they are. Yeah, they're in the bill. But I don't know. Like, that could change. I mean, and that could change when it gets to the Senate. The whole reconciliation process is so, so, so uncertain. You're throwing things in, taking them out at the last minute to make these deals. So who knows if they stick around.

[Sagar]

The reason why I felt comfortable calling it a capitulation and still do is in the context of China. The initial rhetoric from Trump was so maximalist about like, I don't even know why we have overseas supply chains. And they were Talking about a total decoupling from China and backing off of that unilaterally without getting anything really in exchange. I mean, really, truly nothing in exchange from China other than, oh, they'll talk to us about fentanyl. That I think is fair to call a capitulation. They realized they could not take this immediate maximalist approach to China specifically and be able to survive what the stock and the bond markets and the domestic political situation, all of that was going to, to throw at them. Now, I think it's fair to say, and I felt this as well. That doesn't mean that Trump is done with tariffs.

[Krystal]

I was gonna say, I think it could still change.

[Sagar]

Well, and first of all, I mean, 30%, like I just. We got a level set here. If we had gotten 30%, if there had never been the 145% and just out of the gates, what was announced was 30%, we would all be like, holy shit, that is a gigantic tariff. Yeah, that's like Smoot Hawley level style tariff tariff. It's a massive tax increase on working class people. Like, it is an extraordinary economic political event. And as I've also been saying, Trump loves tariffs because they give him all of this unilateral power. And we've learned more about that since the Liberation Day. And what they've been using some of the things that he's been using that leverage in order to accomplish. And actually one of the key things is apparently to help out his buddy Elon Musk Musk with starlink. They've been using, the State Department has been using the tariffs as sort of a mob boss tactic to get countries that were reluctant to take up Starlink to go ahead and accept to have licenses for this product. So I don't think that he's done with tariffs because if there's one thing we've seen in Trump 2.0, it is all about him consolidating as much power as he can in his own hands and in the hands of, of the executive. And tariffs are a key part of that story that allows him to. All the businesses have to come to him, all the countries have to come to him, something that he can use as a carrot, as a stick, et cetera. And that's why I think we're far from finished with the tariff conversation.

[Krystal]

Yeah, absolutely. And your point about the 30% level, I mean, when Oren Cass and American Compass proposed that 10% global tariff, there was a massive freakout. And now that looks like, like sweet relief to the markets and to the corporate Class.

[Sagar]

Well, what was inflation at its peak under Biden? With COVID it was, it never hit 10%. And so if you're talking, if, if you are talking about 10% around the world, you know, it may not be exactly 10% inflation that you're going to experience, but it's going to be a significant amount. I mean, that is a dramatic economic event. Just 10% across the board, let alone 30% here and 50% there. And what they contemplated on April 2 and apparently are still contemplating going back to.

[Krystal]

And it's possible, we look back at this moment and over the course of the last two plus months, I mean, it's been so crazy. You never know how this stuff ages because they're so ad hoc about this. And again, I think they see that as part of the leverage, that it's creating uncertainty. And other countries, to your point, have to kind of come on bended knee. And that's sort of what they're saying. Here is Trump and the UAE in that clip we rolled saying, we don't even have time to meet with all of you. You want to do trade with us, but we don't even have time to talk to you. That's how powerful we are. Of course, I think we could look back on this and be like, this was just a moment where they were feeling uncertain about the deals. They felt like they weren't getting enough deals. And because they flexed like this, everyone ended up coming back and making better deals, whatever. But that's just really more not the trajectory again of the last, like six weeks. We're just how many weeks into like six, seven weeks into Post Liberation Day world? And there aren't a lot of deals coming to fruition. There's, there's scattershot ones. And I think some of them are like, actually good changes. The way that it's looking with the uk, it looks like a decent step. It looks like a step in the right direction, roughly. But this was worldwide, essentially.

[Sagar]

And also, it's not like, I mean, whether you think that the UK deal is marginally better than the status quo or not, it's not like this was a game changer.

[Krystal]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Sagar]

All of this, you know.

[Krystal]

No, not at all. And that's the thing. It's like you just need to see, I mean, you would need to see a lot more than what's been seen so far.

[Emily]

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[Sagar]

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[Emily]

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[Sagar]

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[Emily]

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[Sagar]

To get that JLO glow, let's go ahead and turn to this extreme weather that we saw with horrific deadly consequences in in the middle of the country. Kentucky and Missouri in particular, really hard hit by this strong line of tornadoes and storms. We can put some images up on the screen here. 26 people are dead after these tornadoes hit in those two states. Here's some footage from USA Today. They say deadly tornadoes leave a Trail of destruction in Kentucky. There you actually see the tornado itself. They say this is Scott County, Missouri here. This is terrifying. Part of an apartment building just blows apart like it's made of absolutely nothing. We've got some of the aftermath here. I'm not sure if this is Kentucky or Missouri. I think this is in Kentucky, But I'm not 100% sure. But you can see just the level of devastation. And this is in London, Kentucky. Looks like it was a small airport there. You can see the debris and wreckage of some of those small planes that were just absolutely torn apart. And, you know, this obviously is really significant in and of itself, just given the loss of lives. At least 26 people dead that we know of at this point. But it also has raised some real questions about the impacts of Doge cuts and whether there was sufficient warning given or whether more lives could have been saved if the relevant weather office there which had experienced these cuts had been fully staffed. Ryan hall, who's a fantastic weather youtuber, Kyle's a big weather guy, he watches him all the time on YouTube, was astonished that there hadn't been sufficient warnings put out at the time as he was covering this live. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little of what he had to say.

[Emily]

What we're talking about here is a big deal. I am so surprised that we don't have an upgraded warning from the National Weather Service. Things that I do want to mention is I'm pretty sure this is the National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky. My local National Weather Service here. This is one of the places that's understaffed right now. I don't know if you guys have been following the news. Big, big layoffs across National Weather Service and stuff like that. That might be a result of a problem that we're having there. If so, that's crazy. That's crazy. We're about to have a large tornado go through a very populated area with much less warning than what there should be as a result of that. Guys, all I can tell you right now is if you know anybody in Somerset, call them, call them right now and let them know what's going on. I'm not kidding. Like, this is a big deal. This is a huge deal. We've got a massive tornado about to slam through Oak Hill Bourbon and Ferguson here.

[Sagar]

And he was absolutely right. In the dire nature of those warnings that Kentucky weather office, they say scrambles for staffing of severe storms bear down. New York Times write up here. Washington Post had a write up as well. Well, National Weather Service office in Eastern Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as these tornadoes were moving through much of the eastern U.S. according to the union that represents the department's meteorologists. Tom Fahey, the legislative director for that union, was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of government efficiency. Mr. Fahey said on Friday that because of the threat for flooding, hail and tornadoes facing eastern Kentucky, the West Weather Service had to find forecasting help for that office. A spokeswoman for the weather service said the jax's office would be relying on nearby offices for support throughout the weekend. So, Emily, that's the lay of the land here. Now, I will say that the government is claiming, no, this did not impact. They were able to fully staff, they were able to have the coverage that they need. But it certainly raises questions whether lives could have been saved if this office had been been fully staffed and not subject to those DOGE cuts.

[Krystal]

I mean, there should be an investigation. And I think it's crazy, Crystal. I mean, this always happens with tornadoes. You lived in Kentucky briefly, didn't you?

[Sagar]

I did, yeah.

[Krystal]

Yeah. So you know this. It' swhenever there's a snowstorm in New York. I actually like when we I used to teach students, I would use this as an example. Whenever there's a snowstorm in New York, it's national news for days. A tornado can rip through the heartland, kill 28 people, and it's a blip on the national news radar because most of the newsrooms are in New York. They're in D.C. they're in LA. And the gutting of local media means that there are just a few newsrooms that are kind of concentrated in big cities like St. Louis, for example, throughout the Midwest. But the main producers and editors and everything aren't there. And so, I mean, the this is getting to the bottom of whether or not these cuts actually may have actually resulted in a loss of life. I really hope that national media is sending people, is paying attention to the local media, sending people out to get to the bottom of this, because it's a hugely significant story. And it's one of those things that when you look at Elon Musk and the way he's been parading around with the chainsaw at cpac, for example, that Mele gifted him, it's never been funny. It's not funny. 80% of federal workers are outside of D.C. and I say that as somebody who loves the idea in Theory of Doge, but you're actually playing with people's lives. And it'd be one thing if the Trump administration had tapped someone like Russ Vogt, like a type of policy person to do, but they went with Elon as the figurehead of it, and it just gave the whole project this sense of. What's the right word for it? I don't know if casualness is the right word, but.

[Sagar]

Haphazard. Yeah, yeah.

[Krystal]

This sense that like. And he has openly said that his strategy involves mass firings. And then if you realize you need to bring people back, then you bring people back. He said that's the way to do it, basically, is that you learn who's essentially potential after you fire them on a nationwide scale. I mean, we're talking about one of the biggest countries in the world, one of the biggest countries that has ever existed. Massive piece of land with a huge population. That's a really, really, really, really, really dangerous game. And that is obvious to everyone. So I'm really curious. I mean, maybe it turns out that they were. They came in overnight and they staffed up because they realized these storms were going to be bad and this would have happened no matter what. Maybe that turns out to be the case. But when you juxtapose it with National Weather Service cuts and Elon Musk parading around with a chainsaw, it's a pretty bad look.

[Sagar]

Yeah, well, and here's what I would say, too, is I do think some of the cuts were just completely haphazard. But even with rust vote, Project 2025 took direct aim at NOAA, and there is a ideological project on the road. Right. That would like to see some of this weather tracking privatized so that we don't all, you know, Ryan hall and everybody else who wants access to the data doesn't get access to the data. You have to pay for it. There is an ideological agenda behind it as well. So it's not just random that these offices get hit with cuts. The National Weather Service gets hit with cuts, and NOAA overall gets hit with cuts. There is also an ideological project behind it, and this is the fallout from that project or demonstrates what the potential for the fallout could be from that project. There are a lot of things the government does that actually are effective that we just don't think about. They do track the weather very effectively. It takes a lot of resources. It takes a lot of people. It takes these weather balloons going up, which also have been cut significantly. But actually, they have done a pretty good job at the that and that is now being put at risk. We see it also, you know, with the air traffic controllers and the horrific situation, you know, with the faa. Again, this is something that is a life or death issue that we really depend on the federal government for. And when it doesn't function, when it does function, you don't think about it too much. When it doesn't function, suddenly it becomes really front of mind if you want to, you know, go somewhere for Memorial Day weekend and be able to actually, you know, get where you're going, going and not be terrified of what's gonna happen when you're trying to land. And there's another. Let's go ahead and put this FEMA piece up on the screen. Cuz this is connected. Obviously you have a newly appointed head of FEMA and Trump has been.

[Krystal]

FEMA is a mess, like a mess right now.

[Sagar]

I think everyone, yeah. And I think anyone who's been associated with FEMA would have said going into this administration there were things that needed to be resolved. Trump has an ideological agenda against FEMA at all. He thinks this should be basically dismantled and it should all be sent to the states. Now if you have a minor weather disaster, states may have sufficient funds and resources to handle it. When you're talking about increasing extreme weather events year after year after year, you need the federal government just for resources sake to be able to assist. And states do not have the capability to be able to respond. Respond. So this is coming, you know. There was some leaked information coming out of FEMA that the newly appointed head says the agency does not yet have a fully formed disaster response plan going into hurricane season. I'll read you a little bit of this. David Richardson, who previously served as a senior official at dhs, does not have a background in emergency management, told staff he would share a hurricane plan with Kristi Noem after he completes it later late next week. He said Thursday he's 80 to 85% done with the plan. Agency is already months behind schedule in its preparations for the hurricane season which starts June 1 and is expected to have above normal activity. Richardson said in a recent meeting the FEMA staff that clarifying the intent of the president who has called for terminating the agency was a challenge in preparing a strategy for hurricane season. According to a video recording of the media of the meeting that was viewed by the Wall Street Journal. And there was an another wild quote in here, Emily. He was apparently asked during this town hall meeting if the will of the president or the well being of Americans was more important and he responded, I think those two things are essentially the same. So this is a, you know, this is a Trump loyalist. Yes, man, whatever. And FEMA is dramatically behind in preparing for the impending hurricane season.

[Krystal]

Yeah. The Reuters headlined three days ago. Staff losses and low morale are derailing FEMA hurricane preparations. Internal document says. And then there's another headline. This is two days ago as well. Trump's firing a FEMA director unsettles GOP senators. And the Republicans made a big deal, rightfully so, of the FEMA response after the hurricanes in Helene. Yeah, after Helene, North Carolina last, South Carolina, last fall. That was, I mean, reasonable. Everyone was right to be outraged about the FEMA report response there. So if the FEMA response to these tornadoes, which have now killed what, 28 people, is lacking, Trump is going to hear from the senators in those states, Republican senators in those states. He's going to hear from the governors in those states, Republican governors in those states. And what's interesting, Crystal, is that's the type of thing that will start to change the permission structure for DOGE and for massive cuts. If Republicans are saying the way you were going about these cuts are worse than just continuing to spend at the same level.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Krystal]

Which is not impossible, by the way. That's the thing you can, again, I support the idea of DOGE in theory. And I would say in some cases, these cuts are. You can still end up. When you're making cuts that are necessary or that I think are necessary from a perspective of just a more limited government perspective, you look at it and you say the cuts themselves can be worse than the altern, the status quo, because they're done in a way that is cruel. And one thing I wanted to mention is if you are in dc, you don't understand how important the emergency warning systems are for tornadoes and saving lives because people rely on them to make a judgment about where to go, what to do. Do they get out of the soccer carpool and go home right away? Is it that serious? Or are they upending everyone's routine for something that's not serious at all? The warnings are important to that. If you live in the Midwest or in the south or in an area with tornadoes, and if you don't understand that and you're just saying, we will fire people, then we will learn and rehire anybody who's necessary. People get caught and fall through the cracks and tragedy happens.

[Sagar]

And some of his strongest supporters in terms of, of states have already been impacted by the denial of FEMA assistance. So flooding in West Virginia, FEMA Denied assistance for windstorm damage in Washington, not a Trump state. But FEMA staff said there's no longer a clear process for assessing assistance requests from states. They're concerned disaster victims aren't getting the help they need. In Arkansas, they were initially denied funds, but Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now the governor of Arkansas. So she was able to go to Trump and say, please, we need these funds. And eventually they were able to. They relented. But if you don't happen to have a personal relationship with apparently our sovereign monarch now, then your residents are going to get screwed. Including in a state like West Virginia, which I covered here, that flooding was apocalyptic. It's the worst they've ever seen, the level of disaster. And it hit the poorest part of an already poorest, poor state, which has been screwed over and left behind many times over. And so denied assistance for flooding there is honestly, to me, it shocks the conscience, but this is the direction that they have gone in. And they put in just a Trump sycophant at the head of this agency who was apparently unprepared for the hurricane season. So it's unsettling. It's very unsettling to see things that were previously taken for granted. And again, not to say FEMA was great or perfect, we've all seen what happened with Katrina. We saw the inadequacy of a response in Helene, et cetera. But once again, you're taking something that needed work and you are eliminating it entirely or making it vastly worse. And I think this is an indication of potential things to come.

[Krystal]

Yeah. With a tone of flippancy and joviality. It's just all a chainsaw game. Which is probably why in the Elon Musk has stepped into the background because.

[Sagar]

They realized he's quiet lately.

[Krystal]

It wasn't.

[Sagar]

Yeah, he's devoting his time to reprogramming Grok to talk about white genocide and deny the Holocaust, apparently, is what he's spending his time doing now.

[Krystal]

He's got all kinds of stuff to do. Yeah, busy man, Crystal. Let's move on to the. This is gonna be so interesting. I'm really excited about it. Arjun Singh, who joins us to talk about the history of how Republicans became an anti tax party fundamentalist, anti tax party and what that means for today.

[Sagar]

So, guys, Trump's big, beautiful bill passed a cleared important hurdle in the House. I can put this up on the screen. The tax and immigration bill clears hurdle after late night vote. It had previously failed in committee in a late night vote. Was able to Pass after some Republican dissenters just voted present so it could make it out of committee. All of that is a long way of saying this bill still has a long way to go before it actually is effectuated into law. But at the center of this bill is a big old tax cut for the rich, doubling down on Trump's key priority and accomplishment from his first administration. So joining us now to discuss how the Republican Party became this anti tax juggernaut is Arjun Singh with Lever News. And you guys have a new podcast series out called Tax Revolt, which tracks the history of the anti tax movement. So great to see you, Arjun.

[Emily]

Yes, thank you for having me. Thanks for having me.

[Sagar]

Yeah, of course. So we can put E2 up on the screen. That's just the logo. So you guys can see here's Tax Revolt. We've got four part series and let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of the trailer to set this up for everybody. All taxes are bad.

[Emily]

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Some are worse than others. We have a new revolution against the tax. Tax, tax, spend, spend, spend, spend. The mindset of die hard tax cutters has dominated politics since the 1980s.

[Krystal]

And today, cutting taxes is practically a religious mandate in conservative politics.

[Sagar]

And government agencies like the IRS are partisan battlegrounds. The dream in America is not to.

[Dave Smith]

Make the rich poor.

[Sagar]

The dream is to make the poor rich.

[Emily]

The era of big government is over.

[Dave Smith]

Don't hurt the top.

[Emily]

And if you're gonna fight rich people, you're gonna lose.

[Sagar]

From the landmark California tax revolt to.

[Krystal]

Trump's latest push to cut taxes for.

[Sagar]

The rich, this movement claimed to fight.

[Krystal]

For the average American, but really deepened inequality and helped the rich get richer.

[Emily]

This is the story of how a small but powerful movement reshaped our economy, weakened our democracy, and left the government scrambling to serve the people it was meant to protect. But that's not the way the world is. Guys, do you want to sit there and scream and holler and hate rich people and lose every election?

[Dave Smith]

It is time for a wealth tax in America.

[Emily]

You'll lose everything. If you don't lose the election, you'll lose the country.

[Sagar]

So I like the description there of tax cutting as an almost religious mandate.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Sagar]

Because at this point, you have a broad national coalition, really quite bipartisan at the grassroots level in favor of taxing the rich more.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Sagar]

And yet you still have the Republican Party going in the polar opposite direction.

[Emily]

Yeah. And one of the funny things that we actually talk about in the series is that when you get to the 1980s when Reaganomics is becoming very popular. Democrats vote for Reagan's bills. Tip o' Neill's the Speaker of the House. Reagan's got these Democratic legislatures. And part of the reason the Democrats are on board with it is they hear from their own constituents how upsetting it is to see how easy it is to game the tax code. They're saying that our rich friends who have fancy accountants can do all these loopholes. The tax code is so complex now. Why don't we get any relief just because we have to pay our taxes? Taxes like suckers. And the Democratic response was, you're right, the tax code is too easy to game and so we'll bring down your tax rates. And they tried to fix some of the loopholes, but as we know through history, the winners of all of that was the business community and corporate interest who managed to bring everybody's taxes down and also take their taxes down to the point that some billionaires don't even pay taxes. They pay negative taxes they earn from government subsidies.

[Sagar]

Unbelievable.

[Krystal]

Well, yeah, let's keep pulling at this thread of religion actually, because this is what on the right we're seeing what on the right is the fading of what's called fusionism, which is the three legged stools. Frank Meyer. A whole thing basically is it combines limited government, social conservatism and neoconservatism. And that's completely falling apart at this moment. Maybe it'll reconstruct, but at this point it's really difficult for the Republican Party to maintain that coalition. So as you went back through history, can you maybe tell us a little bit about what it was like as the Milton Friedman wing coalesced with the social conservatives and the neoconservatives? It's such an interesting marriage, especially between neoconservatives and Milton Friedman types, because the Reagan era saw massive spending on defense and at the same time there was this mandate for tax cuts. It's sort of similar to what we see people talking about right now.

[Emily]

Absolutely. I'm so glad that you distill that like that because that is one of the most fascinating things that I, I came out from the series is that the Republican coalition is kind of a Frankenstein monster of different groups that have made alliances with each other. But when it comes down to it do end up being on different ends of the issue. So when we start in the 1970s, you have the post Watergate era and you have stagflation happening, high unemployment and high inflation.

[Krystal]

I keep wanting to say uninflation which.

[Emily]

I think is what everybody wishes was happening. But no, you had stagflation, which was the worst of the worst. And so you had an economic crisis. You had people actually seeing real pain paying their taxes because their money was getting cheaper and cheaper by the day. And what you see enter in that is different groups of conservatives trying to take advantage of that. So you have the people from the business community who say, listen, let's just knock down the whole tax code. Free market capitalism. This is the way everyone's gonna probably prosper. That would be kind of like the art laughers who we heard in the trailer just now, the Godfather. Supply side economics. We'll take them at kind of face value that if this is what they believe, they believe that low taxation will lead to so much prosperity, you don't really need a government to play the role of an administrative state. Those people find alliances with another group of conservatives who are seeing integration happening, who are seeing changing social values, and they're seeing a, a Democratic party in a government that they feel is becoming too tolerant of women and minorities and that a lot of the white working class people are being left behind. And in our first episode, we talk about Howard Jarvis in California in 1978. He gets this ballot proposition on there that says, let's just cap the property tax. And he messages both of those things. Isn't the government bloated? Aren't the bureaucrats overpaid? Aren't your taxes too high? And he would also say to certain people, should your taxes pay for school integration? Should your taxes pay for a social educational system that is slowly moving away from you? And he merges these two things together. And we talk about Newt Gingrich the same year, 1978. That's when he wins his election to Congress. He sees the potency of the practicality of telling people, you don't have to pay as much anymore. A lot of people vibe with that message. But he sees an undercurrent of people, people who are starting to view the federal government as something that they should be opposed to. That's an enemy to them. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter's IRS was withholding tax exempt status from schools that refused to integrate, violating court orders in this period, 1978. Gingrich. But also people like Howard Jarvis in California that started the anti IRS movement, which they said, the tax collectors are a tool of an ideologically driven government. Government. Your taxes going to them is helping an ideological battle. Not just funding kind of the base social services that were pretty popular and that a lot of Republicans agreed with too, because like you said, Republicans like George Herbert Walker Bush and Ronald Reagan wanted strong military. They wanted more spending on defense. So they wanted government to do things. They just didn't like the intrusion of government on the tax code, certainly taking. Making big businesses profits. And so that's kind of what the series leads up to. And by the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich gets into office, the movement of conservatives has become so fractured that the Pat Buchanan, hard, proto Trump conservatives, now, they have a lot more influence over this party. And they're saying Ronald Reagan's too moderate because he compromised with Democrats. And George Bush is, of course, way too moderate because he would even consider raising taxes. And they see Newt Gingrich shut down the government and they say, this is what we're all about. Aggression, hostility. And the movement takes a hard turn to the right right there. And it's not to say that the entire Republican Party believes like this. I think that the Republican civil War is still happening right now.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But that is how this tax issue then morphs into what we see right now, which is you have whole anti government forces. People who saw Waco and Oklahoma City saying, you know what? The government is taking away our rights, and it is a frightening force. And if our taxes defund the government, more power to that. And that's, by the way, Grover Norquist, who we interview in our last episode. He's that faction of the conservative movement. Art Laffer, who we heard in the trailer, is the other side, which he says, low taxes equals prosperity, but he'll message all these kind of pro government values.

[Sagar]

Oh, interesting.

[Krystal]

Yeah, no coincidence, by the way, that happened during the fall of the Soviet Union. Just that timeline is in the early 90s.

[Sagar]

Yeah, that's a fantastic point. And so sort of bring us to today. I mean, on the one hand, again, this $4 trillion tax cut for the rich centerpiece of the Trump agenda, He sort of floated like, oh, maybe I won't cut taxes as much on the millionaires. But then he backed off of that immediately when it became clear that he'd actually have to exert some pressure to get that to happen. He wasn't all that interested in doing it to start with. On the other hand, in the time period that you're covering, they really were on the offense. They felt very confident in their messaging. Now, now you can see from Steve Bannon and others that they realize if they're gonna really position themselves as this populist party, this is a little bit of a problem. For them, they're at odds with their own voters, let alone the national conversation. So kind of where is the anti tax movement today?

[Emily]

I think the anti tax movement is still very powerful because of things like Elon Musk and Doge, and that is that they are taking the rhetoric that the government's a hostile action and dialing it up to 11. And as we talk about in the series, when you, if you message that rhetoric in an era where people are already dissatisfied with their government, they feel let down by it and they're frustrated, you can get people who initially were pro government agreeing with you that the government is doing negative things. I think the biggest contour DEI is.

[Sagar]

A big part of that.

[Emily]

DEI is a big part of that. I think the big thing that the Steve Bannon thing is trying to do is he's trying to mimic more language of the progressive left and the left, left wing and hoping that left wing allies will also say, hey, isn't this the future? We should be. No taxation on everybody else but putting some taxes on the wealthy. And I think that the anti tax movement is realizing the Republican Party was never a good vehicle if that was the kind of politics that you wanted to espouse. The more progressive Bernie Sanders style of politics vibes a little bit more with that. So the anti tax movement is still clearly very strong because Trump himself got scared by his own statement of putting taxes on multimillionaires. And I think the quickness with which he kind of pulled that back. And even his Trump, his true social post where he was like, I'll put the taxes on there, but if they don't want to, I'll still be okay with it. It might be a good idea. You can see his hesitancy at how powerful the entrenched interests that run the party really are. And that's the struggle for the Trump administration. He's tried to tilt his base towards the populous working class base, which was the Democratic base for a long time. And he's seeing why Democrats politically found favor when they would raise taxes on the wealthy. That was their base. So that's the base he wants to have. But the party is still dictated by the entrenched corporate interests.

[Sagar]

Yeah, yeah.

[Krystal]

I mean, that's the problem for Grover spent decades. He spent decades on this, like anti tax Harvey. Crusade. Yeah, crusade. And he bullied everyone into signing. Well, I shouldn't say bullied. I mean, everyone was doing it with willingly to sign.

[Emily]

He was quite the bully though, from what it sounds like.

[Krystal]

Oh yeah, he could be a bully but when you know they have an opportunity to do a big tax bill in 2017 and Paul Ryan's saying, we're gonna get your taxes down to a postcard, it's gonna look like something like a flat tax. Well, that never happens because the corporate interests need there to be significant tax rates still to fund defense spending, to fund all that other corporate welfare. And that's what Gruber Norquist and the anti tax crusade who genuinely do believe in limited government and extremely limited taxes, they've ended up sort of being the vehicle for corporate interests to continue the welfare spigot.

[Emily]

Yeah, the flat tax debate is really interesting to me because I will say that when I sat down with Grover Norquist, there are people on the anti tax side who seem to genuinely believe just a complicated tax code is bad.

[Krystal]

Yeah, that's what I believe.

[Emily]

It will lead to people gaming the system, which it completely has. And it's unfair to people who don't have the means or the knowledge base to understand what all the complicated tax code means. And I think that's why tax cutting a flat tax became a really salient message, which is that if you're trying to live your life, you have your full time job, you have your family, and if someone says to you, do you just want to pay a simple tax code and know that the code is fair, that you know your neighbor who's an accountant, who knows the system system is paying less just because they have that knowledge base, that's a really powerful message. But again, the flat rate cutters, and a lot of them like to talk about Ronald Reagan. They're like, ronald Reagan was our hero. He was gonna do that, but everybody else made the tax code more complicated. Well, the story of Republican politics, and arguably Democratic politics too, is that the powerful interests, whenever you offer a tax cut, are going to be able to find what they can do. They used to call the hallway outside of the Senate budget writing room in the 80s, Gucci Gulch. Because Bob Dole came out and he saw all the tax lobbyists wearing Gucci shoes and suits and he would say, it's Gucci to Gucci in the hallway.

[Sagar]

Gucci to Gucci.

[Emily]

Yeah. And that's who wrote the 1986 tax cut bill.

[Sagar]

There you go. That says it all right there. Tell people where they can find the series and take a listen so you.

[Emily]

Can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is levernews.com and if you search tax revolt in your podcast players and lever time, you will find our podcast.

[Sagar]

Fantastic. Good to see you.

[Krystal]

Thank you so much.

[Emily]

Yeah, you too. Thanks for having me.

[Sagar]

Our pleasure. All right, guys, that does it for us. We are gonna do an AMA live today. So if you wanna be part of future AMAs, make sure to sign [e-mail] I will see you back here with Dave Smith tomorrow and then we will go from there. Emily. Fun. Always.

[Krystal]

I'll see it too, because I'm gonna be watching. Can't wait.

[Sagar]

There you go.

[Krystal]

That'll be fun.

[Sagar]

I always watch you and Ryan too. Just so you know. You watch everything I. I do. I do. I genuinely like, I learn. And I'm a fan, so.

[Krystal]

I mean, how can you not learn from Ryan? The man is just a font of wisdom. Infinite.

[Sagar]

There is a lot. There is a lot going on in that brain, isn't there?

[Krystal]

Well, he'll be here on Wednesday. Dave is in tomorrow. Can't wait to see it.

[Sagar]

Yep, sounds good. All right, guys, have a great day.

[Emily]

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[Sagar]

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[Emily]

Ah, but do you know what our most important ingredient is? Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

[Dave Smith]

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[Krystal]

Way better than that.

[Emily]

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